WoD Survival guide: Windwalker monk | patch 6.0.2

Hello everyone! This has been a long time coming this post for those of us who are interested in playing a WW monk through out the new expansion to come. With patch 6.0.2 out tomorrow, a huge amount of changes to all the classes are about to be dumped on our plates and some of which, you may not even know about, so this little guide should help you prepare for patch day. It will be simple, methodical and hopefully easy to understand, for old and new Windwalkers in the guild. Enjoy.

Talents:
These will remain pretty much the same, however with the recent nerf to chi brew and *slowdown* to our energy regeneration, Ascension will pull ahead for aoe. Here is how I will Talent for specific needs:

Single target - Tigers lust - Chi wave - Chi brew - Leg sweep/Ring of Peace - defuse magic - Xuen.

Aoe/multi target - Tigers lust - Chi wave/Chi burst - ascension - Leg sweep/Charging Ox - defuse magic - Rushing Jade Wind

Reason behind taking ascension for AOE: With Rushing Jade Wind costing a fair amount of energy and our energy regeneration being much lower, the static regen from Ascension makes it easier for us to maintain an up time on Rushing Jade Wind, Simple.

Note: I wont cover glyphs in detail as their all pretty standard. Karma, Fortuitous spheres and zen med being the cookie cutter.

Rotation:
Due to the Energy regeneration changes and overall feel of the class has changed, we now priorities Fist Of Fury over everything else. Currently in live, with the amount of excess haste we have in 570+ you don't even need to use it, this pissed blizzard off as we're not using the monks Niche spell as it's a DPS loss in most cases. So they hit back hard.

New DPS priority: Tiger palm(apply armor debuff on boss) - Rising Sun kick(apply damage taken increase on boss) - Fist of Fury (On Cooldown) - Jab. (Energizing Brew on CD)

Summery: Putting up your Tiger palm, Rising sun kick is standard, You should have that nailed in to your memory bank now. The real change here is using Fist Of Fury on CD. I myself use it now and then, but because this is our biggest hitting ability for the cost of chi it requires and a way of us pooling energy while we channel it helps with energy regeneration by a huge amount. Also, its damage split that it has on live has been removed, so it will hit 100% of the damage on every target in your path. Sexy.

If you would like the AOE rotation/set up then please ask in the comments bellow as its detailed and I will PM you with all the macros you need to do it effectively. This separates the good monk from the bad monk.

Because of this change, and us being so dependent on Fist Of Fury, Assurance of Consequence is our best in slot trinket due to us being able to drop haste and focus more on crit with Haromms being the only way to have Multistrike.

Stats:

Agility is your primary statistic. You should look for it in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Attack Power, which determines the damage your abilities do.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities.

Haste provides you with increased attack speed and Energy regeneration.

Mastery (Mastery: Bottled Fury Icon Mastery: Bottled Fury) gives you a chance to generate an additional stack of Tigereye Brew Icon Tigereye Brew each time you gain a stack.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Multistrike causes your abilities to have a chance to hit/heal a second and a third time, each time dealing 30% of the initial damage/heal. (This could be our BiS stat come WoD)

Enchants:
These will stay the same. Tons of info on these around the web.

Gems:
Big changes here, When WoD hits, we wont have as many gem slots available. Also due to blizzards focus on Secondary stats now and the removal of Hit/Expertise we can now either gem for pure crit/pure haste or a split between the two. I think only the meta gem is the only way to provide agility from a gem but don't quote me on that. Here is a list of the gems you want in your specific slots.

Meta: Agil primal (34 agil and 3% crit) - Legendary Gem if you have it.
Red: Accurate Imperial Amethyst( 25 haste - 25 crit)
Yellow/Prismatic: Smooth Suns radiance (50 crit)
Blue: Rigids River heart (50 crit)

Quality of life changes:
- You can now see fist weapons when you attack.
- Storm, Earth and Fire is now off the GCD.

Worried about Simulation DPS charts?
Don't be they dont take in to account multi target. Monks main strength is mobility and our on demand cleave. all bosses apart from 3 in the next expansion are multi target/cleave which all fall down in to our domain. WW monks will be the top melee DPS during most encounters if played right and make great use out of SEF.

TL:DR
Windwalkers will feel the pinch of the Energy Regeneration slow down a touch, but Fist of Fury now becoming so much better, we will rotate our priority around that. SEF changes makes our life much easier. We dont have access to the level 100 talents or new gear with Versatility/multistrike on it so its hard to speculate which will be BIS. If you like WW monks before the patch, you will still enjoy them more so now, just don't expect it to be as frantic as it was which to me is a good thing. Cool calm and collected.