First off, let me state that I am VERY disappointed by "changes" made to AAs in the upcoming GU, particularly the removal of double attack, so don't jump on me for that. Now the reason for this post, my opinion as to what I think the devs were thinking. First off, had they left the double attack ability in, what monk in their right mind would not take the STR line? The way I interpreted the reason for the change to AAs was that they(the devs) wanted to bring balance to AA selections, mainly so you don't have posts asking "Which AAs should I take?" And the definitive answer is x-x-x-x-x or y-y-y-y-y if you don't have z. This game is all about change, and they want to change all the classes with this remake, along with the removal of DW weapons scheduled for GU 37, to allow for people not getting screwed and pick the wrong epic weapon for the next expansion. Does this help our situation? No. I don't plan on changing any of my KoS AAs after next update, because I think that the changes aren't that appealing for me to want to change what I already have. I fully agree we need A LOT of help. I am tired of reading "We are a jack of all trades, blah, blah, blah." We are FIGHTERS, which means that we should be able to tank, or do dps at a rate lower than rogues. The concept of AAs should allow us to specialize in a greater aspect of doing one or the other, with the possible option of helping both overall. I personally like my dps role, as I group consistently with a zerker, who is our guild MT when he can make it. I have seen his job, and I don't want it. Does this mean I don't want the ability to tank an instance here and there? Not in the slightest, but since I am specced one way, I do expect to have more of a challenge when I do. In conclusion, while it seems we got screwed over, we've joined everyone else in the game. It is just unfortunate that we were more screwed from the beginning. From what I've seen, and thought about what monks need, this is what Monks need the most, imo. First, something to offset our lack of mitigation, since they won't (most likely) change avoidance again, we need something to offset the fact that our main way of preventing damage decreases as the mobs increase in lvl/difficulty. Second, AoE aggro control. This is a BIG problem we've had from the beginning. There are ways around this obstacle, but trying to convince a pickup group to ASSIST you as opposed to just attacking through you is a P.I.T.A. Finally, DPS, if we choose to go with this role we should be near the top of the fighter classes, only to be outdone by bruisers. In my opinion, if we wanted to be fully specced for dps, that number should be on par, or just below that of rogues, so as to give some appeal for us to be brought on raids, as we don't have the other abilities that help with mobs overall. These are just my thoughts, and would appreciate it if you kept this thread from catching on fire and melting my monitor/causing CPU overheating issues when I check out responses.
[p]Of course everyone would take double attack if it were left in at 96%. Many of us are asking to have it remain but capped in the range of 21-30%, which would bring the bonus damage it gives right in line with other class' double attack lines.[/p][p]Many of us have been asking for mitigation bonuses to be incorporated as part of our AA tree. The problem is that 40 per rank at lvl 70 currently offered is not nearly enough. 8 ranks should give at least 500 mit. If they want to stay with 40 per rank, we should get 1% riposte per rank along with it. Having access to riposte also helps with our aoe aggro generation issues (and, once again, is directly in line with rogue/warrior double attack AA lines).[/p][p] In general, it seems AA lines are conceived to either 1)improve upon the class' primary role by shoring up shortcomings (in our case, aoe aggro control and mitigation), or 2) offer an alternative path (for us, dedicated dps option). Players have an option to focus on either the primary or secondary role, or to take something from both. The problem with many of our current choices is that the benefit they give does not adequately scale with similar choices offered to other classes. I am not really in favor of changes to our baseline dps, which i think is at a solid level. I am in favor of increasing our AA benefits so we can choose a defined role, like other classes.[/p]
I agree with the thought of keeping double attack and was expecting them to and drop it to say 3.5% per rank, which would give us 28% in the end, and a total of 56% with 2 weapons, still less than warriors post change. I was also very disappointed to hear that the mit bonus is only 40 at lvl 70, I had rolled up a monk on Test yesterday, and found at lvl 10 the bonus to only be 6 per rank, and was hoping that it scaled a lot more as we went up in tier.
One other thing I thought of, and this was kind of in response to a zerker's post on another thread (name escapes me atm) where it was said that we would auto lock aggro. If we are going for aggro, and we put up Dragon Advance(DA), yes it would be very difficult to pull aggro from us, but, DA only procs on the primary weapon, and according to the test notes, procs will not happen on the double attack. Inversely, if we are running Mongoose stance, we will have a 50% chance of ALL melee attacks decreasing threat by X, which would only put us gaining aggro on the double attacks them selves above the aggro that we currently gain in that fashion
