Hello Everyone,
I rarely post but when I do it is because I feel moved to do so.
First off, thank you, Blizzard (Not the Execs and poor decision makers). I can very much tell that a lot of care went into the creation of this expansion. And you did try to listen to what we had to say.
Thank you, non-toxic members of the community, for putting up with all the poor attitudes of the elitists and people who think that they are special because they were around during specific things. I stopped playing in 2010, came back only for the WOD story, Legion story, BFA story. Then COVID hit and I decided to get back into PvP. I got a very intimate look at the inside of some hardcore players and competitors, and I have to say that for the most part I am not impressed.
So far In the Dragonflight PvP scene, we’re seeing a lot of players who relied on their superior gear score and FOTM, get super angry because in reality they are not in it for the competition or even the fight, they are in it to feel powerful against the weak. I’ve been a brew/fistweaver in pvp since I started in COVID, and right now they’ve never felt so good. I feel more competitive in all scenarios than I have since starting. And though I realize that both playstyles are not for the faint of heart that some people consider them bottom tier, but I love them so much and have so much fun that I don’t care. I wish to shake the hands of the Monk Dev team, because while I think the trees can use a little tweeking (i will adress this in a moment), I got everything that I had hoped for when talking to my guildies, and more.
This is where I see the flaws in where monk is at. For brew it was difficult going from 35% mastery to 14% at the start of the expansion (I had 1600 gear going into it and didn’t need to replace anything until I got to 70, and it only took 4 wins to get enough honor to cover my basics). I would have made the baseline probably 15%, it’s simply that Important for the entire kit. Overall, I like where I am at with brew in the team fight. I can pretty much hold my own against any melee. I beat rogues and warriors a lot, even WW monks. Shadow priests and locks (except demo) I have some difficulty with, and of course dh, but if I’m playing of FOTM person I can beat them 10/10 times. As few buttons as the DH has, compared to both brew and fistweaving, it’s really easy to see a good player and a poor one who abuses broken builds.
I have quite a few screenshots where my healing and damage are perfectly in balance. If somebody can guide me on how to post a safe image link on the forums I can share them. Since I’m mostly still isolated because my job went away for covid and i have a bit of freetime (retired veteran), I have done quite a bit of calculating and comparing how my builds have gone against the META, and I think I have a superior product.
IMO, Monk is in a good place for improvement, and if I can possibly communicate it, I don’t want to be anything more than competitive with other classes.
I have not spent much time at 70 with the fistweaving, but the pre-patch was the most fun that I have ever had with it, and I will propose a few changes to the trees that will help us maximize our utility.
The first think that I wish for is Keefer’s Skyreach to be on the general monk tree, possibly combined with Tiger’s eye, or replace Windwalking all together. Once I was able to use that while fistweaving, because ATOTM became baseline, my healing and survivability went through the roof because I was able to stick on my target, and even chase. I used it on my brew monk too, and it seriously is one of the best utilities in the monk kit, for the WHOLE monk kit.
The other one is the Emperor’s lightning capacitor because I seem to use my lightning quite a bit as both brew and fist. I also love Faeline Stomp for both brew and fist, and am sad that i lost it for brew, but I was able to fill out more of the tree around Dragon’s Breath Brew with the dodge side of the tree and the combination works out very well.
Which brings me to the statues and the summons. I think they should also be on the base tree, but with a significant change. I would like the statues to be a 1/3 slot (where you get 3 choices), and a talent under them to give whatever choice you make, 1/3 of the power of the other two statues. This would also give us a more jack-of trades option. The biggest change I would make would have the ox-statue be able to taunt pets/summons/etc, for 4 seconds or something of the like to give it some pvp viability. The tiger statue is great for flag spinning, but not really for much else, and none of my playstyles would ever use any of the statues. I don’t even use the ox summon for pvp, and if the crane was available I would take that in both brew and fistweaving.
Chi-Ji for the win.
As for the story thus far, I’ve loved it all. It’s not perfect but I can see the effort and the love.
As for taking a step back from the faction war and uniting Azeroth, I think that would be great. Because then we can go and find other worlds, and, you know, fight them.
-Az
I also loved the torghast power where you summon one and it summons another, it would be cool to have the summons be a 4-in-1 talent, with a sub talent that did the same thing.