Windwalker Monk Talents Guide

With 11.1, the deeply-cemented status quo of talent builds has been upended with a series of talent tuning, a talent addition, and several other factors such as different bonuses and added stat scaling. The main difference comes down to Hero Talent selection as Strike of the Windlord is not played in Shado-Pan builds whereas it’s required for Conduit of the Celestials. And with the removal of Mark of the Crane, Spinning Crane Kick and consequently Dance of Chi-Ji become an auto pick in all situations.

Overall, there’s a lot of experimentation and individual expression in talent builds for 11.1. Below is what I’d overall recommend.

Disclaimer: Dual Threat gains value if you are dual wielding; Mythic+ Conduit has a lot of options to choose from and it may vary by dungeon. For example, Slicing Winds and Xuen’s Battlegear gains value over Last Emperor’s Capacitor and Power of the Thunder King in more single target skewed situations.

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The new class tree has an incredible flexibility in the talents that you can choose. There are a select few talents that are “required”. Required in this context meaning that they provide valuable utility that outweighs other options you can pick and/or they are required for efficient pathing through the tree.

These would include:

Grace of the Crane: This is borderline required as a 4% increased healing taken is extremely valuable in all situations. In addition, This allows you to path towards the important Vivacious Vivification and subsequently Chi Burst/Chi Wave easily.

Vivacious Vivification: This acts as your self-healing for this expansion. The nice part of this is you can use it to spot heal others as well.

Chi Burst/Chi Wave: Both of these are changed from their Dragonflight versions with Chi Wave being a passive now and Chi Burst being a proc. You still use them in the same ways you used them before (in downtime and if there is nothing better to cast).

Transcendence: A staple of Monk mobility; this gates Ferocity of Xuen which is a mandatory 2% increased damage node as well as the powerful Ring of Peace.

Ring of Peace: As mentioned above, you need to pick Transcendence in order to pick this, but choosing this or the significantly less popular Song of Chi-Ji allows you to pick up your defensive nodes which are mandatory.

Martial Instincts/Chi Proficiency: These two point nodes at the bottom of the tree take up roughly half of your allotted points in this section of the tree but they are mandatory and open up pathing options to the powerful Fatal Touch and Flow of Chi nodes.

Fatal Touch: This has been altered slightly from the Dragonflight version. This now gives a 5% damage buff for 30 seconds upon using Touch of Death. The end result being that it isn’t as important to “snipe” enemies within the Touch of Death instant kill range. Instead, you can use it as a mob reaches 15% HP.

Flow of Chi: A new node and entirely passive but extremely powerful, giving you a damage reduction, increasing healing taken, or movement speed depending on your health threshold.

Much like the class tree there is a degree of flexibility to the talents you can choose. While this isn’t as great as the class tree, there are still many options and different build choices you can go with. I’d like to highlight a few notable talents that you will take in different situations that alter your gameplay significantly.

Ordered Elements: This is reminiscent of the Weapons of Order effect from Shadowlands with a slight modern twist. For one, the duration of the reduced Chi cost buff is increased to 7 seconds. This (combined with many other changes) makes it so you will never have to cancel Fists of Fury.

Secondly, Activating Storm, Earth, and Fire (which is now a Combo Strike) resets the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick and grants 2 Chi. This is crucial for our single target opener as it allows us to reach 6 Chi within a reasonable amount of globals spent and gives us an extra Acclamation stack.

Glory of the Dawn: This has received quite the glow up from Dragonflight. This now benefits all nodes that affect Rising Sun Kick such as Rising Star, Xuen’s Battlegear, and Acclamation, and now it’s chance to proc now scales with haste.

Last Emperor’s Capacitor/Power of the Thunder King: These talents have been around since the rework at the start of The War Within, however with the recent (and massive) buff to its damage in 11.1, This will start to become a staple talent pick in Single Target and AoE situations.

Xuen’s Bond: This talent was changed going into Patch 11.1, it now provides a static 30 second cooldown reduction which should make it way more consistent on fights where uptime can be an issue. It still provides the 30% damage increase to Xuen.

Slicing Winds: New in Patch 11.1, you may be familiar with this capstone talent if you have played the Plunderstorm game mode. This is an empower spell that sends you further the longer you charge it. Meaning in most cases, you’ll just tap the spell. This can be pretty strong if you play Conduit of the Celestials and has interesting applications in fights where adds are spread out.

Currently the two trees are very close and it’s mostly preference on which you want to play.

Shado-Pan highly values never overcapping energy, where Conduit of the Celestials is flipped and values never overcapping Chi.

Shado-Pan's main gameplay impacting effect is the Shadow Flurry Strikes buff from Wisdom of the Wall. This was recently buffed to last 40 seconds instead of 20 like the other wisdoms and is an exceptionally powerful effect, especially in AoE as it is Windwalker’s only source of uncapped AoE damage.

While this is active, you want to more aggressively press Tiger Palm. This means that you want to weave in Tiger Palms between your other spells even when you may overcap Chi. As mentioned earlier, this becomes even more of a priority in AoE situations.

Conduit of the Celestial is much more active than Shado-Pan. The most important, and the most gameplay impacting node by far on the Conduit of the Celestials tree is Heart of the Jade Serpent.

This talent, when activated by pressing Strike of the Windlord or at the end of the Celestial Conduit channel, acts as sort of a mini-Serenity window where it will reduce the cooldown time of your Rising Sun Kick, Fists of Fury, Strike of the Windlord, Flying Serpent Kick, and Whirling Dragon Punch by 75% for 8 seconds. In addition, Fists of Fury will have a 50% reduced channel time.

These effects are further amplified by the Unity Within capstone which calls all of the celestials and increases their effect by 200%!

This means that you gain a super Heart of the Jade Serpent window with 150% reduced cooldown time. On single target this means you can press Rising Sun Kick and Fists of Fury back to back as the cooldown reduction provided from Xuen’s Battlegear will be ultra effective with the shorter cooldown of Fists of Fury.