I know all monks get FD1 at lvl 14 but what about its upgrades? It says FD 2 and so on is a drunken style does this mean to get the upgrades you have to go down the drunken path?

It says that Feign Death I is also drunken style.  Since the monk revamp, the styles have almost completely melded.  Now, instead of dragon monks getting heavy AoE abilities and the ability to jump really high, drunken monks getting the ability to tank and use the opponents strengths against them, and harmonious monks which can turn the tide of the fights with subtle blows, instead of all of that, they've combined most of those abilities into the basic monk.  For example:  My drunken monk got Whirling Strike and Divine Typhoon (the AoE strike and the AoE finisher) of the dragon school.  He also got some hate shifting harmonious abilities, as well as the drunken ones.

The style of monk you play gives you three stances per style and a relatively stunted list of style-unique abilities (which you learn using your style-specific Aum after meditating to 6 jin or more).

I haven't gotten the chance to play around with harmonious too much, but here are the notable stances from drunken and dragon:

-Drunken Stance: -- Drunken Mastery Stance - gives you 10% haste and 5% dodge.
-Drunken Stance: -- Drunken Sway - gives you 30% dodge and -10% accuracy.
-Dragon Stance: -- Storm Dragon - lightning fricken strikes your opponent when you do.  lightning.

Broken Stances:
It is believed that the Dragon regeneration stance (Heavenly Dragon I believe...) is broken as it doesn't seem to alter regeneration, nor show a buff icon.  It is also believed that the Drunken damage stance (Drunken Fist) is broken as it doesn't alter combat damage noticably, nor does it show a buff icon.


So far my favorite style-unique, aum-learned, monk ability is Spinning Fists (I believe it's called).  I learned it with the Aum of the Drunken Master at level 19.  The ability allows a 100% critical chance (provided you hit) with a 5 minute cool-down (granted this should be lowered a bit considering the new crit chance nerf).  This is very helpful for soloing or DPS groups (without intense crowd control) because you'll be wanting to use your AoE critical Divine Typhoon as much as you can.  With Divine Typhoon, you can deal loads of damage, off tank if you want, or completely drop the aggro with FD.  I believe I used Divine Typhoon II which delt melee damage plus 664 to all within something like 6-10m.

I believe all monk style choices will have a higher employability in Vanguard thanks to caster stones (the little rocks of ressurecting the healer classes can summon: Bloodmage - Sanguine Shard, Shaman - Spirit Orb, Cleric - Gem of Life, etc.).  A monk that has one of these beauties can drop out of combat when the group gets in over their head, get back up, ressurect the caster using the stone, and get the group back up losing little to no progress.  In a sense we're the best form of life insurance a group could hope for.

Final thoughts (atleast temporarily): All monks should learn how to make a macro that can drag multiple player corpses... here's a quick guide.

Assembling a mass corpse pull macro:
Step 1: Ensure all players have given you consent to pull their corpses.  (They have to type /consent YourName)
Step 2: Right-click an empty macro slot to open the create a new macro tool.
Step 3: Type in a quick macro name, choose a spiffy image, and then move to the body.
Step 4: Type on the first line "/targetoffensive Name's Tombstone" Where *Name* is the player's name.  Press Enter to move to the next line.
Step 5: Type "/corpse".  Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all player's tombstones are added.
Step 6: You should now have your mass corpse pull macro.  Basically click it every two or so seconds to pull corpses as you're moving.

It is stated in somewhere in some other thread. All monks get the base Discipline abilities. Most of the AoEs are Discipline abilities. Your stance determines your Mastery abilities and Aums.

Lower level Harmonious Stance Mastery abilities:
1. Eagle Claw 1- Damage + 15% Damage Mitigation debuff to target for 18 seconds.
2. Viper Sting 1- Good damage. Delayed. Strike target and 16 seconds later internal organs rupture.
3. Tiger Pounce 1 - Low damage but guaranteed critical hit. Can start hit bridges and chains.

It should be noted that all the abilities that I have received up to level 19 are melee abilities so are subject to the standard melee rules. They can be blocked, dodged, and parried, as well as having a standard "you miss" chance. I don't have enough info gathered yet to evaluate if any of my abilities vary/alter the standard melee % to hit for my equipment and stats. My gut tells me they do by 5-10%.

Akodo

P.S. Kaji's list has the lower level drunken and dragon masteries on the list.


[edit - clarification and added info]

TY to the posters here,some great info. in this thread since I'm closing in on having to choose a style.  Leveling is on hold for now for my static group to catch up (or "fellowship" to finally get patched in  ).

The more I read about harmonious and drunken, the more interested I become...

Eug