Vanguard Monks

Well being somewhat new to monks and more new to being a dragon (lvl 19 now, only 4 levels of experimentation)

The strange thing is, I had a:
Torrid Bladestaff  2H
35-52dmg  Speed 3.25
13.23 dps
100 hp
8 Str
lvl 23
Damage on Char sheet listed with no buffs = 193-217

and when I upgraded to
Indistinct Bladestaff 2h
53-80 Dmg  Speed 3.25
20.31 dps
63 Energy
13 Dex
0 (+13 Dex) <-wtf is this
12 healing focus
Damage on Char sheet listed with no buffs = 207-242



I noticed absolutely NO DMG increase... same 2H Piercing, Bladestaff skill... did +8 str make a 7 DPS difference? Whats going on there.

Also... I'm trying to decide between dual wielding fist type weapons or using a bladestaff. As a dragon monk who's in Storm Dragon most of the time, which would be best? I was guessing a high dmg bladestaff to maximize instant attack damage. However sometimes my far lower dps dual wielding:

Torrid Fistwraps 1h
22-25 dmg   speed 2.15
10.70 dps
29 hp
Character sheet listed dmg (no buffs) = 123-126 MH  64-65 OH... total 187-191

...was hitting harder... sometimes quite regularly...

Am I not understanding some crucial fact with weapons? Specifically something with monks? Also note: all these comparisons were done on the same mobs of the same levels and dot #s (bugbears outside of Three River village). Then tested on other mobs (bear cubs) under the same conditions...

Now I dont have a parse or actual numbers because I'm too lazy to write them down or search this out extensively on my own, aside from browsing the forums. So if anyone could give me a good run down of what TYPE (not specific wep names) of weapons is best for what... especially as a dragon monk... I would really appreciate it. Also, whether certain stats on weapons outweigh a minor dps increase (i.e. 8 str >/= 6 dps? I wouldnt think so but it appears that way) and so on.

Thanks again in advance to whomever responds to this post in any fashion.

Yeah was kind of concerned about this actually as well.... my new Graystone Bladestaff of Purification (72 dps...) isn't really outdamaging my two 35-ish claws that much.  Thought I'd be seeing a big difference but it's kind of dissapointing.

Hmmm... was hopin I could get Chunli to post... or another very knowledgable dragon monk

It appears to be a general issue with monk weapons pretty much ignoring the weapon used and making their own run for the money on abilities - if this is a bug caused from our unarmed fists or some other unknown factor I'm not sure.

However, autoattack appears to work as intended, specials are a bit screwed at the moment. Would be good if it this problem (it affects all monks) would be forwarded as it's quite a bug and probably just affecting us/disciples (could be a reason why their specials do such ridicilously low damage when they are supposed to deal quite the bit more). ~

I am mostly in storm dragon too. I am going H2H all they way because I don't really care for the "OMG ROCKSZOR BIG NUMBER CRITS"-burst damage with 2h.

I think in groups it's way better to not have this burst as I think it could totally screw up aggro. I rather have decent constant crits for a nice overall dps without interfering with the tanks aggro. Burst damage aggro in general is super annoying in this game.

I just made sure I have both skills maxed for both blunt and piercing damage and switch according to mob type.

That's just me though..

damage is currently pretty much equal when using equally leveled fists compared to two-handers, even on crits, which it shouldn't (tm) be considering speed etc - which leads me believe that the damage bonus when calculating damage bonus from strength might not be working as intended on specials.
It doeshowever scale properly intraship when using a subpar weapon etc, so there's nothing inheretidly bugged.

Well im no street fighter but i'll give it a shot  :P

I did semi "study" on weapon damage kind of and basically what i discovered is this:
Monk abilities don't seem to register the strength bonus but auto attack does (basically the weapons will hit for about the same using specials)

When i went from a 40DPS bladestaff and 40ish DPS martial staff to a 71 DPS bladestaff, i honestly noticed no major difference in how hard my abilities hit.  I was fighting skeletons in graystone so i was hitting harder than normal, but whether i used the 40 DPS martial staff, the 40 DPS bladestaff, or the 71 DPS bladestaff i still hit the mobs with thousand fists for between 7k-10k consistently with any of the three weapons.  This CLEARLY means something isn't working as intended, because when you nearly double the damage of your weapon (from 40 to 71) and you add about 24 strength, you should see a HUGE difference in your damage output, but sadly i did not.  When i parsed h2h weapons compared to my 2hand weapons, the 2handers usually parsed higher.  I have a 40DPS handwrap and a 37DPS handwrap and it felt like i was doing more damage, i was throwing numbers out all over the place, using secrests etc, but the parse said 2handers were doing more.

Hope this helps.

Well I think we should give this info to Quinn, as it seems pretty important.  Doesn't seem like he checks the other areas besides Monk General (though I'm sure he does =P  just never see any posts over here).  It seems like STR and max damage for weps should affect abilities the most, as auto-attack in this game is pretty unimportant compared to abilities.  This seems like the biggest deal when fixing our DPS. 

There's a clear damage diffrence between a 40 dps 2hander and a 70 btw, was doing 1400 hits with the 40 and 1800 with the 70 (the mob had ToF, so diffrence is even more than that, I sold off the bad weapon after returning from trip though).
That said, there's definitly something awry in how damage for specials are made (and our finishers are still way to subpar).

So then, what's going to do more overall damage for us Dragon Monks:

Graystone Bladestaff of Purification
http://vg-en.curse-gaming.com/database/items/details/1391287/graystone-bladestaff-of-purification/


OR

Hand of the God King
http://vg-en.curse-gaming.com/database/items/details/1350038/hand-of-the-god-king/

and another similar DPS h2h weapon such as another Hand of the God King... I assume if I paired this with an Aluul's Claw it would heavily outweigh the bladestaff.

If I had 2 Hand of the God Kings for instance, would it be like 53 DPS and then half of that for offhand, so about 26.5 DPS, for a total of about 80 DPS all together?  I guess with faster speed there will be more autoattacks, but it just doesn't seem that autoattacks really matter much at all in this game.... 

In the  short time i have been playing i have noticed I very rarely have the Auto Attack even go off.  About the only time is does is if for some strange reason I am out of end and jin at the same time which is usualy pretty rare.

If you can get your delay under 2 you will auto attack between specials. Which is a nice little boost of DPS w/o doing anything.

~QTM

Thanks for posting that Quinn now I have a goal to shoot for.  Attack speed for 1.0 or lower.  That is usualy attained by gear correct?

It's usually a combination of gear + buffs. Dont expect to see this with Swords / Staves / Blade staff though. HTH weapons will get you under 2.

~QTM

My design plan is for H2H.  I am sure there are better staves/swords out there but for how I see my character its all H2H.  Also planning on going dragon style since I prefer playing the DPS role in parties.

Oh before I forget, I am trying to find out whats up with the damage relative to our weapons. As someone has stated some of it really doesnt make sense.

~QTM

No matter which monk style you choose you will be playing the dps role in parties. 

ok.  Hi guys. 

Strength bonuses are (IMO) screwed when applying damage bonuses to special attacks.  There's an extensive and detailed post breaking down the way it's applied on the silky venom defensive fighters forum (http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15788 ) but it appears taht the effect is vastly more pronounced for monks than it is for other fighters given the reliance on critical hits for total DPS.

What happens is that for specials that use weapon damage and multiplicitive modifiers to calculate damage (say when you crit) those damage numbers are being caluculated and THEN the str. bonus is being tagged onto the end. I think it makes MUCH more sense to add str. bonuses as a part of base weapon damage and thus avoid scaling problems with strength at higher levels.

HUH?

So what this means is that your autotattack damage will scale appropriately as str. and level increases because there are no mulitiplicative effects to diminsh str.  But as you gain more and more powerful special attacks and weapons your str. bonuses will become less and less a factor in overall DPS for critical hits. 

Those numbers don't add up quite that way for dualwield, me and a bard friend ran some tests (which I can't recall) when it was laid out which put most of his specials well above strength not being added but not quite as high as strenght being added for every % (for example: if damage range is 100, weapon adds 100, and a 400% ability, it would deal 500 damage according to this theory, 800 to the "believed" way, but in actuality landed around 650).
Monk skills are sorta awkward to test since the damage numbers presented on tooltip dosen't correspond veru well with reality. For example, a damage range of about 800 unbuffed, with a skill that deals +500 (flying kick) damage lands 1500 hits on a mob that's not fully AC debuffed. There's more deviations, but flying kick is the more obvious.