Windwalker Tips

Unnamed Player's Windwalker play and how it can be improved.

*This is based off of looking at two night's worth of logs (Sunday 10-18 Archi attempts and Wednesday 10-21 farm night)*

-TLDR of Important Points-
	- Archimonde + 4PC is a HUGE increase and help to dps / gameplay
	- (Talent) Power Strikes is not that great.
		- Serenity + Chi Brew and Chi Explosion + Ascension is your best bet
	- (Talent) Zen Sphere
		- Casting it on just yourself is less than optimal
		- Cast on others or take Chi Burst instead for better DPS
	- FoF usage can be improved
	- Tiger Eye Brew usage is quite good
		- Chi Explosion = 100% uptime (or as close as you can get)
		- Serenity
			- Try to only use with 8 or more stacks
			- No more than 15 stacks should be saved up
			- Use it during FoF when possible
			- Priority adds and big cooldowns is the best time to make sure it's up
	- Touch of Death more often
	- More "cheesy" Touch of Karma usage

I understand this is an off spec of Tzatziki, but it looks like it's utilized enough that this could make a difference on progression. I can tell that the basics of the spec are understood and there is deffinitely potential here if they really want to focus on it and hone it.

If they really want to just up their Monk play period and are focused on improving, the IRC channel #PeakOfSerenity on the Coldfront (http://coldfront.net/) server is the best place to go. Also www.chiburst.com is the monk centric forum to post to as wel.

-Gearing-
Since MW is their main spec, the gear works quite nicely for WW. Enchants and gems seem mostly to be in order and having the 4pc is really important. The most important, especially paired with the 4pc, is having the Archimonde trinket. It's not that great for MW and BRM, but for WW it changes the playstyle quite a bit.

I'm not quite sure how highly MW values haste, but having more haste would not be a bad thing for the WW set. The more haste means more energy regen and more energy is more dps. 8%-10% is a nice place to be for most people to get in their "comfort zone." That is taking the trinket into account.

I think it's safe to assume that they do not have the Council or Tyrant trinkets to swap in and out on a fight to fight basis. Those are both good trinkets for certain fights, but at least they have Soul Capacitor which is a very fun and good trinket to have.

-Soul Kappacitor-
This is a somewhat tricky trinket to use as a Windwalker. Besides every other agility user having their /cancelaura macro to get the most damage out of it as possible, the way it calculates what damage counts towards the explosion makes WW have an extra thing to look out for. If you do not know, SC is a random proc that gives you a buff. During this buff it takes all damage that THE CHARACTER does and stores it inside the trinket. When the buff ends, 125% of the damage that would have been dealt in the duration of said buff is done to targets around it. The extra thing to consider for a WW is that when you have clones out, your character does 70% damage to the target and each clone does 40% to their target (Note: You are unable to do damage to a target that has a clone on it). Keeping how SC works in mind, the trinket only stores the 70% damage that you do while the clones are up. Canceling the clones as soon as the trinket procs may seem a bit

-Archi Trinket-
"You have a 18.94% chance to perform a free Rising Sun Kick after each Fists of Fury, Blackout Kick, or normal Rising Sun Kick."
That is huge for saving chi given RNG is in your favor, and of course the more chi the more damage output. It speeds up the gameplay quite a bit and gives that "spammy" feel back to the class that many enjoyed during MoP. It especially effects Chi Explosion gameplay and the amount of cleave damage possible on fights like Archi, Iskar and Xhul.

-Talent Choice-
There are two glaring issues that seem fairly common across most boss fights. The level 100 talent choices are mostly good across the board, but their pairings are off most of the time.

Serenity (single target) is always paired with Chi Brew. Having on-demand Chi and Tiger Eye Brew generation is key for single target, especially during the opener and prepping for burst phases. Chi Explosion (multi-target cleave fest) should be paired with Ascension due to how energy intensive this talent choice can be. The extra Chi you are able to have as well as the increase in energy regeneration helps counter the resource hunger of the talent.

The second talent choice, or use of a talent, that I'd like to point out is Zen Sphere. Zen Sphere is the best DPS talent in that talent tier, if you use it properly. It has a 10 second cooldown and can have two running at a time. It's a shield that absorbs damage and does damage and healing when it takes the damage or the timer expires. The issue is that for it to be more effective than Chi Burst, you need to cast it on yourself and someone else every 10 seconds. Having a macro set to your focus, and that focus being a melee, makes casting on someone else much easier. The amount of casts one very single boss indicates that it's only being used as a self shield, and as stated above, is not being used to it's potential.

--Gameplay--

- Fists of Fury
	Overall FoF usage isn't that bad, but I did notice some frequent delaying of the spell when it otherwise is not necessary. Sometimes other stuff happens like movement and poor positioning, and that's completely understandable. But keeping FoF on cooldown as much as possible is huge for damage. Holding it on some fights for adds to spawn, Iskar and Xhul to name two, is beneficial if it's happening in the next 5-10 seconds. Other than those cases, chi should be ready within a couple seconds of it coming off cooldown.

- Energizing Brew
	This is a 1 minute cooldown that generates 60 energy over 6 seconds. This should be on cooldown most of each fight regardless of which "spec" the fight requires. Similar to the FoF holding for certain phases of a fight, holding EB for burst phases similar to the add phases on Iskar and Archimonde. The usage on this could be improved quite a bit since that's essentially free damage. Casting more would be beneficial especially given the lack of haste on their gear currently.

- Tigery Eye Brew
	PROPER uptime on TEB is essentially and seperates the "greats" from the "meh." The overall usage, from what I can tell is not bad at all but could be improved slightly. Having 100% uptime on TEB during Chi Explosion is pretty easy to obtain especially with the amount of chi being spent. With Serenity it's more or less about having it up during the proper times. Those times being FoF, SC procs, Serenity uptime and when a priority add needs to die. The proper application is anywhere from 8 stacks and up while trying to not get too many over 15. Capping at 20 is a waste of stacks.

- Touch of Death
	ToD does damage equal to or lower than your current health and can be used when the bosses health is less than 10% or your max health. Sniping down adds like this helps with DPS getting back on the boss, unless it's preferred that Warriors execute snipe for the increased damage buff. That's completely dependant on your strategies and how you want things handled. It's essentially a 3 minute CD that should be used as often as possible. In add heavy fights I'm only seeing ToD being used on the boss which is gimping their damage output by at least an extra 800k - 1m damage.

- Touch of Karma
	Seeing as this reflects damage equal to half of your max health as damage to the target makes it a very useful defensive and offensive spell. It's a great way to save you from accidentally getting a stack or three of fire or a nice way to mitigate Pound damage (Reaver and Kormrok) to save healers mana AND do an extra ~250k to the boss. Finding instances to use this effectively while still being able to hold it for those "oh shit" moments can be that little bit that could be a first kill. There could be more casts of this througout most fights. I'm only seeing, on average, one cast a fight if at all. Not the most important in this critique, but it could help.