World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Preview

The editors at GameInformer have cranked out a preview of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria based on everything they learned during this past weekend’s BlizzCon event. If you’re unfamiliar with Blizzard’s latest expansion, the meaty article should serve to bring you up to speed:

Although the monk is not a hero class, it’s more complicated than most regular classes. Monks use two different resource pools. First there is Chi, which is a regenerating resource that is used for the Jab and Roll abilities. Roll provides a quick burst of speed, but Jab is an essential attack for the class. Every time you hit an enemy with Jab, you build up one point of light force and one point of dark force. You can build up to four points of light and dark force, neither of which will fade until you use them, and these are used to pull off more powerful attacks.

Since the monk must constantly be building light and dark force, it has no auto-attack. Smart monk players must continue using Jab over and over in order to unlock abilities such as the light-force-draining Tiger Palm or the dark-force-using Blackout Kick.

The martial arts style of the monk’s attacks makes them a very animation-heavy class. Luckily Blizzard has totally delivered on this. Even the physically large Pandaren are made to look agile and powerful with their sharp punches and swift kicks, and I can only imagine that more slender races will look even better with this move set.