ok, i'm decently geared in mostly legendary form sf instances and a fabled piece here and there. there is nothing i have come across in the heroic part of the game that i cant stand in fornt of and tank and laugh at when it doesnt hit me. (hehe) BUT, my biggest issue is agro. my regular group mates are tearing my taunts up spitting them on the floor and there is nothing i can do about it. it doesnt matter if its single target or aoe. although i actually have less issue on aoe which is ironic but most of my regular group are singel target classes so it makes sense. all of my skills are t9 expert+. im still a bit low on aa but outside of getting provoking stance and the taunt add to dragonfire i have everything that increases hate maxed. i have 10% hate boost atm from yellow adorns. our brigand will destroy my hate everytime without even trying. he has to throttle his dps from 30k down to about 14k for me to keep the mob without burning specials every 3 seconds. this doesnt feel right and is way out of whack. he is not max aa and gear wise we arent that far apart in stats and such. in my tank setup im 100 crit 100 da 27% parry 70% block 55% mit atm 10% hate mod 110 haste without outside buffs. my crit bonus and potency self buffed are kinda weak but in group im at around 22 cb and 20 potency. brig is at 45 potency but only 10 cb. he detaunts his butt off and i taunt liek there is no tomorrow and no matter what i do i cant keep mobs off him when hes going all out.. in comparison my sk holds agro in the same group without even hitting his taunt buttons and when im on my necro and our guard is tanking the brig can go balls ot the wall and never rips agro either. so either im doing something way wrong (which i can seem to figure out, but being our gear is so comparitive i cant see that being the case) or we need some more boosting. why is it monks dont have reactive hate (regardless of how little we get hit it woudl help) why on earth was our one group hate management aa turned into some dps spec garbage. yeah im talking about evade check pre sf i never lost singel target agro with my monk with evade check (except for the over zealous wizard casting ic or fusion on pull,, hehe let em die i say hehe) is provoking stance and the dragonfire agro aa's gonna make that much of a difference vs high dps rogues? i should not have to spam snap agro tools just to keep agro. i shoudl be using them to get agro then my natural taunting and dps hate shoudl be keeping it. i know there are brawlers out there that arent having hate issues. my question is HOW? this is the only area of my monk that i just cant spec properly or cant overcome the natural disadvantage of the class to do properly. why is my monk so crippled in this area with sf when in tso he had no ST problems with hate. there are fights, named in particular that i have to tank in O stance jsut to even hope to keep agro for the first 10 seconds. im doing 7-10k while tanking in the group we have, not a huge number but for my gear i believe its a respectable number. I hope to god the devs wake up one day and change all the stupid hate reduction aa's into hate increasing aa's since we are a TANK class. but before i start ranting and making proposals about what changes ild make I'ld liek to see if anyone has any suggestions on this particular issue im having. I have no survivability problems these days. im comfortable with my dps but yes im still looking out for gear that will give me more and more. its hate that is my nemesis now. i used ot think it sucked that i coudl rip agro all day long and keep it forever but coudlnt live long enough to talk about it. but living forever and not being able to keep the agro is far far worse. any help in this area woudl be appreciated.
Sounds like an AA problem, but without example of gear, aa's, parses and group builds there really isnt much help we can give you.
ok as far as gear im in 85% legendary gear from teh sf instances all of it is level 90. some jewelery is still faction merchant stuff but most has been upgraded to lvl 90 instance stuff also. have teh gruengach forearms, bg cloak and stonewill ring. right now im using semi-decent 2.5 delay weaps for the +block they have. ill have to dig through to try and get some parses of what i had going on. aa is my weak point right now monk was sidelined for raiding in tso cause i raided my necro then. not yet to 200 aa's but moving fast to get over 200. current aa spec if i remember correctly str- 4-6-10-0-8 stam 4-10-8-2 wis 4-8-10-2-8 int 4 - 7 monk tree max mend max challenge max will of the heavens couple in dmg stuff nothing fancy here with my current aa amount i had to skimp this tree alot but aside from dragonfire hate mod and provoking stance i have all the +hate stuff .. which isnt much. tso tree 5hp 5pow 5 def stance 5 dmg redux 1 sneering 5 taunt boost 5 aversion 5 deflecting 1 inner focus 5 meditative 1 five rings 4 mend 2 hidden openings 2 bob and weave my monk tree is obviously very weak. right now all my other trees are set until i get my monk tree fleshed out so every day adding more points to it. all my gear is adorned in mostly ethereal greaters for hp crit da dps boosts and some procs on the weapons potency on the ranged i know im weak on aa in my monk tree, but dragonfire woudl be the only actual taunt ill pick up. provoking stance seems more of a mem wipe management tool to me and woudl fall into the snap agro category. 10% hate boost form yellow adorns so far can add another 7.5 but that woudl be 7 pieces with yellow hate adorns which seems a bit extreme and still might not help. as for the group makeup. fury dirge illy brigand ranger, monk when im tanking with my monk. so im getting a 32.5 hate boost from teh dirge and even with that the brig rips agro like hes slicing through hot butter. i was skimming through parses earlier today and noticed that i ahev been missing alot in my all report on act. i havent gone through and looked at exactly what is missing but on 1 zw i had over 1000 misses. so tomorrow im gonan swap in some + weapon skill adorns and see if that helps as well
When you have no problem to survive encounters, try to be more offensive; replace tank gear by dps gear, change defensive aa to offensive aa spec, etc. Also, learn to use your temp wisely. Use them to boost your survivability instead of wearing tank suit and in defensive stance. Based on your post, you are fully geared with SF legendary gear. Your zone wide dps should be at least 15k in most heroic instances (in dps gear and offensive stance). I doubt you would have any aggro issue with such dps. Again, survivability issue in SF heroic instances shouldn't be a problem for a monk with legendary dps gear. If you need tank suit and in defensive to stay alive, you didn't use your temp wisely.
What kind of group setup do you normally run? Your agro could probably be improved upon a lot if you had some of the following classes in your group: Dirge -> +hate to the tank Troubadour -> -hate to the group Coercer -> +hate to the tank, -hate to group members Swashbuckler -> huge hate transfer to the tank Assassin -> hate transfer to the tank (not quite as much as swashbuckler) Warden -> they now have a buff that procs a lot of threat when put on a fighter, it also lowers threat on anyone else If you do regularly run with one of those classes, make sure they actually have their hate buffs running. I have grouped with plenty of those types who wont bother with their hate management skills and than complain about agro. I notice this issue especially with bards / enchanter who don't want to "waste" the concentration slot on hate management. You could also try tanking in Black Widow Stance, it is more the defensive enough for pretty much all heroic tanking. You also don't have to give up much offensive prowess to use it. You might also want to look into gear with an Undeniable Malice proc on it. It is an excellent proc for hate (and damage) that just happens to be on a lot of nice tanking pieces, such as the fabled ring from Demetrick's Bastion and the fabled charm from Vestigal Cella. I believe there is also an earring out of Royal Erudin Palace that procs a hate position increase as well. As far as weapons go, I would suggest trying to get the two brawler weapons from the battlegrounds. They are excellent weapons all around and are easy to obtain. A lot of the armour is also great for heroic dungeons where critmit doesn't matter much, the chest and legs especially should help your parse a lot.
Ambrin, Yeah I have been trying to get the fabled hate proccing pieces out of the instances. Ironically though for some reason my group jsut has the worst possible luck ever on fabled. WE have not seen a single fabled item drop since the start of SF. all the fabled pieces I have were bought so far and well the really good ones are heirloom and I dont like bidding wars so Ive been hoping our luck will change on fabled items. weve gotten a bunch of masters but no items yet (and we have run a ton of instances). when my group mates pug with alts and such they see fabled pieces drop all teh time. i think our group is jsut cursed or something heh. and as far as group setup, im usually tanking when our guard is working his assassin up or isnt able to be on for an evening or something so ild say 75% of the time im on my necro but the group make up when im tanking is mostly monk, fury, illy, dirge, ranger brig. and occasionally folks want to go with alts for aa and such so it changes to monk, inqi, troub, dirge, swash ranger. its the usualy group i have difficulties with though. the brigand jsut produces so much hate compared to me that is the issue. i can keep the mobs off the dirge the swash the illy all day long. occasioanly on ae fight swash can rip but i get it back quick. it seems the brigand is really the only class i have intense difficulty keeping the mobs off of. he is a very excellent brig skill wise. we've played together for a long time and his brig was his main is tso for raiding and such. but with teh new expansion and what not gear wise im able to keep up with him stats and such wise. I do need some hate procs though, and ive been trying to get them my biggest thing is that its liek a night and day change from tso to sf for me. tso never had a problem on single target hate, wizards where the usual culprit for ripping agro then but it was easy to get back. its different when a rogue is the ripper though. they hit hard and fast and have some pretty big attacks with it. which jsut makes it a non stop ping ponging of the mob when im tanking and then his dps drops cause he doesnt have the mobs back half the fight. it works fine when he throttles his dps but i need to get to a point where he doesnt need to. thats my goal. hopefully soon ill get the ring off demetrik and the charm in cellas. and i have an additional question. have you higher geared monks switched to 4.0 weapons or have you stayed 2.5. i did a test in a pug woe last night and my dps drops with 4.0 which strikes me as odd. my 4.0 weapons are 111 and 112.4 dr, my 2.5 are both 112's (for the block chance hehe) but my dps drops with teh 4.0. which i thought shoudlnt occur due to procs having a naturally inherently higher chance to proc on a longer delay weapon. it struck me as odd. i lost about 2k dmg with the 4.0s
Regarding the slower delay weapons, I think a lot of why you may be parsing lower (if the weapons have the same DR) might just be getting used to the new delay compared to the 2.5 delay weapons. I believe the best choice for DPS is still a pair of high end 2.5 delay weapons such as the ones from the battlegrounds, so you may do well farming for those weapons (along with a huge amount of other very nice pieces from the battlegrounds). If you haven't already, you may want to put 5 points into Tranquil Vision to get the hate transfer. Place this on the brig and it may help out with some of your hate issues. Also make 100% sure your bards/coercers are using their hate management buffs. Anything beyond that and it is a matter of you getting better gear, more AA, and more experience playing your monk.
