wow-monk-abilities
Latest
Mists of Pandaria Beta: First impressions of monk leveling
The first monk I leveled to 15 in the Mists of Pandaria beta was a tauren, and I'm still having nightmares about it. I thought it would be a grand idea, allowing me to focus entirely on the monk experience and not allowing myself to get distracted by the shininess of the new pandaren starting zone. Going with something I've already done tons of times in the past seemed to make sense, and the fact that tauren are still my favorite race in WoW was just icing on the cake. For this same reason, I eschewed heirlooms; I wanted to give myself a holistic monk leveling experience. I had the best intentions, but the actual experience was pretty bad. Most of this can be chalked up to the beta test being a beta test; I'm fairly certain the monk isn't a fully developed class yet. One of the biggest issues was ability progression. You start off with your basic chi-building attack, Jab, at level 1. After that, you get the awesome and always-useful Roll ability at level 2. I have no complaints about Roll, even though the animation hadn't been implemented on tauren models yet.
Insights and observations on early Monk DPS mechanics
Here at WoW Insider, we're somewhat known for our crock pot, tin foil hat theories. Anne Stickney and Matt Rossi are definitely the best-known for this, as both of them possess levels of lore knowledge that can only be bested by Red Shirt Guy. Personally, I'm not a lore buff. My tin foil hat theories have relatively little to do with wondering if Elune is secretly a Naaru but instead with class balance, generally within the DPS role. With last week's announcement of the monk class in Mists of Pandaria, I've kicked my brain into overtime to figure out just how this class -- and specifically, the windwalker spec -- might come out. What do we know about monks? We know that monks will be agility-based melee DPSers (and tank and healer, but I'm focusing on DPS today). We know that they'll be able to use staves, polearms, fist weapons, and one-handed maces, axes, and swords, which means they'll need to be balanced with both two-handed weapons and dual wielding in mind (that is, unless Blizzard restricts dual wielding to DPS and two-handers to tanking, which is a possibility).
BlizzCon 2011: Early monk abilities and the dark side of the force
I was able to sit down at the Pandaria demo stations at BlizzCon 2011 over the weekend and play a Pandaren monk two times in a row. (It was a short line.) I came away with the impression that the monk class may be one of the most interesting and dynamic classes to play in the game. Similar to the death knight, there is more than one resource to manage, and it makes the class enjoyable and engaging. This is how it works. The basics are very similar to playing a rogue except that there is (currently) no auto-attack. You have a bar of chi that mimics the rogue energy bar. You also have a bar with slots for four light orbs and four dark orbs. The basic level 1 attack, Jab, consumes 40 chi (out of 100) with every shot and grants you both a light orb and a dark orb. Also at level 1, you get an attack that consumes one light orb that does twice the damage of Jab. If the target is over 50% health, it inflicts three times the damage of Jab. At level 2, you get a kick that inflicts three times the damage of Jab and consumes two dark orbs but returns one if the kick kills the opponent.
