9.2 ww monk feedback

9.2 Windwalker Monk Feedback

Legendaries
There are several legendaries that could use a tuning pass of those, there are a few that could warrant a rework entirely.

Bountiful Brew - This legendary is one of the few that should be entirely redesigned or reworked as there is no way for this legendary to be salvaged currently. It suffers across the board - it’s a boring effect, isn’t fun or exciting in practice, doesn’t have synergies with other legendaries or borrowed power systems that allow it or another to become better as a result from its existence. The current effect is bad because Monk has a hard time taking advantage of random procs of Bonedust Brew in addition to the duration from the random proc not stacking and instead overlapping you are left with a legendary that feels that it almost provides no benefit. I have several ideas for a better legendary.

Allow the proc from Bountiful Brew act as a stand alone effect, allowing you to have two Bonedust brews active at one time.
Change the effect to: “While active, your Bonedust Brew procs increase the duration of Bonedust Brew by 0.5 sec. Maximum of 10 seconds.”
Add a secondary effect, “When Bonedust Brew expires gain 1% primary stat for 10 seconds for every time Bonedust Brew procced. Maximum of 15%.
Add a secondary effect that focuses on the spec specific effects of Bonedust Brew, “During Bonedust Brew, your Spinning Crane Kick refunds an additional 1 Chi and has an increased chance to proc Bonedust Brew.”

There are several design directions you could take this legendary to improve it and almost all of them are preferably to what we have now.

Call to Arms - This legendary suffers from a lot of behind the scenes wonkiness and unclear design intentions. Looking at it without knowing how it works you would assume as a Windwalker Monk that the second Xuen you summon would proc Empowered Tiger Lightning which would then proc the first Xuen’s Empowered Tiger Lightning thus creating a positive feedback loop between the two resulting in large damage. But in reality this interaction has been purposefully hamstrung in order to keep the legendary in check but as a result has made the legendary feel uninspired and weak. This is, not to mention for Brewmaster Monks where the second Niuzao doesn’t interact at all with your kit (doesn’t stagger damage or benefit from you clearing stagger). It makes this an odd design choice for a legendary where the cool potential of it is hampered and also having almost no synergies with other borrowed power. I would like to see this redesigned in favor of something that is more involved with Weapons of Order more. Even a boring stat legendary that has a similar effect to the Balancing Stave Anima Power from Torghast would be preferable as this would directly interact with the Strike with Clarity covenant conduit for Kyrian.
That about covers the legendaries that I believe would benefit greatly from redesigns or reworks. I think the rest of the legendaries just need a general tuning pass. Specifically:

Xuen’s Treasure: Increase the Crit provided by 5-10% and increase the CDR provided by 1.5 sec.
Last Emperor’s Capacitor: Needs a baseline buff to CJL damage and an added effect that allows you to cast this empowered CJL while moving.
Keefer’s Skyreach: Crit buff needs to be longer in PvE.
Jade Ignition: With the uncapping of Fists of Fury it is possible to overcap your Jade Ignition stacks with the fist tick of Fists of Fury. My solution is to increase the cap of Jade Ignition stacks to 100 and make Spinning Crane Kick consume a maximum of 20 stacks per use. In addition the base damage should be increased as it is pretty underwhelming currently.

Covenants
Night Fae
The primary problem with Night Fae is two fold, as a Windwalker Monk you are brought to groups for your AoE burst potential but this makes Faeline Stomp counter intuitive as its damage profile as a Covenant is more sustain focused. However Faeline Stomps damage is lower than the burst damage alternatives which gives Faeline Stomp no upsides especially once you add in the fact that it has a strict positional requirement that is punished heavily by movement. Additionally there are some universal changes that should be made to Faeline Stomp. Firstly it should be uncapped like the rest of the Windwalker Monk kit. This is especially important when using the Faeline Harmony legendary as in big AoE situations there is no reliable way to apply the debuff quickly. Secondly there is currently no indicator that you are standing in a Faeline. There is a 30 second buff that tells you that a Faeline is active but because of the wonky hitbox, you have no idea if you are or are not standing in an area of the Faeline that would allow you to get a reset. Lastly the conduit - Way of the Fae should be reworked. It was buffed by 100% in 9.1.5 and as a result may be a strong AoE conduit but it only increases the damage it does which is not useful to Mistweavers or Brewmasters as much. Maybe the conduit should increase the secondary effect of Faeline Stomp unique to each spec by a percentage? There are many ideas there for an awesome conduit that it feels lame to be stuck with a boring one.

I think there are two main solutions in my mind - the easy one and the more convoluted but cool one.
Increase the damage that Faeline Stomp does significantly to make resets more valuable outside of Niya stacks and Dreamweaver flowers uptime. In addition this ability should have two charges to facilitate movement more, allowing you to bank a charge for unprecedented movement.
The more expansive option is a slight rework to how the ability functions in order to make it feel more meaningful whilst double downing on its unique mechanics. Revert the Faeline behavior back to what it was in earlier Shadowlands beta builds - Allow multiple Faelines to persist at one time allowing you plan your movement out ahead of time if you are fortunate enough to get resets. In addition to doing this, you add a special effect that allows each Faeline to reverberate a portion of its damage and healing whenever you use Faeline Stomp. These changes combined effectively change Faeline Stomp into a sustained no movement powerhouse of an ability. You could overlap several Faelines and deal huge damage with it or if you suspect movement will occur soon you could position yourself according and place your Faelines towards where you suspect the movement will be. This has to be potential to be pretty overpowered but in my mind Faeline Stomp should be the highest damage covenant in a no movement situation so that it’s downsides (susceptible to movement, sustain damage profile) are actually warranted.

Either one of these avenues is acceptable in my eyes but the ability itself definitely needs some attention drawn to it as it currently stands its clunkiness is just too great and makes it super situational when it should otherwise be good.

Venthyr
Venthyr’s main problem is its poor tuning throughout the expansion. The 9.1.5 rework to the ability has helped some and I believe the borrowed power support that the ability has is absolutely incredible as Mistweaver monk has demonstrated. The problem is with the Windwalker Fallen Order Monks. Their problems are as listed:
Their Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick is still capped.
The damage their Fists of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick do is way too low.
Their AI doesn’t know what to do with a lot of haste.

The main offender for the entirety of Shadowlands has been item b on the list. You recently added the ability for the Fallen Order Monks to cast Spinning Crane Kick but unfortunately they do not benefit from Mark of the Crane which makes the damage it does pretty pathetic. On a recent Mythic Kel’thuzad kill my guild had the Fallen Order Monk Spinning Crane Kick ended up doing less than my Chi Burst on a heavy AoE encounter. The same can be said for their Fists of Fury almost doing less than their autoattacks on Single Target encounters. If those values were raised the entire covenant choice would be much more lucrative as Windwalker. To explain item c more on single target the Fallen Order monks come out, immediately Fists of Fury and then stand there, auto attack and Tiger Palm and then despawn. Because of the low damage of Tiger Palm there is currently no reason to get more haste as a Venthyr Windwalker as your ability does not benefit from it at all.

Serenity
I know it is unusual for a talent to be significantly buffed or reworked in the middle of an expansion but I am pleading to you to please buff this talent. This talent row has been severely dominated by Whirling Dragon Punch for 3 years straight and this next tier is looking like one that could be a good Serenity tier if it wasn’t for how terribly tuned the talent is.

I have two proposals: the first is a simple numbers change to make the talent stronger and fill a niche role as a single target talent for Windwalker Monk, the second is a more dramatic redesign. Both of them include a new effect that is necessary for the talent to be used outside of single target - “During Serenity, all abilities count towards Mastery: Combo Strikes.”. This effect is necessary to make Serenity provide you with a benefit in AoE, you will be able to spam Spinning Crane Kick for 12 seconds whilst gaining the damage bonus from your mastery. A playstyle that is seen now as Necrolord Windwalker Monk.

Reduce the cooldown to 1 minute. Increase the damage bonus to 35%. Add effect listed above.

This will give Serenity a bit more heft in the damage bonus its providing whilst its reduced cooldown will allow it to fulfill a timing niche that Storm, Earth, and Fire doesn’t necessarily cover. The reduced cooldown will also allow it to line up with other cooldowns easier.

Split Serenity into 3 charges each with a 30 second cooldown that last 4 secs each. Increase damage bonus to 30%. Add effect listed above.

	Splitting Serenity into 3 charges with ⅓ the duration and cooldown allows you take advantage of the infinite resource mechanic already present in Serenity more efficiently, something that is currently almost entirely ignored whilst providing you with added flexibility of how you use the cooldown. The damage bonus and added effect are still necessary to allow Serenity to compete with the other talent row options.

Conclusion
I’d be lying if I said that Shadowlands hasn’t been a drastic improvement for WW Monk over BfA but there is always room for improvement and I hope my feedback helps explain the improvements that I think should be made to the spec to make it the most fun and the best it can be.