What makes our class so undesirable? (Poll on recent article)

[Jeffreymist]

If you take a look at the results for the poll titled "what class will be your main in legion?" in the most recent news article...us monks can't break past 4.5%. I know many will probably leave for the new shiny class that is themed towards the new expansion, but our numbers still surprise me. Monk is the youngest class in game, yet we have fallen to most un-represented class going towards the next expac.

Why do you think this is?

Is it that our ww spec did sub par dps most of the expac?

Dislike for the brm and mw spec and play styles?

The need for new masteries for mw and ww?

The fistweave damage increase and healing nerf trade out?

Statues? Pandas?

I don't know; I log on to see my monk standing there in the icy foothills of dun morogh and I fill with excitement and can't understand why more people would rather play Paladins and hunters. They don't have roll! They don't do crazy cool spell animations and poses!

So people...I ask you....why you no monk? Or if you do monk....why others not monk?

[Hellhowl]

That's an interesting question. I actually have tons of fun on my monk which I all but completely stopped playing boh my warrior and warlock for. I couldnt figure out why more people aren't interested in it after I gave it a shot.

I've always been more interested in less-popular classes though, main reason why I stopped playing my druid and haven't touched my Hunter since the free 90-boost.

Though my only nit-pick with the class is the lack of weapon usage as a melee, I love monk animations but I wish my monk would fling around his staff more instead of punching with it strapped to his back, but that's just me.

[oldgeezer]

I have a mage main and ele shaman alt, both of which I have played for a very long time. I enjoy ranged classes.

I decided to try melee, so levelled a WW monk to 60, then boosted to 90. And boy do I suck at it. There's just so many abilities to take into consideration, and the simple fact that melee requires a totally different game style to ranged. I enjoy the class, but there's no way I'm good enough to play the monk in a group.

[Toppy]

I really really wanted to have a monk. But there were two minor things about the class that ended up annoying me and causing me to shelve it.

The first is the most major. Weapons. Their animations for using weapons are just silly. From the quick way they pull them out and then immediately put them right back, to the comedic little "whap" noise it makes when the attack hits. People love their cosmetics and the weapons on monk just seemed so tacked on. I have no doubt in my mind that the class would attract a lot more people(myself incuded), just like boomkin did with the release of their star form glyph, if blizz released a glyph that just lets monks use their damn weapons. It's especially bad for hand weapons: do they still not show up at all unless you unsheathe them manually?

The other thing was the animations themselves. Its not as bad on Pandaren since the animataions were obviously made for them, but for all races (including pandaren) the animations themselves just look silly. They dont fit the fast paced nature of the game. You go from kung fu master to rapid little spaz who thinks he's a kung fu mastser. Of course the fact that the animations were so deliberatly made for Pandaren doesnt help either. The general look of all the animations just end up looking comedic on, say a Tauren or a dwarf.

tldr; the classes animations make it look silly and people dont want to be a clown.

A more minor note is how the brewmaster tank is rather difficult to use, and tanks are already unpopular as is.

[Tanthoris]

I love my monk, I only shelf him at times when I'm just trying to focus on my paladin, who has been my main since TBC. I've played WW since MoP launched, went through all the crazy changes they had, and I still feel like blizz hasn't gotten them just right yet. BRM is great, it's a little challenging at first, but once you get enough gear it's awesome. I just wish that blizz would've left MW how it was back at the end of MoP, right now it feel very forced. I just miss SM generating Chi tbh. I am a little sad that WW never did get a statue that made it to live, would've been interesting.

[Gourmandise]

Because people don't like to change mains a lot. DK slightly higher than monk and has been around longer. I highly doubt ~20% of people are actually changing their mains to DK and are just on hype train mentality. I wouldn't take much stock in a poll of what will you do, but what have you done.

[klepp0906]

the difficulty of optimal play and the return for doing so

[pandanaconda]

Most recent class, yet it doesn't have the "new class" hype.

Many players have at least known the game for way longer than MoP, so their first love was most likely not monk. People tend to vote that they'll go back to their "main" at the begining of an expac. See how shaman is way higher in this poll than in game? Shaman lovers hope their class won't be subpar as it kinda was all of WoD.

Monk is in essence a different class from others. The design team tried to have something really new in the game, and did this in all three specs. Its a fully hybrid class, with one spec in each role, with no backup spec if windwalker does badly dps-wise. You can understand people not being confortable with sticking to this for legion if they want any of that.

Monk is actually in my eyes a very hard class to play. You can perform just as well as a monk with similar specs in other class with far less efforts. Plus, even if you do make the most out of monk, the results will most likely only be good rather than out of this world. Players can get better results with less efforts, or better efforts with same efforts, by going rogue for instance.


The class still has lots of issues. I think the initial design of monk was way out of line with how they designed most healers/tanks/dps's. This had some good results in having three original and fun specs, but some of those things were design issues. MoP was, I believe, a pretty weird xpac, and it had so many issues that the true problems of monks were not dealt with. Ro-ro was stupid, MoP late x-pac scaling was stupid, and warlocks outshining everyone made it impossible to notice WW's issues. With reforging, we didn't notice how much mastery was an issue on monks after rework.
MoP left the monk class as a very complicated one, and a pretty unfinished one too. None of those issues were dealt with in WoD, we just saw all the issues we had to deal with through stagger scaling, SEF, haste levels on windwalkers, mastery on MW and WW. Those problems appeared, and the design team had communicated they wouldn't do major spec changes after 6.0.


Monk and demon hunters are appealing to similar type of people. Out of this huge 22% of people intending to go DH, many could find what they seek in a monk spec once all those problems are solved.


Monk has a bunch of unresolved issues, is a young class. I didn't expect it to appear any higher in the poll.

[Lamortykins]

Brewmaster, Mistweaver, and Windwalker are all relatively difficult specs to master. For every good mistweaver I see 98 bad ones and 1 confused fistweaver. And windwalkers manage their focus similarly to hunters, while also being a melee class. This, coupled with the fact that it starts at level 1 and was added late in the game, has pretty much resulted in monks being very unpopular.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

I really, really enjoy the Monk I have, and she's a tank. It's kind of fun and well designed, but the Ox statue can be odd, being a go-to taunt for massive areas while being worthless/dangerous near tricky pulling situations.

The fact that Blackout Kick only gives me more stagger for like 6 seconds so I must always spend my Chi on that, when there was plenty of other stuff to spend Chi on, is retarded.

For some reason, the fact they wear leather makes it more difficult to like them. There's no really nice transmog choices, just your standard warbear woolies.

Last of all, can't be Worgen, so shelved them after I was done fooling around. That's just my 2 cents I'm not really thinking about it.

Out of all this I'd imagine the fact that WW dps sucks so hard is the most serious issue across the board. I have a Fury warrior with the legendary ring and set bonus and it's not worth it to bring them to archimonde when we could have had an aoe deathgrip or a high dps rogue. It sure as hell isn't worth jack shit to bring a crippled hand slapper.

[Adus]

Monk and demon hunters are appealing to similar type of people. Out of this huge 22% of people intending to go DH, many could find what they seek in a monk spec once all those problems are solved.

Or vice versa. Monk has had a lot of whiplash in their design. Some could see DH, look at the fact that it is yet another leather melee class with "unrivaled mobility", and just say fuck it. Maybe they just couldn't figure out what to do with monk after all and are going to focus on DH instead. So maybe I'll just switch over. Or they just see the fact that the classes have very similar roles and realize DH sounds cooler.

I'm not sure I completely agree with either train of thought, but I won't lie that I haven't considered switching classes at Legion if only because I don't want to compete with a bunch of other leather wearers who kneejerk switched to the shiny new class. Also the fact that Monk is a 3 role hybrid class and I only enjoy one role. I may as well play a rogue or hunter or something where I at least have 3 different variations on how to do DPS.

[RippedGeek]

MW is easily my favourite healing class but theres nothing special about the BM or WW specs, they don't have any iconic abilities and lack individual flavour.
if you add that with Moging a Monk being a total nightmare and we will most likely never see Monk lore ever again...

[Toppy]

MW is easily my favourite healing class but theres nothing special about the BM or WW specs, they don't have any iconic abilities and lack individual flavour.
if you add that with Moging a Monk being a total nightmare and we will most likely never see Monk lore ever again...

Honestly I loved WW and BM gameplay both. I thought they were fun, involved, and a bit unique too.

I just shelved my monk for the reason stated in my first post here. For all the fun of the class, I felt silly playing one, and missed my weapons.

[Sevarin]

to me, monk seemed a lot like rogues. they have combo points and energy, but thats not why i didnt like them.

i had originally started as a brewmaster. it was incredibly fun at lower levels. but as i got to higher levels i started to be squishy in dungeons to the point that i could hardly even pull a single pack without nearly dying. ive never had that issue on a tank before, and while i liked the playstyle... it just felt like i was incredibly weak compared to other tanks i had played.

i also was annoyed that even with the glyph for weapons, you could only see them when you jab. pandaren have amazing fighting stances with weapons, but i couldnt use mine.

[amythist]

I love my monks but at the same time I never find myself playing them, I think it's a situation of Blizz added them to be thematic with the content of MoP, same as they did with DKs in WotLK but like with DKs did not have a clear idea for how they wanted the class to actually fit, and as was already said MoP was so screwed up numbers wise that most of the problems of the class were overshadowed/hidden I'm hoping that after them having numbers from WoD they can make a positive change in the class to bring it in line with the others

[ablib]

I hate monks because they're not fun, I hate all that hi-yah karate zen bullshit, and those stupid statues.

I don't like Asia, really.

[Chirri]

Mine never even made it to 85. So for me, starting at L1 remains the biggest hurdle. I can't speak to any other issues as I've no doubt leveling is much different than laying at level cap.

[Blazefrost]

I cannot get myself to play rogues or druids. I want to like them, but its the gameplay that gets me there.

Rogues have felt to me way too homogenized, and the little flavor they had was wrecked trying to level pre Boosts (Subtlety, 90% of its rotation requires being behind what you're hitting, and in leveling EVERYTHING TURNS TO FACE YOU IF YOU SO MUCH AS GLANCE AT IT). Combine that with the fact that its very much Stealth-based in a game that isn't meant for Stealth, but has mechanics barely implemented for it, it feels like a glorified "youdon'tseemeIMHERESTABBYSTABFORWAYTOOLONG" *repeat 50 times until quests are done in the area*.

Druids, it's the gameplay. I love how each spec is differentiated, I really do, but the way they play in practice is subpar. Balance Druids right now lose their rotation, which is totally based around casting the right spells in the right side of the cycle and pre-casting for the next, whenever they so much as get nudged or tickled, and it makes it hard to play simple because the Lunar phase has the LONGEST CAST TIME ON A MAJOR ROTATIONAL SPELL EVER, and getting a % pushed back on it pretty much kills half of your DPS time. Feral, I can see the appeal in it, bleed focused with cat scratches (OUCH), but it always feels to me energy starved, and the animations are all little tiny lunges that don't have the cat really move at all other than in playful pawing motions or nips. And I really do not want to have to play a spec I can't be behind to get the right haste levels via gear for the energy starving to go away.

Tried Druid Guardian and Resto, but A: I suck at healing, I really do, and B: Guardian feels like a somewhat slower, heavier hitting version of Feral to me, not so much bleed focused but still in a semi-energy starved state.



Side note, seeing a lot of monk issues here, and I totally agree. A glyph that allowed monks to see their weapons should be used in ALL animations, not constantly sheathing and unsheathing them. For WW, Fists of Fury could turn into a flurry of blade strikes or polearm/staff jabs, blackout kick a wide swing with the staff/polearm from below up to enemy "head" level, then down to the other side, a similar swing with a 1handed weapon, tiger palm is fine, really, the name implies it, a hard palm strike, and Rising Sun kick turned into a straight uppercut with the weapon along with the flip. Glad to have made my monk a Pandaren, and that I enjoy seeing the hand and feet only nature of it, so it doesn't bother me that much, but they could have done more. (Also older asian culture is really awesome looking and interesting in it's recorded depth and lore)

[Wondercrab]

It's the newest class, isn't super "cool" or iconic in the same way Death Knights or Demon Hunters are, and doesn't really have much in the way of stand-out perks like starting at a high level. I feel like the gameplay is comparable enough to the other classes not to be too major of a factor. It's probably more to do with the overall vibe of the class. Monks aren't exactly a stand-out fantasy archetype that draws people in like Mages, Rogues, or Warriors do, and they don't have much unique WoW lore richness to get the average player super hype about them.

[NexiiTank]

The fact that Blackout Kick only gives me more stagger for like 6 seconds so I must always spend my Chi on that, when there was plenty of other stuff to spend Chi on, is retarded.


Out of all this I'd imagine the fact that WW dps sucks so hard is the most serious issue across the board. I have a Fury warrior with the legendary ring and set bonus and it's not worth it to bring them to archimonde when we could have had an aoe deathgrip or a high dps rogue. It sure as hell isn't worth jack shit to bring a crippled hand slapper.

Blackout Kick does not increase your stagger anymore, and hasnt for awhile.

And.

WW Monks are the 3rd Highest Melee DPS now, behind only Sub Rogues and Cats. Highest in AoE DPS.