Proposed Monk Changes

Try backing out of melee range instead of clicking feign death. Unless your tank is a paladin or is standing way back at templeton range they should get it back.
 
huey said:
I believe you'll only get the assistance penalty on blues or lbs, I might be wrong on whites. Also on blues, if you do all your flopping before 50% you will never get the penalty.
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i've given exp penalties on raid mobs
 
huey said:
I believe you'll only get the assistance penalty on blues or lbs, I might be wrong on whites. Also on blues, if you do all your flopping before 50% you will never get the penalty.

It's still a bunch of agro I'd love to have had when we were the 4th tank. (I personally really don't mind the agro at all (actually outside of raiding I like it), but I can vouch for it at least)

To force myself to keep things short, I agree with the loss of identity thing, and I agree with Tisukii that unless there is a specific spot that needs a puller and one of the many other people that can pull is not around, you're probably better off bringing almost anything else, assuming equal tomes and gear. If something does actually get tweaked again with monks, I personally hope agro is not the highest priority.
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Assist penalty happens because when you feign, all the damage you've done to that point is counted as an out-of-group/raid source rather than your own. It happens regardless of the level of mob, and can happen even if you only feign while the mob is above 50%. If you are doing a large enough portion of your group/raid dps, you'll give assist penalties very very frequently even if you're good at judging aggro and not flopping more than necessary.

Also, since monk aggro generation is so absurdly high, if a high dps monk is exping anywhere that mobs have decent hp (BQ, Cita, Emberflow, etc) you will pull aggro multiple times per fight so even if you time your flops properly, you either cause an assist penalty or end up tanking mobs almost as much as the actual tank (and monks that pull aggro after doing a dps combo that greatly decreases their avoidance are shitty tanks). SKs can still hold aggro but they end up having to cast extra terrors on every mob despite other classes doing the same or more dps, which leads to mana issues for the SK.
 
If I don't want agro, I flop when the mob's health hits 80, then somewhere between 45 and 55 without the assistance penalty. Sometimes it is simply inevitable.
 
Since I don't think this has been mentioned, but since our damage output method has changed a good bit, I'm curious about something.


I know other monks are having this issue, but when trying to start combos you can sit there and sometimes miss 2, 3, 4, or more round kicks in a row, are there any plans to add +Rk to items? Since FK is no longer our extra button to mash repeatedly and in fact we would never hit FK by itself, it might be beneficial to have +RK mods to things instead of +FK so we don't have as many issues starting combos?


I mean it's not terrible as is, but occasionally I will have a horrendous time starting a combo, maybe I'm just bad, but others I saw mention this problem too. I haven't played my monk as much in the past 2-3weeks, maybe this issue was addressed already, or as I said, maybe I'm just bad and others aren't really having any problems like this with combo system.
 
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Gegen said:
Since I don't think this has been mentioned, but since our damage output method has changed a good bit, I'm curious about something.


I know other monks are having this issue, but when trying to start combos you can sit there and sometimes miss 2, 3, 4, or more round kicks in a row, are there any plans to add +Rk to items? Since FK is no longer our extra button to mash repeatedly and in fact we would never hit FK by itself, it might be beneficial to have +RK mods to things instead of +FK so we don't have as many issues starting combos?


I mean it's not terrible as is, but occasionally I will have a horrendous time starting a combo, maybe I'm just bad, but others I saw mention this problem too. I haven't played my monk as much in the past 2-3weeks, maybe this issue was addressed already, or as I said, maybe I'm just bad and others aren't really having any problems like this with combo system.
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It has not been address. I was played about 4 hours last night and sometimes went entire fights without being able to start a combo.
 
Daffie said:
It has not been address. I was played about 4 hours last night and sometimes went entire fights without being able to start a combo.
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you sometimes have to be closer than max range its very very strange if your fights have any length of time in them to not be able to start a combo at the very least
 
also they should really just change force of body tome to give + 25% accuracy to specials per rank or something because thats just 240 aas worth of exp just wasted. if slaar wants to keep combos relying on round kick so that noobs can access it sooner it should be changed to something remotely useful. i do like 10-12 dps via round kick lol.
 
Or could just make monk combos like the war ww and ramp abilitys so were not spamming lvl 6 kick for our dps upgrade.
 
Lleoc said:
you sometimes have to be closer than max range its very very strange if your fights have any length of time in them to not be able to start a combo at the very least
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That may have been part of my issue. That said, while playing Gegen I have observed 3 and 4 kick streaks without staring a combo (due to misses.) I would by no means call this the norm, but it happens.
 
Ideas to bring the monk class back up to par without relying on a smattering of OP weapons/items:

1. Swap Flying Kick and Round Kick in the current Combo rotations.
Flying Kick is very obviously the intended DPS special attack of the monk class. It is the final special attack we receive. It has the highest base damage. It has no utility effect like most of our other attacks. We have a class tome devoted solely to increasing its damage. The +FK skill mod has been tweaked to provide a larger benefit. Yet because our DPS combo is 3x Round Kick, all of these class mechanics devoted to making Flying Kick do better damage are completely wasted. This would not be that significant of a DPS improvement even for the monks that have every possible boost to Flying Kick damage, but the situation now is 100% illogical and this change seems like an obvious one, and one that is a very simple fix.

2. Add more +Flying Kick mods to monk gear across the tiers.
There are a grand total of 7 items in the game that provide the +Flying Kick mod. 3 of them are BOE items, two are CMal 2 drops, one is a low tier quest reward, and one is a mid/high tier drop. My first proposed change would cause monks to actually use Flying Kick again, and this one would mean the altered +Flying Kick mod actually would actually benefit a sizable portion of monks. Perhaps a +Flying Kick refuge aug, so monks can choose to aug for a bit more DPS instead of straight resists/ac across the board?

3. The combo system itself still needs work.
There are several issues with the combo system as it stands. First, our special attacks have fairly low accuracy, which results in long stretches of time where we fail to initiate a combo due to missing multiple attacks in a row. In 30 minutes of soloing in OG yesterday, I failed to complete a combo attack against 3 mobs (out of perhaps 20 total) due to missing ~5 kicks in a row at the start of the fight. If our class is to be balanced around the combo system, it needs to actually be reliable. There are also issues with mob hitboxes and terrain that can make it impossible for our special attacks to land due to being out of range (while still being inside regular melee range). So, I would propose that our combos should be initiated whether or not our special attack actually hits.

Secondly, most of our combos are not worth using. The lifetap and DPS combos are very nice and are the only ones I personally ever use. For a while, Slow Time worked differently than it does now; using it actually added the buff as a melody like a real bard song, and allowed it to run on its own until you ended it (most commonly by feigning death). This was great for boxing/soloing, and could be useful in groups and raids in some situations. It was still extremely niche in those environments however since monks have to feign death so frequently to avoid pulling aggro, and it also doesn't stack with other overhaste as far as I'm aware. It would be cool if this could somehow be brought back, or if the 15% overhaste could be adjusted somehow to make the effect worth using with its current duration. The human racial combo (Wrath of Nalansar) seems pretty nice in that it actually does some AOE DPS along with some utility effects, although I'm not sure how much DPS it actually does since I'm not a human. The iksar racial effect in comparison is awful. Its key feature is a mana drain of -18 per tick. Mana drains in the first place are very seldom required/useful, and this one in particular is very weak compared to what other classes can offer. The two DD+Stun combos and the mez combo should be changed entirely, or at bare minimum get rid of one of the stuns and give us something else. Requiring 8-10 seconds of windup on a stun or mez, while being in melee range of something to initiate them, results in them being completely useless in my experience. If there are other monks out there that want to weigh in on the usefulness of our various combos or ideas for new ones I would welcome the input.

Thirdly, the whole purpose of the combo system was to provide monks with more utility, bring our DPS up to par with the other classes, and to also be somewhat involved. I don't believe that the combo system as it stands has managed to meet any of those goals. The potential is there, but it has not yet been achieved. In groups and raids our primary purpose is DPS, and we used to spam flying kick every time it refreshed from the start of a fight until the end to maximize our dps. With the current system, we now spam Round Kick from start to finish instead. Giving us a wider variety of useful combos is necessary to meet all three of the goals of the combo system. We should have multiple combos that are worth using in any given fight, rather than having one that we use from start to finish. Pretty much every other class in the game (aside from perhaps rogues I guess) have to actually make choices on what they are going to do next in a fight. Give monks actual choices to make as well.

Edit- An example of what I think the combo system could be. Firstly, reading back through the thread makes it apparent that Slaar for whatever reason was against things with 100% uptime. I feel that this is a key issue with the system not being very involved. If none of your combos have persistent effects that last longer than one combo rotation, inevitably you will just use whichever combo is the optimal one over and over and over forever. I think a slightly different approach would be much better overall.

If one of our combos applied a DOT that lasted 4 or 5 ticks which resulted in more overall damage than the Massive Kick DD and its +accuracy effect, and we also had a combo that applied a buff to ourselves or our group that lasted a minute, suddenly monks would be using 3 different combos in a typical fight rather than just chaining the same one over and over. We'd have to actually evaluate the situation and choose our next combo appropriately.

Or, say you are soloing or 2boxing or offtanking... if the Round-Tiger-Flying combo were changed so that the +avoidance, -accuracy, self heal effect instead lasted a minute and applied a self HOT with an aggro boost, it would accomplish several things. It would certainly be used more often (I completely forgot about it in my original post listing the current combos, for crying out loud) and it would encourage using multiple combos because refreshing its effects while the previous ones were still active would not be very useful.

There are tons of possibilities for the combo system that would actually meet the goals set forth in this thread, I'm sure the devs and other players can come up with tons of possible things to implement that would be fun and engaging while addressing the substantial issues that the monk class faces currently.
 
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Dinadass said:
Ideas to bring the monk class back up to par without relying on a smattering of OP weapons/items:

1. Swap Flying Kick and Round Kick in the current Combo rotations.
Flying Kick is very obviously the intended DPS special attack of the monk class. It is the final special attack we receive. It has the highest base damage. It has no utility effect like most of our other attacks. We have a class tome devoted solely to increasing its damage. The +FK skill mod has been tweaked to provide a larger benefit. Yet because our DPS combo is 3x Round Kick, all of these class mechanics devoted to making Flying Kick do better damage are completely wasted. This would not be that significant of a DPS improvement even for the monks that have every possible boost to Flying Kick damage, but the situation now is 100% illogical and this change seems like an obvious one, and one that is a very simple fix.

2. Add more +Flying Kick mods to monk gear across the tiers.
There are a grand total of 7 items in the game that provide the +Flying Kick mod. 3 of them are BOE items, two are CMal 2 drops, one is a low tier quest reward, and one is a mid/high tier drop. My first proposed change would cause monks to actually use Flying Kick again, and this one would mean the altered +Flying Kick mod actually would actually benefit a sizable portion of monks. Perhaps a +Flying Kick refuge aug, so monks can choose to aug for a bit more DPS instead of straight resists/ac across the board?

3. The combo system itself still needs work.
There are several issues with the combo system as it stands. First, our special attacks have fairly low accuracy, which results in long stretches of time where we fail to initiate a combo due to missing multiple attacks in a row. In 30 minutes of soloing in OG yesterday, I failed to complete a combo attack against 3 mobs (out of perhaps 20 total) due to missing ~5 kicks in a row at the start of the fight. If our class is to be balanced around the combo system, it needs to actually be reliable. There are also issues with mob hitboxes and terrain that can make it impossible for our special attacks to land due to being out of range (while still being inside regular melee range). So, I would propose that our combos should be initiated whether or not our special attack actually hits.

Secondly, most of our combos are not worth using. The lifetap and DPS combos are very nice and are the only ones I personally ever use. For a while, Slow Time worked differently than it does now; using it actually added the buff as a melody like a real bard song, and allowed it to run on its own until you ended it (most commonly by feigning death). This was great for boxing/soloing, and could be useful in groups and raids in some situations. It was still extremely niche in those environments however since monks have to feign death so frequently to avoid pulling aggro, and it also doesn't stack with other overhaste as far as I'm aware. It would be cool if this could somehow be brought back, or if the 15% overhaste could be adjusted somehow to make the effect worth using with its current duration. The human racial combo (Wrath of Nalansar) seems pretty nice in that it actually does some AOE DPS along with some utility effects, although I'm not sure how much DPS it actually does since I'm not a human. The iksar racial effect in comparison is awful. Its key feature is a mana drain of -18 per tick. Mana drains in the first place are very seldom required/useful, and this one in particular is very weak compared to what other classes can offer. The two DD+Stun combos and the mez combo should be changed entirely, or at bare minimum get rid of one of the stuns and give us something else. Requiring 8-10 seconds of windup on a stun or mez, while being in melee range of something to initiate them, results in them being completely useless in my experience. If there are other monks out there that want to weigh in on the usefulness of our various combos or ideas for new ones I would welcome the input.

Thirdly, the whole purpose of the combo system was to provide monks with more utility, bring our DPS up to par with the other classes, and to also be somewhat involved. I don't believe that the combo system as it stands has managed to meet any of those goals. The potential is there, but it has not yet been achieved. In groups and raids our primary purpose is DPS, and we used to spam flying kick every time it refreshed from the start of a fight until the end to maximize our dps. With the current system, we now spam Round Kick from start to finish instead. Giving us a wider variety of useful combos is necessary to meet all three of the goals of the combo system. We should have multiple combos that are worth using in any given fight, rather than having one that we use from start to finish. Pretty much every other class in the game (aside from perhaps rogues I guess) have to actually make choices on what they are going to do next in a fight. Give monks actual choices to make as well.

Edit- An example of what I think the combo system could be. Firstly, reading back through the thread makes it apparent that Slaar for whatever reason was against things with 100% uptime. I feel that this is a key issue with the system not being very involved. If none of your combos have persistent effects that last longer than one combo rotation, inevitably you will just use whichever combo is the optimal one over and over and over forever. I think a slightly different approach would be much better overall.

If one of our combos applied a DOT that lasted 4 or 5 ticks which resulted in more overall damage than the Massive Kick DD and its +accuracy effect, and we also had a combo that applied a buff to ourselves or our group that lasted a minute, suddenly monks would be using 3 different combos in a typical fight rather than just chaining the same one over and over. We'd have to actually evaluate the situation and choose our next combo appropriately.

Or, say you are soloing or 2boxing or offtanking... if the Round-Tiger-Flying combo were changed so that the +avoidance, -accuracy, self heal effect instead lasted a minute and applied a self HOT with an aggro boost, it would accomplish several things. It would certainly be used more often (I completely forgot about it in my original post listing the current combos, for crying out loud) and it would encourage using multiple combos because refreshing its effects while the previous ones were still active would not be very useful.

There are tons of possibilities for the combo system that would actually meet the goals set forth in this thread, I'm sure the devs and other players can come up with tons of possible things to implement that would be fun and engaging while addressing the substantial issues that the monk class faces currently.
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This is a GREAT post for so many reasons. Boxing in a monk a lot of times leads me to agree with pretty much everything you have said. I am glad that someone finally agreed with me that missing a bunch of kicks in a row is a problem...

The only thing I would add is that the avoidance changes, while the physical numbers were small, are very noticeable and have decreased monk utility (at least in xp/6 man scenarios.) I would argue that the combo system should be 'finishing', and monks should be given back the removed avoidance. This would add back the dps/utility that monks are now lacking.
 
I'm not sure why every combo currently starts with Round Kick, but if it's possible to alter this I think it would help quite a bit. Ideally, Flying Kick and Round Kick would both be interchangeable in the combo system so that lower level monks can use the combo system while higher end monks are actually using the special attack that is most appropriate. Also, I think regular old Kick should be used for some combos as well, since kicking procs boots, and boot procs are a pretty important part of our DPS from fairly early on.

So, a proposed list of combos (with Round Kick functioning identically to Flying Kick) that I feel would do a pretty solid job of reaching the goals set forth in this thread by Woldaff and Slaariel:

Fly-Fly-Fly: Current DPS combo, with the "Increased accuracy and decreased avoidance" effect adjusted to add enough DPS to bring monks up to an appropriate DPS. You could also just make the Massive Kick spell do more damage but it's already a pretty large aggro spike and that would make it worse.

Fly-Fly-Kick: Applies a DOT to the current target. Ideally it is rather long lasting, and also does more damage overall than the regular DPS combo. If it's high damage but short duration, you'll end up just spamming this instead of the regular DPS combo, and if it has a long duration but doesn't actually do more damage than the regular DPS combo it wouldn't ever be used.

Fly-Kick-Fly: Offensive group buff that provides overhaste or ATK or mini-Cunning. Again, would have to be significant enough that it would actually be worth maintaining in most situations, while also having a duration longer than the current Slow Time combo so monks aren't just forced into spamming this combo from start to finish.

Fly-Fly-Racial: AOE damage combo. I don't think the iksar and human racial combos need to be identical, but they should at least fill the same role. And I don't think the current human AOE combo actually does enough damage to be worth using instead of the regular single target DPS combo but I could be wrong.

Fly-Fly-Tiger: +Avoidance, -Accuracy, Self HoT with slight +aggro mod. Similar to the current Round-Tiger-Flying combo but hopefully this would be more useful in the appropriate circumstances and would have a duration long enough to allow you to use other combos while maintaining the defensive effects of this one.

Fly-Racial-Fly: Lifetap combo. Leave it just the way it is imo, it does its job fine.

Fly-Eagle-Fly: Defensive group buff, be it a rune or spellrune or small heal or something else.

Fly-Fly-Eagle: Medium/long duration slow. Not a high % or anything, but a slow would be more useful than the stuns we have currently.

So, overall that would be several different combos that would be useful in any given situation and would hopefully be balanced such that using multiple different combos is superior to using one over and over. I think Flying Kick should be the foundation of every combo for two reasons. Firstly, it's our best attack, has its own class tome, and has its own special treatment in the +skill mod area. Secondly, having the same attack used as much as possible for the first and second attacks of each combo makes the system as a whole less clunky since if something changes in a fight partway through your combo, odds are you'll be able to adjust accordingly and finish a different combo than you had planned rather than being stuck partway through a combo that isn't as useful in the new situation. So if you were just DPSing in a group and you get an add that you need to offtank, having the tanking combo being 2/3 identical to the DPS combo makes it pretty likely you'll be able to get the tanking combo up and running sooner than with the current combos.

Also I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to change the special effect of Dragon Punch and Tail Rake. A randomly proccing root is pretty annoying for a host of reasons, so something like a chance to decrease the mobs resists or AC slightly would probably be an improvement.
 
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I agree with the recent posts, as a low tier monk the DD and lifetap are both useful and nice. However they are the only ones I use; it would be nice to switch up the others in one of the many ways suggest throughout this thread.
 
Another random suggestion- The fire and cold proc stances are lower DPS than regular offensive stance, on top of having a stamina drain. Increasing the proc rate or damage of the proc seems like a pretty easy thing that might help a bit.
 
Dinadass said:
Another random suggestion- The fire and cold proc stances are lower DPS than regular offensive stance, on top of having a stamina drain. Increasing the proc rate or damage of the proc seems like a pretty easy thing that might help a bit.
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something that scales with the ratio of your weapon or your haste or something. I think that as a general rule anything that does not scale in some fashion will end up being a mistake.
 
burt6 said:
something that scales with the ratio of your weapon or your haste or something. I think that as a general rule anything that does not scale in some fashion will end up being a mistake.
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Slaar was talking about monks in ooc yesterday and said he'll probably be scrapping most or all of the combo system and our unused stances in exchange for something that we'll actually use so I guess we'll have to wait and see. He did say it's possible that he'll keep the dps combo around though.
 
Dinadass said:
Slaar was talking about monks in ooc yesterday and said he'll probably be scrapping most or all of the combo system and our unused stances in exchange for something that we'll actually use so I guess we'll have to wait and see. He did say it's possible that he'll keep the dps combo around though.
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This is great news. Hopefully, the DPS and lifetap combo are kept. I assume he intends for the mitigation changes to be kept in place?
 
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