Monk patch notes on test server

[Soluss]

- Disciple, Monk - Monk and Disciples unarmed damage is treated like a weapon. The unarmed rarity levels have been adjusted to: below level 10 mundane, level 10-19 common, level 20-39 uncommon, level 40-49 rare and level 50 rare+. Rare+ is between rare and ultra-rare strength.
- Disciple, Monk - Monk and Disciple unarmed damage is no longer the equivalent of a weapon with maxed out damage of the corresponding rarity level. It is now more akin to actual item damage progression.
- Monk - Monk base damage has been slightly increased

sounds to me, unless i am reading it wrong, that we get screwed again. In there path to make weapons viable for monks, instead of making our skills utilize them they just lowered our bare hand damage. I hope I am just reading this wrong but it is what it sounds like to me.

[Owle]

Thats some good stuff, im sure it will be changed tho as it sounds a bit unfair giving us rare+ weapons , just using our fists ... where most people have to find these weapons monks get them for free

[Soluss]

Thats some good stuff, im sure it will be changed tho as it sounds a bit unfair giving us rare+ weapons , just using our fists ... where most people have to find these weapons monks get them for free

Actually what I see is unfair is... All other classes can boost there damage from getting better and better weapons. Monks cannot do this. As well as other classes benefiting from the other stats on the weapons. Sure monks benefit from the stats on the weapons but usually monk weapons that are rarer are also disciple weapons too which means half the stats are energy, wis based. Neither which effect the monk. We also lose out when we equip a weapon unlike other classes because our skills do not take a weapon into account. Our skills are a set damage.

[Jinpo]

That's a long, long way off from where we need to be.

Monks should be #1 in offensive fighter dps (per what Sigil said), and anything less is unacceptable.

When a level 8 pally can smoke a mob that nearly destroyed me, a level 12 monk (used ignore pain to live), something is seriously wrong with the game's mechanics.

Sigil's own number state that the current DPS line up is: Ranger, Rogue, Monk, Bard.

It should be Monk, Rogue, Ranger, Bard

most dps>least dps
least utility>most utility

[Soluss]

Actually, even worse, what was said was this ...

Quote from: Quinn the Mighty on March 01, 2007, 09:19:56 AM
Update;
DPS Numbers are in and we came in 3rd. Rogue->Ranger->(Vast Chasam of DPS)-> Monk -> Bard. The DPS issue is being worked on as they will turn up the dmg knob for us.

When this will go live I don't know but, I'll try to find out.

~QTM


Notice the ->(Vast Chasam of DPS)-> Monk part? What that means is that rogues and rangers were WAY ahead of the dps of monks and bards.

And to be fair what was also said is that monks should be top dps in fights 20 seconds and under and that rangers and rogues would start to take over from there. But we should definatly always be ahead of bards

[Aeronis]

And to be fair what was also said is that monks should be top dps in fights 20 seconds and under and that rangers and rogues would start to take over from there. But we should definatly always be ahead of bards

Rogues should be superior in both DPS and consistant damage IF they sta stealthed and behind their enemy.

Monks should out DPS and out evade a Ranger in fights that have short durations, but the Ranger should pull ahead when they have been fighting the same target for a while.

[Vanboi123]

Does monks out dpsing for the first 20 seconds account for starting a battle with full jin or with no jin

To me if monks start with full jin it should be like 30 seconds

[Almod5]

In all honesty they lowered the damage for bare hands not the monk itself. Besides you should be using weapons because the fists lack stats. If the attack skills are base damage and not affected by weapon damage shouldn't monk be striving for more stats to boost the damage done by skills? Also the base damage for monks was increased thats should offset the decrease in fist rarity.

[Khaunshar]

Actually, Rogues dont perform even nearly as well in practical circumstances. Their DPS is in a vacuum, with perfect tank, perfect opportunity and positioning from the start. Throw in a 4 sec time of initial chaos on multi-pulls, and getting behind them mob, you have Rangers as the stellar winner in the DPS contest.

That being said, maybe this change is just the groundwork for something that really should be coming ASAP: change monk specials from fixed numbers to xxx% of weapon damage + Y extra damage. This would allow much more easy and direct balancing, and it would make monk weapons something besides a stat carrier and graphical gimmick.

Before, this would have boosted monk DPS too much I guess with the insane damage stats of fists.

But perhaps I am just dreaming :) want to dust off my monk badly.

[Ninbei]

- Disciple, Monk - Monk and Disciples unarmed damage is treated like a weapon. The unarmed rarity levels have been adjusted to: below level 10 mundane, level 10-19 common, level 20-39 uncommon, level 40-49 rare and level 50 rare+. Rare+ is between rare and ultra-rare strength.
- Disciple, Monk - Monk and Disciple unarmed damage is no longer the equivalent of a weapon with maxed out damage of the corresponding rarity level. It is now more akin to actual item damage progression.
- Monk - Monk base damage has been slightly increased

sounds to me, unless i am reading it wrong, that we get screwed again. In there path to make weapons viable for monks, instead of making our skills utilize them they just lowered our bare hand damage. I hope I am just reading this wrong but it is what it sounds like to me.


The prophecy has come true. Instead of fixing monk itemization problems, Sigil instead just nerfed monk unarmed damage across the board so that we now absolutely NEED to equip weapons.

[Drool]

So in other words, we need to stay one tier ahead of the Unarmed rarity level to out-DPS weapons when unarmed?

10-19 Unarmed = Common, therefore using any Uncommon weapon that is maxed skill will be better option than Unarmed correct?

If so this is a total nerf to the most gimped DPS class out there. Sorry, but Bards have way more utility than the Monk currently. Even if their DPS comes in last, which I doubt, Monks still take the cake for worst DPS class.

[Hanzou_Masamori]

Heh, is this a joke? Seriously this looks like they will be making monks weaker creating the "ILLUSION" of you actually getting stronger by equiping some cheap weaponry. One of the Monks draws was the fact that they can function very well without ever needing to pickup a weapon- the really GOOD weapons are the ones you should feel the NEED to get.

If they want to actually improve monks consider the following;

Style Ability Costs: Reevaluate endurance costs on Mastery Style Specific strikes. Many of them are too expensive when compared to the endurance cost on other melee attacks which *were* retuned with lower endurance costs, the master abilities seem to of been forgotten.

Style Ability Damage: The damage of our attacks in general is not where it should be, as others have suggested our attacks would greatly benefit by an increase in damage or alternatively changing them to percentage based attacks, as has been suggested to better function off of weaponry.

Chain Attacks: Our DPS relies heavily upon or ability to chain together combinations, however our chance to start chains and come to an advanced finisher has been reduced with the change to our critical rate which is what our Chain Attacks are based upon. Monks should recieve a slight bonus to our innate critical rate, to allow us to better perform our combinations OR our advanced finishers should recieve a damage increase.

Counter Attacks: Reduce endurance costs of counter attacks, when the rare condition on their use is met you are often already low on endurance. As others have mentioned our counterattacks also dont come into play much in groups, another condition should allow their use in group play, perhaps using them off your defensive targets parry/dodge when you are not the direct target of attack. Counter Attacks in general (for all classes) should be moved to their own timers, for example finishing a combination while a counter attack presents itself should not automaticly end the counter attack chance, only runing out of time should cause that.

Weaknesses: Allow monks to generate more weaknesses via their style specific strikes; for example allowing "Feet of the Fire Dragon" to generate the burning weakness and allow it to exploit vulnerable. Theres plenty of ways to enhance monks weakness creating/exploiting aspect making the class play more dynamicly.

Itemization: Sad to see that Monks (and Disciples) still are suffering from the same problem that faced them in the early days of EQ1, but there is a real lack of worthwhile Monk weaponry out in the world at the moment. Alot of quests exclude Monks/Disciple rewards but provide useful options to the other melee fighters. I would love to see some truely nice Windblades, Fistwraps, and Martial Staves begin to show up in the world sometime in the future. Lord Tsang Tomb series was particularly a sore point to me, considering Tsang was one of the original Jin masters, you would think he would have something useful for monks in there... If monks HtH is truely changing this will be a very important point to follow up on, there NEEDs to be the weapons out there for us to obtain, and Im not just talking one or two. They need to be obtainable in all parts of the world and they had better be good!

Ignore Pain: The Ignore Pain line, our self heal, is far too ineffective to be considered useful. As others have suggested this line would function far better if it were made a percentage of our health rather than a set amount. At the very least the size of the heal should be increased from what it is!

Jin Surge: In its current form, in a normal group setting Jin Surge seems to be more of a waste of Jin then anything. Perhaps changing it to function on the next 3 to 5 attacks rather then just a single blow would greatly enhance the use of this ability.

Nerve Strike: This a great tool for crowd control, but its condition on use seems somewhat rediculous. The current use of this ability involves the monk floping to the ground with Feign Death, then coming up instantly with nerve strike to stun the target for CC purposes or pulling. It would make more sense if this ability was simply just useable regaurdless of if you are in combat or not. The out of combat component seems pointless when you can just Feign Death to use it, its use simply does not make sense to me in either realism or gameplay standpoint at the moment.

[Ohhm]

Monks should be #1 in offensive fighter dps (per what Sigil said), and anything less is unacceptable.



Actually, I hate to break it to you, but monks are supposed to be #3 in offensiver fighter dps (according to Sigil). They start off in the lead, but, as the fight drags on (or you have fought about 5 mobs in a dungeon) the rogue/ranger will pull ahead.


That being said, I don't think this will fix monks unless this dmg increase is significant. Rangers are clearly ahead of the pack at the high end. The only ones that come close are rogues, but not for long because rogues are getting nerfed.

[saubertounito]

Actually, I hate to break it to you, but monks are supposed to be #3 in offensiver fighter dps (according to Sigil). They start off in the lead, but, as the fight drags on (or you have fought about 5 mobs in a dungeon) the rogue/ranger will pull ahead.


That being said, I don't think this will fix monks unless this dmg increase is significant. Rangers are clearly ahead of the pack at the high end. The only ones that come close are rogues, but not for long because rogues are getting nerfed.


I had it to be honest, its all about form. We have been complaining about not doing enough dps; and getting our skills nerfed, and the first godamn thing they do is nerf the only thing good going for us are bare hand dps. So the first thing they do is nerf that, then give clerics "SIGNIFICANT" dps increase, while only giving monks a "SLIGHT" increase. So basicly lets say our fists used to be 120 + 50 dps, after nerf it will probably be 100 + 40 dps but with the slight increase it will be 110+45 dps. Basicly its another nerf, another slap in the face to monks. I personally will wipe my hands of this useless class and level my bloodmage, if I dont find it interesting enough to get me to 50 then I wont be paying for another month.

[traizen]

Is anyone actually on the test server that can see the changes?

Or is everyone just making noise because its how they THINK things will be after the new patch rather than how they actually are?

Monk really need a DPS increase, but we didn't have a lead until recently - I hope the increase will happen soon and I'm waiting a few live patches; Since we have heard something from the devs (through QTM) if nothing changes in a few more patches THEN I will be upset.

I think most of you people just like to compete to see who has the bigger lungs.

[Soluss]

Is anyone actually on the test server that can see the changes?

Or is everyone just making noise because its how they THINK things will be after the new patch rather than how they actually are?

Monk really need a DPS increase, but we didn't have a lead until recently - I hope the increase will happen soon and I'm waiting a few live patches; Since we have heard something from the devs (through QTM) if nothing changes in a few more patches THEN I will be upset.

I think most of you people just like to compete to see who has the bigger lungs.

You can tell from the patch notes that we are nerfed plain and simple. You can also tell by seeing the words "SLIGHTLY" increased base dmg is going to be pratically meaningless.

On the second note about just getting a class lead... Yeah that may be true however the fact that the monk is one of the least played classes in this game and even rarer at the higher level speaks volumes in itself.. obviously the class has nothing enticing about it if hardly anyone plays one. Secondly you can see from posts all over this forum, all over another forum sigil views and all over vanguardmonks.com that the class needs help. I am sure they read them and ignored them as they are hard to miss. You dont need a class rep for them to know its broken. All he is going to do is tell sigil the same info that im sure they already read all over these forums

[Vanboi123]

Was a slight overall buff, the only skill that evne uses weapon damage is boundless fist, our ae's which rarely get used, and six dragon strike if you are dragon, all of our other skills are just base static damage, so boundless fist and auto attack had a slight nerf everything else was buffed I would call that a slight overall buff to monks

Also, this just means you have to buy some crafted fist weapons, and you will have the same dps, but this is some pathetic ass loving, we need way more than this to ever be worth playing over something else

[DarkProdigyX]

While this sucks at lower level... imagine the pain you'll be laying down with legendary fists at high levels...

[Tem]

You can tell from the patch notes that we are nerfed plain and simple. You can also tell by seeing the words "SLIGHTLY" increased base dmg is going to be pratically meaningless.



This is disagree with. Healers had a "slight increase to the cost of heals" patch note awhile ago. Slightly turned out to be 25%. You never know what they mean by "slightly".

Still, though, buff monks!

[Soluss]

This is disagree with. Healers had a "slight increase to the cost of heals" patch note awhile ago. Slightly turned out to be 25%. You never know what they mean by "slightly".

Still, though, buff monks!

True we wont know slightly until we see it I guess. However they used the term "Significantly" increased melee attack and melee special attack on clerics and disciples. If we were slightly increased and it means by alot... can you imagine what Significantly means..... So by those standards I highly doubt the word Slight increase to base dps for monks means by alot... im betting it means by a very little bit.

[Mustang68]

That's a long, long way off from where we need to be.

Monks should be #1 in offensive fighter dps (per what Sigil said), and anything less is unacceptable.

When a level 8 pally can smoke a mob that nearly destroyed me, a level 12 monk (used ignore pain to live), something is seriously wrong with the game's mechanics.

Sigil's own number state that the current DPS line up is: Ranger, Rogue, Monk, Bard.

It should be Monk, Rogue, Ranger, Bard

most dps>least dps
least utility>most utility

Disagree with this. I play both a monk and ranger and believe that monks should be the best at evading/dodging damage in regular stance (something that should be significant, which it does not appear to be now - I talk about this in another thread) and rangers and rogues should have the BEST dps when they are able to initiate a fight with ranged shots and stealth attacks respectively. Monks SHOULD have the best melee dps by a bit over other offensive fighters' abilities to melee, but if rangers and rogues can't have the best dps when they start with their situational attacks (ranged is not always possible, nor is stealth) then something would be very unbalanced.

Of course, this goes back to what we mean by dps - burst, sustained, etc.

[Aeronis]

Sigil has said that Rangers should only have superior DPS in prolonged fights after having time to learn their enemy.

Monks should have superior DPS in shorter fighters, or when switching between multiple opponents.


The problem with the Monk is that he doesn't have the flexibility of the Ranger to perform top DPS evasion and utility all at once. He has to specialize along three paths.

A Dragon monk should have the potential when played right to even out DPS a Ranger in a prolonged fight.

A Drunken monk should surpass a Ranger at evasion even in prolonged fights and be the best evasion fight period. (right now this might technically be the case, but it's such a minor superiority that it's not worth going Drunken).

The harmonious monk is about right in that you're not specializing in anything but getting well roundedness and superior team utility.

[Vanboi123]

A monks base damage should out damage a ranger in short fights, I think if a monk picks dragon he is going all out damage and has not much utility, so he should out damage ranger even longer then that maybe up to 35 seconds and our ae should be second to sorcerors

[Mustang68]

A monks base damage should out damage a ranger in short fights, I think if a monk picks dragon he is going all out damage and has not much utility, so he should out damage ranger even longer then that maybe up to 35 seconds and our ae should be second to sorcerors

The problem with comparing monks to rangers is that rangers depend up front quite a bit on getting ranged attacks in early. Obviously this is a generalization, but my ranger gets cut to ribbons by an equal level 3-dot and even to some extent a 2-dot as soon as they close to melee. Solo, a good portion of my damage to equal out my melee weakness is done with the ranged shot to open combat. After that and once we are in melee, I can't really go ranged any more. The snare really doesn't help all that much as it takes too long to cast to be of much use.

My monk, on the other hand, should be the straight ahead melee master of the offensive fighter class. This includes defense such as evade and dodge. Personally, I think in all paths the monk needs to have better evade/dodge/mitigation whatever, and also slightly higher dps than it does now. But, I do not think they should outdamage a similarly twinked ranger with up front damage. Why else would a ranger have strong situational ranged attack (something which takes time occasionally to even get off as you move to range in grouping, etc.). The ranged critical attack is obviously designed to compensate for a weakness elsewhere, and in my opinion that certainly appears to be a weakness in melee ability compared to my monk. It's just not enough of a difference right now.

[Saphx]

I'm a monk, I can agree on the following order of damage if all things being even (level, gear, skillful player)
Rogue(from back) > Ranger(from ranged) > Monk(melee) > Bard(melee)

however if we are talking just straight up parsing of none positioned frontal melee dps should it be Monk > Ranger > ..rogue or bard as rogue isn't getting back position damage they are going off just normal hit attacks that don't give the flanking bonus.

If we speak in terms of realism (this is a fantasy based game, but there is still logic correct?)

Who would you believe would win a melee brawl better a Shaolin Monk trained to use his mind and body in defence and strenght enough to crush boulders with their hands vs. A Ranged specialist in Bows that lives alone in nature and in the wild that one could assume has some training in say chopping logs with an axe.

Rogues do Bursted flanked damage and a ton of it. But if they are not skilled enough to use such advantages should they still outdamage a monk? I say no.

Rangers are Range-rs they are specialzed with Bows they do a ton of damage with them we have all seen our friends rangers scoring huge bow crits. This is expected and they will have a high Burst dps with these as well.

Monks get many damage adds that adds to their sustained DPS, Iron hand, Storm Dragon, Ice and Fire secrets these are all buffs made to make our over all dps sustain not just powerful single attacks. Is this not the role of our Dps?

As it stands a medium equiped ranger with say rare equal to his level weapons (where alot have higher then their lvl weapons) will still do as much dps in melee combat then anything but the smartest of dragon monks that use the exploits that can do over and over again to keep up. (ie. Paladins do Daze we exploit it, warriros do enraged all the time making it easy for dragons to just do sixdragonstrike and exploit it every move instead of going between boundless and six)

Monks openers are another problem with the equastion, I've seen it quoted that Monks were intended to be the path for other classes to do more damage in way of openers, yet we only have a hand full as different stances do some different ones, on paper if you add them all up that class as a whole has more(by one lol) but no monk can do all of them as we can only be one style at a time of course.