Developers, Monks Need Love!

[elujin]

str16 con 14 dex 15 int 8 wis16 cha6
dwarf
10 base
10 wraps
10 monk
+6
---
36
+3 dwarf
----
39
1 waterstands
1-1 +2 tome and or ship buffs
----
41-42

not that easy but its not supose to be
exeptional wis can be added too

[AtomicMew]

"your going to be doing more DPS, you should be happy"

No one has been asking to make the monk an "ubber dps class" what they've been asking for is to remain viable in the areas they OBVIOUSLY have enhancements for. Tripple the DPS, if we can't stun or fire off TOD, we're just fist fighting barbarians.

If that were the case, the ONLY thing that you should be complaining about is the higher saves on mobs and the change to stunning fist. Adapt. Play a 12 monk/X fighter. So what if it's not pure? Monks, on the whole, as a class, will be getting a boost. A pure ranger hasn't been good in a long time, yet some of the highest DPS builds are ranger builds and I still see tons of pure rangers.

I don't really see what the big deal is.

[Thuriaz]

and requires a plus 2 tome to be viable, something well outside the reach of MANY first time monk builds OR other build class builds.

Now take that layout and assume that your NOT using a +2 tome because you can't pre-fund this character with a ton of plat, or points, at that cost. No class should REQUIRE financing from another character slot to be viable. I've seen other MMO's go that route, it's neither fun nor encouraging.

You can rebalance that build with 14Str, here is the kicker though, all you did was list a dwarf enhanced stunning blow, so that leaves you 3 less for TOD, or any OTHER monk ability. Remember a rebalance to STR also means your dumping +2 of your hit, so your hitting 10% less.

Edit:: Rather than post below for the reply that came in just before I hit send I'll amend this post.

Really the Ki gen for dex based monks is what's worrying me, the higher saves contribute to that because before you'd be blowing 50ki, failing, using some other stuff, firing it off again, failing, firing off other stuff, and then MAYBE succeeding on the 3rd or 4th mob you came in contact with. Now you'll fire off TOD, fail, and that it's your wiped with no GOOD way to replenish Ki. This is comparable to reducing a wizards SP pool while also increasing the DC's and increasing cast time on all spells. That's a BIG set of changes. Wizards are getting a micro nerf and a micro boost. Monks are getting 4 or 5 micro nerfs which means a LARGE number of builds are being invalidated. For what it's worth it doesn't affect MY monk, he's strength based similar to the above posted build (with the changes to STR I mentioned) and even without stunning fist since he's in fire stance to hit he's pretty reliable on ki generation. However just because MY build is unfazed doesn't mean other builds aren't. What I'm basically asking is that other options than 1 or 2 build options be available. Stunning fist is nice, but it's not TOD or Kukando or any of the other special abilities that make playing a monk neat. Fighters get a stunning attack, monks get a lot more variety at the cost of that awesome fighter DPS, limit that variety and the ability to throw out a lot of different things and they are simple 2 smite per day paladins, fighters minus a kensai pre, or rangers minus a tempest pre at the end of the day. Does that mean I can't build around it? No, it doesn't, however the developers are making these changes, to a class that is pay to play, it makes me suspect that this is just a scam to get VIPs to burn some points on LR, or those who purchased the class (since they obviously have money) to buy more points to LR. In either case that does rile me quite a bit. However I think you may be on to something so I propose since fighters and barbs are over powered now obviously we impose some serious nerfs upon them in U10. You know, 5 haste boosts per shrine is an awful lot, lets limit it to 2, and while we're at it, 40 some minutes of rage is way to much, remove the entire enhancement line for extended/extra rage. After that we can then sit back and listen to the wails (not the wizards killing stuff, I mean the barbs and fighters complain).

When a nerf changes EVERY mechanic of something like 80% of the builds in a class, there will be very upset people, and we should expect some departures, I'm still on the fence about a lot of this because frankly, I don't play my monk alot. I got him to level 11, kinda said "thats nice, now I want to try something else" and started up a fighter. Is the experience a little different? Yes, it's a lot less active and a lot less difficult to maintain anything close to reasonable DPS. Also rolled up a Warforged Paladin who is, pre U9, more active than the fighter and less active than the monk. All in all not that bad. However, I've experimented up a few levels with dex based monks, I've seen how reliant they are on crit ki generation, and I gotta wonder if they'd be viable at all without it. IMHO all this affects dark monks a lot worse than light. Dark monks gain damage from sneak attack and therefore may be more willing to make a dex build. Light monks rely more heavily on strength for attack and may then be LESS likely to go dex on a build. That's just my opinion though.

[QuantumFX]

Stances need to be balanced now that Sun stance is getting promoted to the “go to” DPS stance. Thanks to the previously mentioned ki issues.

Stances also need to only give secondary benefits at Tier II and above.

Mountain Stance needs a serious rework. (1 DR/- per tier that stacks with perfect self and the natural armor stacking with other sources of natural armor would be a good place to start.)

Quivering Palm needs work since we have a level 9 ability that is *WAY* more powerful than a level 16 ability.

All the previous “on crit” abilities need to be rethought as they have all gone from “Marginally useful” to “not worth the ki expenditure”. (Fists of Iron/Trembling Earth/Jade Strike)

The cooldown on Tomb of Jade needs a serious rethink now that it’s backup has been gutted. The Tomb of Jade effect was already fairly rare. Now we’ll be lucky to see it once per epic quest.

All the animal paths need to be brought down to 1/1/1/1 enhancement chains or remade to be worth 10 AP costs.

Void Strike 1 and Animal Path 1 need to be dropped to level 1, 0 AP's spent enhancements.

It’s pretty ******** that the melee class that is the most dependant on combat DC's doesn’t have an enhancement chain that directly affects them. While a class that has a very limited number of combat DC's gets full enhancement chains, a PrE to buff them, Primary Stat buffs to enhance them *and* a clickie to boost them.

[krogyy]

It’s pretty ******** that the melee class that is the most dependant on combat DC's doesn’t have an enhancement chain that directly affects them. While a class that has a very limited number of combat DC's gets full enhancement chains, a PrE to buff them, Primary Stat buffs to enhance them *and* a clickie to boost them.

nonsense, the only monk abilities that benefits from tactis DC are stunning fist and kukan-do. and stunning fist should not be monk-only to begin with...
the majority of monk abilities with a DC are not affected by tactics.

on the other hand tactics moves are the only DC abilities a fighter has.

fighters should rightfully be the master of combact tactics, it's the main distinctive trait of their gameplay.

[Forzah]

OP, you are totally wrong. Monks are going to get a HUGE boost for U9.

The nerf to ki generation is so trivial. So you need to use Oremi's instead of Nyoko's for trash mobs? OH NO major game breaker right there! Not... c'mon, guys.

You're still going to be doing more DPS because of having +5 holy vorpal transmuting rocket handwraps of super-duper everything bane. Not only that, but you're going to be doing more RELATIVE DPS in the party, compared to other classes, because the auto-crit nerf means that other classes can't just switch to picks.

You have a good point here. The new crafting system favors monks a lot (since there are no GS wraps). Most likely, monks get back more than they lose. It might be better to wait for update 9 and see how it turns out. It shouldn't be that bad.

[waterboytkd]

It seems to me that there are two major things happening to monk in this next update: the loss of massive ki gen, and epic trash having boosted saves.

The latter I would consider a problem, but is really easy to solve. Give monks an enhancement line that adds to Stunning Fist DCs, as well as an enhancement line(s) that add to other monk DCs as well. That alone should make up the difference between pre U9 epic mob saves and post U9 saves.

As for the former, it seems to me to only really hurt dark monks using ToD, as light monks have nothing comparable whipping off a 50 ki move every 15 seconds (note: my dex based shintao only has Oremi's necklace for augmenting her ki gen, and does not have ki issues, despite having 4 to 5 fist combos that she does regularly, though not constantly--lots of trash mobs don't require fists to kill, and in epics, you don't need to use special fists on stunned mobs if everyone else is on them, too). But, hosing dark monks is a problem, too (you don't want them to be strictly worse than light monks). There are a couple ways to remedy this:

1) Change monk capstone to +1 ki on hit. I really like this as monk's current capstone is only ok. Also, currently, if you're not a fire stance monk, you have to have Oremi's on, and that sucks. Monks have a hard enough time with gear as is (especially if you're trying to have an AC in the 60s without sacrificing all your dps), and by changing the capstone, they could ease up on gearing stress for monks while also keeping Dark monks a bit happy. This has the consequence, though, that a Fire Stance user wearing Oremi's necklace would generate 4 ki per hit...might be a bit excessive.

2) Change the ki costs on all monk moves slightly. They've already said they're going to adjust the upper level fists back to their cheaper costs, so that'll help. But all moves could take a couple point reduction. But, ToD is still the problem, and I have the feeling that the Devs don't necessarily want monks using ToD every 15 seconds. Which leads me to:

2b) Change the cool down on ToD to 30 seconds. This could also come with a significant ki cost reduction for ToD (as opposed to the slight ki cost reduction other abilities could get). That way, dark monks could still use their other fists, and then maybe have enough to ki to do ToD when it refreshes...

Just some ideas.

[shadowhop]

1) Change monk capstone to +1 ki on hit. I really like this as monk's current capstone is only ok. Also, currently, if you're not a fire stance monk, you have to have Oremi's on, and that sucks. Monks have a hard enough time with gear as is (especially if you're trying to have an AC in the 60s without sacrificing all your dps), and by changing the capstone, they could ease up on gearing stress for monks while also keeping Dark monks a bit happy. This has the consequence, though, that a Fire Stance user wearing Oremi's necklace would generate 4 ki per hit...might be a bit excessive.

Please do not put a bonus back on the capstone, there are people here that like to level and they already had a really hard time to get some ki at lower level and in the next update that is even getting worse.

If they are going to make the ki generation so that a monk will not lose some of its versatility(strange that they make it less in an update to improve the versitility of arcanes) they have to do that for all monk levels and not just for the level 20 people.

The problem is a monk gets better at level 18 (Tod ringen/ oremis necklace) and before 18 he is much weaker.

[Thuriaz]

shadow, exactly what I'm getting at. Yes at level 20 things balance out a LOT for the monk in comparison, but lets face it, your going to spend a vastly larger portion of your time GETTING to 20 than STAYING at 20 for a lot of people. Level 20 is the FIRST step on the gear grind perhaps, but there is a grind to get there. Even the most experienced TR would take 2 weeks to get to 20 running ONLY high XP window farming quests on a first life. The problem with that is, most players are NOT the most experienced TRs and do NOT have a dedicated window farming group. Now, to give you a comparison that will kinda shed some light on this, imagine trying to get to 20 in a reasonable period (2 - 3 months) with no special abilities and NO ONE willing to group with you because your gimped in every meaningful way.

A 2 - 3 month grind to get to level 20 may have just becomes a 6 - 8 month grind once this is all said and done. True some LFMs won't be as bad, some party leaders will give you a shot, but when they see you can not EVER use your TOD or other abilites due to low Ki gen they'll call you a "Epic Fail Monk" and boot you at first opportunity.

So what is gonna happen is that monks will go from "Versatile" in build philosophy like the ranger, bard, rogue to "Static" meaning 1 or 2 builds work, and ONLY 1 or 2 builds work, and I'm not talking JUST Epic content I'm talking content, in general, period.

[Letrii]

Will Kensai monks still have better DC with Stunning Fist once they fix it to properly calculate the DC based on monk level like they said they would in U9?

[Celebras]

[QUOTE=waterboytkd;3700727]It seems to me that there are two major things happening to monk in this next update: the loss of massive ki gen, and epic trash having boosted saves.

a question to that: i cant find the part in the release notes that say, they raised the saving throws. En contraire, it says:

General Quest & Adventure Area Changes

Players are now able to add an effect to their character that gives them a chance to earn additional slayer points when they kill a monster in a Wilderness area.
A floaty text now displays when a player gets a bonus slayer kill due to a buff or world property.
The quest panel now shows the proper information when re-entering a quest after having a hireling in the party.
Non-boss monster hit points and saving throws have been reduced in Epic difficulty.


Have been reduced, or am I missing something. And... i really didnt find anything in there, just wanted to point that out, im not making fun of u guys or so...

[Soleran]

Will Kensai monks still have better DC with Stunning Fist once they fix it to properly calculate the DC based on monk level like they said they would in U9?

assuming a comparable wisdom yes the kensei will have a better stunning fist dc

[Logicman69]

[QUOTE=Celebras;3701119]

It seems to me that there are two major things happening to monk in this next update: the loss of massive ki gen, and epic trash having boosted saves.

a question to that: i cant find the part in the release notes that say, they raised the saving throws. En contraire, it says:

General Quest & Adventure Area Changes

Players are now able to add an effect to their character that gives them a chance to earn additional slayer points when they kill a monster in a Wilderness area.
A floaty text now displays when a player gets a bonus slayer kill due to a buff or world property.
The quest panel now shows the proper information when re-entering a quest after having a hireling in the party.
Non-boss monster hit points and saving throws have been reduced in Epic difficulty.


Have been reduced, or am I missing something. And... i really didnt find anything in there, just wanted to point that out, im not making fun of u guys or so...

I was kind of wondering that too... did they mis-calculate on this and raised the saving throws instead? If they are lowering the throws as it states in the release notes, then monks will have an easier time hitting the stuns/special moves.

[ckorik]

The thing everyone is worked up about was a comment made by Eladrin that stated the 'minion' debuff was going away in Epic.

Note that only affects Epic and therefore doesn't really change the 1-19 level game.

The patch notes say something different and from personal testing I can't say that anything is worse for light monks.

Dark monks are worse off especially if they are dex based - *I* don't have an issue with this - gimp your monk versatility for DPS - which means maybe you can't stun if you want to ToD every opportunity.

The comment Eladrin made was in reference to the spell pass changes - and that perhaps with all the buffs to caster dps they would be able to reverse the minion save debuff that went in a couple of patches ago.

[edgarallanpoe]

OP, you are totally wrong. Monks are going to get a HUGE boost for U9.

The nerf to ki generation is so trivial. So you need to use Oremi's instead of Nyoko's for trash mobs? OH NO major game breaker right there! Not... c'mon, guys.

I keep hearing this and honestly don't understand why anyone would think this.

Yes, there will be a 50% increase to damage on held mobs, BUT there are *several* new wrinkles that severely mitigate this increase.

1. The lack of auto-crit means that the burst effect on wraps doesn't automatically go off.
2. The increase in SF DC means that there will be a lot less stunned mobs.
3. The lack of Ki regen means that there will be a lot less *attempts* at SF to begin with.

Put all 3 of those together and that 50% goes right out the window.

The biggest thing that the anti Monk crowd is not realizing is this...

The beauty of a Monk lies in its versatility. Not one single Monk player is crying about DPS....not one. The anti Monk crowd keeps bringing it up but it is a red herring. Monk players like versatility, not DPS. With this upcoming change, a Monk without Oremis and not in Fire stance is pretty much useless. That goes against *everything* that is cool about being a Monk. THIS is what has Monk players crying foul...

Think about this for one second....(this is all being reported by experienced Monk players on Lam)

1. Every stance besides Fire is now useless.
2. Every Path besides Crane is now useless
3. Every Monk must now have Oremis to be useful.

Any other class that would experience the above would be upset. NO class should be pigeonholed like this. It makes no sense.

[ckorik]

This is the post FYI:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...27#post3657827

Assassin III is treated as a vorpal weapon, so is now hit point capped but now has an effect in high level content. Assassin II is treated as a death effect with an opportunity cost, so does not have any hit point related restrictions. You can go ahead and assassinate epic monsters (or monsters in previous death warded dungeons), but be warned that we've also reduced the penalty epic trash has to their saves from the minion debuff (and chopped their hit point to about half of what they were before).

[ckorik]

The beauty of a Monk lies in its versatility. Not one single Monk player is crying about DPS....not one. The anti Monk crowd keeps bringing it up but it is a red herring. Monk players like versatility, not DPS. With this upcoming change, a Monk without Oremis and not in Fire stance is pretty much useless. That goes against *everything* that is cool about being a Monk. THIS is what has Monk players crying foul...

Think about this for one second....(this is all being reported by experienced Monk players on Lam)

1. Every stance besides Fire is now useless.
2. Every Path besides Crane is now useless
3. Every Monk must now have Oremis to be useful.

Any other class that would experience the above would be upset. NO class should be pigeonholed like this. It makes no sense.

1. Only if you are a dark path worried about DPS
2. Only if you are a dark path worried about DPS
3. Only if you are a dark path worried about DPS

Specifically ToD - stop using ToD and your Ki problems go away. That's why people are saying this is crying about DPS.

A monk that can't do anything but ToD is gimp if they can't fire it - no argument. Perhaps the dark monk role is no longer to stun but to DPS.

[krogyy]

The beauty of a Monk lies in its versatility. Not one single Monk player is crying about DPS....not one.

maybe not DPS, but i heard a lot of crying by various of the so called "pro-monk crowd" that kensai's have better tactics DC.

they also forgot about the monk versatility and concentrated their attention in a single aspect of the monk class.
so it goes both ways really.

hopefully the changes are so that many monks can rediscover all the Ki strikes that are seldom used.
for example if a mob has high fort save, dance him instead of stun.

and it may be better to stance dance in U9. fire while building the combo then water to land it.
tactical play is fun.

[dejafu]

...




What?

[Taryana]

Since when our monk chars have been so uber? Each class has got its pro et contras. I DO hate things being nerfed for the sake of making the game harder, so people spend more in-game time playing OLD CONTENT. Rather cheap way of developing it. Add content and classes - we dont need nerfs and grinds!
NERFS + GRINDS = NO FUN!!!