Proposed Monk Changes

I think that Skill of Hand (or Force of Body tome or whatever else) should work slightly differently than a percentage damage increase if we're expected to use all of our special attacks. Right now, using Round Kick every 4.5-5 seconds, it is worth around 8 dps on Susvain, even with the 100% damage increase from rank 5 of Discipline of the Body. If they instead added flat damage, or gave a chance for every special attack to trigger a bonus Flying Kick or something, it would be a lot better. When monks literally only used Flying Kick, which has a much much higher base damage, the percentage scaling worked fine with it so nobody cared about the other attacks. That is no longer the case, so it should be changed.

The rest of your ideas are great though.
 
Thanks Susvain. What if Skill of Hand gave a % chance that special attacks would immediately cause a round of (or single) normal attacks? I have no idea what the numbers would be on that, but it would scale with the monk indefinitely. Any other attempt to "fix" special attack dps would be uneven through the tiers. I initially just lazily copied the existing AA function but I think this new idea could really smooth out dps. Along with the added utility Monks will be in a good place when none of these ideas go anywhere.
 
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1. Scrap Combos
-This seems like a no-brainer at this point. Combos have not caught on and the system itself is fundamentally flawed and heavily skewed toward just doing more DPS. Planning desired effects two skill CDs out is the Spruce Goose of game design.

I actually like the idea of the combo system when I play a monk, but the fundamental flaws with the system make it tough to swallow. (FYI At this point I don't raid with the monk...) If all these flaws can be fixed, I think it would be a valuable and fun system. Issues:
  1. Out of range problems with special attacks..
    1. I believe some special attacks have a shorter range than max melee range.
    2. z axis issues
  2. The way combos are started. One of the following is the problem...
    1. Not starting combos on a miss
    2. The high failure rate of landing special attacks.
  3. Planning combos so far out is horrible.
    1. Think about if you were casting a spell on a caster and every spell took 12 seconds + to cast...
    2. Combos should be spawned from 2 special attacks, not 3.
  4. The fact that the DPS from each special attack varies and isn't accounted for via the result of the combo.
  5. The fact that only 2 combos are worth using, and arguably only 1 is worth using.
    1. The tankability hit and agro from the DPS combo is not good.
    2. The lifetap combo isn't actually horrible, but hurts dps too much imo.
    3. The other combos suck. (The haste combo was good and used, due to the duration, until it was 'fixed'.)
      1. If meaningful group utility buffs could be added for medium durations via the combo system it could be a real boon and add some utility to the class. (It could also fix the dps problems... not the h2h problems.)
      2. Things like: group haste, DD/Dot crit chance, healing crit chance, melee crit chance, rune, super self over haste, increased base damage, increased proc rate, etc.
      3. I'm talking about numbers that are actually going to make an impact during raids and group sessions with a buff duration of 1 minute +. (Maybe a max of 2 buffs per monk or something.)

*I'll also add that monk styles leave something to be desired... The warrior stamina system is super cool and really makes melee kind of fun. I'm not sure how something like that could be implemented for monks, but it's a thought.
 
What about just giving Monk special attacks 100% or greatly increased accuracy, and instead of combos, just have each attack have a unique, situational/useful effect (similar idea to combos, just... without the combo part. It sounded neat but having to start any effect 12+ sec early sounds horrible and removes a lot of potential skill.

Just ideas:
Flying Kick: flat damage = ATK*WeaponRatio*+/-0-25% *(divide weapon ratio by two for 2H weapons)
Round Kick: For 6 seconds, heal group for 15% of all meele damage dealt
Tiger Claw: For 6 seconds, gain 15% mitigation to all damage and 50% agro
Eagle Strike: For 6 seconds, monk runs at max speed
Tail Rake: Unresistable Lifetap for 50% of monk's total hp - 15 minute cooldown
Dragon Punch: Unresistable Nuke for 80% of monks total hp - 15 minute cooldown

Those numbers might be off, but keep monks as a second tier dps, but give them some potent utility.

I liked when monks were the next best offtanks after war/sk/pal. Now it seems like ranger or bard are just as good, while bringing way more to a raid.

Other abilities provide some pinch utility, that would reward monks for playing smart/reactive.
 
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Since FK has the best base damage and an entire class tome dedicated to making it do more damage, it really should be the dps skill either in the combo system or whatever new system ends up happening. And if FK remains substantially higher dps than our other attacks, losing that plus whatever effect the dps combo/ability gives would be enough of a dps loss to justify having some decent utility or defensive effects on our other specials.

Having timers on certain special attacks is interesting. Normally I'd rather have smaller effects that are always available, but then again having a big on-demand nuke for caster curse would be pretty cool.

I'm not really a fan of different abilities for Dragon Punch and Tail Rake. Right now the human combo is easily better and more useful than the iksar one, and I don't really think people should be locked into an inferior option due to a choice they made before the system existed. I get that it'd be better lore/flavor but I think that has to take a back seat to balance.
 
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It would be nice if our dps stance/combo/attack/whatever allowed monks to outparse the utility classes and end up a couple hundred dps below the real dps classes, especially since we have our avoidance greatly reduced to do it.

And then if we are instead using whatever utility stuff we're given, we could do slightly below bard level dps; we shouldn't do top tier dps or top utility dps since we have the ability to switch between those roles.

Ideally we get some sort of defensive group utility (hot, heal, rune, etc) and offensive group utility (ATK, overhaste, decrease mob AC/resists, whatever). The offensive utility is only worth using if it actually raises group dps by more than the loss of the monk dps option though, which currently Slow Time does not do. Same with the defensive thing... If we give up a quarter of our dps, and can only do it while we have a mob to attack, and don't have the option of increasing the output like casters can by spamming casts when the situation dictates, it needs to actually be a decent amount of defensive utility to justify its existence.
 
Other than Daffie's confusing post ("I like combos but here is what is wrong with them- everything") there seems to be some consistency in posts/likes about what would be beneficial changes for the monk class. That terrifies me after having survived the great 'Paladin Aggro Whining Threads and Meh Fix of 2008-2013'. We should definitely stop suggesting ideas players actually want to see happen, especially top tier players of those classes because from dozens of options something completely different will be selected. In your face Bango's suggestions.

On an unrelated note, monk's would best be served by expanding upon the combo system.
 
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From what I understand, and have a brief concept of from playing my lvl 30ish monk, combos are system of 3 "moves" that culminates in a special ability, be it DD, slow, etc when completed. This system also relies on low level monk abilities to start a combo to encompass all level of monks in the roll-out, which is unfortunate for high level monks because they ignore their best damage dealing combat ability, rendering one of their tomes almost useless.

Could the combo system "change" but remain the same as new combat abilities are learned (as the monk increases level and trains at the dojo). They would only change to use the most recently learned combat ability to be used as the first and second part of the combo. At level 1, a monk could kick, kick, kick which would probably be a DD. Since they don't have any other abilities, they would only be able to do that one combo (but kick, kick, mend, if possible, could cast a regen spell or recourse or something). At level 5, round kick, round kick, round kick would be the new DD combo, but now, you would be able to round kick, round kick, kick to do a new ability (maybe a dot). By level 30, you would flying kick, flying kick, flying kick to do the same DD combo, but you would have a total of 6 different things you could do because monks get 6 combat abilities (kick, round kick, tiger claw, eagle strike, iksar/human one, and flying kick).

I haven't seen anyone mention a system like this, and I'd imagine it is because it would be a coding nightmare / impossible. I thought I would share in case it might spark something in one of the more seasoned contributors.
 
All of the special attacks do negligible dps aside from FK, it's not like a low level monk unlocks Round Kick and can immediately tell a difference between that and regular Kick.

My suggestion right when combos came out was to make RK and FK perform identically as far as which combos they triggered, and add regular Kick in to the combos where FK currently goes.

So RK-RK-RK would be the dps combo, and higher level monks could instead use FKx3. RK-RK-Kick would be the lifetap combo for lower levels and FK-FK-Kick would be what higher levels used, etc. That would have allowed lower level monks to use the system while higher level monks would still benefit from their AA and class tome.

That was before Slaar said he was going to replace the combo system entirely though, and at this point I don't really think trying to change combos would be worth the effort compared to just working on the new system.
 
tl;dr of my confusing post was monk combos were a cool unique concept that ended up poorly implemented :p
Well that and the client we have just has some bad limitations. Not being able to make the range of special attacks match autoattack, slows of any % completely negating all haste for special attacks making comboing impossible, etc.

Make every FK have a watered down version of the dps combo
Make every RK have a lifetap
DP/TR- small gheal
TC- Self +aggro and AC or something defensive
ES- Group ATK or overhaste or lower mob AC/resists

Ideally things would be given a fixed duration of like 4 or 5 seconds instead of tick-based since that would result in a lot of effects lasting like 0-1 seconds because of the way ticks work. I think the current combo effect durations aren't tied to ticks but maybe they are and the messages are just lagged or something.

Change one of our AAs or Force of Body to also increase the accuracy of our special attacks.

And then maybe look into changing stances so we don't have so many that are dps stances that do lower dps than stance 2.

The whole point of the combo system was to give monks better dps (partially successful), more utility (not really successful), and more engaging combat than just mashing FK (not really successful).
 
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Other than Daffie's confusing post ("I like combos but here is what is wrong with them- everything") there seems to be some consistency in posts/likes about what would be beneficial changes for the monk class. That terrifies me after having survived the great 'Paladin Aggro Whining Threads and Meh Fix of 2008-2013'. We should definitely stop suggesting ideas players actually want to see happen, especially top tier players of those classes because from dozens of options something completely different will be selected. In your face Bango's suggestions.

On an unrelated note, monk's would best be served by expanding upon the combo system.

The main suggestion we harped on for paladins was Divine Stun. Divine Stun is about the only thing that was changed. Now they are amazing.

As for monks, I think the easy fix is to change every combo to two-specials, and change the class tome to affect all special attacks. Numbers adjusted accordingly.
 
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