So I recently gave up all hope on wizards ever being fixed, so I used my 100 boost to make a Monk. I absolutely love it. It is an extremely fun playstyle and is for sure my new main, however I have some AA questions. I have taken a look at several high level monk AA setups and none of them make any sense whatsoever. First off, why are people speccing for Crane Flock? Should we not already have 100% AE Auto? Nobody specs for Altruism, a very good death save. I've seen several people spec out of combat mastery and some for Draconic Shout, which seems relatively useless with the strength of the new adornments coming out, and a massive waste of points as it requires 31 points, where you would normally only get the mitigation from that tree. So could someone shed some light on the AA choices? Also confused on people speccing flurry in the brawler tree. 6% flurry for 8 points? Edit: Yes, I know I have some mistakes in my build currently, I went through and redid a few of them yesterday and wasn't paying attention.
Who have you been looking at? No monk I know run with Crane Flock, Never found Altruism to be that good only usage is if same person pulls aggro all the time (It sound like you think you can cast it on yourself wich is wrong). MAke sure you do not look at PG specs unless you plan to do PGs. (If everyone has same bad namesence as me it can be hard to make out wich one is wich. test1,test2,test3 ).
I know a lot of Monks that spec Crane Flock. I assume it is so they don't have to reforge to get AE Auto cap along with the almost insignificant 100 DPS boost. Depending on how a Monk decides to gear not all pieces will have AE on them making it difficult to cap without reforging. As far as Altruism I have never found it to be all that effective. I guess you could macro it to one player...healer maybe? But my opinion is that a single target death prevent for a monk is not worth the 10 points. It has a pretty long cool down also. Not to mention the points to get to Altruism...you will eventually cap reuse so you reforge...and 24 extra defense really does not mean all that much these days. If it were more like the Guardians Sentry Watch then I could see the undeniable benefit. Mantis Mastery is a no brainer, Swift Wings is completely a player choice and as I said imo has everything to do with reforge. That leaves Tiger Reflexes or Monkey Wisdom...most I know choose Tiger Reflexes although even that is easily capped these days. Draconic Shout I think is used in conjunction with rotating temps...maybe that short period where temps are down to boost health and give the Monk a quick heal. Draconic Shout has nothing to do with Combat Mastery, you seem to imply it is one or the other. I may be misunderstanding that part of your post. I am of the opinion most Monks should spec for CM, 8 seconds of maximum group melee damage is a damn good buff. However in some situations...Stone Cold(15% group damage reduction) is very helpful. Just my opinions on the subject. Best of luck.
I understand it isn't one or the oter, I meant that some people were taking Draconic Shout which doesn't make sense to me and some people are also not taking Combat mastery, which makes even less sense to me. They were unrelated, but I can see how I might have confused you. Thanks for the writeup!
Snikkety, I don't play a monk, but get the AAs that are comfortable to you. You can adjust later as you find a need to do so. Have fun and remember, the pointy end of the stick goes into the enemy, not into YOU!
I put it on the healer. And literally every single one i've seen in top raid guilds all spec crane flock. Which is why I was confused
The pointy end goes in me if I decide to not try and be a DPS monk and actually hold agro like a normal tank
Best Advice I can give you as a monk in one of the top guilds is that the brawler tree is pretty bad overall, like crane flock is basically useless because you already have 100 ae and auto attack unless being a geomancer is pretty useless except for triggering procs, altruism is one of the only semi useful things in that tree but you have to dump points somewhere to get Brawlers Tenacity so most high end raiders if they do have crane flock its more just along the lines of its not great but the rest of the options are worse and you have a lot of points spent in that line already. Only thing I can honestly say that you really must have is all 3 endline heroic abilitys atleast for a raid setting it is so worth it allowing you to run duel prestige for dragonfire resets without giving up any survival and Combat Mastery is just for DPS its a fairly large dps increase for your bard during RO's or a Beastlords primal chain even for yourself if you have neither in the group and just use it after perfect form isn't up for boneshattering stacks as threat doesn't scale well you have to be a high dps yourself or decent atleast.
One of my monk builds that I was testing almost completely ignored the brawler tree (Test 2). I started elsewhere. I'm working on gearing my monk so I can actively play it and tweak the AA trees to my preferred playstyle, but I think I'll drop the first tree again once I get the hang of tanking again as I've been maining a healer for 3 expacs.
There may be a lot of outdated stuff in the Brawler tree - unless you decide to run Proviong Grounds or join the TLE server - but it becomes essential as soon as you actively start grouping or raiding. You will need Mantis Leap, and even more important, Brawler's Tenacity.
