[2022] Feedback: Monks

In this thread, please respond with your feedback on the updated Monk class, once you’ve had a chance to test it out in the Dragonflight Alpha.

Thank you!

We now have a first look at the Monk talent trees.

Our goal with the class tree is to allow a player to construct different visions of their character and play with the hybrid nature and cheerful mobility that exemplifies a Monk.

For Brewmaster, our primary goal was to allow players the flexibility to lean into different flavors – to emphasize a brew-heavy playstyle, or go the way of the wily martial arts master – while also providing situationally-interesting decisions for survivability.

For Mistweaver, we want to offer support for both the caster and melee playstyles while maintaining a variety of choices for both builds. We also wanted to take a look at Mistweaver’s multi-target damage profile through returning and new talents such as Zen Pulse and Ancient Concordance.

For Windwalkers, we want to allow players the flexibility to focus on different styles of damage dealing, as well as offering opportunities to customize their ability loadout in ways that bring back old friends or lean into focus on specific abilities.

We’re excited for Monks to be joining the Dragonflight Alpha and we look forward to hearing your feedback!

• Known Issues
  • There are several talents that are not fully implemented yet. These are tagged with NYI (Not Yet Implemented) in their Talent name.
  • The Talent Frame background for Mistweaver is incorrectly using Windwalker art. This will be corrected in a later build.
  • Roll is intended to be baseline. The talent in the upper left, connected to Soothing Mists, is a second charge of the ability.
  • We’re working on a bug where, if you learn a talent loadout with some of the NYI talents, you won’t be able to spec out of them.

Added to Known Issues:

• Roll is intended to be baseline. The talent in the upper left, connected to Soothing Mists, is a second charge of the ability.

Added to Known Issues:

• We’re working on a bug where, if you learn a talent loadout with some of the NYI talents, you won’t be able to spec out of them.

In today’s Alpha update:

• Class Talents
  • New Talent: Summon White Tiger Statue – Summons a White Tiger Statue at the target location for 30 seconds, pulsing damage to all enemies every 2 seconds for 30 seconds.
    • Developer note: This medium-duration area of effect cooldown is designed to bring the pain to enemies who dare doubt the wrath of the White Tiger.
  • Roll Rank 2 now correctly communicates that it grants an extra charge.
  • Windwalking tooltip now correctly displays speed increase instead of size change.
  • Generous Pour, Close to Heart, and Save Them All talents are now implemented.
• Mistweaver
  • Unison – Soothing Mist heals a second injured ally within 15 yards for 100% of the amount healed (was 50%).
  • Awakened Faeline, Misty Peaks, Rapid Diffusion, Invoke Yu’lon’s Enveloping Mist mana reduction, and Ancient Concordance are now implemented.
  • Zen Reverberation triggers a second Zen Pulse at 50% effectiveness (was 30%).
  • Accumulating Mist increases Zen Pulse’s damage and healing by 15% per stack (was 10%).
  • Invoker’s Delight now scales its duration down to 8 seconds when talented into Gift of the Celestials.
  • Jade Bond’s Gust of Mist buff increased to 25% (was 12%).
  • Known Issue: Ancient Concordance’s tooltip displays the incorrect target count for Blackout Kick’s cleave. The intended functionality of this is to hit 2 targets with 1 point and 3 targets with 2 points.

Hello weavers of mist.

We’d like to address few topics that have come up regarding the new Mistweaver Talent tree.

Tree Layout

In the Mistweaver tree, our intent is for players to make compelling decisions between powerful abilities, particularly with their final points, in order to decide on their build. We want players to feel engaged with pathing throughout this tree and have reasons to explore a variety of options regardless of their build type.

This may result in some ability placement feeling counterintuitive. The question “this spell has great synergy with this other spell, so why are they not placed next to each other?” can be answered: We want to maintain pathing tension, so that players feel engaged throughout the talent selection, as well as avoid certain talent combinations for balance purposes.

Rotational Clutter

Several pieces of the Monk and Mistweaver tree are adding options for active buttons on a short cooldown. Too many relatively low impact abilities on a short cooldown can lead to gameplay feeling rushed and overwhelming.

Zen Pulse has been the main offender in our eyes. In future builds, we’re looking at increasing the cooldown and effect of Zen Pulse to make it feel more impactful while reducing rotational clutter.

We will be keeping an eye on this problem moving forward with spells such as Refreshing Jade Wind and Faeline Stomp.

Mistweaving and Fistweaving

Our intent is for both builds to feel as though they have options and reasons to explore throughout the tree. The trick will be to find pathing that satisfies both builds without removing options or build diversity.

We were overall pleased with the first iteration of this tree but are still looking to make improvements. Players can expect a few nodes that may have felt like blockers to swap positions and additional connections to facilitate this in future builds.

Renewing Mist Synergies

Our intent is for spreading Renewing Mist to feel rewarding and powerful. We’re happy so far with how Misty Peaks, Rapid Diffusion, and the return of Dancing Mist have been received and we’re glad to see many players feeling much the same way. Our goal is to tune around these effects remaining engaging and synergistic.

Essence Font

The placement of some abilities, namely Essence Font, at the top of the tree has come off as alarming for some players. Since Essence Font is not an ability that sees universal use, why is it required to move past the first gate?

The intent for this placement is to sacrifice a small amount of choice early in the tree to maximize choice later in the tree. There are many different modifiers later in the tree that rely on Essence Font to function, and the layout of the tree overall would be heavily impacted if these needed to be packed into a small subsection.

A good example of the opposite of this placement is Life Cocoon-related talents in this tree. While players can expect the Life Cocoon talents to feel more optional with increased pathing being added in future builds, the overall placement of these nodes is reliant on stemming from Life Cocoon, due to it not being required to progress past the first gate.

Thank you all for your continued feedback!

Today’s update includes:

• General
  • Heavy Air – Moved to NYI, redesign coming soon.
  • Resonant Fists has been redesigned – Now simpler to activate and deals area of effect damage to nearby enemies.
  • Bounce Back – Now correctly triggers only on hits of 20% or more.
• Mistweaver
  • Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
  • Zen Pulse – Cooldown increased to 30 seconds (was 15 seconds). Damage increased by 80% and healing increased by 50%.
  • Yu’lon’s Whisper – Healing reduced by 25%.
  • Spirit of the Crane – Adjusted mana refund to 0.45% (was 0.65%).
  • Misty Peaks – Enveloping Mists procs now last 2 seconds (was 3 seconds).
  • Enveloping Mist – Healing reduced by 20%.
  • Ancient Teachings of the Monastery – Healing reduced to 125% of damage done (was 200%).
  • Ancient Teachings of the Monastery healing increased by 60% in PvP combat.
    • Developers’ note: Mistweaver Monk’s damage capabilities have gone up by a significant amount due to the Dragonflight talent system. This adjustment to Ancient Teachings reflects that increased damage potential and is not intended as a large nerf compared to Mistweaver’s current Shadowlands experience with Ancient Teachings. It is likely that further adjustments are needed (for example, some damage going down and Ancient Teaching’s healing going back up), but this should get us in the ballpark for now.
  • Clouded Focus – Now increases the healing and reduces the mana cost of Enveloping Mist and Vivify by 15% (was 20%).
• Windwalker
  • Multiple talents have been moved to allow better flow and decision-making throughout the tree.
  • Gale Burst has been removed.
  • Rushing Jade Wind – Damage increased by 33%.
  • Meridian Strikes – Cooldown reduction increased slightly.
  • Hit Scheme – Replaced with Hit Combo as intended.
  • Spiritual Focus – Now works with Serenity.
  • New Talent: Hardened Soles – Increases critical strike chance and critical strike damage of Blackout Kick.

Hello Mistweaver Monks! We have a few updates to the Mistweaver spec tree coming in the next beta build. We’d like to take a moment and discuss our upcoming changes and the philosophy behind them.

2 Point Node Positioning:

The 2-point node placement on this tree has been a little tricky to get into what we feel is the right spot. Overflowing Mists is a situationally powerful bonus, so we don’t want it controlling pathing in the bottom of the tree. Resplendent Mist felt like its use cases were more universal than its positioning. Peaceful Mending shouldn’t block off any pathways but should feel like it contributes to navigating down the tree if selected.

To accommodate these principles, we’ve moved Overflowing Mist back up to above gate 2, Resplendent Mist has moved to the node below Ancient Teachings of the Monastery and Clouded Focus, and Peaceful Mending is occupying a new connection on the right side of the tree that is not exclusively blocking any pathing below. This new pathing has also enabled Bountiful Brew and Attenuation to move up and directly connect to Bonedust Brew.

Jade Bond:

We’ve been steadily moving most of Jade Bond’s value to its Gust of Mist/Soothing Breath bonus. The dichotomy we’re looking for on this choice node is more frequent access via Gift of the Celestials versus more impactful access via Jade Bond. We’re hopefully continued tuning can get us there.

Unison:

We’ve made this into a choice node with Restorative Proliferation to make the middle path towards Invoker’s Delight slightly more appealing for all builds. Unison being on its own may have felt like a choice limiter to some builds who were interested in pursuing Invoker’s Delight.

Tea of Plenty:

We’re interested in pursuing this “random bag of goodies” design but felt the swing of expected value from this ability was too large, especially with the reintroduction of Essence Font to Thunder Focus Tea. In future beta builds, we’ve split Tea of Plenty’s effect into a choice node of two spells.

Tea of Serenity will give Thunder Focus Tea an extra charge of Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, or Vivify. Tea of Plenty will give Thunder Focus Tea an extra charge of Renewing Mist, Rising Sun Kick, or Essence Font. Hopefully this will maintain the same feel of the talent while allowing players to customize more towards their desired outcome.

Here’s the new layout you can expect to see:

• Tea of Serenity. New Talent, Row 10. Thunder Focus Tea also grants Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, and Vivify 1 extra charge at random.

Thanks again for all of your testing and thoughtful feedback.

Here are all of the Monk updates in the new Beta build:

• Mistweaver
  • Overflowing Mists – Now heals for 1%/2% of max health (was 1.5%/3%).
  • Invoker’s Delight – Now has an 8 second duration with Gift of the Celestials (was 7 seconds).
  • Enveloping Mist – Increased healing by 12.5%.
  • Rising Sun Kick – Increased damage by 25% for Mistweavers. Mana cost increased to 2.5% of base mana (was 1.5%).
  • Tiger Palm – Increased damage by 40% for Mistweavers.
  • Blackout Kick – Reduced damage by 20% for Mistweavers.
• Windwalker
  • Strike of the Windlord damage has been adjusted.
  • Fixed an issue preventing Forbidden Touch from functioning.
  • Mark of the Crane – Now correctly grants its passive when talented.
  • Empowered Tiger Lightning – Now correctly grants its passive when talented.

With the PTR build that went live moments ago:

• MONK
  • Mistweaver
    • Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope (4) Set Bonus: Fixed an issue that caused some healing spells to not properly contribute to Chi Harmony.
    • Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope (4) Set Bonus: Fixed an issue that caused some healing spells to double dip contribution to Chi Harmony.
    • Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope (4) Set Bonus: Now accumulates up to 15% of healing done (was 20%).
    • Healing Elixir now additionally heals if excess healing elixirs are generated.
    • Healing Elixir now restores 20% of maximum health (was 15%).
    • Healing Elixir now automatically triggers at 40% health (was 35%).
    • Expel Harm now costs 1.4% base mana (was 3%).
    • Expel Harm healing increased by 550%.
    • Expel Harm now deals damage equal to 25% of the amount healed (was 10%).
    • Expel Harm’s damage range increased to 20 yards (was 8 yards).
    • Strength of Spirit now increases the healing of Expel Harm by up to 30% (was 100%).
    • Profound Rebuttal now increases the critical healing of Expel Harm by 15% (was 50%).
    • Expel Harm can no longer be cast on allies during Soothing Mist.
    • Unison now duplicates 75% of Soothing Mist healing done (was 100%).
    • Enveloping Breath healing decreased by 20%.
    • Invigorating Mist’s healing visual is now only visible to the caster.
    • Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 20%. Does not apply in PvP combat.
    • Calming Presence now reduces damage taken by 6% (was 3%). Does not apply in PvP combat.
  • Windwalker
    • Developers’ note: We heard community feedback that the additional Spinning Crane Kicks granted by Windfoot were difficult to fit into the rotation and Blackout Reinforcement alone was not an impactful enough payoff. Windfoot has been removed and the set will now directly grant Blackout Reinforcement. Additionally, free Spinning Crane Kicks should now more reliably and consistently grant Blackout Reinforcement. As always, we will continue to monitor feedback around this bonus and appreciate the testing the community has put forth.
    • Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope (2) Set Bonus has been redesigned: Free Spinning Crane Kicks grant Blackout Reinforcement, increasing the damage of your next Blackout Kick by 150%. Melee abilities have a chance to grant Blackout Reinforcement.
    • Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope (4) Set Bonus has been redesigned: Blackout Reinforcement empowered Blackout Kicks reduce the cooldown of Fists of Fury, Rising Sun Kick, Strike of the Windlord, and Whirling Dragon Punch by 3 seconds.
    • Spinning Crane Kicks cast during Serenity now correctly grant Blackout Reinforcement.
    • Blackout Reinforcement is correctly removed at the start of Mythic+ dungeons and raid encounters.
    • Blackout Reinforcement can no longer be canceled. Usage of Cancelaura macros on Dance of Chi-Ji without casting a Spinning Crane Kick will no longer grant Blackout Reinforcement.

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Monks in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

The War Within Beta

All classes’ Hero Talent trees are available for testing. Please keep in mind that this is a Beta environment:

• There may be UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI).
• Some new spell visuals and audio may still be a work in progress.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus at this time:

• Finish work on changes to talents, especially wherever Hero Talents still need adjustments.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

Working from Feedback

Alpha feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Now that we are entering Beta, our focus on Hero Talent trees is shifting away from reworks and design changes and towards tuning and refining. We want to thank you so much for all the forum posts, videos, and discussions all over the internet. Your feedback and impressions have been invaluable for bringing their identities to life and making them fit into what you love about the classes you play.

We are looking forward to hearing from more of you as you get a chance to try Hero Talents for yourself. We are specifically interested in feedback or impressions on these topics:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
• Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.
• Hero Talent choice nodes that you feel could offer more meaningful choices.

Again, Thank You

Feedback throughout the Alpha test was highly impactful on our design of the game, and we look forward to refining every class with you in the Beta. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

Zen Pulse does currently scale its proc rate with the number of Renewing Mists active to encourage and reward good management of Renewing Mist uptime. We agree the current reward has not been enough and have increased the proc rate at higher counts in the next Beta Build. Thank you for your feedback!

We have a significant update for Brewmaster Monks coming in today’s new Beta build.

Please read all about our overall philosophy here:

Brewmaster Monk

Healers have more time to heal monks than other tanks because Stagger spreads out the damage that they take over time. Our goal is for monks to take a little more damage overall than other tanks to offset this effect. However, we feel their overall magic damage mitigation is a little low compared to other tanks and are improving it somewhat by buffing Stagger and its value against magic. To increase their physical damage taken overall, we’re primarily reducing the dodge granted by Elusive Brawler and some of their other talents.

• Brewmaster’s Balance increases Monks’ Armor by 50% (was 25%).
• Elusive Brawler chance to dodge reduced by 12%.
• Celestial Fortune heals you for 70% of the amount healed (was 80%).
• Amount of damage staggered increased by 8%.
• Percentage of magic damage staggered increased to 58% (was 45%).
• Dance of the Wind chance to dodge reduced to 5% (was 10%) for Brewmaster only.
• Yu’lon’s Grace grants an absorb equal to 1% of your maximum health (was 2%) every 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).
• Healing Winds restores 10% of maximum health (was 15%).
• Staggering Strikes healing reduced by 28%.
• Spirit of the Ox chance to summon a Healing Sphere reduced by 40%.
• Elixir of Determination healing reduced to 30% of recently purified damage (was 50%), or a minimum of 8% of your maximum health (was 20%).
• Celestial Brew healing reduced by 10%.
• Pretense of Instability grants 10% Dodge (was 15%).

Hello.

In The War Within, we’ve increased health pools by 60% relative to Dragonflight values. Many spells scale with player health values, so we’ve reduced many of these spells so their relative value remains similar between Dragonflight and The War Within.

Life Cocoon was among the percent-health scaling spells chosen to reduce to keep its value the same between expansions, as we did not feel it was a weak spell throughout Dragonflight (with or without modifying talents). So Life Cocoon’s value is about the same relative to its strength in Dragonflight.

We’ll keep an eye on it to ensure it’s handling scenarios appropriately in The War Within all the same.

Thank you for your feedback!

We’d like to call your attention to adjustments we’re making in the next Beta build.

• MONK
  • Hero Talents
    • Conduit of the Celestials (Mistweaver/Windwalker)
      • Celestial Conduit healing reduced by 8%.
      • Inner Compass now increases secondary stats by 2% (was 3%).
      • Temple Training increases the healing of Vivify and Enveloping Mist by 6% (was 10%).
  • Brewmaster
    • All ability damage increased by 15%.
  • Mistweaver
    • Yu’lon’s Whisper healing increased by 30%.
    • Jade Bond now decreases the cooldown of Chi-Ji by 0.5 seconds (was 0.3 seconds) and increases the healing of Yu’lon’s Soothing Breath by 500% (was 300%).
    • Tear of Morning now increases the healing of Vivify by 10% (was 15%).
    • The locations of Invigorating Mists and Healing Elixir have swapped.
  • Windwalker
    • Touch of the Tiger now increases the damage of Tiger Palm by 40% (was 25%).
    • Hardened Soles now increases the critical strike chance of Blackout Kick by 10% (was 5%).
    • Rushing Jade Wind’s damage has been increased by 30%.
    • Communion With Wind now increases the damage of Strike of the Windlord by 100% (was 80%).
    • Memory of the Monastery now increases Tiger Palm’s chance to activate Blackout Kick! by 25% (was 15%).
    • Xuen’s Bond now increases Xuen’s damage by 30% (was 15%).
    • Brawler’s Intensity now increases Blackout Kick’s damage by 12% (was 15%).
    • Crane Vortex now increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick by 30% (was 20%).
    • Meridian Strikes now reduces the cooldown of Touch of Death by 0.6 seconds (was 0.35 seconds) when Combo Strikes is activated.
    • Darting Hurricane proc rate has been increased.
    • Martial Mixture now increases the damage of Tiger Palm by 8% per stack (was 10%) but can stack up to 30 times (was 12).
    • Chi Burst’s activation effect can now stack up to 2 times and its duration has been increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
    • Chi Burst damage decreased by 20%.
    • Chi Wave’s damage has been increased by 80%.
    • Rising Star now increases Rising Sun Kick’s damage by 15% (was 10%).
    • The duration of Fury of Xuen’s stacking buff has been increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
    • 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.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Chi to drop below Combat Wisdom’s threshold at the start of raid encounters.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Ferociousness to not grant its increased effect during Fury of Xuen procs.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Rushing Jade Wind’s duration to be longer than intended.