Pros and cons of Monks? (PVE based)

[Avikur]

I am currently level 67 with my WW Monk, I'm really enjoying it and thinking of making him my main, I just wondered what you guys think some of the good points... and bad points of the class are, I'm looking for opinions of all 3 specs but am planning on being WW.
Also how do they compare to Death Knights for soloing, I've looked at the solo thread on here and it looks promising! What is WW burst like? I know pvp is a sore point but do the 5.2 changes look like they will fix this?

Thanks guys

[Kisho]

Brewmaster:

Strong tank once you get used to it, terrible tank if you're unsure of what you're doing. But once you learn, we're very good. High skill requirement compared to other tanks.

We do have lower stamina in general than other tanks, which means healers can dislike us sometimes. But overall we're fine.

Windwalker:

Strong single target DPS. Very steady, not much in the way of burst. Which is good or bad depending on the fight. Not too difficult to learn, but does have some tricky parts to it (proper TEB management f.ex.). Fun rotation, needs tweaks but these are coming in 5.2.

Soloing:

Strong for soloing. Perhaps not as strong as Death Knights, but still very good contenders. Have personally soloed 3/4 in Bastion of Twilight normal mode 10 man, and Omnitron normal mode 10 man in BWD, as well as all TBC raids, about half WotLK raids, and some trash in Firelands (lol). Could probably solo more WotLK raids, just not bothered (and got another Monk I usually run with for those; we've duo'd heroic TotC and heroic ICC on 10 man).

Brewmaster is necessary for Cataclysm content really, whilst WW can be used for most of WotLK and all of TBC.

In general: we have our pros, we have our cons, but overall we're a strong, well-implemented class. Could use tweaks, these are coming in 5.2, so generally speaking I'm very happy with my class. I hope it'll make you happy as well!

[Avikur]

Thanks for that, it's good to hear that others are also enjoying it and at lvl 90 as well, I must say I'm really liking it so far, it looks to be a very solid class, my main was a Warlock but I wanted to do a hybrid class to give myself more options, I'm looking forward to getting to 90 and raiding / trying to solo older content!

[Jeffyjimbob]

On the subject of Mistweavers, they're a very interesting spec.

Overall you're pretty well dedicated to raid healing, but you have two "routes" to pick from. You can stay at range using only spells to heal and generate some chi, or you can get in the thick of it with the melee and "Fistweave" as many call it. Typically speaking, regardless of which path you choose you'll be working on keeping Renewing Mists up on as many targets as possible, and using uplift (with or without the focus tea buff) when possible/logical. After that you either use targeted ranged heals to pick and choose who gets heals from afar, or you roll up to the boss and beat his ass which in turn heals your allies. Apparently the mists work like that.

Other than that, the two paths have their own quirks about them. There's quite a few differences, but mainly it comes down to positioning, which spells you use the most, how much mana you use, and how much chi/mana tea you generate. I wont go into great detail on either route, but I will say both are very fun, very useful, and they do their best when combined and used to their strengths.

[Callimonk]

I primarily play Windwalker these days, but I started out as a Brewmaster (I only played Brewmaster during the beta, and didn't switch to Windwalker until around October).

I think that Brewmaster has a bit of a learning curve vs. other tank specs (OPINION, not fact - I still found it pretty easy to master, but I can see someone who is new to tanking having some difficulty early on), whereas Windwalker is much easier to master early on. Overall, though, both specs have certain intricacies which makes learning about them new and exciting - but I guess that's also in part to them being a new class. I have never loved theorycrafting so much as when I made my monk.

[SurrealNight]

BrM's are a lot like the DK's of MoP. If you know what you are doing they can do some amazing things and are a lot of fun, and if you don't know what you are doing your healers will probably hate you. Ironically our block is even the opposite of DK's in a sense, deflecting up front damage in return for taking it later.

I'm not sure the term "high skill cap" is the right word. It's just a class that isn't going to be that intuitive to someone that hasn't done the research (read at least one class guide) and set up a UI to support what they need. At this point outside of a few advanced tricks I just watch my Weak Aura strings and that covers 90% of what I need to worry about.

Having a "blink" ability as a tank is amazing though probably my favorite thing, if I could I would just roll everywhere even if it was the same speed as running after the charges were spent =P

[Callimonk]

Having a "blink" ability as a tank is amazing though probably my favorite thing, if I could I would just roll everywhere even if it was the same speed as running after the charges were spent =P

I also found roll amazing when trying to position a boss, or kiting things. I was able to kite while still keeping stuff in roughly the same place for DPS to be able to AoE them down. Good ole' dizzying haze.

Also, didn't mean to indicate BrM is "hard", so much as it seems to me that it has a higher learning curve than the other two specs.

[Biggety]

Having a "blink" ability as a tank is amazing though probably my favorite thing, if I could I would just roll everywhere even if it was the same speed as running after the charges were spent =P

Agreed, wholeheartedly. Monk mobility makes my warrior feel flat-footed. The toolkit monk tanks have is a lot of fun. Ditto for mistweavers and windwalkers.

WW lack of burst is problematic, as is the lack of a good cleave attack on certain fights. Their AoE attack is pretty powerful for how easy (and boring) it is to get off, but it doesn't compete with some of the other classes/specs for raw AoE damage especially with the lack of a good cooldown. Hopefully 5.2 fixes it.

Mistweavers are apparently designed as throughput healers without a ton of utility. 5.1 hit them pretty hard, though. 5.2 might fix it a little.

Brewmaster tanks are very powerful (almost overpowered) in fights where they can offtank for a certain amount of time to build up a shuffle. The ox statue provides amazing utility. They are weaker on fights with significant tank downtime as shuffle and elusive brew go away pretty fast.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but while I was gearing up my Brewmaster, it felt like I was overly squishy for a long time. I never had enough chi to keep shuffle up consistently as well as my shield, heals, and elusive brew often expired with just a handful of stacks while I was hoping to build it up higher. Then, almost overnight, right around ilvl 475, I went from a squishy, stressed out wannabe tank to an unkillable fluffy drunkard. Elusive brew stacks, energy, and chi were no longer a problem and I laughed in the face of attacks that dropped my plate-wearing brethren like stones. Until, I got stunned, that is. Because I die when I get stunned.

The downside of this is that challenge modes tend not to be friendly to us. The ilvl normalization takes away the chi/energy flow that keeps us alive. Our survivability is not helped by the heaping helping of stun-happy trash in challenge mode dungeons. 5.2 gives us a 2 minute cooldown to get out of stuns. Too bad that there are another 5 or 6 stuns in that 2 minute window we can't avoid.