#1 - July 9, 2013, 4:39 a.m.
Mastery:
I'd like to first talk about the rework of our mastery. It looks like it was made in an attempt to balance/phase out RoR. This change I feel was necessary. Having a spec's performance hinge on any single item is not good game design. It would have also scaled out of control with the stat upgrades we'd be getting in 5.4. My main issue with RoR was that proc timings were unreliable causing the damage variance to be extremely high. Tying such a critical part of our damage to RNG is not fun.
So when we look at the current mastery, my issues with RoR are still present. Having procs based on chance is still RNG and I don't believe this is the right mastery for us. It works as a set bonus, but not as such a core part of the skill set.
Ramp up time:
WW monks have never been known to have any reliable starting burst. Before RoR, we would shudder at the idea of lusting on pull because we had no form of on demand burst. Outside of pull the damage was pretty consistent, but this change would exacerbate the problem. Requiring 15 stacks for the full damage buff and reverting the stack per chi just makes us spend more time in "down periods". The mastery could be argued to counteract this, but again, our damage would be tied to RNG. (as an aside, this could be an issue for competitive PvP, who are already having problems with bursty comps)
Raid utility:
I'm not sure if the healing changes to TEB were directed at PvE (I don't suspect they were), but it does highlight an interest in some form of raid CD that monks have been asking for. At the moment, WW monks are earning raid positions for 2 reasons: Raw damage output and excellent personal cooldowns. Worse case scenario, WW monks fall into middle of the pack damage and retain their CD's. I fear this is not enough to warrant a raid position. Compared against other classes in our slot (agi melee DD), rogues bring (arguably) the same amount of cool downs with feint and CoS, more damage and a raid CD (smoke bomb). While this may not matter in a casual raid setting, a raid leader's role is to min-max their group composition and choosing a rogue in most cases would just be common sense.
My suggestions:
- Make 5 chi baseline. At the moment, Ascension is too good of a pick to not take and would definitely make the other choices in that tier more viable.
- Make Chi Brew generate 7-10 stacks. This would address our on demand burst while keeping it as a decision between needing burst now (Chi Brew) or a more passive form of play (Ascension).
- Implementing some form of raid CD: 2 popular choices are having Eminence as a CD similar to VE and AG, or allowing access to Revival. The latter suggestion could have unique implications with the healing changes to TEB and increasing the skill ceiling of the class.
- I don't have any suggestions for the mastery but I would like to reiterate that I'm not exactly a fan of its current implementation.
Feel free to argue with anything I've said so far (call me an idiot), I would like to hear from other WW monks and make sure we've ironed out all the kinks before this hits live.
