Post by Xirobe
I am currently leveling a gnome monk still in the teen levels as a tank, though I mostly do solo questing rather than dungeons.
My question is: Should I use double
Bloodsoaked Skullforge Reaver or double
Venerable Mass of McGowan?
Monks seem to use agility more than strength so I am leaning towards the maces. However, the sword have parry and also I have the
Nimble Fingers racial as a gnome which should give me expertise with the swords. I have no idea if Monks get anything out of expertise, though. (That's actually a secondary question I have.)
Any advice would be appreciated.
EDIT: Okay, I only just now saw that the sword is main-hand only. Whoops!
Post by Nulgar
There's also
Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge, a sword with Agility.
As a Windwalker/while soloing, you don't really need Parry, and Agility grants a bit of Dodge anyway. If you want to play as a Brewmaster tank often, I suggest
Burnished Warden Staff. Don't know exactly why, but Brewmasters prefer staves/polearms instead of 1-handed weapons.
Post by Xirobe
There's also
Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge, a sword with Agility.
As a Windwalker/while soloing, you don't really need Parry, and Agility grants a bit of Dodge anyway. If you want to play as a Brewmaster tank often, I suggest
Burnished Warden Staff. Don't know exactly why, but Brewmasters prefer staves/polearms instead of 1-handed weapons.
Thanks, and I shall definitely try out that staff! Looks like it has better stats than 2 McGowan maces. A bunch less speed though, but I don't know if weapon speed even affects a Monk's fighting.
Post by gbalkam
As a brewmaster, your primary stat is agility (exp at higher levels and when you can get it at lower, same as hit). So.. any combination of swords with agil is better than any sword with strength. However, even if you have 2 strength swords, they are still better than a caster staff with intel, which provides no benefit at all to your attack power. As a brewmaster, all you abilities are based on agility and attack power. So... even an uncommon green weapon with agility, is better than that BoA caster staff. If you have 2 agil swords, use those, you dont NEED a staff, your fighting style adjusts automatically, and you get 40% bonus damage i believe, from auto attacks? With a 2h stave, you get 40% attack speed bonus.
Now, considering you are a gnome, with short blade specialization, the bonus exp will be a big perk, considering it affects your chi generation (no hit, no chi). As for a stave vs 2x 1h weapons.. it really doesn't make much difference, except.. that 2x 1h weapons can be enchanted with +15 AGILITY each... vs +25 AGILITY on any 2h weapon. So for example, if your weapon, in the teen levels have say 2 agil per sword vs 5 agil on a stave.. the extra +5 agil is a major amount, easily 12% extra agility (guestimate math)
At the moment, I am also leveling a human brewmaster monk. Using the
Venerable Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge in my off hand with +15 agility, and
Battleworn Thrash Blade in my main hand with the
Enchant Weapon - Crusader enchant. The reason is... the chance of an extra free attack which means also an extra chance for my enchant to proc. I have that in my main hand, because the hit rate is higher than my off hand. I also have
Battle-Hardened Thrash Blade with the crusader enchant, and am considereing that for my off hand as well, since the upgraded model is unique and then non-upgraded model is unique, they count as different weapons. So you can actually equip both. ** I'll be replacing both around level 67+ when gemmed weapons become available, and at 77 with a cata green and 83 with a MoP weapon. (which will depend on how lucky I get with drops..lol).
So to recap.. the caster stave with intel is not as good at the agility swords, and since agility is your main damage mitigation stat, it means you will be squishy and harder to heal, and nothing drops faster than a mis-geared monk. As an example, think of how many times you died, and the healer kept everybody else up except you. Reason isn't that the healer is a fail, quite the contrary, the healer is probably awesome. The reason is, a mis-geared tank (monk or otherwise) takes damage faster than the healer can cast.
Most healers will tell you, that if there are no plate wearers in the party and the tank dies, they will pick a rogue as main healing target. Rogue tanks (much like brewmaster monks, the gear is almost identical) rely on agility to mitigate damage (massive dodge from agility). The idea of being a tank is A) mitigate as much damage as possible or B) get hit as little as possible. (I believe its 'stagger' for monks? This is also why protection warriors (for example) stack stamina, parry, dodge at low levels and stam and mastery (as much as they can get) at higher levels.
My 2nd alt is a prot warrior, so i refer to that for examples of tanking stats. The stats are different, but the mechanics are the same.. mitigate as much damage as possible while generating as much threat as possible.
BTW if you are thinking in terms of dps.. a tank will have lower single target dps than any dps class at the same level. Tanks get high dps from AoE attacks (keg smash or shield slam) for example. Don't worry about your dps, not your job. Taking a beating and holding aggro is your job. Do that, and you will be a great tank!
Footnote: IF you really want to level fast from 80-85 you can KEEP all your BoA armor that gives +experience. YOU MUST use the best cata and mop gear you can get in your other slots to make up for the loss in stats. (you also have to upgrade some of the items from (1-80) to (1-85). I just did this on a holy priest, and was op as heck in pve. Leveled from 1 to 85 in 10 days. (although i do play a lot) lol