I was Drunken Mastery from 15 to 29. Two days ago I switched to Dragon. My only advice to any drunken monk is to switch out asap, lol. The warrior that i usually duo with even noticed the substantial increase in dps coming from my side. Where when i was drunken, the "utility" or lack of it on this path does not compare to the amount of dmg that can be done with dragon.

Drunken monks get the same "force crit" jin based attack as dragons, though the dragons ability does more dmg.... why?

The Jeering Kick 2 round taunt is nice.... but you can do that with a few ashen hands and FD.

The only one that i saw at 29 that was usefull was the AOE 5 round taunt. That saved some people, but usually got me killed, so I never really did it in pugs, lol.

The end doesn't justify the means when compareing Drunken Mastery with the other paths. I can see a use for the Dragon stances, the add dmg stance without taking a penalty, the increased health regen for out of combat, makes you solo faster, less down time, and the stone skin form, great for soloing, with at least descent rewards to the 20% slower attacks.

They try to lower the drunkens dmg output to increase is utility in the group, but his only utility is the ability to take a hit, when atm he can't. Thats my biggest gripe on the drunken, with the evasion hit, the drunken style monk can't perform his "job" as the "off tank" which if givin taunts you become a tank or a variation of one.

Quite honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to be a higher level drunken monk.  In it's current form the Drunken Style offers absolutely no benefit and very little to differentiate this style from the others.  As a matter of fact, from a broad perspective this style offers less than the other two.

There are two factors that make the Styles what they are: Stances and Mastery Abilities.  Since drunken monks share all other abilities, they also share all of the general monk bugs, issues, and concerns.

Drunken Style Stances

This was beat to death in another thread and hardly warrants any further discussion as far as I'm concerned.  All of the Drunken Style stances are largely worthless, offering very little if any benefit.  Most drunken monks fight from their mastery stance (or fist stance if solo), simply because it provides the least amount of penalty for being in a stance.

Drunken Mastery Abilities

Drunken monks are masters of...whatever...somebody pour me another drink.

I pulled this list from an SV post by Jojo.  You'd think that drunken mastery abilities would be a mixed bag of agro management, defensive tricks, and a few wild attacks.  Instead we earn these:

15 -
Jeering Kick I - small damage, taunt for 2 attacks
Staggering Punch I - small damage, applies 'stagger' weakness

18 -
Spinning Fists I - small damage, autocrit

22 -
Staggering Punch II

26 -
Foolhardy Swagger - ae taunt for 5 hits
Jeering Kick II

30 -
Staggering Punch III
Clumsy Whirl I - dodge counter ability - weapon + ae

32 -
Spinning Fists II

34 -
Lurching Feint I - costs jin, makes the mob not attack for 2(?) seconds and gives next shot some percentage to crit. I haven't really noticed the stop attacking bit.

36 -
Foolhardy Swagger II
Jeering Kick III

38 -
Clumsy WhirlII
Errant Strikes - useless, gives you a buff for 1 minute that will apply all attacks to both your target and your defensive target's target. REUSE- one HOUR, and sometimes does absolutely nothing, not applying the buff.
Staggering Punch IV
Impossible Drunken Palm I - chain finisher, does less than Thousand Fists, maybe more than Flying Kick

42 -
Lurching Feint II
Drunken Arms of the Cyclone - adv chain finisher after Impossible Drunken Palm, does less damage than it.

46 -
Magnificent Drunken Stagger (our equivalent to Dragon Monk's invis/lev) Dodge all attacks for 15 seconds, REUSE- 30 MINUTES.
Legedary Fists I - Third finisher after Thousand Fists/Thundering Fists
Foolhardy Swagger III
Clumsy Whirl III
Jeering Kick IV
Staggering Punch V

I would like to see a mastery ability added that when pressed makes us vomit while shouting, "Whoopty friggin' ding dong!"
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My biggest concern for Drunken Monks is that there will be no clear benefit to being one.  We currently are not the best at anything compared to the other styles (or classes for what it's worth).  There is nothing that a drunken monk can offer that another style or class can't do better.  Neither our stances nor mastery abilities reflect our evasive nature or path of "deception and unseen" power we are supposedly travelling on.

If light fighter off-tanking is not a viable option, then there is very little point to this style.  Our lack of evasion and agro management would make harmonious monks better suited to that task anyway.  If melee damage is to be our role and priority, we are again outshined by the other two styles.

Given that monks are already paper tigers, I can not see anything that the drunken style brings to the table worth swallowing.

I find errant strike very useful its a better celerity.  Make sure you are your own defensive target and go to town adds about 1k per hit (e.g a little under 3k for thousand fists  one strike for each hit/3hits).  Use Ashen Hand and thousand fists.

As to being a drunken monk -- I'm fine with it but I duo with a paladin a lot -- so I pull aggro with jeering kick or the aoe and he rescues me for mega damage.

The level 46 stance is silly though

Jojo is a girl, careful killer!  She's lvl 50 so she should know what's up.  I play on the same server as her, I'll tell her to stop being lazy.

I'm pretty sure I remember Jojo saying she thinks Disciples need like 10x more DPS and even MORE medium armor drops and weapons with healer stats because they're so sexy.  Please listen to her devs.

You dont need to PM her by the way, she knows all. 

Oh, I agree Perigee! Disciples need more dps and uh everythign else...as long as youre still in my group you can get beefed up to godliness

I have to second what Jojo's experiencing.  I run mainly with my brother and sister-in-law, who play a warrior and a boodmage, respectively.  Usually, we pick up three random group-fillers, and go off adventuring.  I've found my Drunken style monk to be very effective at 28-29th as a backup tank and emergency distractor.  Occasionally, the bloodmage, a necro, or a sorceror will grab agro while the warrior is busy dealing with adds, and I'm able, via the Jeering Kick and Foolhardy Swagger abilities, to pull the mobs off of them long enough for the warrior to reestablish agro.  Also, the mez is a wonderful tool for add and multiple pull management (but I *think* all monks get Nerve Strike, right?).  Also, FD allows me to shake the mobs off of me once the Warrior has control of them. 

So, I do look at myself as having a bag of tricks that include agro management, defensive tricks, etc. 

I did, about 4 levels backs, consider switching to Harmonious (for the crit chance stance), but gave up on that idea when I found out the quest involved going to Tanvu AND Cai'Brael, both of which are not very fond of Orcs.  The idea of spending a while leveling of faction didn't sound appealing at the time.