Monk stunning kick removed?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Aganerral, Aug 24, 2017.

  1. Aelen Augur

    Do stuns halt the cooldown of a mob's autoattack round? I'm inclined to think they don't from stun-bubbling and stunlocking mobs in the past, and seeing what it looks like when they come undone. But I could be wrong.

    But I seem to remember hearing people throw around 2 seconds-ish as the recycle time on an average mob's swing. Again, not real clear on that.

    It's possible that moving the stun to less than 2 seconds will result in a difficult to model defensive loss that's not quite 1 to 1 with the old one.

    Aside from that, my first pass on this is that it looks good, and I might like tooling around on a monk more with this change. Might look at this when it goes to test.
  2. Sarcogian Augur

  3. Aelen Augur

    I went out and did a more controlled test of this behavior, and I’m pretty sure the way a stun works is it prevents action from being taken, but changes nothing about a mobs cooldowns.


    I.E., I went out and got mobs to attack my Enc, got them swinging independently by having them pulled from different distances, then when I AE stunned them they all had their swing rate sync up.

    I think that’s why having a stun bubble lapse or fail is so dangerous, the entire pile gets a volley off all at once if they don’t have to move to their target still.

    The time before they’d swing again in my test matched the time the stun should last, 6 seconds.

    I was incorrect in saying that 2 seconds was a particularly relevant time interval above. It’s more the case that shorter stuns can land in between combat rounds and do nothing, and longer stuns are progressively more likely to cover more time that a mob could’ve been swinging, and is being prevented. Swing speed of the mob matters, but longer stuns are progressively better, and longer swing cooldowns make stuns progressively worse.

    Assuming a 2 second swing cooldown(Not a given, I don’t know what the real ones are or what slow and reverse HHE actually make this look like)

    Assuming equal chance of a stun landing anywhere in that 2 second interval(Not a given, if the cooldowns line up properly people could time it.)

    Assuming round kick is a 4 second cooldown(I didn't check)

    Time until next swing with a 1.5 second stun

    0-0.5 = 2 seconds
    0.5-2 = 2-3.5 seconds

    0.25*2 = 0.5
    0.75*((2+3.5/2)) = 2.0625

    0.5+2.0625 = 2.5625

    Without a stun the time is 2 seconds
    2.5625 – 2 = 0.5625

    This is the average gain, and if 4 seconds is the true timer for round kick that’s
    0.5625/4 = 0.140625

    For the basic representation of that power over time.
    Qualitatively, that’s 2-3.5 seconds between attacks, 0-1.5 of which is the stun, somewhat weighted toward the 0. Available every 4 seconds.

    Time until next swing with a 3 second stun

    0-2 = 3-5 seconds

    (3+5)/2 = 4

    Without a stun the time is 2 seconds
    4 -2 = 2

    This is the average gain, and with a 9 second reuse timer for stunning kick that’s
    2/9 = 0.222222

    For the basic representation of that power over time.
    Qualitatively, that’s 3-5 seconds between attacks, 1-3 of which is the stun. Available every 9 seconds.

    The relationship is such that as the mob swing gets longer, adding slows in for instance, all stuns get weaker but longer stuns are favored more. Up until stunlock is achieved, anyway. The reverse is not exactly true, as swings get shorter all stuns get stronger, but shorter stuns simply move closer to being identical to longer stuns assuming equivalent uptime.


    This could also means that defensive 1 second stuns, like the Paladin Armor of Ardency disc line, and the stun on the Shining armor defensive proc line have probably never really done anything other than make mobs slower to follow you while moving, and maybe proc some random extra heals off an AA line. Granted those all do other things, but the stun isn’t really much of a perk. I was unable to show that the Armor of Ardency stun did anything to swings. Could be the same with riposted stun bashes, not sure how long those are.

    As far as interpretation goes, there’s a little more to it than raw numbers. Somone else’d have to weigh in on whether they think more shorter intervals or fewer longer ones help with resetting and healing and such with mercs/real healers or what have you. I know before the merc tank buffs, the six open seconds between stunning kicks could allow the merc tank to go from 100-0 with a merc healing it. It’s very streaky.

    If you're interested in this kinda stuff, you should prolly do your own tests when they push this to test. I don't main a monk and mine isn't really well geared, I can't give an ideal critique of what's happening.

    Though I guess obviously, this is an improvement against non-stunnable stuff. And anywhere your tank is strong enough to prefer getting riposte damage in.

    And still, I’m interested to see the DPS and gameplay change and what it looks like.
    Riou likes this.
  4. Nedrom Augur

    This is absurd.
    Elnn likes this.
  5. Aelen Augur

    Scratch what I wrote up there. At least as a general measure of the power of the ability.

    One of my assumptions, there’s real randomness in the timing of Round Kick, isn’t generally applicable. It might be true of the first cycle, or when the mob gets moved around. But that’s basically the solution for a specific case, not general use.

    In reality, with an autofire what’s actually going on is that the power of that stun is going to vary wildly based on the swing speed of the mob versus the reuse time of round kick. Because it’s going to force the mob to settle in a particular pattern.

    I’ll expand on that a little this evening.
  6. kyong Augur

    Only thing that I can think of that might improve this is if Thunderkick had a chance to proc on ANY kick whether that was round kick, flying kick or kick. With that change, it would be neat to see if you autoskill Flying kick it would add a chance to flurry flying kicks!
  7. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    I like the idea in general and will wait until it's live to assess it. The only real downside for me is the loss of a 3s stun that I can fire on command. It doesn't matter so much for casters these days, but I do use it to mitigate incoming damage at appropriate times. When I'm solo I'm the tank, and even in the easier HA's in Ethernere Tainted West Karana I can get hit for a couple quads in a row that leave me near dead. I use Mend and FD to work around this, but some well timed stuns can help to avoid those situations.

    It shouldn't be a big deal though, more damage is certainly a tempting trade off.
  8. Elnn New Member

    Dzarn/Devs,

    Please reconsider this. There are many ways to go about improving monk quality of life and add a small dps boost, and this is not one of them.

    The key problem with this idea is how autoskill has now been applied. You're not giving us the choices you think you are here because of how clunky these mechanics actually are combined with the state of the class in general.

    1. Our dps is in such a state that we can't not chose flying kick as what we are autoskilling.
    2. The last thing we need is to make this game more bind intensive and overly-complex UI-wise by having to constantly swap around what is being autoskilled (or not).
    3. To truly be versatile and react to situations making the most of our abilities we'd need to just not autoskill anything and go back to spamming. That's just a dps loss (minor for the best of us, significant for others) and bad QOL decision.
    4. It's going to end up taking away choices from us because it just won't be worth the extra hassle and/or loss of dps if we chose to not have flying kicks and tiger claws auto-firing so that we can instead stun/snare/etc.

    I'll add that I myself make immense use of the existing 3s Stunning Kick as a pulling tool. To me it's just as integral to our pulling tool kit as pacify, mez, FD, and ID. Also to those mentioning above about how TC's now adding the Eye-Gouge debuff will help with survivability to make up for the stun on-demand: It already does this, it's just not the max possible level of it (I believe it does EG XX, but not logged in).

    Please, please, start consulting players of classes before years-standing fundamentals are modified like this.

    Thank you.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  9. Aelen Augur

    K. This is quite complex. Its not immediately apparent to me how to fit this to a formula, though I’m sure it does, and I’m probably not going to solve for 193/200/209/216/225 haste right now. But those different haste points (Think potions/buffs/overhaste)have a good chance of making strange differences in how this plays if they all adjust the round kick timer.

    I’ve probably got the exact breakpoints wrong, but this is kind of the relationship that shows what the stuns are doing.

    With a 2 second swing rate, a 1.5 second stun every 4 seconds will quickly push things to where it’s landing in a useless area all the time.

    It grows from that bottom point of nothing at 2 seconds in both directions, till around 2.5/2.6 and 1.3/1.2 delay. It bottoms out immediately to around 10% on the lower half, and declines slowly from 2.6ish to 4, reaching 0 again.

    So this varies from no effective change in swings to around a 37.5% reduction in swings.

    This should already be happening with the current Stunning Kick, just differently. And the longer duration still helps, not in absolute terms but for practical reasons. It’s more likely to cover a more common timing interval.

    With a 2-2.99 second swing, the current stunning kick should allow 3 swings per 9 seconds, ranging from an effective 33% swing reduction to a near zero swing reduction. Though that delay increase is still oddly clustered, especially at the lowest amounts.

    For a swing of less than 2 seconds, 4 swings per 9 seconds is allowed starting at an 11% swing reduction, scaling to an effective 33% swing reduction at around a 1.5 second swing.

    This one also bottoms out at zero just under a 3 second swing, and spikes to max at 33% reduced at 3.

    I could very easily still have the breakpoints off here, and don’t have the real numbers. But things seem to sit right near a weird point.

    Ultimately the behavior here is that as swing speed and stun cooldown change, the reduction in mob swings scales from as near true value as possible to as near zero as possible. A stun that’s longer than the mob’s swing time can’t quite get to zero, which still gives that edge to longer stuns--in theory, in practice it could cause it to "settle" at an inferior point. But shorter stuns can reach identical power levels with longer stuns assuming you’re fighting something with the right swing delay and equivalent total uptime.

    There’s also the issue that the current stunning kick and the new one hit unusual weak points at different mob swing delays. The new one potentially having its bottom segment right above and below 2 seconds could make it a problem.

    The takeaway here is more that you will probably want to test for the situation you find yourself in most often, I.E., level of haste and level of slows applied in a given zone. 'Cause this will cause it to resettle somewhere new. Maybe somewhere similar, maybe very different.

    It maybe doesn’t show, but I still like the idea behind the changes. It just takes a lot of words to explain what I think is happening. If keeping things somewhat change-neutral when the monk decides to use stun is a goal, round kick’s options might require some tweaking.

    It could also be that people won’t notice so much in combat, since the original was a little variable as well. Also the fact that those who needed it the most were most likely to suffer from the streaks in between.


    This’d all be so much easier if stuns did halt a mobs swing timer till they became unstunned, not just push it to the end of the stun. But that’d definitely buff a lot of ministuns. It’d also be pretty bad if it applied to players.
  10. Elnn New Member

    I would really like to see more discussion on this before this makes it live and we are just stuck with this. Once it goes live it'll be too late. It will either be a choice of being dumbed-down to just autoskill FK and forget the rest or go back to spamming abilities manually just incase you need the utility at a moments notice. Or I suppose some nightmarish clunky version of constantly trying to swap around what is autoskilled for brief amounts of time.

    The reality is that our class brings very very little in the form of utility to groups and other players outside of pulling (which is barely needed anymore, arguably not needed at all in a max level group setting).

    As it stands now at least Stunning Kick adds a visible benefit to other classes/roles:
    • Tanks - Us stunning on incoming as a mob(s) is dragged into camp provides a moment for reaction from the tank to pick it up (especially helpful if pet or merc tanking). The consistent use of Stunning Kick as part of our rotation reduces the damage intake on the tank as well (as opposed to a trade-off of dmg for utility), and can also be timed for clutch or high pressure moments as it is on-demand.
    • Healers - As mobs are pulled into camp without Stunning Kick we likely take a couple hits as its pulled off of us, mend helps with this, but healers would still need to react and supplement. Other option would be to just FD before it hits us, but if tank isn't on it instantly then someone else takes the hit (bard gets eaten, healer themselves take the hit, random dps from slash/AE, etc). And again the assistance of lessening damage to tank/others by the consistent use of it.
    • Dps/CC - Helpful on mez breaks (if fast group, not waiting for taunt cd's, high threat chanter, taunt fails, etc). Unmezzable adds - can save other dps while tank picks them up. If we need to offtank we can Five-Point it to keep it on us and then tab stun it to lessen or time out dmg intake while still burning the main target.
    I could go on, you get the point. It's not much, but at least it's something we have. These options won't be there if we have to choose between easy, less work, and better damage versus trying to do these things with less control and a smaller stun.
    I worry that at this point in the game the majority of all we have left playing this class are raiders that desperately need every ounce of dps they can get to be competitive with other classes that will stay silent just hoping this change gives them a tiny increase or people that play monks super casually/as alts who might think it'll be cool for their level 57 monk to auto-spam baby stuns on light blue cons while soloing.
    After all these years of sticking with this class this is exhausting to see us at this point.
  11. Nedrom Augur

    So how are the changes? I've been thinking of playing again with my bard monk combo on Povar.
  12. nocens New Member

    They suck, feels more like a nerf which took away pulling utility to add minimal dps or something, glad I didn't buy all three on tlp.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare, Elnn and Ishtass like this.
  13. Ishtass Augur

    Agreed, I solo and rely on the stun too much so I basically just lost dps, which, as some of you might be aware, isn't too great to begin with.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Elnn like this.
  14. Thrillho Augur


    It's been an increase to my DPS. I would have preferred an increase that would have upped the DPS of the other discs, as Heel was already the breadwinner, but I takes whats I gets. It just puts a bit more pressure on landing a good burn on Heel. If you miss - death, positioning, HP lock, endurance loss, etc. - your other discs aren't going to carry you. If you get a good burn you can break 400k easily, 600k with some adps (over the duration of the disc).

    I haven't noticed the difference in not being able to stun though - a lot of raid mobs are immune to it, and I wouldn't be tanking it anyway to notice. With the changes to tanking, I don't think the tanks can accurately evaluate the loss of stuns. The AC soft cap increase is going to help us when we're tanking (group), and higher DPS is going to reduce the amount of tanking time. Maybe it's a wash for us. I didn't really keep track of my tanking ability beforehand anyway.


    You can still stun on pulls. Just fire Round Kick as a normal hit instead of a /autoskilled one. Put it in place of where Stun Kick was. It'll refresh the same as Flying Kick (unless you're running Heel). It's not as good as it was, since the stun time is half the time it was. Plus, it gets resisted a lot more (I haven't confirmed this).
  15. Phrovo1 Augur

    main thing about losing Stunning Kick is now you have to be facing the mobs and be in their faces to stun them. that said I too have seen an increase in my dps. also gotta love proccing resonating kicks off riposte kicks :p
  16. kinadafz Augur

    I've seen an increase in my agro, hardcore. I'm not sure if it's due to this change or not, but ever since around last Friday, my monk is pulling agro from my tank constantly.

    It may also be a change to the warrior class, not sure, but definitely pulling a lot more agro.
  17. Elnn New Member


    Unfortunately this doesn't work. I was hoping it would, and tried to do that myself (put it in place of Stunning Kick, fire it manually while auto was off - on the pull, on incoming, as tank grabbed, etc), but in practice it doesn't result in just a half-the-time stun.

    The reason is because of the range (and as Phrovo noted, the directional requirement doesn't help either). You have to essentially be standing on top of the mob to get this to land, and at that point you're already taking hits.

    I never expected this to matter much in raids, but in a group setting it's exactly as expected - we take more damage while pulling. As I detailed in my previous posts (most of which is obvious to monks already I know), it's just a reality that Stunning Kick going away was going to mean that either we take a couple extra hits while the tank picks it up, someone else takes the hits from an early FD, or we slow pulls enough for the tank to always taunt singles on incoming. If you're using a pet or merc tank then just acknowledge that more healing is needed. And just kinda forget about using it as an initial pull tool to break things up, at least in the capacity we did before.

    I also feel a void in activity on key presses now. I know it's new, but it's kinda odd having one less thing to press when we really didn't have many combat abilities to begin with. I personally would love to have less activated CDs and discs, because it's just kind of silly and redundant at this point having so many, but I like having things to consistently be active on and not just stare at the screen waiting on different CDs.

    Also - somewhat humorous I guess in a "seriously?" kind of way, I was maxed AA before and then patch hits and what do I have to buy? 3 ranks of Stunning Round Kick.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Ishtass like this.
  18. Phrovo1 Augur

    now that I've had time to play with the change, I think I like it overall. i haven't noticed much change in survivability when soloing in EoK (and using flying kick), it is pretty nice to have the attack debuff guaranteed and to be able to proc the kick with riposte. I've seen a pretty fair amount of dps gain while doing large pulls in oldish content as well. regarding pull tools, I never really used stunning kick for pulling (except for assisting a rogue when pulling blood and emperor in Seb and saving him with a stun while he runs away). I do believe that our mitigation line (Impen, Earthforce, etc) where originally intended to help survive pulls, correct? I know the stun resist and mitigation saved me quite a few times when pulling trains for my group in Seb
  19. Elnn New Member

    I can understand people being happy with the slight dps gain, I am too, we needed it and we need more even still as this really didn't add that much outside of the Heel burn. My thinking though is how/why should a damage increase be linked to or justify the removal of a totally unrelated utility skill?


    They shouldn't be connected at all, and viewing it as some kind of "trade off" is excusing poor decision making and poor design. We out-right lost the ability to stun in any functional capacity when using it as "utility". The round kick version is not useable as a pulling tool or anything related to it. I am certain that whoever thought of this either only raids and thus doesn't even care about a stun, barely plays a monk, or plays a monk and just isn't good and doesn't know how to maximize the skills we have (had). Or maybe they are just lazy, I don't know.

    As far as Earthforce use for pulling - there is a CD on it (as there should be) so it has to be used at the right times. Preemptively using on difficult splits/pulls when you know you will take hits (think a room of goblins in Droga, where you might take a casted/ranged stun from them and it's tight on the LoS, or mobs that snare and Purify is down, or kiting around a room to clump/split out, etc.), saving for "oh sh#@" moments, or using to offtank is typically best use. We can't really just run it for the sake of running it just because we can't stun on incoming now.

    At any rate, it is what it is, seriously doubt anything would get changed back or that dev's even care at this point. Pulling as an art started to die a long time ago, this just takes it further, and i'll just have to get over it. :p
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Ishtass like this.
  20. Questoften32 Augur

    Monks never were that stunning anyway let alone the kick, I have leveled two of them to late 60's with all aa, one before auto grant and cant get much out of them.

    I don't know how to explain it, but there is just not that much under the hood, feels weak.

    I love the idea of monks as a class but the early reality is not that much. They don't have that ''glow'' you might say. hahaha.

    I have not entirely given up on the class though..indecently will the next aa change be when you hit FD, the game also wipes your butt for you too?