Monk Deep Dive Discussion!

Baashem

Not to beat a dead horse.

Me (60 Monk, Mothers Sorrow/Hadirs, 190STR, 60 Shaman Haste) and a 59 Shadowknight (Fell Trident, really well geared. Also 60 Shaman buffed) were fighting a mob.

Our Shaman (60) had logged out to give out some enchants on his alt. Logs back in. We are already engaged on the mob, and the Shaman is out of group. He tosses TWO dots and his pet on the mob (Zirat PH in Upper Saman). Mob dies. He gets the kill.

Not the 59 SHD with 20% haste and a Fell Trident grouped with a 17% haste Monk with Mothers Sorrow and Hadirs -BOTH with Shaman buffs.

The Shaman that wasn't even trying and only tossed 2 DOTs and then was free to do whatever he wanted (heal, sit, buff, look at his phone).

Over 500 hours played JUST on my Monk and I quit. Just logged off to post this, but I am done. I spoke with a few other 60 Monks that are just as frustrated. And Xilith, I appreciate you man. I know you are all volunteers at this point, I want to pay you all, you deserve it, but I dont know how any testing could have been performed on this class at any high level?

Right now I will go toe to toe on video with a 60 Cleric that has lower quality gear than me and he will out dps me.

Phuture

Fubsy

Can't even remember if I mentioned this or not.

We don't get anything for the first 15s from it assuming we open with it. If the fight lasts 60 seconds, you get your first chakra break at 50% of the fight being over. This means the mob doesn't do reduced damage until after it is slowed. You don't deal increase damage until the fight is 75% over.

Even with a free cost it is hard to drum up a scenario where it is worth having on the spell bar in its present form.

Activist

49 monk here, I think on the surface there’s a lot of options in this new tool kit. I’ve not played the full kit in any real dungeon dives yet so I won’t comment on damage or combat itself yet.

What I like so far is that I have more bar abilities then slots finally, and there’s definitely for me some decision making on what to load up.

The little things like the root throwy, the short but reasonable cool down on the burst sprint, the gap close, the stacked debuff and the damage shield immunity are all extremely welcome buttons.

Honestly it seems trivial but my biggest criticism at the moment from what I have played is none of it is worth anything if the flying kick animation is going to be so lame.

It somehow reminds me of a little kid running up to you and kicking you in this shin. The thought of having to look at that animation thousands of times does bum me out on the monk.

Fubsy

Phuture

I agree - especially with a figher already causing them to be off balance - and it takes taunt out of play for 20 sec. At this point I use CS unless I get a reset on cooldowns with kick the first time out - keeping wind up more important that the borked damage coming out of 100 fists- Grudgehaft hitting for 21 on 100 fists? Hitting for 50% of tooltip damage 1/3 of the time? That doesnt feel like its calculating right. These are actual combat lof numbers - painstaking put into Claude to analyze - if that is working as intended so be it, nothing I can do.

To echo everyone else PLEASE give monks their fist damage and how it scales at level. Every other class can make gear choices based on knowledge that we don't have.

Phuture

Fubsy

Is there knowledge of our fist dmg/delay out there somewhere? I was under the impression it would be tackled this patch.

The fd fixes and pulling fixes were good and necessary.

Right before the patch, I said this looks good on paper but I can't see any of the numbers and it could go either way.

Abilities are majorly lacking.

Beastmaster currently has:
-Two Separate cooldown lines of higher weapon ratio damage skills
-a higher movespeed aura with built in sneak
-a better offensive aura
-a longer range higher ratio gap closer (pounce) with +75% movespeed buff (10s)
-Mend heals 10% more than Lick Wounds but has 5x the cooldown
-over 5 minutes, mend heals for 30% and lick wounds heals for 100%
-A PET
-a pet that can tank, dps, has utility skills (like attack slow) and procs bleed.

As I type that out I wonder why im on my monk... feign death?

Jokes aside, Bst without its pet is similar dps to us right now. Having chop on top of savage/enraging strike may make it neck and neck. but then they have a pet.

Phuture

Fubsy

The off-balance thing has a big an obvious flaw.

You have to have 100 punches off cooldown to trigger it. That should never be off cooldown, you hit fist whenever its up. We lose all of our non auto dps if we sit there waiting for a warrior to knock it off balance so that we have a chance to land a 1.5 second stun.

100 fists is channeled too, so you lose your auto dps, and these strikes are "ability skill" hits so they do not appear to roll for double or triple attacks.

The fist damage and scaling are troubling for several reasons. It affects our ability to give feedback. It should be very easy to produce. When weapons got buffed, the scaling was already at a point where it didn't make sense to consider using a fist weapon until mid/late 40s. There was no real indication how, to what extent, or even if fist damage was given a similar buff. The class was already in a bad dps place, and after that was around when i decided to play anything but the monk.

Fubsy

Phuture

There is no knowledge - just what people have put together based on analyzing combat logs. I do know they changed whatever it was at 60 though. Hadirs was a very firm 22/27 prepatch and now is 24/36 at best guess - still need more data and to get my mothers sorrow back to really analyze it. It also appears that this patch changed the way offhand was calculated - but it wasnt right before so I understand the fix. Feels over corrected now. Still need further testing to confirm the accuracy on these statements.

But a rogue or beast can look at weapons and say - oh this one has best ratio - a monk needs to spend hours testing in order to determine what is the best.

Phuture

Fubsy

I would have liked to see a scenario where it made sense for monk to use fists or h2h earlier in the game as well. I would unequip offhand wep and suffer the consequences as I leveled... But it doesn't feel right that bare fists are basically never even worth considering at any point. Any fix that addresses that will fix other issues with h2h weps.

b0ry

I've been thinking of ways I would clean up the stances a little bit and I would like to simplify them into DPS/Tank/Support.

Personally, I would like to bring back the Way of the Water stance and self healing. Instead I would remove Sun Style so that Wind Style could pivot into the main damage stance. Way of Water would be a guaranteed heal with Celestial Strike and maybe bring back the group heal with a small chance.

Wind Style would become the main damage stance by giving the monk a chance to perform an extra round kick, jump kick (flying kick without the gap closing), and normal punch every few seconds. I imagine that each strike would have its own cooldown so they would each trigger automatically and independently. No need for the magic or fire stuff, I'd rather just keep it martial.

Moon Style would become more of an avoidance tank stance. I think the pure damage mitigation could be replaced with dodging and parrying. I can imagine animations playing for each of the 3 actions and how that would weave into the combat now!

Moon Style > Way of the Floating Ashira (Avoidance Tank) - Increase in % chances to block and dodge and parry
Wind Style > Way of the Hundred Fist (DSP) - Speed Boost + Automatically perform an extra round kick and jump kick and punch every few seconds
Sun (Water) Style > Way of the Feinting Fist (Battle Healer) - Celestial Strike always heals the monk with a small % chance to heal the group

I feel like we could even remove the interaction between Celestial Strike and the stances to keep it even simpler.

4bsylon

Xilith I think the monk class was fun and unique - I did feel we were lacking some dps and expected this to be fixed. Getting h2h weapons that are extremy rare felt part of the playstyle (soloing hadir for 30min while dark blue). The only option for soloing (while slow and very inefficient) has now been removed. I look forward to the tuning to see if things improve =)

EDIT: I really do like the fixes to monk pulling - those feel great! Too bad it's not very often called for...

Phuture

Xilith

Is there any info you can provide on methodology for this? Like the mobs used, buffs, general settings? I think it would be very helpful in finding out how that data and many of our experiences are so dramatically different.

From my PoV, feels like and makes sense we have low dps. To do a head to head comparison with beastmaster:

Savage/enraging strike line does a higher ratio % than celestial, and provides stance-independent dps benefits
Chop does more damage than round kick, and boosts pet damage, and does even more damage if the mob is bleeding
Pounce does the same thing as flying kick, but has a higher wep ration dmg %, longer range, and adds 75% move speed for 10 seconds. This is a superior flying kick in every way.
Kill Command does a small amount of damage, but it is worth noting since monk has no rebuttal.
Mend heals 30% every 5 minutes. Lick wounds heals 20% every minute. Every 5 minutes they do 100% worth of healing and we do 30%
Way of wind is 10% movement speed. Aspect of the prowler is 15% and provides 0 movement reduction sneak.

-Aspect of the predator provides the same offence Way of Sun does, but with agility.

-They have a pet that does very very good damage, can tank adds, is healable, and has great utility.

-Monks have feign death

-Triple attack

-slight higher double attack.

So our double and triple attacks, which are not to be underestimated, would have to add up to more than the skill dmg % advantage they have, and their entire pet kit. It is hard to believe we win that, and it does look like more beastmasters do way more damage than us.

It also doesn't feel good that they have a pet and better versions of several of our class skills.

Canaway

55 monk
Was in alpha and here in beta.

Got a say I was excited when I read the deep dive write up but playing this out was rough. I wish the body abilities were Innate or a perma buff. The 30 minute cool down is annoying. Locking the Cstrike cool down with hundred fist makes hundred fist unusable. We are watching to many timers and have to much apm right now with not enough reward. The fury buff needs to last longer if your not gonna change the hundred fist being locked to cstrike. And speaking of fury buff, lets just kill the elephant in the room now, you murdered our dps, especially soloing, by nerfing the dot out. The perfect focus, ethereal body cools down versus use time is obnoxious. Flying kick needs to be usable at close range and its launching range could use a buff.

Overall, We need a significant buff to our soloablity with what should be a soloable class. Areas I was able to camp well at lower levels I now struggle at being 55 with greens and light blues. We went from a 2 button class to way more buttons than you needed and not being able to equip them all, yay we are almost a caster now. Honestly haven't even been able to effectively test most the skills becuase of this.

Big, nerf and confusing to play atm.

I'm in the camp of thinking this wasn't tested to much by anyone who played monk before and know after, or i need that person to give an example of gameplay to me to get this lol.

And if I have askes for it once ill say it again and again. when, if ever, are you gonna add a way for us to see Fist damage/delay ? It was said it was being work in months ago and obviouslt was left out in the "deep dive." As the only class that has to guess/farm this information, especially everytime you adjust it, it's not at all enjoyable.

Sev

I agree with most of what everyone else has said. I think 100 Fist Sharing a CD with CS is Bad, The Overall DPS has dropped off a cliff, but The FD Changes were good and I love the new Skills like Flying Kick and the Knockback but they need to be tuned, Also I think the FD should be tweaked a bit it seems like 50% of the time it works when the Deep Dive said it would be low chance to fail but the possibility exist. Also Please Show DMG/Delay with Fist and for the love of everything change the Animation for Flying Kick XD. Overall, I think it's a Net Positive and a great rework, but it still needs some love.

P.S. Flying Kick animation just steal Lui Kangs Flying Kick from MK XD

Sev

P.S. Flying Kick animation just steal Lui Kangs Flying Kick from MK XD

Baashem

Please put my gear on a 60 BST and run them side by side on an upper saman mob.

I know my dps is down from before the changes, but I bet you the BST out performs by 40%+

Now couple that with the FD changes I have to flop more to make sure agro is clear before engaging. I am out of the fight longer. On a per mob basis I’m probably doing 30-40% of the overall damage I use to do.

It feels god awful, and is currently unplayable.

Greavs

Monk feels great rotation wise. I hear damage feels bad later but my 1-30 journey has been smooth as butter solo/group dmg wise. My only gripes are that the new sun style dmg is magic instead of fire which is a big deal on pvp as everyone runs magic res perk. Sun style should still be fire....SUN style. Maybe they flip flopped the moon/sun last second and so it got moon themed magic dmg. Also with that removing any sort of dot off monk class just lets rogue kind of man handle monks a little because rogue can just restealth and leave whenever they want without any kind of dot to pressure stealth. Waiting 20 seconds for celestial CD to proc reverb and then waiting another 6 seconds for reverb to detonate is pretty meh. esp since its magic dmg that has a pretty good chance to be resisted. Better off chasing extra autos with ur other stance. Other than sun style just not delivering on the mystical fire vibe, the rest of the kit is great and fun to press. the split pulling kit being made true was nice, helps make it a better experience for all. my one ask is a kneebreaker style slow. once we flying kick land on a target being able to get some uptime on it while its hauling ass with sow or mobs just being faster would help a ton. OH and mend giving AC when ur a leather class with very low ac compared to chain mail/plate is kinda weird. you use to have a small mitigation % which was nice since u usually used mend in spiky damage moments and then ur healer could catch up with the small defensive mitigating some dmg. make it buff block or dodge, ac is kinda nil for monk. Otherwise great rework. having a blast.

Baashem

With H2H being so much slower now, I wonder if something got changed so the +3 delay from MH Hadirs and the +3 delay from OH Hadirs are additive on both hands now, adding 6 delay per fist? Cause that's what it feels like.

Also, Wind procs suppressing offhand attacks is an obvious bug that greatly effects Dual Wielding but not 2HB damage as Fubsy has seen.

I am thinking about posting some videos of me and certain classes going toe to toe on the same mob and see who gets experience (does more damage). I doubt Monk can win out on anything as it sits right now. I did it with a Cleric last night and lost.

ThePanda

Xilith Hi Xilith- hope you're having a good day.
I just want to share that perhaps the testing that was done was in too much of a controlled vaccuum that doesnt actually mimic real gameplay?

A) Baashem pointed out that Monks now miss 20% of the battle because they are laying on the ground.
B) True DPS wise - not sure what the test looked at, but a 53 Rogue outdamaged a level 60 Monk against level 55+ mobs (by a HUGE margin) [Look at gear between Baashem and Soopreez if you suspect item/stat imbalance]
C) a Shaman's DOTs (only 2 of the 4) out DPS a Monk+SK entirely - so Monk isnt really a DPS class at all.
D) Fubsy has provided a HUGE amount of data showing that DPS is down overall and ultimately Monk's DPS was already struggling pre-update.

If the goal was to make Monks a non-combative puller class only, then 100% success. But if the goal was DPS - there are significant misses here. Monks are not a DPS class at the moment. Cleric is better DPS.

(and as an SK - FD got basically removed from my kit outside of wipe scenarios in the process here; and my DPS trio partner is no longer DPS) <sad_face>

thedrizzle

Baashem
Can you give more info > did cleric spam nukes or was this with their new crazy wrath buff + smites? Just curious since obviously a caster spamming nukes should likely out dps a white dmg class since it is a very limited resource ie mana. Hoping to see the parameters if that makes sense? Monk dps feels very bad but more data always seems helpful

Edit: also Shaman dots are busted and they have unlimited mana right now cause of wisdom scaling + canni > probably not a great comparator since they will obviously change in rework but it does still show monk needs adjustments

Edit 2.0 : as others have stated > monk is the master of multiple strikes and should get triple attack much earlier level 30? Also would bring back round kick double hitting to set up more resets since we now have competing cds with CF and 100 fist

Ferret

Just some quick opinions:

I still think Round Kick should always reduce the cooldown of Celestial Strike rather than give a chance to reset the cooldown.
I'd still rather have Celestial Strike always proc a small HOT rather than randomly proc a heal.
I'm unsure we need two offensive stances unless they do very different things, like one is better for fights under a minute and the other better for longer fights maybe.

And a bug:
The new stances don't appear to be increasing our skills (but the Celestial Strike rider does).

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