So I'm coming back to my thoughts after having put in 4 longish sessions (almost all of it grouped) with the new monk kit.
First, context:
The first time I played monk was in 1999. I have played a monk in every game it's been available since, and in every EQ, EQ Emu, it's always been the same: blind ass human monk with no racials.
If I wind up playing MNM at EA, I will be a monk, no matter how I feel about the kit.
Prior to the re-work (and during the era of Utopian Feign Death), my thoughts on monk were: decent, but incomplete kit. It did not need to be completely changed, just finished. I have always, before, during, and after the "rework" hated the stances. They have never felt like interesting, powerful options. My thought on earth/moon was always "I'm better off just killing faster." and so I would lead fire into every fight and switch to wind.
I want to be clear: while I think that fire stance is better than the new sun style, I hated the fire flop method, thought it was borderline exploitation, and not at all "monkly." I am not asking for that back, but I do not believe Sun Style is, in any way, an upgrade over the old stance. It merely seems like a change made to get rid of the DoT/Fire Flopping. Not at all a good reason to do something. You're punishing players because you couldn't think of a better way to get rid of the exploitative gameplay.
Context in place, let's get to my current thoughts:
STANCES
I still completely dislike the stances. None of them feel powerful. I do not feel like I have an interesting decision. Across my sessions, I was puller every time, I was main tank occasionally, and I was just pulling into DPS sometimes. I very rarely left wind style. Am I being inefficient? Sure! Is it enough to make it worth the effort? Nope.
If you just want to have stances to say we have the illusion of choice and style and "depth" then do not touch them. But if stances are supposed to complement, enhance, and allow monks to fill different roles based on the situation, then the current forms need to be scrapped COMPLETELY and replaced by something CONCRETE and USEFUL. When I say concrete, I mean: REMOVE RNG. Just have a stance that increases our DPS, maybe at the expense of our tank ability, if you really need to be punitive. Have a stance that flat out improves our tanking - demonstrably - at the expense of our DPS, if you really need to be punitive. And then, if you need a 3rd stance, I dunno, a balanced stance where we do everything even, maybe use that stance to add our speed buff. Maybe the balanced stance can be our pulling stance: we're not great at DPS, we're not great at tanking, but we're faster, maybe a bonus to acrobatics and throwing.
These are just ideas. I'm not a game dev. I'm a monk. The current stances are not fun, engaging, whatever adjective you'd like to use.
PULLING
The mechanics described in the deep-dive do not function. Loitering is still broken, damage dealt to mobs is ineffective, the social mechanics are WEIRD (I have thrown at mobs right next to each other and only pulled one, multiple times this patch), and the memblur component is erratic and inconsistent.
I understand the previous iteration of feign had an air of overpowered, but it was the absolute best version of feign death pulling in this game. Now, you could say "yes, but it was too strong," but I have been in the beta for 3 or 4 different loitering iterations and not ONE has worked as described or intended. Loitering it the absolute lynchpin of how you guys are describing YOUR ideal pulling. If you cannot get loitering to work as you describe and seemingly intend, then you are going to have to consider going back to the full memblur version of feign, and coming up with some other drawbacks.
Now, you might read this and go: "we don't want you to FD pull every pull. We do not want that mechanic." That's fine, but if you say that then:
I immediately withdraw my indifference to monk DPS. If we are not supposed to FD pull every pull, if we're not the premier puller, if we're not the player setting the tone and pace for the group, we're just another DPS and our DPS needs to be buffed through the roof to compensate. Merely being able to feign death without purpose is not enough of a boon to just give up DPS. Everyone should just play a rogue and have a better version of FD.
That said, when pinning throw works, I can begin to see part of the vision. Same with double handed strike. I was able to use both of these to create some very interesting pulling scenarios. Unfortunately, the issues I raised above (mostly internal logical inconsistencies regarding loitering and memblur) combined with pinning throws abysmal hit rate, meant that my group was left twiddling their thumbs far longer than acceptable.
Now, I understand there is a bug related to pinning throws hit rate. Great. I will reiterate my earlier request: Throw does NOT have to be on the ability bar. It can go straight to the hot bar. PLEASE allow us to do the same with pinning. I know you want us to have to make choices, but pinning throw should not be one of those choices if we're supposed to be pullers. Even one extra slot will allow us to get creative.
BODY ENHANCEMENTS
I don't see these as truly important nor a key feature of class design. They were neat little bonuses for being a monk, but not all that impactful. And since one of my static mates is a spellblade with the memory of a goldfish who constantly forgets to buy food and water, I have to stay stocked regardless of my own metabolism. I would also say that, in the flow of pulling, I do not like to stop for anything, not even my own bladder. Asking me to stop every 30 minutes to cast my body buff is honestly just not something I'm going to consider. Can the body buff just be permanent, with us having the highest enhancement unlocked based on level?
THE KIT
Like others have expressed: my enjoyment of monk grew exponentially the more I simply ignored the new stuff and simply used the entirety of the old kit and slotted in 1 or 2 of the new abilities.
I don't want to repeat everything I said yesterday, so the cliff's notes is simply: too many of the new skills are just not strong enough or interesting enough or useful enough to put on the bar. Xilith seemed to be hinting at wanting to remove CS. That's certainly a choice, but removing CS would simply leave us with inferior skills. Removing Celestial Strike simply to make the newer kit more useful would be a punitive decision.
The problem is not Celestial Strike. It is not the interaction between Celestial Strike and Round Kick. The problem is that none of the new skills are particularly strong, nor do they have any good synergy. Yes, CS and RK have good synergy. This shouldn't be removed, instead, we should be looking for a way to properly synergize the new kit. I feel like removing CS/RK to make the new kit more appealing is unnecessarily punitive to monks and would make them a very very very bad class. (EDIT: I realize I pulled the high school english class tactic of saying the same thing twice in back-to-back paragraphs. Normally, I would edit it out to read more professionally, however, in this specific instance, I'm going to leave it specifically to emphasize how bad of an idea I think it would be to remove CS/RK simply so the new skills look better. I feel like that move would be downright antagonistic)
For me, Double Handed Strike, pinning throw, and, to a lesser degree, flying kick are the most-useful of the added skills. I cannot envision using quivering or hundred/thousand fists.
COOL DOWNS
In much the same way, stone stance is just too good to be removed for any of the other options that are just way too niche and feature way too long a cooldown. I hope this feedback doesn't lead you to the conclusion that the problem is stone stance's strength, and therefore it needs to be removed. I would hope that, instead, we can find a way to improve the new options in a way that make them actually useful and interesting enough to consider, and maybe find a way to make putting them on our bar and using them not such a chore.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I do not care about our DPS, and if it is a concern, there are enough people in this community carrying that banner.
Personally, I believe a monk should be the person "leading" the party. We should be pulling in the most-efficient way possible for our group to maximize its time together. So I am mostly focused on the tools and mechanics around that. Unfortunately, right now, every aspect of pulling is broken, inconsistent, and not at all fun.
I would also add to my earlier thoughts: if feign is not going to have 100% memblur, then someone needs to take a look at the failure rate. I fail far too often for having maxed skills. I'm not saying I should never fail, but at level 60 with 305 acro, I should not be having back-to-back, or even back-to-back-to-back failures. I shouldn't be constantly saying on comms 'jeez, another feign failure.'
I sort of see some of the interesting aspects with pinning throw and double handed strike. I can see a path to interesting and engaging gameplay, but a lot of the mob mechanics will have to be drastically reworked for that to manifest itself as a consistent reality.
Unrelated to the actual deep dive: Monks seem to be straying away from being H2H specialists. I don't know why. The dev team specifically implemented h2h weapons and made our bare fists worse because we were supposed to be H2H gods. It does not feel this way, and now 1HB and 2HB options seem to be pushing or surpassing our fists.
Can we please get an updated message on YOUR vision for OUR class, in totality, but making sure you let us know how you want us to apply our damage (are you backing off your earlier h2h desires, or does h2h just needs to be tuned).
Thanks.
