I always thought that making counter-attacks an important aspect of the drunken monk would help them in  solo, group, and raid scenarios.

I think Drunken monks should have a force-taunt that lasts for 2 hits, and is on a seperate immunity timer from the generalized one. In a raid, being able to take a hit or 2 off of the tank or person who drew hate would be very useful if the Drunken Monk had the survivability to last through 2 hits.

Adding in a counter attack that does damage based on the damage of the foes attack would also allow this to be a good damage dealing tool in a raiding environment, so not only would they be potentially saving the tank, they would be gaining a damage opportunity as well.

By also improving the Drunken's  hate-generation abilities that help the tank keep hate, the Drunken would be inadvertently be improving the raid's capacity to deal dps and heal w/ less chance of pulling hate, which would be their way of "adding dps," while Dragons take the direct, personal dps approach, and while Harmonious monks take the debuffing approach.

So, though I personally dont play a level 50 monk, I think taking the drunken monks in the "hate transfering, temporary tanking, counter-attacking" direction would be a solid plan.

ah ok i didnt know fists of c.  worked like that!

Yea, a straight up 10% damage boost Secret would be good then, perhpas with 1 jin / 10 seconds as well to make it really unique?

Actually, it would be nice if we had it as a temporary damage booster.

Transcendance:
20 seconds of +50% more damage, with a heavy jin cost or reuse timer to keep it in check, like either 10 Jin cost or a 3 minute reuse and 3 jin?

I dont have a high level monk so i cant really say what a "fair" cost would be on a strong ability like this.

I would remove the spiritual damage from transcendance and just have it as a flat +10% damage option for when mobs are very resistant to spell damage.

For dragons, to take the place of the now missing Spiritual damage secret, a secret i think many here will enjoy:

Secret of Scarring: Mild spiritual based damage, around half of fire, that steals life with each strike, and has a 10% chance to proc a "soul sip" effect that returns health equal to 75% of the attack that triggered it.

This would be a perfect aid for dragon monks who have the hardest issue soloing currently, and it would be ideal for raiding if aoes are constant, can switch to this if needed.

Wow that was increadibly immature; you are making assumptions left and right.

1.) My monk is not my main, so i have no personal bias towards the raiding monk.

2.) Dragon monks do quite well in any group content i've seen, and generate large amounts of damage, especially with my disciple's 1 jin / 4 seconds buff, and they seem to benefit the most dps wise from reciving that buff. In a raid setting, they are currently worthless. Not as effective at pulling and surviving the pull, they offer almost no debuffs short of a mitigation decreaser, and their damage is not much higher, if higher at all, than the other monks, once a harmonious gets end regen to compensate and is criting constantly with a 2 hander, THEN add in the fact that soon haste will "be important" and their haste-stealing buff is going to further increase their dps, and since two handers swing slower, they will see the most noticable boost from haste.... and it compounds further and further.

This isnt the "only" change needed, but it should be one of the dragon's special things they bring to the table, the ability to exploit a foes elemental weakness.

3.) Im talking about implementing a design that is good for the long haul, and while content wont be "fixed" for a while, this design WOULD be ideal for a "damage advantage" for the class if the content did support this in more areas; how would it not?



Also consider that a monk can switch styles as they please, so if you do infact find that a drunken monk can solo some 4 or 5 dot some where that decimates your Dragon, you are free to swtich at any time you choose, which cannot be said for the shaman or necromancer classes, until future patches they are stuck with their choice.


But yes, group content is by and large so behind the class changes that it is not difficult in a full set of green armor if you know how to play your class and work with your team.

As a disciple, im fully capable of tanking several level 50 content areas, rather well in fact. The fact that A N Y class can solo, with little risk, area bosses, that shows the content is fubar.

A short 10 second Silence, a 30 second 50% snare, a ranged attack, Fear immunity, Endurance drain, or a self heal would make any Named that is currently soloable. I know as a healer that the disciple is the only one who could possibly survive a silence and energy drain, but if you compounded that with an endurance drain, i would be screwed. Also, no mob that is a BOSS should be hitting me weak enough that, in my armor, im able to keep myself alive with only my really gimp melee healing.




That, my friend, is why solo/group "balancing" doesnt mean SNARF at the moment, because the content is already painfully easy for even a novice gamer to tackle. Eq2 is often Gibed about having easy foes, but they are brutal in comparison to how fast mobs drop in NN, TOT, and such.

As far as the rest of the game is concerned, NOTHING should be considered when it comes to group or solo content, considering they are eventually going to be reassessing combat some point in the future.

Any real balancing concerns need to come in the form of raiding as it pertains to APW, because they are going to resign combat on the whole to have more strategic value, based off of things accomplished in APW.

Here are the stats on solar flare from one fight against a Guardian A23, this is a heat based nuke of the druid class:

Solar Flare VI    15 casts   0 misses   1957 max hit   185 min hit   767.27 avg hit   

Now compare this to the same person in same gear against a Frostguard:

Solar Flare VI   10   0 misses   2504 max hit   190 min hit   1032.5 avg hit



After looking at the legitiment fights, with out switching groups during this time, the druid is striking harder with a fire based damage spell on a "cold" mob, with a known weakness to Fire spells, this is consistant on all parses with any fire damage, and while its not double damage, i could easily see it being a +50% damage or something of the sort.

Elemental damage does deal increased damage on specific mobs in APW, just as the "same" damage type heals a mob.

I've heard this from several people, and ill check my logs to verify if his are landing roughly twice as hard, or healing.

Use Feet of the Fire Dragon on a Flamewarden and see if it is healing it, i dont know if spells and elemental based melee damage are registered the same.

I know I've brought up the idea before, but i would like to bring a new topic into the discussion of why, lore wise at least, my idea seems well grounded:

I think that Dragon monks, and only dragon monks, should get the ability to " turn all melee damage into specific elemental melee damage." This would not alter our secrets, but would change all our melee attacks and dots (including feet of the fire dragon) to which ever element the dragon monk chooses.

Here is my reasoning:

One of the Dragon styles basic attacks is called Six Dragons Strike. That implies that their is a "type" of dragon for every element, we know their is a Sun Dragon, a Storm Dragon, a Cloud Dragon, a Stone Dragon, and a Spirit Dragon, based on abilities and stances, such as Cloud Dragon's ruse, and Sun Dragon's Corona, and Strom and Stone dragon stances, as well as Aspect of the Spirit dragon.

The developers could expand the lore by adding "Claws of the ----- Dragon," that would simply change the melee damage of the monk to that dragon's particular element.

Claws of the Sun Dragon = Fire

"                  Cloud Dragon = Mental (think of an astral projection dragon, "cloud" would be a good fit)

"                 Storm Dragon = Arcane

"                 Stone Dragon = Physical

"                   Spirit Dragon = Spiritual

"                   Frost Dragon = Cold (this is the only one that currently does not have a named mentioned in any ofour abilities, so what ever "cold" related name would suffice)


It would allow Dragon monk's to gain a slight offensive edge over the other two styles by adapting their damage type to match their foe's weakness.


Granted, it wouldnt be a huge advantage, but having some mobs in which all your melee attacks dealt double damage, would be very nice.

Perhaps the developers would need to limit it to only +50% damage?

I personally think that the "melee damage changed to elemental melee damage" should be reserved for the Dragon monk, as it makes the most sence.

Think of it like this:

One of their basic attacks, Six Dragons Strike. That implies that their is a "type" of dragon for every element, we know their is a Sun Dragon, a Storm Dragon, a Cloud Dragon, a Stone Dragon, and a Spirit Dragon.

The developers could expand the lore by adding "Claws of the ----- Dragon" that would simply change the melee damage of the monk to that dragon's particular element.

Claws of the Sun Dragon = Fire

"                  Cloud Dragon = Mental (astral dragon)

"                 Storm Dragon = Arcane

"                 Stone Dragon = Physical

"                   Spirit Dragon = Spiritual

"                   Frost Dragon = Cold (this is the only one that currently does not have a named mentioned in any ofour abilities, so what ever "cold" related name would suffice)


It would allow Dragon monk's to gain a slight offensive edge over the other two styles by adapting their damage type to match their foe's weakness.

I broke down and made a ... bah the desert race that starts near khal i can never remeber their name, morbedi?

Well anyway, i made one of "those" monks, so that i could do a 5str 5int 4dex build dragon monk to see how much this would effect my secret's damage.

For fun i made 5 +health Intell jewlery, and his intell at 17 is almost 100, and his str is 108, dex in the 80's i think, and he is a dps beast using crapy starter gear, no twinking beyond the Uncommon crafted jewlery.

You know how the secrets list a much higher damage on the trainer, at the "base" damage? Im almost to that damage now, as it listed 98 or so and im now up to 96 i think, ill log in and check later, but it really does make a noticable increase considering its added damage to every single hit.

Actually the disciple's Tiger stance only adds 5% crit currently, but i hope it gets fixed to 10%.

The stance says 10%, but the effect on the buff bar says 5%, and i think the buff bar is more accurate at the moment, but im hoping it is supposed to be 10%, because for most cases Dragon > Tiger (even though im one of 'those wierd disciples' who almost never leaves Tiger and who deals dps hehe)

6 identacle spells save for the resistances and name varients isnt asking for too much if you look at the Sanctuary spells for sorcerers, they get one for each resists so they have a full selection.

Most mobs it should be pretty obvious which would be the better choice, and also it could be considered part of the challenge to figure out your foes weaknesses

Your way could be acceptable as well, but it wouldnt be required to lump them all together.

I personally would like the higher customization over the generalization, but thats just me i guess hehe, i guess that would be more useful for PVP as well, picking a type like mental which would be good vs a Sorcerer for instance.

Hmm i would say throw out this mitigation penalty in there offensive stance, or severly reduce it.

I personally thing an evasion penalty if anything would be much more appropriate.


Well, i do know that some mobs in APW take additional damage if you hit them with the opposing element, aka fire mobs take more cold damage but are healed with fire damage, and vice versa.

If it worked out that:
Heat = Cold
Mental = Spiritual
Physical = Arcane

That would be nice, and if say this adds a raw +25% damage to all attacks of the opposing element, then this would be REALLY nice

Basically the idea i used for how a Dragon monk would be able to change his "element" was using Claws of the --- Dragon.

These would be seperate from any other abilities we have, and would be a toggled effect.

Only one "Claw" buff at a time.

Claw buffs could change your base damage resistance to the Claw's type, and apply a 20% chance to proc damage based on this resistance type, a rather large chunk of extra damage, that would have a high base value that is modified by intell.

That gives Dragon monks the benefit of gaining from additional intellegence, the base values would already be "good" even at low int levels, but they would be really nice procs once you get some good intell buffs, or if you spec intel instead of Con if you want to go 100% dps and be more frail.

They could even introduce damage resistance while using these Claws, but this would be to the opposing resist, because if you are fighting a cold based mob and want additional fire damage, you will want to be shielded from cold attacks.

So, just to give an example of what the buff might look like:

Claws of the Sun Dragon:

The spirit of the Sun Dragon guides your fists.

Converts all damage to Fire base, and applies a 33% chance to deal 750 base heat damage (intell mod), and reduces incoming Cold damage by 20%.


Remove the proc from our offensive stance, replace it with a +15% accuracy effect, so we arent accedentally procing it on foes that do something wierd with arcane damage. The damage lost here should be more than made up with our Claw buffs. Change the -mitigation to drop evasion to zero or something, meaning we are completely focused on offense rather than avoiding blows.



This gives the dragon some additional damage, while adding a lot of flexability based on foe's resistances, and gives them an option to further enhance their dps via Intell.

Perhpas a better increase in AOE damage along with these changes would improve the usefulness of the dragon monk? Thoughts?

Thanks

One thing i can easily see happening is that a rogue will deal more "constant" damage than us if he focused on utalizing his dots.

Also, a rogue will likely deal more "burst" damage in a short fight compared to a ranger if he uses all his longer reuse skills.

This is how it will likely work once we get the final numbers for druids and necros:


It has been said that druids will be the second best burst damage dealers in the game, second only to sorcerers.

Also in the same post, it was said that necromancers would be the second best sustained damage class in the game, second only to sorcerers.

Since both classes get decient buffs and debuffs, this balances out at around the same total damage contributed for them being present, and if you have all 4 casters in a group, they would deal more total damage and be more all around effective than say 4 sorcerers.




It is this reason that i think we will see a similar trend with the Monk class in the Fighter archetype, as it really is a good way to balance things out.

Though, if Rogues are going to be the "best" at burst and sustained damage, they should probably be very ineffective at modifying another person's hate or at debuffing a foe, though currently i think they only have two abilities that increase the chance of allies getting a crit on the foe, so i dont their enhancing is all that great even with their current changes.

One thing that does concern me is their "Trick attack." If they can spam this on the tank, then that kills the "usefulness" that the Drunken monk would have gained, and this would need to be addressed.

Frankly, if a class is best at sustained and burn damage, it doesnt NEED any other offensive assets, as highest raw damage is the rogues comodety as far as offense is concerned. Leave hate management as an asset that a drunken monk could be extremely valued for   

Again, need to see how the Caster's get aranged probably to see how that pans out, then we can see about trying to achieve a similar balance with the fighters, so that no matter what, a raid would prefer to have one of each rather than just taking multiples and not inviting a class.