wow The (Bad) State of Monks on the Shadowlands Beta Discussion

[Starym 3,800]

One of the most popular threads on the WoW reddit at the moment is about the state of Monks, specifically Mistweavers and Windwalkers, as they haven't received much attention on the Shadowlands beta, and have had plenty of issues for quite some time now. Redditor ProgsRS started things off with his initial post, but many more Monk community members chimed in and started a big discussion on what exactly was happening with Monks, what changes were needed and more.

The idea behind the thread was to get attention to the issues and gather as many Monk players to have their voices heard and to add to the discussion, and it seems to have achieved that. Here's the TLDR version from the initial post, although it has many interesting and good points throughout as well, so you should read the whole thing here if you get the chance.

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TL;DR - Monks, specifically Windwalker and Mistweaver, have been neglected in a broken state and at the bottom for most of the past few years, carrying the same core and fundamental issues and bugs into the new expansion which introduce even more problems with the new systems and abilities. After over 5 months of alpha and beta testing (with the class literally being in an untestable state) and feedback on the Monk feedback thread with some of the most well written and detailed posts among all classes about the issues we're facing, there has been a complete lack of communication from Blizzard and nothing but radio silence. A blue post was finally made more than 2 weeks ago which acknowledged our patience and mainly told us to look out for more Monk updates the following week, but 2 weeks on so far (with over a month left till Shadowlands launch) and there's still been completely no updates or communication whatsoever.

For context, there has been one and only one Monk blue post in the entirety of the beta, as opposed to many other classes that get pretty much weekly updates. There is another blue post in the Monk thread, but that's the Mortal Wound-like effect change that affected many classes and isn't that relevant to Monks anyway. Here's that one post, which in itself isn't anything huge:

Monk Beta Class Changes (source)

Thank you, Monk community, for your patience throughout Shadowlands development. We’re especially grateful for the many detailed bug reports that Monk testers have submitted.

In this week’s build, you’ll see a number of updates to Monk leveling rewards. These include several spell upgrades, as well as the removal of Dual Wield and 2-handed requirements for Fists of Fury (Windwalker) and Blackout Kick (Brewmaster). We also performed a pass on all of the Celestial invocation spells, adding Rank 2 upgrades for each and re-designing Yu’lon and Chi-Ji for Mistweavers.

Brewmaster
Level 58 – Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox – Rank 2

• The damage of Niuzao’s Stomp is now increased by 25% of the Stagger damage you have purified in the last 5 seconds.

Windwalker
Level 58 – Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger – Rank 2

• Xuen strikes your enemies with Empowered Tiger Lightning every 8 seconds, dealing 10% of damage you have dealt to those targets in the last 8 seconds.

Mistweaver
Level 34 - Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent

• Mana cost increased to 5% base Mana (was 0%).
• Yu’lon now idles near the Mistweaver and casts Soothing Breath on an injured target, healing the target and up to 4 nearby injured allies.
• Soothing Breath gains benefit from Soothing Mist bonuses, similar to Summon Jade Serpent Statue.

Level 45 – Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane

• Mana cost reduced to 5% base Mana (was 10%).
• Chi’Ji is now assists the Monk and deals melee damage.
• While Chi’Ji is active, your Physical attacks cause Chi’Ji to heal up to 3 injured allies with a Gust of Mist, and reduce the cast time of your next Enveloping Mist by 33%, stacking 3 times.
• Chi’Ji’s Gust of Mist currently heals for 200% of a normal mastery heal.
• Activating Invoke Chi’Ji, the Red Crane clears the Mistweaver of all movement impairing (snare, root) effects, and provides immunity to these effects for the duration.

Level 58 – Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent – Rank 2

• Yu’lon and Chi-Ji now heal up to 5 nearby targets with Enveloping Breath when you cast Enveloping Mist, healing over 6 seconds, and increasing the healing they receive from you by 10%.

We’ve been working hard to address the many bugs that have been submitted, with a focus on those bugs that are impacting testing, and we expect to have Monk testing in a much better place with next week’s build of the Shadowlands Beta (the first week of September).

Our goal is to make use of the feedback we’ve received here and elsewhere, with respect to Covenant class abilities, core class abilities, and legendaries. Thank you for your commitment to providing us with so much valuable information. Please look for more updates next week!

That final line is also somewhat saddening, as the post was made 16 days ago. Now of course, none of this is to say that changes aren't coming or won't come at Shadowlands launch, but considering how short of a time there is to release (and even less to the pre-patch, which will include the class changes), it is a little concerning.

In any case, if you're at all interested in Monks you should head on over to the reddit post and check out all the details, and add your own thoughts on the matter.

Source.

[belhaven28 7]

Windwalker has been in a rough state since Legion 7.3.5. to be honest. Any point where there was a positive it was "balanced" out of being useable to the point its at in 8.3 (the worst raid dps and mediocre M+). Moving Xuen off the gcd and giving whirling dragon punch baseline would probably help out a lot but there needs to be some significant work.

[Libraridan 36]

Hmmm...you mean my fave healer has been broken and I didn't know it? Ignorance, bliss, yada yada. But those changes look very interesting.

I actually deleted my monk at one point because I hated WW so much. But then I played with MW and fell in love. With an evidently broken spec. <cue the yada yada> [NOTE: I originally leveled her as MW, my first leveling of a healer ever, but gave up on it when they nerfed fistweaving into the ground.]

Edited September 12, 2020 by Libraridan

[Talby 0]

It's unfortunate when a player may feel like they won't be able to play the class/spec they enjoy due to issues, or if they are wanting to play something like Brewmaster in a competitive environment, that they may feel as if Windwalker or Mistweaver off specs are a ball & chain.

I'm happy to see that community posts like this are getting attention and to see that despite being one of the smaller communities in terms of playerbase everyone is still willing to come together and speak up when it matters. It really took me by surprise to see threads like this on Reddit, Official Forums, etc start popping up from all around the communities. 

[BeeDad 6]

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but gave up on it when they nerfed fistweaving into the ground.

This is really hard for me too. I like how MW plays in some ways, but the fact that anytime fist weaving is viable it feels like Blizzard swings in seconds later to nerf it because apparently fistweaving is supposed to be bad... I guess? Not to down play how strong it has been or anything but I'd like to see it have some amount of viability. Really though I feel, as someone who mained monk through all of BFA, like that approach is how blizzard has looked at monk for the last expansion at least (can't say anything about legion). Which is to say: If it's middle of the pack or higher then it's problematic. While other classes dominate parses for multiple patches anytime we see an upswing it gets "fixed" because it was an unintended interaction or some other excuse. I honestly just think that the monk fantasy is too narrow for Blizzard at this point and they should try other perhaps more radical things. It seems that after MoP they really just lost the plot on what they want monk to be and in a world where WW has to stand out in a crowd of melee DPS specs it doesn't stand out at all. Really sad to see. I always like recommending changes that will get any class out of that pidgeon hole of only being melee dps since that makes your life even harder. Would be cool if WW used the idea that we see in other media (D&D, PF, Diablo 3) of being able to autoattack and melee at a short range, maybe lean a bit? Make it so it's not just a bad fourth rogue spec? I really just don't know.

 

At the very least I'm glad Touch of Death isn't going to be a major DPS cooldown anymore. That was a really frustrating playstyle (to me at least). I may be in the minority, I don't know but, whirling dragon punch is great and should just be baseline. I would just rework the entire first row of talents I don't think any of those options are fun to use maybe that's a good place to really play around with the spec? IDK. Honestly, it's frustrating. I like this class I want to keep playing it but as it stands I'm already leveling a different class to prep for November.

[Imortalfrost1537 0]

Im usually just here to read whats going on but for a monk player since the beginning of monk im extremely disappointed with the push mistweaver is taking towards being a melee focused healer. What about the massive number of people that want to be the tank healer at range and not have to do all the fistweaving crap to keep up. These are okay buffs yes but it makes those of us ranged focused monks want to throw monk in the trash. Shadowlands is looking to be the first expansion since monk was released that i, and many others im sure, will not be playing mistweaver anymore. Stop forcing us to play cookie cutter builds!

[Starym 3,800]

20 minutes ago, Imortalfrost1537 said:

Im usually just here to read whats going on but for a monk player since the beginning of monk im extremely disappointed with the push mistweaver is taking towards being a melee focused healer. What about the massive number of people that want to be the tank healer at range and not have to do all the fistweaving crap to keep up. These are okay buffs yes but it makes those of us ranged focused monks want to throw monk in the trash. Shadowlands is looking to be the first expansion since monk was released that i, and many others im sure, will not be playing mistweaver anymore. Stop forcing us to play cookie cutter builds!

Hey, thanks for the comment and input, just wanted to jump in and say I edited the comment to remove the quote of the full article ?