Monk Love

In my last post I spoke about retiring my lock, however things are looking up for the class in 5.4. The KJC nerf/changes are looking less severe, allowing us to still move and cast certain spells without a movement penalty, while remaining a passive ability. I am glad Blizzard is taking community feedback into consideration with these changes. The class really is in a good place and has a unique feel. In all of my years of playing, this class has never been so much fun, this was also my first class in WoW back in 2004. I don't think I'll be playing her as my main but I'll still putter around with her.

I also spoke about switching over to my hunter to focus on, but... I really am not enjoying it as much these days. I gave it a go, just wasn't feeling it. The class is fun but the pets seem so buggy and not as well designed as lock pets. I mean hunter pets don't even taunt in old raids, which sows there is clearly a different design with the pets from both classes. Maybe I imagine things but the pet doesn't seem to snap aggro like a warlock pet, even as a BM hunter with a tank pet. I constantly have to kite and feign death because the pet still bugs out, getting behind the mob when tanking, running across the screen as if in a dance with it, aggroing everything as far as the eye can see. Still, after so many years, this bug seems worse than ever. I am wondering if it is even worse because of the changes to blinkstrike? So, I have decided to put the hunter on the shelf for now.

Which left me with a few options, suck it up and play my druid as a main. Painfully stick with balance as a dps spec while I gear up resto and enjoy healing in raids and group content. Quit.... That was a strong consideration at one point. Or pick up a lower alt and level another to 90.

For now I am playing on my baby monk which I took a break from when my brothers came back to the game. One brother doesn't play much these days and the other is busy with his own things, which leaves me more bored than I've been in a long time. The only downside is that once I get rolling with an alt I don't want to mess with any other characters, so when Dire asks me to join LFR, I have to refuse so I can get this new character where IT can run LFR, lol.

So, yeah, back to the monk. How to describe the monk? I wonder why the hell I've been wasting my time with my other characters. Kicking myself, repeatedly. I leveled as brewmaster (tank) and windwalker (dps), for a bit, neither really were what I was looking for. Finally, after watching my son (a few months ago) level his monk as mistweaver, I decided to give that a shot. I can quest, do daily quests, heal, all of that in ONE SPEC. I get a bonus from my healing to attack power, how awesome is that?! Why can't all healers just have this type of playstyle? I love the mistweaver!

Someone mentioned to me recently that the class was much harder to heal than a druid, when I mentioned what my main was. I think the class may have a higher learning curve with many things but I find it fits me like a glove. I don't feel it is hard to heal with at all. The only time people really die is if they get stupid. We'll talk about that in a moment. The spec has a great range of healing tools and really is a fun change of pace. Often I find myself at least third on damage. Yeah, I go around beating on things and keeping my group alive. This I do to balance my Mana Tea incase I need it, and also because it is fun. The class reminds me of the disciple from vanguard SoH, a lot. Healing is always my main focus but it is a real refreshing change. Plus, with spinning crane kick, I get to heal and aoe, awesome! Spinning crane kick is a must when you have stupid tanks pulling like they are trying to kill the group.

Which leads me back to my point on dying. It really is hard to let someone die. Tanks like to run off way ahead while I'm looting, or topping off with a Mana Tea, or if I take a sip of coffee, scratch my leg, breathe... Which really can be irritating. LETS PULL THE WHOLE ROOM. I don't mind that much but it makes things really rushed as they run off before the mobs are even dead.  A few times, I've decided to take my time, actually loot mobs, see if the tanks would kill themselves. Indeed they do, some have ran off to bosses and died before the group had gotten there. Then I hear how we're all going to die and it is my fault... Blah, blah. Lol, nah.

You see, you need me far more than I need you. At this level and scaling, I could keep any dps up as a tank, it is just nicer to have mobs not bouncing all over. They come back to life with a new attitude, actually bringing mobs back to me, and even asking me to queue up again. But I can't do this on every run, I'm not here to school tanks on proper manners an courtesy. Most groups I don't even bother, I just blow through it soaking up all the xp I can to push me closer to my goal. I just would like tanks, because it is always, always tank, in these dungeons leveling, to learn try (as they are in heirlooms, they know what they are doing) to work as a group. Oh, how the times have changed.

Yes, I really love the monk class. It suits me so well. I wish I had been playing it a long time ago. The class really starts to shine in the 50's. Until then it might seem a bit lackluster. I have had many compliments on my healing, it really is hard to kill a group when you have a competent monk healing. I cannot wait to have my hand at heroics and raids. While things will be different in those settings, I always like to push the bar to see what I can pull off with my healers.

I've been chugging along, doing far more instances than one would ever want to do, due to how much xp they give, much quicker than questing alone. I'll get to 90 soon enough. I picked her up at 45 and now she is sitting at 66, not too shabby!

I don't think I've ever seen this model until I did this quest. Aspect of Deathwing, kind of creepy! I always knew he had a human form, read one of the books about it, just never seen it in game.

Another quest, with a flying motorcycle and where I got to pick the hottest 'chick' to ride in it. Naturally the choice was a BE male.... ha!

A dragonling from a quest chain, kind of sad storyline, works as a trinket. 

'Brewmaster' Cupcake The Monk!