Vanguard Monks

Ok I am TOTALLY confused now...either they really need a much better automated system for the patch text or they totally screwed up the last patch and our changes are in this time..however I bet it's the first..

Vanguard Build 1778 Patch Notes 3/13/2007

GAMEPLAY NOTES
- Aggro NPCs that can see invis will now attack if you move near them.
- Aggro NPCs that cannot see invis will no longer attack if you move very close to them.
- Ranged attacks use dexterity for their damage bonus again, they had been using strength.
- Some bugs with target hit points not updating correctly have been fixed.
- Disabled the text output about the number of charges on a charged item changing
- NPC Wyverns should now be capable of flying as intended
- All Clubs, Axes, Martial Swords, Hammers, Longswords and Maces have all had a damage increase.  The choice between light and medium weapons should now be more difficult to make.  Remember, while light weapons have a critical hit bonus every special attack with a medium or slow weapon does more damage. The rate at which you can use attacks does not change with the speed of your weapon but your auto-attack rate does change.

ADVENTURING NOTES
- All Classes – Some attacks remain direct attacks.  These are intended to be lower in damage, but have alternate uses and should be less expensive overall.  These debuff, buff and are not intended to be used to be a main source of damage.
- Bards - The Bard instrument ‘Ancient Melody’ has been changed from granting a voice modification to granting a string modification. Sorry Bards, but wasn’t it fun while it lasted?
- Blood Mage - Blood Tribute now heals the caster’s group as intended.
- Cleric – Your finishing moves now all cost 10 endurance
- Cleric – Maul of the Gods and Maul of Divinity now use a percentage of weapon damage instead of being direct attacks.
- Disciple – Increased the damage of Falling Petal, White Lotus Strike, Soul Cutter and Lao’Jin Burst
- Dread Knight – Increased the damage of Dark Bastion, Incite, Inflame, Shield of Fear, and Scourge.
- Dread Knight – Scythe of Doom now drains for 100% of the damage it deals
- Monk – Fixed an issue with Quivering Palm causing 3 lines of text when executed.
- Monk – Crescent Kick now costs 10 endurance and does not incur global recovery.
- Monk – Counter attacks are now cost free
- Monk – Many finishing attacks were more costly than intended.  Endurance costs have been lowered.
- Monk – Many attacks have been converted over to use weapon damage directly, either flat or percent based.  This will increase over all damage and give better returns when upgrading weapons and increasing strength.  Affected attacks are:
                Ashen Hand
                Crescent Kick
                Dragon's Rage
                Sundering Dragon Claw
                Fists of Transcendence
                Legendary Fists
                Flying Kick
                Kick of the Heavens
                Thousand Fists
                Three Finger Strike
                Thundering Fists
                Deadly Adder Hand
                Celestial Kick of the Master
                Withering Palm
                Stinging Backfist
                Steal the Wind
                Quivering Palm
- Paladin – Stroke of Conviction now progresses differently to provide a more steady progression of hate.  The new levels are: 20, 28, 36, 44, 50
- Paladin – Maul of Valus has been added to trainers starting at level 18.  This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Hammer of Valus.
- Paladin – Stroke of Fervor has been added to trainers starting at level 30.  This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Stroke of Conviction.
- Paladin – Holy Strike and Blade of Vol Anari now deal their additional effects to fiendish races as well.  Ulvari hunters rejoice!
- Ranger – Increased the damage of Fleetblade
- Rogue – Please visit your nearest rogue vendor to learn all of the new poisons that you can. The following information is what has been changed…
- Rogue – Your weapon poisons are now granted at level 10 and have received numerous changes in functionality and recipes. There are also upgrades more frequently than there used to be.
- Rogue – Your flechettes are now granted at level 15 and have been adjusted in effectiveness and function (you can actually even train them now). They will be upgraded more frequently and have had new recipes added.
- Rogue – Your darts are now granted at level 20 and have also been adjusted in functionality and effectiveness. New dart recipes have been added and some dart recipes have been adjusted
- Rogue – Your scroll forging is now granted at level 25 and have received recipe alterations. These can now be trained as well.
- Rogue – The costs for scrolls to learn poisons, flechettes, darts and scroll forging have been lowered drastically. This should make them affordable.
- Rogue – Poisons, flechettes, scrolls and darts have received new animations.
- Rogue – Vendor costs for poison components have had their prices adjusted. This will be an ongoing process – these AREN’T the final prices.
- Shaman – Fixed an issue with the Patron Spirits quests that was allowing some players to pursue two different Patrons at the same time.
- Shaman – Claw of Winter is now a standard attack that uses weapon damage.
- Warrior – Increased the damage of Smash
- Warrior – Increased the damage and hate portion of Overwhelm

CRAFTING NOTES
- Of Striking crafted items have been changed. The previous bonus from striking was too powerful and so these items can no longer be made. Instead recipes will now produce striking items that are within the balance guidelines and add a striking proc as well.
This is NOT a retroactive change. Old striking items will remain the same
- Disabled a lot of the useless crafting spam
- The Thestran caravel quests now require the proper faction.
- Fixed issue with weak product description
- All old of striking weapons have been changed to soulbound
- Specialized defense now adds to block, dodge, and parry skill and the actual specialized defense skill did nothing at all
- Crafting quests should function as adventuring quests now, displaying the proper color difficulty and showing red quest bangs for quests you don’t qualify for but will in the near future.
- Some of the education quests have had their starting levels adjusted.
- The item requirements for the quest “Fresh Cloth” have been revised to better match the reward. If you are on this quest, please check your log.
- The “Swordsmith’s Apprentice” quests have had their level requirement increased. The experience rewards have been increased as well.
- The two reward items for the “Swordsmith’s Apprentice” line of quests have had their overall power increased.
- The advanced work order Door Frame recipe no longer asks for incorrect tools and has had a formatting error corrected.
- Hardened Meteor Shard should now give the proper deconstruct rewards
- You can no longer deconstruct some crafted cloaks
- All of the crafted crafting gear that got skipped by the last fix has been updated (no joking this time!)
- The direction-quest to find Kef Jortul for amateur Kojan outfitters and the Swordsmith’s Apprentice lines of quests should be more factual/helpful in their directions to find the appropriate NPCs.
- The Gwartak faction gain from the quest Grazeel’s Peace Treaty has been lowered.
- Joley and Rold should now despawn more reliably for the quest “Tonic” if the brute force method is chosen. However, safety is still not guaranteed.
- Some special/unique items were accidentally obtainable from regular work orders. This has been fixed.
- The Fiend Hunter’s tools now add ingenuity as the description reports instead of reasoning.
- Blacksmiths must now get at least a B on their specialization recipes to successful craft an item for the specialization quest, just as the other trades do.
- Focusing dust of resilience has been changed to Focusing dust of Wizardry
- Focusing dust of wizardry adds a skill bonus to Evocation, Alteration, and Conjuration when added to cloaks

DIPLOMACY NOTES
- Fixed an issue with the display of parley card refresh timers.
- The Informant’s Vest (Diplomacy container in the Shoulder slot) is now the Informant’s Valise. It equips now in the Diplomacy Container slot. The valise currently holds only Information, but will very soon accommodate clothing as well.
- Thannis Heartsworn will once again offer the quest, “Playing Matchmaker,” that follows “Local Maidens” in Tursh.
- Quick Pun now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Well-Traveled Wisdom now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Common Ground now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Blunt Evaluation now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Maze of Logic now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- You may no longer Gossip with Crafters in Mekalia. This is a temporary change that will be reversed at a future time.
- Crafter Convince Civic parleys are now correctly labeled as “Shared Effort” in Tanvu.
- The Paladin Instructor Bordardia Stoneforge is now a Noble and takes part in Civic Diplomacy in Bordinar’s Cleft.
- The Civic Diplomacy option “Spiritual Revival” is now correctly an Incite parley in Tursh.
- Additional god-related lore dialogues added to the Civic Diplomacy options for Clergy in Tursh.
- Soldier Civic conversation options in Tursh are now correctly labeled.
- Captains Meshkat and Reyahni in Tawar Galan are now Domestics.
- Debutante’s Pants are no longer restricted to light armor wearing Adventuring classes.
- Leg items are now standardized to new Presence values (generally higher by 10-50%).
- The tier 2 waist item “Stylish Surable Silk Sash” is now no longer an alliteration.
- Elindrila Summerbloom is now Clergy in Ca’ail Brael.
- “Flesh and Blood” is now an Inspire card that repeals 2 inspire into 5 Demand, and modifies the dialogue status as well.
- Foot and Hand items are now standardized to new Presence values (generally higher by 10-50%).
- Diplomacy Chest, Shoulder, Waist, Leg, Foot, and Hand items are now standardized in weight and other statistics.
- Known Issue: Some Diplomacy items, especially tier 3 items, may not be deconstructable. This will be corrected in a future patch.
- Tier 3 clothing items are now available in Kojan and Qalia from Informants.
- The Traveler in Lomshir will no longer flip out like a Morduma and attack random wildlife.

WORLD POPULATION NOTES
- Ahgram - Ahgram guards will now correctly give out directions to adventuring instructors.
- Cragwind Ridge – The 3-dot snakes should stop following players into the outpost. Hooray!
- Fallen Cove - More than one Brittleshard Weapons Cache should now spawn at a time.
- Karrus Hakrel - Glowing Aqual Orbs are tradable.
- Karrus Hakrel - Glowing aqual orbs are no longer governed by trivial loot code.
- Ksaravi Gulch - The inhabitants of the Tauthien Tuatiren Village in Ksaravi Gulch are now 3 dot difficulty instead of 4 and 5 dot difficulties.
- Quests - The quest “The End of Innocence” now requires players to use the Altar of Zar instead of just walking up to it.
- Quests - Thorian Glowban will now exchange any ancient weapon once for any other weapon. Choose wisely.
- Rahz Inkur - Players above level 40, you’ll find more quests available to you at the outpost of Deliverance in Rahz Inkur.
- Seawatch Coast - Overland NPCs should have a lower aggro radius
- Seawatch Coast - Several overland NPCs have been changed from aggressive to non aggressive
- Three Rivers - “Task for Three Rivers: Greater Stonesmashers” should now update in all cases when slaying the appropriate targets.
- Three Rivers – Reduced the refresh timer on the Ant Queen Ayxlxyx event, allowing her to spawn more often.
- Vault of the Hidden - Vault of the Hidden should be summonable inside
- Zaraj Arena - The Legendary item reward “Destruction” from the Zaraj Arena has had its stats tweaked.
- Zaraj Arena - All quests that yield Zaraj Coins have had their reward increased
- Zaraj Arena - Arena Enforcers now offer a repeatable quest for Zaraj Coins
- Zaraj Arena - Added many new single events to the arena, ranging in difficulty from solo to full group
- Zaraj Arena - Challenge Tickets now have the correct icon associated with them
- Zaraj Arena - The gold event now yields 60 coins
- Zaraj Arena - The platinum event now yields 100 coins and is more difficult
- Zaraj Arena - Snare immunity was taken off of several single events

Items
- The items ‘Ancient Longbow of Leth Verael’ and ‘Ancient Shortbow of Leth Varael’ along with their upgraded versions now give +bow instead of +sneak.
- The heroic version of Queldoral, Bounty of the Gods now summons heroic Moonstrikes and Sunstrikes instead of Legendary Moonstrikes and Sunstrikes
- Mask of the Portal is now soulbound instead of bindable
- Certain level 31+ Thestran Greatmauls now have the correct 2-handed weapon model attached in place of their previous 1-handed model.
- All Shortswords in the game have had their appearances updated and retiered; additionally, they should actually be “short” now.
- All Longswords in the game have had their appearances updated and tiered.

GUI NOTES
- The red/pink color for text on your offensive target should now update correctly representing if a NPC can see you or not (red, aggro and can see you, pink, aggro and cannot see you).
- The map now properly shows your location while you are driving a ship, and you should now be able to target things (PCs, NPCs, etc...) while driving a ship.
- Your modified factions are now visible in your character sheet under the Diplomacy Factions tab below the Prestige Factions. They will be colored according to your faction rating and you may mouse over them to see your actual standing with that faction.


CODING NOTES
- Fix for NPC Names not drawing in the correct color.
- Fix for another group disconnect bug. This one occured intermittently if you had previously been in a group during your play session, and usually occured within a couple minutes of joining your new group.

~The Vanguard Team


Source: http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/gameUpdatesDetails.vm?id=014&mode=PatchNotes

Ok im not sure whats going on but I get 2 readings on the tool tip for crescent kick. Sometimes it reads 15 endurance then sometimes it reads 10. I now can not make it go back to 10 and after killing several mobs its using 15 endurance. Ill try to get it to read 10 again and see if thats what is uses but im floored with this.

Also I have been killing random mobs around DR all level 21ish and although I have not parsed it my DPS has not gone up one bit.

Ashen Hand now has proper damage display, but Quivering Palm still dosen't (125%+1250 still).

Wasn't this patch supposed to be the special monk revamp patch? If so then why is 80% of our 'patching' the same as our previous patch? O.o

I agree, this patch doesnt deliver for us Monks :P- it does however look like a good one for rogues. Im assuming they are still working on the monk tweaks to DPS, skills, stances... (along with everything else). Heres to next patch~

Can anyone confirm if they fixed duel wield for us....

arrrg you all are killen me.. I am sitten here at work dieing to know if the patch notes are messed up or if they worked those skills over again this patch.   I know there are alot of you all playing now... please tell us something  :>


Zinak

It's pretty much copy&paste. The things not rewritten are new though (ie cresent kick).

BWAHAHAH!  *taunts Zinak*   

Quick IM with Talsiker

Quinn the Mighty says:
patch notes look like a mish mash from the adv changes post hotfix, and now
Talisker says:
yeah
Quinn the Mighty says:
some of it a re-run, or did the attacks get adjusted again?
Talisker says:
rerun

~QTM

Well atleast The weapon dmg for skills is nice.
Bought myself 2 Ancient Fistwraps 22,6 dps each and adding 12 dex each along with 63hp for only 50 silver.
I tried them in TK (im lvl 26 Drunken) and I have to say even while bringing up wraps from 0 to max, I do alot more damage than using unarmed. Allthough the wraps have a high dps for around my lvl I'd say.


BTW, anyone else find it pretty unfair we have to pay twice the price dual wield? The market needs to realise they cant just charge a dual wield weapon for the price of a one handed or 2 handed weapon O.o

Dude i can't find crap as far as monk weapons go.  I found one crafted 30 DPS handwrap and the n00b wants 5gold 50silver for it and i payed like 75silver for a 27DPS knuckle.  BAH i say!  BAH!  I been saving for awhile and can't find fair prices on decent monk weapons anywhere anymore (at least that would be an upgrade)

Mine costs 12 endurance and STILL has a refresh.  What is the difference between refresh and global recovery????

Global recovery means you cannot use a skill after it for the 2 seconds everything  is recycling. Refresh is the time it takes that skill to be usable again.

OK is it me or did our dps go back down after this last patch?

Also I for one think the new crescent kick sux! Yeah it's not on the global timer but it now has a 8 sec refresh. wtf!! I also seem to be eating through endurance a whole lot faster since this latest patch and I have some skills that are available suddenly going black even though I have endurance...example...i'll trigger a finisher and when advanced finisher kicks in before I can even fire it it goes black....and not just grayed out and still fireable if I had endurance...it just goes dead. Anyone else seeing this?

And I'm still not seeing any difference in dps really with weps or no weps...I'm using two pretty good 30+ dps claws and I see no noticeable difference with them on then I do barehanded. I may need to parse it to verify but I would think that with 2 rare weps a couple of levels higher than myself would show a rather substanial increase in dps...any thoughts?

And QTM can you comment on if they are still looking to really get us to the top of the dps tree where we belong.

Thanks

Yeah played around with some normal level mobs tonight.  I personally think we got nerfed again not buffed.  The global refresh crap really didnt do anything to help.  As far as end goes it went from 3 end to 12 end... though I can get it to 10 end in crane stance.  From what they said its suppose to be 10 end which means in crane it should be 7 to 8 ish. Im also using end alot quicker again and notice not much damage difference no matter what weapon I use, or bare hand.  All in all I feel like i was nerfed AGAIN, when they said they would be working on increasing our dps. WTF I had more DPS in beta then in live as well as better evasion.  I had more DPS pre patch then post huge nerf patch then I do now.  So Id say 4 patches of nerfs then a hot fix to fix us so we werent broken completely and now another nerf.  All the while we are supposed to get buffed.. scuse the language but what the F*** is going on.  I didnt expect an overhaul by this patch but I also didnt expect to be nerfed yet again either.

Well reading here I guess my monk stays @ lvl 24 while I continue to level my necro.  :'(

I don't like the way Crescent Kick is set up now.
I think it costs a bit much even at 10 end for an attack that is really only good for giving you one extra Jin.
And the lack of a global refresh for it is not compatible with the fact that Crescent Kick has a longer than average animation  (It will always be interrupted by a follow-up attack now)

All around Crescent Kick would be better off if it was on the global refresh, but was reduced to 5 endurance so that it could be more useful as a cheap Jin builder (Which is balanced by the fact that it has a longer recharge than your other standard attack options).

I'm pretty positive it always had an 8 second refresh. I'm Drunken Style, Staggering Punch stagger weaknesses for 8 seconds and I remember it being same duration as refresh on Crescent Kick (that uses stagger weakeness)

The global refresh being eliminated from the kick has also messed with my main attack macro.  I had the kick and boundless fist on one button.  Now with no gap between them I can't take advantage of a finisher if the kick crits.  Its just a minor annoyance though.

They didnt do anything to the refresh time on the attack. The only thing that they did was make it so every time you use a different skill other then crescent kick, it dosent affect crescent kick. Ever notice that when you use an ability all of your skills get greyed out for about 1-1.5 sec (never really timed it), thats the global refresh.

All they did was make it so that crescent kick is NOT a part of that. I personally use crescent kick ALOT since its one of the higher critting skills that monks, at least dragon monks, get. Its not bad for 10 endurance, although I think 4 or 5 with a shorter cooldown would be much more beneficial.

As a dragon monk, this isnt really an improvement though, its much better if you ask me for a drunken monk who can utilize crescent kick to exploit weaknesses that they can create on their own.

I think it's endurance cost is too high now, seeing it's cool down is longer too. Besides I sometimes just feel on valium watching our global refresh to make my skills available again..

It was 10 endurance "at first" - and I think I prefere this setting though (dosen't interupt autoattack, dosen't stop endurance regen) to the 3 endurance one, and since skills based on kick appears to have a higher crit rate (might just be imagined, but appears to be a common theme) it's a bit like our new crit-on-demand (unlike our 5 minute jokes.)

last night I ended up in thestra for a bit. My damage felt "normal"  while I was duoing spiders, mists outside of Trkengal Keep. After that I joined a PU group with a DK and a Rogue and a couple of clerics  to do quests instide. It was hard for me to judge DPS  in that group as my DPS numbers are inflated by the fact I could exploit weaknesses on pretty much every move I made.

I will admit that CK chage is taking a bit to get used to. I think overall it's better this way than pre-patch IMHO.

And for the record we are still supposed to be the highest DPS base of all of the offensive fighters.

~QTM

Where are people getting "the cooldown being longer"? If I'm not mistaken its always been 8 seconds. The only difference, it was in line with the global cooldown, now its just independant. Am I missing something here?

Hey im not sure if it is just me but I am noticing that some of my reactionary attacks like Thousand Fists and Flying Kick will activate but I wont be able to use them....(they will stay dark but have the green timer active on them). It's rather an annoyance because when I see that green time bar pop up on any skill I naturally want to click it....so sometimes I end up clicking it and not realizing it's not going off.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

I only ever experience that when:

-The mob dies before I execute my chain, sometimes the game lags and they stand there still before they animate dying.
-The mob moves farther from me so I cant use hand to hand, even though their character model is next to me. I think both of these are due to lag, either network or video.

Lately I have been intermittently getting the chain sound after an attack but when I go to use my finishers none of them are lit up.  Seems like a bug to me

Do you have Crescent Kick tied in with your boundless fist macro? If so the bug you see is this, you hit the key and crit on CK, but since its not on a global cooldown you also hit Boundless fist, thus negating your finishers. Basicly not on a global cooldown means you can hit two skill at once if you so choose.

Try putting FK macro before BF macro on your hotkey.

I don't have any attacks macroed and sometiems i get the same chain noises with no finishers popping up.  Doesn't happen often enough to phase me though. 

Wierd thing happened to me last night playing... I completely los my Thousand FIsts reaction from reactions window. I figured ok just make a hotkey and use that. Nex time I got an opportunity to use a finisher Thousand fists was NOT available to me.

The only thing I can think of happening right before this was me changing from Baldestaff -> Knuckle, Handwraps. This happen to anyone else?

~QTM

Yes, happened often.  Another thing of note was that I would get a crit off and all of my chains would pop up but they were all greyed out.  Not blackened out as if they were not active, but greyed like I didnt have the endurance for them (but I did).  I could use the keyboard button to activate the chain (default "G") but couldnt click on it.  Of course, using this only sets off flying kick and not 1k fists.  This happened randomly it seemed last night.

I added it to the bug list.

~QTM

I've noticed this twice while leveling and once when using aum to see if I had new Dragon mastery abilities.  It's always been fixed by logging out and back in.

I've /bugged it in game each time.

That "bug" happens alot to me. Usually criting and just playing out a few more rounds of battle fix's the issue, sometimes. I have gone whole nights with my reactions all screwed up.

As for nerfing..

I watched a lvl 10 cleric beat up a few lions east of Khal. I saw him do three in three attempts. I noticed how much damage he took on his red bar.  Then he left.

I then proceeded to attack the same lions...at lvl 16 i took far more damage then the cleric did measured as % of the red bar. . I might have finished the lion a bit faster and I got xp for them.

Having checked with other monks i feel my armor is about right for my lvl ( AC 300+).

Now it feels odd that a lvl 10 cleric is a better soloer than a lvl 16 monk when fighting the same monster.
I hope the new damage system using weapon damage will help the situation.

I always lose the icon for a finisher when I meditate for an aum.

As for comparisons to healers; the cleric is very powerful in this game no doubt, but I also remember that in EQ2 I could solo stuff as a fury that I couldn't on other characters. Healers can usually do things others can't just because they can heal themselves. I would like to see it brought in line is the amount of damage we do compared to the amount of damage we receive adjusted.

Well you have to remember that a cleric wheres plate and mitigation is much better then evasion... however yeah there should be a big difference in 6 levels... what were the level of the mobs?

My chain attacks never went missing until I learned Divine Typhoon I partway into level 18.  Since then I've had my chain attacks go missing from my UI about 5 times in two hours of playing.  Is it possibly something with having three chain attacks or with having Divine Typhoon I?

Soluss, they were about my lvl. 2 green dots as i remember it. I took about 50-60% damage and the cleric took about 30-40% somewhere. and he was using a 2 -handed weapon.

I dont think he was healing himself but of course my reading of his "red bar" might be sluggish because of gamemechanics. But even if he was the thougt that he, all things considered, was doing better than me was a bit weird.

Anyone else have the problem where your weapons are invisible? I've tried a couple of bladed/martial staffs from the broker as well as my Infineum Bladed Staff and they all are invisible. Been that way since Update #1.

Also Quinn, can you please mention that food has been semi-broke since update #1. I'm not sure Sigil is aware of this as a lot of classes have other methods to heal themselves other than food. If you right click to eat your food the health numbers pop up above your head (the wrong numbers ie 94 instead of 63 for tier 2 food) and you regen no health, other than standard auto regen. To get food to work at all you first have to sit down and then eat it. I wasn't even aware of this for a week and was standing around forever waiting for my health to autoregen.

I first noticed this when i walked down the harmonious path.  Dragon and Drunken finisher abilities disappeared.  Quick check here on the forums revealed a relog fixes it.  It appears to be somewhat random when it happens but a few events tend to trigger it.  One would be when i level it performs some sort of update and removes finisher attacks that aren't of my path.  The other is when i meditate and check to see if i learned any new abilities.  That also seems to run some sort of update on my abilities and makes the finishers disappear.  They're still in my spell book but using a macro also does not allow me to use the ability.  Relogging fixes the issue.  It can be annoying but its not up on my priority list thats for sure.  I just hope we weren't origionally intended to not have these attacks if we weren't in those styles.  I hope the fix leaves us with the finishers haha!