I've been searching through the Live Update notes, and nothing was in there about Winds of Salvation and Bob & Weave being swapped. I dont like the change..but I really dont like the secrecy.
they also did not Tell you about the Proc Limiter being placed on Meditative Mending, or the reduction in duration to Unrivaled Focus. I think there is another that i am missing, but can not remember it atm.
Yah, ToV is the roofy of expansions for monks. Devs bent us over, and if you didn't check yourself afterwards you wouldn't know that you'd been *****.
My favorite is the 'on block' proc damage increases from mobs. From 1/2 of our health per proc to roughly 120%. (30-45k to stoneskins were seeing up to 350-500k)
Provoking Stance also got its duration reduced. They had all of these changes in the beta patch notes, not sure why they didn't make it to the notes for live. They weren't trying to be sneaky, they just messed up. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ineptitude.
I'm pretty sure they were trying to be sneaky, because the mess up wasn't that they didn't post the changes, it was the changes themselves that was the mistake. I'm not exactly sure what motives this new team has beyond chasing current players to EQN when it releases, but if it is to generally bring about the downfall of the EQ2 franchise, then give them all raises because they are doing a fantastic job.
the way i remember events of Open Beta going was... there was some patch notes of new upcoming changes, but not the notes from Closed Bate and thats where all of the Nerfing was. A Few people took it upon them selves to post the Closed Beta Notes and they where up for a few Hours.. I say them and have been trying to tell others what was Nerfed.... then posts about Closed Beta Update Notes was removed reasonably fast... So ya i think the Dev's where trying to keep the class nerfs a Secret and not make people mad about it. As for the WHY Nerf Brawlers... there was a perception (weather it was founded or not i do not care about ATM) that both Brawlers where OP. Guilds where taking more then 1 Brawler to tank in raid over other the Plate tanks... this is the WHY i have Heard.
Well the shot to the nuts with the MA/DPS switch should have been enough to even things out. The 'spectacular' new itemization further kicked us in the face. Swapping around our AA line abilities with prestige abilities..let alone a crappy prestige ability at that....it's like they were designing a way to ruin monks.
Monks are fine. They made some minor changes to some abilities that were either already worthless (Meditative Mending) or still work perfectly fine (Unrivaled Focus, Provoking Stance). Bob and Weave got upgraded when it moved to a Prestige, and now we actually have meaningful choices to make in our prestige tree, which I rather like. The MA/DPS switch hasn't caused any significant problems to anybody who has the ToV gear, as far as I can see, and the new itemization has provided more compelling gear choices than I've had to make in years. Change is scary, I know. But monks are still in fine shape. You guys are making it sound like TSO-era again, which is just silly.
Bob and weave got slammed behind ill designed garbage. You may like Winds of redemption, but if B&W wasn't behind it, I wouldn't even consider touching that crap. In it's former place we get the garbage that I originally avoided, winds of Salvation, an ability that serves more purpose as a parlor trick than a legitimate strat. The MA/DPS switch without ToV has caused significant problems, because now that thier functions have swapped, my gear hasn't. I'm doing 1/3 the damage I was before this failure took effect. If the function was merely to ease server load, they should have swapped all gear attributes to maintain characters effectiveness. But then again, if the function was to ease server load, they wouldn't have added additional rolls to mobs' avoidance to MA. And as far as ToV itemization goes, it's about as far from compelling as a date with Mr. Rogers. I chose not to support that garbage with my $40...but it seems I'm still paying for it. I'm not afraid of change when competent people direct it. But when sheep blindy support the ill-suited, blaming this on fear of change just loses all credibility.
Sorry, but I just can't take complaints seriously from somebody who didn't even get the newest expansion. I assume you played around in the Beta a bit and are now qualified to judge the entire release based on that experience. Myself, I am going to go back to having a really good time with all my friends playing with the new content and seeing my character grow. The newest expansion update changed a lot of mechanics, and there's a gear reset! That's never happened before! Except, y'know, every other expansion...
Yeah, actually playing on beta did qualify me to judge the entire release. Unless they added more overland zones, more variety than 1 new mob type, and completely overhauled the dragon AAs. But I've been keeping an eye on the update notes, and nothing there seems to indicate that quality got put back in to this expac. You don't have to take me seriously because I didn't buy this garbage, just like I dont have to take you seriously because you like to throw money away at everything regardless of quality. As far as a gear reset, I expected that with this expansion as well, I just expected some kind of quality to come with it. If you're going to cut & paste responses from other threads, at least read a little about what they mean. There wasn't a gear reset with DoF because there was level progression added. Same with KoS and RoK. EoF brought about a huge amount of change, but no new levels, so a gear reset was required. If you're not seeing a pattern here then I'll explain it to you: giving players gear progression without level progression causes the reset. We haven't had it every expansion because we didn't need it every expansion.
I am not sure what thread you're referring to with the cut and paste comment, but my words are entirely my own. We seem to differ on our definition of "gear reset", though. I consider any update that results in a character replacing all their existing gear to be a gear reset. So level cap increases would count in my mind, unless you tend to use out leveled gear. Semantics aside, my point stands. Monks are absolutely fine in the new expansion, and expecting your old gear to remain relevant after an expansion is naive, at best. You are perfectly within your rights to not buy an expansion if you feel dissatisfied with it, but you're choosing to be left behind.
I think you are failing to see the point of my arguement and I'm not sure if this is willingly or not. My point as far as the AA change goes is that there was no reason to move it around, we were fine before the change. Now we have to spend prestige points, which IMO are more valuable than AA, to get the same ability we had before they ninja'd it behind some useles prestige reactives. Further, the useful item we got at the end of our original tree is now a useless piece of fluff. Sure they are very rare and extremely conditional moments I would use it, but nothing that would amount to more than a parlor trick to amuse friends. As far as the gear/MA-DPS change goes, Being left out of the expac should not penalize me in content that is outside the expac. I'm not comparing myself to other players here, I'm comparing the content I can access now to the same content before the change. Fights shouldn't take any longer now than they did before, bosses shouldn't be any harder; but they are, because the MA-DPS nerf wasn't equalized with prior gear. My MA didn't change to DPS when they enacted this, and now I am doing 1/3 the damage on the same content. This has nothing to do with being left behind, it's about poor management and inept development.
