Vanguard Monks

I have decided to move the suggestions from the Bug / Issue thread to here. Plaese feel free to post your own. I'll add this to the bugs / issues list as requests for enhancement.

Keep in mind we must make our goal of increasing Monk awesomeocity by at least 4 to 5 times its current levels!

Suggestions

• 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.)
• 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.
• 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.)
• 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 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.
• 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..
• 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.
• As a pulling class is it it possible to get a lull type ability. (This is even more relevant given the wierdness with mobs hauling arse back to thier spawn spot now when FD)
• Crane Stance: Would 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 as well.
•   Harmonious Stance: Doesn't seem worth using aside from abusing the stance. Perhaps if the increased the Jin regeneration or added a jin reduction to CA while in this stance.

I'll add some formatting to this later

~QTM

My thoughts on a few things listed there:

-Don't give monks more HP, give them more evasion. That's more fitting. Monks don't take damage, they outright evade it.

-I don't have much problem with Iron Hand as it is. It's about Jin management during combat. It's meant to take up so much jin every minute to keep it active. Making it take a full bar would force players to meditate  to activate it, which reduces flexibility and may cause as much grief as it saves in some combat situations.
Plus, you couldn't make it last an hour. It would have to last one minute per 2 jin spent.




Another wishlist item:
Allow monks to switch between forms on the fly. 
The monk gets the same amount of abilities up to level 50 as other classes, except he can only access one third of them at a time. This makes for long stretches without upgrades, gives the monk less options than other classes of similar levels, and overall results in a weak Monk.
If the Monk could switch between forms he could offset not being the best at any one thing by being quite good at so much, allowing him to dynamically plug holes in teams.

hmm a few things... Quivering palm.. VERY HIGH end cost for 8 secs. not only that but the timer to use it goes by so fast that sometimes you cant even use it.  I have often come across just hitting a skill having it pop and having the refresh take longer then the timer befor I can use it.  Also can we get this based off of dodge.  Currently it is based off of parry in which I hardly ever parry.  Sure I can use a weapon with with added parry, but currently using weapons on a monk suck... which leads me to my next point...

Can we get a change to skills that takes you weapon into account.

Feign Death... I dont want a lull type ability,  what I want is for the fix to the current unintended "nerf" that makes the mobs run back immediatly.  Also can we get a better way in FD so that mobs that are atleast yellow dont fail against it so much.. i can see it being tougher on reds and no chance on purple but on yellows i think we should have like an 80% chance.  Currently it seems we have about a 10% chance.  Also can we get the "stay in combat corpse camper mobs" fixed when you have 3 or mobs and your FD succeeds.

Ignore pain.. agree needs to be % based and or atleast the cooldown switched to 1 minute instead of 5.  To me this is like the monk bind wound fom EQ1.  Hell i would be ok if they gave bandages back.  Also when you see Ignore pain on the trainer it is listed as a higher heal then what you get.  For Instance when i looked at Ignore Pain 2 it listed on trainer as a 500 hp heal and I was like cool thats not bad.  Then I got it and it was only like 300 something.

HP while I would not mind more I would rather see our avoidance boosted back up and give us block back.  Sure we dont have a shield but do martial artist not block moves?  Are we not martial artists?

Harmonious Body stance... in its current for is worthless.  As a test I ran from Just outside new Taganor to rastals light house with this on... quite a considerable run... I had 6 jin by then.  I would imagine that Dragons Health stance is in the same boat though I do not know as I never played a Dragon monk.

Will list more later but fix to ALL the FD bugs and a fix to our dps will make me very happy for now.

lets make weight worth something imo.
the lighter you are, the higher your evasion/dodge/movement rating.

what about a minor version of sneak? think old school EQ1 - non line of sight(ie: behind mobs)

feign death - it need to be changed. possibly make it a skill like safe fall that you have to work on. IMO it shouldnt fail so often vs higher level mobs. The way the mobs react to FD..... it needs tweaking.

i agree, we need to have meditate worth something. Maybe have a Jin (mental) line of abilties - non combat, but utility. This could include a lull, sneak, or something along the lines of things for the monk, not group directly. This could be part where the monks have the little 'something' that sets us apart from the other classes.

I don't want to cut in on the Bard's territory by giving the Monk a lull.

We have to dispense with this idea that Monks should be pullers. That makes no sense in terms of the monk's concept, it's just a hold over from EQ1.

The bard is the puller here. With their crowd control and run speed. That fits the Bard's concept as being able to get mobs to do as he pleases through the use of song.

Monks are finely tuned fighters based on critical hits and evasion, with combat flexibility - Nothing about a monk says they should be good at pulling.

FD already has enough utility IMO as a way to exit combat, and as a way to cheat death if the team is going to wipe.

Actually Dragon Stance doesn't appear to do anything at all in its current state.  The tool tip say it regenerates health but when activated nothing happens.  You do not get a buff icon like the other two stances and I don't see my health regen increased.  The icon is the same as the shaman neutral stance icon. A red X over a blueish background. The other 2 stances have a proper graphic Icon.  I'd really like this stance to actually work. 

I'd like to see Storm Dragon get a secondary effect, maybe a small haste % or Crit % boost. 

The Dragon AE Finisher Kick could also use a damage boost and lower the refresh.

There is suppose to be a invis type skill in the 40's for Dragon. I thought it was updated in a recent patch, can't remember.

Goji

These all seem like good ideas, I especially like the ideas of increasing Dodge, Crit Rates, Ignor Pain and changing the time on Iron Hand (its a pain buffing every min.).  Hopefully they will listen and at least implement a few of these changes, especially since we dont get great utility and we are straight up fighters.

I would like to see us do something unique between fights.  As it stands, most monks do not meditate between pulls because of the slow Jin regen rate.  If there were some reward for doing so, like a short duration buff, haste, +evade, ANYTHING, we might be tempted to use it.   ;)

How about if they added health regen to meditate on the same scale that Food works. It would have to update as you level on the same scale as updated foor too.  Meditation in real life can be used to heal how about here too.  That would make meditation viable enough to me.

General:
Give us energy.
Make sure our Jin abilites do not count as Endurance for the abilty to regenerate endurance (unless of course this is deliberatly intended).

General Abilites:
Ashen Hand: should use weapon damage + upgradeable amout.
Jin Surge: Give it a longer reuse and increase all damage during a 6-10 second period instead of one attack by 200 (it's only benefical when dotting.)
Iron Hands: Maintained ability. Make it cost energy to sustain.
Feign Death: Lower fail rate on yellow mobs, the diffrence between white and yellow failrate is very large.
Give us a style related maintained group-buff (energy draining, so shouldn't be able to maintain it and ashen hands without outside assistance on energy regeneration without loosing energy).
Secret of XXX: Make them very draining on energy (still costing Jin to activate), remove reuse on most (obviously not on such as Secret of Celerity). Fix stacking issue with Storm Dragon and Secrets.

Finishers - have advanced finishers proc on a succesful land, rather than forcing the need of a crit.
AoE Kick (dragon): Needs to be at least doubled in damage and have it's cooldown reduced. Or same with no cooldown at all.
Flying Kick (harmonious): It dosen't scale with gear. Add weapon damage (without any multipliers)
Thousand Fists: Make it deal x% weapon damage + something,  reduce cooldown, reduce energy cost.
Make the Dragon AoE stun, the Harmonious slow-haste (and whatever Drunken gets here) finishers instead of counters. Would make them useful.

Counters:
Reduce or remove costs on counterattacks. They are not really useful in their current state. Maybe change some of them to rescues (with same effects) but in that case they need to be either downgraded a bit and/or have reuse timers.

Path abilities:
Dragon: Make the AoE Cone actually do respectable damage; possibly make it Jin based instead of endurance to reduce chain use.
Harmonious: Wave Hand in Cloud needs to have it's reuse cut down severly, be a targetable ability, and upgrade - or replaced entirely with something useful. It's a self only 20 second 250 Damage Shield with 30 minute reuse (and 10 Jin cost) currently. It's quite useless.
Autocrit abilities, auto-chain abilites: Reduce cooldown dramatically. Increase Jin (or add energy cost) if needed.

Just a few ideas.

Instead of this, I'd say do a revamp and ADD new abilities to each of the dragon, harmonius, and drunken mastery lines.  This would mean there was still more choice to be a monk (what mastery path to choose?) but you still got lots of options as you levelled and as many abilities as the other classes.  It would also serve further to differentiate the three types of monks.  With the more or less complete revamp they did of rogues post-release, they seem capable of adding the few extra skills necessary to do this.

Make FD work in PvP. Invs classes can use invis to escape...kinda sucks we can't use one of our abilities to try to get away/drop combat quicky.

Add a type of snare/root for all monks. Foot sweep, shoulder toss, hip toss...the moves are out there, no reason we can't have them.

Lets see some Bo staff drops in the world pls. Have yet to see a 2HB weapon in game.

I agree wholeheartedly with the feign death comment. I feel there's a decent amount of problems to be solved, but the main thing that irritates me is the way anything in the encounter's level modifies feign death so horribly. It's depressing only being able to feel slightly secure versus mobs that I have no reason to fear to begin with. Feign death just having one rank (or add other random benefits to higher ranks, either way) and a set skill level such as Kick or anything else of the sort would be wonderful. My skill determining it's success or lack thereof instead of what con/dot level an opponent is would feel alot better to me. Taking it off the global cooldown would be a lifesaver, too.

I don't like the feel of using a skill and it causes endurance regeneration and auto attack both to halt in their tracks; it makes combat feel a bit forced and clunky. That however, is more a design decision in general than a monk issue. =P And having sneak ala EQ would be fun too, nostalgia's always good :D I used to love the sneaky music it'd play when you snuck around crouched when they still used the .midi music system. >_>

As far as finishers go, I agree that we need our old crit back (or the suggested higher crit chance on X abilities that doesn't tie into autoattack at all), or perhaps have finishers not depend on crit at all. That, coupled with the autoattack/endurance regen reset (or GCD slowing them alot, whatever) being addressed would make me feel alright about using something other than fists/handwraps. I'd like to use a 2h staff of sorts, but the way the aforementioned things are, it feels like I'd be shooting myself in the foot to do so. Massive hit to chance to use finishers, and slower speed making the timing between skill use/autoattack/regen even more irritating to manage, all so I can crit a bit harder on normal melee? Thanks, I'll pass.

All in all, it's nice to see communication lines finally open, looking forward to it =)

Really all i wish for is to be usefull  :(

But what i would like is for my minute CD finishers and Adv. finshers  to go off a percentage like 300% plus damage  :P... really don't like seeing my adv. finsher hit for less than my finsher did.
Storm dragon - that adds 20% haste and 20% damage  :)... oh and FD that works and all my ablilties reworked.

I've read most the replies here and am seeing some fairly radical changes. Some are good, some not so much, I won't go into details. I'm also a dragon, so I may be a bit biased in that regard.

I like how the monk plays now, I just want to see what we have to be tweaked, rather than the class as a whole be revamped:

We don't need a lull - Instead we need FD to not tether mobs - Tethering was unintentional, and afaik it's being fixed.

We don't need an energy pool - We have a jin pool, we just need to do more with it.

We don't need hideous debuffs - Monks are damage, first and foremost. Harmonious being the only exception in regards to debuffing, and even then it shouldn't be the end all.

We don't need hideous buffs - See above. Jin surge should be made a bit more potent, maybe have it last a couple of attacks instead of one single. I'd say, what? 3 attacks that deal 200% damage while under the surge? Simple double damage, makes up for the Jin cost.

What we do need, however, is our finishers to not be reliant on crits - OR - higher crit chances:

We need a Jin burn ability - Ashen hand as it is right now is a perfect canidate. 50 x Jin. 15 Jin at 25, 750 damage base. 30 Jin at level 50, 1500 damage base. It takes some time to gain a lot of Jin, which acts as the cool, plus other abilities take Jin as well, and it decays. Meditate before a battle, slam ashen hand. Also makes Meditate useful.

We need endurance costs to be reduced - Simple. Endurance costs are too high. 6Dragon Strike takes 28 Endurance along with Feet of the Fire dragon. Boundless is 20, and the AEs are 34. Unless you intend to spam boundless, these soak up a lot of endurance. Halving the endurance cost may be a bit extreme, but 7 - 10 points lower across the board would help immensly.

We need % based damage, not Melee based damage - What's more damage? 400% Weapon damage Plus 450  - OR - 450 Plus melee damage? Not only is melee damage rather vague, but it's vastly inferior. Unless, of course, you have a melee weapon with 200 max damage.
We need our secrets to be useful - They do bad damage, rarely proc, and stop storm stance from proccing. Awesome. Make them hit harder, more often, stack with Storm, and Pow! Fixed. Celerity needs to last 30 - OR - 60 seconds. It's a great concept, but underpowered considering it takes 8 Jin, and by the time I can use an actual art, it's 2 seconds off the top, and the time between arts must eleminate half the tick time.

We need mend to be % Based - Simply put. When we are fully geared and have 5k HP+, 700 isn't a whole hell of a lot. Oh, and make the % respectable - 30%. None of this ow! I was just hit for 4500 by this collosal 6 dot Mob! Quick! Mend for 15% of my total health!

Our Aums are cool, other than that we really don't have much in the way of buffs, as it should be to be justified in line with DPS. We don't buff people - people buff us.

Right now I think our avoidance is kinda where it should be, somewhat low. Windblades being brought back up to 20/5% parry and Harm/Drunk stances being changed aswell would help.

- - Beyond here are for Dragon Monks - -

It's been said time and time and TIME AGAIN. Storm stance is weak, doesn't take Jin correctly. Dragon Stance is borked. Stone dragon stance is cool. 40% heat/cold absorb at 30 is a good idea, although the haste debuff hurts a lot.

This whole idea of counter attacks for dragons of any sort needs to be tossed outside the window. This is mainly Dragon Sweeps it's tail. In a typical group, that is, a Tank, healer, and DPS, how often does a ranger dodge? A rogue? A bard? I'm sure it's rare.. but even if they happen to steal aggro and dodge, WHY IN GOD'S NAME WOULD THEY LAUNCH A 10 METER STUNNING AE? And why would we?

Dragon Monks AEs need a fine tuning.

Some of these I understand are not Dragon specific, but it helps all of us and it's easier to stick them here.

Whirling Storm - Awesome, I love it. Epitome of an AE, the basic badass. 10 Meters, 300 damage, unlimited targets, stupid high rape your endurance cost: Any questions? If they drop the endurance cost, it would be amazing. Massive AE damage with a few endurance regen buffs, right up our alley.

Dragon Rakes its claws - It's identical to Whirling Storm, except it's conical. Ok, that's cool, I can use it at the right angel to hit mobs we are fighting and not aggro a torrent or break mez.. but why use it over Whirling in any other way? I think it should cost jin. One AE that owns using endurance, and one that owns which uses Jin. Always have an AE available.
I'd set the cost at about 4 to 5. Now if only AEs gave a jin for each target they hit...

Dragon Sweeps its tail - AE stun is bank. One minute recast tones it down, high endurance cost balances it. However! See the above comment regarding dodge counter attacks. Make it arbitrary and it's perfect.

Divine Typhoon/Divine Avalanche - These need to not take a crit to fire, considering how hard it is to crit a full AE in the first place. Up the damage to something respectable, and a 2 minute recast is easily justified.

I think that pretty much covers dragon issues. Overall, a few minor tweaks will make us amazing. Our damage needs to be high, or AE damage needs to be high, or avoidanace needs to be mediocre, and our group buffs nonexistent.

We need to be the masters of AE damage as a Dragon monk. Rogues can outdamage us in stealth, rangers can outdamage us in long fights, but when there is 3+ mobs on the field.. better duck and cover - Bombs be dropping.

Nice list. 90% agree, except for the Lull. There's already Nerve Strike and FD. And eventually, knowing the Sigil guys, 99% of the high level mobs will be immune to Lull.

Also, a mistake, I think:
You cannot dual wield Parrying Daggers. They work *exactly* like a Shield. +AC, +Stats and +Parry, no Dmg / Dly.They are not weapons, and they are off-hand only. But I agree with the "king" part.

I agree with alot of stuff you wrote but that kind of skill is just soooo sweet. I love it when you get the chance of really going all out with your attacks at a high cost. You can use the jin surge as a Jin burn ability, but there would be alot more awsome if you really felt you took all your power into that one attack, in this case Ashen hand, to finish a mob. Even more so on a named etc.


Oh oh! My own thoughts!

I would like to see some kind of exhange between Jin and health/endurance. The ignore pain could cost Jin for example (even max Jin every 5 minute is nothing, so right now it wouldn't matter, but if the ignore pain skill became usefull ;) ). And if that seems to imbalanced I would like to be able to trade jin+health for endurance, or jin+endurance for health. Or just add the Jin burn to Ashen Hands. I really want to be horny for mokkori-Jin, currently I'm not. Having max Jin should really feel great, nirvana like. Since we don't have energy, make every single Jin-point desirable.

Some kind of skill that makes it desirable to have some left after leaving combat. <----> Jin loss at FD.

Wishlist 1:
All styles have a relatively neutral stance that grants no negative penalties, with some light bonuses.
But in the case of the Dragon stance the in-combat health regen is such a non-factor that is basically like having no stance at all.
It would be nice if it got a bit more perk to it, and there are several fitting options:
1. Grant significant out of combat health regeneration to reduce downtime (Which would be quite useful because monks when soloing are almost always forced to rest after each fight).
2. Grant a minor attack speed bonus.
3. Grant a minor run speed buff.

Ie: 5% attack speed bonus, 5% run speed bonus, and faster out of comabt health regeneration. I think it would be fine to put it all into one stance, because it's nothing that powerful but it's a few nice perks that are all along the same thing: Increased speed, which is fitting for a Dragon monk.


Wishlist 2:
Create difference idle combat stances and attach one to each monk stance.


Wishlist 3:
More attack animations, especially for the blunt martial staff (which has really only one or two attack animations, with the rest being normal attacks with the staff ackwardly positioned in your hand and clipping through the player model).

Our defensive reactions all need to have endurance costs greatly reduced, and change them to be when either us OR  the mob block/dodge/parries.

Storm Dragon Stance either needs the lightning damage to be unresistable and be a % of the damage the attack did, or just change it to something like +% to crit, damage, or accuracy (a combination of the two would be ideal)

I know it has been mentined, but Ignore Pain should be a % of our HP heal, with the final version of it being about a 50% heal.

Dragon rakes It's Claw needs its damage increased a lot since it is a frontal cone as opposed to being a true AE.

I whould like to see Martial Swords as 1 handers we got to many 2h wepons.
and i also wish they adjust the dps. for us. or the speed of the wepons.

As it is now i do more dmg with unarmed then with any other wepons. even Zank Bladstaff of the ages that is "Legendary" is worse dps then unarmed

Well, at 41, fists for the first time actually outdo Zank (245 dps tooltip) vs 247.5 (165+82.5) for fists. But since fists gives +7.5 critrate and our attacks never scaled with weapon either way, it's really an irrelevant comparsion.

I see the light!

Want to see what being a kung fu monk is all about? Watch a Gordon Liu Kung Fu film!. Pulling? F@#k that I just want to kick some ASS! Hyah Het hyah waai ! I'm talking about Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique / Shaolin Wonder Palm / Chin Kang Fist / 8 divine sword style. Whoever thought of the drunken style in Vanguard needs to watch the final fight with thunder legs in jackie chans Drunken Master

we need to keep on target and not worry about wish lists at this point.  First thing we need to do is get the class playable.  This involves fixing, feign and increasing our damage output.  After that we should start worrying about a wish list.  Here is my wish, I wish the monk would almost work.

maybe I am missing something but what is wrong with feign death?  it works for me for the most part..  but I would expect it to not work against higher level mobs.. and just mostly with current level mobs...

when you feign, mobs sprint back to their start positions, this is a well known bug that they are too lazy to fix.  this bug kills trying to pull with feign.

I'm a relatively young monk in VG.  But from what I've come to expect to what I've seen, there's a few things I'd like to see:

Counter Reactions - Way too 1 dimensional atm.  I had envisioned a monk's counter being something along the lines of making an enemy pay if they detected and anticipated something they were doing.  Have a variety of types of counter reactions - damage, debuff, stun, etc. that only open up based on certain criteria.  For example, monk has a really powerful, long reuse debuff he can use should he detect the mob missing with a special attack. Or they see a certain spell about to go off and it opens up an attack to stun to stun the mob.  I expected more offensively oriented counters  as opposed to the defensive counters I'm seeing now.  This may be in game, because as I said, i'm relatively new.  But if not, it'd be nice if there were abilities like that tied to the counter reaction.

Iron Hand - longer buff please.  If it's an hour long, that means I only have to med jin up to whatever every hour.  Although yes, I am in the habit of mashing it as I lead off with a crescent kick, but it is somewhat annoying.  Is there any reason why this can't be a longer duration self buff?

Should just get rid of any dual wield penalty.  This includes the half crit bonuses from fists and the evasion penalty.  Martial artists learn to become equally proficient in both hands, so having another fistwrap should not reduce our ability to parry.  I'd also include not halving the damage done, but that could be overpowering.  Of any classes though, monks dual wielding should be just like using 2 primary weapons.  It gives us something unique in that respect ( assuming some other class doesn't have that already).

Jin Surge  - as others have suggested, should be a short duration buff with a toned down % mod.  A high Jin cost and longer reuse can curb possible abuse.

Ignore Pain - while I don't want it % based (because it'd be a mend clone and really render every subsequent ignore pain skill useless), it should scale somewhat.  Have it be X hp * level. The higher versions would do more hp per level. 

As for FD...I've never really liked it being used as a pulling tool (even though I've been an EQ1 monk for years).  It just doesn't make sense and seems hokey.  And as such, while I'd definitely use FD for splitting if it's allowed, it'd be nice if it were simply used a means to escape combat and nothing more.  In EQ1, FD pulling was never intended.  Heck, the concept of pulling itself wasn't intended.  That's why I see mobs running back immediately after an FD as a an intended means to thwart FD pulling and not a bug, unless of course they've admitted it is.  But anyway, its success rate vs higher level cons should scale more naturally. 

Anyway, that's part of my wish list.  The big ones being the dual wield and counter thingies.

I really like the idea of removing the dual wield penalty from the monk. That would really kick their DPS up and give a minor boost to crit rate.
It would be easy to balance considering they've only got one type of one handed weapons - Fists. It doesn't matter if it's Knuckles, Wraps, or Claws, they are all the same in terms of stats and function.

1) Fix DPS

2) Abadon styles.  Make stances more powerful.  Allow monks to learn new stances later in their career similiar to how gestalts give psionicists abilities.  Condense, Or make new abilities for the monk class (which has the lowest total number of abilities of any class.  All 3 styles, and monk general = paladin number of abiliites)

3) Fix FD.  Granted the unintentional bug honestly makes split pulling faster for me,  I should't be able to pull a room of 8, fd, then be able to go back to the group with 1 mob (at least not due to a bug, I'm all for highly skilled monks being able to do this).

4) Remove DW penatly.  We are friggin monks.  I took 8 years of tae kwan do.  I feel pretty confident in my ability to punch with my left, or right hand.

5) Give us heals, plate armor, snares, fear, root, 3 new mezzes, and a can of whoopass.  That should cover anything else I missed :P

  ;D Sounds like everyone has got a good idea, now its getting them to implement it.  ::)

Harmonious Reuses & durations:
North Wind Snaps the Limbs
North Wind Breaks the Trunk
2 minute reuse for 20 second duration. If we're supposed to be able to be masters of debuffs, we should be able to use it a bit more often. If the reuse would be 20-30 seconds, the duration is totally fine, the abilites does deal a decent chunk of damage for the effect (and being finishe/adv. finisher, they aren't exactly at will either). Also lacks a description saying "Finisher", "Advanced Finisher".

Deadly Adder Hand
Eagle Claw
They need something more incentive than tiny tiny damage increases as rank increases, such as longer durations; 16 seconds is really short on higher levels; and the endurance drain from particiarly Deadly Adder Hand is very noticable to be reapplyable.

Tiger Pounces (And their other style eqvivalents)
Trapping Mantis Claw (and their other style eqvivalents)
While harmonious is hardly really in need off crit-on-demand, the 5 minute reuse for these is grossly exagruated, considering their weak damage and Jin cost.

(Sorry for the length! I tend to get on a role.)

My single and only wish, and truly I don't even care how it is accomplished is this: To be a class that brings the best of something, or has a unique ability that is needed to a group, even if only in special circumstances.

I like all the current skills and abilities, I think some are very fun and it's why I've always played a monk. Unfortunately, these skills are only fun and amusing to ME. These do not transcend into being useful to a group. If we were able to solo, I would say monks were perfect. But fact is monks cannot really do much without a group. So we need something that makes us a viable addition to a group, that people WANT. Plain and simple we have to offer something to a group besides second rate DPS or slow second rate pulling.

Now I don't envision the need to be best DPS, or best off tank, or even the best puller. Just something unique that would make people want us in a group. There is just simply no reason all other offensive fighters have something to bring best to the table. Even aside from major roles other classes have pick pocket, tracking or group bonuses. Bards give so much group benefit AND pull the best. Leave something for us poor monks, lol.

So I apologize for the babbling, but here are my feeble suggestions (and I realize some sound over powering, these are just meant to be thought provokers’):

1. Make the monk FD stand out.
- Make it work on higher level mobs then disciples, necromancers or bard lull. This lets us get a niche of helping pull or just plain pulling named bosses or better yet raid content.
- Random but, PvP Feign Death would rock if you lost target and couldn’t get back, only got Name’s Corpse, and had to AoE or some such thing to break.
- Remove level limit so that we can use it to travel in dangerous areas. Might take us a while to flop thru but would be nice! If it’s not meant to pull then why have level cap, make it useful.
- Make one that will FD the group. Stuns for 1 minute or such but saves everyone!
- Make it not tether mobs!

2. Specialization!!! You NEED a rogue to picklock, you NEED a ranger to track, you NEED a bard to pull, you need Monks for nothing except random DPS you can get anywhere.
- We are martial artists, let us do more damage to humanoids, I don’t know how to Kung Fu a bear.
- Feign Death specialization – Bards pull faster, monks pull the tougher stuff.

3. Make us the defensive version of bards.
- Extend certain Harmonious or Drunken ablities to group members. Possibly make Dragon a bard lite of sorts, seeing as how we are light or super light versions of everything else we do. Would even out seeing as how bards with their group damage increase probably do more damage then us if you factor in the extra damage group members do, and that we are aren’t near Rogues for damage.

4. Make us be able to add focus to caster spells. Bards focus mellee attacks, Monks use their inner power to increase healing spells and increase damage done for sorcerers.

5. Definitely agree with making Mend % based for pure fact of scalability. Gonna become useless once gears starts getting better.

6. Just give in and increase our DPS to pretty much a rogues’, or increase our off tanking ability to a Rangers’. No way being so currently low on tanking will we be doing it.

7. Just say screw it and make us a class that can solo. If we are only ones on agro list increase our damage or something. 

Oh and one other request, and clearly the most important... give Drunken Monks a super high alcohol tolerance :)

Oh man, just niticed something too...WTB the old Bladed Staff animation for Thousand Fists/Thunering Fists, the new one is terrible, or was it that just that since Zank got a graphic change it has a lame animation for the skill?  :'(

I want the graphic back on my Defenders martial staff.
Now it looks like a one handed toothpick that casters run around with while a caster was swinging it around in one hand the other day.

They got mixed up.

There is really only one thing left for the Monk to be the best at: Off tanking.

The Rogue already is suppose to be the best at burst DPS.
The Bard is already the best utility and buffs.
The Ranger already combines a little of everything into an effectve package.
The Berserker is going to have to be the best at sustained DPS.

That leaves... Offtanking. The Monk use to be a champ at it, but now he's actually equal to or worse than a Ranger, depending on what form you take.

This is why I doubt the viability of the three forms system, because what is a Dragon monk suppose to do if he can't be allowed to be supreme at DPS?
The Drunken and Harmonious forms both represent what niche the Monk has left to fill: Offtanking, aggro management, good DPS, and some team utility. But why must you choose between utility and off tanking, when by themselves they aren't that powerful but together they could turn the monk into a much more effective whole?

This is why I think the Monk would be better off if the three forms were merged, and we were given a new set of universal stances for offense, defense, and team utility.

my wish is to make monks wear light armor (since there is no leather) for +crit and +avoidance cause i dont see any diffrence between light and medium armor, high lvl mobs kill me with 2 hits or 1 and same goes for casters, changing thousand fists to a multi-hit chain similar to windsong but a limit of 1-5 or 1-6 hits, and atleast give us back block cause this will help our solo ability and it will  make drunken discs better at off-tanking.

(Post overhauled after reading the entire thread)

My thoughts:

General Monk
- Good changes with counterattacks's Endurance costs and unarmed damage so far.
- FD needs two fixes:
   1) combat has to break every single time if FD succeeds.
   2) mobs need to have some form of predictable behaviour when you feign.
- General DPS: to me, it looks like whichever weapon I equip that is as good or better as the unarmed damage rate is supposed to be, my added auto-attack DPS (numbers listed on the character screen when mousing over  main hand and off-hand damage) is exactly the same. This can't be right.
- Ashen Hand: Ranks I through IV all list the exact same damage: 250% weapon damage + 2500. I've never seen it do more than 450 since the last patch, though.
- Halven the timer on Thousand Fists and its advanced finisher.
- Nerve Strike: an attempt to mez is wasted if the attack misses. Make it only go into cooldown if the attack hit and the mob was actually stunned. Or, as an alternative, lower the cooldown to 20 secs instead of 30 to compensate.

Dragon Style
- AE damage needs to be more effective than the generic monk AE Whirling Storm in terms of Endurance cost versus damage output. This goes for all of the AE abilities. Either lower the damage and tweak the Endurance, or plain lower the Endurance cost by about 5 - 29 Endurance is still a fairly large chunk.
- Storm Dragon stance could use an upgrade.
- Six Dragon Strike should be a more significantly better alternative to Boundless Fists.
- Dragon Stance: while it DOES confer a small healing upgrade (noticeable when sitting down, mostly), this could easily be doubled without being unbalancing.

this might be a little far out there heh  ;D

But my wish is that like dancing, but not. See I would like to see us do some sorta kata move stances, like our guy can go and type in sorta like /dance ( but of course not that one ) but go and have like /martial or something and our guy like does like cranes and training and stuff and just does some cool things that have to do with martial arts.

Like the guy in that town in oh my i forget the name you head there and they have a grand master on the roof like doin it and a couple of other guys out in the front doing it like training. I just think it would be a cool little thing.

I too have been wanting some emotes that are like martial arts moves.

On the subject I would also like to see some over the top cool animations for the more powerful and rare attacks when using a katana or bladed staff, like one would see in Jedi Academy.
For instance: The Dragon attack that always criticals but is on a 5 minute refresh. Powers that that could have a somewhat elaborate and powerful looking attack.

I noticed my character does another emote If I get the last hit in with a skill, which look kinda cool. Like a kick to the face instead of a roundhouse kick, or a double fisted punch ot the chest instead of the boxing emote.

Though I wouldn't mind if meditate got another type of emote other than sitting like everyone else. It looks stupid lol.

Six Dragon Strike has one thing going for it: It exploits the vulnerability created by Boundless Fist, so it does more damage.
I like the way that's set up. Makes tactics a little more interesting as a Dragon monk.

Yeah, just noticed that yesterday. That does add a bit of shine to that ability.

What I haven't seen so far is one of my hits interrupt a caster. I can't really tell if it's possible or not. If not, I definitely want at least a few abilities to have a chance for interrupts. I soloed green 4dots to bring my sword skill up and I didn't interrupt them once. They always healed themselves.

secret of ice helps

It will hopefully after this patch - I haven't really see it go of yet.

I don't think we need to add an entirely new ability to lull.  We could use our nerve strike as a hybrid lull bridging the gap between a rogue's sap and a caster's ranged lull.  Allow us to choose either running up, FD and pop our nerve strike or hit our storm stridee followed by nerve strike for a ranged teleport mez.  If executed properly, the enemy would have NO idea what hit them and from where thus giving you or your group no aggro.  Unless of course it was already aggroed to begin with.  In wich case, why not let us use it in combat?  Maybe they saw us coming, thats ok.  Maybe they had some time to react to our attack, reducing it's duration to say 8 seconds?  4 seconds?  I see now point in not allowing us to use storm stride to execute a nerve strike, its the same as running up and FDing without the added steps.

I agree with most of what's listed in the OP.  I'm a bit worried about the 10% crit on h2h weapons though.  Being harmonious would i get even less benefit from tiger stance?  Would i eventually have like 120% crit rate?  What good would that do me?

On the point of mediation.  How about we sit down and meditate.  We then press our iron hand buff (only while meditation) and begin channeling jin into our buff.  The longer we maintain this state, the longer the buff charges up (maybe have it max at an hour) and while in this state we gain no jin.  I also like the idea of short duration types of buffs .  However i would NEVER meditate between pulls if i were pulling... sounds like a waste of time.  Only if someone else were pulling (slowly) and i had time to wait between fights.  Oh and i like the idea of a food-like health regen while meditating.

2 other abilities.  These are called... oh wait i never use them and can't rember their names.  The 2 so far i have at level 31 are 30 minute recast 20 second buffs.  One is a 250 dmg damage shield and the other is the double damage buff.  Umm should i use it now?  What if i need it in 5 minutes?  What if my group would wipe 5 minutes from now if these abilities are on cooldown?  How do i know?  I don't so i never use them.  They're not good enough to ever need to use to begin with.  For the double damage buff, reduce it to like a 3rd and reduce recast to 10 minutes for a quick fix... possibly make it more interesting cuz even that sounds sort of lame.  For the damage shield you could.... oh n/m just refund my 2s i spent to train it i dont' care.

I would completely love to look as awesome as a disciple using a bladed staff.  Whats wrong with us?  I rolled a monk because i already had a cleric and loved the jin martial style from when i tried out disciple.  Martial staffs looked completely sweet but i was saddened that they didn't seem like very much good damage.  Snap to present time and h2h weapon crit is lower and i'm harmonious so i already crit a lot.  Now its a viable option.  I'm 31 and have the infineum blade staff.  The animations SUCK!  (to be blunt)

As far as nerve strike's re-use goes... just have it only usable on one target at a time.  Remove the cooldown if you must but honestly it never bothered me.  What does bother me is that i have to "sneak" up on a mob to use it out of combat.  Like i said above how'd they know it was me?  They should be effectively lulled.  By the way i love how easy nerve strike is to use when u have invis on. =P

I'm glad they looked at damage on some of our less used abilities and on our secrets.  Also the storm stride fix will make me a bit happy (a bit).  Quinn, how likely are we to get anything from the "wish list" added?  Was there a purpose behind this?  Or just something interesting to chat about?

One thing i would like is some sort of intuitive UI for selecting counter attacks.  Basically i just end up macroing them to my boundless fists button and press that when i see anything out of the ordinary go all flashy on me on the screen.  It does take some skill which is cool i would never want to trivialize it.  Maybe a seperate more clearly visible representation of our counter attack's current status?

Oh and is there a reason harmonious monks don't seem to get the ability to exploit their own weakness?  If there's a reason behind it that's cool but if it's just been overlooked, maybe throw it on a debuff or for added effectiveness?  We don't get cool attacks worth any damage like drunk/dragon so it wouldn't operate like theirs did i suppose.  Maybe we could have it on our style specific finisher. (OP?)

I want to look like a martial artist.  A melee combat oriented type of robe styled gear.  I run around town with my shoulders off and my infineum immunity cloak on.  It looks sweet.

And fix our ranged damage.  Storm Stride doesn't count haha.

Hi all!

I am new to the site. I have a lvl 33 Disciple but i recently re-rolled a Kojani Human Monk to play with my real-life friends who just joined the game. I love playing a monk!

Some things i would like to see happen in game:

Monk tunics like those seen in EQ2

Monk\Disciple hats, like the ones n EQ2 or Anarchy online (the pointy hats) - Can't think of the name....

"Takuhatsu gasa" is the pointy, straw looking hat.

Another thing to add to a wish list (other than obviously fixing many of the glaring problems with Monks in general) :

-Aums specific to each stye that plays on the strengths of that style.
-Secrets specific to each style.

I also agree with other posters in that our animations need a lot of work. There are many resources to pull ideas from, lets see some cool moves. But after abilities and stuff are fixed  :knuppel2:

I've always been a big fan of nice passive buffs.  I'm so jealous of Ranger's buff (their cloaks, their +5% crit buff, etc.), I really hope Monks get a stance or buff that will help our damage.  Us Dragon Monks, who have no utility and just DPS, are getting out-DPSed by nearly everyone, I believe we should be up there near the top... hell, even AT the top, seeing as other classes get insane ranged, stealth, etc. 

Re-posted:

I'd really like to see a bonus on Storm Dragon stance (or hell, whatever stance in Dragon Style, make a new one!  Tongue) give an additional 15-20% damage on crits.  I don't think this would be too extreme.....

A 1000 damage crit normally would only be boosted to about 1200 damage.  That would help DPS over the course of a battle and not be significantly overpowering or anything.  Hell even 30% I don't think would be too overpowering, as Dragon monks need DPS, because that's what we're specced to do.

What do other people think?

to increase monk DPS, our Thousand Fists should be similar to the ranger power Windsong.  The power Thousand Fists suggests striking something multiple times, and hence it should live up to its name.

so 1) scale the DPS of the power

2) make it a mulitple hit attack like Windsong

Id like to see a Bind Wounds Skill ala EQ1 for the monk class.  Perhaps make it scale based on what style you choose.

This would be something akin to Drunken best > Harmonious> Dragon, as long as Sigil revamps the monk DPS such that
Dragon>Harmonius>Drunken > all offensive fighters except stealthed backstabbing rogues.

QTM can you push for monk skill reuse timers to be re-worked on?
Currently I feel alot of our higher level skills are moderately useful BUT have insanely long reuse timers!

5min on a tiny amount of self-heal I can understand, 30min on a double-ur-skill-dmg buff I can understand, but 5min on an autocrit??? 5min on a 2sec stun that doesnt even interrupt a mob's casting??? 30min for a 20sec damage shield??

If the Devs feel these skills are too overpowering (they're not!), maybe they can increase the cost but put on much shorter timer so they can be used when needed.  Thanks!

yeah, a lot of the reuse timers need to be rethought. I'll be updating the concerns list soon as I am preparing an update to the main list now anywho.

~QTM

I think the timer on Thousand Fist should come down to 30 seconds.  It would create a lot more DPS for us without overpowering us in the least.

I also think one of the reasons we (at least us Dragon monks) are bad at PVP are because we have no root/snare/stun (out of combat) or any root/snare breakers.  If we get rooted we are pretty much screwed.  Storm Stride lets you get about 1 attack in before the opponent is already far away again and kiting you.  I would love to see some kind of ability that if you get snared and then you storm stride it stuns them or slows them.  I would really just love to see us get some kind of root.  It seems like every other class but us gets a root, stun, silence, invis, etc.  This is one of the true reasons we are bad at PVP. 

Would be even cooler if storm stride broke a snare/root and gave you a X second immunity to incoming roots/snares

The game needs classes that can actually cure crowd control abilities. Then group PvP would be more than the joke that it is now. But I would not expect any PvP changes anytime soon. The only reason the DoT thing getting fixed was that they broke it in one of the early patches and DoTs simply did nothing at all until now.

To me Ignore pain is too low of a heal, expecially since its a self heal. I would like the heal amount increased or make the timer shorter and make it useable on any player. Kinda like mend in EQ2.

Rice hat, omg i want my rice hat graphic! A monk should have that helm graphic no matter what!

Allow Nerve Strike to be used with Stormstride!  8)
And let nerve strike be used in combat and turn off melee when used.
Umm, lower the level req for soaring leap to like the 20s!

Just all around monk pass and love for a week or two  :smitten:

What we really need to compete in PVP at all is our own slow/hamstring ability, as we get kited all the time and our only way to succeed is to constantly be up in people's face.

ALSO I think we should make Feign have a purpose in PVP.  It shouldn't make us unattackable, but it should make the other person lose their target on us, so it actually looks like we're dead.

So I understand that things are turbulent at the HQ, but I still play so I'll add my input to this thread :D

Fix Palm Explodes the Heart.  It is currently useless.  5 minute reuse and even using all 3 links, it is still outdamaged by Thousand Fists/Thundering Fists.  This is probably my biggest issue with the class at the moment, since I, like most Monks, looked forward to this skill since I started my character.

Add more benefits to using 2h weapons.  I don't even carry my T5 flawless staff anymore.  It is item level 53, as are both of my claws, yet the DPS is the same on 1 of my claws (71.35 DPS on 1 claw and 71.38 DPS on the staff).  Now, I understand that topend damage is important for skills, but I have parsed and my DPS with a staff is nowhere near my DPS using claws.

Do something else with Ignore Pain.  Make it percentage based, add a Jin cost, reduce the cooldown in my opinion.

Reduce the cooldown on the secret of fire/ice by 5 seconds each, so that they can be chained.  Extend the timer on Transcendece.  Celerity is great, keep it the same way.

Reduce the cooldown on Goading Slap so that it might be useful in a real fight.  1600 hate doesn't mean jack at level 50 unless you're piling it on.

Lastly, I think it would be a cool idea to give Monks an alternate discipline.  For example, you can be Harmonious spec with an alternate spec in Dragon style.  Maybe give a toned down version of one of the stances, some of the basic skills, etc.  This is just sort of an idea, and I realize it would require a lot of tweaking, but I think it would add a lot more variety to the class rather than "Rawr I debuff.  Rawr I do really bad AEs and some ok DoTs.  Rawr I can tank, but not really" mentality of the current discipline situation.

\-> I'd like it better if the current Disciplines were expanded on instead of dual-styling. First of all, it makes no sense from a roleplay perspective, and second it doesn't make sense from a mechanics perspective: too much work would go into it for too little gain. I'd rather have 2 more Dragon/Harm/Drunken specific moves that expand on the current spectrum of abilities.

I think the vision was to make all classes within a group equal at their job. What should make us stand out is flavor and utility. I like Styffler's post.

I've been thinking in the line of Redirection beeing our thing. Goading Slap and Waning Palm is already there, but refresh timers and low numbers has made me amost forget about them. Beef them up!

We would work a bit like the main tank's little helper. Along with FD we bring safety to the group and to the healer particularly.

I totally agree with Mend needing a revamp and I would like to see us have a nitch in the game other than saving the groups ass on a wipe, but I never ever ever want to be an avoidance tank or light tank or a tanks little helper.  Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say but in my opinion, let the other defensive players be tanks little helpers.

I went through that crap in eq2 with SOE.  The concept of the avoidance tank was great but it never worked right, we were always 3rd rate tanks with decent DPS and soon it was just the DPS that mattered.  The only thing SOE did right was make content that required monks and bruisers to tank, that at least allowed us to shine on certain fights. 

For VG id like to see some group utility maybe in the form of 1 min buffs that only get applied after a finisher, and make jin surge last for atleast 6 seconds, higher base dps, and as mentioned before lower the timer on mend and make it %based.

EDIT: Ok since this is a wish list I guess I should mention I would like to see better stances (more meaningful)  Right now as far as the dragon stances are concerned they are pretty weak imo.

Ok ill shut up now  :uglystupid2:

If this was "The Vision", then why was it stated repeatedly that Rogues would deal the best melee damage? My conclusion is that what you say is the vision, is a lack thereof or simply not it. IMO, the damage scale should be as such:

Healer (defensive) < Fighter (defensive) < DPS (defensive)
and
Healer (offensive) <= Fighter (offensive) <= DPS (defensive)

A tank or healer should never, repeat NEVER deal more damage than a DPS class in offensive stance. NEVER. Only if the tank or healer is in offensive stance and the DPS class in defensive stance, should they be able to out-DPS them, and then only marginally - IF they have better gear. Why? Because offensive fighters can't mitigate enough damage and  can't heal themselves sufficiently, at least one of which benefits healers and tanks do have.

Then on to offensive fighters specifically. Rogues should always deal the most melee DPS in groups, because it's so situational. Rangers and monks should be tied regardless of study levels, because:
- Rangers have buffs to share, monks don't.
- Rangers can deal great damage from afar, leading to less risk. Monks cannot.
- Rangers have stealth, monks have FD. Success rates are about the same when comparing your level to mob level.
- Rangers snare, run speed without a penalty, stun, debuff mobs. Monks can stun and debuff IF they have chosen the right martial style and have run speed at an endurance penalty.
- Rangers can use energy rightaway, the monk has to get up close and personal to build Jin before he unlocks his DPS potential.
Looking at the above list should, in fact, lead you to conclude that Monk DPS would be HIGHER than Ranger damage, if anything. Unfortunately, logic is a lost art when balancing VG classes.

My idea was that of pulling agro back to the tank with Goading Slap, or off the squishy (and therefore back to the tank) with Waning Palm. Redirection of agro.
Avoidance tanking is too risky, I like that I'm able to but I don't really see myself tanking anything.

I think most of us can agree that we should be just below the backstabbing rogue and alongside the ranger in dps. But it would be nice to be able to offer something else besides dps and wipe recovery. If not redirection of agro, then what's our utility? We're certainly not the pullers of choice.

Ok I see what your saying now.  Not sure that will make us desirable or needed but it would atleast be something.

Well, my Rogue buddy gets an ability similar to our Goading slap 3, except where mine gives the tank 800 every 30 seconds, his gives 140-160 every 2 seconds. So after thirty seconds, that would be 2100-2400. I didn't ask whether it was continual or whether he had to click it repeatedly. In any case, as far as giving the TANK extra aggro goes, we're not the offensive fighter of choice.

give monks bind wounds and a chance for a complete heal on ignore pain

I like the ability to pull and split mobs, its an art and hey, its fun.  Your not always going to have a bard, at least in single groups anyway.  It gives me a sense of crowd control.  Pulling in conjunction with Nerve Strike, and SUPER JUMP...I'm into it.  Has 'fun' written all over it.

We need a 'stun' or 'interrupt' ability that isn't tacked onto another ability (Secret of Ice - which only has a 'chance' to stun for 2 seconds).  I want it for interupting casters, and although I don't PvP, may be used for that.

Bottom line is I'm having fun, in theory any changes made are going to improve my good time.

more reactionaries

beeing able to catch and throws back arrows/bolt spells in a small radius arround you (10m 1minute reuse timer)
beeing able to dodge ae attacks (5minute reuse timer)

add a snare on first palm explodes the heart chain and a 6sec stun on the second part

make our stormstride abilitie a 30sek buff which activates on every style we use during the duration AND please change the camera angle  (this is what I would love the most especially on pvp server this would sooooo rock :D)

I would Love to have Sneak again, A dps upgrade to Palm explodes the heart  and maybe a pass on our dps again

Aside from wanting the monk just fixed.... i'd add to it a few more weapon choices.  I've seen a monk trainer dual weilding what looked to be 2 short swords (believe this was in Dark Horse Downs), and with all of the Ra'jin at the fortress near Tanvu dual wielding Sai's.. can't help but drool at the fact that the graphics/animations would already be in for that obviously martial weapon... shouldn't be that hard to add in.  Toss in some fighting sticks and/or nunchakus maybe... add a bit of variety to our arsenals, the npc's are getting it, how bout some for the pc's.

         Rho-Shan


p.s. came to Vanguard to play a monk... now i just log in to see if they've fixed the monk... let me know when i can play again Quinn

Good Post.  I would love to see some duel wield fighting sticks and Sai's the animations for the sai looked great too.

While I like the idea of new wepaon types. We would need a new general skill 1hb, a specialized equipment skill. What would the benifits be to wielding one of these. Since most of our weapons give some "perk" to using them?

• Martial Sword: + Parry
• HTH Weapons: + To Crit
• Bladestaff / Martial Staff + Double Damage on crit

Tonfa / Fighting Batons to me scream + To parry but you could wield 2 of them and would be a faster so the damage would be lower. Ideas???

~QTM

How about a chance to stun or slow? Think of it as beating someone on the gourd, or hitting them in their joints.

More defensive weapons for an offensive class?

Longsword'ish weapon lacking (ie higher damage but longer delay); you could easily have sticks, batons or something else filling that role.
Could also loose some of the abundant variants of HTH (since they all look the same anyhow!) perhaps in favour for hookswords or sommert.

Girl, go get me my woopin' stick!  :smitten:

I do like the idea of dual wileding "battle sticks" just as long as it came with animations to go with it and not the crappy ones that go with DW swords.

I just don't see them handing us stun procs as that could get out of hand although it would be nice to be on the other side of chain stun.

~QTM

I just liked the idea of a bit of variety to our arsenals.  Hmm, while i can see where we'd have imbalance with a stun proc, what if it was a low percentage that progressed as the battle went on?  Dunno, i'd like to see more ideas on any variant weapons.  There's alot of weapon choices im still dissapointed not to see in Vanguard, but let's face it, WE are focused on monks.  Maybe start a thread with some other ideas?  By no means do i want to slow down the repairs we so greatly need first.  Monks need our role in the scheme of things defined, highlighted, and done with the stylishly mastered grace that only a monk can bring to a bashing.  Just more food for thought on monks.  Playability comes first, then some flair (animations/weapon alternatives/class specific armours).  But good to see others interested in the idea.

p.s. in long term, i'd love to see each of the monk paths having specific animations, so you can look and so .. oh!  She's a master of Drunk-Foo!

so sue me, i play dragon school... no idea what the boozin bruisers call themselves

drunken monks really need the ability to drink afull bottle of booze at ones giving them a huge att/def buff for x amount of time then same penaltys for the same duration ;) (and ofcourse a longer recast timer) you know like in the movies where the drunken style fighter really shines while he is really really drunk ;) (drunken master movie for example)


and yes all those h2h weapons should be merged to one and then they could give us some other weapon options
wind fire wheels could be one addition (although this could also been added to h2h)
and I want a kama :D


would be nice to get a monk style specific quest with a unique cloak design as a reward too ;)

perhaps even a further specialisation choice between ra/la jin with different stuff in it...
so many possiblities :)

I wouldn't mind seeing sashes instead of cloaks for monks :)

without a cloak my raki doesnt look half as good :-/

THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT THING / WISH ABOUT MONK, I.M.O.:
i rolled a monk to have a chance to dps / fight WITHOUT ANY weapons. I d like an option to  do so. Maybe through adjusting dragon style = give a higher bonus to damage with bare hands (no weapon allowed), and / or higher non crit reliant damage with bare hand.
Or add a speel called 'fist of diamond' adding a huge portion of damage, non crit reliant, for character fightging without any weapon.

SPEED: in old school RPG, monk were fast character. I'd like a basic bonus to naturel speed, let's say +5% per 10 levels, and a talent, on a X minutes CD, increasing speed by 10-20% par 10 levels (i dont like the 40ish power that gives a flat 50% speed bonus...and bard shouldnt be master of speed movement imo)


Air walk / wind walk = these powers are often seen in oriental / martial monk legend / stories / RPG. Adding a speel allowing monk to travel safe in the athmosphere should'nt be hard, since it's already ingame for another class.

and to finish, i think martial arts styles could get some love / twinkage, they miss this 'magical' thingy i can't spell...

My 2 cents wish

Hm that would be cool, quests to increase bare hand dmg and speed would nice nice.  You sacrifice procs and stats for bare hand dmg.  Id be game for something like that.

Have dmg scale better 1-50 for bare fist
Every at lvl 20,30,40,50 have quests to upgrade fists to heroic dmg/dly
At 50 add a raid quest to upgrade fists to legendary dmg

As long as dmg was always better then crafted weapons (and the quests were hard enough to justify this) it would be a neat addition with low to little work. 

My personal wish would be for a one inch punch type buff.  Where the closer we are to a mob the more dmg we do.

I like your personnal wish a lot !
About bare hand / fist, maybe add a spell passive line, increasing off hand damage when fighting bare hands ?
Plus adding a specialization skill for bare hand (it s actually missing : when you fight bare hands, you only get the benefit from normal skill, cause there is no specialisation skill for pure bare hands): with the 10% bonus to damage from maxed specialization skill, and the increased damage on the off hand...and a dragon style review....pure bare hands could be a viable option, at the cost of procs and bonus from weapons.


Is there any monk review planned ?

Long answer is "yes there is but..."

we have to wait on our class lead to either return or step down
it will have to wait till they finish gu4 (week or 2 minimum)
and lastly it all depends on in which order they do for the next batch.

Plan for each game update to be 2 months apart with 3 class revamps per update.  Classes that have yet to receive a needed update are psi, blm, mnk. 

We got a lot of general changes but not the balance pass we needed.

If we get a new class lead, i'd suggest someone who plays on the pvp server and is active in a raiding guild.

That way monks get all the pve love they need without having our pvp needs ignored. I read through many posts and some statements made are made from obviously Non-pvp players.

"Make stormstride useful" - Correction, it IS very useful, if you pvp and you're trying to chase someone down.

I'd like to hear some more suggestions from people who play on Sartok. :P

I dont think the class lead HAS to be a pvp'er, on the contrary i think the monks on PVP need to be more active.

The problem is skills on pvp that are useful do next to nothing for other monks.  So the quest becomes good for 3 higher population servers or 1 lower population server. 

On live storm stride is useful for pve, it just needs its bugs fixed...which they are for gu4.   I think monk as a whole arent very active on the pvp server as far as community involvement.   

Besides, if an upgrade was done for PVP, people would yell if a community proposed upgrade to the pve monks would be refused  >:(
Vanguard is a PVE game, and it happens to have a PVP server.
PVP is a non issue as far as i'm concerned, and as far as the game was advertised.

Regarding classes that got an update, i thought monks where in the GU3 ? and what about Disciples ? did they get an update ?

disciples got stances and a bunch of basic changes.

Monks got a bunch of basic changes and we are better then we were, but nowhere near the level rogue/war/dk/druid/pal  got (or are getting).  A rogue can afk half a fight, come in and out dmg (not just dps) dps that have been fighting the entire time. 

Monks are better yes, but there needs to be interform balance. (dragon/drunken/harm)
Pretty much all stances need to be looked at
Useless skills need to be droped/modified/ or fixed
We need better itemization (dks are getting a slew of 2 handers added to the game, and i mean a ton)
we need more then 2 superior skills (rogues/war get almost all skills superior)

Disciple update is slated for GU6

They still have a few broken skills, some worthless ones, desire a healing stance, and sorely sorely need reduced micromanagement...theres more to it than that but that's my nutshell version.  ;)

Both monk and disc need the FD glitches to stop though...sooo annoying.

I'd love to be able to play a bare handed fighting monk.
Don't disc's get handwraps + knuckles lumped together for skills?  We could use a slot for unarmed then...
Hell, i'd take that as a fix for dragon if they did it right.
The animations for bare handed are smooth :)

While i have to agree Quinn's absence has me concerned quite a bit... I look forward to his return.  But..
The Monk needs attention.  Fujitsu's doing a wonderful job gathering information, sorting through problems.
Trying to balance/reform/rebuild the Monk.

We need representation

Yeh i'd like to thank fujitsu for all the work he puts into this forum and trying to bring monk issues to light. We really apprechiate it  :)

*Stands up*

Me, too want to thank Grandmaster Fujitsu for his hard work.

*Bows*

I have to agree with the stance issue. I'd kill for the Disciples stances myself.

+10% crit +20% damage +50% energy cost on heals. Gimme.

+20% dodge 1/jin per 8 seconds -20% hate. Oh yeah =p

Honestly though the drunken monk defensive stance should be at least something near that. (without the minus hate)

I'm also all for bare-fisted fighting. And for the love of all that is Gin, how about fixing our animations? :)

Oh, and thank you Fujitsu.

hello,


More accurate wishes for pure bare hands monks : (I rolled monk to fight effectively with pure bare hands AND NO WEAPON AT ALL)

- Spell ‘energy transfer’ or ‘total focus’, tank 1 to 5 gained at levels 5/15/25/35/45, with following effects:
Rank 1 (level 5) : increase effect of ‘iron hands’ by 10% and increase off hand damage by 10%
Rank 2 (level 15) : increase effect of ‘iron hands’ by 20% and increase off hand damage by 20%
Rank 3 (level 25) : increase effect of ‘iron hands’ by 30% and increase off hand damage by 30%
Rank 4 (level 35) : increase effect of ‘iron hands’ by 40% and increase off hand damage by 40%
Rank 5 (level 45) : increase effect of ‘iron hands’ by 50% and increase off hand damage by 50%
Spell to acquire / learn through a questline / for each rank.
Numbers to adjust to fit gamesystem / and Dps / effectiveness targeted for monks by devs.

- add a specialization skill for pure bare hands, or allow ‘handwraps’ specialization skill to apply effects when monks fight with pure bare hands.

- styles / stances revamp (most of bonus / penalty don’t make lot of senses)

- airwalk / waterwalk (to fit oriental monk in old school paper pen RPG)

- more martial sword choice (as quest reward) if we have to play with weapons (most of quest weapons are ulak, claws, staves or bladed staves…)

Really, this game is awesome, ingame content is a must, just miss a few things to reach perfection….

No...earlier disciples simply do not have the knuckles skill, period.  Recently rolled ones had it patched in but most veterans are screwed currently.

My personal thought is that wraps, knuckles, unarmed should be one.  Ulak/claws should be another...since one is essentially causing blunt trauma with your fist and the other is slashing and tearing with an extension.


In regards to dealing significant unarmed damage there would have to be serious balance for it.  It would never fly if monks/disc automatically got unarmed damage on par with T5 crafted weapons let alone APW quality weapons without significant effort.  And its not like the devs have all this spare time to write a monk only unarmed weapon quest line into the game at multiple stages (which is what it would have to be).  So then essentially they could program in to select for unarmed weapon boost as a reward for some of the primary weapon quest lines.  But how is that really any different than grabbing a 1h weapon in the first place?


Don't get me wrong, if the devs had the resources I think it would be fan-damn-tastic to include periodic questlines to upgrade unarmed damage, with one generic soloable one at level 10 (mystic fist = small raw boost to unarmed dps + crit bonus +3str/dex/int/con + 30hps) and then branched ones for the three combat styles with all layers stacking.  Which would also then make a style a touch more meaningful as you would have to retrain your special unarmed boost for your combat style.  Level 20 would still be barelysoloable but really better off with a duo, 30 would be barely accomplished with at least an excellent level 30 duo, 40 would require a solid level 40 group, and 50 a raid (probably involving taking down multiple existing raid targets).

Dragon
Level 20
Stone Hands of the Dragon, the skin of your hands and forearmes becomes like that of the stone dragon and able to punish your foes and turn aside blades.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + small (4%ish) parry bonus + 5 str/int +35hps)

Level 30
Elemental Fist of the Dragon, your hands flow with the thundering elemental power of dragons.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + boosted secret damage(10%ish) +10 str/int +40hps)

Level 40
Elemental Claws of the Dragon, your fingers pierce the core of your foes with elemental jin.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent chance to proc(stacking with other debuffs) lowered mitigation to elemental damage by 10% for 1min + 15 str/int +45hps)

Level 50
Mystic Arms of the Dragon, your arms carry the ancient rage and power of great dragons, their fury is terrible, their strength and knowledge knows no limit.
(further major raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc dragon's fury (1500dd + 10%acc/damage/crit boost for 10 seconds) + 20str/int + 50hps)

Net total for dragon unarmed quest series:
Highest unarmed raw dps
Increased parry 4%
Increased secret damage 10%ish
Proc frequently reduced mitigation vs elemental damage on opponent by 10% for 1min
Proc small chance 1500dd + 10%acc/dam/crit 15sec
+3dex/con +53str/int
+200hps
Total dps would just slightly exceed the strongest dps APW weapon set.



Harmonious
Level 20
Harmonious Arms of Water, your arms flow like water to strike pressure points and vitals of your opponent.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent proc chance for 10%(stacking with other debuffs) slow for 15s, +4str +3dex/int +35hps)

Level 30
Harmonious Arms of Wind, your arms move with the grace of violent wind overwhelming your opponent.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + 10%haste +4%parry +8str +6dex/int +40hps)

Level 40
Harmonious Arms of Eternity, your arms live with timeless vigor, wearing down your opponent relentlessly.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 6end/6seconds +10str/dex/int +45hps)

Level 50
Harmonious Arms of Jin, your arms are possessed by the two sides of jin moving with serentity while delivering disaster.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps +small chance to proc fury of jin (1000dd + stun for2sec + gain 3jin) +14str +13dex/int +50hps)

Net total for harmonious unarmed quest series:
Second highest raw unarmed damage (close to both drunken and dragon)
+6endurance regen per 6 seconds
+4%parry
+10% haste
+frequent chance to proc 10% slow for 15 seconds
+small chance to proc 1000dd + 2sec stun and gain 3jin
+39str +35dex/int +3con
+200hps
Total dps would be just a little below  the strongest dps APW weapon set.




Drunken
Level 20 
Blurring Hands of the Drunken Master, your strange hand movements confuse your opponents and allow further opportunities to you.
(further small raw boost to unarmed dps + small increase to dodge and parry (4%ish), +4str +3con/int +35hps)

Level 30
Unquenchable Grip of the Drunken Master, your thirst knows no bounds; ra-jin empowers your hands to drink life from your foes.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent chance for life tap to proc = 1/3 your Constitution, +8str +6con/int +40hps )

Level 40
Right Hand of the Drunken Master, your mastery of style is perfect, your staggering movements mask flawless subtle hand techniques to avoid harm.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 4%parry/mitigation +10str/con/int +45hps)

Level 50
Left Hand of the Drunken Devil, your unpredicatable attacks allow unusually cruel blows to strike your unprepared opponents.
(Further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc drunken fury (your next attack hits for double damage) +14str +13con/int +50hps)

Net total:
Third highest raw unarmed damage (very close to harmonious)
+4%mitigation/dodge
+8%parry
+frequent chance to proc lifetap = 1/3constitution
+small chance to proc doubledamage
+39str +35int/con +3dex
+200hps
Total dps would be a reasonable bit above the best windblade in the game.


In practice this would have to be looked over with a critical eye to have the final raw damage on each unarmed training quest package be reasonable.

Ideally the dragon monk would always use unarmed for max dps, but switch out for defense or for a slower hitting weapon where enemies with damage sheilds are involved.

The harmonious unarmed would be pretty balanced, but would gain more defense from a good sword and more damage from using choking grasp/senator enforcer etc.  But would loose the extra utility that the slow and stuns provide, so that would have to be a personal call.

The drunken monk would always go unarmed for defense (except with enemies with seriously nasty damage sheilds).  However for going max dps the APW 1h weapons etc. would be a better choice.


Anyway that's what I envision.  But I also don't believe for a second anything like that would ever happen.  The devs simply do not have the resources to carry that kind of thing out.

I really like that idea myself Ronmaru! It's original and doesn't seem exaggeratedly overpowered and seems to fit within the spectrum of the classes. Obviously as you stated would require some tweaking but I think would bring quite a bit to the class...

It seems to take on the vision of what each class should be and plays on them (which honestly IMO needs a bit of work from the devs myself)

Kudos to the thought process.

Thanks, like I said though, probably won't happen.  The idea is nice and would probably flow fine with some people flipping to good weapons around level 25, unarmed 30, weapons 35, unarmed 40, etc.  Others would probably get by just with unarmed for the most part.  Others would feel it wasn't worth the time and go with weapons.  So long as the total damage at any given stage was in keeping with similar weapons avialable at that level.

But assuming this actually happened, the first result would be an uproar across the server about how the devs need to include special weapon quests for EVERY class.  (never mind the point that there essentially already are weapon quests at the 20s(ToLT), 25s(HL), 30s(CIS), 35s(Panth,Arena,CW,WoSM), 40s(GS), and 50s(RI/NN, FlyMntQuest, APW).

OK so APW doesn't technically count as a weapon quest, but it does take consistant and reasonable effort to net both 1h goodies there.  :)

The most realistic approach would be to have your trainer at level 10 give you a mini unarmed training quest oriented around the RaJin stronghold ("I have taught you the basics Matsu, now practice and perfect your new techniques by defeating x number of y mob unarmed within the RaJin Stronghold").

From there you would have to collect "spirit stone" from the standard weaponquest lines. 

Example at level 20 you would collect a spirit token instead of a weapon from Tomb of Lord Tsang.  You would bring it back to the ghost/spirit quest giver in the rundown inn near the rajin stronghold: "Ahh I see you have acomplished much since we last spoke.  I can unlock the secretes of further unarmed training for you with the spirit stone.....<accept> now that I have taught you the basics of these new techniques you must practice them by defeating x number of y mobs unarmed to unleash their power.

and so on in general for level 30 and 40 and 50.




As a side note this would probably be a shoe-in for disciples unarmed training as well following the same general procedure as above. 

Disciple
Level 20
Astral Palm of Eternity, your intense discipline allows the winds of laojin flow through your hands easily and strongly.
(further small raw boost to unarmed dps + small (15%ish)boost to healing effectiveness of BlessedWind, Endowment of Life,  Laojin flare, BloomingRidgeHand, Kiss of heaven, concordant finishers  + 5 str/vit +35hps)

Level 30
Claws of the Celestial Tiger, barbs of ra-jin rend your opponents soul leaving them weakened and vulnerable.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent proc to reduce opponents str/dex/con (stacks with other debuffs) 10% and increase crit vulnerabilty by 4% for 15s +10 str/vit +40hps)

Level 40
Open Hand of Laojin, laojin sheilds your hands warding blows and empowring life.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 5%dodge +further 5%boost to nonspell heals + 15 str/vit +45hps)

Level 50
Fist of the Void, Rajin swells forward in your strikes traumatizing your opponents and stealing their will.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc rajin's vengance (+1000dd + reduce opponent's evasion and accuracy 10% for 15s) + 20str/vit + 50hps)

Net total for disciple unarmed quest series:
Unarmed raw dps on par with drunken monk
Increased dodge 5%
Increased nonspell heals (endurance/jin based) 20%
Proc frequently reduced str/dex/con 10% for 15sec
Proc small chance 1000dd + 10%evasion/accuracy debuff for 15sec
+56str/vit
+200hps
Total dps a bit higher than best windblade available.

A disc would preferably go unarmed when doing heavy amounts of combat healing.  if less healing was required they would likely go with a higher dps weapon/weaponset.  if they had to standback and heal with spells equipping healing foci would be their best bet.  If they had to defend a windblade would provide considerably more defense.

Fun stuff to think about at anyrate.  ;)

Nice ideas. But I don't think a Disciple should EVER deal similar damage to a Monk. We're a DPS class, they just happen to melee.

I woudnt even worry about disciple, they cant even figure out what they are doing with them for gu5.  I wouldnt be supprised to see them change a lot from their current form.

Good ideas yes i agree, BUT the problem is with game evolution eventually there will be weapons that are higher dps anyway.  Then you will just be looking for weapons again... Just like how in eq1 monks started out fighting with bare fists and nothing else for years until they started making weapons for them.

Imo they just need to fix the animations for fist/knuckles/handwraps and itemize them better for monks.
 
And I'd agree that stances etc. need to be looked at as people have stated above many times.

I want to see some weapons like celestial fists. 

Ahhh let me clarify.  You can give a disciple the same weapon as a monk and the disciple is still going to do CONSIDERABLY less damage.

So in terms of tuning I'm talking about tuning the unarmed strength to that of x weapon type.  So even the unarmed weapon traning for the disc woudl be "on par with drunken monk" which is to say like equipping something better than a wind blade FOR A DISC.  Not comparing the actual final damage out put that would be parsed.  Does that make sense?

Otherwise disc would always use unarmed for everything period if it could boost their damage to monk levels and would be horridly unbalanced...that isn't the intention.  :)

Yeah, makes plenty of sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts.

Np man.  :)  Sometimes its fun to dream up stuff and toss it around and its nice to get feedback.  ;)


See to me that is the point...to make both viable.  When the cap gets expanded out, you add on another tier to unarmed training to balance with the influx of new gear. 

Realistically there SHOULD be weapons to choose between in addition to unarmed training.  If one was superior for everythign all the the time that would be pretty boring to me.