Monks will be a difficult transmog target. Not only do they lack all the fancy tiers that other classes enjoy, but pandaren, with their adorably large, round stomachs, awkwardly stretch some textures out in ways that aren’t exactly expected.
In the real world, monks of almost any flavor dress in simple cloth robes. Unfortunately, our World of Warcraft monks wear leather. Equipment designers also have a tendency to create overly complex designs that completely go against traditional simple monk attire.
Don’t freak out. It’s still beta; it’s all a work in progress. Bears in Mists of Pandaria are still like bears in Cataclysm but with the cat half of their toolkit cut out and nothing filled in to replace all that flavor. It’s up to us to keep things from staying the way they are. With the power of <announcer voice> CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM!
To start out, look at the difference between my beta monk’s action bars and my beta druid’s.
I was planning on getting more testing in before posting this, but the beta was pretty much MIA yesterday. I did do a dungeon run the day before, but I’m still far from good at this class. Brewmasters play much more chaotically then before, but with a few changes they will be playable.
Monks went through a lot of changes since my last post. Guard is on a much longer cooldown (30 sec), Shuffle has no cooldown, and Purifying Brew has a much shorter cooldown (6 sec). Brewmasters got a couple of cool new abilities: Keg Smash, Clashing Ox Charge, and the talent Dampen Harm. Dizzying Haze generates a large amount of threat and monks finally have increased health while in their tanking stance (still no increased armor).
I got into the beta a few days ago and quickly transferred a monk premade. I still can’t find a way to get a premade to Stormwind to test on a dummy, but I was able to find the first five man dungeon, Temple of the Jade Serpent, where I spent about two hours learning the brewmaster spec and soloing the first boss.
1. We’ve got some really good looking utility talents coming our way that will be awesome for tanks and actually provide a unique flavor that warriors don’t have. MoP is looking like the first expansion where bears are more than warrior clones and are turning into true guardians of nature.
1. I get to see my transmog. Transmog is the coolest thing to happen to WoW in years, and it’s a bit disappointing to spend all this time making a set for my druid only to hide it under a furry coat.
This is basically what my current transmog would look like on a panda.
In an attempt to better understand Brewmaster monks, I’ve compared them to Guardian druids. I tried comparing similar abilities side-by-side, but many skills do not have a direct correlation between classes. A couple skills fit into more than one category, so they’re on this list more than once. I probably also missed some skills, so if you find any mistakes, please let me know.
Bears will still be the only offensive tank. That is, Guardians benefit from haste and crit, and will probably have more reasons to cap hit and expertise than other tanks. These stats will increase our rage generation, which leads to more frequent Savage Defenses and Frenzied Regenerations. Brewmaster monks, on the other hand, don’t appear to benefit from these offensive stats. I think they will love dodge, since each dodge gives them a huge amount of Chi (their primary resource). Parry will make their rotation a bit more dynamic and probably increase their damage.
So there was an update to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator a few weeks ago. I actually wrote most of this post back when it was timely, but I’ve been so busy with work and being burned out on raiding that I haven’t gotten around to polishing it until now.
I was on the latest Team Wafflecast with several talented bear druids. We answer bear-related questions about the current state of the spec, speculate about bears in Mists of Pandaria, and other things.
I pretty much just sit in a corner and answer questions when Arielle makes me, because I’m very shy. D: There were three hardcore 25man tanks so I felt a little lonely, but I learned that 25 man requires many more tanks than 10 man. Three tanks on heroic Spine?! And other things!
Last night I had trouble sleeping because I thought of a talent I would really love to see in Mists of Pandaria and I got all excited.
Grants the druid the passive benefits of bear form even while out of bear form. While casting, the druid has immunity to spell pushback and takes less damage equal to his dodge chance for X seconds. Y minute cooldown.
So basically bears would have bear-level armor, damage reduction, and uncritability even in caster form (or cat form, or travel form). The “takes less damage equal to his dodge chance” part is the same as a Deathknight’s Army of the Dead ability, where it’s only there to compensate for the lack of avoidance while casting.
