Vanguard Monks

I'm curious to see what style everyone plans on becoming at level 15 and why.

I'm pretty sure I'll be going Harmonous. It seems like a great style to not absolutely be the dps'er of a group, but a style that would help to fully maximize the group. It should be fun.

So, what style do you plan on choosing and why?

well i dont realy know. atm its a fight between dragon and drunken. i wish to see how the class does against mobs and other players 1st and then i can decide if i wan more stuns or more dodge etc

I am also planning on going Harmonious. I have a level 15 Harmonius Monk in Beta and I believe they will be a better aid to group play with their debuff abilities. I haven't gotten past 15, nor am I going to in beta, but this outlook on it may change as  I progress through the levels.

Just my 2 cents. I dont know all the abilities each discipline has but by looking at only the description it seems that Harmonious sounds more suited to group play imo.

I personally tried all 3 for a bit before I decided that the Harmonious Path was for me at release. For me and my play style it seemed the obvious choice as I have a regular group with all the DPS it could ever need already. So my choice to suppliment the group with the Harmi abilities was really easy.

-Ample

Ample, would you mind giving those of us who haven't played them all that high an overview of the difference?  Perhaps something that I can include in the FAQ?

Yes, please, any further info would be great!

It is a scary thing to choose something you are stuck with. Although it shouldn't take too long to hit level 15, I want to have a good understanding of what my choices really are.

True, but I'm more concerned with finding out at 50  ;D

I'll throw together a brief synopsis when I get some time tonight.

-Ample

wow if u could do that it would be gr8. i think for solo grinding and out of group lvling then dragon style is best cos u get the most damage with the most time the mob is stunned or out of action in some way. plus u can take on more than 1 mob at a time

Looking forward to it!  :)

The Roleplayer side of me will force me to play a Drunken Boxing goblin monk.  Love the Jackie Chan movie and love goblins.  /shrug, what can I do?

Spleenbender

Are you stuck to one style once you choose it?

I thought I heard you can change your style when you want to.  Iwould assume it would just take doing the quest for that specific style you are switching to that you would normally do at level 15.

Any info on this would be great.

While I can't say I'm positive, I thought I had heard otherwise; that you can't switch. Clarification on this matter would be great  ???

I have read several times that you are not stuck with your style choice. not sure how it will be handled though. My first choice was to go Dragon style..course that was when i was going to be an orc..but as a human im not so sure. Ill prob start with dragon and see how it works out. drunken sounds good but i think every other monk and their brothers barber will be drunken...

Dragon Monk, I like to kill things, so it is pretty simple.  It also seems to be the best for PvP IMO and the Spirit Form seems really cool.

***Disclaimer***

This is my take on the various monk fighting specialization styles as of 1/19/07. Please understand that the views and opinions expressed in this post are mine and may not reflect those at VangaurdMonks.com so be warned!!!

***Disclaimer***


Drunken Monk - The drunken monk presents the player a decent array of defensive / evasion abilities. It has sufficient means to generate decent dps but not as good as the dragon style. The drunken monk is gerneraly more durable than it's harmonious body and dragon counterparts, and can in a pinch serve as an offtank using it's aggro generatig abilities defensive stance, amd counterattacks to buy time for the group to kill off it's current target. Given the fact that some dodge abilities stop auto attack and is sometimes required to use in order to get counterattacks available, holding aggro may become a micro-mnager's delight.

In my opinion I will say though the more I play this style into the lower 30s that this is starting to become less and less effective as it's relatively easier to just Feign Death to clear aggro and then use Nerve strike to buy time for your group.

The Drunken Monk style is probably the best one currently for soloing as its evasion abilities keep it standing after the other 2 style would have to cut and run.


Dragon Monk - The Dragon Monk presents the player with an excellent ability to deal damage, It's Aum abilities highlight that. If you are a old school EQ wizzy trapped in a monk's body this would be the way to go. It's hard hitting finishing moves and advanced finishers make this style a welcome addition to a group. Although some of its AE abilities are tempting but generally go unused in dungeon crawls as any CC class would have you shot for breaking mez continually. I honestly only used them while soloing. I know,,, I know... can it tank??? Not really IMHO although it's health regen stance is nice to have it isn't overpowering enough to tank with.

The Dragon Monk's soloing power to me is fighting even con and lower two dot opponents as they can destroy these swiftly and move on with little downtime. When fighting higher cons I find thier damage to be mitigated better and extends the fights to a point where it is not an efficient form of xping and thier health regen is not sufficient to keep them going. (Although this could be said about soloing in most cases)

I actually played this style the least as I found it rather one dimensional and I have a regular static group. This style is all about dps and I like more utility.

Harmonious Body Monk - The Harmonious Body Monk present the player with an array of self only buffs and mob debuffs to create DPS. This is arguably the most group centric style as it's debuffs on mobs are of benifit to everyone within the group. The harmonious monk it pretty versitile as it can provide some DPS as well as melee debuff / disarm the mob saving valuable healer mana and limiting damage to the tank. It can do decent (read not as good as the Dragon or Drunken) dps although with a melee mitigation debuff can expand on the entire group's DPS by roughtly 15%

The Harmonious Body Style while on paper seems weaker it is actually pretty adapt at soloing as it's self only buffs, defensive stance, and melee debuffs / disarm can keep it in a fight longer than the Dragon Style although probably not longer than the Drunken Style.

This is my personal favorite as I feel I provide more to a group in this style as opposed to the others. I can CC, Debuff and DPS and I feel I am contributing more in this style than any of the others.

This concoludes my little write up on the various style and I would be happy to answer more specific questions if anyone has them.

Thank you,

-Ample

Thank you Ample!  ;D

I only have experience with the Dragon Style, but I think it might be a little too AE heavy for my liking so I might try Drunken in release.

Thanks Ample...  Some really great info there.

 ;)

whats this spirit form u r talkng about?

You can go back and talk to the grandmaster who gives you the original quest of going to a master.  Asking about the other styles will promp the quest to change your style.  Don't know if can be done more than once though or not.

I read on the forums a while back that at lvl 46 Dragon Monks can get a spirit form that is like stealth and levitate at the same time.  I assume it is still in the game and will be there on release.

So far,  I'm up to level 20 monk and I love the harmonious style.  I have nice debuffs, self buffs, can dps pretty nicely and even consistently pull aggro from the tanks.  I can solo well in defensive stance also. I'm more of a guild grouper or duo with my wife so the harmonious style works best for me since it's more group oriented.

awesome info, helps out quite a bit

I did the beta buff on the monk tonight and it gave me all the different stances and from the way i read it i think you have to go drunken to get feign death is this true. can anyone answer this question for me  thanks janner

Nope, not true Janner. All monks get Feign Death. You get it at lvl 10 I believe. At least thats when I remember getting it, someone correct me if I am wrong.

i

Done.

So i got beta buffed to 35 yesterday night and got all my Combat arts and what not where i want them. I was reading some of them and they have for example Dragon Disciple or Dragon mastery in the description. Does that mean only those monks who go Dragon stance are going to beable to use that combat art? Same goes for Harmonious Body and drunken disciple. Will you have to be on that stance to use that Combat art or does it have another meaning?

Disciplines are for all monks

Mastery Skills are Style Dependant


-Ample

FD is lvl 14

I know all monks get FD1 at lvl 14 but what about its upgrades? It says FD 2 and so on is a drunken style does this mean to get the upgrades you have to go down the drunken path?

i think u get the upgrade later on regardless of discipline
and i think FD2 has 5 second timer instead of 10 seconds in FD1

It says that Feign Death I is also drunken style.  Since the monk revamp, the styles have almost completely melded.  Now, instead of dragon monks getting heavy AoE abilities and the ability to jump really high, drunken monks getting the ability to tank and use the opponents strengths against them, and harmonious monks which can turn the tide of the fights with subtle blows, instead of all of that, they've combined most of those abilities into the basic monk.  For example:  My drunken monk got Whirling Strike and Divine Typhoon (the AoE strike and the AoE finisher) of the dragon school.  He also got some hate shifting harmonious abilities, as well as the drunken ones.

The style of monk you play gives you three stances per style and a relatively stunted list of style-unique abilities (which you learn using your style-specific Aum after meditating to 6 jin or more).

I haven't gotten the chance to play around with harmonious too much, but here are the notable stances from drunken and dragon:

-Drunken Stance: -- Drunken Mastery Stance - gives you 10% haste and 5% dodge.
-Drunken Stance: -- Drunken Sway - gives you 30% dodge and -10% accuracy.
-Dragon Stance: -- Storm Dragon - lightning fricken strikes your opponent when you do.  lightning.

Broken Stances:
It is believed that the Dragon regeneration stance (Heavenly Dragon I believe...) is broken as it doesn't seem to alter regeneration, nor show a buff icon.  It is also believed that the Drunken damage stance (Drunken Fist) is broken as it doesn't alter combat damage noticably, nor does it show a buff icon.


So far my favorite style-unique, aum-learned, monk ability is Spinning Fists (I believe it's called).  I learned it with the Aum of the Drunken Master at level 19.  The ability allows a 100% critical chance (provided you hit) with a 5 minute cool-down (granted this should be lowered a bit considering the new crit chance nerf).  This is very helpful for soloing or DPS groups (without intense crowd control) because you'll be wanting to use your AoE critical Divine Typhoon as much as you can.  With Divine Typhoon, you can deal loads of damage, off tank if you want, or completely drop the aggro with FD.  I believe I used Divine Typhoon II which delt melee damage plus 664 to all within something like 6-10m.

I believe all monk style choices will have a higher employability in Vanguard thanks to caster stones (the little rocks of ressurecting the healer classes can summon: Bloodmage - Sanguine Shard, Shaman - Spirit Orb, Cleric - Gem of Life, etc.).  A monk that has one of these beauties can drop out of combat when the group gets in over their head, get back up, ressurect the caster using the stone, and get the group back up losing little to no progress.  In a sense we're the best form of life insurance a group could hope for.

Final thoughts (atleast temporarily): All monks should learn how to make a macro that can drag multiple player corpses... here's a quick guide.

Assembling a mass corpse pull macro:
Step 1: Ensure all players have given you consent to pull their corpses.  (They have to type /consent YourName)
Step 2: Right-click an empty macro slot to open the create a new macro tool.
Step 3: Type in a quick macro name, choose a spiffy image, and then move to the body.
Step 4: Type on the first line "/targetoffensive Name's Tombstone" Where *Name* is the player's name.  Press Enter to move to the next line.
Step 5: Type "/corpse".  Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all player's tombstones are added.
Step 6: You should now have your mass corpse pull macro.  Basically click it every two or so seconds to pull corpses as you're moving.

Thankfully we get FD I before we have to specialize. I'm thinking about going down the Harmonious path as I think that will  be most useful in groups/raids, but I don't know for sure. I'm a little concerned about selecting a path, as I don't want to go down a path that makes me less than optimal later in the game. Going Drunken seems like a bad choice for me as we have a defensive tank in our group. How much of Dragon's damage potential is tied up in AOEs? If it's a large amount, Harmonious might be a better choice.

It is stated in somewhere in some other thread. All monks get the base Discipline abilities. Most of the AoEs are Discipline abilities. Your stance determines your Mastery abilities and Aums.

Lower level Harmonious Stance Mastery abilities:
1. Eagle Claw 1- Damage + 15% Damage Mitigation debuff to target for 18 seconds.
2. Viper Sting 1- Good damage. Delayed. Strike target and 16 seconds later internal organs rupture.
3. Tiger Pounce 1 - Low damage but guaranteed critical hit. Can start hit bridges and chains.

It should be noted that all the abilities that I have received up to level 19 are melee abilities so are subject to the standard melee rules. They can be blocked, dodged, and parried, as well as having a standard "you miss" chance. I don't have enough info gathered yet to evaluate if any of my abilities vary/alter the standard melee % to hit for my equipment and stats. My gut tells me they do by 5-10%.

Akodo

P.S. Kaji's list has the lower level drunken and dragon masteries on the list.


[edit - clarification and added info]

I think I am going to go down the Drunken   :buck2:  path. I like the fact that you can off tank rather easily and not need to have healers jump from the tank to you to the tank, ect... I do not have a tank in my group, do being able to dodge, disarm and slap around a lot   :knuppel2:  is better for us. I may decide to change paths one day, but for now, I think Drunken  :buck2:  is the way for me!

TY to the posters here,some great info. in this thread since I'm closing in on having to choose a style.  Leveling is on hold for now for my static group to catch up (or "fellowship" to finally get patched in  >:( ).

The more I read about harmonious and drunken, the more interested I become...

Eug