The Young Brewmaster, Levels 1-21

[Screenshots to come sometime after the beta servers are working again]

In my week of beta access so far (busiest week of the semester, I might add), I've managed to level two separate monks to 21, the last level at which a player can queue for the earliest dungeons.  I am already in love with the class.  It's not perfect yet, but it's already a blast to play as far as I'm concerned.  Let's not waste any time; join me after the cut to see what you can expect when you make a baby Brewmaster.

I'm not going to go in any particular order, because a lot of random things have caught my attention.  Begin!

The dual resources work very well together.
Energy and Chi, the lifeblood of our Brewmaster.  Well, besides hit points, anyway.  And beer.  Obviously the beer.  They interact with one another in a way that really exemplifies that whole "balance" thing that monks stress.  Once you get your rotation going, you'll be using your abilities based both on their cooldowns, and the premise of not allowing your resources to cap.  Similar to those filthy stinking no-good lousy rogues feral druids, if our energy reaches 100, then we're wasting energy regen and lowering the total amount of energy we can spend over the course of a fight.  In addition, if you happen to use a Chi generator when you already have 4 Chi, then you generate nothing (duh).  As a result, you're constantly flipping back and forth between Chi builders and spenders, but it doesn't feel frantic.  It flows well.


It's difficult (or too easy?) to choose weapons.
For me, personally, this isn't actually difficult.  I love the imagery of tanking with a staff or polearm.  Mechanically speaking, however, it's a little less clear.  As far as I can tell, there's no incentive for the specs to follow the implied distinction of two-handed tanking and dual-wielding DPS.  There aren't any passive abilities like Two-Handed Weapon Specialization that make it clear to us.  Plus, I haven't gotten a single ability yet, Brewmaster or otherwise, that scales with weapon damage.  Way of the Monk effectively adds 40% more damage to ANY weapon we can use (while simultaneously making staves look cooler, an admirable goal to be sure).  Then there's Fighting Style. While cool, it doesn't have any actual impact on our output.  Because of that, it looks like (secondary stats being equal) the only incentive to choose one weapon type over another lies in your personal preference.


I suppose a change isn't strictly needed here, but I think it would be valuable to encourage the specs to use a particular kind of weapon.  Otherwise we might end up with both melee monks aiming at the same weapons every tier, after discovering which one has better secondary stats for us.  Then again, maybe some monks want to dual-wield tank like the old Frost death knights.  I'm on the fence for this one.


Oh, and can I get nitpicky?  If I am indeed going to be tanking with a staff, I'd rather one of my primary abilities be called something more elegant than "Clobber," which is what Fighting Style converts Jab to.


Dizzying Haze generates way too much threat.
There are no two ways about it.  Dizzying Haze is kind of ridiculous.  In applying the standard three stacks of the debuff, you're going to build a threat lead that can last you until the end of a pull.  I've tested that.  It will never be optimal to spam Haze, since it deals no damage and generates no Chi, but with the amount of threat this builds and the speed with which it builds it, we might as well not even have a taunt.  And I'm only being just a little hyperbolic.  Any readers who've been masterfully brewing on the beta should be able to back me up on this: for aggro, Dizzying Haze has the gravitational pull of a BLACK HOLE.


How to fight, the early stages.
I'll be honest.  I enjoy pulling as a monk so far.  You start out by throwing kegs, to apply the attached debuff and build a(n enormous) threat lead.  Then deliver a quick Keg Smash to generate 2 Chi and build more AoE threat, and spend that 2 Chi on a Breath of Fire, which hits like a truck at three Haze stacks and generates even MORE AoE threat.  Next comes two swift Jabs (or whatever your Fighting Style equivalent is), immediately after so your energy doesn't cap.  After that, dump some Chi with either a Blackout Kick and a Tiger Palm (if the target is below 50%...only one Kick because the DoT doesn't stack) or two Tiger Palms (if the target is above 50%).  At this point, you begin your dance between energy and Chi.

 If your energy is close to maxing out, use Keg Smash (if it's off cooldown) or Jab.  If you're at 3 or 4 Chi and your energy ISN'T dangerously close to capping, use Blackout Kick or Tiger Palm.  The only real tricks are 
A.) Making sure that you have the 40 energy you need to use Keg Smash when it comes off cooldown, and
B.) Refreshing the Dizzying Haze debuff as little as possible.  Even if it's a measly 10, Dizzying Haze still costs energy that could be spent on other, more useful abilities.  Unless you're in desperate need of its immense threat, wait until the debuff is nearly spent before reapplying it.  That said, don't let it fall off, either, or you'll spend three GCDs stacking it up to three again, which is WAY worse.


Miscellaneous thoughts

1. When you do 5-mans, expect a LOT of groups with five monks in them.  Everybody's playing the things.
2. Engineering is a pretty good profession to level on a monk if you've never picked it up before, largely because none of the other monks are Mining.  Questing up to level 15, my troll monk had Engineering up to 100 and still had a good 200 copper ore/bars in his bags, without purchasing any on the Auction House.
3. At least at low level, Stagger is working pretty well to make our damage less spikey, and I'm relieved to see that Recoil does not see us swimming in energy.  We'll see how that holds up at higher avoidance levels.
4. Despite its tooltip on the client, Breath of Fire doesn't seem to have a range anywhere remotely close to 40 yards.  It's behaving more as a melee-range cone.
5. At the moment, you learn Breath of Fire at level 18.  This is a very, VERY minor concern, but that means that for three levels when you're first learning how to tank, you're going to be swimming in Chi without an outlet to match Keg Smash's Chi generation.  Bumping BoF forward a couple of levels could smooth that out.
6. Our Black Ox Statue now has a duration of 15 minutes, alleviating our concerns about having to perform a 1.5-second cast while tanking.
7. Of the first talents, I find myself with a preference for Momentum, which is not at all what I expected.  In a raiding environment, I might lean more towards Tiger's Lust, but we'll have to wait and see on that.  I like the uptime of Momentum; if you let one stack go its full duration before boosting it to the second, you get 10 seconds at 125% speed, followed immediately by another 10 seconds at 150% speed.  After that, you probably have a Roll that's been refreshed, so you can get ANOTHER 10 seconds at 125%.  It's pretty handy in the time before you get a mount, I can tell you that.

Nutshell summary: even at low level, we've already got some problems, and they're problems that will carry over to upper-level play.  And while I haven't had a group with anybody who WASN'T a monk yet, word is that they're a bit overtuned at the moment relative to other classes.  Still, give us a reason to choose one weapon over another, and make Dizzying Haze some kind of reasonable, and our early game will be in good shape.

Keep enjoying the beta, folks.  And give feedback to help make our class the most fun out there!  Lastly, if anyone wants to meet up on the beta, the character I'm going to focus on from here on out is the troll monk Stonetusk on Lost Isles (US).  I'm playing Horde to leave the Alliance story unspoiled for myself.

- Stonepalm -