What fuj said.  Litterally the only 2h weapon dropping in apw for monks is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the greystone bladed staff.

I suppose also if you really focus on int then you simply want to hit more often, period.  So 2x jagged striking handwraps may pull ahead of GS Bstaff depending on build anyway.  Hard to say.  Either way though is a pretty solid setup. 

Ahhh let me clarify.  You can give a disciple the same weapon as a monk and the disciple is still going to do CONSIDERABLY less damage.

So in terms of tuning I'm talking about tuning the unarmed strength to that of x weapon type.  So even the unarmed weapon traning for the disc woudl be "on par with drunken monk" which is to say like equipping something better than a wind blade FOR A DISC.  Not comparing the actual final damage out put that would be parsed.  Does that make sense?

Otherwise disc would always use unarmed for everything period if it could boost their damage to monk levels and would be horridly unbalanced...that isn't the intention. 

Yeah its useful as a decon....

My raid felt it was pretty stupid for a mini in APW to drop a 2h weapon that is considerably worse than 2h weapons gotten outside of APW.  Especially so after a bunch of the weapons outside APW got major upgrades.

Wow...I completely missed that memo.

Thanks for the heads up. 

No  you are quite right.  Never thought to use it like that personally but it makes a lot of sense. 

Wha?

Where have I been?  What class specific weapons do you speak of?

The schematics are just a generic non specific part needed to process the APW armor mold.  And there is only the APW class specific armor that results from this.  

There is no non class specific crafted APW armor.

As for the APW weapon recipies they essentially require materials that are harvested and dropped in APW (MUST purchase apw harvesting tools at entrance to do so, skinning, mining, reaping.) etc.

To my knowledge there are no schematics required for items crafted from APW dropped recipies...that said I have not personally made anything from a dropped apw recipie so I'm about 95% sure.

Essentially what Meiyo said. 

Your thoughts echo my own. 

Going off of this theory hitting the 40% crit cap will be "good enough" if you have a ranger and rakurr shaman present.  If only one is present you will be a little shy of hitting the crit vs. level 53 cap.

Its as good of a place to start as any for making assumptions regardless.

Gatsuh there are two pages with skill lists on them.  One is vastly more out of date than the other which is for the most part accurate.  Head under skills and abilities forum and look for the sticky.  Fuj has that one pretty well ironed out.

Yeah prior to today's patch some trainers at different locations worked and others were broken.  Similar reports on other forums.  People had to hunt around and find trainers that weren't broken.

Good point Simon about level 53 scaling variations.  I'm not perfectly sure what the "cap vs. level 53" is for melee crits.  That would be a damn good question to see how much sense it makes (if any) to shoot past 40% crit for APW.  For example if you're at 40% naturall would the boost from buffs be enough?  (I'm guessing probably but its hard to say.)  Would be good to get a dev comment on that.  Maybe the rogues know?  (they tend to be a little parse obsessed)  

I would imagine the easiest way to verify how fighting a level 53 adjusts things is to simply use AA while the rest of the group/raid wails away for a bit.  See how things line up etc.  And yeah fuj is spot on, every melee class I've played has at least 1or2 skills with inflated crit chance, some say so in the tool tip, others you note from use.

Links to APW armor stats:
http://vanguard.xanadu-community.com/items.php?page=browse&id=384

Generic molds drop (only arm molds drop in entrance wing) a mold is usable by any class and will be processed to the correct peice for that class.

Once you have a mold you need a skematic, hoptonian ore, and rivits.  The quest to process your mold only opens up after you have it.  The amount of ore varies for different pieces.

Skematic is gotten by diplomacy, you can get them off broker easy enough.  Ore is a psuedo random drop in APW, rivets are made by smiths in apw.

Its a big deal in PvP.

For PvE its not strictly neccesary persay, but can be interesting from a tactical point of view.  I've used it to skip past a clustered group of mob's aggro radius to a single one that was past them.  Sometimes is handy for pulling in conjunction with FD, or if you are in a group and the game tells you that you have no line of sight etc.

In general its just kind of fun.

But perhaps I'm missing something critical?

Thanks, like I said though, probably won't happen.  The idea is nice and would probably flow fine with some people flipping to good weapons around level 25, unarmed 30, weapons 35, unarmed 40, etc.  Others would probably get by just with unarmed for the most part.  Others would feel it wasn't worth the time and go with weapons.  So long as the total damage at any given stage was in keeping with similar weapons avialable at that level.

But assuming this actually happened, the first result would be an uproar across the server about how the devs need to include special weapon quests for EVERY class.  (never mind the point that there essentially already are weapon quests at the 20s(ToLT), 25s(HL), 30s(CIS), 35s(Panth,Arena,CW,WoSM), 40s(GS), and 50s(RI/NN, FlyMntQuest, APW).

OK so APW doesn't technically count as a weapon quest, but it does take consistant and reasonable effort to net both 1h goodies there. 

The most realistic approach would be to have your trainer at level 10 give you a mini unarmed training quest oriented around the RaJin stronghold ("I have taught you the basics Matsu, now practice and perfect your new techniques by defeating x number of y mob unarmed within the RaJin Stronghold").

From there you would have to collect "spirit stone" from the standard weaponquest lines. 

Example at level 20 you would collect a spirit token instead of a weapon from Tomb of Lord Tsang.  You would bring it back to the ghost/spirit quest giver in the rundown inn near the rajin stronghold: "Ahh I see you have acomplished much since we last spoke.  I can unlock the secretes of further unarmed training for you with the spirit stone.....<accept> now that I have taught you the basics of these new techniques you must practice them by defeating x number of y mobs unarmed to unleash their power.

and so on in general for level 30 and 40 and 50.




As a side note this would probably be a shoe-in for disciples unarmed training as well following the same general procedure as above. 

Disciple
Level 20
Astral Palm of Eternity, your intense discipline allows the winds of laojin flow through your hands easily and strongly.
(further small raw boost to unarmed dps + small (15%ish)boost to healing effectiveness of BlessedWind, Endowment of Life,  Laojin flare, BloomingRidgeHand, Kiss of heaven, concordant finishers  + 5 str/vit +35hps)

Level 30
Claws of the Celestial Tiger, barbs of ra-jin rend your opponents soul leaving them weakened and vulnerable.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent proc to reduce opponents str/dex/con (stacks with other debuffs) 10% and increase crit vulnerabilty by 4% for 15s +10 str/vit +40hps)

Level 40
Open Hand of Laojin, laojin sheilds your hands warding blows and empowring life.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 5%dodge +further 5%boost to nonspell heals + 15 str/vit +45hps)

Level 50
Fist of the Void, Rajin swells forward in your strikes traumatizing your opponents and stealing their will.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc rajin's vengance (+1000dd + reduce opponent's evasion and accuracy 10% for 15s) + 20str/vit + 50hps)

Net total for disciple unarmed quest series:
Unarmed raw dps on par with drunken monk
Increased dodge 5%
Increased nonspell heals (endurance/jin based) 20%
Proc frequently reduced str/dex/con 10% for 15sec
Proc small chance 1000dd + 10%evasion/accuracy debuff for 15sec
+56str/vit
+200hps
Total dps a bit higher than best windblade available.

A disc would preferably go unarmed when doing heavy amounts of combat healing.  if less healing was required they would likely go with a higher dps weapon/weaponset.  if they had to standback and heal with spells equipping healing foci would be their best bet.  If they had to defend a windblade would provide considerably more defense.

Fun stuff to think about at anyrate. 

Everything fuj said plus in a raid there is a pretty solid chance a ranger will be present, their buff gives another 5% crit.  If a rakurr (wolf) shaman is present they give yet another stacking 5% crit buff.

In short (as fuj already said) with a few pieces of the right gear, you'll be capped pretty much 24/7 on raids.

This of course is one of the reasons many of us kinda just shake our heads at the harmonious "offensive" stance. 

That's better.

Just don't take off the training weights so that things stay civil. 

No...earlier disciples simply do not have the knuckles skill, period.  Recently rolled ones had it patched in but most veterans are screwed currently.

My personal thought is that wraps, knuckles, unarmed should be one.  Ulak/claws should be another...since one is essentially causing blunt trauma with your fist and the other is slashing and tearing with an extension.


In regards to dealing significant unarmed damage there would have to be serious balance for it.  It would never fly if monks/disc automatically got unarmed damage on par with T5 crafted weapons let alone APW quality weapons without significant effort.  And its not like the devs have all this spare time to write a monk only unarmed weapon quest line into the game at multiple stages (which is what it would have to be).  So then essentially they could program in to select for unarmed weapon boost as a reward for some of the primary weapon quest lines.  But how is that really any different than grabbing a 1h weapon in the first place?


Don't get me wrong, if the devs had the resources I think it would be fan-damn-tastic to include periodic questlines to upgrade unarmed damage, with one generic soloable one at level 10 (mystic fist = small raw boost to unarmed dps + crit bonus +3str/dex/int/con + 30hps) and then branched ones for the three combat styles with all layers stacking.  Which would also then make a style a touch more meaningful as you would have to retrain your special unarmed boost for your combat style.  Level 20 would still be barelysoloable but really better off with a duo, 30 would be barely accomplished with at least an excellent level 30 duo, 40 would require a solid level 40 group, and 50 a raid (probably involving taking down multiple existing raid targets).

Dragon
Level 20
Stone Hands of the Dragon, the skin of your hands and forearmes becomes like that of the stone dragon and able to punish your foes and turn aside blades.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + small (4%ish) parry bonus + 5 str/int +35hps)

Level 30
Elemental Fist of the Dragon, your hands flow with the thundering elemental power of dragons.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + boosted secret damage(10%ish) +10 str/int +40hps)

Level 40
Elemental Claws of the Dragon, your fingers pierce the core of your foes with elemental jin.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent chance to proc(stacking with other debuffs) lowered mitigation to elemental damage by 10% for 1min + 15 str/int +45hps)

Level 50
Mystic Arms of the Dragon, your arms carry the ancient rage and power of great dragons, their fury is terrible, their strength and knowledge knows no limit.
(further major raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc dragon's fury (1500dd + 10%acc/damage/crit boost for 10 seconds) + 20str/int + 50hps)

Net total for dragon unarmed quest series:
Highest unarmed raw dps
Increased parry 4%
Increased secret damage 10%ish
Proc frequently reduced mitigation vs elemental damage on opponent by 10% for 1min
Proc small chance 1500dd + 10%acc/dam/crit 15sec
+3dex/con +53str/int
+200hps
Total dps would just slightly exceed the strongest dps APW weapon set.



Harmonious
Level 20
Harmonious Arms of Water, your arms flow like water to strike pressure points and vitals of your opponent.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent proc chance for 10%(stacking with other debuffs) slow for 15s, +4str +3dex/int +35hps)

Level 30
Harmonious Arms of Wind, your arms move with the grace of violent wind overwhelming your opponent.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + 10%haste +4%parry +8str +6dex/int +40hps)

Level 40
Harmonious Arms of Eternity, your arms live with timeless vigor, wearing down your opponent relentlessly.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 6end/6seconds +10str/dex/int +45hps)

Level 50
Harmonious Arms of Jin, your arms are possessed by the two sides of jin moving with serentity while delivering disaster.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps +small chance to proc fury of jin (1000dd + stun for2sec + gain 3jin) +14str +13dex/int +50hps)

Net total for harmonious unarmed quest series:
Second highest raw unarmed damage (close to both drunken and dragon)
+6endurance regen per 6 seconds
+4%parry
+10% haste
+frequent chance to proc 10% slow for 15 seconds
+small chance to proc 1000dd + 2sec stun and gain 3jin
+39str +35dex/int +3con
+200hps
Total dps would be just a little below  the strongest dps APW weapon set.




Drunken
Level 20 
Blurring Hands of the Drunken Master, your strange hand movements confuse your opponents and allow further opportunities to you.
(further small raw boost to unarmed dps + small increase to dodge and parry (4%ish), +4str +3con/int +35hps)

Level 30
Unquenchable Grip of the Drunken Master, your thirst knows no bounds; ra-jin empowers your hands to drink life from your foes.
(further moderate raw boost to unarmed dps + frequent chance for life tap to proc = 1/3 your Constitution, +8str +6con/int +40hps )

Level 40
Right Hand of the Drunken Master, your mastery of style is perfect, your staggering movements mask flawless subtle hand techniques to avoid harm.
(further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + 4%parry/mitigation +10str/con/int +45hps)

Level 50
Left Hand of the Drunken Devil, your unpredicatable attacks allow unusually cruel blows to strike your unprepared opponents.
(Further heavy raw boost to unarmed dps + small chance to proc drunken fury (your next attack hits for double damage) +14str +13con/int +50hps)

Net total:
Third highest raw unarmed damage (very close to harmonious)
+4%mitigation/dodge
+8%parry
+frequent chance to proc lifetap = 1/3constitution
+small chance to proc doubledamage
+39str +35int/con +3dex
+200hps
Total dps would be a reasonable bit above the best windblade in the game.


In practice this would have to be looked over with a critical eye to have the final raw damage on each unarmed training quest package be reasonable.

Ideally the dragon monk would always use unarmed for max dps, but switch out for defense or for a slower hitting weapon where enemies with damage sheilds are involved.

The harmonious unarmed would be pretty balanced, but would gain more defense from a good sword and more damage from using choking grasp/senator enforcer etc.  But would loose the extra utility that the slow and stuns provide, so that would have to be a personal call.

The drunken monk would always go unarmed for defense (except with enemies with seriously nasty damage sheilds).  However for going max dps the APW 1h weapons etc. would be a better choice.


Anyway that's what I envision.  But I also don't believe for a second anything like that would ever happen.  The devs simply do not have the resources to carry that kind of thing out.