Introduction
Hey, I’m J-Funk. I have been playing Windwalker Monk since Mists of Pandaria and have been raiding in Humble since Legion which in Amirdrassil was World 48th. In Battle for Azeroth, I was consistently one of the higher rated WW Monks in M+ and have been a Windwalker Monk theorycrafter/guide maker for several years.
Windwalker Monk is a melee DPS spec that has a tool for nearly every situation and has flexible cooldowns, great utility, and excellent mobility.
In The War Within, Windwalker Monk has received a significant rework to its talent trees. As a result, the playstyle has been changed with many new effects, but still retaining its core identity. One of the biggest benefits of this rework has been to Windwalker Monk’s historically poor secondary scaling; With Haste now being the most valuable secondary stat, it truly is a new day from iterations past.
If you tried out Dragonflight Windwalker Monk and thought it wasn’t for you because of poor secondary scaling, annoying playstyle stuff like Jadefire Stomp, or didn’t like how wasteful it was with resources, give The War Within Windwalker Monk a shot.
What has changed
As well as the recent overhaul to its talents, there are several changes coming that are present in the Beta that are different from Prepatch. These include many drastic talent buffs and quality-of-life changes. I’d like to highlight some of the most important ones here.
- Whirling Dragon Punch now has a slight grace period where it will remain usable when Rising Sun Kick or Fists of Fury complete their cooldowns.
A great change as you often would run into an issue during Celestial Conduit windows where you would be constantly resetting either Fists of Fury or Rising Sun Kick’s cooldown and be locked out of using this spell. This gives you a roughly 1.5 second window where you are able to use Whirling Dragon Punch with either of these off cooldown.
- Communion With Wind now increases the damage of Strike of the Windlord by 100% (was 80%).
This is actually the second buff this has received in the Beta meaning that you go from the live server version of 20% to a whopping 100% damage. This change combined with Darting Hurricane’s buff means this talent may see play.
- Chi Burst’s activation effect can now stack up to 2 times and its duration has been increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
Ever since Chi Burst changed to a proc there were concerns voiced that it would be difficult to use it when you want to. This change should allow you to mostly do so and alleviate some pressure that you are wasting procs at times.