MONKS are so **** FUN

[Drachmoril]

Sometimes, when I bump into a player who's nearly "completed" their past lives, I ask them "What's the plan after you're done?" Often I get the response "Build a monk, idk." And it reminds me of that South Park episode about World of Warcraft, where after spending months grinding xp, they say: "What do you mean? We finally get to play the game!"

Why is it that, on the horizon of a nearly incompletable grind*, so many look to playing a monk?

It's simple: You get to run fast and punch things and spin around like a helicopter.

Monks are just fun. The main reason you don't see many monks in heroics is because they can't do the damage others can do from farther away. There are more attractive options thank monk for a fast heroic life, and there are more mechanically accessible options for new players experimenting with classes.

In epics, you see some more monks - more people who've decided "I'll settle on this class, not because it's optimal for a particular purpose, but because I find it fun." Sure, you won't see nearly as many as you used to, but they're there. I'm not going to pretend monks are in as desperate a need of buffing as other classes; they can lay down some decent damage, have good survivability, and have a diverse set of interesting CC abilities. Not to mention, no matter how buffed or nerfed monks have ever been, they have always maintained a baseline of fun.

But I would petition for monks to be slightly more performant in the realm of damage. As an inquisitive may look forward to increasing law damage dice as they level, so might a monk look forward to more damage dice as they level.

Monks are not the most desperate for a change. But that doesn't exclude them from public attention; rather, it makes them all the more viable for a tweaking. Monks do not need some fundamental rework; ki, finishing moves, all of it has withstood the passage of time because the core gameplay was so inherently satisfying regardless. With a few minor buffs, monks will stand where they were meant to stand: as a source of high-speed, in-your-face, high-damage fun.

The damage exists, from classes safer to play and more mechanically diverse. They have their uses, and monks have theirs. I ask only for a slightly harder punch.

Thank you.



*(This isn't necessarily a problem, and not the focus of this post. It was more of a poetic hyperbole)

P.S: Finally got to play Keep on the Borderlands, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It was a great push to introduce more level 1 content, and the execution was very satisfying.

[Drecas]

But I would petition for monks to be slightly more performant in the realm of damage. As an inquisitive may look forward to increasing law damage dice as they level, so might a monk look forward to more damage dice as they level.




We used to have that, but people complained, and whined and whinged about it until the devs nerfed unarmed monks hard.
This is why we can't have nice things.

[Chai]

...and they advocated for their heroic nerf after one nerf already happened, by repeatedly posting the same video of a pre-first-nerf level 30 monk destroying a bag of HP in a level 24 (adjusted to 26) quest.

Nerf monks in heroics because this is what it did before you nerfed it the first time in epic content this legendary character long since graduated.

[darkniteyogi]

Didnt know monks were nerfed. How much weaker are they exactly

[Discpsycho]

Didnt know monks were nerfed. How much weaker are they exactly

There were two major nerfs, and maybe a few other minor ones as well that kind of pale in comparison. I can't recall the exact dates, but the first was a couple of months after Ravenloft was released, and the second was a few months after that. Both were in response to videos posted of a monk in top-tier gear, including https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Duality,_the_Moral_Compass which is the real culprit

Nerf 1: Henshin
Henshin core abilities used to give 10 MP each, rather than the 3 they currently grant. While this was a little bit overkill for splashing reasons, it made 20 points in Henshin very strong for Shintao monks, who already have a ridiculous attack speed.

Nerf 2: Unarmed Dice
Monks used to get +0.5[W] for unarmed every few levels, resulting in +3.5[W] by level 20. Those got completely removed subtracting an average of 7 or 8 damage per hit (before melee power, crit, etc)

So what?
I don't see a lot of folks condemning the Henshin nerfs, but they're problematic in their own right because that tree was already struggling. Some folks suggested fixes such as pushing the melee power (or adding other boosts) to T5, Core 4+, etc, but none of those happened. Henshin got a slight boost with Falconry, but not as much as Shintao, so it further paled in comparison

The second nerf was controversial because from 1-29, Monks weren't OP. With the introduction of Falconry, Aasimar monks were solid, but their heroic leveling was nothing compared to Inquisitive or Sorcerers these days.

The real issue was Duality. Like all other Baba weapons, it has damage dice of 5[1d6+3], plus another 2[1d6+3] from Impact V. The on-hit effects are better on a monk than most other builds because of higher attack speed, but it's not game-breaking. The problem is that with proper gearing, Monks could top out at ~20[W], which scales wayyyyy too well off the [1d6+3] weapon dice. Hardly any other specs get inherent boosts to weapon dice, so this was monk-specific and not universal to Baba weapons.

[NemesisAlien]

Monk suppose to be the strongest the higher they climb, those 2 nerfs they mentioned werent the 1st, further back there were nerfs also, so from the best end game character it becomes the weakest.

Currently at epic levels, with normal, note normal, not bestest end game gear, it usually is a one hit wonder on ee, much less reaper. As in 1 hit by trash mob and you are dead.

Currently on ddo there is no way to do a pure monk if you want to get past 20, not unless you spend your life farming every single uber gear out there.

For those players who spend only a few hours playing between work and rest it isnt possible.

[Drachmoril]

There were two major nerfs, and maybe a few other minor ones as well that kind of pale in comparison. I can't recall the exact dates, but the first was a couple of months after Ravenloft was released, and the second was a few months after that. Both were in response to videos posted of a monk in top-tier gear, including https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Duality,_the_Moral_Compass which is the real culprit

Nerf 1: Henshin
Henshin core abilities used to give 10 MP each, rather than the 3 they currently grant. While this was a little bit overkill for splashing reasons, it made 20 points in Henshin very strong for Shintao monks, who already have a ridiculous attack speed.

Nerf 2: Unarmed Dice
Monks used to get +0.5[W] for unarmed every few levels, resulting in +3.5[W] by level 20. Those got completely removed subtracting an average of 7 or 8 damage per hit (before melee power, crit, etc)

So what?
I don't see a lot of folks condemning the Henshin nerfs, but they're problematic in their own right because that tree was already struggling. Some folks suggested fixes such as pushing the melee power (or adding other boosts) to T5, Core 4+, etc, but none of those happened. Henshin got a slight boost with Falconry, but not as much as Shintao, so it further paled in comparison

The second nerf was controversial because from 1-29, Monks weren't OP. With the introduction of Falconry, Aasimar monks were solid, but their heroic leveling was nothing compared to Inquisitive or Sorcerers these days.

The real issue was Duality. Like all other Baba weapons, it has damage dice of 5[1d6+3], plus another 2[1d6+3] from Impact V. The on-hit effects are better on a monk than most other builds because of higher attack speed, but it's not game-breaking. The problem is that with proper gearing, Monks could top out at ~20[W], which scales wayyyyy too well off the [1d6+3] weapon dice. Hardly any other specs get inherent boosts to weapon dice, so this was monk-specific and not universal to Baba weapons.

Yup. Some over-performing monks at cap with max gear crippled the state of modern unarmed monks. They're still fun to play, but the relative weakness now is... not so fun. Heck, even when monks were at their best, they couldn't hold a candle to the DPS we have today in *cough cough* other forms.

Not to mention, monks are a melee class... melee, that old term. They get smacked down in melee combat. It's hard enough to be a melee in this meta. It was a nice bone when they could at least do significant damage.

I urge the developers to see this as a pendulum! Monks swung* too far forward, and now they've swung* too far back. Let them settle somewhere in the middle, with a buff to damage at the least.



*(Monk pun)

[LurkingVeteran]

Monk suppose to be the strongest the higher they climb, those 2 nerfs they mentioned werent the 1st, further back there were nerfs also, so from the best end game character it becomes the weakest.

Currently at epic levels, with normal, note normal, not bestest end game gear, it usually is a one hit wonder on ee, much less reaper. As in 1 hit by trash mob and you are dead.

Currently on ddo there is no way to do a pure monk if you want to get past 20, not unless you spend your life farming every single uber gear out there.

For those players who spend only a few hours playing between work and rest it isnt possible.

Let's not exaggerate, except for some raids that require mrr, monk isnt any worse off than most melee. You can absolutely get past 20 but reaper may require gearing and PLs. While I think the Henshin nerf was a mistake, some of the monk nerfs were needed fixes for unintended side effects of the handwrap change.

[Drachmoril]

Let's not exaggerate, except for some raids that require mrr, monk isnt any worse off than most melee. You can absolutely get past 20 but reaper may require gearing and PLs. While I think the Henshin nerf was a mistake, some of the monk nerfs were needed fixes for unintended side effects of the handwrap change.

That's certainly fair; I agree some of their claims were exaggerations. A tempest ranger may only slightly outperform monks in terms of damage, and while druids are still on top, the gap isn't quite as staggering. Monks definitely have their use, with nice single-target crowd control and decent survivability (they can function in reaper, with a group). I would argue however that "not any worse off than most melee" is an unfortunate metric for class performance, considering the present state of melee as a whole.

Monk's ability to lay down damage pre-nerf was unique in a meta that currently dislikes most melee altogether. I argue that the performance of max-level monks with maxxed-out gear should not have affected monks from 1-20 and from 20-30 so greatly. Nerfing the endgame handwraps was a good call, but without the incremental damage dice monks used to gain through level, they are left as mediocre damage-dealers throughout the leveling process and in the end game.

Monks aren't so far from other melee... but certainly mediocre compared to the ranged and casting DPS options available. The risk of playing melee should come with proportionate rewards. Melee as a whole is a much larger issue than can be simply tackled in this thread... but for monks at least, an increase in damage is reasonable.

[Drachmoril]

I guess I'm fundamentally arguing that every build should be very good at at least one thing.

Ranged and casting builds are often multi-purposed, casting spells, trapping, using magical devices, buffing, healing. They are also largely more survivable, as they are able to stay out of harm from a distance. But melees tend to be more limited, and more vulnerable. Exceptional damage is their theoretical compensation... but this is not the case with monks.

The satisfaction of running up to things and hitting them - fun - is the real compensation in its absence. People still play monks, people still play two handed melee. It would just be nice for them to be brought up to speed numerically.