Didn't see a thread made yet. ~~AA~~ - Improved Crystalpalm Discipline: additional 6s added to duration. - Improved Heel of Kanji Discipline: additional 6s added to duration, 5 minutes off reuse. 10m reuse - Improved Impenetrable Discipline: additional 6s added, v2 damage bonus doubled. - Improved Scaledfist Discipline: 5 minutes off reuse. 10m reuse. - Improved Speed Focus Discipline: additional 6s added to duration. - Improved Eye of the Storm Discipline: 2 minutes off reuse, Increase hit damage to 90%. - Improved Fists of Wu: improve the effect by adding a increase flurry chance or increase twinstrike chance and extend the duration by 540s. - Zan Fi's Whistle: increase duration by 30s. Double Increase Hit Damage to 40%. Lethality and Battle Leap are 42-45%. - Improved Dragon's Balance: reduce the reuse of this line down to 10 minutes. - Two-Finger Wasp Touch: reduced to 2 minute reuse. - Improved Alliance: works for all melee being they are proc based. Reduces the counters needed to fulminate their alliance spell by 1 per rank. One or two ranks. - Ton Po's Stance: the cost of this ability is crazy, 600 endurance a second, compared to anything like it (Rampage, Destructive Force, Rakes Rampage, Furious Rampage). IMO this needs to be 30% chance for a 100% damage round at 600 endurance a tick or be more like 50% chance for 150% damage round if it remains 600 endurance a second. - Improved Dreamwalk Discipline: cut reuse by 15 minutes, double duration. - Five Point Palm: the base dragon punch should be more like a 3000 point base dragon punch skill attack. - Hastened Dichotomic Form: reduce recast by 1 minute per rank, 2 ranks. ~~Spells~~ [35064/8521] Eye of the Storm Rk. III Classes: MNK/98 Skill: Offense (Combat Skill) Endurance: 0, Upkeep: 12 per tick Target: Self Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0s, Recast: 7.5m, Timer: 18 <-------------- Move this to timer 15 Duration: 2m+ (20 ticks), Dispelable: No Hate: 1 1: Increase Hit Damage by 45% 2: Increase Min Hit Damage by 160% 3: Increase Hit Damage Bonus v2 by 374
Disclaimer: This is from the perspective of a raiding monk in end-game content. I have all best-in-slot gear, max AAs, and max disciplines / abilities. This isn't to brag, this is just to state that the changes that I'm proposing have little to no impact on me. This is the only class I play, I play it a lot, and I like to think I play it well. Overall, I think monks are in a good position right now if played properly. The problem lies with just that - playing the class properly. The distance between the skill floor and the skill ceiling is tremendous. So much so that a newer monk is going to have a difficult time performing at a level that is competitive. They will get frustrated before they reach a competitive level, falling back on the oh-so-funny "monks suck" messages in General chat when a monk goes LFG. Unfortunately, raising the skill floor without significantly impacting the skill ceiling is rather difficult. Introducing something similar to a headshot mechanic or the old zerker dicho, while it would up the floor, would break the ceiling if used by someone who knows exactly how to play the class. Introducing changes to the kick mechanics (stun / blind / snare, auto-activate) makes the class easier to play while not significantly impacting the higher end play. The amount of abilities we have is more than any other class (I think?). Coupling them together is where the challenge is. Do I run Speed with Destructive Force? Or Terror with DF? What about this new one, Ton Po? Infusion of Thunder with Heel, or do I save it for something else? Tiger's Poise is anyone's guess. Breastplate click, I do that with a burn right? (No, use it with Earthforce because you're going to yank aggro and die otherwise). Five Point Palm is for spam, right? First, second, third spire? When do I use each? What do I use them with? Ability X is down, I should wait before it is available or do I pair it with this other one that's up already? Two Finger Wasp is for burns, or do I use it whenever? To change this would be an overhaul to the class, something I'm not advocating. However, small changes like we've already seen have been effective. Zan Fi having a duration almost in line with its cooldown means it can be (almost) always used without worry about timing it with something else. The consolidation of the stun / blind / snare AAs, while controversial, made the class easier to play. Slowly moving things from activation to always-on would raise the floor while keeping the ceiling in the same-ish spot. Of course, not all things should be changed to work like this - there should be some variety / situational play kept in. Updating Disciplines / Abilities This doesn't impact only monks, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be brought up. A few of our discs / abilities are old. Really old. Crane Stance is from VoA. Ironfist, HoT. Drunken Monkey, UF. I think the way that AAs have been introduced to scale these has been great, but one aspect is missing - ranks. Each of those listed above has ranks 1-3, which do provide an increase in DPS. For newer monks, this means going back to old content - named for rk2, raids for rk3. It's not difficult to take down a named from older content, but that doesn't mean the raids are easy. This gets more noticeable with the mid-age content like RoF for Terrorpalm and Heel, which, while easy, still require a larger-than-group raid force to acquire. For newer monks, a term that is broadly used here as some of this content is 5+ years old, they don't have rank 3 for a lot of the older discs / abilities. It would be nice to see upgrades to this older content in newer expansions. The names can be the same but with added ranks (Rk4 = Bought, Rk5 = Dropped, Rk6 = Raid), and the upgrade can be minimal (Rk1+1% = Rk4, Rk2+1% = Rk5, Rk3+1% = Rk6). The result of this would mean that an older monk gets a 1% increase, while a newer monk gets a "5%" increase (or whatever the difference actually is). To call out one discipline, Speed Focus is our oldest discipline still in regular rotation, It doesn't need to be updated / upgraded. It's currently rankless, so the previous points don't apply. AAs still impact it and can be updated as needed. It scales up nicely as we progress. Headshot / Decapitate / Assassinate Equivalent Not that this was called out by the OP, I've just seen this requested a few times in various threads across the years. Mine might be an unpopular opinion, but monks don't need this. This would break the class and send us into a cycle of buffs / nerfs that a lot of other classes are seeing. We've been more or less steadily climbing in our DPS for the past few years. No ego-inflating buffs, no gut-wrenching nerfs. With the amount of defensive stuff we have, we don't need to have this added on and risk losing that too. Endurance The issue with endurance as it stands is that if you have it, it's easy to keep. But if you lose it (i.e.: death/rez), you'll have a difficult time getting it back. The change to Swift Tails' Chant was nice, and I think it was driven by the change to Ton Po. However, I think it's overpowered (along with Ton Po costing too much, see below). With STC the way it is now, I can drop to 50% endurance, pop a full burn and be back up to 100%. By the time STC is ready again, I'll pair it with another burn and get another 30-40%. Simply put, STC is the only thing that you need to use with endurance. Easy enough, and plays into the notes above about raising the skill floor. However, once you lose your endurance (read: die and get rezzed in), you're fighting a losing battle. Breather / Hiatus are what to use for the start. Breather is an older ability that needs updating - the rate at which you gain endurance is low compared to the endurance cost of abilities and our endurance pool. I run the timer out three times before my endurance is at 29%. Hiatus, while effective at getting endurance back (35%), comes at a steep cost - lowered damage output, and the timer is 3x that of Breather. If you die during this cooldown, which isn't all that uncommon considering you're buffless, you have even fewer things to rely on. STC relies on DPS, which is lacking due to no buffs, no haste, and no endurance. Celestial Fist relies on procs, which is tied closely to haste. We have endurance in the high end, we need something for endurance in the low end. Previously we would just Imitate Death out of a fight, pop Breather, and fight again. You lose a few seconds of DPS each time you do this, but it was enough to keep you going. With the changes to Imitate Death, this method is impossible on most modern raids. I'd much rather see STC reduced back to what it was if it meant we had something for the low-end endurance gain. Ton Po My main concern with this one was the minimal DPS increase for the maximum endurance cost. The DPS has been increased on it, along with the endurance cost. I think this would be better suited as a passive ability to increase damage overall, rather than a click-as-needed ability we already have plenty of. As it's a new ability, it's not going to sour the mouths of many. Not like we would be losing a staple like Earthforce. The endurance cost would be removed, which would allow for the reduction of STC. Then we can get an endurance ability for the lower end. And the passiveness of this would play to the skill floor points mentioned earlier. On to the OP: The higher end discs like Heel, Terrorpalm, Speed, and Ironfist, in my opinion, don't need upgrades, aside from the ranks as I mentioned above. Smaller ones, such as Eye and Earthforce, do. Raising the smaller disciplines with shorter cooldowns is going to have a larger impact overall than our peak ones. A decent heel burn can do 800k+ DPS - changing that to a 10 minute reuse, while glorious, would break the class. Changing the 'downtime' disciplines would push our sustained DPS higher. This should just be an always-on ability now. It would be nice if we could fulminate with two monks instead of three, considering the rarity of monks in general and especially monks on raids. So many changes that could be made to this. I'd like to see this as a passive ability. We don't need more abilities to use. There have been several posts about Ton Po, and one recently about what to actually use it with. This is compounding the difficulty of the class.
I agree with the skill gap for sure but every class has that. I think far to many end game or close to end game melee don't realize just how much of an impact raid stats have from all the current gear, augments and toys that come along with it. They proc everything way way more often on top of having passed the thresholds to get bonus tanking dps at times. I have talked about this in other threads its absurd how much adps synergy there is to be had from raids with shaman epics, alliances, berserker dicho, beast dicho, bards, CoP chains, auspice chains, full raid buffs, etc. Those mask issues very well as do passing the magical thresholds in gear to tank, proc or whatever at levels not attainable by the class at large. Anyone who can't obtain those levels at this point is almost a hostage as a melee class because as you said fixing their issues slightly only amplifies your success at endgame.
Quite a bit of what I would like to see has already been addressed. How about making Alliance based on resonating strikes that hits a mob (kicks would be broken). How about replacing the reduce hit mod on Technique with reduced crit rate and damage, reduce the reuse time on it? A sizable upgrade to DMS would be nice too, maybe add a skill damage mod to it or update the damage bonus? Ton Po definitely still needs an overhaul, it's way too weak for the cost. I like Thrill's idea of making it passive. Alternatively I think they could add a minor hundred hands to it? Above all it's just way more expensive than it should be. Eye of the Storm desperately needs an upgrade. Earthforce fits its primary role quite well but an extension to it would be pretty cool. I think Heel, Speed Focus, and Terrorpalm are fine as they are, Terrorpalm is more reliant on adps than the other 2 while Heel shines the most on bosses and is greatly weakened by having to switch, Speed Focus more or less doesn't care. Maybe a reduction to the cooldown of Terrorpalm? I'm still curious about what they plan to do with Dragon Punch. It went from being the only skill attack with a special property (knockback) to the only one without. Maybe they could add a thunderfoot-esque proc to it? The crit rate of our punches are abysmal either way though, think I recently parsed it at about 18% with chanter haste?
Personally, I think updating the older Disciplines/Combat Abilities should entail new names not expanding ranks. A new name is hardly that difficult to come up with especially within the monk class; the world of martial arts has so much rich lore and techniques to draw from. I mean if all that you are wanting to do is provide a way for "new" players to obtain versions of those older rank 2 and 3s then why not just allow for the newer runes to be downgraded to the older ones. Add a special NPC in PoK who exchanges spell runes for ones from earlier expansions. I think that would take less work over all and pretty much future proof the issue. With regard to Speed Focus, they could give a new version of Speed Focus with something built in; that would increase dps due to not having to wait on a secondary reuse timer. For example; a speed focus that has a built in FDF would but was otherwise identical would still be an increase in dps as it would allow our DF/FDF to be paired with TP. Keep them on the same timer; and one would use them as the situation is most benefited.
All good ideas their Forcallen. I'd say were long overdue for reuse reduction to balance / Tiger's Poise. A 3 min reduction at least or better would be awesome. Terrorpalm also has way to long of a refresh for todays game. Their has been times I've popped it at the start of a raid and it was still not up for the 2nd raid. That's a little ridiculous especially since it was nerfed like over 3 years ago now? I'd say we are also LONG overdue for a Crit rate power-up. Or some kind of skill twinstrike power-up. One thing that's getting really old is getting the same kind of stuff over and over. Earthforce, Eye of the Storm, Infusion of Thunder, Dicho, and Terrorpalm all do the same thing pretty much. + Hit damage. Then they give us Ton Po's which is just a insanely weaker version of something we already had. Monks do not need anymore + hit damage, + faster swings, + more hits power-ups. We really need something totally new that stacks like I mentioned above. Monks don't have a single ability that increases our Crit rate, twinstrikes, or anything cool like that. Last and certainly not least, All melee dps need a toggle spell (proc) casting subtlety. Since everything under the sun in the past few years is a proc, I'm finding myself taking aggro all the time now. They gave us a super weak melee damage subtlety ability, problem is melee damage it's self doesn't cause crap for aggro. Spells and Procs cause like 50x more aggro per damage than melee does. Or if they could at least change the current one we have ( silent strikes) to work on Proc damage as well would work also. I have more to add but running out of time before I got to go to work. To be continued....
Eye of the Storm needs moved to the timer that has nothing on it now real bad. That should have never been on the same timer as one of our best defensive abilities. I've been trying to get that done for ages. It also needs a upgrade as well. I also agree Zan Fi should be an always on ability. For the love of Quillious, please upgrade / bring back Fists of Wu! It was a great idea but + double attack is useless now. Maybe upgrade it and change it to + triple attack or + skill twinstrike, or something would be cool.
Want's (pretty much what every monk would like to see) -make Zan Fi Whistle a permanent buff and also make it so it does not conflict with berserker shared cruelity (currently if i have aggro on a mob, and i have zan fi on, the berserker cant use shared cruelty) -Eye of the Storm upgrade and moved to -1 timer -Earthforce upgrade + Earthforce extension/reuse AA's -Dichotomic Form AA that reduces cool down from 5m (maybe down to like 2.5m at max rank) -move Sting of the Wasp to -1 timer -Reuse Reduction AA's for Tiger's Poise Line -more Crane Stance AA's -standard upgrades to focus/class tabs New Idea's that I think would be fun - Grandmaster's Aura - Increases your Companion's chance to dodge, parry, riposte by 20%(Master's Aura is 10%) . Increases your Companion's Accuracy by 100% (bard 2.0 is 140%), 1% chance to twincast each time you activate a combat ability. - AA that lets you have a % chance to dual wield with your bare fist off hand while using a two-hand blunt - Fortissimo Mending - 15 minute reuse ability/buff that lets your next mend perform a superior Mend on your group (give it a 3 minute buff in song window so you cant Guild hall bank exploit it =P) - Ton Po's Bo Stick Sweep - 5 minute reuse - you perform a radius attack around you striking all enemies within 40 foot radius with 3 primary hand combat rounds and stunning them for 3-6 seconds - Velocious Discipline (speed focus Discipline (L63) upgrade idea) - that decreases weapon delay by 65% (currently 56.3%), Flurries and adds 10% Crit Chance for the duration and also make it reduce tiger claw/Eagle strike reuse.
Think it would be a bad idea to move too much stuff to timer -1 (especially discs like and upgrade to Eye of the Storm)
Why? everything on -1 timer does not share cool downs with anything Currently EoTS shares a timer with Shaded Step / rapid reflexes moving EoTS to -1 would let us use our dps ability and have our 18 second defensive when we inevitably gank aggro with all our procs, FPP, BP click
That's the problem-it would allow us to have 2 discs of the same line on a different timer. Think a better solution would be to move our Projection line to timer -1 or our auras to -1 and move Eye of the Storm and any future upgrades to the newly freed up timer.
It's a good way to get ignored by the dev team. Reasonable requests that show restraint and thought about balance are more likely to be taken seriously than asking for everything under the kitchen sink.
Rapid Reflexes moved to timer -1. As it is now you basically get to cast it once at the start of the night before raids/groups and then never again. Given how strong Shaded Step is having that continue to share a timer with Eye of the Storm is fine. It introduces more judgement calls based on the situation at hand/how you perceive the future playing out. Something to replace Banestrike for snap aggro. Earthforce - New version (or AAs) which add snare immunity for the duration. If you're feeling extra generous, mesmerize immunity as well. Agile Feet - Another rank or ten. Get the resist rate to 15-20% and after that they would reduce the effectiveness of snare. Purify Body - Another minute off the reuse would be very nice. Infusion of Thunder - Reuse timer lowered to 6 minutes (every second epic cycle) or 6.5 minutes (half of Speed Focus' reuse). With it currently at 7 minutes it's really in no man's land. First/Second/Third Spires - Reuse timer lowered to match whatever Infusion of Thunder ends up being. Destructive Force - Reuse time lowered to 13 minutes (to match Speed Focus). Having discs / abilities come up and still have 30-60s to wait on other stuff you want to use with them with is rather annoying. Out of the above three Infusion of Thunder is the biggest one I'd like to see changed. Breastplates - Give them a robe graphic. Edit: Since monks are all about legs, an additional blink that functions along the lines of the Rocketeer Boots item effect. Maybe half the distance/height. It'd work fine as a simple mobility tool but you could also consider adding an area of effect ability (maybe stun?) around the landing area to make it more combat useful / higher skillcap.
I agree with your points. Properly aligning ADPS with your own burns is what is going to bring you to the top of your class' parses. It's a skill, and takes a lot of focus and effort to maximize it. I've posted my thoughts on the various combinations to maximize it, and it's still an ongoing effort to try to figure out how best to do it. In terms of procs, a min/max character has a crazy amount. I didn't realize how much I did it until the other day when I had "your target is immune to your spell" spammed when I was just auto-attacking. It was my proc that was doing it, and it filled one of my text windows. But, trying to keep comparisons equal, two monks on the same raid in the same group with the same gear are going to perform differently because of the ranks of their disciplines. Rapid Reflexes is so underpowered compared to the rest of what it shares a timer with. If there's even a chance I'll be using either SS or EotS in the near future (event starting shortly), I won't touch this one. With the amount of aggro we pull at the moment, this buff fades quickly. Personally, I'd like to see this changed into something that would help us deal with damage shields. Absorb the next 20 damage shield hits, perhaps. Seems excessive, but with a full burn it's not uncommon at all to hit 30+ times per second. With an 8k damage shield (Arx Mentis, the Cost of Balance, for example), that would deal 240k+ damage in a second. Mindfulness certainly helps (DS happens at 15%), but there are some situations where the DS isn't predictable. Absorbing 20 hits of a DS above 2k would trigger an AT and give you enough time to turn autoattack off, while still remaining not overpowering - 2/3 of hits in a second of a full burn. A defensive ability sharing the timer of an offensive ability I take as the cost of it. If you want to be practically invincible for 18 seconds, you're going to have to give up some of your sustained DPS. If you want higher sustained DPS, you're going to have to give up some of your survivability. A large argument I see from other classes about monks whenever we ask for a boost in DPS is that we have survivability. We're not glass cannons like zerkers. We can dish it out and survive. As much as I'd like to see this moved, we would need to give up something else to keep the balance. Giving up EotS for 1.5 rounds is an OK price for me to pay.
I don't hate that many of our disc's are old. As long as we don't lose ground relative to other classes it just means we'll need to get a group of friends together to kill an old raid on occasion. Things I would like: 1. Reduce the reuse time of our disc's to multiples of 3 for group syncronization. 2. Increase the duration of disc's so that they last a full minute. 3. Make zan fi permanent. 4. Reduce reuse of dicho and 5pp to 3 minute reuse. 5. Reduce reuse of spires and Infusion to 6 minutes. 6. Line up destructive, swift and pon to make the multiple of 3 minute request. Stretch ideas that could be cool maybe: It could be nice if we got a second non-timer sharing mend or purify body that could be used on a target. Can start with a long reuse. A group disc that modifies triple attacks or flurries or something else that says monks can ninja chop bad guys and makes others seem to have ninja reflexes lol. Add a small endurance heal/refill to mend. I feel like monks have maintained fairly well and that we'll played monks can be competitive, even if we aren't usually top dogs.
The Grandmaster's Aura sounds nice. Though for the defensive part, I would go 12/15/20 for rk 1/2/3. The offensive parts, I would go with 90/95/100 and 1/2/3 respectively, but I think that combat ability should be replaced with offensive spell or combat ability. Too big of a chance that defensive or pulling tools eating the twins otherwise. The AA that give a % chance for a bare handed offhand attack is cool. I think that this has a lot of potential. And it would make the whole skill based bare hth damage formula get some use for a change. This AA should definitely be called Talon Southpaw's Strike. As for your Velocious Discipline; I've long thought that the lack of an upgrade to Speed Focus in the modern game was kind of sad. I mean they could quite easily leave the HH effect at the same level and just add the +10% crit chance OR the reduction to special strikes (Tiger Claw, Eagle Strike, Dragon Punch) and either way most everyone would be quite happy.
