Windwalker changes, absence of communication

#1 - Dec. 2, 2016, 9:08 p.m.

http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17614455267

This will likely not get ANY attention since I'm using my region's feedback forums. However communication needs to happen somehow.

The monk community has allways been civil. We have rarely whined on forums even when we were in a weaker state. The community figures have allways been calm and kept our feedback tempered.
What has this gotten us? Not a word when we are bugged/underperforming, not a comment on changes. Warlocks spammed the forums and got in length answers, fixes, attention. Is this the way we are rewarded? Is the only possible communication to spam the forums with anger?
If it is, then take the time to read this, whoever you are, and bring support.

Lately windwalker suffered another change on PTR that didn't go through patchnotes, datamining or any sort of communication. This is not the first time this happens to us. We haven't had any communication on anything since Celestalon's last burst of socialisation back in early alpha.

This, and Windwalkers pulling good numbers in pvp, raiding, dungeons, is giving a general false sense that "everything is allright" when many large issues are being ignored.

I'll go over some of the promises that were made to Windwalker close to a year back and what happened to these.

When the big Storm, Earth and Fire // Spinning Crane Kick rework happened, we were made two important promises.
1) Storm, Earth, and Fire now being our major single target/AoE cooldown, Blizzard will ensure it is working correctly, with decent AI. Whenever things are not benefiting from it/not getting copied, we will fix these ASAP (part of Celestalon's initial statement)
2) Spinning Crane Kick will require tab targeting, but considering this is a very annoying thing to deal with as a melee, we're giving you Storm, Earth and Fire to do it for you EFFICIENTLY (answer to people concerned about mark of the crane's new mechanic).

We spent most of alpha testing, beta testing, legion pre-patch and begining of this year attempting to communicate about Storm, Earth and Fire issues. We have gotten 0 feedback on any of it. There have been several changes to windwalker, none of which got any comments even tho they were often not datamined.

http://walkingthewind.com/2016/10/11/what-is-up-with-sef-and-serenity/
This was my attempt, after many bug reports from several windwalkers, attempting to hand out lists of bugs to devs through community figures, to list up some issues. This article is not fully up to date, some things moved.
Issue is, I'm just a fan, I can't spend my time checking every week which bugs have been fixed.
However, it is infuriating when I take a lot of my free time to write stuff, report bugs, ask people to pass the information along and windwalkers don't get a WORD in return. I'm not asking for any answer to me, just to see our spec named in blue posts one day.

Before I go any further: DO NOT turn this, ever, in a numbers discussion. The issues at hand are NOT numbers related; just because a spec does good numbers doesn't mean its working (re: Hunter's sidewinders/marking shot gameplay).

Up untill 7.1, we reported several things not benefiting Storm, Earth, and Fire. Hitcombo stacking separately, transfer the power being ignored, trinkets being reduced, artifact traits misfunctioning. In prepatch, SEF could go as far as being a dps loss due to bugs+not benefiting from mastery.

Since september, some bugs were more of a concern than others, namely clones not benefiting from haste, making them cancel 1 or 2 ticks of Fists of Fury (27% loss), making Fists of Fury oftentimes deal more damage outside of our burst cooldown than inside.
What caught our eye later was that this was "fixed": clone's channel bar changed to be as short as ours. However, they didn't do any more ticks: their ticks of damage were evenly spaced still, you just couldn't wait for them to finish the channel anymore, they canceled it themselves. This change went undocumented.

Once again here, on PTR we're seeing another change, this time to serenity, the highly favored alternative to SEF.
In heroic/mythic raiding, it makes absolutely no doubt serenity is considered the superior talent. Exceptionally, someone specs out of it and does good, mostly by cheesing on irrelevant targets.
This new change is reworking one of the key aspects of serenity, reducing spell cooldowns, by making these spells go back to full, unhalved, cooldown as soon as serenity is over.

This might be seen as a deserved nerf to serenity, an overperforming talent. However the issue is NOT in serenity, but in SEF, and you have to face this issue.

Ornyx

#352 - Dec. 7, 2016, 6:10 p.m.

Hey all,

Just to reiterate here (saw it brought up in the Live Q&A chat today), but we are aware of feedback regarding both SEF and Serenity on the 7.1.5 PTR.

I don't have anything specific for this moment, but know that we've passed along notes on both of these skills to the development team. We will update you once we have more to share.

Ornyx

#357 - Dec. 7, 2016, 6:29 p.m.

12/07/2016 10:20 AMPosted by Jingshui
12/07/2016 10:10 AMPosted by Ornyx
Hey all,

Just to reiterate here (saw it brought up in the Live Q&A chat today), but we are aware of feedback regarding both SEF and Serenity on the 7.1.5 PTR.

I don't have anything specific for this moment, but know that we've passed along notes on both of these skills to the development team. We will update you once we have more to share.

Thank you for a response - any response.

Please, though, don't let this be like what happened on the 7.1 ptr and the Demon Hunters, where we got this exact sort of message, and then silence. Last time, when that happened, I rerolled to monk. I'm so anxious it will happen yet again.

Not necessarily our goal, and I'm not saying we have any changes planned for these two skills within 7.1.5's PTR cycle (I am not sure what's on the plate there for further Monk changes), but I would like to at least work to get something shared on this, whether its a bit of philosophy or otherwise.

We have had some communication shortcomings over the past while, but we are trying something a bit new with our internal processes which should benefit us all in the long-term. :)

Ornyx

#360 - Dec. 7, 2016, 6:46 p.m.

12/07/2016 10:43 AMPosted by Yanchi
"We're trying to get SEF at least partially fixed for 7.1.5, and if not possible we'll tune the spell around the bugs so it's not a DPS loss" -Ion 2016

From q&a

He also mentioned that they will be taking a look at Serenity, just as a note!

Edit: Here's a link to the portion of the Q&A where Ion and Josh talked about SEF and Serenity.

Sigma

Game Designer

#458 - Dec. 23, 2016, 3:43 a.m.

In addition to some changes that are visible normally in the client (damage of most Windwalker abilities), a recent hotfix included one change that won't be noticeable until you try it, which is a very large increase to Xuen's damage.

Ornyx

#502 - Dec. 30, 2016, 9:42 p.m.

Cap extended. Will go over the remainder of this thread once we return in the new year.

Ornyx

#573 - Jan. 6, 2017, 8:56 p.m.

Hey Windwalkers!

We previously responded to feedback about Serenity feeling mandatory due to bugs with Storm, Earth, and Fire, and we said that we were working on those bugs. Here’s an update on how we’re doing with that.

The following fixes for Storm, Earth, and Fire are coming in Patch 7.1.5:

Clones' Fists of Fury now channels faster with Haste, plus an additional 25% faster, to further eliminate any chance of it being clipped due to tight timing.
Clones now travel much faster between targets.
Clones will no longer target Immune enemies, or crowd-controlled enemies, or enemies you aren’t in combat with.
Clones now choose a target within 15 yards of themselves (was 30 yards), to make them more responsive and give you tighter control of them. You may still manually re-target them, or summon them in a location closer to your intended target.
Clones will now only re-target when you use an ability that applies Mark of the Crane, and their current target already has Mark of the Crane.
If a clone is not in range of their target when an ability is used, they will leap to the target and then use the ability (instead of not using the ability).
Clones now inherit your stacks of Transfer the Power when they are summoned. They now generate and benefit from these stacks.
Clones now inherit your stacks of Hit Combo when they are summoned (and continue to generate and benefit from it).
They now have 100% of your health (was 50%), and they now inherit your Dodge chance.
Storm, Earth, and Fire no longer reduces the damage/healing of spells and abilities that the clones do not mirror (such as trinket procs).

We’re committed to making this a fun and functional ability. Please let us know if you find any further bugs with it.

Thank you very much!