Worst part of WW is the ramp up for AoE, if you need to do AoE on mobs with low hp, you're not helping your team because every other class got instant high spamable AoE, monks not so much.
The 'never use the same spell twice in a row' playstyle of WW is what makes it fun IMO because it's quite fluid and doesn't suffer from as much repetitiveness of some other specs. My biggest struggle still is utilizing Karma/Diffuse Magic to the best of their effect to get the most damage out. It's the one small frustration I feel is if you want to be up there on bosses you really gotta use those to the best of their effect which goes against some of my thinking that I wanna save the defensives for those tricky situations that might happen.
I envy people who enjoys WW. I love the style, art, lore and all of it.
But my god - it plays like something from WoW 0.3.
- - - Updated - - -
It's not hard. It's just dumb.
If you try every classes/spec - you WILL ask yourself - why do I need to fiddle with 8 rotational buttons(if you want to experiment with the talent tree) - weave in CDs on top, while the GCD is jammed due to the nature of intensity?
Also there is no sense of flow or purpose. WW seen better times - and it needs a serious revamp today.
I find monk both challening and fun in 5 mans atleast. Properly managing ring of peace to cast it when you see your tank is in danger. And casting it to not spread out the mobs. Dispelling diseases and poisons when your healer is unable to do so. Etc.
There is a lot of utility a monk has to properly be used (not saying many other classes do) but the difference of a good and bad monk really shines here. Seeing cocky 1600 rio monks letting tanks die to stacking disease with a resto druid in grp in dos is kind of... Depressing.
This was just windwalker though. Brew has a bunch of good utility and needs really work well around the weaknesses to become a solid tank compared to the others. When done right they become really good.
What exactly do you mean by difficult?
If we are talking about button pressing/rotations, then having a ten-button rotation is no more difficult than having a two button rotation, just more annoying.
For me, the difficulty comes in making decisions that can either lead to a win or a loss. For the monk class, that is mobility. positioning, moving around, etc - these are the things that bring the most complexity to the class.
Based on all classes I play(ed), including ww, this couldn't be more far away from truth.
The only real skill about ww these days is to keep informed which bugs exists and how to use them to min/max your damage. Overall YES, ww is harder to play than other classes, but there is barely any mechanic to mess up these days.
The difference between a good and a bad player got its maximum with MoP and dropped since then with every step of pruning and simplifing the game mechanics.
Easiest example: In the past it was barely possible to find the perfect time to refresh your dot, as your stats only mattered in the moment you casted the dot. So the min/max potential was barely possible without any kind of addon. Nowadays, the dot scales at any moment with your stats and you can refresh it any time below 30% remaining time without dps decreasement.
Another example: While in the past even a 3 button frost dk needed to maintain the correct "rotation" with diseases etc. for maximum damage, as everything was stacking up with each other spell (each disease increased the damage of obli, the procs, etc), the difference nowadays isn't as big if you mess up a bit and you have less buttons to press for the rotation.
I mean, take warrior. They are pressing 2 damage buttons regulary and another 2 every 20-40 seconds or something. And it basically doesn't matter if they press 2 into 1 or 1 into 2. The damage is for both nearly the same.
Yeah I'm kind of sick of everybody saying classes are brain dead easy and a 5 year old could do them. No, they can't and no, every spec in this game is not "brain dead easy".
Like you said, if that were the case, then everybody would be clearing heroics in a few weeks and timing +20s.
If you want to sound cool and have people think you're awesome at this game and that you're a badass--that's one thing. But to say this game is faceroll easy or whatever is just false.
Imo, the mastery is what makes WW unique and interesting. Otherwise it's not that difficult. It's not warrior, of course, but you get used to it pretty quickly nonetheless.
I've been recently learning WW so that I have an off-spec when we don't need 3 healers. As a frost mage main previously, the rotation is a lot more difficult, but frost mage is also at the most brain dead easy it's been since BC with half or more of my damage coming down to just making sure I hit Ice lance with fingers of frost present. I appreciate that the mastery actually does something (frost mage mastery is laughably bad), but I still wonder why some classes need to work 3 times as hard to do similar damage to a class like frost mage that has 3 buttons and 2-3 cooldowns you just hit whenever they come up.
Personally I'd rather they balance frost mages (and similar super easy specs) damage better so they are less brain dead to play... but I understand the complaints.
I have no macros and I find it pretty fun to play which in turn makes it easy. You get in a rhythm. My action bar is my spells, and my cooldowns are on top which I click. No weak auras either.