Hello there! Seeing how the current thread in this forum on monk issues has not seen an update since December 2008, I thought I’d go ahead and start a new one. The focus of this thread is monk issues on the live servers. A thread on the state of affairs on test before the fighter revamp was revoked can be found here: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=442409 - I’d encourage you all to go there and look it (and other brawler posts there) over and provide feedback there as well as soon as the new fighter revamp begins going live. I’ll be updating this thread as things are pushed to the live server of course, but no one seems to know exactly when that will be, or how much may or may not be changed before this happens. By all means, add suggestions below, I’ll try and fit them into the list as best I can, establishing new categories only if I have to in order to accommodate an issue falling outside the established ones. This is a universal monk issues list, not tailored specifically to a single level of play. For my own part, I’m a raider and used to focus a great deal on DPS, which means I may well miss problems others are encountering daily. I am however keeping the focus to current-tier. If an issue has absolutely no relevance in tSO or RoK, don’t expect to see it here. Also, due to the structure of this, feel very, very welcome to add concrete examples – this will help me lazy self flesh out the second post via copy/paste. The list is structured as follows: This post contains categories of issues and brief overviews. The subsequent post (an empty placeholder for now, will add something to it when I've time or when others do the work for me and post it within this thread) will add in details and examples to document and/or elaborate on the issues, as well as provide suggestions for solutions. I apologise for this somewhat unwieldy structure of things, but I found the issues of the class so numerous that making one comprehensive list would get extremely impractical. All that said, without much further ado, the issues list: tSO Itemisation The launch of the Shadow Odyssey has, of course, seen the introduction of new items on all levels of play. Sadly, for the monk part of this, there are many, many problems. To list them all would be far, far too exhaustive in this single post, so specific items follow in the post dedicated to the main category below. Some general points follow here, however: Incorrect weapon delays – after RoK, it should seem a simple matter to agree that weapon delays for brawler-only weapons should follow that of our epic or mythical. However, for several pieces, this has not been the case. Our Mythical weapon’s delay is 2.5 seconds, several otherwise desirable brawler weapons were introduced in tSO with a 3.5 delay, making them utterly useless. Illogical upgrade patterns – Generally speaking, it’s easy to find drops on all levels of play for a monk that is not an upgrade from an item clearly more easily obtained elsewhere. This may not be a problem on the grouping level, due to the wealth of instances some overlap in this fashion cannot be avoided. On the raid level, it’s unacceptable; not only are there items from RoK that only sees an upgrade very late in the tSO raid progression; there are in fact armour drops in the game from RoK that remains the best pieces of equipment for a monk in the game. The best tanking offhand weapon is from RoK (and no longer obtainable), DPS gear tailored to monks are often lacking compared to the VP set. The list goes on. See the post below for details. Lack of +crushing – Many items useable by brawlers have +piercing & slashing on them, but for whatever reason does not include bonuses to the crushing skill at all. Seeing how the brawlers are the only classes relying only on the crushing skill for weapons, this puts us at a direct disadvantage. The corresponding gear with +crushing and lacking one of the others outside brawler-specific gear is next to non-existent. Narrow itemisation – Due to the new critical mitigation mechanic being introduced to the game, monks now have to rely heavily on it (just like any other class) to survive, especially when tanking which, in this expansion, is quite often. This limits itemisation greatly, especially on difficult content, since a great deal of gear will simply not be worth equipping due to lacking of critical mitigation. This issue is general for all classes, especially tanking classes, in tSO - being a hybrid class and having very few viable equipment pieces isn't exactly optimal, either. Survivability With the introduction of tSO, monks were given a great deal of tool for survivability, to be passable tanks. What we were given was insufficient in the sense that we are still nowhere near plate tanks. Due to the nature of avoidance mechanics, monks having high haste and DWing and low inherent mitigation, the brawler classes remain woefully behind. Specific examples, again, follow below, but the main categories of concern are as follows: Damage Shields – Many mobs in tSO, especially on the raid level, possess damage shields with very powerful detrimental effects. Because we as monks always attack very fast (low delay weapons, dual-wielding, high haste), we trigger these damage shields much more often than any other tank. On some fights, this makes using a monk to tank impossible. Avoidance mechanics – Contested avoidance remains nearly useless on the raid level of play. In other words, a good deal of our survivability simply does not apply against epic mobs. This makes us fall behind plate tanks, who do not rely as heavily on this unreliable mechanic. Narrow selection of tanking weapons – Because only slashing weapons can benefit from the Smoldering Balanced Handle adornments (which give +3% riposte chance), the selection of monk tanking weapons becomes very, very narrow. On the raid level, in tSO, there is exactly one. AE aggro A great deal of content in tSO consists of group encounters. This is good, because this was lacking in RoK. It is however a problem for the monk class (recently pushed out of being viable for DPS and utility, hence pigeonholed into tanking), because our AE aggro tools do not well enable us to deal with this content, making us even less desirable as a class. The specific main points are: Lack of passive aggro generation – As opposed to most other fighters, in order to produce aggro against a mob, we have to hit it. A comparatively huge chunk of our damage output comes from autoattack. This quickly becomes a problem against group encounters. Lack of Blue AoE effects – All told, the monk has three of these, one of them from the brawler Wisdon Achievement line. None of them are particularily useful for aggro generation. Lack of AoE autoattack – As the only fighters in the game, brawlers do not have access to a passive effect granting them a chance to have autoattacks affect all enemies in front of them. Crane Twirl is a very weak replacement for this, and Crane Flock is, althought it helps, a short-term buff. DPS output With the introduction of tSO, an attempt was made to bring monks up to par with plate tanks in tanking potential. This being a failure aside, it meant our damage output did not increase much if at all with the launch of the new expansion. This again means that the monk class, which previously had desirability as a DPS/buffer class with some emergency tanking potential lost this – effectively changing the focus of the class more thoroughly than any other class-specific adjustment made in this game since LU 13. On top of this, several issues from as far back as the launch of the game remain; years of feedback has not seen them addressed, but they are included here for the sake of completeness. Inferior AA choices – See “Achievement Tree Issuesâ€, below. Lacking DPS improvement from RoK to tSO – In RoK, we used to be desirable for DPS. In tSO, this is no longer the case – the gap between us and the rogue classes has widened tremendously. But even ignoring for a second that monks used to be comparable to rogues and focusing only on the tank classes, another problem becomes clear: We are not doing more damage than them. On many zonewide parses, it should be expected to see Berserkers and Shadowknights well ahead of monks, guardians and paladins are catching up to us, and bruisers have always been ahead. The reason this is problematic? Because we’re also worse at tanking than any of the other 5 fighter classes. Overt reliance on autoattack damage – As the game progresses, capping out melee critical chance, double attack, haste and DPS mod has become increasingly easy, to the point where a decently geared monk on the tSO raid tier will be able to do this, with equipment slots left to spare. Because of our very low CA damage, this means we are left with very little room for further improvement. This issue will only get worse as more expansions are launched and the bonuses get even closer to the various caps. Too high selfbuffed haste and melee skills – at the exclusion of everything else, monks get selfbuffed haste. At this point, getting 160+ haste with halfway decent gear and in offensive stance is not hard at all – and there’s no point in doing so. In fact, the DPS loss in an optimised group for a well geared monk, going from offensive stance to balanced is zero, because monks are buffed above all sense in these categories, making offensive stance completely useless. This has been an issue since before t8, but balanced stance “caught up†with offensive stance in terms of DPS with the advent of RoK. This will only get worse as the level cap continues to increase. Low AoE damage potential – As an extension to our reliance on autoattack for damage output and complete lack of AoE autoattack, AoE damage potential is the lowest of any fighter. Achievement Tree Issues Our current AA lines contains several problems that do not fall exclusively in the domain of any other category listed here; also, the issues are easily extensive enough to warrant isolated attention: Brawler tree – The brawler tree is currently missing double attack, melee critical chance and especially AoE autoattack effects to put it on par with the corresponding warrior and crusader trees. Additionally, there is little to no point investing points in the stamina line at all, the intelligence endline is all but useless and the Wisdom line is extremely weak in regards to AE damage potential, compared to what plate tanks have access to. EoF tree – Endlines are all but useless, CA improvements are very specific and hence not very desirable. tSO tree – Is severely lacking in DPS options, effectively forcing monks into a tanking role. What DPS enhancing abilities do exist are exceedingly weak. Endlines are comparatively weak. Far too many abilities are single target taunts, something this class has no lack of as-is. Several abilities are specific to raid tanking and does not effectively help against heroic content at all. Several abilities are marginal in use at best. A few abilities provide bonuses that put a decently geared monk past the reuse cap on the enhanced ability, essentially wasting points for no benefit. Utility loss Going from RoK to tSO, the monk class is the only fighter class that has actually lost utility rather than gained it. Since we are also falling behind in DPS, AE aggro and survivability, this puts us at a disadvantage. No group buffs – neither monk nor bruisers posses any groupwide buffs whatsoever, significantly lowering our desirability as compared to plate tanks. Raid wide buff nerfed – With tSO launch, all raidwide fighter buffs were enhanced somewhat, through AA abilities or through a straight increase. The only exception to this is the monk raidwide, which has effectively been lowered in desirability. Coupled with the lack of group buffs (see above), this means we are now clearly behind several plate fighters in this area. Extremely inefficient utility AA choices – What few utility choices are provided via the Achievement system are generally not useful. The exception to this is the increased hit chance added to our raidwide effect – which incidentally still makes that buff inferior to what it was during Rise of Kunark – and it now costs us AA to have it.
Getting started on this list slowly. Thank you all for reposting information here; the very idea of having to dig through all the old posts to find excellent points was daunting at best. Looking over this list, it seems like it will get pretty long before we're anything remotely close to done. Itemization issues Incorrect weapon delays - To my knowledge, this issue has been taken care of. It does however reflect badly on the developer responsible for the itemization (fireflyte I am guessing) to be unable to calibrate something so easily done correctly to attain basic functionality with the class on launch of the expansion. It goes a long way to explain exactly why we have issues with gear elsewhere. Illogical upgrade patternsThis point is a major concern, and falls into many seperate categories at once: Weapon upgrades: A: If the monk in question has obtained the Tenth Stone of Zen, as well as the Mythical weapon from RoK, then there are no viable tanking weapon upgrades currently in the game whatsoever (that's we've seen yet); quite simply, every weapon available falls short compared. B: Should the monk have finished with only Nightmare Wraps and Knuckles of Blistering Blows (both from VP), then there are valid, if minor, upgrades to these weapons in the tSO raid content, namely Coupled Hammer of Distrust (from Tythus Tinzok) and Void Knuckles (from Pentaclypse/Ultaclypse), both in Palace of the Ancient One. However, moving onwards in progression, we then encounter a problem at Avatar gear: Mysteriously, the Fist of Judgement has a lower damage spread than the previous weapons from Palace of the Ancient One. Why this would be done to an endgame weapon, we can only guess. C: In case of monks ending RoK with anything less than Raiding weapons obtained in VP including mythical, this expansion finds itself more or less devoid of good brawler weapons. One exists in the Bloodwood Effigy from Bloodwood Plank (need to doublecheck the name of that item). I've heard of or seen no others for the entirety of the expansion. tSO set gear: For the raid set in ToS, Fyreflyte has stated that each piece was supposed to be a direct upgrade from the VP gear. Looking purely from a DPS perspective, however, this is only barely the case: Examples: Gloves: VP: +40 Str/+7 Melee Crit TSO: +40 Str/+5 MC/+3DPS/40 haste Head: VP: +36 Str/+7 DA TSO: +30 Str/+5 DA/+1 MC/+75 CA Boots: VP: +64 Str/+7 MC TSO: +60 Str/+3 DA, +5 MC Chest: VP/Trak: +64 Str/+7 DA, Focus Five Rings (+120 dmg) TSO: +20 Str/+5 DA/+3 MCB, Focus Five Rings (+120 dmg) Set bonuses: VP: 2 piece bonus (+125 to dmg of dragonfire), 4 piece bonus (adds to effectiveness of offensive stance) TSO: 2 piece (same), 4 piece (focus heal) In other words, the tSO set is, as it stands right now, not desireable from a DPS perspective. Monks are still wearing it because of the critical mitigation mechanics, and predictably, we fall behind in a DPS capacity as a result. It is only marginally better than the VP set, and some pieces fail to be even that (boots and gloves in particular are lacking). Conclusion on the set gear: At present, it is about where it needs to be in a tanking capacity. It is, however, severely lacking in the DPS perspective, to the point where much of it is a downgrade as compared to loot from the previous expansion. To compound this issue, we do not have any alternate gear from raiding to pick up for DPS for many of our armor slots either. This is not at all acceptable. Lack of +crushing on gear:List of problematic items will eventually be forthcoming here. Narrow itemization:Aside from gear being of low quality for some aspects of the class, there's also not a lot of it: Equipment availability:In addition to the avatar loot above, a quick count through the known drops (as per the list provided on http://eq2.xanadu-community.com), dividing items between items designed for brawlers, those for plate tanks and those for melee DPS (rangeresque items ignored here), shows something of a discrepancy present. Notes: Set items are ignored for obvious reasons. Weapons for plate tanks ignored since most are obviously designed for scouts with 4.0 delay. Tanking jewelry used by both brawlers and plate tanks not included is useable by all classes - in the case of "fighter only" jewelry, it is counted for both brawlers and plate tanks. Likewise, DPS jewelry has not been counted unless possessing category exclusive effects or being limited to scouts only either. Some items are exclusive to crusaders within the three interest groups here, and so, these are not counted here, in order to keep it at 3 groups. Tomb of the mad crusader: Trash drops: Plate tanks: 3, Scouts: 3 Senior Loyalist Tilas: Nothing of relevance. Captain Ikalus: Plate tanks: 1, Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 1 Teth-Em-Aua: Scouts: 3 Xebnok the Wretched: Nothing of relevance. Gynok Moltor: Brawlers: 1 Over all, Tomb: Plate tanks: 4, Brawlers: 2, Scouts: 7 Palace of the Ancient One: Trash drops: Plate tanks: 4, Brawlers: 1 2x Xythus: Nothing of relevance Switchmaster Zaxlyz: Nothing of relevance Absatalius: Plate tanks: 2, Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 1 Tythus Tinzok: Plate tanks: 1, Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 1 Penta-/Ultaclypse: Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 1 Mynzak: Scouts 1 Anashti Sul: Nothing of relevance. Over all, Palace: Plate tanks: 7, Brawlers: 4, Scouts: 4 Ykesha's Inner Stronghold: Trash drops: Plate tanks: 4, Scouts: 1 Strange Stalker: Scouts: 1 Kultak the Cruel: Nothing of relevance Tyrannus the Dark: Plate tanks: 1, Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 1 Over all, Ykesha: Plate tanks: 5, Brawlers: 1, Scouts: 3 Zarrakon's Abyssal Chamber: Zarrakon: Plate tanks 1 tSO instanced raiding, total: Plate tanks: 16 Brawlers: 7 Scouts: 14 Avatar gear: BChizzle wrote: tSO tree: Additionally, a few items in the game are currently useable by all fighters that give bonuses to shield efficiency, but fails to provide a similar bonus for brawlers. These include: \aITEM -1337398515 -1389467974:[Jewel of Many Colors]\/a - Fixed, thank you. \aITEM -1804384167 1812379618:[Charm of the Tribunal]\/a Add deflection chance to these items. SurvivabilityNothing written here yet. AE aggroNothing written here yet. DPS outputSince the launch of tSO, our DPS output, compared to other classes in the game, has been dropping dramatically. This problem stems from many seperate issues in the game currently on live, and will need to refer to many of the points raised under "itemization issues" and "Achievement Tree Issues" especially. Complete lack of upgrades over RoK raiding gear: With the above provided information under "Itemization issues" another problem should become clear: Aside from the armour set patterns, brawlers get the following armour slots from tSO instances: Shoulders x2 (Captain's Cursed Spaulders, Captain Ikalus, Tomb of the Mad Crusader, and Void Ripper Armwraps, Trash Drop, Palace of the Ancient One) Pants (Flesh-Peeled Leggings, Gynok Moltor, Tomb of the Mad Crusader) Chest (Void Gi of Sorrows, Absatalius, Palace of the Ancient One) All of the above slots can be argued to have DPS upgrades over RoK raiding loot (although the Void Gi of Sorrows is questionable unless used against shadow enemies), and for shoulders and forearms, there are set pieces comparable or better than instanced RoK loot for DPS purposes. However, this still leaves 4 of 7 armour slots without alternates to the set items. As we have already seen, the gloves, helmet and boots of the VP set is better for DPS than the new tSO set. This means that inside known content in tSO up to (and actually including) avatars, tSO gear provides only extremely marginal upgrade to DPS capacity. This is unacceptable as it hurts the viability of the class for raids signifigantly, especially given that some other fighters, already having better survivability and better DPS potential, gain comparable DPS enchancements on their set pieces (berserkers in particular). Achievement Tree Issues:The following has been gone over many, many times, some of the issues going back to Kingdom of Sky when Achievement points were originally introduced; a few have been resolved over the years, but most remain: tSO monk tree: The following is written as an overview of the achievement abilties, one by one. Oppinions stolen from too many places to clearly identify at this point. Structure preserved from an old "monk issues list" thread: Brawler line: Taunt increase: Is extremely marginal in use. Take this out and replace it with a DPS/utility option. Or, if taunt amounts recieve massive boosts for brawlers with the fighter revamp, make sure it works with all taunts, including the hate proc selfbuff. Raidwide buff enhancement:This ability is fine in and of itself. It is however sad to have to face that our raidwide now needs an investment of 5 AA points to achieve being almost-as-good as it used to be. Full Moon enhancement: Brings the CA down to 0.91 second's reuse, which means it can now fit into a normal CA rotation. As such, it is useful. It would however help greatly do see some damage enhancement here. Lightning fists enhancement: This ability is far too weak; 15% dmg increase is in the ara of additional 30 damage per trigger. Needs atleast 5% dmg increase per point spent, 1 extra trigger per point and 5 points makes it group/raid wide to be desirable. Deflecting blow: Nothing to complain about here. Aversion: This AA is probably the best we have in the tSO tree for tanking. Endline: This one is just about right as-is. Monk tree: Peel enchancement: This ability is in no need of any improvement (except perhaps making the aggro lock actually work on anything that matters again). Remove this, replace it with a solid utility- or DPS-focused AA choice. Heal enhancement: In theory, this is fine, but it does not stack well with the monk 4 set bonus. Change this AA or (preferably) the monk raid set 4 piece bonus. Bite of the Cobra enhancement: This enchancement is much too small to make any kind of difference. Boost it signifigantly, add an enhancement to the debuff component of the CA, and/or make it apply to more than 1 CA. Focused followup: Spending 1 point here is worthwhile. Anything more than that is an utter waste of points. Increase the damage on all hits with the last 4 points, rather than only the first, to make this somewhat viable. Mitigating blows: A useful AA line, but it begs the question: Why do we have to spend AA points to make a CA viable at all in the first place? Covering up flawed class design by forcing said class to spend 5 aa points that will then not go to actually improving (as opposed to repairing) the class is, quite simply, only compounding the issue. Meditative healing: Is too specific. Against raid content, it's somewhat useful. Against solo- or group content, it never triggers. Change this to 2% straight damage reduction per point invested, to make it equal to the bruiser mythical effect at 5 points. Bob and Weave: A weaker version of tsunami, with a longer recast timer is not at all impressive as an endline. Reduce recast timer on this one to 150 seconds. Hidden Openings: The fighter tree already provides us with a snap aggro tool. One more here is excessive. Replace this with a solid DPS improvement, to cater to an in this entire tree otherwise overlooked role tSO tree, overview: This tree is overstacked with tanking abilities, to the point where we cannot even take all of them - and most are rather useless anyway. Kingdom of Sky tree: Many issues pertaining to this tree remain in the game: Wisdom line: Crane sweep: Too low damage, too high reuse. Cut recast in half, increase damage by around 50%. Crane Twirl: Clearly inferior to the 40% autoattack chance given to every other fighter. Change this to give brawlers AE autoattack. Crane Flock: With DA easily being capped, this ability is now only marginally useful. Change it to a passive AE autoattack chance calibrated to monks specced with 8 points in Crane Twirl end up with ~55% chance to trigger an AE autoattack (40% from Crane twirl, 15% from crane flock?), or change it to provide the brawler with a passive flurry chance. EoF tree: Endlines here are far too weak, and too few. We have only 3, where most classes get 4: Superior riposte: Enable this ability to also block magical attacks of any type, or increase the amount of triggers to 3. Combination: Does far too little damage and encourages excessive macroing (cluttering the server with orders to cast combination because monks simply add that effect in a macro to every CA they have). Change this to be an additional damage proc triggered whenever the conditions (use kick/jab/punch within 2 seconds) are met and keep the damage as-is. Evade Check: Is not worth picking up at all at this point. Redesigning the ability entirely may be called for.
Nice job Eilien, I am going to just throw this out there on itemization. With regard to gear lets look at how many items each typ of tank can wear for avatar gear. Not counting charms which everyone can wear and possible items not discovered yet... Guardian - Good avatars (7), Neutral Avatars (4), Evil Avatars (4) Zerk - Good avatars (7), Neutral Avatars (4), Evil Avatars (4) SK - Good avatars ( 8 ), Neutral Avatars (5), Evil Avatars (4) Paly - Good avatars ( 8 ), Neutral Avatars (5), Evil Avatars (4) Bruiser - Good avatars (6), Neutral Avatars (2), Evil Avatars (3) Monk - Good avatars (6), Neutral Avatars (2), Evil Avatars (3) So respectively warriors can wear 15 avatar items, crusaders 17 avatar items, and brawlers get 11 avatar items to wear. Since jewelry is a wash because we can all wear it the discrepancy is plate tanks can wear a avatar helm chests legs forearms shield secondary. We can wear a fist weapon and chests. Sounds great doesn't it?
This is how it looks for a legendary monk that has no intention to raid. Lack of weapons. To upgrade from 72 mastercrafted there is only the bloodwood effigy and the fabled weapon from Sebilis:CoA. Never seen anything else except the fabled epic. I think there should be something in the 85dps range for us more casual monks. Also the mastercrafted have a hate proc. With more legendary/mastercrafted 85ish weapons we would have more choices for dps or tanking. +aggression. Where is it in TSO ??? I have still some blue items from RoK and maybe EOF with +aggression. But nothing in Moors/TSO. No jewels, not on T1 and i think not on T2 shard armor, only on the fabled shard set. I havent seen any jewels with +agression. Be it crafted or dropped. There might be some, but i havent seen them. This will probably make a different once the taunts have changed.
Well with the fighter changes gone, the much needed improvement to meditative heal looks to be gone along with our ae auto attack that sucked anyways, on top of that since they scrapped the avatar gear changes our avatar weapon isn't getting deflection chance.
I'm a tad busy today, but I'm dropping a link to this post on the "in testing" thread to try and get people over here - this is about the ideal place for us to continue discussion for now, after all. I should have time to get some stuff written on this thread tomorrow. Right now, it looks like I'll be poking at itemization issues first, right after I go over the "in testing" thread and stealing whatever points I missed from that one. Thank you both for the input so far.
Reposting my gear post from the other thread. ---------- Monk (and brawler) itemization is in a state of disarray. More to the point, brawlers as hybrid classes are suffering from "hybrid gear syndrome." Much of the brawler-oriented gear splits the baby between being tanking/defense oriented and enhancing DPS. In RoK, the direction seemed to be that the VP set gear was DPS oriented, and the lower tier brawler set gear was defense oriented. For the raid set in ToS, Fyreflyte has stated that each piece was supposed to be a direct upgrade from the VP gear. Looking purely from a DPS perspective, however, this is just not the case. Many, if not most, of the individual pieces of ToS raid set gear are inferior to, or at best no better than, the VP set gear for DPS. Examples: Gloves: VP: +40 Str/+7 Melee Crit TSO: +40 Str/+5 MC Head: VP: +36 Str/+7 DA TSO: +30 Str/+5 DA, +50 CA Boots: VP: +64 Str/+7 MC TSO: +60 Str/+2 DA, +5 MC Chest: VP/Trak: +64 Str, +7 DA, Focus Five Rings (+120 dmg) TSO: +20 Str, +4 DA, Focus Five Rings (+120 dmg) (As an aside on this commentary, WTH is it with the TSO raid chest pieces? They are all REALLY weak - not just the monk set.) Set bonuses: VP: 2 piece bonus (+125 to dmg of dragonfire), 4 piece bonus (adds to effectiveness of offensive stance) TSO: 2 piece (same), 4 piece (focus heal) If you flipped this around and looked at it from a tanking/defensive perspective, the TSO gear is a lot better, piece for piece than the VP gear. It has critical mit, loads of + deflection, + parry and + defense, + riposte chance on the chest, + deflection chance on the shoulders, etc. So, what has happened? In lieu of increasing our DPS potential, the "improvements" are all in the direction of making us better tanks. Great - it's a welcome change to have more viability as tanks. That viability, however, should not come at the expense of upgraded DPS gear for TSO. The point has been made MANY times, but it's still true: Fighters represent 1/4 of the classses in the game, but tank slots represent only 1/6 to 1/12 of available group and raid slots. Even if brawlers can suddenly spec and gear up to raid tank level, which, frankly, remains to be seen after the LU51/52 changes, that does not suddenly mean there are more slots for raid tanks. This same hybridization problem is carried through the brawler shard gear, which is tank/defense heavy. Having the hybrid (Wasted Wilderness/Wilderness Warrior) gear helps, but there is no equivalent at the T4/raid level. Perhaps the best (or worst) example of this is the Void Gi of Sorrows from the Palace of the Ancient One. Who exactly would equip this and for what reason (other than in an appearance slot)? I will post screenshots later, but there are heroic Gi's that are better for DPS (Gi of the Jarsath Swiftail) AND tanking (Abandoned Gi of the Jin Drake). Why is this? Because it has mediocre DPS (+4 DA) and mediocre tanking (+5 Defense/Deflection). Hybrid classes are ill served by split the baby gear. Make us have two whole sets, by all means, but go full bore in each direction.
The "specifics" post updated with a bit of the information eventually needing to be on it. Thank you again for making my job that much easier by reposting from earlier threads. I went over the loot table as presented on Xanadu and did a count of class-specific items to go with Blanka's avatar loot list. I may have missed an item or two, but I don't think so. In any case, feel very free to correct any mistakes found in the above, of course. This, for now, should take care of most of the itemization in the raiding aspect of the game. Instances being as numerous as they are isn't something I'd personally want to go over for an item count. If anyone does, I'll update the list here of course. Next up for my personal focus, most likely, will be the Achievement Tree issues. Thankfully, there's loads of documentation on that to draw on - if I can find the old posts.
Adding this info here (also posted on In Testing), for completeness: Thought it would be easier to comment if we had a pic. This is what the set looks like as of 3/27: Note: I took my Mythical off so that the mitigation values would show true. A few initial comments: 1. With boosts to the various pieces, I believe each piece is now at least a little bit better than the VP gear for DPS purposes. That's good, though in general I think there should be a little more headroom. 2. The 4 piece set bonus is still a complete joke. (Although, can anyone comment on the actual mechanic of the "additional deflection chance"?) Edit: I understand from Couch that the additional chance is 5 for 10 seconds, so my original comment stands. Heal is already overstacked on recast reducers. 3. The 5 piece set bonus is at least better than nerve pinch. Still pretty underwhelming though. 4. We remain at 3 Melee Crit Bonus for the whole set, and that's on the Gi, which even most raiding monks will never see. Should be on the shoulders, or replace the 4 piece bonus with ~+7 MCB. 5. The haste on the gloves MUST GO. Replace it with something that will actually boost our DPS, please.
Updated list to account for changed set items, and added a few notes on AA problems - nothing complete, but I guess it's a start.
I would like to add that I think we have one of the most inferior mythicals, Strikethrough rarely helps at all... Another just to be specific for EoF aa's is, Combination if lucky does 25dps max on a fight with the most ridiculously STUPID recast of all its not even worthy as an endline. The deaggro endline doesnt even work anymore, got it to try it out once and it doesnt even drop the people around you enough to lose hate on a encounter so very useless. We dont even have a 4th endline?...Doesnt that make us the only one who doesnt have it? Our lack of instance loot is pathetic, pathetic tank gear, pathetic dps gear and I mean VERY PATHETIC dps gear. For specifics on the RoK tree, well no AE Auto attack is a given way less stats being crit/da than other fighters who have stronger advantages with dps and by far tanking. Very useless Agi endline now since when someone dies and fd's they will most likely die by an ae/dot. VERY USELESS Sta endline...does any brawler even use this even in PvP? Wis endline, Way too long of a recast, even 1min seems too long if revamped to it because it only last for 16sec oh god, like 10 auto attacks before its down. INT endline very pathetic even for solo anymore...30% health to activate i mean cmon you trying to get 1 shotted for sure? And what healer in their right mind will even let you stay under 30% longer than 1 sec...So thanks for making us pretty pathetic aa's. We dont even have a passive endline. TSO aa's are a JOKE, I literally think who ever made our aa's was laughing drunk...Endlines are just terrible...lets have another single target taunt! And a wanna be Tsunami with an unbelievable recast...ABSOLUTELY nothing in that whole entire tree to help our ALL AROUND dps which makes me /sad /verysad...W/E Will our cries be heard?...
Few things here could be updated--the +crushing on raid items seems to have been mostly fixed--there's still an earring off of Anashti sul that's missing it, but everything else I've noticed has been fixed already. Can anyone here who notices an item useable by brawlers that has +shield effectiveness but not +deflection chance list them, or any items that you think should have +crushing but currently don't (with the criteria there being an item with +slashing that is useable by brawlers)? Kander has put through a lot of fixes along these lines lately so they're fairly likely to be fixed.
Fist of Judgement needs to have higher dmg to equal or be greater than the damage from Void Knuckles. I am also very VERY disappointed this being Avatar worthy, having high melee crit/da is nice but a very uncreative proc just very sad. Justice Charm should have some sort of Deflection chance on it. Jewel of Many Colors needs +Crushing, I havent checked Hoop of Dark Desolation from Anashti. I also saw a instance shield having 30% chance on successful deflection to ward 650(?) off alll dmg, why does a shield have that kind of proc? Anyone who uses a shield cannot DEFLECT. Why doesnt Brawler gear or offhand weapons have this kind of effect...I just dont get it........ I also think that our ability "Will of the Wise" should have its recast cut down to 30 because its only a cure and I dont believe that to be too overpowered. Because at 1min 30sec it is ridiculous for just a cure. Im sure a lot of Monks are suffering with "Too-much-haste-ittis" which is giving us a difficult time to giving our class an advantage, with beyond max haste we gain no benefit so other classes who used to suffer with haste are now smothered in it enough that its great for them, but when im in raids sitting at 200-300, like wow stopped being usefull at 165? I just think something needs to change with our haste, or like every extra 10haste turns into a diff stat? Flurry! or something...
I really think they ought to change everburning to a flurry buff instead of a haste buff. It accomplishes the same thing (hitting more often) while allowing us to benefit from haste buffs.
Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote: This is a good idea. Also, we should add the problem with TSO raid mobs being immune to aggro locks.
I say get rid of group FD. It is really useless on a raid. Hey group FD the AE will kill you anyway. I rarely use it in group instances except when getting the group past something in the zone. Just get rid of this ability and give use something more useful. Get rid of the invisibility also. Don't need it when 99% of all zone mobs see through it anyway. Also with FD who needs invisibility? Another ability that can be replaced now.
scalzo wrote: While not useful on raids, Group FD has it's place in group/duoing content. It does quite well as a way to save a group that accidently pulls something they shouldn't and can't evac in time or doesn't want to hike all the way back. It shouldn't be dismissed out of hand because it's not useful for a particular playstyle. Removing monk invisibility ignores all the levels from 24 to 79 when exploration might be your goal, not going from Point A to Point B, which is what you use Feign Death flopping for. I do think it needs to be worked on, however. The only truly useless ability Monks have is the Iron Body buff before level 80, which make no sense until you achieve the 175+ AA's you need to remove it's massive use penalty.
After rolling a noob SK and seeing 5 AE's + an AE taunt, Passive Hate when hit ability and an AA for AA AE auto attack - I'm amazed on how E-Z it is to keep aggro on group encounters (even multiple group encounters) As a Monk this a tab-fest and if its more than 1 group your essentially SOL. would like to see something to Remedy this problem for the Monk Class I love to play. 1) Dragon Rage Line - Needs to be at the very least an AE taunt ability or sometime of passive hate. 2) Brawler Stamina AA line changed to some sort of group hate ability. 3) I would like to see the Monk AA tree :Superior Riposte" changed back to the way it wa sin beta as a 15 second AE blocker, but make it group. 4) Raise Brawler Wisdom AA "Crane Twirl" to 33% chance and up the damage amount. 5) Monk TSO AA "Med Healing" changed back as it was in the fighter Revamp plan to a 40% heal.
