2012 October » World of Monkcraft

Guide updates

Uncategorized No Responses »

Oct 162012

Finally had a chance to go back through and update all the guide posts. Here’s the changes.

Brewmaster:

Now recommending Chi Wave over Zen Sphere for self-healing purposes.
Noted that Avert Harm is more useful in combination with Zen Meditation.
Added some more discussion about glyphs.
Completely redid the stat weight section to emphasize that there are many different ways to reforge, depending on your preferred outcome.

Mistweaver:

Clarified the differences and useful situations for Chi Wave/Chi Burst/Zen Sphere. Switched recommendation from RJW to Xuen.
Recommended CJL a bit more.
Reworked the rotations to empathize Enveloping Mist more and Surging Mist less.
Typo fixes.

Windwalker:

Added the missing professions section. (Oops.)
Talked about DW being slightly stronger than 2H.
Added information about AoE rotations; Single-target for 1/2 targets, ST with a SCK subbed for Jab for 3/4, RSK/SCK spam with 5+.

More thoughts on monk talents

General Monk, Uncategorized 4 Responses »

Oct 152012

I wrote a column for WoW Insider digging deeper into monk talent choice; you can find it here. (I’m updating the guides, slowly; I’ll have a roundup post in a few days with all the changes.) For the most part, I’m pretty impressed with the talent choices that are out there, though some could definitely use improvement. Specifically, I’d like to see:

Tiger’s Lust lose the chi cost or become a baseline ability (or both)
Zen Sphere get some kind of AoE component when sustained (or make the detonation cheaper)
Ascension be buffed to increase the chi pool by 2
Deadly Reach range buff increased to 30 yards
Healing Elixirs scale with the number of stacks consumed
Chi Torpedo become a Tier 1 talent; replace it with something Ox-themed to keep the Tiger/Ox/Serpent theme.

Oh, and Leg Sweep probably needs a nerf, that thing is awesome. Anyway, what do you guys think about the current talents?

Brewmaster/Windwalker Ovale Scripts

Brewmaster, Windwalker 1 Response »

Oct 092012

I’ve had a few queries about Ovale scripts for monks. I was planning on writing one myself when I had time, but thankfully Nerien has compiled one already based on the rotation in my guide, so now I don’t have to! Yay! His script supports both Brewmaster and Windwalker. You can get it either by downloading the Nerien’s Ovale Scripts addon from Curse, or by copy/pasting from my forums, where I’ve reposted it. (I’ve posted it twice, to keep discussion properly categorized; here’s the windwalker thread, and here’s the brewmaster thread. I’d like to get some serious theorycraft discussion going if possible.)

Also, thanks to all who sent their condolences. My wife is doing better, and hopefully should be out of intensive care sometime next week.

Real life sucks, redux

Uncategorized 1 Response »

Oct 062012

(xposted on TFD and WoM)

Warning: Real life trauma ahead. This is not a happy post.

So, in my last post, I mentioned my wife was in the hospital. Well, things got worse.

Originally (last Monday), she was in for a routine intestinal hernia repair. No big deal, everything was great; hell, I brought my laptop in to her room, tethered it to my phone, and got the Realm First mining achievement Tuesday, plus a bunch of monk time. She was feeling great, so they discharged her and we came home.

Well, either during the surgery or sometime following (I’d say around Friday), she suffered an intestinal perforation. Unfortunately, I attributed her lethargy and fever to post-surgical blahs, and didn’t catch on that something else was going on until Tuesday of this week, when she spiked a 102+ fever. I brought her in to the ER, thinking she just needed some antibiotics or something; she was immediately admitted and sent off to emergency surgery. The intestinal perforation had caused contents to leak into the bloodstream, which caused her body to go into sepsis (infection of the blood) and then septic shock.

It’s now five days later. Things were very close for a few days; she’s had three surgeries since Tuesday to find the perforation, repair it, and attempt to fully clean the abdominal cavity of the infection. At this point, she’ll be okay, but she’s likely to be in the ICU for multiple weeks and the hospital for longer. She was airlifted to the Army medical center in San Antonio, so I’ll be living out of the San Antonio Fisher House for a while. I’d like to get back to playing and writing about WoW, so you’ll start seeing some more material here in a few days. (It’s either that, or sit here, stare at the wall, and mentally kick myself for not getting her to the hospital sooner.)

I’ve got about 200 emails/messages to get through, so if you’ve asked me a question, I will get to you, just give me some time. I’m finding it difficult to string higher-level thoughts together at the moment.

Chase (Alaron)