There hasn’t been much going on in the Mists of Pandaria world for me lately, thanks to Diablo 3 and my new position at work. However, in the last week there have been two patches with some interesting monkalicious tidbits. I’m going to talk about the best tidbits today.
Most of these changes aren’t very game changing, and most of them are tooltip clarifications of sorts. I’m going to start with the slightly older changes first.
Spinning Crane Kick now generates 1 Chi.
Now that Spinning Crane Kick generates one Chi, it’s not a horrible skill for a brewmaster to use during AoE. It’s still should not be your primary AoE skill because it takes you out of the fight for too long, but it’s good to use for damage. Whatever you do, don’t initiate a pull with this ability. You should still start out with some Dizzying Haze for threat, thenKeg Smash and a Blackout Kick so that your healer doesn’t suffer from a heart attack.
Tiger’s Lust now has a 20 yd range, up from melee.
I don’t know about you guys, but this was the first time I realized this talent can be used on others. Unfortunately that doesn’t make it any more useful for tanks because it still consumes Chi, but it will probably be way awesome in PvP. The recent change simply made it easier to use on others.
Desperate Measures: (New) While at or below 35% health, your Expel Harm has no cooldown.
This is a completely new passive which adds a tiny bit of dynamic choice making to our rotation. There is no UI indicator that it’s active in the beta right now (not even a buff!), though it does work.
Purifying Brew now has a 1 sec cooldown.
This modification is to protect you from your button-mashing self. Turns out some of us were using Purifying Brew multiple times in a very short time period and nomming Chi like crazy because it had no cooldown before.
Summon Black Ox Statue has been reworked: Sancturary of the Ox (Passive) -Everytime the Monk deals (AP * 16) damage, the Black Ox statue will cast Guard on an injured party or raid member within 40 yards absorbing 14232 damage lasting 30 sec. This effect cannot be cast onto the Monk.
Finally the Ox Statue isn’t a vital source of mitigation for the monk. Instead, a bubble spawns once you deal a certain amount of damage. On my 89 brewmaster, this means a bubble will spawn every time I deal an accumulative 188,000 damage. You do not have to deal this damage all at once. Basically, if you’re in a group you should have this statue up.
These changes are sort of interesting because of the way they scale with AP. The more attack power you have, the faster you can do the damage but you are also required to deal more damage. I think ideally this means the rate of bubble spawns will stay about the same, even when you get much better gear. Vengeance makes this even more complicated, though it doesn’t change how we use it.
Blackout Kick now has an additional effect for Brewmasters: Causes you to gain Shuffle, increasing your parry chance by 30% and your Stagger amount by an additional 20% for 6 sec.
This is just a tooltip clarification for monks who already have Brewmaster Training. My level 18 brewmaster does not have this extra information on her Blackout Kick. Sadly, low level monks still lack all of their mitigation until high levels. Contrary to what MMO-Champion says, Brewmasters still get the DoT if you use it on a target with less than 50% health.
Zen Pilgrimage (New) Your spirit travels to the Peak of Serenity in Pandaria, leaving your body behind. Use Zen Pilgrimage again to return to your body. 10 sec cast. 15 min cooldown.
Zen Pilgrimage: Return (New) Returns your spirit back to its body, returning you back to where you once were. Leaving Peak of Serenity will automatically return your body to your spirit, causing you to be unable to return back to where you were. 10 sec cast.
I can’t figure out where this spell takes you because you can’t learn it yet. It says “See your trainer”, though trainers can’t actually train skills anymore so that’s sort of an issue. There’s only a single spell listed in the spell book, so I assume you also don’t actually have to learn and use two spells, the skill just acts differently depending on when/where you use it.
Chi Burst now does 10,886 damage to all enemies, up from 1,013 damage. It also does (16,914 + 77.5% of AP) healing to all allies in its path. Chi Burst will always heal the Monk. Now has 50% AP scaling.
This is simply numbers balancing since Chi Burst was significantly worse than Zen Sphere as far as damage goes. Zen Sphere also had the benefit of guaranteed healing on yourself, which Chi Burst did not have until this patch. This spell now has a positioning element. While it will be hard to position yourself in a way that will hit any damage dealers or healers, you can probably heal the other tank if you stand correctly.
Zen Sphere now does 1,171 + 71.85% of AP healing or (1,971 + 113% of AP) when cast again, up from not scaling with AP.
Zen Sphere has undergone quite a few bug fixes in the last patch, scaling the second hit being one of them. You can also auto-attack while it’s active (bugfix).
Stance of the Sturdy Ox now allows for you to shrug off melee attacks, rather than all attacks.
I’ve seen one instance of my monk staggering magic attacks, which I figured was just a bug, and it seems to have been fixed. You should only be able to stagger melee attacks.