Pruning of Excess or Excess of Pruning? - First Impression of Midnight Windwalker Monk

Posted 2025/10/21 at 4:44 PM by Babylonius

Windwalker Monk Changes in MidnightStorm, Earth, and FireZenithTigereye BrewStormspirit StrikesWisdom of the Wall

Windwalker Monk’s Midnight updates primarily focus on removing conditional modifiers and making sure the base damage of spells feels impactful. Critical strikes will be the main way their damage changes values and otherwise each spell will remain largely consistent between in and out of cooldowns. Our goal is that this will reduce the rotational overhead and allow more focus on procs, resource management, and Mastery: Combo Strikes to drive gameplay.

Slicing WindsPruning of ExcessMartial MixtureTransfer the PowerCourageous ImpulseAcclamationFury of XuenWisdom of the WallAgainst All OddsStorm, Earth, and FireZenithStorm, Earth, and FireZenithTigereye BrewStorm, Earth, and FireTigereye BrewZenithExcess of PruningInvoker's DelightInvoke Xuen, the White TigerLast Emperor's CapacitorPower of the Thunder KingLast Emperor's CapacitorInvoker's DelightDance of Chi-JiLast Emperor's CapacitorWhy Not Pruned?Slicing WindsFlying Serpent KickSlicing WindsStrike of the WindlordWhirling Dragon PunchSlicing WindsHeart of the Jade SerpentCommunity OpinionSlicing WindsLast Emperor's CapacitorFirst Impression Spreadsheet

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Comments

Comment by Bravejohn

I fully agree for slicing winds.. if there was 1 ability to prune, this should be, not the others! it simple does not fit with Windwalker.. pr they can just make it a cone aoe spell instead, rather than move you forward

Comment by Skullhawk13

Totally agree on slicing winds. It's not that I can't use it, it's that I don't want to.

Comment by FlyingToaster

Fellowship with much less spells than wow is now having great success! and you are still crying for the pruning.. you cant even make titles without the word "pruning" on..

Consider actually reading something before crying about it

Comment by Karael

I liked last emperor's capacitor a lot because it felt like you had power and you had the choice where to use it. However in this raid tier it ended up making us into padwalker monk with most of our damage feeling irrelevant. If only the lightning hit 8 targets, more often and have spinning crane kick as an ability to use above 8 targets. We are full pad in this tier which I hate, I'd love to see a pure single target option of windwalker which is competitive with other single target builds of other classes. At least make conduit the go to spec for single target, I wouldn't mind this but at its current iteration its not competitive.

Comment by Claimh

Fellowship with much less spells than wow is now having great success! and you are still crying for the pruning.. you cant even make titles without the word "pruning" on..

Great success is a bit of an exaggeration.

But I agree there are many other MMORPGs that have far fewer skills to use and are good.

Guild Wars 2 itself has few skills to use and has its own level of complexity.

I think the direction of the classes is going in the right direction; fewer skills doesn't mean everything will become monotonous. But feedback is necessary for the classes to be fun and good.

Comment by mephinho

Totally agree on slicing winds. It's not that I can't use it, it's that I don't want to.

Same…

Comment by BurntToast

Fellowship with much less spells than wow is now having great success

... said with every MMO launch... and sadly none of them ever pan out. Maybe this one will be different but we've heard this time and time again.

Comment by Nalaadu

I like Slicing Winds, but I recognize I am not speaking for all. It is dumb that it replaces FSK tho.

Emperor removal is sad, and I am saying this as a religious fan of Conduit, which doesn't even play Crackle.

I am less concerned about our ''flatter'' dmg profile because it seems the direction they are taking across the board with most specs (my long time main was ele shaman, and they NEUTERED Ascendance on alpha, and that is the burstiest cooldown in the game).

Also, current Shado-Pan is kind of flat dmg profile wise, Conduit is much burstier, but still SP sees a lot more play.

Since from the proposed changes, our ''burst'' seems to be centered around us critting alot during cooldowns, I am intrigued at how that will pan out. Crit hasn't felt special in years on retail, and maybe it will be different with the overall pruning of specs.

I like Weapons of order, especially since they remade the animation to fit monk visuals, but it could probably use some more flare, like secondary stats amp or just flat dam increase.

Comment by zauriak

The slicing wind has to go. It's just not a good spell at all.

Comment by mbaez1626

Im the biggest Blizz hater out there, but if they remove Slicing Winds, I will D-ride Blizzard till the day I die. Please Blizzard, get rid of this awful ability.

Comment by thirty8overhead

A straw poll in Discord found that 76% of the Vets and over 70% of the +800 community members thought that the posted changes were either net neutral or positive changes.

I don't disagree with the conclusion, but beware the sampling bias here.

Comment by evilmeimei

while at it I wouldn't complain if they made Touch of Death a PvP talent. It always felt... out of place in PvE.

Comment by Malvient

Forced movement and animation lock both feel awful. SW and WDP should both go, or be changed.

Comment by Midday

Capacitor going feels like a good change to play, it feels gross to have to stand still in melee when things are already so hectic. If it existed you should at least be able to move during channel.

I hope slicing winds goes (or at least changes) too, empowered spells just don't feel good to press.

I do think there should be changes though; split Whirling Dragon Punch and Strike of the Windlord and add talents for those instead.

Comment by Grizzmaw

I share your point of view about Xuen and Last Emperor, they're both great at the moment and I enjoy them.

I'm surprised that this is an unpopular opinion but I really like Slicing winds. I'm only doing M+ and running Shado-Pan with Slicing winds and it feels good and explosive. I do agree losing Flying Serpent Kick sucks but I'm not mad at all at Slicing winds. Coupled with Strike of the Windlord it adds some dynamism to the rotation.

Comment by Karael

idk I feel that every slicing winds hater just hasn't played with the ability enough. At +17s I have no issues with using it along with WDP every single time and hitting the maximum amount of targets without ever having mobility issues due to lack of FSK. SW has an enormous hitbox and most of the times just standing still hits everything and in some niche cases that you have to move far away you can use it like that too. And it also crit for 16 million without a damage amp on my key last night on a single hit. What's there not to like? It's not like the 0.5 sec empower cast will kill you or something or make you unable to interrupt when you already spend 2-3 seconds using fists of fury for a large portion of the fight.

Comment by MonkMaan

Slicing Winds is one awful spell. Clunky and even bugs out in PvP that requires you to restart your game - If you are CC'd during the cast it bugs and you're down a spell for no good reason.

Comment by Avaheim

Slicing winds is such a horrible agility, it ruins the flow of the spec

Comment by selkiesidhe

Slicing Winds looks terrible. Always seems to proc at the wrong moment (wasting it). That, and Fists of Fury--- both are so underwhelming and look terrible.

Comment by Nickball

Make SW a choice node with either wdp or sotw. Bring back LEC. And for the love of god rework the apex talents. This "version" of TEB is the worst apex talent added so far. It does absolutely NOTHING. Completely passive, nothing to think about, nothing to play around, nothing noticeable. Literally "you do x% more damage during your cd" how did this even make it out of the design board?

Oh and WW desperately needs a visual overhaul. FoF animation is downright pathetic at this point.