Blizzcon just finished and I’m sure we’ve all heard the new announcements by now. \u00a0 New race: Pandaren. \u00a0 New class: Monk. \u00a0 Demo computers were available to see both the Pandaren starting zone and give the new class a whirl.<\/p>\n
WoW fan sites have posted the details of all the new World of Warcraft announcements, ability lists, gameplay trailers, etc, but I thought I’d do something different and talk a little bit about how actually playing the new monk class felt and give my own impressions. <\/strong><\/p>\n Remember, all of these details can change between now and when the expansion goes live, and probably will<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Basic Information<\/span><\/p>\n Monks are a new hybrid class; they have specs that will allow them to heal, tank, or melee DPS.\u00a0 They are heavily martial arts themed, aiming for the archetypal monk class.\u00a0 They are not a hero class, and will begin at level 1.<\/p>\n They wear leather and will share their gear with rogues and druids, depending on their role.\u00a0 They start in leather gear from level 1.\u00a0 They can currently use fist weapons, polearms, staves, and 1-handed swords or axes. As healers, they will use offhands rather than shields.\u00a0 The current plan is for tanking to lead towards 2h while DPS and heals will use the 1h weaponry.<\/p>\n They will use stances, presumably similar to a warrior and based on their role.<\/p>\n They are available for every race except Worgen and Goblin.<\/p>\n Resource System<\/span><\/p>\n Monks use a unique resource system different from the current ones in game. They have an energy bar, called Chi<\/strong>, which functions similar to that of rogue and cat druids by refilling quickly to a hard cap.\u00a0 This is paired with a combo points-like system, but this is where it departs from the familiar.\u00a0 Monks get two <\/em>sets of combo points — Light and Dark Force <\/strong>— and these are tied to the player and not the thing you’re fighting.\u00a0 They do not appear to decay (although they probably clear at log out) so you can carry them from fight to fight.<\/p>\n Your basic attacks cost Chi but build combo points of either the Light or Dark Force or both. \u00a0 You then spend those force points on special stronger attacks.\u00a0 Unlike the finishers that rogues and cats spend their combo points on, these abilities don’t scale based on number of points – they cost a flat amount.\u00a0 Because of this, you will not be capping your points and then spending them, but rather using a rolling priority system of using both as needed.\u00a0 The playstyle ends up being very different than the usual “point-point-point-finish” feel of other energy classes.<\/p>\n Blizzard has said that when Monks are spec’d for healing, their Chi bar will be replaced with a Mana bar. \u00a0 It was not explicitly stated but seems obvious based on their design goals that the class will still keep its Light and Dark Force bar for healing, allowing it to maintain its unique feel in all three talent specialisations.<\/p>\n Abilities<\/span><\/p>\n Here are some of the spells & abilities that were available in the demo:<\/p>\n Level 1 Abilities<\/p>\n Jab<\/strong> Jab is your basic attack. This is the button you are hitting the most to spend your Chi and generate your Force points. I imagine you get different ones later as you level and based on spec.<\/p>\n Tiger Palm<\/strong> Level 2 Abilities<\/p>\n Roll<\/strong> Roll is a mobility tool to keep you moving around the battlefield (and, when out of combat, to appease your pining for that mount that is eighteen levels away).\u00a0 It costs only energy, so you can zoom around as often as your bar refills.\u00a0 It’s very fun for getting quickly from enemy to enemy or just getting around faster.\u00a0 You can roll in any direction, including backwards and sideways.<\/p>\n Level 3 Abilities<\/p>\n Blackout Kick<\/strong> Level 5 Abilities<\/p>\n Flying Serpent Kick<\/strong> Spinning Crane Kick<\/strong> Some other abilities were loosely discussed at the various panels, but were not in game to try.<\/p>\n Auto-Attack<\/span><\/p>\n Monks do not have an auto-attack like every other class.\u00a0 Blizzard developers said they wanted the monk to have a “street fighter feel” where each button press from the player is an attack from your monk.\u00a0 This is very unique to the game, and it is controversial enough that this may end up not going live (in fact, I would predict it will be in and out of the beta several times before a decision is made).\u00a0 There are some concerns about that, and I’d like to address them the best I can for a player who has only played the first six levels of the monk class.<\/p>\n The first worry I have heard expressed (totally justifiably) is that this will make playing the Monk very spammy.\u00a0 I’m sure those of us with Warriors heard the announcement and were thinking old school Heroic “I eroded a hole in my keybind” Strike.\u00a0 The good news is that it does not feel like this at all.\u00a0 Your Jab<\/strong> costs enough that you are not hitting it a million times a minute, but fast enough that you don’t feel like you’re standing around waiting for energy regen (usually… more on that below).\u00a0 You are also limited by your GCD, which is current the same 1.5 seconds of most players [note:\u00a0 I am pretty sure Jab<\/strong> is limited by the GCD]. The playstyle is fast paced but far from overwhelmingly or spammy.<\/p>\n However, the lack of auto-attack does have some weaknesses that need to be addressed eventually.\u00a0 It is annoying when you find yourself in a situation with neither Chi nor Force points and you’re up in some mob’s grill unable to do literally anything but stand there.\u00a0 That might not happen often, but it can happen in numerous circumstances:<\/p>\n When moving quickly from fight to fight, the small delay before your opening attack could prove frustrating in those situations where you’re racing to tap a rare mob and have to stand there waiting for the precious energy to claim it as yours.<\/p>\n As a raider who currently plays a rogue, I can think of a lot of current situations in group play where I am swapping to an add and auto-attacking it until I have enough energy to use Mutilate.\u00a0 This would be very frustrating to find myself in that position as a Monk, chasing an add but doing literally no damage.\u00a0 I can think of a lot of situations where the add dies before I get enough energy for that special, making my only contribution my white damage (or perhaps I am pooling for when I return to the primary target).\u00a0 For a monk, there would have been nothing.<\/p>\n I can also see it being problematic from a tanking perspective, where one at least builds minimal threat in the seconds before or between breaking out a special, especially if you’re juggling multiple mobs at once.\u00a0 Those white attacks can often be the difference between you or the healer tanking in those first microseconds of a pull.<\/p>\n There are also the circumstances of when a mob has a sliver of health left, and one would finish it off with auto-attack. A Monk would be forced to use its resources which perhaps it wanted to save for the next fight. At the very least, it would be a bit overkill.<\/p>\n The other thought that occurred to me is doing old content.\u00a0 When I was working on Loremaster, I often had to bare-knuckle auto-attack mobs that I needed to get low but not kill<\/em> for some quests.\u00a0 If a Monk can only use specials, how would he do such quests?\u00a0 A level capped Monk would surely one shot these low level mobs in a single Jab.<\/p>\n That may sound like a lot of problems, but they are <\/em>very situational.\u00a0 I actually like the feel of the gameplay and being in total control without the auto-attack, so I hope these issues can be resolved in a positive way that allows Monks to keep this unique flavour.\u00a0 Perhaps a no-cost but super weak attack with a cooldown to use in those situations?\u00a0 Still, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Monks went live with auto-attack like everyone else.<\/p>\n Healing<\/strong><\/p>\n My disclaimer here is that this is all based on Blizzard’s conjecture and will [very probably] not end up like this on live.<\/p>\n They want the heal system to be unique and involve damage reflected into AoE healing for friendlies, rather than the traditional three-cast-time-heal bread and butter for current classes.\u00a0 For example, Blizzard envisions moves like this to be the means through which a Monk heals its party:<\/p>\n Statue of the Jade Serpent<\/strong> I have serious doubts that the class with go live with things like this as their primary <\/em>means of healing.\u00a0 It’s too different, too hard to balance and seems like the kind of thing that would end up overly powerful in some circumstances and too weak in others. \u00a0 Statues radiating heals seems like it would be very awesome as a raid healing, but what about five mans, or high movement fights? \u00a0 What about when the healer needs to keep up a tank taking a lot of damage?\u00a0 What about when the monk is forced to move out of melee for whatever reason?\u00a0 It’s a very big move away from the “we want all the healers to be able to do successfully do all roles” design goal that Blizzard just implemented, and against the homogenisation that all other healers faced in the last expansion.<\/p>\n The current design goal for healing is to heal through DPS, making the Monk the true melee healer.\u00a0 This is something they’ve toyed with trying to achieve with Holy Paladins with limited success.\u00a0 The difference is that Blizzard wants even healing Monks to do “massive” damage and for that to be the vehicle for their heals.<\/p>\n I’m not sure what the implications of that will be for gameplay if we have one healer who is able to contribute significantly to DPS while the others are not. The worry is always that the other healers will be less desired if a raid could instead choose one that helped with those tight enrage timers — a variation of this was voiced frequently when Death Knight tanks were doing a lot of damage and while it didn’t end up proving true, DKs did ultimately receive a series of nerfs in this area to bring them in line with other tanks.\u00a0 I can see this also having negative PvP connotations if your arena player can both DPS and heal effectively at the same time.\u00a0 And what of the shadow priest, whose passive raid healing was nerfed because it was too powerful in conjunction with strong DPS?<\/p>\n I suspect that when Monks are being beta tested and tweaked, we will find them being homogenised into the same foundation as the other healers, with the [fast expensive heal], [long, big heal], and [slow efficient heal] and the moves like the statues and vampiric-embrace-like abilities will be dropped to supplemental, expensive AoE heals like Prayer of Healing or Tranquility.\u00a0 I think they will use melee attacks to add the flavour of their class and to earn the Force Points to do unique and different things with their heals in order to keep their very unique class feel.\u00a0 I suspect they will not end up doing significant damage as healers, and may perhaps be more in line with a tank or smite-spamming Disc priest.<\/p>\n Tanking<\/span><\/p>\n We don’t know much about Monk tanking, except that it will probably involve using staves and polearms and the gearing will be about the same as current Bear druids.<\/p>\n Overall Impressions<\/span><\/p>\n Despite being somewhat similar to rogues (my primary reason for being uninterested in feral cat), I found the Monk to be fresh and engaging and am definitely interested in leveling one up in Mists of Pandaria.\u00a0 Monk is definitely appealing to me a lot more than Death Knights did initially (the DK class and starting zone was amazing but I found the resource system cumbersome and the pace at which you get abilities as a hero class overwhelming).\u00a0 I thought the resource system here was unique and fun but still very intuitive and user-friendly. The abilities are fun, simple, and well paced.\u00a0 Roll is super cool.\u00a0 That handful of levels I got to play in the Blizzcon demo was very enjoyable.<\/p>\n I love hybrid classes and I’m interested in trying both tanking and healing as this new class.\u00a0 I’m already thinking about which races I will choose for each faction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blizzcon just finished and I’m sure we’ve all heard the new announcements by now. \u00a0 New race: Pandaren. \u00a0 New class: Monk. \u00a0 Demo computers were available to see both the Pandaren starting zone and give the new class a whirl. WoW fan sites have posted the details of all the new World of Warcraft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,3,370,74,99,59,372,6,404,405,406,407,23,369,104,18,103,371,109,5],"tags":[402,638,410,399,398,396,394,391,392,395,393,158,400,401,397,403],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muffinsguild.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n40 Chi – Melee Range, Instant
\nRequires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
\nYou jab the target, dealing 5 damage and generating 1 light force and 1 dark force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n1 Light Force – Melee range, instant
\nRequires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
\nDeals 10 Physical damage, deals 5 additional damage if the target is above 50% health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n50 Chi – Instant
\nRoll a short distance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n2 Dark Force – Melee range, Instant
\nKick with a blast of energy, causing 28 physical damage to an enemy target. If the target is killed by blackout kick, you are returned 1 Dark Force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n8-40 Yards range, 25 Seconds Cooldown, Instant.
\nSoar through the air towards a targeted enemy, knocking them down and stunning them for 2 seconds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nInstant, 2 Lights and Dark Forces
\nRequires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
\nYou spin while kicking in the air, dealing 23 damage every 1 second to all nearby enemies within 8 yards. Movement speed is reduced by 30%, last 6 seconds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n5 Sec Cast
\nSummon a statue at the target location. Anytime you deal damage, a nearby friendly target within 20 yards of the statue will be healed. You can have up to 3 Jade Dragon Statues active at a time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n