Monk Deep Dive Discussion!

Phuture

Construction Hammer does way more damage than bare-knuckled attack.

This is why we are posting about this. If it simply did the same damage, it would obviously be a simple issue. If you read some of our other comments, you will notice we point out that this weapon and fishing pole say "Punch" instead of "crush", so we are well aware of the bare-knuckle dynamic.

Again, the complicated aspect is why does Construction hammer outperform Hadir's fist? Why does it blow the bare knuckle damage out of the water?

Same with fishing pole. Why is it equivalent to Grudgehaft?

Phuture

Xilith Again, just to reiterate this and make sure it gets through-

These two weapons are doing more damage than bare knuckles.

BobWendal

Phuture When i tested the fishing pole it does 1/2 the damage grudgehaft can do, not to mention the str buffs grudgehaft provides. (77 max hit compared to 135).
I don't have a construction hammer to test, but if its like xilith is saying and you are attacking slower, maybe its adding the delay from the hammer while maintaining the ratio, making each hit bigger but slower?

Phuture

Xilith

Xilith not tanking end game content, but able to tank small group content as a primary tank (assuming this means you're targeting easier mobs in a smaller group) and full group content for brief amounts of time during a bad pull or peeling situation.

I'm concerned about this because monk seems to have this "offtank" status used as justification for less potency in other arenas. Yet, this "smaller group easier mobs" is a scenario that virtually never happens and has no practical value to any playstyle occurring in the game.

"Small group easier mob tanking" is a role that can be done by elementalist pets, beastmaster pets, beastmaster themselves, shaman, cleric, paladin, shadowknight, spellblade (with damage absorb), inquisitor, fighter, ranger, necromancer (drain tank), and rogue. The recent AC changes put us even further behind most of these classes.

The only classes that cannot serve this role are wizards, archers, druids, enchanters, bards. Wizards, archers, and druids can all solo kite easier content quite well.

Druids, enchanters, and bards to some extent can all charm. Druids and enchanters are among the best soloers in the game.

My point here is that being able to briefly occupy this role in non-challenging content does not seem like a class-defining mechanic or fair trade for loss on other abilities. Druids, for example, enjoy the ability to nuke for reasonably close to wizards, while also being able to heal top end content, and provide an enormous host of utility and buffs to group.

It is worth noting as well that Rogue - who is not described at all as an "offtank" is better suited to this than we are, given recent AC changes. A 3 second stun every 30 seconds is the same as 10% mitigation when used for "easier mobs". The "vial of smoke" ability has a similar cooldown to feign death, except has 100% success rate and instant aggro clear. A rogue can also make sure of Sap, Distract, snaring poison, to arguably be a better puller than Monk at the moment, in addition to the AC advantage and ability-damage ratio advantage.

Phuture

BobWendal I am happy to sit there and watch you hit things and tally ever hit/damage value and total number of hits per fight. It attacks faster than grudgehaft, and hits for less max damage, but hits for mid range damage values at a much larger rate.

Zurrie

Xilith Noooooo. That absolutely does not need to be changed. The monk speed boost (Fleet of Foot) SHOULD multiply with SoW or whatever other speed boost is active. It's not that strong of a skill in the first place with its low uptime. Changing it from its currently functionality would make the skill total trash. This is a good "bug" that was stumbled into. Do not take this away from Monks, who are already struggling enough. The skill is not causing any kind of issue as it stands, it's merely a small tool, and why shouldn't this design space exist of a short duration speed boost that multiplies with SoW, giving the class an actual unique ability?

Fidric

i agree that the movement speed should stack, especially for something like Fleet of Foot

ideally it would be nice if movement speed buffs had a concept of primary major / secondary minor effects for stacking (see also wind stance or beastmaster speed+sneak aura)

just so that SoW isn't the be all end all

if fleet of foot does not stack, up it's % value.

Fubsy

Xilith

Thank you Xilith, and thank you for all the wrok and other responses in this thread. On the fishing pole issue, what you are explaining would mean at 60 with a fishing pole equipped we are essentinally punching with a 19/25 2h. That would explain the numbers I'm seeing and it being so close to Grudgehaft(.76 as opposed to .79)

Appreciate letting us know what H2H is at 60 being 19/30. It would be nice to know how that scales when leveling if you can share it.

Any plans to add weightstones(maybe weighted fistwraps) to H2H weapons in the future?

Once again, truly appreciate all the team is doing and I know you have a whole bunch of classes you are responsible for - excited for EA to start and the team to have some more resources - what you've donr on a volunteer basis really is pretty amazing.

Fubsy

Also - I really feel there is something off with mitigation when holding a 2h weapon. I'ts pretty obvious the amount of damage I take when holding Grudge vs double Hadirs or Hadirs/Mothers. Is anyone else seeing this, I know not a lot of people go 2h but thought I'd through it out there.

Baashem

Xilith It's far simpler than you're making it out to be. When you have an item in your hand that has no damage, either a weapon with 0 damage (Construction Hammer) or a Candle that doesn't show damage anyway, that item just gets treated as bare handed H2H attack using the (probably too generous) inherent scaling that monks get.

So at level 60 you're looking at a 19/30 bare handed attack and noticing the damage increase, but probably unable to see the fact that your delay has also changed.

I think where we are having an issue is that maybe this is what the Devs intent, but that is not what is happening (or at least what we are seeing).

And we are trying to explain that what you are saying and what we are seeing are two different things. Instead of getting told how "its suppose to work" it would help if we got "it shouldn't work like that, let me test and see if it ISN'T working the way we intent."

All of that said: When you use a Construction Hammer your average hit is near its max value. Your minimum damage is higher than using Hadirs.

I have tried to explain this several times. I don't get Crit hits for 5 with the Construction Hammer, but I will with both the Hadirs and a Mother's Sorrow, That conflicts with what you stating.

@Phuture @Fubsy and I have all tested this. If we had logs we could parse it and show you over large swaths of time what is happening between Bare Fists vs Hadirs vs Construction Hammer.

Best I can do with what I have available to me is a full screen cap of a fight on the same mob with the weapons. I can try and do that tonight in Fallen Watch.

Baashem

And what I think is going on:

Something got changed that broke the melee damage formula for Monks.

Instead of the +5 damage to a mainhand & the mainhand weapon damage COMBINED being your minimum hit, it is now 5. And another lower possible hit of the mainhand weapon damage.

So if it use to be for Hadirs 5 + 3 + 19, for a minimum hit of 27 + your strength modifier for say a minimum of 33....

It is now a lower bucket of 5. Another lower bucket of 19. Another lower bucket of 27. Another lower bucket of 33.

When you use a Construction Hammer it somehow breaks this and youre dropping off a bunch of those lower buckets. I notice my most common hit is like 75. The bulk of my hits are 60-75. Very rarely do I hit lower than 25-30 with it.

Then I put a Hadirs on and I see hits for 5 all the time.

Shit my Mother's Sorrow, again, hits for 5 crits.

@Xilith Should I be able to crit for 5 with a Mother's Sorrow? The screenshot of it is above in this thread somewhere.

Fubsy

Baashem

I can confirm this too, and so can @Phuture for whatever reason, 0 damage weapons hit the high end noticeably more often (15-20%, in my
experience) while the low end barely shows up at all. Put a fishing pole on and you'll see line after line of "You punch for 100."

On methodology: we're respecting the team's wishes here. Trent's posted in Discord that parsing violates the PnP, and Shawn's said the same on stream, I'm paraphrasing, but the gist is "we can't detect it, but if you talk about it publicly we'll act on it." I've put too much into this Beta to risk that, so everything going forward is manual observation only, nothing automated.

I understand the stated reasoning, not wanting a min/max culture, not wanting people intimidated if their numbers don't measure up in a group. But I don't understand why the line gets drawn specifically at DPS. Every other role is already fully visible through normal play: a healer running out of mana or letting people die, a tank losing aggro, CC that doesn't handle a large pull, you see it immediately, and you adjust who you group with accordingly. I don't see why damage output is the one thing that gets protected from that same obvious scrutiny.

Back to @Baashem point: we're not asking for anything exotic, just for things to be tested, because they aren't functioning the way we've been told they should. Early in this thread, Xilith said monk DPS was "on par with other reworked classes" in high-level testing. We aren't. We're not close.

To be clear, if the answer is "you trade top-end DPS for utility, and that's intentional," I'm genuinely fine with that. I just want to close the loop between what's been said and what we're actually seeing in-game.

We're in Beta to test, and some of us are doing that in the only ways available to us, restrictions and all, because we care about this game and want it to succeed. I mean it when I say my whole family is getting MnM merch this Christmas, this game is my happy place and I'm emotionally invested.

I'm grateful for everything the volunteer team has put into it, and there are plenty of us ready to help however would actually be useful.

Baashem

Thank you @Fubsy for your reply.

I would like to reiterate your comments. I care about this game. I am here to test. I am not trying to be abrasive because I know you guys are working tirelessly - so I am sorry if the tone of my posts are sometimes not as positive as they could be.

We appreciate what you guys are building, and we want you and the game to succeed.

So if 3 of us are ready to die on this hill that the Monk damage formula is broken, what can we do to help show it? Can you guys live parse us? Can you copy my character and play it on live? Hell @Xilith you can log onto my character and try it out if it helps.

Would video of the combat log or screenshots help?

Xilith

I tested this again now with combat reporting on. Obviously without a huge data set there's noise in the results, but I got 10% lower DPS over about a minute of autoattack + Celestial Strike (Wind Style) using Construction Hammer over bare fist. I got 20% higher DPS using Hadir's fist. Additionally, I observed a 5 point higher max Celestial Strike, and set a breakpoint to verify where damage/delay is calculated and saw the correct values (bare handed = construction hammer, hadir's fist +3 to both damage and delay on top of that).

So I remain unconvinced anything here is working incorrectly, as far as damage and delay for these scenarios is concerned.

Xilith

Fubsy

I'm not a fan of the sharpening / weightstones in general, and especially them just being a Strength buff, but at some point I'll make these work with Fist weapons in whatever form they are in at that time.

Fubsy

Xilith

Thanks for testing that - if you have time will you try the 0dmg fishing pole? That's where I'm really seeing the biggest difference. I appreciate you taking the time to address those concerns.

Xilith

Phuture I'm concerned about this because monk seems to have this "offtank" status used as justification for less potency in other arenas. Yet, this "smaller group easier mobs" is a scenario that virtually never happens and has no practical value to any playstyle occurring in the game.

The Offtank vs dps thing was part of some original design thing I've been skeptical of for some time. Utility itself is hard to balance as it is so apples and oranges, and the two classes held up as deserving the highest dps had, in my opinion, the best utility as well. After this patch we'll be retuning dps classes to all fall within a comparable range, at least for those that have limited resource-based burst or excelling under very particular circumstances.

There's still work to do getting monks able to fit the tanking they are intended for, but that will be considered part of your "utility" and not penalized in your dps as it won't compete with a dedicated tank.

ickireas1

My take on the monk changes a few weeks in.

The pulling is much much better now especially with the pinning throw fix and the LoS fix i can pull well out in the open or around corners the biggest issue is the FD fails Double handed strike is surprisingly effective to make separation pulls on big groups if you are crafty with it .

Issues mobs in motion often don't take a root on pinning throw so if they are all headed your way chances are you'll need to flop and try again .
FD fails mobs casting stun on you will interrupt your FD and still use the CD .... And FD feels like it fails a little more than it should usually not a problem but it feels a little too frequent some times for no reason...

Damage Round kick , Celestial strike and hundred fists, flying kick all feel good but come with down sides ...

Issues Flying kick sometimes will not go off in caves or places with tight corners even if you have LoS
Celestial Fists vs Hundred major issue they share a CD and they really shouldn't CF should be static use on CD.
HF use on CD and on proc from Round kick for bonus dmg. Round kick is fine

Major Issue our dps isn't normalized nobody knows for sure at least what weapons do for dps equip anything other than a 2hander and its impossible to know if its going up or down ..... and a fishing pole shouldn't be the same dps as Hadir's fist .... but here we are .... The biggest problem is our dps isn't up there with rogues or wizzys from a martial standing ... and it should be. we spend half the time pulling for our group and we don't contribute dps in a meaningful way... we hit 3 maybe 4 buttons in just a few seconds and then run off .... if we stay and fight because we are low on dps its worse than the support dps classes except the bard ... we're more dps than bards but that isn't a good thing we dont add buffs or heals or mana in a meaningful way .... we're most likely to die while pulling all the white dmg needs a buff .... just my opinion but I'm certain over time groups should want a monk instead of an inquis pulling as is now .... its a toss up.

The Stances don't work for me .... moon isn't tanky enough to tank and we don't really choose monk to be some groups tank. We reject the notion that the tank should be pulling anything else is niche oppps the tank went down prolly the shamans fault lemme get in there for 1 mob ..... Wind .... frankly isn't fast enough we cant outrun mobs with wind and the extra swing is covered by other classes and they do it better .... so fire is the obvious option and mine stays there 99% of the time .

The buffs .... nope sorry my bar is too full to use them throw them on skills or make a second aspects bar for choosing the buffs if you want them used but i dont have time to stop the pulls to put on a buff to make me eat less :-)

Every thing not mentioned is fine and I really enjoy monking it up it's my favorite class because of the pulling changes which i think are amazing but dmg needs some work stances need to be meaningful and buffs .... come on guys :-)
just my two cents!

Sar!

BobWendal

Fubsy I run grudgehaft every now and then when soloing or tanking for my group, and my healer never notices a difference in how much damage i'm taking. It is hard to say with Grudgehaft specifically as it eats 30 agi once you get the stacks going which would lower your tankiness quite a bit.

Xilith

Fubsy

Fishing Pole does seem to be bugged and getting Two-handed damage bonus / disabling dual wield, while still triggering melee damage, effectively operating as a 19/30 2H weapon. I'll fix the exploit, and thanks for narrowing it down.

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