Friday 30 January 2015

Mt very first WindWalker post.....be gentle with me!!

A very happy new year to everyone!! As most of you know I have predominantly been a tank or healer on my monk, and I have never really gone into using the DPS spec all that much, since WoD dropped though I have switched to windwalker for raiding. So here it is, my opinions on Highmaul from a new perspective, my talent choices and as always, my "this is how I do it" version of tactics :)




Talent overview.

At the moment I'm still in the process of trying out different combinations of talents for various fights, I have to say that at first I was really disappointed with Chi Explosion, it seemed to encourage far too much chi pooling for my liking and it was almost steering me away from using RSK and FoF, most likely because I was not used to the rotation and keeping the RSK debuff up was not something that I was doing naturally. For this reason I stayed away from CE when I first picked up the spec and got myself used to the "old" rotation. Now that I am more comfortable with keeping my RSK debuff up and my Tiger Palm buff up I am finding it a lot easier to utilize CE, especially when I run it with Ascension for the extra chi pool. Serenity Is really nice for opening burst for me, especially with the Chi Brew and lucky mastery procs, if you can start a fight with 8-10 stacks, get TP and RSK up, then "windmill" with BoK for the duration of serenity on single target fights this has produced some very nice opening numbers, especially as the BoK builds up stacks of brew ready for a FoF straight afterwards. I have tried Hurricane strike on some trash pulls and in dungeons but at the moment for me, the CD is too long and it doesn't ever really contribute much to my overall damage, This could be because I am using it incorrectly but on the whole , personally I find it to be the weaker of the 3 new talent choices. 



Highmaul - Welcome to Ogre country.....

On the whole I have to say the raid is quite fun, I really wasn't sure how I would settle into playing a new spec, or how I would cope with not being able to tank. DPS has never really held a lot of intrest for me, I am not really bothered by the numbers, I try to do "too much" instead of doing damage and end up not really doing enough or dying. I have had to learn to find myself a happy medium of running off and doing  mechanics and simply just sitting there and belting the boss for all I am worth when I need to. I am finding it a lot easier that when I first started, I don't find myself as frustrated as I initially did, and my overall numbers aren't too horrendous. 


Butchwork.

This was the fight where I really learned a nice rotation, for melee it's just a case of sitting on the bosses arse and whoring numbers. It was a nice way for me to practice and let the rotation become more natural for me, it's helped me out on fights like Brakenspore where I can abuse my mobility a lot, while still keeping a good rotation up. 


"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves" 

Edmund Hillary really had that one right when it came to Tectus. This fight is one of the mist fun but challenging fights for me so far in Highmaul. The combination of keeping up DPS while hardly being able to stand still for more than a FoF was really fun to master - I don't think I'm quite there yet, and I could definitely squeeze out a few more numbers, but my survivability on that fight is at an all time high due to having a tool kit almost perfect for the fight itself. I never realized just how well equipped Windwalkers were in general until I abused pretty much everything I had during one pull to stay alive when we were progressing on this fight.


Two targets?? Use the Red wun!!

Twin Ogron is a perfect example of how monks just excel at multi target fights, the other monk in our guild and I have affectionately renamed Storm Earth and Fire "The Red wun, Green wun and the Bloo wun". Funnily enough though, by the end of this fight, our clones have generally our DPS'd us, probably because they don't seem to give a monkeys for tactics, fire, falling ceilings or whirlwinds, basically all the things we spend half the fight avoiding!! on a more serious note, I really enjoy this fight, it's a good test of how much you can sit on a bosses arse when the odds are stacked against you, particularly on mythic, when things can kill you at the drop of a hat. I find Chi Explosion to be the best way to pump out numbers in this, and more often than not, both of us monks will top DPS charts by quite a margin, which is actually quite fun to do - never thought I'd catch myself saying that though!!

I've been putting quite a bit of effort into challenge modes lately, picked up a few realm best times and am halfway to my 8/8 gold, so keep an eye out for my next blog which may well just cover more Draenor challenges; )

Be Good

Dark xx