I never played monks before, but after trying out a paladin in EQII and not liking that very much I tried out a monk myself.
And it's been truly fun to play with one up to lvl 70 (it still is actually).
Monks are very versatile, good for solo but very good for a group. We're not main tanks, but we can tank (not everything perhaps, or definitely not for very long), only one heal unfortunately (3 minute timer too) that at adeptIII and boosted with the AA points is at about 50% of maximum health so that is only for emergencies really (or soloing).
We're a bit of everything, which I like a lot.
(ofcourse, that does mean that other classes are more effective at what we do)
I've used staves for as long as I can recall really, no real reason for that, there are lots of options for weaponry. Although what you use as weapons does affect some possibilities in the AA list, there are spells there that require a specific weapon to be used. (although none are powerful enough to switch all of a sudden to a different weapon)
If you can afford it, try getting a second set of weapons to keep all your skills up to date. But it's not a real necessity, I once got a set of slashing weapons with a good proc (I switch from time to time, depending on the mob I'm fighting) but my slashing was at 25 or so, it took me a fairly long time to get it to 350 then.
I've recently betrayed to Freeport and then back again, so I've played with a Bruiser too, several big differences.
Monks and Bruisers:
-Monks focus on haste, Bruisers on DPS increase. (as a Monk I can boost my haste to 100% fairly easy, Bruisers can easily get an extra 50% DPS)
-Monks have a heal that can be cast on anyone and it costs no power to use it(important detail), Bruisers only have self heal (which is not as powerful, costs power but reuse time is half of a Monk)
-Monks have invis, Tsunami and a very good magic damage ward (cannotlinktod Calm) but low damage spells. Bruisers have very good damage spells/abilities, such as a very hard backstab spell (not sure what the name was, very high damage but you needed to flank or be behind the target for it to work) (definitely compared to a Monk, when I betrayed I boosted my top melee damage by about 800 without trying very hard).
-Monks have spells to debuff poison and other magic dot, Bruisers have spells to debuff weapon dot's. But with the AA points, it is quite possible to boost the Monk debuff to add physical damage dot's to the removal list. (alongside the health boosts, definitely one to get)
Both have the feign death ability, which is (alongside the invis spell) one of my most used ability
All in all, can't imagine playing a different class in EQII, I tried a lot of them, but Monk is most fun for me.
Edited, Feb 17th 2007 12:23pm by Zieveraar