Reflections of a monk-hater

**feynman** · 07-14-2008, 01:14 PM

I have been terribly critical of monks in the past; I have questioned their utility, design, and power. Well, after 13 levels of playing a monk, not much has changed.

Handwraps: I understand that these things must be kept in perspective, but broken and underpowered is no way to run a class. Vicious handwraps were fixed, of course, leaving me to wonder how anyone makes it to level 10 now, but ghost touch still doesn't work, and only getting to use one handwrap is kind of silly; what, are we supposed to be Michael Jackson?

Hit points: This is the killer; no matter how high your AC and saves, sometimes you get hit, and you need the HP to soak it up. A line of toughness enhancements would be a welcome option to all those ki moves. Of course, if you ditch TWF, mobility, etc, you can drop all those feats on toughness, and you can get close, but still low by tankish standards.

Ki moves: W_T_F? None of them would be worth the effort to click on if we had any reasonable options, but what else do we have to spend our AP on? We get a healing ability that doesn't heal enough after level 3 to be meaningful, a set of debuffs that everything is immune to, the blindness/curse/etc removal abilities that can be replaced by a nominal investment in potions, and a resurrection ability that is so restricted that it is essentially unusable. About all I use my Ki for is Wholeness of body and abundant step.

Abundant Step: OK, this goes a long way towards making up for all of the other shortcomings; I'm not sure that they meant to obviate the horn of agility test in the Crucible, although the issue of picking up the horn before the door closes is one that I was unaware of. The only thing that this needs is the ability to jump higher as well as farther.

Attack ability: As a strength build monk, my damage output isn't bad; not phenomenal, by any means, but enough to draw aggro and get myself killed. FYI: short of green steel kamas, the quarterstaff is the highest DPS monk weapon.

Three more levels, and I will have a reasonable comparison to my tempest-tank; right now, it looks like the monk has an advantage on AC and saves (though not by much), but comes up short on damage, utility, and especially hitpoints. The ki stuff looks neat, but does not substantially contribute to anything.

**Strakeln** · 07-14-2008, 01:27 PM

Dead-on.

What's really sad is when I first looked at the Harmonious Path monks, I thought "what a waste!" - especially with things like lesser restore/remove blindness/disease. So I took the dark path, and could not believe that I actually found something even MORE useless!

The HP is a big issue, though. Should definitely be a toughness enhancement line.

Looks to me like they could make mod 8 "fix the monks" and still have plenty of stuff remain broken.

Pretty sad that we were told for upwards of a year that X, Y, and Z couldn't be looked at because the focus was on monks. They finally come out, only to find out everything from weapons to enhancements to the base abilities are waaaaaay out of whack with DDO reality. Almost to the point that it's like they were designed by someone that doesn't play DDO...

**Club'in** · 07-14-2008, 01:31 PM

What irks me is that you have to have all of those weak sauce lower level abilities (lesser restore? curse removal?, please) in order to pick up the higher level abilities like raise.

**Rameses** · 07-14-2008, 02:13 PM

well you could learn how to play a monk.
Not suggesting you as in you OP. But if the shoe fits.
Seriously, Monks are not Barbarians. Really? I didn't notice.
Low DPS? Maybe, but Monk attacks are DoT. And since a Monks attack rate is faster than the standard Melee (even without Wind Stance.) it gets over looked that a Monk is dealing out more Damage over time.

And which good Monk actually gives a FLY'ing rip about the trash Finishers/Path Abilities? Sure it's nice to use Unbalancing Strike I, Walk of the Sun etc... but Stunning Fist is gonna make your Monk stand out more.

Handwraps are BROKEN. We get it. Now build a bridge and get over it. These will be fixed, since there is already a million threads about broken Wraps and lack of Greensteel Weave Wraps.

Instead of complaining about what Monks can't do. Level a Monk to 16 run it for a while. Really invest yourself into it. Discover what a capped Monk is capable of. Then afterwards pass-judgement.
Cause right now, you have a level 10 Monk and this makes you an expert about how bad Monks are?
Right

I am, Rameses!

**gamblerjoe** · 07-14-2008, 02:15 PM

monks are by far my favorite class from pnp. i gleefully rolled a monk on risia as soon as i possibly could, and played it to L7. I made him again the same way on argo, and got him up to lvl 5. Honestly, im just not diggin' him. Dont know what to say, not my cup-o-tea. As far as what they contribute to a party, its too close to a sword'n'board guy with good saves. My mnk/rgr/pal, however, is super effective and really fun to play.

to all the players who hated monk to begin with, i reccomend not building one. if u REALLY hate it, i understand that you want to be able to say u capped one when people try to say you dont know what youre talking about. Just tell those people to screw. Dont waste your valuable playing a toon u dont like. Even if you are a great character builder, and have the ability to gear it up, if you dont have your heart in it, the toon is not going to be that good.

My best guess as to why monks are underpowered is that they have a lot of 'fun' abilities that are situationally very usefull. If they were as tough as a str8 ftr or rgr without them, they would be unbalanced with them. As it turns out, to get those abilities, you have to give up things that the typical ddo player does not want to give up.

Even though i dont like to see monk bashing, about 90% of the gripes are perfectly valid. Keep them coming. I doubt the devs will change anything, and i dont really give a s*** weather or not they do. Just know that they read the forums. they are there reading, learning and improving their skills. they are smarter human beings than most people think.

**feynman** · 07-14-2008, 02:31 PM