If you once could, but now can't, my guess is someone in your IT department noticed the site and blocked it in the firewall.  Another cause could be that they've started using a content filter based on some rating system and blocked whatever rating that system assigned to this page.  In any case, though, I don't think the meta tags are the reasons.  They could be though, you never know what some systems use these days 

We already have a temporary damage booster ability, actually.  Fists of Celerity gives us double damage for 20 seconds on a 5 min reuse.

I'd still like to consider making transcendence a defensive oriented secret.  I feel that another damage oriented secret (secret of fire being the other) would be a waste as there will always be one that is never used because it adds less damage than the other. 

For transcendence I would like to see something that adds to all damage resists and possibly a melee damage returned as health aspect, as we discussed in the previous thread dedicated to transcendence.  My ideal would be:

+ % to melee damage
+ x arcane damage
+ x to each damage resist type
+ % damage dealt returned as health

I would love for this to happen.  Pulling would be much easier and faster if secret of ice would snare when i throw shurikens.

As for the dragon only secrets, they sound like they'd be just what the doctor ordered.  I hope you guys get em

I don't know much about it (I'm taking a course on web programming atm, so I'll know more over the next few months!), but I believe the meta tag has to do with how the site works with search engines.  If I understand correctly, it's needed in order to show up when people search for vgmonks, vanguardmonks, etc.  I could be wrong though, I'd also be interested to find out more about what that tag actually does.

According to Phathom, we can expect a few smaller patches before game update 4.

http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=26019&#298924

Not really, since its been the holiday season and most of Sony's staff has been on vacation.

I thought I should post my support for this idea.  I play a harmonious monk so I won't comment on the dragon and drunken stance changes proposed, but I will say I'd be very happy with these stances.  It would be nice to have a flat damage boost to tiger stance and I feel that the 30% crit rate enhancement that it has now is unnecessary. 

I also like crane as it is.  I find it useful in all sorts of situations from long fights that I need to conserve endurance with to when I'm playing meat shield.

Having some extra effects on the mid stance (as proposed) would be nice as well.  With only the jin regen I haven't found a use for it in combat yet since I got immortal crane stance and even outside of combat it doesn't fill many needs. 

Just a quick note:

If we shoot for all damage resists instead of a mitigation boost we'd get some protection from magical foes (which I think is our main weakness right now) plus some mitigation from the physical resist.

Another thought I had for secrets in general:

What do you all think of having the secrets turn all of our melee damage into a certain elemental type.  For example, while we have secret of fire activated, all melee attacks would deal fire damage instead of physical damage, secret of ice, ice damage, secret of transcendence, magical damage.  I think that would add a bit of strategy and versatility to our repertoire.  For melee resistant foes we could circumvent their defenses with the appropriate secret and for element/magic resistant foes we would have to use no secret.

I like the idea of mitigation and health as part of transcendence.  I kinda have mixed feelings about the hate mod though.  If I were to tank, I would want a hate mod, of course, but my thinking is that we ought to make trans a defensive secret rather than a tanking secret.  In other words, I think trans ought to be a "make you harder to kill" secret rather than a "make you a meat shield" secret.  I picture a scenario on raids and such where the mob we're fighting does AE damage and monks switch to trans to both make it more likely they live and keep doing dps and taking the burden of healing them off the healer(s).

I definately think we ought to have a health recovery component to transcendence, it kinda sounds like something that would help your health  , but I think it would be a better idea to have something like 1-2% of melee damage dealt returned as health.  Due to the nature of our dps, this would result in a fairly smooth heal over time rather than some sketchy, unpredictable heal procs.  If we use this for tanking, we want our health to be as predictable as possible, ie we don't want our health to go down at variable rates. 

I propose we make trans something like this:

+ % dmg
+ some magic damage
+ to all forms of damage resists (enough to be significant)
1-2% of melee damage returned as health

It may be overpowered, but I think there is enough flexibility in the numbers involved to be worthwhile but not at the same time not break balance.  I think we can get away with having no hate modifier due to the nature of our dps in relation to other dps classes.  Our dps is smooth and consistent and its the highest at the start of the fight.

I think we ought to have it be usable without making fire and ice obsolete.  The way I see it, fire is what you want to use when you're wanting to do as much dps as possible; mostly for the group setting.  Ice is what you want to use when you need the slow and snare buffs, vs casters, etc.  I usually use it when soloing or the situation calls for its effects.  Transcendence ought to have its own little niche.  We should brain storm some effects we could have transcendence give us that would fill a situational need that fire and ice don't.

Fire seems to be an offensive secret
Ice seems to be utility or neutral
Maybe make transcendence a fully defensive secret.

We could even toy with the idea of extending the effects of transcendence to the group instead of just us.

It kinda looks like it may be a weapon targeted more at disciples than monks.

I use it in much the same way as Kivik described.  I run up to a pair of mobs, fd within melee range of one and then use nerve strike to get up from FD and it mezes the mob I'm targeting before he aggros me.  Then I run away with the other mob chasing me.  The critical thing about this technique is that no one in the group should do anything to aggro the other mob.  If someone shoots an arrow or casts a spell on the mob you're pulling before it runs out of social range of the other mob, that person will get aggro on the mezed mob and the split will be in vane.  Likewise if a healer heals you before you FD, the healer will get aggro on the mezed mob as well.

I can do this either grouped or solo depending on the location.  To do it solo requires that you are able to run the pulled mob far enough away from the mezed mob that you can FD, get up and reaggro the pulled mob before it gets back in social range of the mezed mob.

Rather than isolating one skill vs a perceived counterpart, I think it would be a better idea to compare overall dps outputs of the forms to determine whether things need to be changed.  The dps of deadly adder hand may be higher than feet of the fire dragon, but do harmonious monks really do more dps than dragon monks overall? 

As I understand it, each form is supposed to play differently and therefore it isn't a good idea to give each form the same skills with different names.  There ought to be a differentiation in the play styles used by the different forms.

Also, it wouldn't be surprising to see some dragon and drunken monk changes in the near future.  The majority of the patch notes seemed to be for harmonious monks this time around; dragons and drunks still haven't received a passive ability and most dragon and drunk specific abilities remained the same I think.  This leads me to believe that sony may have overhauled general monks and the harmonious form first and are poised to do the other forms at another time, hopefully soon.

To me, it sounds like what you're fishing for here is a trait that will make monks required for raiding.  Yes, our dps can be replaced by other classes and yes other classes can pull, but so can we.  There's some flexibility in which classes are needed for a raid to happen and I think that's healthy.  I think the ideal situation is that there shouldn't be any class that is required for raiding properly, but all classes ought to be able to bring something to the table.

As for what we can bring to the table, dps is nothing to scoff at, really.  To have high dps (read high, not necessarily highest) is the reason I chose to be an offensive fighter and not a healer or tank.  Mobs need to take damage to die, raid mobs need to take a lot of damage, so there's no reason to feel that we aren't filling a critical role.  The main difference is that there is a bigger pool of classes designed to fill this role, but this is okay because a lot of people are needed to fill the need.

As for pulling, I'm sure if you asked, your raid leaders would let you and other monks pull a few raids.  You may not get to do it every time, but at least some times.  Same goes for corpse runs.  Honestly, I think that FD would be quicker and more desirable than waiting for a rogue to stealth back from the spawn point or however it goes, but it's still good that it's an option in case the monk dies somehow or is not available.

Bottom line is that there's no need to be the best to fill a meaningful role.  At least, that's how I see it