Class Wishlists for Midnight
Death Knight Wishlist
Hunter Wishlist
Monk Wishlist
For a brief breakdown of the changes coming to each specialization in Midnight, check out our Midnight Class Survival Guide.
Midnight Class Survival Guide
Monk Wishlists for Midnight
Our Monk Writers, Sinzhu (Brewmaster), Swirl (Mistweaver), and Babylonius(Windwalker), discuss the most significant issues plaguing their specs as well as the must-have changes they'd like to see prior to Midnight's launch in just a few short months.
Brewmaster Monk Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Rebalance Choice Nodes
2.
Increase Keg Smash's AoE Radius
3.
Justify Spinning Crane Kick's Existence
4.
Take Celestial Brew/Celestial Infusion off the GCD
5.
Tone Down the SFX/VFX of Flurry Strikes
Choice Node Imbalance
While tuning is still relatively early and ongoing, it is important to mention the state of imbalance that remains in many of Brewmaster's choice nodes. Not all of them are a matter of damage numbers, either, as in the case of Rushing Jade Wind now having its duration equal to the cooldown (and still further reduced by Haste), which results in it creating far too much rotational bloat over the entirely passive alternative of Special Delivery. Other than this, at present most of the nodes across both the spec tree and even Hero Talents have one clear winner and loser rather than a compelling choice. Although this can be acceptable if the design goals are different—like Blackout Combo versus Press the Advantage—one must wonder why the tree still offers only a heightened illusion of choice rather than the real thing.
AoE Threat Risks
As something of a knock-on effect to Rushing Jade Wind now more or less being unusable due to its negative rotational impact, Brewmasters deal much less consistent damage in larger AoE, with Keg Smash and Breath of Fire being the only buttons used with frequency. However, should a Keg Smash fail to hit a target, which is surprisingly easy when enemies are not yet tightly grouped, you don't have many options to rein in stray targets suddenly running toward a DPS or healer instead. You would think that this is a perfect job for Spinning Crane Kick, but it remains largely unintegrated with the kit's many damage modifiers to the point where even a Tiger Palm can outperform it almost every time. Though some players are drawn to following up an Exploding Keg with the ability to generate more bonus hits of Fire damage, even this is rarely an efficient use of Energy or time. The point here is that if the tools of "consistent" AoE damage are going to be either undertuned or infrequent, then they must at least be better at hitting only loosely grouped enemies. There are only so many times you can use an AoE Provoke on Summon Black Ox Statue as a bandaid.
Quality of Life
Development for Midnight has resulted in Brewmaster largely seeing a lot of small victories, whether it's a better integration of Stagger into combat log events and the "official" damage/healing meters or reworking the powerful-but-random Hero Talent tier set bonuses of this last season of the War Within into something more consistent among the new nodes. However, despite a general reduction in keybinds, especially in defensive cooldowns, one of the spec's main mitigation abilities—Celestial Brew/Celestial Infusion—still remains locked to the global cooldown. When all of the removed abilities—Dampen Harm/Diffuse Magic and already Zen Meditation in TWW Season 3—were off-gcd, this lack of responsive defensive gameplay is all the more painful in its lingering presence. With the fourth point of the Bring Me Another Apex Talent also encouraging Celestial Brew/Infusion's use to increase one's damage output (not to mention being required to enable most of the Master of Harmony Hero Talents), the Brewmaster rotation can quickly feel like one with too many "setup" globals, much like when too many offensive cooldowns take them up in other specializations.
Brewmaster Monk Guide
Mistweaver Monk Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Thunder Focus Tea Balance
2.
Mystic Touch Rework
3.
Unique and Desired Utility
4.
Consistent Gameplay Mechanics
5.
Major Bugfix Sweep
Thunder Focus Tea
With the ever-growing list of effects added to arguably our most important spell, Thunder Focus Tea, especially given the new Apex talent Spiritfont and the recent change from 30-second to 45-second cooldown, the imbalance between casts under each Hero Tree is incredibly apparent. Master of Harmony only adds 1 additional cast to our repertoire during an encounter through Endless Draught, while Conduit of the Celestials offers cooldown reduction under the various activators of Heart of the Jade Serpent, resulting in approximately 2 additional Thunder Focus Tea casts every 5 minutes. These imbalances continue to compound as we reach talents that add additional effects to Thunder Focus Tea: obvious ones like Emperor's Elixir and Focused Thunder while supporting talents like Morning Breeze and Yu'lon's Knowledge gradually expand these synergies. The post-Coalescence rework doesn't make up the difference in healing or damage for the spec and leaves Master of Harmony (which was mostly untouched during Alpha and Beta) lackluster in various forms. Something must change to bring these trees into balance as Thunder Focus Tea has accumulated significant synergies with the rest of the kit.
Desireability
Monk has seen ebb and flow of raid buffs living with Legacy of the Emperor, giving Legacy of the White Tiger to Windwalker initially then Brewmaster in Warlords of Draenor until both buffs were removed in Legion, receiving Mystic Touch in Battle for Azeroth (with a short-lived attempt to buff but subsequently not making it to live in The War Within), and finally seeing the 10-yard range Close to Heart and Generous Pour buffs in Dragonflight until they became nerfed personal versions in The War Within - we are no stranger to volatility. Compared to other healers who offer buffs and unique utility that affect all specializations like Devotion Aura and Blessing of Protection, Mark of the Wild and Rebirth, Skyfury and Bloodlust, Power Word: Fortitude and Power Infusion just to name a few, Mystic Touch and Monk's utility don't quite meet the mark. Mistweaver's utility is great on paper; however, Revival exists yet is only useful in niche scenarios, Elusive Mists offers incredibly low single-target damage reduction that requires pausing gameplay to channel and often cannot be used due to stop casting mechanics, the cookie-cutter crowd control of Leg Sweep and Ring of Peace, de-enrage being oddly tied to crowd control under Paralysis with Pressure Points while having the longest cooldown of all single target soothes, and lastly, Midnight's removal of Spear Hand Strike. I'd really like to see Monk no longer live in a state of "Jack of ...some Trades, Master of None" with odd limitations on our utility that other specs simply do not have to deal with.
Consistency & Bugfixes
Midnight Mistweaver lives in a state of bugs looming over the spec with menacing eyes. There are more minor bugs that provide inconsistency in existing gameplay mechanics such as Rising Mist not extending Renewing Mists under Mists of Life and the brand-new Monk Mistweaver 12.0 Class Set 4pc or the summoned Jade Serpent Statue's Soothing Mist not being buffed alongside the Mistweaver's Soothing Mist (historically to 50% of its value). Some of these are gameplay-defining bugs where various talents either do not work, such as Flowing Wisdom not increasing haste during Heart of the Jade Serpent or bugs that cause abilities to randomly stop working, like the inability to use Jadefire Teachings with Conduit of the Celestials where the damage-to-heal conversion drops off to the significantly lower baseline rate of Ancient Teachings. Frankly, the long list of bugs is frustrating to deal with in everyday gameplay and makes playing the spec exhausting seeing them happen in real-time.
Mistweaver Monk Guide
Windwalker Monk Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Balance Abilities and Talents
2.
"Better" Feeling Cooldowns
3.
Change Strike, Whirling, and Slicing
4.
Help Defensive Struggles
5.
Bring Back Last Emperor's Capacitor
Balance Abilities and Talents
Included with the Midnight Alpha announcements, the Developer's Note stated that they had the goal of "making sure the base damage of spells feels impactful". Currently that is somewhat the case, with Fists of Fury being our strongest hitting ability and Rising Sun Kick being "good enough" in single target. However, AOE is where things start to struggle as Windwalker is currently leaning further into single target than most people are used to. Much of this problem comes from Spinning Crane Kick (somewhat due to losing Dance of Chi-Ji) and things like Strike of the Windlord and Fists of Fury's AOE/cleave being lackluster.
Moreover, many talents are currently solidly in the "meh" category of being strong enough to not be sad about, but not strong enough to be excited for. My favorite new talent Rushing Wind Kick is an incredibly enjoyable button to press and playstyle to play, but it just doesn't do as much damage as you'd expect it to do and the same can be said for many of our "capstone" talents. There is something to be said for many different talents being an option, but them all being an option because they are all "bleh" isn't very provocative... it doesn't get the people going.
"Better" Feeling Cooldowns
Many people, including myself, are excited or at least not sad to see Storm, Earth, and Fire go. Tigereye Brew was a longtime fan favorite and something that many have wanted to return, however, the old problems of Tigereye Brew are returning as well. Tigereye Brew's stacking mechanic, historically, was more degenerate and counterintuitive than people liked, or even knew about. This was "fixed" by Storm, Earth, and Fire simply having two charges when it replaced Tigereye Brew, but now it would be back. Similarly, "tricks" to generate more stacks at the start of a pull, like swapping specs, staying in or out of combat, or using your damage increasing cooldowns as targets die all could become common place due to the way that Tigereye Brew currently works. By making it a set Critical Strike % increase rather than one with stacks, many of the potentially unpleasant things Windwalkers could do to squeeze out more damage can be mitigated.
With the simplification of things and the shift to Critical Strike instead of Haste, the new cooldown, Zenith, doesn't have the same "umph" as people are used to having when it comes to live where we have both Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger and Storm, Earth, and Fire further modified by things like Invoker's Delight. Without Invoker's Delight, much of the "feel" of the offensive cooldowns is lost since it isn't as noticeably faster than normal. Zenith does come with a rather large chunk of damage with Zenith Stomp, but this is passive and doesn't add anything to the tactile "feel" of our cooldowns. It also comes with significant risk of pulling agro at the start of pulls, and can very easily end up killing you before there's any chance for anyone to react unless you wait several seconds before using your cooldowns, which is never a fun experience.
Change Strike, Whirling, Slicing
Our Discord poll with over 1000 responses showed that 67% of respondents felt negatively about Slicing Winds, so its understandable that many of us are annoyed to see its return. Without the Heart of the Jade Serpent activation that it gets from the tier set on Live, it's now just a "press button get damage" ability with the empowering, movement, and Flying Serpent Kick replacing mechanics that often make it more annoying than enjoyable.
Another puzzling change in Midnight is that they're taking Strike of the Windlord and Whirling Dragon Punch and making them a choice node together. They are both activated differently, so its not just a change in how you do damage, but how you press your buttons. Because of this, while Whirling Dragon Punch "technically" provides Heart of the Jade Serpent , since Whirling Dragon Punch requires Fists of Fury to be on CD to activate, you can almost never benefit from Fists of Fury's faster channel time during Heart of the Jade Serpent . While there is some logic in taking these two "extra" abilities and making them a choice node, with one focusing on ST and the other focusing on AOE, these are the top two spells that people most often want to see made baseline, so making them a choice node feels like a step away from what people want.
Windwalker Monk Guide
