Midnight’s first “minor” patch is here and there are some changes to Windwalker. With these changes come a few minor tweaks to how Windwalker plays and what you are looking to do.
As with any patch and changes, the information below and the consequences of the changes may change over time as more eyes and brains are put to the task of maximizing things. Keep an eye on this post and Discord for any changes since the last time you checked. Don’t freak out if things change from this, our beautiful and talented simulation people had quite a lot of work to do for a “minor” patch.
What’s Changed
- Crashing Fists has been redesigned – Fists of Fury damage is increased by 20% (was extends duration by 1 second).
- Apex Talent: Tigereye Brew (Rank 1) has been redesigned – Every 3 Chi spent generates Tigereye Brew. Zenith consumes up to 20 Tigereye Brew stacks to increase your critical strike chance for its duration by 1% per stack. Generates quickly up to 10 stacks while out of combat and may generate up a maximum of 30 stacks.
- Apex Talent: Tigereye Brew (Rank 3) has been redesigned – Zenith now grants access to 2 additional Zenith Stomps.
- Xuen’s Battlegear may now additionally trigger from Spinning Crane Kick, reducing the cooldown of Fists of Fury by 0.5 seconds for each unique target struck, up to 2.5 seconds.
- Zenith Stomp now generates 2 Chi.
- Zenith no longer generates 2 Chi on cast.
What it Means/FAQs
Strength
This is what you’re all here for, so here’s the currently theorized number difference.
- Single Target & Raids — NEUTRAL — This is mostly a net-neutral change in single target damage. Less of your damage will be tied up in Fists of Fury, but with the other changes your damage should stay mostly the same depending on how well you can handle the extra Dance of Chi-Ji procs you’ll have to manage.
- AOE & Mythic+ — BUFF — This should be a small increase in damage due to slightly more Dance of Chi-Ji and more frequent Zenith casts.
- Belo’ren — BIG NERF — The unfortunate loser in this patch is Windwalker’s place as one of the two best specs at Egg damage. Doing this leaned entirely into Windwalker’s ability to do HUGE burst with Conduit with Tigereye Brew stacks that were already very high, so losing a chunk of Critical Strike and sitting on capped Tigereye Brew stacks for even longer is a large difference for this. Windwalker will still be very good for it, but not so good that everyone will want to stack them. Conduit is still probably the play since Egg damage is the most important aspect of the game. You may see Shado-Pan dominate most of the overall damage rankings, but it may not be the most useful for progression.
Talents
- Shado-Pan > Conduit — UNCHANGED — Conduit loses some ground since its cooldowns area bit more inflexible, so Shado-Pan will continue to be the recommended and generally more powerful Hero Talent.
- Crashing Fists > Cyclone’s Drift — UNCHANGED — While Crashing Fists has been changed, to the joy of some and the chagrin of others, it is still the better choice of this choice node.
- Revolving Whirl vs Echo Technique — CHANGED — With the additional cooldown reduction from Spinning Crane Kick, you’ll swap the choice node from Echo Technique to Revolving Whirl when there are multiple targets. Sequenced Strikes means you’ll basically have the same amount of Combo Breaker procs but additional Dance of Chi-Ji procs to use. You can use either for single target, but Echo Technique is slightly simpler and within the margin for error, so it is still recommended for single target.
- Spiritual Focus ≥ Drinking Horn Cover — CHANGED — With the changes to Tigereye Brew (Rank 1) you get a lot more stacks of the Crit buff. Even though it’s a smaller Crit buff, getting more Zenith during a fight or dungeon is more useful than it was before. They are roughly the same in single target but Spiritual Focus should pull ahead in AOE and Mythic+.
Playstyle/Rotation
There aren’t any really big changes to the rotation. There may be more changes in the future, so I’m sure I’ll be misunderstanding or missing something somewhere.
- More APM — Cutting down on how long you’re channeling Fists of Fury and adding more frequent Dance of Chi-Ji procs will slightly increase the amount of buttons to press and things to track
- Spinning Crane Kick — You’ll naturally be using Spinning Crane Kick more often with more Dance of Chi-Ji procs from Revolving Whirl. It can be used ahead of Blackout Kick in AOE as long as you don’t have the Combo Breaker proc AND using Spinning Crane Kick won’t delay Rising Sun Kick or Fists of Fury.
- Zenith — This is probably the largest change that Windwalkers will experience rotationally, and it’s not even that big. Ideally, you want to line your charges of Zenith up with having at least 20 stacks of Tigereye Brew.
- When using Drinking Horn Cover, it is slightly harder to line these timings up, so you won’t want to use your second Zenith on pull or with Bloodlust, you’ll want to just use the first one and make sure the second is there for when you hit 20 Tigereye Brew stacks a little later in the fight. This is a small optimization and using both stacks on pull and during Bloodlust is still a completely reasonable thing to do.
- When using Spiritual Focus, you can still use both Zenith charges on pull since you’ll have one up quickly enough.
- If you can do so without losing a cast, you want to use your trinkets with this buff window as often as you can. Ideally your cooldown window includes at least 20 stacks of Tigereye Brew, Zenith, and your trinket. Having a rough idea of how long a fight will last should make this easy enough.
- Rising Sun Kick vs Fists of Fury — Even with Fists of Fury losing some damage, it is still strong enough to prioritize over Rising Sun Kick and most other abilities, the gap is just smaller.
- Zenith Stomp — The new addition to the Windwalker toolkit, this is what your Zenith button turns into during Zenith.
- You automatically cast one instance of Zenith Stomp when you press Zenith, you can also use it again twice per Zenith. Each instance, including the automatic one, generates 2 Chi.
- Zenith Stomp is a pretty significant chunk of AOE damage and appears during your cooldown window, so you’ll want to make sure you use it at least twice during Zenith.
- Ideally, using Zenith Stomp doesn’t delay a higher priority ability like Strike of the Windlord, Whirling Dragon Punch, Rising Sun Kick, and Fists of Fury, so it will generally take the place of Blackout Kick and/or the “naked” Spinning Crane Kick you use to cast after casting a Blackout Kick that didn’t give you a harder hitting damage ability.
- Currently, and most of us are really hoping it is a bug or an oversight, but Zenith Stomp does not contribute to your Mastery ability tracking.
- This means that using Blackout Kick > Zenith Stomp > Blackout Kick will result in dropping your Hit Combo stacks and lose your Mastery bonus on the second Blackout Kick.
- It also means that you can comfortably Blackout Kick > Zenith Stomp > Zenith Stomp to fill the added space, but it is unlikely that you’ll look to do this too much since Blackout Kick can still give you Rising Sun Kick back faster.
Gear
- Actual Gear — There doesn’t appear to be any big changes to embellishments or any trinket strengths
- Stats — With less Critical Strike % coming from Tigereye Brew, Crit’s value actually gets stronger, so you’ll more regularly see your character dip into getting slightly more Critical Strike than before. You’ll likely be aiming for Haste > Critical Strike = Mastery, but expect all of them to continue to be very close with the gap even smaller than before. Getting your Potion of Recklessness to proc Critical Strike is also less problematic and may result in some characters having Critical Strike rating higher than their Haste.
Voidcores: Bonus Rolls & Upgrades
12.0.5 is introducing a variation on the Bonus Rolls and extra upgrades that we’ve seen in the past. Ascendant Voidcore drops from content and is used to improve the maximum item level of your weapons and trinkets up to a new maximum of 298. Nebulous Voidcore are used as bonus rolls to give you an additional chance to get gear from a raid boss or Mythic+ dungeon. The loot that drops will be Myth track, so these are incredibly useful.
Since Raid boss bonus rolls cost 2 Nebulous Voidcore, and Mythic+ bonus rolls only cost 1, it is recommended to roll in Mythic+ as much as you can unless there is an item that you can only get from raid, like Gaze of the Alnseer.
Below is the generally recommended order you should aim to use both your Nebulous Voidcore to target pieces and your Ascendant Voidcore to upgrade them:
- 2-Handed Weapon — You should have plenty of access to 2-handed weapons at this point, so if you don’t already have one then get one, and if you do have one then upgrade it further.
- If you are targeting either trinket, then spending your Nebulous Voidcore in Algeth’ar Academy and/or killing Chimaerus will allow you to target those trinkets and a 2-handed weapon at the same time. Both 2-handed weapons from these bosses have Versatility on them, but getting a maximum item level weapon first is MILES more important than worrying about the stats that are on them.
- Algeth’ar Puzzle Box — Getting and upgrading this should be your next priority after your weapon. Because it only costs 1 Nebulous Voidcore to target, it is much more efficient to go for this next.
- Gaze of the Alnseer — As the strongest passive trinket, this is your next target.
- Once the above is squared away, use your remaining Nebulous Voidcore to target lower item level or upgrade track pieces to upgrade them to Myth track.
