I wrote this because I found myself confused about the current playstyle of the Monk. As a returning player - the abilities, disciplines, AA, skills, timers, and interactions between them was a bit overwhelming at first. It can be hard for new or returning players to get a feel for how a class should play. The target audience is Monk players who feel totally lost. There are a lot of links in the post to facilitate research or reference. This guide is intended to explain different interactions, as well as give an idea of what you might use in common situations. I do not intend to explain how to use all of these abilities or tell you which combinations will provide the best results. That being said… if you see a mistake, omission, or feel a clarification can be made – please let me know. I’m not an expert in all Monkly matters, just a regular player who spent a lot of time looking up stuff. The current formula for EverQuest seems to give major abilities a refresh every 5 levels. Utility and special abilities are sprinkled in. The Basics The Monk is based around melee damage, special attacks, and skills. Melee damage consists of blunt attacks (1 or 2 hand) and Hand-to-Hand (Martial). Special attacks consist of Tiger Claw, Kick, Round Kick, Eagle Strike, Dragon Punch and Flying Kick. Tiger Claw is unlinked and can be used in conjunction with one of the other 5 special attacks, typically Flying Kick. However, you still should level up the other skills because they are often used for other disciplines or AA’s. Autoattack takes care of a large portion of your melee damage, so playing a Monk is all about managing your special attacks, skills, combat abilities and AA’s. Timers (links to EQ Resource) Monks have ‘Combat Abilities’ on 18 separate timers. Each timer generally shares similar effects, but there are overlapping cases where using one ability will lock out another. You want to be aware of these interactions, otherwise you might lock out an ability unintentionally. 0 - This is for group buff abilities. These show up in the Songs window. Fists of Wu (Level 68) increases chance to double attack by 6% for a minute. I think the general consensus is that it’s pretty much useless at higher levels. Masters Aura – Increases chance to riposte, parry, and block by 10%. Lasts somewhere around an hour. Keep this up. It fades after a while (even in POK/GH). 1 – This is for Defensive abilities. If you want to keep it simple, I recommend only having Earthforce/Impenetrable on your hotbars. Once you feel a bit more comfortable, you can experiment with Voiddance or Whirlwind, but beware – they incur a long timer lockout. 2 – Melee burst DPS disciplines with a relatively long reuse (22 minutes) each. There is no way of reducing the timer for these, so use appropriately. The two contenders for this spot are Hundred Fists and the Palm disciplines. Basically speed or heavier hits. I advise using the highest level one you have. 3 – Special attack enhancements. Ironfist is the highest level version. AA’s can lower the reuse timer. 4 – The general theme is utility and oh boy, there’s a lot going on here. Resistance boost, runspeed, fear immunity, healing, or endurance recovery. The healing can be helpful at mid-levels since it has a 5 minute reuse – but most people use a mercenary, or take a quick rest these days. Resistance boost was for an era long-passed. Fear immunity or runspeed/+100% spell resistance could come in handy for a particular situation, but the endurance will generally be most useful. At higher levels, you can choose between taking a few breaths and draining the endurance of your target at the expense of DPS. Endurance cooldowns are 20 minutes. 5 – Flying Kick is so special it gets its own discipline. Use the highest level version, such as Heel of Zagali. 15 min reuse. 6 – AE distraction (Echo line) or single-target slow. The Echo line acts as a short duration AE mesmerize with a memory blur at the end. Nice! Use the slow if you need to step up and take some hits without the benefit of a slower. It’s quite useful for this, but the reuse timer will lock out your Echo line for 10-15 minutes. 7 – Life extension abilities. This is for when things are looking hairy and you need to stay up for a little while longer. Protection of the Shadewalker has a 5 minute reuse. The ‘Stall Death’ line has a 10 minute reuse. 8 – Most notable for the Synergy line. The longest cooldown is 30 seconds, so you want to use them constantly. There is also a ranged attack, but you only want to use it when absolutely necessary. This will be part of your melee spam. It can be macro’d with the /disc command. 9 – The Phantom line (single-target Pacify) with a few defensive disciplines mixed in. Everything in here has a 30 second reuse time. The defensive abilities hit you with a large drawback, so use wisely (I don’t even bother with them personally). 10 – Speed Focus. That’s it. Decrease weapon delay for 30 seconds. 22 minute reuse that can drop to 13 minutes with AA. 11 – This was only for a Strikethrough discipline (offensive, 10 min reuse) or a Dodge discipline (defensive, 20 min reuse) for a long time. Both were kind of underwhelming. With The Darkened Sea, they have added a Tiger Claw special attack on a 30 second reuse called Torrent of Fists. If you are level 104 or greater, you’ll want to use it as additional melee spam. 12 – Basic melee Endurance Recovery. That’s all, so feel free to use it whenever you need to. There’s two types. One for when you’re totally out (short reuse) and a separate one as a heal over time (long reuse). 13 – Crane Stance or Inner Rejuvenation. Avoid the heal. Crane stance can be used for awesome burst damage in conjunction with other abilities and cooldowns. Using it properly is important. It’s best to have as many modifiers running as possible, such as Drunken Monkey buff, Infusion of Thunder, Zan Fi, Second Spire, Synergy Debuff and Ironfist. 14 – Drunken Monkey or Vigorous Shuriken. Drunken Monkey will show up in your ‘Songs’ window, similar to Master’s Aura and Fists of Wu. It has 2 components – a melee damage boost and a random cycling special attack boost. The reuse is 30 seconds. Vigorous Shuriken is a thrown item with a 6 second reuse. The shuriken deals more damage the farther away your target is, but still deals respectable damage in melee range. There’s a bit of back and forth with these for melee use, but you should always use Drunken Monkey before you pop a burn discipline. If you’re not bursting, you can use shuriken as part of melee spam if you prefer it over Drunken Monkey. 15 – The Balance line, which becomes available starting at 92. These will grant you a proc based damage DD, such as that from Dragon’s Balance. 20 minute reuse timer. 16 – Becomes available starting at level 87 and offers a choice between swarm pets or a strong physical/magical combo attack. The swarm pets such as Phantom Partisan are on a 30 second cooldown, and Zalikor’s Fang is a 60 second reuse. 17 – Contains Blocking/Dodging disciplines as well as Eye of the Storm, which is used offensively. The longest reuse is 7:30. Most would recommend using EOTS unless you anticipate needing the others for something specific. 18 – Is reserved for the Projection disciplines and nothing else, so feel free to use them as often as necessary. They can be used while feigning death and are great for scouting without putting your skin on the line. Pulling: These will be your commonly used: · Throw Stone (Level 1, Range: 70, Timer 8) / Distant Strike (Level 95, AA, Range 300) · Phantom Line (Beginning at 57, Timer 9) · Echo Line (Beginning at 73, Timer 6) · Feign Death (Beginning at Level 17) · Imitate Death (AA) · Moving Mountains (AA) · Neshika’s Blink (AA) · Ranged throwing items or clicky effects (such as Fiercehand Shroud of the Focused) You also have several associated AA’s such as Stonewall, Weightless Steps, Rapid Feign, Purify Body, etc. You’ll have to feel these abilities out and experiment to find what works best for you. Defense: There’s danger everywhere! If you find yourself on the wrong end of a beating, you have quite a few options: · Earthforce/Impenetrable (Timer 1) will be very common, and Voiddance/Whirlwind to a lesser extent. · Protection of the Shadewalker/Stall Death line (Timer 7) · Blocking/Dodging discs (Timer 17) · Slow/Absorb disc (Timer 6) · Hold the Line (AA) – Increases healing received, but reduces damage done for 1 minute · Mend · Feign Death (For when it just becomes too much) There’s also other AA’s which will help you take hits better, survive longer, or augment the above such as: Critical/Hastened Mend, Staff Block (for 2H), Unflinching Resolve, Purify Body, Planar Durability, Rapid Feign, Imitate Death (which bestows invisibility afterwards). At the end of the day, Monks are better at ‘surviving’ than taking hits. We’re not tanks, but we can stand toe-to-toe in many situations. DPS: Standard DPS will generally include some/all of the following: · Autoattack · Weapon procs · Tiger Claw · Flying Kick (most likely special attack) · Synergy Attack (Timer 8) · Banestrike · Drunken Monkey/Vigorous Shuriken (Timer 14) · Torrent of Fists (Timer 11, Starting at Level 104) · Swarm Pet/Fang (Timer 16) · Zan Fi’s Whistle (AA) – with AA’s augmenting, can be up to 5:45 duration, with 7 min cooldown · Stunning Kick (AA) – Can be dropped to a 9 second cooldown · Clickies granting procs (Such as Symbol of the Planemasters) · An occasional burn disc or clicky you wouldn’t use otherwise Burn/Burst DPS will generally consist of the following: · Hundred Fists/Palm Disciplines (Timer 2) · Ironfist (Timer 3) · Flying Kick Discipline, such as Heel of Zagali (Timer 5) · Speed Focus (Timer 10) · Crane Stance for a burst attack (Timer 13) · Balance Line (Timer 15) · Spire of the Sensei (AA – 1,2,3) · Infusion of Thunder (AA) · Five Point Palm (AA) · Two-Finger Wasp Touch (AA) · Clickies such as breastplate Note: Make sure you have Drunken Monkey running before triggering a burn discipline. You are unable to activate it during. Ranged DPS should only be used in the most necessary of situations, but you have tools: · Ranged Attack (Daggers/shurikens, usually summoned) · Vigorous Shuriken (Timer 14) · Sting of the Wasp (Timer 8)
Recently Zan Fi's Whistle overtook DMS rk.3 in all the skills that they both modify. DMS still wins in tiger claw, kick, and tiger claw as Zan Fi does not directly mod these. All I can really see is DMS filling in the gaps when Zan Fi is down (only ~1 minute downtime) and even then spamming Vigorous Shuriken might still be better for your sustained dps and take less concentration (although I kinda want to test that now). As far as timer 2 goes, I would recommend using the Palm line since there are so many forces of HHE in the game already (including the HHE proc that we have). However, I still find Speed Focus decent for a tertiary burn (I usually stack it with Infusion of Thunder so that it's like a mini Palm) as it is guaranteed HHE for 36 seconds. Edit: Oh, and if it's safe, try stacking Palm with your Destructive Force AA (this is AE). It gives an extra attack to your primary per round on your target. That said, you might want to use a 2 hander if you do this.
