The Queue: Monks

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

So today's Queue is about monks.

Why the picture? Because the King of the Hill episode where they get visited by a bunch of monks is one of my favorites.

I miss that show. Such a good yarn.

Amaris asked:

What's your take on MW monking, now that you've delved into it?

So I was talking on Twitter the other night how I've ran my first few instances healing with my monk. Here's how they went:

Instance #1: Nervous as hell. Hands sweating as I'm pushing buttons, don't really know what I'm doing. But hey -- we survive and clear the place without any deaths.

Instance #2: Fun group, various noobie mistakes throughout by the DPS and tank, one wipe. None of it was my fault I'm pretty sure, and I'm still fine with it -- didn't sweat much.

Instance #3: Easy run, was thinking about programming my new PHP Page class for a website I'm working on, and how I don't want to use Twitter's Bootstrap (because I do enjoy reinventing the wheel sometimes).

Instance #4: I zone in, am changing specs, and the tank starts to pull the entire first room and dies within a few seconds. It's 1am and I just type "Right." into the instance chat and leave drop group. Moron.

Now given my limited experience, and it's very limited compared to the thousands upon thousands of instances I've been in on other classes, I have this to say as nearly a total noob:

• I know I can sit back and DPS to build up Chi, but it doesn't really feel necessary most of the time. I bet this is different in raiding, but once in a while I found myself going back into the older caster model of just staying back and AFK Healing (we all know what that means...). I think a little more emphasis could be put on this at lower gear levels so when I get into healing LFR and normal mode raids, I'm not suddenly "zomg change play style nao."

• While I understand all the spells, I haven't had to use them all yet. When I'm healing on my priest I need to use my entire toolkit at lower gear levels to keep everyone up. This seems to be missing on the monk. I don't think I'm super awesome, but nonetheless it's an observation I've made.

• Doing DPS as a healer is really fun, and I could see a game being made out of not doing any direct heals and just pipping out as much damage as possible. It'll be interesting to try this when I've got more gear. I bet I can make it work.

• Things really didn't make sense to me until I sat down and ran through that first instance. I ready Icy Veins, talked with some folks, and consulted various forms before hand -- so I wasn't going in blind, but the interplay of it all isn't intuitive. I think Blizzard could do a better job explaining things.

Now take these critiques for what they are -- a perspective from a noobie monk. That doesn't make them less valid than others, but in the context, they are what they are. And while I might be a noob monk, I have played plenty of healers in raids since classic, so I think my insight is at least correct from my perspective. And thus the next question:

Joseph asked:

Zen Meditation imo isn't very useful, only rare conditions. What are some ways that it could be improved?

I actually disagree that it's not useful. It's a really good (cover your ears kids) "oh shit" button that the healer can press when something is going wrong. The ability for all damage to be redirected to one person, who by virtue of the spell and others would take dramatically reduced damage, can be a game changer in raid situations. I can't count the number of times my raid has been saved by a well-timed Shield Wall. This is the same thing, expect it's done by the healer.

Now that being said, I haven't used it yet -- but I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

Nocjin asked:

I was just using the 3D viewer on WoWhead, and apparently Worgen have monk animations? Was not letting them roll monks a late decision or something? Werewolf martial arts would be somewhat amazing.

I think Warsongraven said it best:

Also don't discount the ability of Blizzard to change their minds and let every race have monks. The flip-flop is strong with that one.

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