EZ Server

So, I figure it may be worth our while to compile a list of issues we have with our class. That way we have a single place that the Devs can look at instead of digging through a dozen posts/PMs/emails.

I'll start off with a few and update this post as more get brought up.

Bugs

• Flying Kick - Doesn't do as much of a damage spike as it ought to. Flying Kick mods aren't affecting the damage, nor does it feel like the AAs do.
  
  Some parses pre- and post- FK AA purchase would help quantify this.
• Epic - Apart from the dmg/dly, it's largely useless. Innerflame focus doesn't work, Flying Kick mod doesn't work, the click's main effect of boosting max HP doesn't work. So right now it just adds a DD proc with a stun that every mob past Luclin resists anyway.
  
  I heard this will be rectified with a new epic click, I just hope it will feel "epic" enough.

Balancing

• Class Comparisons - BSTs get an awesome pet, tanks get AE damage or heals and lots of innate utility procs (AE DD + Hate, group heals, etc.) Monks get high DPS and FD. I just feel like we could be more useful somehow.
  
  A decent chunk of our AAs don't work or are pretty much useless. Stonewall used to be one of the awesome Monk AAs, now it seems every FD class has it built-in from level 1.
  
  I just think we need something that sets us apart from rogues and rangers and berzerkers. Monks were meant for more than DPS.
• AAs - Not sure how feasible it is to include AAs from other expansions or to add custom ones, but our list is somewhat lackluster. Return Kick, Technique of Master Wu and Stonewall are wasted expenditures right now because they're broken (first 2) or useless (3rd.)
  
  We don't get Imitate Death (which I'm pretty sure came out in GoD, so was intentionally disabled?) Yet from my understanding, Bards have Fading Memories.
  
  It just feels like we have no true "Monkly" AAs in the list. It's all DPS/tanking AAs that most of the other melees have with a few rarely-used utilities.

Suggestions

• Epic - Saw some discussion by the devs in ooc the other night that our epic click may turn into a clicky DD of some sort with a short reuse. I'd rather it had some innate proc or a clicky utility, to be honest. Clicky AE would be a good utility for us as a hate-holding mechanic. (See below)
• AE - Some form of AE besides the awful Whirlwind Kick would be great. I'd love to be helping more people with things, but as a Monk it's hard to keep them from dieing. I can't hold hate on any sizable train and if someone so much as farts 100 ft away from me, half the mobs go and kick their ass.
  
  If we were to get our Epic click changed to an AE, I think that would go a long way, and I'd consider that a "utility" function, as it's a hate-holding mechanic.
• Fighter Guild - Comparing the CG pet reward to the non-pet casters and the FG rewards, there is a huge gap that needs to be filled. I'm not just thinking of Monks here, but every non-CG pet class. The stat foods are great, as is the clicky rez (sometimes,) but I think the non-pets should get some form of boost that the pet classes won't have access to.
  
  Now, before any pet classes come in and chirp about how your pets get eaten up by Rampage, that's already being looked into and will likely be fixed soon. At which point, you are gods.
  
  While more click utilities would be nice, I think it'd be nicer to see some click combat-helpers. I haven't done anything past Qvic, so I'm not sure what's needed for the high-end stuff, but I imagine some higher-quality potions (or clicky item equivalents, since I don't think potions can be class-locked) would help out a lot. Clicky health and/or mana injection with a decent but not prohibitive reuse.
  
  Or if that doesn't float your boat, a portable buff bot for the non-pets would be awesome. Nothing worse than being 4 floors into LDoN and someone dies without a CG pet.
  
  Those are the only ideas I have at the moment, I'm sure there's better ones out there.
  

Thanks for posting this. Very good details. I can't think of anything to add, but I certainly share the sentiment for all that you posted.

None of my suggestions were because I want Monks to be as uber as some_class01. I'm just brainstorming ideas to make them more than Rogue minus Backstab, plus Feign Death.

I haven't had a chance to toy with my Mage's CG pet yet, it just seems like the CG pet kicks mucho ass. Which is understandable, as there are limited ways to boost a Mage's DPS. But Wizards are kinda shafted, it seems. And as a Monk, I don't really get much out of FG membership apart from 2.5/3.0 access.

I guess it just feels like a pet class getting their CG is instant-uber button, whereas for a Monk (and other non-pet classes) it's like "okay neato. Better buffs and I can get my 2.5 now." Which is what everyone else gets out of it.

Like I said, not complaining about soandso being OP or Monks not being able to tank like a Warrior or any of that. Just trying to come up with ideas for discussion.

The only reason I suggested the AE was a light hate builder. I'm not looking to hold hate of Wizards casting PBAEs. Just to not be training anyone that casts a heal spell within 5 miles of me when I pull more than 1 mob.  :P

Some poor cleric in PoTime ate my 5-pull for healing herself nowhere near me the other day. I'm not looking to be an AE god, just have some mild AE hate with a long but manageable refresh. Make it a 200dd PBAE with a 5 minute refresh or something, I'd be fine with that. Just something I can click and go "these mobs are mine and aren't going to go pwn some random person who isn't even involved in healing me or attacking the mobs."

The single greatest benefit from joining the fighters guild is the setting of your skills. It puts most of them over cap. It is a huge boon

I will look into retuning the monk epic & their t4 spells. I completely agree, it's a bit dumb that no one plays monks, and some of the T4 spells, specifically the epic, is completely worthless to a dps or avoidance tank.

I'll have to review them, but as a temporary fix, I gave their t4 spell a 35% increase in damage. I will probably add a line of discs eventually that will increase their damage, and when I do, their t4 spell will be nerfed.

I've also considered giving them aoe, but as a proc, not a guaranteed aoe, and if anything it's going to be a rain spell or targeted AE. I'll ask Hunter for ideas if I can't think of anything myself; monks really are a tough cookie.

You know how to change targets right?  :P  Yeah it takes time, with 5 or more mobs might be awhile.. but that's what I do when I get a multi-pull with my ranger+druid group before I start dropping heals from the druid.

If you give aoe damage/aggro to monks... why not rogues and zerkers and beastlords(?) hell every melee class...  I mean there are different roles for different classes, thats why there ARE different classes.. I think that's a good thing.  Monks aren't really supposed to be tanks.

Not saying they don't need tweaks, more dps etc... just sayin, roles are roles...

Monks are pinch tanks. They are not really meant to tank but they can tank in a pinch. This does not break the role monks have as they have always been this. If bst, berz and rogue want to tank, sure, let them tank. And I will give them a rez once the mob is dead.

Secrets I feel your pain on monk balancing. It is really hard to balance monks because they are usually either too weak or too strong in one way or another. I do think however that they could use an aoe, maybe in the form of an aug. Monk is supposed to be the king of toe to toe dps, I would love to see them put back in their proper place ahead of warriors.

I think it would be a mistake though to put any kind of anger component along with it. There are a few discs that we have that can maybe be tweaked to add some small hate. Maybe something that is larger than what a heal and/or nuke gives but less than that of paladins, sk, and warrior.

NOOOO!!!

jk, yeah seriously

Lol, didn't mean taking anything away from warriors, Hell with the amount of hp the mobs have in T3/4 we need all the dps we can come up with. Even if they were to give monks the same amount aoe dd that warriors have with the anger v hate aug monks would naturally move above warriors in the dps dept because of our ability to land more hits than warriors.

IMO, an idea i read that really stuck with me is a destructive force ability. (like, an improved one) via epic or otherwise. Destructive force is LETHAL and its balance is being able to survive whatever mass of mobs you grab. I feel badass using destructive force, but its for ~5 seconds, and then on a 6-hour timer. (What it feels like)

Might be a cool edge on monks. Our burst damage on AOE would be awesome, and put us in a niche for add control, and give us a ranking number in overall DPS, toe-to-toe.

RP-wise, it makes sense for a monk to be able to "1000 fists" every mob around him in a fit of rage. Haha

I don't think our boost in dps should come from a button press, rather an innate ability. I do support the idea of monks getting lowered DF but I don't think it would make our dps go up very much at all. As far as our dps increase I like the idea of giving them a comparable aoe dd aug to the warrior minus any hate component. Then maybe put innerflame as a right click effect on our epics with at the very least the correct timer.

THat sounds like a useful utility

Tranquil Force and Purify Body

I know these aren't terribly useful from what I have seen, but they both appear broken after the last update. Has anyone else noticed this?

Dongar

I agree with this post. At this time my warrior is out dpsing my monk. If the dps classes were given an aug that does the same thing the warrior aug does minus the hate, it would balance them back out.

honestly monks were never great dps before they got their clawstriker line and ashenhand disc is useless without it i suggest hunter or secrets come up with a way to implement the clawstriker line but up the damage from live as 3 3k hits from a disc isnt going to bump the dps much very much as it is on a 30 second recast but you would have to make it affect the tiger claw eagle strike abilitys as well to increase them everytime its pressed like wu's mastery is supposed to do but doesnt

It was a little hard to read your post but if I understand you correctly you are saying the 2 disc's would add 3 3k hits once every 30 seconds for a total of 9k every 30 seconds or 18k every 1 minute. My monk currently does about 4k dps, stretch that over a minute and you get a total of 240k. Add in the 18k and you get 258k. Divide that back down to get the dps and you get 4300. If I did my math right that is a 7.5% increase. Hardly something that takes monks from "never great dps" to great dps. But it is nice eye candy though, just like most of the other monk discs and our flying kick. Adding a proc to our weapons would take advantage of our superior connection rate.

Procs hit regardless of the melee hit connecting.

Xiggs are you saying you rather have balance via an aug and/or an epic click versus an innate ability?

My destructive force idea I originally thought of would be an epic click. Which is similar idea to innerflame..

And PS, it all depends on the reuse timer, but our dps would SKYROCKET if a DF click/reduced reuse skill was available to us

Thanks for the correction drippy. Going to do some parses to see about a better solution and present it.

Sohami, adding DF to the epic click would only up my dps significantly when I am in a zone that I already have the gear from. Basically, DF would not up my dps very much at all in T1/2/3/4. Oh sure, I can kill trains in qvic and ldons but I want something I can use in all of those zones to increase my dps.

Basically yes, but it wouldnt always hit for 3k exactly it ranges from the low hundreds to 3.3k or so and with ashenhand its doubled but the min is like 2k when using that disc. But as on ez everything isnt on par with live the damage should be scaled up a bit to make it more useful for people to tab over and hit it every thirty seconds a 10% dps increase is better than none imo

PS: its on the same timer as the monks pacify line

Monks are the new king of dps with Epic 4's and T4 Spell as far as I can tell from my parses, they leave rangers in the dust... Just got the spell this morning though, so haven't had much time to play, but ran gamparse on ranger and monk and the difference is quite substantial.

Wood

Meh..anyone else not excited that we're the king of dps at that point? Who's going to actually get there? Aren't you the king of anything with a team like Crab has?

Well yes and no.  I think the trickle down will happen eventually, people like Crab, FoH, and OR (before the bans) were always going to be first to get the new gear, it's just what they do.

I think the difficult part is bringing monks to that level in the first place.  Rangers are just the way to go until that point so there won't be much incentive to gear monks unless you know you are headed for that content.

My guess is people will only gear their monk boxes when they know 4.0's are within their reach.

The fact that Crab mentioned it at all is helpful though.  It's got me thinking "hey it might be worth it to keep a couple full T2 monks around for when 4.0s are more common."

When Anguish came out and the only people in there were The Order of Sin the same speculation about it be unattainable were said. People will progress farther, they always do.

In that case the speculation was actually kind of right.  That zone wasn't instanced and we got like 90% or the repops. 

Instances have made the end game even more accessible for everybody.

Honestly the spells will trickle down, I need one more T4 monk spell for my secondary monk, but after that it may well end up on the market because I need plat. Since instancing has come along I find my plat stores slowly decreasing and with the L Guk/Halls of Honor ones being 100k that can amount to more than a million a week. I may well offer spells up to the open market in exchange for plat when it's one I don't need (this morning for instance i had a spare t4 sk spell). The beautiful part of T3/T4 spells is that anyone can use them that is flagged to loot them (t2 bp and red stone to get up) unlike T4 armor which requires qvic-tacvi-t1-t2-t3 to make.

In that case I'm looking to buy the big wiz nuke. Also as long as you are around here Crab can you tell me what the Wiz 4.0 does?

Wiz nuke is t3, I've rotted/banked quite a few actually. Wiz epic 4.0 is a big self rune.