Zen Meditation: Storming the earth with fire

When asked the true strength of the Windwalker specialization, few monks will hesitate. Very quickly, they will unanimously say the same thing: our cleave.

What they are citing is one spell: Storm, Earth, and Fire. Now, if you are reading this, you likely already have a UI set up for Storm, Earth, and Fire. You have a good idea of its usefulness. However, perhaps you need to explain why this spell is so incredibly strong (or not strong) to your guildmates. Or perhaps there are some things with it that you didn’t previously know. Either way, let’s discuss its intricacies in a way that you can link around, perhaps to use the spell better for yourself or to explain your argument with your guild leader. Note that this post may sound somewhat fractured at times; there are many details to cover with what we’ve lovingly referred to as SEF.

The basics

Casting range with SEF is 40 yards, which is fairly typical of spells that you should want to use at a great distance. You can run a few yards outside of that before your clones will disappear; this is likely to give more leeway for general raid mechanics. After all, it would be incredibly frustrating to force this spell to dissipate any time an add ran out of range of your cast. This being said, the clones are  incredibly fragile; consider them to be similar to shaman totems that do not have AoE protection (that is, they can be completely destroyed by Area of Effect spells). When my own guild did Twin Ogron, I found that my clone would often die to Whirlwind – forcing me to need to recast it.

Additionally, in Warlords, SEF was removed from the GCD and given no resource cost. It also begins working more quickly than before; however, keep in mind that your clones do not begin to cast until perhaps a second or two after you have sent them out. They also require their own Tiger Power and Rising Sun Kick buffs and debuffs.  They will not dynamically update to reflect these buffs without having to cast them themselves.

Cancelling clones is also done several ways. The easiest to cancel each clone is to attempt to cast it at a third target (keeping in mind, you can only have clones on 2 targets at a time). This can certainly cause poor results for a monk not paying attention that they already have two clones out. A single clone can be cancelled by re-casting the spell upon the same target that it is already on. Otherwise, the easiest (and more widely preferred) way in which to cancel your clones is with a cancelaura:

/cancelaura Storm, Earth, and Fire

Sounds pretty sweet!

Overall, I agree with this sentiment – SEF is a major reason why I adore the Windwalker spec. However, keep in mind that this spell has a few ‘issues’.

If you suddenly begin hitting the same target as one of your clones (keeping in mind that the stock UI does not allow you to see what target your clone is on, other than by the trailing clone), your clone will autoattack and your spells will still only do 70% or 45% of their damage (dependent upon the amount of clones you ahve out). There are a few ways to mitigate this: first is a WeakAura (note that I did not write this; it is simply a very widely-used one that is part of my personal UI). The Storm, Earth, and Fire addon also performs a similar function.

Keep in mind, too, that canceling the spell – regardless of if you use a cancel macro or another cast of it – will still take a few GCDs before the clone is gone and your damage returns to “normal”.

For casting it, you would also want to have a mouseover macro. Otherwise, you would need to target the target you want to cast it on, and then swap targets… In other words, the mouseover greatly simplifies being able to cast it while continuing your rotation:

/cast [target=mouseover] Storm, Earth, and Fire

Copycats

The tooltip text states that the clones will copy your abilities. This is a lie. Well, perhaps not a lie, but still misleading. These spells are not copied:

• Chi Torpedo: As our current go-to for burst AE, it is unfortunate that the clones will nerf Chi Torpedo’s damage but not copy it.
• Zen Sphere: I suppose this is only sort-of a concern. First, Zen Sphere is rarely the best spell for multi-target cleave (I would recommend Chi Burst, but that is for another discussion). The clone will cast Zen Sphere on itself, which means that it never detonates – most of Zen Sphere’s damage is in this detonation. They will still nerf the detonation damage.
• Touch of Death: Just keep in mind that they do not nerf the damage of Touch of Death.

Likely, the lack of copying these spells is simply a technical limitation.

Padding and cleaving

A major complaint I hear from many Windwalkers is that their raid cites that they should never be using SEF, because it is padding. This is not only completely untrue, but it also completely neutering the Windwalker’s strengths and abusing the class in the worst way. Consider a few different types of fights. First, Iron Maidens. Second, Paragons of the Klaxxi.

Iron Maidens require that each boss be cleaved down. They do not share health, and they must die within a few seconds of one another. They will not regain health whenever one dies.

Paragons of the Klaxxi only requires the raid to split damage during one early phase. Otherwise, each boss will heal to full after one dies.

You can see the difference between these two: in the first case, the damage dealt to something other than the primary target is a gain to overall raid damage and key to destroying the encounter. In the second, damage dealt to something other than the primary target is a major loss to the raid.

This is the main consideration with SEF. In Paragons, using SEF would be considered “padding” due to the nature of the encounter, and that it is losing damage on the primary target. In Iron Maidens, the opposite is true. This is why Windwalkers are considered so very strong for Iron Maidens; this type of even cleave is perfect for ranged-cleave bosses (such as Iron Maidens on Mythic), or even shared-health encounters, such as Twin Ogron or Hans’gar and Franzok.

Final Thoughts

The Windwalker that does not use this spell or does not understand how to use it is missing out on an entire facet of their class. I hope that this explanation of playstyle will enlighten many. Additionally, raids which are not leveraging it or are attributing a Windwalker being “strong” for a fight without taking this spell into consideration are also hindering their own progress.

While it may not be as useful in PvP, I believe that this spell can be considered the Windwalker’s utility for PvE content. It is an extremely unique spell, classified both as a cleave and multidot, if not its own entity entirely.