#1 - April 3, 2012, 8:58 a.m.
Overall, the Monk feels pretty good. Soothing Mists and Surging Mists is a great mechanic and it works well. I definitely felt like I had good single-target burst and could react to situations, but I also felt like I had to be careful with mana. As a replacement for the triplet of small/fast/big heals other classes have, it works great. Top notch; this is a great mechanic and very creative.
Renewing Mists felt pretty good. I think it will feel stronger in a raid, but it was decent at topping people off. The default UI makes it hard to see who has it (or, at least, hard for me to see since I'm not used to it). Uplift worked well with it, and Thunder Focus Tea synergized pretty well. There were times where my AOE heals did feel a little weak (but that could just be Anger and Strife being really over-tuned). Revival is insanely strong for AOE burst but it's so rarely usable that I'm not totally blown away by it.
DPS healing is, well, kind of non-existent right now -- 1.8% from Jade Statues, 9% from Chi Wave, 2% from Expel Harm. On trash, it's okay (particularly Spinning Crane Kick), but on bosses, it doesn't provide much healing and there isn't much downtime (with the exception of Chi Wave which is a nice instant heal). Also the cooldown on placing statues is really painful and overly punishing. Honestly I'd rather just be able to place them anytime; at 1.5s cast for a 45k total heal, it really isn't that over-powered. Since Clobber/Jab/Slice/Tiger Palm don't seem to scale with spell power, it's pretty flat; not sure how well it will scale, but it needs something. Having a 1s GCD on melee like when in Fierce Tiger would be nice.
Healing Spheres may not have even existed. 3.8% of my healing on the first two bosses (sadly, I only logged my second run through) -- less than Eye of Blazing Power, which is generally not regarded as a decent trinket. I just don't see how people are going to make use of the Mastery procs. Perhaps it isn't proc'ing often enough or perhaps they just don't get used. I like the idea of them but at least in 5 mans, as a mastery proc, they really just don't do much yet. Hopefully it's just a bug but right now it feels like a very, very worthless stat.
Mana management is a little tight but workable. It would be nice to have some kind of residual heal besides Renewing Mists to toss out before drinking Cherry Mana Tea. Chi Wave is okay for this except the targettng is rough. Anger and Strife is crazy intense but, again, I think that's the encounter -- other encounters were okay. I felt like I had to manage my mana and not hammer Surging Mists.
Chi Management is interesting. Besides the occasional seemingly random-healing Chi Wave, though, it feels strictly like something used for keeping up Renewing Mists via Uplift. It would be nice to be able to cast Thunder Focus Tea while channeling Soothing Mists. Right now, though, it feels like Chi flows very freely but there really aren't great things to spend it on (perhaps Soothing Mists should do something else rather than award Chi if you have full Chi, some proc or residual or something). Some kind of Chi dump that performed a single target heal or, better yet, had a true single-target HoT would be really nice. Actually a HoT definitely feels like it's missing, and would be helpful for stabilizing when using Cherry Mana Tea.
Overall, there's a lot of promise. I've healed pretty much everything in Cata progression on my priest (as well as non-progression since TBC). I think the raw blocks are there. Monk definitely feels like a new class, and especially the Mists are just top notch mechanics. The interaction of the GCD with Surge/Sooth is very nice and felt very natural. I think there is a lot to adapt to but it feels solid overall. DPS healing is a little rough (scaling in particular worries me; we need something that makes Int turn into C/J/S damage) and statue cooldowns are just painful, but I'm sure that's still in active development.
Bugs: Cherry Mana Tea breaks on damage. Made Anger and Strife a little tough. Jasmine Force Tea seems to cost 12k mana per tick, not 6k. It basically is unusable in a fight because of the mana cost, but really, Soothing Mists generates Chi fast enough anyway. Chi Wave can hit Horde in sanctuaries and damage them (and probably kill them).