Do the game developers not care about monks anymore?

[Taimasan]

I am a player who used to love to play monks. But due to the bugs, not fixing things and flat out ignoring the class...I would like to hear from a dev if these problems would be ever be fixed. If not please take the monk class out. It pains me to see it still there. I would love to come play DDO again, but I just want to ask why? Why developers? Why?

[Saekee]

they are working on wraps in terms of coding. I suspect that it makes sense to start with that big bug and work from there

[Marshal_Lannes]

I am curious why you would like to see them removed from the game?

[FranOhmsford]

they are working on wraps in terms of coding. I suspect that it makes sense to start with that big bug and work from there

I've never understood the supposed bugs with Wraps?

What exactly is this big bug?

Monks have massive problems that have absolutely nothing to do with Wraps - Terrible Enhancement Trees {Henshin Mystic being a Prime Example but Shintao is also weak and Ninja isn't good either.}, No AoEs whatsoever! Earth Stance being an absolute requirement and the other stances being functionally worthless! I could go on!

Worst of all - The biggest issue with the Monk Class was it's ability as a Splash for other Builds {Including Archers!} - The Devs finally did the right thing and reduced the sheer power and ubiquitousness of the Monk Splash BUT WHILE DOING SO NERFED THE PURE MONK INTO VIRTUAL NON-EXISTENCE!

[Livmo]

I've never understood the supposed bugs with Wraps?

What exactly is this big bug?

Monks have massive problems that have absolutely nothing to do with Wraps - Terrible Enhancement Trees {Henshin Mystic being a Prime Example but Shintao is also weak and Ninja isn't good either.}, No AoEs whatsoever! Earth Stance being an absolute requirement and the other stances being functionally worthless! I could go on!

Worst of all - The biggest issue with the Monk Class was it's ability as a Splash for other Builds {Including Archers!} - The Devs finally did the right thing and reduced the sheer power and ubiquitousness of the Monk Splash BUT WHILE DOING SO NERFED THE PURE MONK INTO VIRTUAL NON-EXISTENCE!

Check yourself.

[Discpsycho]

I'm not sure exactly what the problem is with wraps, but they're weird for a few reasons. Since you can only equip one and can't have an offhand, they're a two-handed weapon. But they have no base damage, instead applying modifiers to the monk's fists, which supply the base damage. They also don't have glancing blows, which is weird for a two-handed item, AND they let you benefit from offhand attacks that are further increased by TWF. I'd assume it's for one or more of these reasons that abilities modifying the crit profile (eg, DC's Celestial Champion) or damage/to-hit attribute (Tempest's Tempest and Graceful Death respectively) don't work properly. Most of these also don't work on shapeshifted druids, but it's less of an issue because their crit profile is better and they can exploit the SWF/TWF bug.

I won't argue with you on the Shintao or Henshin trees, but Ninja Spy isn't awful, it's just unremarkable. It's got nothing on the updated melee trees (swash, DWS, tempest for example) but that's more due to age and a lack of power increases than any particular weakness inherent to the tree. Compared to the older versions of some melee enhancement trees (DWS and KOTC come to mind), it was fantastic, especially pre-U23 or 25 or so. But ToD is worthless now because HP is so high, and Shadow Double is dropped in favor of longer cooldowns like A Thousand Cuts (Tempest). I'd call Ninja Spy on par with Warchanter, except that a Warchanter has access to two other useful trees and Ninja Spies don't.

The passive bonuses monks get are similar - the faster unarmed attack animation only works while unarmed, dodge is less exciting when everyone has UMD or greensteel items for displacement, and Perfect Self's 10 DR isn't significant anymore because mobs hit for way over 100 damage in high-end dungeons. They're nice bonuses, but aren't usually worthwhile because they involve gimping yourself via PrE restrictions. Really, the only competitive pure monks are monkchers (Ninja Spy capstone is nice but a lot of endgame shuriken already have vorpal), who splash into or outright ignore the monk enhancement lines.

With an enhancement rework, Ninja Spy and Henshin could work just fine. Shintao would probably require the handwrap bugfixes. I'm sure these are somewhere on Turbine's list of things to do, but since the class still works as a splash, it's not of the utmost importance

[FranOhmsford]

I'm not sure exactly what the problem is with wraps, but they're weird for a few reasons. Since you can only equip one and can't have an offhand, they're a two-handed weapon. But they have no base damage, instead applying modifiers to the monk's fists, which supply the base damage. They also don't have glancing blows, which is weird for a two-handed item, AND they let you benefit from offhand attacks that are further increased by TWF. I'd assume it's for one or more of these reasons that abilities modifying the crit profile (eg, DC's Celestial Champion) or damage/to-hit attribute (Tempest's Tempest and Graceful Death respectively) don't work properly. Most of these also don't work on shapeshifted druids, but it's less of an issue because their crit profile is better and they can exploit the SWF/TWF bug.

Monks need crit profile bonuses added to their level up system then - No need to change handwraps just up the crit profile that Unarmed Fighting gets instead.

I won't argue with you on the Shintao or Henshin trees, but Ninja Spy isn't awful, it's just unremarkable. It's got nothing on the updated melee trees (swash, DWS, tempest for example) but that's more due to age and a lack of power increases than any particular weakness inherent to the tree. Compared to the older versions of some melee enhancement trees (DWS and KOTC come to mind), it was fantastic, especially pre-U23 or 25 or so. But ToD is worthless now because HP is so high, and Shadow Double is dropped in favor of longer cooldowns like A Thousand Cuts (Tempest). I'd call Ninja Spy on par with Warchanter, except that a Warchanter has access to two other useful trees and Ninja Spies don't.

Did I say Ninja was awful?

No...I said it wasn't good!

But: The only reason for a wraps user to go into Ninja is the absolutely ESSENTIAL 3rd Core - Shadow Veil!

[Marshal_Lannes]

But: The only reason for a wraps user to go into Ninja is the absolutely ESSENTIAL 3rd Core - Shadow Veil!

And even that is diminished because every 3rd epic item has ghostly on it, so really every class gets almost 50% of what used to be a monk unique ability. (well PM too)

Monks are certainly not unplayable, they just are not as good at the power 6 classes. Some things of interest would be...

Big DPS increase to wraps thru the Shintao tree.
Synergy with fire stance in the Henshin Tree. Bringing up abilities in here at least on par with TA. If they don't want two QS trees, then make this a warlock type SLA magic effect tree for monks.

Stances need a complete overhaul. Monks need access to some PRR/MRR. Make sure to back load the really good stuff into the the monk cores so you can't have people splashing 2 to 6 levels of monk and getting all the benefits. We don't need a new generation of 14/6 15/5 paladin monks.

[Saekee]

I've never understood the supposed bugs with Wraps?

What exactly is this big bug?

Monks have massive problems that have absolutely nothing to do with Wraps - Terrible Enhancement Trees {Henshin Mystic being a Prime Example but Shintao is also weak and Ninja isn't good either.}, No AoEs whatsoever! Earth Stance being an absolute requirement and the other stances being functionally worthless! I could go on!

Worst of all - The biggest issue with the Monk Class was it's ability as a Splash for other Builds {Including Archers!} - The Devs finally did the right thing and reduced the sheer power and ubiquitousness of the Monk Splash BUT WHILE DOING SO NERFED THE PURE MONK INTO VIRTUAL NON-EXISTENCE!

wraps are super buggy since they are not typed as weapons. The result is that a lot of abilities and weapon boosts do not work for wraps. I do not have the list handy and can't recall any offhand since my monks were all weaponized dex-based (save for one weird splash).

I agree on your tree analysis. A pure ninja spy master with the ninja capstone has a worse crit profile with short swords than a level 3 bard.

[Shoemaker]

Okay, so the developers do know that the monk class is in rough shape at the moment. I believe that the current plan is to work on monk after fighter. Fighter is probably not happening in U29 (they've never said it would despite a rumor that went around saying otherwise, or at least I can't find any developer claim that it would be in U29). That means to me that fighter will likely be U30. Based on the fact that I have heard them say likely in the first half of 2016, and based on what they did for xbows for mechanic rogues where they gutted them out and rebuilt them in a much more appropriate manner that makes them act and work appropriately (or at least much better than they were, if you know of a specific bug, please report it someplace), I believe that monk will be right after fighter. This says to me likely in U31 or U32 but possibly bumped out to U33. I know that when they do monk, they plan on gutting out handwraps (like they did xbows) and fixing them correctly. The issue with handwraps is that they are not weapons. They are typed in the system as "unarmed" which means they have to do hokey-pokey silly-willy things to make them "work" at all. I'm not sure how they intend to change them, but I would assume they will be retyped as weapons and apply effects like normal weapons. This means that all handwrap/unarmed feats/enhancements/etc. will need to be updated and modified for this.


TL;DR. Developers do care, and have stated likely to be fixed first half of next year.

[froggi480]

TL;DR. Developers do care, and have stated likely to be fixed first half of next year.

Waiting for this is going to be torture!

[twigzz]

Waiting for this is going to be torture!

Going to be? It's been torture for a grip now. I mean, how long have wraps been messed up so far and nothing has changed yet? Years!

[Marshal_Lannes]

Shoe - do you have any idea how this will effect Legendary Greensteel? I guess you cannot make greensteel wraps. Will you be able to make epic greensteel wraps? If not in u29, will they add epic greensteel wraps when they redo the monk?

[froggi480]

Going to be? It's been torture for a grip now. I mean, how long have wraps been messed up so far and nothing has changed yet? Years!

Well yes, I agree with that but I quit playing DDO for a long time (many long times actually) always came back because I missed my monk so much. This time when I came back it had been a bit longer than usual. When I finally came back to give it another try, the character that I had loved so very much, that always kept me coming back and putting $ into this game now seemed even worse than ever and I just couldn't stand it any longer so with great sadness I TR her into a different class just so I could feel like I was not holding my husband back when we played together.

So it's been torture (just not so much for me on the off times) and will be every time I log on to that character.

[Vargouille]

I am a player who used to love to play monks. But due to the bugs, not fixing things and flat out ignoring the class...I would like to hear from a dev if these problems would be ever be fixed. If not please take the monk class out. It pains me to see it still there. I would love to come play DDO again, but I just want to ask why? Why developers? Why?

We have plans to fix all handwraps in the entirety of DDO by making them behave more like all other weapons in the game do. It is because handwraps are considered special and different that there have been so many bugs in the past. It's unfortunate that it's a great deal of work to fix, but it is a large fix across many items and systems (so it takes time no matter what, and extra time to make sure we get it right since it's complicated). Once we do that, we can make new handwraps and handwrap abilities the same as other items and combat styles, instead of having to make special cases for them each time. Then those items will be faster to make and with greatly reduced chance of having bugs (or, at least, the bugs won't just be for handwraps!)

[Impaqt]

We have plans to fix all handwraps in the entirety of DDO by making them behave more like all other weapons in the game do. It is because handwraps are considered special and different that there have been so many bugs in the past. It's unfortunate that it's a great deal of work to fix, but it is a large fix across many items and systems (so it takes time no matter what, and extra time to make sure we get it right since it's complicated). Once we do that, we can make new handwraps and handwrap abilities the same as other items and combat styles, instead of having to make special cases for them each time. Then those items will be faster to make and with greatly reduced chance of having bugs (or, at least, the bugs won't just be for handwraps!)

Any idea when those "plans" become "We are now working on a fix...".

[Enoach]

Handwraps have been a thorn in DDO's Monk side since the start.

First there was no Greensteel option
Added in the Shaverath Rings to compensate, but ML18 vs ML12 still was a let down

But fighting styles and moves/feats have been a plague on the coding because they are unique in that they use both hands, but are not considered duel weapons as far as equipping goes but are considered duel weapons as far as hitting goes.

Monks have not yet had a pass, but to play a monk takes a lot more understanding and clicking of moves then most builds have. Some of the people I play with that enjoy their monk spend a lot of time prepping and using Ki, switching stances and adjusting to the situation. But all of them enjoy their pure monk over anything else they play. Sure their trees need some adjustments but what class didn't?

However, if you look at how long the Paladin class was considered subpar you will see that the time table monks have been in this situation is a lot less. I say give it some time, they will get to Monks and make the adjustments.

And I realize this is not a big deal, but the EE DQ2 I ran last night with my pure cleric and my buddy's pure monk was a lot of fun for both of us.

[FestusHood]

wraps are super buggy since they are not typed as weapons. The result is that a lot of abilities and weapon boosts do not work for wraps. I do not have the list handy and can't recall any offhand since my monks were all weaponized dex-based (save for one weird splash).

I agree on your tree analysis. A pure ninja spy master with the ninja capstone has a worse crit profile with short swords than a level 3 bard.

Wraps not working as weapons isn't a bug though, they were designed that way. As far as i know most of the historic actual bugs with handwraps have been fixed. There are also some abilities, notably stunning fist, that only work while unarmed, and that's not a bug either.

[peng]

wraps are super buggy since they are not typed as weapons. The result is that a lot of abilities and weapon boosts do not work for wraps. I do not have the list handy and can't recall any offhand since my monks were all weaponized dex-based (save for one weird splash).

Here's your list: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...d-bug-emporium

[Ovrad]

Once we do that, we can make new handwraps [...]

What about new outfits? The last named outfit that wasn't just a "one-size fits all armor" was the Spider-spun Caparison, from MotU, released on June 25, 2012.

And let's not forget to mention,
The more and more lackluster damage output in epics.
The 1 totally worthless enhancement tree, and the 2 mediocre (at best) trees.
The stance system that's ONLY viable in earth stance.
The dodge bonus that's way lower than rogues, while rogues get PRR from light armor.
The combo system that's greatly outdated.