Devs are planning on adding ranged item slot pieces of gear for pure stat purposes to cover that exact issue, especially for the classes that have no ranged weapons at all.

But I think one of their glitches is treating bows as "2handed weapons" in terms of stats and throwing pouch as "1handed".  I agree it needs looking at.

They are also talking of making wands ranged equippable for casters...but that would also suffer from the "1hand stats" vs. "two hand" stats issue I feel. 


That or they're putting an absurd amount of weight into the hp regen like they do on regular crafted gear.  Nobody crafting uses that dust.  You can sac 100s of hps or other stats on crafted gear for hp regen and the result is beyond pathetically weak, much like how the end regen got the bajesus nerfed out of it...except that the hp regen was never a good deal to begin with.  I personally can't fathom what the devs are thinking when I see stuff like that.  (same with dust of armor and quite a few others where you get an utterly crappy result, who do they honestly think will look at that and say "well that was worth it!").

I think you took it differently than I intended Fuj.  I'm looking at it as the dragon monk creating the elemental weakness via melee attacks/thrown attacks etc. that add debuffs.  So no need to program in anything on a mob by mob basis.  Granted mobs that have predefined weaknesses will be able to be more heavily exploited by a dragon monk, and elemental casters/attackers (sorcer/ranger etc.) will also be able to capitolize on the elemental weaknesses/debuffs a dragon monk creates in groups/on raids thus the utility aspect, but damage oriented utility.

In addition to the dragon monk being able to buff his/her own elemental damage output one way or another.

In the long run I don't think it would be that tricky, but then again I've never had to program for this game and it would involve making new abilities instead of adjusting old ones.  But I don't really see a way around that.  If dragon is ditching AOE, then new abilities are going to have to come into play.  I'd prefer they were unique instead of copy cats of other abilities.  But you may be right in thinking that's hoping for too much.  Hard to say.



I like the idea of a dragon hps saccing damage boost, that's a neat concept and would hopefully capitolize on their balanced stance hp regen very well.



In regards to the adjustments to dragon defense.
The trade off was made with APW in mind more than anything else, 35% spell resistance vs. all is a pretty damn powerful thing in practice.  50% fire and ice is great, but also more than what you actually need in most scenarios.  35% spell mit vs. all is useful in a larger range of scenarios and still very very functional.  I would prefer 35% all instead of 50%cold/heat in a heartbeat.  Also goes with the theme of being an elemental master.

And 5% more slow is a drop in the hat in practice.  Considering how little of our damage comes from auto attack, especially if you have any kind of endurance regen running, the difference might be too small to show beyond regular error and variance even on good parses.

But 10% physcial mit is pretty darn good and fits with the theme of a stone dragon well.  Very resistant to the elements and more durrable to physical blows.  Perhaps could add a touch of parry but realistically 15% slow is a pretty trivial penalty (just like 15% melee haste is a pretty pathetic boost in practice).  You'd have to make it much worse or figure on a different additional pentalty to go much further imo. 


I guess in my mind the harmonious damage redux wouldn't change from level to level.  Just be a flat 20% from 15 on.  It keeps them from stepping on drunken toes for tanking as their reactive damage will never compare when going all out defense, and while they will have similar overall defense when in defensive stance, drunk will still be higher, more reliable and hold aggro much better.  I don't feel based on playing that 25% end redux cost will fully compensate for the damage reduction, nor do I think it should...it is afterall a defensive stance and harmonious are not supposed to be the tanking style.  But I certainly could be wrong about the endurance cost reduction being too high it wouldn't be the first time. 

Yeah I think you're right about parry for drunk defense > dodge.  I was thinking dodge initially in terms of higher damage output = better aggro holding, but taking less damage = requiring less heals = less healer aggro so that definitely works too.  Went back and adjusted the bonus.

Anyway its what I would want from stances in the different styles.  But I'm only one person. 

Sorry in advance for the longish responce, just trying to explain where I'm coming from in my thoughts.   

The main problem essentially comes down to "false advertising"

When people went dragon they were led to believe that they would be sacrificing a degree of utility and survivability for higher damage.  In practice they are the lowest damage (esp on raids) and have no notable utiltiy in practice beyond the basic core monk toolset (their aoe abilities don't add much to what monks get automatically) and lower survivability.  That and two of their three stances suffer horridly from diminishing returns comparatively at higher levels.

It sucks to be told one thing and get a sense of expectation and then be let down and effectively screwed over.  That tends to make people upset/bitter and want some kind of compensation in addition to balance.

The question now when taking a fresh look is, "What is the target dps?" and "what direction do you want the utility to go in?" and "what is a reasonable  trade off?".

On a personal level I would add "how do we do this and maintain uniqueness of flavor".  I couldn't stand how bland EQ2 was at launch in the name of balance.  A troll paladin played scarcely different from a halfling warrior...it was silly and redundant.  So I'm a pretty big opponent to any proposition that involves homogenizing and killng uniqueness...it just kills a lot of the fun for me.  (granted playing a gimped class/style isn't fun either).

Read your PM.

Dragon's and utility...

OK so assuming they ditch AOE completely.

Having them go the same path as harmonious with mitigation debuffs seems a bit redundant.

If I had a personal fun second choice for a direction to take them (aside from being the highest dps) I'd make them more elemental focused than the other two (just because the idea of going with the theme dragons of different elements etc. appeals to me and it would be markedly different from the other styles...yes I played too much D&D).

AKA dragon style would do net physical dps on par with harmonious and drunken but could boost their elemental damage well beyond the other two for a notable net higher total dps.  That combined with a strong %damage boosting stance which would further boost their elemental damage output would put them clearly ahead of other monks in damage when going offensive.

Their utility would come in the form of elemental oriented buffs/debuff and perhaps an int boost etc.  This would ditch the AOE theme completely, no monk would have any aoe attacks beyond the basics. 

Of course in order to fully take advantage of it they would have to spec more points into int at the potential expense of dex/con, but it would in theory be a worthwhile trade off, and people go dragon for dps in the first place so it would only make sense.

That said I STILL think the dragon monk should have an 8sec AOE stun on a 5min cooldown as they have nothing along the lines of the drunk/harmonious invulns on 5min cooldown.


Anyway something that sounded fun to me that I thought I'd throw in real quick.

kop.

The examples I cite are when someone gets too agressive aka goes offensive (vs. balanced or defensive) that's what I said.  And going offensive tends to result in getting hit harder.

(edited unnesseary physics explanation)

Why keep it mitigation?  Simple, its more risky.  I feel going more offensive to hit as hard as you can should be more risky.  The more heavy the advantages of any given stance the more that needs to be traded off for it.  Otherwise you would simply stay in one stance 99% of the time because the others would be trivialized.  

Each stance for dragon should be valid and useful, currently they are all lacking...and so are many of the dragon style abilities.

A balanced approach should leave all three stances as attractive options.  If you feel 10% mit penalty would keep you from ever using the offensive stance then its too much.  But you would also have to reduce the damage/crit bonus to be fair.  Part of this is severly scewed by the point that dragon style abilities in practice are not overly functional.  I feel it would be better to look at the stances assuming that things will get fixed and brought in line.  Otherwise it will simply need to get readjusted yet again once dragon style abilities are tuned appropriately.  AKA I worry that making your offensive stance too excessive will only serve as a bandaid and have your ability sets stay mediocre because people will look at your max damage output with an overpowered stance and crap abilities and say "its OK".

Much like harmonious offensive stance is poorly balanced.  The major endurance penalty makes it almost worthless in a large chunk of the game and overpowered when you are raid buffed with endurance coming out of your ears.  If the endurance is lowered to a more reasonable cost the crit bonus should as well. 

Offensive
Dragon          27% dmg 10% crit 1k proc   5%dodge 5%mitigation penalty
Harmonious   25% Crit 25 % endurance penalty
Drunken        20% dmg 5% crit  5%avoidance penalty 5%endurance penalty

Balanced
Dragon          5%hp regen/6sec  10%dmg
Harmonious   1jin/8sec
Drunken        10%ability haste + DS

Defensive
Dragon          10%melee mitigation,  35% spell mitigation 15%slow
Harmonious  8% dodge/parry,   -20%damage  +25%endurance cost reduction
Drunken       9%parry/mitigation and hate gain


The idea being that Balanced stances are particularly useful solo but provide utility regardless.  The defensive ones are functionally useful when getting hit (and partiularly tanking for drunk, and taking AOE damage for dragon) and the offensive stances are particularly good for burning through easy targets or going pure dps mode in groups/raid.


Pretend for arguments sake when looking at these that without their stances factored in dragon's dps is just slightly ahead of harmonious which is just slightly ahead of drunk.

With this setup, and slap hands fixed and tuned, drunk's dps would easily outpace the other's in defensive stances and hold aggro well and hit for full damage on frequent counters.  Dragon would pull further ahead in dps when in offensive.  And harmonious would typically be floating somewhere in the middle.  Granted ability fixes and tunes need to take place but assuming they are done right I feel this would do a good job balancing things without killing the flavor and uniqueness.

Yes with a solid raid who knows what they are doing all raid enounters are beatable... but that's not really the point.

The notion is that a raid force or group in group content that shouldn't be able to win with 3 dragon monks could via alternate means if they can virtually permastunlock AOE.

Having three monks on a raid is not unheard of at all.  If that became a usable mechanism nothing's stopping them from flipping to dragon.  Doesn't really matter how likely it is, point is that its abusable.


Consider in a normal group with ONE dragon monk who can stun any mobs the group is fighting potentially 6 out of 15 seconds.  Two makes it potentially 12 out of 15 seconds.  That would be a major glaring difference in the flow of a lot of fights.  The annoying part is it would be a really great and fair tool to a soloing dragon monk.  But it could get out of hand I feel way to easily.

I agree that for a style that is supposed to "specialize" in AOE they are far far too weak, especially for the cost.  In general dragon dps needs to be adjusted, we all know it.

You're argument of "well just make more mobs immune to stun" I disagree with for a lot of reasons, one of which that it would completely invalidate having an option to stun for any class so you'd essentially be trivializing  the ability in general much like how sneak is in APW etc.

~Edited to be more objective

I still feel it would end up being abusive in a bunch of scenarios.  I do think its a fun idea, but I doubt it would get implemented as the game stands currently.

Perhaps a potential variant would be to make dragon sweeps its tail an 8sec AOE stun on a 5min cooldown.  Still a very powerful ability but not able to perma stunlock...though I can imagine it would still have to be tuned differently for PVP.  As many classes can get killed easily within 8-10seconds or less.

~edited to come off as less of a prick. 

Well in my experience being recklessly offensive does in fact lead to getting hit harder.  Even in a completely hard combatitive style or boxing for that matter.  Focusing too much on offense means you aren't trying to roll with attacks and flex target spots with the right timing to shrug off and mitigate punishment.  Taking a kick to the gut without swaying and/or tensing at the right time is a night and day difference.  Yeah you still got hit but its a world of difference.  Overextending yourself and being too aggressive causes stuff like that.  One of my blackbelt kungfu friends in a tourney accidently gave an opponent a crunched nose because she was overly agressive and leaned into an attack.  Had she been more cautious it would have still connected but only very lightly, as was intended.

I once saw videos of a martial arts master taking blows to the neck and shrugging them off, the slowed down camera showed the neck muscles tensing perfectly in harmony with the incoming blows and absorbing the shock almost completely.

So yeah, it actually makes a lot of sense.  There's a damn big difference between a blade going in an 1/8th of an inch verses a half inch because you're fighting more recklessly.  Even though you still got succesfully cut both times.


I really like the idea of reducing the cooldown on the AE finishers and adding a 2sec stun component...however I'm not sure the devs would go for it, primarily because it would essentially allow 3 dragon monks to nearly permenantly chain stun all mobs in an AOE raidus, heck even 4 normal monks would be able to.

Its a damn fun concept but it could get out of hand, not sure of the best way to moderate that.


I also like the toggled level 30 passive buffs.

Yeah their insanely priced on my server as well.  But in just one hour of harvesting on test some guildies had gotten a couple of the more expensive crystals including pain so I suspect strongly the prices will drop on most of them by quite a good margin.  Still test server and live are not always the same thing...esp in terms of economy. 

If you take that line of adjusting things there would virtually never be cause for a dragon monk to use their defensive stance.  The idea behind stances is to allow flexability of options.  So if you make dragon have half the defense of harmonious it must give something else dragon oriented in addition to be balanced and useful.


I think the point of AOE is to be the "utility" aspect of dragon monks.  The problem is that in its current implementation its simply not that functional.  Blaming a dragon monk's poor single target dps on their aoe abilities is probably not the right route.  Instead focus on what needs to be done to give dragon a true edge.  Ideally dragon should be the highest dps, weakest defensively with AOE damage for utility.  Giving up that utility is highly unlikely to further increase your single target dps.

After GU4 decon options will be heavily nerfed to reduce camping of nameds for decons.  However crystals will come from harvesting, from what I've talked with guildies on test right now they will be much more plentiful in general.

That is my primary concern of the monk class styles.

-My personal thoughts on the drunken defensive stance, remove the +damage sheild, replace it with +hate gain.  Make it +9%dodge/mitigation.  This makes drunken a FAR FAR more viable tank/offtank...which I should think would be the purpose of their most defensive stance.  

MAYBE consider boosting to +10%dodge/mitigation.  But I'd say try it with the first adjsustment and see if it is honestly needed to further define and balance.

-Make the medium drunken stance simply be 10% refresh timer + small DS.  (a good choice for soloing and generalist/utility)

-Make the offensive stance +22%damage +5%endcost redux -5mitigation%

-staggering fist if used right takes advantage of an exploit chain and is a potential interrupt.  Maybe lowering it as far as 15-17?  10 is a bit excessive.

-You are proposing 3 changes to slap hands in addition to boosting raw aggro gaining ability of your defensive stance...sounds a bit overboard to me.  You want it to be cheaper, do more damage AND boost more hate.  I would humbly suggest to either:

(my preference)Add a flat amount of hate generation, make the damage about 5% less, and boost its durration out to 2min.  Making it more functional for holding aggro and less micromanagement, plus it helps justify the cost.  This would also help be useful if you are trying to hold aggro but don't neccesarrily need max defense from defensive stance.

or

Boost the damage about 25-35%ish and make it reliable/consistant and add a small hate component but keep the cost/durration the same.  (useful as a meaning ful damage/aggo gaining burst at the start of fights and periodically in the middle etc.)

-Magnificent drunken swagger/find the center...I do not understand the need to make it cost 10end instead of 2jin, to me its a somewhat trivial difference either way.  In regards to boosting swagger to match center...if a drunk monk is using their 10%ability haste their swagger comes back up 30seconds earlier allowing them to use it more often.  Still not a perfect match up and would need their durration bumped to about 18seconds from 15 to match near perfectly.  So that might be more reasonable.  Tanking requires holding aggro, and a drunk will do that better, period.  Harmonious having a slightly longer invuln means there is more time for someone to pull aggro off them, making them "in theory" better pullers, though I feel you are splitting hairs at this point and in reality 15seconds is plenty for most pulls but the dunk has the advantage of getting it to pop quicker along with reed in the wind and other defensive abilities etc.

-Fully agree with lowering the endurance penalty on tiger, its a bit silly high, esp at lower levels.

-Balanced harmony stance could use a small boost to its jin regen in general.  1/10sec is a bit low.  Doesn't need much drastic and I'm not sure if it would need to scale much with level if it was boosted to about 1/8sec from the start...my guess is most people will be pretty happy with that.

-I would also push to make the harmony finisher extension to the kick line add 2 jin instead of one.  Its piss weak as far as finisher extentions go but would give it some value and utility.  

-Sun dragon corona add INT and a small fire damage component proc (triggered by melee OR spells) beyond the damage sheild, stackable with secret of fire.

-Dragon offensive stance 30%dam 10%crit 1kproc seems about right for dragon.  That's going to be a rather large boost in practice as it is.  Loading up crit to 15% and 30%dam is a bit overboard to me.  I would stick with mit penalty.

Those are my thoughts anyway.  Excessively homoginizing the stances leaves an ill taste in my mouth.


I do suspect however if all these changes make it through, dragon and drunk with both out dps harmonious (possibly significantly)...which would cause most people to ditch it.  But its A LOT of changes and would have to be tested to make any real conclusions either way.


imo balanced would be:
Dragon = highest DPS (particularly aoe) but lowest defense util.
Harmonious = DPS slightly higher than drunk (seems to be pretty close to that now), utility in debuffing mobs.
Drunk = DPS slightly lower than harmonious, slightly better personal defense, utility in holding aggro.

Not sure things will end up quite like that if things went in the way you propose fujitsu.  But like I said its a lot of changes.

Hrm...

I would expect power bladed staff of intensity to be the best choice for a monk.
http://vg.curse.com/database/items/details/1144881/

The problem with powerbladed staff of devestation is that the focusing of power competes with the resonating devestation effects and essentially nerfs the bejesus out of the focusing power raw damage % boost.

By using the intensity proc for resonating instead you get the full effect of the focusing crystals of power which gives a very high raw damage boost to both procs and melee (particularly good for those that persue reasonable amounts of int in their build).  The intensity proc is pretty strong as well.


If you are raiding APW of course there are some very nice 1h weapons that a jagged handwrap of striking will complement beutifully.  Though you might want to wait a bit until after GU4 for that since currently focusing crystals of pain (adds jagged/crit% boost) and resonating crystals of striking (boosts raw damage stats on weapon plus procs striking) are both DAMN expensive.

After GU4 most crystals in general "should" be a little easier to come by.



A weird combo that I've considered is using a high int build and using the appropriate specialized upgraded spell damage focus in my offhand...consider that you still essentially do "weaponless" offhand damage if you have a focus equipped, so its like having an offhand weapon equipped that does your basic barehand damage but boosts your secret of choice (fire/etc.)

I've been thinking with a high enough int build, its possible that a specified spell damage focus will provide more net damage boost than a standard offhand weapon.  This is TOTAL speculation, I haven't messed around with this or parsed a damn thing.  I figure your basic offhand (unless you have access to something VERY powerful is about 25% better than your "weaponless" offhand, but that is cut in half since its offhand.  So an upgraded specified sdfocus would boost secrets of that type by about 15% and that boost is not reduced by being held in offhand.  I can also be made to grant 150hps or 19int or a few other options.

Considering how dirt cheap the mats are to make a flawless spelldamage focus it might not be a silly way to start out until someone gets a hold of two very solid 1h weapons or an ideal 2hander.  Ignoring that...it just seems like a fun concept. 

The basic upgraded specified type is like this:
http://vg.curse.com/database/items/details/1269575/

So this example would only work with secret of fire, you would need other specified types for other secrets...but that's easy enough to build in a marco to just switch your sdfocus when you switch to a diff secret type.

Totally off the typical beaten path I know but something I was thinking about.