WINDWALKER MONK FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

WINDWALKER MONK PLAYSTYLE

Hello and welcome to Skillcapped's damage course for Windwalker Monks in the War Within. Throughout this course, we're going to be giving you everything you need to excel in the arena, all the way from the basics to the advanced techniques that the pros have developed from countless hours of limit testing the class.

In this first video, we're going to be going over the general playstyle of Windwalker Monk in the new expansion, allowing you to get a feel for the class and see if it's something you really want to commit your time to. Let's get into it.

More akin to a fighting game character than a World of Warcraft class, Windwalker Monks are all about playing around their mastery and hit combo talent, incentivizing you to have a rotation where you never press the same DPS button twice for a massive damage boost in return for doing that.

Now, this makes the rotation feel incredibly fluid and rewards consistency and high knowledge of the class. So, you'll really notice the difference between a seasoned monk and one that's just started.

While carrying out these Tekken-esque combos, we're going to be fulfilling the Brawler gameplay archetype, staying in the fight as long as possible to deal strong, consistent damage, while preemptively trading out our defensives, like our walls and touch of karma, to allow us to keep up the pressure.

Now, although saying that, we're going to have to be quick on our feet when it comes to survival if we're hard focused, utilizing our strong mobility and telepathy. So, let's get started.

Windwalkers are a great way to get out of your way and use your teleport to duck out of harm's way, which frustratingly becomes a huge part of our play style when up against other melees due to us being a leather class with low passive damage mitigation.

Now, other than dealing powerful, consistent damage, Windwalkers also have a ton of burst every one and a half to two minutes with our powerful Zwyn and Storm Earth and Fire cooldowns, which now can even be crowd control, making our setups more fun.

Now, other than dealing powerful, consistent damage, Windwalkers also have a ton of burst every one and a half to two minutes, with our powerful Zwyn and Storm Earth and Fire cooldowns, making our setups more fun. making our setups more fun.

And while we're on the subject of setups here, we did receive a slight nerf to our paralysis duration, dropping it down to three seconds, which does reduce our setups' lethality.

However, with tools like Clash allowing us to basically deathgrip people and charge us to our target, and our whirling dragon punch throwing our enemies into the sky, we're now incredibly disruptive, allowing us to survive longer.

As well as us being able to double leg sweep more frequently than before, even if we're more reliant on killing through healing or with our partner's crowd control than in previous iterations of the class.

So, all in all, you can sum up Monk as a high mobility, highly disruptive, brawling ninja with a truly unique approach to its damage rotation. So, if that sounds appealing to you, well stay tuned to our next video on the goals of Windwalker Monks in the Arena.

WINDWALKER MONK GOALS

Hey, glad you're interested in starting your journey on Wind Walker Monk. We're happy you're here.

In this video, we're going to be diving deeper into the mindset of this class, providing you with some straightforward goals you should be looking to accomplish inside of your arena games. So let's get started.

Coming in at goal number one, we have maximizing your overall pressure.

Now, although this may sound blunt and for PVP quite reductive, but much like Dragonflight, a solo shuffle round in the War Within is always won in one of three ways, either through incredible burst, outlandish crowd control chains, which we don't really have access to considering our CCs are so short and have pretty long cooldowns, or simply just doing more consistent damage than the enemy healer can do healing and dampening.

Therefore, the most important thing to consider is the amount of damage you can do to your opponent and the amount of damage you can do to your opponent. The most important thing to consider is the amount of damage you can do to your opponent and the amount of damage you can do to your opponent.

The most important metric for both winning games and pushing rating is simply how much burst and sustained damage you can deal. Master that and you're going to be well on your way to success.

So make sure you study and deeply understand our sustained damage and burst sequence videos later on in the course. But all that's pointless if you can't connect to your target, which leads us to our second goal for Wind Walker, managing your mobility.

Now, in the days of Dragonflight, we could zoom around with Sky Reach and really not pay that much attention to trading mobility as we could always have that built-in charge in our back pocket.

However, now with its removal, we need to take much more care of when to use one of our three rolls, when to commit Flying Serpent Kick, and when we need to start using our teleport for offense rather than defense. Take this instance here.

Our resident Wind Walker, Sponks, is facing a Warlock, and he knows that he's going to be a good match for him. He knows that they have teleport and gateway available.

So to counter this, he puts his transcendence close to the lock's demonic circle, meaning he can't instantly reconnect whenever the lock tries to escape. By doing this, he can hold onto his other movement tools for when he needs to swap targets or if the Warlock gets gripped by their priest.

The important takeaway here is to try and match the mobility of the enemy you're against to maintain uptime. Instead of chucking three rolls into one simple teleport to get back on target.

Dealing damage and trading mobility aren't the only goals of a Wind Walker though, as we're also going to need to make use of our crowd controls to score kills and shut down our enemies. When it comes to using our crowd control offensively, we're mostly going to be looking to do something a little like Sponks does here.

Utilizing Clash on one target and dragging them to our kill target, allowing us to get double value on our leg sweep and double value on our R.H.G.P. and cleave both players down with our cooldowns.

And then following that leg sweep damage up with our paralysis for good measure if our partner has no way of securing CC on the healer. Good monks look to do this with every single leg sweep, regardless of if you can land it on the healer or two DPS.

Just make sure you're always getting that double stun value. Other than these massive leg sweep goes, monks can also be very disruptive with their crowd controls, especially because of the new rising dragon sweep talent.

This is because when facing casters, you can essentially have two kicks by knocking them up in the air for about two seconds with every single dragon punch we do.

And when combined with your spear hand strike, well, you can be incredibly annoying to any ranged player, shutting down their spells multiple times in a row, which means less pressure on us and more damage on them.

Now, this doesn't go for casters though, as we can also be a buzzkill to melees by incorporating disarm and ring of peace into the mix, like Sponks does here, who manages to deny the rogue with his disarm, prevent cyclone with his ring of peace, and also toss the rogue up in the air after the disarm ends, meaning that he essentially just stopped the entire enemy, from playing the game for about six seconds.

And they say rogues have a lot of CC. So in conclusion here, a monk's primary objectives are to maximize your damage output, trade your mobility wisely, set up double leg sweeps effectively, and to be as disruptive as possible.

Now we're gonna dive into these fundamentals a little bit later on in the course, but for now, let's get into our sustained damage priority. We'll see you there.

WINDWALKER MONK DAMAGE PRIORITY

Welcome back! Now that you have a solid grasp of the Wind Walker playstyle and goals in Arena, let's dive into how we can actually deal damage here.

To do this, we're going to first go over your sustained priority list, which is going to be a hierarchy of Wind Walker abilities power, allowing you to know which buttons to value over the others.

Now, just remember that this isn't a set rotation though, merely it's just a template so you can understand the thought process that goes behind each of your globals. So, let's get started.

Now, first things first, the most important part of playing Monk is their mastery and the talent hit combo, which essentially, honestly do the same thing. What these two abilities do is that they incentivize you to never press the same damage ability twice in a row or you're going to be losing a ton of DPS.

Now, although this may seem simple, just keep it in mind as you really don't want to lose these stacks or your output when you're playing Monk. Now, if you're playing Monk, you're going to want to be able to get a lot of damage from your DPS, but you're going to want to get a lot of damage from your DPS.

Now, as a final note on this, using a non-damaging ability won't count towards your mastery, so using a Tiger's Palm followed by a Leg Sweep followed by another Tiger's Palm will result in you not benefiting from your mastery.

Coming in at the number one position for our sustained damage, we have Strike of the Wind Lord, which costs 2 Chi. This ability is ranked so highly, not just due to the amount of damage it does, making it a must-use when it comes up every 30 seconds, but also because of the insane buffs it grants us while doing so.

These buffs are Gale Force, which makes our target take 10% additional damage from all sources for 10 seconds, and finally Thunderfist and Rushing Jade Wind, which basically just make it deal even more damage depending on how many targets we hit with it.

Now, because of these buffs, and particularly because of Thunderfist, we want to try and get Strike on as many targets, including pets, as possible.

Now, if you're playing Monk, you're going to want to get Strike on as many targets as possible when we use it, as this will allow us to generate more Thunderfist stacks, thus resulting in higher single-target sustain as well.

After Strike of the Wind Lord, we have Slicing Winds, which replaces Flying Serpent Kick and becomes our hardest-hitting ability. You can charge it up to travel further, but the damage doesn't scale with that charge, so it's usually going to be better to just use it at the first rank and just send it.

Charging it up also puts you at risk of getting CC'd during the cast, since it goes on cool down instantly. If you sit there charging it, someone could easily just interrupt you with a micro CC.

So, we then have Rising Sun Kick, which also costs 2 Chi.

We'll be using Rising Sun Kick basically on cool down, as its damage is pretty high and through the talent's acclimation, it will increase our output on our main target each time we use it, incentivizing us to stick to one player at a time to stack it as high as possible.

Other than stacking our acclimation, it's also very important to keep Rising Sun Kick on cool down, as when it crits, we will reduce the cool down on our Fist of Fury for 4 seconds, meaning we can get even more damage out in the future.

And by having Rising Sun Kick on cool down, we can then be halfway there to enabling ourselves to press Whirling Dragon Punch.

Other than using it for its increased parry chance, we'll also use Fist of Fury to enable our Whirling Dragon Punch, but since it deals such low damage, we're only going to use one tick of this if we're not looking to get value from Turbo Fists.

After that, we use Rising Sun Kick again, but this time while the Mortal Wounds debuff is already on the target. Since the target already has Mortal Wounds, it becomes less of a priority than Fist of Fury, as this will deal more damage than Rising Sun Kick.

Therefore, prioritizing Rising Sun Kick in this way is going to maximize your overall damage. So, moving on, we then have Spinning Crane Kick if we have a Dance of Qi Ji proc, making this ability actually worth pressing.

Following this, we'll have Blackout Kick when we have the proc, as this will make it not only cost no Qi and refund a Qi through the Energy Burst talent, but also deal 200% more damage than usual thanks to Courageous Impulse, which is currently tuned to make Blackout Kick hit like an absolute truck.

Finally, with all of the finisher abilities out of the way, we then have our Qi Generator of Tiger Palm coming in at 60 Energy, which will give us 2 Qi on every use as well as a chance of a free Blackout Kick.

Additionally, it will also trigger Expel Harm every 15 seconds, giving us a little bit of a defensive boost, however minor that may be. And apart from that, there's really not much to say about this ability.

Just make sure that when you're building Qi, you're not using it two times in a row, as otherwise you're going to mess up your mastery and your hit combo. Alright, that's all for our sustained damage priority.

Next up, we're going to be going over our hero talents, so don't go anywhere. Thanks for watching!

HERO TALENTS: CONDUIT OF THE CELESTIALS

Welcome back! In this next video, we're going to be going over our hero talent tree of Conduit of the Celestials, thanks to its Keystone talent giving us some great burst on a one and a half minute cooldown.

The Keystone of Conduit of the Celestials is the appropriately named Celestial Conduit. This channeled ability deals some pretty big damage, and if fully channeled, it grants you a 30% damage increase.

However, be mindful as using any other ability during the channel will cancel it, so make sure to avoid using anything else during the cast. Celestial Conduit doesn't just act as a damage button for ourselves, though.

As due to the Capstone talent of Unity Within, our Conduit will summon Celestials when it ends, turning us into some sort of demonology warlock with a legion of sparkling animals to help pound our target down.

Unity Within will also give our Celestial Conduit, a Recast function to summon these Celestials instantly if we want to as well, allowing us to essentially press Conduit twice in quick succession and front-load our burst for quicker setups.

Other than these Keystone and Capstone talents, Conduit of the Celestials will give us some other passive damage increases, like Temple Training to increase our Spinning Crane Kick and Fist of Fury damage.

Courage of the White Tiger, which will give our Tiger Palm a chance to summon a little more damage from our Zwin to do one hit of damage before fading away, although this does become a 100% chance during our actual Zwin CD window.

We'll also be gaining Strength of the Black Ox, which will make our Blackout Kick deal more damage in our Zwin window as well, with an added AoE component as it summons a Celestial Ox to stomp around our target.

So moving on, we're also going to be grabbing Inner Compass, which will increase our stats after we summon one of these Celestials, from our random procs, but don't try to play around this, as it's far too minor and it's RNG based.

Next up, we have two abilities that focus on our Spinning Crane Kick, such as Restore Balance, giving us a Rushing Jade Wind proc when we pop Zwin, and Flight of the Red Crane, that will give our Rushing Jade procs a chance to increase our Energy Regeneration, and summon yet another Celestial to dart around and deal some AoE, flipping our Inner Compass buff once again.

Following this, we'll also be getting Cooldown Reduction through Heart of the Jade Serpent on a bunch of our core rotational abilities, but we won't always notice this, as it'll take a whopping 45 Chi to activate.

And finally, for our last offensive component, we'll be getting additional movement speed after our Celestial Conduit, or whenever we summon a Celestial from our previously mentioned procs.

As for the defensive side of the tree, there's honestly not much to say, as most of the above-mentioned abilities do a trickle of healing when popped, so honestly, I guess Blizzard just used that as their defensive quota.

However, we do gain Niu Zhao's protection as a standalone talent, giving us an Absorb whenever we press Fortifying Brew, which is a great callback to one of our favorite Shadowlands Conduits.

So, as you can see, this tree is very heavily oriented around that 1.5-minute cooldown, and buffing our burst window through random damage. random pets and procs while also being a bit more focused on spinning crane kick than usual

WINDWALKER MONK BURST: CELESTIAL CONDUIT

Okay, so now you know what the different trees do, let's get into their respective burst rotations, starting with Conduit of the Celestials. To start with, we're going to begin with 2 Chi, which if we're at the start of the game, we should have by default from our Combat Wisdom talent.

Next, we're then going to summon our Zwin to increase our overall damage, while also giving us more haste and crit from Invoker's Delight and Ferociousness.

After this, we'll then Tiger's Palm to build our Chi to 4, and then we'll use Rising Sun Kick to apply our Mortal Strike and start stacking our Acclimation buff, followed by another Tiger's Palm to build even more Chi.

Next up, we'll pop our Storm, Earth, and Fire images and immediately fixate them on our kill target, doing this will also refund 2 Chi. Following this, we'll then Rising Sun Kick again, as its cooldown will have reset from using our images.

And then throw in a 2 Chi. And a Strike of the Wind Lord for that 10% extra nature damage from Gale Force.

Next, we'll then use our Conduit of the Celestials, double tapping it to instantly activate its bonuses. We'll then want to use Slicing Winds, only charged to rank 1.

Charging it further doesn't increase the damage, and it risks getting interrupted. Followed by another Rising Sun Kick into our Fist of Fury.

And then as soon as we're able to, we'll cancel it with a Whirling Dragon Punch. After this, we'll use our Wind Lord to activate our Acclimation buff, and then we'll use our Wind Lord to activate our Acclimation buff.

After this, we can then use our Spinning Crane Kick as we gained a proc from Whirling Dragon Punch, and finish with a Blackout Kick. From here on, we'll fall back into our sustained priority.

WINDWALKER MONK OPENER

Alright, now we know how to deal damage and what our goals and general playstyle are, let's cover a typical Wind Walker opener. The first thing you're going to notice is that the Wind Walker isn't rushing into the center of the map.

Instead, they're sitting back and letting the enemy come to them. This patience makes setting up a go a whole lot easier.

If you run straight in, the enemy will naturally just try to spread out, making it harder to land clean setups. By staying back, you force them into a better position.

The Warrior charges in, but gets immediately disarmed by the Monk, who then pops Storm Earth Fire, which forces the Warrior to trinket. With the Warrior out of line of the Holy Paladin, the Wind Walker lands a sweep on the Warrior.

This is both offensive and defensive, as the Warrior had committed their Champion Spear. Without a trinket, they're forced to sit through the sweep.

The Monk could have clashed onto the Mage to set up a double sweep, but the Mage could just blink out of the stun. Plus, it would have given the Warrior time to get off their damage during the Globals it takes to set up.

Sometimes, it is better to sweep the target with no trinket, especially if they're out of line of sight. This is an amazing position as well, since if the Paladin tries to move toward that Warrior to save them, the Monk can immediately land a full paralysis.

This causes the Warrior to use Enraged Regeneration, which means next go, they're going to be without both their trinket and their wall. Without those cooldowns, we can easily win the next setup, especially if we can get a good win.

This is a good CC on the Holy Paladin. At this point, the Monk swaps over to the Mage to interrupt some of their damage between goes.

The focus now shifts to surviving until the next leg sweep. While the Wind Walker can deal significant damage outside of their goes, it is going to be rare, if ever, that you're going to score a kill without a proper setup.

The key here is staying alive and waiting for that next opportunity to land a killing blow.

WINDWALKER MONK WIN CONDITION

Welcome back! In this video, we're going to be covering the Windwalker Monk win condition by following Sponks once again as he guides us through two different ways to climb the ladder in Shuffle.

So, for our first win condition, we have the perfect setup and it's something that you probably visualize in your head when you think of a typical Windwalker win. Now, at this moment in the game, Sponks has 20 seconds until his leg sweep is off cooldown and no one on the enemy team has a trinket available.

But instead of running away and waiting for the win condition to present itself, Sponks sends out an incapacitate and makes sure to deal as much damage as possible so that when sweep is up, his targets are all already low. It's a lot harder to play the game when you're taking a beating.

So, from this end cap, he's able to force sacrilege and then use his wind to get the win condition. So, from this end cap, he's able to sacrifice from the Paladin outside of his window, which is perfect as it means the enemy won't have any tools to be reactive with.

But instead of playing defensive here, Sponks keeps up the pressure with a Fist of Fury and Spinning Crane Kick. Now that his sweep is available, Sponks looks for the perfect setup, first with his Ring of Peace to try and grapple the Feral together with the Shadow.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work because Sponks used his Whirling Dragon Punch knock earlier, putting the Feral Druid on DR, before utilizing Clash on the Holy Paladin for a triple sweep on the entire enemy team.

From here, all Sponks has to do is send out his Storm, Earth, and Fire, hit a Rising Sun Kick, activate his Whirling Dragon Punch, and then consume the following Chi-Gi proc and cleave the enemy team.

So, Sponks has to do is send out his Storm, Earth, and Fire, hit a Rising Sun Kick, activate his Whirling Dragon Punch, and then consume the enemy team down with some massive spins.

Now, as we said earlier, this is really a perfect setup as Sponks first baited out cooldowns, maintained high pressure, and then got a montage-worthy triple sweep. However, life isn't perfect, and we know that.

And these situations are the exception here, not the rule. More often than not, your win condition is really going to look like this.

So, this win condition starts with Sponks just dealing damage, and forcing a double leg sweep in which he then follows up with his burst rotation. This go is then easily countered by the enemy Paladin's Trinket and Blessing of Protection.

So, with cooldowns still up, Sponks turns his attention to the next enemy target of the Paladin. Seeing the Mage, who is a squishier target than the Paladin, come closer though, Sponks then just decides to hit them instead with the remainder of his Storm, Earth, and Fire.

And by following his sustained priority, he's able to literally just kill the Mage through the Paladin's wings with some assistance from his Elemental Shaman. Now, this win condition may look a little bit swampy and uncoordinated, we get that, but that's what shuffle is, honestly, a lot of the time.

Simply doing as much damage in your cooldown windows as humanly possible while making sure you're hitting the right target. If Sponks was to wait for the perfect go or be content with forcing cooldowns from one player, he would have lost out on this win.

Sometimes. Simple is really the best.