I only have one simply question...why is your avetar not wearing a green jump suit?

Hrm...if that's correct then it blows away much of the traditionally held theory about equipment having x number of points to spend and certain things burn up y amount of that total pool?  It would suggest that some bonuses are cheaper on certain pieces than others?  Which is very strange to say the least.(but might explain why the RI mitigation jewlrey seems to be a rediculously good deal?)  I'm going to be making another full set for a bard soon.  I'll cross compare some of the peices as I make them and verify.  If that's the case it would stand to reason that some gear peices are biased towards particular stats/bonuses.  Which would be VERY enlightening vs. the current crafting/equipment mindset to say the least.  It would make boots/shoulders a bargain, head a ripoff, and legs somewhere between.

Thanks for the info.  When I get time I'll see what I can verify etc.  I'm insanely busy atm but I will eventually get around to it.

OK guys...can both of you kill the exaggerations.

Just because a despription in game suggests something doesn't make it fact by a long shot.  Rakurr description still essentially listed them as getting intensity...which hasn't been in game since...I don't remember how long at this point.  In game description doesn't neccesarily = a trump card that defines exactly what the devs had intended.  I'm pretty sure any of us could find several glitches in texts or descriptions without trying terribly hard.  Any person's given viewpoint on how they feel things should be balanced is just that, a viewpoint.  Until the devs flat out say "this is what we intend to have" everything else is opinion...and even then it would be the devs opinion on how things should be.  Everyone would be entitled to disagree or agree with the dev's opinion.

Its like trying to argue what someone else's favorite color should be as a fact.  Utter waste of time.

And saying that dragon are USELESS as primary pullers in APW is blatently false.  We can and do use disciples as primary pullers sometimes just fine.  And PLENTY of guilds (ours included) use dragon monkies as primary pullers.  The simple point that it does in fact happen invalidates the statement that they are useless in that capacity.

I would strongly suggest for both of you to take a step back before you further degrade your own conversations.

That is an opinion not a fact.  There's a difference. 

It can be argued well that having offtank and alternate aggro manuvers IS utility.  It certainly is considered such for turgin shaman and clerics (esp protection affinity).  But like anything else this has different value to different people.  That said claiming harmony has "more utility" than drunken is a very subjective statement.

He didn't "twist" words any more than most people posting here, but wanted to clarify what he felt were exaggerations leading to ideas that will likley "overfix" dragon monks effectively trading the current imbalance with a new imbalance.

I agree there is a fair amount of bitter dragons that want balance "plus payback" for their comparative suffering.  I have yet to see anyone say "dragons are great as they are and need no adjustements at all" yet if someone posts anything short of a zealous rant going over the top on how much fixing dragon needs they seem to often be criticized as out of touch or biased towards another style etc.

That said I felt the comparison between dragon and drunk was a pretty large over simplification.  I would still rather see dragon get an AOE stun on 5min cooldown instead of invuln for purposes of maintaining diversity among styles, but I also feel I'm probably more concerned about keeping a level of uniqueness to the different styles than most people?

Realistically maintaining 1 SOLID (and more efficient than the core monk) AOE attack plus finisher extension and putting the rest of the abilities towards an elemental dragon master theme to provide alternate damage route (boosting secret damage, int and debuffing mobs to take more damage from elemental sources) would be my chose preference.

That and all styles could use a little fine tuning and definitely some stance adjustment...but there's already a thread going on that.

http://www.vanguardmonks.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,1026.0/

You are correct most AOE are spell based, that said mitigation adds to both melee and spell thus it works on ALL AOE.

You're thinking about physical absorbtion crystals (melee mit only)

Protection adds general mitigation = mit vs all.  Hence it works peachy on AOE.

Yeah I understand the dynamics of using protection crystals (hp/energy trade off for mit, hps also range further than 230) etc.  One of my alts is L50 leatherworker. 
I just didn't do the math to see how many points of hps gets converted to how much %mit.  Its likely to be a static value regardless of what piece you use.  I just didn't take the time to peg it exactly, might do that this weekend just for purposes of accuracy.  /shrug

That said I've often considered the merrit of making a few peices of spell absorbtion (head peice etc.) to use in conjunction with protection just for situations where you know in advance you'll take heavy spell damage.  (spell or melee only mitigation gives a fair amount more %mit per gear point than general mitigation does, and as you pointed out most AOE are spell based so it may be preferable to skip general mit in favor of spell mit in APW).

Of course...its damn annoying that its essentially impossible to get med crafted gear without some worthless stats on it other than pariah's for monk.  Which of course loads us up primarily on dex...there isn't a good way to get a large amount of str/int without also taking on vit/wis which does us precious little good.

Edit took a little time.  1point of general mit = roughly 2.7ish hps  And 1point of mit = roughly .027ish% mit.
So roughly 100hps converts to 1%mitigation.  So my initial guesstimate was pretty off.

So yeah takes A LOT of hps to break even. 

Still I like it. 


Incidentally crit bonusgive slightly less bang per hp spent trading at about 1 point per 3ish hps or roughly 111hps per 1%crit.


Specific mitigation (melee or spell) gives a much better return per hps sacced, but also (obviously are not quite as versitile).

Outside of APW I'd say melee mit is vastly more useful, but inside I woud lean towards spell mit being more useful.

It really is as simple as I laid it out.

To go by your approach however, consider that in scenario 2, your monk lost more %wise in the first hit but that's merely a matter of your choice of how many hps you feel the 8% mit would cost in gear.  The part your missing is that the remaining 32%hps on the monk with mit gear is more valuable than it would be on the monk with 33%hps left.  AKA he's also going to mitigate the next attack incoming as well.

In a nutshell the glitch in your math is that it goes with the view that only the first attack is mitigated.
Consider your setup with 10khp and 8%mit. 

Scenario 1, the monk with 10khps and no mitigation dies in two hits.  (10k -5k -5k = dead)
Scenario 2, the monk with 9300hps and 8% mitigation lives (10k -700 - 4600 -4600 = alive (barely))

So its CLEARLY more beneficial at that point to go with mit.

Additionally mit doesn't "seem" to cost 170hp per 2% I'll have to double check but I felt it tends to be more around 130-150ish?  Some peices of quested dropped jewlry seem to have mit at a good value, RI jewlrey has over 2% on a single piece.


But to put it into a more practical situation, most apw attacks are of two varieties.  Punishing attacks for very high damage, and sissy but frequent attacks.  With decent hps and/or mit you're going to typically be able to take about 2 big hits.  If your mitigating more of that it will be easier for a healer to keep you safe without peeling aggro.  AKA most healer's "big heal" with reasonable gear heals about 5kish.  If you're taking notably more than that it becomes very hard for them to keep up.  If you're taking less than that its much easier and sustainable.

If you are getting nailed with damage sheild hits, constant small aoe hits etc. more mitigated once again makes it more likely for a healer to keep you up and running easier.

But this is assuming you've got all the important stuff nailed out already.  Like having enough hps to make mit worth it.  That and, once your survival is "good enough" ... unless you tank a lot in groups you'd be better off going for more %damage/stats/crit etc.

Either way going for a lot of hps or a good amount of hps+mit will get the job done. 

From what I've seen I would have to agree.

Actually it depends on your hp pool.

If your hps are at about 7.5k or higher mitigation starts to do more for you than hps do per gear point invested.  (obviously for tanks dealing with strike through this isn't always the case).

So if you're getting raid buffed to 8k + its a safe bet that mitigation on your gear will do more for you than hps at that stage.  This is completely ignoring the point that mitigation provides better healing efficiency (makes it easier for healers to keep you topped off with AOE heals etc.)

To look at it simply. 
5% mitigation on 7500hps is about a "free" 375 extra hps.  Pretty close to the raw hps you'd sacrifice on gear to get it.
5% mitigation on 9000hps is about a "free" 450 extra hps.  Well more than you get from the gear pieces so its a hands down better deal.

I've got about an extra 10% migitagion coming from gear and raid buff to between 8k to 9k depending on who's present.  There is no way I'd get 800 to 900 raw hps from the gear I'm getting that mitigation from.


That said if you're raid buffed below 7500hps...you definitely need to focus on getting your hps up first.  You'll get better returns. 

And yeah simon, you're right on the money in retrospect.  I had never looked at the psi buffs closely.  Oh well.   
On the bright side thestran boosts damage to fire and ice...so that's always nice. 

You guys are starting to argue semantics here....

He's calling them attacks you're saying, no they are hits...who cares?

Either way they count as seperate hits/attacks.  I feel it would be a step in the right direction to count them in regardless of weather its "enough" or not to fix the problem for PVP.

I can see and understand what you are saying daefuin that if you are capping but still get off 3 attacks that = a dead target either way.

The other problem goes back to programing...since the secret is potentially resisted etc. independantly I suspect the programing wouldn't be so simple...

It may simply have to come down to no more than 40% damage dealt per 3seconds or something like that...which would probably feel very messed up but I can't think of a less complex solution programmingwise atm?

Most discs I feel prefer vit/str ideally in terms of core stats from gear.

And does anyone else think its a little silly for weapons notably weaker than APW weapons to drop from flying mount quests when by many reports the quests have parts that are more difficult than a large chunk of APW content?

Yeah unfortunately monk secret of fire and turgin(bear) shaman frenzy are two of the most broken things in PvP and both could be essentially fixed via the same mech.  Just count all the damage on a given attack as one attack, like fuj said. 

The big question (as always) is how much programming will that involve?

20end plus a message would make me very happy.

I'd take that over it causing a debuff considering that adding a debuff would "likely" raise back up the endurance cost and the few times where you need to use it you tend to have to spam it like crazy.  Lower endurance makes it more functional towards its intended purpose.

Adding a debuff will give it more global utility granted, but on the whole I'd rather keep it focused.  Just my feelings on it of course. 

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

I think you misread, I said spell mitigation.  AKA making a few peices of spell absorption to boost your mitigation from the AOE spell damage etc. in APW.