Your expectations are unreasonable, especially in juxtaposition with a magician's solo ability. A magician's interface with enemy melee is wholly robust with a single item - the earring - and a bit of Companion's Fortification AA. No gear, no progression, no clickers, just a busty buddy ready to go in every expansion upon leveling once. The dps one might expect can vary some based on character development (though the lion's share of even that is technique not development), but any 116 mage (117 necro, 118 beastlord) with a /baz attunable (non-prestige!) EM ear is a 120 tank. The 13 out of 16 classes that are not structured like this instead have as inputs to their ability to interface with mob melee: all 20 pieces of gear, 20 augs in, progression across the last eight expansions plus the current expansion as a ninth, some key clickers, all their AA, buffs, and so on. Monks have never, indeed no non-pet class has ever, since the advent of character development (so, looking beyond stupidness that early TLPs are infamous for these days) been plain kickbutt in a can, "off the shelf" as it were. Further, not just characters without development like you describe, but also nearly no players period would have accomplished what the lifers here reminisce over, regardless of character development, no matter the year. Soloing all of progression from whatever expansion through some other time was not a regular expectation for "monks" in general, much like soloing the four missions in each of ToV-CoV-ToL in era isn't a regular feat for Shadow Knights now. Someone - some one - did it. Occasionally, more than one someone, meaning, like, a couple. The stories are told, and without exception communities co-opt the glory (ref: the "I made this / you made this / I made this" meme), but it's not a true picture. In this way also, your expectations have been warped substantially.
In no way, shape or form do I expect my monk to be able to do what my magician can do. Just like I do not expect my mage to solo the Zlandicar mission like a paladin can do (for example). I do expect, with the gear and AA that I currently have, to not have to stress in killing one light blue dwarf in GD when I am not in defensive mode. And furthermore, like Riou mentioned earlier, monks were a class that in the past could do things solo given the right amount of gear and AA. Those days seem to be long gone. I never expected my monk to molo TOL progression. But I do think I should kill a light blue in GD and not have to worry about death. That was my expectation. And now I am re-evaluating that expectation. And I am now wondering if it is worth the extra time I have to put into the monk so that if I am in GD and I get an add I don't have to FD and wait six minutes for the merc to die and respawn. Because if the end result, if the expectation of a 120 monk is to handle two light blues from two expansions ago and that is the ceiling on the expectation? I dunno if the work into the class would justify the end result.
This is true even for the tank classes. There is a melee cliff at CoV T2/T3 as those mobs are much more dangerous even then ToL mobs. My 120 paladin can passively molo (w/ healer merc) a variety of ToV, ToL, and CoV T1 mobs. I regularly do combat testing against these mobs and am not concerned about dying while running the test. These combat tests can last up to an hour and I don't kill the mob. This is not possible against CoV T2 mobs. A 120 healer merc cannot keep me alive entirely on it's own vs a CoV T2 mob (e.g. an aggressive follower). Since the introduction of mercs, mob tuning has progressively assumed a healer (merc) presence. Now the healer merc is not only required for some classes to "solo", it is inadequate. Boxing or grouping is required for more and more classes. Meaning more and more classes are relatively under-tuned for the content.
No, not at all. My paladin has always been able to true solo current content since 1999. For your statement to be true then the content has been broken since day 1. My point in this thread is that it's become measurably harder to solo/molo since the introduction of mercs, peaking in CoV T2, and the monk class is a prime example of this trending weakness. Wrt taking damage, it all makes a certain amount of sense in that if we assume a healer is present 100% of the time, then mobs need to overcome that healing to kill a player. It's a variation of the 10 second Complete Heal problem. Also, the sure-death interval has been reduced from 10s down to 2-4 seconds.
I like riposte, give us back the ability to riposte a riposte. Make us so good at riposte we can stand in front of the mob and further, prefer to stand there because we do more damage that way. We are supposed to be practitioners of the martial arts. Turning an opponent's attack back on itself is kind of our thing. Then let us riposte a few hits on the people next to us. If we could help keep a few hits off the tank, now that might ensure our popularity on raids. Failing that, make us able to take few rounds from a raid mob, even without using an AA. Or give us the exact same dps potential as a berserker. Or bring back the need for monk pulling. Lots of options, some better than others, but we diminish through neglect, expansion by expansion.
I am a return player. I would like to know if any Monks level 120 would be interested or care to share their .INI file with me. I don't play a tank role, I prefer being in the role of high dps. I am on TEST server, Obiwankenobi. I lost all my original UI set up when I reinstalled EQ, I had a back up on a thumb drive but that got deleted as well sadly. If any of you high speed, raid dps monks have a INI you can share with me, thank you. Can let me know here or on test. I have E-mail address you can send it to. Thanks.
lots of copium in this thread. real talk -- monk is trash. so is every other pure melee, but monk is the most trash of those. no, parsing 60% of what your necros are parsing is not acceptable, and you're patsy for accepting it.
most monks either switched to a different class or quit for games where monks are actually good, nothing to see here
After seeing Wizards upset at how they have fallen so far behind, I was going to write my own message about monks. But this thread basically says it all. Szilent has laid things out quite well. As a raiding monk that has played the class quite successfully for 20 years, we need improvements. We are a class without an identity, especially in raids. That needs to change. Don't break us, but make us viable again.
The answer to our problems is stupidly simple. Reduce some timers and upgrade our ancient discis..... Eye of the storm could be upgraded into something like knifeplay for monks sustained it's 10 years old for christs sake, Terrorpalm and Heel of Zagali are also 10 years old and outdated! Speed focus, maybe add a proc to it and upgrade. Ironfist is also ancient and could be upgraded even if small. Why even add disci lines if they never get upgraded, even if it's a small gain? They need to learn to utilize what's there sometimes.
could you imagine if Eye of the Storm actually had any semblance of scaling? nah it'll probably be more bonus damage if it ever gets upgraded, at least the other discs scale decently but like you said, it's been a really long time. since Speed Focus is the second fastest hundred hands in the game (right behind a beastlord aa), I feel like they could either upgrade it to that level, add flurry, or add ability spam damage (like Ironfist) so that it still fully stacks with everything else that would be clicked with it. Terrorpalm and Heel are probably in the best shape disc-wise An upgrade to Earthforce would be nice for a little more bonus damage or even something akin to a mini Eye of the Storm Ton Po should be upgraded further, maybe bring up the chance of the extra round's damage further
How about a mix of these 1. Upgrade the numbers on some of the Damaging Disciplines 2. Increase the Duration on some of the Disciplines 3. Shorten the Reuse on some of the Disciplines. 4. Change/Add some of the Timers. The Step-Patterns and the Synergy-line could have different timers for example. 5. Add some new interesting AA-skills that contribute more to Raiding
No, it wasn't. That was only true during those expansions if you were raid geared. Actual group geared monks had to have groups or do older content alone.
I was playing on Phinigel a long time as a Monk/Bard/Shm raiding 3 box. I left around House of Thule and Returned at Broken Mirror. It was then I quickly changed my Team into Raiding Bard Main, with Druid/Necromancer box. It was like a massive shift in power and gameplay style. And I had a ton of fun. Left EQ for RL. Came back and wanted to play again my Original Stromm team of Monk/Shm/Wizard. And man.... so many friends and guildies helped me race back from lvl 90 House of Thule monk to 115 ToL geared monk. Now im trying to carry myself as a Main monk through recent expansions and even last 2.... and reading this thread. Seeing no light in the tunnel for monks. Realizing this team is way weaker then almost anything else I can play right now.... its like a glory days love of the Monk class and friends I made while chain pulling endlessly for raids and groups... its gone. its dead. Am I to become a Bard again!? Oh Give Monks Heart Strike! Give them some instant Kill, Bring Back God Monk!
Lol Riou I did that, I was on vox other day and saw a graveyard of 60-65 Monks from all the TLPS lol. But I love playing Live now and just state of monk on live is as if they forgot the class existed since the year 2004
I box a Warrior, Shaman, Monk Berserker (and 2x healer mercs). Monks are still a great class, but it's DPS is balanced by it's ability to split/pull mobs. Yes, my monk can do as much or more damage than my berserker (trash mobs, not long fights). But it comes with a big asterix: Monk go through endurance like crazy compared to my berserker, which can do excellent dps on endless pulls of trash mobs and barely sips the endurance. My monk has a couple of really nice hotbuttons, but If I push each button once during a fight, I"ve used up as much endurance as about 3 fights of my berkserker. The average dps of my box is excellent, and i"m not complaining about my monk's dps, but I knew when I added a berserker (about 18 months after starting the War/sha/monk), I knew the berserker would have considerably more dps with far less effort compared to my monk. I'm not complaining. I had a raid monk in the early days of EQ, and loved playing it. (My warrior is my main,. I came back to EQ in 2022), in spite of knowing it wasn't a "needed class", in respect to the fact it wasn't the best dps, and of course, many classes can pull mobs, using a variety of techniques. In raids, monks were the preferred pullers. Bards could have issues with pulling in some events, but I think it was more of a point of pride that the monks wanted to be the primary raid pullers. Still, every class has it's nuances, and monks can be very fun to play, and are more than capable of doing great dps. I'st just when compared to a berserker or a rogue they seem a tad short in dps. LIke everything, a lot boils down to gear and AA's. If you just with guidies or boxing and the crew is decked out in raid gear, nobody is going to complain the monk isn't doing high dps. I don't raid. But my monk is no slouch in pulling. Although he occasionally takes a faceplant while pulling in OT (RoS).
In the past, Monk had the role of Puller in addition to DPS. Now no one does time-consuming FD pulls.Right now, Monk has only one role left in Attacker. BER,ROG,RNG (and more...) has much more DPS than Monk. Monk is the lowest in the Attacker role. Even BST, which is a utility role, is comparable to Monk's DPS. Not Puller or Attacker, where is Monk?
