Spec, Builds, Talents and Glyphs
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for Windwalker Monks in World of Warcraft WoD 6.2.2. We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
1. Talent Choices↑top
- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
Talents can easily be changed, thanks to 
Tomes of the Clear Mind. You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents offer you a choice between 3 ways of improving your mobility.
Celerity passively increases the number of charges of 
Roll and 
Chi Torpedo by 1, and reduces their cooldown by 5 seconds.
Tiger's Lust removes all roots and snares from the target, and grants 70% increased movement speed for 6 seconds. It has a 30-second cooldown. It is targeted, so it can be cast on yourself or on another ally.
Momentum passively causes each Roll and Chi Torpedo to increase your movement speed by 25% for 10 seconds, stacking up 2 times.
While the choice of talent here is somewhat encounter-dependant, we believe that Tiger's Lust is preferable in the vast majority of situations. Roll (which both of the other two talents in this tier improve) is mostly sufficient on its own. Tiger's Lust provides an additional movement speed burst, and the snare-removal component is also useful in some PvE situations.
3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents offer you a choice between 3 hybrid, DPS-healing abilities.
Chi Wave is essentially a chain-heal that bounces to the 7 nearest targets. The bounces target allies and enemies alternatively. Each target that the wave bounces to is healed or damaged, depending on their alignment. The healing portion of Chi Wave is a smart heal, in the sense that it prefers healing low health players. It has a 15-second cooldown, and it is free of cost.
Zen Sphere summons a sphere above the head of a friendly target (yourself included), which lasts for 16 seconds. Every 2 seconds, the sphere heals the target, and deals damage to the nearest enemy within 10 yards. It has a 10-second cooldown, and it is free of cost. You can have a maximum of two spheres at one time. Finally, the Zen Sphere will detonate, causing it to deal a moderate amount of damage and healing to all targets within 10 yards, whenever its target drops below 35% health, or after its duration runs out.
Chi Burst heals all friendly targets, and damages all hostile targets in a 40-yard cone in front of the caster. The spell has a 30-second cooldown, a very short cast time, and it is free of cost.
Zen Sphere is the best single target talent, provided that you can keep it active on both yourself and a secondary target. The next best choice for single target is Chi Wave. Chi Burst is best for AoE damage.
4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents↑top
Power Strikes passively causes 
Jab, 
Expel Harm, 
Spinning Crane Kick (when it hits at least 3 targets), and 
Crackling Jade Lightning to generate 1 additional Chi. The effect has a 15-second internal cooldown. If you are at maximum Chi when this effect procs, a Chi sphere will spawn next to you. A Chi sphere grants you 1 Chi each time you walk through/over it, consuming the sphere in the process.
Ascension increases your maximum Chi by 1 (from 4 to 5, and from 5 to 6 once you gain the Empowered Chi perk), your Spirit by 10%, and your Energy regeneration rate by 15%.
Chi Brew instantly restores 2 Chi, and generates 2 stacks of 
Tigereye Brew. It has a 1-minute cooldown.
We believe that Ascension is the best talent in this tier if you are using 
Chi Explosion as your tier 7 talent. Otherwise, Chi Brew is the better option.
5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents offer you a choice between 3 crowd-control abilities.
Ring of Peace is an ability that can be cast on a friendly player. It creates a ring with an 8-yard radius around the player, lasting 8 seconds. When Ring of Peace is cast, enemy players who are inside this area are instantly incapacitated for 5 seconds. Enemies inside the area who cast spells or use any abilities other than melee attacks are incapacitated for 3 seconds (the incapacitate being subject to diminishing returns). This ability has a 45-second cooldown.
Charging Ox Wave summons an ox that stuns all enemies located in a 30-yard path in front of you for 3 seconds. It has a 30-second cooldown.
Leg Sweep stuns all enemies within a 5-yard radius of you for 5 seconds. It has a 45-second cooldown.
These talents have no meaningful impact on your gameplay and will not affect your performance. Therefore, you can choose them based on your own preference or the crowd-control requirements of the encounter.
That said, Leg Sweep is probably the most useful talent in the majority of Tier 17 raid encounters, and this should be your default choice. Ring of Peace can have some fruitful situational uses, but this is quite rare.
6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents offer you a choice between 3 survival abilities.
Healing Elixirs heals you for 15% of your maximum health each time you drink from a Brew or Tea. The effect has an 18-second internal cooldown, and it does not proc when you are at full health. It procs automatically when you have less than 35% health.
Dampen Harm causes the next 3 attacks against you (within 45 seconds), which deal 15% or more of your maximum health in damage, to have their damage reduced by 50%. This ability can be used while stunned, and it has a 1.5-minute cooldown.
Diffuse Magic transfers all magical debuffs from you onto their caster, where possible. Additionally, for 6 seconds, it reduces all magic damage taken by 90%.
We believe the best choice is either Diffuse Magic or Dampen Harm.
- Diffuse Magic is mostly the best option. It will help you greatly mitigate magic damage against you (most raid damage is magic damage), as well as clear harmful debuffs from yourself.
- Dampen Harm works against both magic damage and physical attacks, despite the tooltip mentioning attacks. It can prove beneficial, but it will always provide a smaller damage reduction than Diffuse Magic. Due to its 45-second duration, you can also use this to mitigate the damage of several large blows that are spread out over a longer period of time.
While Healing Elixirs may provide substantial self-healing over the course of the fight, the fact that this healing is tied to your usage of other abilities makes it less flexible. Therefore, you will often have to either have the healing be wasted, or you will have to delay using an important ability just to benefit more from the healing.
7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents offer you a choice between 3 multiple target abilities.
Rushing Jade Wind is an improvement over Spinning Crane Kick, which it replaces. It summons a tornado that moves around you, dealing damage to any enemies within 8 yards of you. If it hits at least 3 targets, it grants you 1 Chi. It has a very short cooldown, and it costs 40 Energy.
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger summons a tiger that will attack your current target, and 3 other nearby enemies. The tiger persists for 45 seconds, and it can be controlled by means of a pet action bar. It has a 3-minute cooldown.- Chi Torpedo is an improvement over Roll, which it replaces. It causes you to roll a short distance in front of you (but further than with Roll), dealing damage to all enemies, and healing all allies in your path.
Currently, Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger provides the greatest single-target DPS increase of the three talents.
Rushing Jade Wind is the go-to talent for sustained AoE damage against 3 or more targets.
Chi Torpedo provides high burst AoE damage. It also performs a hybrid role of DPS and healing.
8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents↑top
Tier 7 talents offer you a choice between 3 ways of enhancing your DPS performance.
Hurricane Strike unleashes a series of kicks towards random enemies within 12 yards of you, dealing damage over 2 seconds. The damage is split between all affected targets. During this time, you are immune to movement impairing and loss of control effects. The ability has a 45-second cooldown and it costs 3 Chi.- Chi Explosion consumes all your Chi, up to 4, having different additional effects depending on how much Chi was used. Before we look at the effects based on Chi, it is important to note that Chi Explosion replaces
Blackout Kick, and that 
Combo Breaker is replaced by Combo Breaker (Chi Explosion), which causes your next Chi Explosion to refund 2 Chi.
- 1+ Chi: Deals a base amount of Nature damage plus more damage for every additional point of Chi consumed.
- 2+ Chi: Deals an additional 50% damage over 6 seconds.
- 3+ Chi: Generates a charge of Tigereye Brew.
- 4 Chi: The damage done also hits all enemies within 8 yards of the target.
Serenity is a 10-second buff with a 90-second cooldown and no cost, that causes all your Chi consumptions (while the buff is active) to be instantly refilled. Note that even though this talent effectively makes abilities free of cost for its duration (using 3 Chi refunds 3 Chi, for example), you still need to have the required amount of Chi to be able to use the respective ability.
Serenity is the best single target talent, while Chi Explosion is the best talent for cleaving and AoE fights.
Hurricane Strike can be useful when you need to deal a burst of damage to a target (such as a boss that is taking increased damage, or an add that has to die quickly), but its potency decreases greatly if more than one target is hit.
9. Major Glyphs↑top
There are several Major Glyphs that are interesting for Windwalker Monks, although they do not offer anything in the way of performance improvements. We only mention those which we consider to be the most important.
Glyph of Flying Fists increases the range of 
Fists of Fury by 5 yards. This glyph is especially useful when trying to hit large groups of adds, but it can also help when the boss moves slightly (which could put them out of your range).
Glyph of Floating Butterfly allows you to channel Fists of Fury while moving, but no longer stuns the target. This glyph is very useful in improving your mobility.
Glyph of Freedom Roll causes your Roll, Chi Torpedo, and 
Flying Serpent Kick to dispel all snares from your character. This glyph could be useful in fights where you are snared a lot.
Glyph of Touch of Karma increases the range of your Touch of Karma ability. Touch of Karma is a very powerful survival cooldown, and this glyph allows you to use it even if there isn't an enemy in your melee range.
Glyph of Zen Meditation allows you to move while channeling Zen Meditation. This is particularly useful since Zen Meditation is often used to soak damage, so having the ability to move away from the raid while Zen Meditation is active is a great benefit.
Glyph of Fortuitous Spheres causes a healing sphere to be summoned near the Monk, when their health drops below 25%. It has no cost, and it has a 30-second internal cooldown. This glyph is useful when you have a spare glyph slot, and especially so in fights where your health often drops below 25% health.
Glyph of Touch of Death removes the Chi cost of Touch of Death, but increases its cooldown by 2 minutes. Deciding whether or not to use this glyph depends on the number of times that you believe you will be able to use Touch of Death during the fight (depending on how many bosses will be below 10% health, at what intervals, and for how long). If you will only get the chance to use Touch of Death once in the fight, then using this glyph is a DPS increase, as it saves you 3 Chi. If, however, you can use Touch of Death more than once, the glyph will probably be a DPS loss since the increased cooldown that the glyph causes will mean you will miss out on additional casts (due to the ability being on cooldown).
10. Minor Glyphs↑top
There is one important Minor Glyph that affects your performance, namely 
Glyph of Blackout Kick. This causes Blackout Kick to deal damage over time after being used, regardless of your positioning. It is ideal for situations when you are forced to attack bosses from the front.
None of the other Minor Glyphs offer any boost in performance, so they are all entirely optional. 
Glyph of Spirit Roll and Glyph of Water Roll allow you to use Roll and Chi Torpedo while dead, and while traveling over water respectively. They have no raid applicability, but they can prove to be very convenient.
Content gathered and originally posted by Vlad at http://www.icy-veins.com/wow