When I first made this character, back when you had to quest for class and subclass, the way it was laid out was the following: Warriors: Pure tanks, aggro junkies, and no dps. Out tank ALL fighters. Brawlers: Pure dps, not really meant for tanking, but could tank in a pinch for a second or two. Out dps's ALL fighters Crusaders: Hybrids, can't tank as well as warriors, can't dps as well as brawlers, but a decent mix. Out tank's brawlers, out dps's warriors. It saddens me to see how far we've gone from this. I'm sure the fighters aren't the only archetype with this issue, but the system is way broken. I wish/hope/pray that we can get back to this. I'm sorry if I'm the only one who thinks this way, but we need to get back to this.
I understand your anger. When the game was young zerkers were better dps and better aoe than the crusaders but lacked their versitility. Guardian was the best defensive tank and could survive a beatings that other tanks would need two healers to accomplish. Paladins were the most versitle. Able to be a solid tank, group support, secondary tank. Like guardians they just lacked dps. Sk's were somewhat like paladins but more offensive. Solid tank, lesser group support, but better offense than the paladin. Monks were strong in that they could provide good dps, group support, and had more defensive tools than a bruiser. Monks were very versitile like paladin but monks had higher dps than paladins but monk group utility was slightly less than the paladin. At the time monks were the only fighter that had a combination of good defense, good offense, and group utility. That made them very hard to beat. Bruisers at the time lacked defensive abilities but what they lacked in defense they made up in offense. Bruisers could tank but not as effectively as the other fighters. Dps is what a bruiser did in groups and they did it well. They were not as versitile and offered little to no group support. I wish things could have remained this way but do to lack of vision individuality is a thing of the past.
Frankly, I disagree with your interpretation of what our class used to be. I learned to tank in the original Runnyeye, before we had any expansions out, and at the time my monk was totally solid defensively and could hold agrro on the hoardes of little goblins that we'd pull. We were not DPS at the start of this game. We were tanks.
We could tank in the original game, and we could tank decently well in heroic content, as far as I've tried it; that doesn't mean we were ever tanks in the sense that we were competitive with plate - we may have been pre-LU 13, I honestly woud not know, since I did not raid the kind of content where problems in viability would become really apparent until early KoS (and raiding on a regular basis only from sometime late in KoS). When you read the early material on brawlers, it was fairly clear we were not meant to be tanks to the exclusion of everything else. That's what the Guardian was. It is however true that after LU 13, we were much less "tanky" than before (I remember the difference distinctly). The same goes after LU 1, for that matter (they took our ability to use shields away), though that's before I began playing the game. All in all, looking at the development of the brawler classes in eq2, it's been one of the most-changed classes throughout the game's development. The idea that we should be tanks in line with plate, if that was ever the intent, was dropped very quickly, and only during RoK did we begin to see it reintroduced in earnest. With tSO, citing the intent to "return the class to its roots" (by which I assume they mean the way the class was around eq2 launch), we saw the brawlers tip back towards a more focused tanking role that I certainly do not recall us having before (again, I've been raiding since KoS, anything before that I'd rate as casual play and hardly up to measure the quality of a class). So I understand why the OP here would be frustrated. The only answer is: That's the nature of the class it seems. You can either live with it or go roll a class where you've a decent idea what the purpose of the class will be a few years from now. My personal view on what the class should be is well enough known for those who've been following here for a while; but most of all, I want the class to have a role that spans more than one expansion; the only we've had that fulfills that criteria would currently be 3rd tier tank with dps (slap on a raidwide buff after mid-EoF and an avoidance buff from RoK onwards (it became raidwide back then if memory serves, and hence much more useful)) - and that role is not viable with the way the game is currently built.
I really appreciate what's been written in this thread, and the balance descriptions are very accurate with my own memory of the way the fighters were long ago. I log in now and shake my head at how scrambled up everything has become, and I wonder what was so broken from the OP's original class description that required somebody to retool everything.
Fact is monks were never that great dps and have always been easily replaced by a dps class when it came to raiding. You can fool yourselves all day by saying 'but I was always near the top of the parses' but the reality is that just means the dps with you were horrible. Even our group buff was garbage back then it was just simply haste and didn't have the casting speed part, pretty much before the raidwide was put in most of you monks QQ'ing about how great things were wouldn't have been able to find a raid at least now we can get brought because we can tank and we do have utility. The fact is unless SOE just gives up totally on our tanking even heroic content and makes us T1 dps with mage survivability the only way we are ever going to be wanted or desired in this game is to be able to hold our own in the tanking department.
Preya@Antonia Bayle wrote: That was never the case and sure as hell better never be the case in the future.
BChizzle wrote: I'll change around a few words here and there: Fact is monks were never that great tanks and have always been easily replaced by a tanking class when it came to raiding. You can fool yourselves all day by saying 'but I was always always doing well like this' but the reality is that just means the plate tanks with you were horrible. Even our group buff was garbage back then it was just simply haste and didn't have the casting speed part, pretty much before the raidwide was put in most of you monks QQ'ing about how great things were wouldn't have been able to find a raid. The fact is unless SOE just gives up totally on our dps even heroic content and makes us T1 tanks with sub-par dps the only way we are ever going to be wanted or desired in this game is to be able to hold our own in the dps department. The above written only to demonstrate that you're running a pretty onesided argument here, easily turned around. I don't believe either is a fair assesment of the situation. There's no denying that SoE moved monks towards tanking with the launch of tSO. There's very much an argument as to whether that move was necessary, or wise. In fact, people returning to the game and finding the monk lacking should give you an idea that something's been changed. Also, I don't recall finding a raiding guild to join being a real problem. Sure, we're not the most sought-after class out there, but it was still possible to get by and perform decently. I do remember finding something meaningful to do within said raiding guild being a problem - when tSO launched.
Siatfallen wrote: Except that your side of the argument is wrong, monks were in fact excellent tanks before they took away our shields. It is only a one sided argument because the dps side has no argument, our dps has never been an issue in the sense that we hold our own with the other fighters it is OUR TANKING that is the issue. Anyways you sat most of your raids once your guild decided not to be so casual and while I am sure you were happy with the role of cheerleader it doesn't change the fact that most people don't play this game to wear pom poms.
BChizzle wrote: Which was... Live Update 1? Right, so your argument hinges on the design of this game in the very first early months. Sorry, didn't play the game at the time. Our tanking abilities have not been equal to that of plate tanks between LU 13 (I would say LU 1, but I really can't be sure on this count) and up until now - y'know, the game we've all been playing for the vast majority of our time. Unless that happens to have been EQ1 (where monks were certainly not tanks). In every single other game I can think of that has a class called "monk" in it, they're also not tanks; in some, they manage to be a hybrid class of a sort (please correct me if I've missed one here). It's perfectly true I sat a lot in tSO, because the role I had on our raids was undermined (and because, frankly, my time for this game was dwindling; you try telling your leadership "right, I'll probably be gone from this game around April or May" and see what happens around February). This is an attack on the person rather than the argument, by the way; it's one of the most basic mistakes in leading any kind of argument - but let me address it anyway: If your qualification for being non-casual is "killing avatars" (you'll notice SF killed everything else in RoK and had it on farm status for months), then you're talking about content that far less than 1% of the playerbase will ever get to progressionwise. That alone is a huge gaping hole in your argument. Finally: What you're missing here is a pretty obvious argument. I think it applies to all fighters, but brawlers especially exactly because we're below the other fighters in tanking ability: What, exactly, are we doing in a raid environment when we're not tanking? The answer at the moment is "wasting space" or, in a pinch "waiting for the MT/OT to die so we can feel useful". We can try with "providing buffs", but that's been a joke for some time now; we're not bards. This was never the point of the brawler class before. It seems to be what they're turning the brawler class into - and with the way the game has been going, I can see why they'd have to remove us from the hybrid role we've had for most of this game's lifetime (and which they've spent most of this game's lifetime failing to correct balance). Like I said earlier, with the way this game is looking atm, "T3 tanking and low-end T2 DPS" translates into "useless" nowadays. This is a major change. Don't expect everyone to like it; I certainly don't. Go back and read my first post in this thread, though - I see why it was done, and I realise this is what the class will be at this point. Your argument assumes that brawlers have always really been meant to fill this particular role; this is blantantly not the case. In fact, this is probably why we see complaint threads like these popping up here constantly. You'll notice it's not the same people starting them all the time. It most likely means it's something we'll keep seeing, too, well into SF.
It was specifically stated by the developers of the game that all 6 fighter subclasses, including both brawlers, were intended to be capable of fulfilling the role of tank in groups. That was the purpose of the fighter. If brawlers were intended to be a DPS class, we'd be among the scout archetype. If our job isn't tanking, why do we have taunts, self-only defensive buffs, and snap-aggro abilities? If our job is to DPS, why are we given some of the least-damaging attack abilities in the entire game? No, brawlers have always been designed to tank, first and foremost. You can argue that we've always been inferior to plate-wearing fighters in that role, but honestly, I recall being a perfectly acceptable tank for heroic content back in the original release. I have never been a raider, so I cannot speak for that content, but raiding has always been more specific and less adaptable anyway (as numbers get bigger, balance gets harder). I've played my monk since day 1: Nov. 8th 2004. As long as I have played, monks have been tanks. We've just progressively decreased in competency as the years have worn on, mostly due to poor itemization, mudflation, over-specialization, and simple developer incompetence.
Pretty much agree with Monks originally being a tank class. We were decent tanks for groups but not for raids. Also we were the perfect pulling machine for group or raid. Most of the time I was either MA or OT. Some times MT. However, in the beginning Monks had significantly higher DPS than they do now and were the first class (I think) to get "tweaked" i.e. nerfed. Our defense (avoidence) was too good and our DPS too high (according to most other classes). We could solo most things that normally would need to be duo'd at the least. Thus we were "balanced". The more we got balanced the more other classes obtained "Monk" skills until we, except for unusual circumstances, are really not needed at all. Yes we, being very well geared and played, tank and dps. Perhaps not the best but we can do it. However, now other classes can both better, so why a Monk? Crap, this has too much rant in it. BTW have been a Monk since day one and was in either the first or second guild raid group to do what was end game at that time.
A lot of you guys seem to forget back when the game first came out Monks were insane tanks because of a bug. When SOE dropped Round Shields and made deflection there was an issue where Monks/Brawlers had like a 200 deflection skill (something like that. Might have been lower) from L10 on up till they started gaining more deflection. So a L10 Brawler had the deflection skill of like a level 40 Monk. It took SOE a long time to fix that. In fact I know I was L50 when SOE fixed that bug. So while a lot of you think Monks were great tanks back then you either forgot or didn't know it was due to a bug. At level 50 Monks were no where near the tanks that Guardians were. So I do agree with the OP understanding of the game. Now lets see just how many of you used a shield.. I had one.
Tsukuwa@Mistmoore wrote: I tanked the CL instance at lvl 50 on my monk in T5. I tanked a lot of raids in T6, including being one of the two MTs for Terrorantula. I gave up my brawler in T7 but then I played with a bruiser who MT'd all content including avatars in RoK and tanked and cleared most of the instances in TSO. Just saying.
Gaige I never said Monks can't tank. Just ask my guild that. I'm saying back in the beginning Brawlers could out tank the plate classes because of a bug. A lot of people are referring to their tanking ability back then but the truth is up till L40 Brawlers were insanely hard to beat as a tank because of it. You can't say things like "I learned to tank in the original Runnyeye, before we had any expansions out, and at the time my monk was totally solid defensively" without saying it was because of a bug. And you know that at L50 Guardians were the best tank back then. But at L30 a Monk could out tank a Guardian while dishing out good DPS. I remember soloing heroic ^^^ in SH with my Monk because he never got hit. But after the 30's he leveled out and became the fighter he was meant to. I see agree Brawlers now are nothing like what SOE first invisioned. I'm ok with that because I like my Monk.
Tsukuwa@Mistmoore wrote: As a monk, being worse in survivability than guardian is totally acceptable and understandable for me. However, just because we are worse than guardian in survivability, suddenly, our primary role is not tanking is beyond me. I have played this game since game launch. When SoE advertised this game, they stated clearly that fighter was tank and every fighter was viable for all content for their primary role, tanking. The only issue is how far our survivability is comparing to other so called plate tanks. Until KoS, plate tanks are not far better than brawlers in survivability. The real disaster for brawler tanking in raid since KOS because uncontested avoidance was introduced to EQ2. It totally screwed brawlers because it made plate tanks avoid hits more than brawlers in raid. Finally, it's corrected in TSO; brawlers have more avoidance than plate tanks in raids. Even with new issue occurred in TSO, more brawlers are tanking in raids for their guilds than before since KOS. You can have your own vision of what a brawler should be. But the vision of brawler from SoE is tank and it is never changed. They did some mistakes before but the good news is, we are finally back on the right track in SF.
Preya@Antonia Bayle wrote: You sure rolled a monk back then ? Back then the encounters where linked and a monk was solid as a rock when tanking. Back then you could stand between 3 green heroic gnolls and go to the bathroom and the avoidance still kept him up when you came back from the bathroom. They tanked anything through prism one if needed. It was wishful thinking and the idea that a matial artist should be a dps class that changed a lot.
