Windwalker Monk Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Windwalkers use a priority system, not a rotation. This means that you want to use the highest priority ability available and don’t delay a higher priority ability for a lower one.

The lists below assume you are doing what you need to do to avoid capping resources, avoid breaking your mastery and using above cooldowns appropriately.

NEW IN 12.1 - The 4 piece of the tier set causes Spinning Crane Kick to shoot up in priority quite a bit. You want to use Spinning Crane Kick after Fists Of Fury casts on 2 targets or more to consume the buff.

Spinning Crane Kick itself also has shot up quite a bit in priority as a result of a 40% damage buff and should be used much more often in AoE when you have excess Chi to spend.

• Single Target
• Multi Target

Opener

Single Target with Bloodlust (Conduit of the Celestials)

The key to a Celestial Conduit opener involves properly utilizing your improved Heart Of The Jade Serpent window provided by the Unity Within hero talent. This will effectively allow you to cast Rising Sun Kick and Fists Of Fury back-to-back while it is active.

You also want to be careful to not cast Celestial Conduit too early, ideally waiting for the Heart Of The Jade Serpent provided by Strike Of The Windlord / Whirling Dragon Punch to expire first.

1. Cast Tiger Palm
2. Cast Invoke Xuen, The White Tiger
3. Cast Zenith with potions, racials, and trinkets (make sure to use stat buffs prior to Zenith being cast to buff Zenith Stomp)
4. Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
5. Cast Fists Of Fury
6. Cast Rising Sun Kick
7. Cast Fists Of Fury (if #8 reset your Fists of Fury cooldown)
8. Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented and #8 did not reset your Fists of Fury cooldown)
9. Continue with normal priority

Single Target with Bloodlust (Shado-Pan)

Shado-Pan’s gameplay and opener is much more simpler than it has been in iterations past. Once inside your cooldown, you just want to prioritize pressing your buttons off cooldown and making sure you have the resource available to do so.

1. Cast Tiger Palm
2. Cast Zenith with potions, racials and trinkets (make sure to use stat buffs prior to Zenith being cast to buff Zenith Stomp)
3. Cast Fists Of Fury
4. Cast Rising Sun Kick
5. Cast Fists Of Fury (if #5 did reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
6. Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented and #5 did not reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
7. Proceed onto the normal priority list

Cooldowns

Windwalker has Zenith, which is one of the most flexible cooldowns in the game, thanks to the ability to reduce its cooldown with Spiritual Focus, or as Shado-Pan’s Efficient Training.

This allows you to possibly play Conduit of the Celestials at 2:00 or 1:30 timings, or Shado-Pan with a 1:30, 1:20, or 1:00 cooldown timings. It’s important to keep this in mind when doing encounters, as this is a luxury that not very many classes benefit from.

Defensives

As a Windwalker Monk, you only have access to Fortifying Brew and Touch Of Karma defensively. Touch Of Karma can be used in a couple of different ways:

1. You can use it prior to a large burst of damage if you are worried about it one-shotting you.
2. You can use it during heavy sustained damage by letting your health get low and then using it. This acts as a momentary pause in your health bar and allows your healers to top your health bar off.
3. You can use it aggressively to deal damage. This method isn’t usually recommended unless you’re on the farm of a boss or are otherwise not worried about dying.

Mobility

Windwalker Monk has many different mobility tools available to you with Roll, Flying Serpent Kick, Lighter Than Air, and potentially Slicing Winds. I’d like to highlight two in particular that have somewhat of a skill ceiling.

Lighter Than Air: This has a ton of skill expression and can be quite fun to use once you understand how the game handles momentum. For example, if you use the dash at the correct timing after jumping or using Whirling Dragon Punch, you can launch yourself forward much further than you would normally be able to. As a result of this and being able to cancel knockbacks, this talent serves a very unique and important role in Windwalker’s mobility toolkit.

Slicing Winds: Slicing Winds retains a lot of its mobility characteristics from the Plunderstorm game mode. Namely, unlike Flying Serpent Kick, Slicing Winds cannot bring you over edges. It can only bring you to the edge of a platform. It can also be used in the air, which will bring you safely to the ground, where it normally would have landed if you just empowered it on the ground.