So today even though we never got the chance to raid (again due to the lack of tanks that are currently leveling) we got some interesting testing going and to sum it all up its the exact opposite of what I expected.
Brewmaster Monks - Their viability has gone down the sink, this is mainly due to their lack of armor and stagger stacking up to 2.5k which by itself would kill my 10k hp monk tank in 4 seconds
, during the time of testing I had 8k hp and was being healed by 2 holy paladins, this always resulted in wipes about 20 seconds in. I returned later with 10k hp buffed with my Disc priest and this turned out better, I still couldnt take this add down but I lasted much longer, again only dieing when stagger reached just crazy amounts (think I sas it hit for 3.5k once). Anyway to sum it up I beilieve Brewmasters will have the edge on certain situations and im defeinatly going to finish gearing that spec up, but overall id prefer that people wanting to roll tanks choose warriors.
Mistweaver - This was a huge suprise for me, up to this point I had been comparing healers to priests however with monks they bring some very useful bonuses to healing. To start with I will compare their moves to that of a priest, they have their renewing mist (renew equivelent) that also serves as raid heals which will be good in the very few raid damage situations (as far as i can see this is going to heal the same amount as renew). Apart from that the rest of their moves go in a fairly obvious rotation that for the purpose of <Fifty> and the situations we are put in will be absolutly amazing. They have soothing mist which will be their primary move and they will be channeling this pretty much all the time. During channeling this you can cast surging mist (Flash heal and should heal around same amount) and enveloping mist (renew on steroids, dusnt last long but will heal around 2k a proc every second for 6 seconds (or soemthing like that)) Thay are also able to cast these instantly which will make healing easier due to the ability to flash heal instantly, I consider this a switch from cast time and random spamming to reaction time pressing of buttons as soon as the tank takes damage, which will simplify things a lot. On top of this they also have an crazy op bubble on a 2 minute cd that increases HoT healing by 50% (real op when you have all your HoTs going) this bubble is for about 6-8k. The negative however is the mana useage and monks will have to be very aware of this, I can oom myself in 15 seconds by spamming spells which i very little time compared to my 2 minutes spam healign fest on my priest. Overall I realy like these healers and they will be very useful for fights that require healing before 1.5 seconds flash heals.
I cannot stress how more than ever <Fifty> has become a more class/roll specific project, if you want to roll a tank and not get killed in 10 seconds in any situation you HAVE to roll a Warrior, they are just the best class by a long way, and have some very useful cds.
If you want to roll a healer im pleased to anounce there are 3 extremly viable healers now (up form the previous two) those are Mistweaver Monks (Gnome obviously), Resto Druids (dusnt matter what race realy), and finaly Dist Priests (again always a gnome).
We dont realy amtter about what you rolla s a DPS its compeltly up to you, just a warning however certain classes/specs would be extremly unsatisfactory im refering to caster classes like mages and warlocks, however we are in the middle of testing soem new things out that you never know might make them viable to a certain level.
Notoriusthf just to answer your question we havent done major testing with spell hit since we dont have anyone at 50 with the capabilities to trial the expertise chain (I would if I had an 81 on spinebreaker but sadly I do not). However Bubbleblowin has trailed it and apparently it is no longer even considered viable due to the lack of damage from all moves, please ask him more about it but I would suggest you choose another class to roll seeing as I stated above some classes/spec are not going to work. I realy hate saying this as I have said before but I cannot stress enough the way <Fifty> works and how certain things are just not viable at all.