Monk Deep Dive Discussion!

ThePanda

Yes - kill credit goes to the majority damage doer. Either as a group, or solo (if ungrouped)

Blastermaster

Monk has gone from a solid soloing class to me nearly dying to a light blue cinder drone, and this is with decent gear. All of the design issues mentioned by Fubsy are huge issues. Also, isnt Pinning Throw supposed to do more damage than Throw? It is not, and I am missing nearly every single throw and have not seem Throwing level up since rework. Also, sometimes after fd a mob will stand next to me for about a full minute before pating back. Very sad day to be a Monk.

Arkamedeez

Blastermaster It is not, and I am missing nearly every single throw and have not seem Throwing level up since rework.

This seems to be a bug. I created a new monk over the weekend. He does not have the Throwing skill and is not receiving skill-ups when I use Throw.

Baashem

There is a lot to respond to here.

First, let me just say I tried to start and play the Monk completely fresh, ignoring the numbers and just seeing how it flows. I removed Thousand Fists from my bar. I removed Quivering Palm. and just played with Round Kick, CS, Jab, Pinning Shot, Mend, Stone Stance, FD, Perfect focus, Sweeping kick and Taunt.

It played pretty close to how it use to but with a burst dps cooldown on Perfect Focus. Pinning shot missing all the time feels terrible, FDs are worse, but as a whole pulling wasnt much more awful. But it was still bad in comparison to pre-rework. Having to stay down or waste time flopping several times while my group is fighting something just feels bad. Napping simulator. I know the devs dont want to revert to the 100% mem wipe chance on FD, but they should give it a chance to, and give us the message immediately when we flop if we are clear, so we can get back to fighting.

Quivering Palm is pointless in groups for the slot it takes, how long it takes to stack, etc. Thousand Fists channeling, sharing a cooldown with CS, AND doing crap damage feels like its broken. "Pummel your target... dealing 120% Weapon Ratio Damage four times." It's just not doing that. Correct me if I am wrong, but my if max melee hit with my MH weapon is 100, I should be able to occasionally hit for near or atleast near 120 damage with this ability in 1 of the 4 hits... Right now EVERY SINGLE HIT is less than that of a decent auto attack with my MH. My unbuffed max hits seem to be around 91 with the MS now (down from before slightly), but Thousand Fists max hit on the same Claw Green is 77. Is it mis-coded and doing 120% weapon ratio damage SPLIT between 4 hits? Cause that's what it seems like. completely unbuffed, I am 145 STR, max hit on a green is 91 with MS. Never saw a single hit with Thousand Fists go above 77. So its like 85% of a regular white damage hit, 4 times in 4 seconds, while disabling normal damage. It's a huge damage loss to use this ability. Fix: Take it off CS's CD, make the hits all happen at once like Fighter's Flurry, increase damage slightly OR give it a 'you gain 10% over haste for 15 seconds' or some other buff to make it matter in our rotation. Flying kick can have a chance to reset its cooldown.

I went to Grimtide Sanctum Friday as a 3 man and killing light blues. One thing someone turned me on to was to try using just naked fists in my MH, so I would do a couple of pulls without a Hadirs equipped, and then a couple with the Hadirs equipped. The damage spread seemed much larger with the Hadirs equiped (yes max hit was higher, but the low hit was lower and seemed to happened more often).

I have completely abandoned H2H currently - I dont know if there were layers of changes that were not tested (thinking specifically of the AC changes, I assume that system also effected players damage vs NPCs?) - but H2H, the class identity, feels worse than 1hb options. Also, with the changes to stats and jewelry the STR we get from weightstones really increases the upside of 1hb (weightstones should work on fist weapons btw).

Another thing I changed mid weekend that seemed to help a lot was go back to really focusing on STR, giving up a lot of DEX. I can sit at 202 STR permanently with just shaman buffs and 2x weightstones and 1x sharpening stone. With the activatable skill Strong, I cap out obviously. It does feel better (though still worse than pre-patch when I would regularly triple attack with Mother's Sorrow for 103/103/103, that doesnt happen anymore).

So I am 60. I have what I would consider best in slot for most slots. I have all the major weapons (Mother's Sorrow, Stirring Stick, Hadir's x2, Hammer of Elemental Forging, Savage Club). The best I can tell with just watching right now I think is Hammer of Elemental Forging in the MH and Mother's Sorrow in the offhand is doing the most. But I know the ratio on Mother's Sorrow is better, so I kept that in my MH last night.

Here I am fighting a light blue. Shaman haste and buffs. my 17% haste. capped STR, 100 DEX, with Perfect Focus up:

My highest crit was 185 with the MS in my MH. My highest offhand hit was 109. Round Kick not critting is interesting, as Fubsy has pointed out. Also interesting is the sheer number of times I hit for 5 with my offhand.

Compare this to pre-patch when MS was hitting for 103 regularly, I was 198 STR, not using any damage cooldowns, and I think that was more than this. Our once per 10 minute burst.

Baashem

I would like to ask this plainly, and there is no malice here - just genuine curiosity.

I know from my own line of work there can often be 3 realities, 1) what the developer intends, 2) what the user observes, and 3) what the system is actually doing. Everyone's hope is that 1 and 3 are the same, but they often aren't.

What is the general design desire for damage tiers amongst the classes?

Going into MNM I thought it would look something like this:

Archers, Rogues and Wizards at the top. Sure, Wizards have ports and can solo (mostly just kiting in the open world), but they hit hard then sit to recoup mana. Archers have little to bring to a group aside from their range damage, so it is high. They can solo, but again open world kiting. Rogues have stealth, but they cant solo. When it comes to melee damage they are top dog.

BSTs and ELEs have pets. Bring utility to groups. Have more damage that Necromancers because NECs give up some damage for group utility and FD. Monks likewise give up some damage for their ability as pullers and the fact that they have FD. Rangers have some utility, give up some damage potential to be able to solo kite, etc. Spellblades are higher on the dps than the others in this group, but still below the pure DPS classes (ARC, ROG, WIZ).

Next tier NECs already explained.

Next tier, Enchanters have huge group utility so they cant bring the same damage as ELEs or NECs because they are CC gods.

D tier are your high damage tanks and high damage healers.

Below that is your Paladin (trades dps for survivability), Bard (makes the whole group better, that is partially their dps), and Shaman.

Lastly is your CC tank and pure healer.

I am curious what the devs are shooting for. Is it anything like this?

Because it feels like they genuinely might not be aware that it currently looks like this:

Not to beat this dead horse deader:
Max STR - great weapons - 100+ DEX, huge burst CDs on a light blue mob - Total damage there roughly 2100. Over 15 seconds while blowing a 10 minute cooldown and a 5 minute cooldown on a light blue mob. Meanwhile an Ele can hit for 1700 with their 58 nuke. The dropped 60 nuke can hit for 2100. In 1 cast. Without taking into account their pet damage at all (which is more than a Monk's output). Should Monk's once per 10 minute dps pump with 2 cooldowns and max STR do the equivalent of 1 Ele nuke?

Run7s

Xilith im confused by this statement "You may receive better results by a few % if you get a Celestial proc in Wind and then change to Sun. There's no benefit to staying in Wind while fighting."

Is this for the passive +5 offensive from sun stance? Because using Celestial Fury in Sun generates a generic Celestial Fury buff that overwrites the Wind Powered Celestial Fury buff. Essentially proccing cooldown resets with round kick only benefit Sun Stance.

Please anyone tell me if i am misinformed here?

Fubsy

Run7s

You have to swap to wind everytime you CS - so if you get an immediate reset on it from kick you swap back. If I have just procced wind CF and get a reset I will go to 1000 fists with Grudge, and you maybe lose 2-3 seconds on the wind cf being up. Because the CD of 1k fists is 30 sec then it doesnt make any sense to use it unless you get that immediate reset after CF. It's a lot of style dancing - you are swapping every 20 seconds and with the global cooldown on style swapping you have to keep a real close eye that kick refresh before swapping. What I believe he is saying is you want wind cf buff with the passive 5pts from sun, you dont override the wind proc with sun.

Baashem

Run7s

It is adding clunkiness to clunkiness. You need to be in wind stance, CS to get wind CF, switch to Sun Stance purely for the + offense, then switch back to wind just before CS comes back - it sucks. God forbid you are in Fallen Pass or NH where the latency is bad, you just cannot do this.

Xilith

As we've mentioned several times, we have not done the DPS tuning yet, as it has been a moving target with mechanics changes happening alongside the class reworks.

Hundred Fists - I'll revisit the scaling, but I think you're mistaken about the DPS. These attacks fire every 0.5s which is far faster than your autoattacks. It is intentional that you can't use another ability in the 2-3 seconds it is active. A bigger issue is probably the choice between CS / Soul Reverberation and hundred fists isn't very interesting.

Quivering Palm is intended to not stack quickly on most fights, and to be more for more difficult content or when soloing. The debuff is applied to the target, so it affects everyone attacking or being attacked by it.

I'll look at the CS -> Round Kick reset. There's an overall issues with the client cooldowns getting out of sync with the backend that is frustrating on multiple classes, and this may be a case of that.

The Round Kick reset was kept as from everything I've read it was found enjoyable by monk players. If you reset CS within the 6s before Soul Reverberation fires, consider using Hundred Fists instead, or swapping stances to refresh a Celestial Fury buff. I'll also consider shortening the delay on Soul Reverberation, but this doesn't really solve the problem, just tightens the window on it.

Taunt is not intended to share a cooldown with the other abilities and will get fixed. Most abilities ARE intended to share cooldowns with something to reduce the ability spam performed by the class and fight against APM creep.

DEX scaling on kicks is indeed working, but I suspect most ppl are already capped out on the effect of it. I'll see what we want to do there to make that more satisfying.

FD, as mentioned in the deep dive, is impacted by fixing a logic bug that's been around a while, and restoring the intended logic that NPCs don't forget you 100% of the time. I'm discussing this with the team. Pinning Throw's hit rate has been increased for the next hotfix, as well.

Wind Style is an indoor-usable self movement buff that is not intended to stack with SoW (no movement speed buffs stack)

Cyclone Spin is firstly a defensive ability, with a bonus of applying damage, and not primarily offensive ability.

Monk Utility is primarily focused in pulling, corpse recovery, and scouting, as well as their ability to off-tank. While the intent is not that they can tank as well as the dedicated tanks for an extended time, we'll continue tuning to make sure that for short durations or small groups / easier mobs they can fill this role more reliably.

Xilith

Run7s Is this for the passive +5 offensive from sun stance? Because using Celestial Fury in Sun generates a generic Celestial Fury buff that overwrites the Wind Powered Celestial Fury buff. Essentially proccing cooldown resets with round kick only benefit Sun Stance.

Problem noted.

Nideak

Xilith I am going to do a long, detailed write-up on the testing I've done (will be close to a full day's worth after today, almost all of it grouped), but while you're here and posting, I was wondering if you could address the ability bar "situation." It's very difficult to find a spot for the majority of the new abilities, and few of them offer anything close to a compelling reason to remove "the staples." Adding an extra "stance bar" for the longer cooldown abilities would at least give us the ability to use these more niche tools without having to make bad decisions that impact our group. Is something like that possible? Or do you not see it as an issue?

Thanks.

Ghastlee

Thanks Xilith!

Pocah

I would prefer hundred fists not do channel and be like the SPB rapid attack just all fire off at once.

Throw still feels busted, generic vendor dagger damage caps at 5 points, player crafted steel dagger caps at 15 dmg( my level 23 monk, around 80dex and 65ish STR). Pre patch steel daggers in late teens were hitting for 35-45 ish range. Add in fact that throwing has a super high miss rate it seems or feels like misses to often.

Xilith

Nideak

It's intentional that you give up some option in order to have access to a powerful cooldown ability, and intentional that deciding what should be on the bar is a nontrivial decision. I'm not inclined to move things like defensive cooldowns onto the stance bar just to make sure they are all available, and almost all melee classes have some sort of a cooldown they have to consider, and some have more than one and need to decide when to double up or which to take.

It's also intentional to provide some pressure against everyone having Kick/Jab on the bar, or at least that you are giving something up for that.

But balancing abilities vs the "staples" so there's a compelling choice can be difficult and might require some iteration to get just right.

It's also intended that you change this loadout as situations change, and not that you have a set list of abilities that are always on the bar. Keeping Round Kick and Celestial Strike from the previous monk implementation (and their associated reset mechanics) does tend to lock them to the bar and reduce the choices around which to use and which are on the bar, and that's something I dislike about the current design.

Nideak

Xilith Thanks for the reply.

I actually do agree with your opinion on choices and not having everything available to us (I like having interesting choices to make). Unfortunately, my feedback (and I do believe I've played enough to state this confidently) is that the punitive nature of the game (which I LIKE, this is not a complaint) means that I am doing a disservice not just to myself, but my group, by not having stone stance and sweeping kick on the bar, just to prevent the monk from having to stop pulls for 30 minutes while he runs back from bind.

So for me, the staples are: celestial, round kick, sweeping kick, mend, feign, stone stance. This leaves me four spots. I would like to have taunt up. I think that, as a monk, being able to smartly use taunt is a good skill to bring to my group. Then I need pinning throw (I wish Pinning Throw did not need to be on the bar, like regular throw). I also find double handed strike to be both a great pulling tool and a great "camp management" tool.

So now, without counting jab, that leaves me one spot. I am never using that spot on one of the new cooldowns. Also not using it on quivering or hundred fists. I was also out of game for 2 months, so I missed out on the grudge hype, and still just use h2h / 1h, so I'm not using cyclone.

I still think jab is the play, but flying kick has some very niche use. I just don't think anything else is compelling / useful / strong enough to ever get onto the bar in a group situation. I was in upper saman last night doing cook. Eventually a warden spawned and was DSing, and our tank was like 'perfect time for your fist move!" and yea, woulda been, but not like I'm going to sit, mem, pop, for one fight. Just quicker easier and more efficient to murder and move on.

I appreciate having a full bar, and I appreciate the thought of having choices, but I do not think the choices, RIGHT NOW, are compelling, interesting, or good for both my abilities AND my stance bar. I think some of these need more than just "tweaks."

Baashem

Xilith

In a group, any good Monk should always have:
1) Round Kick
2) CS
3) Mend
4) FD
5) Taunt
6) Jab
7) Stone Stance (For failed FDs)

That leaves you 3 open slots.

Flying kick and 1k fists dont comes close to making that cut. Both abilities aren't worth their CDs.

I slot Perfect Focus when named respawns are coming (#8)

Ascendant Body is pointless to even swap in for the buff - I will pay the extra few silver for food/drink to avoid putting this on every 30 minutes or whatever. That whole body mastery line is currently pointless.

If FDs are failing a lot (like Upper Saman where it seems to happen more often), I need Ethereal Body and Sweeping Kick to survive the failed FDs. (#9 and #10).

That leaves 1 situational slot for when named aren't on the menu just yet and i don't need Perfect Focus, so it's pinning shot to hopefully make pulling a bit easier.

Notice anything? Its all of our previous, pre-rework abilities. Perfect focus is a once per 10 minute click. Ethereal Body is also new, but is just a 'oh FD failed, I would like to not immediately die' button but im only using it after both stuns (Ogre), and Stone Stance, so it's not often used unless I get 3 failed FDs in rapid succession.

I think that's another thing I am trying to highlight here. Because of how Flying Kick, 1k Fists and several other new deep dive abilities are implemented/tuned/designed - there is no reason to use them. The class hasn't changed at all.

And the stance dancing in real world feels bad in places like FP where the latency is huge. Sometimes the UI makes it look like you changed stances, so you hit CS, but just kidding the stance didnt take, and you are currently not in any stance and just blew your CS. And as Fubs pointed out, you cannot Wind -> CS -> Kick (w/ CS reset) -> Switch to Sun Stance -> CS // This will drop your CF Wind, which is a dps loss on a class that really cannot currently afford to lose any.

Fubsy

Xilith

Appreciate all the feedback and all the time and effort you're putting into everything in MNM, a genuine thank you, @Xilith . I know at times we come across as complaining/whiny, but that's not the intent at all. I'm playing monk regardless of where it lands on the dps/tank/pulling scale, I just genuinely enjoy the class style and the lore behind it.

I think the kit is actually really fun, like I've mentioned before. The one thing I'd like to see considered is how much we're forced to commit to a single loadout for the whole fight in group content, say you're in a solid chain-pulling group, your bar's balanced for puller/offtank, and then you bring in a named. There's just no time to swap over to dps cooldowns mid-pull.

I've been really liking Double Handed Fist as an alternative to Sweeping Kick for interrupts (helps that I've got Ogre Smash too), and it's a genuinely good solo tool if you're a serial bandager. I wish I could find bar room for Flying Kick after Pushback, but that's on my own other choices, not the kit.

The more I've played with what we've been given, the more I've found I actually can solo with the right strategy, it might take a little longer but really enjoying experimenting.

The one thing that still feels off on the FD side is mobs "remembering" you through line of sight. If there's any way to make non-forgetting NPCs path back slower, pause and look around more, get suspicious about corners instead of just committing around them, I think that would give FD splits the intended challenge without feeling like it's working against the mechanic itself. Could also just be me needing to adapt more (spamming FD on splits the moment you break LoS).

Monks are a passionate community, always have been, and I genuinely enjoy the back-and-forth here, seeing how other people think through this stuff helps me rethink my own approach too.

Xilith

Some abilities should see more use in solo, small group, etc. play. You probably don't need taunt in a group with two tanks or when solo. Gap closers are a bit more useful in solo play.

And as I feared, without drastically changing / removing Celestial Strike and the Round Kick interaction, it's hard to choose something else to use instead. I actually dislike how many "kick" abilities we have to shut down casters and how effective they are, which leads to those abilities being "locked" on your bar. Monk could certainly lose Jab and rely more on Double-Handed and Sweeping for interrupts, letting them onto the bar more often.

With some tuning, Hundred Fists could be a more powerful DPS ability you'd slot instead of Celestial Strike for the cases you don't need the flexibility of stance-based effects for CF.

Ghastlee

Xilith
Make Celestial Strike the ability you use when pulling/tanking and 100 fists for DPS? (remove the CS interaction from whatever stance ends up being the “dps style” and add the functionality to 100 fists while keeping the CS rotation intact for tanking/pulling/utility)

Ie, instead of using Round Kick -> CS rotation in Sun Style (or the preferred dps style, whatever that ends up being), you use Round Kick -> 100 fists primarily. If filling a “primary dps” role in the group, rather than needing dedicated pulling or tanking utility

Would keep choices relevant and not able to slot both at the same time without really limiting your other pieces you’d prefer to have to perform those specific roles. (Like now)

Add in Flavor idea: balance sun style and wind style dps numbers so that wind is preferred better dps stance and sun is more of a utility, delayed damage stance (use CS for delayed damage prior to pulling the next mob) so that Celestial strike interacts with Moon/Sun (celestial bodies) while 100 fists interacts with wind (fast, multiple attack theme)

Full dps monk loadout could look totally different from the dps/puller or the tank/puller.

Moon + CS rotation (and associated abilities like cyclone staff, damage reduction CDs) for tank/puller role
Sun + CS (and associated abilities like quivering palm, pinning throw, double hand) for DPS/puller
Wind + 100 fists rotation (with damage CDs, quivering palm if wanted, flying kick etc) for pure dps situations

Half baked idea but it feels to me at first glance, with proper numbers tuning in the future to make the dps stance unambiguously better for that application and maybe some obstructive CD between CS/100 fists that forces mutual exclusivity, that this could help some of the choice paralysis/lack of spell slots that people are feeling and rather force folks to change loadouts depending on intended role.

Blastermaster

There is no point to using Quivering Palm when soloing when it can be replaced by Disarming Strike or better-yet, Two-handed Strike + Flying Kick combo. Quivering Palm takes too long to stack and if you miss a single one of the 3 attacks then it all falls apart. 5% incoming dmg reduction and 5% increased dmg is not even worth the time it takes to use the ability, either. Even in a group with a Fighter, you can't really feel the synergy because you can't tell when the Fighter has already knocked them off balance. If you use Quivering Palm and then the Fighter knocks them off balance, then there is no benefit at all.

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