Proposed Monk Changes

Given the dps numbers and aggro pulling maybe we should just claim monks are tanks and call it a day. Hardy har har.

Thanks for indirectly answering my question about the innate procs Dinadass. Having aggro/root procs go off while trying to do other stuff sure seems like it would be annoying as hell, especially when Tiger Claw/aggro is attached to the big damage combo.

Not to get all back to the drawing board, but how many effects do Monks really want/need out of the Combo system? There are 8 using the current system. What if instead of Round Kick (dps downer) and three total steps the combo system used Flying Kick + next attack = combo. That would drop the number of combos down to 5 but definitely boost the base dps and "streamline" the system.

FK: Big Hit
TR/DP: Lifetap
TC: Defense/aggro
ES: Haste
RK: Stun

Or something like that. Maybe just either kick sets up a combo and any of the punches/rakes finishes it. That'd be 8 again, but allow for finishing combos faster/getting desired effects out in less response time.
 
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While I've been skeptical about things from the start (the whole resistance to change thing), I was at least interested in trying it all out........and then I logged in with a 61 (previously useless) round kick skill, lol.....
 
I'm running into a problem where the combo sometimes fails to register the second or third attack and then expires. This tends to happen if my original target died or I switched targets partway through the combo. Say I kill something after my first Round Kick, get the combo start message, and immediately start attacking another target. I'll hit Tiger Claw, get the message saying that I surprised my target with a swift claw, and then 1-2 seconds later I'll get the "Your combination attack expires" message. I suspect this is a result of the Tiger Claw actually missing since it wasn't on the original target and still giving the success message. So whatever code there is to guarantee the second and third attacks in a combo are hits might not be working if you switch targets?

Also since I haven't seen a response to whether or not the 10% avoidance bonus was removed and 20% avoidance bonus while not attacking was added, I just parsed a bunch of cractees. With identical stats, normal stance, etc, they had a 38% miss rate against me while auto attacking them and a 39.6% miss rate while I stood there doing nothing, so I'd say it looks like it either was not added or is not functioning correctly, or my parses of ~1000 hits were not long enough. Maybe I'll do a longer one later.

Waldoff said:
Numbers are still being worked out - and we want to keep hearing feedback on them. We are doing a bit of our own parsing too to see if things are where they should be.

Be sure to give feedback on whether or not the system is fun/interesting/worth keeping regardless of the numbers needing a bump. Also any other cool effects or combos would be nice to hear.
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Thank you very much for the update! I'm liking the system itself very much, most of the monks I've talked to (that have had Round Kick skilled up, lol) have said the same.

As far as ideas for new effects, I'm pretty jealous of human monks with their Wrath of Nalansar combo. Maybe turn one of the Tail Rake combos into an AOE with a secondary effect of some sort that makes it more similar?
 
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Numbers are still being worked out - and we want to keep hearing feedback on them. We are doing a bit of our own parsing too to see if things are where they should be.

Be sure to give feedback on whether or not the system is fun/interesting/worth keeping regardless of the numbers needing a bump. Also any other cool effects or combos would be nice to hear.
 
Waldoff said:
Numbers are still being worked out - and we want to keep hearing feedback on them. We are doing a bit of our own parsing too to see if things are where they should be.

Be sure to give feedback on whether or not the system is fun/interesting/worth keeping regardless of the numbers needing a bump. Also any other cool effects or combos would be nice to hear.
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It is fun and rewards paying attention. I also like the options except for mezzing myself a few times... I haven't clearly seen the dps or tanking combos to be reliably beneficial yet with parsing, but maybe with better round kick they will be.

For me, losing avoidance is a big deal so I am hoping these combos really make up for it. I like the idea of switching between tanking and dps stances.. but I died more this weekend than I have in a long time to mobs I usually don't have trouble with. Maybe I was preoccupied trying to hit the right attack though.
 
My opinions on the combos so far.

The lifetap is a big winner, very useful in a lot of situations.

The mez doesn't work atm, the group haste doesn't work atm. so I will reserve judgement on those.

The offensive combo is a problem for several reasons, The dps increase is meager. not enough to fix monks and certainly not enough to make it worth the defensive penalty, this is further complicated by it causing us to pull agro because of the tiger claw component and nuke (and take more dmg than normal). As it stands this is really not worth using and definitely not usable on raids where pulling agro can wipe a raid.

The defensive combo is also not very good for similar reasons, I have found it is basically impossible to hold agro with it even with Fidels high ae dps procs. also the short duration makes it inherently problematic for obvious reasons, it really needs to be up all the time even if that means it is weaker.

as it stands I don't think I will be using anything other than the Lifetap combo and I would trade it for the small amount of avoidance we lost.

once again, monks were pretty much ok, they were fine in groups which is what most of these changes affect. They have problems on raids at the high end which these changes didn't really address.

just give us festering curse this is the answer
 
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My initial thoughts on the monk combo system so far are generally good, but I have a couple of qualms with some of the individual combos:

DPS Stance (Tiger Claw -> Flying Kick)

While this is a cool idea, the fact that it uses Tiger Claw means it builds up a great deal of aggro, and I usually end up pulling aggro off the MT (so far I've been pulling aggro from Kandi, Versul, Rothel, and Fuwok) and I'm only a t8-t9 monk. I have to feign death far more often to ensure I don't pull aggro, which means I'm not really maximizing my dps, I'm lowering it on purpose to make sure I don't get wrecked.

Lifetap + Stun Combo

Cool idea, but I never use it, I'd use either the Seven-Sided Stomp combination for far more lifetap or the Crushed Lungs combination for a far longer-lasting disable. (assuming crushed lungs worked).

Wrath of Nalansar (Human only Dragon Punch -> Round Kick)

This one is really fun, I don't really have much to say about it other than I'll never use it over DPS Stance for damage.

Seven-Sided Stomp (Round Kick -> Flying Kick)

Love this one, I don't really have any complaints about it.

Dodge Stance (Round Kick -> Round Kick)

I'm not in many situations where I have to tank or offtank, but the few ones that I have been in I haven't really seen a big difference between having this stance on and not having this stance on, so I can't say much.

Would it be possible to increase the duration of the DPS Stance by a substantial amount and make its effects cumulative up to a limit?
 
I've mostly been waiting to pass judgement on these changes, but there are a few things that I have to ask/address:

1) What happened to the avoidance proposal? I'm getting leveled by melee hits while pulling. A failed FD is now either a death sentence or ethereal stance. This is not cool at all- it makes me look like an inept ass in areas that used to be no (or few) problem before.

2) It seems that monks can now carry 5 stone more in weight before the character screen reports loss in AC. I understand that it has been stated that this is an artifact of the old system... but am I the only one that feels this needs investigated? It sure seems odd...

3) I would like to know how I can change the color of the emote associated with the combo system. It aggravates me to no end that I had to change the colors of everything else just to make the combo messages stick out more.

As for feedback about the combo system in itself- I don't like it. I don't find it any more interesting than spamming Flying Kick. (The current combo system almost reminds me of playing a bard on live.) In fact, it's annoying as hell because I now have to watch for emotes constantly. Remembering where I am in a combo while boxing is aggravating to say the least. It's just another reason for me to avoid boxing altogether. I suppose this was intended?

Previously, I enjoyed the fact that I could watch what I wanted in combat. On raids, I could focus on calling out Enrage, mob health percentages, emotes, etc. Now I feel like I'm stuck watching for emotes just to pull off fancy combos that seem very limited in their current versions. Maybe I just need to change my UI around but I feel that I can no longer do what I enjoyed most on raids- monitoring the flow of combat.

As the system stands right now, I feel like I've lost all ability to tank worth a damn. I've tried the defensive combos and find them very lacking. Places that I used to feel comfortable taking agro over, even for a moment, I now avoid like the plague. I used to be able to nearly solo two mobs simultaneously in Kaesora... now, I'm using mend before I can even properly establish agro for those same two mobs in a group.

I understand that you don't want a monk tanking raid mobs over the real tanks... but I feel these changes are killing everything I used to love and have worked for to progress my monk. You might claim that 10% avoidance bonus was nothing but I beg to differ. The system as it is right now is unacceptable in my eyes. It sure feels like this combo system is being used to hide the real nerf that's being laid down.
 
I understand the class wasn't meant to tank, but it was nice to be able to fill in the role on trivial zones when there wasn't anyone else available.
 
Intended or not, we have been the 4th (or 3rd depending on the paladin...) tank class for a long time. If they really wanted to get rid of this, maybe they should've done it when there wasn't quite as much of an issue finding a tank for a group. For a long time I've been an extra tank option. I almost never did any kind of main tanking raid-wise, but I was always an option at ramp tank, aux-tank, heavy number of adds tank. Now we're kinda just blending in with everyone else, kinda the same as what the bag/weight-limit change did. We don't really pull a whole hell of a lot more than other classes (especially the tanks, lol...if you're nerfing our tanking, nerf their pulling! (A total joke...some fool's gonna take that seriously...)), now we don't tank. We're basically another dps class with a pause button, trading the better dps numbers from the other classes for being able to pull while the sk has death fatigue, lol.

As far as the combo thing goes, it's a bit early to evaluate it just yet, and I personally have less experience with it (mostly due to my craphouse round-kick skill when it started) than most. That being said, if we were hitting a hotkey to flying kick, etc. before, and now we're just maybe hitting a few different macro hotkeys now, is there really a ton of difference? From what I've heard from a lot of others, most of the combos that are out so far aren't getting used at all. Some seem to only really bother with the big tap.

Again, it's too early to really evaluate a lot of the stuff, but it kinda feels like we were just given a couple new toys, and mostly just blended in with the rest of the classes a little. (I actually clicked haste and rbow off my monk on a raid the other night because I glanced and saw 3500pp on me and subconsciously assumed I was on the shaman, lol...)

As far as what has actually gone in so far... has the 10% for sure been canned, and did the attack off 20% get put in?
 
Just reiterating that it would be really nice if the first round kick didn't have to hit to trigger a combo. I have an issue where sometimes I just don't get random lines of text, whether it's because my connection is laggy or it's the client or what I'm not sure. But this causes a lot of problems where I do a Round Kick, don't get any message saying I start a combo, so I round kick again when it's up and then get "You add a second round kick" message which results in me missing out on a lot of dps combo uptime. If I could be hitting something and know for sure that my Round Kick just started a combo regardless of getting the message or not it would be a lot better. It would also let people macro combos if they wanted to give up some flexibility to make boxing or watching for fight mechanics a bit easier.

I'm also noticing the issue where I do the second attack in a combo, get the corresponding message, but then also get the expiration message a second or two later. This happened quite frequently last night even without changing targets. Is anyone else experiencing this?
 
Yeah, if the first RK didn't have to land to start the combo... it would be a lot easier for us to parse and test. I was getting extremely erratic parses in BQ due to this. Half the time, my dps was lower than what it was before the combo implementation...

And it's the RK, RK, FK that bugs out for me. I'll land the second RK and then suddenly it says the combo fails but there's no rhyme or reason that I can determine why it's doing so.
 
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I think its pretty reasonable from both a lore and gameplay perspective that the first round kick should only need to be attempted to function for the combo attack.
 
Also... will there ever be any type of documentation (instruction manual maybe?) for the combinations? I mean, without this post, I'd be completely in the dark. Even with it... I'm still unclear as to what all of these combos are supposed to be doing. Even the wording of some of the emotes compared to the effect's text seems off or mildly confusing at best.
 
Do monk special attacks have a very short range that leads to scenarios where you can be meleeing something and/or tanking something but your special attacks won't land because you're too far away? Because I think this has happened to me several times lately. Maybe this could be adjusted.
 
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