Vanguard Monks

Think you can get Talisker to give an update about concerns/bugs anytime soon? I am pretty sure this list speaks for Dragon Style (with a couple of general Monk abilities addressed)

Reference threads:

• Monk Bugs/Issues thread (http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,383.0/)
• Monk Wish List thread (http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,407.0/)
• Stances discussion thread (http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,532.0/)
• Dragon Monk skills at 50 thread (http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,585.0/)

-Stances: will test them when I have time. Storm still does not proc on multiple targets if using an AE and it procs. Stone icons do not match. Dragon icon does not go away when you change out of the stance.

-Iron Hands still has stacking issues. Sometimes it adds damage, sometimes it subtracts damage.

-Divine Tsunami (melee damage + 515) barely does any more damage than Divine Typhoon (melee damage + 492) and does less damage than Divine Avalanche (melee damage +516) all are on a 2 min refresh as well. Leet damage for the follow-up of an advanced finisher. Actually on this subject, lets discuss our supposed AE prowess that was touted when choosing Dragon style:

Here is a list of our AE attacks:

Divine finisher chain

• (1) Divine Typhoon 4 = melee damage + 492 (10 END, 2 min refresh)
• (2) Divine Avalanche 3 = melee damage + 516 (10 END, 2 min refresh)
• (3) Divine Tsunami 1 = melee damage + 515 (10 END, 2 min refresh)

END using AEs

• Whirling Storm 5 = melee + 143 (34 END)
• Dragon Rakes Its Claw 3 = melee + 136, frontal only (34 END)

Jin using AE

• Dragon Breath 1 = 357 - 389 dmg, frontal only (8 Jin, 10 min refresh)

Abilities in italics are unique to Dragon AFAIK

SO we have a 3 part AE chain, a normal AE, and 2 frontal AE attacks. Refresh times severely restrict our supposed AE kingship. Low damage hurts this even more. Then the steep costs (for such little damage) sticks the knife in the chest. Change the "Divine xx" chain to use 400% weapon damage + xxx damage, drop the reuse to 1 minute like everyone else, and we should be talking business for that finisher chain.

-Dragon Rakes Its Claw (frontal cone attack) costs the same END, but does less dmg than the full AE all monks get.

-Dragon Breath is a pretty  subpar attack. 10 minute refresh/8 Jin cost. Frontal cone attack that does 400-424 damage. Wow talk about an overpowered attack. /sarcasm

-Dragon's Rage does pitiful damage for a 5 minute refresh/4 Jin cost. (366-390 damage, always crits) and does not always crit. Reduce the refresh greatly and it could be worth using.

-Cloud Dragon's Ruse is a subpar attack as a 5 minute refresh/6 Jin attack. (melee + 350, makes target not attack for 1 second {worthless}, and always opens a finisher). Reduce the refresh greatly and it could be worth using.

-Three Finger Strike and Hammer Fist both do a paltry 75 damage on average, sometimes less, rarely more. Palm Explodes the Heart does subpar damage at 1234. So for an attack chain I get at 50, I can look foreward to (75) + (75) + (1234) = 1384 unbuffed damage from a 3 part attack chain...wow. The significant increase to damage was rather measly. The first 2 attacks should do alot more damage than what they do,  250 weapon % + some damage, and Palm Explodes the Heart should be close to, if not more than,  Thousand Fists. Then slap on a 1 minute refresh on the attacks in the chain if the damage is greatly improves.

-Lets have Thousand Fists chain have a chance of hitting 3 times, ala Windsong. Make it use weapon % mod rather than melee dmg + . Would also be nice to have a 3rd chain in this series.

-Gouging/Sundering Dragon Claw - Make them use weapon % mod, not melee damage + .

-Secret of Celerity...30 minute refresh is WAY too much. Lets shoot for 10/15 minutes, ok? Also, remove the global cooldown it incurs on us. Waste of an already precious 2 seconds.

-All Secrets - Lets see how much damage they are supposed to do, and have the time they last added to the description. They do not proc on AE attacks, other than on the mob you have targetted.

-Aum Liat should have the negative effect of having all attacks cost 25% more END removed, then it would be worth using.

-Aum Ti should have the dodge component put back into it, but at the moment it is the Aum that Monks use once they have it.

-Aum Kor needs to have more than 10% melee haste. Actually melee haste is basically useless wiith fists IMO. The ones you get at higher levels are all less than 2 delay. So anything that gives you haste is useless since using a skill resets your autoattack timer. And with less than a 2 delay, you will always get a swing in before your global cooldown is up. Would be nice to see specials NOT reset your autoattack swings, therefore making haste beneficial to all classes, not just the ones that use a 2 hander, or really slow 1 hander.

-Idea for Aums/Secrets - lets have each style of Monk have a Secret/Aum unique to them. Also, you could probably make it so that Aums affect the group.

-Jin Surge should not be consumed on a miss, on a buff, or on an autoattack. The buff should only be consumed on the next special attack. Jin surge should also not cancel out your finisher chain when you use it. Or better yet make it for the next 10 seconds type of buff.

-Iron Skin - Can we get the reuse reduced on this? 10 minutes is a bit extreme for how short the buff is (10 seconds I believe).

-Aspect of the Spirit Dragon ... really confused on this one. WTF do we even have it? It was cool for about a day. I do not even have it on my hotbar now. Give us something useful. Preferably something that makes stuff die faster please.

-Ignore Pain should be a % of total HP heal, especially if it is on a 5 minute timer. On my tooltip it reads 827 heal, but really does 777 because my Vitality is not spectacular. Our heal should not be based on Vitality either, remnants of an outdated system when we actually had energy.

-FD is still buggy as hell. I can succeed 10 times in a row on a group of mobs that are aggroed to me, yet they will not leave my body and they keep me in combat. Not good when said mobs hit for 1.5k and can stun.

-Storm Stride still does not always teleport you to the target. Mainly seems bugged if you are moving.

-For being the supposed masters of opening up weaknesses...I feel like a grasshopper.


I open up:
Enraged
Shaken (x2)
Vulnerable

I exploit:
Enraged
Dazed
Staggered
Soul Wracked

Maybe add in some vulnerability add/exploits to some more of our attacks, even if it means our finisher chain attacks, to really make us the masters of opening vulnerabilities. Don't need to exploit more of our own, just add in more options since that was one of the things we were told we could do well.



-=Off Topic=-
-WTB class specific armor at higher levels. Rahz Inkur looks like a pretty good spot to do this in. Could even have some of the stuff come from Nusibe. Make it start in Afrit, and gather armor drops from Rahz/Nusibe, as well as catalysts for the armor. Lets even toss in a new quest line that maybe takes us through all of the 45+ areas for another series of weapons. Graystone is nice and all, but lets see new stuff that will keep people playing and occupied when they hit 50.

-Animations. Our animations are terrible to say the least. I do not feel like a well honed warrior trained in the ways of the Monks. Our two hand weapon animations are even worse than our unarmed/fist weapon animations. Play some fighting games, watch some anime, watch some martial arts movies. There are some kick ass moves that can be used. Lets see something that makes you feel like you are playing a Monk as opposed to playing some side scrolling game from the 80s with all of 5 different looking, bland attacks.


Any comments by him would be appreciated as these issues have been jacked up since, well, forever. It is my understanding, well maybe interpretation, that by picking Dragon Style we give up group utility and evasion in favor of damage. Should we not stand head and shoulders above the other monks in damage? Also we should be pretty damn close to Rogues that are sneaking/behind/etc. (they have great utility in their darts/flechettes now, whereas before they had none to speakof). Rangers can have their edge in longer fights as they study the target or whatever. Groups should have a tough time deciding which melee DPS they want. A  Monk should be one of those choices.

I'm KageKiri - Dragon Monk and I approve this message!

Nice writeup Chunli, you have my vote for Dragon Monk lead.

But you forgot one thing from the list - Stance animations.

Storm Dragon - We are encircled by swirling electrical charges like that bad guy demon in the movie - Big Trouble in Little China.

Dragon Stance - We have the DragonBall Z power up aura - nothing obnoxious but noticable.

Stone Dragon - We take on the hue of Stone.

If we get these additions - then we will be on the right path to Brad's original statement about us!

I agree, nice writeup on how out of wack we are. The one whole stance not working AT ALL really really annoys me.
Id love to be regening while running around after a fight. Well if it can be noticed...

this topic finally got me to register for the forums.

i whole heartadly agree with all points

lvl 44 dragon monk

Absolutely agree with this.

Obviously I also agree with the original post but that goes without saying.

You get a bow from me Chunli!  Awesome thread.

The only sad part i see is that im sure Quinn has reported many of these bugs and we still haven't had a major monk overhaul patch :(

not sure what else we can really do if they are too busy to help us.

- exploiting boundless fists does more dmg than explointing six dragon strike
- i dont see the point geting invs at lvl 46 should be somthing like lvl 30 atleast
- lvl 50 chains should do 2k+dmg since a DK gets a 3k+dmg  HT at lvl 46 then gets a 2K dmg DoT at 50 and another 3k+ nuke that costs them all their dreadfull contenance, they are tanks lol ( never seen what other classes get at 50 except DK)
- cloud dragon ruse is useless cause we dont need a 30% crits chance for an Adv finisher
- our ds buff for 20 sec should change to a 20+ dmg for an hour, never used it costs jin and even if it gets fixed still a useless ability
- fd should be skill based and upgrades for refresh timer
- thousand fiists/thundering fists changed to a multi-hit chain similar to a ranger's windsong

A excellent post. A great wrap up of DM isssues.

Planck
Halcyon Affinity
50 Dragon Monk

Stone Dragon, does anyone really use it? If your 20% slower and without the lightning damage from our main stance maybe let us hit 20% harder in stone dragon? Just an idea. Become slow hard hitter and able to take a bit more damage since our evasion blows. Possibly make the AC bonus scaleable somehow rather then a hard number.

Dragon Stance, food level of regen out of combat really that hard to fix? Feigned and regening like we were eating would make that stance worthwhile.

Ok, not dragon fully but I pull with shurikens obviously with lightning damage its decent, but fix shuriken damage so its not all equal to the junk ones.

Monks need a full pass, fix the classes before AAs and other class "tweaks".

Right now with itemization Dragon style monks are not the highest dps monk. Harmonious monks are no doubt. harmonious monk with greystone martial staff with tiger stance = MAJOR MAJOR DPS. Itemization really hurt monks right now. Its sad to see that every quest reward for monks are 2handers except for maybe 1-2 fist weapon rewards. To tell the truth I do not understand why harmonious monks got crit increase and not dragon sytle. With the new changes 25% endurance isnt to much of a increase and not sure but I think AUM's lower this debuff.

Dont forget some of the abilities you stated are not just dragon sytle but monk in general abilities. Buffing those would not just boost dragon sytle monks but other monks. Stances do need to be reworked because as of now dragon style monks are not the top DPS of monks.

I agree with you on most but the abilities to open finishers arnt in themselves to be Superioir dmg but time abilities to open up chains at will to dish it out. Their main use comes in your timing skills and watching what your ally's are placing on the enemy and exploiting their debuffs asap. A added note Cloud Dragon's Ruse currently does not stun the NPC.

The FD bug will almost ALWAYS happen if you get 4 or more NPC's on you. Rare chance that 4 or more npc FD's will FD them all off. Did you know that a necro can FD while FD, which allows him to escape this FD bug (technically right now Necromancers FD is a bigger advantage then Monk FD).

/sticky so I don't lose this info

~QTM

something i noticed about storm dragon stance just recently, when using iron hand. while it does increase your melee damage, it LOWERS the proc damage from storm dragon stance by an equal amount. I would appreciate if anyone else could confirm this, and add it to the list of problems with dragon style

It's 50%, 30% with our only really useful Aum though. But yes, it's not that big of a disadvantage for the crit chance - it's still rather heavy of a disadvantage if you plan on doing something else than damage.


Double tap FD. It's not really hard.

With the recent changes I find myself not using storm dragon but just fire and ice because its the same damage but the additional stats make them worth using. Right now storm dragon is just a joke my average is about 180dmg with it at lvl 40 and fire and ice do about the same damage -+ 10 dmg. One secret I dont understand is trans it doesnt seem to increase dmg enough and the proc isnt to far from the others to really so its almost inefficent to cast for the cost of 12 jin and a 10min recast.

Tested the Iron Hand thing for an hour today, and yes the damage proc does go down by the same amount Iron Hand adds. Maybe our AA will make up for our bugs.

"Monks (and a few other classes) do not learn anything from mobs. You (our class rep, Quinn) even said that the mobs that were supposed to teach us stuff DO NOT teach us the abilities they are supposed to. Where is our fix?"

This is fixed  the ability is Reed in the Wind,  I have it, learned it from mobs,  it rocks

Lot of the other stuff are viable problems

I WISH auto attack mattered like Eq or something and Specials didn't distrub instead just added to the damage.

Which is why I added the [EDIT] part below it  ;). I'll change the color of edits.

Got another thing i'd like a fellow dragon, or even any monk in general to try out. One of the normal things i like to do in fights is Jin Surge and then our feet of flame DoT attack, but noticed last night it wasnt getting any extra damage. Looking at the damage log i noticed that every single time i used jin surge and an attack, while buffed with a proc like the Secrets of ---- stuff or even storm dragon stance, that the proc would go off BEFORE the attack and consume the extra damage from jin surge. Normally the proc doesnt go off for our DoT attack because that would be obscene, but it was still going off last night to consume jin surge.

I'm a dragon monk and I basically start out every fight with Jin Surge and Feet of the Dragon. I think it's nice, particulary when it crits high, to have that damage just working away while I start beating on the mob. It is still working for me in added damage. I personally rarely ever use the secrets or iron hands cause of the jin cost and short time frame. Unless its a longer 4-5 dot fight.

Also add to the list since we are supposed to be the ae monks also:

 Dragon rakes its claw 3 cost42 end -melee plus 136 add one jin  hits all opponents in front of you.

Whirlling storm 5- 42 end melee plus 143 hit all opponents in 10 m  jin +1.

Boggle. Mastery skill less than the common skill.


Planck
Florendyl
Halcyon Affinity
50 Dragon

It is already there. On a side note, turn off buffs that affect END costs when checking the cost of abilities. Both attacks cost 34 END (looks like you had Aum Liat on).

Nod liat was on its 34.

Planck

To be fair and give some credit - you might want to add that monk learned abilities are in game now ;)

Great writeup however, just haven't commented earlier and I am still working up my ranks.

Updated a few things. Once again will not have time to test things fully until the weekend sometime. So far I am not impressed really, fixing Storm and Dragon stances is OK. We still have a plethora of other stuff that is broken, and I am going to be a squeaky wheel until we get enough grease.

Go Go Dragons! :D

Something that's still bugging me overall is that I would love to have the FD message on a separate codeline..without all the additional spam so I can switch it around to my main chat window without all the other fluff text I don't need.

When I dinged 30, I redid my hotbars and added Dragon's Rage again. So far, after about 20 uses, it opens up finishers every single time.

Update: I've had my first non-opener, non-crit with Dragon's Rage today. It happened when moving.

I've see it on the drunken / harmi versions too, when I looked through the combat spam. I found I missed with the attack. I know it's a bit late but next time you see it double check for misses.

~QTM

Eh, someone else can maintain the list. Uninstalled VG today, and do not plan on renewing. Maybe I will see some of you all in Age of Conan or Warhammer Online. Best of luck, and I hope they fix the class in addition to the game.

Sorry to see you go Chunli and I truely cant say that I blame you. You were a great spokesman for Dragon Monk issues. Good luck to you in whatever you may do.

Sorry to see you go Chunli. Best of luck to you, and thanks for all the help you've done here.  :'(

oh bugger  :'(

Maybe this is a sign to all of us  :(

One of the most respected monk activists is fed up, maybe we should all throw in the towel on our monks until something ACTUALLY happens for us....

it really comes down to how much you're actually enjoying playing your broken monk. I understand why anybody would leave the monk class, since it's broken in so many different ways it's almost stressful. I've always played a monk in every MMO, and I dont intend on giving up in vanguard either despite the fact our class is quite far from perfect . I will bring my monk to 50 and try to enjoy it, but im also re-rolling other classes to find a more stable class that might keep my attention. I wont give up on my monk, though. Monks are always under-dogs, it makes it interesting.

"Whow, the MONK pulled aggro!!?!? WTF??"

or the best was my convesration with a cleric the other day after we parted a great party...

sybrant: "It's always good to group with a good cleric, ill look you up if I ever need a healer which is basically always ;)"

cleric: "it's always good to group with a good monk, i'll look you up if i ever need a monk which is basically never ;)"

It's sad, though, that the changes required to make our class balanced are so simple and logical, yet our class continues to suffer as it levels....unlike other classes that get stronger, we just get newer, weaker, redundant skills....

^ yeah I really don't get that..every class and their mom gets increases in already high damage..

I am slowly starting to not see any reasons to play dragon style.

Yeah, I'm not going to switch though just yet. I'm too affraid of what sigil might have in mind for monks upcomming. I want them to finish "playing" with the class before I do anything drastic.

although, it would be nice to spam ashen with harmonious

Sorry, but in countless roleplaying systems a crit means you can't miss. Is this not the case in VG? Secondly, seems like an always critting, always finisher opening ability that costs 5 Jin and has a reuse of 5 mins shouldn't miss, or at least not be consumed upon missing.

Perhaps the mob dodged or parried? I agree with your association of previous critical hits that imply you must actually hit to begin with. In the case of these abilities when it hits it's always a crit., but I think it doesnt gaurentee a hit though.  I'll as Talisker & Co and if it's supposed to always hit then I'll add this to Bug / Issue list 2.0


Bummer  :'(, Your presence will be missed as well as your passion for the monk as a class.

~QTM

Sorry to see you go Chunli.  I was just curious whether it was the state of the monk, or PvP that truly caused you to leave, or some combination of the two (from what I hear pvp is simply a gank fest right now with the bugs and people exploiting). 

I suppose now that your gone, and you always post way faster than me, that I could actually start contributing to this list :p

Good luck wherever you may end up.

Combination of things. Basically not happy with Vanguard in general. I really wanted to game to remind me of EQ I guess. The game did not deliver. Performance issues, game becoming too soft (increased xp rates, lowering requirements for stuff), PvP getting next to no attention, and lack of anyone of the Devs (in my mind at least) playing a Monk on the live servers. Yeah I know the game got released way too early, but I think Brad shot for too distant of a star when he did the game. While Quinn did a great job, the person he talks to did not.

So I decided to go with LotRO, which is extremely polished, and is very fun at the moment. I have had no performance issues, there is actual raid content planned, and I can either play for an hour and leave, or play for the entire day and enjoy myself. Something I could no longer do with Vanguard. Sure it is a rather simple game, but it is just a hold-me-over until I get into Conan and Warhammer Betas. Warhammer is probably where I will end up as I really enjoy the competitiveness of PvP, and Mythic did a great job in that aspect with DAoC.

Anyway, as I said, I really do hope they get a clue and fix Monks, along with the rest of the game. But I fear that will not be until AoC is released, and the real Warhammer Beta starts. Hell, there is even a Warhammer 40k MMO in the works, so I may end up looking at that. Anyway, the Monk community is a great one, I just wish the game would have worked out for me.

Thanks mucho !

Finally hit 50 on Varking and was all so excited about the exploding heart technique!  Sorcerers get Meteor Storm that does an AoE for 4k and 2 ticks of 2k, rangers got to make arrows that autoshot for 4k, other classes get special abilities... monks get the heart tickle technique.  I can see that first 2 steps not doing much damage, that makes sense to me as in martial arts the first steps set up the final actual strike, but the final damage is paltry at best.  I use it as often as I can just to see if I can get a decent crit out of it or something.  I think I hit for 5k once.  Ohhhh.  This skill should have an auto crit on it or something that makes is as dangerous as it SHOULD be.  In PvP, me or those I am fighting rarely last long enough to get that third shot off anyways...

I completely agree! Especially with jin surge, make it a 10 second-15 second buff  so we can actually use it with chains.  And for god sakes.... give us some real animation with our monken arts, rehashed moves is lame common this game is supposed to be revolutionary.

Aspect of the Spirit Dragon

I like the fact we get a invis/levi spell, but the cost and failure of the spell makes it hardly useable.

At level 48 i can cast this spell 5 times. Out of the 5 times it will fail after a minute atleast 3-4 times. For a monk to sit and meditate for 8 jin for a spell that is supposed to last 10 minutes and have it fail after 1 minute is really stupid. The jin should be lowed to like 4 and get rid of the stupid failure rate on it all together.

Invis breaking goes for Bloodmages, sorcerers, psionicists, etc too. The only class that has an invis that can't break, is the Bard.

Those classes use Energy for their invis.  Something that will regenerate itself. Jin doesn't and that should make some difference combined with levitate being tied to it.

Gouging Dragon Claw icon shows as available about 6 seconds too early.
(can't click even though full colored since the timer is not down to 0 completely).

Invis shouldnt break period. If they didnt want you invising down someplace then make the mob see it. Not hard at all. But instead they make the player base have to deal with it. The cost vs failure rate on Aspect of the Spirit Dragon is way too high. It shouldnt Fail as much as it does.

On to next subject,

Exploding Heart Tech,

Disappointing. I was looking forward to this ability when i hit 50 only to find out it does subpar dmg. All 3 attacks in the chain need love. I hit harder on Thousand fists. Im not asking to nerf Thousand fists, but when we get Thousand Fists through our whole leveling crusade and Exploding Heart is a level 50 only chain......... something is wrong. Exploding heart definitly needs more love.


Aum Kor,

Bleh

It's looked into:

Quinn's update (http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,685.new/topicseen,1/#newUnsubscribe)

Adding it again since I forgot to mention:

Storm Dragon Stance mitigation is still bugged. The 15% Mitigation has to be looked into again.

General Issue that still consists: secrets don't ae hit with our storm dragon stance.