Impending Release Mistweaver Review

Moving right along, the Mistweaver is next. The healing spec for monks. The abilities feel great and special to me. While having similar mechanics to other healers, they still do it in a definitely unique fashion.

Impending Release Brewmaster Review

So with the release coming in literally less than a week it's time for a short review of each spec and the primary abilities. Beginning here with the Brewmaster, the tanking specialization for the Monk.

World Wide Renown for Glory and Riches

COUNTDOWN WEBSITE

That right there, is how long until midnight Pacific on Tuesday the 25th of September. As this counts down to full blown Mists detonation there are some things we have to be ready for. Of course leveling the Monk to 90 is priority number 1. Then Scenarios and Dungeons. One of the things we'll be looking to do though, is buy Justice/Valor Gear to help along the way.

The Story So Far

Deathwing is dead and the world has little time to rejoice. Starvation and homelessness plagues the land as the resources of the world dwindled in breaths of flame. The horde takes Theramore to claim the newly fertile Southern Barrens for their own. The aggression between the factions builds up. With no distractions, the alliance and horde have nothing to deter them from attacking the other.

Necessity and Vanity in Glyph Scribing

 

Ah Glyphs. I did say I would get to them didn't I? I know it's a bit later than I claimed it would be and I do apologize. There have been some updates too in the last couple of days. No Scroll of Resurrection for monks, but yes we can get the Recruit a Friend benefits. A few numbers adjustments for balance, vengeance modified, and more.

Making the Zen Pilgrimage

One of the abilities the monks got during the course of the beta was Zen Pilgrimage. As you can see using this ability sends you to the Peak of Serenity in Kun-Lai Summit. A very pleasant sanctuary and monk training headquarters. There's more to it than that though so come have a look...

Changes for the Monk at heart

Sitting on Live waiting for MoP

Another Beta build (yes, another!) dropped in here and gave us a few updates. If you saw it on WoWhead News they list a bunch more that show number changes. I'm disregarding those because it may just be a pull error where it returned a value for a lower level or something strange. Anyway here they are.

Kaivax answers feedback

Kaivax's twitter profile image

Today while I was away at that pit of despair called a job Kaivax took to the forums and gave us a response on both a Windwalker AND a Mistweaver feedback thread.

So what did I miss?

Zen Flight

I missed a few patches, but as time passes the notes get smaller and smaller. After my investigation of blackout kick they changed it with patch 15762. I also missed the last one 15882. So let's find out just what changed.

Falling off the edge of the world

So just a quick post to say that I did not die or even anything horrible, no accidents, I just got distracted. I fell off the edge of Azeroth and landed in Sanctuary and basically every bit of free time was spent there.

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of, well, everything. So give me a little bit and I shall catch up to everything I've missed and even take a fresh look again at all the specs.

The Shifting Winds

Well beta patch 15699 is out and it decided to have an impact on the Windwalker rotation I talked about recently. There were a good number of changes for us this build other than just Blackout Kick. There's a new spell that is similar, yet different, to the Druid's Teleport: Moonglade called Zen Pilgrimage. Other major changes include the shielding effect from Statue of the Black Ox, the Ox Stance itself, and Chi Burst actually doing a meaningful amount of damage.

The Windwalker Rotation Implementation Extrapolation

Tiger Palm has just changed majorly on the beta from doing bonus damage above 50% enemy health, to applying a stacking debuff that gives 5%/10%/15% Armor "Penetration" for 15 seconds that is called Tiger Power. This of course changes everything for the previous proposed rotation.

Never Gonna Stop the patches (Never Gonna Stop)

Taken just this morning. Myself using meditation next to my Transcendence spirit.

It's been another couple of days and another couple of beta patches that change the way monks are working. My messed up sleep and work schedule have not contributed well to my beta time but I go on vacation for 8 days to do nothing but relax starting this Sunday so I should be able to get more to you. I do want to do more to talk about the changes but with a patch averaging every 2 days and things like the change to Tiger Palm I don't know that it'd be worth it? You know what I mean? Anyway here comes stuff --->

Faster, and Faster, We have to get through!

Yet another beta build went through sometime early this morning/late night. Faster than I thought it would even. There's some talent changes here so check 'em out. *UPDATED*

Another Day another Beta Build

Well it's another day passed and so there's yet another new beta build. I did say things would start happening fast right? Details here after the break and some of the things I've learned and experienced on the beta so far.

Beta Time

I know it's been a bit of time again since an update. There were changes with the latest beta build that I intended to try out, but I was one of the many people stricken by error 132 so often I just go frustrated and gave up. I'm updating from the launcher right now though so I can get in there and figure some more stuff out.

Mistweaver Feedback

Via: MMO-Champion

Valen posted some awesome feedback on the beta forums for mistweavers describing much of the feel and flow of healing as a monk. There were 2 blue posts that came from that and I just wanted to relay what's going on with the mistweaver monk spec.

Blue Post & Beta Patch Bonanza

Attack of the GAMES!

So as I said, I've been quite behind in writing and I do apologize. All my downtime has been either in the beta, sleeping, or just in general turning my brain completely off to facilitate brain dumping work drama and frustration. We have had a beta patch since I started in it last Monday and we have another one on the way. The first patch brought about a few changes so let's check those out first.

Sparring the Windwalker

Sorry this has taken such a long time to write up compared to the others. Switching from a 7am-4pm work schedule to a 3pm-midnight is absolutely horrible. Anyway, wrapping up the specs and abilities (for now) we have the Windwalker, face smashing extraordinaire.

Note: For this I'm going to leave it at a preview of the abilities for right now. There have been some changes which I will go over shortly. The windwalker "rotation" is still in development. Many things are changing fast so I'll try to keep up with it. I apologize for such a long delay in just this post. Working 4pm to midnight has made me really just sleep, a lot. So check out the Windwalker abilities and I'll be back with changes that have happened so far in the beta.

Staggering the Brewmaster

Ah the Brewmaster. Drunken fighter of the monk class. Nothing like getting totally wasted and picking a fight you probably can't handle on your own. You start brawls and take a beating but you don't even feel it until later. Nothing seems to phase you. Let's take a look at what the Brewmaster can do.

Unraveling the Mistweaver

I'm going to begin looking at the monk specs by checking out the Mistweaver. The healing spec of the Monk class the Mistweaver has a lot of new unique abilities that look like a lot of fun. Bouncing waves of damage/healing around the field, dropping healing orbs, and surrounding allies in a mist that heals those around it and moves each time it heals. All at the same time generating Chi by Jabbing your enemies. So let's explore the Mistweaver.

Information Dump

screen-cap from: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists-of-pandaria/monk/

So this is just going to be a simple "here is everything" post. This will just be everything they dropped on us for the monks. There was of course a TON of news, every current ability and talent, as well as a few changes. Key things like each race might have a different animation for the same attacks, such that Jab on the human above, would look different compared to the Jab of the blood elf behind him. So come on through to the other side (of the jump) to get a read on all the information.

Deluge Aftermath

My work schedule has changed to evenings so I just wanted to quickly say that I will definitely have posts incoming. I spent much of the morning reading over everything monk, gathering materials and starting to piece together ability/talent interactions. There's lots of new stuff out there. www.wowheadnews.com has a very nice layout. www.mmo-champion.com has a ton of stuff as well, and don't forget the folks over at wow.joystiq.com and their news feeds.

Coverage and speculation incoming soon!

Weaving the Mists of Vitality

Picture Courtesy TheLifestream.net

I was trying to figure out just what I could use to symbolize the way a monk would be a Mistweaver and instill life in their allies when it struck me like one of those V8 commercials. You know the ones, the person slaps themselves hard in the head and goes "coulda had a V8!". Yeah, "DUH" Sin, Final Fantasy 7's own Lifestream fits so perfectly. Well on to the topic at hand. I wrote this almost 2 months ago in a thread on MMO-Champion and just never got around to bringing it here. It was a sudden epiphany about how monk healing could work and I just wanted to share my thoughts on it after this here break. (That I just figured out how to do >.<)

It's Evolution (of stats)

~ Crabby pic courtesy Wowwiki.com

It was dropped into the Dev Watercooler last night from Ghostcrawler himself that there are a few stats going through some significant changes for Mists. The full repercussions of which, or if they even go through, are of course unknown until we can get our hands on them. The stats we're looking at are Spell Resistance, Hit/Expertise, Block, Criticals and Resilience. So without further ado, the stat changes.

Calm before the storm

The talent calculators on the official site have been updated once again. There are lots of interesting tidbits that have come down the line for many classes. Unfortunately there is still absolutely nothing out there for monks. No new skills, no talent teasers, nothing. Dead silence. I think this makes it even more suspenseful. Although terribly disappointing at the same time as I'd really like to see at least *something* of note.

Aily, Qeynos Monk (the original Aily)

There's lots and lots of things I can't wait to try out for the monk. All 3 specs. Especially tanking and DPS. What makes me so interested in the monk class is because I used to be one back in the day playing Everquest. It was my first character of any mmo and is still by far my favorite. Monks in Everquest were quite fun. When I started there were hardly any skills in the game. You had your gear and you had auto-attack as a monk with some special kicks and punches and feign death. That's really it. You ran up to stuff and hit it in the face and if it got too close you faked your own death. Monk feign death in Everquest was pretty awesome. It was attatched to a skill that you had to work on to keep capped every time you leveled, so that was the only drawback. It could fail, and fail horribly. It did have a cooldown but this cooldown started when you hit FD, not when you got back up from it like hunters in WoW have now. Another interesting feature in EQ was if you died and gave permission to someone, they could move your body (see, you respawned at your bind point with no gear and negative xp if you died in EQ) to a safer place. I remember one time I was in an area with 2 friends we shouldn't have been in and well, they died, and I FD'd being the upstanding monk that I was. Using the old trick of the FD hop, I made a macro and dragged both their bodies back to the start of the cavern for them to safely recover them. I also remember how monk was the puller for groups and how if our group was no doubt going to die, I would take aggro of everything I could, avoidance tank it, and let everyone else run out until the very last second I could FD and save the lives of everyone.

The old Everqeust interface >.<

In the end, I really can't wait and the silence is deafening in this case. I want to bash stuff in with fists and maces and also to parry and dodge incoming attacks with speed and grace. While I doubt WoW monks will have FD, I can only dream of doing the same exact things I used to do in Everquest, but in WoW instead.

Down Time

So I know I've been very (very) lax lately about the updating but that should definitely pick up here soon:

A Break in the Mists: Alert the Press!

Since the announcement of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria at BlizzCon 2011, we’ve been hard at work on all of the new game features, environments, dungeons, and other content that awaits adventurers. Today, we’re inviting members of the press worldwide to get an updated sneak peek and some hands-on time with the latest version of World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion at an event taking place March 13 - 15.

If you want to know more about what lies hidden within the mists of Pandaria, wait for the season’s end….

Hopefully that will keep us all sated in our desire for learning more about the Monk Class.

In other news as my main Aily <Arisen> we finally managed to down Madness of Deathwing on Normal on our last raid night before the 5% debuff came out. Even if it feels like a fluke win (he died with just our Pally tank alive) it still counts and still got us our achievement 5 days before the debuff hit.