I think its important to examine "what" the other Offensive fighters offer, and see what they dont offer specifically, and try to fill this niche.

Pulling is one thing, but in combat assets are by far the most important aspects to look at, and on top of that, only focus on abilities that deal, enhance, or enable damage, since that is every Fighter's primary role.

Rogues are the sorcerer's of the Fighters. They dont offer much in the way of debuffs or ally enhancement, and as such, will have the highest damage potiential, but then again they arent improving anyone elses damage.

Bard currently fills the role of "melee damage enhancer," and as such they are the opposite of the rogue in every way. Less me, more team, that is how they contribute their damage.

Ranger is more like what the revamped druid will "probably" turn out to be, second banana to rogues for "burst" damage, but they also get some ally enhancement buffs that add enough dps to bridge this "gap."



Which leaves monks. What role hasnt really been fully tapped? Debuffing, strong hate modification, and steady dps, and AOE dps.

Problem with monks is they branch off in 3 directions, so chances are they would divide up these remaining roles.



Likely the general "theme" of all monks is exactly like one of the posters above me said, constant, always flowing and going dps:

"while i might not do 70k damage in one hit, i might deal more damage in the time it takes for him to refresh"

Basically, i see monks as "likely" ending up being the "dot rot" of the melee classes, the necromancer equivalent. We would be constantly dealing damage, and while averaging a little under a rogue in ideal conditions (max stealth and possitioning), we would be dealing more over time damage than  a ranger, while a ranger would beat us in burst damage.


Then, i think it will probably end up that the Harmonious contributes some extra damage through their debuffs.

A drunken should be highly valued for increasing a tanks hate, alowing other players to "play harder," basically making then a potiential enabler.

A dragon is where it gets shaky in my opinion, because they are supposed to have the "offensive advantage" over the other 2 monks, and they would have enhanced aoe damage, but AOE damage is situational while debuffs and hate transfer is always a boon.



I think if they want to give dragon monks a unique factor, they should let them be able to deal "specific resistance" type damage with their melee.


That is, have 6 toggled buffs that change the resistance of all their attacks to a specific resistance:

fire, cold, arcane(lightning), spiritual, physical, and mental.


Giving the dragon monk the advantage to "capitalize" on a mob's weak resistance would give them a unique aspect as well as go along with their offensive advantage.

This also lets a dragon monk bypass traditional mitigation, as they would be dealing "fire based melee damage" which would check against the foes Resistances, not his natural Mitigation.



Just some ideas i wished to share, take them for what little they are worth

Thanks

One thing i can easily see happening is that a rogue will deal more "constant" damage than us if he focused on utalizing his dots.

Also, a rogue will likely deal more "burst" damage in a short fight compared to a ranger if he uses all his longer reuse skills.

This is how it will likely work once we get the final numbers for druids and necros:


It has been said that druids will be the second best burst damage dealers in the game, second only to sorcerers.

Also in the same post, it was said that necromancers would be the second best sustained damage class in the game, second only to sorcerers.

Since both classes get decient buffs and debuffs, this balances out at around the same total damage contributed for them being present, and if you have all 4 casters in a group, they would deal more total damage and be more all around effective than say 4 sorcerers.




It is this reason that i think we will see a similar trend with the Monk class in the Fighter archetype, as it really is a good way to balance things out.

Though, if Rogues are going to be the "best" at burst and sustained damage, they should probably be very ineffective at modifying another person's hate or at debuffing a foe, though currently i think they only have two abilities that increase the chance of allies getting a crit on the foe, so i dont their enhancing is all that great even with their current changes.

One thing that does concern me is their "Trick attack." If they can spam this on the tank, then that kills the "usefulness" that the Drunken monk would have gained, and this would need to be addressed.

Frankly, if a class is best at sustained and burn damage, it doesnt NEED any other offensive assets, as highest raw damage is the rogues comodety as far as offense is concerned. Leave hate management as an asset that a drunken monk could be extremely valued for   

Again, need to see how the Caster's get aranged probably to see how that pans out, then we can see about trying to achieve a similar balance with the fighters, so that no matter what, a raid would prefer to have one of each rather than just taking multiples and not inviting a class.

Hmm i would say throw out this mitigation penalty in there offensive stance, or severly reduce it.

I personally thing an evasion penalty if anything would be much more appropriate.


Well, i do know that some mobs in APW take additional damage if you hit them with the opposing element, aka fire mobs take more cold damage but are healed with fire damage, and vice versa.

If it worked out that:
Heat = Cold
Mental = Spiritual
Physical = Arcane

That would be nice, and if say this adds a raw +25% damage to all attacks of the opposing element, then this would be REALLY nice

Basically the idea i used for how a Dragon monk would be able to change his "element" was using Claws of the --- Dragon.

These would be seperate from any other abilities we have, and would be a toggled effect.

Only one "Claw" buff at a time.

Claw buffs could change your base damage resistance to the Claw's type, and apply a 20% chance to proc damage based on this resistance type, a rather large chunk of extra damage, that would have a high base value that is modified by intell.

That gives Dragon monks the benefit of gaining from additional intellegence, the base values would already be "good" even at low int levels, but they would be really nice procs once you get some good intell buffs, or if you spec intel instead of Con if you want to go 100% dps and be more frail.

They could even introduce damage resistance while using these Claws, but this would be to the opposing resist, because if you are fighting a cold based mob and want additional fire damage, you will want to be shielded from cold attacks.

So, just to give an example of what the buff might look like:

Claws of the Sun Dragon:

The spirit of the Sun Dragon guides your fists.

Converts all damage to Fire base, and applies a 33% chance to deal 750 base heat damage (intell mod), and reduces incoming Cold damage by 20%.


Remove the proc from our offensive stance, replace it with a +15% accuracy effect, so we arent accedentally procing it on foes that do something wierd with arcane damage. The damage lost here should be more than made up with our Claw buffs. Change the -mitigation to drop evasion to zero or something, meaning we are completely focused on offense rather than avoiding blows.



This gives the dragon some additional damage, while adding a lot of flexability based on foe's resistances, and gives them an option to further enhance their dps via Intell.

Perhpas a better increase in AOE damage along with these changes would improve the usefulness of the dragon monk? Thoughts?

6 identacle spells save for the resistances and name varients isnt asking for too much if you look at the Sanctuary spells for sorcerers, they get one for each resists so they have a full selection.

Most mobs it should be pretty obvious which would be the better choice, and also it could be considered part of the challenge to figure out your foes weaknesses

Your way could be acceptable as well, but it wouldnt be required to lump them all together.

I personally would like the higher customization over the generalization, but thats just me i guess hehe, i guess that would be more useful for PVP as well, picking a type like mental which would be good vs a Sorcerer for instance.

I've had single target dragon attack line on the "To Do" list for a while. Since APW is wrapping up I'll see if I can get some type activity on this soon.

~QTM

I got to test the new fool hardy swagger tonight and i just wana say"Nice one on this quinn" .Execellent skill and really helps a ton.In my full refresh haste setup i can recaste this every 19 seconds  with ease.
The benifits from what i saw made our tanks need to use rescues minimal and on boss fights mob didnt even turn.
You are able to cast it at start of fight easily and stay out of combat doing it.It also works very well on yourself along with goading slap and drunken hate generate stance = nice solid agro.

While i do like this new updates skill i still feel jeering kick needs another look at.2 attacks rescue every 30 seconds is a bit short imo to be considered useful.Perhaps make it a duration or add maybe a 4-5 attack set on it.