I… am… Merculees!

Monks. Peaceful, introspective, serene.

*Yawn*

Blessed with the power to destroy things with their bare hands.

…

Destroy things, and people.

Well hello, beautiful.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I just could not get into playing the Monk class. I’d played Monks in D&D, AD&D, and was a fan of Ken and Ryu in Street Fighter. Serenity now, but violence forever. Probably not the best way to approach it, but that’s how I roll. Needless to say, I am down with what Monks bring to the table.

A knuckle sandwich.

There’s definitely plenty of appeal to playing a monk – new techniques, new mechanics, the ability to tank/dps/heal without too much gear swapping. After a quick search, I also found they even had more class-specific podcasts than Death Knights did. A strong multimedia representation tells alot about the leetness of a class.

After my alt culling and accumulation of various heirloom items, I thought I would give the Monk a fair shake. I would use my two most effective leveling techniques – heirlooms and theZygor Leveling Guide – and take a Monk to Level 20. From what I’d read, that was where the Monk picked up some kind of class quest / daily quest that buffed them or something.

Whatever. Twenty levels would be enough to see if it would be a class worth continuing with.

I decided to go with a Human monk for two reasons. One, the Pandaren starting zone took too damn long to navigate between quests. The Human starting zone was compact, and the starter quests would be quick to knock out. Two, because my boy would be rocking The Rock’s look as Hercules (or as close as reasonably possible).

Drawing muscles on armor is so Batman. At least there’s no nipples on it.

And thus was born Merculees.

Do you smell what the Merc is cooking?

From the picture, you might notice a couple of things. One, his shoulders are cloth heirloom, not leather. Second, dude is bare chested. Let me try and explain both points. The cloth heirloom is there because I needed an heirloom item a leather wearing class could use, and I didn’t have the leather shoulders. The number crunches out there will point out that the stats on a cloth item do not help a monk worth a damn, since the AC is piss poor and Int doesn’t do shInt for DPS monks. I will point out that I’m leveling to twenty, not raiding Garrosh’s panty drawer. The only stat I care about on the shoulders is the one that buffs my XP.

As far as bare chested goes… dude’s got a wicked six pack. Why wouldn’t he want to show that off? And before you ask, no I don’t have the leather chest heirloom. I do have a cloth one, and I guess if I wanted to I could transmog it to look like something interesting instead of a robe. But like I said before, I’m only leveling to twenty. He could probably do that naked, and if I wasn’t in a hurry to reach twenty maybe he would.

I’ve gone ten levels so far, and I admit I’m liking it more than I had in previous attempts. But we’ll see what happens in the next ten levels. Who knows, maybe the Main Monk will find himself a shirt.