Monk Deep Dive Discussion!

BobWendal

Just going to mention this again, but the dot and flop method is not only not dead with the rework, but stronger than ever with celestial strikes interaction with quivering palm. On top of that you can literally build a gear set specifically around this playstyle to make the damage even higher (high Int). Just keep seeing people mention they're happy its gone but it will never be gone if we all just pretend it doesn't work now.

Nideak

Fubsy

I do not disagree with your goals and I think it's important to, uhm, make sure everything is accurate (to be polite). My issue is when the discussion devolves into NOTHING BUT.

If you increased my dps tenfold right now, I would not enjoy the class anymore.

Fubsy

Phuture

Thank you for putting the time to put all of this together and for your efforts and diligence. In our converations its is clear you are incredibly intelligent and the way you analyze data with the human eye is incredibly impressive. A very heartfelt thanks for all your work.

You are correct, this is truly comes from aplace of just wanting the game to succeed, I have immense amount of time spent in Beta and MnM really is my happy place. We know the team is a small volunteer group who are doing this in their spare time and have sacrificed so much too get this project to where it is. I want to make sure that @aLovingRobot and @Xilith really know how grateful I am for their effort and I think every one else here feels the same. Even though I havent put in 1% of the time you have in this, I would say I am emotionally invested in the success of the game at a pretty high level.

At the end of the day collecting data, figuring out mechanics, solving puzzles(whether intended to be solved or not), helping others to succeed, and trying new things, strategies, adventures is what I enjoy most.

I'm sure my list of friends that I am constantly bugging for str values, max hits, min hits and swapping weapons with will tell you I might need to seek help lol - but I am who I am at this point in my life! Rambling now, but just wanted to thank everyone who has posted their thoughts, who has sent me tells in game or on discord, the devs and team, and I do look forward to watching the future of MnM unfold.

Fubsy

Nideak

I agree - accuracy is crucial and key. I probably jumped the gun in my first few posts(not probably - I did) but with the help of @Phuture guidance and advice I think anything posted going forward(I'll save number and analysis for him and not AI) should be accurate. I love your passion and vision for the class, you put it all out there in a way most of us can't!

Fubsy

BobWendal

Curious about this int build- my reverb hits at 201 AT 60. The kit has made soling even stronger if used right, I'm not disappointed in my solo ability right now, as long as I'm patient and don't let the ADHD kick in

Xilith

Phuture

There is indeed a damage bonus applied to the primary hand based on weapon delay and attacker level that the offhand swings to do not get. This is consistent for all classes.

It is the the nature of our combat damage rolling to have "bins" of damage that you've noticed and that the counts in each bin in a lengthy test would show somewhat normalized as opposed to purely random numbers. This again is intentional and the same for all classes. If you want to know more about why, etc. - coax it out of Ali.

BobWendal

Fubsy
Still working on getting a set of gear, been too busy grouping to farm/buy it. But to simply test it out I've got a +7(+4 enchant) helmet and the platinum badge of the living city +4int with a +4 enchant for a total of 19 extra intelligence. The damage bonus from 16 int to 35 int brought my Reverb from 174 to 190. This isn't a meaningful amount of damage and will never out perform any other stat if fighting normally, but for the dot and flop method where you basically don't hit anything or get hit stacking a lot of int can do a lot. It seems to add roughly 80% of your int value to the damage of reverb, so getting 100 int would increase your damage by roughly 80 assuming linear scaling. I also tested it earlier with borrowed int jewelry to get to 48 int and had roughly the same % increase but i don't remember the exact numbers.

Phuture

Xilith

Xilith that the +4 exists is not in question or what one of the issues is.

Why does a 60Shadowknight, same Str and statline, have a minimum damage with Mothers Sorrow of 15, but we have a minimum damage of Mothers Sorrow of 4?

We generate hits of 4 at the same rate. The hits of 4 occur at exactly a 3/4 rate; so three hits of four occur for every 4 hits if 15. This pattern repeats itself across sample sizes.

We have measured this across level gaps, weapon gaps, str gaps, dex gaps.

If this is to occur for all classes, where is it for shadow knight? Why are they rolling out of one 15-93 bin, and we are rolling out of a 4-97 bin?

Mathematically, the numbers show a pattern where we have two overlapping hit charts, and shadow knights/non dual wield classes have one.

This indicates an error in how dual wielded weapons are generating damage values.

For what you say to be logically valid and correct in the program, sk and monk would generate identical number spreads, and they do not. They are shifted 4 upwards and 11 downwards for monk, but still maintain 15 as the only strong signal in the 10-20 bucket. This indicates overlapping and competing hit charts.

Baashem

Thank you @Fubsy, @nideak, @Phuture for your posts. Great input yet again, and while we may have differing opinions on some small aspects, we definitely are all on the same page.

This is BETA. We are meant to give feedback, are we not? We are trying to figure out why things are working the way they are, and then if they are suppose to be working that way. I would hope @Xilith has taken some of this in, because we are genuinely trying to help - not just with Monks, but with the game in general. I hope that this feedback reads as heartfelt input from fans that want your team to succeed and not tryhards screaming about the sky falling...

With that said, it would be great to hear from the team:

What issues we have described that they have confirmed are issues.
What issues we raised they dont think are issues.
What discussions look like around how things are going to change on the class.

A promise of a future damage pass isn't going to do it. Adding some damage to the class doesnt issues with abilities. It doesnt change Pinning Throw missing all the time, pulling being below mediocre as a monk, 1k Fists feeling miserable to use (regardless of its damage, which is bad), etc. I know the team is burning the midnight oil trying to get things out before EA. But again, this is BETA. If we cannot get responses to feedback (or changes) or even have a discussion about major class changes it probably wont ever happen and doesn't bode well for future issues.

I love the Monk class. I love MNM. As I said, I am way over 500 hours in just on the Monk. I have time and money to spend on MNM in the future, but I don't want to get into a situation where I am this invested in a game and things broken by a patch linger for weeks.

Communication is essential - as long as the community knows that a dev is aware of an issue, says they are working on it (would be nice if we were told what was being done, but that is a big ask), and an honest effort is made to resolve it promptly, communities can be forgiving.

This hasn't felt like that at all.

If this were EA, I think I would be more understanding about this. But again, this being BETA, we are here to test for you all, and having an open dialog with a dev thats actually building the class would be fantastic. Shouldn't they want to know how the class feels out in the gameworld with real players? I just dont understand what the point of beta or this thread is otherwise? I thought we were doing exactly what was being asked of us, but for whatever reason it feels like there is this animosity.

This isn't just my feedback. I have open conversations with groups of several other high level Monks and I am echoing group sentiment. They just dont want to post here.

Phuture

Baashem Your input has been great too.

It was so odd to log in to write about the causality for so many 4 damage reads for us, to see you say how "weird" it is how often you see 5(crit).

My feedback was trying to highlight exactly where the equations they have might be reading wrong inputs, or someone left a parentheses open or something.

If I take data at identical stat values for different classes, and give them all the same weapon, have them all fight the same mob, I can slowly isolate what variable is causing the difference from the expected pattern.

In this case, my suspicion is that in order to code dual wield, a random value was assigned to differentiate mainhand from offhand, and that this value is being incorrectly input somewhere, causing a lower damage floor. This is a specific mechanical complaint with a lot of data behind it. It is not observed across all classes of the same level, str, and wep, so it isnt a level bonus.

Phuture

Phuture One other issue I forgot to add-
Mother's Sorrow, level 39 monk, level 60 monk. With the same Str values, the top end damage on this weapon goes up 7 points.*

Savage club, with identical parameters, the top end damage on this weapon goes up 32 points. It has lower delay, lower damage.

There might be a softcap on damage per hit, or a damage ceiling for non crits? Str seems to raise the cap through this hypothetical ceiling.

When compared to the harder hitting and slower mother’s sorrow, this 6x increase rate is rather unexpected and hard to explain. Interestingly, and speaking to the normalization and floor problem I mentioned, while the max hit dmg on SC climbs 6x faster, the dps increase rate for each weapon remains nearly even (excluding weapon procs and abilities)

Baashem

Keys to the Castle
If I were given free reign for a Monk patch going out tomorrow, here is what I would change:

Wind style removed. Similar effect added to Hundred Fists.
Sun Style - Assume a sun-based fighting style, increasing your Offense. Additionally, Celestial Strike reverberates through to your target's soul, dealing Magic Damage after a few seconds. Hitting a mob with a pending Soul Reverberation has a chance to trigger a Soul Reverberation of its own.
Moon Style - Assume a moon-based fighting style Dodge and Block. Additionally, Celestial Fury further increases your Block and reduces your Physical Damage received for its duration. When a 2 handed weapon is equipped also increasing your AC by 10% and AGI by 1 per character level.

Pinning Throw now reliably hits targets.

Feign Death now has 3 possible outcomes:
Failure: 5%.
Complete Memblur: 70%.
Partially failed: 25%.

You will get an immediate message upon using FD - All mobs have forgotten about you // FD failed // %t mob seems to be unconvinced.

Thousand Fists removed as an ability. It is now a buff granted by Hundred Fists and it's ranks.

New rank of Hundred Fists added to replace removed Thousand Fists.

Hundred Fists is now on its own cooldown, separated from Celestial Strike. It now does 100% weapon ratio damage per hit (really this time), is no longer channeled - landing all of its hits in rapid succession akin to Fighters Flurry ability. It now grants you a buff, Thousand Fists, giving you a chance to strike your target a second time on melee attacks for a duration. No longer has a chance to stun if the target is off balance.

Flying Kick now has no minimum range. Flying kick has a chance to reset the cooldown on Hundred Fists.

Fleet of Foot moved to the skill bar.

Quivering Palm now only has 2 stacks. First reduces damage dealt, the second increases their damage received.

Ascendant Body added to the skill bar. Lasts 1 hour. Now also adds weightstones to your fists when using H2H weapons. Automatically increasing STR by 11 per H2H weapon equipped.

Perfect Focus, Cyclone Staff, Iron Fists and Ethereal Body added to skill bar.

Perfect Focus had is duration doubled to 30 seconds and its cooldown halved to 5 minutes.

H2H damage and delay values per level have been published.

Minimum hits formula recalculated for Monks. Too many auto attacks were doing minimum damage, should see minimum hits roughly 30% of max hit. (if hit range was previously 5--103, new range is 35-103, with more weight on the top end based on STR+DEX combined stat value).

Baashem

Phuture

There is definitely a max hit cap by level.

When leveling twinked alts I always go for the faster weapon (which will have lower damage) because of this and it is very obvious when switching between say a Mothers Sorrow and a 23 delay weapon with similar ratio. Faster with the same ratio is better for lower levels because you hit that max damage per hit hardcap so easily.

Baashem

With these changes my bar would look like:

Round Kick
Celestial Strike
Flying Kick
Hundred Fists
Mend
FD
Pinning Throw
Quivering Palm
Sweeping Kick
Taunt

You would CS for Sun Style proc, Activate Perfect Focus, Hundred Fists to get Thousand Fists buff, Quivering Palm, Round Kick, (if CS reset) CS, Flying Kick, (if HF reset) Hundred Fists.

Baashem

Phuture

I feel like I caught grief in the beginning of this when I said the damage felt way worse and something felt off. Again nice to see the data reveal something Fubs, myself and others caught early on by eye.

Nideak

Baashem In case this is directed at me: I am not singling anyone out. I just do not want these discussions to focus on DPS while the foundations of the class are fundamentally broken. DPS can be tweaked. The foundation, in my opinion, cannot. Most of Xilith's replies have focused on replying to DPS and not the concerns about the foundations of the class.

I am not saying monk DPS is good, bad, whatever. I'm simply saying, even if we're the lowest DPS class in the entire game, I think we have more-pressing issues.

Arkamedeez

Baashem Moon Style - Assume a moon-based fighting style Dodge and Block. Additionally, Celestial Fury further increases your Block and reduces your Physical Damage received for its duration. When a 2 handed weapon is equipped also increasing your AC by 10% and AGI by 1 per character level.

That is a stupid amount of agility. The max rank of the shaman buff is only 20, isn't it?

Phuture

Xilith as to the normalization bins, I’m afraid my points were missed, which is in large my fault for presenting them with other separate mechanical issues.

Of course there are bins. A true RNG is literally impossible, one has to put some type of boundaries on it. But the boundaries must also let the RNG breath, otherwise there is no rng, just flat fixed combat.

My two poorly explained points here were:
1) whatever is causing our damage floor to be lower than other classes is creating another damage “bin” below the bin SK’s seem to have as a floor. This bin also has to be “filled” with hits.

Imagine the SKs have 3 boxes of equal size, and must fill them all to move on to another 3 boxes. They represent high, medium, low hit values. Monks (probably other dual wield classes) have those same 3 boxes, but a fourth additional box labeled “extra low hit values”. This box also must be filled to cycle back through.

The math fully supports this theory. Others (@baashem) have posted about this before my deep dive. It is why he is being forced to cycle through a bunch of hits for 5 to get back to high value hits.

My second issue with the normalization mechanic itself, is that normalization is “too aggressive”.

By this I mean that the normalization is not serving as a bumper rail to the rng; the normalization is guiding the entire flow of combat.

When the trend lines become so neat that multiple hit counts fall within one hit of each other after thousands of hits, it is no longer random.

As that relates to monks; monks rely the most on auto attacks for dps. A lot of weight is given to triple attack, and bonus attacks from wind-fist. That is why it is so pronounced on us, and why ac changes perhaps caused such a negative blowback to monk dps.

This persisting is going to make your job of balancing and updating classes very difficult, and could result in a lot more work later.

This is flattening stat benefits on combat too. The benefits of stacking strength to increase your hit limit are completely muted and inconsequential. With our floor bugged at 4dmg, raising your hit limit by 4 points increases your dps by 0. A far cry from the impact stats have on casters.

There are very easy ways to fix this. If you set the bins so that they each only had to fill 25% before resetting, it would improve dramatically and begin to function as bumper rails again. If you were to accompany this with making strength or dex increase the minimum fill of the upper and middle bins, gear would actually feel consequential, and many monk problems would be solved.

Phuture

Baashem conversations I have had with other monks echo the same. There is a lot of disappointment. What is really sad is several of my monk friends barely log in or play since the update. Everyone waited with a 5 button class, was excited for the update, and now can cant beat an elemental pet or lower level dps class in a dps race. And then they go to the forums to post and see others have done so and it fell on deaf ears.

A lot of other monks made beastmasters (me included) after the bst update, because of all the shared armor. The two classes are night and day.

Xilith

Baashem There is definitely a max hit cap by level.

The max hit cap varies by both the level and the delay of the weapon instead of only level. This change was made months ago to punish 2H weapons less in the early game.

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