We need balance between light and dark again!

[Fecerak]

Well, now that U7 is live there seems to me at least like the difference between light and dark path monks has become very big. Lets just look at what they get:
Dark:
ToD (10 AP, assuming you take ninja spy, and while it does quite a bit of damage, since its now neg energy, a lot of mobs are immune to the dmg (including ANYTHING with DW, which is sad, if it just were undead I would be fine).
3d6 Sneak attack (while this is really nice, its kinda the biggest benefit for dark monks right now it seems. 3d6 while nice, isnt a whole lot considering it only works when you dont have aggro, and are up against mobs with less than 100% fort.)
The level 6 Invis thingy (Arguably the biggest benefit of ninja spy, 25% incorporeality that stacks with everything IS really nice, however, it isn't enough to carry ninja spy alone)
A few mostly useless things (Water strider, some minor skill bonuses, shortsword abilities, faster sneaking, which all doesn't really add too much)

Light:
Smite tainted creature is bugged, so I won't be talking much about it, but if/when it gets fixed it will be even worse.
High bonuses to saves and AC - To be honest that helps shintao do what it was supposed to do. Support instead of pure dps
X, light, X finishers: Really nice and helps shintao do what it is supposed to do
However, the problem lies in how shintao probably can get HIGHER dps while still doing the support stuff. Here is the list of all the stuff of that kind they get:
Jade strike - Could possibly be as much more dps as dark monk gets from tod and SA against bosses like harry, if you consider having more than 1-2 players. Yes, its supposed to be nice, but while the dark monks struggle to get anything from their SA because of the aggro system, and thus only have ToD to rely upon, this is a quite large boost.
DR breaking - Now here is the thing. This adds more dmg than SA against anything with a decent amount of DR (again, lets say harry) because of that DR/15 is kinda huge, but you avoid the DR while still using your dps weps which probably have 10 or so more dmg per strike, which is about the amount that dark monks get from SA, except they dont because of things like fort and aggro.
And THEN we have all the things like kukan-do and so on. It just doesn't add up.

So I would really like to see a buff to NS soon, because right now shintao gets all their useful benefits AND can do comparable dps, which just isn't right.

[Soleran]

The ToD nerf wasn't needed the bump to shintao was needed.

I think before we try to balance light and dark and the pre's we need to just sit tight for ninja pre3 or of course you can always just switch to light/shintao.

I'm still crossing my fingers they just give the ninja pre x3 crit profiles, I'd be happy with that

[Fecerak]

What I hope Ninja 3 is:
Autovorpal on shortswords (would be a nice benefit even though it isn't too huge)
3d6 Sneak attack
Faster sneaking and skill bonuses and such
A cool not very powerful in combat ability (Abundant step for half or no Ki perhaps?)
And then perhaps something that applies to undead, or perhaps just the x3 crit or something like that.

[Fafnir]

Having just TR a half orc shintao to 20, it's not all that. Ninja is still superior dps.

In my opinion, and ymmv, Jade strike, Tomb, Dismissing strike, Kukan Do are, frankly, more annoying than awesome.

[Deaths_ward]

Having just TR a half orc shintao to 20, it's not all that. Ninja is still superior dps.

In my opinion, and ymmv, Jade strike, Tomb, Dismissing strike, Kukan Do are, frankly, more annoying than awesome.

But, way more fun. ToD wasn't fun before and it isn't fun now, I mean it's 'Watch his hp drop, wait 15 seconds while his hp slowly drops, then watch him die', that was it. You didn't really have any reason to use other strikes, Even now, it's just click, wait,.......wait some more, click again repeat. Only difference is you'll have to repeat 9-10 times instead of 4-5.

Shintao/Light monks bring some really cool buffs, and the whole self/party healing with FoL, and have a handful of nifty abilities for use on trash.

[Resilian]

Having just TR a half orc shintao to 20, it's not all that. Ninja is still superior dps.

In my opinion, and ymmv, Jade strike, Tomb, Dismissing strike, Kukan Do are, frankly, more annoying than awesome.

Jade strike was too hard to tell if it actually landed especially on bosses. Tomb of Jade was resisted almost every time for me in Amrath, but outside of Amrath it seemed to land a little more often..though still not often enough..plus a 60 second cooldown is terrible. Dismissing Strike I like because it eliminated the need for banishers and it works on devils and fiend-bloods. Kukan-Do is great..was able to stun orange named mobs in elite IQ. Overall I decided to respec back to Dark because for trash mobs I kill way faster and have less to worry about, and for bosses I can ToD -> fist of darkx 2 -> dark finisher -> earth strike x 3 -> earth finisher -> TOD is ready again so it's still a nice continued chain of DPS strikes with the added bonus of dark finisher helping all dark monks hit for better TOD damage.

Overall as it's been said the dark path is still very good dps and probably just above light monks, but still above. It's merely preference..do you want to kill trash faster, or stun mobs more often for others to kill faster.

[Taimasan]

Dark path still destroy's light path on dps, at least my monk does. /popcorn

[LupusVai]

Dark path still destroy's light path on dps, at least my monk does. /popcorn

Yep same for me. I have a light and dark path monk. Dark is much better dps even after the changes. Even with a gimped wisdom of 26 I'm seeing mostly hits of 500. With 2-3 procs of it at a time. Even in epic its still fairly reliable. Boo hoo i cant hurt undead with it, cause i do fight so many undead at level 20. ;-) (and if i do feel the need to go into wizking epic i'll just use my epic mabar wraps)

The problem comes from Dark being way over powered before and now being closer in balance to light after the patch. Which is why all the crys of anguish.

I have a hard time choosing which i prefer now as some of the new toys on the light path are fun but the extra sneak damage, tod, incorporal miss chance from the invis and the debuffs for epic (helping with the casters firewalls, i'm guessing though that i'm in a minority who actually uses the debuffs) are also very appealing. I would say though that its a good thing that i cant decide which i prefer rather than dark path always being a no brainer choice before.

Looking forward to what ninja spy III brings. Another 3d6 sneak damage seems likely and most welcome.

[Khurse]

Yep same for me. I have a light and dark path monk. Dark is much better dps even after the changes. Even with a gimped wisdom of 26 I'm seeing mostly hits of 500. .

What mobs are you fighting?
With a 34 Wisdom I'm hitting for 250 at least 3/4 of the time against the raid bosses.

[LupusVai]

What mobs are you fighting?
With a 34 Wisdom I'm hitting for 250 at least 3/4 of the time against the raid bosses.

Various mobs in epic fens today.

[gurgar78]

What I hope Ninja 3 is:
Autovorpal on shortswords (would be a nice benefit even though it isn't too huge)
3d6 Sneak attack
Faster sneaking and skill bonuses and such
A cool not very powerful in combat ability (Abundant step for half or no Ki perhaps?)
And then perhaps something that applies to undead, or perhaps just the x3 crit or something like that.

x3 crit for shortswords would be fine. x3 crit for fists would be overpowered.

However, the only reason a monk would use shortswords would be for on-crit effects since fists will still provide superior damage, even if shortswords had a x3 multiplier. You'd be better off asking for a +1 to the crit RANGE of shortswords so that your on-crit effects fire more often.

[Soleran]

x3 crit for shortswords would be fine. x3 crit for fists would be overpowered.

However, the only reason a monk would use shortswords would be for on-crit effects since fists will still provide superior damage, even if shortswords had a x3 multiplier. You'd be better off asking for a +1 to the crit RANGE of shortswords so that your on-crit effects fire more often.

Why do you think a x3 crit would be overpowered on a 19-20 crit profile (that is of course with a feat.)

[Angelus_dead]

So I would really like to see a buff to NS soon, because right now shintao gets all their useful benefits AND can do comparable dps, which just isn't right.

Ninja III will add a bunch of sneak attack and some other helpful feature, which will mostly fix it. Then they just have to drop one of the prereqs for TOD and make debuff-finishers more valuable, and it's fine.

[Ssmooth]

I'm not sure how a light monk would come CLOSE to the dps of a dark monk, but hey, to each their own

I know that my 1/2ling dark monk can wait 2 minutes before beginning to attack in epic chrono and will have aggro in a very short amount of time, ie: less than 1 minute.

While light monks can use their mabar wraps to bypass dr, the radiant blast certainly doesn't go off every 15 seconds nor can it do 1500+ damage(outside of vamps) so the wraps still do not bring the dps close to even.

No change is neccessary.

[gurgar78]

Why do you think a x3 crit would be overpowered on a 19-20 crit profile (that is of course with a feat.)

Dark monks are currently doing very competitive DPS with a x2 crit multiplier due to superior base weapon damage and penalty-free offhand attacks. Increasing their multiplier to x3 would be a significant increase in DPS against any enemy with less than 100% fortification. Not only would physical crits be higher, but I would imagine it would yield a signficant increase in the multiple bursting effects that high-end monks have attached to each attack.

Because they are currently doing competitive DPS, the significant boost that would result from a x3 multiplier on their handwraps would push them well beyond other classes.

Not to mention who would bother taking a light path monk if dark path got a x3 multiplier to their h2h attacks?

[Monkey_Archer]

Dark monks do not need to be buffed, they just need their existing abilities fixed and/or modified due to recent and no-so-recent changes.

Karmic strike, all 4 elemental curses, and the other X-dark-X finishers have all either been made obsolete by TOD/stunning fist spamming or never worked correctly in the first place. Fix these and dark monks will be just fine the way they are.

[Scarecrow9]

also even tho i love shintao, jade strike on raid bosses has been landing for my with a 43 dc (will) very VERY seldom. gret wen it DOES land but....

[Soleran]

Dark monks are currently doing very competitive DPS with a x2 crit multiplier due to superior base weapon damage and penalty-free offhand attacks. Increasing their multiplier to x3 would be a significant increase in DPS against any enemy with less than 100% fortification. Not only would physical crits be higher, but I would imagine it would yield a signficant increase in the multiple bursting effects that high-end monks have attached to each attack.

Because they are currently doing competitive DPS, the significant boost that would result from a x3 multiplier on their handwraps would push them well beyond other classes.

Not to mention who would bother taking a light path monk if dark path got a x3 multiplier to their h2h attacks?

x3 crit would have no effect on holy burst, shocking etc.

Why make a light monk when dark monks can already ToD?

Remeber that monks would only get a 10% chance to crit regardless which is a rather small amount of their attacks.

[gurgar78]

x3 crit would have no effect on holy burst, shocking etc.

Are you sure about that? I know it doesn't seem to result in increased burst damage for single-strike increases like FoI or the earth^3 finisher, but I'm not sure it wouldn't result in more damage if the NSIII gave a permanent increase to x3. Guess it would depend on how it was coded.

[Taimasan]

What mobs are you fighting?
With a 34 Wisdom I'm hitting for 250 at least 3/4 of the time against the raid bosses.

Yea you must have some crappy dice becuase in my last life with wisdom of 28, I was hitting 500s on almost everything, when it comes to raid bosses you gotta cut it some slack, cause the saves are gonna be abnormally high. Fortunately the endgame content is not composed of 100% end boss fighting, maybe something around 10%.

x3 crit would have no effect on holy burst, shocking etc.

That is incorrect.


This same rule also applies to rings. Try doing the 3xearth finisher that raises crit multiplier by 2 and see your burst effects.