We got another Beta build tonight, this time with some meaningful changes to Windwalker: https://www.wowhead.com/news=284605/battle-for-azeroth-26707-class-changes-and-azerite-traits

  • Flying Serpent Kick   Soar forward through the air at high speed for 2 sec.1.50 sec.Serenity   Enter an elevated state of mental and physical serenity for 912 sec. While in this state, you deal 40%20% increased damage and healing, and all Chi consumers are free and cool down 100% more quickly.
  • NEW Good Karma   Touch of Karma can now redirect an additional 50% of your maximum health. Tier 4 Talent, in place of Summon Black Ox Statue
  • Power Strikes   Every 15 sec, your next Tiger Palm will generate 1 additional Chi and deal 100% additional damage. Removed
  • NEW Spiritual Focus   Every 2 Chi you spend reduces the cooldown of Storm, Earth, and Fire by 1.0 sec. Tier 7 Talent, in place of Power Strikes

The changes to Cyclone StrikesRising Sun Kick, and Blackout Kick are mainly tooltip and formula changes, not actual changes to their functionality.

So as much as I am sad that I’m losing my favorite talent in Power StrikesSpiritual Focus is a good replacement since it makes Storm, Earth, and Fire have a similar cooldown to live.. So lets do some quick math. Every minute Energizing Elixir generates 4.8 Chi per minute, Chi Burst generates 2 per minute, with no Haste, you generate 600 energy in a minute, or 24 Chi. This means a total of 30 Chi or so every minute, or an average of 0.5 Chi per second. This translates to 0.25 seconds off SEF every second. With a base 90 second cooldown, that’s roughly 22 seconds off. Figuring the shorter the CD, the less seconds you get off with some diminishing returns, the average cooldown of SEF should be somewhere around 70 seconds, assuming my guesstimation is right. This is equivalent to 4/4 in Split Personality, a pretty strong increase in your average SEF uptime. How it compares to the other talents will be more difficult to figure out.

Good Karma is a huge increase to Touch of Karma’s abilities as a defensive, but also as an offensive. It should double its offensive benefit, making it the only talent on that tier of talents that provides an offensive benefit. Suffice it to say that unless you really need Ring of Peace or some extra range on Leg Sweep, this will become the default talent.

Serenity gained some uptime, but lost some damage increase. Similar to the addition of Spiritual Focus, this change is hard to determine exactly how big/small it is with the basic math skills and limited time I had this evening. From a purely mathematical look at it, 33% more uptime but 50% less damage should be a 33% net loss overall. However, because this could mean that you can get another cast of Fists of Fury or Rising Sun Kick into the buff, it may be a net gain when all is figured out.

Many of the answers to the questions surrounding these changes will come out over the next few weeks as we prepare for the expansion. Right now there are still some bugs on Beta that make things difficult, or impossible to test, so time will need to tell. Many of us who normally do the legwork to figure this stuff out are also delaying the harder stuff like optimal Serenity usage due to exact situations like this one where something was changed that invalidates most of what was done before.

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