We All Love Monks, Here

It would have been so easy to make a few changes to the combo system and monks would have been great. :(

Seriously- Combo system with Round Kick as the main attack could have been Kick instead for low levels and Flying Kick for higher levels so our tome wasn't useless. RNG streaks of failing to initiate a combo for 30 seconds could have been fixed by either allowing combos to start on a miss or making our AA increase special attack accuracy substantially. And the seldom/never used combos could have been tweaked or replaced so we actually had some decisions to make while fighting.

Bare fists could be balanced around our gloves like they had been forever, and just have a better progression of ele damage and proc DPS so you don't have BOEs as the best gloves until tier 10 and tier 13 gloves being equal to tier 10 gloves. The whole str/dex thing is unnecessary.

And our stances could have just been left alone or tweaked slightly. Not being able to invuln to pull/split fucks up a whole lot of raid and 6man pulls in the low and mid tiers. No WW stance is a huge loss to our already limited AOE potential, plus it greatly diminishes our ability to tank several easy mobs at a time. S15 was both our best single target dps stance and tanking stance which should have probably been changed one way or the other and one of our unused stances changed to fill the opposite role.

That plus some minor things like extending the combo timeout window so we could still use them while slowed (since slows completely negate all haste for special attacks) and changing to combos to use kicks as much as possible since we rely on boot procs for dps and monks would be great. Slow Time combo was 10% group overhaste with ~50% uptime, improving that to actually be better than our personal dps combo would have been an easy way to improve our utility. And changing one of the stun+dd combos to a defensive group utility (rune? Small gheal? Vex effect of some sort? etc) would have been enough to make people maybe want monks in 6man content again.
 
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Dinadass said:
It would have been so easy to make a few changes to the combo system and monks would have been great. :(

Seriously- Combo system with Round Kick as the main attack could have been Kick instead for low levels and Flying Kick for higher levels so our tome wasn't useless. RNG streaks of failing to initiate a combo for 30 seconds could have been fixed by either allowing combos to start on a miss or making our AA increase special attack accuracy substantially. And the seldom/never used combos could have been tweaked or replaced so we actually had some decisions to make while fighting.

Bare fists could be balanced around our gloves like they had been forever, and just have a better progression of ele damage and proc DPS so you don't have BOEs as the best gloves until tier 10 and tier 13 gloves being equal to tier 10 gloves. The whole str/dex thing is unnecessary.

And our stances could have just been left alone or tweaked slightly. Not being able to invuln to pull/split fucks up a whole lot of raid and 6man pulls in the low and mid tiers. No WW stance is a huge loss to our already limited AOE potential, plus it greatly diminishes our ability to tank several easy mobs at a time. S15 was both our best single target dps stance and tanking stance which should have probably been changed one way or the other and one of our unused stances changed to fill the opposite role.

That plus some minor things like extending the combo timeout window so we could still use them while slowed (since slows completely negate all haste for special attacks) and changing to combos to use kicks as much as possible since we rely on boot procs for dps and monks would be great. Slow Time combo was 10% group overhaste with ~50% uptime, improving that to actually be better than our personal dps combo would have been an easy way to improve our utility. And changing one of the stun+dd combos to a defensive group utility (rune? Small gheal? Vex effect of some sort? etc) would have been enough to make people maybe want monks in 6man content again.
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I said this month's ago in a well organized post with bullet points. Other community members responded poorly to the idea that with a bunch of minor changes to the combo system, it would be functional.
 
I've been saying it for over 2 years at this point. When the combo system was announced, it sounded awesome and almost all of the initial responses from players were excited and hopeful and positive. Then the actual mechanics and effects went live and most people thought it had issues and they have been almost completely ignored ever since.
 
Dinadass said:
I've been saying it for over 2 years at this point. When the combo system was announced, it sounded awesome and almost all of the initial responses from players were excited and hopeful and positive. Then the actual mechanics and effects went live and most people thought it had issues and they have been almost completely ignored ever since.
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The other advantage of fixing the combo system was that it was already coded and 90% functional. Not to mention that the only required minor item updates were for a handful of h2h fixes and weapon fixes to mostly monk/bl only usable items.

Maybe with the tweeks and issues ironed out, the newest system will be cool.
 
All of the kick effects need to be well-scaled to level or str/dex; a 100 point lifetap that costs 20% stamina is a bit pointless at 65.
At least the old combo system had a decent lifetap effect that allowed monks to stay alive for a fight and even solo, but now the lifetap effect is practically worthless considering how small it is. A monk's only way of soloing now is through lifetap procs and heal clickies.

R.I.P. the Solo Monk.
 
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a disfunctional system to start off i understand. Not seeing any updates/comments/question answering from the Dev is really old after you tell us to post....Am i missing the responses or are there just none?
 
frogdogy684 said:
a disfunctional system to start off i understand. Not seeing any updates/comments/question answering from the Dev is really old after you tell us to post....Am i missing the responses or are there just none?
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Maybe she is working on updates or at work. It is Tuesday and 1 day after the patch was released.
 
Daffie said:
she.
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lol

also can we get the str dex scaling thing out of our heads pls, that's a terrible way to balance one class's bad dps fists. just make the damn gloves good for the tier by adding more damage and better procs / rates, revert the str and dex back on all the items and make kick effects not shitty by making the numbers good. gg everyones happy
 
As long as they paying attention idc. just want he bugs fixxed.

The idea of a single item turnign someone into DPS is the MEANING of raiding. Scythe for warrior. Bows for Rangers. Weps for Rogues. Only Wizards are not affected by this AS much.
 
Okay, I'm gonna make one post that addresses the last 30 and in order:

Return Kick using Discipline is a bug and will be fixed.

The Monk anti-charm stance seems like it is more important than I thought and I will strongly consider re-adding that mechanic somehow. Back in the day, I remember being VERY disappointed that Xeras could pop that stance and try to pull WW dragons and get charmed anyway so when I was making these decisions, that stance was very underwhelming to me.

The STR/DEX scaling is not capped and scales pretty smoothly through the tiers. Currently, Monks reach approximately 1.0 ratio at 1000 combined stat (this includes buffs and is a rough estimate). The hardest numbers I can give you, since this is RATIO scaling, is that the highest maximum fist damage is 30 base and the lowest fist delay is 14 base. To hit 30/14 you would need an unthinkable amount of STR/DEX though but that is the limit I imposed for the ratio algorithm.

The lifetap on Kick does indeed scale with level. It can be adjusted if it's that underwhelming.

Another suggestion I have heard is to move the lifetap to Defensive stance and this makes sense to me since when you are aux-tanking you want to be defensive proably and healing as much as you can. I will probably do this.

The Flying Kick damage multiplier may be bugged and I will look into this. All I did was change a "4" in the code to an "8" and prelim testing showed a small increase but it certainly wasn't doubling. I'll add something to this to make empowered Flying Kicks more special.

Once Flying Kick is adjusted, I think that the weird DPS issues will be resolved. I certainly had reports that some people were doing the same or more DPS and some people were doing slightly less. If you are doing WAY less, it's probably because of Flying Kick not working right so that should be solved soon.

Right now, the skills that scale do so with level, but I can add some base + str/dex scaling for the ones that don't, maybe. Also I will investigate the issues with Ethereal Form I promise you I thought that I had accounted for the Stamina problem!

The reason I grouped abilities by stance is to allow Monks to spam abilities while generating Discipline. That way, they could "queue up" a succession of several lifetaps or stuns or massive kicks instead of building them up and using them one at a time. I still feel like this is the right choice from a design perspective and allows more creative use of Discipline but if you really do not want this option I can scrap it.

The old combo system was lop-sided and I encourage you to find and post parses from before it existed and compare. I did do real test parsing with these changes, but maybe I did not test enough different gear setups. On hand-to-hand alone, there is no way a T13 Monk does less punch damage now than before, but the DPS loss could still be attributed to the weakness of Flying Kick. For lower tiers, it is possible the scaling does not work as well. So my options are to either skew the scaling or just increase and cap it. I hate hard caps though! Nevertheless, it was not my intention to cut Monk DPS, so this will bear looking at.

Sorry this is a little out of order but I wrote it while reading the thread so that is the order the info came in.

Thank you for all your responses and work continues apace!
 
The stances are fine imho. lifetap may need to be moved to defenisve cause unless ure takign Spell Dmg you are wanting to be in defensive.
As i have stated in other places, 1 thing to note about Flying Kick dmg is it may have to low a base. if you kick for a base 400 with empowered kicks...yeah ouch on the DPS.

Since we have to kinda insta-swap depending on situations in raids is there a way to remove the timer in-between stances or shortin it? (just a thought.)
 
"Another suggestion I have heard is to move the lifetap to Defensive stance and this makes sense to me since when you are aux-tanking you want to be defensive proably and healing as much as you can. I will probably do this."

Why would you want to be in defensive while auxing?

The way this system works, monks won't be able to sit in front of a mob to aux anyway so they'll need to constantly strafe to stay on the aux list while being behind the mob 90% of the time. That will get annoying in a hurry.
 
If you are aux tanking, you might be tanking.
But even if you are not actually tanking, you're eating ripostes occasionally so you still might want defensive stance on.
 
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Okay I was mistaken, apparently while tanking you do count as an aux tank.

Still, AFAIK ripostes can't be dodged or whatever anyway so defensive doesn't help you avoid ripostes, does it? If you aren't tanking, you want to be optimizing your dps 99% of the time. If we have to gimp our dps to aux tank, just bring another healer instead of the monk to do the same dps and keep the tank alive even better!
 
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Dinadass said:
"Another suggestion I have heard is to move the lifetap to Defensive stance and this makes sense to me since when you are aux-tanking you want to be defensive proably and healing as much as you can. I will probably do this."

Why would you want to be in defensive while auxing?

The way this system works, monks won't be able to sit in front of a mob to aux anyway so they'll need to constantly strafe to stay on the aux list while being behind the mob 90% of the time. That will get annoying in a hurry.
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I think that the idea is for monks to be able to sit in front of a mob, that was what I got from it anyway. Lets assume this will still need to be tuned.
 
Yeah if we actually can stay in front to help aux while DPSing, cool.

If we can only do that while in defensive stance and gimping our dps severely by not using a dps kick, then the group/raid would be better off by just bringing an extra healer to dps and quick heal the tank when they eat a big round.
 
Slaariel said:
The reason I grouped abilities by stance is to allow Monks to spam abilities while generating Discipline. That way, they could "queue up" a succession of several lifetaps or stuns or massive kicks instead of building them up and using them one at a time. I still feel like this is the right choice from a design perspective and allows more creative use of Discipline but if you really do not want this option I can scrap it.
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This got me thinking on the drive home.

First and foremost it does not make much sense that you gain Discipline through combat. Rage (or whatever the Warrior mechanic that was kind of copied over) generation through combat makes sense because combat makes you mad then blasting your opponent makes you less mad, but Discipline is about being calm- waiting for an opening and not charging in recklessly. Because of that, and to fix some other stuff, I humbly suggest the following:

DISCIPLINE 2.0
A rested Monk has full (100) Discipline, a resource which regenerates slower the more empty the Discipline bar is- or vise versa faster the fuller it is. In other words Monks who LACK DISCIPLINE will blow through their DISCIPLINE bar while those that EXERCISE DISCIPLINE will have plenty of DISCIPLINE bar to work with. Wax on, wax off. Abilities should not be attached to stances since that is limiting for no reason.

DISCIPLINES BAR
100 points of Disciple that base regenerate at:
Discipline Regeneration per tick = Current Discipline X .1; rounded up to a whole number
EX: If the Monk practices DISCIPLINE and has 90 Discipline they will gain 9 points per tick
EX: If the Monk lacks DISCIPLINE and has 10 Discipline they will gain 1 point per tick

AA Changes:
Discipline of the Body - 2/2/2/2/2
Each rank reduces the cost of special attacks by 1 Discipline point.

Skill of Hand RENAMED: Inner Calm (or, SERENITY NOW!) - 5
Increases the rate as which the Monk regenerates Discipline:
>AA Discipline Regeneration per tick = Current Discipline X .15
>This allows Monks to spam Flying/Round Kick on CD without worry

Tome Change:
Melee Discipline's Rested Style would increase (double?) discipline regeneration while in stance.

SPECIALS
[these numbers are maybe too low? I dunno]
  • Kick now has the LARGE lifetap 30 (25)
>High cost to balance the change in lifetap. Good way to introduce Monks to the Discipline system mechanics and help leveling.
>Could the damage/tap be scaled to a % of Monk hps? That fixes scaling issues and keeps the tap appealing at all levels.
  • Round kick will now do an AE attack 15(10)
Low cost means can be used on CD all day long to replace lost WW stance better
  • Flying kick has a large increase to base damage 15 (10)
Similarly useable on CD. The default Monk ability.
Return kicks would not use Discipline
  • Tiger claw will generate extra aggro 20(15)
Useful ability, doesn't need to be always on
ALTERNATIVELY: Could this ability give the Monk a massive avoidance boost for a few ticks if NOT the primary target? That would certainly facilitate the AUX tanking idea and make keeping the effect up kind of interactive/decision making instead of spamming lifetap.
  • Eagle strike will stun or interrupt 25 (20)
Useful ability, should be limited.
  • Dragon punch / tail thing will kb/root [depends on how Ethereal is handled, either 10/5 or 20/15]
Since this is pretty much for pulling you would want a really low cost if Ethereal is changed or high cost if it is a fixed timer thing.

"Removed except for Ethereal Form which is currently fixed at 20 seconds and locks Discipline generation for a short time on use. Currently Lay Hands equivalent reuse timer."
>This seems like a crazy long reuse timer.
>How about instead, assuming DISCIPLINE 2.0 is used, have it drain 30% Discipline per tick (so lasts 4 ticks max) and lock out Discipline generation for a short time (a few minutes to prevent any hackiness).
>The only thing prolonging Ethereal Form reuse does is slow down raids, boo.

POSSIBLE NEW BURN STANCE:
A stance which wildly increases haste and/or damage at the cost of 10-20 Discipline per tick depending how wildly. Disciplined Monks can go into Super Monk mode but only briefly (less disciplined monks for less time). Gives a reason to monitor Discipline and an offensive oh shit button to balance Etheral's defense.
 
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