Repairing Ninja Spy PRE ... brainstorm session.

[manfredshw]

Ninja spy III-warrior of death
anytime you gain a critical attack and confirmed, you deal 500Xmonk lv untyped damage to your target.

Done~!

[Modinator0]

how about something that actually focuses on the "spy" part of ninja spy.... maybe an ability to temporarily change your alignment to any alignment, including evil, and temporarily switch to any race... something to make up for the missing disguise self / thousand faces...
maybe the ability to use wisdom for charisma-based skills?

[sephiroth1084]

Uh, I don't think Ninja Spy really needs much of an improvement. Maybe add Deception (though some people don't like it), or something like Unbalancing Strike? Or make turning Invisible grant the ability to land Sneak Attacks on anything susceptible to SA and without See Invis or True Seeing?

They get one of the best damage mitigation abilities in the game (Shadow Fade), which doubles as a way to avoid aggro and regain stealth, passive Ki regen, extra damage on all attacks vs. a lot of stuff (as contrasted with Shintao which gets extra damage on some attacks at a cost vs. a smallish number of things), and the ability to use shortswords effectively for stuff like Banishing.

Each has a niche, and I'd not place Shintao above Ninja Spy necessarily (I'll have to try it out, but it doesn't look strictly better in any sense).

And, ToD is still a LOT of damage.

[Calebro]

That's exactly my point Ferr. Dark Monks are fine. They're right where they should be.

If you want to play a pure damage dealer, you roll a Barbarian.
If you want the choice between DPS and tank, and a lot of feats, you roll a Fighter.
If you want that same choice, but with a few spells, you roll a Paladin.
If you want a support melee with a bunch of skills, some combat options, and a few spells, you roll a Ranger.
If you want a pure DPS that squishy, but can dish it out, you roll a Rogue.
If you want a support melee that has a ton of inherent defenses, you roll a Monk.

If you boost a Monk's DPS to be competitive, there will be little to no reason to play a Fighter, Barbarian, or Paladin ever again. Kind of like we saw over the past two months.

People complain that all those little goodies that a Monk gets don't matter, that they're inconsequential.
Individually, that would be true. But as a whole, they make for quite a powerful defense.
People complain that spells and gear can duplicate all of that, but those people fail to realize that the Monks can then use that gear slot for anything else that they want, without ever needing to swap gear in for certain situations. This is a HUGE benefit for Monks. Monks can outfit themselves in something similar to a Barbarian's guard setup if they so choose, and they lose absolutely nothing by doing so.
For every item that a Fighter needs to swap in for any given situation, that's one less piece of gear from their "optimal" setup that they have on. Monks don't have this problem.

This is exactly why they should not be top tier DPS, and this is exactly why they are right where they should be on the DPS charts. Nothing is needed. What you'll likely see is that Ninja III will be OP'd without intending to be.

[Chai]

Actually no developer has said why it was nerfed. We're still waiting for an answer. Any reason for the nerf currently being discussed is theory and conjecture.

I see this statement every single time something gets the nerf bat, and grin each time I see it.

We all know why it was nerfed, the same way we all know why twitch was nerfed even though they never came out and said it was a twitch nerf or that twitch wasnt intended. This is the same reason spaz attacking was nerfed back in the day when they never literally gave us a reason for that either.

LOL @ conjecture. Put your DM hat on and figure it out. You and a few other conjecture addicts might be waiting for an answer. The rest of us already know.

Are you still waiting for an answer on spaz attacking from late 2006?

[Modinator0]

If you want a pure DPS that squishy, but can dish it out, you roll a Rogue.
If you want a support melee that has a ton of inherent defenses, you roll a Monk.

If you boost a Monk's DPS to be competitive, there will be little to no reason to play a Fighter, Barbarian, or Paladin ever again. Kind of like we saw over the past two months.

I find this kinda funny since rogues have more support options available than monks, especially dark ones... With disable device, open locks, UMD as a class skill to easily use any wand or scroll... rogues can dramatically help a party without ever swinging a weapon. Can you say the same about a monk? All the **** monks DO get, the defenses, basically amounts to one thing: slightly easier soloing. They mean little to nothing to a competent group in almost every situation. Unless the group is 100% monks, the group is still going to have the same healer requirement, the group is still going to need the same mass buffs... Heck many many healers even use primarily mass heals, so having a monk doesn't even reduce the number of heals cast... So congratulations, you're the last one to die in a party wipe?

[gurgar78]

really man if you waant to counter an argument realize that this game is based on end raids not a free FF ability.

Who said the game was based on end raids? Most players never participate in a raid. I'd be willing to bet that to most of the people playing monks, the extra defenses are far more important than a little bit of extra DPS.

[Missing_Minds]

I'm waiting for people to actually crack open their 3.0 and 3.5 books to come up with suggestions.

[Chai]

I find this kinda funny since rogues have more support options available than monks, especially dark ones... With disable device, open locks, UMD as a class skill to easily use any wand or scroll... rogues can dramatically help a party without ever swinging a weapon. Can you say the same about a monk? All the **** monks DO get, the defenses, basically amounts to one thing: slightly easier soloing. They mean little to nothing to a competent group in almost every situation. Unless the group is 100% monks, the group is still going to have the same healer requirement, the group is still going to need the same mass buffs... Heck many many healers even use primarily mass heals, so having a monk doesn't even reduce the number of heals cast... So congratulations, you're the last one to die in a party wipe?

People arent talking about not swinging a weapon. Most min maxers could care less about what else the toon brings to the table other than how fast it can plow the quest.

Slightly easier soloing? Monk is one of the best damagers in 100% fort and crit immune situations, while rogue is the worst, hands down. The only thing worse than a str rogue against elementals is a finesse rogue, heh. Calling it slightly easier soloing is like saying a barbarian has slightly higher HP. Elite TOD part 1 is "slightly harder" than normal TOD part 1.

If you ask the min maxers, DPS graphers, number crunchers, and epic farmers "what matters" when they take you into a group, the first likely question they will ask is "can you kill stuff?" Most traps in the game can be metagamed and jumped over, walked past, triggered and buffed for etc...but can you kill things?

I will also mention that a 1 rogue 19 monk (or 1 rogue 19 anything else with skill points) could do all those traps, heh. Not that someone would want to out themselves on a semi decent capstone for that ability, but its true. In the end game, pure rogues arent built for "all the fuzzy things they can do sans swinging a weapon" They are build to kill things like everyone else.

Keep in mind I am not saying I support the fact that DDO is dumbed down to a DPS ePeen waving contest, but that is what I see at the high end. People make build decisions based on a point or two of DPS, even if it means far less defense. I wish this game wasnt a DPS power creep at the high end, but so far as of late this is the case. If the rogue in your example can make it easier to kill things for the party, it might be considered, but if it cant, the power gamers will wave whats said away sans care. They dont want to hear it. What they do want to hear, is that you can kill stuff, fast. Stun plus autocrit will land you an epic group before trapsmithing will. I wish it wasnt true, but it is. Sad pixelated reality.

[Calebro]

I find this kinda funny since rogues have more support options available than monks, especially dark ones... With disable device, open locks, UMD as a class skill to easily use any wand or scroll... rogues can dramatically help a party without ever swinging a weapon. Can you say the same about a monk? All the **** monks DO get, the defenses, basically amounts to one thing: slightly easier soloing. They mean little to nothing to a competent group in almost every situation. Unless the group is 100% monks, the group is still going to have the same healer requirement, the group is still going to need the same mass buffs... Heck many many healers even use primarily mass heals, so having a monk doesn't even reduce the number of heals cast... So congratulations, you're the last one to die in a party wipe?

Where did I say anything about support options outside of melee? We're talking about melee.
Traps are secondary, and inconsequential as 99% of traps can be completely bypassed if you know how to do it. We're talking about combat.

List all of a rogue's class abilities. Just class abilities, without spending a single AP. Compare them with all of a monk's class abilities.
Compare the two lists.
The shorter list should have higher DPS to balance all of the other things.

• Rogue:
• Saves: 1 good, 2 poor
• BaB: medium
• Trap sense
• Sneak attack
• Evasion
• Uncanny dodge/Improved uncanny dodge
• Chosen rogue feat
• Chosen rogue feat
• Chosen rogue feat
• Chosen rogue feat
• Chosen rogue feat

• Monk
• Saves: 3 good
• BaB: medium, high when centered
• Increasing damage based on level
• 4 different stances
• 5 different elemental strikes, with associated finishers
• Evasion
• Meditation: an inherent way to regain your power source if needed
• Still Mind: bonus to saves vs enchantments, which is much more useful in combat than a rogue's trap sense
• Automatically bypass some types of DR
• Inherent feather fall ability
• Increasing AC based on level
• Immunity to diseases
• Resource free healing
• Improved evasion [not a choice, a granted ability]
• Immunity to poisons
• Abundant step, used to get into or out of combat quickly, or as a utility
• Spell resistance 10+level
• Insta-kill effect
• Immune to spawning new undead when killed
• Resource free shadow walk spell
• DR 10/epic
• free feat
• free feat
• free feat

Hell, I'll even give you traps.... and you still have a much larger list of abilities than any other class in the game.
We're lucky Monks can do the damage that they can currently do. If they get a boost to combat, there is zero reason to play any other melee class.
Period.

A little less DPS is the price you pay for all of these goodies.

[Gulnar13]

Someone in another thread said that putting a vorpal on fists should be good. I agree; while it "doesn't matter" on bosses, we all knows that we will get 2d6 or more likely 3d6 from the last tier of the ninja spy, which would bring a lot of dps in those situation; meanwhile, putting vorpal on fists means we don't have to rely anymore on those vorpal kamas.
Another idea, as pointed out by many posters, is to make better the crit of fist. Which would cause the monks to become the best dps in absolute. We already kill 100% fort things faster than every other class (Well, other than arcanes... but how much can an arcane go without chugging pots?), think what we could do with a 3x fist on normal strikes (that rises to 4x on fist of iron... and 5x on the earth-earth-earth finisher). We would have a whole mob of barbarian at the doorstep, moaning for buffs (for them) and nerf (for us).

[KaiserKronos]

Some cool ideas have come out so far, but I feel a few are a little OP or out of touch with current DDO design.

In my math I find ninja dps needs a 5-10 dmg a hit boost (from ninja 2) to top shintao. This is due to the dps advantge of not having to use metaline handwraps. Adding a few more (high lvl) of those to the game would go a long way to balance.

Still ninja 3 should give some cool bonuses. A balanced ninja 3 to me looks like
+2 sneak skills & dark move DCs and TOD
Ignore 10 % fort on mobs
+2d6 more SA dmg

Just lke the first 2 levels have a ninja move, tier 3 should as well. Mabye a vanish like the new cloack of night that drops aggro temporaraly.

Finally if the tod necklace is going to appeal to dark monks it needs to grant ki on SA hits or in some other way.

Or, in what I admit is an out of the box solutions, make tod a finishing move(keep timer, lower cost) and make the current finisher a curse move(required for ninja 3). This would allow dark monks to be more customizable in build and gearing which is usually the best part of DDO.

[Modinator0]

People arent talking about not swinging a weapon. Most min maxers could care less about what else the toon brings to the table other than how fast it can plow the quest.

Slightly easier soloing? Monk is one of the best damagers in 100% fort and crit immune situations, while rogue is the worst, hands down. The only thing worse than a str rogue against elementals is a finesse rogue, heh. Calling it slightly easier soloing is like saying a barbarian has slightly higher HP. Elite TOD part 1 is "slightly harder" than normal TOD part 1.

If you ask the min maxers, DPS graphers, number crunchers, and epic farmers "what matters" when they take you into a group, the first likely question they will ask is "can you kill stuff?" Most traps in the game can be metagamed and jumped over, walked past, triggered and buffed for etc...but can you kill things?

I will also mention that a 1 rogue 19 monk (or 1 rogue 19 anything else with skill points) could do all those traps, heh. Not that someone would want to out themselves on a semi decent capstone for that ability, but its true. In the end game, pure rogues arent built for "all the fuzzy things they can do sans swinging a weapon" They are build to kill things like everyone else.

Keep in mind I am not saying I support the fact that DDO is dumbed down to a DPS ePeen waving contest, but that is what I see at the high end. People make build decisions based on a point or two of DPS, even if it means far less defense. I wish this game wasnt a DPS power creep at the high end, but so far as of late this is the case. If the rogue in your example can make it easier to kill things for the party, it might be considered, but if it cant, the power gamers will wave whats said away sans care. They dont want to hear it. What they do want to hear, is that you can kill stuff, fast. Stun plus autocrit will land you an epic group before trapsmithing will. I wish it wasnt true, but it is. Sad pixelated reality.

Oh I agree dps is all that matters, as sad as that is. What I was pointing out was the silly titles people keep giving of rogues being "pure dps" and monks being "support" when rogues offer more ways to support a party, while monks, especially dark ones, are more self-focused.

[Calebro]

Oh I agree dps is all that matters, as sad as that is. What I was pointing out was the silly titles people keep giving of rogues being "pure dps" and monks being "support" when rogues offer more ways to support a party, while monks, especially dark ones, are more self-focused.

You're interpreting the word "support" to mean that the class can support the party, when in a monk's case it means he can support himself. So it's utility we're talking about, and the word "support" isn't meant as a party role.
But because of a monk's utility, he drops from main DPS to support DPS.
Just like a rogue.
A rogue can only sustain "main DPS" numbers as long as he doesn't have aggro. As soon as he gains aggro, his DPS is practically nonexistent in comparison. This makes him a support DPS class who can deal main DPS damage in bursts. A monk's damage has no such limitations, which is why it needs to be lower than a rogue's burst numbers, but much higher than a rogue's if that rogue has aggro.... which is exactly where they fall on the charts. Right where they should be.

Furthermore, since we're speaking about Ninja Spy specifically here, the fact that Ninjas get sneak attack as an ability of the PrE only reinforces this fact. If they were meant to be a main DPS class, then sneak attack would be completely useless. Monks are support melee.

[Soleran]

. Monks are support melee.

Support that comment realizing that rogues have the same bab who have the highest dps in game under conditions that are favorable. Dark monks have no support as compared to light.

[Calebro]

Support that comment realizing that rogues have the same bab who have the highest dps in game under conditions that are favorable. Dark monks have no support as compared to light.

Which is why they have higher DPS than light monks. Dark monks get improved DPS, while light monks get more utilities to support themselves and the party.
In either case, they're still secondary melee.

[Soleran]

Which is why they have higher DPS than light monks. Dark monks get improved DPS, while light monks get more utilities to support themselves and the party.
In either case, they're still secondary melee.

You have yet to support that statement.

[Calebro]

You have yet to support that statement.

That statement needs no support from me. That statement is supported by the game mechanics.

And you have yet to answer my original question, which was: Why do you think that monks *SHOULD* do more DPS than rogues?

[Modinator0]

You're interpreting the word "support" to mean that the class can support the party, when in a monk's case it means he can support himself. So it's utility we're talking about, and the word "support" isn't meant as a party role.
But because of a monk's utility, he drops from main DPS to support DPS.
Just like a rogue.
A rogue can only sustain "main DPS" numbers as long as he doesn't have aggro. As soon as he gains aggro, his DPS is practically nonexistent in comparison. This makes him a support DPS class who can deal main DPS damage in bursts. A monk's damage has no such limitations, which is why it needs to be lower than a rogue's burst numbers, but much higher than a rogue's if that rogue has aggro.... which is exactly where they fall on the charts. Right where they should be.

Furthermore, since we're speaking about Ninja Spy specifically here, the fact that Ninjas get sneak attack as an ability of the PrE only reinforces this fact. If they were meant to be a main DPS class, then sneak attack would be completely useless. Monks are support melee.

That's generally what a support role in a party does, is it not?

It's worth pointing out that that is also exactly where monks fell on the charts without the TOD nerf.

rogues rely on sneak attack but are a "pure dps", but ninja spy getting sneak attack means they are support?


I dunno man, you talk in circles a lot. Support that isn't support, in the other thread you had things that were intended but not intended... working as intended but broken... you make my head hurt D:

[Calebro]

That's generally what a support role in a party does, is it not?

It's worth pointing out that that is also exactly where monks fell on the charts without the TOD nerf.

rogues rely on sneak attack but are a "pure dps", but ninja spy getting sneak attack means they are support?


I dunno man, you talk in circles a lot. Support that isn't support, in the other thread you had things that were intended but not intended... working as intended but broken... you make my head hurt D:

Not in a Monk's case, no. As I said in that same post you quoted, a Monk's support is for himself, not for the party.

That's even more reason not to boost them above where they are. If they were so friggin awesome with ToD before the nerf, why should they get even better now that it's been nerfed? That's what the OP suggests. That's what I'm opposed to.

My use of "pure DPS" on the set to which you reference refers to a rogue's lack of other combat options. They don't have fighter tactics. They don't have barbarian rages. They don't have a monk's insta-kill [or stuns, or a 500 pt attack, etc etc etc].
A rogue's combat is all or nothing. Pure DPS or nil.
They are still a support melee, just like monks are [which I also said in that same post you quoted].

As to that other thread.... it's a different matter. That's not the topic here. But ToD is a special case for the changes to TWF'ing. I'm not getting into that again here.