What is Happening

Back on December 5th (last week), Windwalker saw a nice tidy 6% to our Windwalker Monk tuning Aura. This translated into, roughly, a 4-5% increase in Windwalker’s in simulations. Looking at comparing the data between last week and the previous one, and understanding that all data is contextual; Windwalker went “up” to 5% below the average from 11.15% below the average in 75th percentile Mythic raiding, and from 12.55% below the average “up” to 7.99% below the average in 75th percentile Heroic raiding. Far from all that Windwalker needed…. but better than nothing.

Today, Blizzard posted more balancing notes planned for the upcoming raid reset on December 19, and it included some targeted buffs to many of Windwalker abilities:

• Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 20%.
• Blackout Kick damage increased by 10%.
• Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 8%. Does not apply to PvP.
• Fists of Fury damage increased by 8%. Does not apply to PvP.
• Blackout Reinforcement increased to 250% (was 200%).
• Glory of the Dawn damage increased by 40%.
• Dance of Chi-Ji bonus increased to 300% (was 200%).

What it Means

Anyone who’s been looking at numbers for any reasonable length of time knows that 10% almost never means 10%, so here’s what we think it will actually do;

• Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 20%.
• Blackout Kick damage increased by 9.26%.
• Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 7.6%. Does not apply to PvP.
• Fists of Fury damage increased by 7.5%. Does not apply to PvP.
• Blackout Reinforcement increased to 250% (was 200%).
• Glory of the Dawn damage increased by 40%.
• Dance of Chi-Ji bonus increased to 300% (was 200%).

Their numbers are not very far off, which is always good. Comparing it to actual data is slightly harder, but we can try.

Lay currently has the highest Windwalker DPS on Mythic Volcoross, with a respectable 226, 319 DPS on Dec 13, before these new round of buffs, but after the last round so its easier to calculate. For estimation purposes, its as easy as adding these modifiers to his data.

• Spinning Crane Kick – 3,898.8 DPS * 1.2 (SCK buff) * 1.33 (DoCJ buff) = 6,222.5 DPS, for a gain of 2,323.7 DPS.
• Blackout Kick – 31,449.8 DPS * 1.0926 (BoK buff) * 1.045 (BoR buff) = 35,908.3 DPS, for a gain of 4,458.5.
• Rising Sun Kick – 58,872.4 DPS * 1.076 = 63,346.7 DPS, for a gain of 4,474.3 DPS.
• Fists of Fury – 41,254.8 DPS * 1.075 = 44,348.91 DPS, for a gain of 3,094.11 DPS
• Glory of the Dawn – 839.0 DPS * 1.4 = 1,174.6 DPS, for a gain of 335.6 DPS

If you add all of these together, you get a gain of 17,780.32 DPS, or about 7.85% more damage. This number roughly matches the 7.5% increase that Hursti found when changing the spell data on our Simulation Profile.

If we take an increase of 7.5%, and add it to most recent week of data, understanding that the real outcome will not be exactly this but its late on a Friday after a crazy week and I’m out of practice so shut up… Windwalker moves to roughly 2% ABOVE the average, which is a position it hasn’t been in a while. Obviously, reality will be different, but for now it seems to be theoretically “enough”.

Conclusion

There’s a BUNCH of other moving parts in the patch notes that make it hard to predict exactly where the chips will fall. However, this buff seems to get the job done to at least get us to the average and give every Retribution Paladin more justification for complaining. If you consider that Windwalker got a 4-5% buff last week and a 7.5% buff next week, that is more than 12% more damage over the course of 3 reset weeks, roughly the lower bound of what many predicted it would take for Windwalker to get back off the mat.

Now, if you wonder how a spec could get to the end of the expansion, get 12% worth of buffs and still just hit “the average”, then you’re caught up. There is also something to be said about further leaning on RNG based buffs and leaving more of Windwalker damage to chance… or Faeline Stomp still being a huge and awful part of playing the spec. This is certainly not a fix to the scaling or playstyle problems that the spec has; but it gets the job done numerically, which is consistent with the bandaids that Windwalker gets when there are problems.

There may be some moving parts in terms of altered ability priorities or talent tweaks, but we don’t expect anything major. As always, the latest news will be found in Discord, and the guides will be updated as soon as possible.