Vanguard Monks

Red colour means the issue/bug was entered into the last edit.

Since quite the lot of the minor issues were fixed, I've removed them to make the post easier to read.

Stances:
Harmonious Stances leaves no real complaints.
Visual Bug: Immortal Crane mouseover states damage -20% (and parry/block/dodge +20%). Icon and stat summary has no such indication of errant behavior however.

Major Issues:
General DPS. A general overhaul of all skills and abilities is in place. We were emergency fixed after LU#1, to operate fully functional, that badly needs to be reviewed and give us a release state on our abilities rather than a "uh, how much damage did you guys actually do before this LU?"-state.

Minor Issues:
Abilities
Wave Hand in Cloud: Rank III (without taking the still rather aburd reuse of 20 minutes into account) deals a mighty 20 damage more than than the already to low single rank did at 26. 270 damage shield usable on yourself each 20 minutes for 20 seconds needs a sanity check, for real - we're an offensive fighter, having defensive after defensive ability (which even does a bad job at that) with offense abilities majorly ignored is bad.
Diamond Body: Rank I and II needs some serious look at (don't even know what the diffrence is, tooltip dosen't tell any, and 30 minutes is way to much to bother checking as the mainfocus of the ability (curing) appears unchanged).
Find the Center: Grants 100% block chance. Lovely, but monks don't have block.

General issues that interfere with Harmonious:
Iron Hand: Duration is still to weak. Again, compare with the +84 melee damage BM's get that lasts an hour (and still has a rare component) and dosen't stack with Iron Hand.
Secret of Transcendance:: Increase power, reduce cost. Or make it more in line of Ice/Flame as a third choice.

Related Bugs
Celestial Kick of the Masters I: Gives 2 jin rather than 1.
Secret of Transcendance: Lasts 1 minute. Tooltip states 20 seconds.
Secret of Celerity: Unlike all other secrets, it creates a global cooldown. This means it eats up 2 of it's precious 20 seconds all by itself. Bad. Update: Fixed on test
Jin gain: Misses gives Jin. While good, it dosen't make real sense.
Jin use conflicts with Endurance regeneration: Might be intended, but should be stated clear then (the orignial message was that only endurance abilities interfered with endurance regeneration, those tied energy (only other example given) would not.) If Jin offensive abilities are not supposed to conflict with Endurance regeneration, they need to be fixed to not doing so - if it's meant to conflict, we need to be told so.
Steal in the Wind: Doesnt show up the damage - does spam it twice in the combat logs. But I am not even sure it does damage since when I use it I dont even see the hp bar go down. (From Jengfu)
Withering Palm: Gives the buff even if the strike miss. I would assume (but can't confirm due to not really using since counterattacks aren't really used that much in groups etc) that Steal the Wind suffers from the same bug.
Deadly Adder Hand, Eagle Claw: Each rank is stackable. This means, at level 50, a harmonious monk can apply nearly a -600 strength debuff (well 5 of them total) on a mob. This is not an issue localized to monks - at least bards can stack debuffs from diffrent ranks aswell.

Deadly Adder Hand: IMO i think the damage should be converted into a dot for the duration of the debuff, making it more usefull to keep up.

Wave Hand in Cloud: Same thing, timer should be cut down. and if you can cast it on an other it would make it higly more usefull for a tank to gain agro and keep it "mostly in multiple mob situation". And maybe change the damage to a sends half or more of the damage back to the target.

since im only lvl 29 i dont know of any other skills.

As for stance just need minor ajustments.

Just to point out, for thoese dragon monks that say there neutral stance doesnt do much, well ours even tought regen jin, well is useless to a certain extent. since it take 1min per jin and as you lvl up you gain more jin thus making it take even more min to fill up the jin bubble. so as of now it take 15min to fill up the jin meter.

Personally, I'd rather us come together on not just the issues but the prioty of said issues as well. Simply giving a laundry list makes it harder for the devs to identify critical needs or even a starting point. I suppose at least some of this has already been done in other threads though.

And while I don't necessarily subscribe to some of the suggestions you've recommended to fix our issues, they aren't anything too significant. Aside from that, I would mostly agree with your assessment of the harm monk issues.

Harmonious dosen't have anything critical (unlike Dragon and Drunken) to fix per se; but it's still very limited due to the large amout of abilities (I would say I don't use at least half) that of one reason or another aren't quite useable. While naturally not having same priority as the more pressing of getting other styles up-to-par, it's easy to forget that despite things are looking better for the Harmonious than for the others.

Managed to forget:
Diamond Body: Clears disease/poison/curses every second for 2 minutes, increases AC by ~800 (possibly % based, tooltip states 0), 30 minute reuse, 6 Jin.
It's either quite powerful (the duration) for raidevents or generally just useless (30 minute cooldown, can't be used very often). A simple fix would be maintaining cost, remove the AC component, remove reuse (or reduce to a few seconds anyhow) and make it a single cleanse. Since the heavy Jin cost, it couldn't be spammed, but would still be an availible choice.
In general though, this ability should be made availible for all monks and find some suitable replacement for Harmonious.

i find that in general, monks lack in what they are suppose to be specialized in. Harmonious monks lack a bit in buffs and debuffs as for the 2 others i only speculate dragon prob. lack in DPS skills or some with to long of reuse time and drunken monks prob lack in dodging abilities and counter attacks.

You don't like waning palm?  I use that all the time.  It has to be one of the most powerful targetable deagros in the game.  And as long as your healer isn't running around like a chicken with its head cut off you shouldn't have any targetting problems.

Well, I play with decently heavy CC, where a badly used power would simply break an already established CC - and even when CC isn't availible (raz inkur) healer agro usually occurs either directly into fight (where mobs lack debuffs so they'll simply just splat the healer up before I could get targeting going) or not at all.
Ever since disciple critrate was fixed, I've never seen a healer having agro issues; hence the use has been quite limited for me - I suppose others would have diffrent experiences.

Level 25 harmonious here.

I can't show hard numbers but I have a feeling that our specials interrupt autoattack so if you spam them there are hardly any basic damage dealt. This unlike my ranger.

Nerve strike: useless on mobs higher in level since FD often fails and that is the only way to use nerve strike for me. I'm dreaming of Storm Stride working with Nerve Strike  ;) Either that or adjust FD so it does not fail so often on higher mobs.

About damage. I seem to be very safe in a group, I can dish out as much damage as I can and rarely steal aggro from the tank, even if I'm higher in levels and not using Goading Slap. I don't know if this is intended but it feels wrong.

I also feel the crane stance is unbalanced, too much damage penalty for very little evasion gain.

I have stopped soloing with my monk, it's just not viable.

Deinnun currently right now 1 dmg = 1 hate in vaguard. With poor monk itemization and every increasingly powerful other melee weapons. We tend to get out DPS'ed thus out hated. + I beleive tank abilities have additional hate but combined with the hate system = powerful taunting power. Dont get me wrong we can steal pull agro off in a instant when we burn a couple of cooldowns and get a nice crit chain.

Great post Leishu. I am a 36 harmonious monk.   I agree with much of what you have said.  However, I do not agree that Tiger stance is over-powering.  The 50% endurance penalty is substantial and should decrease slightly with levels.  Maybe down to 40% or so at lvl50.  I would like to see some added use out of harmonious stance as right now it is useful only out of battle really.  I like the idea of it giving extra jin on jin based attacks, and maybe reducing jin needed for those requiring jin.  That would make this stance useful.  I never use crane stance.  Maybe it is useful in certain situations, but even when solo I don't use it.

I do not agree on the durations of the secrets and iron hand.  I do believe the duration should be increased or they should instantly re-up if the jin is available.  I do not like having to push the iron hand button every 60 second.  I think a 5 minute buff time would be better, or at the end of 60 second it is automatically re-applied for 2 jin if the jin exists.  I think the secrets line would be too powerful if you could apply it for 30 min for 4 jin.  Jin is supposed to be something where the monk gains power the more he fights.  Thus being able to have iron hand and secrets up while chilling out for 20 minute does not make sense.  I think 20 sec is too short.  Perhaps a longer duration of maybe 2 min for maybe 8 jin would be better.  Maybe they should make it scale with levels.  So as you level the cost in jin increases but the duration increases as well. 

OVerall I am happy with harmonious monk but wish there were not so many skills and stances that I never use.  The auto-crit ability is fairly useless in my mind especially since I crit a lot in tiger stance.  Perhaps if it was an auto-crit that allowed access to all finisher regardless of cooldown state it would then have a use.   That would allow us to open boundless fist twice in a row every 5 min or so.  Secret of Celerity is very nice, but that long a cool down makes you never want to use it when it is up.  It is almost like a novelty that is cool to use once in a while.  Reducing the cool down on this would make it more usable.

The debuffs are nice, but I agree the duration is too short.  I never use Deadly Adder because the endurance cost is too great for the 16 sec debuff.  If these increased in duration as you level it would make them much more usable.  Perhaps to 32 sec around lvl35 or so, and then 48 sec around lvl 50.

/sticky  for j00

~QTM

Endurance: With Aum Ti, it's at +30%. For dealing damage (it's purpose and intent) that's a very cheap price for the +30% you have at level 50; in contrary it should perhaps be 40% until level 30 and then be increased to 50%. It does feel harsh on most of our other abilties that does not deal damage though; but the power is our brothers keeper.
Potency: When we can maintain 40%+ (level 30+) critrate without much issue using two-hander - our finishers will not be evolving - if flying kick would become a 400% + X like other DPS melee - Monks would indeed feel a power increase, but Harmonious would become the #1 offensive fighter due to our ability to spam finisher after finisher. It is currently allowing us to maintain a fighting edge against other classes - but it might also be holding the our class back - a bad combination; hence the comment about it being a bit powerful.
It's a fine line to thread though.


You'll see more powerful buffs with longer 60x (or 180x for secrets) duration and no real cost (energy cost for buffs is neligible) for other classes. Holding our buffs back simply because we don't have energy is a bad way to go about it. Or simply making all our secret exotic ways to burst our DPS; it's really all fine to me.

are you kidding?   I cant understand why people would post that our class needs a nerf.  If it's a 'tad bit' overpowered, lets leave it at that and let it be known for us monks only.

This is exactly the same thing rogues are doing now in re to their now working lint book, which gives them a 600 point heal using badages in or out of combat with no refreh timer.

Dont make the devs look at us and think we are OK, because we are not.  Please dont post abut how anything a monk hasis overpowered-- this will certainly get the ONE useful ability we have subject to the raginf nerf wars that commence
every week.

Gwaehirs Fist, is not that over powered, mostly with the end that it take off each skill and the fact that we get 0 other benifits out of it. And over that you dont real get a +20 or +25% increat in crit change, because if it were true i should be crit every 39% of the time or so (about 13% base, +1 from gear and 25 from form), witch isnt even closely happenning.

I certainly never thought our Tiger stance was overpowered at all.  I was responding to Leishu's comment that he thought that "...Tiger Stance is a bit overpowered to be fair...."

If it's holding back a general progress, then it needs to be adjusted. Is +20-30% crit (pending level) powerful? At the moment? No - it keeps us on the near same level as other offensive fighters. If we get upgraded properly with finishers worthy the name? Yes. I rather have a decently accurate report instead of trying to lie and connive and then get struck back when it's discovered and "slight reductions" are introduced.


So if pointing out that one stance is powerful is saying we're ok? Oooook, even bothered to read on from that point?
+Huge amout of crit is powerful, in particular with the finisher system (keep in mind, when Tiger stance was designed, finishers did not trigger from crits) - and if you keep in mind we're (supposedly) getting upgraded - you'll have to consider that these things are what developers consider and I rather not have it holding (all) monks back simply because of some "if it's good, HUSH!" principle.

I did read the rest of  the post, however...  due to the incesant KNEE-JERK Sigil reactions to things, a dev who reads that MAY, not read even choose to read further,  and even if he/she did, the fact that a MONK is posting that they have an overpowered ability cant really help us, can it?

You cant tell us that this one ability is the reason why we havent been revamped.

Steal in the Wind skills doesnt show up the damage. does spam it twice in the combat logs. But im not even sure it does damage since when i use it i dont even see the hp bar go down.

People are looking at the same issue with different viewpoints, which is completely valid (and thus why the discussion is good for the class). On the one hand, you could look at monks and say we have many abilities that need to be improved but only a few that work well enough to make us a worthwhile class to play. Based on numerous posts here, I think many players probably fall into this category, and rightfully so. After all, it's perfectly understandable to want to hold on to those few abilities that work well because there's little else to fall back on.

Another way to look at it though is from a more utopic perspective. If, and I stress that word again IF, monks get some of their issues resolved and other abilities improved such that players feel they bring a diverse set of functionality and benefit to the table without solely relying on one or two abilities alone, then the argument could be made that something like Tiger is probably a little overpowered with the high crit rate. I think this is probably the point that Leishiu is trying to make. Given that most harmonious monks seem to use Tiger stance almost exclusively, that alone should give at least some credence to the point too.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here. I think it's simply a matter of perspective. If (there's that word again  ;) ) we get word from the devs/QTM that they have specific items planned to improve us as a class, improvements that will actually make a difference, than I suspect less folks will have a problem with them touching Tiger. But until that time occurs, I'm inclined to agree that adjusting Tiger (read nerfing) is just not a wise idea at the moment by Sigil.

Tiger stance being over-powered is not why harmonious stays in it all the time.  I don't think it is over-powered at all.  We stay in tiger stance because the other stances just plain suck.  Remember that increased crit-rate from tiger brings a 50% endurance penalty as well.    Certainly tiger is over-powered compared to the other stances but that is because those are all broke.  If you think tiger stance is over-powered then I am sure you think the ranger crit buff is over-powered as well right?  Or the fact that a ranger with a bow can stand around all day and kill named mobs their own level solo?  If tiger stance is over-powered why can't I kill a 3-dot same level as myself?  Don't say it is my weapons because I have dual 35 DPS claws at lvl38.  If tiger was over-powered I should be able to chew through 3-dot 38 mobs with very little downtime.

If we had comparable finishers to that of other offensive fighters has, Tiger would indeed be overpowering. Currently? It allows Harmonious to actually perform decently, where most other monks are falling behind. If we were to be upgraded, this is rather important to factor in.
And comparing 5% from ranger to 30% from a level 50 Tiger stance (which stacks) is bad. It's 6 times as potent.


At 40, it's a 30% penalty. With a cleric or bear shaman, you simply can't run out of endurance anyhow. It's only a disadvantage when you're using abilities that aren't based around doing damage (CC, deagros, reed the wind etc) but then you can actually switch stance to a -25% endurance stance (even though micromanagent is a pain).


Because of the design of monks - if you want to change that you need to see the entire picture (ie, if B was modified how would A and B now work. In essence, currently we have a very weak finisher, if they were upgraded to likewise stats as other offensive fighters, Harmonious would probably be the #1 melee DPS class due to being able to spam them pretty much all the time) not just the pieces that are actually currently being broken.

You missed the point entirely. I'm not stating that Tiger makes harmonious monks overpowered. In fact, I was stating that given our current deficiencies, Tiger is one of the few bright spots that even keep us close to where we should be in the DPS pecking order today.

The point being made here is that when the devs eventually improve our other abilities and attacks such that we're not tied almost exclusively to just one stance to deal damage, the cumulative effect of those changes might be such that Tiger in its current form with a high crit rate gives monks too much of an edge in the other direction. I'm not saying it definitely will have this effect. I'm simply saying I could potentially see it happening depending on the changes to the other abilities.

As I said before, I'm clearly not in favor of any changes to Tiger until 1) we know for certain what improvements the devs intend to make for our other abilities and for the class overall, and 2) what the actual end-result and impact to DPS those changes have on us.

Tiger stance isn't overpowered all the other styles are borked.  If it was overpowered we would be parsing above other DPS classes.  Currently with tiger stance and a 71DPS weapon im not even matching any other DPS class, im just barely ahead of the curve against well equipped fighter classes.  If our finishers get adjusted so they actually deal decent damage(and im talking about flying kick, thousand fist line is fine EXCEPT it needs to scale) then with tiger stance we will probably at the least break even with the other DPS classes and we MIGHT parse higher than them, but i doubt it.  And damnit if we do parse higher well we deserve it because we have zilch utility compared to every other DPS class.  Rogues can even fricking evac now, lol.

I do have one question though.  Are my special attacks not taking into account my strength bonus?  Sometimes it seems my auto attack is higher than most of my specials, even the melee damage + 300 or whatever seem to be matching or barely above my auto attack.  I believe my auto attack picks up my strength bonus and thats why it hits so hard, but my abilities when they do not crit are more or less an out of rhythym auto attack.  i have about 425ish str unbuffed, i think i have a 412 melee bonus or something.  So my abilities should have +400 damage on top of what they read?  or how does that work?

Other (dps) classes finishers are roughly the potency of thousand fists (slightly diffrent mechanic, thousand fists is a bit stronger), without reuse timers; and 1 minute finishers are as thousand fists versus skeletons. If our finishers had that potency, you might see why critting roughly every second special might be a tad overpowering.
With how monks are currently, it's really fine.

Leishu is correct.  Tiger stance is somewhat overpowered, however, it is downplayed by the fact that monks don't do much damage to begin with.  If you think tiger stance is fine, go roll a dragon or drunken, and see how you operate without it.  The endurance costs become pretty negligible when you get aum ti, or are grouped with a bearshammy/cleric.  Furthermore, your going to be critting so often that you'll use finishers most of the time, which is only going to cost 10-15 endurance, and probably crit again.  Tiger stance is the sole reason monks can be competitive with other fighters.

I'm not trying to start a style war between monks or anything.  I just want to iterate that Leishu is making a very well-informed class balancing statement and people should take his post seriously.  Every monk needs love, a lot of love. 

Sidenote:  Does it seem silly to anyone else but me that harmonious get the most offensively oriented stance?  I thought they were supposed to be the midline/utilty style and tiger stance really doesn't fit that description to me.  Was just curious if anyone felt the same way?

I agree.  Back in beta when the stances were 1st conceived, tiger stance was just to supposed to add supplimental damage to abilities not provide the pathway to bigger and better damage dealing moves.  Back then you either had to be nuts to use tiger or have large amounts of end as the benifits were not worth the added end costs.

All of the Harmi monks cried foul and said that tiger stance wasn't worth the bang for the buck. Why to Harmi monks only get 1 usefull skill and 1 completely broken 1. (My how times changes)

Since combat changed to make crits the pathway to dealing more damage you basicly over powered 1 style and gimped 2.  When I can trap Talisker into commenting on the style changes I will ask for your feedback.

~QTM

I agree that Tiger stance is going to be overpowering IF monk skills were ever buffed up in-line with other offensive fighters.  HOWEVER this is a big IF.

QTM Please just make sure that ALL monk issues are resolved (ie bug issues, DPS issues and utility issues) BEFORE the Devs (Taliskar) even considers making changes to Tiger.

Judging from how things were done in the past, it is very likely that Tiger be "fixed" into giving only 10% extra crit for 50% more end cost, and then we recieve another 8dps boost in Iron Hands as "compensation".

On patch notes it would look like:
- Tiger Stance has its Critial chance slightly reduced
- Iron Hands has its damage significantly increased

And then every other class is going to think that we monks finally recieved our love.

I do have one question though.  Are my special attacks not taking into account my strength bonus?  Sometimes it seems my auto attack is higher than most of my specials, even the melee damage + 300 or whatever seem to be matching or barely above my auto attack.  I believe my auto attack picks up my strength bonus and thats why it hits so hard, but my abilities when they do not crit are more or less an out of rhythym auto attack.  i have about 425ish str unbuffed, i think i have a 412 melee bonus or something.  So my abilities should have +400 damage on top of what they read?  or how does that work?

Copied and pasted, no one answered this question, hehe.

They are. However, I've also noticed small deviances on special attacks.
The displayed damage on strength is when using a 2.10 (or something roughly like that I think, might be making things up now, but I made some calculations and it ended up slightly above 2.00 - however the deviance could easily be invisible bonuses to two-handed weapons.)
If you have a faster weapon, you'll hit less. If you have a slower weapon, you'll hit harder. At high 30, 1 str was pretty much 0.5 DPS (ie 1 str = +1 damage on speed 2.00 weapons, +1.5 damage on speed 3.00 weapons and so on) - this has does increase with levels though (which in contradiction to dexterity gives you larger return the higher you get instead of lesser) and I'll check it out next time I level (which will probably be some time!). This matters little on autoattack (since it adds DPS) but makes the world on specials as they aren't penalized by the delay (rather you're penalized for having fast weapons).

Why it's not beating your autoattack? Well, hmm, tricky question, but mitigation really eats up special attacks (unless you've got a debuffer - or is well, harmonious!) - a mob has about 20% regardless of it's class (even though they stated it would be spread out pending mob level, only hitpoints differ, one 15% mitigation debuff will not remove entire mitigation while a second (such as from a bard) will remove the rest - and the return from the second application is really low compared to the first, leading me to assume ~20% mitigation).
The other answer is that your weapons are to fast (fists are really bad itemized currently) - but that still wouldn't explain why you can't outdo autoattack.
I haven't used fists in ages, so can't comment on that - it feels totally right using two-handed though - specials really blows away autoattack.

Thanks for the input and very helpful post as usual Leishu =D

I also have given up on h2h weapons, using the graystone staff now.

I will log in again sometime tonight and do copy down some numbers, will try a few parses only auto attack and a few special spamming.  Should i do my attacks without tiger stance?  Would the crits throw off my information?  I'm thinking it would be good just to find kind of an average for the auto attack damage, and then find an average for special attacks through parsing.  Perhaps i should avoid finishers then when testing the special attacks? Flying kick does kinda low damage, its not uncommon for ashen hand to hit harder.  Sometimes boundless fist even hits harder when using weaknesses.  Will try soloing a few mobs and parsing the info.  I'll check here again before i log in tonight, let me know what you think i should do.

Tiger stance wont really affect normal strikes (bug?) faik, but since crits along with bladestaff makes up a wierd multiplication it might be better to fight outside to make decent comparsion.
And yea, Ashen Hand with a two-hander is way better than Flying Kick; the diffrence is I suppose that Flying is tied to the kick skill, which appears to have a diffrent critratio. Since Flying Kick don't scale with weapons like just about every other finisher, we be sad pandas in the endgame unless it starts doing it.

lets not forget about tiger form, that with 50% end cost = 50% less skill used meaning less chances to get crits off for finishers and all. So in some kind of sense for our +20% gives us a small bost of crit chance over the others.

I've read this twice and I still can't figure out what you're trying to say. Can you perhaps clarify?

its simple, the only way to open up out finishers and all is by having a crit while using a skill. but if it cost 50% more end, then the result is 50% less chances to get crits off then if you didnt have it. Sure the crit boost is better then none but if you can fire off more skills with your end the more chances to get crits increases. It all ways happends where i have to wait for my end to regen befor i can use any of my skills.

That assumes you have a non-recoverable resource - and since endurance do regenerate, this is not case. To be fair, you'll have to assume you can use Aum Ti aswell, which means only 30% more cost. Finishers deals more damage than boundless fist (only real damage ability harmonious has) and costs half the endurance, so a crit pays off in multiple ways.
Tiger stance does deal more DPS than Harmonious for example (except perhaps those cases where the RNG frowns - but there's a likewise amout of times it beams) over extended time.

All that said, with a cleric or bear shaman, the endurance penalty is trivialized anyhow.

Well, you're making several assumptions here though, such as the rate of endurance depletion using specials versus simple crits, which happen on both auto-attack and special attacks. And while specials arguably have more bang for the buck than auto-attack does (finishers certainly do), there are several factors that could sway the impact of those crits one way or another in a fight, including the RNG.

it is true, but for the laishiu, not mather if you have fix end or regenerative end. In the end it stays the same my friend we have 50% less chances at a skill crit. using 2 times the same skill for a harm, others get a 3rd chance at a crit.

Im not sure if thats true.  It's been my experience that when i use a special attack in tiger stance (usually crescent kick) i get a finisher on just about every ability.  Then i do the finisher combs, during global refresh i'll get like one tick of regen, which regens most of the end i've spent in that little 3 hit combo.  I only run out of end in tiger stance if i use deadly adder or tiger claw, other than that i do not run out of end from spamming crescent kick an the finishers.  I rarely used boundless fist.

Since Tiger stance has 2-3 times larger chance to score a critical hit (compared to the mere 50% endurance cost) it's still efficent to always pay off. The chance to score 3 successive crits without tiger is neligible - and you'll have to consider that for the same buck (ie endurance) another stance might get another swing off, the Tiger stanced monk is probably already using finishers - which does deal considerably more damage than most abilities (two-handed AH excepted - which again also gains quite the lot from the Tigers improved crit rate).
Due to global cooldowns and endurance being limited to 100, it's a lot of bang for the buck. Things might have been diffrent without the cooldown, another finisher system and an energylike pool (it was actually) - but with the current endurance pool & finisher production Tiger stance is extremely benefical.

Sheng whats the point of beeing a harm monk if you dont use thoese skills? forget about the stances, cause i chose monk from the start because of the buffs and debuffs abilities of the monk. So bascly your just a monk with a boost in crit thats it, wich is kind of lame imo.

Well for one, spamming specials too often minimizes the impact of a good weapon with a low delay. Aluul's Claws and it's 1.85 delay is a perfect example of this. I'd wager that at least in some instances while using that, relying more on auto-attack damage and less on spamming specials might actually produce a higher overall DPS. Finishers are probably always worthy of use when they're available but I'm not certain that spamming everything you got otherwise is the most effective way to use them otherwise.

Not to mention the side effect of always waiting for endurance to regen when spamming as well. That's not to imply that it takes a long time to regen endurance to full but it could potentially allow you to be more tactical with your specials.

say whaaaat?

I do use deadly adder hand and eagle claw, to open the fight.   But i dont spam them because they alst like 15-16 seconds so i will recast them once they go off, not every time they pop up.   I usually wait for deadly adder to go off so i get the damage from it then i recast it (it actually does decent damage so i use it every fight)  I of course use eagle claw and make sure it is ALWAYS on the mob, but it doens't cost a lot of end so why not.  I guess in my previous post i didn't clarify my tactics.

I open with eagle claw then immediately cast deadly adder.  While those are on i'll use only crescent kick and AH and Spam the finishers if they open up.  When deadly adder drops i reapply, same with eagle.  Rinse and repeat.  There's really not a whole lot of reason to do much else imo.  If i'm feeling frisky i'll use a secret but its not a whole lot of extra damage.  I'll use celerity if we fight a named.  I rarely run out of end with this strategy, if i do its probably because adder missed and i have to put it on.

sorry i made a mistake, i tought you never used them. secrets are usefull, when using skills they usely apear alot, and at lvl 32 monk there doing around 100-150 damage but i have yet to see a dot.

......or a stun =D

Diamond Body I and II needs some serious look at (don't even know what the diffrence is, tooltip dosen't tell any, and 30 minutes is way to much to bother checking as the mainfocus of the ability (curing) appears unchanged).

Wave Hand in Cloud III (without taking the still rather aburd reuse of 20 minutes into account) deals a mighty 20 damage more than than the already to low single rank did at 26. 270 damage shield usable on yourself each 20 minutes for 20 seconds needs a sanity check, for real - we're an offensive fighter, having defensive after defensive ability (which even does a bad job at that) with offense abilities majorly ignored is bad.

not only that, we have so many defensive abilitys, but our solo abilities lack greatly. we are so inificient at it to. Over that all thoese defensive abilties have very limited use when grouping with others. I say limited cause some times we get agro and hit a defensive abiltie to avoid damage.

Why hit an offensive ability with 2-20 minute reuse when you can hit FD with 0 seconds reuse that avoids all damage. The three monk abilities that grant defensive: reed the wind (high endurance cost, 2 min reuse), iron skin (10 minute reuse, no costs though) and find the center (8 jin, 20 minute reuse). We also have the universal 160% dodge ability with 0 reuse now (found it interesting that our cooldown was removed instead of it being added to other classes aswell; it appeared rather balanced that an offensive class couldn't completly shrug off the attacks of a mob attacking slower than each 2 seconds) which I suppose fill some purpose, but FD simply means we can resume killing instantly, everyone wins.

Wave Hand in Cloud is the absolutly worst of all abilities - quite comparable to current incarnation of Dragon Breath. It requires you to pretty much fight a mob which swings every two seconds and does not miss a single hit (ie, you don't dodge/parry - which can be quite tricky as our avoidance would eat 2 hits by average) and in that case deals the same damage as a critical ashen hand - except that it wont trigger a finisher and it took 20 times as long time. Due to the fact that it can be used to damage more opponents at the same time (not happending if solo, really, we can't take that damage, and dealing 1/5th of a mobs health over 20 seconds means dead monk (well, feigning monk), we need to win within 10 seconds for a fight to be decently efficent). Dealing ~2800 (if you don't avoid any hits, mobs aren't casters and don't swing overly slow - it's a a lot of if's to make this power deal that amout of damage) damage on a few 3 dots with a healer is well, ridicilious at 50, with luck that's enough to claim ownership; not exactly what you would expect from a level 50 power.
Since it's 20 minute reuse, I rather just Find the Center and counterattack spam, which will not only deal more damage, it will save me from getting hurt. Hell, even Reed the Wind is a more efficent as indirect damage shield than an ability that's intended to do so.
Rethink completly or make targetable (and with higher damage and lower reuse - ~280 at 50 is a laugh for 20 minute reuse).

I believe the intention of wave of hand in cloud is a cooldown for AoE'ing. Monks usually end up tanking during AoE pulls, it puts out a litle extra damage to the mobs wailing on you. Not defending the cooldown or lack of use, just a suggestion for rare use of it.

At an ideal rate (no dodge/parry, mob has 2.00 delay and dosen't cast) you can deal around 2800 damage with it. If used when up, that boils down to 2.33 DPS per ideal mob used against it.

Ironically, when the orignial ability was recieved at 26, it was at 250 damage, and was quite useful. Now, slightly more damage is at rank 3 (level 50...) and the previous ranks have been lowered to likewise ignorantly low damage. I seriously don't think the developers has any idea what this ability is used for.

Anyone know which is the correct discription of Crane Style?  My buff icon says +8% to defensive, -10% to damage, and -20% to endurance cost or something like that.  The style selection icons however read something totally different.  It says +20% defensive, -20% damage, and -25% to endurance costs.

Which is it really?    If I had to guess I would say it is the buff icon stats as I don't really dodge/parry that often the few times I have actually tried using crane.  I don't use crane since the read in the wind nerf but I still want to know for sure.

Tool tip is borked it's supposed to be +8 to parry and dodge. It was supposed to be fixed but apprently slipped though.

~QTM

My interpretation is that a more defensive player would use this on top of thier defensive stance to add addtional damage. AOE pulls are the ideal situation. Right now I consider it an jin expensive marginal short term DPS boost. not worth the jin IMO the scaling just doesnt add addtional value to it. It does need to be revisited.

~QTM

Uh, harmonious defensive abilities/stance is avoidance. Avoiding a hit means it wont trigger. You'll be better of just using Reed the Wind (which has 1/15th the reuse) and spam counterattacks; or Find the Center (same reuse) and avoiding getting hurt at all, spamming constant waves of counterattacks, which each deals 10x the damage of it.
In AoE you will have to factor in damage taken, agro from heal before agro is established proper etc; being hit as much as possible dosen't really do you much good. It's useless with that cooldown, damage and unability to target it. /shrug.

Wave hand in the clouds SHOULD be a 100% counterattack sort of skill, like ... oh what was that skill in eq, where all attacks incoming would allow the monk to get an attack in return, INSTEAD of taking damage.

This is the only thing that makes sense with the large jin and re-use costs.   

I'm not a seasoned Harmonious Monk - only been one two days, in fact. The only use I have for it is when soloing 3-dots or 4-dots: free DPS.

Harmonious stance has been broken for me as long as I can remember, in that it just stops working altogether when you meditate.  I have to refresh the stance to make it start building jin again.

Just noticed this about 2 or 3 weeks ago... Harmonious stance seems to drop when you play a diplo card.  My other 2 stances remain active while doing diplo, but that stance drops altogether, leaving the accompanying Diamond Body buff which now activates with stances on.

I think Tiger stance kind of sucks at lvl50.  With the crit cap at 40% and crit gear so easy to find, there really is not point to tiger stance.  Now if +melee dmg gear was easier to find, then it would be ok.  We could get gear that would add dmg instead of crit.  But this is not the case.  So as it stands, Harmonious will always do the least dmg of all 3 styles at 50 because the other 2 styles can easily match our crit %.  However, we can not make up 20-25% dmg with gear.  There is just not enough gear out there to do so.

Show me some parses that say harmonious is the lowest of the 3.

Ill post some raid parses tonight of me vs our harmonious monk. 

This is interesting to see hove much you do! I just did the quest for Harmo (i am now only lvl 17).

But if you see it in big picture i say that Any off the forms have a value but if you have a Harmo Monk de-buffing the tank take less dmg and that is way harmo should be best for solo play,

But i have only played 17lvl's, i have just a beginner.

Evagi
LVL 17 mnk on Halgar

Anyone that plays harmo style and claims that they suck solo only feels so because the monk is not a strong solo class at its core compared to some other classes.

But between styles harmo monk is easily the most effective soloer.  Their debuffs effectively make them the most efficient tank and their dps is very consistant and reliable.

If you are having a hard time soloing as a harmo monk, there is a 90% chance you'll have a more difficult time as one of the other styles.

one issue with harmonious monk is you actually LOSE dps by going into offensive stance while solo.
This is just rediculous, especially noticeable before Aum Ti at lvl 40
....some "offensive" stance.... :/

yeah...the harmo offensive stance is a bit unbalanced...that's been mentioned in multiple threads at this point.  ;)

Hi all, just registered here, though I've been lurking for a few weeks.  I've been playing non-stop since open beta, have 2 level 50's (Necro & Rogue) plus several more who are coming along.  Compared to my other classes, here's some thing I've observed about the Harmonious Monk (most of these are in comparison to my Rogue)

1) They are extremely survivable!!! Compared to my Rogue, soloing a Harmo Monk is a piece of cake.  It doesn't touch my necro, but its easier than either of my Tanks, and far superior to my Rogue.  Mid-levels, I'm succesfully taking down 3-dots that are 5 level above my own.  That's unheard of on a Rogue, and damn hard on either of my tanks.  Could probably do it on my Disciple, but it would be a long fight.

2) Offensive stance on a Harmo monk is pretty much useless except in a group.  Solo, I do Far FAR better in Crane Stance.

3) Aggro control abilities on the Monk are way below what my Rogue has to offer.  The refreshes alone make them poor to useless.  Couple that with the fact that they are apparently bugged, and you have serious problems.

4) Harmo Monk Debuffs are GREAT!  Better than my DK that's for sure.

All in all, its a good class that only needs a couple tweaks (especially to aggro management and the offensive stance).

Hi alacritus, nice to meet you.

a few things i am wondering...by aggro control abilites do you mean Feign Death, or Goading Slap?
Feign Death is bugged in various circumstances but on the whole is the best de-taunt in game. Rogue has some nice de-taunts too but i certainly wouldn't trade off a -100%hate from Feign Death for them. And it has no cooldown except global....please ellaborate on what you mean.

And also, yeh the debuffs are really good, every raid force certainly needs 1 harmonious monk. Not sure if they are better than DKs though - it's a close one.
DK gets what -60str/dex/wis/int
 and then from the Dreadful countenance, +15% crit vulnerability, -200 spriitual resist -10% dmg...or something along those lines?
Harmo monk has -115str, -150dmg, -10% dmg, -15% mit
(by the way i think the mit debuffs stack with previous ranks
i tried on a 3dot with my martial sword + auto-attack, normal hits were 600,
Eagle claw IV - hits about 750
Eagle Claw IV & III - Hits about 820
Eagle Claw IV & III & II - Hits about 900
didn't see any increase with the 4th though..i assume the mob was 0% mit by then??
anyway try it yourself if you doubt me  :) )