WAR Beta signup page, closed beta signups are finally here. Can't wait to smash some Order face. 

I hated Phinny with a passion. 31 kills before dropping the piece for my Wizzy epic. It seemed like every other kill netted the Bard piece though.../grumble

Actually I am glad I did not renew my account. I hate how SoE destroys good games, and even though VG needs  LOT of help (and probably about a year for the general subscriber's computer to be on par with the game's requirements) This thread makes me wish I never even purchased the game.

When did you start playing EQ?

When the game was released, it was 10 times harder than this game ever was.There were no double xp weekends. No little quest dots. When you died you went back to bind, not the closest altar. They did not change xp rates to suit the casual player who complained it was too hard to level. Do you think Vanguard will ever have a Veeshan's Peak in its original form? Vanguard has a lot of potential, but if Brad and Co. continue to drop the ball  this game is going to be nothing more than a bad memory. Lord of the Rings Online comes out on the 24th, Age of Conan comes out around Oct./Nov., and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is scheduled for Winter 2007/2008. Say goodbye to subscriptions if they do not make drastic changes. Hell, I have already started with LotRO, basically enjoying the $10 a month game until I get into AoC/WAR Betas.

Combination of things. Basically not happy with Vanguard in general. I really wanted to game to remind me of EQ I guess. The game did not deliver. Performance issues, game becoming too soft (increased xp rates, lowering requirements for stuff), PvP getting next to no attention, and lack of anyone of the Devs (in my mind at least) playing a Monk on the live servers. Yeah I know the game got released way too early, but I think Brad shot for too distant of a star when he did the game. While Quinn did a great job, the person he talks to did not.

So I decided to go with LotRO, which is extremely polished, and is very fun at the moment. I have had no performance issues, there is actual raid content planned, and I can either play for an hour and leave, or play for the entire day and enjoy myself. Something I could no longer do with Vanguard. Sure it is a rather simple game, but it is just a hold-me-over until I get into Conan and Warhammer Betas. Warhammer is probably where I will end up as I really enjoy the competitiveness of PvP, and Mythic did a great job in that aspect with DAoC.

Anyway, as I said, I really do hope they get a clue and fix Monks, along with the rest of the game. But I fear that will not be until AoC is released, and the real Warhammer Beta starts. Hell, there is even a Warhammer 40k MMO in the works, so I may end up looking at that. Anyway, the Monk community is a great one, I just wish the game would have worked out for me.

Eh, someone else can maintain the list. Uninstalled VG today, and do not plan on renewing. Maybe I will see some of you all in Age of Conan or Warhammer Online. Best of luck, and I hope they fix the class in addition to the game.

Dragon Sweeps Its Tail does not have an energy cost. Logged in to day to run a few tests and get a new series of skill screenshots before my subscription runs out, but I decided to wait until at least the Secrets work. Couple of things I did mess with:

• Secrets borked, minus Celerity. How do you add an energy cost to the class that has no energy?
• Palm Explodes the Heart chain is not worthy of a 5 minute refresh. damage goes around  700/800/3500.
• Dragon Rakes Its Claw is 40 END now, but does melee + 200something, so it is OK. Still do not see the logic in how the skill is designed. In every other MMO, a cone attack always does more damage than a true AE if they are of the same level and power cost.
• Dragon Breath is around 1k damage now. Better than before, but I don't know about a 10 minute timer.
• Did not check the damage of the AE finishers in actual combat, but the tooltips did not make me go "WOW nice increase".
• Ignore Pain does 1373 heal. About  a 25% heal, still 5 minute timer.
• Stone Dragon icons finally match up.
• Dragon Stance icon still stays when you switch out of it.

When Secrets get fixed I will run a series of tests to give a better analysis, and post a the revised screenies of a Dragon Monk's skills at 50.

Check how many of our skills use melee + xxx damage. Compare that with how many use xxx% weapon +xxx damage. When you upgrade weapons, but do not have skills that take into account actual weapon damage (your melee damage is a combination of a few things), your damage on skills will not seem to increase that much. At least that is how I understand it.

Filtered out the list to fit Dragon:

======================================================

- Monk Lowered the mitigation penalty of the Storm Dragon Stances
Not bad, but with how low our mitigation is in general, I do not feel it was needed.
- Monk Lowered the melee slow of the Stone Dragon Stances
Nice change
- Monk The refresh timer on Swaying Step has been removed.
Nice change
- Monk Reed in the Wind has had the intended 2 minute a refresh timer added to it.
Kind of a long refresh IMO
- Monk Stone Dragon Stance now adds the appropriate cold and fire rune (30, 40, 50%).
Please ensure the rune is applied to DoT effects as well. Also is it going to be 50% Rune/10% slow I take it (at 50) ?

I have been working with Talisker our issues list. The following should hit test soon. (On Deck)

Monk – All steps in the Exploding Heart Technique have been increased in power significantly.
Hopefully this "significant" is not of the same scale that "significant" was for Iron Hands not too long ago
Monk – Added a 5 minute refresh timer to all steps of the Exploding Heart Technique
If the damage is great, then this is OK, if not may want to shoot for something less.
Monk – All finishing attacks that were previously 2 minutes are now 1 minute.
Finally
Monk – Reduced the Refresh timer on Secret of Celerity to 15 minutes.
Happy camper
Monk – Increased the power of Ignore Pain, with the most power being gained at the final version.
Nice change, hopefully it is NOT affected by Vitality as well.
Monk – Iron Hand now lasts for 5 minutes and costs 5 Jin to activate.
Amen. Any word on finding the code that sometimes makes Iron Hand cause you to do less damage?
Monk – Secret of Flame now lasts for 40 seconds, has a 90s refresh timer and has an increased chance to apply the DoT portion. The damage is clearly marked in the description.
Monk – Secret of Ice now lasts for 40 seconds, has a 90s refresh timer and has an increased chance to apply the stun portion. The damage is clearly marked in the description.
cool x 2, anything about Transcendence?
Monk – The damage of Dragon’s Breath has been greatly increased.
10 minute timer changing, or is the damage THAT great?
Monk - Increased the damage of Divine Tsunami and Divine Avalanche to make a better, more gradual scale.
Hopefully this will be somewhere near the damage of the Ranger's AE finisher, especially since Tsunami is Dragon only, one would think it would get a hefty damage value.
Monk – Increased the damage and the endurance cost of Dragon Rakes its Claw
Kind of confusing. Hopefully the damage is spectacular since the END cost is going up. May want to remind Talisker that this is a frontal cone and it already costs 34 END. It needs to greatly outperform Whirling Storm, which is in itself a subpar attack for the 34 END cost.
Monk – Trapping Mantis Claw and Cloud Dragon’s Ruse have been lowered in refresh time to 2 minutes.
Not too bad, how about Dragon's Rage? still on the 5 minute timer, or being changed to 2 minutes? Also what about the damage of the attacks?

Also

Clearing up the FD issue as more investigation was done

Against 1, 2, and 3 bad guys you have a 90% chance to succeed FD (modded vs. opponent level)
4 or more bad guys you success drops under 50% (bad *meh*)
In cases where you have more than 3 mobs and that one hangs out is actually a FD failure but the 1st 3 succeed. (bug)
Why not ask him about making each mob on you take away a certain % chance of success rather than going from 90%-50% with the addition of 1 mob?

Thanks much Tali for all of the work over the past week on us!!!

Keep up the feedback

~QTM

edited as to keep confusion to a minimum regarding FD.

======================================================

Looks like some good stuff inc, at least concerning Dragon Style. Still a few cloudy areas, but all in all not bad.

you need to be:

level 26 to get RItW 1
level 36 to get RItW 2
?? level 46 to get RItW 3 ??

Glad they finally fixed our stances, as they are basically the foundation to work with. Now they need to fix the rest of our class.

The thing is, as I stated: fix our AEs and we do not need to change the stances. Regen for Dragon is fine, it is actually decent for down time when soloing or FD training through places. Dragon is also fine now, sans a few stacking issues with Iron Hands and the fact that nothing procs on multiple targets in an AE attack. Our AEs are utter garbage (in addition to the other stuff I mention in my thread about Dragon Issues). Giving us a stance to boost the garbage will only give us slightly better garbage. It is like an analogy I used when I was in the Army:

Spit shine a turd as much as you want, it will still be a turd.

Which is all making an AE stance would be doing.

Updated a few things. Once again will not have time to test things fully until the weekend sometime. So far I am not impressed really, fixing Storm and Dragon stances is OK. We still have a plethora of other stuff that is broken, and I am going to be a squeaky wheel until we get enough grease.

We do not need an AE stance. If our Storm stance and Secrets worked with AE attacks, and if our AE attacks either did substantially more damage or cost substantially less END, we would be melee AE kings. But right now our AE finisher chain does less damage than the Ranger one (forget the name, but it made me sad grouping with my Ranger buddy and hearing him say on vent what his AE finisher was hitting and critting for). I do not know how it compares to other classes AE finishers...but the Divine Typhoon/Avalanche/Tsunami chain is utter SNARF. Then again so are our other AE abilities.

Here is a list of our AE attacks:

Divine finisher chain

• (1) Divine Typhoon 4 = melee damage + 492 (10 END, 2 min refresh)
• (2) Divine Avalanche 3 = melee damage + 516 (10 END, 2 min refresh)
• (3) Divine Tsunami 1 = melee damage + 515 (10 END, 2 min refresh)

END using AEs

• Whirling Storm 5 = melee + 143 (34 END)
• Dragon Rakes Its Claw 3 = melee + 136, frontal only (34 END)

Jin using AE

• Dragon Breath 1 = 357 - 389 dmg, frontal only (8 Jin, 10 min refresh)

Abilities in italics are unique to Dragon AFAIK

SO we have a 3 part AE chain, a normal AE, and 2 frontal AE attacks. Refresh times severely restrict our supposed AE kingship. Low damage hurts this even more. Then the steep costs (for such little damage) sticks the knife in the chest. I do not think a stance devoted to AEs would help this at all. Fix the AEs, the new stances should be fine.

Click below to see Dragon at 50

New stance screenshots

• Top row is hovering over the stance shift button.
• Second row is showing my stats (no buffs) when in the stance.
• Third row is hovering over the buff window icon.
• Bottom row is the actual stance icons.

Kind of busy the next few days, so testing will have to wait until the weekend probably. When switching stances, Dragon icon stays, and the Stone stance icons still do not match. WTB more fixes for Monks. Changing one stance and fixing another is a start. We still have a long road to travel before we are done, and I hope the devs do not decide that these changes are enough.