So What about Monks and Epic post U9?

[Khurse]

OK, unless I'm missing something there seems to be an upcoming issue with Monks and update 9.
No, I'm not talking about the Ki generation, how about Monks in epics?

Right now Hekx (45 DC stunning fist) doesn't have much of a problem stunning stuff in epic.
With bursting wraps,rings etc, he does respectable damage even with the 2x crit.

In U9 however (again unless I missed something) saves are much higher, Hekx can still hit stuff, but in the (admittedly few) tests I ran the mobs saved alot more than they did before.

With the removal of autocrits, I beleieve the gap widens between what I can with wraps (19-20 x2), and what someone with one of the standard khopeshs (17-20 x3) will do. I think losing out on those autobursts hurt Monks more than other DPS classes. (Not math guy, so I may be completely wrong here though)

This update seems to
1) Deny some Monks their KI generation
2) Increase the DC's Monks will need for stuns in Epics (not necessarily a bad thing)
3) Decrease the damage Monks will do in epics compared to super Vorpal or khopesh wielding DPs toons.
Even with a 40 Wisdom, Quivering Palm will only have a 35 DC, against an epic fort save that's not really anything more than "lucky if they fail the roll" territory.

Is there something simple I'm missing, or is this change going to hurt Monks more than other classes in epics?

[dogpig11]

have you seen monks running around with full or nearly full ki bar? it appears when ki generates too quickly, *some* people find it difficult or forget to spend them. So Turbine decided to reduce the generation rate, and thus, giving *some* people more time to "react"...

[Deathlos]

We all reroll into Barbs grind back too lvl 20, completely re-equip, throwing away all our uber monk gear thats worthless to a barb. and monks become extinct besides the rare light monk that only plays him so his guild has em for ToD.

Really kinda sucks. for some reason they are trying to do mass genocide on monks.

[Khurse]

I actually don't use crane (I know, I know, I'm a heretic ) so that doesn't bother me as much.

I'm just not sure, so much of the Monk contribution to Epics (in my experience) was the stunning and DPS I could do to a stunned target. By making the DC's I need higher, I have to find ways to raise Wisdom, which will likely impact my DPS even more.
Not Dark at the moment, but of course they will be hit as the saves against TOD will be going up.

It just seems to me although I'm sure all the devs play monks, they really don't think about them that much,
Won't some Dev please think of the Monks?

[Tsuarok]

@Dogpig11

No, I'm not talking about the Ki generation, how about Monks in epics?

[Auran82]

It looks like monks will be left with:

Spam stunning fist and hope it connects.
On cooldown hit quivering palm, hope they roll a 1.
On cooldown hit Void 4 and hope to roll a 20.

The Ki generation is a concern too, especially if you are a light monk using a stance other than fire and wanting to wear the Shintao necklace.

[waterboytkd]

So, I did run some math on my monk, comparing my damage per swing with auto-crits vs. 50% extra. Obviously, your dps goes down. But, and again this is for my monk, my dps only went down by about 23% for regular attacks, a little higher for Earth 4 and 3 fists, and it went down a little less for Air 4 (it didn't benefit from auto-crit, but does benefit from +50% damage). All numbers were right around a 25% reduction in dps.

BUT, then you consider that all epic mobs lost 50% of their hp. Really, my monk (again, my particular monk) will be doing more dps relative to epic mobs' hp than pre U9. The helpless change *in epic* seems to be an overall "buff" for monks. But that's just looking at monks in a vacuum. Not sure how other melees will be affected (though, my initial thought just looking at numbers on auto-crits vs +50%, I would say they took a bigger dps reduction on helpless mobs, which, again, makes monks *relatively* better).

[Darkrok]

I'm about 1/8th of the way through my plan to deal with this. Roll up a balanced str/wis monk after getting 3 fighter past lives. To-hit and stun dc issues solved/mitigated. By going str-monk and using Oremi's ki generation issues mitigated. Go Half Elf/Fighter Dilettante to further address the stun dc issues. Not the only way to deal with it but I'm having fun with the fighter/monk build I have planned for the 3 fighter lives so it's all good (well, not really, but it's easier to be positive than dwell on what monks have lost).

[LeLoric]

Did some testing in epics and it appears the saves aren't too bad.

Fort save based melees without rage effects have about a 30-32 fort save. (melee sauhagin in deeps, ftr tieflings in chrono, some gnolls in wk)

Reflex based melees (rangers/rogue tiefling in chrono, ranger gnolls in wk, ranged sauhagin in deeps) have about a 25-28.

Divine casters (gnoll clerics in wk, divine tieflings in chrono, priests in deeps) have about a 25-28 also.

Arcane casters (pretty much any arcane caster across the board) are much lower basically still 5% chance to save on 40ish dc.

The highest saves ive encountered so far are trolls/ogres in von 1 and scrag in deeps at about a 38-40 ish save. Elementals tend to be around here too and although i never tested I am sure wf melees in von 4-5 are similar. All these are actually harder to instadeath than named devils in chrono with no minion debuff.

So in general this means a wind IV stance monk with a 40 dc will actually land about 80 to 85% on a 30 save mob due to offhand and doublestrike procs. So really all you have to worry about are the few that go higher.

[QuantumFX]

The loss of basic damage won’t hurt monks as much as it does other classes. Monks simply go from (effectively) double damage to (effectively) 150% damage. I can live with this.

The DPS loss that sucks comes from the fact that we will no longer be able to cycle through multiple special attacks and they changed “Fists of Iron” and “The Trembling Earth” from “Useful on trash” to “Useless on everything.” (Edit: They also screwed the usefulness of Jade Strike on helpless opponents.)

The ki generation is *really* bad. Wind Stance IV + Crane II + Oremi’s + Auto stuns in Shavarath explorer = I barely had the ki generation necessary to cycle Stunning Fist and Kukan do. This is the third nerf to ki management in the last year (Update 5 lowering number of attacks, Update 7 increased ki cost of elemental strikes, Update 9’s changes to helplessness.)

I’m seriously hoping that they add an “on helplessness” function to all the stuff that used to work on crit and make Fists and Trembling auto generate crits when they’re used.

But then again, this is the same development crew that doesn’t think there is anything wrong with the lack of level 1-3 monk enhancements so…

[Bigrtt]

The screw job to monks is bad enough that I'm seriously considering TRing mine into a more useful toon if the update hits live as it is now. And I hate TRing, so much so that the last toon I TRed I just deleted and started again...yet this TR would be a second TR too.


Something needs to be done though from my point of view. Either giving us monks a higher to-hit, increase Ki generation on a helpless mob (and not just for a certain path, this needs to be in general for monks), slightly increase our stun dc or keep the epic mobs saves as they are on live.

[thx.janus]

bump to get dev attention.

[Seliana]

A simple base code change from the devs would really fix most of the monk concerns.

Set burst effects to proc on helpless every attack.
Set crane ki generation to proc on helpless every attack.
Set monk +stun dc to use full monk level instead of half (Monks shouldn't have lower stun DC then barbarians anyway.)

[Brannigan]

OK, unless I'm missing something there seems to be an upcoming issue with Monks and update 9.
No, I'm not talking about the Ki generation, how about Monks in epics?

Right now Hekx (45 DC stunning fist) doesn't have much of a problem stunning stuff in epic.
With bursting wraps,rings etc, he does respectable damage even with the 2x crit.

In U9 however (again unless I missed something) saves are much higher, Hekx can still hit stuff, but in the (admittedly few) tests I ran the mobs saved alot more than they did before.

With the removal of autocrits, I beleieve the gap widens between what I can with wraps (19-20 x2), and what someone with one of the standard khopeshs (17-20 x3) will do. I think losing out on those autobursts hurt Monks more than other DPS classes. (Not math guy, so I may be completely wrong here though)

This update seems to
1) Deny some Monks their KI generation
2) Increase the DC's Monks will need for stuns in Epics (not necessarily a bad thing)
3) Decrease the damage Monks will do in epics compared to super Vorpal or khopesh wielding DPs toons.
Even with a 40 Wisdom, Quivering Palm will only have a 35 DC, against an epic fort save that's not really anything more than "lucky if they fail the roll" territory.

Is there something simple I'm missing, or is this change going to hurt Monks more than other classes in epics?

You got some numbers on this or percentages?

Cos if your still not stunning stuff on a regular basis with a 45dc stun then they have totally borked Monks.

[kendo]

I'm about 1/8th of the way through my plan to deal with this. Roll up a balanced str/wis monk after getting 3 fighter past lives. To-hit and stun dc issues solved/mitigated. By going str-monk and using Oremi's ki generation issues mitigated. Go Half Elf/Fighter Dilettante to further address the stun dc issues. Not the only way to deal with it but I'm having fun with the fighter/monk build I have planned for the 3 fighter lives so it's all good (well, not really, but it's easier to be positive than dwell on what monks have lost).

does the half elf fighter dilettante enhancement for stunning blow also increase the DC for stunning fist? would assume it does if you are factoring it into your plans here.

I also have a dex/wis monk that I just love playing. fairly new to the class, only level 13, but it has become my favorite to play. it's not my strongest character at that level but it has rekindled my desire to play DDO. so it figures that, just as I am getting to the more interesting powers, it appears it will get nerfed to being almost worthless outside of normal or hard difficulties

will wait to see how things shake out when this goes live but will be very disappointed if it effectively shelves my character. I don't have super gear yet and will probably never have the time to seriously consider multiple TRs as a way to boost DCs

[Brannigan]

Would be nice to see Eladrin comment about this - surely if nothing else they will need to add a Stunning Fist DC enhancement line in.

Otherwise Monks will become a thing of the past for epics.

Stunning is their main effective attack imo.

[elujin]

A simple base code change from the devs would really fix most of the monk concerns.

*snip*
Set crane ki generation to proc on helpless every attack.

*snip*

this would go a long way

[Warinx]

3) Decrease the damage Monks will do in epics compared to super Vorpal or khopesh wielding DPs toons.

Actually it's the opposite, no longer is the crit multiplier the only important thing on your weapon in epics. Actually picks lose, fists win. Your damage relative to crit dependant weapons went up a whole bunch.

In autocrit you were at best 33% behind with x2 at worst 50% with picks. Now It's only your total crit average that is low compared to kopesh.

Fists = 2/19 Crit Damage
Kopesh = 8/19 Crit Damage
Scimitar/Pick/Rapier 6/19 Crit damage

Wich is nowhere close to how bad it used to be.

[grodon9999]

Actually it's the opposite, no longer is the crit multiplier the only important thing on your weapon in epics. Actually picks lose, fists win. Your damage relative to crit dependant weapons went up a whole bunch.

You're forgetting the multiple burst multipliers that monks get from ToD rings.

[Barazon]

Set monk +stun dc to use full monk level instead of half (Monks shouldn't have lower stun DC then barbarians anyway.)

Actually this would be a downgrade for monks below level 20. Currently the base of the stunning fist DC is 10 + monklevel/2, which is still 20 at level 20, but at level 4 your base DC is currently 12 (instead of 4).