I'm not so sure you can directly compare crit and dmg modifiers.  dmg modifiers are always there and there really aren't any in game substitutes for it.  Where as crit can be substituted with +crit gear.  So certainly +% damage is better % for % than crit.

Also when parsing it all out, withering palm ends up only being a ~6% dmg increase because of the opportunity cost of the Jin needed to maintain it.

Question for QTM....

was the test done only with class leads for example when the test was made there was one ranger being tested, cause results may differ depending on the person too.

Hmm, interesting, from playing around with styles I've pretty much determined that ashen hand should be used almost all the time.  It seems to have a higher base crit rate than the normal melee attacks so opens up finishers quite often, plus its effectively a free attack that doesn't use endurance which helps to allow trading off +end regen for other things.  On top of that ashen hand exploits extremely well.  In my experience, AH is the second highest damage attack that we have outside of Thundering/thousand fists.

Effectively if you are sitting at 15-20 jin the entire fight you aren't maximizing dps. 

Well you do the math let me layout the typical fight for you.  With aum kor and starting at 20 jin.

Time -2- Secret of fire -3 jin 40 sec buff
Time 0 - Whithering Palm - 400 dmg - +10% dmg for 60 sec -6 jin
Time 2 - Eagle Claw 4 - 240 dmg and minus 15% target mitigation for 24 sec Jin +1
Time 4 - Cresent Kick VI - 220 dmg (opens crits 90% of the time)  +2 jin
Time 6 - Thousand Fist - 3.6k +1 jin
Time 8 - Thunder Fist - 3.4k +1 jin
Time 10 - Ashen Hand - 1.5k dmg  -4 jin (opens finisher 70+% of the time)
Time 12 - Three finger strike + 700 dmg +1 jin
time 14 - Hammer Fist + 900 dmg +1 jin
time 16 - Palm explodes the heart  3.5k dmg +1 jin
time 18 - Crescent Kick - 220 dmg +2 jin
time 20 - Flying Kick - 1500 dmg +1 jin
time 22 - Eagle Claw 4 - 240 dmg and minus 15% target mitigation for 24 sec Jin +1
time 24 - Crescent kick - 220 dmg +2 jin
time 26 - North wind slaps the limb - 1600 dmg + 1 jin
time 28 - North wind breaks the trunk-   1600 dmg + 1 jin + 300 addition dmg every time mob attacks
time 30 - Ashen Hand - 1600 dmg - 4 jin
time 32 - Flying kick - 1600 dmg +1 jin
time 34 - Kick to the heavens - 600 dmg +1 jin
time 36 - Celestial kick of the master 1600 dmg + 1 jin
time 38 - Secret of fire -3 jin
time 40 - Ashen hand - 1500 dmg -4 jin
time 42 - Flying kick - 1600 + 1 jin
time 44 - Kick to the heavens 600 dmg + 1 jin
time 46 - Celestial kick of the master - 1600 dmg + 1 jin
time 48 - Eagle Claw 4 - 240 dmg and minus 15% target mitigation for 24 sec Jin +1
time 50 - Crescent kick - 220 dmg +2 jin
time 52 - Thousand fist - 3.5k +1 jin
time 54 - Thunder fist - 3.4k +1 jin
time 56 - Boundless Fist - 1200 dmg +1 jin
time 58 - Ashen Hand 1600 dmg -4 jin
time 60 - Crescent kick 220 dmg +2 jin

Jin spent - 28
Jin earned - 29
Net 1 jin gained

Again this is a typical fight for me, while ashen hand may be the biggest dmg regular attack harmonious have, dragons 2 endurance attacks are more damaging.  Simply swapping out an ashen hand for crescent kick  usually guarantees a crit, while netting me 2 jin (instead of costing me 3) this allows me to do a few things
1) I maintain a constant level of dps, while i could easily throw in an ashen hand or 2 more, i keep a constant level of jin for self buffs in case i want to swamp in celerity or transcendence. 
2) This maximizes the dps with debuffs and self buffs always being maintained
3) even with 40% increased endurance cost, i still never go less then 50% endurance (have +5 endurance regen gear)

The reason i do this is simple, if i go all out and do max dps with ashen hand, then the next fight i cant do the same dps, and to me, its not worth it to do high dps one fight low dps the next 2. 

Well im not saying the class leads are the best at their, class.  Most of them know they their class well, and dont under stand how them being "old" matters. 

Yes if a test is run to manage dps of different classes, each class should have 4-5 people in it.  Thing is, at the end of the day there will be people who do way better then class leads and people who do worse.  The average will still be pretty close to the same, it will just show the range of dps that a class is capable of.

I understand the issue, lets say the ranger class lead sandbaged the tests, and didn't go all out, or didn't use a fighting style representative of all rangers.  Now the classes will be balanced based on a sub par rangers dps.  So monks may only get a 15% boost to dps when we really needed a 25-30% boost.  Its a very clear problem, however, soon all players will be able to copy their main to the test server, and will be able to more actively participate in events like this, the test server is also an amazing place to randomly find developers and chew on their ear for brief periods of time.  Not comforting, or reassuring i know, but i have some faith that for the most parts the class leads at least did 85% the dps of the best of their class.

As far as I know they didn't invite others to particapate. I did ask Talisker via IM and have not receive a response. I can see where having more than one person doing it would have value.


I agree with these statements. I like Ashen Hand and do use it quite a bit in my normal routines.

It was pretty much a set up of + crit  gear. We all used the same gear.

As far as people rigging the tests I just dont see it happening. is it possible? Yes, but I don't think that is the case.

  Damn, I only got a B for effort??? OMGZ!!! The ranger just needed to stay in offensive mode and wail away, I had to do everything for each style..

Speaking of which I did get to finish testing on the other styles. My test results ranked the styles with Dragon tops followed by Drunken and with Harmonious lowest. Surprisingly the margin between all 3 style avg was within 200 dps

~QTM

Are you telling me a drunken monk does more damage than harmonious?  Yet all everyone keeps saying here is that harmonious is over-powered compared to dragon.  Something is wrong with this picture.  Seems like Harmonious needs a damage increase.  We should be doing more damage than drunken.

As for increasing monks damage, I for one would vote to increase the damage of our kicks.  They are the most used attack, and yet we have no way to increase there damage.  I think increasing there damage throughout all levels would be a good way to increase our overall dps.

Very possible the harmonious numbers would be a good bit higher.

~QTM