Even without Mend and FD and discs, Monks tank better than Rogues or Berserkers. Block is (or at least was) twice as effective as Parry, and they have higher skill caps on the defensive skills. As someone else stated, balance incorporates ALL aspects of a class, no matter how useful or useless it may be. Mend, FD, Escape, defensive discs, offensive discs, attack skills, defense skills, passive and activated AA’s, ALL of it counts towards class balance.
Ok so basically just a bunch of zerkers coming up with every reason they can think of that they should do twice as much DPS as everyone else. I mean I can't fault you, I'd probably be pretty happy if that's where monks were at, but it's selfish. It's not ok that some classes are completely undesirable on raids and not able to join top raiding guilds. Even a guy with a horse clearly in the berserker race has to see that isn't balance in any sense of the word. People new to EQ should be able to start playing, pick a class that interests them, and then be desired (provided they're skilled) by raiding guilds if that's what they choose to do later in the game, not forced to reroll. I could handle being slightly lower DPS if we were given more tank viability or any form of utility on raids besides being straight (subpar) DPS. But we are only *slightly* more viable as tanks, just barely when Earthforce is off cooldown. And I'm saying this as someone who plays both classes. We are *nowhere near* as viable in terms of our DPS output. If that's not enough for you, what's your reasoning for rogues being annihilated by zerkers in DPS? They tank even worse than zerkers and have similar "limitations" like backstab.
Seems like a monk trying to say monks should be equal as zerkers when you can Fd mend and tank like pros through grp content. With your 70% cc buff last patch.
No one in this thread is advocating Monk DPS should be equal to Berserker DPS. In fact most, if not all, Monks agree that Berserkers and Rogues should be at the top of the pure melee DPS heap. Berserkers are there now. Berserkers ANNIHILATE all pure melee DPS on the parse. If this is not the case for you, then you and said melee class aren't on equal footing for gear, AA, hAA, hSTATS, Trophies, Clickies, or skill.
Maybe you missed the details but Shmoob was effectively saying that in his view Monks should be on par with Berserkers, he wants Monks to be competitive, he is not happy being behind Berserkers & Rogues all the time on DPS & wants parity to be competitive enough with them to beat them on occasion, his argument being he doesn't feel Monk brings enough to a Raid to be so far behind them. So yes someone, a Monk player, was in fact advocating for that. Until the devs give some clarity on where they see the DPS "hierarchy" being we are all just peeing in the wind here, I do know that they have previously stated that TLP DPS hierarchy is not their overriding concern & the live server is much more important in their decision making process on balancing classes, which is why on TLP Monk have had an uninterrupted reign as the premier DPS class on TLP servers (at some point after 2008 at least). Most Monks do indeed not seek parity with Berserker & Rogue being aware of what their overall class has available to it & do not view it through a restrictive lens of only what they do on raids, I don't play live but I think perhaps there may be some room for them to have something that makes them a bit more attractive to raids, though after some 20 years of game & character development I'm not sure what that could be, maybe Monks have some idea what could be added besides DPS to make them more attractive to raids, if indeed that is even needed. Maybe there are raid leaders out there with ideas on that.
There is no silly utility to add to monks to make them more viable in raids. Monks aren't a utility class, they are a pure melee dps class. What class is the only class to get dual wield at level 1? Monks do, and the reason why is simple. We are a pure melee dps class, and were always meant to be that. This whole argument from rogues and berserkers that we get these utilities that should therefore drop us down on the dps rankings is pure nonsense. Monks get fd, rogues can evade constantly also, zerkers cycle agro redux skill instead of volley I think, they just don't want to sacrifice that dps from volley and would they need to if they engaged intelligently and used silent strikes? Who knows. And mend? Ok so zerker gets innate aa that returns HP every swing blah blah. Point is all three of the classes are pure melee, nothing more. No small utilities any of the three classes have make them so much better than others that their dps should not be on par.
I found SHmoob's post. Thanks for the correction. Monks don't bring any utility to a raid. None. Not even Monk aura is useful anymore. Fists of Wu hasn't been upgraded since itemization and melee re-balancing maxed double attack by default. They offer no aDPS of any kind except to other Monks while running alliance rotations. Pulling, in today's 'zerg it' mentality, is a useless skill. The reality is raiding Monks can be relied upon for nothing else but their DPS. This is why SHmoob advocates for parity. In the group game, Monks' utility increases some with pulling ability and some survival options. So I can see where Rogues and Berserkers look on with envy while they die and the Monk lives. But Rogues and Berserkers are already top DPS in both the group and the raiding game. So what, for the love of Brell, are you advocating for?
Me? I agreed with the Monk crit change & advocated for some extra raid utility for them rather than DPS, but you would see that from my posts if you read them. As said already disclaimer is I don't play in live era (stopped that in 2008) so my experience of that end of the game is currently none but I can see the validity of his grievance.
Zerkers also don't have endurance problems or nearly the aggro generation we have, monks have massive end problems on long fights if you're hitting all your buttons and are always in danger of pulling aggro early in fights.. Surprisingly, the crit chance % did almost nothing to monk DPS, so we're still massively behind zerkers.
Yeah not really much point for raid guilds to field any monks to be honest, if they know what they are doing they can come after zerks in parse, but other than that, hope monks get something cool, I don't have a good imagination though
It really wouldn't take much to level the playing field in a fair and balanced manner. For instance, reduce the cooldown on our Dissident and Infusion of Thunder to 2 minutes or somewhere around there. This would let monks gain the edge on longer fights, and zerkers would still win short fights. I think DBG may just not be aware of how massive the difference in monk and zerker DPS is...these tiny tweaks are not going to make a dent in it, it is going to take a very large change to our top DPS abilities. And we can't beat zerks in parse no matter how well we know what we're doing. I can hit every single ability I have on a 50 sec burn (and my monk is absolutely maxed out) and be 600k+ behind a zerker with worse gear/achievs than I have.
Did you really just say zerkers dont have aggro and endurance problems ? Really ? For the record i said monks should be an option i never said zerkers should be double the dps. I love how a class loves to downplay how useful other abilities they have are. Can we stop bringing up what a class does on raids only ? They do not balance that way and never will.
...yes, I did. Again, I'm talking about raids here. And I don't know what you're doing on your zerker if you're having End problems on anything other than Generals if your guild is bad. Nor should you ever pull aggro if your tanks are anywhere near good. Meanwhile I can rip aggro from a good tank even with Silent Strikes up with BP + FPP + full burns. I personally do not care about group content, it's not what I play the game for, and I would like to be viable on raids. You've addressed none of my points, i.e. the fact that rogues have far less DPS than zerkers and have none of this supposed incredible out of raid utility monks have. And please don't say Hide + Sneak, there isn't a place in the world I can't get to with Fade and some cheapo Cloudy Pots. Zerker DPS is busted, it isn't balanced, stop trying to act like it is.
And I'm not trying to pick on zerkers, it's just that I feel y'all are one of the primary reasons monks are a second-rate class on raids; we're not doing anything you're not doing better. I would like to see every class be viable.
Let's be honest though, Rogues should be #1 simply because they are the only one of the 3 that requires a specific positioning on the mob
Five Point Palm is way too much aggro. I play on Phinigel as well, and I'm curious when zerkers overtake monks. We're in RoF and monks are still top melee dps. Someone earlier said 7/8 years, but that would put it right around VoA/RoF and monks are still top on TLP. It has gotten closer, zerkers have been climbing up on them every expansion.
My understanding is 7/8 years is huge exaggeration, 3-4 is likely. I think the gap narrows around TBm but that's conjecture on my part. I don't feel Monks belong on parity with Rogues & Zerkers DPS but do need some raid utility beyond their enviable "tool-bag" to assuage some of the grief.
No one wants to address it but the problem with balancing rogues/zerkers is ADPS. Zerkers require a lot more of it to do the dps they do. You will never have proper balance with how screwed up ADPS is in this game. Rogues and zerkers should be equal dps the difference should come down to the better player not the better class. You can ignore other aspects of what a monk brings to the entire game but that kind of argument wont serve you well with the devs.
I mean, I would hope the devs wouldn't ignore the fact that some classes are stonewalled out of raids because they bring nothing to the table that class X / Y / Z doesn't bring better. That's not a very good business model, especially if you're trying to attract new or returning clients who don't understand the nuances of the endgame when they roll their class at the beginning..."Oh you rolled a class you thought seemed fun, dumped a ton of time into it, did a bunch of progression, learned the ins and outs of the class, and then got to the endgame and decided you want to raid? Well too bad for you, you rolled a monk, they're awful at raiding and nobody wants you. Reroll zerker or quit. At least you have Earthforce." I don't care if monks are the top DPSers in the game, just give us something that other classes can't do on raids that makes us necessary again. There are so many creative things that could be done, as it stands we just get these tiny DPS tweaks that do nothing. To Skuz, you blow monks away by TBM. And even before that.
