Hey all,

In the intro boards I posted that I would be duoing with my girls shaman. I'd like to appeal to those of you who have gone farther in VG with their monks.

I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck with tanking as a monk. I understand that a monk will most likely not be tanking for a group but for a casual duo, do you think a monk could tank for a shaman?

If so, can anyone recomend specific tactics. I haven't chosen a style yet, I'm leaning towards drunken boxer. I read that they are more evade and counterattack. I think that sounds like it could work well.

Anyhoo, I would really appreciate thoughts and feedback about this subject. I'm really excited about it, some of my fondest memories in EQ1 are two-boxing a monk and shaman (Before and for a short while after the PoP miti. nerf).

Thanks all,
Phil

I've only played a monk to level 14 so my opinion may not be justified.  However, I've had great success tanking for my friends group.  With the monk AE being so powerful we can take out 10-12 even level mobs at once without any real difficulty.  We have a shaman healing and it works great.

Spleenbender

Awesome! Thanks much for the info. I never expected to be tanking 4 dot mobs, I was just hoping this could be a useful duo to be running around in. Doing things such as questing. I figure when we decide to go hit up the dungeons, we would start by looking for a Plate Tank er Defensive Fighter. Glad to hear that I shouldn't have problems holding agro though. My wife gets way to nervous when shes taking damage for some reason, lol.

Yeah at level 13-14 I was tanking the Gardens dungeon at the Goblin starting location for my friends, and I have to say I was tanknig better than the dread knights / paladins in the group.  I seemed to hold better agro than they did (Probably due to my DPS vs their agro control) And we did perfectly fine.  So due to these observations, I'd say that you could tank fine as a duo, but at higher levels (25+) I'm not sure how well you'd fair.  But I think its safe to say that monks are definately a decent backup tank, to say the least.

In my opinion monks actually do a better job than defensive fighters at tanking in groups in certain situations.Once you get reed in the wind you become a viable option for tanking in xp groups. And with reed in the wind 2 you have 13 seconds before you have to recast it, giving you plenty of time to land finishers or adv finishers. Harmonious monks also get find the center which would be even more of a benefit to avoidance.

As someone else mentioned earlier drunken do get some agro management tools, but for a duo especially the avoidance would be better.

I run a duo with a buddy, he plays a Wood Elf Shaman and I am obviously a Monk, Dragon Mastery. We've been killing stuff together since about level 5. We typically fight 3-4 mobs at a time ranging from 1-3 levels below or above us, usually 2 or 3 dots. On several occasions we find ourselves fighting say 8-14 mobs due to a horrid pull or something and we survive most of the time. I don't do anything special to be a better tank, I use Stone Dragon Stance and just dish out as much DPS as I can. Every so often I will use Goading Slap or Waning Palm when needed but that endurance is usually better used by casuing more damage.

A few examples: At level 14 I tanked the summonable 4 dot level 14 Kujako General. Shammy kept me alive and I dropped the big guy. Three times actually. At level 16 we went out to Renton's Keep and got the quest to fend off the farm from waves of 2 dot ants followed by a 4 dot yellow ant boss. I tanked all the way through while the Shaman supported me and we killed the 4 dot boss easily.

I have not done as much tanking in a full group, mostly off-tank, but I have been delegated the roll of meat-shield several times when our groups cannot find a proper tank.

Now I won't say were perfect. We've had times where we bit off more then we could chew and we paid for it, but most of the time we are able to fight mobs that I never would have thought we could. I never would have figured 2 players could take on multiple 4 dots mobs and win.

So can a Monk be a tank? I'd say yes, with the information we currently have, but who knows what it will be like at 50.

monks need to be prepared and geared for it, but we can tank.

if you planning to tank and having that in consideration then i would go with drunken style, they have agro and tanking in their stances, (i think 40% dodge?)

at 40 we get aum ti, which is a self buff that grants 25% block/dodge and parry indefinatly.

equip a decent martial sword with 25% parry or above..

and you should be pretty darn good for tanking, using goading slap to help with agro it needed, or just spamming our damage.

Thats assuming you intend to tank 4 dots.
If you only plan to duo on 3 dots you can pretty much go all out dps and tank fine enough in dps stances/gear

I was talking the stance that drunken style get not the actuall avoidance %
Or does the stances dodge % change with level?