For the love of God... please fix the only broken class in the game. If I were a raid leader, I wouldn't bring a monk to a raid unless I had an open spot.
Not going to deny that monks need some help, but you clearly haven't seen good monks in the raid game lately. Maybe I am fortunate to play with what I consider to be exceptionally well played monks who excel on raids in spite of the lack of attention that has been given to the class. You act as if they are a class with broken legs, dragging themselves around and having to eat with a straw. Perhaps if you could point out some glaring issues it would help your case. You know, like some of the other threads here that are supported by data?!
Dude back up a level. Look at all the posts about monks in the forum. Look in the veterans lounge about how bad monks are. Look at how monks, berserkers, rogues, rangers, knights and beastlords all say that we're way, way behind. Look at the monkly boards, look at the completely unrelated massive decline in monks and raise in rogues/necros/mages right now. Hint: I lied, That's slightly related
I think it would stop alot of posts like from the OP if they would at least let us know they realize something is wrong. And offer some sort of assurance something is in the works. Were left here hoping monks are going to be fixed and we see no light at the end of the tunnle. I can realize where the OP is coming from because I look at the posts that have the actual data in them and see nothing from someone who matters. So as I am sure it is the same as the OP my frustration with the class just keeps growing as well. And its not exactly easy just to go to another class, because you have so much work into one character. Quests, AAs, gear, and list just goes on and on.
Glaring #1-100 issues for our class: We have no role on raids. We're not "pullers" since there's nothing to pull, we're not tanks, we don't DPS anywhere near other DPS classes, we don't (nor do we want to) add any ADPS. We have mend and short reuse defensives (as a dps class), which is great, other than the part where there's no reason for us to use them, since we have no reason to be taken on raids.
monk on a raid is a welfare spot. you either know where the bodies are buried, or you do dkp stamps, or THE RAID LEADER HAS NO OTHER VIABLE OPTION TO REPLACE YOU. because if they did, it's not a hard decision to make: do i want 100k dps or 60k dps?
You should read the Monk AA IRC discussion. Lots of monks offered up ideas to Eli on how he could improve dps, but he didn't like how those 'fixes' scaled or something which would cause some sort of crazy imba dps. *shrugs*
There have been several mutli-page threads on the issues monks face, including lacklustre dps compared not only to other pure melee, but also to hybrid classes. In addition there is a scarcity of monk weapons; there is a complete omission of monk weapons essentially from CToV, and drop rates that are rarer than (multiple) ROG only weapons across the entire expansion. Monk disciplines need to be looked at too, and improved and reuse timers brought down to be in line with other melee. All these issues were brought up at the monk IRC, and most of the people posting were at that IRC too. Now, I agree completely with the reversal of the zerk weapon nerf, and well done zerks for bringing it up, and devs for actually dealing with the issue sensibly. BUT, that was 1 small thread, and monks have much BIGGER issues. We actually shut up for a minute since we thought something was going to happen, but seemingly not. So far Piestro has said he will open up a new round of CRT recruitment. Thats not enough. How about some action, since you have now demonstrated now that you are capable of redressing issues that are brought to light, and of acting quickly.
I think the biggest aggravation about this is the lack of communication. At least with the berserker 2 hander nerf, someone came out and said that they intended it and explained it (even though it was later reversed.) Monks don't know why we are below every other DPS class, and despite a multitude of threads have had 0 response (aside from don't hate bro.) It would make me personally feel better to either get an acknowledgement that we are behind and it's being worked on, or a statement that says we don't see the problem. Either one would be better than the current situation, though one of course would be preferable.
While I agree monks are most in need of help, I don't thikn they're the only class by any stretch. Right now casters dominate the game (I bet they still mutter "MeleeQuest" though), with wiz sustained starting to approach necro sustained and mage of course being decent sustained too. Next up come hyrids on sustained - monks may complain about beastlords outsustaining them and ask for a boost, but they out-sustain rogs and zerks too on a long fight. What it comes down to is that pure melee have turned into burst-only classes with lacklustre sustained, while even burst caster classes (ie wiz) have a far less significant drop from burst power to sustained power. The devs are wary of boosting us due to multiplicative ADPS effects making burn too high. Maybe we need to work out ways of adding flat +damage and asking for more of that so it has neglible burn boosts while offering significant sustained boosts. PS. Before anyone complains, I know I'm talking about sustained only, but it seems 90% of raid events are sustained now unless you're in one of the 2-3 guilds with enough burn classes stacked together that everything dies in a couple min or less.
Something that just occurred to me which I know nothing about... How much of a casters DPS comes from other classes ADPS? As far as I know, they only benefit from bards and enchanters (And maybe druids?) and those two are interchangeable? I really know very very little about this. Melee depend on: bards/shaman/beastlords/rangers/zerkers. Possibly related to the issues that melee are having currently?
I won't cry out and whine how the monk class currently sucks since I think it is a very embarrasing thing to do. For this I do love the class too much and enjoy the possibilities it offers to me for my type of gamplay. Also I will not throw a temper tandrum and threaten to cancel all my 3 billion subscriptions thus causing SoE to go bankrupt and EQ to collapse... While I have no problem to get a spot in raid I really doubt this is attributeable to the desirebility of the class I play but more likely achieved by me as a player and what I have to offer to a raid. Maybe something to think about when you come here and cry that you are useless and not wanted in a raid anymore; and this is not a class specific issue only for monks in their current situation. However I think by now it should be very obvious that something is pretty much messed up and needs to be braught back in line, especially in raid game. While I agree with most people posting here that currently the monk class hurts the most I see it more like a general problem with how difficult it seems to achieve a certain balance so noone feels left behind, undesireble or useless. I believe the whole ADPS situation is the core of the problem. It causes all kind of unpredictable results since classes cannot be balanced and tuned anymore around the skills they alone bring to the game but with consideration of all the possible intereaction with other classes in all kind of different situations and setups. Currently it's like in a complex system - and a very complex one at this - where you turn a little screw here and turn a little screw there not being able to see what consequences and effects it has on a completely different corner of the system. In the end you might completely mess everything up. I do believe that something needs to be done and rather sooner than later, but I do not believe this is something that easily can be achieved by applying a little baindaid like giving out or tuning some AAs. This can only be a short term fix till a real fix can be applied and not only to monks but to all classes and how they and their skills interact. Back in the days the pretty much only class whose major role in game was to bring ADPS was bards aside from the buffs other classes could contribute and the game could be tuned with that in mind. Nowadays almost every class can influence the ADPS game in one way or the other and that is where the whole mess we see is coming from. Besides this complexity you then add that players will always find some ways and possibilites to do stuff the Devs never considered or even thought of. -> nerf -> angry players -> ... I guess you can see where this leads to. Fix the core issues so you can reliably balance classes again. As is it obviously is way too complex and you, developers, seem to have lost control and have no idea how to regain it. Personally, what frustrates me the most is the lack of communication and shown ignorance by some devs during various occasions. If you discount the usual whiners, troublemakers and people that never have anything positive to say it still leaves you such an awesome playerbase that is offering help left and right to test, provide data, identify problems and bugs. Why not take that hand that is being reached out? Not like we get paid for it or expect to be. Maybe it's just that a free offer to help. Might be worth some reconsideration of how this playerbase is treated in some occasions?
As I mentioned in my thread on this very sub-forum here: A good start would be to give Monks a version of rogues massive strike. But call it massive kick. Monks need passive help with DPS. They dont need more hotkeys to press because they are already wack-a-mole enough as it is.
The problem with band-aid solutions to problems is that we have this exact same conversation every few years. We were in roughly the same spot and had the same issues during SoFish era and in SoD the band-aid solution was to give us the synergy line that we combine with stunning kick. The problem is, now that's been recycled and stagnated just like everything else, and if we're given another such band-aid, we'll be back in 2014 with the same thing. edit: Also, let's try to keep the hostility down a little bit. It's an extremely frustrating situation for a lot of us right now but when you bring hostility, finger pointing and just general negativity into the situation it makes those that are able to help our cause not want to. This isn't soley targeted at you, Zzlaarr, but rather us as a community. I know I get frustrated and lash out from time to time as well, but our best option right now is to try and reign ourselves in and work this out in a carebear-ish manner
As I wrote I'm a bit frustrated about the whole situation but not sure where you read hostility in my post. If so then I'm sorry, my post was not meant in any way to be hostile.
Not at all, like I said, it's less about any single idinvidual and more about the community as a whole. Let's all hold hands and sing and . Dibs on lucky-bear though
I have to agree on this. I know the devs have admitted themselves that the multiplicative and stacking power of different class ADPS abilities causes problems for them, and they prefer +damage instead of *damage for future mods if possible. I think we, as generic melee, also need to get a grip on our expectations for discs. An example from rogues as I know the rogue class best. We get the Duelist AA at level 59 which is "Increase All Skills Damage Modifier by 100%". Later we got Assassin's disc at 129% and later still Eradicator's at 164%. The Rogue's Fury AA has a similar line of progression, but even more pronounced. Now we all love getting new discs, and obviously we want new ones for our class when another class gets them because we fall behind otherwise. ADPS boosts (Nature's Fury -> Kolos' Fury -> Ruaabri's Fury) similarly gain multiplicative power with every few expansions. But think about the impact of all of these. Our dps during-disc is going up faster than our dps inbetween-disc and ADPS abilities from others exarcerbates this even further. With all discs and ADPS going I may well be doing 5x my sustained damage. As a consequence we start looking stellar on short term parses and wiz etc cry foul (with good justification too). We're stagnated to compensate and voila, you get the situation we had in VoA where melee outburn wiz and wiz outsustain melee - rediculous! (In RoF wiz got a well needed boost to burn, but in doing so now massively outsustain melee rather than just slightly.) This cannot go on for ever. We can't keep getting higher and higher multipliers as it simply doesn't work. Chanters don't get bigger and bigger hastes. Shaman slow doesn't slow by a higher percentage every expansion (quite the reverse - it was stagnated by the addition of slow mitigation). Why should our burst dps become a higher ratio of our sustained dps? What would happen in 10 years time if it did? Melee burst being 10x their sustained? 20x? It just makes the high dps guilds higher and the low dps guilds look rubbish as fight duration is everything! The solution is hard. Probably we need to stagnate the multipliers for now and improve our sustained dps by adding various +damage components. As rogues we have several already, but monks could do with similar tihngs too. Eg h2h mastery AAs which add +1000 to every hit say at max ranks (sizeable boost to sustained and a bit more under speedfocus). Procced extra damage attacks of a fixed amount (massive strike being a good example) also adds a nice chunk of damage. Similarly for rog and melee our sustained needs increasing too if we're to keep up with caster sustained in any shape or form. Disc wise I don't really expect monks to be winning parses (sorry), but they really need to be discing far more often so the timers need slashing.
I agree with a lot of what Brogett says. I think the game as a whole would currently be a lot better if there was a tempering of non-bard ADPS in general (as this is the bard's role, they should still provide a significant boost). Classes could be given an additional utility to compensate, and hybrid DPS has been approaching pure DPS classes in general recently anyway. It's not so much about nerfing part of their toolset, it's about a rebalancing of the ADPS paradigm. Depending on group composition currently, DPS can go up or down by well over 40-50%. This issue seems more prominent with melee than casters, but I could be wrong on that. Monks currently have a lot of these +damage effects (Zan Fi +85, Fists of Steel +330, Second Spire +37, Eye of the Storm +300, many cleave stack for +192, 1400+ flying kick AAs, punch mastery, etc.) which makes us seem lackluster against the classes that have the *damage effects. Additionally, it reduces the impact of upgrades in weaponry. If 2 classes both hit for 4000, the one that got there by 9x400+400 flat is going to see 20% more impact from a weapon upgrade than the class that got there by 7.5x400+1000 flat. I believe during eye of the storm / zan fi, my flat damage modifier is near (if not over) 1000 on my autos, and those are both effects used for monk sustained. I'm just trying to illustrate that flat damage boosts are good as part of the discussion, especially as they help casual players more than raiders, but they can't be the entire discussion until we reach what most will consider a decent balance. I don't think any monk has said they expect to win parses consistently. The issue is when we aren't even within 25-30% of the top, we have to wonder why we're there. Especially when pulling as an art died long ago, and that was long used as justification for us being lower. Then it was on to our defenses, which have not aged well, and we're just as likely to be pancaked by AE rampage as other melee at this point. That leaves us with mend/impen, which while nice, is not by itself worth a raid slot. I agree that stagnation on our discs is a good idea. It won't feel good, so we will need something else to compensate. I think a variety of defensive utilities are overdue for several classes, and maybe that can be a big part of discs for the next round. Not use this every 40 minutes to protect yourself for 12 seconds, but meaningful buttons to hit when you expect something bad to happen. The monk Void/Shaded Step line was a good idea (massive dodge boost on a 7 minute timer), but now that it is tied to one of our dps discs (Eye of the Storm) it will see little use. On the topic of disc stagnation, I think access to prior expansion rank 3s is in order for everyone through research, or if not everyone at least as trade-downs for raiders. I missed a couple expansions, and now I don't have access to currently used rank 3 abilities (Drunken Monkey, Cloud of Fists) unless I beg people to go back to Underfoot and House of Thule raids, which I think is a waste of time for then. Meanwhile, VoA runes are rotting anytime we touch Sepulcher. If VoA went off our radar and a new monk joined the guild, they'd never see max rank Crane Stance. The rank 2s through research is okay, but honestly it's easier to just go back and club some named for those. Make them no-trade through research if you want, it would give me something to do in off times until I got those discs. Of what you suggested, I know the punch mastery part came up in beta, massive kick came up in our AA chat, and a laundry list of other suggestions are out there in condensed forms in several places.
