I guess its a gear related decsion then as I have a nice martial sword so I can effectively keep QP and DA on the mobs and when I can I use the North Wind serires too. It may take me longer but I am rarely in danger of dying.

So in essence we can  both be "Right" 

~QTM

To be honest though, even with fixed stances and damage output something radical has to be done with the general playstyle.

We have the worst of two worlds: Our buffs have so tiny durations that we need to keep a constant eye on them if we want to keep them up at all times.
On the other hand, our attacks - beyond the normal spam abilities - have insane reuse timers.
5 minutes (and Jin) to get a guaranteed critical (with global cooldown to boot) or a guaranteed finisher? 10 minutes to get a 1 minute proc boost (which is probably a bug - according to tooltip it's suppose to last 20 sec)? 30 minutes (and a global cooldown - which is probably again a bug) for 20 seconds damage spike? 2 minutes to deal an aoe finisher which isn't much stronger than flying kick (and nothing compared to the AoE finishers on a 1 minute cooldown rangers for example have). 2 minutes for our style specific finishers, which in the case of harmonious gives a 20 second debuff - and an actually lower damage than Flying Kick (even though the tooltips would indicate a fairly equal amount, North Winds deals significally less)?
Oh, and lest I forget, debuffs that lasts 16 seconds on level 15 and lasts 16 seconds on level 50. It's not all that fun to refresh debuffs because they can't scale with ranks (since damage scaling is off).

This leads to a rather quick boredom, you need to spam the buffs to maintain decent output, but your combat will be so static because the specials are either underpowered or have such immense reuse that they aren't really considered alternatives. In the end, on most grinds (ie where things aren't really challenging, you easily just skip the buffs and skip the long reuse abilities and just spam away.)

Buffs are generally a free resource - you wont notice any downtime when the whole party is being buffed. I don't see why our buffs couldn't have some decency of duration.
I also don't see why our combat abilities need such ridicilously long cooldowns - they would easily lend to a varied strategy if they were actually accountable...

Slight derail here, but I summed up the comments from this thread and from the PMs I have recieved over the past several days. I feel this list is a good start and getting the stances where they need to be. I appreciate any feedback you can provide.

Dragon Style Stances

Storm Dragon
* Procs need to have the thier damage upped. Also the Proc can be missed ( I can understand resisted but missed)
* There are stacking issues with this stance and the Secrets line that need to be resolved
* Proc needs to hit on all targets when performing AE attacks
* Perhaps add a crit chance boost or add % Based Damage boost will make it more effective
* Add a damage shield component

Dragon Stance
* Health Regen is not working. Also this component needs to be an in combat item. This could be solved easily by turning the stance into a heal over time with infinite duration (similar to a pally's auras). This would need to scale with level.
* Perhaps improved versions of the stance can remove poison / diseases or other effects

Stone Dragon Stance
* The Fire / Cold rune needs to actually apply itself
* Mitigation needs to scale with level
* The slow component should decrease as improved versions are used.


Drunken Monk Stances

Drunken Mastery Stance
* The Haste Component doesn't help at all as it only effects auto attack. It needs to be changd. Change it to a % weapon based attack buff.
* Remove the +5 Dodge and add in a small aggro reduction component

Drunken Fist Stance
* Change the attack buff to a damage reduction (small)
* Add a Dodge Modifier to compensate for the dmg reduction
* increase the hate generating component.

Drunken Sway Stance
* Change the dodge from +12 to Dodge +10 and Parry +5 evasion needs to be beefed up some
* Possibly make use of the "glancing blow" functionality from beta 2 to simulate rolling with a punch / strike.
* Keep Accuracy at -5%

Harmonious Body Style Stances

Crane Stance
* There are several stacking issues with Aums and Shaman spells that need to be addressed. Over all it works well.

Harmonious BOdy Stance
* The Jin increase needs a tweak upwards.
* Possibly add a Jin reduction component with the stance although if you tweak up the jin regen enough it essentially does the same thing.

Tiger Stance
* Again, there appear to be stacking issues with crit enhancing abilities / items that suggest a hard cap or stacking issues these need to be looked at.
* Many feel the end cost penalties may be too harsh. Perhaps a slight reduction in end costs may be in order.

Yeah the Dragon Style stances are a nod in the right direction, but I still don't think our damage or DPS problems will be solved by only changing stances.  We need a buff or two that will help out with damage, a 1 hour buff or something that doesn't eat up jin so fast as Iron Hand (which I think should be an hour buff, but hey that's just me). 

Drunk Monk level 20...

As pointed out elsewhere, Drunken Fist stance doesn't have text or maintained effect icon feedback to show you it is truly in effect.  (This is reportedly cosmetic but is stance related and does need fixed.)

I tend to keep in Drunken Mastery stance as I don't seem to notice the increased damage of Drunken Fist as much as the haste of the Mastery.  Now it has been posted here that the haste of Mastery only is affecting the autoattacks?  But, my purely subjective impression was that I was getting more frequent chains/reactions with Mastery than Fist, and had attributed that to the haste effect.  Therefore, since we do the greatest damage with chains and reactions and the like, this led me to note that I kill things faster with Mastery than Fist.

I don't know if this is a false impression on my part, or if in fact the haste is only on autoattacks, if they can trigger chains/reactions to account for my impression.  I reserve the right for my impression to be illusory 

As posted many times already, Sway has no usefulness to me personally for widely stated reasons, so in essence I have 2 real stances to choose from.  And since I kill monsters faster in Mastery (mainly soloing) I really have ended up remaining in the same stance all the time.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with some notions that have been put forth, of where Drunken Style stances should be.  I think Lorr Evander understood what I was attempting to suggest by saying these stances were completely seperate and useful by filling each roll we'd be expected to play as a Drunken Style Monk.  Perhaps I should explain the reasoning behind my suggestions.

While all monks share some abilities of each style, each style of monk also has their own set of Mastery Abilities representative of their respective styles.  I believe that in turn, each style's stances should also reflect those unique abilities and enable monks to perform the roles that their style is expected to contribute.  I'm thinking largely in terms of gameplay mechanics, where each style of monk contributes some defined role for the party.

I think that most everyone agrees that the Drunken Style Monk is, or should be, geared towards off-tanking.  I see the Drunken Monk as the party member that does several specific things in that capacity for the group.  For example:

- Taking that "add" and keeping it busy until the until the tank is ready and the situation is under better control,  and then redirecting that mob to the tank.
- Pulling mobs off of casters and healers when the tank's ability to keep agro is stretched thin.
- Assisting tanks in holding agro during intense battles.
- Doing baseline dps when off-tanking isn't needed.

These are the types of roles I see reflected in the Drunken Style abilities, and these are the types of roles people could reasonably expect Drunken Style Monks to play.  I see different, but equally effective and important roles for the other styles of monks as well.

Keep in mind, the numbers I've attached to these stances were pulled out of the air and are, for all intensive purposes, meaningless.  That is something the developers would need to determine and tune.  It's the concept of the stances and their contribution to gameplay for the expected roles of Drunken Monks that I'm suggesting.


There will most certainly be circumstances where Drunken Monks will want/need to fill the role of dps.  This offensive stance would fill that role, allowing the Drunken Monk accuracy and increased damage at the expense of any extra evasion.  This stance would generate far more agro than usual, hitting more often and for more damage.  In fact, a monk gaining agro in this stance better be prepared for it. It won't be pretty when that 4/5 dot mob cracks you upside the head whle not in a defensive stance.  We all know how soft monks are.

The numbers I've attached to this stance are perhaps high, but a flat damage increase is consistent across abilities and easy to tune.  I also believe that the other two styles should have a more agressive, accurate, and damaging offensive stance.  While dps is not the strong suit of this style, a Drunken Monk should be able to perform that role to some base extent. 

I actually see this as the most "neutral" of the Drunken Monk's stances, and not used as often considering the primary role that the other stances would allow him to excel at.  Heck, take the damge increase off, slap on very small evasion boost and call it neutral. 



It makes particularly good sense to have agro generation on the drunken monk's defensive stance.  The very in-game description of the Drunken Monk contributes their evasive style to infuriating opponents. 

Protective fighters generate agro from their defensive stances, so too should the "off-tank" of monks.  Remember that this is evasion and strikes will get through.  Given a reasonable level of evasion, there is no way in hell that any monk will ever be able to "tank" even remotely as well as a protective fighter.  We simply do not have the hit points or mitigation to sustain heavy blows for any length of time.

Coupled with our rescues and agro tools, this stance would allow the Drunken Monk to naturally excel in the role he is expected to play.



I'll admit, I'm in love with this idea.  It seems a natural fit for the role Drunken Monks are expected play in groups.  The idea of agro redirection is naturally fitting for the Drunken Monk, as well an immensily useful purpose for groups.  In addition, this would really help to define the roles each style would be expected to play.

The bottom line is, I don't feel that the current stances of the drunken monk are anywhere near what would allow them to make the most use of their Mastery Abilities; nor do I believe the current stances conducive to allowing the Drunken Monk to perform their expected role as the off-tank of light fighters.

This is what is now you're right. We are offering ideas as to what we want to see adjusted to to do their jobs effectively.  A defensive stance with a huge accuracy penalty but not increase in aggro is worthless.  Its akin to making the warriors defensive stance but with out the +40% hate increase.  All they get is some avoidance and a lot lower damage.