Vanguard Monks

The following is work in progress regarding all things monk. I have started pulling in information from the various forums in to get this started.  For sanity sake I will kindly ask that you keep the thread positive as the last couple of attempts started to derail and then burst into flames. I will attempt to keep this thread as up to date as possible provided we can keep it focused and on track.

If you don't see your bug / issue / suggestion on here please send me a PM and I can rectify that or explain why it's not there.

General Monk Bugs

• Bug: FD Wierdness: Occasionally mobs will camp the supposed "corpse" of a player who has successfully FD. This keeps the player in combat sometimes thus lowering health regen. This does lead to the death of the monk on occasion as they can’t escape combat.
• Bug: The ability to split pull using FD has mysteriously been removed. Was this a fix / nerf? Should this ability exist? (Bug acknowledged by Talisker and the pause prior to moving back to spawn spot will be reintroduced)
• Bug: Players are still reporting getting skill ups in weapons that they don’t have equipped anymore.
• Bug: Ranged attacks are not taking into account the damage of the object used when making a ranged attack (e.g. a crude shuriken will do as much damage as using a balanced shuriken)
• Bug: Storm stride doesnt teleport you behind the enemy if the enemy does not have aggro on anyone.
• Bug: Storm Stride when it does teleport you doesnt change the camera position with you if in 3rd person
• Bug: Secret of celerity does not work on auto attack
• Bug: UI does not always display finishers properly. Advanced finishers do not always make thier way to the reactions hotbar. Also sometimes Advanced Finishers get "stuck" in the reaction hotbar.
• Bug: Quasi Exploit: Aum Lait - Currently gives 2 buff icons, one for the penalties and one for the enhancments, if you click off the penalty you can have aum lait speed buff with no penalties  (Dont do it!... Dont be that guy!)
• Bug: Weapon Specializations do absolutely nothing.
• Bug: Aum Ti - Many stacking issues. The five percent to parry does not grant the full amount. The twenty percent reduction to endurance costs does not stack with Eternal Crane, putting harmonious monks at a big disadvantage.
• Bug: Nerve Strike Currently this ability is broken by Psionicist AoE mez as well as many other minor AoE debuffs. With a 30 second cooldown, these make monks less dependable as a crowd control option in groups. This ability should be broken upon damage, to keep it in line with other classes mezmerize capabilities, or atleast make it less sensitive to certain debuffs.
• Bug: Three Finger Strike, Hammer Fist hits for about 40 dmg. Damage seems way too low
• Bug: Aum Kor doesn't work or do anything at all.
• Bug: Jin Surge is used up even if you miss.
• Bug: Unable to learn Reed in the Wind via mobs.

General Monk Issues / Concerns

• Issue: The monk is supposed to have the highest DPS baseline of all offensive fighters. This is not the case. Some of this may be tied to itemization or lack of it at lower levels.
• Issue: Granted, evasion was way too high before but now it feels like it swung to far in the other direction. I am not sure what the magic number is but right now it doesn't "feel" like an evasive light fighter.
• Issue: Secrets of Ice / Flame dont proc enough and it's effects are negligible and not long lasting.
• Issue: Legendary Weapon Quests are Bugged or non-exsistant as compared to other classes
• Issue: Jin Surge appears to incorrectly apply the damage to other abilities, spell damage appears to gain no improvement from the ability, and DoT abilities seem to get a very very big increase. (need more information on this)
• Issue: Swaying Step:  Appears to not apply the dodge bonus, or the tooltip is incorectly displaying the real dodge bonus.
• Issue: Monk dodge abilities are on a refresh timer where as a Ranger' are not. Either remove our refresh timer or add one to thiers. Level the playing field.
• Issue: Claws / Ulak and knuckles should be represented visually on the character's hands. Fist wraps, however, should continue to look like the monk is bare handed.
• Issue: You can't use food and meditate at the same time. A minor issue, but it would be nice if we could meditate and rest up using food at the same time, considering that as a monk you're probably resting after each fight when soloing.
• Issue: Originally monks were supposed to be the masters of creating weaknesses that their group members could exploit. I think it wouldnt hurt to apply more weaknesses/weakness exploit tags to more mastery style specific attacks
• Issue: Aum Liat - After the horse movement buff speed changes, monks should be granted a Five percent increase to mounted speed while chanting to keep in line with other classes movement buffs.
• Issue: Jin Surge should not count for auto attacks, because it's very easy to have it "wasted" if you don't time it right - And you can't expect your teammates to time their attacks for it either.
• Issue: Vulnerabilities need better descriptions / tutorial
• Concern: UI gives a "rescue"  cue when your target is below 20% but all reactions are outlined in green Is this normal?
• Concern: Our abilities are not scaling well enough for us to maintain our role as the highest base DPS offensive fighter. Perhaps more upgrades more often would eliminate part of the DPS issue as well.
• Concern: Modes of mitigation: We currently have 0 additional ways to mitigate damage

Dragon Monk Bugs

• Bug: Dragon Stance: it says it regenerates HP's but it has no effect at all.
• Bug: Magnificant/Storm Dragon Stance:  Currently does not drain Jin over time as per description
• Bug: Storm Dragon Stance: Secrets of Ice and Flame do not stack with this stance
• Bug:  The icon is just a red X for the neutral stance icon.  When clicked on nothing happens.
• Bug: Sundering Dragon's Claw tool tip says: Savagely tears through your opponent, inflicting a massive 891 to 941 damage over 6 seconds. Increases Jin by 1. It's listed as a finisher but is actually an advanced finisher and it doesnt work at all. 0 initial damage and 0 DoT
• Bug: When you use a 2h weapon and do  your AOE, Lightning damage is not added from our offensive stance.

Dragon Monk Issues / Concerns

• Issue: Storm Dragon Stance / Magnificant Storm Dragon: The style is listed as adding lightning damage in return for draining 1 jin every 4 seconds (think its 6 seconds on magnificant, cant log in to check atm) Jin currently isnt being lost, however the damage add on lightning is also very small, The style needs to add a lot more lightning damage and add the jin drain, OR take off the jin drain from tool tip and improve the damage just a bit.
• Concern: Dragon Stance - Provides health regen out of combat. This stance provides no benefit during combat and the amount of regen isn't comparable to that gained by food. It's greatest appeal would be for monks who have Feigned Death, but remain in combat with not much health left, giving them a chance to regain some health and allow them another chance to Feign Death. In combat regen from a fix of this ability may provide an advantage soloing, but I'm sure most monks would just like to see this stance replaced completely.
• Concern: Stone Dragon - Improves the monks armor scaling in level and adding resistances, while reducing attack speed. The armor gained has very little impact on the reduction in damage taken, the penalty for attack speed has little or no affect on the damage output of the monk. This stance doesn't seem to have much impact either way. Possibly reduce a flat percentage of incoming damage, or provide a percentage of resist to stuns, roots, snares and change the penalty to a reduction in run speed or percentage of outbound damage.

Drunken Monk Bugs

• Bug: Drunken Fist Stance does not have/give a buff icon.
• Bug: When targeting a mob and changing to Drunken Mastery Stance, It will give the mob the buff icon (like bard songs do I think)
• Bug: Foolhardy Swagger II is a cloned version of I version down to the tooltip.

Drunken Monk Issues / Concerns

• Issue: Drunken Mastery Stance did not get upgraded at level 30, The other two did.
• Concern: Drunken Fist Stance - 10% damage increase, while generating 25% more aggro. This stance is clearly for soloing or tanking in groups as you will compete with tanks for aggro if used. Right now this stance collects dust. A possible fix to this stance would be switching the damage modifier with a damage reduction or avoidance modifier, allowing drunken monks to perform the role of off-tank once again.
• Concern: Drunken Master Stance - 10% attack speed increase and 5% dodge increase. This stance provides monks with the least amount of penalty for using the stance, but provides no real benefit other then 5% dodge. A fix for this would be adding a set amount of damage to all abilities rather then haste (or making haste affect monk abilites) and increasing the percentage of avoidance gained.
• Concern: Drunken Sway Stance - 10% to dodge, but 10% less accurate. This stance has seen perhaps the most extreme effect from the evasion changes. Almost everyone can agree that 10% is not worth a 10% reduction to accuracy simply because the two do not scale equally. A mob will gain more benefit from you missing 10% of the time, then you will see from +10% to dodge (once again 10% increase is usually not completely obtained). A possible fix for this stance would be to increase the evasion provided, possibly add a percentage boost to all damage dealt while in this stance, and significantly reduce the accuracy penalty as well as scaling it down as the monk levels.

Harmonious Monk Bugs

• Bug: Harmonious Monks who use Deadly Adder Hand Line and then FD will garner aggro once again (even if still FD) when the damage portion of this ability hits the mob.
• Bug: Crane Stance:  mouse over description says it adds +20% to parry, but the buff tool tip says 8%, i'm inclined to believe the buff tool tip.

Harmonious Monk Issues / Concerns

• Issue: Eternal Crane end reduction components are not stacking with Aum Ti's end reduction components
• Issue: There is a problem with the crit bonus stacking with buffs, gear, and weapon types. It appears to have the 25% added before other crit rating modifiers are factored in. With heavy +% crit and dex gear, along with buffs almost no benefit is noticable from switching to this stance. A suggestion for this stance would be fix the stacking issues, remove or reduce the cooldown on stance stepping, and scale the endurance cost penalty down minorly as the monk levels.
• Concern: Tiger Stance the end cost penalty for this stance may be too harsh

PVP General Monk Bugs

• Pushing Hands does not work in PvP

PVP General Monk Issues / Concerns

[/list]

very nice

Good job getting this together. My 2 jin points worth:

Generally speaking, I think monks are fairly balanced but could use some tweaking. Here are some possible suggestions and feedback from a level 19 Harmonious monk.

Crane Stance - For the most part, I think this is ok, although I'd like to see a slight % increase it gives to dodge and parry than what it currently gives. Perhaps make it a range that scales upward in level.

Tiger Stance - This stance needs help, IMO. Specifically, the endurance hit is simply too penalyzing. I'd also like to see a scaling damage boost added to this stance that eventually caps at 20%, much the way damage is decreased by 20% for Crane and scales downward.

Harmonious Stance - In its current state, I find this to be largely useless. In fact, I doubt it's even working as intended as it's rather easy to abuse. Sadly, there's not much benefit in abusing it because Jin recovery isn't really a problem. I think the Jin regen rate should be increased significantly such that it's actually meaningful in combat. I also think the stance should provide a similar regen mod to Endurance as well. Only then would I really consider using this stance over the other two.

Jin - Overall, I think the Jin system is balanced fairly well. Replenishing Jin points through attacks makes it the system fairly efficient while also providing a somewhat limited means to burn through it quickly when needed. Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing a true Jin burn ability at some point.

Endurance - This is arguably the one area that could use the most attention. Enduarnce costs as they are today are a little too high across the board. Even in Crane stance, an Eagle Claw/Deadly Adder combo to open a fight takes a significant chunk of my Endurance, especially if one misses and needs to be fired again. In Tiger Stance, this scenario is crippling. I think the base regen rate is probably fine but the costs themselves need to be looked at or we need additional ways to increase our total Endurance pool.

Eagle Claw - Solid effect but would like to see the mitigation % be changed from a flat 15% to say 10% and scale upwards. Addiitonal EC upgrades should continue this mitigation scale while adding additional side effects.

Deadly Adder - Strong ability. The problem is that it's great for its level but then shows diminishing effects for each level afterwards. If they don't change it, it should at least have an upgrade available every 4 levels or so.

Quivering Palm - would like to see the effect increased from 8 secs to 12 secs.

Ignore Pain - would very much like to see this % based instead of hard numbers or a range.

Itemization - I guess my only concern at this point is Sigil's stance on bare fists. They've said that bare fists pretty much scale upwards such that only the rarest of legendary weapons will surpass their DPS. I guess I could live with this, although this may be rather penalyzing at later levels when trying to eek out every HP you can to survive a raid, not to mention the fun factor of weapon choices ("Oh sweet! It dropped the Uber Ulak of Greatness!! Oh wait...).

That's all I have for now but I'm sure there will be more to come.

Drunken Monk Bugs

Drunken Mastery Stance did not get upgraded at level 30, The other two did.
Drunken Fist Stance does not have/give a buff icon.


(minor bug)
When targeting a mob and changing to Drunken Mastery Stance, It will give the mob the buff icon (like bard songs do I think)

If you turn on Camera Snap Behind or some similarly named option (can't remember exactly) It will change your view angle after you warp.

Hello all.

  Dragon Monk Bug- 

Dragon Stance: it says it regenerates HP's but it has no effect at all.  The icon is also the red X neutral stance icon.  When clicked on nothing happens.

Goji

updated... Kaji can I get a sticky on this?

QTM

Looks good.  Now we just need to communicate this to the folks at Sigil.

Adding my 2c to Monk issues:

1) Our skills do NOT grow with us!  Currently most of our skills add a fixed amount of damage to our attacks, that mean the skill does roughly the same damage at level 15 as it does at level 25!!  It would have been OK if we get frequent skill upgrades (like once every 4 levels) but we don't.  Either make the skills do X% of weapon damage or give us frequent upgrades.

    - ie Deadly Adder Hand of Harmi monks do a -40str debuff for 16secs and does +133 to +175 (forgot exact numbers) when the effect wears off.  It's cool to get a skill that debuffs and does ~200dmg at level 15.  It's TOTALLY NOT COOL to have the same skill do ~250dmg at level 25!!!

2) Our heal does too little for too long a refresh.  At level 25 Ignore Pain does a ~360 heal to my 2200hp.  That's only 15% per 5 minutes.  Personally I think a heal based on Jin or Endurance is better - ie a smiliar-amount heal requiring something like 80 endurance to cast and/or a similar-amount heal using 10 jin.  Something that's usable whenever needed but with a high cost so that true healers won't cry foul.

3) This is more of a novelty suggestion.  I'd love to see a throw move that a) displaces the mob a little distance away (like 5m to 10m), Kung Fu style, b) does a little to moderate amount of damage, and c) roots or stuns the mob at that location for a short duration (like 10secs).  A skill like this would be a great ghetto CC addition that makes a monk much more useful AND adds alot of flavour and spice to monks the martial artist!  Have you seen anyone execute a throw move in any MMORPG?? heh.

4) Tomb of Lord Tsang's monk weapon, Kel'Dakkar, apparently still doesnt work as intended - it says it's a martial sword but it got normal long sword stats.

For clarification, you are saying that the Aum abilities granted do not scale sufficiently then? At this point I would agree but, I am also a harmonious monk. We would need Dragon and  Drunk monks need to chime in so I can say it's either a general or style specific issue)

~QTM

Feign Death does not work in PvP, IE you can still be attacked by players even  if FD is successful.

Skills need to be based on a % modifier of attack rating or weapon dmg. Melee dmg + any numer for our damage is terrible when other classes have up to 400% weapon damage for their skills.

Added it as a potential issue I'll get some kind of word on what up with FD regarding PVP. Also as far as PVP goes I am a care bear and don't even /duel much. So you guys are going to have to help me on this using /log to get me log files and screenshots to help me recreate as much of this as possible.

~QTM

More than the Aum abilities, but most monk attack skills do not scale for many levels at a time.

General skills like Boundless Fists and Crescent Kick are only upgraded every 8 levels, and Finishers 10~14 levels.
With a fixed amount of damage added instead of scaleing up with character's level/equipment, a skill that's "Wow!" at level 15 becomes obsolete or worthless at level 25.  Ie the damage figure from Deadly Adder Hand is so pity it's less than what my autoattack hits, at 38 endurance cost too.  I however do not know if the debuff portion of the skill scale, but I speculate that it also does not.  -40 fixed str sounds good at level 15, but doesn't sound much at level 25.

Quick way to fix would be to either
1) Convert the fixed damaged added into percentage weapon damage added
2) Provide more frequent upgrades to skills

Is this list somehow getting to the developers somehow?

If there is anything that I would like to see changed for monks it would be:

     Have our skills SCALE! 

Almost all of our abilities are based off a set damage amount.  We could have the most uber of weapons and the damage of our moves would be the same as every other monk out there (except white DPS).  All of the other classes that I have played or spoken with those that are playing, have abilities that do damage based on a certain % of the weapon damage.  This would be especially important for chains and finishers.  All of ours are a basic set amount.  Its frustrating when I am grouped with rangers, rogues, and even bards who regularly get crits over 2k when I am lucky to see a crit over 1k once a night. 

Another issue, maybe someone here can explain, is why is it that even when I have a rare equal level knuckles/handwrap/claws equiped that my DPS is higher with no weapon equiped?  Also along the same lines, when I have no weapon equiped, my hand to hand skill nor any weapon skill under Weapon Specialization go up.  So what factor is the monks use of no weapons based on?


One thing to add:  Why do our combat reactions cost so much damn endurance?  I dont mean the chain/finishers, but the others.  I dont use them at all so I dont remember the names.  On my DK, the combat reactions had a ZERO end cost, yet ours cost something like 37?

Ok now that we got a class team lead, I will post some things I think need fixing.

1. Monk dps is directly based off critical hits with our opener abilities. Obviously this coupled with a low crit chance can really jack up our melee dps.
My suggestion, for monks and monks only tie into a critical crit change into every opener and finisher. For example, bounless fist has an aditional 5% crit chance when you use it. Flying Kick has another 5% chance to crit etc.

2. Monk buffs/abilities that take jin, but have a low timer on them. Examples of these are the Secrets line and the Iron Hand line. Iron hand in particular is rediculous in its timer.
The Iron Hand ability should be a 30 min to 1 hour buff period. It is not like you dont have the Jin to put it up, but it just gets annoying to recast it every fight. Make it a high jin cost buff like 14, but have duration for 1 hour. This would give us reason to meditate more often then we do.Up the timer for the Secrets lines, so that as you get these abilites as you level, they go up in duration, and make them stack with dragon dps stance.

3. I think monks should be on a separate hp table then the other offensive fighters, let them but similar to the warrior in their line in where they get the most hps for the archtype. Not only this but they are the only offensive class aside from rogues (who will get poisons and have hte best situational dps of all fighters) that have to actually be in melee to do their damage. Example being warriors get 10 hps per stam, rest of defensive fighters and monks get 8, rest of offensive fighters get 7 etc.) This will allow them to take more punishment than other offensive fighters, but still wont be able to take as well as any defensive fighter due to lack of migitation.

4. Storm Stride should maintain its current timer, however take off the Jin cost for it. There is absolutely no reason to have it, as with the timer you cannot spam it.

More suggestions comming soon......

Got an upgrade to Foolhardy Swagger at level 36, and it does the exact same thing as the level 26 version, same jin cost. The only thing I could think of was that it had less resist rates, but I didn't think thats how resists work.

Edit: Foolhardy Swagger is a Drunken Monk Style ability.

Quick answers: Yes this list is going to sigil, DPS is being looked at, Itemization is also being looked at, and end costs may be there as is to promote more strategic use.

~QTM

If you could check and see what the dodge value is on the tool tip it would help me find out if the ability was cloned and not updated. If the 2 have the same tool tips i'll add it to the list.

~QTM

I'd also like to add that we have a counter called Stinging Backfist... which opens up upon a successful dodge.

Through the teens this spell has a 27 endurance cost but the damage it provides is less than Boundless Fist.  Since Boundless fist is an instant refresh/recast for 20 endurance and does more damage, it makes stinging backfist useless.

Now this may change when it upgrades... but I don't think so.

I think you have some decent suggestions but this one doesn't quite make sense to me. What's the logic behind asking for Monks to have an added constitution benefit over all other offensive fighters? You said something about Monks are the only ones besides Rogues who have to melee. Are you saying Bards and Rangers don't melee? And even if true, what does that have to do with HPs since in most groups, none of them will be tanking anyway? This logic makes perfect sense for defensive fighters because tanking is what they're supposed to do. From an offensive fighter perspective though, I suppose I just don't see what Monks do as primarily a DPS class that warrants a decided advantage in HPs over the other classes in our archetype.

Perhaps if Monks are officially deemed as the only offensive fighter class designed to be an off-tank this *might* make sense, but I don't know if that's currently true or not. You could certainly make the case that a Drunken could fill this role but again, this is very specialized. So much so that I don't think it would be fair to the other offensive classes nor to non-Drunken monks. If it were to happen, I suspect we'd see quite a few min/maxers switch their styles to drunken to gain the added HP benefit, which would subsequently create an player imbalance within our own class.

In these games, HPs are everything (especially in the raiding game). Any min/maxer out there will tell you that even the slightest advantage in this category is almost always worth the trouble of obtaining it.

Foolhardy Swagger I taunts all mobs around me for 5 attacks. Foolhardy Swagger II does the same exact thing, same jin costs, same refresh, as far as I can tell the tooltips are the exact same.  Also, the tooltips still say range 0 even tho I think the range is around 10m.

Currently, there is an evasion penalty while dual wielding showing on the off-hand tooltip. This penalty at level 36 is anywhere from 6.45% to 6.75% depending on which weapons are equipped. Now this doesn't update the Defense tooltip or the evasion on the Dexterity tooltip. It would be nice to know if it is being applied or not, and removed if not. If it is being applied, it should be updating the Defense tooltip. I also think that there should be no penalty for dual wielding handwraps, or other Hand to Hand weapons. 6%+ is an unreal amount to lose after the 'avoidance nerf' as that is almost everything that I currently get from Dexterity. Why would I EVER want to dual wield Hand to Hand weapons then? They already give minimal if no dps increase, even having same level rare weapons, even the stats aren't worth the minimal dps increase (if there is any) and the evasion penalty.

Maybe I wasnt clear enough, I never ment to imply rangers or bards dont need to melee, I am saying each has an alternate way of doing damage (Bow with Ranger, Spells with Bard). However Monks have only one real way to deal damage, that is melee. The reason I suggest this is because Sigil seems to be gearing all classes to have only a specific amount of melee evasion.

(At level 23 my evasion is a non factor in pve, as I rarely if ever dodge or parry, maybe twice a fight no more than 4 times.) Rangers and Bards can snare a mob and retreat or kite, while still doing damage, and rogues can stun and most likely will be able to snare once poisons are implemented. Monks have no option but to FD which clears aggro and resets the mobs hps. Obviously if she or he is grouped it wont matter, however not all people are always in a group; and monks out of all the offensive fighter classes  are the most likely to be an offtank.  Keep in mind while we would have nearly the same hps as a paladin and DK we still could no way come close to their migitation.

Thanks for the clarification. I see what you're saying, but I'm still not sure an added constitution benefit is the right solution though. If the problem is evasion, or more specifically for Monks our perceived lack of it, then the answer should be to modify our defensive stats to adjust accordingly and boost our overall avoidance. As most MMO vets know, avoidance is a tricky mechanic to balance correctly and almost always takes several iterations to get right. Being a "soft" mechanic means you simply cannot pinpoint how effective it is or needs to be at any one point in time.

On the other hand, HPs are absolute and extend far beyond just one mechanic like avoidance. For instance, an added HP benefit through constitution would ultimately give monks a decisive edge over other offensive classes against AE spells, something that has no ties to melee evasion at all. Again, I see an imbalance there that favors Monks for no real solid reason other than, just because.

Please understand that I don't mean to single you out or anything. I'm sure all of my ideas above have holes in them as well. My take is that it's easy for us as a community to simply compile a litany of requests that we want for our class. It's our responsibility though to ensure they are reasonable, well thought out and are prioritized. I'm not saying your ideas aren't any of this. I'm just stating that we need to be careful in what we wish for because regardless of any changes that Monks get, rest assured other classes are taking notes and looking for similar changes to their own class. And they're usually looking to one up ya in the process.

an Issue:
Storm Dragon Stance / Magnificant Storm Dragon.
The style is listed as adding lightning damage in return for draining 1 jin every 4 seconds (think its 6 seconds on magnificant, cant log in to check atm)

Jin currently isnt being lost, however the damage add on lightning is also very small, The style needs to add a lot more lightning damage and add the jin drain, OR take off the jin drain from tool tip and improve the damage just a bit.

ability: Sundering Dragon's Claw (or something like that, learned at level 42 i believe)
tooltip on this skill says it's a finisher but is actually an adv. finisher. it's also supposed to be a dot for 800-900dmg or something, but does nothing.

as someone mentioned before, storm dragon should stack with secrets otherwise secrets (except celerity) are useless. and also seeing all the buffs last for more than 20seconds would be nice. secret of transcendence lasts for 1minute rather than the 20seconds as the tooltip says.

general issue with the game itself which would help monks would be, when being off the ground too long while having agro, the mob will teleport right onto you. i'm sure any 34+ monks know what i'm talking about. this gets incredibly irritating when you're just jumping thru a zone and a mob decides to agro you, and won't stop hitting you because you're using soaring leap to go faster unless you fd. (i should mention to any monks who aren't lv34 yet, monks are probably the fastest class in the game at the moment from my own experience so far and if you have soaring leap and dont use it often because of that endurance cost, Aum Ti at lv40 will solve that for the most part)

Ability: Aum Ti, level 40, says it's supposed to grant Parry and 20% cost reduction.  The parry bonus works but abilities still cost the same amount whether this is up or not.

Updated the main list

Added

• Bug - Foolhardy Swagger II is a cloned version of I version down to tooltip.
• Concern- DW Evasion Penalty post evasion adjustment
• Issue: Storm Dragon Stance / Magnificant Storm Dragon: The style is listed as adding lightning damage in return for draining 1 jin every 4 seconds (think its 6 seconds on magnificant, cant log in to check atm) Jin currently isnt being lost, however the damage add on lightning is also very small, The style needs to add a lot more lightning damage and add the jin drain, OR take off the jin drain from tool tip and improve the damage just a bit.
• Bug Sundering Dragon's Claw (or something like that, learned at level 42 i believe) tooltip on this skill says it's a finisher but is actually an adv. finisher. it's also supposed to be a dot for 800-900dmg or something, but does nothing. (Need more info)
• Bug: Aum Ti, level 40, says it's supposed to grant Parry and 20% cost reduction.  The parry bonus works but abilities still cost the same amount whether this is up or not.

Removed

• PVP FD issue as its working as designed

*DOH* Late for my meeting *Shakes fist in the air* KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

~QTM

Quinn, just to point out you listed this thread as bugs/ issues/ suggestions; and so far I have only seen bugs/issues being listed. Is it possible that you could add a separate area on the initial posts for Suggestions.

I thought I brought to the table at least two very good suggestions to consider

1. put +crit on our abilities (IE boundless fist = 5% crit every time you use THAT ability, as it wont stack with white melee or anything other. This should help us crit a bit more to open up our real dps the finishers.)

2. Make certain spells, especially Iron Hand a longer lasting buff, with increased Jin cost. As is casting every minute does nothing but irritate the user. It reminds me of being a thane in DOAC when it first came out. Thanes had a self buff that you had to rebuff every 3 minutes. They finally changed it to an hour, which is much much better.

I suggest the class start actually using its meditation skill for something, making Iron Hand cost a full bar of jin but last for an hour would make us meditate to gether that much jin. (example at 23 my max jin is 14, so make it cost that, and 50 if Jin is 30 make it cost that etc.) This also allows us monks who use it, to keep our sanity and not have to cast it every minute.

And one debatable

1. I also suggested more hps, but it would seem that many of our fellow monks disagree, however I think its a fair tradeoff since we get very little Utility. (Yes FD is nice, however rogues will get stealth which is even nicer, and also poisons, and I wont have to mention bards or rangers as everyone knows they got insane utility.)

sorry for my vague description.
----[learned at lv42]
Sundering Dragon Claw I
38 Endurance
Dragon Mastery Finish
Refresh 2:00
Savagely tears through your opponent, inflicting a massive 891 to 941 damage over 6 seconds. Increases Jin by 1.
----
not sure if skill is meant to be a finisher. the skill becomes activated after a finisher so it should be a "dragon mastery adv. finisher"? also, the skill itself doesn't work at all. there is no dot, or initial hit damage.

a side note to the Aum Ti not working, it seems to be working as intended as far as endurance cost. just tested it ingame aswell.

Bug:

Weapon Specializations do absolutely nothing.

I'll add my 2 copper for this thread :
- Our lack of an energy bar isnt compensated by Jin uses. Even rogues get an energy bar, and us monks, witch are supposed to be the most "mystical" of the non caster classes, we dont have any. This is a built in flaw that will cripple us unless we get some huge compensation.

- Damage reduction for monks is allmost non existant. As we get a few "tanking" abilities, we should be given some kind of survavibility to use them. Avoidance has always been unreliable, unless you can scale up to like 50%. I'd prefer to have 20% mitigation and 0% avoidance than 30% avoidance and 0% mitigation, because i know i wont get bursted and killed with a few lucky shots. So either raise our avoidance by a large margin (but with a mechanism that dont allow us to build too much aggro, like lowering our hate each time we avoid an attack, else we'll suplant tanks) or raise our mitigation. A Sorcerer with same quality gear of same level will have a better mitigation than a monk since he get massive self mitigation buffs.

- The dragon stance "fix" we had since last patch is ugly : i would rather have a stance that doubles natural hp regen than a self invis that wont add a lot to both survavibility or utility.

Harmonious:
Bug: Aum is outright broken.


General bug note on FD.
It's not based on FD that you get "combat bugged" with an NPC. It's easily reproducable and has to do with death. Try this. Agro 4 npc's at the same time (ie, they being close and social and get a star in their face) and FD. You'll have a single mob with you. Stand up and FD again (it will go back as it's only on agro as others have instantly reset). Agro same mob again. Watch the same mob that camped you before comes to do the trick. Watch someone else pull 4 mobs (at same time) and die. Watch the same mob that would camp you if you had FDed doing the pull stand and corpsecamp the puller until he release.
It has nothing to do with FD, but the way mobs deagro on deaths. It is however, extremely useful for pulling currently, so fixing it might make our job trickier.

Many issues mention already, so I'll try not to digress too much.

1)Weapons - Monks see slim to no benefit from equipping weapons.  Weapons monk can equip tend to have stats geared towards disciples.  Lack of weapons in quest rewards, and higher level drops.

2)Lack of abilities/ poor scaling of said abilities -  Count up the total number of monk abilites.  Then add the abilities from your stance.  This number is generally well below every other classes total number.  Secondly, when we get a new ability, it becomes much less effective until you upgrade it.  However, the upgrades on abilities in the tooltips is usually a whopping 20-40 damage increase, meaning its not really much of an upgrade at all.  Mobs have probably gained 2k hp in that level span if they are 2 dot, and likely 10k+ if they are 4 dot.  An extra 40 damage is not going to make a difference.

3)Lack of energy bar/is jin worthless - I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but why do we have jin in the first place, if we don't get a source of power ie energy that every other class.  It's like they decided to just add a limiting factor to monks, while simultaneously removing a potential gain.  Give us an energy bar, get rid of jin and the problem is pretty much solved.  Thus energy would be somewhat desirable and at the very least useable.  Other wise, make abilities like secrets and iron hand jin based, and ashen hand, jin surge, and the like based off of energy for example.

4) No utility! - Many will disagree with this, but FD does not equal utility.  The best use for FD, and I think a fair share of higher level monks will agree, is to drop combat and rez your healer mid fight.  Our silly little mez barely counts as utlity, when many other classes can mez faster and more effectively. We have 1 self buff(aums), no group buffs.  Stances provide neglible gain, and usually at a pricey cost.  If we got one group buff I'd be happy here.  I don't want a ton of utility, just a little something to bring to the group (besides our hopefully very soon to be largely increased dps).
Personally, I think the ranger buff stalker's grace that adds str/dex and melee crit/accuracy screams monk.  I think monk should get a str/dex crit/dmg buff, and rangers dex/con accuracy/evasion.  To me that matches the "feel" of each class better. /shrug

5) Styles ultimately force you to pick a path to be subpar at -  As it stands, in any style you pick, you will not be able to excel over another class at anything.  Furthermore, the differnence in styles does not affect your experience as a monk dramatically.  Personally, I think styles should be done away with.  roughly all the abilities should be made available to all monks.  We should get 3 stances based roughly on each style.  Dragon is our offensive stance,  Drunken our defensive, and Harmonious a mid-line stance.  Furthermore, I'd almost rather we didn't even get a true defensive stance, rather our stances allowed us to provide different damage/effects.  Harmonious could haste you and add a slow proc to your attacks.  Drunken a large increase in damage or crits, at the expense of accuracy.  Just some very vague ideas, but a lot of things could be done here, and very balanceable.

6) Avoidance - A touchy subject, and a difficult thing to balance.  However, I definetly do not feel very evasive at all, especially when I watch rangers chain parry the crap out of things.  I think 75% evasion was way too high, but monks ending up somewhere around 40-45% and other light fighters at about 30-35% is pretty reasonable.

7) DPS - As it stands, our dps is atrocious.  This is not debatable.  Dps obviously needs to be balanced with utlitiy, and as it stands we have basically no utility.  So in my mind, that means we should dps kings.  And I literally mean top of the dps tree.  I see it something like this on single targets 1) Rogues>Monks, Sorcerors 2)Ranger>Necro, Druid 3) Bard, Bloodmage, Psi (no charm, which can send psi dps through the roof with the right pet) > offensive stanced tank
4) Tank>Healers
AE fights are somewhat different, but it definetly seems like Monks should be top of the liine melee dps, with the amount of ae abilites and procs we have.  Sorcerors should own ae for casters.
These are my thoughts about how we the dps tree should look, provided our utility doesn't get added to.

Well, that's the best I can do right now, I had to reformat last night so It's time for another restart. /sigh

Until laterz

Quinn,
Very nice job uncovering the monk issues and posting them. Very good job, you get an A for content, now hopefully you'll also get an A for execution on getting us fixed. :)

My main problem you have posted there was when we got the undocumented nerf of FD split pulling. This had me absolutely seeing red when I tried to split mobs and no longer could because they sprint back to their spawn point! I am glad you have this addressed in your post.

Also at 30 my crits are not much higher than they were when i was 10, even with much better equipment (no weapons because even blue ones of my level LOWER DPS). Don't buy weapons monks, they are USELESS. :) Our DPS is absolutely tepid when compared to that of a ranger or a bard. Rangers can do almost anything a monk can do except FD, heal, have awesome buffs, and do 5x the damage (wish there was a parser out so I had proof on this), I went Dragon Style which was supposed to be dps, and just don't see it. As I see it, the DPS heirarchy of light fighters should be Rogues first, followed by monks, rangers, then bards. Right now it seems it is Ranger by far, who with their buffs, ability to snare and heal and everything else, making them an uber class compared to the rest of us light fighters. Well Bards also have a fine fit in a group. Rogues and Monks got left behind here.

Next suggestion is on Ignore pain. At level 30 I am at 2782 hps, and ignore pain heals for 565, less than 20%. Either the timer should be reduced to about 1 min from the 5 it is, or the amount of damage healed should be closer to 50%. As it is it is a very limited use ability.

Next, compared to energy using classes, our endurance gets shot WAY too fast. Do two or 3 special attacks which is the only way we get DPS, and then sit on auto attack for awhile and wait for it to build again. Endurance costs need to be cut to bring us up to where we can compete with others in the DPS dept. Either that or have Endurance on some rogue/monk only equipment to help us fighters who do not use enrgy (Yes, i beleive rogues need this also).

And one last thing... Waning Palm 2 never replaced Waning Palm 1 on our reaction bar...

I love my monk but we really need to be brought to the level of other light/offensive fighters in either utility or dps, hopefully both. At the moment our value to groups is becoming quite limited and our ability to solo (which i don't care about if we have group value) is almost nonexistent.

Please help us soon!

Anyway, thanks for being our ally and hope you can 'get er done' :)

Hmm, not only does my Aum Ti icon on the buff bar not mention the reduced cost, if I switch to harmonious stance (no reduction / no increase cost) and use a 16 endurance ability, my endurance goes from 100 to 84.  So appears to be not working for me.

I did get confirmation on this I heard from the source that it's fixed internally and we shall see it pushed out live soon.

~QTM

Anyone else to double check this?? there appears to be conflicting reports. Just remember to test it 100 for simplicity sake.

~QTM

I am not forgetting these, just tying to figure out what to do with suggestions as they are benig sent in... I may move the suggestions to a different list. but I'll get them up there today.

~QTM

Dragging to the end for a list update....

Oh god no. Don't pidgeon hole the monk as a pulling class - The monk can be so much more. Plus, the Bard is already the lulling pulling offensive fighter.

Monks are finely tuned spiritual warriors of crits and evasion with supernatural utility - They should be defined by those abilities, not by some nonsensical ability to pull mobs by lulling them and faking his death.

Issues:
-Claws and knuckles should be represented visually on the character's hands. Fist wraps, however, should continue to look like the monk is bare handed.

-Monk fists and fist weapons should have their crit chance returned to 10% per hand, because they are the only class that is entirely dependent on crits to unlock their DPS. If not, the monk needs to be reworked to have it's DPS not be reliant on crits. The easiest and best path here is to just give them their crits back as it was intended.

-Martial sword parry chance should be doubled, considering you cannot duel wield them like parry daggers. Monks should be the king of evasion amongst offensive fighters.

-Monk weapon loot tables appear to be woefully incomplete. There's a very limited selection of weapons to choose from on the exchange compared with other weapon types.


Suggested tweaks for other powers:

-To make Storm Stride more useful, it should give you 5% extra chance to crit, along with a small accuracy and damage bonus for the next attack.
-Storm stride should not detrigger finishing moves. You should be able to active storm stride after a crit and then land your finisher behind the enemy..

-Ignore pain, not being tied to endurance to jin, shouldn't trigger the global refresh timer. The timer slows down your attack rate after a dull pain when you probably need those precious seconds to kill off the enemy before he kills you.

-For the same reason I think swaying step should not be on a global timer, so you can throw in an evasion without being forced to wait to use something like dull pain, or another utility power. Considering that it has a 15 second refresh it's not like you could spam it.

    *  Bug: The Harmonious Stance is being abused for quick jin regen.
    * Bug: Harmonious Monks who use Deadly Adder Hand Line and then FD will garner aggro once again (even if still FD) when the damage portion of this ability hits the mob.

These are not bugs, nor are they issues. You need to THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING before you label it as something to be fixed.  If you put a DoT on a mob, you aren't going to wipe aggro from future damage you do to the mob.

Harmonious Stance was NOT BEING ABUSED, it was being utilized for its potential.  If you are disappointed with your other SNARFty stances, then complain about them...but do NOT complain about the utility of my stance and have it altered. You have forever forsaken this class.

You cant possibly think that being able to go from 0 jin to full jin in the matter of about 3 seconds wether in combat or not was intended.  If you honestly believe that then you are a complete idiot

I didnt see anything about this, but i found it to be quite a nuisance especially with how bad our Self Heal is. FD being on the Global cooldown, that one second refresh after any ability has gotten me killed so often especially after an FD fail, mash the Self heal, healing for less then 20% of my HP,with 2 or 3 MoBs it rarely helps and having to wait that extra second for the global to refresh on FD, seems like it limits the use of the ability that sets us apart from everything else. Love to hear others thoughts on this also.


Thanks,
Rowel-Hilsbury

I second that.


I never got my jin to max in 3 seconds or even close.. What Harmonious Stance lets you do is finish 1 fight with good/full Jin and keep that jin until the next fight.. It does regen a tiny bit too fast to be neutral. so over time you will gain Jin instead of keeping in at the amount it was when you last gained jin from attacking or fighting.. So I could concede that it could be toned down a tiny bit. But then again what difference would it make. got nothing much to do with all that jin.. well we got some sucky short duration self buffs but most attacks seem just as good as the next one.. meaning not that good at all.
Anyways.. to me it seems that the Jin that is gained using Harmonious stance is so insignificant that its laughable to cry nerf at it. :uglystupid2:

I am sure it has been posted before but I didnt see it on the complete list at the begining of the post...

Storm Dragon Stance:  Not only does the Jin not drain (not that bad of a bug), but it doesnt stack with either of the Secrets (I only have Fire/Ice).  I was testing this today and the stance would give me about 15 damage extra on a strike, where Fire/Ice would give me 50-70 extra damage a strike.  Why in the world would anyone select that over using the secrets?!?  And whenever I had the secret up I didnt get the lightning damage. 

So that leaves Dragon Monks 2/3 broken stances.  And yet they move an ability to lvl 50 and put stance changes on a global cooldown.  Come on devs...

The problem never was in using properly, but rather the fact that each time you entered it, you gained one Jin. Hence if you macroed a stance shift (or just spamed mouse between stances) you could at an extremely rapid pace max out your jin. It's really nice for traveling and for using between fight, on afk breaks and so on, it's just not broken anymore.

Yeah I get how it was being abused now..
Read a few hints on it in another thread..
Sorry I didnt know that people were doing that.. Didnt know spamswitching stances would have that effect.
but seems that the way they designed the timers on various stuff in the game leaves it vulnerable to that sort of exploits.

yes that exploit was clearly not intended. and it should have been stopped.

But then again I dont really see it as having a great enough impact on the game to be the first thing they fix instead of the very basic issues as our lack of effectiveness in the game.

The form system is fundamentally broken and needs to be scrapped.

One problem is that you get about a third as many abilities as any other class, meaning you've got less tools and it takes forever to get an upgrade to your core skills.

Another problem is that even after you've chosen a path to specialize in, you're still not doing anything that other offensive fighters couldn't do better.
Go Dragon and Rangers/Rogues will still out DPS you.
Go Harmonious and Rangers still have about as much utility and Bards far surpass you.
Go Drunken and be a gimp that can't off tank, with Rangers actually having better evasion.

Why would a Monk lock himself in as a Dragon for pure DPS when there are already pure DPS classes?
Why would a Monk lock himself in as a Drunken to be a dedicated off tank when he could have just rolled a warrior?
The Harmonious is a bit of everything, that is it's equally bad at doing everything compared with other classes. Rangers still have just as much utility, and Bards have more.


The key to making the Monk work is not just in a tweaking of it's stances, but in allowing the Monk to offset his lack of specialization by being able to truly take advantage of his flexbility - This requires that he be able to switch between stances on the fly, perhaps with a 5 minute timer between each (although conceptually there's no reason a learned monk couldn't switch tactics and stances in the blink of an eye).


The Monk forms should break down like this:

The baseline of the Monk is Harmonious. They are a lot like the Ranger in this form - Having high consistant DPS, decent evasion, and some team utility.
The difference is the monk should have more/better team oriented utility in harmonious, about equal evasion, and slightly less damage (especially after factoring in a ranger that opens up from range).

The Drunken monk should be far away better at off-tanking than any other offensive fighter.
He should have team utility geared towards this, making him unique among the offensive fighters.
They should either do damage on par with a bard or a bit more.

The Dragon monk should be critical based and have a higher chance of critical than other offensive fighters. The Dragon normally should have equal DPS to a ranger, but when factoring in criticals the Dragon Monk should surpass the Ranger easily, but not do as much damage as a rogue that stays stealthed. Rogue = burst damage. Monk = Consistant damage with critical spikes.
Dragon monk should be the best Melee AoE damage out of the light fighters, and he should have aggro reducing capabilities to facilitate his damage dealing.

I disagree.  As it stands, harmonious monks do most of their DPS while in Tiger stance.  Giving this style (or something like it) to Dragon monks gives them a huge advantage over the other two.  It has been said that Dragon monks will excel at multi-target damage - that, along with Storm Dragon is their niche.

I do, however, fully support your argument that each style should be well defined.  As is, they are not.  Sure, the styles make a little difference here and there, but there is no monk style that is superior to any other class in any way.  Period.

If the styles are what sets us apart from other classes, then we clearly need some serious adjustments - this is clearly not working as-intended.

o nos hijack! :knuppel2: Kaji I am all for a lively conversation but, can you move this to another thread?

I r the bug police.... sorta

~QTM :police:

Dragon Stance bug:


When you use a 2h weapon and do  your AOE, Lightning damage is not added from our offensive stance.

Added

• Gerneal Issue: Claws / Ulak and knuckles should be represented visually on the character's hands. Fist wraps, however, should continue to look like the monk is bare handed.
• Gernal Issue:  Get Monk dodge off the global cooldown timers
• Dragon Style Bug: Sundering Dragon's Claw tool tip says: Savagely tears through your opponent, inflicting a massive 891 to 941 damage over 6 seconds. Increases Jin by 1. It's listed as a finisher but is actually an advanced finisher and it doesnt work at all. 0 initial damage and 0 DoT (Clarification)
• Dragon Style Bug: Storm Dragon Stance: Secrets of Ice and Flame do not stack with this stance
• Dargon Style Bug: When you use a 2h weapon and do  your AOE, Lightning damage is not added from our offensive stance.

Removed

• Harmonious Stance Bug: Harmonious Stance can be abused
• Removed the suggestions from this thread as I am going to put up a wish list thread.

~QTM

ok, my bad, Aum Ti works fine, just doesn't show in tooltip.  But it does affect the cost of your abilities (it just actually changes the cost in the ability description instead of being applied aftewards.

Issue: Tiger stance should have it's endurance penalty reduced if the Monk's base chance to crit is not going to be increased. Because the 50% endurance cost was balanced around a time when monks could get 15% or 20% crit increase just from their weapons, that when stacked with their dexterity bonus and Tiger stance would put their crit chance on par with their increased endurance cost - Thus you might actually come out ahead in terms of DPS efficiency, or at least on par with your new endurance cost.

With monk weapons being nerfed to 5% each, the endurance penalty should be reduced to 40% at least, but I think 35% would be best.

Finally you bring a reasonable post to the table.. thank you

An issue related to the Monk and his effectiveness groups is that the vulnerability system has a certain about of intractability to most players. It could be improved to be easier to understand and easier to work with.

Suggestions.
1. Change the way openers and exploits are listed in the tooltips, because right now it confuses people and I always have to explain which is which. It's not intuitive.
2. There's enough for players to monitor during a battle without them also trying to watch the little vulnerability icons in the upper right. There are a few ways to improve this. One is to make the corresponding ability have a red outline or flash on the UI bar when a target mob can be exploited by it.
Another is to make the icon appear over the mob's head, or make the icon appear in the upper right corner very big, so that it's unmistakable that something is happening you can take advantage of - And people who don't understand the vulnerability system will not miss this, and will ask what it is and what they should do about it.
I'd go with the second idea, and then put a timer underneath the symbol so that you know how long youv'e got to exploit it before it disappears.

There's a good list on this page by  Hanzou_Masamori
http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13268&page=2
He reflects many things already said, but says it well.

Drunken Mastery Issue/Concern:

"Drunken Sway" stance is essentially a "make the fight last longer but change nothing else" button, as it increases your dodge by 10% (making the other guy 10% less accurate) while also making you 10% less accurate.  It doesn't really do anything else except drag out the fight, making it last longer, as both you and your opponent are equally penalized.

But a "make the fight last longer" button is REALLY a "get less xp/hour" button.  No one in their right mind would want it.

As the Drunken Monk was intended to be an offtank. prolonging the fight until the dps classes and main tank drop the first of the total pull. your not meant to kill the thing. You meant to stand toe to toe with it until your group can assist you in bringing it down. At that time you FD allowing the MT to have aggro switch to Drunken Fist and beat on it til its dead.

Problems-

1. Counterattacks doublespam the melee chat box.

2. Harmonious Style, Crane Stance - mouse over description says it adds +20% to parry, but the buff tool tip says 8%, i'm inclined to believe the buff tool tip.

3. Just dinged 22 and can't seem to learn my skills from Aum, i'm around 50 or so tries.

Suggestions

This is a little out of the box, but is it possible to make our ignore pain Energy based, as in it heals xxx damage + any worn energy.  This way I don't  feel so bad about all my gear having energy, and will make ingnore pain alot less of a joke.

The range on shurikens is a joke, everyone uses stormstride for that extra 5 feet, which still is 1/2 as far a we need it to be.  increase the range on shurikens to 10-50.

I can only say:

(1) With only a 10% dodge, the drunken monk can't really last very much longer tanking this add.  Also, because unlike the drunken fist stance which generates aggro, this one does not generate aggro and in fact because of the accuracy debuff to the monk will have a harder time keeping aggro because he'll miss more.  Finally, the monk could also use the stance which give 5% dodge and no penalty to better effect.  So two of his stances seem better at this off tank role.  In any case, the monk would not last long and would need a healer to keep him going.

(2) Better performers at this offtank role would be:
(a) Any tank.
(b) Any non-bloodmage healer.  I have disciple/shaman into the high teens and a cleric into the high 20's, so this one is from personal experience.  They can last indeifintely against 3-dots several levels higher than them.
(c) A necro (just sick the pet on the add, with the benefit that you can heal the pet yourself) or a psionicist (many crowd control options.)
(d) Maybe other classes.  I am just trying to restrict myself to ones I have actual knowledge of.  None of my suggestions in (a)-(c) are at all "dramatic" and all are eminently practical and viable.

In conclusion, the drunken monk himself has better stances for the situation, but probably needs a healer in any case to keep him going for long.  In addition, there are at least 8 other classes that would be able to do the job much better than him.  The drunken sway stance should--in my opinion--by modified so as to be viable.

I would be happy to hear from high level drunken monks about their experiences with the stance.

Another issue I was just reminded of:
Jin Surge should not count for auto attacks, because it's very easy to have it "wasted" if you don't time it right - And you can't expect your teammates to time their attacks for it either.

I definatly dont disagree with you, it needs modified, but in many aspects of a group when dont you have a healer able to neglect the MT for one heal for an off tank. not like a 3 or 4 dot is a plane raid and we need CH chains to keep the MT up. i rarely use the stance as its pretty bad. but in groups i have used it for exactly what i said and i've dodge a decent amount with it, add in our Nifty(Name Fails my memory atm) 27 Endurance Auto Dodge ability. and you can atleast get 8 dodges in. However i believe Drunken Mastery stance is the better of all the stances. 10% atk speed would total more then 10% dmg consecutivly and its not all the time you want to add 25% Threat to a target when your dpsing. i think Drunken Fist is for peeling off a healer, but without an actual taunt ability we are still limited to just plain.... being lucky no matter what we do.

Pvp concerns:

On a successful Feign Death, players should not be able to attack you.

Pushing Hands does not work in PvP

The problem with this is that if implemented monks would have an instant cast "invulnerability" ability with infinite duration and 8 sec recharge.  If you contrast this with other invulnerability things like the cleric one that lasts for less than half a mnute and is on a 15 min timer, you can see its NEVER going to happen.  It would mean that if you, as a monk, were ever about to lose a battle in pvp or were ever jumped or etc. etc you could do this and be invulnerable forever and you could pop up after 8 secs, hit them again, then feign dead again.  etc. etc.

If it were useful in pvp, it would require major nerfage.  The problem then is how to nerf it for pvp but leave it the same for pve.  Tricky.  You have to keep the 8 sec recharge to not effect pve.  I guess the only way to do it would be to make it fail basically all the time against pvp enemies but at its current rate against pve enemies.  Anyway, it looks like a big can of worms.  To be honest, I really see (and I have half my chars on Tharridon so I do have pvp concerns) allowing feign death to work in pvp to mean that it will inevitably get nerfed in pve.

Give it a timer like other games until you actually die then? Make them detarget you when you FD?

 Not being able to FD and get ooc basically negates our Nerve Strike unless you do the crap of double ESC to get ooc, which I would imagine will be fixed soon as it is too easy to get ooc by doing that.

theres many things they can do to make it work in PvP

I guess I am just sick of faggot bards and other invis users being able to use invis to instantly escape. Maybe should make a thread in another section asking for a major nerf on invis ><

I am leary of a timer for pve reasons.

Yeah, the invis stuff is pure bullSNARF at the moment.  I assume they realize this and will change it eventually.  But this isn't a thread for bard-pvp concerns, so I'll shut up.

You are right that detarget on an 8-sec timer might be something you could push through, if they still resisted it a lot.  Actual feign death on an 8 sec timer I just don't see going.

FD 2 is actually 4 second recast, but i was talking about putting a timer on how long you can stay feigned, like 5 mins or something until you eaither get up or die.

But this hurts the pve game...

when do you stay FD somewhere for more than a few seconds ?

Soloing, all the time...  feign dead and then go afk a sec in a dangerous area.  Feign dead and wait for patrol slowly to walk away again.

Grouping, say you are in a dungeon and fighting next to another team (not pvp, just pve.)  Mobs gets trained and one team or the other wipes.  You have to wait for the brick-a-brack to clear (maybe say your team wiped and you are waiting for the other team to finish up its current mobs before rezzing cause you think they are gonna wipe to.)  So you wait and then pop up and then use your rez stone on the healer.

Anyway, if they made it viable in pvp they would have to nerf the duration to almost nonexistent, to like 1.5 secs or something ridiculous like that.  This would very obviously affect the pve game. 

I'm just saying, I see letting feign dead work in pvp as inevitably leading to it getting nerfed in pve.  And you are confirming my suspicions by your suggestions.  I hope they just leave it alone.  I'd say make the monk pvp-viable by another route, maybe letting them use their stun in pvp mid-battle or some similar modification, and making it more highly resistaable in pvp for this reason.

Bug: I noticed that storm stride doesn't teleport you to the target if you're rooted. I would consider this a bug, because teleporting should be able to get around the limits of being unable to run.

Issue: You can't use food and meditate at the same time. A minor issue, but it would be nice if we could meditate and rest up using food at the same time, considering that as a monk you're probably resting after each fight when soloing.

Itemization:

In the Celestial Ward line of quests...

After getting 10k faction, you can get the quest "The Reawakening of Vol Tuniel". The Quest rewards are 3 very nice yellow items for the non monks, and then the monk item is green 'Fistbinds of Vol Anari' of which I had better weapons at level 10. This needs to be fixed badly. Why don't monks actually get a useful item on this quest? 10k faction is a ton of work so our reward should be on line with the other rewards for this quest. Here is the exact breakdown of the rewards for this quest.

Ceremonial Dagger of Vol Anari (rare)
Bindable
Dagger and Knife     Either Hand
58-71 damage          Speed 2.25
(28.44 DPS)
+42 Energy
+12 Intelligence
+4 Vitality
+42 Hit Points
Item Level 35
Class Bard, Druid, Blood Mage, Necromancer, Psionicist, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer

Bow of Vol Anari (Rare)
Soulbound
Short Bow     Ranged
93-93 Damage      Range 8-25
+1 Ranged Damage
+1 Critical Hit Chance
Item Level 35
Class: Bard, Ranger, Dread Knight, Rogue, Warrior


Shielding Dagger of Vol Anari (Rare)
Soulbound
Parrying Item      Secondary Hand
84 Armor Class
15% parrying chance vs level 35
90 hit points
+11 Dexterity
+15 Arcane Absorbtion
Item Level 35
Class: Bard, Ranger, Rogue


Fistbinds of Vol Anari
Soulbound
Handwraps          Either Hand
37-40 Damage      Speed 2.25
16.89 DPS
+63 Hit Points
+6 Strength
+7 Arcane Absorption
Item Level 35


Does this really seem fair?

I think i seen in the dev tracker that they did indeed fix that and it should be in the next patch

Combinations are much harder to land with the lowered critical rate that we have from the critical hit/dual wield changes. Since combinations are a large portion of our damage potential I believe Dragon and Drunken (Harmonious style already grants a critical bonus in their offense stance) monks should recieve a 5 percent critical boost on their offense forms to grant them their old chance at chains and finishers. They are offense stances after all.

I also think endurance costs on mastery style specific abilities and some counter attacks is something that has been overlooked with the recent tuning thats been done with melees. Mastery style specific abilities and some counter attacks feel far too costly in endurance currently, I would love to see their costs evaluated.

Originally monks were supposed to be the masters of creating weaknesses that their group members could exploit. I think it wouldnt hurt to apply more weaknesses/weakness exploit tags to more mastery style specific attacks, currently alot of form specific attacks are lacking them. Its not anything major imo, but it would go quite a ways to enhancing a dynamic that the class were originally touted as being the "masters of".

Added

• Bug: Aum Ti - Many stacking issues. The five percent to parry does not grant the full amount. The twenty percent reduction to endurance costs does not stack with Eternal Crane, putting harmonious monks at a big disadvantage.
• Bug: Nerve Strike Currently this ability is broken by Psionicist AoE mez as well as many other minor AoE debuffs. With a 30 second cooldown, these make monks less dependable as a crowd control option in groups. This ability should be broken upon damage, to keep it in line with other classes mezmerize capabilities, or atleast make it less sensitive to certain debuffs.
• Bug: Counterattacks doublespam the melee chat box.
• Bug: Unable to learn my skills from Aum, i'm around 50 or so tries. (This should be fixed in the next patch) keeping it on the list
  
  
• Issue: You can't use food and meditate at the same time. A minor issue, but it would be nice if we could meditate and rest up using food at the same time, considering that as a monk you're probably resting after each fight when soloing.
• Issue: Originally monks were supposed to be the masters of creating weaknesses that their group members could exploit. I think it wouldnt hurt to apply more weaknesses/weakness exploit tags to more mastery style specific attacks
• Issue: Aum Liat - After the horse movement buff speed changes, monks should be granted a Five percent increase to mounted speed while chanting to keep in line with other classes movement buffs.
• Issue: Jin Surge should not count for auto attacks, because it's very easy to have it "wasted" if you don't time it right - And you can't expect your teammates to time their attacks for it either.
• Issue: Vulnerabilities need better descriptions / tutorial
• Dragon Concern: Dragon Stance - Provides health regen out of combat. This stance provides no benefit during combat and the amount of regen isn't comparable to that gained by food. It's greatest appeal would be for monks who have Feigned Death, but remain in combat with not much health left, giving them a chance to regain some health and allow them another chance to Feign Death. In combat regen from a fix of this ability may provide an advantage soloing, but I'm sure most monks would just like to see this stance replaced completely.
• Dragon Concern: Stone Dragon - Improves the monks armor scaling in level and adding resistances, while reducing attack speed. The armor gained has very little impact on the reduction in damage taken, the penalty for attack speed has little or no affect on the damage output of the monk. This stance doesn't seem to have much impact either way. Possibly reduce a flat percentage of incoming damage, or provide a percentage of resist to stuns, roots, snares and change the penalty to a reduction in run speed or percentage of outbound damage.
• Drunken Issue: Drunken Fist Stance - 10% damage increase, while generating 25% more aggro. This stance is clearly for soloing or tanking in groups as you will compete with tanks for aggro if used. Right now this stance collects dust. A possible fix to this stance would be switching the damage modifier with a damage reduction or avoidance modifier, allowing drunken monks to perform the role of off-tank once again.
• Drunken Issue: Drunken Master Stance - 10% attack speed increase and 5% dodge increase. This stance provides monks with the least amount of penalty for using the stance, but provides no real benefit other then 5% dodge. A fix for this would be adding a set amount of damage to all abilities rather then haste (or making haste affect monk abilites) and increasing the percentage of avoidance gained.
• Drunken Issue: Drunken Sway Stance - 10% to dodge, but 10% less accurate. This stance has seen perhaps the most extreme effect from the evasion changes. Almost everyone can agree that 10% is not worth a 10% reduction to accuracy simply because the two do not scale equally. A mob will gain more benefit from you missing 10% of the time, then you will see from +10% to dodge (once again 10% increase is usually not completely obtained). A possible fix for this stance would be to increase the evasion provided, possibly add a percentage boost to all damage dealt while in this stance, and significantly reduce the accuracy penalty as well as scaling it down as the monk levels.
• Harmonious Bug: Crane Stance:  mouse over description says it adds +20% to parry, but the buff tool tip says 8%, i'm inclined to believe the buff tool tip.
• Harmonious Concern: Tiger Stance the end cost penalty for this stance may be too harsh
• Harmonious Issue: Eternal Crane end reduction components are not stacking with Aum Ti's end reduction components
• Harmonious Issue: There is a problem with the crit bonus stacking with buffs, gear, and weapon types. It appears to have the 25% added before other crit rating modifiers are factored in. With heavy +% crit and dex gear, along with buffs almost no benefit is noticable from switching to this stance. A suggestion for this stance would be fix the stacking issues, remove or reduce the cooldown on stance stepping, and scale the endurance cost penalty down minorly as the monk levels.

Removed

• Aum Ti not working as intended (Although there are stacking issues...... that I have covered previously)

~QTM

Aum Liat counts as a horse, ie if you get a buff with +10% mounted speed, you'll reach 160% with it (I've seen up to 210% without bard adding in and 35-40 buffs - was with the vampiric curse though)  but it's not a speed-buff per se.

Pretty positive Aum Ti Endurance reduction affect not working at all.  I'll go test it again right now, but I tested it when I got it and there was defenitely no endurance reduction.

EDIT:  Ok, the reduction does work.  Although, it seems that the tooltip doesn't display the endurace costs correctly at times, it may have been a stackign issue with turgins vigor (10 end regen, -10% end cost).  But watching my endurance meter, flying kick was only using 7 endurance, which is exactly what it should be.  Sorry for any confusion.

Is the above not true?

~QTM

Aum Ti breakdown:

Taking cresent kick (or Eagle Claw) which I rather vigiliantly use (base / with Aum):
Harmonious (no mod): 15 / 12
Crane (25% base - dosen't affect like mentioned before): 11 / 11
Tiger: 22 / 20

Tiger stacking is like this:
True: Add percents together first (ie 50%-20% = 30%), then do calculation.15 + 30% (4.5) = 19.5 (see note on rounding)
False: Aum Ti first, then Tiger stance: 15-20% (3) = 12. 12 + 50% (6) = 18.
False: Tiger first, then Aum Ti: 15+50% (7.5) = 22.5 (tiger cost). 22.5 - 20% (4.5) = 18

From this, you could deduct (while only a developer could answer to it really) that you only get to benefit from the largest reduction.
Having had the opportunity to recently test out the Aum Ti along with the bear shaman -10% endurance cost, the cost remains the same.
Rounding also appears to have some issues, which might make this thesis incorrect. Cresent Kick is 15. 50% extra should be 7.5, which ends up at 22.5 - yet the ability is rounded to 22. Which makes it even wierder when you add a 20% reduction and the cost gets to 20 (19.5 according to my calculations).

If this is true, I suppose it's balance issues, I still think it's a bit wierd we're non-stacking with our own (core) abilites though.
I will double check these numbers tomorrow, but they should be correct. ;)

I was told by a high level dragon monk that the Dragon stance was suppose to be in combat regeneration.