Windwalker Monk DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Midnight Season 1
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Windwalker Monk in World of Warcraft — Midnight Season 1. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
Best Midnight Talents for Windwalker Monk
Welcome to our Talents Page. Many of the builds listed are popular recommendations for various different damage profiles that cover all aspects of endgame content. If you're looking for advice tailored to Mythic+, check out the dedicated page below.
Quick Start Import Codes:
Best Talents for Windwalker Monk in Midnight
Single-Target builds are straightforward — They do as much damage to single target as possible. Cleave and AoE are totally ignored here. Many raid fights are either wholly or predominantly single-target. In many cases, even if a fight has AoE moments like add spawns, if those add spawns are not especially important or dangerous, playing a single-target build can be optimal, even on such fights.
Mythic+ builds are optimized for completing Mythic+ dungeons as quickly as possible. To obtain them, thousands of builds are simulated across both single-target and AoE, and math is used to analyze this simulation data and arrive at the build that performs the best across both single-target and AoE, without disproportionately preferring AoE as many other methodologies tend to. Open-World and Delve Builds are often variants of this, as these disciplines also contain a healthy mixture of single-target and AoE, both of which ought to be optimized.
Delves builds are generally the same damage profile as Mythic+, so the talent build is the same.
Apex Talent for Windwalker Monk: Tigereye Brew
Midnight introduces new Apex Talents, unlocked between Level 80 and 90. Windwalker Monk gets:
Tigereye Brew
Tigereye Brew
Tigereye Brew
Tigereye Brew is the new Apex talent node and is a callback to
Windwalker's original damage cooldown, although mostly in name only. As the tooltip
suggests, during combat you generate stacks that are then spent when you cast
Zenith
to increase your chance to Crit. Outside of combat it stacks back up to 10 very quickly, or
will maintain its stacks if you are already at or above 10.
Generally you do not have to play around this buff, as you should be naturally using
Zenith frequently enough to not need to worry about the cap of 20 stacks. The primary
way that this buff affect's your thought process is that it lessens the incentive to use both
charges of
Zenith back-to-back because the second use will have very few stacks.
Most of the time, spreading them out is a reasonable choice to make, but sometimes you will still
want to use them one after the other. This talent can be taken and ignored outside of the more extreme
min-maxing situations that may be figured out as time goes on.
After the first talent point, the other three are passive damage increases that don't change anything.
Hero Talents
Windwalker gets to pick between two distinct Hero Talent choices:
Shado-Pan and
Conduit of the Celestials. These are available at level 71
and are mutually exclusive.
Shado-Pan
Shado-Pan can be described as "baseline" Windwalker, with no additional buttons
or mechanics that you need to worry about. This Hero Talent tree is focused around
increasing the power of the base kit that Windwalker has to work with.
The tree does add the damage source of
Flurry Strikes, which are
additional strikes of damage when you cast abilities like
Fists of Fury or
Rising Sun Kick, and
Spinning Crane Kick during
Zenith. These are
further augmented into AoE damage with
Shado Over the Battlefield and become a
decently large source of additional damage.
This Hero Talent tree is recommended for beginners, as none of the talents or
Flurry Strikes
change how the spec is played at all.
Conduit of the Celestials
Conduit of the Celestials leans heavily into the lore of Monks and Windwalker,
leveraging the assistance of the August Celestials to provide additional power. This Hero Talent
tree comes with the familiar spell of
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger and
Celestial Conduit and is
generally considered to be noticeably more complex and different from
Shado-Pan.
Playing as
Conduit of the Celestials revolves around managing the windows of
Heart of the Jade Serpent
that are generated when
Zenith,
Celestial Conduit,
Strike of the Windlord, or
Whirling Dragon Punch
are used. These buff windows dramatically increase the speed that the spec plays, with faster channeling of
Fists of Fury,
and dramatically reduced cooldown times on abilities. Learning how to balance and manage these buff windows is essential
to maximizing the power of
Conduit of the Celestials and contribute to the belief that it is both more complicated and faster
than
Shado-Pan.
Mythic+
Mythic+ can require a mix of AoE and Single-Target talents, depending on affixes and other variables. You should check out our page below if you want advice specific to Mythic+.
Rotation for Windwalker Monk Talents
Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.
Spells Overview for Windwalker Monk
To better understand our Talent Builds and the Talents within them, it is helpful to understand all of Windwalker Monk's spells and abilities in detail to get some context. For that, check out our dedicated Spells page:
PvP Talents for Windwalker Monk
War Mode offers several benefits for you in the open world.
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
- At least 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
- 10% more experience gained while leveling.
- Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of all PvP Talents for Windwalker Monk
Wind Waker grants you and allies affected by
Windwalking an effect that makes them immune to slow and snare
effects once every 30 seconds.
Reverse Harm doubles the healing of
Expel Harm and
provides an extra Chi when used.
Disabling Reach increases the range of your
Disable
to 10 yards.
Alpha Tiger grants you 30% Haste upon attacking a new target with
Tiger Palm. This can happen once every 30 seconds per target.
Grapple Weapon grants you an additional spell which prevents
your target from using their weapons for 6 seconds.
Turbo Fists causes
Fists of Fury to deal full damage to all
targets hit and reduce their movement speed by 90%. It additionally grants you
100% Parry chance during the channel.
Ride the Wind causes
Flying Serpent Kick to increase
the movement speed of allies in its path by 30%. This applies to yourself.
It also increases Flying Serpent Kick's cooldown by 10 seconds.
Pressure Points reduces the cooldown of
Touch of Death
by 60 seconds if you kill a player with it.
Tigereye Brew generates stacks of Tigereye Brew whenever you
spend 3 Chi. Using these stacks makes your attacks bypass armor but deal
slightly less damage for 2 seconds per stack.
Turbo Fists,
Reverse Harm, and
Alpha Tiger are the three talents that will benefit you
the most when doing PvE content. They grant you sustainability, as well as
survivability.
Changelog
- 16 Mar. 2026: Reviewed for Midnight Season 1. No changes necessary.
- 26 Feb. 2026: Updated for Midnight release, new talent builds and format.
- 10 Feb. 2026: Updated for 12.0.1 moving from PTR to Live.
- 19 Jan. 2026: Reviewed and Updated for Midnight Pre-Patch, added section for Hero Talents, no other changes necessary.
- 30 Nov. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.2.7.
- 05 Oct. 2025: Reviewed for 11.2.5, no changes needed.
- 04 Aug. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.2, no real changes yet.
- 15 Jun. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.1.7.
- 21 Apr. 2025: Reviewed for Patch 11.1.5, no changes necessary.
- 24 Mar. 2025: Updated for March 25 tuning changes, added additional talent options to talent builds.
- 24 Feb. 2025: Updated for 11.1, added Conduit talent information.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 22 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 27 Aug. 2024: Added Delves talent build.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Reviewed and updated for The War Within Launch, changed the "includes".
- 23 Jul. 2024: Reviewed and updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4, no changes necessary.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6, no changes necessary.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated and Reviewed for Patch 10.2, updated talent recommendations.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for 10.1.7 and new format.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated and Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5, no changes necessary.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1, no changes needed currently.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch, added ST and AoE Talents.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Monk Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide is written and maintained by Babylonius; Long time raider in Occasional Excellence; Thirteen year veteran of Windwalker; Founder and owner of the dedicated Monk website, Peak of Serenity; and Admin/Owner of the Monk Discord, PeakofSerenity. You can find him on Twitch, Twitter, and occasionally YouTube.
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