Monk Must-Haves for Midnight: Tea & Brew Focus, Talent Balance & Impactful Cooldowns

Top 5 Midnight Wishlist

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.