Devs - once the Ocean Stance bug is fixed . . .

[OliviaCrowley]

The scenario..

Level 20 Monk 3.5[x]
Earth + JT .5[x]
Active Monk PL .5[x]
First Tier GMoF .5[x]

at 1d6 +30 I should be seeing top main damage numbers of 5*6 +30 = 60

The most I am seeing is 54

Something is not working properly....

Active Monk Past Life is not working at the moment, I believe. Nor is Jidz'tetka, to my knowledge. Old diesteps are currently broken.

[Chette]

Seems a little odd that a fighter in light armor (which provides significant AC and PRR) can obtain the same dodge as a monk in robes (which provides negligible AC and no PRR). Hopefully monks will be included in their next visit to this issue and provided with some means of having a balanced defense.

[OliviaCrowley]

Seems a little odd that a fighter in light armor (which provides significant AC and PRR) can obtain the same dodge as a monk in robes (which provides negligible AC and no PRR). Hopefully monks will be included in their next visit to this issue and provided with some means of having a balanced defense.

I wouldn't call 9 AC negligible by any stretch. Picking up the Sun Soul robes (I had no armored bonus item before u14) gave me a 7 or 8% bump in defense. I really don't understand people's problems with survivability of monks at the moment. Mine has (had, TRed to continue completionist run, returning to monk as final life) no issues whatsoever with risk of death, and I didn't even have shadowfade (just mabar cloak) or a blurry item.

I asked every monk I grouped with if they felt more or less survivable. The only ones who said less were geared to the teeth, only-hit-on-a-20 characters in U13. Funny thing is, these characters were still hit on a 2 in almost all of the content that was relevant to them (old epics). Even the H-Orc Strength-focused monks I had played with told me they felt much more survivable now than they did pre-U14. 'I went from being hit on a 2 to avoiding 40+% of attacks!' was a very common theme amongst people actually playing the game instead of complaining on the forums.

[TDSCBloody]

Tell ya what, keep the dodge cap but let me dodge spells and effects and we'll call it even

*Drow sorcerer casts finger of death*

DODGE!

my monk now has a spell resistance of 45,
I don't even need to "dodge" spells

btw I tested switching between fire stance (8% dodge with my gear) and the bugged water stance (25% dodge)
and I can't really tell the difference in gameplay. I only can say that my survivability is pretty good in both cases.
that is on a grandmaster 5 with about 70 AC (~50% to be hit), blur and ghostly.
so from my personal experience I don't really care about the dodge cap...

[Ape_Man]

Seems a little odd that a fighter in light armor (which provides significant AC and PRR) can obtain the same dodge as a monk in robes (which provides negligible AC and no PRR). Hopefully monks will be included in their next visit to this issue and provided with some means of having a balanced defense.

While I don't think there should be a dodge cap (it really is dumb, especially as you mention a fighter with the right twists and AP can get the same in Leather as they can in cloth) I can't say I've seen monks (especially not Earth-Stance ones, and who isn't Earth-stance these days?) being defensively behind the other classes.

There's a ton of defense out there if you twist right and take the right ED. Even the PRR can get to the diminishing returns point.

Built right monks are still the god-class Turbine intends them to be. Splashes on the other hand . . .

Can we have dodge back to AC? The dex based toons are destroyed by this update. not only did the to hit calc's change, but we lost our dodge ac bonus as well. my 80+ ac ranger dropped and even wearing armor can't get close to where i was, much less the higher ac needed now with the to hit change.

Your forcing everyone to go str builds and we want variety!

Once your AC gets about the 50% miss mark those points of dodge pay off more than they do as AC . . . and if your AC isn't in the ballpark needed to play they still pay off.

One of my toons was an 80ish AC "ranger" who is now about a 65 self-buffed and I can't say I feel defensively gimped at all.

You just cannot put all your eggs in the AC-basket for defense. 20+% dodge (In the Weeds FTW - such a shame twisting it is almost impossible because it's home ED is terrible), 10% incorporeal, and 20% blur result is a lot of misses. To test I went into Sins of Attrition on hard and I could literally stand with a zillion devils around me like I could at 70ish AC before U14. Could I do that on Elite? no, but I couldn't do that before do to the grazing hits tearing me apart.

And we actually have SOME defense now in epics where we had not before unless you were a 6 STR halfling that couldn't hurt a fly. Overall it's actually gotten better, it's just different.

Definitely get something that gives you 10% incorporeal . . . ring of the stalker or Epic Cloak of night. Keep yourself blurred, keep your dodge up, get some displacement clickies for long fights and UMD the scrolls for short ones.

If you're 10% incorporeal, 20% dodge, and displacement you have a 66% "miss" even if they'd "hit" you on a 2 (which they won't because all AC will get you some misses except if you're a babarian as the game is hard-coded that they get hit 95% of the time). it's why the spell was nerfed to self-only.

Ans since you mentioned you're a ranger if you don't already have these take advantage of those two additional feats and pick up Quicken and Maximize. You can get away with a stupid amount of wreckless behavior if you have those two feats

Things are just different now, no other way to put it. With that said the dodge cap is still silly and should be re-thought.