I leveled to 50 and raided with dragon for quite a while, and still play with it sometimes (though I agree drunken is higher dps and so primarily use it for my guild).

Fusoya wrote:

(Wish List) Storm Dragon Stance - This stance is pretty decent after the last time it was tweaked. But all monks will agree Dragon is by far the weakest of the 3 paths. To help close the gap between the other paths, could we consider increasing spell damage with this stance as well. Don't want to go nuts with + melee dmg (18% is fine), but increasing the monks spell damage (secrets) would provide a unique aspect to Dragon monks. A flat 25% or 50% to secret damage would give them a small overall dps increase (don't think it would effect it anymore than 5% overall).

I disagree, everyone knows it is the harmonious monks who are wasting their time.  Dragon has much higher dps than harmonious monk, so much so that I don't see how their debuff makes up for it. 

While stone dragon may not be as good as other styles defensie stance, I rarely have used the defensive stances of the others, especially drunken, while the dragon's increased resistance from their stance is very useful and actually worth using against those types of mobs (even while dps'ing for strong ae's for example if you are in a guild working though entry and learning the elemental mobs).  Unless you are taking into consideration solo play, I think dragon is better and not all THAT far behind drunken (but it still lacks any draw to get me to switch back permanently).

I agree with you that it woudl be nice for them to take a look at the harmonious/dragon unique finisher lines to give them more flavor.  I think this would be a good way to do it since they really didn't seem to give the divine finisher line much help in this last patch (it is still pretty weak, and even though I can now I personally wouldn't use foc with it when other abilities give a much better return).

The absolute best thing they could do for Dragon, and to an extent Harmonious is

Make the weakness system more powerful again. 

Or even more powerful than it ever was.  Six Dragon Strike is very good for an endurance attack and this change would be a huge boost to dragons without messing with their abilities too much creating balance issues.

As a DPS class PLEASE GOD give us some type of sympathetic/teamplay encouraging actions to help deal with the BOREDOM of group grinding.  Tanking is exciting in nearly every MMO out there, this game has the best healing action in any MMO, yet DPS'ing in this game remains some of the most boring I have experienced in any MMO and while monk had some fun tricks pre gu6 nerf to make it a little more interesting, it has only gotten worse.

You put in this big level increase now is the time to mess around with dps'ing, make it interesting without being overpowered.  This coudl be done SO EASILY by just increasing weakness exploit dmg, but I would much rather prefer you reintroduce sympathetic actions to get real teamplay dps in this game again.

You are looking at monks purely from a raid DPS stand point. This is a very close minded outlook when it comes to balancing classes as there is more than just damage to consider. With the main focus of the game being group content now, I think a lot of issues and suggestions I have presented are very important to consider.

Yes, Stone Stance was useful for pulling fire/ice mobs in APW, now with 2 new resist types added and the game changing from raid to group settings the stance is very rarely used. Drunken monks with 35% mitigation and 55% avoidance clearly take the upper hand here as all mobs, even most spell casters use melee as a main source of damage.

Harmonious needs to get their debuffs looked at for raiding purposes, but they can out dps dragon monks if they're aiming for dps. If you keep your debuffs cycling you lose out on damage, it's a choice you have to make. So in that view, a monk with full debuffs in a group setting (they don't stack in raids) can also out damage a Dragon monk, leaving dragon monks with what role? Drunken monks are the highest DPS and can off-tank VERY effectively in the new 2-3dot POTA content.

-Drunken- Highest DPS, Tank for group content

-Dragon- Better sustained dps than drunken (lower overall, after burst is factored in)

-Harmonious- Great group debuffs, Can tank for group content, Best sustained DPS, 2nd overall for dmg

My purposed changes would allow Dragon monks to function as the Monks who specialize in spell casters, giving them a role in solo, group and raid content. The 'DPS monk' path has never fufilled that role, nor will it ever as long as Drunken monks have the extra two thousand fist finishers and Errant Strikes.

Harmonious is by far the best choice leveling from 1-50, and probably fairly useful in the grind from 51-55 as debuffs will function in most groups. This post was to bring attention to the forgotten monk path, and maybe spark some interest in some people playing it full time.

well i have been on numerous log parses run but very many players of different classes and can agree that out of 100% of the log parses th  my harm monk rarely shows up on the top or mid tier end damage or crit hits fully apw gear except for radiant pauldron, senator claws and the other apw red con dropped monk hand weapon i forgot the name

but anyrate im drunken now but gonna switch back to harm  tonight  if u all would like to meet up on the test server with our different styles n run tests together i would be glad to do that.

 to lessen the burden  of all this on one players shoulders and reduce all the foot work it will take to get the numbers together. for the harm monk i have tweaked a many macro's that's  allowed to get as much  strikes n debuffs to work together as i could

Siago - Yea, I was going to see if there was any dev interest to devote an hour or two to running some parses with the various styles. My monk on test server has all the drunken / dragon stances and abilities available at one time. My playtime is rather limited, but I could arrange a specific time to do testing.

Radvek is by far the best harmonious monk I've played with. In raids he was always on my heels for dps. Recently he's switched to drunken, because the debuffs are so trivial in raids because of stacking issues. But, he has shown me how powerful harmonious can be when they don't need to focus 100% on debuffs. I've played harmonious myself and been able to duplicate this. But when I try to play Dragon, I come close to my harmonious path DPS, sometimes passing it. The issue I have with that is that harmonious has much more in the ways of defensive and survival abilities, and they are one of the best all around debuffers in the game. Once again, on raids with every class present, their debuffs are useless, but in a group if you need a debuffer they are probably the single best. So my point is when played close to it's fullest, Dragon currently offers nothing that the others two don't have. If pushed Dragon might be able to out dps a harmonious monk, but really it shouldn't even be close without giving Dragon some other benefit.

From a groups perspective, say a dragon monk and a harmonious monk are lfg. I think everyone with knowledge of the class would pick the harmonious monk.

When the two can compete for DPS....

-Harmonious monk offers -15% mitigation, -10% dmg, -str/dex (dex debuff decreases the bonus evasion 54+ mobs have now), along with flat -damage debuffs, self poison/disease cleansing 15sec 100% evasion and dodge/parry defensive stance (for off-tanking or pulling).

-Dragon monks offer self -50% dmg to fire/ice (very rarely situational), a lightning proc (sometimes this heals mobs instead).

If you compare the two based on what they really offer, a small amount of damage would be the only difference. I've seen a great harmonious monk out damage a decent dragon monk by over double. I've seen a dragon monk do the same to a harmonious. My point is, there should be some benefit to playing a Dragon monk, right now I fail to see any.

I think you just have not been playing with very good dragon monks in that case.  I was not really talking about in raids, and I think that dragon is superior to harmonious 1-50 if you group primarily.

The debuff makes up for the damage difference depending on the group setup if the caster in your group (assuming you are in a balanced group) is someone who does very good dps.  Otherwise I think having the monk focusing on damage (and so going for dragon/drunken) is better.  And even in the case of your group's caster being the groups primary dps class, having another character doing high damage I personally thinks makes up for the entire groups benefit from harmonious's debuffs.

For grouping the damage difference between drunken and dragon is less noticeable actually than in raids, unless you are talking about named fights for example where a drunken could use all of his timed abilities.

I don't think the answer is to rework dragon completley, besides I think the chances of that happening are slim and if they did try and rework styles they would probably just end up breaking monk all together (no offense).  I would rather that they paid attention to their weakness system and made it more powerful, using the weakness system as a dragon monk from 1-50 before I think it was around GU5 where they lowered the exploit damage I constantly was the highest dps character in my parties.  Harmonious and dragon have much better weakness exploiting abilities than drunken and because of that an improvement to the system would go a long way to balancing them with drunken while at the same time not ruining drunken, and making every dps class more fun to play in group content.

If we are just talking about raid content then who cares, raids are fun because they are uniquely scripted.  With the exception of named fights (which drunken is still the preferred style for), grouping is boring as hell for all dps classes especially at 51-55 where I can only assume most people have figured out how to play their class and it just becomes button mashing.

For the record I do agree with you that the style specific finishers, especially for dragon and harmonious, could use some help so:

/signed

Fusoya wrote:

Siago - Yea, I was going to see if there was any dev interest to devote an hour or two to running some parses with the various styles. My monk on test server has all the drunken / dragon stances and abilities available at one time. My playtime is rather limited, but I could arrange a specific time to do testing.

 

Radvek is by far the best harmonious monk I've played with. In raids he was always on my heels for dps. Recently he's switched to drunken, because the debuffs are so trivial in raids because of stacking issues. But, he has shown me how powerful harmonious can be when they don't need to focus 100% on debuffs. I've played harmonious myself and been able to duplicate this. But when I try to play Dragon, I come close to my harmonious path DPS, sometimes passing it. The issue I have with that is that harmonious has much more in the ways of defensive and survival abilities, and they are one of the best all around debuffers in the game. Once again, on raids with every class present, their debuffs are useless, but in a group if you need a debuffer they are probably the single best. So my point is when played close to it's fullest, Dragon currently offers nothing that the others two don't have. If pushed Dragon might be able to out dps a harmonious monk, but really it shouldn't even be close without giving Dragon some other benefit.

 

From a groups perspective, say a dragon monk and a harmonious monk are lfg. I think everyone with knowledge of the class would pick the harmonious monk.

When the two can compete for DPS....

-Harmonious monk offers -15% mitigation, -10% dmg, -str/dex (dex debuff decreases the bonus evasion 54+ mobs have now), along with flat -damage debuffs, self poison/disease cleansing 15sec 100% evasion and dodge/parry defensive stance (for off-tanking or pulling).

-Dragon monks offer self -50% dmg to fire/ice (very rarely situational), a lightning proc (sometimes this heals mobs instead).

If you compare the two based on what they really offer, a small amount of damage would be the only difference. I've seen a great harmonious monk out damage a decent dragon monk by over double. I've seen a dragon monk do the same to a harmonious. My point is, there should be some benefit to playing a Dragon monk, right now I fail to see any.

i agree that a harm monk can do more damage "if the debuffs stacked with other classes debuffs" but to go back and re code every class debuff  to cater to a harm monk debuff is is over kill if a harm monk debuff would work % wise for the  harm monk player its self and not be over written by raid or grp debuffs would help a lot

as far as the dragon playabilty in the game i agree with u on that point that has been an issue from day one  when APW went live i was  dragon monk from lvl 1 to lvl 50  pre APW  when my guild started apw the playabilty of the dragon was not feesible do to the aoe's  and the dragon style could not compete with the evasive style of drunken and the debuffs of the harm  i know this cause i asked the top raid "guilds" in APW at that time  it was the servicabilty of drunken n harm that benifited the  grp conent the most.

i'm glad ur taking interest back into the "playabilty " of the three styles compared to the end dps that was the major focus when the class lead program was active, despite the numerous concerns of the dragon monk role in apw the lack there of,

a lot of the issues of the playabilty issues of the three styles can be traced back to when the bard class lead  made a post of "melee over powerd" and if im not mistaken it was over the  monk n rogue combo  top of the food chain in apw the dps, the playabilty made the classes very popular

another thing that  hurt the playabilty of the monk class was the endurace issue if the endless endurance buff issue was brought up "before" the melee over powered issue" was parsed logged n sent in we wouldnt of had to endure the refresh timer nerf and we took a big hit on the endurance nerf of every  monk style when one style was the one benifiting from it the most of the so callled " mystery bug" is which why have have come to the term monks can tank like warriors.

which is wrong and has been wrong for too long each style in theory should do = 1/3 dps of the over all DPS  the monk class can do over all, and that the path" style" and the "abiltys" ect of each style will be left to the players on the creativty of the player per style he or she choses to play i  i just wanna make sure it an open book for all to see on the monk class and just not a selected few to tweak the style of the monk to his or her liking and then the rest of the community left in the dark  with" you dont know your class" attitude

 it shouldnt take a low GPA in computer programming to play vanguard"

Your post makes no sense Siago.

First of all the only reason that many players play drunken is because those of us who focused at the "end dps" which several of us started before we were 50, and I certainly was doing before I was 50 and while I was dragon.

Either you weren't around as much when vanguardmonks was being used, which I don't think is true, or you have a selective memory.  For a long time monks were considered to be horrible damage by most, by most monks.  Then several monks showed people how do to better damage, they didn't exploit, they weren't "using a low GPA in computer programming" whatever that means, and many people did it on their own and just chose not to post about it, which is their right.  The reality is that since GU3 monk has been a good dps class, unfortunatley yes some players are BAD players who "need to learn how to play".  I'm sorry but that is the truth, either do it on your own or read up on the vast amount of information out there.  You have no excuses to complain about it.

Endurance was never a major issue for most monks even solo, it was the worst for dragon (in my opinion) but I still played one just fine and did not have tuurgin shamans around me, or endurance feeding for the majority of my vanguard career. 

I don't understand what you mean by each style should do 1/3rd of the overall dps of the monk class overal, if you mean that it should do about 1/3rd of a monk's damage then that is almost how it works now but we would need real fixes to boundless fist and the divine line for me to say that with any certainty because no matter what style I am playing I ignore a lot of the non style basic monk (though in truth a lot of style specific ones too) abilities because they are just plain useless abilities and not fit for any dps class. 

Monks have issues, but the biggest problem comes from there being no harmonious monks or dragon monks sharing information on how to play those styles, which is why drunken monks are primarily the only open book style.  Not because it was always more popular but because people talked about it.

For the record apparently Radvek was a good harmonious monk, and draxs was a great dragon monk, I just never really saw them saying how they did it.  I liked dragon monk, and I raided with it.  I don't understand why you had to stop raiding because of AoE's that makes NO SENSE, you don't evade the ae's in apw (at least I never did), the mitigation lost in offensive stance was not that noticeable for ae's, and dragon is actually better at many ae's that give early raiding trouble.

All that said, unique style finishers need help because they are BROKEN.  There are parts of the monk class that are BROKEN, boundless fist was not fixed in the last patch, in my opinion it is still broken.  Dragon was balanced very well when weaknesses MATTERED.  The monk class in general however... is not as broken as you make it sound.  I'm all for getting buffs, but that is not even how it always works and beign so dramatic is more likely just to see us further dumbed down and nerfed than it is to get us to whatever state you are seeking.

This is kindof a mix of all kinds of monk...

1) Divine Avalanche/typhoon does not stack with errant strikes. Intended?[Drunken]

    -additionally divine avalanche doesnt stack with foc either

2) Withering Palm, northwind breaks the trunk and snaps the limb(cant remeber exact name atm) heals earthen elementals.[Harmonius]

3) Ashen hand appears to "sometimes" heal earthen elementals[any monk]

4) kick of the celestial master is apparently a cold based spell. ie the ability heals cold based elementals on sea of kojan. the rest of the flying kick line is ok though[Harmonius].

Good job on the recent bug fixes.

I noticed some oddities with some of these abilities lately while trying to solo. i think withering was the only ability that actually showed as healing as a harmonius monk, but i will double check that. Are the harmonius debuffs actually buffing the earthen elementals( ie withering palm, eagle claw,etc?) The earthen elementals appeared to hit for considerably more dmg after i debuffed (went from 400ish dmg to approximately over 1000 ) with withering palm and north limb snaps the limb then not. I didnt get a stastical sample though so maybe they were getting lucky hits...

Tulkas

Do you guys feel that opening up Errant Strikes to Dragon and Harmonious monks would help close the DPS gap without destroying the unique aspect of the drunken monk? I would say that either opening up the Thousand Fist line or Errant Strikes would fix the gap in DPS. I still think Drunken would be able to be #1 for dps, but the gap would be reduced greatly by either of these changes. Do you think that opening either Errant OR 1k fist for the other paths would ruin the drunken monk?

I also noticed that the third line of the Divine Typhoon chain, the Tsunami doesn't work with Fists of Celerity.

And I'd like a little more feedback on the defensive stance situation for Dragon monks. I really think Stone Stance needs a flat mit % added to it to balance out monks defensively, right now Dragon is the glass cannon without any ammo. Harmonious is the best solo, followed by drunken, with dragon in a distant 3rd.

My original post was aiming for a revamp for Dragon monks, but perhaps we can seek some adjustments that would solve the problems.

Fusoya wrote:

Do you guys feel that opening up Errant Strikes to Dragon and Harmonious monks would help close the DPS gap without destroying the unique aspect of the drunken monk? I would say that either opening up the Thousand Fist line or Errant Strikes would fix the gap in DPS. I still think Drunken would be able to be #1 for dps, but the gap would be reduced greatly by either of these changes. Do you think that opening either Errant OR 1k fist for the other paths would ruin the drunken monk?

I would not support that particular idea at all.....it's a cookie cutter fix, if that's the case then just combine all 3 styles and be done with it so i can re-roll another class. Keep your dragon ideas dragon monk specific without leeching into the other monks territory.

Drunken may be highest of the "Burst" dpsers ....but miss a part of a chain and we suffer while dragons stay consistant. I'm guessing you would also want to lower the dragons overall base dps to compensate for errant/thousand fist....

Fusoya wrote:

Do you guys feel that opening up Errant Strikes to Dragon and Harmonious monks would help close the DPS gap without destroying the unique aspect of the drunken monk? I would say that either opening up the Thousand Fist line or Errant Strikes would fix the gap in DPS. I still think Drunken would be able to be #1 for dps, but the gap would be reduced greatly by either of these changes. Do you think that opening either Errant OR 1k fist for the other paths would ruin the drunken monk?

I also noticed that the third line of the Divine Typhoon chain, the Tsunami doesn't work with Fists of Celerity.

And I'd like a little more feedback on the defensive stance situation for Dragon monks. I really think Stone Stance needs a flat mit % added to it to balance out monks defensively, right now Dragon is the glass cannon without any ammo. Harmonious is the best solo, followed by drunken, with dragon in a distant 3rd.

My original post was aiming for a revamp for Dragon monks, but perhaps we can seek some adjustments that would solve the problems.

I think it is very useful to discuss this from time to time to keep people interested. Thanks for your post.

Monk Balance:

I don't think that Errant strikes for Harm and Dragon would be the right way to go since it would bring monk styles closer together in character and further enhance the burst characcter for those 2 sub-classes. Imo Dragon should be (and is to some degree) the style with highest base damage and lowest burst damage, while drunken should be and is the burst damage sub-class. If there is a gap between Dragon and Drunken in their dps ceiling, and I am not experienced enough to know how much it is when fully geared and optimally played, then lifting the base damage would be the way to go for Dragon, for example by upgrading their unique finisher line and  the Typhoon step, which is somewhat underwhelming since it became single target. The chain is little more than another Flying Kick chain at the moment. Adding Celerity damage could help a bit although I usually don't use the finisher together with Celerity. The other aspect that could use a boost is the AE character of dragon. The Jin AE attack (name?) could use a decent boost in damage and lower reuse timer since it hardly does more damage than the regular frontal AE, if at all. 3 min reuse is much too long.

A bit more +mit wouldn't really help solo in stone dragon stance since the only way for monks to solo, whether harm or dragon or drunken, is to kill the mob fast.  The dps bonus of Storm Dragon is too important unless +doge +parry, +mit would be rather large on Stone. More mit would help if group tanking with a dragon but keeping aggro would be a lot more difficult unless it would get +hate, so I prefer Storm even for that (or some kind of stance dancing). Drunken should stay the tank style monk. Dragon being a glass cannon is fine if dps is equal to Drunken (or ideally a tick higher on Trash and long fights). Dying during pulls is mostly a FD resist issue. I died often enough as Harm monk pulling.

Harmonious is in much worse shape than Dragon. Harm monks can hold their own in xp groups and are easier to solo mostly because of their debuffs  and to a lesser degree because of stances. This is fine. Raiding or in high level group content they drop off because their debuffs are overwritten and a monk is usually measured by their dps where they are significantly behind. Tiger stance is much too expensive in endurance cost and crit is buffed high enough in a raid that its benefit is limited. Their unique finisher is miniscule in damage and the debuff is of very, very limited value. Basically, Harm have one finisher less than other monk styles. Harmonious either need a substantial upgrade in dps or debuff power for their unique finisher. They need a better DOT. An upgraded Jin Surge would also fit their style of being the utility monk.

Baruka wrote:

I would not support that particular idea at all.....it's a cookie cutter fix, if that's the case then just combine all 3 styles and be done with it so i can re-roll another class. Keep your dragon ideas dragon monk specific without leeching into the other monks territory.

Drunken may be highest of the "Burst" dpsers ....but miss a part of a chain and we suffer while dragons stay consistant. I'm guessing you would also want to lower the dragons overall base dps to compensate for errant/thousand fist....

Yea I would prefer not mixing the class abilities, but at times it seems like the only chance at balance. I would consider opening up one of the two abilities for the other monks, but like you say, it makes all of the monks very similiar.

It's hard to think of ideas that would benefit Monk DPS for Dragon / Harmonious without further increasing Drunken DPS. I think Drunken monks provide a good bench mark for where monks should be in terms of damage. I think most of us can agree with that.

Perros@Xeth wrote:

I think it is very useful to discuss this from time to time to keep people interested. Thanks for your post.

Monk Balance:

I don't think that Errant strikes for Harm and Dragon would be the right way to go since it would bring monk styles closer together in character and further enhance the burst characcter for those 2 sub-classes. Imo Dragon should be (and is to some degree) the style with highest base damage and lowest burst damage, while drunken should be and is the burst damage sub-class. If there is a gap between Dragon and Drunken in their dps ceiling, and I am not experienced enough to know how much it is when fully geared and optimally played, then lifting the base damage would be the way to go for Dragon, for example by upgrading their unique finisher line and  the Typhoon step, which is somewhat underwhelming since it became single target. The chain is little more than another Flying Kick chain at the moment. Adding Celerity damage could help a bit although I usually don't use the finisher together with Celerity. The other aspect that could use a boost is the AE character of dragon. The Jin AE attack (name?) could use a decent boost in damage and lower reuse timer since it hardly does more damage than the regular frontal AE, if at all. 3 min reuse is much too long.

A bit more +mit wouldn't really help solo in stone dragon stance since the only way for monks to solo, whether harm or dragon or drunken, is to kill the mob fast.  The dps bonus of Storm Dragon is too important unless +doge +parry, +mit would be rather large on Stone. More mit would help if group tanking with a dragon but keeping aggro would be a lot more difficult unless it would get +hate, so I prefer Storm even for that (or some kind of stance dancing). Drunken should stay the tank style monk. Dragon being a glass cannon is fine if dps is equal to Drunken (or ideally a tick higher on Trash and long fights). Dying during pulls is mostly a FD resist issue. I died often enough as Harm monk pulling.

Harmonious is in much worse shape than Dragon. Harm monks can hold their own in xp groups and are easier to solo mostly because of their debuffs  and to a lesser degree because of stances. This is fine. Raiding or in high level group content they drop off because their debuffs are overwritten and a monk is usually measured by their dps where they are significantly behind. Tiger stance is much too expensive in endurance cost and crit is buffed high enough in a raid that its benefit is limited. Their unique finisher is miniscule in damage and the debuff is of very, very limited value. Basically, Harm have one finisher less than other monk styles. Harmonious either need a substantial upgrade in dps or debuff power for their unique finisher. They need a better DOT. An upgraded Jin Surge would also fit their style of being the utility monk.

Might I ask what path you typically play Perros? Just so we know where the different viewpoints are coming from.

So are we all pretty happy with the current Dragon monk? If we can get the 3rd divine typhoon finisher included in Fists of Celerity? If not what other suggestions would you have for small / simple fixes that could increase Dragon DPS. One thing I've noticed is a HUGE difference in the damage the DoT's can do from dragon monks. One set you will get DoT's that are doing 5k (feet) and 8k (sundering) then the next you get a 1k (feet) and 3k (sundering). Maybe if we could inquire about getting the base damage raised significantly?

I was going to do a seperate write up on Harmonious monks after discussing Dragon, but I guess we can include that here as most of you feel Harmonious is in worse shape than Dragon. What changes would need to be made to make Harmonious a viable path 50+? If Drunken is our burst dps, and Dragon is the DoT's and sustained DPS, where does that leave Harmonious? buff / debuff class? fix the debuffs and the class will be resolved? what's missing from it.