Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Crowbar's Combo Breaker.. wait what is this?

Hello, I'm Crowbar and I play a windwalker monk in World of Warcraft.

This is going to be a blog of my personal adventures though World of Warcraft. So to get started let me tell you a little about myself and why you should continue to read on or blacklist this site and never come back again. Lets start with my raiding history and where I've come from.

I started playing wow back in vanilla raiding as a hunter in the 40 man guild <DPS> on US Bloodscalp. We cleared everything from MC to Naxx 40, being the first to open the gates of AQ40 at a time where it was a very different game and the progression race was very different.



From there I raided as a priest in various guilds through the Burning Crusade expansion pack until I ended up in <Death and Taxes> for Sunwell. When Wrath of the Lich king launched I took a break from the game through Naxx progression and brought my priest out of retirement for Ulduar progression where I raided in a guild called Harmonium where I continued to progress until I was recruited by <Gong Show> for heroic ToC progression.



The end of Wrath I wasn't in a cutting edge guild, however I had swapped to a warrior and found the love of tanking, where I killed the Heroic Lich King as a warrior tank at a time warriors were hated.



Then came Cataclysm... yeah lets not talk about Cata, maybe we'll leave that story for another post.

So then we must be at Mists of Pandaria, yay current content, well almost. MoP was very strange for me coming back to the game, I started out as a mage, switched to a holy pally which became ret and bounced back and forth between a few classes. Then one day I said to myself, hey I want to play a monk. Knowing nothing about the class and not doing any research I leveled one to cap and wanted to be the best DPS monk in the game.

With my ambition and a start in a casual guild I was ready, however there was just one problem. No one wanted a DPS monk and I had no idea how to play one at all, but since I had a background in tanking I was forced to spec my monk tank, and at the time I was less than thrilled about the decision but I did it anyway.



Also be prepared for lots of images and gifs on this blog (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED). Then something incredible happened, with no clue what a Brewmaster was or how to Keg Smash things I fell in love with the launch of Throne of Thunder. I quickly found out that Brewmasters could not only do lots of damage, but with the awesome damage output you could put out some crazy heals while not taking any damage.


So then came the question, why would anyone ever want to play another class or spec when Brewmasters were so overpowered. I never found the answer to that question, however there was a problem, now that I was back into the swing of things and I had learned how to play my class, I quickly grew tired of the guild I was in with the lack of progression and poor skill from the players around me.

Since no guilds were recruiting tanks I made the decision to start my own guild for Throne of Thunder Progression. Now I had not lead a raid in years, nor did I know where I was going to get 24 other people to raid with (because who really wants to do 10man, really?). There was one saving factor, I was on Mal'Ganis, a realm with tons of people on it all the time, and you know what I ended up finding 24 other people within a week and started my raiding guild <Incarnum>. We were by no means a great guild, however we were decent and we were damn proud of the fact that we were decent.



So Crowbar, what happened? You said you were a windwalker, not brewmaster, you're supposed to punch things. Yes currently I'm a windwalker monk and this story is by no means over so lets continue. As Siege of Orgrimmar was closer to launch my guild was getting cherry picked by other more progressed guilds on the server and recruitment became harder as attendance dwindled, so it came to the point where it was time to part ways with my guild and look for something else.

I happened to find something better in the guild <Apophasis> who at the time was US #6 by the end of Throne of Thunder. Now this was a 10 man guild, however everyone in the guild was really really good. The raid environment was one of the best most laid back guilds I've ever had the pleasure of being apart of. I got to do what I enjoyed which was tank and progress in a new tier with top caliber players.



As Siege launched we kicked ass, getting four top 5 world kills the week heroics opened. Then came the Galakras bug which killed our rank because we could not pull the boss. We went from world 5 to world 26 in the matter of a few hours. With this the morale of the guild started to fall apart and people started making simple mistakes making our decline into the rest of the tier that much worse.


Don't get me wrong we were still a damn good guild, but we went from getting top world kills to top US kills and let me tell you there's a big difference between top 5 world and top 5 US. With the guild morale continuing to decline and the desire to raid from other members of the guild just dying we ended our Siege of Orgrimmar progression at Siegecrafter Blackfuse World 99 US 20 and decided to call it quits the week before Blizzcon.


I guess you could say we were not prepared to stick through it and see the end of the tier. So that leaves us to where we are now. At this time I'm a heroic geared brewmaster tank who is bummed that he doesn't have a guild to raid with and ready to call it quits. Just as I was about to give up and quit raiding for good I decided to take a chance and apply to another guild.


Knowing no top end guild would want a tank since most guilds are set on tanks I applied as a windwalker to the guild <Tyranny>.


Tyranny is a 14/14H guild who finished progression around the time <Apophasis> would have finished progression and they ended the tier at US 19th 25m. This guild has a long history of being very good and it shows in the way they play. I am currently in my trial period with the guild as their only windwalker monk. So I guess that means things have come full circle and I can actually achieve my original goal of wanting to be the very best DPS monk there is.

With a core of solid members to learn from and the most organized guild leadership I've ever seen I now only had one problem. I've tanked for so long that I still have no clue how to play a windwalker monk. So this leaves me with a big challenge, learn how to optimize and play a class to compete with people who are some of the best caliber players in their current roles.

This brings us back to the whole concept of my blog and what it's going to continue to be about. Since I have no clue how to play a windwalker I'm going to document my findings so you can learn from my experiences. Will I learn how to dominate the world of monks and become one of the best windwalkers the game has seen? Will I fail miserably and get kicked from my guild and have to start from scratch? Or will I be mediocre at the role and put out decent numbers until the new expansion comes out and everything changes again?

I guess we will find out. Now I do have some knowledge of the class as I've been playing it throughout the expansion. I've been a trail in the guild for about six weeks now and have learned a lot about windwalkers and what makes them tick. My next few posts will go over what I've learned so far and some of the huge mistakes I've made which have been great learning experiences for me.



I hope you learn from my mistakes and find this site as a good source of information for windwalker monks not only for 5.4 content but going forward into Warlords of Draenor where I will go in depth with changes and we'll learn how to play again come WoW 6.0. If you like you can check out my live stream at http://www.twitch.tv/crowbarx/profile I go live every Tuesday, Wed, Thurs and Sunday from 6pm MST - 10pm MST. You can follow me on twitter @ericlovato and visit my youtube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/Worthog where I will be posting videos of my findings and continue to improve my class.


Please feel free to send me messages on what you would like to see going forward or if you liked this content, if you hated it, lets get interactive and keep things fun. My next post will go heavily into theorycrafting and how to use SimCraft and what it means for windwalkers.

Until Next Time,
-Crowbar

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