Whats your experience with monks? Im not looking for a insanely expensive setup as I have heard this class is pretty hated. Should I go caster/healer/melee?

Im caster Monk but not very good

if you want to be caster monk you should have pretty good intel or hm stuff and good heals

if not you should be melee monk

Im doin melee next climb

insane stuff is not needed but you'll need a good stuff to play easy on it ^^

it is lacking mana a little but still works great as caster

from my own experience, I hated it as melee char

should I do melee next climb??

I'd go caster myself ^^
but I haven't see your stuff so I can't really tell

some hard time as monk caster ?

buying good caster monk stuff is not a waste at all, as it is same as mage's requirements.

and if you buy caster staff, your warlock gears are automatically set.
even if you have caster dagger, you can go straight to caster ninja

about difficulties it's quite similar to caster rogue, except usable gears are more limited.
melee monk is horrible when you failed to find a good cata team @ 60+...
i passed monk/ninja as 30(40)-71 caster and currently love a pure (1-71) casting class.

I would suggest a hybrid melee , but if your on a budget just jump in catas. The mana is low on monk casters especially at low levels

So one is better off doing melee statting every point in intelligence untill 30/40 and from there start casting? I really wanna try something new

imo you should try it like that
should be quite easy to melee until lvl 30-40 and put all stats into int
then caster with a higher amount of mana ^^