Going back to the original announcement of Shadowlands, the subsequent alpha and beta testing, the launch, and so forth - playing a Windwalker Monk has always felt as though we have been consistently been placed into an incredibly awkward position. A position which seemed to be often overlooked by much of the development team and the community as a whole for a number of different reasons. These things include problematic bugs, wonky rotations, poor scaling, and unfun design in things like Torghast. The awkwardness comes from the fact that even despite these “challenges”, the class remains to be one of the most fun ones to play, and one that I don’t think I would ever switch from.
The 9.2 tier set bonus highlights, I think perfectly, what I mean when I say that at times it seems we’re neglected. Perhaps out of touch would be a better word? For those unfamiliar this is what the set bonus entails -
9.2.0 Class Set - Monk - Windwalker - 2PC ** Increases Fists of Fury damage by 40%.
9.2.0 Class Set - Monk - Windwalker - 4PC ** After 10 offensive abilities, your next 3 offensive abilities deal an additional 22% damage.
Specifically what I’m referring to is the 4 piece bonus - “After 10 offensive abilities, your next 3 offensive abilities deal an additional 22% damage”. Not only does this leave the taste of “unfun”, it seems to make the class inherently more complex for no reason other than adding complexity.
The first problem becomes - what is an offensive ability? Does flying dragon kick count as an offensive ability? Expel Harm? Touch of Death? The lack of clarification from this can create a lot of confusion for a player who might not be willing to put in the time to research from other players what they have found. In turn this makes having the set bonus appear almost as though it were a disadvantage if you aren’t actively counting each offensive ability towards the 10.
Which brings me to the next concern - the 3 offensive abilities deal an additional 22% damage. Ideally we would want that to constitute a RSK, FF, and WDP or another RSK. If you aren’t utilizing the damage bonus on those, or a dance of chi-ji in AOE, you are affectively throwing away the bonus. This means that in order to achieve being optimal you need to constantly be counting, or become reliant on a weak aura or some other addon to perform the counting for you.
Set bonuses should be fun, or at the very least they should make an adjustment to a class that makes it more interesting. In this particular case neither feel as though they are being achieved.
I don’t have a solution - I’m not a class designer, but I would love some input on what could be changed about it. One area I had though was to utilize the Chi Explosion ability that was removed in Legion -
- Consumes up to 4 Chi to cause the target to explode with Chi energy, causing additional effects based on Chi consumed:
1+ Chi: Deals Nature damage to an enemy equal to (47.5% of Attack power) plus (47.5% of Attack power) per Chi consumed.
2+ Chi: Deals an additional 50% damage over 6 sec.
3+ Chi: Also generates a charge of Tigereye Brew.
4 Chi: The damage also hits all enemies within 8 yards of the target.
In this case however instead of consuming Chi, after utilizing 10 offensive abilities you explode with chi energy to deal damage to an enemy, and some of that damage occurs additionally over 6 seconds.
