Why do I see so few Monks?

[Blobfish]

I had a look at www.warcraftlogs.com & guess which spec is number 1 for DPS in Uldir

That's right a ww monk.

In fact 2 ww monks are top 2 in DPS all stars

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/

I copied the Talent tree of the monk named Rammonk in Zul'jen & it is performing heaps good now.
Even in PVP.


Maybe monks are skipping the monk mount series in legion and are skipping the chance to get Ban Lu.

Ban Lu is a very noticeable mount now..it is brightly colored & perhaps the best class mount in WOW

I do not see many Ban Lu's around as was in legion.. So maybe monks have become unnoticeable.

[Marrilaife]

Ban Lu is a very noticeable mount now..it is brightly colored & perhaps the best class mount in WOW

I love his looks. I hate the fact every time I mount, dismount or afk he talks. So I stopped using it. What used to be a cool novelty is nothing but annoyance. Went back to using hearthsteed.

[Juliansfist]

I had a look at www.warcraftlogs.com & guess which spec is number 1 for DPS in Uldir

That's right a ww monk.

In fact 2 ww monks are top 2 in DPS all stars

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/

I copied the Talent tree of the monk named Rammonk in Zul'jen & it is performing heaps good now.
Even in PVP.


Maybe monks are skipping the monk mount series in legion and are skipping the chance to get Ban Lu.

Ban Lu is a very noticeable mount now..it is brightly colored & perhaps the best class mount in WOW

I do not see many Ban Lu's around as was in legion.. So maybe monks have become unnoticeable.

I don't know what you're smoking but it must be some good shit because monks are definitely not number 1 dps in Uldir. If you are basing your choice on all stars then you should know that to get points there you need to be best within your class.

So say star 1 has all number 1 rankings for WW. No other class/spec has a player that is number 1 for every fight. Thus that WW is all star 1. Funnily enough the first 30 DHs all out damage that WW though.

You need to look at statistics, not all stars

[united]

Monk is the only class I've never tried because I feel the aesthetics of it are very lame. For me a guy punching or throwing beer at things in a world like wow just feels out of place and lame.

monk is the absolute best class, but only the enlightened know.

[Powerogue]

2. Visually wind walkers are boring to play. Their attacks aren’t exciting to watch. They definitely need something added to make the fantasy look fun

Agree to disagree. I love flying across the battlefield with my kicks and using storm earth and fire + fists of fury to unleash a billion fists on someone.

[Juliansfist]

Monks have been going on their zen pilgrimages but because it's been bugged for > 1 year they haven't been able to return

[Frosteye]

On the other hand mistweaver was one of the most powerful pvp healers in rbgs and arenas in legion, if not the strongest one overall.

I think H Priest was the overall best/easiest in Legion. But yeah each group needed one mistweaver for the most part, they were definitely important.

[Schalde]

As gameplay i find Monk to be extremply fun and unique... the stagger mechanic is amazing and its great having another class with all 3 spec. by that said what make me not want to play the monk for some time is how it looks in many ways, let me give a few example....

1 : i know Monk have there fist... but running around fistning with 2 giant axes on your back looks stupid. yes i can Tmog it but still...

2: The Chi torpedo and Flying serpent animation is so stupid... flying through the air as a torpedo and stucked in the same position through air, just looks weird imo.

3: Which they would change the Brewmaster spec to something else... we are Monks... not pandas... running around throwing beer/kegs and drinking alcohol everywhere is silly and dosent fit into a fantasy world.

I am hoping for a revamp because i really like the gameplay... but the fantasy feel just isnt there.

[Marrilaife]

Thanks for this 1 year old necro to remind us of poor state of monks.

Brewmaster is OP in raiding, but boring af and lame to play, they need a full rework or at least revert to WOD gameplay.

Mistweaver doesn't scale so went from best healer in Uldir to worst one in Eternal Palace. At least they're getting some buffs in 8.3. But their healing cds are not as well designed as the other healers since they're the latest added healing spec and Blizzard had to try to make them "unique" to not overlap with other healers.

Windwalker except MDI where it was a buff bot for rogues hasn't seen much spotlight either.

Worst part is due to Brewmaster being nearly mandatory for raiding, guilds don't even need to bother to take a WW or MW for the "monk buff" because they always have a monk tank, so monk got short end of the stick in comparison to Warrior and especially Demon Hunter that has basically 1 dps spot guaranteed.

On the casual side, monks are pretty squishy and their self sustain isn't as great, and a lot of casuals will pick classes that can solo very easily, like hunters, death knights, paladins, demon hunters or druids. They don't have flashy visuals either.

[fluffyell]

Monks are fun

[redisniecitcarp]

hidden op, wait n see

[Rollatorklm]

I love his looks. I hate the fact every time I mount, dismount or afk he talks. So I stopped using it. What used to be a cool novelty is nothing but annoyance. Went back to using hearthsteed.

really? this is my favorite part of the mount!
except when he calls me fat! i dont eat manabuns!

[Venziir]

Personally, while I enjoy the monk, my biggest issue is that it is so tied up to Pandaria and the Pandaren. And while MoP was my favourite expansion, the whole August Celestials, Chi, Zen, Brew thing doesn't really match (or downright clashes) with any other race bar the Pandaren, so I don't really play my monk a lot.

[TheRainman]

meaningless numbers if u ask me. I mean according to that Shamans are more popular and they are garbage tier. But then again a bad class would be more played since mostly bads play WoW. Monk has all 3 specs mythic viable so it should have more people playing them.

Lmao "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

[denisgsv]

i dislike a bit their beer thematic ... i would preffer them to be more serius like diablo, not funny

[arkanon]

This. Method had 5(?) Monks on their Zul kill? There by far more popular than they've ever been before.

WTF are you talking about? One guild having 5 monks is not a valid argument for a classes popularity. If the question was "Why are the best 1/2 guilds in the world not using monks?" THEN your statement might have had some reliance.

[Marrilaife]

I don't think leveling is the problem. The problem is the class sucks, and also that wow doesn't need new classes. With demon hunter they literally couldn't even come up with a third spec. When you've got a 20 person raid with 2 tanks and 4 healers, you don't need 6 tank specs and 6 healing specs. And melee is almost always going to be worse than ranged.

Raids do use monk(s) but it usually ends up as 1-2 mandatory brewmasters, period. Despite brewmaster being the monk's most boring spec and dumbed down after WOD, it's highly effective. Windwalkers are more interesting, but 9 out of 10 times end up undertuned in comparison to rogue, dh, warrior which are staples of melee roster. Mistweaver often falls into a pithole of "worse resto druid" and current raid design is very against resto druids, they're only good in m+ and pvp, and there mw can be decent, but again, it's often a scenario "druid would do it better".

Even when monks got the "mandatory raid buff" the reality is 99% of the time raids just have a brewmaster to cover for it, making other monk specs redundant.

It's especially bad with hybrid classes, because each of their spec offers unique playstyle and different role, but one of these being dominant and you suddenly get everyone say "but x class gets raid spots so it's fine" while it's only ONE spec of that class being welcome. Say, holy paladins and balance druids.

BFA is especially bad because class tuning was sparse and did very little to shake the meta, so you will see guilds declining windwalkers and mistweavers even after the recent wave of buffs because they still believe the go to healer setup is pala - priest - shaman and go to melee setup is demon hunters - rogues - warriors. M+ meta is no better, people will still want resto druids over mistweavers, and rogues / dhs over windwalkers (only time ww was meta was reaping season with double rogue prot warr setup).

[Auberdeen]

I’ve always wondered this as well, monks are the least played class in the game according to statistics that I’ve seen.

Monk is my main, Ive only played Mist Weaver, I’ve never tried the other specs

1. I don’t like tanking
2. Visually wind walkers are boring to play. Their attacks aren’t exciting to watch. They definitely need something added to make the fantasy look fun

Maybe the class fantasy doesn’t appeal to most people.

have you ever tried WW 2s or 3s? so... FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Marrilaife]

It's hard to argue with pal - priest - shaman. Each has its own mega utility that is generally better than the others. Paladins get to be the only good single target healer which is simply optimal over being a raid healer. Priests get the whole dps/heal hybrid thing. Shamans have spirit link. Hasn't really changed much over the past few expansions.

But this is where I'm an extremist relative to the crowd. I'm fine having a standard three, maybe 4 class meta for healing. There's not really a need for more than that, and you're not going to get much differentiation between specs while also making sure that all are good. I'd much rather have a few specs where every one is excellent and has a distinct role than a ton of specs where some are just consistently bad (holy priest, mistweaver).

Tbh I dunno what's people's obsession about adding new classes. There were already multiple QQ threads that Shadowlands won't bring yet another class. Meanwhile in the tank camp it's even worse than in healer camp, because you only want 2 tanks for raiding (maybe 3rd as a backup or melee on offspec), while we have 6 tank specs same as we have 6 healer specs.

Monks were "lucky" they ended up being the "go to" raid tank in nearly every single expansion, but many tank specs struggle to find any niche. Druids were treated with suspicion and had a stigma of mana sponge until legion gave them a lot of new tools, only to immediately take them away with the artifact, so in bfa guardian druids fell back into disfavour. Vengeance dh fails to find a good niche since its implementation, it had one as extremely mobile flag carrier in pvp, but that got nerfed fairly fast. Paladins I can't remember when was the last time they were considered great, and few times slipped into bad spot together with demon hunters. Warriors now have a niche in m+ with spellreflect being such a damage boost, but in expansions past had periods of big struggle to fit into meta.

Only 2 tank specs were more in the meta than out of it, and that's monk and death knight, none of them existed in vanilla. They had periods of being underpowered, like during start of legion, but outside of those, they were fairly dominant.

Problem is now that milk is spilt, you can't put it back. You can't just delete redundant classes or specs.

So the only possible solutions would be:
1) carve a niche for each of them to excel in (very hard, especially for tanks there aren't that many existing niches, mostly 2: raids and m+)
2) homogenize them, making more specs similar to what works well already (people are gonna cry that classes lost flavour)
3) leave them as they are where couple of specs dominate and rest are delegated to casual content or endless struggle to get into competitive groups (most probable solution, status quo doesn't cost anything)

#3 won't only affect mistweavers / holy priests, but many other specs that traditionally struggle to find recognition, most of these problems lying in melee camp and tank camp.

It's problematic in a setup where people are expected to "invest" into their character, and most people have their preferred role. Feral druid won't suddenly switch to moonkin, because these are 2 different roles. Meanwhile for a mage it's less jarring to switch from frost to fire because both are ranged dps.