Monks are by design a very Single target tank class, and have been since game creation. I know that in order for monks to keep up in the SS and other group/raid content we needed more AoE power and thus we got the option to get the Prestige ability "Dragon's Rage". this ability make an AoE that was just OK, into one that is one of my heist single target attacks and even more on large AoE fights. using just Dragon Fire with this prestige ability I can hold AoE agro on trash off of the Pally in my raid, If I can time it right. ok, I am not complaining about this and I do very much like it. but it doesn't feel like what the Monk was supposed to get to me and I have a suggestion to make it go back to what I feal the monk class could be without a nurf. Prestige ability to replace "Dragon's Rage". Note "Dragon's Fury" may need reworked also. Changes Combination to trigger on any 2 of the 3 required abilities. Also a +50% - +100% damage may also be appropriate. this may let it trigger up to 1/3rd more and give more flexibility to the players that cannot get it off just right. this would also give us more single target damage in replacement for the AoE damage that Dragon's Rage is giving up. If any other monks have other ideas for this or other changes to make us more "Monk Like" or just broken abilities that please post.
I don't agree that monks were intentionally designed to be single-target focused, nor that such focus is an intrinsic aspect of the monk's class identity. The whole concept of separation between single-target and multi-target tanks didn't come into vogue until RoK/TSO (as I recall) and was widely decried by many of us in the fighter community as an innately flawed idea. Before that era, most people saw the identity of brawlers as the "hybrid DPS Fighters", with monk being the more "defensive" or "group oriented" brawler. All the classes in EQ2 have gone through many changes over the years, so it is pretty pointless to try and determine what the "original intent" was for balance. There are totally different devs in charge of class mechanics now, and they certainly have their own opinions on how the fighters should perform. Dragonfire is awesome, and the last thing we should be doing is asking for changes to it. The only alterations I can envision them making to the prestige ability in question would be nerfing it. Personally, I've had my fill of monk nerfs, recently.
I agree I never read that we were intended to be singletarget tanks w/e that means other than significantly weaker cause we are not made to have many mobs beating on us. Nor offtanks since Pallies can do that so much better, and until the nerf to our heals they were also great back up healers since they can fill the role of a support tank while helping with heals. saying a single target tank is just an excuse for us lacking aggro capabilities. I know if u are pve only u might say we have no aggro issues but as a pvper only the differences in aggro are exposed to a great degree seeing as how , we cannot do it but Guards zerkers pallies and sk's do it so much better than us. So on my server not only is it very hard to get a group as a tank but even harder getting a group as a pvp tank in addition. Almost like we were intended as a solo classand never to be needed for a group. But I thought the game was designed for grouping.
I hope so much that the OP made a second account. With a join date of 2010, I very much doubt he would know what monks were like at game creation. Unless you are referring to character creation... Back in '04, agi actually influenced evasion, and evasion applied 360 degrees. There was no cap and life was good. If you were a monk and you weren't multipulling, you weren't utilizing one of the monks best capabilities. When DoF came out, Tsunami only highlighted what monks did best, and put it into a very awesome raid application (Terrorantula anyone?). Now that we have a variety of AA and skill based AoE's, there seems to be more offensive ability for a mutlipull monk. The down side is that our defense took such a hard beating from the nerf hammer over the years that it has been reduced to just de. Evasion cap was set in (and set extremely low for monks IMHO), evasion percentages applied only to certain quadrants, etc. AFAIK, monks still multipull and peel awesomely, but the first few years were definately more fun. I've just returned from a hiatus since RoK came out, but so far I still play my monk the same way successfully.
