If you think about the current fights which are pretty fast, I like your line Kydan. I would however like longer fights in general though. When I was like level 12 with my disciple and took on 3doted level 15's, the fight took quite some time and I really had to fight, timing my heals, saving mana, timing my endurance for heals etc. That was fun.

I'd like that kind of fun, for everyone, all the time. I really like auto-attack though, and I'm not lowering my percentage lower than 65%, and that's final

If each mob had like 3 diffrent stances, no need for animation changes etc (even though that would be cool), just change the numbers a little. One mode with 20% increased damage but lower defense etc, then you would have to constantly be aware of how your auto-attack damage changes and how much damage you are recieving, and change short-term buffs / stance accordingly. Content in a game can be so much more than meets the eye.

Some boss could have a red thorns aura that intensifies the more offensive he is, but at the same time he's going to be easier to damage while going offensive (and hey, most of his damage is going to come from his attacks anyway) so one would have to chose if to attack while he's being aggressive or defensive. Being aggressive while HE is aggressive without dying is going to take some serious team work. But if you succeed in making a strategy that works, you'r in for some nice grinding . He could also get extra aggro from magic while being aggressive, sfutt like that to even things out, making it "BA" (BAlanced).

Atleast in my imagination, stuff like that shouldn't be that hard to implent. Add a random-timer, then just either have 3 diffrent "templates" that share the same mob, or have the same base stats and just add invisible buffs / debuffs (the better one is at juding one's opponent, the better one can see what mode he is in, maybe).

Some kind of animal could have a "super-defensiv"-mode where it regenerates HP quickly and you really have to SPAM to kill it. Forcing you to really learn how to beat each mob, like NES / SNES RPG-bosses

But if something like this was implented and people didn't know about it, it would probably piss people off since it would make the game harder. With the current system where you always have 100% focus on what you and your party is doing and mostly don't even look at the mob, things that require attention might be too much. But I like it when there's much going on, that's when I feel like I'm really playing a game.

So basically I think forcing the player to spam alot of buttons just for the hell of it is alot more tedious than just good 'ol auto-attack. If you'r using the same skills in the same way over and over again, it's still just auto-attack IMO but you have to press alot more buttons, kinda pointless. Only difference is that we can't even chat while grinding anymore. If we just keept some of the auto-attacking and instead of forcing the player to focus more on himself we made him focus more on his enemies, things would be interesting. The fact that most people think grinding is boring is because nothing changes except when you reach a new level. If one had to really walk around and try out diffrent grind spots for 10-20 minutes, and it would acctually require full attention to even understand if you'r able to kill the mob or if you'r just messing up, I think grinding would be alot more fun for a lot more people. More challenging, but also more rewarding.

Every time you had to rest you could discuss the mob(s) you are grinding. The tank says "Hey have you guys noticed that his damage increses like 10% when his nose turns red?", and then the mage replies "LoL no... I thought they added that just because it's christmas... damn... maybe that's why he sometimes all of a sudden goes after me, I'll move down to the lighter spells when his nose is red then" (since "offensive  mode" often means higher aggro for spells aswell) and all of a sudden your grind-efficienty went up by 6.7%

I agree.

The more rarely one uses speical attacks, the more special they feel. I'd like to see auto-attack dealing around 70% of the damage, 10% would be abilities buffing auto-attack. Like give 5 jin to get haste for 10 seconds etc. 15% would be specials only usable in diffrent situations, for example a parry-counter with no cooldown (since you wont dodge that often anyway). If you haven't used your counter 0.3s after it was activated, it would not be possible to use it anymore until next dodge. The rest of the 5% would come from abilities with cooldowns, for when you need that last bit of DPS to take down a boss when your healers mana is running out. That would be damn sweet.

Monks could have a probability to add jin each strike, diffrent from one's crit chance. Maybe wisdom would increase that chance. Jin is pure auto-attack-buffage. One for speed, one for strenght, one for a % to stun for 3 sec (unstackable which wont break when hit damnit!) and maybe one for increased crit-chance. Endurance could drain while fighting, or increase slowly when fighting, depending on which stance your a using.

Defensive, endurance rebuilds at a slow pace, lowerd offensive abilities (lowerd % of base damage, hit chance, crit chance, slightly increased dodge, parry etc)

Balanced, endurance drains alot slower than defensive rebuilds it (should last for a some minutes of combat), 100% damage, normal hit chance, the normal mode.

Offensive, endurance drains at a rapid rate, increasing damage by X%, hit chance by X%, crit chance by X%.

Full endurance = base everything (every single bit off offensive power, every single bit of defensive power, EVERYTHING) is 100%
No endurance = base everything is at X% (70ish)
With scaling in between.

Healers would heal better in offensive mode, tanks would get aggro increase, casters reduced cast-time etc.

Monsters would also have these, and change between them in fights. So if a monster goes offensive, one might use the skill that 5seconds free dodging, and go offensive aswell. Maybe have two tanks that time their aggro-stealing and stance switching really nice so the tanker is always defensive and the other tank can stay normal or even go agressive.

Auto-attack as the base with multiple small effects is what would make me the most happy. But I guess that's not going to happend in this game.

I think it's nice that they decresed fist damage, fists shouldn't be superior to weapons.

I agree with alot of stuff you wrote but that kind of skill is just soooo sweet. I love it when you get the chance of really going all out with your attacks at a high cost. You can use the jin surge as a Jin burn ability, but there would be alot more awsome if you really felt you took all your power into that one attack, in this case Ashen hand, to finish a mob. Even more so on a named etc.


Oh oh! My own thoughts!

I would like to see some kind of exhange between Jin and health/endurance. The ignore pain could cost Jin for example (even max Jin every 5 minute is nothing, so right now it wouldn't matter, but if the ignore pain skill became usefull ). And if that seems to imbalanced I would like to be able to trade jin+health for endurance, or jin+endurance for health. Or just add the Jin burn to Ashen Hands. I really want to be horny for mokkori-Jin, currently I'm not. Having max Jin should really feel great, nirvana like. Since we don't have energy, make every single Jin-point desirable.

Some kind of skill that makes it desirable to have some left after leaving combat. <----> Jin loss at FD.

Yes, they will always top the chart, that must be intended. Ranged damage is worth more than melee damage, so if the Ranger dealt as much damage it would be imbalanced. The Monk is able to take more damage, so if he was able to deal the same damage, it would be imbalanced. And since a big part of being a bard is buffing the party, he should obviously not deal as much damage himself as the others, since that would be imbalanced. All classes are however to a greater extent "pure DPS", that's what they do. They should be able to deal about the same amount of damage, but in diffrent ways. Geting a head start from using ranged damage, being able to do more damage by staying alive longer and buffing your party (if we count that towards the bards own damage, which we should).


When I talk about "dealing damage", I mean the total damage the class is responsible for (see previous quote-reply). Not just what they hit themselfs. But I think we understand each other.


First of all, I was comparing to other job-classes, and if you compare the rogue and the cleric, they are alot more diffrent than the bard and rogue. Second, I was saying 20%, not 5%. But that doesn't really matter since I wasn't claiming any numbers to be correct, I was just using them as an example, i e "Let's say...". I'm still convinced though that they are fundamentally two very similar classes, they are acctually the perfect example to prove my point. They are both all about dealing damage, the Rogue does it all by himself, therefore his own DPS is the highest, and the Bard is the most dependent on others, therefore his own DPS is the lowest. If they are currently not balanced with each other, that is unintended. They are intended to do the job of an "Offensiv Fighter" equaly good, just different.


Haha, obviously Bard's aren't offensive healers. The Disciple is an offensive healer. However, out of the 4 offensive fighters, the Bard is the most healerish and the Ranger is the most casterish (due to his range!). (Before 20% wasn't enough difference wasn't enough, now 5% is too much? I don't get it But then again maybe I was using an unnecessarily complicated way to explain myself )

It's true that I have little to no experience in any other class than the monk, but since this thread doesn't have anything to do with that I don't really understand why you even mention it.I agree with you though that the Monks probably should have the best defense, but the fact that they don't at the moment doesn't really matter since this is all about the future and what sigil really want's, not the game's current state. Atleast that what the title says. 


If the Dragons debuff can boost the party more than the Rangers abilitys can, then the Dragon should have lower DPS than the ranger and vice versa. I'd like to see the dragon have pretty limited weaknesses abilities though, and just slightly higher defense than the ranger, and better DPS since he's melee. Being all out offensive should hurt. (His three stances could balance this out though, so he wouldn't have to be at the extreme all the time, which if looking at the current dragon seems intended.)  Lowest defense, highest offense of the styles, least group-oriented skills. AoE-power.

The Harmonious should be more team-oriented than the dragon, weaknesses etc. Having lower base damage than the Dragon, the Harmonious has more crit to even things out a bit, although still having lower DPS than the dragon.  Medium defense, medium/high offense. The most group-oriented skills.

The Drunken Monk should have more group-oriented skills than the Dragon on, about equaly many as the Harmonious. Should be able to help the tanks doing their job, without taking over as a tank. In some really awsome way. Maybe stealing alot of aggro, being forced to hold it for like 7seconds and then be able to choose a new target for it.  Lowest offense, highest defense. Keeping people alive based, aggro/team-oriented.

So yeah, we basicly agree if we don't count the part about switching between the styles. It just seems waaaay imbalanced to me. If we were just 60% effective in each stance comparing with others that could fill that roll, we would be 180% effective overall, but at the same time we would only be about half as good as anyone else at what we do. But if we on the other hand is about 99% as effective as another class (i e, harmonious vs ranger), we would be incredibly imbalanced. Your idea is interesting, but it would be impossible (or close to) to balance it. About the whole skills thing I think your completly right though. The Monk isn't supposed to have 1/3 of every other class' skills. We were once "complete". However, Monks in that form were surely extremly overpowerd, so they split us in 3 which was a good thing. The thing remaining now however is that they make us more skills to compensate for our current shortage, making each style not just unique, but also content-filled. It doesn't matter if we are balanced if we get alot less skills than other classes. Geting skills is part of the fun, we shouldn't have less content.

Cool. Having a Jack of all Trades from another Job-group would be cool so you could compare, test som duo-setups with the two. I just don't want the monk to be that 

I hope none of my answers seem to be the same thing repeted over again, now I've stated how I would like to see Monk class develope and I've read your ideas (a couple of times before aswell ).

We won't be able to really define the monks concept though, since Sigil has probably already got their master plan and they'll put it to work as soon as the overpowerd classes get nerfed (as it should be, one class being to strong pisses of everyone but that class, while one class not being strong enough only pisses of that class). But I guess you just wanted to vent your ideas, but then the title of this thread really should have been "This is what I wan't the monk to be like", or you could just have made a post in the "Monk Wish List" thread since you know QTM reads it.

Look your are obviously above average skilled in internet argumentation (good or bad thing? I don't know), that doesn't give you the right to bully other people and claim your oppinion is worth more. I think you also realize that he's just simply saying he doesn't want the same thing as you do, that's not something you can argument and prove a point about. He does not have to convince you that his opinion is valid.



Ok, let's bring everything down to the basics. All defensiv figthers should be equally good at tanking, they just do it diffrently, same goes for every other job. As it is right now, the Ranger, Rouge and the Bard appear to be pretty balanced at their primary objective, dealing damage. They all do it with diffrent flavor, just as intended. Due to the fact that the Monk is in the same group as those classes, the Monk is obviously intended to be equally good at dealing damage, just in another way. Let's say each class is basicly 80% the same as the other classes sharing the same job, 15% are flavor towards that goal, and the remaining 5% giving them something else besides their main objective. Those 5% is ranged damage for the Ranger, part of the buffs for Bards (as in the healing) and being stealthy for the Rogue. The Monk is probably intended to basicly be 5% thougher than the other 3. You could even go as far as saying that the Monk is the off/def, the Ranger is the off/caster, the Rouge is the off/off and the Bard the off/healer. That's pretty much the same for every job. Cleric is healer/tank, Disciple is healer/off, Blood Mage is healer/caster and the Shaman is well... I don't really know.

The point being that the monk is clearly intended to be an offensiv figther(!) and everything that comes along with being one, which is having an balanced overall damage output compared to the other classes sharing the same job. I also think it's safe to assume that the "extra 5%" is supposed to be towards tanking, I think it is intended that we are tougher than a Ranger even though we are not at the moment. When it comes to the diffrentI stances i  belive we should/are going to keep somewhere between 5-10% of the primary flavor, and all of the last 5% job-unrelated flavor. Making each stance diffrent while still keeping their role compared to the other offensiv fighters.

That's were I see our role, that's exactly where I would want to be and I both hope and think I'm right.

It's great that you express your views and all, but it does seem like a majority of the monk players don't want to be a "Jack of All Trades". And the "vision" doesn't seem to be that either.

<quote>
We are the highest base DPS class. This essentally means

    * We should beat out Ranger DPS short term as he builds builds knowledge from his enemy (Short fights we should beat them out >  20 seconds or longer on an encounter they start to take over)
    * We should beat out Rogue DPS while they are not using stalk to its Max potential
    * We should always beat out Bard DPS. As even if they were to amplify thier damage with songs we would be able to take advantage of it.

I hope that clears the picture up for some who are not sure where we are supposed to be on that.

~QTM
</quote>

Telling other people to change class just because they don't want the monk to be what you want it to be isn't really going to lead anywhere. We all want to be a monk, and we all want to see the monk being as close as possible to our own ultimate vision.  I think your ideas are intresting, but I wouldn't want to see them make it into the game. Having a Jack of All Trades whose only unique feature is being a Jack of All Trades just doesn't make sense to me.

Great post. My thought's exactly, and with your experience behind those words I feel at ease. Thanks for helping to make Vanguard a better game for monks as in making us balanced, not imbalanced as some people seem to desire.

/bow