..."monks are broken" thread. Now I've reserved judgement on this issue up until now. But I am now 70/50, up to 14 or so in Claymore, have raided in T7, have 1/3 to 1/2 of my CAs as masters (and some of the rest as ad3s) and, in short, I feel informed enough to air this issue. I am an informed commentator. I will also add that I parse. A lot. I run most of my groups (and raids) with ACT running. I've compared DW to 2H and have generally minimaxed my stats, armour, weapons and CAs. I do not have legendary/fabled T7 armour. The weapons I am using are Strifewing fists (49 rating) x2 DW or a 92 rating 2H with a proc I got from some quest. Yes I realize these will make a difference. Luckily the comparisons I'm making are in a similar situation (since the people involved are generally in the same guild). There are many classes I could make a comparison to. The one I'll start with is the paladin. I don't think many will argue this is an overpowered class. It is what I consider to be one of the three "real" tanks (along with zerkers and guardians; SKs don't--or didn't--have the taunt). First a bit of preamble: in t6 I realized that we are no longer tanks. Compared to a plate tank we can't tank the same level of targets and, for whatever we do tank, we need more support--typically a mystic/defiler. I wasn't too happy about this (because I'd started to tank for some friends and picked monk as a fighter never having played eq2) but I could live with it. Why? Because monks were high damage. At 60 I was doing probably 400+ dps in a typical exp group. Compare that to a zerker guildie who, at the time, had to be fighting 3 mobs to equal my damage and 4 to beat (just). On 1-2 I beat him handily. At 70, typically I'm doing 500-550dps (more with a dirge and/or zerker and anyone else who can buff dps). I self-haste to 96% (FBSS, group haste, offensive stance, everburning fire). I'm still using the master1 of the level 32 everburning line (30%). AD3/Master1 of th elevel 60 version would be more but honestly, theres not much point. AD3/Master1 of the group haste would achieve the same thing and that I'm more likely to do. Problem #1: we are too haste dependant. On this bruisers have us beat. Capping dps is MUCH harder than capping haste and doesn't happen in everyday grouping. It only really happens (if at all) in raids. Add any of a number of classes (eg coercer, illusionist, dirge) to your group and you've hit the haste cap. We need to swap some dps/haste with bruisers. We'll both be better off and we both need it. Problem #2: we haven't really gotten any better since 60. At least theres brawler itemization in KoS (eg manacles of dark sky) but this doens't make up for the rest. To come back to paladins, I am typically outdamaging paladins now by a mere 5-10% IF THAT. Now that wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it wasn't for... Problem #3: we cap at about 30% mitigation (sub-fabled; 35-37% fabled) and 70-75% avoidance (defensive stance with th eright AP lines). Plate tanks cap out at about 65% mitigation and 65% avoidance (with a shield). That's a problem. Thats a massive shortfall in mitigation and a minor advantage in avoidance. Problem #4: avoidance is worse than mitigation. If yo uhad to give me a choice of 30% mitigation/60% avoidance or 60% mitigation/30% avoidance I'd take the latter option every time without a moment's hesitation. Theres a number of reasons for this: 1. Mitigation scales better with higher level mobs than avoidance; 2. Some mobs simply ignore avoidance completely (typically epics); and 3. Avoidance is inherently less reliable than mitigation. Mitigation basically always works. Avoidance is subject ot luck and bad luck will get you killed. Over sufficient time bad luck becomes a certainty. The only way to manage this bad luck is to lower the risk (by fighting weaker mobs). Problem #5: we have no class-defining skills or abilities. Group FD is admittedly nice in a group situation. No complaints with that one but we don't have any meaningful buffs (group or targeted). Haste? Yawn. Well, that's about it. Hell, even zerkers have more buffs than we do. They hit the 5 concentration cap in the 20s. Buffs include dps and in-combat regen: both useful at every level. Problem #6: there is absolutely NOTHING we can do about our woeful mitigation. No APs. No abilities. Nothing. Hell, even brigands get a mitigation buff (and a single target taunt as it turns out). Plate tanks can do something about their avoidance. Problem #7: while we were decent (although not uber) dps in t6 we don't even rate a mention in t7. I can watch assassins doing 1300-1600dps while I eke out 600 on a good fight. Now that's what assassins are for but take a class like brigand or swashbuckler. Not only do they beat us on damage but they have some hoopy abilities to go along with it (to the point that high end raiding simply isn't viable--or maybe even *possible*--without 1 or evne 2 brigands). What's more I'm hitting a cap on how many CAs I can pump out without getting aggro (from a geared up guardian). I have to hold back further hurting my dps or I'll die every fight. The real dps classes have deaggro abilities. Problem #8: our AE taunting ability is simply woeful to the point that on any group encounter, without constant switching (and even with to a lesser degree), the healer and others will get aggro. Master1 AE taunt every 20 seconds doesn't cut it. 3s cast damage AE doesn't help (and this casting time needs to be reduced to 0.5 seconds, I mean honestly, it's almost completely worthless). What else is there? What exactly do you need a monk for on a raid? Is it the avoidance buff? Nope. Pallies have that too. Is it the dps? Nope/ Other buffs? Nope. Oh thats right, it's for tanking Gorenaire cos, hey, we've got safe fall. Gratz us. As I understand it, long ago in the mists of early EQ2, avoidance was king and anyone with sufficient AGI/avoidance could then tank 3 up heroic nameds 10 levels higher. That got nerfed... hard. LU13 semi-fixed this (one guildie told me he stopped playing his zerker at LU13 cos his avoidance dropped form 100% to 60%) but not far enough. Our taunt stance is great. If only there was a reason to taunt anything. Now I know SOE. Like always they balance things out by going too far (and taking too long to come to a consensus). In fact, once consensus is reached, the reaction is almost kneejerk and completely half-arsed (melee mitigation in eq1 SoL anyone? Vex Thal anybody?). It's kinda weird that they spend 2 years deciding something only then to get it completely wrong by spending two and a half minutes cobbling together a crappy solution. The pendulum will (eventually) swing back the other way. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can be bothered levelling a useful character to 70. If not, goodbye EQ. And I'm not one of those Vanguard fanboys either (frankly I think the game is looking pretty awful so far). The one thing left to do on my monk it seems is to take my free respec to get rid of all these useless deflection/parry APs. Not sure what to swap them for yet. Maybe the AE proc on the wis line but 8% seems pretty crappy for 8 APs. Suggestions welcome (for most dps).
I was going to reply to each of your points but the previous poster did a good job of doing that. I have played my monk for quite a while now. I rolled it after i became bored with my first character (a shadow knight). I have been around to see most of the changes made to the brawler class , and to be honest , we are probably the best balanced class out there. Now i agree that the tanking tends to favor Mit more than avoidance. Mit offers a much more consistent damage threshold instead of the large damage spikes we have to deal with. You can really tell the difference on hard hitting mobs , such as epics. But i find i tank just fine on heroics and even some of the easier epic mobs out there. Ability plays a large part in tanking anything really. As far as DPS goes , once you get most of your skills to master level and you obtain better weapons , you can hold your own. I , like the previous poster, almost always parse high. In a +DPS group setting i easily hit 1000 to 1100 almost every fight. I have never had a complaint about my DPS. We have a few class defining skills. FD of course , but also Tsunami is one of my most used. Its is one of the best pulling abilities out there. All in all , i am happy with the monk class the way it stands now. We aren't just a one trick pony , so to speak. We can tank or do some nice dps depending on the role we need to fill. Also we are one of the best solo classes out there. Trust me , there are other classes out there that are far worse off than us.
Monk mitigation isn't capped at 30% at all (or 37%). Before I betrayed to bruiser I think I was around 50% mit, 75% avoid self.
Gaige: Monk mitigation isn't capped at 30% at all (or 37%). Before I betrayed to bruiser I think I was around 50% mit, 75% avoid self. 50%? Now I near my gear ain't great (as already noted). I typically have treasured level with some legendary for 30% mitigation at 70. To get to 50%, each piece of mine would need to increase by 66%. My BP is 306 mitigation. I'm just not seeing 500 mitigation *leather* BPs anywhere (raid drops or wahtever). Am I missing something here? That being said, what are the stats (dps, avoidance, mitigation) of a paladin, guardian or zerker in your guild who is similarly compared (as in same level of gear)? I'm curious. Message Edited by HaginNetherblade on 07-25-2006 03:25 AM
Yes, there are jewelry with slashing, piercing and crushing resists in them. These will add to mitigation. When solo, my monk is at 42% mitigation, 71% avoidance at lvl 70 with one fabled and the rest legendary gear and master 1 defensive stance.
