How do you find monk?

[KBDK]

Hey all, how do you like the monk spec this patch and how do you think it will do in the next?
I used to main one back in Pandaria, but haven't touched it for ages. Wondering if it's worth coming back to?

[Asrialol]

Brewmaster is pretty chill. Strong in m+ and raids.
I don't care much for WW / MW this expac. MW is as braindead as ever and WW is.. yikes. WW performs alright ish while MW hasn't been seen in a mythic raid group since Uldir lmao.

[Shelly]

Brewmaster is ok but rather boring. It really needs a double charge of Keg Smash, other than that it's pretty good.

Windwalker is more involved but for me it's a little too involved. Feels like for your best damage you need to hit 3 or 4 buttons, then after all that you've used up like 1/3 of a bloodlust/hero.

Mistweaver I don't play since me playing a healer is a great way for people to die.

A lot of folks really like them, but for me personally Brewmaster is the only spec I get along with. It's just that it feels slightly incomplete, lacking an extra CD and needing that extra charge on Keg Smash. Something to fill in an empty GCD or two.

if you can play a monk well though, then you are nothing but an asset to any team you're on. Ring of Peace and Pressure Points are both amazing, especially in M+.

[Puri]

I like the current MW, my favourite dungeon healer. No idea about raids, though.
WW performs quite nice but the playstyle is not really mine.
BrM I have no idea, I don't play it and I don't think I even had a single one in any m+ ever since BfA.

[mkultra55]

Monk is my favorite Class and has been since MoP even with the ups and downs of the specs.

I love Mistweaver healing. I enjoyed the Legion iteration a bit more than how it plays in BFA but the mobility and option to dial up the HPS (at a huge mana cost) is still there.
I also liked Windwalker in Legion more than on Live but I still enjoy the spec. I miss Strike of the Windlord.
Brewmaster has been dumbed down since MoP but unless they totally rework Stagger they're always going to be a top Tier Tank. The only issue is some of their self sustain was lost with the removal of Artifacts. With a pocket healer they're nearly unkillable but solo they don't have the crazy self sustain of DK's and Pallly's.

[Dakara]

Monk is a class I keep coming back to only to be reminded why I put it down.

Windwalker - Suffers the same problems as Ret (IMO). It’s a viable spec, but the class is more desirable as a Healer/Tank. This is the real “Hybrid Tax” imo. Blizzard want all specs to be “viable” but often (not always) Hybrid DPS specs get outshined by their classes Heal/Tank specs. This is especially true for Monks/Paladins who only have single DPS specs (unlike Druid/Shamans for example).

Windwalker specifically, in its current iteration, feels like you have to do more work for less DPS. They have plenty of buttons to push, which helps with Mastery, but outside of FoF they all feel rather “meh”. Visually, excluding SEF, they’re also quite boring. Some weapon attacks would be nice.... as it stands, my favourite button to press as a WW are my Essences.

Mistweaver-Great fun as a dungeon/small raid healer, but feels like a poor Druid in larger raids. Vivify cleave onto ReM targets is great in dungeons where you can effectively blanket the whole group. In raids however, the number of players you can cleave heal onto as a percentage, reduces with raid size. Upwelling EF helps, but I feel weaker as group size increases. With weak raid CD’s, I don’t feel all that impactful.

Brewmaster-Can’t really comment as I stopped tanking in Wrath. For soloing however (challenging content), without strong Azerite traits to provide some healing, you basically die from 1000 cuts (stagger).

Still love my Monk, but only in small doses.

[Raisei]

Let me answer in two parts, viability and style:

1) Viability
BrM Monks are quite easily the best tanks in the game, from a survival perspective. Once you figured out how to manage your brew charges dying to raid bosses is quite rare. Spike damage is something you can laugh about where other Tanks nearly fall over.
The mitigation however comes with the price of being nearly 80% dependent on your healers. Without a healer Stagger will eventually overwhelm you and even with purifying you will not stop that.
It is also a small problem that Stagger is really good in dealing with big single hits, but with many smaller ones you can get overloaded fast (as can happen in M+)
My biggest gripe is however that there are nearly no come-back tools or CDs. You have one big CD but it only raises the damage your stagger absorbs, it won`t do a thing if you are already at high stagger and your health is going down. Basically if you mess your brew charges up or if you get hit with too much magic damage there is nothing you can do. Stagger is your one and only tool for survival, it is a proportionally great tool, but it is not almighty.
On top of this, the dps of a BrM is quite low. Warriors and Paladins with good proc rates will outdps a Monk easily and on skittish weeks this can be quite a problem for dps.

Windwalker is a cool spec, the rotation is a bit complex and with essences I have 5 CDs to press before going into full Burst, but the cleave is very nice. It suffers a bit on single-target, but we get a buff there in 8.3.

Mistweaver is probably my favourite healer in the game, you can be great at both tank healing and aoe healing with the only limit being your mana.

2) Style

Windwalker is awesome in style. A true martial artist and with the new mogging rules you can completely remove your weapons (with the Monk-only invisible fist weapon)

Mistweaver looks great, you truely feel like you are bending healing mists or channeling them into someone. The beam of green mist is my favourite.

Brewmaster... well... their style is fitting buuuut I am just not a big fan of it. Throwing kegs and burping fire... meh... on top of that we carry a staff that we use for 1 single attack, feels underwhelming.

[Razion]

Honestly it feels pretty bad as a Mistweaver not being able to heal with Soothing Mist on the run, and you don't *really* get to heal by dealing damage anymore either. Bleh.

[Dawon]

As a HC only healer, I find myself in a good spot with my monk. Always the one putting out most hps, best healer on movement heavy phases (yeah we dont have a druid) and having most "oh almost shit"-capabilities of us all (i.e. not the top but several average healing CDs for misc combat situations). What I really do miss and what makes me feel aside a bit is when we sort up CD rotations and such, it's always the same "Shammy blah, prist bleh" and when done "ah yeah we have monk as well if one dies call for him to use Revival+Crane at the same time or we wipe". A fully stacked EF doesnt do enough as a raid CD, Revival can be ok but usually that dispel makes it unreliable to use in several oh-shit situations and the Crane is just mediocre and slow (yeah usually we need to blanket heal all asap, not wait for seizure crane to be finished).

Bottom line, in a HC environment it's perfectly ok running MW as a HPS monster (mana is only an issue find you heal blindfolded or everyone takes damage 24/7) but just be prepared that you are not in the "cool healers club" when it comes to CD talk and sorting special mechanics, you are the hps-bot and that's pretty much it.

That said, I like my monk (I dislike tanking and I hate dpsing with it) but it sure could use a niche CD and some more base survivability to make us on pair with the rest.

[Cheze]

mistweaver's fun to play imo but it doesn't do anything that druid doesn't do better (especially in m+). It lacks the overall throughput of disc and hpal and MW also doesn't contribute much in terms of utility or cooldowns (revival is baaaad), unless you are somehow the raid's only monk. I played MW through most of M EP and it's just... not good enough.

throughput is getting buffed a bit in 8.3 so they'll keep up better in terms of hps, but will still probably do less throughput than other classes while bringing less utility.

windwalker is kinda in the same boat; you can play it, it's fine... but rogue and DH are riiiight there.

[The Butt Witch]

WW is hard to play optimally. Has a lot of keys and a lot of resources and cds to manage. And when it comes to the fast paced environment of raids and pvp, you're gonna fuck it up royally and have a bad performance.

Windwalker, alongside demo warlock and survival hunter, is not something you can just pick up and play it good.
Imo, Windwalker needs a second pruning just to get its difficulty in line with the likes of other specs, so people can pick it up and play it comfortably.

There are very few ww monks around right now because people know they're very hard to master, and if you don't play them at master level, you're gonna do 70% of the dps you should be doing with your item level, and you're gonna get pissed and reroll.

If you ask me, stay away until Blizzard fixes them. I too have a WW monk that I played since MoP, but abandoned it in BFA because I literally cba with it when on top of what it already had, it also gets active essences to manage, and Ashvane's trinket, and active PVP talents on top of everything.

[Pandragon]

Windwalker is perfect for me, except for Blizzard taping sponges to the end of my fists and saying "now go raid".

- - - Updated - - -

WW is hard to play optimally. Has a lot of keys and a lot of resources and cds to manage. And when it comes to the fast paced environment of raids and pvp, you're gonna fuck it up royally and have a bad performance.

Windwalker, alongside demo warlock and survival hunter, is not something you can just pick up and play it good.
Imo, Windwalker needs a second pruning just to get its difficulty in line with the likes of other specs, so people can pick it up and play it comfortably.

There are very few ww monks around right now because people know they're very hard to master, and if you don't play them at master level, you're gonna do 70% of the dps you should be doing with your item level, and you're gonna get pissed and reroll.

If you ask me, stay away until Blizzard fixes them.

No! Windwalker does not need to be dumbed down because people can't figure it out.

[The Butt Witch]

Windwalker is perfect for me, except for Blizzard taping sponges to the end of my fists and saying "now go raid".

- - - Updated - - -



No! Windwalker does not need to be dumbed down because people can't figure it out.

Yes it does! Very few people play them, you can't possibly deny that, and pandering to a small percentage of people, is just wasting time and resources that could be put to better use in other places. So either fix it so people engage in it, or stop spending resources on it.

Obviously since Blizzard can't delete WW spec, the only option is to change it so it becomes profitable and attractive to people.

Survival hunter was an even bigger pain in the ass to play in Legion than it is in BFA, but Blizzard took a look at it and got rid of some of the bloat. Survival is good now but still not enough, as the meta build (Mongoose Bite + Wildfire Infusion) demands a lot of attention to the rotation, as opposed to the easy build (Tip of the spear + Birds of Prey) which is just bad dps but easy to play.

[Actaeix]

There are very few ww monks around right now because people know they're very hard to master, and if you don't play them at master level, you're gonna do 70% of the dps you should be doing with your item level, and you're gonna get pissed and reroll.

You're gonna do 70% of everyone else's damage even if you've mastered the spec, people don't play the spec because its the weakest DPS spec in the game.

[Lucetia]

Brewmaster is ok but rather boring. It really needs a double charge of Keg Smash, other than that it's pretty good.

I haven't really played Brewmaster since Legion Mage Tower (which I did around 15 attempts) and last before that was a little in MoP so my knowledge on it is rusty and outdated.

Lately I've leveled 2 Brewmasters 20-60 (so I can do AV for heritage) and was curious why double charge of Keg Smash instead of something like Fire Breath cut in half? Granted some of my other complaints about it right now deal more with how Blizzard is terrible at giving spells while leveling so your toolkit is neutered.

Windwalker is more involved but for me it's a little too involved. Feels like for your best damage you need to hit 3 or 4 buttons, then after all that you've used up like 1/3 of a bloodlust/hero.

See, I hate the mastery where it has to be a different ability every time in order to maintain buff. Where it's mostly Tiger -> Blackout -> Tiger back and forth while the other two are on cd.

Mistweaver I don't play since me playing a healer is a great way for people to die.

I feel the same way, especially when leveling and getting other mistweavers. My Mistweaver bar instead of having the original spells and icons, I retooled each one to look like another class just so I can remember what each ones functionality is. I remember in MoP when you could do healing with fistweaving and found that to be more fun / better than it is now.

lot of folks really like them, but for me personally Brewmaster is the only spec I get along with. It's just that it feels slightly incomplete, lacking an extra CD and needing that extra charge on Keg Smash. Something to fill in an empty GCD or two.

Yeah, I've noticed that too where there are times that it's empty. I think part of it is because I'm a lower level with barely any haste so I can't even tiger palm.

[Pandragon]

Yes it does! Very few people play them, you can't possibly deny that, and pandering to a small percentage of people, is just wasting time and resources that could be put to better use in other places. So either fix it so people engage in it, or stop spending resources on it.

People hardly play WW not because it's "hard" but because it deals crap damage and has no utility. When WW was one of the top damage dealers in Antorus, they were everywhere.

Windwalker has basically no more rotational abilities than Outlaw or Havoc. Havoc: 5-7. Outlaw:5-6. Windwalker: 5-6. Depending on talents. You just have to think a little more about your abilities with WW than mindlessly spamming them until something dies.

[Rhaxus]

WW isn't really that hard to play, but i HATE the look and style of some of the abilities. if they had a second style pack that gets them away from the chinese mop-look then i'd be all over them.
worst offender to me is SEF...

having really bad damage in raids and with brewmaster being so popular that their utility niche is allready provided for in m+ is the deathknell for their popularity

[Shelly]

I haven't really played Brewmaster since Legion Mage Tower (which I did around 15 attempts) and last before that was a little in MoP so my knowledge on it is rusty and outdated.

Lately I've leveled 2 Brewmasters 20-60 (so I can do AV for heritage) and was curious why double charge of Keg Smash instead of something like Fire Breath cut in half? Granted some of my other complaints about it right now deal more with how Blizzard is terrible at giving spells while leveling so your toolkit is neutered.

Try getting the legion legendary that gives two charges of keg smash and then play. It's a lot smoother.

With it in LFR gear it took me two tries to get the mage tower done, while it only took one on my DK I still feel that my Brewmaster run was the best. (Paladin was the worse, but that's because everything had like 150% more health which was bitch-tits.)

Anyway, keg smash does more damage than breath of fire and it's large, up front, burst damage. Which is great for snap aggro. DoTs while giving a good amount of aggro are more about keeping things on you that are already attacking you, a big burst of damage though will pull back that mob your one DPS guy decided to tunnel.

It also just feels better and looks better.

[Lucetia]

Try getting the legion legendary that gives two charges of keg smash and then play. It's a lot smoother.

I can't even remember which legendaries I used for it.

With it in LFR gear it took me two tries to get the mage tower done, while it only took one on my DK I still feel that my Brewmaster run was the best. (Paladin was the worse, but that's because everything had like 150% more health which was bitch-tits.)

Yeah, Bremaster was pretty easy along with guardian druid. Pretty sure after looking back on some videos I had saved it only took a couple attempts. Part of that might've been because I spent days doing it on Paladin. Found out later I apparently did it on the hardest class first.

A

nyway, keg smash does more damage than breath of fire and it's large, up front, burst damage. Which is great for snap aggro. DoTs while giving a good amount of aggro are more about keeping things on you that are already attacking you, a big burst of damage though will pull back that mob your one DPS guy decided to tunnel.

It also just feels better and looks better.

Probably. I'm just going by lower level dungeons where the DoT would do more help by keeping aggro on that random mob that somehow some finds and pulls. Part of the problem I find with Monks (and even feral druids and rogues) is I hate energy regen. It always feels so slow so I feel like I'm waiting around more. Sure things hit a bit harder, but the waiting is meh at times.

[Juliansfist]

It was an artifact trait which gave 2 keg smash charges - you cannot get it back unless they decide to enable artifact powers in time walking.

I've mained monk since MoP. I didn't do Antorus as I was travelling. In 8.3 I'm going fury warrior which has been my alt since MoP.

Where WW didn't really perform before, it was at least fun.

Now it doesn't perform and is boring.

Fury on the other hand is the opposite.