20121029

A. My mistweaver,

    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/Chronospanda/advanced

is now the veteran of 70 dungeon runs, 3 as dps, 67 as heals.  The character's level has risen to 67 and is close to moving on to Northrend and the WotLK material.

B. New healing skills

---Healing sphere
---Uplift
---Mana tea
---Thunder focus tea

show a lot of promise, though I have yet to master them all.

C. Since MoP started, the mistweaver monk is the first I've seen that can exhaust its mana pool.  This makes Mana Tea (funny play on words, there) a real blessing.  I can refill an empty pool in 5 to 7 seconds following heavy encounters.

D. Healing Sphere does not yet make sense to me.  Laying down spheres does not take all that long, but it does take some time.  Most of the tanks I encounter are in quite a hurry.  I need to figure out how to do this quickly.

E. Uplift and Thunder Focus Tea are both of the form 'spend more chi, get more done' so they have their uses for burst healing.  I just need to practice on these two.

F. On dps/questing side, Crackling Jade Lightning has shown its usefulness.  With a talent choice, Paralysis gets a 20 yard range, which makes it more versatile.

20121026

A. Since 20121012, my level 14 mistweaver monk has progressed to level 54, and has had 40 dungeon runs, 3 as dps, 37 as heals.  At this point, the mechanics of the mistweaver seem stronger to me than those of holy priest or restoration druid.

As a questing character, my mistweaver is not particularly strong, but still serviceable.  I found both holy priest and restoration druid to be only slightly better than useless for questing.

I waited until level 33 to start running the mistweaver as heals.  At level 49, the character was fairly robust with the healing spell set

------Soothing Mist
------Renewing Mist
------Chi Wave
------Surging Mist
------Enveloping Mist

By level 54, the following have been added:

------Life Cocoon
------Spinning Crane Kick
------Chi Brew

plus some improvements in questing (or dungeon) survivability.

B. I have not been running my level 51 Windwalker (dps) monk much lately, but I have been quite satisfied with its spell set, particularly spinning crane kick and fists of fury. The windwalker is my second favourite dps character, though well behind my unholy death knight.

C.  The third version of monk is specified by 'Brewmaster,' and is designed for tanking.

I have completely stalled on my level 14 panda monk Brewmaster.  The male panda is just too awkward and gawky looking for my taste.

I have created a new Night Elf monk Brewmaster that uses mining to build its toughness.

As with the mistweaver, it looks like the brewmaster will not be all that good until perhaps level 35.

I started playing WoW (World of Warcraft) in January, 2007.  Here is my current lead character:

      http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/chronoslycan/advanced

I play mostly in the Uldum realm, secondarily in Antonidas, and not so much in a few other realms.  In Uldum, I run with the guild Dungeon Crusaders.  I play with the Alliance in most realms, though I started with the Horde, and retains some Horde characters.  I play the DPS role almost exclusively these days, but I hope to get into healing and tanking.

A. Things I like about MoP so far:

1. Tumbleweeds--not realistic, but nicely done.
2. Lightning storms, clouds, rain--love it.
3. New shoulder armour buffs in Inscription
4. New devices in Engineering, notably tinkers and the trinkets with +600 cogwheels.
5. Kites for transport
6. One can choose class and specialisation when dealing with some vendors.  This makes the choices the vendor offers much more relevant.
7. The DPS version of the monk class has been a lot of fun, at least on a human character.

B. A sampling of the changes I don't like about the MoP contraction (it was not an expansion).  Much of this was present in the 5.0.3 wound (it was not a patch).

1. The castration of the talent trees.  The amount of tuning a player can do is strongly reduced.
2. The new offerings in the stunted talent trees are remarkably not useful.  For some classes, the eighteen possible choices contain perhaps one or two that I want for that class.
3. The elimination of prime glyphs, plus turning minor glyphs into meaningless appearance changers means that one has 3 meaningful choices for glyphs, not 9.  Why inhibit configuration choices of the players this much?
4. The castration of profession trainers.  There is no longer any need to separate them, since they do not have separate offerings.
5. Automatic installation of new spells on level up.  The game puts the new spell glyph where it wants on your action bars.  This is irritating at best.  I would much rather buy the spells and install them where I want them, when I want to do it.  When this automatic install occurs in a dungeon run, it is a pain.
6. Pandas are ugly in appearance and have stupid-looking movements.  The males remind me of Kung Fu Panda, which I did not care for in the least, but was commercially successful and quite well-known.  I am continually reminded of a non-WoW property being used in WoW.
7. Pet battles.  This is strongly derivative of Pokemon, a very long running anime television series and card game--which I do not care for in the least, and hate to see imported to WoW.
8. Panda newbie area: the cursed pools are a direct ripoff of Ranma 1/2, a Japanese anime series (and manga) which ran for seven years.  This makes at least 3 direct 'borrowings' of popular anime series.  Someone more familiar with anime and manga would probably find even more examples.  Blizzard should do better; this smacks of intellectual property theft.
9. The elimination of the tie between the size of total Intellect and the size of the mana pool: again, Blizzard decides for you what should be determined by individual planning and effort.  My mana using characters no longer manage mana, since they are no longer able to exhaust it. One would conjecture that mana will be eliminated in all classes, just as it was eliminated in Hunters, in favor of something limiting and not controllable, such as focus.
10. The dropping of reputation based buffs for head gear.  What was Blizzard thinking?
11. The elimination of the 'ranged' slot: there is no longer separate slots for wands, bows, guns, and relics.  This continues the 'dumb-down everything' trend noted above.  For hunters in particular, the tactics are changed.  One does not have to separate near and far combat.
12. Multi-looting.   This seems like a good idea, but the implementation is seriously flawed.  About half the time, my characters get stuck looting.  No, it is not all the time.  Having one's characters freeze in place, while the game may or may not complete the auto-loot is dangerous for the characters' health, especially in dungeons or near high spawn rate areas (hozen and the like).
13.  Cooking, farming, Tillers---what is this?  Farmville?  Yet another ripoff?
14. Some of the primary/secondary professions were just too easy.  Getting from 525 skill level to 600 was almost effortless.  Mining, Inscription, and First Aid come to mind.

C.  As I take my level (89, 87, 86, 85) characters to level 90 I'll have more comments.  Also, I will have more to say about what I've outlined in A and B above. As I take my three monk characters (one DPS, one healer, one tank) from level one to as high a level as far as I can stand working with them.  My level 30 DPS character is my favourite so far.  The healer (level 14) might be OK, but the tank (level 13) is really foul so far.  Hopefully the tank will improve.