Vanguard Monks

You know, I've been lurking here since release and you all have done such a fine job contributing a wealth of information to this community that I've personally never felt the need to register and post myself, until now. I am completely fed up with both the class and the way Sigil is choosing to handle fixing it with baby steps. You can flame me or call me a whiner all you like if you disagree, but not only have I been repeatedly skipped over for PuGs since everyone is pretty well aware of what trash we are currently, but I just joined a pretty prominent guild on Flamehammer and out of their 129 members, I'm the only active monk.

When I joined said guild, my welcome was "Lol, A monk. Haven't seen one of those in a while, kudos to sticking with it o.O"

How does that make me feel? It spearheads the frustration I've felt since level 10 and that frustration spiraled out of control with todays patch notes that are causing me to pray for another week to actually be fixed.

This is getting out of hand, our class is so behind where we should be that I'm very close to either discontinuing my monk (I would be very happy rolling a Blood Mage or a DreadKnight, two classes I've been itching to play but have chosen for now at least to stick out my Monk since he was my favorite class at launch) or discontinuing my time with Sigil, because this frustration isn't a fun justification to my monthly subscription.

Post release problems or not, the class imbalance we face needs to be addressed much more heavily than Iron Hand doing 8% more damage. Whoopty friggin do.

I'm sick of being the joke.

Hmm... I am on flamehammer and have never been passed over for a group. In fact, I often receive tells when I log on from people wanting to group with me.  If someone passes you over for a group because you are monk, chances are you don't want to group with them.  There is more to this game than numbers.

Whereas I've actually been asked to leave a group so "we have a shot of actually killing xxxx mob."

Wow leadfoot I guess that proves why monks are almost the lowest population class in this entire game, because people are begging them to group, laffable

Monks are worthless in groups

As where I agree that we have a crapload of issues and that it is hell of frustrating to play a monk but:


That's just bullSNARF. Any dps helps a group and FD is still a wipe saver - no matter what anyone says.

i get invited to groups constantly, because i have built a reputation of doing the impossible, i am the puller, i off tank, and DPS, im corpse retrieval and wipe recovery, i crowd control with the best of them. people take me over other DPS because while i may NOT do quite as much, i still add a respectable amount, AND i add that benifit of the group never wiping entierly.

just the other day in tsangs, we accidently pulled rubicon and half the room with him, so i had everyone burn ruby down as far as they could. (i was 21 at the time) now i feigned mid way through as to not be high on  the aggro list.

the group proceded to wipe in the spot we had cleared, and just before the healer went down i burned my jin to finish the last 40% of rubicon and feigned... poped up and used the gem on the cleric


i see all this complaining, and the only thing i think, is, am i doing somthing that no one else is doing?
i dont see it that way, while i may be "lower level" and will hear "just wait till higher no one will group with you"
 i think people are focusing FAR to much on the negitive, insted of finding out what works now instead. find work arounds for our issues, and while i dont say we should just let the issues lie, in general all i have seen is threats of quitting if XX isnt fixed, or we are weakest because of YY,

they are Balancing the gameplay, and you expect them to just heap on buffs to us?

is that how a scale gets balanced? dump a ton of somthing on one side and hope all goes well? or do you add a bit at a time?


and no this isnt an attack on you or anyone, what im saying is look for other methods to make yourself worthwhile and groups (that have a brain) shouldnt pass you over

~Vaiya
~Varking(pvp)

agreed Vaiya. Not everything is about numbers. A smartly played character of any class is more useful than a stupidly played toon, no matter how uber. IThe player is more an issue than the toon usually.

 

Dragonhand

Please cancel your account as you have stated you would do so many times and do us all a favor.  I never said I got invited to groups because monks are uber and have no issues.  I get invited to groups because people feel I contribute well to a group, and actually like grouping with me. 

From my experience on Targ server I never get an invite from a PuG. Even thou I have some nice abilitys as mentioned by others too many groups just want DPS and nothing more. Sure they are ignorant about what a monk can do but all the need is a disciple who can also FD or even a necro post 20 and they have the grp saving wipe already. Sure I can stun but so can a few other classes.
Love the monk but I am frustrated by it at this time.

You guys who are saying you never have problems finding a group, well that's because of your character (in a literal sense, not your toon) and perhaps the sheer amount of effort you put into your play. While this is certainly commendable it should not be the requirement for Monks to be able to get into PuG. Whether or not you work in overdrive to overachieve and make up for your class balance with tenacity, it does not dilude the underlying issue. You are the minority, Vaiya, the majority of monks are far less viable to a group than a Rogue or a Ranger and everyone knows it.

I'm not trying to insult anyone. Again your character in game is perhaps friendly and knowledgable enough for you to have a following of people eager to play with you, but that doesn't mean your Monk toon is any less imbalanced.

While this is certainly a positive VS negative argument, just because you are optimistic about our class does not instantaneously mean that all of us Monks out there who are disatisfied are wrong simply because we do not choose to accept things as you have.

Again, this is my opinion and I'm not trying to insult anyone. Just debate.

so in a counter-argument, your saying that knowledge of a class, and of game play should not affect your chances at a group, but just the numbers should?

just hitting the number keys on my keyboard is not how i personally want to play, that makes a game much akin to a children's toy that says things as you push a button with a picture on it

im not saying that the negative argument is wrong, but if we are to wait for the devs to fix what needs fixing,
it would be nice to find other ways to make us work, as opposed to just giving up like this.

i do agree with what you said, in a lot of ways, id actually like to have this thread turn into a well rounded debate, taking in all aspects of people that play this game.


i wont deny that i am an optimist ... i am a perpetual optimist in real life about everything.

I don't think there is any monk out there that is satisfied with where the class is.  I certainly am not.  I think we need a good upgrade to our DPS, FD needs to be fixed, and our stances need tweaking.  With all that said, nothing about the monk class should make a skilled knowledgeable player not want to group with you.  Anyone who is worth anything will know that the skill of the person playing the class is worth a lot more than the class itself.  I have yet to come across any quest or NPC that my group could not kill because I was a monk and not a ranger. 

My only advice is to just enjoy the game.  Build friendships.  Play with people you know.

Look monks are useful.  Monks do moderate DPS.  Anyone can kinda offtank with a good healer.  Anyone with a mez can mez.  FD does have its uses obviously, and i for one applaud you for using it well and playing your monk well.

I can't overlook the fact that it has been almost 2 months since release and (imo) the most important function of the game, the one the consumer spends more time with (the class system), STILL is not balanced. 

I see what your saying about balancing, but you're perceiving in a different way than i am and you may be right. 

However i see it as this, they are taking baby steps because they WILL NOT SIT DOWN AND SPEND A LOT OF TIME TO FIX US!   There is NO NEED for baby steps.  did they BABY STEP the rogue?  NO!   they sat there and they saw a bunch of problems and they took the rogue and they spent a ton of time on him and they added a TON of fixes into ONE patch.   Was it perfect?  no, but is it continuing to be brought into perfection, yes.  It started with some brave dev doing a lot of work and making A LOT of changes and just throwing it out there and letting the playerbase see what he's done.  Without major changes where people just have the balls to go out there and DO something, everything would take YEARS to do.  I am ready to spend years PLAYING, not years WAITING. 

 We have had consecutive baby steps where only a FEW have gone in the right direction.  Crescent kick has no global refresh, hurray.  It only costs 10 end, hurray.  Iron hand does 8% more damage........ that's nice.  our DPS goes up 8points, thats a real fix.  if you are going to FIX something then FIX it. there is no excuse to sit there and say, well this is kind of a good idea, lets toss this minor type deal at the monk class, maybe that'll shut them up while we do other stuff.

If they don't have time to fix us right now, then they should say so.  Tell us when they will get to us, and fix us FOR REAL.  This BS with the retarded mini do nothing fixes for our class is more frustrating than anything else.  I would rather them do NOTHING with us until they are ready to do something WORTHWHILE.   Do you see my point?  I wake up every day looking for the next patch that will SERIOUSLY fix us, and every patch day i get crap for my $15. 

Now again,  i will emphasize that if the monk is where he should be, and a dev says this is where we want the monk to be, i will gladly step down and enjoy the class for how they made it.  what BUGS me more than anything is they say this isn't where it should be (so they must have an idea or KNOW where it should be) and they have yet to DO it!  If you know something isn't right, you fix it! 

If your car door is broken what good is painting it going to do?????  FIX THE DAMN DOOR!  PAINT IT LATER!

Vaiya, skill should certainly play a factor in the effectiveness of a class, but skill should not be the factor that determines balance. Do you understand what I'm saying?

To say that a broken class played skillfully will equal a class that is functioning as intended but with much less effort is tolerable, well to me at least, isn't acceptable.

Vaiya again I fully respect your opinions as you've helped this community much with your insight. And to everyone I'm just venting frustrations to a community I know that shares them.

Optimism is a good quality, but I generally have a hard time being optimistic about MMO's. Call it functional conditioning, but I no longer can stay optimistic about the future of MMORPG's when so many have been borked in the past. I understand how daunting this kind of task is for the developers, but they should be able to achieve some sense of propriety in what is truly broken and what isn't. Rogues were perhaps borked more than us and they attained a very uplifting overhaul and now are on path to being fully functional. We have had no mention of even needing this kind of treatment (If I remember Quinn's post correctly, he stated that Monks won't exactly be getting a huge patch dedicated to them, but rather touch ups here and there, which I think is far from what we really need) and it would be nice to hear Developer input on the matter.

I mean, would it be that hard for a developer who occasionally checks these forums to drop a topic and say "Briefly this is where we intend to take your class:." It would do wonders for my frustration and I think many of you could agree.

Truth be told, I personally don't think Sigil truly knows what direction they're taking class balance yet. So many systems weren't complete by release that now they have to overhaul everything for the game to work properly and I think, as of now anyway, they're in a bit over their heads.

To elaborate on my last paragraph: Sigil is trying to do too many things at once.

I too would be rolling my eyes  ::) at what I'm about to say if I saw someone else post it, but over the years I've dedicated myself to gameworld monkhood I've learned that the key factor in determining whether you get asked to group consistently isn't your dps, it isn't your utility buffs or debuffs, and it sure as shinola isn't your l33t cr tricks. Rather, people that get groups are . . . easy, even fun, to group with. Maybe you're an impressive roleplayer who talks drunken troll even though you're a high elf; maybe you're naturally funny; maybe you're really quiet and unobtrusive; maybe you're known for your generosity and reliability. Most people that play mmorpg's are not strictly utilitarian in their thinking and VG actually has way more inherent flexibility in its  joint adventuring than many games before it. Ultimately, you define the role you'll play in the game.

Rielle Sojourner of The Old Timers Guild
Monkette of the 27th cycle
Hilsbury

I found that to be very true in City of Heroes, where some of my funnier roleplay characters were always remembered and invited to groups.
I had an Ice Tanker who was over overzealous and always made bad ice puns about the situation. Simple but effective.
A more elaborate one was a Chuck Norris character, martial arts and super reflexes, eight feet tall and wearing a karate outfit with cowboy hat. He was self absorbed, talked in the third person, and always quoted Chuck Norris facts off the internet, or ones I made up on the spot, that were relevant to the situation.
(Ie. "Technically Chuck Norris could prevent everyone on the team from ever dying, but sometimes Chuck Norris lets teammates die to remind them of their place").
People who cheer when they saw Chuck Norris join their team, and when he turned on the super evasion of elude he turned into an unstoppable killing machine that saved the team.
As an MA/SR scrapper I was entirely unnecessary to a functional team, but I couldn't log on without being invited to teams constantly.

Not sure what's up there.  But I have never been turned down in a pickup group...ever.

Hell, groups are still amazed that I can keep a mob mezzed through an entire fight.  And all while DPSing and being there as a safety net if things go really badly.

I've never once heard a request asking me to leave if we were having difficulty with a mob.  Discussion usually turned to trying different things, mezzing different mobs, which ones to off-tank and which ones to burn.  However, never once have I ever been asked to leave.

Currently, I'm a little overwhelmed with the DPS I'm doing now in comparison to previously.  I can easily pull aggro off a Rogue or Ranger.  And likewise once the Rogue goes stealth they can pull aggro from me if I'm not trying.  And if I'm trying they can still occasionally pull aggro off me.

I'm sure there's more tweaking needed.  Working stances would be nice.  And while Stone Dragon stance has made a difference at times when duoing, it's generally not worth it for the very very small benefit it provides.

Secret of Ice and Secret of Flames is doing absolutely phenomenal damage right now, however only being level 31, that may change as I get higher in level.

Being able to pull off a 5-10k chain whenever I feel like it is pretty nice also.  And works wonders when I need to burn something down.

Autoattack now regularly hitting for 200-700 is pretty nice.

Playing today was a noticable difference in the upgraded damage and I can only imagine I'm even more desireable in groups than I was previously.  Enough so that I start to wonder if I'm encroaching on Rogue/Ranger desirability.

The Rogue I grouped with today brought absolutely nothing to the group other than similar DPS to what I was doing while I was also doing crowd control.  Meaning if I was doing DPS and only DPS, I would have been spanking him.  And he was level 34, three levels higher than me.  I can only assume he either had no clue how to play his class, or his weapons sucked.  Does this mean that rogues sucked compared to monks?  Probably not.  I'd imagine it has more to do with him not knowing how to maximize his DPS while I was generally doing what I could to maximize my DPS.

Either way, while I may have felt down about the damage I was doing in the past, I've never once felt or noticed that I wasn't desirable in groups.  And have never had problems getting an almost immediate invite from groups looking for DPS.

And if you think I'm overly optimistic and like to glaze over things.  Think again, just go to the Monk forums for EQ2 and do a search for author "sslarrga".  If you want to see a totally gimp monk compared to other classes you have no further to look than there.  Granted I only judge things from a group/raid standpoint.  I could care less about a class' soloability.

I still haven't found a "good" and robust DPS parser for VG yet, and don't expect to for another few months.  The current ones are nice starts and hopefully they'll improve and get fleshed out as time goes by.  But until they do, I'm not going to go running willy nilly claiming the sky is falling without being able to parse meaningful numbers over at the very LEAST 100+ repeatable fights.  And probably still won't make any conclusions until I have about a thousand or so fights parsed.  Is it excessive?  Maybe, but it reduces the chances that I'll make a judgement good or bad based on what may have been an aberrant parse or series of parses.

Are monks where they need to be?  I'm not sure.  I think we still have a little ways to go, however what I do know is that we're currently a LOT better off than we were 2 weeks ago.

Regards,
Croaker