I think Monks were originally intended to have no forms, thus the root of suckiness.

[Aeronis]

Count up the powers to 50. It's about 130 with all three forms combined.

But a Paladin has about 130 total up to 50.

Clearly I believe the Monk was intended to have all his powers at once, thus granting him the ultimate flexibility in how he can engage a situation, which would be very monk like.

Maybe they split them because they felt the Monk was too powerful with everything combined?

Or maybe they just decided it was too much complexity for a single class and they wanted to simplify things by splitting the Monk into three clear roles?
I think that was a mistake from the start because no matter which form the Monk takes he's always going to be subpar to another class in a particular role.
The only saving grace of the Monk's subpar specialization would be if he had everything at once so he could change tactics on the fly based on the situation.

[WildAce]

id have no problem with them removing the diffrent styles and instead making the Styles your certain Stances, So you have a Dragon stance. you enable

Dragon stance you get the electricity/jin drain effect +10% damage. you can only use Dragon style based skills and some Universal skills in that stance.

Drunken Stance would add -10% accuracy +5% damage +15% dodge +25% aggro. could only use drunken skills along with a few universal skills. accuracy penalty degrades over time to -0%

Harmonious Stance -10% damage +20% crit chance, End cost +25% could only use harmonious skills and some universal. the -10% damage would degrade to -0% over time, End penalty would remain.

would be kinda intresting. those effects were kinda thrown out there but you get the idea.

alot of the skills would need to be tweaked some made universal while other maybe moved to a diffrent style.

but that type of setup alone would i think make monks a better class over all. as for the time needed to switch between stances. 10min. would be good. so you could swap once on the fly but in order to back to the role you were in before you have to wait 10min. would keep stances from being swapped all the time. also each stance should have its own style of animations.

like in drunken stance you should have drunken sway animations. harmonious could be sorta like the disciples open hand animations and dragon could be similer to the current animations.

also monks should be Light armor with high evasion... leather would be too much restriction for fast movements. that and i think my monk looks stupid in leather. lol.

[Leishiu]

Character specialisation really own though.

We haven't had a major revamp in quite some time though; and abilities have remained virtually the same since 3.5 (and probably earlier than that). It will be fixed. ~

[Calibix]

Count up the powers to 50. It's about 130 with all three forms combined.

But a Paladin has about 130 total up to 50.

Clearly I believe the Monk was intended to have all his powers at once, thus granting him the ultimate flexibility in how he can engage a situation, which would be very monk like.

Maybe they split them because they felt the Monk was too powerful with everything combined?

Or maybe they just decided it was too much complexity for a single class and they wanted to simplify things by splitting the Monk into three clear roles?
I think that was a mistake from the start because no matter which form the Monk takes he's always going to be subpar to another class in a particular role.
The only saving grace of the Monk's subpar specialization would be if he had everything at once so he could change tactics on the fly based on the situation.

I have noticed this also and tend to agree. However, you have mentioned before you wanted to be able to switch between stances on the fly, think you said on a 10m cooldown. The problem with that is your are still a style specific monk, and thus you suck. What is the difference between switching styles every 10 minutes or running to the disipline master? About 1 hour depending on how many times you get agro on the run :p EDIT: LoL, noticed you ended up saying more or less the same thing. sorry

Imo, I'd really like to see them do away with styles period. We need a huge boost in dps, our abilites to work properly as described in the tooltips, and for the love of god can we get some f'n utility. FD is not utility, I don't care what anyone says. Our mez counts as .000001% utility or so, considering just about every class has a mez that is faster/more effective.

I will digress if you so desire, but I feel like I'm wasting my time posting for monk changes that will never come.

No class lead ftw.

[Calibix]

id have no problem with them removing the diffrent styles and instead making the Styles your certain Stances, So you have a Dragon stance. you enable

Dragon stance you get the electricity/jin drain effect +10% damage. you can only use Dragon style based skills and some Universal skills in that stance.

Drunken Stance would add -10% accuracy +5% damage +15% dodge +25% aggro. could only use drunken skills along with a few universal skills. accuracy penalty degrades over time to -0%

Harmonious Stance -10% damage +20% crit chance, End cost +25% could only use harmonious skills and some universal. the -10% damage would degrade to -0% over time, End penalty would remain.

would be kinda intresting. those effects were kinda thrown out there but you get the idea.

alot of the skills would need to be tweaked some made universal while other maybe moved to a diffrent style.

but that type of setup alone would i think make monks a better class over all. as for the time needed to switch between stances. 10min. would be good. so you could swap once on the fly but in order to back to the role you were in before you have to wait 10min. would keep stances from being swapped all the time. also each stance should have its own style of animations.

like in drunken stance you should have drunken sway animations. harmonious could be sorta like the disciples open hand animations and dragon could be similer to the current animations.

also monks should be Light armor with high evasion... leather would be too much restriction for fast movements. that and i think my monk looks stupid in leather. lol.

Light armor would make monks more useless than they already are imo. They would never give us a proper boost to evasion to rectify that change. Not to mention think of all the new gear they would have to make for monk armor, and since they have a hard enough time putting in monk weapons/armor as it is, I really hope that doesn't happen.

I really think your on to something with your stance idea though. Granted you just threw the numbers out there, but I think that would help achieve the flexibility Aeronis is looking for.

They still need to fix a lot of things before they could even consider implementing that though, but imo very good idea.

And as a Sidenote, has anyone actually found any heroic handwraps? I play on Qualia and haven't seen any. Furthermore, how about some handwraps that actually do more dps barehanded? Currently using the Heirloom 'Pugilist Wraps for the + Hand to Hand bonus so I can hit/crit higher level mobs more reliably.

Finally, how does + Hand to Hand (or any skill for that matter) work? If you have +20 to H2H, does that mean your attacking as if you were 2 levels higher (which I doubt) or does it simply give some sort of static bonus over the soft cap? Any info here would be splendid.

[Aeronis]

I have noticed this also and tend to agree. However, you have mentioned before you wanted to be able to switch between stances on the fly, think you said on a 10m cooldown. The problem with that is your are still a style specific monk, and thus you suck. What is the difference between switching styles every 10 minutes or running to the disipline master? About 1 hour depending on how many times you get agro on the run :p EDIT:

Having to run to the masters to switch stances every hour is not a realistic option.

But being able to switch between roles every 10 minutes would allow you to reasonable mold yourself to fit different situations in groups (maybe even every 5 minutes). The only reason I'd put it on a 5 minute timer is because the devs might not like the idea of allowing the monk to switch styles in the middle of engagements, or from engagement to engagement, even though that is probably within the logical parameters of what a skilled monk would be capable of doing conceptually.

So as I think about it more, I'm not sure a timer on switching is even necessary.

A monk who is learned in all three styles should conceptually have no trouble switching between them based on what is required.


Imo, I'd really like to see them do away with styles period. We need a huge boost in dps, our abilites to work properly as described in the tooltips, and for the love of god can we get some f'n utility. FD is not utility, I don't care what anyone says. Our mez counts as .000001% utility or so, considering just about every class has a mez that is faster/more effective.


Martial arts is about styles and flexibility to take on a variety of situations.

The Monk would be an awesome class if we could switch between styles on the fly to suit specific situations, because the fact that the monk can do so many things pretty well would offset the fact that it can't do any single thing really well.

Right now the monk doesn't have that kind of flexibility because he's forced to spec himself into one role at a time, thus negating any real flexibility.

[Aeronis]

Another way this method of monk power splitting renders it to suck, is the fact that people who pursue a single path end up being forced to wait very long periods of leveling before getting upgrades to their powers.

[jojo]

And as a Sidenote, has anyone actually found any heroic handwraps? I play on Qualia and haven't seen any. Furthermore, how about some handwraps that actually do more dps barehanded? Currently using the Heirloom 'Pugilist Wraps for the + Hand to Hand bonus so I can hit/crit higher level mobs more reliably.

Finally, how does + Hand to Hand (or any skill for that matter) work? If you have +20 to H2H, does that mean your attacking as if you were 2 levels higher (which I doubt) or does it simply give some sort of static bonus over the soft cap? Any info here would be splendid.


As far as I have been told, +H2H will consider you higher level accuracy wise, same as +evocation type skills for casters. The cap on accuracy will be 95% if your weapon SKILL is max for your level for that weapon against an even con, but having +20 H2h would make an even con 2 levels above you.

I have the Heirloom Pugilists Wraps as well, and only use them while fighting reds, as they do lower my dps against even or lower and don't give me any benefit from the +H2H.

[Jinpo]

I just wanted to add:

There's a quest called Beast of Air (or something) in Kojan, where you have to kill that level 10 3-dot mob named Falx. I was hesitant to take him on, being only level 11.

But then when I was looking for Falx, I saw him being completely pwnd by a level 8 paladin.

Yes, a level 8 pally.

I thought, hey, "what am i worried about? I'm 3 levels higher and have superior dps".

I built up Jin, engaged the next spawn, and nearly died - if it wasn't for Ignore Pain, I would have. I finished the fight with about 5% health.

When a level 8 defensive player can solo a mob that a level 11 offensive player has serious troubles with, there's problem with our dps and/or avoidance.

Thoughts?

[Ninbei]

When a level 8 defensive player can solo a mob that a level 11 offensive player has serious troubles with, there's problem with our dps and/or avoidance.
Thoughts?

Highly twinked level8, maybe?

[Calibix]

I just wanted to add:

There's a quest called Beast of Air (or something) in Kojan, where you have to kill that level 10 3-dot mob named Falx. I was hesitant to take him on, being only level 11.

But then when I was looking for Falx, I saw him being completely pwnd by a level 8 paladin.

Yes, a level 8 pally.

I thought, hey, "what am i worried about? I'm 3 levels higher and have superior dps".

I built up Jin, engaged the next spawn, and nearly died - if it wasn't for Ignore Pain, I would have. I finished the fight with about 5% health.

When a level 8 defensive player can solo a mob that a level 11 offensive player has serious troubles with, there's problem with our dps and/or avoidance.

Thoughts?

Monks are teh suck, pally's are not. My twinked 14 cleric can handle 2 yellow 3dots at once, and 1 yellow 4 dot. But cleric is like playing god mode :p

[WildAce]

i have a lvl 11 paly but i havnt played him in awhile but when i did i had no problem taking out 3 dots above his lvl. and he isnt a twink.

[Jinpo]

Highly twinked level8, maybe?

Aye, it's possible, I bet his hps were off the chart, but being twinked is not going to let him take this mob down much faster than I did.

Even a weapon that's way beyond his skill will not make up for a lack of points in str,con,dex, etc or skill level with a weapon, or the amount of damage his special skills do (which is fixed), which is only attained by leveling.

IMO, no melee should do more damage than a monk, not even a rogue. We give up utility and mitigation for pure dps, and I'm beginning to see that the dps is not there.

[WildAce]

Aye, it's possible, I bet his hps were off the chart, but being twinked is not going to let him take this mob down much faster than I did.

Even a weapon that's way beyond his skill will not make up for a lack of points in str,con,dex, etc or skill level with a weapon, or the amount of damage his special skills do (which is fixed), which is only attained by leveling.

IMO, no melee should do more damage than a monk, not even a rogue. We give up utility and mitigation for pure dps, and I'm beginning to see that the dps is not there.

we all know monks are pretty messed up, but monks arnt supposed to be pure dps, they are supposed to have really good utility. as they are right now they dont have either dps or utility.

a dragon style monk is supposed to be more dps than utility tho. but you cant pull all monks into that unless you give all monks the 3 styles as stances. so that you can choose between utility, off tanking, or dps.

i dont expect monks to be the highest dps class. but i do expect them to have the highest evasion in drunken style, slightly less dps than a ranger when in dragons style, and in harmonious they better have some really nice mob debuffs and a mixture of a little extra evasion and increased crit chance.

but like i said in one of my other posts id really like them to combine all the styles into 3 diffrent stances.

hell they could even make you quest to learn the stances a nice solo quest for each stance. alot more detailed than the current lame quests for the styles heh..

another thing id like to see changed is for the dragon style, the AoE's are pretty bad damage wise. you would think they should be some what comparable to a Sorc's AoE's granted not strong as them. but atleast from the ones ive used they do little damage even the finisher is pretty weak. unless you go out slaying mobs of lvl 10's when your 28.

[Jinpo]

we all know monks are pretty messed up, but monks arnt supposed to be pure dps, they are supposed to have really good utility. as they are right now they dont have either dps or utility.

a dragon style monk is supposed to be more dps than utility tho. but you cant pull all monks into that unless you give all monks the 3 styles as stances. so that you can choose between utility, off tanking, or dps.

i dont expect monks to be the highest dps class. but i do expect them to have the highest evasion in drunken style, slightly less dps than a ranger when in dragons style, and in harmonious they better have some really nice mob debuffs and a mixture of a little extra evasion and increased crit chance.

but like i said in one of my other posts id really like them to combine all the styles into 3 diffrent stances.

hell they could even make you quest to learn the stances a nice solo quest for each stance. alot more detailed than the current lame quests for the styles heh..

another thing id like to see changed is for the dragon style, the AoE's are pretty bad damage wise. you would think they should be some what comparable to a Sorc's AoE's granted not strong as them. but atleast from the ones ive used they do little damage even the finisher is pretty weak. unless you go out slaying mobs of lvl 10's when your 28.

Your points are well taken and you've got some great ideas. Yes, a dps increase is needed....but I've never heard of or played a monk that was considered a utility class. (I don't count Friars in DaoC as monks)

From my experience, the ability to do damage was inversely proportional to the kind of armor you're wearing. It's like this in all games from all genres. Right now, monks are leather-wearing warriors with fewer hps and ac, no utility, and a bit more avoidance.

I'm kind of scared of AoEs, cause as a former EQ monk I dont' want that much attention. If I can't solo a 3 dot mob below my level, I sure don't want a gaggle of 2 dots all pounding me at once..lol

[WildAce]

in a group situation where your fighting 2 or 3 4dots, yea AoE's would be suicide even if we had 80% evasion lol. but im mainly talking about thier use at all like if your solo or even in a group where theres a bunch of 1-2 dots zergs where AoE's could be usefull such as the Larva insite the Ant mound near Renton Keep.

while my AoE's did some damage to the swarm. my attacks just seemed very weak. and after 3 uses your out of energy.

an AoE that uses Jin could be helpfull.

the only real time my AoE's have been any REAL help was when i was clearing out really low lvl mobs for a guildie.

pretty sure the devs id say they wanted monks to have good utility. and i really think the only way to achive that is with the 3 styles becoming your 3 stances. would be sorta like a warriors defense/offense stances. in terms of how diffrent they are from each otehr along with limiting skills based on the stance's so if your in drunken stance you would only get the basic weak AoE while alot of the better ones are in Dragon stance. things like that.

and to me i think knowing all 3 styles is more realistic. monks dont know just one style they usually study many forms of Wushu. they would use which ever form they saw fit for a situation

[Aeronis]

The Monks concept is basically this:
A critical based high consistant DPS fighter based around evasion for defense, with supernatural and natural utility that seperates it from the bard and ranger's utility.



The Monk's three forms should be thus:

The baseline of the Monk is Harmonious. They are a lot like the Ranger in this form - Having high consistant DPS, decent evasion, and some team utility.
The difference is the monk should have more/better team oriented utility in harmonious, about equal evasion, and slightly less damage (especially after factoring in a ranger that opens up from range).

The Drunken monk should be far away better at off-tanking than any other offensive fighter.
He should have team utility geared towards this, making him unique among the offensive fighters.
They should either do damage on par with a bard or a bit more.

The Dragon monk should be critical based and have a higher chance of critical than other offensive fighters. The Dragon normally should have equal DPS to a ranger, but when factoring in criticals the Dragon Monk should surpass the Ranger easily, but not do as much damage as a rogue that stays stealthed. Rogue = burst damage. Monk = Consistant damage with critical spikes.
Dragon monk should be the best Melee AoE damage out of the light fighters, and he should have aggro reducing capabilities to facilitate his damage dealing.

[WildAce]

This is what we should be like
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LpqGZcmuOFs


this is what we are like right now
http://youtube.com/watch?v=faxW0GcyyDo



:D

(Edit)
i almost forgot heres a video of our drunken style in action
http://www.break.com/index/drunk_squirrel_climbs_tree.html

[Soluss]

This is what we should be like
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LpqGZcmuOFs


this is what we are like right now
http://youtube.com/watch?v=faxW0GcyyDo



:D

(Edit)
i almost forgot heres a video of our drunken style in action
http://www.break.com/index/drunk_squirrel_climbs_tree.html


Omg that was hilarious but sadly it is almost true

[Ninbei]

LOL nice videos