Playstyle & Rotation
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.
Single Target Rotation (Conduit of the Celestials)
- Cast Fists Of Fury if Heart Of The Jade Serpent has 1 or less second remaining
- Cast Touch Of Death
- Cast Celestial Conduit if Heart Of The Jade Serpent is not active
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented)
- Cast Tiger Palm with less than 4 Chi, less than 2 stacks of Blackout Kick! and about to cap Energy
- Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Fists Of Fury
- Cast Rushing Wind Kick (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with less than 4 seconds remaining on Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented) and not at 2 stacks of Blackout Kick!
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm if any of #6-#10 is ready and not enough Chi
- Cast Blackout Kick with Blackout Kick!
- Cast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented)
- Cast Blackout Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm
Inside Zenith skip #5 and #9 when talented into Obsidian Spiral. Your goal is to minimize Tiger Palm casts inside your cooldowns.
Single Target Rotation (Shado-Pan)
- Cast Touch Of Death
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented)
- Cast Tiger Palm with less than 4 Chi, less than 2 stacks of Blackout Kick! and about to cap Energy
- Cast Strike of the Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Fists of Fury
- Cast Rushing Wind Kick (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with less than 4 seconds remaining on Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented) and not at 2 stacks of Blackout Kick!
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm if any of #4-#8 is ready and not enough Chi
- Cast Blackout Kick with Blackout Kick! or Zenith active
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Zenith and more than 3 Chi
- Cast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented)
- Cast Blackout Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm
Inside Zenith skip #3 and #7 when talented into Obsidian Spiral. Your goal is to minimize Tiger Palm casts inside your cooldowns.
Multi Target Rotation (Conduit of the Celestials)
- Cast Fists Of Fury if Heart Of The Jade Serpent has 1 or less second remaining
- Cast Touch Of Death
- Cast Celestial Conduit if no active Heart Of The Jade Serpent
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented)
- Cast Tiger Palm with less than 4 Chi, less than 2 stacks of Blackout Kick! and about to cap Energy
- Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Fists Of Fury
- Cast Rushing Wind Kick (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with less than 4 seconds remaining on Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented) and not at 2 stacks of Blackout Kick!
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm if any of #6-#10 is ready and not enough Chi
- Cast Blackout Kick with Blackout Kick!
- Cast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented)
- Cast Blackout Kick
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm
Inside Zenith skip #5 and #9 when talented into Obsidian Spiral. Your goal is to minimize Tiger Palm casts inside your cooldowns.
Multi Target Rotation (Shado-Pan)
- Cast Touch Of Death
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented)
- Cast Tiger Palm with less than 4 Chi, less than 2 stacks of Blackout Kick! and about to cap Energy
- Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Fists Of Fury
- Cast Rushing Wind Kick (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with less than 4 seconds remaining on Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented) and not at 2 stacks of Blackout Kick!
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm if any of #4-#8 is ready and not enough Chi
- Cast Blackout Kick with Blackout Kick! or Zenith active
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Zenith and more than 3 Chi
- Cast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick with Dance Of Chi-Ji proc (if talented)
- Cast Blackout Kick
- Cast Spinning Crane Kick
- Cast Tiger Palm
Inside Zenith skip #3 and #7 when talented into Obsidian Spiral. Your goal is to minimize Tiger Palm casts inside your cooldowns.
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.
- Precast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- Cast Tiger Palm
- Use Algeth'ar Puzzle Box (if equipped)
- Cast Invoke Xuen, The White Tiger
- Cast Zenith with potions, racials, and trinkets (make sure to use stat buffs prior to Zenith being cast to buff Zenith Stomp)
- Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Fists Of Fury
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Fists Of Fury (if #8 reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented and #8 did not reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
- 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.
- Cast Tiger Palm
- Use Algeth'ar Puzzle Box (if equipped)
- Cast Zenith with potions, racials and trinkets (make sure to use stat buffs prior to Zenith being cast to buff Zenith Stomp)
- Cast Fists Of Fury
- Cast Rising Sun Kick
- Cast Fists Of Fury (if #5 did reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
- Cast Whirling Dragon Punch (if talented and #5 did not reset your Fists Of Fury cooldown)
- Cast Strike Of The Windlord (if talented)
- Cast Slicing Winds (if talented)
- 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:
- You can use it prior to a large burst of damage if you are worried about it one-shotting you.
- 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.
- 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.