Every thread in this forum at the moment seems to be moaning over some perceived short coming of the monk class and why Blizzard doesn't just do X or Y ill thought out change to make us overpowered, so I wanted to make a thread saying all the things I love about the monk class since after playing it I really don't find any other class (and I have nearly all of them at 85 or above) as fun.
Brewmaster - Yes it is harder to play than the other tanks, that i believe is quite clear due to how much punishment we get from a mistake. However the damage we can do while tanking is amazing and I don't think it can be ignored in a world where there's quite some tricky enrage timers this tier.
The versatility in design is incredible, we basically get to customize our guard and our 1.5 minute cooldown to suite the fight, with all options actually being functional and useful given the right circumstances.
We have amazing mobility when compared to other tanks, the freedom that roll gives us when doing things like will of the emperor makes handling movement mechanics a breeze.
Our statue function is incomparable to anything else in any other spec's toolkit and does a surprising amount of absorb over the course of a fight.
We can monitor and control our damage taken in a way like no other tank. Stagger gives us a clear visual of the damage we take and purifying brew lets us tailor out the damage to a level that suite the healers.
Ranged and damageless threat using our dizzying brew, this is quite a unique tool as well allowing us to do interesting things with adds such as the ones on elegon when picking them up.
lvl 30 healing talents with our vengeance up actually have a meaningful impact when we have the chi to utilize them.
Mistweaver - We get excellent mana efficient raid coverage against constant aoe damage and have no requirement for a raid to stack up. We can customize one of our core aoe healing abilities to use chi or mana depending on the fight. We have multiple options to generate our secondary resource. We carry a unique tank healing toolset offering heavy healing over time effects that can pushed into overdrive with instant heals depending on the damage.
Eminence lets us give constant cheap throughput using serpent's zeal on certain fights in a unique style.
Again mobility is excellent with plenty of stuff we can do on the move.
We have access to the same customizable defensive tools of the other specs making us a highly resilient class to most damage.
Windwalker - we carry the most consistent damage of any spec meaning we dont rely on short windows and correct cooldown usage but rather a constant and reliable performance and uptime. This allows us to lose much less damage when things go wrong than many classes.
Touch of Karma is a unique and powerful offensive and defensive tool that opens up many opportunities for ignoring boss mechanics to do even higher damage. Our damage cooldown tigereye brew can be utilised at any stack level letting us sync it in with different trinket procs increasing it's value through intelligent use.
We have base movement speed as well as our excellent roll and flying serpent kick to get around quicker than any other class.
For a melee we actually have a relatively strong ranged dps with jade lightning and spinning fire blossom.
Again the level 75 defensive talents are simply amazing along with the core defensive tools we get.
Quite simply I think monk is amazing, sure it is missing some mainstay type features we expect of other classes like a lack of a strong healing cooldown (although the more I look at revival the more I think it is better than most give credit, think of it like an instant tranquility and it starts to feel alot better). Yes our tanking does take some getting use to for the people healing us and for us playing it, but overall it's not really any weaker than other tanks it's just very different.
Windwalker dps is a sophisticated and very personal spec where you can tailor your haste levels and play style to suite yourself and still come out on top rather than being a slave to stat priorities and a fixed rotation.
We should play this class because we enjoy it, not because we want to sit and complain about the things that Blizzard needs to do to fix it. Personally I feel that alot of other classes are far less fun and interesting right now and could use blizzard's attention more.