U40: Unarmed Strike Change

[Steelstar]

Hello!


We're here today to talk about an upcoming change coming soon (likely Update 40). A few years ago, we converted Handwraps from being non-weapon equippable items into actual weapons - A change that allowed a large number of effects and abilities to start working with Handwraps as they do other weapons. In that process, we also brought over most of the existing features meant to help Handwrap DPS be equivalent with that of other weapon types. As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear. This is, in part, due to an increased number of Weapon Dice while wielding Handwraps. In retrospect, the buffs they got in the transition to being "real" weapons made the additional damage dice much less necessary.


To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.


This change does not affect the other sources of Monk Handwrap Damage Dice, such as:


Improved Martial Arts Feat
Reinforced Fists item effects
Touch of the Void Dragon and To Seek Perfection
The Disciple of the Fist Past Life Feat



These will continue to add +[w] while using Handwraps as they do now. These have their impact on total DPS as well, but they require build decisions and gearing tradeoffs to achieve, which we're comfortable with. Internal playtesting shows that Handwrap Monk DPS continues to be very strong after the changes.


We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game. We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement as well; the recent Barbarian pass was work aimed in correcting classes that are behind where they should be, and we have plans for improving other such classes in the future. Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to work on class balance.

[cru121]

I am always in favor of nerfing Monks!

[FoliumSakura]

I think this is just fine.

Is there anything to bring the uniqueness of the henshin mystic up to par with other melee builds? The melee power hit was huge and didn't get much to compensate.

[Windaar]

We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game.


I think if you want to continue to "fix" the monk class, you should go back and fix some of those "interesting abilities" before you make new changes. If, as you say, your main is a monk, than you should already be aware that since the introduction of the Age of Rage pack, Ki Shout has not been working as it is supposed to. The ability states that it uses the Concentration skill, and only shares a cooldown with the Intimidate skill. Instead, Ki Shout has been using the Intimidate skill for its checks, making it useless as an enhancement.

Can you do something about this before you start messing with damage output again?

[Steelstar]

I think if you want to continue to "fix" the monk class, you should go back and fix some of those "interesting abilities" before you make new changes. If, as you say, your main is a monk, than you should already be aware that since the introduction of the Age of Rage pack, Ki Shout has not been working as it is supposed to. The ability states that it uses the Concentration skill, and only shares a cooldown with the Intimidate skill. Instead, Ki Shout has been using the Intimidate skill for its checks, making it useless as an enhancement.

Can you do something about this before you start messing with damage output again?

This is a Known Issue, one we hope to fix when time allows. It is Not Small.

[Windaar]

Is there anything to bring the uniqueness of the henshin mystic up to par with other melee builds? The melee power hit was huge and didn't get much to compensate.

Agreed. Henshins deal far less damage than many other melee builds, and unlike the Thief-Acrobat they only get one specialty attack to use with the staff (Quick Strikes, which is a copy from the TA tree). Under level 20, HMs are severely under-powered when compared to other THF builds, and don't really start to compete evenly until around level 22 or 23, when slightly better weapons are available (Thunderforged and Sireth come to mind).

[Capricorpus]

Hello!


....it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear....


...This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear....

While there are legitimate reasons to suggest that monk is outperforming other melee builds, I'm concerned by your claim that monk can "deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear". According to both kobold times on Lammania and testing that the people I run with have done in game across many lives, that simply isn't the case. Monks are good because they have top tier survivability (high dodge cap, shadow fade, high enough armor to get missed sometimes even when fully set up for dps) and a lot of cc/utility options (including but not limited to stunning fist, kukan do, quivering palm, tomb of jade, knock on the sky, unbalancing strike).

Pure monk dps is fine. It isn't, however, even in the top 3 builds when only dps is taken into consideration. It's possible that the fact that many good players play monk due to the reasons listed above has led to a misconception that monk dps is a lot higher than it actually is - those same players would be doing more dps if they were playing a different class, they just prefer to have the other stuff.

There's a case to be made for monk dps being too high considering the amount of other stuff monk has going for it, but the claim that that monk deals more damage, let alone substantially more damage, than comparably geared melees played by players of similar skill levels is simply inaccurate.

[NXPlasmid]

This is a Known Issue, one we hope to fix when time allows. It is Not Small.

Just like the "known issue" where quarterstaff monks are the OP build? right, because now that you let that secret "cat" out of the bag, the servers are overrun by quarterstaff monks. So OP. Or could it be, it remains that barely anyone runs quarterstaff builds and that while your "dps calculations" may show quarterstaves to be OP in your sterile testing lab, that in real life for people who actually play this game, quarterstaff builds are useful for one thing, flavor, not DPS... Can't you spend time working things that represent a real problem? Like the TR cache, sorting functions for the bank tabs, fixing dungeon alert issues, actually balancing the other classes to swash bard like you said you were going to do... how many years ago..

[kain741]

There's a case to be made for monk dps being too high considering the amount of other stuff monk has going for it, but the claim that that monk deals more damage, let alone substantially more damage, than comparably geared melees played by players of similar skill levels is simply inaccurate.

This is very true. While it does perform well overall it is not top DPS. I know you are seeking the right balance of other classes in game but we are trending back to where monks were before their pass. As more and more offensive ability gets pulled back then we have to ask what the goal of push towards DPS in their pass was. The obvious answer was to make people want to play it again so then why nerf it when you get the desired result?

I would suggest instead of looking at your internal testing reach out to some high performing DPS on different servers and see what their numbers suggest for Monk vs Barb vs Ranger vs Kensai vs etc etc etc. We have a tendency when working in a vacuum of coming to the conclusion we want without considering the considerable amount of outside testing that takes place on live servers every day. I know there are some squeaky wheels on the forums whining about monks power but reality shows when you actually look at who is doing what in game. I'm confident that if you look at the quantity of DPS out there you will see lots of monk DPS (maybe why you think it's outperforming) but when you look at quality you will find something very different when considering non-monk DPS.

[mraz]

you guys are waisting time on things that are not important.
and this is not the first time you doing it. i dont understand how can that be more important and game breaking then fixing stuff like tr cache.
ive never heared anyone complaining about monks ruin their game expirience or anything like that. on the other hand every single person wants to smash their monitors when it comes to tr cache for example.

[noobodyfool]

This is very true. While it does perform well overall it is not top DPS. I know you are seeking the right balance of other classes in game but we are trending back to where monks were before their pass. As more and more offensive ability gets pulled back then we have to ask what the goal of push towards DPS in their pass was. The obvious answer was to make people want to play it again so then why nerf it when you get the desired result?

I would suggest instead of looking at your internal testing reach out to some high performing DPS on different servers and see what their numbers suggest for Monk vs Barb vs Ranger vs Kensai vs etc etc etc. We have a tendency when working in a vacuum of coming to the conclusion we want without considering the considerable amount of outside testing that takes place on live servers every day. I know there are some squeaky wheels on the forums whining about monks power but reality shows when you actually look at who is doing what in game. I'm confident that if you look at the quantity of DPS out there you will see lots of monk DPS (maybe why you think it's outperforming) but when you look at quality you will find something very different when considering non-monk DPS.

Your a numbers guy looks like monk is as good as it gets

Build DPS
Assassin Blitz 21577
Melee Monk 20952.38095 monk
Melee Rogue 20370.37037
Fury Thrower 19789.91597 Ranged monk
Melee Monk 19505.49451 monk
Fury Thrower 17035.71429 Ranged monk
Melee Rogue 16627.63466
Melee Wolf 14536
Old Tempest 14081.63265 theirs a new build out now about 20000.
Melee Monk 13032.06997 Reaper Optimized Great Defense monk

After rounds of various build dps testing we failed to break the previous 15 second record with shintao monks. Despite utilizing a superior rotation from his last tests, symb only managed to attain a 20 second kill. 2 seconds slower from his previous attempt with unnerfed prowess. These were conducted on a fully geared and buffed character with all past lives.

My tests on no life character were also similar and were 2 seconds slower than my previous tests, 34 seconds currently compared to previous 32 for monk. my no life tempest clocked in at 33-32 seconds.
Vanguard 11143.85204 Not Reaper optimized DEAD LAST Vanguard/Kensai no defense pre nerf numbers

The fix to prowess was the largest roadblock to breaking 15 seconds on a monk. Though using scourge's divine form could hit 15 seconds.

[Paisheng]

I am disappointed to hear that you plan to nerf the hand wrap monk further -- traditional dnd had the monk supreme of the melee classes in dps -- they received more attacks and more damage per hit that all the others melees. The give away was that they could not wear armor or use many of the cool weapons and tactics available to other fighters.

In DDO maintaining the different flavors of melees instead of having them all be "balanced" to the same output is what makes characters and classes fun and unique. If all melees have to perform exactly the same then are you going to lift for example the 50 MRR cap on monks so they can achieve similar protection as other melees. Should all have the same achievable PRR, AC, Dodge, etc.?

Adding +1 to hit is essentially nothing (not even +1 damage too??) but more importantly leads DDO more towards homogeneity and blandness rather than the stellar uniqueness of classes which classic DnD offered.

I love DDO and one of the reasons has been its incredible character development of classes and builds (far more than other MMOs). You have for the most part refrained from making melee classes "equal" by having the same output or performance, but rather different inequalities among the melee classes (some better at defense, some with healing or spells, some better with offensive abilities, etc.) achieved a "different" balance -- where players had to choose different classes to achieve success in the area they thought most important.

But over the last year (nerf to monk Duality wraps, nerf to monk melee power in Henshin and Shintao trees) it seems you have decided that monks should not shine as the melee dps kings they were in pen and paper DnD. If all the melees are going to sport the same abilities in essence then we are just choosing a class name we like, not an actual class with differences.

Differences are more appealing:

Barbarians: DPS Kings (when raging) and Hit-point kings
Monks: DPS kings in general and some interesting CC abilities like stun, ki strikes, etc.)
Fighters: Overall balanced best defense and offense and king of tactics.
Paladins: Defense Kings and healing abilities

But if you really plan to make all melees essentially the same in DPS, then you need to be fair and increase defenses to all be the same too. Increase monk Hit-points and MRR, etc.

I hope you reconsider and instead of calling such classes outliers call them designed differences that make people choose among the melee classes what kind and style of melee they want to be.

(Edited for spelling and clarity)

[kain741]

Your a numbers guy looks like monk is as good as it gets

Build DPS
Assassin Blitz 21577
Melee Monk 20952.38095 monk
Melee Rogue 20370.37037
Fury Thrower 19789.91597 Ranged monk
Melee Monk 19505.49451 monk
Fury Thrower 17035.71429 Ranged monk
Melee Rogue 16627.63466
Melee Wolf 14536
Old Tempest 14081.63265 theirs a new build out now about 20000.
Melee Monk 13032.06997 Reaper Optimized Great Defense monk

After rounds of various build dps testing we failed to break the previous 15 second record with shintao monks. Despite utilizing a superior rotation from his last tests, symb only managed to attain a 20 second kill. 2 seconds slower from his previous attempt with unnerfed prowess. These were conducted on a fully geared and buffed character with all past lives.

My tests on no life character were also similar and were 2 seconds slower than my previous tests, 34 seconds currently compared to previous 32 for monk. my no life tempest clocked in at 33-32 seconds.
Vanguard 11143.85204 Not Reaper optimized DEAD LAST Vanguard/Kensai no defense pre nerf numbers

The fix to prowess was the largest roadblock to breaking 15 seconds on a monk. Though using scourge's divine form could hit 15 seconds.

I don't care about this list you have posted no less than 37 times. Join a high level group if you can get in it and see what the melees who are doing the most DPS are playing.

[GramercyRiff]

**** I need to get Monk past lives done STAT.

j/k lol at that attack animation



Also I just seriously read that Monks deal the most damage in pnp what is going on

[ironmaiden-br]

Honestly i wish you guys spent more of your time develloping new content then messing up with monks.
Why wont you try scaling UI, better engine to avoid lag, new quests , new classes, new races, more sagas ... Monks are fine the way they are.

[GramercyRiff]

It's very interesting to constantly read how different the player experience is relative to what the devs do.

I'm in the camp that thinks SSG should be doing QoL stuff over nerfing things that don't really need nerfs. I mean I think Monk is too good, but it's not so good that it needs another nerf.

[droid327]

I don't care about this list you have posted no less than 37 times. Join a high level group if you can get in it and see what the melees who are doing the most DPS are playing.

That's anecdotal, imprecise, and qualitative. You should balance classes by what they CAN do, not what people GET with them,because that's as much due to player skill and groupthink trends than actual mechanics.

[noobodyfool]

I don't care about this list you have posted no less than 37 times. Join a high level group if you can get in it and see what the melees who are doing the most DPS are playing.

I have and I do It's Mostly DC casters hold mobs and we all beat on them not much fun.

If there no DC caters or healers I'm SOL on a Tanky Vanguard over R 3-4 unless there is Monks and Worklocks just crushing everything before I can get there also not much fun.

[Amundir]

@Steelstar

Just for the sake of the community, could you give some insight into how the data for decisions such as these are obtained? My imagination is that you probably have some sort of logging server side to record the damage players do that you could perform analysis on. But others might imagine that you get your data from internal play tests, or watching people play on twitch, or from whatever. We just don't know.

[Selvera]

While I agree that handwrap monks outperform other monks; this is partially a problem with the other monk enhancement trees: Ninja spy doesn't really offer very much and dark-monk finishing moves suck. Henshins are rather lackluster since the melee power nerf. And whirlwind attack only works effectively with handwraps. If whirlwind attack; dark monk finishers and ninja spy/henshin were tweaked a bit; monk vs monk balance would be much better.

In terms of monk vs other classes; Capricorpus says it; their dps (after the duality nerf which was needed) isn't higher then what other classes can output; but it is certainly still pretty strong, especially considering the defenses and CC they can bring to the table. I'm not against the idea of a 10% endgame-monk dps nerf; but I don't agree that removing unarmed strike is the right way to do it. It's a class feature which makes monks unique as a class and draws from pnp in a fairly faithful way. +1 to hit is laughably useless.

[Arkat]

https://i.imgur.com/Toh4PBE.jpg

[Spl1tz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xO-FQvv7-k&feature=youtu.be

#RevampTRcache!

[PsychoBlonde]

Yeah, I don't see much point in messing with monks at this point. They're not an extreme DPS outlier since Duality was fixed. This change is minor enough that I don't think it's worth ****ing people off to make it.

Bards and Paladins could use some tweaks, and of course Sorcerer and Wizard still need class enhancement passes.

I'd also like for you to clean up the epic destinies that are and have been really garbage for a long time now.

[Iriale]

Another change that moves this game even more from pnp? Please no

What if instead of nerfs you finish the class passes, you improve the EDs that desperately need a pass, you make a much needed revision to the spells (do you know how many are directly useless and how many do not scale well in epics?), and also improve also the tactical feats of the melees, who are in dire need of a revision?

It is not as if there was no work pending.

And instead of nerf unarmed combat, how about you do viable the other monk combat styles? Because they are currently bad

[zehnvhex]

@Steelstar

Just for the sake of the community, could you give some insight into how the data for decisions such as these are obtained? My imagination is that you probably have some sort of logging server side to record the damage players do that you could perform analysis on. But others might imagine that you get your data from internal play tests, or watching people play on twitch, or from whatever. We just don't know.

Same way we do it.

They spawn static mobs with X amount of health, build a character and then see how long it takes to beat them up and then do the math. Near as we know, there's no support for any kind of external logging available in game and I doubt they have the capacity to build something like that given how hands-off they are in regards to any sort of UI elements (IE: Public Group Finder has been been broken since elite streaks became a thing and they've yet to fix it).

While they probably aren't as good at it as some of the best builders in the community, they can get reasonably close to it. Sometimes they say things that makes no sense (Steelstar defending the racial nuke that dark elves get by saying "Free DPS is always good right?"), but by and large they can get ballpark figures down.

My hope is that this all leads to a 'bigger picture' thing in the future. If we can get melee dps in line with ranged/spell caster dps, then we can see them push more things through to make melee dps safer other than a poorly implemented HP buff.

That is to say, when top blaster casters can get within 10% or so of top melee builds, maybe we can see more options open up so that melee aren't such a liability without a hard tank and CC. Right now DPS casters are useless outside of running TR's (of which they are arguably king), so giving melee better CC options would be a rich get richer scenario.

We've been getting hints of a caster revamp, so hopefully they're establishing a baseline they want DPS to do with melee, then bring casters/ranged up to that baseline, then adjust reaper/grouping mechanics so that melee can more reliably do that dps and casters are more than FoD/Otto/Hold bots.

One can hope at least.

I mean the more likely thing is Sev spun the 'What should I tell people to do today?' wheel in his office and it landed on 'nerf monks'.

[GramercyRiff]

I like most of the posts in this thread. It makes a ton of sense to me.

Fix the stuff that needs fixing; there's a lot that needs fixing aka Freedom of Movement. I don't even play Monk, so this doesn't affect me, but I got feels for those that do. Keep Monk the way it is.

[Engoril]

We're here today to talk about an upcoming change coming soon (likely Update 40). A few years ago, we converted Handwraps from being non-weapon equippable items into actual weapons - A change that allowed a large number of effects and abilities to start working with Handwraps as they do other weapons. In that process, we also brought over most of the existing features meant to help Handwrap DPS be equivalent with that of other weapon types. As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear. This is, in part, due to an increased number of Weapon Dice while wielding Handwraps. In retrospect, the buffs they got in the transition to being "real" weapons made the additional damage dice much less necessary.


If you are just looking at DPS then you are failing to properly balance any class, let alone monks. There is more to each class than just their DPS. Monks have weak MRR and that is noticeably a problem in higher end content compared to say the MRR that a fighter gets. I have both a level 30 Kensai Fighter and Shintao Monk. The fighter might have slightly less DPS than the monk but the fighter is also noticeable tougher when it comes to taking damage from all sources, apart from evadeable damage.




To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.


You are removing a signature ability from what Monk's did in PnP. Originally DDO had the proper unarmed progression of damage dice: D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, 2D10. My memory may be incorrect about the actual damage steps, but the dice steps were a key feature that made monks different. You got rid of that after a few years and replaced it with +0.5[W] steps which was sort of acceptable. Now though you are going to throw it away? Just to make the monk work the same as every other melee? That's just crazy (and boring) in my eyes. If you wanted to knock 10% off their DPS there are more subtle ways you could have chosen rather than removing one of the big things that makes the class different.

[Amundir]

Same way we do it.

They spawn static mobs with X amount of health, build a character and then see how long it takes to beat them up and then do the math. Near as we know, there's no support for any kind of external logging available in game and I doubt they have the capacity to build something like that given how hands-off they are in regards to any sort of UI elements (IE: Public Group Finder has been been broken since elite streaks became a thing and they've yet to fix it).

Did you hear that directly from a dev, or is that what you imagine they do, like I imagine they do it the other way? If it's not directly from them, I'm asking for some details straight from the horses mouth about their process. Not granular details about it, but just an idea of how they do it.

[lLockehart]

Haaaaaaaum, I think I'm okay'ish with this.

Historically, Monk has always been a devious class in comparison with everything else. I think the main premise was supposed to be something along the lines of a disabler with high survivability that can go in, disable the caster or (more recently added) champions and get out. It's very hard to translate the core premise of what they are in PnP, especially 3.5 to our action paced engine and I much rather it work as a stand alone class within our own game.

The implementation though, is pretty tricky and I think it's easy to fall into wrong balance configurations, even if you're trying to seriously work well on the class since Monk has the whole package of evading damage, good Dps with Helpless attached to it which is the most used strategy by far, it's flexible and it's the prime target for the recent 25% Hp buff. It's easy to let things go off the rails with a class that's supposed to be so good in what's currently optimal in the game so the balance falls within the ratios which are hard to track down.

I don't think it'll be a 10% loss of Dps, especially with higher weaponry that feature [W]dX + Y. Coupled with things like Whirlwind attacks, buffs, melee power, damage argumentation like helpless, 5% from gear fury, etc, it'll be a good, solid blow to a damage output that does have its peers with Tempest and Rogue. I also think adding +1 Attack is just rubbing salt on the wound, may as well be +3-5 Attack to capitalize on the need to land blows with Monk's special attacks and offset the damage drop a little at end game where to-hit really starts to matter and the damage drop is most felt.

I'd much rather buff everything else to an acceptable baseline but I understand that it would be an extended and labour heavy endeavour. However... I do think a trade off has to be implemented somehow, if not an higher Attack bonus, then something else ~

With that said, I think I'm okay with the change or rather, the attempt at ironing the class. I trust tests are done with an optimal build and a capped lvl 30 Character because anything short of that would be tragically sad, I'm sure there's plenty of people in the forums to help with that if it's needed.

[janave]

While I agree that handwrap monks outperform other monks; this is partially a problem with the other monk enhancement trees: Ninja spy doesn't really offer very much and dark-monk finishing moves suck. Henshins are rather lackluster since the melee power nerf. And whirlwind attack only works effectively with handwraps. If whirlwind attack; dark monk finishers and ninja spy/henshin were tweaked a bit; monk vs monk balance would be much better.

In terms of monk vs other classes; Capricorpus says it; their dps (after the duality nerf which was needed) isn't higher then what other classes can output; but it is certainly still pretty strong, especially considering the defenses and CC they can bring to the table. I'm not against the idea of a 10% endgame-monk dps nerf; but I don't agree that removing unarmed strike is the right way to do it. It's a class feature which makes monks unique as a class and draws from pnp in a fairly faithful way. +1 to hit is laughably useless.

This is spot on, Monk to Monk lack balance due to Ninja and Henshin are weak and the best perks are easily accessible for Shintaos too.
It would be nice to disconnect them from the current stereotype, shuriken and staff only build is really boring.

[DrawingGuy]

*snip*

Sooo much info missing from this (what are their enhancements, feats, gear?), and so many build options also not listed here. I've played hundreds of builds, many of which were post monk-pass, and I've had many beat out my Monk. There is also the consideration of multiple target DPS. A ranger can apply its top-tier DPS to 4x targets 66% of the time, wolves/bears get cleaves with offhand strikes, warlocks can hit entire groups with every attack, etc). Monk is not the top DPS, and its posts like yours performed in a vacuum of single target only in an extremely narrow scope missing millions of options and factors... and of course posted repeatedly that the devs seem to latch onto.

Though while your post is not why I'm replying, the devs seem to be testing under the same conditions. Tunnel visioned DPS testing that misses many other factors and build options, since if they think handwrap DPS beats out everything by "substantially more", they are definitely missing things.

I am also wholeheartedly against going yet another step away from what is a core PnP feature: scaling unarmed damage as you level. Destroying a core feature should be an absolutely last resort. If nerfing monks is indeed the game priority over many other important things (TR cache, bug fixes, improving THF, class passes, epic destiny passes, actual new content), there are better ways to do it. Get rid of the Improved Martial Arts feat, or scale it back to .5[W] for handwraps. You can also get rid of Reinforced Fist items. Changes like that will achieve the heavy handed 2.5[W] nerf without destroying a core D&D mechanic. Simply just flip Reinforced Fist to Enhanced Ki (+1 for regular reinforced, +2 for greater, +3 for superior), and gear that has both either stack it or just replace it with something else (though Sun Soul gear getting +2 would be fitting). Keeping +[W] gear (as well as Imp Martial Arts if it is deemed further nerfs are needed) but getting rid of core mechanics simply doesn't make sense to me. And doing a change like I suggested would at least give the silver lining of lifting the requirement for me to always be in Fire stance to afford ki moves in heroics due to more access to enhanced ki (something I've always wanted).

[Eelpout]

I am fairly certain the nerfs will continue until all Monk players promise to be purely Kama builds who only put points in the Henshen Mystic tree...

[UurlockYgmeov]

I miss the ability to walk on water.:(

[J1NG]

Not directly related. But Handwraps realted I guess. With the changes to Handwraps damage coming in U40, is the Epic Feat: Vorpal Strikes going to get it's correct functionality for Handwraps for U40 then?

Right now:
Epic Feat: Vorpal Strikes
Unarmed gains Slashing Damage Type for bypass, and gains Vorpal property for instakill on 20 if less than x amount of damage.
Handwraps gains Slashing Damage Type for bypass.
Handwraps do NOT gain Vorpal property for instakill on 20 if less than x amount of damage.

Will the Feat be "fixed" to include the Vorpal property on Handwraps since unarmed damage is being tweaked? Because according to Lynnabel, this was "fixed" back in 2016. Which is only partially correct. The Fix gave us what I desribed above. Handwraps do not get the Vorpal effect property. Hence, still not working correctly.

Unless the Devs want to confirm that Vorpal Strikes should not be working for Handwraps?

J1NG

[JP457]

If monks are so OP, why is it I never see them in groups leading the kill counts? Instead I see tempests, kensais, etc.

If balance is so important why aren't you actually balancing things?

I think you just don't listen to your player community and don't know how your own game actually works. This is blatantly demonstrated every time I see one of your live streams.

[PsychoBlonde]

I miss the ability to walk on water.:(

Some water. There were large parts of the game where it didn't work right.

[Epicstorms]

Oh please, monk is already not the best DPS in-game after you nerfed it over and over.

I still play a monk and like to have a bit more survivability and CC, while trading in some DPS compared to other build choices.

Now you nerf it again? Come on ... -_-

Time to TR out of monk I guess -_- thanks

[noobodyfool]

Haaaaaaaum, I think I'm okay'ish with this.

Historically, Monk has always been a devious class in comparison with everything else. I think the main premise was supposed to be something along the lines of a disabler with high survivability that can go in, disable the caster or (more recently added) champions and get out. It's very hard to translate the core premise of what they are in PnP, especially 3.5 to our action paced engine and I much rather it work as a stand alone class within our own game.

The implementation though, is pretty tricky and I think it's easy to fall into wrong balance configurations, even if you're trying to seriously work well on the class since Monk has the whole package of evading damage, good Dps with Helpless attached to it which is the most used strategy by far, it's flexible and it's the prime target for the recent 25% Hp buff. It's easy to let things go off the rails with a class that's supposed to be so good in what's currently optimal in the game so the balance falls within the ratios which are hard to track down.

I don't think it'll be a 10% loss of Dps, especially with higher weaponry that feature [W]dX + Y. Coupled with things like Whirlwind attacks, buffs, melee power, damage argumentation like helpless, 5% from gear fury, etc, it'll be a good, solid blow to a damage output that does have its peers with Tempest and Rogue. I also think adding +1 Attack is just rubbing salt on the wound, may as well be +3-5 Attack to capitalize on the need to land blows with Monk's special attacks and offset the damage drop a little at end game where to-hit really starts to matter and the damage drop is most felt.

I'd much rather buff everything else to an acceptable baseline but I understand that it would be an extended and labour heavy endeavour. However... I do think a trade off has to be implemented somehow, if not an higher Attack bonus, then something else ~

With that said, I think I'm okay with the change or rather, the attempt at ironing the class. I trust tests are done with an optimal build and a capped lvl 30 Character because anything short of that would be tragically sad, I'm sure there's plenty of people in the forums to help with that if it's needed.

All this means is they will all go falcon and pick-up 15%-20% so it really its a buff of 13.5%-17.5% go falcon/aasimar

[Thar]

If monks are so OP, why is it I never see them in groups leading the kill counts? Instead I see tempests, kensais, etc.

If balance is so important why aren't you actually balancing things?

I think you just don't listen to your player community and don't know how your own game actually works. This is blatantly demonstrated every time I see one of your live streams.

I see the opposite on sarlona. Most of end game raids on reaper are 50% monk. That being said, the nerf isn't going to make us run a pally instead as they are still 1/2 the dps.

that being said i still have an issue with this. and i don't currently have a punchmonk,

1) this is a core part of the class that martial damage increases from 1d4 at start to 1d20 at lvl 20. This isn't implementable in ddo so the +w was added.
2) they were just nerfed and we are doing another one like a few months later? bad decision and design. put better weapons in the game for other classes, better feats/enhancements for s/b, dual weap, etc. the new tree just buffed monks... with a non class tree... why you'd remove class abilities doesn't add up.
3) monks should have dps as they should take a beating not wearing armor. so armor and shield should be more defensive value if monks are the best option.
4) grandmaster of flowers is a horrible ED tree.

[lLockehart]

I miss the ability to walk on water.:(

I will totally seize your post and hijack the thread to express how much I also miss this quirky little ability.

But first... I see a lot of people complain about the departure from 3.5 Pnp mechanics and I truly don't get it, this game has almost nothing to do with PnP - mechanics wise and the things that we do share with it, gradually hold us back, more and more. If we handn't introduced scaling mechanics like Spellpower, PRR and the like, it would have been impossible to continue, even with a strong horizontal progression but regardless of that, even when the game launched in 2006, it was still a far cry from most PnP driven games seeing our action paced engine and I think that's one of our strongest points, it's why it's so fun to melee about or spellcast in real time. The beauty in our game is how we translate the mechanics and lore into it, not copy pasting things for the sake of it.

Even in most player handbooks, the strongest point to be made is that it's a game driven by imagination and the flexibility of a GM is key, following the book's rules and mechanics is a strong 2nd. I digress however but I will digress even more! for all the people looking for a more traditional PnP fix and aren't unwilling to play actual DnD online or can't afford to have time to go by a store and play a couple hours per session... it's a good time to be alive - there's a bunch of good PnP driven games with the likes of Pillars of eternity 1 and 2, Divinity: original Sin, even things like Wasteland or... even Darkest dungeon will yield a better time if you're looking for that particular feel. Feel free to google them or browse GoG, it's a pretty marketplace.

But let's talk game and that's Water walking! it was useless, complete garbage, a real waste of AP save for.... that one raid featuring our old friend the Abbot and man, did it feel awesome there... and everywhere else really. It's an utility that really empowers flavour, something we're so lacking now and I never really understood why it was taken out, the code was in place... why leave it out? We need, we must have more flavour driven utility abilities like these and whenever they do come in handy, it really shines and it's such a treat to the game, hgggn!

[Eddexp]

Haha... fighter with Handwraps gona be better then Monks... -Monkas
Fighter with bow are better then rangers...
Lets ev1 play Fighters

[NXPlasmid]

All this means is they will all go falcon and pick-up 15%-20% so it really its a buff of 13.5%-17.5% go falcon/aasimar

Oh I get it, I can buy the new falcon tree and get my monk's dps back, wait a minute... I already paid money for monk in the first place. Can't I just trade some of those lame cosmetics I was forced to buy with the expansion for my monk w's back? Do I have to buy another tree now?

[Gemini-Dragon357]

Unarmed Strike is a unique class feat and it's really an essential part of the monk class in DDO. It's a big part of what makes them better at using handwraps than a fighter or any other class. What you're proposing to replace it with, +1 to hit, is essentially nothing. At the very least it should be +1 hit and damage, but preferably it would stay similar to what it is now - boosting weapon die. Currently monk damage in heroics isn't stellar and doesn't stand out at all from the other melees. This change seems focused too much on balancing around capped players.

Dropping Unarmed Strike from .5W per 4 levels to .25W per 4 levels results in a -1.25W. That coupled with reducing the W from the item enhancement Reinforced Fists by 50% results in a similar loss of W. Fleetfoot Necklace's Superior Reinforced Fists gives 1.5W at level 29, dropping that to .75W reduces monk W by 2 at capped. Most monks at cap wear or want to wear Fleetfoot Necklace, dropping cutting the bonus won't make much less desirable, 0.75W is still a huge boost. And the other items with normal and Greater Reinforced Fists would be reduced to .25W and .5W from .5W and 1W respectively. Items with Reinforced Fists would still be sought after by monks and still require gearing trade offs to wear.

[NXPlasmid]

Unarmed Strike is a unique class feat and it's really an essential part of the monk class in DDO. It's a big part of what makes them better at using handwraps than a fighter or any other class. What you're proposing to replace it with, +1 to hit, is essentially nothing. At the very least it should be +1 hit and damage, but preferably it would stay similar to what it is now - boosting weapon die. Currently monk damage in heroics isn't stellar and doesn't stand out at all from the other melees. This change seems focused too much on balancing around capped players.

Dropping Unarmed Strike from .5W per 4 levels to .25W per 4 levels results in a -1.25W. That coupled with reducing the W from the item enhancement Reinforced Fists by 50% results in a similar loss of W. Fleetfoot Necklace's Superior Reinforced Fists gives 1.5W at level 29, dropping that to .75W reduces monk W by 2 at capped. Most monks at cap wear or want to wear Fleetfoot Necklace, dropping cutting the bonus won't make much less desirable, 0.75W is still a huge boost. And the other items with normal and Greater Reinforced Fists would be reduced to .25W and .5W from .5W and 1W respectively. Items with Reinforced Fists would still be sought after by monks and still require gearing trade offs to wear.

I think you missed the point here. The truth is, monk is well... too monk like. Clearly, monk needs to be more like two weapon fighting ranger or fighter. By making this wonderful change, a monk can enjoy fighting side-by-side with their melee brothers and sisters without feel different or unusual. Handwraps are weapons now. Everything in balance. Remember the game isn't about you, it's about the mone...err I mean the game. SSG gave you the bird (tree) before they announced this change, what's problem?

[Jetrule]

Melee monks are overpowered. I approve this change!

[peng]

This... is not a good change. Unless you're using legendary ravenloft wraps, that +2.5[w] adds an average of 2.5 x 3.5 = 8.75. Powerful? Maybe. Overpowered? Not at all. Not on a weapon with base 20/x2 crit profile. However, morninglord/nightmother/duality add another 5/5/7.5 damage on top of that, on weapons that already push the envelope on weapon power. So once again, you seem to be nerfing monks, both in heroics and epics, based on how powerful 3 level 29 weapons are.

If you really want to lose the 5 x 0.5[w], which scales the same on all wraps except morninglord/nightmother/duality, replace it with 5 x +1 attack and damage, not just +1 attack.

Also, while you're nerfing monks (again), mind fixing some monk bugs? Like ki shout (uses intim instead of concentration), vorpal strikes (gives slash bypass but no vorpal proc), and items that add an on-hit effect for unarmed like tower of despair burst rings and brawling gloves (they do nothing while wearing wraps).

[Tianie]

Monks have lower hit dice then most melee, that's what they give up to increase DPS, pls take that into consideration.

[Tilomere]

2.5 [w] for 25% more hit points from epic defensive stance seems a fair trade for those that play in epics.

Edit: oops. Didn't mean to bump.

[Feal]

I don't understand... Why nerf a class that has the possibility to do end game (not all melee monks can afford that wihour PLs, gear and in game skills) while other classes are trashed and stink?

They already wrote monk is strong because is balanced, dps wise is not top dps.

They already wrote maybe is better to fix bugs and improve game.

Maybe developers need to be player to have some clue?

[hp1055cm]

We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game.
I can't believe you are actually talking about another nerf for pure monks. I can't truly express my disgust and abide by forum rules.
Look, I'm 6+ years in and I'm not gonna drop the Q word over this; but will I play less and enjoy it less... Yes.

If the problem is with endgame DPS then why are you adjusting DPS at the heroic level?

The real problem with this game is player retention and grouping - That is what you should be focused on.
You should be asking yourself each time you make a change, "Will this promote player retention or chase more people away?"

People have been asking for QOL changes as long as I have been playing and nothing ever gets done. How about you actually poll the player base to help you decide what changes the game may need?
I mean, TR Cache, TR process in general, Ladders, Hirelings, broken features, better LFM tools, better Trade tools, portals, Token of the twelve alternatives, etc - useful improvements that people actually want.
Does that just make too much sense, or is it me?

[Yamani]

I can't believe you are actually talking about another nerf for pure monks. I can't truly express my disgust and abide by forum rules.
Look, I'm 6+ years in and I'm not gonna drop the Q word over this; but will I play less and enjoy it less... Yes.



It went: Big nerf, Super buff, Small nerf. For monks :P These all being relatively recent changes.

[ice584]

This is a Known Issue, one we hope to fix when time allows. It is Not Small.

Instead of replacing Intimidate with Concentration maybe it would simply be easier to change the enhancement to something like:
- Adds [10/15/20] to Intimidate checks
- Adds [25%/50%/75%] of your Concentration skill to Intimidate checks
- Adds [quarter/half/full] monk level to Intimidate checks
- Adds WIS modifier to Intimidate checks

And there's probably many more ways. Rather than leave an enhancement to be useless, this could at least be changed to something that is easier to accomplish and still somewhat useful.

[Zeklijan]

Hello! ..... /cut


Hey Steel, thanks for the heads up! I get why this is happening, so I'll bear with you (knowing I main this class)

While we're on topic of monks, I'd like to mention a few things here.

1. Grandmaster of flowers destiny has interesting Ki abilities, but their DC needs to be looked over. The fact that none of them factor in stunning or combat mastery bonuses make all of these abilities completely unusable at lv 30, even with a fully geared out character.

2. I feel monks lack the ability to customize, it used to be possible to have touch of death, void strike on a handwraps dark monk(It was a tight fit and little room for anything else back then, but still possible). Now each are exclusive to a certain type of style, void for henshins, dark for non handwraps monk, and light for handwrap monks. It's very limiting and really feel these shouldn't be mutually exclusive, if one would like to play a dark monk with handwraps I feel the game punishes too hard by losing on core abilities (such as crit threat ranges, for example), or by making many of the action point choices specific to a weapon type only. I see why it makes sense from a MMO point of view but the beauty of DDO is it allows room for creative build thinking, which I think is lacking with monks right now.

3. Henshin needs proper and interesting weapons to play for monks in endgame. Only handwraps have the cool monk effects, and I feel Quarterstaves options are very limited for the endgame (which is especially important since the sentient weapon update)

Thanks!

[FuryFlash]

To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.

I guess this is a reasonable change, since the damage dice buffs were from a different era of handwraps. That said, handwraps are a [1d6] weapon, so keep that in mind vs other weapon types which scale more with [W] scaling. I'm not really against a damage nerf to monks balance-wise, especially considering their significant defenses and CC. However, I would much rather see improvements to Monks' special abilities, combo attacks and other fighting styles (staff, ninja weapons, etc) to make the class more fun to play.

[Tianie]

If you are doing this, I would like to see some changes in the enhancement trees, to let Pure Monks have enough good stuff in their trees, to spend all there points. Each tree is limiting in what works for it.
If you look in each tree you see things that limit your choices to the weapon of THAT tree. Ninja Spy has many things that say (does not work with staves and hand wraps). Shintao Core abilites work only with hand warps, etc.
And Stunning Fist feat only works with hand wraps, make it, you have to be centered and work with staves also.

[Xyfiel]

I would rather have the base class part stay and the misc. bonuses removed.

[Killonius]

Hello!


We're here today to talk about an upcoming change coming soon (likely Update 40). A few years ago, we converted Handwraps from being non-weapon equippable items into actual weapons - A change that allowed a large number of effects and abilities to start working with Handwraps as they do other weapons. In that process, we also brought over most of the existing features meant to help Handwrap DPS be equivalent with that of other weapon types. As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear. This is, in part, due to an increased number of Weapon Dice while wielding Handwraps. In retrospect, the buffs they got in the transition to being "real" weapons made the additional damage dice much less necessary.


To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.


This change does not affect the other sources of Monk Handwrap Damage Dice, such as:


Improved Martial Arts Feat
Reinforced Fists item effects
Touch of the Void Dragon and To Seek Perfection
The Disciple of the Fist Past Life Feat



These will continue to add +[w] while using Handwraps as they do now. These have their impact on total DPS as well, but they require build decisions and gearing tradeoffs to achieve, which we're comfortable with. Internal playtesting shows that Handwrap Monk DPS continues to be very strong after the changes.


We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game. We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement as well; the recent Barbarian pass was work aimed in correcting classes that are behind where they should be, and we have plans for improving other such classes in the future. Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to work on class balance.

So I don’t disagree with game balance at all, one of my mains is a monk as well, but could monks get some mitigation against damaging spells? Some additional MRR access would balance out the loss of dps. Dps is also a form of mitigation, I don’t want Monks to get lost again, I enjoy playing mine, and I am sure others feel the same way. Other classes might have slightly lower dps, but they also have access to more mitigation, both PRR and MRR. So a fair scale of things makes sense to me.

[cave_diver]

Nerf rangers & rogues....they have more dps then monks atm......actually just nerf everything.



Personally, monks, rangers, melee rogues are in a good spot at the moment....how about leaving them alone and fixing pallys & fighters

[cave_diver]

This is a Known Issue, one we hope to fix when time allows. It is Not Small.

Not sure how small or big this is but can you elaborate how you broke this from 1 patch to the next? If it is SOOOO big, just give us a useful enhancement instead at this spot> Say 2.5W added to wraps

e

[Yamani]

Nerf rangers & rogues....they have more dps then monks atm......actually just nerf everything.



Personally, monks, rangers, melee rogues are in a good spot at the moment....how about leaving them alond and fixing pallys & fighters

Please do a FULL post about both Rangers and rogues and why they need to be nerfed! I need some entertainment.

This change for monks I'm ok with and I have had a monk before they where even the meta when players who still can't build a monk think they are suddenly good.

[Tianie]

I would do a staff monk, if it was done alittle better, because I would want to be 100% monk. On that note, why does Hehshin get as a level 20 cap, +4 wisdom, when you can't use stunning fist with a staff?

[Vish]

Ok let's look at it by the numbers
7w duality
3.5w 20 monk
3w Shintao core 5/6
1.5w dance of flowers
1.5 superior reinforced fleetwood necklace
16.5w total
.5w past life monk
.5w pa in ld
17.5w total

Now let's look say white owl 17/3 cleric monk
7w duality
1w 3 monk
1.5w dance of flowers
1.5w fleetwood necklace
11w total

Most of the loss is from 20 monk and Shintao cores. 5.5w
With changes the multiclass will lose no die, but the pure monk is down 2.5. So 14w vs 11w on a 3 monk. A spread of 3.
So the outlier is duality. I would suggest nerfing the impact, not giving up the core progression.
The difference in running a pure monk should be to some advantage. If the impact is given up, then 14.5 pure, 9 multiclass, a spread of 5.5.
Anyways, you guys didn't know what you were building, so now you're walking back all the changes because you finally have a metric. And in doing so changing the core abilities of going pure. Something that hasn't been changed since I started playing 3 years ago.
This is a sad state of affairs that rules get changed all the time. You can't count on anything. It's like you're forcing us to run flavor of the month. It gets exceedingly tiresome, and besides we don't have the resources for it. You just gave us 25% more hp on monk, and changed the game with wisdom conversion. Now you're nerfing dps again. I tell you what, you can keep you're hp if I can keep my dps. Because dps is more important. It's like running a cleric, you can stay alive forever but can't kill anything. Keeping monks up there in dps is how the original game of dnd was perceived. They were the super fighters. But they were rare. Because you had to roll 3d6 for stats and actually get high enough stats in the right place to even be qualified to play one. Of course that is out the door when you get to choose first then allocate stats. Anyone can roll a monk in ddo, so they are diminished.
I am very much against the nerf of core progression. This will greatly affect heroic. But you killing it in the name of epic. Because there's just too much add on with the gear you've provided. You created the best dps fighter in the game, and now you're walking it back in the name of balance. You know how that looks? Like you don't have no vision, or that you're just running a fotm gang. And it is terrible. I am thinking of quitting ddo again.
It's not like you're building on a foundation, you're tearing the foundation down because of gear. Sad panda.
Yore no monk.
So nerf dualitys impact. Fix the gear, don't tear down monk.
Nuff said.

[Synthetic]

Could you fix WWA? It's silly this one feat works differently with handwraps then any other weapon. If handwraps are high single target dps that's fine, but they shouldn't be better AOE then other TWF, and should be behind THF(especially staff) builds for AOE.

When you fix it make sure WWA doesn't take longer then other cleave abilities, and it's fine with me if it better then cleave/g.cleave( let it doublestrike it has a lot of pre-requisites) but it shouldn't be better for TWF than THF.

Cheers

[HastyPudding]

+1 to attack? Really? You might as well not even have the feat at all.

Why don't you just thematically shift Unarmed Strike from damage to accuracy, then? +5 total attack is pointless, but maybe +10 or a +% is more useful. Unarmed monks aren't supposed to be powerhouses, but they are supposed to be fast and precise. They have the speed, so give them the accuracy to go along with it. By level 30 an unarmed, pure monk should be effortlessly hitting enemies, even if they don't deal significant damage or even have a +attack item.

There's a bad history of Turbine/SSG changing things and only going half-@ssed on it. Go all in or don't do it, at all.

[Mindos]

Internal playtesting shows

Kobold remember infernal playtesting! Kobold also not get paid because it called play not worktesting. Kobold not get fooled again!


(my main is a Monk)

Wait, monks can use runearms? :P

[cave_diver]

Please do a FULL post about both Rangers and rogues and why they need to be nerfed! I need some entertainment.

This change for monks I'm ok with and I have had a monk before they where even the meta when players who still can't build a monk think they are suddenly good.

Melee dreadnought rogues & tempest rangers are better or even dps with monks atm with the high skull groups we run with, that is why i said they are in a good spot atm. Raid rapier is just sick CC atm on a tempest.

[Ovrad]

This feels unnecessary.

I'm really doubting how you calculate class DPS at this point. Do you ignore all action boosts, enhancements and EDs or something? and use an uncritable target?Cause Monks are clearly NOT leading DPS in end game. Qstaff monks were never ahead of the curve before the henshin nerf and are now completely gone from the game. That tree is just sad.

And +1 to attack? Not even damage? Why even bother giving a bonus at all.

Meanwhile, tons of handwraps bugs remain unfixed and ignored. From old stuff like the ToD rings not giving any of the monk bonuses, to new stuff like the "Shadowshimmer Cladding", from last update, which has banishing fists that does NOTHING.

/shrug

[Memnir]

...wow. ...really?


https://media.giphy.com/media/v9rcdLpNMlR4Y/giphy.gif

[Vish]

Ok here's another argument
There is no 20 game
So why bother boosting Shintao core 5 and 6? That would only be for epic use practically speaking.
And the core progression of monk IS a die progression. So there shouldn't be any need for it in the cores. Since it is already reprensented in the 1-20 monk leveling. And it's only for Handwraps. Henshins don't get a w increase. Neither do shortsword ninjas.
So if you want to represent monk as a die increase, it should be done from the 1-20. Don't add more in Shintao cores, just adjust the amount in core progression.
For epic, the progression is the weapon die. Mostly in heroic it doesn't go over 2w. But in epic it goes up to 7w. So there's you're epic progression. Plus gear, and Ed for dance. But dance is a gimme on monks. Who wouldn't take 1.5 for free. Maybe that's op too. Maybe need to remove it.?*
But you've got gear that provides another 1.5 to wraps. And the wraps themselves are at 7. So all this adds up to some pretty big numbers. Don't nerf the heroic side for epic considerations. I guess you can't do much about gear, but I argued nerf impact. But it is a raid weapon. And the 1.5 is a raid necklace. So pile on the big numbers. But don't gut the core for something at the end, or the 30 build. And there still ain't no 30 game. Nothing but a hamster wheel for everybody. Means you can't count on good ppl being at 30 when you get there. So you leave too. But 30 is mostly what we build for.
Sorry but I couldn't sleep, I'm so ****ed off about this. You give us a pass and take it away a year later. Did you not know what you were doing two years ago? Lynnabel had up monk changes for president. I see she changed her banner. So I guess the time of the monk is over. You giveth and you taketh away.
But really. Reconsider. Nerf impact on duality or nerf core5/6 of Shintao. Don't nerf heroic monks.

[DrawingGuy]

@Vish - I disagree with most of what you said in your last two posts. Duality may indeed be the best wraps for monks atm, but they're not really an outlier. There are other weapons that provide 7[W] - it is a factor if the standard end game 5[W] + Impact. They've already nerfed what they needed to nerf on Duality.

I also disagree with pulling +[W] from 18/20 cores. That is going against your earlier argument of all the devs are doing is pulling the power out of actual Monks while leaving the power unchanged for cross classing.

And end game numbers is what the devs are going off of. It isn't some level 17 soloing R10s, it is the forum posts of someone with 70+ reaper points and every past life and some beating on an inanimate kobold that misses many factors of questing and combat.

While I still question how the devs are getting their data (be it overly limited testing both in purpose and scope, or "forum numbers", or what), I am COMPLETELY against where they are deciding to pull the damage die away from Monks - it should not be from core Monk. It should not be that a 1 splash Monk is as good as a 20 Monk. We should not be destroying core D&D themes and mechanics unless there is no other option in the DDO environment. There is a perfectly good option to nerf Unarmed damage die without ruining what a Monk is:

- Reinforced Fist items. The can remove up to 1.5[W] easily and without any mechanic changes. I mentioned in my previous post converting these bonuses to enhanced Ki (scaled to match the level of RF provided) would give a way to alter the gear without it being a straight nerf to gear that contains it. This nerf will hit monks in Heroics as well as Epics
- Remove/Nerf Improved Martial Arts. Another extra source of +[W]. If the .5[W] is deemed as a value all Monk weapon types should have, taking the unarmed bonus from 1 to .5[W] is still another shave.
- A Dance of Flowers can be taken by anyone that qualifies centered (a good tactic for Vistani builds), but is another nerfable source of +[W] that doesn't resort to removing core game themes. My biggest hesitation to that is it resides in a basement-tier ED that can't afford nerfs of any type.

[Rull]

I can see this leading to better balance yes. It was getting harder and harder for me to find reasons to play anything but pure monk with falconry and now +20% HP.


we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead
That looks ugly. The +1 to-hit is already there. In the feat Flurry of Blows which is also auto-granted and also increasing every 4 levels.
Or did you mix them up and are you just trying to say Monks will lose their dice progression but keep their +1 to-hit progression every 4 levels?

I hope so, because making Unarmed Strike give a to-hit bonus as well would be HIGHLY confusing!

It was kind of inevitable to need to adjust the +W mechanic when weapons grow in base damage now (1d6+3 and such)
But how about changing it to +1 damage flat?
After all, 1D6, 1D8, etc is just a fancy way of saying 3.5, 4.5, etc.

+0.5W +1dmg none
1 3.5 ~ 6.5 3.5 ~ 6.5 3.5 ~ 6.5
4 5.25 ~ 9.75 4.5 ~ 7.5 3.5 ~ 6.5
8 7 ~ 13 5.5 ~ 8.5 3.5 ~ 6.5
12 8.75 ~ 16.25 6.5 ~ 9.5 3.5 ~ 6.5
16 10.5 ~ 19.5 7.5 ~ 10.5 3.5 ~ 6.5
20 12.25 ~ 22.75 8.5 ~ 11.5 3.5 ~ 6.5

If not, keep the feat clean. Adding +1 to-hit does not make sense at all.

[voxson5]

The sad state is that this isn't a discussion between the the Developers and the players. It is a statement of an already chosen path.

We have a thread full of (IMO) reasonable discussion and concerned feedback.
Through external sources there is easily accessible, quantifiable, DPS testing which does not support the hypothesis of the OP.

In the ~14 hours since the thread was started, what has Steelstar addressed?

Ki shout. Not even on topic.

[Gallsin]

Stubborn stone games couldn't care less about our logic or reasoning, they want monks nerfed and so they will do it. I love monks and enjoy playing them so my opinion is heavily biased however in my opinion another nerf is not justified especially with all the other stuff that needs fixing

[blerkington]

It's been really odd watching this crazy see-saw approach to balancing monks over the last little while. Almost as if it's being done by people who have no idea what they are doing or who are changing their minds all the time about their methods and/or how to evaluate their test results.

Seems like now would be a great time for SSG to come clean about how it measures DPS (in different scenarios) and then balances it with other factors. So we could have a sensible discussion about it, understand how weaker styles like staff monk were somehow deemed to be too strong, and how what was too much one moment can be not enough and then too much again a short time later. Then we could also discuss how the approach might be applied to other classes in future class discussions.

Otherwise it seems like we might just be stuck in this endless cycle of buff/nerf/buff/nerf etc. It is just so hard to take developer oactions on these issues seriouslyy when everything is in a constant state of flux. And if the community doesn't have confidence in these methods and test results, the outcome is only going to be even more ill-feeling about what seems like arbitrary and unfounded changes.

Thanks.

[Revolted]

Monks are outliers in dps nowadays?? Never played Wolf, tempest or kensais did you? Stop messing around with monks, at this point you got so many other priorities over it (like revamping arcanes, epic destinies, pallies, etc.) that this makes no sense at all.

[haku-ba]

Forget this was ever posted and move onto fixing things that are more important. Monks do not need to be changed

[Tianie]

Okay I've had time to think about this.

If the issue is balance, then I recommend a balance to monk types also.
Make a new feat path, maybe call it "the Monk's Path"
Start at level 2 and each 3 levels after, so 2 5 8 11 14 17, so 6 feats.
Have for ALL monks, not just hand wraps, have them be +when centered+.
Have 3 for dps, and 3 for defense.
Such as +2 to hit and damage, +5% doublestrike, or +5% weapon speed.
For defense, + dodge cap, + MRR Cap, +% AC or HPs.
OR add weird but cool stuff (I got a +8 Charisma Stat tome in the daily roll) so add a + something based on Charisma.

This gives the devs a way to balance not for just hand wraps DPS, but between different types of Monks and other DPS classes.

[Tianie]

SO if after adding the above feature, the devs can tweek easler.
Say the monks is doing to much damage, change the feat that does +5 double strike to +4. Or the + 3 Dodge cap to +4 if they are dying to much.
Gives the devs more balance tools.

[Tianie]

And change Stunning fist, to Monk Stun, and let it be used with staves.

[Requiro]

We all know that it will happen. Tbh, I don't think that this nerf will be enough.
So be prepared to more nerfs.

But on the bright side: No more 6x monk party on R10? :D

[Kilgrave]

We all know that it will happen. Tbh, I don't think that this nerf will be enough.
So be prepared to more nerfs.

But on the bright side: No more 6x monk party on R10? :D

+1

[Chacka_DDO]

At first, I want to make clear that I'm not against nerfs in general, if the developers see a nerf is really need, they should to it better early than late.
And I don't think because other things have objectively more priority a needed nerf cannot be done earlier, already with the reason that it is easier to do.
I have faith that everyone does his best as good as he can.

But...
In the case of this nerf I really wonder once more if the understanding of the developers for Dungeons & Dragons and their own game DDO is so low?
Over the years you added a lot of things to increase the unarmed damage a monk can do with additional feats, enhancements and item effects.
Now you think that after you have all this done by yourself and seemingly not really knowing what you do, you now think monks have way too much dps when they fight unarmed.
By the way, I have my doubts about your dps testing in general because you seemingly don't even have the ability to create log files to analyze them, because if you would have this and you would actually test what you do, this should not happen at all.
Anyway, now that you think that monks get too much damage dice (more x[W]) you are not going to remove or reduce things that you are obviously wrongly added over the years, you are going to remove one of the core features of the monk class.
And this core feature is increased damage with unarmed attack the more monk level your character gets.
Even if is doubtful that you have any "handlungsbedarf" (German for the need to do something) it is obvious that you should do it differently.
At first, you should consider nerfing the handwraps again that give you more dices insider the [] because this was the most recent addition to the game regarding monk unarmed damage.
And just to mention it, the first time I saw you give handwraps with [d6+6] I was quite shocked how it is possible that you do this because this is a quite clear indicator that the guy/gal who get this idea has no clue what he is doing at all.
If the endgame dps is really that much over the top, you should nerf the too powerful items you added recently that made such damage output possible.
And if you think this is still too much then nerf other items and maybe enhancements to trim the dices to the right amount.
But DO NOT remove one of the core features of the monk class first, this makes once again NO SENSE.
It is even shocking that you get this idea at all and that this idea even made its way to an official announcement.
But at least rethink and take it back after many players tell you it is wrong!
Just some "yes-man" cheer at you anyway but they cannot even give reasons why they think you are right, those statements are meaningless.
The overwhelming majority in this thread tells you this is WRONG, so do it differently or leave it at all!
But most likely everything is already done and you don't really want to hear the opinions of your players anyway.

[Anaximandroz]

I guess thumbs up for consistency:

Pallys had average dps and good defense/utility and got nerfed multiple times;
ES warlocks had average dps and good defense/utility, multiple nerfs;
Shintao has average dps and good defense/utility, multiple nerfs.

Personally i would go with nerfing gear or halving the feat and/or enhancements.

[Chacka_DDO]

And change Stunning fist, to Monk Stun, and let it be used with staves.

They could name it Ki-Stun but personally, I'm undecided if this should work on all Ki-weapons.
But they should give Stunning Blow a similar DC calculation and the same cooldown time and maybe use the same ability modifier as your current ability modifier for your to hit calculation.
So if one uses the harper tree to get his int for to hit, he also has the DC calculation for his tactical feats based on his int modifier.

[kain741]

Melee dreadnought rogues & tempest rangers are better or even dps with monks atm with the high skull groups we run with, that is why i said they are in a good spot atm. Raid rapier is just sick CC atm on a tempest.

This is very true! I'm not even playing a monk right now (because there is better dps to be had) and the thought of nerf frustrates me mostly because it's based on faulty data. We have to assume people playing top dps will do what they need to to max their DPS. If monks were so far ahead then that is all we would see.
When strahd first came out we used to have 6-8 monks in the raid...groups with overflowing with them. Now we find it hard to get a monk or 2 for the necessary single target CC we need for some raids. If monk DPS was so far outperforming everyone else can we logically conclude that this scenario is possible? clearly there is little understanding on the impact of crit range and multiplier on top dps and how inflexible monks are in this arena.
Don't complete your research in your own groups! Assume every player out there is doing it for you since they will instinctively do what they need to max their dps, DCs, attack speed, crit range, spell power and so on.

[Paisheng]

My wife and daughter wondered why I looked so depressed yesterday. How can I tell them of the fell deeds being done in monk-land? They will shudder and wilt. I am so inclined to protect them from such travesty and wanton mayhem but then I think, “I must prepare them for such blunt realities outside of rl where the very core and identity of people –no whole classes of people – are savaged and stripped needlessly.


The very designers themselves – are they not aware of this?? That in the name of sameness one slays a mighty warrior, reducing him to just meditate on what once was and no longer can be. Everything is now nothing.


And yet to find that it comes from the makers themselves? E tu Steelstar? Say it is not so. Say it will not be so. Say that you will traverse a more difficult path to achieve a grander glory where fighters fight the good fight, uh, monks pummel the unbalanced foe that is. Return to the path of light and make peace with many of your monk brethren. We implore you – don’t takeaway our monk-hood!

May my family see my countenance shine again and know all is well in the land of DDO.

[Chacka_DDO]

We all know that it will happen. Tbh, I don't think that this nerf will be enough.
So be prepared to more nerfs.

But on the bright side: No more 6x monk party on R10? :D

I have the slight impression that this statement is based on envy which is, in general, a bad counselor.

And if a group of six monks is working in R10 as you say, the question is, is it any bad?
In my opinion, any group of six (well geared and prepared characters) should potentially work in Reaper with ten skulls (aka R10) regardless of their class.
You should rather ask why 6 monks work and other don't work.
In my opinion, one of the reasons monk groups work better is, that monks have actually working tactical feats while most other melees don't have any access to tactical feats that are powerful enough.
And the reason why a group of e.g. 6 wizard/sorcerer/cleric/fvs don't really work because they have not the substantial real damage to kill red or purple bosses in high skull reaper.
And I think a group of 6 archers that are similar as powerful as my recent great crossbow archer build would work in reaper with 10 skulls too, which doesn't mean that this demands a nerf.
It is no reason to nerf something in the name of balance just only because it is working and fun just only to bring it in line with everything else that is not working as it should!

[trevitt]

We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement as well; the recent Barbarian pass was work aimed in correcting classes that are behind where they should be, and we have plans for improving other such classes in the future.

This is the sentence from Steelstar's post that gets me. Why spend time nerfing monks who are now working well instead of using the time to improve the classes you obviously know need a lot of work doing to them. I have been playing for 7 years and for over half of them my monk was weaker than most classes. Now he kicks arse he is getting nerfed. ARGH!!!.

[Soleran100]

I guess this is a reasonable change, since the damage dice buffs were from a different era of handwraps. That said, handwraps are a [1d6] weapon, so keep that in mind vs other weapon types which scale more with [W] scaling. I'm not really against a damage nerf to monks balance-wise, especially considering their significant defenses and CC. However, I would much rather see improvements to Monks' special abilities, combo attacks and other fighting styles (staff, ninja weapons, etc) to make the class more fun to play.

Well we got wisdom to damage and wisdom modifiers to damage that match kta, that was obviously a direct monk boost, why act shocked to these changes?

Aren't scimitars and rapiers 1d6 and they do ok, aren't daggers 1d4 base and those are ok.

[kain741]

Aren't scimitars and rapiers 1d6 and they do ok

What are those crit ranges? Why is it people play rapiers and scimmys? Please do tell...

[Soleran100]

What are those crit ranges? Why is it people play rapiers and scimmys? Please do tell...

So disengenious about your intent when you partially quote me to look and validate your thoughts.

End game even with nerfs duality is still 7d (1d6) and rapiers/scimitars are 5d(1d6) which also precludes any buffs by shintao cores.

While people are discussing the change to +w on wraps I haven't heard them discuss the recent changes and HUGE buffs monks got with the falcon tree.

So you have 1 stat that boosts attack, damage, cc, saves, armor. While you look at that how many ways can a monk put something into a helpless state (even the king the "tactics" has less options then monks.) Monks have the best defenses with incorporeal, dodge, improved evasion, high mobility.

Let's just call this little nerf a wash in the scheme of things with the recent buff in the falcon tree and be honest that it gave them huge boosts to hit/damage/cc.

[noobodyfool]

So disengenious about your intent when you partially quote me to look and validate your thoughts.

End game even with nerfs duality is still 7d (1d6) and rapiers/scimitars are 5d(1d6) which also precludes any buffs by shintao cores.

While people are discussing the change to +w on wraps I haven't heard them discuss the recent changes and HUGE buffs monks got with the falcon tree.

So you have 1 stat that boosts attack, damage, cc, saves, armor. While you look at that how many ways can a monk put something into a helpless state (even the king the "tactics" has less options then monks.) Monks have the best defenses with incorporeal, dodge, improved evasion, high mobility.

Let's just call this little nerf a wash in the scheme of things with the recent buff in the falcon tree and be honest that it gave them huge boosts to hit/damage/cc.
+1OOOOOO000000000oooooooooooooo

[NXPlasmid]

The sad state is that this isn't a discussion between the the Developers and the players. It is a statement of an already chosen path.

We have a thread full of (IMO) reasonable discussion and concerned feedback.
Through external sources there is easily accessible, quantifiable, DPS testing which does not support the hypothesis of the OP.

In the ~14 hours since the thread was started, what has Steelstar addressed?

Ki shout. Not even on topic.

I am over the idea that SSG is some "improvement" over Turbine. Sure, Ravenloft was pretty sweet, but the last two updates were pretty meh. Steel is way "too busy" to discuss his newest edict. Just enjoy it.


Stubborn stone games couldn't care less about our logic or reasoning, they want monks nerfed and so they will do it. I love monks and enjoy playing them so my opinion is heavily biased however in my opinion another nerf is not justified especially with all the other stuff that needs fixing

Exactly.


It's been really odd watching this crazy see-saw approach to balancing monks over the last little while. Almost as if it's being done by people who have no idea what they are doing or who are changing their minds all the time about their methods and/or how to evaluate their test results.

Seems like now would be a great time for SSG to come clean about how it measures DPS (in different scenarios) and then balances it with other factors. So we could have a sensible discussion about it, understand how weaker styles like staff monk were somehow deemed to be too strong, and how what was too much one moment can be not enough and then too much again a short time later. Then we could also discuss how the approach might be applied to other classes in future class discussions.

Otherwise it seems like we might just be stuck in this endless cycle of buff/nerf/buff/nerf etc. It is just so hard to take developer oactions on these issues seriouslyy when everything is in a constant state of flux. And if the community doesn't have confidence in these methods and test results, the outcome is only going to be even more ill-feeling about what seems like arbitrary and unfounded changes.

Thanks.

No man, you are wrong. Quarterstaves I say, QUARTERSTAVES!!! there is no greater DPS than quarterstaves, how do I know this? Well, because Steel told us. So now Steel is telling us monks are broken, so monks are broken. It's called faith, you have to have faith in Steel, because on it's face this change seems to be out of left field(not just because it swaps DPS for to hit). And they really can't open the kimono on DPS testing, there are quite a few players who be able to obliterated the results of their "in house testing" with a few quick videos from the live game and that would be... embarrassing I guess? Now let us pray...


So disengenious about your intent when you partially quote me to look and validate your thoughts.

End game even with nerfs duality is still 7d (1d6) and rapiers/scimitars are 5d(1d6) which also precludes any buffs by shintao cores.

While people are discussing the change to +w on wraps I haven't heard them discuss the recent changes and HUGE buffs monks got with the falcon tree.

So you have 1 stat that boosts attack, damage, cc, saves, armor. While you look at that how many ways can a monk put something into a helpless state (even the king the "tactics" has less options then monks.) Monks have the best defenses with incorporeal, dodge, improved evasion, high mobility.

Let's just call this little nerf a wash in the scheme of things with the recent buff in the falcon tree and be honest that it gave them huge boosts to hit/damage/cc.

Please do some research on crit ranges and crit multipliers, in addition to the other class buffs and enhancement trees available to scimmy and rapiers users, OK? thanks. And I would add, so are saying I now have to buy the bird tree for my already purchased class to perform like other melee classes, really?

[Soleran100]

Please do some research on crit ranges and crit multipliers, in addition to the other class buffs and enhancement trees available to scimmy and rapiers users, OK? thanks. And I would add, so are saying I now have to buy the bird tree for my already purchased class to perform like other melee classes, really?


Why would I do that when different classes have different trees and enhancements when today, right now we are talking about monks.

What do we know about monks specifically, they have the highest attack rate with a 10% boost over other forms of attack. Shintao boosts their crit and threat by 1 in addition to significantly boosting +w damage (no other class gets base +w damage.) They have more ways to put mobs into a helpless state then any other melee further making them effective etc etc etc.

If you don't have the falcon tree your monk isn't ruined but it seems as though because of the falcon tree we are seeing changes to monks.
No one likes nerfs but let's not pretend this is going to end monks who are very dominant in the melee dept currently with their defenses and to a degree healing and dps/cc.

[NXPlasmid]

Why would I do that when different classes have different trees and enhancements when today, right now we are talking about monks.

What do we know about monks specifically, they have the highest attack rate with a 10% boost over other forms of attack. Shintao boosts their crit and threat by 1 in addition to significantly boosting +w damage (no other class gets base +w damage.) They have more ways to put mobs into a helpless state then any other melee further making them effective etc etc etc.

If you don't have the falcon tree your monk isn't ruined but it seems as though because of the falcon tree we are seeing changes to monks.
No one likes nerfs but let's not pretend this is going to end monks who are very dominant in the melee dept currently with their defenses and to a degree healing and dps/cc.

Well, you are the one who posted about other weapons that have nothing to do with monk and while I know it just crazy to base this game on DnD, the +W is directly from that source. There are plenty of other MMOs that have completely different basis for how combat works, perhaps you should consider posting in the LOTRO forums? Does this completely ruin monk, no you are correct. Is it really needed to balance melees in actual gameplay, not really. Is it a fairly significant nerf to monk DPS after a number of other significant nerfs? Yes. And, I would add, in order to use all the other features of monk, like helpless states, requires a metric butt ton of button mashing that other DPS classes simply don't require, not to mention timing. So while all those amazing abilities are super overpowering on paper, they simply don't manifest in real gameplay nearly so well and when they do, it's at the hands of a player who is at such an elevated level of skill that any class is their hands is going to be OP. The game should be balanced for gameplay and class diversity, this just an overcooked oatmeal approach to game design. Even Goldilocks would not approve.

[Zretch]

End game even with nerfs duality is still 7d (1d6) and rapiers/scimitars are 5d(1d6) which also precludes any buffs by shintao cores.


http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Vulkoor%27s_Edge

7.5 (1d6+2) Scimitar.

Shintao cores have +W, Tempest tier 5 has 66% uptime AoE damage to up to 4 targets. Different classes have different things, it's not much of an argument.

[Soleran100]

Well, you are the one who posted about other weapons that have nothing to do with monk and while I know it just crazy to base this game on DnD, the +W is directly from that source. There are plenty of other MMOs that have completely different basis for how combat works, perhaps you should consider posting in the LOTRO forums? Does this completely ruin monk, no you are correct. Is it really needed to balance melees in actual gameplay, not really. Is it a fairly significant nerf to monk DPS after a number of other significant nerfs? Yes. And, I would add, in order to use all the other features of monk, like helpless states, requires a metric butt ton of button mashing that other DPS classes simply don't require, not to mention timing. So while all those amazing abilities are super overpowering on paper, they simply don't manifest in real gameplay nearly so well and when they do, it's at the hands of a player who is at such an elevated level of skill that any class is their hands is going to be OP. The game should be balanced for gameplay and class diversity, this just an overcooked oatmeal approach to game design. Even Goldilocks would not approve.

I'm going to wager the +w nerf is due to amount of damage you can add to your attacks when you only need to boost 1 stat for all your significant abilities. Then you get 1/2 of that stat boost directly added to damage and dc's. Obviously the falcon tree is required for that but it seems as though thats what would bring about this particular nerf.

It's not like you are going to lose the dps war with fighters anyway, they just got powersurge nerfed.

[Zretch]

What do we know about monks specifically, they have the highest attack rate with a 10% boost over other forms of attack. Shintao boosts their crit and threat by 1 in addition to significantly boosting +w damage (no other class gets base +w damage.) They have more ways to put mobs into a helpless state then any other melee further making them effective etc etc etc.


Monks don't have the highest attack rate. Pretty sure that belongs to a wolf. 30% haste from wolf, 25% from fatal harrier, 15% from melee alacrity, and 30% from haste boost out of LD. Can easily achieve 90 standing doublestrike with 100% using howl of terror for 10 of 45 seconds.

The number of ways to put a mob into helpless status is kind of a dumb metric. The key is how many mobs can you put into a helpless state for what percentage of uptime. When a monk needs to put multiple things into helpless, they use what many other melee classes use...dire charge. If you're trying to say monks are a CC class and thus should do less damage, then I'd say you're very mistaken.

[Soleran100]

Monks don't have the highest attack rate. Pretty sure that belongs to a wolf. 30% haste from wolf, 25% from fatal harrier, 15% from melee alacrity, and 30% from haste boost out of LD. Can easily achieve 90 standing doublestrike with 100% using howl of terror for 10 of 45 seconds.

The number of ways to put a mob into helpless status is kind of a dumb metric. The key is how many mobs can you put into a helpless state for what percentage of uptime. When a monk needs to put multiple things into helpless, they use what many other melee classes use...dire charge. If you're trying to say monks are a CC class and thus should do less damage, then I'd say you're very mistaken.

You know wolves are probably higher, your right. Since the nerf to wolf builds are they out dpsing monks, I don't see wolf druids anymore so I could be wrong.

I didn't say monks are a CC class, I said they have more CC options, defense, dps and mobility then other classes they compete with that are considered DPS. Also getting to 30 and using dire charge is just one aspect of game play, how you get there and how the toon plays up to that point is another discussion.

More importantly here we are, monks are taking a +w weapon hit but gained the use of the falcon tree. Are they REALLY taking a hit to dps(I'll bet they still have higher dps and cc now then prior to the falcon tree.)?

[LucasMacKinnon]

Something else to look at for monk is Look at Diamond Body and Diamond Soul feats. Diamond Soul You gain a racial bonus to Spell Resistance (http://ddowiki.com/page/Spell_Resistance) equal to your Monk level + 10. Diamond Body You have firm control over your metabolism and are now immune to ability score damage from natural poison. You gain a +10 racial bonus tosaving throws against magical poisons, and do not fail saving rolls against them on a roll of natural 1. How about making it something worth while like class MRR and PRR. You get the feats at lvl 11 and 13 so make it +10 to respective MRR and PRR based on monk levels so multi class won't really benefit but pure builds will get a total of +20 to respective MRR and PRR. You want to keep taking away from monk how about adding something in.

[NXPlasmid]

monks are taking a +w weapon hit but gained the use of the falcon tree. Are they REALLY taking a hit to dps(I'll bet they still have higher dps and cc now then prior to the falcon tree.)?

Would you stop using the falcon tree to justify your arguments, why should I pay extra for an already paid for class. And it's not as though you can drop 3 points in that tree and get wisdom for attack and damage, it's 12 points minimum that have to come out of other useful trees. The game should not be balanced for players who have maxed out all their past lives with action points to spare, which just points out the mess this game has become...

[Zretch]

You know wolves are probably higher, your right. Since the nerf to wolf builds are they out dpsing monks, I don't see wolf druids anymore so I could be wrong.

I didn't say monks are a CC class, I said they have more CC options, defense, dps and mobility then other classes they compete with that are considered DPS. Also getting to 30 and using dire charge is just one aspect of game play, how you get there and how the toon plays up to that point is another discussion.

So which classes are out DPSing monks? I've heard Tempest and Assassin rogue. I'm not sure why you're bringing CC options, defense, and mobility into a DPS discussion. If monks aren't primary CC, then why does it matter that they have a couple CC tricks that other high DPS classes don't? They aren't CC. If monks aren't main tanks (and if you say they are, I'll laugh), then I'm not sure why defense is being brought up either. Are you saying that monk is a high DPS but also relatively decent all around class? Well, I'd hope so, it's pay to play after all. It's a f'ing premium class. Why have premium classes that you have to pay for if they're the same as out of the box classes that any free to play player can select? That's not being an elitest jerk, it's just having some business sense. The cheap seats are further back for a reason.

i think if you put down the axe you've been grinding, you'll see that most responders see there's a bit of room for an adjustment, they're mainly balking at the adjustment itself. If monks really are 2.5W better than any other class bar none, then why not start by looking at itemization? Keen adds threat range, but that's fine because you can also take a Improve Crit feat to get the same effect on a non-keen weapon. The problem is that keen also adds 2W and there's no way to make that up. If your class received a end game raid weapon with keen, you win. If not, you're 40% behind anyone who received one. Congrats to handwraps users and maul users. So sorry khopesh and rapier users. Maybe keen adding +2W to a baseline 5W weapon was a bit too strong, eh?

I tend to think that monks can absorb a reduction in W and still be a good class, but I 100% agree with people who are saying "*** did you give us all of that +W in the first place???". If it wasn't where you wanted monks, then you shouldn't have released it. If it was, then stop changing your mind because people on the forums ***** because they see outlier videos and think they should be able to do that too.

[NXPlasmid]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Vulkoor%27s_Edge

7.5 (1d6+2) Scimitar.

Shintao cores have +W, Tempest tier 5 has 66% uptime AoE damage to up to 4 targets. Different classes have different things, it's not much of an argument.

Thank you, and it has 15-20 crit range, duality is 19-20 crit.

[Arkat]

Would you stop using the falcon tree to justify your arguments, why should I pay extra for an already paid for class. And it's not as though you can drop 3 points in that tree and get wisdom for attack and damage, it's 12 points minimum that have to come out of other useful trees. The game should not be balance for players who have maxed out all their past lives with action points to spare, which just points out the mess this game has become...

+1

[Eelpout]

More importantly here we are, monks are taking a +w weapon hit but gained the use of the falcon tree. Are they REALLY taking a hit to dps(I'll bet they still have higher dps and cc now then prior to the falcon tree.)?

I am by no means a Monk expert or a high end Reaper guy so I am not going to try and get into all the intricacies of the arguments in this thread. However, this is the second time the Monk class has had something significant taken from it (First the Melee Power from Henshin Mystic which was a big hit to those of us who actually found it fun to play a staff Monk instead of a Thief Acrobat Rogue, and now the hit to hand wraps which they finally made useful by giving them weapon status). They are doing this at the same time while boosting (or gave the impression) other classes like Cleric, Arti, Druid, etc.

I don't think it is a realistic approach to say "Sure you are taking an overall DPS hit because a fundamental change is being made to the Monk class but you have an option to get something different back by spreading your enhancement points around into another tree that you currently have to PAY for".

I do not care for the change, and I care even less for the idea of using an enhancement tree that has to be purchased currently to make up some of the gap. Not to mention the Falconry tree does nothing special for hand wrap Monks that it doesn't do for any other Monk or class for that matter.

[Soleran100]

I don't think it is a realistic approach to say "Sure you are taking an overall DPS hit because a fundamental change is being made to the Monk class but you have an option to get something different back by spreading your enhancement points around into another tree that you currently have to PAY for".

I do not care for the change, and I care even less for the idea of using an enhancement tree that has to be purchased currently to make up some of the gap. Not to mention the Falconry tree does nothing special for hand wrap Monks that it doesn't do for any other Monk or class for that matter.

I have very few posts in this thread, if you can go back and quote me ever as saying that monks deserve a nerf because of the falcon tree then you win the internet. I merely stated that were in nerfed because of it after it was celebrated so loudly by them.

Monks lost 2.5W and fighters lost a ton of powersurge uses, looks as though a few people took a hit. My point aside from addressing the nerf was that in relation to other classes that are dps (melee) monks still have alot of things available to them not available to other classes while still sporting comparable (or better with the falcon tree) dps.

[NXPlasmid]

I have very few posts in this thread, if you can go back and quote me ever as saying that monks deserve a nerf because of the falcon tree then you win the internet. .

Huh, it appears you don't read, or don't understand your own posts..

[Soleran100]

Huh, it appears you don't read, or don't understand your own posts..

You quote me saying monks deserved a nerf and we can talk, you won't because you can't. You are just upset monks are getting nerfed. I get it, they are your pet class but onward and upward. I get the feeling that the people who will most feel this nerf will be folks that are in upper reaper quests and raids, if you aren't there then lucky for you, it won't be that big of a deal.

[noobodyfool]

Once Handwraps were converted from being non-weapon equitable items into actual weapons they have to be balanced as such, this had to be done so that going forward Handwraps scale properly.

Look at the bright side now you get a birdie to play with ;)

[Eelpout]

I have very few posts in this thread, if you can go back and quote me ever as saying that monks deserve a nerf because of the falcon tree then you win the internet. I merely stated that were in nerfed because of it after it was celebrated so loudly by them.

Monks lost 2.5W and fighters lost a ton of powersurge uses, looks as though a few people took a hit. My point aside from addressing the nerf was that in relation to other classes that are dps (melee) monks still have alot of things available to them not available to other classes while still sporting comparable (or better with the falcon tree) dps.

I wasn't implying that you were a card carrying member of the Nerf Monk Club or the President for that matter.

I also am not trying to win the internet. I don't want that level of fame or responsibility. I just want the Falconry Tree to not be the fall back response to the Monk hit. ex. "Hey, hand wrap Monks got nerfed good, Rick." "Well, Ilsa, We'll always have the Falconry Tree"

[Eelpout]

Once Handwraps were converted from being non-weapon equitable items into actual weapons they have to be balanced as such, this had to be done so that going forward Handwraps scale properly.

Look at the bright side now you get a birdie to play with ;)

Are you certain your Crusade won't turn into "Nerf bird wielding Monks, true Falconers were Knights in Heavy Armor" once you see a R10 group with 2 of said Monks in it?


Believe it or not, changes that negatively impact the upper 1% of the gaming community also splash on us plebes at the bottom. It is one of the few examples of trickle down theory actually working...

[Tlorrd]

gotta agree with some of the Wis to hit/dmg argument ...

folks wanted that so bad and now to balance that fact, +W is getting a nerf.

Wis 100 gives what +45 dmg and 1/2 that for insightful deadly with whatever its called, do the math. Yes, that may be end game numbers, but heroics and reaper heroics are still easily completed. At level R1 (meaning doing quest levels 2 higher than your current) are manageable (I am a casual player too).

... and the whole paying for extra tree stuff is nonsense. This is a pay game ... and it should be, dev's have to feed their families too ... there are no ads in game (that I know of), etc ... thus this game has to somehow make $$ to keep it going and give the devs a career and all of the forumites a game to play.

Amazingly enough, if you go back through all the balance passes and class passes ... the one to withstand the test of time so far is bard. It may not be FOTM, but it holds up. That was the gold standard and still should be ... they should go back to keeping that power level in mind when buffing or debuffing classes.

Warlocks were out 1-2 years and ES got the nerf bat ... instead of this roller coaster up and down, continue to make small adjustments.

[Eelpout]

gotta agree with some of the Wis to hit/dmg argument ...

folks wanted that so bad and now to balance that fact, +W is getting a nerf.

Wis 100 gives what +45 dmg and 1/2 that for insightful deadly with whatever its called, do the math. Yes, that may be end game numbers, but heroics and reaper heroics are still easily completed. At level R1 (meaning doing quest levels 2 higher than your current) are manageable (I am a casual player too).

... and the whole paying for extra tree stuff is nonsense. This is a pay game ... and it should be, dev's have to feed their families too ... there are no ads in game (that I know of), etc ... thus this game has to somehow make $$ to keep it going and give the devs a career and all of the forumites a game to play.

Amazingly enough, if you go back through all the balance passes and class passes ... the one to withstand the test of time so far is bard. It may not be FOTM, but it holds up. That was the gold standard and still should be ... they should go back to keeping that power level in mind when buffing or debuffing classes.

Warlocks were out 1-2 years and ES got the nerf bat ... instead of this roller coaster up and down, continue to make small adjustments.

I don't play a Bard, but I can tell you I would be fairly annoyed if SSG gave them 2 pretty good nerfs followed by a brand new paid enhancement tree that grants Charisma to hit and damage along with a summon-able field mouse that gave them some nifty, if clunky, special attacks.

[NXPlasmid]

You quote me saying monks deserved a nerf and we can talk, you won't because you can't. You are just upset monks are getting nerfed. I get it, they are your pet class but onward and upward. I get the feeling that the people who will most feel this nerf will be folks that are in upper reaper quests and raids, if you aren't there then lucky for you, it won't be that big of a deal.

You end almost all of your posts with, yeah but with that new tree you can get your DPS back... and sure, I like monk a lot, so what. I played monk for years when they were not nearly on par with other melees, when there were barely any good named handwraps. Now that monk is a decent class, if you don't mind, I don't want to go back to the past, and this change shouldn't be a dev priority for the exact reason you state. That is, if you honestly feel that it won't make a big difference, then you must support the idea that there are soooo many other melee class issues that deserve development time. So why this one?

[NXPlasmid]

gotta agree with some of the wis to hit/dmg argument ...

Folks wanted that so bad and now to balance that fact, +w is getting a nerf.

Wis 100 gives what +45 dmg and 1/2 that for insightful deadly with whatever its called, do the math. Yes, that may be end game numbers, but heroics and reaper heroics are still easily completed. At level r1 (meaning doing quest levels 2 higher than your current) are manageable (i am a casual player too).

... And the whole paying for extra tree stuff is nonsense. This is a pay game ... And it should be, dev's have to feed their families too ... There are no ads in game (that i know of), etc ... Thus this game has to somehow make $$ to keep it going and give the devs a career and all of the forumites a game to play.

Amazingly enough, if you go back through all the balance passes and class passes ... The one to withstand the test of time so far is bard. It may not be fotm, but it holds up. That was the gold standard and still should be ... They should go back to keeping that power level in mind when buffing or debuffing classes.

Warlocks were out 1-2 years and es got the nerf bat ... Instead of this roller coaster up and down, continue to make small adjustments.

I already paid for monk

[noobodyfool]

I don't play a Bard, but I can tell you I would be fairly annoyed if SSG gave them 2 pretty good nerfs followed by a brand new paid enhancement tree that grants Charisma to hit and damage along with a summon-able field mouse that gave them some nifty, if clunky, special attacks.

I play Vanguard and we just got 2 pretty BAD NERFS, I'll pay double the price of the bird tree for a HEAVY ARMOR tree that gives me
25% AC MORE THAT STACKS, 25% reduction in DC needed for tactics and 25% reduction in cooldown of all tactics and 25% reduction in self heal penalty, along with ONE just ONE Exclusive CCs feat for FIGHTER/Pally ONLY that's as good as dire charge that is not Exclusive to dire charge where I would have 2 dire charges essentially lets do this!!!

[NXPlasmid]

I play Vanguard and we just got 2 pretty BAD NERFS, I'll pay double the price of the bird tree for a HEAVY ARMOR tree that gives me
25% AC MORE THAT STACKS, 25% reduction in DC needed for tactics and 25% reduction in cooldown of all tactics and 25% reduction in self heal penalty, along with ONE just ONE Exclusive CCs feat for FIGHTER/Pally ONLY that's as good as dire charge that is not Exclusive to dire charge where I would have 2 dire charges essentially lets do this!!!

Sounds like you need to have a talk with Steel about his priorities and your wallet....

[DireMax]

I don't unerstand why developers says "monks have higher dps". How you tested this? Let me put my numbers here for dps on different classes (all in LD, Blitz):
18ftr/2mnk Tremor: 154612
Barb 20 Tremor : 152529
18ftr/2mnk Torn: 142187
Barb 20 Torn : 141916
8Druid/2monk/10ftr (Wolf form) Tremor: 141220
12ftr/8monk Spite (trower build): 109957
20 barb SWF Calamity: 136299
20 Ranger Calamity: 139694
20 Monk Duality: 115024
20 Rogue Gulthias: 111747
Monks are best, yes....

[BandVP]

Overall a nice update!
I'm still annoyed about the Power Surge nerf, but this monk nerf i can live with.
Hopefully now Monk will be with other classes, as i'm fed up with Monks being one step ahead.
I'm not hating on Monks, just saying that i'm glad they are nerfed. This update should definitely help!

[Eelpout]

I play Vanguard and we just got 2 pretty BAD NERFS, I'll pay double the price of the bird tree for a HEAVY ARMOR tree that gives me
25% AC MORE THAT STACKS, 25% reduction in DC needed for tactics and 25% reduction in cooldown of all tactics and 25% reduction in self heal penalty, along with ONE just ONE Exclusive CCs feat for FIGHTER/Pally ONLY that's as good as dire charge that is not Exclusive to dire charge where I would have 2 dire charges essentially lets do this!!!

Good news. I don't disagree with you one bit. And I certainly don't think you should have to fork out the cash for an extra tree to make the Vanguard a good option. I don't think you are wrong in what you are asking.

I don't feel that asking for one or more classes to get things taken from them is the way to get things added to the classes that may need it most, however.

[NXPlasmid]

I don't unerstand why developers says "monks have higher dps". How you tested this? Let me put my numbers here for dps on different classes (all in LD, Blitz):
18ftr/2mnk Tremor: 154612
Barb 20 Tremor : 152529
18ftr/2mnk Torn: 142187
Barb 20 Torn : 141916
8Druid/2monk/10ftr (Wolf form) Tremor: 141220
12ftr/8monk Spite (trower build): 109957
20 barb SWF Calamity: 136299
20 Ranger Calamity: 139694
20 Monk Duality: 115024
20 Rogue Gulthias: 111747
Monks are best, yes....

You are clearly not using the devs "internal playtesting", if you did you would clearly see that Monk henshin quarterstaff build would be 251232, but as Steel pointed out in another discussion, some of these super secret builds possibilities are "unnoticed" by us actual players of the game. And as I have already pointed out, even after he tipped us all on the crazyballs qstaff power, I notice no people actually running Qstaves, or anyone posting anything remotely close to a top DPS qstaff build. Now, you might think based on this information, that perhaps there is a disconnect between the "internal playtesting" that the devs use to evaluate melee DPS and the actual DPS that includes actually playing the game, or you could conclude that we, as a player base, are simply not smart enough to figure it out, because we are clearly not figuring out the power of the quarterstaff build that Steel alluded to. What change is next? What way is the wind blowing today? I noticed Ellis Dee has stopped playing, and even Qhualor is apparently hanging up his hat at the end of the month. Now, if that doesn't worry you, I'm not sure what should... Sew the wind and Reaper the whirlwind...

[Tlorrd]

Overall a nice update!
I'm still annoyed about the Power Surge nerf, but this monk nerf i can live with.
Hopefully now Monk will be with other classes, as i'm fed up with Monks being one step ahead.
I'm not hating on Monks, just saying that i'm glad they are nerfed. This update should definitely help!

with regards to Power Surge ... just get rid of the number of uses ... make it ...

Power Surge 1 min duration ... 3 min cooldown (starting when you click of of course, thus its really 2 min in between surges). Then at least for long quests you can still use it generously enough but also not have it up all the time and maybe have to time it for bigger boss fights.

Edit: Same with Hip flask. Same with Endless Fusilade (18 sec duration, 1 min cooldown with no charges). Get rid of charges ... action boosts should be as they are and recyclable. Same with One cut.

[Sorcerio]

So as I understand it this is another one of the steps (along with the previous post-ravenloft monk nerf, and now a Fighter nerf) to tamp down the highest damage output outliers of the melee classes before bringing all-of-melee damage output up as a whole? Trying to keep in mind the big picture as was foretold by the developers in their recent statements. There's a bit of dismay that my favorite class is going to become weaker (again), especially now throughout the leveling process from 1 to 20. But here's to hoping more details will come soon about the upcoming "overall melee" DPS increases.

[Clerize]

If monk DPS is such an outlier, then how is it that properly geared tempests can pull agro off equally properly geared punchy monks? Surely that implies tempests are also outliers and need nerfing?

[NXPlasmid]

If monk DPS is such an outlier, then how is it that properly geared tempests can pull agro off equally properly geared punchy monks? Surely that implies tempests are also outliers and need nerfing?

The "internal playtesting" the devs do shows you are very wrong. There is no way that happens. I stand by the devs.

[Ballrus]

I play Vanguard and we just got 2 pretty BAD NERFS, I'll pay double the price of the bird tree for a HEAVY ARMOR tree that gives me
25% AC MORE THAT STACKS, 25% reduction in DC needed for tactics and 25% reduction in cooldown of all tactics and 25% reduction in self heal penalty, along with ONE just ONE Exclusive CCs feat for FIGHTER/Pally ONLY that's as good as dire charge that is not Exclusive to dire charge where I would have 2 dire charges essentially lets do this!!!
I pay the triple and a beer!

[Kaboom2112]

If monk DPS is such an outlier, then how is it that properly geared tempests can pull agro off equally properly geared punchy monks? Surely that implies tempests are also outliers and need nerfing?

This is nothing but lies and propaganda!

[slothinator]

This table leg is too long. I think I'll shorten it.

Now the other three are too long. I'll shorten them.

Now there's not enough space between the chair and the table. I'll shorten the chair.

Now people bump their knees on the table. I'll take the legs off the table and chairs and put longer legs on.

Hey this table leg is too long...

[Nubom70]

Hello!
... changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] )
Oh, and my favorite line: We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement AS WELL .

Improvement as well??
.........The MONK needs "improving" with a loss of 2.5(w) ??

Another laughable line: Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear....
........ Really, point out a handwrap barbarian for me please, wearing monk gear. I'd like to test his cleaves.

When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks),.
........ Monks have to waste feats to get extra handwrap damage, which noone even thinks about when complaining about monks,
plus have to use FIVE feats for whirlwind. Monks hit more stuff in groups, but NOT FOR MORE DAMAGE, which is why monk damage is skewed on parsers.
My monk crits for about 2k, my barbarian crits for 8-10k, and over 30k in Fury, the monk just hits more targets at once, due to a FIVE FEAT investment.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Seriously, you're boating this game into an iceburg on purpose at this point, if you're worrying about monks.

[sjbb87]

People complaining about such a nerf ... Compared to the last update buff. this is nothing.
Hit and damage using wisdom, it's light years above that little nerf.

[xenon211]

It takes a lunatic to come up with solutions like this. Every other sane human being will undo or modify their last action to achieve the desired result.

I have the distinct impression that our esteemed problem solvers' solution to the sun shining in their eyes would be to paint over the window rather than pull the curtains or draw the shade. Then when they needed more light, saw a hole in the roof so the sun shines in, meanwhile forgetting what the roof was for! Then, when it inevitably rained and the house began to flood, they would claim it was "Working as Intended". Years later (if ever), when they admitted it wasn't quite what they had hoped for, they would saw a hole in the floor and say "Look at these awesome new changes ... BUG FIXED!" Total achievement being to ruin the entirety of the house, or in this case the class.

Lunacy ... just lunacy.

Am I going to stop playing? No, but I will not be revisiting monk, possibly ever.

[Iriale]

I just want to point out that according to devs, henshin monk was top-tier, and the only thing that they have achieved with removing the melee power without giving them a replacement is that almost nobody plays staff monnks. Since that update I have not seen any again, which does not surprise me. I TR'ed out from an acrobat / monk. His dps was already subpar before the update, then it was laughable.

Devs, leave it, before you do something irreparable to the class. Monks now do no more damage than other melees top-tier. If you want to work in the class, look at the henshin monk: he is in a bad position now. See why there are no melee ninja monks currently. See why we can not become dark monks with handwraps as we could with the old system of enhancements. Return the monk attacks that we lost with the new system of enhancements.

And honestly, I do not understand the hurry to get into monk, when you have not yet fixed the mess you have created with power surge.

And if you still want to lower the monk's damage (something I do not think is appropriate at this point), changing the basic class is not the solution. Changes should be focused on auxiliary feats, enhancements and gear. The monk should improve his damage with the class levels; another class in handwraps should be lower in dps, in the same way that a monk should be lower dps with non-monk weapons. And it's a traditional D&D feature, you should not forget the roots of the game. Many of us are here because of that.

[wolffboy]

Stop it! Monks don't cry! Now pull up your bathrobe and get back in there!

[Muadd]

Hello!


We're here today to talk about an upcoming change coming soon (likely Update 40). A few years ago, we converted Handwraps from being non-weapon equippable items into actual weapons - A change that allowed a large number of effects and abilities to start working with Handwraps as they do other weapons. In that process, we also brought over most of the existing features meant to help Handwrap DPS be equivalent with that of other weapon types. As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear. This is, in part, due to an increased number of Weapon Dice while wielding Handwraps.


It's hard to take you serious. I'm trying, I really am, but it's hard. Its really hard.


https://youtu.be/S4StUmag2ek

[Balordo]

Hey, I just recorded a short video about DPS test in live. Both toon are fully geared for max dps, 3x melee completionist and racial completionist. Twisted same things: Symmetric strikes, balanced attacks, stealthy and dance of flowers.
that's the result:


https://youtu.be/p_d1GtEfrCQ

As you can see Fighter (also more standing doublestrike) is another class that whose dps surclasses monk's dps

[Chacka_DDO]

And another aspect that speaks against this change in the way you want to do it.
Not only that it effectively removes one of the core features of the monk class, it also makes monk weaker during almost the whole reincarnation process.
Only at the very end of the heroic life (at lvl 18 and 20) they get additional dices from the Shintao enhancement and then again at level 29 with items.
This means a big impact on the damage a monk can do while he is leveling to level 29.
A monk might be too strong when he is level 30 compared to other classes but this indicates a nerf for monks at level 30 and not for monks at lower levels.
My personal experience is, that a monk in level 1-22 is not better than any other well build character that is focused on damage and kills.

To be honest, I have my doubts about your ability to evaluate good numbers for the real damage per second a character can deal.
But if you really think a nerf of ~10% is need of the damage a pure monk can do at level 30 you should nerf in the first place the handwraps that are most likely do too much damage.
Therefore just remove the additional damage within the W and not the x in the x[W] and don't introduce any new handwraps with this.
And this should be already enough to reduce the top tier damage from monks at level 30 by ~10% and this with maybe even less effort and for sure better effect for the game as a whole!

[noobodyfool]

It is not only Tempest, but I consider Tempest the best as they have a button that allows them to apply that DPS to 4x targets making them not only amazing at single target, but group DPS as well. There really are only two reasons there are more Monks than Tempests:

1) The people that know how good it is are not advertising it. There is no Symbiont thread for Rangers like there is for Monk, so the average forumite that wants their pet class to be the best really only sees Monk as the target. This is THE biggest reason.

2) While there are many builds that beat handwrap DPS, Monks are the top DPS for builds that come with multiple extra CCs. As CCs are the only way to handle high reaper damage, when you are often finding yourself pugging/without caster CC that extra CC is important. Defenses are also a factor, though Assassins/Vistany have buttons to beat it on demand if needed and anyone can get basically full Monk defenses with a 2 splash (a problem imo).

The latter is a reason why Monk should not be the top DPS... but they're already not the top. While it may need to be questioned how far from the top they should be, it does seem to be the devs are missing key points of info based on the OP. Handwraps, even with all the +[W] bonuses provided, are not the best TWF DPS. If their DPS in general is in question, all of TWF should be.

Should TWF be nerfed? Should THF and (to a much lesser extent) SWF be buffed?

However based on the history of how updates get put out, I don't think we'll be able to have them put this nerf on hold and try to look at the whole picture. There is much more than just a DPS number to look at, and even that seems to be skewed. But if this nerf is going through no matter what, I truly hope they will not take it out of core Monk and D&D concept/mechanics and instead just pick out gear/feats.

We'll see if that happens, or if we have another Epic Defenses Feat pushed through.

The time of the monk has passed it's the time of the Barbarian now.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SaFoGtZe94Q/VQi13fU1T6I/AAAAAAAAECs/AhgXbFtg6jM/s1600/802%2BVikings%2Battacked%2BIona%2Bmonastery.jpg

[FlavoredSoul]

Hey SGGs, could you please stop trying to "fix" melees.


They were in a fine situation until you started butchering power surge, and added that terrible HP stance that screwed over paladins/fighters and massivly buffed tempests, monks, and barbarians which is clearly the reason why you're now nerfing monks to try and make up for it.


please just revert all the melee changes in 39.2, and just your U40 monk changes in the trash.


~Signed, disgruntled Fighter player

[Nubom70]

It's hard to take you serious. I'm trying, I really am, but it's hard. Its really hard.


Yeah, noone takes them seriously anymore. They're in a cycle of nerfing things that don't need it, then trying to bump it up later, then realizing they screwed up twice, then overcompensate the 3rd time. After that, they have to adjust every other class to keep it in par.... then realize they screwed it up four times, then ignore it all, and push out another update.

Less damage, and less survivability, so monks will need an un-re-un-renerf?

[Iriale]

It is not only Tempest, but I consider Tempest the best as they have a button that allows them to apply that DPS to 4x targets making them not only amazing at single target, but group DPS as well. There really are only two reasons there are more Monks than Tempests:

1) The people that know how good it is are not advertising it. There is no Symbiont thread for Rangers like there is for Monk, so the average forumite that wants their pet class to be the best really only sees Monk as the target. This is THE biggest reason.

2) While there are many builds that beat handwrap DPS, Monks are the top DPS for builds that come with multiple extra CCs. As CCs are the only way to handle high reaper damage, when you are often finding yourself pugging/without caster CC that extra CC is important. Defenses are also a factor, though Assassins/Vistany have buttons to beat it on demand if needed and anyone can get basically full Monk defenses with a 2 splash (a problem imo).

The latter is a reason why Monk should not be the top DPS... but they're already not the top. While it may need to be questioned how far from the top they should be, it does seem to be the devs are missing key points of info based on the OP. Handwraps, even with all the +[W] bonuses provided, are not the best TWF DPS. If their DPS in general is in question, all of TWF should be.
the problem I would say are the builds that designers do, they do not play the same way we do. They are also influenced a lot by opinions that are obsolete. Certainly the monks had an exaggerated dps before the duality / henshin nerf, but not now. But I'm sure the devs are still thinking about the criticism of people who do not currently play monks and do not realize that their dps has dropped a lot.

It is not that now the dps of the unarmed monks is bad. But neither is it exaggerated. It's right for his melee role. The one who needs a buff is the staff monk. Melee ninjas are practically unknown too


However based on the history of how updates get put out, I don't think we'll be able to have them put this nerf on hold and try to look at the whole picture. There is much more than just a DPS number to look at, and even that seems to be skewed. But if this nerf is going through no matter what, I truly hope they will not take it out of core Monk and D&D concept/mechanics and instead just pick out gear/feats.
it would be logical, but the devs rarely reconsider their ideas. I have little hope that devs will listen to people on this thread


We'll see if that happens, or if we have another Epic Defenses Feat pushed through.
It is most likely

[Nubom70]

I have little hope that devs will listen to people on this thread


They don't usually listen to themselves either. They don't understand that there's no way they can test out
these changes properly, before they shove them out, then spend 6-months backpedaling and trying to fix
things that should have never made it off test. Look at the last patch, case in point. They ignored all player
feedback (HP as a non-toggle passive, shield skill lines, etc).

[Cantor]

Good change, should have been done when they were changed to weapons, then it would have been accepted. been allowed to sit too long and now people feel like they are losing something.

[Dark_Helmet]

Hello!
We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game. We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement as well; the recent Barbarian pass was work aimed in correcting classes that are behind where they should be, and we have plans for improving other such classes in the future. Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to work on class balance.

Thank you for showing you do not understand why a large portion of people play DDO. I don't see an "overwhelming" number of monks - not to mention them using quarterstaffs. Yes, there are people who min-max, but I don't see the conversations of "Why are you playing any class but a monk"? While that happened for warlock, I don't see that happening for monk.

You would rather destroy the mechanics that casual players use (and have them rebuild their characters) because a few that farm for specific items / builds can, theoretically do the maximum damage. Well, the game is like rock-paper-scissors: You will always have a good build for certain situations and you are only testing one particular situation and using that as gospel.

So, good luck in the future with your nerfs as that is the only thing you seem to care about and not actually fixing the bugs. that make the game unplayable for a large segment of the (departed) players.

[MaeveTuohy]

This game nerds so much work in many classes, EDs, unfixed bugs and QoL issues that I am simply stunned that monk DPS even gets the Devs attention.

What a phenomenal waste of the limited resources I contribute to.

[draven1]

This adjustment for unarmed monks is proper.
Because in pnp, monks have innate fist dices progression, but, they can't get weapon dices unlike DDO.
Innate fist dices + weapon dices made 17W(1d6+3) weapon dices, unlikes 7W(1d6+3) other weapon dices.
10W differences were too much.

By the way, melee-weaponized ninja spy needs some love.
Shuriken ones are still quite over-performing, but, almost nobody want to use shortword or kama ninjas, it is too weak. Especially, active poison attacks are too weak and hard to use.

[kennedyxrider]

But I feel the nerfing over and over of the same class is getting a bit ridiculous, people spend lots of time building a character gearing it and make it changes until they reach a desired result and then you go and just nerf nerf nerf. I play all Melee classes and love them all but I hate when I am Playing any of them when nerfs are being passed on them. I am definitely against this.

[kennedyxrider]

Thank you for showing you do not understand why a large portion of people play DDO. I don't see an "overwhelming" number of monks - not to mention them using quarterstaffs. Yes, there are people who min-max, but I don't see the conversations of "Why are you playing any class but a monk"? While that happened for warlock, I don't see that happening for monk.

You would rather destroy the mechanics that casual players use (and have them rebuild their characters) because a few that farm for specific items / builds can, theoretically do the maximum damage. Well, the game is like rock-paper-scissors: You will always have a good build for certain situations and you are only testing one particular situation and using that as gospel.

So, good luck in the future with your nerfs as that is the only thing you seem to care about and not actually fixing the bugs. that make the game unplayable for a large segment of the (departed) players.

I completely agree with this as well, and all classes need diversity of the game will be generic and boring like other mmos people love the character building mechanics of Ddo and the fact that all of the classes have unique strengths and weaknesses. It like I can’t keep up wit all the nerfs these days honestly, it’s getting exhausting and will run people away from playing .

[Nubom70]

This adjustment for unarmed monks is proper.
Because in pnp, monks have innate fist dices progression, but, they can't get weapon dices unlike DDO.
Innate fist dices + weapon dices made 17W(1d6+3) weapon dices, unlikes 7W(1d6+3) other weapon dices.

Were you were shamed by a monk once? IF you have raid wraps, every feat, the ship buff, past lives, reinforced fist gear... you might get close to that, but you're forgetting that Monk DPS is mainly
from a HUGE feat investiture, and even then you only get those skewed test numbers in groups using whirlwind. You're looking at ONE spec, with a 7-feat investment, fighting groups.

By comparison, my barbarian (with junk gear), hits for 6-8k on crits, upwards of 30-35k, to whole groups, and you think a maxed out monk doing LESS damage is the issue here?

My ranger in PnP can't crit for 132,000 damage, my cleric can't rez himself, and my bard can't AOE freeze an entire group of Orcs. DDO isn't PnP, don't try to compare the two and justify anything.

[Muadd]

Yeah, noone takes them seriously anymore. They're in a cycle of nerfing things that don't need it, then trying to bump it up later, then realizing they screwed up twice, then overcompensate the 3rd time. After that, they have to adjust every other class to keep it in par.... then realize they screwed it up four times, then ignore it all, and push out another update.

Less damage, and less survivability, so monks will need an un-re-un-renerf?

In all honesty I believe this is their way to push the falcon tree is all which will just result in a more homogenic player base -> Disaster after another

THE most important issue regarding the current state of the game is exactly that there's no variety in classes anymore if we are really to talk about DPS builds/classes. DDO has "evolved" in to a polar opposite to what it once was. Currently the game is focused on very specific builds and/or classes as was the recent case with warlock. There's no basically no room for diversity. If you are to build a good dps monk theres pretty much one way to go. No staff builds, no kama builds: forget any dreams of an efficient dual wielding poison damage build etc etc. Self healing has killed the original mechanics of the game which was build on group efficiency and ROLE PLAYING. But we are way beyond a state to even be able to fix that and I am convinced this has been a conscious decision from the devs based on diminishing player base

[Octarino]

What is the goal exactly? More build diversity or less. After the last duality nerfs, I don't see dominance of handwrap monks anymore. It seems to me further nerfs will simply eliminate another choice leading to more build homogeneity. If Monks pull ahead at cap due to duality, or the Falconry tree, then that is what needs attention, not the core class.

If you want more build heterogeneity then buff the classes that people actually play less these days - like pure bards, sorcs (at epic/cap) etc.

[Phoenicis]

8<snip>8
To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.
8<snip>8

.5w changed to +1 to hit?

At low levels the .5w is useful, +1 to hit? Not so much, you always miss on a 1 and very early on to hit numbers get to the point that the ONLY time you miss is on a 1. This change will simply make that happen faster.

At high levels 2.5w is definitely useful. Plus 5 to hit? Yeah, still useless.

IMO? Just remove the ability if it really pushed DPS to a place you don't want it.

[Milikki]

Again? My 2nd life barbarian is happy to know he will be even more powerful than my completionist monk. Enough, I'm out. If anyone wants my stuff, it will be on the floor in the Phoenix Tavern.

[Tianie]

I don't like the idea of "maxing out one stat" that goes on so much, one of the reasons I like the monk, I would prefer ways to be built into the game that spread out benefits between different stats. This would be for all classes in an ideal world.
Like if each class had a group of stats that effected their attacks and such. Like melee attacks being 50% str, 40% dex and 10% int. Range 60% dex 30% str and 10% int. With things like Spell damage divided up also. I think this would add the game a lot. The point is that making it one stat for most things, leads to a maxing of that stat, and I believe and inbalance in game. Or in the enhancement trees where it lets you use another stat in place of the normal stat used for that thing, have it give a % increase added to that thing, but keep the original stat as the ones used. Like in the case where the Monk also gets wisdom added to AC. Now I know this would need to be balanced, but I like this idea more then putting all things in one stat.

[Ballrus]

Good job!

You should have done this when you changed the hand wraps to weapons. Now people are addicted in power and will tell anything to make you give up with the change.

[Ew_vastano]

Good job!

You should have done this when you changed the hand wraps to weapons. Now people are addicted in power and will tell anything to make you give up with the change.

thats the mistake everyone is making hand wraps were broken from the day monks were released right up to the day the devs finally fixed them what 8 years
hand wraps were always supposed to be weapons
however that aside this is the third monk nerf in 2 updates and its kinda rediculas i had to reroll vast from dps to wisdom based running gmof because of the 25 to 30% dps loss and now you talking of taking another 10% plus

way to totally kill a class (mind you ddo has done it before look at ranger)

[Ballrus]

hand wraps were always supposed to be weapons
If hand wraps are weapons, why UNarmed strike?

[AzureDragonas]

Dices were added for unarmed as "bonus" to balance previous handwarps which didn't count as weapons and didn't get right bonuses to boost them as weapon.

Right now at 21 with adamantine knuckles I got 10W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x wraps.
With running blitz no prowess or something I crit for 5k {2k crits on unarmed monk at cap that was nice one, made my day -> https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136046&viewfull=1#post6136046}

In comparison my main Assasin have 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP with dual ravenloft raid daggers. By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice, and anyone who don't see an issue with monks while having normal weapons which scales, getting double base dices compared to others... Should be just ignored...

Bottomline is that wraps are way outperforming other weapons and needs adjustment and "oppinion" by those who have no clue how to build/play monks is not a valid reason to keep status quo of this issue, instead of whining about needed balance they should actually learn to play class and how to build it, and before another wave of whines of "to be good monk you need ALL pl feats there is" my 3rd alt with only 6 pl feats at 26 Half-elf reaches 1500 hp and with Epic adamantine knuckles have 15w wraps. It's not even duality and it's already going over the top of weapons end game dps uses.

[Robbenklopper]

Hello!


We're here today to talk about an upcoming change coming soon (likely Update 40). A few years ago, we converted Handwraps from being non-weapon equippable items into actual weapons - A change that allowed a large number of effects and abilities to start working with Handwraps as they do other weapons. In that process, we also brought over most of the existing features meant to help Handwrap DPS be equivalent with that of other weapon types. As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS. When compared to other Melees (and even other Monks), Handwrap Monks still deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear. This is, in part, due to an increased number of Weapon Dice while wielding Handwraps. In retrospect, the buffs they got in the transition to being "real" weapons made the additional damage dice much less necessary.


To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.


This change does not affect the other sources of Monk Handwrap Damage Dice, such as:


Improved Martial Arts Feat
Reinforced Fists item effects
Touch of the Void Dragon and To Seek Perfection
The Disciple of the Fist Past Life Feat



These will continue to add +[w] while using Handwraps as they do now. These have their impact on total DPS as well, but they require build decisions and gearing tradeoffs to achieve, which we're comfortable with. Internal playtesting shows that Handwrap Monk DPS continues to be very strong after the changes.


We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game. We're also aware that there are classes with a lot of room for improvement as well; the recent Barbarian pass was work aimed in correcting classes that are behind where they should be, and we have plans for improving other such classes in the future. Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to work on class balance.

I welcome new gear and interesting abilities, if useful and not just a Gimmick.

To the new Change: If you guys really really think that Monk is OP, then i can accept the loss of 2,5W, what seems to be a loss of more than just 10% dps, to bring Monk to Balance with other classes. I still can´t see where Monks are dominating the Scene as some People hear-say, there are a few shiny Diamond builds, but that´s it. and certainly not the majority of Monks.

When changing Monk, please Keep the following into mind: Don´t base your nerfing on a combination of Monk+falconry tree. Monk itself has to stay on-par and has to remain Balanced in comparison to other classes WITHOUT the requirement to have falconry-tree! If you can manage this, i´ll be ok. More or less.

[Alisonique]

keeping this polite and to the point.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! please dont do this!

Thank you.

[LightBear]

As someone who isn't a fan of monks as it brought to much unbalance to the game... I'd still go for a no.

Handwrap monks are no way near any decent damage output. That +W doesn't do all that much for a weapon sitting on 20*2 for the crit profile and multiplier.
The only big numbers are star aligned fire stance iron fist mountain finishers Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right B, A, Start.

[AzureDragonas]

As someone who isn't a fan of monks as it brought to much unbalance to the game... I'd still go for a no.

Handwrap monks are no way near any decent damage output. That +W doesn't do all that much for a weapon sitting on 20*2 for the crit profile and multiplier.
The only big numbers are star aligned fire stance iron fist mountain finishers Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right B, A, Start.

At least you don't try to hide that you got no clue about handwraps :)

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136700&viewfull=1#post6136700

There is info of what wraps have at 21, 27 and at 29 they have over 20w dices. Would like to see any other weapon in game which could be at least close to that in same levels

[Phoenicis]

Bottomline is that wraps are way outperforming other weapons and needs adjustment and "oppinion" by those who have no clue how to build/play monks is not a valid reason to keep status quo of this issue, instead of whining about needed balance they should actually learn to play class and how to build it, and before another wave of whines of "to be good monk you need ALL pl feats there is" my 3rd alt with only 6 pl feats at 26 Half-elf reaches 1500 hp and with Epic adamantine knuckles have 15w wraps. It's not even duality and it's already going over the top of weapons end game dps uses.

Yup. Lets balance the game on what the best of the best are capable of.

Where exactly does that leave those who aren't that good? Oh, Yeah 'You need to learn to play right'

...

[GeoffWatson]

At least you don't try to hide that you got no clue about handwraps :)

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136700&viewfull=1#post6136700

There is info of what wraps have at 21, 27 and at 29 they have over 20w dices. Would like to see any other weapon in game which could be at least close to that in same levels

Why nerf heroic monks when epic monks are the problem?

[Clerize]

Dices were added for unarmed as "bonus" to balance previous handwarps which didn't count as weapons and didn't get right bonuses to boost them as weapon.

Right now at 21 with adamantine knuckles I got 10W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x wraps.
With running blitz no prowess or something I crit for 5k {2k crits on unarmed monk at cap that was nice one, made my day -> https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136046&viewfull=1#post6136046}

In comparison my main Assasin have 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP with dual ravenloft raid daggers. By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice, and anyone who don't see an issue with monks while having normal weapons which scales, getting double base dices compared to others... Should be just ignored...

Bottomline is that wraps are way outperforming other weapons and needs adjustment and "oppinion" by those who have no clue how to build/play monks is not a valid reason to keep status quo of this issue, instead of whining about needed balance they should actually learn to play class and how to build it, and before another wave of whines of "to be good monk you need ALL pl feats there is" my 3rd alt with only 6 pl feats at 26 Half-elf reaches 1500 hp and with Epic adamantine knuckles have 15w wraps. It's not even duality and it's already going over the top of weapons end game dps uses.

You forgot to add the 20+ sneak attack dice scaled with 150% melee power on your assasin to your "balance equation".

[noobodyfool]

Nerf is such a harsh word why don't we call it (Monk rejuvenation-procedure) bring in the dps a bit and send you home with a therapy attack bird to comfort you by killing your enemies.

[Chacka_DDO]

At least you don't try to hide that you got no clue about handwraps :)

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136700&viewfull=1#post6136700

There is info of what wraps have at 21, 27 and at 29 they have over 20w dices. Would like to see any other weapon in game which could be at least close to that in same levels

In my opinion, this all turns only into a problem with the Morniglord and Nightmother Handwraps and Duality.
ok, so you hit 20w at level 30 as a monk so let's see...
Duality 20[1d6+3]= 120 (before the nerf it was even 180)
Calamity 5[1d8+3]= 35
This is, of course, indisputable a difference that is too big but the question is what you should do?
In my opinion, you should remove the +3 completely because this is just too much for handwraps.
then you have 20[1d6]=60
Which is still ahead of the Kopesh but you also have to see that a Kopesh has a crit profile 17-20 x3 and also this can and will be enhanced by Epic Destinies and other things.
And also don't forget that you don't only have the W[x] for your damage.
I think you can say a good build hit ~+100 damage from his ability modifiers and other things at level 30 (maybe even more) then it looks like this:
20[1d6]+100 = 160
5[1d8+3]+100= 135
This means a monk does 18,6% more damage if you would not count the clearly better crit profile a Kopesh has.
If you include the better crit profile e.g. a tempest ranger should do more damage than a Shintao monk.
Therefore my advice would be: nerf the overpowered handwraps but don't remove a core feature of the monk class!

As some in this thread already stated, a tempest ranger can do already now more damage than a comparable monk.
And my personal impression from the last time's ranger I made and my current monk at level 22 also tells me that a tempest ranger does indeed noticeable more damage than a monk on a character with similar past lives etc.

But let's say, this all is not true and monks do really more damage than everyone else, then the question remains is a nerf really need to make everyone equal?

I say, a nerf is maybe need, but if you nerf something then you should nerf the weapons and items first and only if this is not enough then you can see what you can do with the enhancements and thereafter what is maybe wrong with the granted feats.
I was already a bit sad that unarmed strike was changed (or should I say nerfed?) to the current state because I liked the system with the changing weapon dices more.
But to completely remove this Feat from the monks is clearly too much!
And don't tell me +1 to hit is not effectively a remove of this feats!
My feeling is that this is just the easiest way to cut the damage down (the least effort for the implementation) but it is for sure not the best way!

[karatemack]

We like the Monk class a lot (my main is a Monk), and want to keep supporting it through cool new gear and interesting abilities; but to do so, we need it to be in better balance with the rest of the game.

Can you please share some of the specific changes in the works for monk once these changes are in place?

If we had more information about the overall plan for monk (and melees) it would help align players thoughts with the direction the development team is planning for these classes. It would like also improve the overall usefulness and quality of the feedback you receive... so... win/win?

While I understand that fun surprises are fun from time to time, I think you'll find the power of anticipation far outweighs the benefits of surprise.

[Chacka_DDO]

You forgot to add the 20+ sneak attack dice scaled with 150% melee power on your assasin to your "balance equation".

Exactly, the question of how much real dps a build do at the very end is quite hard to answer with math.
It would be much easier if you could actually test the dps and the game would provide a log file of your combat chat.
Then you could analyze this log file and see what dps you really do.
My impression is, that not even the developers do either solid math to evaluate the damage per second or have such log files to analyze at hand. :(

[AzureDragonas]

You forgot to add the 20+ sneak attack dice scaled with 150% melee power on your assasin to your "balance equation".

And you forget that monks:
* get access to sneak dices in ninja, and can do sneak damage in general
* have more MP than assassin
* does full damage with offhand
* have 90% offhand chance
* have dozen cc which from low level affects reapers
* have better defenses
* does double base weapon damage

And most importantly sneak damage cant crit, but who counts?

[Clerize]

And you forget that monks:
* get access to sneak dices in ninja, and can do sneak damage in general
* have more MP than assassin
* does full damage with offhand
* have 90% offhand chance
* have dozen cc which from low level affects reapers
* have better defenses
* does double base weapon damage

And most importantly sneak damage cant crit, but who counts?

Comparing 4d6 from ninja to 17d6 (10 from pure rogue, 4 from tree and 3 from improved sneak attack) on an assassin build seems fair to me..

Vkf builds have 100% off hand chance. Sneak attack damage by passes all mob DR so potentially can be more DPS than the front number.

A dozen CC? Really? List all 12 of them.

There's a lot of complexity here and simply comparing base dice is overly simplistic.

For the record I'm on the fence about the wrap dice nerf. But being told that punchy monks are outliers in DPS is complete BS based upon my in game experience.

btw. Where do you get 20D6 wraps at cap? Last time I played a monk It was around 15 or 16 dice. But its been a while and I don't remember the exact number.

[cru121]

A dozen CC? Really? List all 12 of them.
To be fair, you started with the hyperboles.

You forgot to add the 20+ sneak attack dice

[NXPlasmid]

Why nerf heroic monks when epic monks are the problem?

Exactly, this nerf is mostly going to impact heroic monks while solving an epic issue that is mostly irrelevant because there isn't really any end game. With reaper and all the past life **** stuffed into the game now, no one stay at 30 or 29 for that matter.


Can you please share some of the specific changes in the works for monk once these changes are in place?

If we had more information about the overall plan for monk (and melees) it would help align players thoughts with the direction the development team is planning for these classes. It would like also improve the overall usefulness and quality of the feedback you receive... so... win/win?

While I understand that fun surprises are fun from time to time, I think you'll find the power of anticipation far outweighs the benefits of surprise.
Or what about the novel idea of bringing out the nerfs and benefits at the same time...


Comparing 4d6 from ninja to 17d6 (10 from pure rogue, 4 from tree and 3 from improved sneak attack) on an assassin build seems fair to me..

Vkf builds have 100% off hand chance. Sneak attack damage by passes all mob DR so potentially can be more DPS than the front number.

A dozen CC? Really? List all 12 of them.

There's a lot of complexity here and simply comparing base dice is overly simplistic.

For the record I'm on the fence about the wrap dice nerf. But being told that punchy monks are outliers in DPS is complete BS based upon my in game experience.

btw. Where do you get 20D6 wraps at cap? Last time I played a monk It was around 15 or 16 dice. But its been a while and I don't remember the exact number.

Don't bother, Azure isn't going to listen, you'll just end up trying to "whack a mole" his constant only moderately relevant rebuttals...

[Zretch]

btw. Where do you get 20D6 wraps at cap? Last time I played a monk It was around 15 or 16 dice. But its been a while and I don't remember the exact number.

Sorces of +W for a monk

Handwrap Exclusive
Duality 5
Duality Impact +2
Monk Unarmed Strike Innate +2.5
Monk Level 18 Core +1
Monk Level 20 Core +2
Feat Improved Martial Arts +1
Item Bonus Superior Reinforced Fists +1.5
ED Tier 5 (Cannot Twist, but be in Grandmaster which is NOT DPS optimized) Fire Stance +1

Centered +W that works with any weapon while centered
ED Tier 1 (Can be twisted) A Dance of Flowers +1.5

General +W that anyone can get
Airship Buff +0.25
ED Improved Power Attack +0.5
ED Combat Brute (Core cannot be twisted) +1 while action boosted

So is it possible to hit 20W?

You can get 7.75W just equipping Morninglord's Handwraps as a 20 monk while having ship buffs.
10.75W with Shintao capstone
11.75W with Improved MA Feat (no brainer epic feat selection)
13.25W with a Tier 1 Twist of A Dance with Flowers (again, easy to justify cost benefit)
14.25W with a Legendary Perfect Pinnacle, which isn't too hard to farm
15.25W running in Legendary Dreadnought with a boost active from Combat Brute
15.75W if you have Power Attack running with Improved Power Attack from LD
16.25W if you take the monk past life feat Disciple of the Fist
16.50W if you take Way of the Tenacious Badger in Hensin

To push much higher, you need raid gear
17.00W if you have a FleetFoot Necklace (doesn't stack with Perfect Pinnacle)
19.00W if you have a Duality (due to Impact)

There's another +1W to be had in Grandmaster of Flowers running fire stance, but it's a tier 5, so it can't be twisted. You'd lose Combat Brute, so that's a push.

There's a further 0.75W to be had, but you have to let your hitpoints get to under 50% for Way of the Tenacious Badger to kick in to +1W.

I don't see how to get to 20 or above. 19.75 very situationally (not sure people are going to deliberately sit under 50% health for an extra .75W). 19 with an action boost running. 18 standing. More likely because of build tradeoffs raid geared monks will be in the 17.25 to 18.25 neighborhood.

[Zretch]

To be fair, you started with the hyperboles.

The hyperbole needs to stop, on both sides. It's utterly unhelpful to any discussion.

[Vish]

In comparison my main Assasin have 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP with dual ravenloft raid daggers. By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice, and anyone who don't see an issue with monks while having normal weapons which scales, getting double base dices compared to others...

Where do you get 20w?
I'm at 30 with all max gear, and pl monk,
I have 17w

[Bobmj]

If your build design abilities are limited to copying popular ones posted online, then I can see how you could come to the conclusion that monks are top DPS. However, there are current players that have builds with no yellow bars that cause sufficiently more damage than monks while having better defenses and other features. Other classes (different melee, divine, and yes casters) can crush content just as effectively as monks, if not better. They have different strengths and weaknesses, which in my opinion is what TRUE balance is about as opposed to adjusting all of the classes to be like Gauntlet characters. (I get the Blue Monk!)

Players don't post these builds online for exactly the reason of what is going on with the nerf monk movement. They also don't play in many pugs. When some do play with others that they don't know, they sandbag to not draw attention to their builds.

Some will demand for videos or claim this isn't true without proof. My point is not to bring any attention on those specific builds, but to point out the tunnel vision targeting certain high-visibility builds and the apparent lack of understanding of the game mechanics by whoever is involved in making these supposed "balance" decisions.

I've been playing for quite a while as Warlordbob on Sarlona. I'm not an uber player, but I'm pretty good. I am only listing my name so the players who know what I am talking about realize I am giving them credit for their game knowledge and the awesome builds they have come up with over the years. I have run with some great players and I appreciate them sharing the knowledge with me over the years. And of course for carrying my soulstone.

As for the devs' attempts at balance, I'm sorry but you are entirely too narrowly focused on straight DPS and not looking at how the overall mix of damage, defenses, and tactical feats work together for total player effectiveness.

If you made it to the end of this, thanks for reading. See you in the game!

[NXPlasmid]

Still waiting for the "talk" part of this thread.... So far it appears to be an edict.

[DrawingGuy]

Clerize, he is clearly trying to exaggerate and misrepresent numbers. He's quoting the crit range of one of the only two wraps with adjusted crit profiles in the game like it carries into end-game. Assassins can also do better than the crit profile he listed for daggers - be it permanently with T5 Assassin or temporarily with T5 Vistani. Vistani can also do better than 10[W] as you have 7/7.5W + 1 deadly blades + 1 LD boost + 1 deadly arti (if you're counting it for Monk, only fair to count it for rogue) + 1.5 dance + .5 PA (monk would rarely take this feat like a rogue wouldn't either, but as you're counting it against Monk...), and that gives you 12.25/12.75 [W] on top of a higher crit range with higher multipliers. After all is considered (attack rates, SA, procs, double strikes, offhand doubles, etc), end game Vistani BEATS end game Duality monks in DPS, though not even Vistani is #1 on the DPS pole.

As for the 20[W] that he quoted, even doing silly things like PA on an unarmed Monk for LD's .5, taking Monk PL, and pretending +1[W] from Artificer is part of Monk class, it still lands you at 18.75. More realistic monks will have 16.75 while using Duality. (forgot about tenacious badger, though 16-17ish is till the realistic Duality-only number)

"SA damage in general" I believe he is pointing at Ethereal. If Ethereal is the general part of calculating Monk DPS, than that feat should be looked at. It is part of what helps all of TWF perform so well, and as melee power got a massive boost (especially with Prowess and flat MP filigrees), Ethereal was boosted at a 1.5x rate. It went from an "ok" feat (elemental Scions could beat it) to one that can hit for a couple hundred (before Reaper descaling) and a must have for max DPS on TWF builds. Simply scaling it back to 1 SA per 4 or 5 Hide could scale this feat back and thus hit TWF - especially classes with fast attack rates like Monk.


It is obvious that AzureDragonas is either an exaggerator or is missing a lot of things for game mechanics - between inflated numbers for Monk (fake numbers for weapon die, fake numbers for amount of CC, fake numbers for endgame crit profiles, etc) and deflating values for other classes, he's trying to make it look like things are broken in Monks favor.


Monks are indeed not in a bad position currently. I don't think they are in a "substantially" better position like Steelstar alludes to, which makes me seriously worry how they are getting their numbers since proper meta-gaming considerations would clearly point that they are not... it can easily lead to nerfing them to a bad position like they've been multiple times in the past. That is not to say that there is not room to shave down monk in the whole picture of things, but I am 100% against the way it is currently proposed. Destroying core Monk mechanics that were based on PnP concepts (scaling unarmed damage) is the absolutely worst way to do it. If Monk needs to have their dice potential shaved (debatable, especially at a 2.5 amount), there are other sources that would be much better options.

[Chacka_DDO]

Sorces of +W for a monk

Handwrap Exclusive
Duality 5
Duality Impact +2
Monk Unarmed Strike Innate +2.5
Monk Level 18 Core +1
Monk Level 20 Core +2
Feat Improved Martial Arts +1
Item Bonus Superior Reinforced Fists +1.5
ED Tier 5 (Cannot Twist, but be in Grandmaster which is NOT DPS optimized) Fire Stance +1

Centered +W that works with any weapon while centered
ED Tier 1 (Can be twisted) A Dance of Flowers +1.5

General +W that anyone can get
Airship Buff +0.25
ED Improved Power Attack +0.5
ED Combat Brute (Core cannot be twisted) +1 while action boosted

So is it possible to hit 20W?

You can get 7.75W just equipping Morninglord's Handwraps as a 20 monk while having ship buffs.
10.75W with Shintao capstone
11.75W with Improved MA Feat (no brainer epic feat selection)
13.25W with a Tier 1 Twist of A Dance with Flowers (again, easy to justify cost benefit)
14.25W with a Legendary Perfect Pinnacle, which isn't too hard to farm
15.25W running in Legendary Dreadnought with a boost active from Combat Brute
15.75W if you have Power Attack running with Improved Power Attack from LD
16.25W if you take the monk past life feat Disciple of the Fist
16.50W if you take Way of the Tenacious Badger in Hensin

To push much higher, you need raid gear
17.00W if you have a FleetFoot Necklace (doesn't stack with Perfect Pinnacle)
19.00W if you have a Duality (due to Impact)

There's another +1W to be had in Grandmaster of Flowers running fire stance, but it's a tier 5, so it can't be twisted. You'd lose Combat Brute, so that's a push.

There's a further 0.75W to be had, but you have to let your hitpoints get to under 50% for Way of the Tenacious Badger to kick in to +1W.

I don't see how to get to 20 or above. 19.75 very situationally (not sure people are going to deliberately sit under 50% health for an extra .75W). 19 with an action boost running. 18 standing. More likely because of build tradeoffs raid geared monks will be in the 17.25 to 18.25 neighborhood.

At first, I want to mention that not everyone wants to run in Legendary Dreadnought and I have no AP left for Tenacious Badger etc. so these numbers are just only for monks who max out there weapon dps regardless what else they lose with this.
But ok... some of this W addition from your calculation can also be used on any weapon so I can add at least 1.5W while "only" 19.75 is possible for a monk with Duality.

So let's compare what happens if you remove only the +3 from the Duality weapon dices with the average damage only from the main weapon:
19.75[1d6+3]+100 = 218.5 (Duality now) 48.4% more than the Kopesh Calamity
19.75[1d6]+100 = 159.25 (Duality after another nerf) 8.1% more than the Kopesh Calamity
6.75[1d8+3] = 147.25
6.75[1d8+3] = 161.25 (Calamity if it would have Keen V)

As you can see the only things that happened is that the developer who had the bright idea to give Handwraps once 7[1d6+6] has embarrassed himself to the bones and just only this mistake needs to be removed.

And it is of course also questionable that Duality gets +2W with impact and the Kopesh not.
If the Calamity would get this too, the Kopesh user would do 1% more damage than the monk with Duality

And always remember this all doesn't count in that a monk with handwraps has a significantly worse crit profile than most weapons another melee build would use
And also see that a monk doesn't get any additional boosts for his weapon damage for more + damage while most classes get this.

At the end it boils down to a point that a monk does already now not significantly more damage and even less as several players in this thread showed with videos.
And the only thing that should maybe be nerfed is Duality, Morninglord, and Nightmother Handwraps.

[Zretch]

I'm really hoping that the devs considers the impact of this change on a non-optimized, non-endgame build.

I see a ton of newer and/or less savvy players out there who spread their APs across all of the trees and, by the time they hit 18 or 20, they don't have enough APs in Shintao to pick up those last two cores. Players that have zero access to raid gear. Players that don't know about ED twists, let alone how to optimize them.

For those players, their current likely weapon damage would likely be:

5W for Morninglord wraps (gotta assume they'd pick up the free weapon, unless they don't own Ravenloft)
Monk Unarmed Strike Innate +2.5
Feat Improved Martial Arts +1 (I gotta assume that they'd pick this up, the name is compelling)
Legendary Perfect Pinnacle +1
ED A Dance of Flowers +1.5 (I assume they'd be in GMoF)
Airship Buff +0.25

I think that's your baseline, and it still assumes that they'd recognize the value of A Dance of Flowers and farming for a Legendary Perfect Pinnacle.

That's 11.25W. Your nerf would lower them to 8.75W. That's over 20% base damage. More when you're talking about 2W handwraps in low epics.

[Alcides]

I think this points more to percentile damage increasers that are being used to their maximum potential. The issue is that they stack multiplicatively instead of additively. This was a huge problem with legacy healing amplification and was fixed by making all the percentile increasers stack additively. I really don't see a difference with damage which would directly translate to a certain amount of melee power, ranged power or spellpower equivalent to the percentage increase of the effect in question. I would suggest fixing this using the legacy healing amplification change as prior art for your design basis. Then you should look at damage dice increasers next as the multipliers are more of an issue than damage dice.

[AzureDragonas]

Comparing 4d6 from ninja to 17d6 (10 from pure rogue, 4 from tree and 3 from improved sneak attack) on an assassin build seems fair to me..

Vkf builds have 100% off hand chance. Sneak attack damage by passes all mob DR so potentially can be more DPS than the front number.

A dozen CC? Really? List all 12 of them.

There's a lot of complexity here and simply comparing base dice is overly simplistic.

For the record I'm on the fence about the wrap dice nerf. But being told that punchy monks are outliers in DPS is complete BS based upon my in game experience.

btw. Where do you get 20D6 wraps at cap? Last time I played a monk It was around 15 or 16 dice. But its been a while and I don't remember the exact number.

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat

[voxson5]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat

Could add +1[w] by twisting fanatism & intolerant blows?

Out of interest, what does tremor on a centred silvanus work out to be?

Damage comparison?

Is heroic monk dice really the issue?

[Chacka_DDO]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat

Just to mention it, on one hand, you talk about the critical profile of Adamantine Knuckles and with the same breath you talk about 20W.
Don't you think this is a bit dishonest to argue this way?
Also, you should know that only with Duality something close to 20W is possible, but then you have the quite bad crit profile of normal handwraps.
You can also not tell someone you have 9W from a Legendary Tail of the Scorpion (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Tail_of_the_Scorpion) and with the same breath talking about a Epic Sword of Shadows (http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Sword_of_Shadow) with a 15-20 x3 crit profile because you cannot have both!
As I said already in this thread, I think if there is a problem with the damage per second a monk can deal in level 30 you should raher remove the recently and seemingly mistakenly added items that leads to more damage than intended for a monk.

[MaeveTuohy]

Is heroic monk dice really the issue?

Nope. Even epic monk damage isn't an "issue."

[DrawingGuy]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat

It has already been broken down earlier, but note that monks do not get 3.5[W] from their unarmed scaling. The wiki shows 3.5 because it include the base die if you were actually unarmed. When using handwraps, it would be whatever the x[W] of the weapon is plus any scaling (2.5[W] for pure Monk). I also find it pretty generous to round 19.25 to 20. Shouldn't you be rounding all of your other weapon examples up a full W from ship then?

I crunched the numbers quickly in my head in my own post, so I forgot to add the .5 PA and .5 PL options in my post, but those that are going off max potentials are just silly. Most Monks will not be running that, though it does reiterate my earlier point (a few posts ago) of the second problem of them destroying core Monk concepts is that Heroic monks are not where most of the potential comes from. End game items and Imp Martial Arts feat also gives 2.5W, so if the nerf is being shoved down without better testing, that is a MUCH better place to pull from.

[MaeveTuohy]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat

One big assumption here is that a player has Duality. How many first lifer's have it? I have a lot of past lives and don't have Duality. A second if the other raid item, Fleetfoot Necklace, which also don't have.

Dropping to Morninglord wraps and only a greater reinforced item and you have 16.75w (or less with a better build focus)

[rikkitikkitarvi]

The way I see it is that it boils down to what happened when handwraps were made to be weapons.

So if we compare the removal of unarmed strikes combined with the disadvantages of having the handwraps as weapons compared to having handwraps as weapons its a nerf but how much

UNARMED STRIKES

Unarmed strikes +.5[w] at lvl 4,8,12,16,20 for a total of 3.5[w]
Weapons based on Cannith Crafting .5[w] at lvl 10 1[w] at 20, 24 28 maxing out at 4[w]

This results in a reduction between lvl 4 and 27 but an increase at lvl 28. I'm ignoring named items because every class as named items that do not follow the cannith crafting guideline.

OTHER REVISIONS
Well we used to get the Ki strike:Magic feat at lvl 4 now, that is completely irrelevant as any handwrap with a plus 1 would be considered magical.

So it comes down to losing the specialty effects that used to work on handwraps but now only work with unarmed combat (no handwraps). Now its been a while since I have played a monk so I could be wrong but my understanding is that bonuses from the brawling gloves, rings of potential which are plus to damage when hitting unarmed do not work with handwraps. Is that correct? So if these items were corrected to work again properly for handwraps than I see this as an easier pill to swallow.

CONCLUSION
The big problems I see with the overall change is having a reduction of 1.5[W] at lvls 16-24 really stings as does the loss of the functionality of the bonus to unarmed combat damage. If the functionality of the items that give bonus to damage on hit with unarmed combat worked properly with handwraps and if the functionality of various abilities that say that they don't work with handwraps were adjusted to work with handwraps this really becomes a non issue.

Also changing the unarmed strikes to +1 atk is basically nothing. I've never really had a problem with hitting things where an additional +6 to atk at lvl 20 is going to do anything. It might as well be MRR to have any meaning at all.


With respect to the Falconry tree. I think that this is a completely separate issue and has no bearing on why this nerf is being implemented I think it fully comes down to the benefits that were received when handwraps became weapons.

[Nubom70]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat
-----------------------------------------------------------
In comparison my main Assasin have 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP with dual ravenloft raid daggers. By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice, and anyone who don't see an issue with monks while having normal weapons which scales, getting double base dices compared to others... Should be just ignored...





So yeah, you're talking about:

A level 29-30 monk only, since this doesn't even apply to a non-raid-gear build at all.

IF a monk has the raid wraps.... (which I don't)
IF the monk has the raid necklace..... (don't have that either)
IF the monk runs in LD ...... (I'm not)
IF it's a capstoned action boost built monk.... (still not)
ETC

You're quoting ONE maxed out build, with optimal gear, in a specific ED, using action boosts to get those numbers.
Changing ONE set of wraps would fix that, but instead you think it's a better idea to nerf NON-epic monks? Really.

You made me laugh like **** with your other comment. You're sitting at x4/x6 crit on daggers, and with SA that EASILY getting high crits, which you
can't match on a standard monk (played both), but you still say all monks have (20w) base in that comparison. You're just making up stuff at this point.

My barbarian does more damage, with non-raid gear (already critting for 35k, not at cap). Monks are not the issue, never have been.

So to quote YOU... Should be just ignored...

[Clerize]

To be fair, you started with the hyperboles.

Actually no. There is over 20d6 of sneak available at cap. The assassin would probably be running the silent avenger set which is 3 more sneak dice on top of the 17 I've already listed. There's more from shadow dancer, but arguably LD is better.

[Clerize]

If I didn't missed anything :

7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

19,25 dice on first lifer with no pl feat


Personally I'd never waste a feat for the PL dice boost. Using power attack is questionable due to the difficulty hitting things (grazing hits). Depending on difficulty you are trying to run at precision may be a better choice for dps.

Others have already addressed the other issues I have with this breakdown.

[Tarnoc]

I don't care about this list you have posted no less than 37 times. Join a high level group if you can get in it and see what the melees who are doing the most DPS are playing.

i agree with you monks are full of tricks and good dps and survivability...but my str based twf ranger with stunning dire charge boosted 3k hps and dual kopeshes sees massive numbers has a 76% double strike and massive -fort% from rogue twist and mark of the hunter

i also have a monk whose fast sees close dps over time lotsa tricks but my rangers crits are 3800 to 5500 base number

[aumerle]

I doubt this gets read by anyone that matters but - improve classes that need it before nerfing something else. In fact more than that - fix the commonplace "loading screen bug", fix the ridiculous TR cache design (in a game that's all about TRing for MANY people), fix the actual monk build bugs that are mentioned throughout this thread. THEN, come back and talk about some kind of class nerf. So what if they aren't small problems, they are core issues with the game that I would wager a lot of money matter much more to most players than a monk nerf.

You even admitted yourself in your opening post that there are other classes that need help. Boosting several other classes is harder than nerfing one, sure, but this is how you lose players. You can put a lot of effort and care in this game into building up a particular character. Nobody wants all of that time and effort to feel wasted when that class is nerfed - and after that's happened to you once, what's your motivation to build up another class, since clearly it could happen again?

Also, in my experience of playing many MMOs, this kind of developer decision leads down the road to generic boring classes. One of the things about DDO that makes it different from other similar games is the amazing amount of customization and different builds you can create. You literally cannot balance every single possibility that someone can choose to build - and efforts to do so will just eventually lead you to making every class so generic and the same that nobody will feel excited about playing any of them.

I'm not saying that if there is some crazy outlier mistake that it shouldn't be corrected, but it's pretty clear from the large amount of posts here arguing that monks are not by far the #1 dps class that the difference can't be that amazing. Sometimes generated stats don't represent what's actually happening in the game.

[Andu_Indorin]

As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS.

NO. Handwraps Monks are NOT an outlier in terms of DPS. They are the last of the viable pure melee classes.

In an effort to catch up with where you are coming from -- Torc, from "Melee Survivability Post": "- As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or reaper 6+ skulls." -- I recently ran with a public group through Ravenloft, part III, at R7 on my 30th Level pure Monk. Not only is he the strongest melee toon that I have, he is now the only epic melee toon that I have left. In the group there were three ranged toons and three melee toons. My monk spent the entire damned quest running about swinging at thin air, chasing after the mobs who were chasing after the three ranged toons --one Warlock, and two ranged Monks. I scored one kill in the quest, the other melees zero. Every other enemy was killed at a distance by the ranged toons, including RANGED Monks. Needless to say, it was not an enjoyable experience for my melee monk.

For you to suggest that Handwrap Monks are outlier in terms of DPS really demonstrates just how far divorced from reality your game design has drifted. The essence of Dungeons & Dragons has always involved team work between classes with different strengths and weaknesses. Reaper is a challenge, yes. But your design has made it such that it greatly rewards ranged play over melee play, and this has further segmented the gaming population, driving away many players who prefer the melee role to the ranged role.

Thus, I'd recommend and urge you to focus on finding ways to re-balance ranged play with melee play, rather than nerf the only viable pure melee build in the game.

[AzureDragonas]

Comparing 4d6 from ninja to 17d6 (10 from pure rogue, 4 from tree and 3 from improved sneak attack) on an assassin build seems fair to me..

Vkf builds have 100% off hand chance. Sneak attack damage by passes all mob DR so potentially can be more DPS than the front number.

A dozen CC? Really? List all 12 of them.

There's a lot of complexity here and simply comparing base dice is overly simplistic.

For the record I'm on the fence about the wrap dice nerf. But being told that punchy monks are outliers in DPS is complete BS based upon my in game experience.

btw. Where do you get 20D6 wraps at cap? Last time I played a monk It was around 15 or 16 dice. But its been a while and I don't remember the exact number.

I love how you pick single thing about sneak dices like they are most important aspect in game and keep repeating that, and ignoring all other stuff I mentioned yet at end claiming that I do same about base damage, when I even give list of why monks are better than let's say assassin in instakills/better saves/better defenses/more cc/and even more base damage in general. Seems opposite than you I am capable to acknowledge that, yet I am not short sighted about playing only monks or warlocks all the time, I specialize in all playstyles and all classes, I tried all builds and playstyles at some point and thats why I can make objective assessment on where does each play style stands without needing to recheck devs data. I have no doubt that even by base damage monks are above all other melee.


Clerize, he is clearly trying to exaggerate and misrepresent numbers. He's quoting the crit range of one of the only two wraps with adjusted crit profiles in the game like it carries into end-game. Assassins can also do better than the crit profile he listed for daggers - be it permanently with T5 Assassin or temporarily with T5 Vistani. Vistani can also do better than 10[W] as you have 7/7.5W + 1 deadly blades + 1 LD boost + 1 deadly arti (if you're counting it for Monk, only fair to count it for rogue) + 1.5 dance + .5 PA (monk would rarely take this feat like a rogue wouldn't either, but as you're counting it against Monk...), and that gives you 12.25/12.75 [W] on top of a higher crit range with higher multipliers. After all is considered (attack rates, SA, procs, double strikes, offhand doubles, etc), end game Vistani BEATS end game Duality monks in DPS, though not even Vistani is #1 on the DPS pole.

As for the 20[W] that he quoted, even doing silly things like PA on an unarmed Monk for LD's .5, taking Monk PL, and pretending +1[W] from Artificer is part of Monk class, it still lands you at 18.75. More realistic monks will have 16.75 while using Duality. (forgot about tenacious badger, though 16-17ish is till the realistic Duality-only number)

"SA damage in general" I believe he is pointing at Ethereal. If Ethereal is the general part of calculating Monk DPS, than that feat should be looked at. It is part of what helps all of TWF perform so well, and as melee power got a massive boost (especially with Prowess and flat MP filigrees), Ethereal was boosted at a 1.5x rate. It went from an "ok" feat (elemental Scions could beat it) to one that can hit for a couple hundred (before Reaper descaling) and a must have for max DPS on TWF builds. Simply scaling it back to 1 SA per 4 or 5 Hide could scale this feat back and thus hit TWF - especially classes with fast attack rates like Monk.


It is obvious that AzureDragonas is either an exaggerator or is missing a lot of things for game mechanics - between inflated numbers for Monk (fake numbers for weapon die, fake numbers for amount of CC, fake numbers for endgame crit profiles, etc) and deflating values for other classes, he's trying to make it look like things are broken in Monks favor.


Monks are indeed not in a bad position currently. I don't think they are in a "substantially" better position like Steelstar alludes to, which makes me seriously worry how they are getting their numbers since proper meta-gaming considerations would clearly point that they are not... it can easily lead to nerfing them to a bad position like they've been multiple times in the past. That is not to say that there is not room to shave down monk in the whole picture of things, but I am 100% against the way it is currently proposed. Destroying core Monk mechanics that were based on PnP concepts (scaling unarmed damage) is the absolutely worst way to do it. If Monk needs to have their dice potential shaved (debatable, especially at a 2.5 amount), there are other sources that would be much better options.

As someone who claims to be "uber completionist" and failing to acknowledge inbalance of monk survivabililty/cc/damage in general you talk a lot.


I'm really hoping that the devs considers the impact of this change on a non-optimized, non-endgame build.

I see a ton of newer and/or less savvy players out there who spread their APs across all of the trees and, by the time they hit 18 or 20, they don't have enough APs in Shintao to pick up those last two cores. Players that have zero access to raid gear. Players that don't know about ED twists, let alone how to optimize them.

For those players, their current likely weapon damage would likely be:

5W for Morninglord wraps (gotta assume they'd pick up the free weapon, unless they don't own Ravenloft)
Monk Unarmed Strike Innate +2.5
Feat Improved Martial Arts +1 (I gotta assume that they'd pick this up, the name is compelling)
Legendary Perfect Pinnacle +1
ED A Dance of Flowers +1.5 (I assume they'd be in GMoF)
Airship Buff +0.25

I think that's your baseline, and it still assumes that they'd recognize the value of A Dance of Flowers and farming for a Legendary Perfect Pinnacle.

That's 11.25W. Your nerf would lower them to 8.75W. That's over 20% base damage. More when you're talking about 2W handwraps in low epics.

Balance is never about "average Joe" it's about those who understands and maximise builds. Joes still can get better improve see how others playing/building/picking they haven't reached ceiling, but can be certain that if devs balance anything arround average person something in other end of stick, someone who knows what hes doing going beat that horse out for good.


Just to mention it, on one hand, you talk about the critical profile of Adamantine Knuckles and with the same breath you talk about 20W.
Don't you think this is a bit dishonest to argue this way?
Also, you should know that only with Duality something close to 20W is possible, but then you have the quite bad crit profile of normal handwraps.
You can also not tell someone you have 9W from a Legendary Tail of the Scorpion (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Legendary_Tail_of_the_Scorpion) and with the same breath talking about a Epic Sword of Shadows (http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Sword_of_Shadow) with a 15-20 x3 crit profile because you cannot have both!
As I said already in this thread, I think if there is a problem with the damage per second a monk can deal in level 30 you should raher remove the recently and seemingly mistakenly added items that leads to more damage than intended for a monk.

If you can't follow discussion and just pick text to make your misguided statement its your problem not mine. What I shared is insight how most "good" monks transition from lvl 14 to 29 using adamantine knuckles -> epic adamantine knuckles -> barovia/duality wraps and how hard they scale even compared to end game builds and weapons.


It has already been broken down earlier, but note that monks do not get 3.5[W] from their unarmed scaling. The wiki shows 3.5 because it include the base die if you were actually unarmed. When using handwraps, it would be whatever the x[W] of the weapon is plus any scaling (2.5[W] for pure Monk). I also find it pretty generous to round 19.25 to 20. Shouldn't you be rounding all of your other weapon examples up a full W from ship then?

I crunched the numbers quickly in my head in my own post, so I forgot to add the .5 PA and .5 PL options in my post, but those that are going off max potentials are just silly. Most Monks will not be running that, though it does reiterate my earlier point (a few posts ago) of the second problem of them destroying core Monk concepts is that Heroic monks are not where most of the potential comes from. End game items and Imp Martial Arts feat also gives 2.5W, so if the nerf is being shoved down without better testing, that is a MUCH better place to pull from.

Just because "most" don't that doesn't validate anything. While "most" casters can't land single spell in R10 somehow we still recognize that casters on R10 are strongest class to play and run in party with. Heroic monks have other sources of how to get dices, I even gave example of my monk having more dices on heroic weapon than my assassin have at cap, and truth to be told my assassin don't have access to attacks like whirlwind strike hitting all targets around multiple times like unarmed monk.


One big assumption here is that a player has Duality. How many first lifer's have it? I have a lot of past lives and don't have Duality. A second if the other raid item, Fleetfoot Necklace, which also don't have.

Dropping to Morninglord wraps and only a greater reinforced item and you have 16.75w (or less with a better build focus)

Again even excluding duality which I have already on 3 toons just by running raids and trade ins unarmed still have way too many dices compared to other weapons. Just because "you" don't have it yet in some sense validates keeping something what needs balancing intact? I doubt.


So yeah, you're talking about:

A level 29-30 monk only, since this doesn't even apply to a non-raid-gear build at all.

IF a monk has the raid wraps.... (which I don't)
IF the monk has the raid necklace..... (don't have that either)
IF the monk runs in LD ...... (I'm not)
IF it's a capstoned action boost built monk.... (still not)
ETC

You're quoting ONE maxed out build, with optimal gear, in a specific ED, using action boosts to get those numbers.
Changing ONE set of wraps would fix that, but instead you think it's a better idea to nerf NON-epic monks? Really.

You made me laugh like **** with your other comment. You're sitting at x4/x6 crit on daggers, and with SA that EASILY getting high crits, which you
can't match on a standard monk (played both), but you still say all monks have (20w) base in that comparison. You're just making up stuff at this point.

My barbarian does more damage, with non-raid gear (already critting for 35k, not at cap). Monks are not the issue, never have been.

So to quote YOU... Should be just ignored...

Just because you are incapable to play monk fully thanks to your own "limitations" doesn't mean there are no issues with class. Ppl who plays flavor water downed version of class and "whines" about them getting even weaker while they can't do a thing should be ignored. Those who actually understands game and actually play class in its fullest see how broken stuff is.

Also let me guess, running on fury? I assume you see really high numbers are feel really good about that, yet I wonder how good is that while entire remaining time you do poke damage. Or am I mistaken, and you actually manage to make same crits as I did on end game barb with torn and LD, running with 19-20/9x and over +150 to damage weapon before even reaching cap?


NO. Handwraps Monks are NOT an outlier in terms of DPS. They are the last of the viable pure melee classes.

In an effort to catch up with where you are coming from -- Torc, from "Melee Survivability Post": "- As we watch players play the game, we've noticed melee dps was under represented on high difficulty. Not gone entirely, but, noticeable more uncommon. I'm talking mostly about raids, or reaper 6+ skulls." -- I recently ran with a public group through Ravenloft, part III, at R7 on my 30th Level pure Monk. Not only is he the strongest melee toon that I have, he is now the only epic melee toon that I have left. In the group there were three ranged toons and three melee toons. My monk spent the entire damned quest running about swinging at thin air, chasing after the mobs who were chasing after the three ranged toons --one Warlock, and two ranged Monks. I scored one kill in the quest, the other melees zero. Every other enemy was killed at a distance by the ranged toons, including RANGED Monks. Needless to say, it was not an enjoyable experience for my melee monk.

For you to suggest that Handwrap Monks are outlier in terms of DPS really demonstrates just how far divorced from reality your game design has drifted. The essence of Dungeons & Dragons has always involved team work between classes with different strengths and weaknesses. Reaper is a challenge, yes. But your design has made it such that it greatly rewards ranged play over melee play, and this has further segmented the gaming population, driving away many players who prefer the melee role to the ranged role.

Thus, I'd recommend and urge you to focus on finding ways to re-balance ranged play with melee play, rather than nerf the only viable pure melee build in the game.

You literally say your experience with monk and how bad it was to play, while all I see that you not even single time mentioned using stunning fist/dire charge/Tomb/Kukan do/shining star/palm to CC and kill same mobs in seconds on R6 instead of chasing.

Bottom line is ill scaling is cause of monk inbalance issues now, without fixing it its hard to create new items and improve class in general, specially when new items can make without fixing this even worse. Devs should have done this with wrap update to avoid this drama against those who can't comprehand that sometimes adjustments are needed to release new cool stuff and balance all classes in their unique way, and 10 page discussion about ppl who can't understand that adjustments are needed is just ugly.

[mopsforthewin]

Honestly i wish you guys spent more of your time develloping new content then messing up with monks.
Why wont you try scaling UI, better engine to avoid lag, new quests , new classes, new races, more sagas ... Monks are fine the way they are.

A new expansion is in the works (which is supposed to include the tiefling race), we just got white plume, disciples of rage before that, and we got ravenloft about a year ago. For a free to play game I would say the amount of content we get is pretty fair. Hell, its about on par with the other dnd mmo, and that one has WotC advertising it every chance they get. Also, you do know that instituting a new engine would require them to build the game from the ground up right? And no, monks are not fine the way they are. They do need a nerf. I can't tell you how many times I have looked up a build and been stopped dead in my tracks because it required monk. Most melee builds, its mandatory to have at least a few monk levels. As for the new engine... okay I'll give you that one, though I imagine doing so would be a logistical nightmare for the back end and cause more issues then we have now at first.

[Chacka_DDO]

If you can't follow discussion and just pick text to make your misguided statement its your problem not mine. What I shared is insight how most "good" monks transition from lvl 14 to 29 using adamantine knuckles -> epic adamantine knuckles -> barovia/duality wraps and how hard they scale even compared to end game builds and weapons.


A strange sight but ok...
here the quote from you in full length...


Dices were added for unarmed as "bonus" to balance previous handwarps which didn't count as weapons and didn't get right bonuses to boost them as weapon.

Right now at 21 with adamantine knuckles I got 10W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x wraps.
With running blitz no prowess or something I crit for 5k {2k crits on unarmed monk at cap that was nice one, made my day -> https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/499356-U40-Unarmed-Strike-Change?p=6136046&viewfull=1#post6136046}

In comparison my main Assasin have 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP with dual ravenloft raid daggers. By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice, and anyone who don't see an issue with monks while having normal weapons which scales, getting double base dices compared to others... Should be just ignored...

Bottomline is that wraps are way outperforming other weapons and needs adjustment and "oppinion" by those who have no clue how to build/play monks is not a valid reason to keep status quo of this issue, instead of whining about needed balance they should actually learn to play class and how to build it, and before another wave of whines of "to be good monk you need ALL pl feats there is" my 3rd alt with only 6 pl feats at 26 Half-elf reaches 1500 hp and with Epic adamantine knuckles have 15w wraps. It's not even duality and it's already going over the top of weapons end game dps uses.

so you can see how you tell us at first that a monk "with adamantine knuckles" got a crit profile of "10W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x" and a assassin only "10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP" and "By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice" with not a single word you mention that you need to use different handwraps for this "20w" and exactly this IS not really a honest kind to present facts because the missed additional information tells the reader that a monk can have the "20w" AND the "15-20/3x 19-20/6x".
Not to mention that you admit in the other post that it is only 19.25W and this only if you currently use any kind of action boost.
And of course every monk runs in fire stance and in LD etc. to get this crit profile with Adamantine Knuckles :rolleyes:.
So it looks more like you are either dishonest or not able to articulate what you mean.
And therefore it is maybe you who "Should be just ignored..."?

[Tuxedoman96]

I love how you pick single thing about sneak dices like they are most important aspect in game and keep repeating that, and ignoring all other stuff I mentioned yet at end claiming that I do same about base damage, when I even give list of why monks are better than let's say assassin in instakills/better saves/better defenses/more cc/and even more base damage in general. Seems opposite than you I am capable to acknowledge that, yet I am not short sighted about playing only monks or warlocks all the time, I specialize in all playstyles and all classes, I tried all builds and playstyles at some point and thats why I can make objective assessment on where does each play style stands without needing to recheck devs data. I have no doubt that even by base damage monks are above all other melee.



As someone who claims to be "uber completionist" and failing to acknowledge inbalance of monk survivabililty/cc/damage in general you talk a lot.



Balance is never about "average Joe" it's about those who understands and maximise builds. Joes still can get better improve see how others playing/building/picking they haven't reached ceiling, but can be certain that if devs balance anything arround average person something in other end of stick, someone who knows what hes doing going beat that horse out for good.



If you can't follow discussion and just pick text to make your misguided statement its your problem not mine. What I shared is insight how most "good" monks transition from lvl 14 to 29 using adamantine knuckles -> epic adamantine knuckles -> barovia/duality wraps and how hard they scale even compared to end game builds and weapons.



Just because "most" don't that doesn't validate anything. While "most" casters can't land single spell in R10 somehow we still recognize that casters on R10 are strongest class to play and run in party with. Heroic monks have other sources of how to get dices, I even gave example of my monk having more dices on heroic weapon than my assassin have at cap, and truth to be told my assassin don't have access to attacks like whirlwind strike hitting all targets around multiple times like unarmed monk.



Again even excluding duality which I have already on 3 toons just by running raids and trade ins unarmed still have way too many dices compared to other weapons. Just because "you" don't have it yet in some sense validates keeping something what needs balancing intact? I doubt.



Just because you are incapable to play monk fully thanks to your own "limitations" doesn't mean there are no issues with class. Ppl who plays flavor water downed version of class and "whines" about them getting even weaker while they can't do a thing should be ignored. Those who actually understands game and actually play class in its fullest see how broken stuff is.

Also let me guess, running on fury? I assume you see really high numbers are feel really good about that, yet I wonder how good is that while entire remaining time you do poke damage. Or am I mistaken, and you actually manage to make same crits as I did on end game barb with torn and LD, running with 19-20/9x and over +150 to damage weapon before even reaching cap?



You literally say your experience with monk and how bad it was to play, while all I see that you not even single time mentioned using stunning fist/dire charge/Tomb/Kukan do/shining star/palm to CC and kill same mobs in seconds on R6 instead of chasing.

Bottom line is ill scaling is cause of monk inbalance issues now, without fixing it its hard to create new items and improve class in general, specially when new items can make without fixing this even worse. Devs should have done this with wrap update to avoid this drama against those who can't comprehand that sometimes adjustments are needed to release new cool stuff and balance all classes in their unique way, and 10 page discussion about ppl who can't understand that adjustments are needed is just ugly.

So I can understand your concern for the [W] bonuses going to handwraps. How much [W] do you feel should be given to unarmed and why? Do you find the monk dmg in heroics to be outperforming other melee classes (referring to Ftr, Brb, Pally, Rng, Rog; the other classes can cast spells to a fairly large degree and shouldn't be very competitive with those)

Part of my problem with all this "testing" is that no specifications are provided. How are we sure that the classes in question have been properly balanced gear-wise? Should we compare handwraps with the base crit profile with weapons that have better crit profiles (some even having better than normal profiles)?

Another problem is that as far as I have seen, the devs usually aren't proactive in discussing the suggestion aspect of proposals. They tell us what they'll do, when, and why, and largely change the smallest gripes. That in itself isn't a problem if the changes are well-founded, but if there's not much room for suggestions then I can't really say that the vision will carry you far.

Like the monk changes here. Instead of starting a thread with the dilemma of "hey, monks seem too powerful, what should we do about them," Mr. Steelstar decreed: "unarmed monks are too powerful; therefore we are [removing] unarmed strike." In the first situation, many different opinions can be thrown out, some of which may be better than the idea in the presenter's head. The second option implies, as has been seen time and again, that no suggestions will be considered, even if a later idea would be better.

[Clerize]

I love how you pick single thing about sneak dices like they are most important aspect in game and keep repeating that, and ignoring all other stuff I mentioned yet at end claiming that I do same about base damage, when I even give list of why monks are better than let's say assassin in instakills/better saves/better defenses/more cc/and even more base damage in general. Seems opposite than you I am capable to acknowledge that, yet I am not short sighted about playing only monks or warlocks all the time, I specialize in all playstyles and all classes, I tried all builds and playstyles at some point and thats why I can make objective assessment on where does each play style stands without needing to recheck devs data. I have no doubt that even by base damage monks are above all other melee.



The point was that balance is far more complicated than weapon dice. Try playing punchy monk vs any mob that has DR vs blunt w/o spending a feat for vorpal strike on a class that is already feat starved (in mid to high skull). Every other dps class can change damage types by simply changing weapons. Yes it will be sub optimal but that's a lot better than 0 front numbers. Every other dual wielding class has the option of running lgs offhand for utility while maintaining a DPS weapon main hand. Punchy monks do not get this.

Rechecked my sneak math I was off. There's actually 21d6 available to rogues 8, not 4, in the assassin tree. So at cap with silent avenger there's 24d6 sneak dice. 25 with 1 twist. Sneak attack should be landing nearly all the time with a deception item. The devs assertion was that monks are DPS outliers you agree with them and compared it to an assassin. Then chose to ignore a substantial amount of the assassins DPS output. I didn't see the devs claim that monks are surviavablity outliers. So you're now using that as a justification to lower their dps. I recall that same argument being used vs Paladins after their pass. Several rounds of nerfs later and we see people now talking about how weak they are.

You talk about highest saves, better defense, etc. But ignore the 50mrr cap and that saves don't matter as much in the newer content. Can't save vs dots. Can't evade polar ray, etc. That said, evasion certainly rules a lot of the older content and i that content I don't have an issue getting my saves high enough to never fail on rangers or rogues. So once again "better saves" doesn't matter. Saving is saving.


If you want to look at other dps builds, try looking at a calamity (or some other dps main hand) + flow dual wielding tempest. Fast stacking vulnerability + guard breaking for CC. Other than you I've yet to see anyone claim quivering plam is better than assassinate. I play endgame. When I was a monk, QP was garbage and rarely landed.

Problem I have with the devs "data" is that it does not match my in game experience where other high dps builds perform on par or better than monks. As for everyone playing melee monks and warlocks. I certainly don't see that on GLand in end game.

[Chacka_DDO]

Bottom line is ill scaling is cause of monk inbalance issues now, without fixing it its hard to create new items and improve class in general, specially when new items can make without fixing this even worse. Devs should have done this with wrap update to avoid this drama against those who can't comprehand that sometimes adjustments are needed to release new cool stuff and balance all classes in their unique way, and 10 page discussion about ppl who can't understand that adjustments are needed is just ugly.

Yea, of course, everyone who got a different opinion is just a bad player and has no clue...
Maybe the truth is just a bit too difficult to understand for you.
Many players who are against this nerf understand very well that nerfs are sometimes needed but they don't agree that the feat Unarmed Strike should be nerfed to a point that is equal to remove this feat.
The last nerf of monk weapons was obviously need and therefore I said nothing
And I can't remember that there was any feedback like here from other players.
Your claim that players who stand up against this nerf are against any nerf in general is quite daring.

Basically with your own numbers you should see that the biggest issue that gives a monk too big numbers at level 30 are the raid handwraps from Curse of Strahd who give not only 7W which is already a lot, they give also an additional +3 to the weapon dice and this is of course too much if a monk gets 15-19W.

And the next is, it is indeed questionable if a monk is really that much over the top at damage because of the damage at the end counts and not only the max possible 19.25W.
And some players presented here videos that show e.g. temples ranger can do more damage.
And I can imagine also a well-played melee rogue can do similar or more damage.
And what tells you which class should have the best damage?

And I have my doubts that the developers can really evaluate numbers that are any more meaningful than the numbers from players.
That many bugs make it on the life server that could be prevented by actually testing it a single time.
This gives me not a lot of faith that I just have to trust in what a developer says!

My main is theoretically a monk but in fact, I play him almost never as a monk because I reincarnate him every 2-3 weeks and I want to try all the classes with him.
And I would speak up in the same way if I think a change to another class is wrong or need.
But the good news is that I can say that every class I try so far are fun to play and therefore the developers do at the end a 95% good job they just roll sometimes a 1 and fail horribly in what they do ;)

[AzureDragonas]

A strange sight but ok...
here the quote from you in full length...



so you can see how you tell us at first that a monk "with adamantine knuckles" got a crit profile of "10W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x" and a assassin only "10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x AT CAP" and "By the time monks hit cap they reach 20w as base dice" with not a single word you mention that you need to use different handwraps for this "20w" and exactly this IS not really a honest kind to present facts because the missed additional information tells the reader that a monk can have the "20w" AND the "15-20/3x 19-20/6x".
Not to mention that you admit in the other post that it is only 19.25W and this only if you currently use any kind of action boost.
And of course every monk runs in fire stance and in LD etc. to get this crit profile with Adamantine Knuckles :rolleyes:.
So it looks more like you are either dishonest or not able to articulate what you mean.
And therefore it is maybe you who "Should be just ignored..."?

Sorry my bad, should have told that comparison of adamantine knuckles in heroics and early epics and sudden transition of dices up was not good enough indication about weapon change and profile update, if it helps you even more can give you extra info:

ravenlfot dagger at 30: 10w[d6+3] 16-20/4x 19-20/6x
5.25 pain/suffering
1 vistani
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts
2 pain suffering set

average damage: 45 {2-15 630}{16-18 540}{19-20 540} 85.5

Adamantine knuckles at 21: 12.75W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x
2.5 knuckles
0,5 Prisoner's Manacles
3,5 pure monk
0,5 Prisoner's Manacles
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

average damage: 44.625 {2-15 580.125}{15-18 559.5}{19-20 535.5} 83.75

Epic Adamantine knuckles at 25: 14.75W[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/6x
3.5 knuckles
0,5 Prisoner's Manacles
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

average damage: 51.625 {2-15 671.125}{15-18 619.5}{19-20 619.5} 95.50

Duality at 29: 19.25W[d6+3] 17-20/3x 19-20/6x
7 duality
1,5 Fleetfoot Necklace Superior Reinforced Fists
3,5 pure monk
1,5 a dance of flower twist
3 shintao
1 improved martial arts
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts

average damage: 108.75 {2-15 1876.875}{17-18 750.75}{19-20 750.75} 168.91

Torn at 29: 8.75W[d12+6] 19-20/9x
5 torn
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts
1 Raging Blows
1 Cracking attack

average damage: 109.375{2-18 1859.375}{19-20 1968,75} 191.40

Calamity at 29: 8.25W[5[1d8+3]] 16-20/4x 19-20/7x{12 fighter 6 ranger 2 monk}
5 calamity
0,25 ship
0,5 PA in LD
1 LD capstone during action boosts
1.5 a dance of flower twist

average damage: 61.875{2-18 866.25}{16-18 742.5}{19-20 866.25} 123.75

There might be mistakes but I gave you simple crackdown on weapons how each react on pure assasin/barb/monk. The most recent classes I played. As other mentioned there are stuff not included in calculation like sneak/doublestrike/speed/survivabillity/special moves.

By numbers you could argue that barbs have most damage barbarians don't have too much attack speed and not 2WF meaning they do way less damage than other 2 in same time. As I mentioned by unique abilites, when duality monk adds jade strike on his target it gets +15% more damage so same duality broken number would be seen as 194.25 etc.

My goal was to show that just by taking into account how class affects weapons in end game build, you can see adamantine knuckles even as heroic item at 21 is in pair with end game raid daggers on vistani assassin and at 25 even surpasses it, there can be more varieties of builds which can perform even better or worse. But keeping that in mind and knowing that by defenses/cc alone monk surpasses all other classes does it make sense than it have even better weapons on top of that.

[AzureDragonas]

The point was that balance is far more complicated than weapon dice. Try playing punchy monk vs any mob that has DR vs blunt w/o spending a feat for vorpal strike on a class that is already feat starved (in mid to high skull). Every other dps class can change damage types by simply changing weapons. Yes it will be sub optimal but that's a lot better than 0 front numbers. Every other dual wielding class has the option of running lgs offhand for utility while maintaining a DPS weapon main hand. Punchy monks do not get this.

Rechecked my sneak math I was off. There's actually 21d6 available to rogues 8, not 4, in the assassin tree. So at cap with silent avenger there's 24d6 sneak dice. 25 with 1 twist. Sneak attack should be landing nearly all the time with a deception item. The devs assertion was that monks are DPS outliers you agree with them and compared it to an assassin. Then chose to ignore a substantial amount of the assassins DPS output. I didn't see the devs claim that monks are surviavablity outliers. So you're now using that as a justification to lower their dps. I recall that same argument being used vs Paladins after their pass. Several rounds of nerfs later and we see people now talking about how weak they are.

You talk about highest saves, better defense, etc. But ignore the 50mrr cap and that saves don't matter as much in the newer content. Can't save vs dots. Can't evade polar ray, etc. That said, evasion certainly rules a lot of the older content and i that content I don't have an issue getting my saves high enough to never fail on rangers or rogues. So once again "better saves" doesn't matter. Saving is saving.


If you want to look at other dps builds, try looking at a calamity (or some other dps main hand) + flow dual wielding tempest. Fast stacking vulnerability + guard breaking for CC. Other than you I've yet to see anyone claim quivering plam is better than assassinate. I play endgame. When I was a monk, QP was garbage and rarely landed.

Problem I have with the devs "data" is that it does not match my in game experience where other high dps builds perform on par or better than monks. As for everyone playing melee monks and warlocks. I certainly don't see that on GLand in end game.

I agree that reducing dices is only start, and there other issues to be addressed like how whirwind strike works in general and best only with wraps etc. And for Palm, its way better than assassinate ability, it affects more mobs, don't require you to sneak so can easily use in fights, have 6 seconds CD compared to assassinate and last time i played monk like year ago, on alt was hitting 95+ DC enough to land on R10 legendary content.

[AzureDragonas]

Is there a display bug? I am on a character that has been playing mostly monk lifes on the racial tr train and I definitely noticed a boost when they changed the way wraps worked, but this character has no raid weapons so I tried swapping on nightmother wraps and this is what I should be getting based on this:

5 Nightmother Handwraps
1 Legendary Perfect Pinnacle
3.5 Pure Monk
1.5 A Dance with Flowers Twist
3 Shintao
1 Improved Martial Arts
.25 Ship Buff
--------------------------
15.25 before action boosts

Displayed on Wraps: 12.75[1d6 +2]

Is this a display bug or is stuff not stacking? I haven't really checked this before - just curious why the theoretical and display numbers aren't lining up.

Also when I use the haste or power action boost from LD my number doesn't change and remains at 12.75

I don't really have an opinion on this change, but obviously duality is awesome not just for the +[2] but also the improved crit range and the [1d6+6] instead of [1d6+2]. Pair that with the raid necklace for another +[.5].

What strikes me odd about this change is that you can get +[2.5] from raid gear and 2 extra crit range and +4 to each die compared to nightmother wraps. The nerf is -2.5[W]. So what they are doing is taking a portion of the power of the best wraps in the game away, but they are doing so to all players at all level ranges. Simple math tells me this hurts those without duality much more. Adamantine Knuckles is another outlier in terms of DPS at lower levels.

Before Change - Destiny Neutral

Nightmother Wraps: 15.25[1d6 +2] with Crits on a 19-20 = 83.875 * .9 + 251.625*.1 = 109.0375
Duality Wraps with Necklace: 17.75[1d6+6] with Crits on a 17-20 = 168.625 *.8 + 505.875 * .2 = 236.075

After Change - Destiny Neutral

Nightmother Wraps: 12.75[1d6 +2] with Crits on a 19-20 = 70.125 * .9 + 210.375*.1 = 91.1625
Duality Wraps with Necklace: 15[1d6+6] with Crits on a 17-20 = 142.5 *.8 + 427.5 * .2 = 199.5

I would appreciate anyone familiar with monk math helping me with any mistakes if I am not looking at this right, but it seems to me issue is itemization more than monk base damage.

Also why does the display value on my wraps show less than the [] I actually accumulated?

For action boost part after you activate it enter again character sheet it doesn't update if you are in,
for dices you have pretty much same as I do on adamantine knuckles would suggest to try other wraps maybe its bug with mabar wraps, when they fixed heroic one.

[Zretch]

Personally I'd never waste a feat for the PL dice boost. Using power attack is questionable due to the difficulty hitting things (grazing hits). Depending on difficulty you are trying to run at precision may be a better choice for dps.

Others have already addressed the other issues I have with this breakdown.

Or you run combat expertise for the PRR gain from Improved Combat Expertise. The people who ***** about 20W handwraps are also the ones saying that monks all run around with 2500 hitpoints and 250 PRR. They don't realize that you can't do all of that in one build. Outside of reaper, my multi-past life monk with fleetfoot and duality had 1,601 hitpoints (before EDF) and 155 PRR using combat expertise (175 while blitz is running) with 17.25W. Those are the numbers with 9xDivine past life (27 PRR) 3xPDK past life (9 PRR) and 9xPrimal past life (105 base hp).

[tpbtoc]

While there are legitimate reasons to suggest that monk is outperforming other melee builds, I'm concerned by your claim that monk can "deal substantially more damage than other similar builds with similar gear". According to both kobold times on Lammania and testing that the people I run with have done in game across many lives, that simply isn't the case. Monks are good because they have top tier survivability (high dodge cap, shadow fade, high enough armor to get missed sometimes even when fully set up for dps) and a lot of cc/utility options (including but not limited to stunning fist, kukan do, quivering palm, tomb of jade, knock on the sky, unbalancing strike).

Pure monk dps is fine. It isn't, however, even in the top 3 builds when only dps is taken into consideration. It's possible that the fact that many good players play monk due to the reasons listed above has led to a misconception that monk dps is a lot higher than it actually is - those same players would be doing more dps if they were playing a different class, they just prefer to have the other stuff.

There's a case to be made for monk dps being too high considering the amount of other stuff monk has going for it, but the claim that that monk deals more damage, let alone substantially more damage, than comparably geared melees played by players of similar skill levels is simply inaccurate.

This

[Chacka_DDO]

I don't really have an opinion on this change, but obviously duality is awesome not just for the +[2] but also the improved crit range and the [1d6+6] instead of [1d6+2]. Pair that with the raid necklace for another +[.5].

Duality, the Moral Compass (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Duality,_the_Moral_Compass) has a normal crit profile, just impact V which is not stacking with the improved critical feat make them 19-20 x2.
And they have now 7[1d6+3] (DDOWIKI is currently not up to date here) the +6 was nerfed already but even the +3 is seemingly still too much.

[NXPlasmid]

I specialize in all playstyles and all classes,

I think this statement says it all...

[slarden]

Duality, the Moral Compass (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Duality,_the_Moral_Compass) has a normal crit profile, just impact V which is not stacking with the improved critical feat make them 19-20 x2.
And they have now 7[1d6+3] (DDOWIKI is currently not up to date here) the +6 was nerfed already but even the +3 is seemingly still too much.
Got it so my math was completely off then. I wish I knew why the displayed [w] on my wraps don;t match up with all the bonuses I have.

[Zretch]

Got it so my math was completely off then. I wish I knew why the displayed [w] on my wraps don;t match up with all the bonuses I have.

Did you look at the tooltip, or in the Details bottom section of your inventory page? Just like with crit profile, they can show two different numbers for the W stat.

Also, you don't get 3.5 from pure monk. It's +2.5. 0.5 every 4 levels. If you have [1d6] handwraps on at 20, you'll show 3.5 because the wraps themselves are 1W. So it's weapon W + 2.5, not weapon W + 3.5.

That puts you at 14.25. The difference between 14.25 and 12.75 is 1.5. A dance of flowers may be bugged. I've tried twisting it in and then removing the twist and received pretty dubious results on training dummies. I've since moved on to my Paladin life, so I can't confirm, but you may want to test it out. Reset GMoF, only select aDoF, hit the dummy without killing it (a dead training dummy respawns in a helpless state and your damage numbers get dumb). Then reset GMoF and do it again with no points spent. You should see a pretty noticeable jump in your min/max hits between 12.75 and 14.25 (about 10%).

[Chacka_DDO]

Sorry my bad, should have told that comparison of adamantine knuckles in heroics and early epics and sudden transition of dices up was not good enough indication about weapon change and profile update, if it helps you even more can give you extra info:

(removed the numbers so the quote gets not too long)

There might be mistakes but I gave you simple crackdown on weapons how each react on pure assasin/barb/monk. The most recent classes I played. As other mentioned there are stuff not included in calculation like sneak/doublestrike/speed/survivabillity/special moves.

OK, I think the communication was not ideal and I should have quoted the other statement of you so it is better to see what I meant.
In general, I appreciate your effort to give numbers but I hope for you that if you see your own numbers and they tell you your opinion (based on your assumptions etc.) are not right you change your opinion.
This is not a sign of weakness, it is a strength to throw old and wrong opinions out of the window if you see they are wrong!


By numbers you could argue that barbs have most damage barbarians don't have too much attack speed and not 2WF meaning they do way less damage than other 2 in same time. As I mentioned by unique abilites, when duality monk adds jade strike on his target it gets +15% more damage so same duality broken number would be seen as 194.25 etc.

As you say, other aspects are also important and therefore it is absolutely not easy to evaluate meaningful numbers for the dps a character can do.
By the way, I see Jade Strike as a group supporting ability even if this is, of course, an advantage if a monk solo.

DDO needs a log file for the combat chat, this is not an "all new invention" of mine, Ever Quest wrote a log file of all your chats already many years before DDO was even released.
And I don't think the developers are unable to evaluate good numbers because they are any stupid.
The problem is most likely they also don't have the right means because they have no other tools than the players.
And the fact that they are very silent when players ask for this is for me a confirmation that I'm right here.
Therefore if the DDO development wants to have meaningful numbers and they don't want to do the complex math they need to do the work so DDO writes a log file for them and this can be analyzed.
This is then of course not a 100% accurate solution but it is well enough to make decisions regarding nerfs or buffs and for sure much better as what we have.
And it gives also players a better chance to help the developers to figure out if something is wrong with the game.


My goal was to show that just by taking into account how class affects weapons in end game build, you can see adamantine knuckles even as heroic item at 21 is in pair with end game raid daggers on vistani assassin and at 25 even surpasses it, there can be more varieties of builds which can perform even better or worse. But keeping that in mind and knowing that by defenses/cc alone monk surpasses all other classes does it make sense than it have even better weapons on top of that.

My assumption is there "internal tests" was with Duality and not very complex, which I can understand because for the development it is always also a question of time management.
But it would be interesting what you think after you did all this work with your numbers?
My opinion is that a monk with normal weapons is not an outlier regarding damage compared to other classes with normal weapons.
And if it comes to Adamantine Knuckles or Antipode you should compare this with a fighter or barbarian whole uses e.g. an Epic Sword of Shadows in lower epic levels.

The reason because a monk maybe does too much damage at level 29 and 30 is, in my opinion, the additional +3 weapon dice from Duality.
And the reason is of course that a monk has more xW than any other class but the conclusion that the xW of all monks need to be nerfed is in my opinion wrong!
You just cannot give monks weapons with additional weapon dices like you can do this for other weapons, that's all.
And it is questionable to release items that increase the problem even more like this Fleetfoot Necklace (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Fleetfoot_Necklace).

My conclusion is that there is no need to nerf every monk from level 1-30 just only because there is maybe currently a problem with the damage of level 30 monks with Ravenloft Handwraps.
Unarmed Strike should remain as it is and if need only the Ravenloft Handwraps should be nerfed.
And if you release new handwraps keep in mind that changing the weapon dice has a bigger impact on the monk damage than for other classes.

[Iriale]

Chacka, do not get tired. Judging by the released notes, the devs are not going to listen any feedback. As usual.

Another bad decision. The core class should not be touched. All other classes have additional damage per class (sneak attack, special feats, favored enemy, etc.) If they want to lower the monk's damage, they should change auxiliary feats, enhancements and equipment, not the core class. A fighter or rogue with handwraps will be better than a monk. Oh yes "great" work, devs.

And that if they really need to lower the monk's damage. In my experience, the monk does no more dps than other top-tier melees. I'm sure they do not take into account neither critical range nor sources of additional damage.

But why argue? These designers never reconsider their positions.

[NXPlasmid]

Chacka, do not get tired. Judging by the released notes, the devs are not going to listen any feedback. As usual... ...But why argue? These designers never reconsider their positions.

All too true, but we can't simply stare into space and do nothing...

[NXPlasmid]

The change is already in the U40 lama preview. Instead of "talk", should have been "Here, choke on it" so disappointed in this development pathway that includes the disaster that is the melee survivability "improvements"

[DrawingGuy]

As someone who claims to be "uber completionist" and failing to acknowledge inbalance of monk survivabililty/cc/damage in general you talk a lot.

Orrrr, you know, maybe because I have indeed played hundreds of builds, I know of many that can beat Monk DPS while still being highly survivable with good CC. If you've also been reading my posts, you'll note that I have said multiple times that Monk could afford a shave not because they are top DPS (because they are not), but rather because they have a good balance of survivability/cc/damage. There are two major concerns of mine from the Dev's original post. First is the fact they think Monks DPS is substantially better than all other melees, which is false. Second is that they plan on doing it by destroying core D&D concepts, which I'm wholeheartedly against. I've made suggestions on how to nerf Monks by the same suggested amount, but in a ways I consider far better.

You also continue to quote incorrect values and exclude major factors of DPS. Monks do NOT get "3,5" dice - it is 2.5. The wiki includes the base unarmed die that all races get, but is NOT part of Monk scaling. So every one of your handwrap mentions are +1[W] too high, but people have said this to you multiple times and you keep ignoring it.

Additionally you are underestimating Assassin crit range, which is either 15-20/4x 19-20/6x permanently or 15-20/5x 19-20/7x burst with Vistani T5s (with the crit profile you have listed when not under Vendetta. You are also forgetting that all an Assassin/Vistani build has to do for 1.5[W] from Dance of flowers is wear cloth instead of light armor. And if you're going Vistani capstone instead of Assassin, a 1 Monk splash can land you Wis to AC and either monk dodge or an additional 19-20 multiplier (which is what you use for Monk numbers, so I hope you're not assuming the extra dodge in Monk survivability as well - you can't have both), which would give you 15-20/4x 19-20/7x with T5 Assassin and 15-20/5x 19-20/8x T5 Vistani burst. Add in superior doublestrike, superior offhand doublestrike, competitive attack speed, and much more SA, and you have a build that does higher DPS than a duality Monk. Of course it can also temporarily give itself from 93 to over 100 dodge if tankiness is needed.

Crit profiles and multipliers scale very well. They multiply the entire range of your base damage + ability + deadly items + seeker items + crit damage bonuses. It is indeed why Handwrap DPS went from bottom tier to top tier (note that "top tier" does not mean #1 or "substantially better than all melees" as builds can beat it by a fair margin, but still A-class). Your numbers grossly underestimate the value of crits, and is a big part of what lets other melees still beat out Handwrap DPS. Barb can indeed beat out Monk DPS as the decreased cooldowns of their abilities gave a solid boost to their DPS along with the new strong raid weapons. I'll be revisiting barb shortly to see how it compares to all my past barb lives, but have only heard good things. But that is getting off topic.

[Chacka_DDO]

All too true, but we can't simply stare into space and do nothing...

Exactly and sad as it is it was not to expect that anything a player tells the development changes there mind.
Instead of asking the players what they think and how monks should be nerfed in there opinion the create facts and players have to deal with it.

The same for the "melee survivability improvements" now we have to deal with this stupid touch range and can be frustrated how stupid it is when we have to chase our party members who surprisingly not stand still and wait for a heal if they are going to die...
and also this was NOT needed at all!

One of the special features of the monk class is that they get better damage and defenses without items!
And this special feature is now removed with no real reason just only because the developers cannot give us the right items for the monk class.
That's just plain sad :(

[PsychoBlonde]

I ran around a little bit on a new heroic monk character while testing on Lamannia. Holy **** the damage is bad. I mean, 1d6 base damage at level 20? BLEH. And it's not like the majority of wraps are designed to scale the way regular weapons do. Heaven help you if you can't find a NAMED item to boost your damage.

[NXPlasmid]

I ran around a little bit on a new heroic monk character while testing on Lamannia. Holy **** the damage is bad. I mean, 1d6 base damage at level 20? BLEH. And it's not like the majority of wraps are designed to scale the way regular weapons do. Heaven help you if you can't find a NAMED item to boost your damage.

Dang. I have been spending a lot of time putting lives on my monk main, now I guess it has to be converted into a tempest ranger... this really sucks.

[AzureDragonas]

I ran around a little bit on a new heroic monk character while testing on Lamannia. Holy **** the damage is bad. I mean, 1d6 base damage at level 20? BLEH. And it's not like the majority of wraps are designed to scale the way regular weapons do. Heaven help you if you can't find a NAMED item to boost your damage.

having d6 at cap as base damage? Wanna hear how you mange it cause it seems unbelievable:

#Did you tried adamantine knuckles which gets 2.5 dice?
#equip items which gives extra dices like perfect pinacle for 0.5?
#I mean at 18 you got core for +1
#At 20 for +2
#A dance of flower for +1.5?
#LD to get extra +1?
# 0.25 ship?
# 0.5 PA?
Even after this balancing at 20 you should have 9.25[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/5x weapon

while kensei in same setting would be running on esos at
4.25[2d6] 14-20 / x4 19-20/5x

[noobodyfool]

I hear tempest and assassin are next for a hard look at their dps.

[voxson5]

having d6 at cap as base damage? Wanna hear how you mange it cause it seems unbelievable:

#Did you tried adamantine knuckles which gets 2.5 dice?
#equip items which gives extra dices like perfect pinacle for 0.5?
#I mean at 18 you got core for +1
#At 20 for +2
#A dance of flower for +1.5?
#LD to get extra +1?
# 0.25 ship?
# 0.5 PA?
Even after this balancing at 20 you should have 9.25[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/5x weapon

while kensei in same setting would be running on esos at
4.25[2d6] 14-20 / x4 19-20/5x

So you're showing fighter does more damage? That was already known pre-nerf.

Assuming not human, what are you not taking to include power attack?
Why are you in fire stance? Just trying to bloat numbers?

[AzureDragonas]

So you're showing fighter does more damage? That was already known pre-nerf.

Assuming not human, what are you not taking to include power attack?
Why are you in fire stance? Just trying to bloat numbers?

At low levels like these you don't have how to generate ki quick enough to cc stun all mobs arround, having 1ki/attack vs 2ki/attack and +5 on crits makes difference. When I get into monster fights, I tend do dance/stun/tomb to imobilize couple mobs and use healing mark finisher for massive aoe healing for myself and others {average 400-700 in non reaper}, all this requires high number of ki with quick gain rate, no other stance gives that.

About PA, there are 2 type of monk builds who work best, racial completionist orc and non completionist human, not sure why to go any other race unless you do for pl feat.

[voxson5]

fair comments

Agreed on all points.

I think that your rational is sound, and I think that everyone agrees this would not really be an issue 20+

I believe the biggest impact felt will be in heroics, so 1-19.

By your own example:
1d6 until lv 8
1.5[d6] until lv 14
4.0[d6] until 18 etc

[AzureDragonas]

Agreed on all points.

I think that your rational is sound, and I think that everyone agrees this would not really be an issue 20+

I believe the biggest impact felt will be in heroics, so 1-19.

By your own example:
1d6 until lv 8
1.5[d6] until lv 14
4.0[d6] until 18 etc

And thats not fair compared to other weapons how? Can you give examples of certain weapons at same ranges heaving somehow better dices damage in general, backed up by massive AOE ability to clear like WhirlwindStrike at 6, healing from 3 and CC starting level 1? Obviously rangers/fighters/rogs with no actual heal capability to heal in fight or having any actual CC is at disadvantage no? If you wanna make point about heroic monk suffering due to this balancing give example of split/build which have as good survivabillity as monk and does even more damage than monk.

[Chacka_DDO]

having d6 at cap as base damage? Wanna hear how you mange it cause it seems unbelievable:

#Did you tried adamantine knuckles which gets 2.5 dice?
#equip items which gives extra dices like perfect pinacle for 0.5?
#I mean at 18 you got core for +1
#At 20 for +2
#A dance of flower for +1.5?
#LD to get extra +1?
# 0.25 ship?
# 0.5 PA?
Even after this balancing at 20 you should have 9.25[d6] 15-20/3x 19-20/5x weapon

while kensei in same setting would be running on esos at
4.25[2d6] 14-20 / x4 19-20/5x

Do you really not know what you talking about?
Your comparison shows already that a Kensai with a SoS does more damage than a monk if you would have only this numbers.
But a level 20 Kensai with a SoS gets a LOT of other things for the damage he gets...
up to +19 damage while a monk gets +0 damage
up to +14 to hit while a monk gets now +4 to hit
up to +60 melee power while a monk gets 20 Melee power

I hope I don't need to tell you that the +19 alone is worth a 6.3W for a Monk and that 40 more melee power is a HUGE difference and the +10 more to hit he gets is also a big difference if it comes to grazing hits.
But in no way, you can admit that the nerf of the Unarmed Strike Feat is simply a bad idea?
Because it nerfs a Monk especially from level 1-19 and also from 20-28.
And such a nerf is NOT need you only have to nerf the level 29 Handwraps to cut down the numbers in a reasonable way!

[voxson5]

And thats not fair compared to other weapons how? Can you give examples of certain weapons at same ranges heaving somehow better dices damage in general, backed up by massive AOE ability to clear like WhirlwindStrike at 6, healing from 3 and CC starting level 1? Obviously rangers/fighters/rogs with no actual heal capability to heal in fight or having any actual CC is at disadvantage no? If you wanna make point about heroic monk suffering due to this balancing give example of split/build which have as good survivabillity as monk and does even more damage than monk.

That is not the point I am making and you know it.

How can you possibly argue rangers have no AOE, fighters have no CC options, and rogues (or in fact anyone) can't heal in a fight? I think this speaks volumes of specialization in all playstyles and all classes.

Maybe why you feel so strongly about this is that secret dozen cc which from low level affects reapers?

Good survivability and more damage than a monk? In what heroic levels? At what difficulty? With what past lives? More damage to what - a single target? A red name?

I can think of an easy 4 across a few heroic level ranges.

Aasimar barbarian
WF sorcerer
FvS nuker
According to Tilo, some random paladin with soundburst

Just please step off the soap box before you fall down and hurt yourself.

[Chacka_DDO]

At low levels like these you don't have how to generate ki quick enough to cc stun all mobs arround, having 1ki/attack vs 2ki/attack and +5 on crits makes difference. When I get into monster fights, I tend do dance/stun/tomb to imobilize couple mobs and use healing mark finisher for massive aoe healing for myself and others {average 400-700 in non reaper}, all this requires high number of ki with quick gain rate, no other stance gives that.

About PA, there are 2 type of monk builds who work best, racial completionist orc and non completionist human, not sure why to go any other race unless you do for pl feat.

A monk at level 20 has access to different items that give enhanced Ki +1 and therefore it is not need to be in fire stance at all.
And also the claim a monk can "cc stun all mobs arround" is another exegeration, he can use jade tomb on ONE monster and this only for 30 seconds while the cool down is 1 minute and stun a second one and with a small chance he can controll a third with Jade Strike.
You just tune your numbers so it looks fine and fits to your preconceived opinion.

[noobodyfool]

They say the 3rd times the charm or is it the 4th? Nerf jade?:p

[Chacka_DDO]

At low levels like these you don't have how to generate ki quick enough to cc stun all mobs arround, having 1ki/attack vs 2ki/attack and +5 on crits makes difference. When I get into monster fights, I tend do dance/stun/tomb to imobilize couple mobs and use healing mark finisher for massive aoe healing for myself and others {average 400-700 in non reaper}, all this requires high number of ki with quick gain rate, no other stance gives that.

About PA, there are 2 type of monk builds who work best, racial completionist orc and non completionist human, not sure why to go any other race unless you do for pl feat.

Are we one step further? Seemingly even you cannot deny that a monk doesn't do much more damage than e.g. a Kensai fighter and this even before the nerf that is seemingly inevitable now.
And now you tell us the nerf is justified because a monk can do other things?
You just seek excuses to support your preconceived opinion because you're unable to give this up!
That's quite ridiculous because the reason for the nerf is:

"As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS"

Which is very questionable when you see what "extras" other classes get for there damage and a monk is supposed to be a DPS class from my understanding.
And you should rather ask what you can change for other classes so they have better means when it comes to CC or healing.
And only a light monk can heal and this heal is by far not that easy to use as other kinds of healing where you hit one button and you get your heal/cure.

[AzureDragonas]

Do you really not know what you talking about?
Your comparison shows already that a Kensai with a SoS does more damage than a monk if you would have only this numbers.
But a level 20 Kensai with a SoS gets a LOT of other things for the damage he gets...
up to +19 damage while a monk gets +0 damage
up to +14 to hit while a monk gets now +4 to hit
up to +60 melee power while a monk gets 20 Melee power

I hope I don't need to tell you that the +19 alone is worth a 6.3W for a Monk and that 40 more melee power is a HUGE difference and the +10 more to hit he gets is also a big difference if it comes to grazing hits.
But in no way, you can admit that the nerf of the Unarmed Strike Feat is simply a bad idea?
Because it nerfs a Monk especially from level 1-19 and also from 20-28.
And such a nerf is NOT need you only have to nerf the level 29 Handwraps to cut down the numbers in a reasonable way!

First monks gets up to +4 damage in tree next to attack, really should check :)

Second your argument is that because kensei gets more damage on weapon it for some reason beats huge difference in survivabillity? You understand at the end Fighter is HP bag having low saves, no evasion, no dodge, nor incorporallity or as many CC as monk, or way to heal without using UMD with no scroll mastery on or even hamp.

You really should admit that there was a reason why trinity of classes ppl choose to grind racial pl were warlock/monk/repeater for a reason and not only end game wraps are issue but entire scaling and number of effects introduced in game.


Are we one step further? Seemingly even you cannot deny that a monk doesn't do much more damage than e.g. a Kensai fighter and this even before the nerf that is seemingly inevitable now.
And now you tell us the nerf is justified because a monk can do other things?
You just seek excuses to support your preconceived opinion because you're unable to give this up!
That's quite ridiculous because the reason for the nerf is:

"As part of our continued balance pass on Melees, it has become clear that Handwrap Monks are still an outlier in terms of DPS"

Which is very questionable when you see what "extras" other classes get for there damage and a monk is supposed to be a DPS class from my understanding.
And you should rather ask what you can change for other classes so they have better means when it comes to CC or healing.
And only a light monk can heal and this heal is by far not that easy to use as other kinds of healing where you hit one button and you get your heal/cure.

One thing which becomes clear is how little you understand about classes and game play but don't worry, at times even I get tired of trying reason and explain basic info to ppl which are in constant denial. As many others "elitists" who knows game more than average player agrees that balancing of monk was needed, and even devs already made this to Lamania there are no more point arguing, can leave whiners here till next doom thread pop up.

[Chacka_DDO]

I hear tempest and assassin are next for a hard look at their dps.

They say the 3rd times the charm or is it the 4th? Nerf jade?:p

Basically, I should just ignore you, but just to mention it, with this and other provocative statements Wikipedia clearly defines you as an internet troll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll).
I just hope everyone sees this and ignore you as you deserve it.
Or you change your mind and try to be constructive?

[Chacka_DDO]

First monks gets up to +4 damage in tree next to attack, really should check :)

Second your argument is that because kensei gets more damage on weapon it for some reason beats huge difference in survivabillity? You understand at the end Fighter is HP bag having low saves, no evasion, no dodge, nor incorporallity or as many CC as monk, or way to heal without using UMD with no scroll mastery on or even hamp.

You really should admit that there was a reason why trinity of classes ppl choose to grind racial pl were warlock/monk/repeater for a reason and not only end game wraps are issue but entire scaling and number of effects introduced in game.

ok, I forgot the +1 damage and to hit from the Finisher enhancers but keep in mind that only a light monk get this!
And the +15 damage a Kensai gets is still worth a +5W for a monk.
And you leave out of course the BIG difference in Melee Power because you know this alone would make your argumentation totally collapse.
The nerf of unarmed strike hits every monk hard but dark monks even harder but your only argument with some "ideal numbers" most monks don't have.


One thing which becomes clear is how little you understand about classes and game play but don't worry, at times even I get tired of trying reason and explain basic info to ppl which are in constant denial. As many others "elitists" who knows game more than average player agrees that balancing of monk was needed, and even devs already made this to Lamania there are no more point arguing, can leave whiners here till next doom thread pop up.

This is totally ridiculous, your argumentation shows exactly the opposite, you just wish you are something like an "elitist" and know the game better than everyone else, that's all.
And you just quickly change your mind to the developer's opinion because you know then you most likely apparently "win" a discussion at the end because the developers don't hear the players anyway.
The developers just only have the power to enforce what they want, even if it is wrong.
And you are just a yes-man.

[AzureDragonas]

This is totally ridiculous, your argumentation shows exactly the opposite, you just wish you are something like an "elitist" and know the game better than everyone else, that's all.
And you just quickly change your mind to the developer's opinion because you know then you most likely apparently "win" a discussion at the end because the developers don't hear the players anyway.
The developers just only have the power to enforce what they want, even if it is wrong.
And you are just a yes-man.

Just of curiosity how many pl feats you got, how many reaper points and what reaper difficulty you run average/tops?

[Chacka_DDO]

Just of curiosity how many pl feats you got, how many reaper points and what reaper difficulty you run average/tops?

Let's assume I tell you the right numbers and I would have 10 past lives more and 20 reaper points more than you, would this change your mind?
This question is just an indicator that you got the obviously wrong attitude.

[Vish]

Azure, you obviously have a vendetta
You think you post here all the time,
You get monk nerfed
Well they are gutting heroic Shintao
And you're poster child for that nerf
You obviously hate monk
And your arguments don't hold water
The problem is 30, if there even is
Not 1-20
I'm sorry for your ignorance

[noobodyfool]

Basically, I should just ignore you, but just to mention it, with this and other provocative statements Wikipedia clearly defines you as an internet troll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll).
I just hope everyone sees this and ignore you as you deserve it.
Or you change your mind and try to be constructive?

O Chaka Chaka Chaka NERFS are constructive my friend if you get gangrene we my have to amutate to save the body;)

[AzureDragonas]

Azure, you obviously have a vendetta
You think you post here all the time,
You get monk nerfed
Well they are gutting heroic Shintao
And you're poster child for that nerf
You obviously hate monk
And your arguments don't hold water
The problem is 30, if there even is
Not 1-20
I'm sorry for your ignorance

Have unarmed monk for raids now, as monk hater its strange for me to respect from fury shooter to unarmed monk no?

[AzureDragonas]

Let's assume I tell you the right numbers and I would have 10 past lives more and 20 reaper points more than you, would this change your mind?
This question is just an indicator that you got the obviously wrong attitude.

Saw triple completionists unable to even solo elite or ee, I am one of those who palys multiple alts and got wings by doing lifes on different classes and different builds, if by any chance you had more than I and still failed in basic understanding of where each class stands and why monks needs balancing I either would assume you are trolling or just that bad.

[Sunnie]

To correct this, we are changing the innate Unarmed Strike feat that Monks get every 4 levels to grant +1 to Attack while using Handwraps instead of 0.5[w]. This reduction (a total of 2.5[w] for pure Monks) brings Unarmed Monks much closer to other High-DPS Melee builds of similar gear. The overall reduction in DPS will depend highly on build and gear; the average we're seeing is about a 10% drop on a capped Pure 20 Monk.
Having read much of the thread and thought about it for a while, I have come to the conclusion that this change is, firstly, unnecessary and, secondly, detrimental to the game.

Monk dps is no longer the outlier it was before you changed the [W] of those Ravenloft wraps. That change solved all major imbalances already. Then you also went and nerfed Henshin to the ground, I haven't seen any melee with a quarterstaff this life yet. And now you want to go and nerf handwrap monks to the level of q-staves. Handwraps have a critical profile of 20*2, additional [W] dice is keeping it relevant when it comes to damage. Remove those and there won't be any pure monks left, only splashes being centered with falchions and kopeshes.

Then there's the utter nonsense of removing heroic features to change something that's only relevant for levels 29 and 30. "That tree is too tall, let's chop a bit off the bottom here to fix it."

And replacing the [W] bonuses with +1 to hit is just adding insult to injury.

[scipiojedi]

Ok so the devs should pick a concrete vision for monk - obviously they don't want something with crazy defense to also have really good dps, so they are nerfing the dps.

But +1 Attack doesn't do anything. If that is the route they are going, making it so monks hit more then give them meaningful hit bonuses. Give monks +3 Attack with each feat of unarmed strike, so by level 20 they have +18 to attack. That should make it so monks will miss less than other classes while their dps is still respectable.

[Chacka_DDO]

Azure, you obviously have a vendetta
You think you post here all the time,
You get monk nerfed
Well they are gutting heroic Shintao
And you're poster child for that nerf
You obviously hate monk
And your arguments don't hold water
The problem is 30, if there even is
Not 1-20
I'm sorry for your ignorance

Too bad it is even worse, Azure just has no own opinion and everything is fine what the developers do and any player suggested changes to the game are wrong by default.
As I said just a yes-man and no one should be interested to hear what he says because you just only need to see what the developers say.

Of course it is questionable if you need to nerf a monk at all because in this case different opinions are allowed.
But it is quite obvious that the coming nerf is the worst kind to nerf the monks class.
Seemingly also the developers are unable to admit that the recently added weapons and items are simply wrong for the monk class.
But rather than correct their obvious mistakes they going to nerf the monk class at the core.
And to make it even worse, because they think monks are too powerful at level 30 they nerf monks a bit at level 30 but a lot in lower levels, especially in heroic levels.
This is obviously wrong but a yes-man like Azure will never admit it because then he is in danger that the developers do what they want against his newly found opinion so it's better to have no own opinion so you're not in danger to get disappointed...

[Chacka_DDO]

Saw triple completionists unable to even solo elite or ee, I am one of those who palys multiple alts and got wings by doing lifes on different classes and different builds, if by any chance you had more than I and still failed in basic understanding of where each class stands and why monks needs balancing I either would assume you are trolling or just that bad.

As I said it is a strong indicator of your wrong attitude.
If I would tell you I have fewer reaper points and cannot solo R5 you would think you are now confirmed and if I tell you I have more reaper points and solo R10 you would tell me that I still fail to understand the game.
And it doesn't matter to you that a monk is supposed to be a specialist in unarmed fighting and his power is not supposed to come from items in the first place.
And it also doesn't matter to you that if you nerf a monk that you should do it in the right spot and not at the core of the class.
You are unable to differ a millimeter from the opinion of the developers and why?
The reason is simple you don't have your own opinion you just have absolute faith that the opinion of your idols (the developers) cannot be wrong, as I said just a yes-man :(

[Cantor]

And it doesn't matter to you that a monk is supposed to be a specialist in unarmed fighting and his power is not supposed to come from items in the first place.


Make all wraps 1w and keep the 2.5w from levels then... how many people would like that?

[Iriale]

Make all wraps 1w and keep the 2.5w from levels then... how many people would like that?
The fact is that they do not need any nerf. More base damage is logical when the critical profile is so bad. One of the problems of the staff builds is that they have bad critical profile and bad base damage. The devs should learn from that example, instead of reducing the monks to the level of the staff builds.

Today the monks' dps is not overperforming. Devs should think about why this is so, with or without major base damage, and they may realize that in addition to better critical ranges, other dps builds belonging to other classes also have additional damage, either in the form of a flat bonus, sneak attacks, etc

[Valerianus]

this change is bad, based on inaccurate premise. monk is not all about dps. moreover, it chops heroic to achieve cap "balance". wrong aim, wrong method.

[Chacka_DDO]

Make all wraps 1w and keep the 2.5w from levels then... how many people would like that?


It is quite clear that the main reason for the nerf is, that a monk does too much damage at level 30 if he uses one of the Ravenloft handwraps.
If you want to cut down the damage then nerf Duality again because just only the additional +6 and then +3 for the weapon dice was a real mistake.
Currently, Duality has still 7[1d6+3] and if you have this 19.25W it is 125.125
If you nerf Unarmed Strike is is still 7[1d6+3] but now 16.75 and 108.875
At this point, you see that the nerf of Unarmed Strike has not really a big impact on the damage.
And indeed if you count in the additional damage from you ability mode and deadly etc. you are maybe at ~10% nerf, I think it is not to dare to claim there comes the developers assumption from.

If you nerf Duality again it has 7[1d6] and you don't nerf Unarmed strike it is still 19.25W but now 67.35
You see this is a big nerf of a level 30 monk with Duality and the reason is simple, the additional +3 is the big mistake they made!
This nerf is equal as if they would nerf the numbers of dices by 9W and not only 2.5W from Unarmed Strike.
It is in no way need to nerf monks between level 1 and 28 just only because a monk with Duality has too much damage at level 30.
Even more, if this means that all monks receive a big nerf while it is only a small nerf for the monk at the cap.

And once again Duality and the mistake of giving +3 to the weapon dice is the real issue here and not Unarmed Strike.
And this issue is still there even if you nerf Unarmed Strike.
And if you don't want to nerf a monk at the cap that much as I suggest here, just remove impact V from Duality and you have almost your goal of nerfing a monk at cap by 2W

[noobodyfool]

It is quite clear that the main reason for the nerf is, that a monk does too much damage at level 30 if he uses one of the Ravenloft handwraps.
If you want to cut down the damage then nerf Duality again because just only the additional +6 and then +3 for the weapon dice was a real mistake.
Currently, Duality has still 7[1d6+3] and if you have this 19.25W it is 125.125
If you nerf Unarmed Strike is is still 7[1d6+3] but now 16.75 and 108.875
At this point, you see that the nerf of Unarmed Strike has not really a big impact on the damage.
And indeed if you count in the additional damage from you ability mode and deadly etc. you are maybe at ~10% nerf, I think it is not to dare to claim there comes the developers assumption from.

If you nerf Duality again it has 7[1d6] and you don't nerf Unarmed strike it is still 19.25W but now 67.35
You see this is a big nerf of a level 30 monk with Duality and the reason is simple, the additional +3 is the big mistake they made!
This nerf is equal as if they would nerf the numbers of dices by 9W and not only 2.5W from Unarmed Strike.
It is in no way need to nerf monks between level 1 and 28 just only because a monk with Duality has too much damage at level 30.
Even more, if this means that all monks receive a big nerf while it is only a small nerf for the monk at the cap.

And once again Duality and the mistake of giving +3 to the weapon dice is the real issue here and not Unarmed Strike.
And this issue is still there even if you nerf Unarmed Strike.
And if you don't want to nerf a monk at the cap that much as I suggest here, just remove impact V from Duality and you have almost your goal of nerfing a monk at cap by 2W

The decision is final there is no going back. Lets move on to tempest, assassin and dc casting what do you say?

[slarden]

If you are going to do this nerf, I think a better answer would be to reduce the cores from [1] at level 18 and [2] at level 20 to [.5] at level 18 [1] at level 20 and leave the leveling changes alone. The proposed curve doesn't make sense as you gain [4] from 18 to 21 with the 2 cores and improved martial arts after gaining nothing for 17 levels.

[Tlorrd]

The decision is final there is no going back. Lets move on to tempest, assassin and dc casting what do you say?

Agreed ... it's like when they created Vanguard ... and then promptly took Holysword spell away from shields, all because of a few over performing shields at end game at that time.

Now look where paladin dps is.

Time to move on boys and girls.

[haku-ba]

Imagine if the devs actually listened to their players. You guys aren't redhot, just listen to what we have to say. After all, it seems like we know more about the game than you do, infact I have no doubt about it. If you actually listened to your players or polled your propositions, you wouldn't have a thread thats filled with people pointing out why your changes are so silly

Before you do something stupid, ask your players first.

[Phoenicis]

So, poking around on the wiki I came up with these numbers:



current new
Monk lvl 4 +0.5W 1.5W 1.0W
Disciple of the Fist +0.5W 2.0W 1.5W
Monk lvl 8 +0.5W 2.5W 1.5W
Weapon lvl 10 +0.5W 3.0W 2.0W
Monk lvl 12 +0.5W 3.5W 2.0W
Improved MA +1.0W 4.5W 3.0W
Monk lvl 16 +0.5W 5.0W 3.0W
Touch of the Void Dragon +1.0W 6.0W 4.0W
Monk lvl 20 +0.5W 6.5W 4.0W
Weapon lvl 20 +1.0W 7.5W 5.0W
To seek Perfection +2.0W 9.5W 7.0W
Reinforced Fists +0.5W 10.0W 7.5W



If this is accurate then we are getting a 25% reduction in monk DPS at 20 so we can reduce monk DPS by 10% at 30.

For builds that have perfect, or nearly perfect gear? How bad is the reduction for those without all the best gear/perfect builds?

Am I missing something here?