Class Concepting: Monks

It's very plausible that in future Hearthstone expansions they will add the missing classes: Death Knight and Monk. In this article I’m tinkering about what might be the ability that would be that the Monk brings to the game. According to Wowhead, Monks are masters of Hand to hand combat. (Only using their weapons for devastating finishing moves).They're also good healers. However they can't be to much of an healer, because that's what the Priest is for.

During the developer interviews, they made it very clear that they didn't want to chance the HUD. They didn't like adding all these weird bars and icons. And that’s excellent, because that's exactly what the HEX tcg is doing. Adding all these weird bars and icons distracting you from what's actually happening. (Which is terrible for casual and newer players) 

So Monks shouldn't bring anything new to the HUD. So doing something with Chi / Energy might not be possible. Besides that, Monks are known for Melee attacks and having three different Stances. Those stances could be utilized as spells (similar to the Shadowform spell) You play the spell and chance your Hero ability with it. Essentially giving your three different Hero abilities and tree different play-styles. It is possible to make the Hero ability similar to the Shaman, where you get an random totem stance. But I think Hearthstone has enough RNG as it is. I think Blizzards will choose for this RNG path, but I really hope they don't.

I would like to see the following; Monks will be attacking through hand to hand combat. Thus they need some form of protection. Or else they'll take really much damage or end up as an clone of the Rogue class. The Stance of the Sturdy Ox might give the solution to this. It reduces damage that the Hero will receive. So, by evading two attack each turn, you essentially have the weaker version of the Warrior ability. Why weaker? Because you can't stack 'evasion'. That's why I thought about the possibility of preventing one WHOLE attack. But that might be the opposite side of the coin and be to overpowered.

Using spells, it should be possible to implement the two other stances the Monk has available. Stance of the Fierce Tiger resembles the ability of the Druid and Stance of the Wise Serpent represents the Priests ability. Thus it would be cool to see a class changing between these stances allowing the player to drastically change his playing style during the game. This should make up for the somehow lesser ability the Hero has for default.