(xposted on TFD and WoM)

The good news: my wife has recovered enough to go home. The bad news: there’s still a lot of adjustment we have to do. I didn’t really think it through, but I actually had more free time in the hospital to play/write because the nurses took care of her personal care. Now that she’s home, I’m having to help her with everything (including adjusting to life as an ostomate), so I haven’t touched a keyboard (until now) since we got home a week ago.

I’m still keeping up with goings-on via RSS on my phone…just don’t expect me to say anything meaningful for a while. Hope you guys are having fun in WoW!

Just a quick C/P from the blue thread so I can find it again when I go looking in a month. :) I’ll try to add other proc rates in here when I find/confirm them. I also went back and updated the table of combat ratings, since apparently it’s the highest search result on Google.

Weapon Enchant Proc Rates:

• Lord Blastington’s Scope of Doom – 1 PPM, no ICD.
• River’s Song: 2PPM on melee attacks that land, or are dodged, or parried.
• Dancing Steel: 1PPM on melee attacks that land.
• Colossus: 3PPM on melee attacks that land, or are dodged, or parried, with a 3-second cooldown.
• Elemental Force: 5PPM on melee damage, or non-periodic spell damage/healing, with a 0.1-second cooldown.
• Jade Spirit: 10% chance on spell damage or healing, 50-second cooldown.
• Windsong: 1PPM on melee damage, or non-periodic spell damage/healing, with a 1-second cooldown.

– Vision of the Predator – 15% chance on direct/periodic spell damage dealt, 105 sec ICD.
– Carbonic Carbuncle – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
– Windswept Pages – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 65 sec ICD.
– Searing Words – 45% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell crit, 85 sec ICD.
– Light of the Cosmos – 15% chance on periodic damage, 45 sec ICD.
– Essence of Terror – 15% chance on harmful spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
– Terror in the Mists – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
– Darkmist Vortex – 15% chance on direct white/melee/harmful-spell landing, 105 sec ICD.
– Relic of Yulon – 20% chance on direct/periodic spell damage, 50 sec ICD.
– Relic of Xuen (STR) – 20% chance on white/yellow melee landing, 45 sec ICD.
– Relic of Xuen (AGI) – 20% chance on white/yellow/ranged crit, 55 sec ICD.
– Bottle of Infinite Stars – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 45 sec ICD.
– Vial of Dragon’s Blood – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 45 sec ICD.
– Lei Shin’s Final Orders – 15% chance on direct white/melee/ranged/harmful-spell landing, 45 sec ICD.
– Qin-xi’s Polarizing Seal – 15% chance on direct/periodic spell heal, 45 sec ICD.
– Spirits of the Sun – 15% chance on direct/periodic spell heal, 105 sec ICD.

Other:

– Killing Machine – 6 PPM on white melee landing, no ICD.
– Sudden Doom – 3 PPM on white melee landing, no ICD.
– Fangs of the Father
—- Assassination: 23.139% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
—- Combat: 9.438% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
—- Subtlety: 28.223% chance on white/yellow melee landing, no ICD.
—- These chances are multiplied by 0.9 for lvl 89 targets, 0.8 for lvl 90 targets, 0.7 for lvl 91 targets, 0.6 for lvl 92 targets, and 0.5 for lvl 93+ targets.
—- After adding a stack, if you have >30 stacks, you have a [1/(51-stacks)] chance to proc the Fury buff.

Hey druid fans, as many of you know, I’m also writing WoW Insider’s monk content, so I’m composing  guides for both classes. As it happens, I finished up the windwalker guide first, so go check it out and let me know what you think! I’ve excerpted the beginning below.

Introduction

Windwalker monks are a melee DPS class that was newly added to the game for the Mists of Pandaria expansion. Any race, except Worgen and Goblin, can be a monk. (All my pictures are pandaren because, well, that’s all the art at the moment.) Like all monks, they have two resources that must be managed; energy and chi.

Energy regenerates at a constant rate (10/sec), and is used to power several abilities. Windwalkers have a 100-point energy pool. Energy regeneration does scale with haste, and can also be temporarily buffed by Energizing Brew.

In contrast, chi is a static 4-point pool, similar to a paladin’s holy power, that decays when out of combat. To build chi, a windwalker monk will typically use a “chi builder,”  such as Jab, which hits for very little but generates chi. The windwalker monk’s hardest-hitting abilities, or “chi consumers,” use that chi to generate the bulk of the windwalker’s damage. The key difference between chi and other secondary resource systems (such as holy power or combo points) is that all chi consuming abilities have a fixed cost and damage, compared to the others where damage/effect scales based on the amount of secondary resource currently banked.

What does that mean? Well, it opens up your flexibility quite a bit. Rogues, for example, pretty much never use a finisher unless they’re at maximum combo points, because of the way it scales. In contrast, windwalkers have the flexibility to alternate chi builders and consumers for steady damage, or use multiple builders to store chi, and then multiple consumers for extra damage during a burst period.

Every fight against non-trivial enemies will require careful management of both resources. The two primary mistakes you want to avoid are chi dumping and energy capping. Chi dumping is using a chi builder when you are already at full chi (thereby wasting time and energy) whereas energy capping is allowing your energy meter to fill to 100, which causes your energy regeneration to stop. As you get used to the spec, you’ll learn how to weave chi builders and chi consumers together to keep a constant flow going.

Primary Abilities

These are the abilities you’re going to use most often, so know them, love them, hotkey them.

Ability	Icon	Discussion
Jab		40 energy, no CD. Basic attack. Increases chi by 1 baseline, increased to 2 via Stance of the Fierce Tiger. Can proc a free Tiger Palm/Blackout Kick via the Windwalker’s Mastery, Combo Breaker. Primary chi builder for single-target.
Rising Sun Kick		2 chi, 8s CD. Heavy damage to current target and causes all targets within 8 yds to take 10% additional damage (from the Monk) for 15 sec. Use this on cooldown.
Fists of Fury		3 chi, 25s CD. Unlike the other instant abilities, this is a 4 sec channel that hits 5 times for significant damage. It also stuns enemies during the channel. Downsides: expensive, it’s channeled (can be interrupted, no autoattack during the channel) and it splits damage among targets hit, which makes it not very good for AoE unless the stun works.
Blackout Kick		2 chi, no CD. Hits for good damage, and adds a DoT for 20% of the damage if attacking from behind, or a self-heal for 20% if attacking from the front (Combat Conditioning). Occasionally usable for free due to Combo Breaker.
Tiger Palm		1 chi, no CD. Moderate damage; adds a 10% armor debuff for your damage to the target. The debuff stacks 3x, so 30% armor reduction. (10% armor reduction = 3-4% more damage, roughly.) Occasionally usable for free due to Combo Breaker.
Spinning Crane Kick		40 energy, no CD, generates 1 chi if it hits three or more enemies. Channeled 3 sec AoE that hits 4 times. Primary chi builder for AoE.
Energizing Brew		60s CD. A energy regen cooldown, very similar to a feral druid’s Tiger’s Fury except slower. Like TF, you’ll want to use this as soon as it comes off cooldown and the extra energy isn’t wasted.
Tigereye Brew		This is your “click me for more damage” button. It doesn’t have an actual cooldown, but you’ll want to use it at 10 stacks to maximize the effect, so roughly every 75s-90s, or more if you have to stop attacking a lot.
Zen Sphere		Your Level 30 talent. At the moment, things are fluctuating as to whether this (or the other L30 talents) will be used in the rotation, or just for self-healing purposes. More on this in the Talent section.
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger		Your Level 90 talent. The other options appear to be more AoE focused, so we’ll rely on Xuen for the time being.

That’s it! Master those 10, and you’ll be 95% of the way there for single-target DPS situations.

Reminder: Hit this page for the full guide.

If you missed my appearance on the Twisted Nether Blogcast, check out the podcast here. (I’m afraid to listen to myself, so I’ll let you guys tell me how I did.)

x/posted at TFD and WoMC

So, I was going to cover the new posts in the Class Balance Analysis Thread (henceforth abbreviated as the CBAT, because bats are awesome, even those who were mediocre in school) but I’ve had quite a bit to do at work and other people have written it up better already. Link post? Link post.

• Go see Sunfyre for info on the revamp to the balance rotation (stronger, more frequent Starsurge and a maintenance buff to keep up) Graylo will probably also have something bloggish to say about it soon, I’d wager.
• Arielle over at TIB had two Guardian roundup posts (one/two) Really liking the part about how Rebirth’s CD might be reset on a wipe, and bearcats were “not” OP. Um, right. I disagree with GC here. I’m cool with “world firsts have to resort to unusual strategies” but bearcatting wasn’t unusual, it was fairly customary to my knowledge.
• Reygahnci throws out some numbers as to why Incarnation really is that terrible currently, and why Wild Charge really is that OP.
• Oh, right, and I summed up what I saw as the current issues for balance and feral (in the beta) on WoW Insider.