Monks - the new glass cannons

[Aalric]

There's been a lot of talk about how both pm & tanks will be hit by U14. There's another class that is also in trouble, perhaps even more than the other 2 - that's monks who, after U14 will be DDO's new glass cannons.

Armor wearers are getting more AC on their armors. This will more than make up for their loss of dodge items. Even when they get hit, they have PRR to soak up some of the dmg & deaden the pain. & in the closed Beta, Torc said quite clearly that without these changes, melee wouldn't be viable - they would simply be receiving too much dmg & would die.

But where does that leave monks?

Monks MUST wear cloth. Cloth does not get an armor boost. As a matter of fact, a monk on beta tends to have less ac then on live because his dodge items don't count towards his ac & his ac has not been boosted like other armored melee.

When a monk gets hit, he only has PRR in mountain stance, which is much less than provided by armor.

Now a monk does have unlimited dodge. This sounds good in theory but it is really useless in practice (at least the way it is currently implemented). An armored melee gets most of his ac from 1 - 2 single items (his armor & shield, if he uses one) and can use all of his other items for dps. A monk would have to use almost every slot for dodge increasing items & even then, would probably not have enough dodge to make that big a difference. And we still have the problem about what happens when a monk gets hit - he doesn't have the hp of a fighter or barb or their PRR - how is he meant to survive?

In short, we need something to give monks either more AC, substantially more dodge (maybe both their wisdom & dex bonuses - still not sure if it would be enough) and more PRR.

Turbine has put a lot of effort into monks. They have changed the way their dmg works, made an interesting epic destiny & are even looking at handwrap bugs. But if they don’t fix this, there will simply be no point in playing monks - they will have gone from being one of the most resilient melee's to being glass cannons who have less hp & less ability to survive. &, tbh, although they will defiantly be glass, I am not even sure if they will be cannons because the "Hard to kill" nerf will probably effect quivering palm & touch of death.

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

tod is not a death effect, it does 500 negative dmg or 250 on a save, so unless the hard to kill makes them impervious to negative dmg then the tod will work, though quivering palm hardly works less you invest heavily in it, and... with the hard to kill i will be taking it off my bar completely

[t0r012]

tod is not a death effect, it does 500 negative dmg or 250 on a save, so unless the hard to kill makes them impervious to negative dmg then the tod will work, though quivering palm hardly works less you invest heavily in it, and... with the hard to kill i will be taking it off my bar completely

only planning on playing hard/elite epics?
did you have a 37+ DC with your QP that was doing much in the old epics?

[Aalric]

hard to kill was initially a deathward - that may have stopped TOD becuase it's a negative energy effect. It's now haunting & I have no idea how that will effect TOD...

But this wasn't the main point of my thread & it's just nit picking. perhaps we will be cannons, perhaps we won't be. We will definately be made out of glass.

[FranOhmsford]

Clerics aren't getting Armour Bonuses/PRR that they should be getting as Hvy Armour Wearers.
They're losing Implosion/Destruction etc. as viable spells.
They're losing Damage on Blade Barrier.
They're losing Healing power too BUT this is minor.

AC/PRR is the big one however - Radiant Servant basically requires that you be standing in the middle of the ruck and the AC changes are going to make AC a requirement so Clerics are going to take FAR FAR more damage.

Clonks will be broken completely by the looks of things.

Monks/PMs/Tanks etc. may have it bad BUT:

Clerics are getting the biggest kicking!

[Stillwaters]

Clerics aren't getting Armour Bonuses/PRR that they should be getting as Hvy Armour Wearers. <-same bonuses under divine power though

They're losing Implosion/Destruction etc. as viable spells.<- bull! cooldown on implosion takes care of most of the penalty from the MAX 5 mobs you will kill from it, destruction and slay living are getting a small nerf if you constantly spammed them

They're losing Damage on Blade Barrier. <- Blade barrier damage is for artificers, and its much easier to find items that boost it now didnt you get the memo?

They're losing Healing power too BUT this is minor. < spell changes have taken most of the GEAR benefits down and raised the value of enhancements and metas, Heal and MASS heal take a hit the other cures and bursts do better

AC/PRR is the big one however - Radiant Servant basically requires that you be standing in the middle of the ruck and the AC changes are going to make AC a requirement so Clerics are going to take FAR FAR more damage. <-- more than they do on live, past about lvl 11??

Clonks will be broken completely by the looks of things. <- totally agree here cloth builds are screwed over HARD

Monks/PMs/Tanks etc. may have it bad BUT:

Clerics are getting the biggest kicking!

My responses in COLOR

[MrWindupBird]

hard to kill was initially a deathward - that may have stopped TOD becuase it's a negative energy effect. It's now haunting & I have no idea how that will effect TOD...

But this wasn't the main point of my thread & it's just nit picking. perhaps we will be cannons, perhaps we won't be. We will definately be made out of glass.

Yes. The Devs have alluded to the fact that monk AC/defenses are still under consideration, but there hasnt been any development on this front.
There are really two frames of reference here: DPS monks vs armored melees, and monk tanking builds vs armored tanks.

The problems:
A. The addition of higher base armor classes relatively disadvantages monks. Consider something like the new Cormyrian red armor posted in the U14 items list: the heavy armor is 28armor/2maxdex vs 9armor for the robes. So, that's a 21pt difference to make up in dex/wis modifiers. That's a lot, but it's not unreasonable, although the number required for parity will be a bit higher than 21 due to mobility/enhancements/etc with max dex bonus on the armor.

B. PRR. This is a big one. Right now, monks are getting screwed on PRR. And it's a bigger deal than you think, even. Nevermind the fact that monks cannot achieve any meaningful PRR without being in earth stance, which is not going to be desirable for non-tank monks, and that the effective monk PRR cap for a toon focussed on it is far far lower than a fighter or paladin tank in heavy armor with a shield. The issue I havent seen discussed is one of both HP and variance. We can calculate the total damage mitigation as an iterative combination of concealment/dodge/AC/PRR whatever else I'm missing. The problem with using this as a measure however is that it ignores the variance of incoming damage, ie the spiky-ness. As anyone who has ever healed a tank knows, spiky damage is bad, and harder/more resource intensive to heal than an equivalent amount of damage occurring at predictable intervals. This spikiness problem is compounded with a lower hp total of the tank. Monks suffer from both problems at once.
Even if they were able to achieve comparable damage mitigation to heavy-armor-wearers via increased dodge relative to lower AC and far lower PRR (for a variety of reasons this seems unlikely to be the case but we'll give the monk the benefit of the doubt for the moment), this results in much spikier incoming damage, due to the mitigation coming from dodge rather than PRR. And monks dont have the feats, toughness enhancements, hit dice or +x%hp from defender stances to accomodate this spikiness with a large HP-pool. Spiky damage + lower hp = not a very good tank. So I am not optimistic about the potential for monk tanks, at least for bosses with high physical damage output. Spell-heavy bosses may be fine. All of this is independent of the fact that the tanking bonuses earth stances offers are strictly inferior to those of the defender stances, incidentally, which furthers the conclusion of the obsolescence of monk tanks.

C. Dodge! Monks can dodge at least, right? The amount of dodge they can get is uncapped, they must be awesome at it! Not so much.
I'd like to see monks become the dodge-y melees, even though this is strictly inferior to equivalent PRR, from a tanking standpoint, as discussed above. But as things stand, monks are exactly as good at dodging as arty, wiz, sorc, cleric, FVS, bard, druid, pally and ranger, and worse than rogues and barbs. Which is to say that only rogue and barb currently have class-dependent bonuses to dodge. Everything else is gear and feats. And Epic Destiny enhancements (3% is found in Grandmaster of Flowers, the rest elsewhere). But a monk can slot lots of dodge and make use of that uncapped max dodge bonus right? Again, not so much. For one, dodge is slottable but doing so precludes using that slot for other purposes (DPS, utility, other survivability). Expecting additional use of slots to balance defensive abilities isn't a very good idea. Further, it's not difficult to push light armors into the low 20s for max dex bonus, which is more dodge than you're ever going to be realistically able to slot anyway. So that supposed advantage is also null.


I'd like to see the problem of monk-squishiness addressed via dodge- this seems most appropriate to the defensive abilities of the class. Monks would still cede the position of excellent tanks for bosses who deal a lot of physical damage, due to the PRR/hp pool issues, but would remain useful melee who can stand some aggro. The issue with implementing it is to tie the dodge bonus to monk levels somehow. The issue with the strength of 2-monk-splash for AC-tanks was that the Wis-to-AC vested immediately with just one level of monk, which does create some balancing issues. A few possibilities I can see: the possibility of wis (and perhaps dex) to dodge has been broached a few times. I think this is a pretty reasonable solution. It would add a large chunk of dodge and alleviate a lot of the pain. The problem then becomes how to distribute it, so that the monk-y goodness actually scales with levels of monk, vs being entirely upfront as it was previously. An obvious answer would be to tie the dodge to stances somehow, although that might have the problem of penalizing players who frequently switch stance situationally but do not have them all at master/grandmaster level. Another option would be to tie it to monk level, such that the max % dodge bonus you get would be min(monk level, wisModifier) or a similar permutation.

Just some thoughts I've had. Also, I realize that there are other classes who are being overlooked/diminished also, such as rangers. Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to advocate for those classes.

[JollySwagMan]

This comes as a bit of a change - on live, a 20 Monk in Earth IV stance has some pretty nice DR while full-out attacking!

One uniquely Monk-ish way of addressing the problem might be introducing more Monk combos that could temporarily boost Dodge (or blocking DR, Fortification or other defensive attributes). Self-target only probably. Perhaps have the finishing move activated by holding block when hitting the finisher key.

Mind, I haven't asked yet - any differences in Ki generation/maintenance using the new system?

Another may be improving Tumble's effectiveness in avoiding attacks - does Tumbling provide a Dodge bonus in the new system? That could be a nice option for more than just Monks.

[CarpeNoctu]

Monks MUST wear cloth. Cloth does not get an armor boost.

Are you sure about this? Some of the cloth has a + value to it now, and when I switched out some regular outfit for a +3 outfit the other day, my AC went up by 3 (don't remember the % change and still haven't totally gotten my head around that).

I could easily be wrong, but it seems to me that the easiest way to boost the ac of the cloth wearing classes is to make a few things stack by changing the nature of some of them. If, for example, we look at the +X on FP as being inherent to FP due to it's being made of metal, then obviously cloth can't possibly have that +X for the same reason. Thus, if the cloth "armor" was just a bit different so that the AC bonus of my Jidz (or any other AC Bracers) would stack, that could help...

Of course, I'm not even going to pretend that I understand this stuff as well as some of you, as I just don't get quite as into the numbers and the math as some. That said, I could easily be wrong about the apparent simplicity of this suggestion, and even if not, it could be that it wouldn't really help in the grand scheme... So, feel free to ignore.

Going back to my coffee now

[Stillwaters]

/snip brilliant post

+1

I would +50 you if I could, this is EXACTLY what needs to happen and what I was trying to show in the closed threads.

Unfortunately it still breaks tiny splash and low splash cloth users....
though those builds still retain evasion and monk feats, if wanting defenses they have OPTIONS to jump into armor and lose cloth, true monks dont have that option.

[Stillwaters]

Are you sure about this? Some of the cloth has a + value to it now, and when I switched out some regular outfit for a +3 outfit the other day, my AC went up by 3 (don't remember the % change and still haven't totally gotten my head around that).

I could easily be wrong, but it seems to me that the easiest way to boost the ac of the cloth wearing classes is to make a few things stack by changing the nature of some of them. If, for example, we look at the +X on FP as being inherent to FP due to it's being made of metal, then obviously cloth can't possibly have that +X for the same reason. Thus, if the cloth "armor" was just a bit different so that the AC bonus of my Jidz (or any other AC Bracers) would stack, that could help...

Of course, I'm not even going to pretend that I understand this stuff as well as some of you, as I just don't get quite as into the numbers and the math as some. That said, I could easily be wrong about the apparent simplicity of this suggestion, and even if not, it could be that it wouldn't really help in the grand scheme... So, feel free to ignore.

Going back to my coffee now

Armor at lvl 25 gives +7from enhancement
and MAX 25 or 27AC (if you can fill the dex portion),

Shields add +7 from enhancement and 9AC more (3 more if you went tower shield and didnt mind losing MDB)
32 or 34(armor) + 16(heavy shield)
= 32 to 53AC (add more potentially from DEX + mobility or action point)

Cloth/bracers gives MAX 8 enhancement to AC,
monk levels (centered bonuses) give MAX 15 bonus to AC, most of that unavailable to a splash
(more from DEX and WIS) can assume 30s in each for +20AC maximum +30AC
20 to 30(stat) + 0 to 15(centered) +8(cloth/bracer)
= 28 to 53AC (add more potentially from stat boost pots etc)

The problem isn't the AC from cloth... it's the MITIGATION see HERE for why
Its the PRR is nonexistent, and the no MDB dodgecap is meaningless
Without these factors players will be ripped apart in lvl 20+ content.

[Eme]

the devs only seem to be talking about earth stance,, and using this as a base for monks.

This is so wrong on so many levels, whichever stance the player uses should be bonuses on top of a base unstanced monk.

They are rushing all this out and are going to screw this up so badly,,



screw up the only class i want to play, or force me into a particular stance turbine and youve lost me as a player.

[redspecter23]

My thoughts are this:

Each stance should offer both an offensive and defensive benefit.

Earth stance is the only one that offers any real defensive and offensive punch on Lamania currently. I'd give a substantial buff to water's dodge % and possibly tack on some concealment bonuses to air and/or fire in the neighborhood of 40%+ for top tiers to place it near permadisplacement levels.

Adding wisdom bonus to dodge would probably then put you right where you need to be defensively. I hear people talking about mid 30ish wisdom at end game. I cry bs on that. My monk should be nearing 60 wisdom at end game. That's 25% dodge right there. Combined with items and enhancements, that gets a wisdom based monk up to 50%+ dodge which is where I think a well built monk should be at end game. Sure you can build a monk strength based or not put effort into raising wisdom, but if you want to reap the rewards of a class with wisdom as a prime attribute, you should expect to have to invest heavily in it. Min/max str/con with dumped wisdom monks could be a thing of the past.

[Drakos]

My thoughts are this:

Each stance should offer both an offensive and defensive benefit.

Earth stance is the only one that offers any real defensive and offensive punch on Lamania currently. I'd give a substantial buff to water's dodge % and possibly tack on some concealment bonuses to air and/or fire in the neighborhood of 40%+ for top tiers to place it near permadisplacement levels.

Adding wisdom bonus to dodge would probably then put you right where you need to be defensively. I hear people talking about mid 30ish wisdom at end game. I cry bs on that. My monk should be nearing 60 wisdom at end game. That's 25% dodge right there. Combined with items and enhancements, that gets a wisdom based monk up to 50%+ dodge which is where I think a well built monk should be at end game. Sure you can build a monk strength based or not put effort into raising wisdom, but if you want to reap the rewards of a class with wisdom as a prime attribute, you should expect to have to invest heavily in it. Min/max str/con with dumped wisdom monks could be a thing of the past.

I'd be interested on how you plan to get to near to 60 Wisdom.

[Stillwaters]

Min/max str/con with dumped wisdom monks could be a thing of the past.

I thought they were already?
I'd love to compare notes with you tho on getting 60 wisdom (is that a lot of expensive pots etc?)
The best(balanced) idea thrown around is to tie the 20% or so needed dodge in with either monk levels or enhancement/stances.

They could always split the difference and alternate giving 1 dodge/2 monk lvls and 1 prr/2 monk lvls

Another option is to put it on bracers and robes but make the dodge% part affect monk only

That way it tiers with level (preferably MONK lvl)

I like your ideas on stances having defense and offense each though
I (especially recently) consider
Earth the "shield" stance (as if i was wearing one)....
Fire is the ki regen stance
Water is for saves/DCs (doesn't do a fantastic job)
Air is for speed/dps

[Malky]

I'd be interested on how you plan to get to near to 60 Wisdom.

Think 52 was the max sustainable 'til now. Between 1 more levelup, +8 item instead of +7, +3 insight instead of +2, and the destiny/twists that can add a lot of it...

[krogyy]

well, they are offering ways other than gear to improve monk's defenses. see

Walking with waves (min level 20) (3 ranks - 1 AP): (Passive) Gain cold resistance 4 and +2 to AC. If you have monk levels and are in ocean stance, +[1/2/3]% chance to dodge enemy attackes

Standing with stone (min level 20) (3 ranks - 1 AP): (Passive) Acid resistance 4, +5 max HP. If you have monk levels and are in earth stance, +[5/10/15] PRR

besides, wasn't the PRR granted by heavy armor equal to your BAB? that tops at 20, exactly as earth stance PRR value. with standing with stone you can even have PRR than is similar to full plate + tower shield.

the only ones that will have clearly better PRR is the defenders. so i wouldn't call monks glass cannons at all.

[LiquidShadow]

i dunno what are u complaining about... u might get lower PRR but thats how its supposed to be right there has to be some benefit for using heavy armor and loosing IMPROVED evasion? u still get ****load AC from enhancements/epic destiny, WIS mod, and centered (it was changed IIRC) while other classes doesnt get this and have to use shield instead of twf or thf style - u also get full str dmg bonus to both hands and ur base dmg gets increased with ur lvl... yet u want even more...

so in the end i think monks are still in better situation than most melees who are not tanks - and yes i dont understand why monk should be a viable tank - maybe some support tank but not the main one

EDIT: before someone starts attacking me. i also have a lvl20 monk aswell as melee character in heavy armor without evasion

[LiquidShadow]

My thoughts are this:

Each stance should offer both an offensive and defensive benefit.

Earth stance is the only one that offers any real defensive and offensive punch on Lamania currently. I'd give a substantial buff to water's dodge % and possibly tack on some concealment bonuses to air and/or fire in the neighborhood of 40%+ for top tiers to place it near permadisplacement levels.

Adding wisdom bonus to dodge would probably then put you right where you need to be defensively. I hear people talking about mid 30ish wisdom at end game. I cry bs on that. My monk should be nearing 60 wisdom at end game. That's 25% dodge right there. Combined with items and enhancements, that gets a wisdom based monk up to 50%+ dodge which is where I think a well built monk should be at end game. Sure you can build a monk strength based or not put effort into raising wisdom, but if you want to reap the rewards of a class with wisdom as a prime attribute, you should expect to have to invest heavily in it. Min/max str/con with dumped wisdom monks could be a thing of the past.

oh yes and then 45% of server population will become monks while the other 45% will stay on their wf sorcs. 10% for all those fanatics that doesnt need to be uber

as for the stances... each of them is supposed to have some advantage and disadvantage not just benefits... u get +4 con and -2 dex in earth stance not +4 con and +2 something
same with power attack u get extra dmg at the cost of "to hit" bonus
i totally dont understand why u get extra crit multiplier in earth stance because lets face it the whole defense bonuses are enough to make it worth using
water stance could use a buff on the other hand... +1 passive ki generation is weaksauce now and dodge might be the way since its defensive stance

[Urist]

Feat: Turn aside blow
When in this stance, your character concentrates on parrying or deflecting enemy blows, so that they hit with less force.
* Stance; converts up to x points of dodge bonus (capped by armour) to f(x) points of PRR.
* Monks (and fighters?) get enhancements to boost the maximum
* Can be selected as a monk or fighter bonus feat