Vanguard Monks

Ok, so Im taking my firsts steps into the world of overly complicated MMOs (I skipped the whole "Second generation" and stuck with Anarchy Online)

So it seems that now theres all these percentages, and numbers involved in pretty much everything (Instead of the good ol...this shoots fast and this hits harder).

Ive been reading around and people are saying that bare handed is better than using wraps or stave's or anything. Why exactly is going bare handed any better than going with wraps? Im assuming it has something to do with stats, but I cant exactly see what the stats are of my bare fists to compare.

So what is better, and please, explain to me how you figured it out.

Bare hands do more damage than any other weapon for monks right now.  From what I have read, this is not intended and it is just another thing that Sigil will have to look at when they do the monk revamp.

As far as weapons go, I gauge my choices by hovering my mouse over the Attack in my character window.  This shows your dps with the current weapon equipped.

well how exactly can you figure bare fists vs. weapons. Unless I video tape several battles and compare Fisted dmg to weapon damage...i wouldnt know how....or am i over reacting

I have not done any formal testing or recorded anything.  All I know is that I hit much harder with bare hands than with a weapon.  For example, one attack with fists will do around 300, while with a weapon it will do around 100.

And as far as I understand it (from reading the tooltips in the skill sheet) your weapon skill only affects accuracy, not damage.  And the bonus skills (Bladed Staff, Knuckles, etc.) are supposed to give bonus damage.

I've got your back on this Dojo. I'm sure it's not intended to be this way, but my monk is also doing more damage with his bare fists than with nuckles or claws.  I have not compared it to sword or staff, but generally dual wielding is higher damage all around.

All I can say is at lvl 7, on a corpse run, I hit a mob for 655 kick. Havent even come close to that with gear on. Havent even come close to that at lvl 10 now. So I am going to drop my knuckles and boots to see if it happens again. If it does, well, thats proof enough for me. If not, well, we shall see...

Hey, now that's weird.  When I was level 7, I landed a kick for 611.  Since reaching 10, I haven't even come close to doing that much damage.  I think that it was either a bug that was fixed a day or two ago, or it's a level 7 glitch.  That's crazy!

the rare weapons from coterie infinitum chain quest are slight upgrade to fists, if your level is under 28. not found anything else better than fists so far

I'm new at this monk thing and still working through my ignorance, but I kept hearing "Use your bare hands!"  Once I did, I came here and found this post through a search.  I checked the "attack" and "off hand" values by hovering (as pointed out earlier = THX)  Here is what I found for my character:

Level 13 Monk with awesome hair!
With Sharptooth Shanker equipped (2H, speed 3.15, dps 9.52)
attack hover reads = 43.50

With no weapon equipped
attack hover reads = 29.50
off hand hover reads = 14.75
Total = 44.25

With one Dread Wind's Claws equipped (speed 2.20, dps 7.73)
attack hover reads = 26.82
off hand hover reads = 14.75
Total = 41.57

With Dread Wind's Claws and Dusty Claws equipped (speed 2.25, dps 5.33)
attack hover reads = 28.64 (yes, different than above?)
off hand hover reads = 10.44
Total  = 39.08

So it appears to me, and I am by no means good with all these stats, that the bare hands have it right now for my guy.  I'm curious if I'm looking at this correctly, please let me know if I'm missing something obvious (other than great gear  :) )  You can also throw in the obligatory "Everyone already knows this, why are you posting it?" - but I'll just ask the question again; I want to make sure I'm checking this out properly.

Eug

Fists being higher dps makes sense to me because you are sacrificing  stats in order to do a little more dps. This doesn't make much difference at low lvls but at higher lvls items will have more and more stats. This is just an example and all numbers are made up but what would you choose?

Fists = 75dps
Claw =  Base dps: 66.58 with 10 dex, 5 vit, 25 energy

Well if those stats are woth it to you you would choose the claws. Not too mention the effect any dex or str might have on your dps due to crits etc.

This make sense to anyone else?

Great question Az, and I have no idea.  I would guess that ultimately stats will win out by driving up crits/etc. but I don't know the math.  I was only looking at the straight dps for starters - the other wild card is what "crit" effects weapons will ultimately have, x2, x3 etc.

Eug

lol cant u remember the average dps u get with a weapn and then with bare fists and compare that way. no need to videotape. easy way is find 2 mobs of the same species and lvl and just test them on both 1 after the other. always use the same moves that u used for 1 as the other or u cant accuratly tell which gives out more dps.

true there is also the possibility of doing insane crits: like in all games vanguard have used this as well. u have the chance to crit upto 10x more than the tool tip. even though when u crit the damage is ussually doubled there are also times when the damage can be 5x the tool tip. after trying on friends account i got some hits that were not epic crits for + 3x the tool tip... although they were really rare. i think i got 3 in like 12 hours straight or something stupid :( .... but they do happen and its awsome when they do. seeing the mob's hp at 50% and then instantaneously drop to 0% is always a cool feeling.

I also find most of the time bare fists are the way to go...although today i bought a weapon at the AH that has 60 dps equipped and my bare fists right now combined are somewhere in the high 40's. ive never compared back to back yet but if the numbers are true the blade staff i bought is a better choice...

13 monk here.  I use claws, handwraps, or knuckles.  The crit rate boost is just so significant in my opinion.  That 7.5% crit rate increase is definitely more than a 7.5% boost to my dps considering I can use my finisher more as well.  Even if bare fists have more base dps, I guarantee knuckles, claws, and handwraps are doing more damage for me as long as they are updated.  I would say the improved crit rate alone gives me 15% more dps easily.  That's not even including any stat boots that may come with the weapons.

Maybe finishers become less of dps later on.  Also, I think a dragon monk get a skill that automatically criticals, so they don't need +crit% as much (I might be wrong about that though).

I've found that fists are better unless you can find yellow or better knuckles or wraps that are about 5-10 lvls higher than you are. That way the stats plus the dps will be a significant increase over going bare hands.

I have been useing bare fisted in primary but useing redcap claws in the secondary (+6str) and i tend to get a little more dps that way at 22.

I'm a level 29 monk and I have always kept my skills maxed on hand-to-hand, ulak/claws, bladed staff, knuckles, and shuriken skills.  So far,  I have found that my bladed staff does the best dps and the weapon graphic is alot better than unarmed in my opinion. The reward for the Infineum questline are claws and the reward for the next questline that requires you to kill Kronus is a very nice bladed staff.  Even the monk default emblem on the UI has a picture of the bladed staff instead of fist wraps or something else.

Anyway,  I can usually beat my unarmed dps by about 6 - 10 by using bladed staff and my knuckles, ulak/claws are typically just barely under my unarmed dps by 2 - 4 dps approx.  Ofcourse, keeping your bladed staff and 2-hand slashing skills maxed are a must for this to work.

Also,  I noticed that by putting a wep in your offhand ONLY will slightly increase your dps rather than just going fully unarmed.

I am a lvl 17 monk (drunken style), and I got one nice handwrap (18dps), and one decent knuckles (12.5dps).

Unarmed: 38.50 main hand, 19.25 extra dps off hand.

18dps hand wrap: 58.00 main hand, 12.00 extra dps off hand.

both handwrap and knuckles: 53.78dps main hand, 18.84 extra dps off hand.

11.67dps windblade: 51.75dps two handed.

A few things which I noticed:
- With a good handwrap/knuckles/ulak/claw you can get significantly more damage. From 38ish dps to 58 is a lot!

- When you have a better weapon on your main hand, your off hand dps drops. When I am only using my main handwrap, I get lower dps on my off hand! This is probably because of the difference between your main hand weapon, and your off hand weapon. When I used two identical claws, I also had a DPS drop, but when I equiped both of them, the dps loss compared to both unarmed was gone, I actually gained a little! Both claws were weaker than my knuckle which I use on my off hand. My main hand had a lot less dps, but my off hand was better!
So the best is to have two identical, or similar weapons in both hands. I can't imagine the dps boost I would get when I would have two 18dps handwraps!

- My windblade, which has far less dps than my main handwrap, or my off hand knuckle still has some good dps! The difference is not really minor, but with a 15dps windblade I would be better off than now! I used to have a 16dps staff which I gave to a guildmate because I bought the 18dps handwrap, but I would probably be better with the staff. (It also had +25dex). This shows that for tanking (windblades are better for tanking as they have some % parry), you do not have to lose a lot of DPS.

Just my two cents, hope it's useful to some of you.