Brewmaster monks are in pretty good shape in Warlords of Draenor. The lost some abilities, as did everyone else, and had the usual tweaks and such, but still retain their ability to be serious tanks. You can check out the Warlords Monk changes here.
They use active mitigation to do their job and may require a bit more attention to certain details than other tanks, but the reward is excellent tanking abilities if you can handle that detail. Brewmasters can be very effective at mitigating massive damage.
This page is for Brewmaster Monk tanking, in PvE. If you want PvP or some other flavor of Monkish activity then see our links just below. Have something to add? Comment below.
Brewwmaster Contents |
This Brewmaster Monk guide is primarily intended for dungeon/raid tanking use at level 100. However, the principals will still apply during the leveling process and a few notes to that extent will be included below.If you want the same in-game step by step leveling guide that we use to get to level 100 as fast as possible, take a look at our favorite in-game leveling guide.
Our Other Monk Guides:
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Brewmaster Monk Tanking Talents
Certain talents are better for some situations, while other talents might be better at other times. Keep a stack of Tome of the Clear Mind for switching talents (and glyphs.)
Descriptions are below the image (comment if you want to discuss) and our picks are checked: 
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Tier 1, Level 15:
Tier 1 offers us three mobility enhancing talents. None will increase your tanking ability, so which you pick really depend on what feels best to you. Tiger’s Lust offers the greatest speed increase, but also has the shortest duration. The other two improve your consistent mobility, but can’t be cast on other players.
- Celerity is one of two options this tier that enhance roll and Chi Torpedo, increasing the limit of charges by 1 and reducing the cooldown time by a small amount. It’s a nice overall movement boost and you don’t have to activate it. It’s a passive ability, one less thing to think about, and it will give you quite a few more rolls over the length of a fight. Take this if you want more rolls.
- Tiger’s Lust gives us a speed increasing, PvP triket type spell that can be cast on both ourselves and others (such as a healer or off-tank.) No Chi cost. Especially useful if you need clutch movement and snare/root breaking. It’s basically a “Sprint” every 30 seconds and provides the best clutch movement for most situations. It’s especially nice if you do the occasional PvP.
- Momentum is a passive that causes our Roll and Chi Torpedo abilities to grant us a speed increase for a short time, stacking up to 2 times. This has it’s uses, one being when you have to move a large distance. It’s also a passive ability, one less thing to think about, and gives a nice movement boost. Note that it does not break free of effects, unlike Tiger’s Lust.
Tier 2, Level 30:
Forget any of these for raid healing, as they’re pretty useless for that. Which one heals you the most and increases your damage/threat/etc?
- Chi Wave is a basic chain heal type ability. It’s best used for soloing content and fall behind the others in other situations.
- Zen Sphere summons a sphere that periodically heals the target (you) and damages the nearest enemy. Zen Sphere can be detonated early for a small burst of AoE healing. For Brew it’s a decent heal that adds to your damage and threat. It has no cost and the shortest cooldown.
- Chi Burst is best used for healing a stacked up raid. That it has a cast time is a minus. Much better for MW monks than Brews.
Tier 3, Level 45:
- Power Strikes passively causes our Chi generating attacks to generate an additional 1 Chi once every 20 seconds. This is the best general pick of this tier. If you’re already at max Chi the additional Chi is not wasted, but takes the form of a Chi Sphere next to you. You can use your Chi using abilities then grab the sphere(s) for more.
- Ascension increases your maximum Chi by 1 and your energy regeneration. It’s a decent passive, but does fall behind the other two in overall value.
- Chi Brew instantly restores all of our Chi on a 1 minute cooldown. Not a bad talent, but Power Strikes will give more Chi/energy overall. This one could be nice for emergency use. Mostly it depends on how you do your Brewmastering. Useful when you need a bit of burst or have to pick up an add when your resources are low.
Tier 4, Level 60:
None of these have much of an effect on your tanking, so pick what you like.
- Ring of Peace forms an 8 yard sanctuary around one friendly target for 8 seconds, incapacitating all enemies in the area for 5 seconds (this “stun” breaks on damage.) Not terribly useful for raid content, but might be good in dungeons or PvP.
- Charging Ox Wave stuns all targets in its path up to 30 yards away. A decent option for stunning targets you need to catch up to/grab threat on. Also good when kiting (stunning) a bunch of target at range, such as incoming adds. Note that you do have to aim it accurately.
- Leg Sweep stuns all nearby enemies (within a 5 yard radius) on a 45 seconds cooldown. Nice anytime you’re dealing with groups that can be stunned and you don’t need the ranged stun of the Ox Wave.
Tier 5, Level 75:
Which one is best depends greatly on the type of damage that you’re taking, though Dampen Harm is a decent default pick.
- Healing Elixirs adds a small heal to our use of Brew/Tea abilities. Not bad, but not exactly a great survival ability for when you’re taking heavy damage either. It’s decent if you’re not really concerned about survival.
- Dampen Harm is particularly good against short periods of heavy damage. If you’re going up against a lot of magic damage then take Diffuse Magic.
- Diffuse Magic is very helpful against magic damage heavy fights, pointless in all others. If the boss is going to burn you to ash then this is the one to take. You get 6 seconds of near immunity to magic damage. For non-magical damage you should be using Dampen Harm.
The best choice in my opinion is either Dampen Harm or Diffuse Magic depending on whether a fight is loaded with magical damage or not.
Tier 6, Level 90:
- Rushing Jade Wind is an AoE effect, best used for groups of targets. It replaces your Spinning Crane Kick.
- Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger is somewhat useful and best used in situations where the taunt isn’t going to cause any problems. It adds to your DPS and taunts the target away from you (which might be a decent survival mechanic.)
- Chi Torpedo doesn’t offer anything interesting to us at this time. It’s basically an improved roll and the damage and heal are hardly worth the effort.
Tier 7, Level 100:
- Soul Dance allows you to Stagger a small amount (30% of your normal Stagger amount) of magic damage. Your other cooldowns should cover this damage well enough, but it might be useful in some magic heavy fights.
- Chi Explosion replaces your Blackout Kick and is a nice DPS increase, perhaps cutting down your survival a bit since you’re not using that Chi on survival abilities. Take this if DPS is more important than survival.
- Serenity is used when you are at full Chi and instantly refunds any Chi use for 10 seconds. Useful in any situation where you want to spend lots of Chi over 10 seconds (90 second cooldown.)
Brewmaster Monk Tanking Glyphs
- Glyph of Expel Harm – Highly recommended. It reduces the cost Expel Harm, by 5 Energy, when you’re 35% or lower. This make it available a bit more often.
- Glyph of Touch of Death – how often do you use T of D? If you only use it occasionally then this glyph saves those three chi to use on other abilities. If you use it frequently, such as in dungeon content, then this will cut down the number of times you can use it with its 2 min. cooldown.
- Glyph of Fortifying Brew – More damage reduction (5% more) makes up for a smaller (10% instead of 20%) health gain.
- Glyph of Zen Meditation – Let’s you move while using ZM, which will occasionally be very useful.
- Glyph of Guard – Only useful on magic heavy fights.
- Glyph of Stoneskin – Only useful if you’re looking at a fight with bleeds.
Minor Glyphs
The minors are mostly just cosmetic, such as a color change, but a couple add a bit of convenience.
- Glyph of Spirit Roll – Can roll when dead, so you get back to your body a bit quicker. Hopefully you’re not dying often enough to find this to be useful.
- Glyph of Water Roll – Can roll over water, which is often nice outside of raids.
Brewmaster Monk Tanking: Stat Priorities
Hit and Expertise died in Warlords and they don’t look like they’re coming back.
You have two new stats, Multistrike and Versatility, that aren’t very useful for Brewmastering. There are some tertiary stats, which only appear randomly on PvE gear, but which you can’t stack with gems, enchants, or anything else. These are Speed, Avoidance, Leech, Bonus Armor, and gem sockets.
‘>’ = “better than”
- Priority: Agility > Bonus Armor > Mastery > Crit > Multistrike > Versatility > Haste
- Look for Mastery/Crit gear.
Agility is #1 as it improves everything important: damage and Dodge.
Bonus Armor is a new “tank only” stat which increases your effective armor and your attack power, and it increases the latter more than any lesser stat.
Mastery: Increases your Stagger and your Attack Power, so is your most important stat (after Bonus Armor) for survival.
Crit: Arguably the best avoidance stat, since it powers your Elusive brew. Crits do 200% damage.
Multistrike gives you two chances at an additional strike or heal at 30% effect. Multistrikes can crit. Note that if you have 10% Multistrike you only have a 1% chance (10% x 10%) to actually get that bonus hit twice. So MS is less valuable than Crit, especially since it doesn’t proc anything in particular.
Haste should offer faster energy regen, cooldowns, etc., but scales badly and, as a result, doesn’t actually offer much.
Stamina: Stam that you find on your gear will be sufficient, which is fortunate since you cannot gem or enchant for it.
See the video below for an in-depth discussion on gearing.
Brewmaster In-Depth Rotation Guide
You should always be in Stance of the Sturdy Ox and your Black Ox Statue should always be active.
As a Brewmaster, your tanking ability is based on generating and expending Chi to generate a variety of effects, heal, apply debuffs, etc. Additionally, a key part of your tanking ability is due to Stagger, an effect which splits the damage you take into both a certain amount of instant damage and the remainder which takes the form of a short DoT.
While Stagger doesn’t actually reduce the amount of damage taken, it does prevent you from taking full damage up front which is enough to help survive in a number of situations. Additionally, the DoT effect generated by staggered damage can be removed through use of Purifying Brew which allows you to effectively ‘drop’ damage that you would have otherwise suffered.
- Shuffle increases the amount of damage staggered.
- Jab is your default melee attack used to generate Chi.
- Keg Smash should be used on cooldown save for when the 2 Chi it adds will be wasted.
Use Expel Harm when possible assuming you’re missing health so the self-heal will be beneficial. Desperate Measures (level 45) removes the cooldown on Expel Harm when you’re below 35% health.
- Blackout Kick should be used once every 6 seconds to maintain Shuffle.
- Tiger Palm should be used quite often both as a filler attack and for the buffs it provides, the armor-ignore damage increase from Tiger Power.
When facing multiple targets, maintain the Dizzying Haze debuff and Breath of Fire DoT on all targets.
- Use Spinning Crane Kick if facing a large group of targets.
- Provoke is our standard single target taunt ability.
- Purifying Brew allows you to drop staggered damage, use it whenever the amount of staggered damage reaches a high level.
- Elusive Brew is a damage avoidance cooldown best saved for periods of spiking, heavy damage. Charges of Elusive Brew are built by your auto-attack critical strikes. You can have up to a maximum of 15 stacks of Elusive Brew.
- Guard should be used as often as possible.
- Fortifying Brew is best used in anticipation of heavy damage when the damage mitigation will take full effect.
Tier 3 Talent Abilities
- Power Strikes is a passive, meaning you don’t have to worry about managing it.
- Chi Brew is best saved as a survivability cooldown for when you instantly need Chi to use on abilities such as Purifying Brew or Blackout Kick.
- Ascension is a passive increase.
Tier 5 Talent Abilities
- Healing Elixir adds a healing effect to your use of Elusive Brew, Chi Brew, Fortifying Brew, and Purifying Brew. This effect has a 15 second cooldown.
- Dampen Harm should be used in anticipation of heavy damage.
- Diffuse Magic similarly should be used just before you take heavy magical damage.
Tier 6 Talent Abilities
- Rushing Jade Wind is useful for AoE situations and generating the Shuffle effect.
- Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger should be used as often as possible during a fight for maximum effect both damage wise and from the taunt.
Gemming the Brewmaster Monk
Gemming changed a bit in Warlords. For one, you will not have several pieces of gear each with two or three gem sockets.
- Gem sockets are actually few and far between. They have a (small) random chance to appear on Raid/PvE gearand those that do are “prismatic,” which means that they will take any available gem. Only one socket will appear on any given piece of gear. Chances are you won’t have more than 3 or 4 gems total.
- The gems themselves are all prismatic, as are the sockets,.None of the new gems have primary stats (Int, Ag, Str) they all have secondary stats (Mastery, etc.) There are no Meta sockets or meta gems.
- Older (Mists of Pandaria) gems work until item level 600, but the item squish cut them down a bit. What used to be 160 Ag is now 10, for example.
- Any of the older gems that codes for Hit or Expertise now code for Crit or Haste instead.
The lesser gems are far less expensive than the better ones. See our gold guide if you need help picking up some extra gold to buy the things.
Gemming:
- Mastery for survival
- Crit for damage
| Gems for Warlords of Draenor | ||
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| Prismatic |
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| Mists of Pandaria Gems, for gear under ilevel 600. | ||
| Meta | Capacitive Primal Diamond: +20 Critical Strike, and chance on melee or ranged hit to gain Capacitance Agile Primal Diamond: 14 Agil & 3% Increased Crit Effect Austere Primal Diamond: 20 stam and 2% more armor from items |
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| Red | Delicate Primordial Ruby: 10 Agility | |
| Yellow | Fractured Sun’s Radiance: 20 Mastery Smooth Sun’s Radiance: 20 Crit |
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| Blue | Rigid River’s Heart: +20 Crit | |
| Orange | Polished Vermilion Onyx: 5 Agility, 10 Dodge | |
| Purple | Glinting Imperial Amethyst: 5 Ag, 10 Crit | |
| Green | Jagged Wild Jade: +10 Critical Strike and +8 Stamina Sensei’s Wild Jade: +10 Crit and +10 Mastery |
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| Cogwheel | Smooth Tinker’s Gear: 38 Crit – requires an engie helm, such as this. Fractured Tinker’s Gear: 38 Mastery Subtle Tinker’s Gear: 38 Dodge |
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Enchants for Drunken Brewmaster Monks
Short on gold? Most of the enchants below have similar enchants available, of lesser value, for less cash. We’ve linked to a couple of these. Check with the rep vendor or the Auction House for others. If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Tycoon Addon can do about about improving your situation.
Warlords Notes: There are no head enchants, all shoulder enchants come from the Inscription profession and are only for items under item level 600. There are new enchants for Neck, Cloak, Weapons, and your Rings. Not for any other pieces. (Not yet, anyway.)
The enchants are unchanged for patch 6.2.
| Enchantments | |
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| Weapons Main and off hands |
Mists
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| Cloak |
Mists
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| Neck |
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| Rings |
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| Other enchants, for gear under item level 600. | |
| Shoulders |
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| Chest |
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| Bracers |
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| Gloves |
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| Belt |
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| Leggings |
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| Boots |
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Brewmaster Consumables
Warlords has no foods that buff primary stats (Ag, etc.,) only the secondaries. Chow down on either crit or mastery, whichever best suits the job at the time.
Note that Pandarens get twice the food buff. All food buffs last one hour. Food buffs go away when killed, flasks do not. Your agility flask is better than any pair of elixirs.
Foods
- Pickled Eel: +125 Crit
- Sleeper Sushi: +125 Mastery
- Savage Feast: feeds 30, 100 in Highest secondary stat, this is produced by your barn’s work orders, not Cooking.
- Blackrock Barbecue: 100 Crit
- Sleeper Surprise: 100 Mastery
Agility Foods
- Sea Mist Rice Noodles: 34 Ag
- Valley Stir Fry: 31 Ag
Flasks
- Greater Draenic Agility Flask: 250 Ag for an hour
- Draenic Agility Flask: 200 Ag for an hour
- Flask of Spring Blossoms: 114 Ag for one hour
Potions
- Draenic Agility Potion: +1,000 Ag for 25 seconds
- Draenic Armor Potion: +1,500 Bonus Armor for 25 seconds. Note that this will also increase your attack power.
- Virmen’s Bite: 456 Ag for 25 seconds. If you pop one immediately before combat you will be able to pop another during combat.
- Draenic Rejuvenation Potion: Heals ~68k HP
- Darkwater Potion: When 15 seconds of faster running/swimming might be useful.
- Draenic Swiftness Potion: +70% movement or +200% swim speed for 8 seconds.
Rune
- Hyper Augment Rune: +50 Agility for one hour. Occasionally drops from WoD bosses (in Raid Finder mode) and is also rarely found as mission rewards from your Garrison. Stacks with flasks and other buffs.
Other
- Runescroll of Fortitude III: 8% increased Stamina to your entire group.
- Oralius’ Whispering Crystal: +200 to all stats.
- Tents: (not usable in raids or arenas) These account bound items are available through your leatherworking hut, from the follower that you assigned to that hut. All the tents do the same thing, which is to add 10% to all stats for an hour. Very nice if you’re doing anything outside of the raid.
Race Choices for the Brewmaster Monk
The Worgen and and the Goblins are the only races which cannot become Monks.
With Warlords all racials for Hit or Expertise died. Every race now brings at least something to the DPS table, a few offer something for survival.
Pandaren
- Can be either Horde or Alliance
- Better buffs from food is a nice benefit. 250 Mastery Vs 125, from food, isn’t bad.
- Rested XP lasts longer, for faster leveling.
- Melee range stun will have use on trash mobs and occasional low level bosses.
- Take less falling damage.
Alliance Monks
Human
- Diplomacy skills make rep gains less grinding
- Escape ability will have occasional use
- Bonus Versatility will add a bit to your survival and your DPS.
Dwarf
- Storm form washes away some effects and reduces damage by 10%, which will have occasional use when things get tough.
- +2 Critical effect for bigger crits.
Night Elf
- 2% Dodge is a fairly nice stat for Brewmasters and all tanks.
- Shadowmeld is perfect for those times when you’re tired of your group and you want the boss to kill them. Fade away, lose aggro, they die. Otherwise it’s pretty useless for a tank.
- +1% Crit by day, which is nice, and +1% Haste by night, which isn’t so hot.
Gnome
- A bit more Energy is always nice.
- Your Escape will find occasional use.
Draenei
- Bonus to Agility is pretty nice.
- The self-heal is always useful
Horde Monks
Orc
- Blood Fury is very nice for those times when you need a bit extra damage and threat.
- Resistance to stun effects will only be rarely useful in PvE
Troll
- Berserk isn’t quite as nice as the Orc’s Blood Fury, since Haste isn’t a great stat for Brew.
- Increased XP Vs beasts will be helpful if you’re leveling.
Undead
- The ability to remove fear and other effects is occasionally useful.
- Touch of the Grave is a small DPS add and also heals you for the amount that it drains.
- Indefinite Underwater Breathing doesn’t have any real use, if you’re not questing, but might be fun for pranks.
Tauren – My mind boggles at Taurens doing spinning kicks.
- Additional Stam doesn’t scale well at very high levels, but is still nice.
- War stomp will have definite use against trash.
- +2 Critical effect for bigger crits.
Blood Elf
- Arcane Torrent will silence casters, which is situationally useful.
- +1% to your Crit rating.
Professions for the Brewmaster Monk
In Warlords there are no professions bonuses. No special stat boosts that characters without the profession cannot get. The only profession that provides a stat buff, to yourself or anyone else, is cooking (such as +125 to Mastery or Crit or whatever.)
Professions now are for the gear and/or the gold. Most have something that can be used as starting raid/pvp gear or sold, such as ilevel 640 gear pieces. Leveling a profession can be done quickly and relatively easily once you get the Draenor version.
Some of the professions, eg: Engineering, have really useful items for leveling and world events. They’re not usable in raids, however (sigh.. no firing rockets at the boss…)
Recommended? Inscription for the glyphs and a staff, Leatherworking for the armor. Upgrade both to the max. Or just buy the things from a friendly crafter or off the Auction House (expensive.)
| Useful (and not) Brewmaster Professions | |
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| Tailoring | Cloth armor, flying carpet, murlock chew toy and allows you to make nets (Embersilk Net) and battle standards (such as: Fearsome Battle Standard) |
| Leatherworking | will let you make entry level armor for raids (ilevel 640.) You can also make the items to reroll the stats and also to upgrade the items to 685, at a cost far exceeding that of the original piece. You can also make Drums of Fury for a Heroism type buff (25% Haste for 40 sec.) Through the Leatherworking hut in your Garrison you can make single use tents that will increase your agility by 10% for an hour. |
| Jewelcrafting | You can make useful (ilevel 640) rings and neck items, pretty gems, gemmed mounts. I recommend leatherworking for the crafted items, though. |
| Enchanting | Enchant all those items and you can cast illusionary enchants. These are basically transmogs for your current enchant. Want your current enchant to look like an older one? Then this is for you. |
| Inscription | Glyphs, some trinkets, caster weapons, fortune & Darkmoon cards, and more. You can also make and upgrade your staff, as well as some trinkets. |
| Alchemy | Chemistry is fun, unfortunately you can’t make acids or bombs. You can make flasks and potions to boost stats and cause other interesting effects. You can also make a very nice DPS trinket:Draenic Philosopher’s Stone, requires Alchemy 500. This item is upgradable. |
| Engineering | Nothing here for the raid, but will let you create a number of useful items, such as rockets, shields, a stealth device, etc. These cannot be used in rated PvP, but that can be used elsewhere, such as World PvP or in Highmaul Coliseum. |
| Blacksmithing | Nothing here for Brewmasters except for some blades. Can also craft Mail and Plate armor and weapons. Keys for locks. |
| Skinning | For gold gathering and for leatherworking |
| Herbalism | For Inscription, Alchemy, and gold gathering |
| Mining | Making gold and powering Blacksmithing and some engineering. |
“How to Brewmaster” videos
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The Fast Monk Leveling Guide
Once upon a time, while leveling, you had to look up quest details on some website. There was no in-game help and you had to trundle along as best you could. That was when there were only 60 levels. Now we have the new(ish) Monk class, 100 levels, thousands of quests, and a bazillion mobs to kill. Whether or not you’re playing a Monk that’s a daunting task.
Here’s how to make it easy: Now you have a guide which sits in-game, in a small window, and shows you step-by-step where to go, what to do, and everything you need to know to make leveling easier. Dugi’s Guide shows you the best and fastest path to complete those quests and get yourself to the top levels ASAP.
Want to get a level, or several levels, in the dungeons or in PvP? No problem. Dugi’s will remember where you left off and then it will figure out where you should be at your new level and pick up from there.
Brand new to WoW? Decked head to toe in Heirlooms? Mixing up questing with PvP and/or dungeons? No problem, Dugi has your back all the way from level 1 to the level cap, or whichever level you start from.
Dugi’s in-game guide is always quickly updated for all patches and expansions, so it’s never obsolete. Grab yours here and get leveled fast. Maybe you’ll even be able to match their time to 100.
Related Postings (AKA: Check out these pages next)
- Brewmaster Monk PvP – Yes, it can be fun. No, you won’t top the arena lists.
- Mistweaver Healing for PvE
- Windwalker DPS Guide – Kicking your way to the top of the DPS charts
- Windwalker PvP – Kicking butt and talking names.
- Monkish Postings – Our blog posts for Monks
- Monk Leveling Guide – Tips to get to max level faster
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