Idea for raid tank monks.

[DynamicPerforman]

<ul><li>I apologize if this is hard to read, it won't let me add newlines.                                                                                                                                                                                                          </li><li>HAHA the new forums suck.</li><li>Use something like shield of the magi  <a href="http://eq2i.com/articles/Image:Shield_of_the_Magi.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2i.com/articles/Image:Shie...of_the_Magi.jpg</a></li><li>Combined with the Hammer of Ancient Energy (84.6 DR, 24str 24sta, 115hp, 100pw, vexing tormet 550 threat proc).  </li><li>Would this improve survivability of the Monk? </li></ul><hr />I'm going to go through a little excercise:Assume I'm the most uber insane monk ever, and I have every atainable item in the game in my bag of holding.  I want to max my survivability.  I reach into my bag and I first pull out every master spell from levels 1 to 70 and scribe them.  Then I pull out the ranged item with the best stats Combine War Satchel. (30str, 30sta, 30agi, 115health, 115power)  and I continue around the Invantory window counter-clockwise till I come to weapons.  For pure survivability, are there 2 DW weapons I can take that will be better than the Hammer and shield previously mentioned?I am disregarding the fact that certain mobs need different resists.  Since very few weapons give good resists, it should have little bearing on the choice of weapons.What do you all think?

[Almeric_CoS]

<p>Gwarsh....it hadn't occured to me that the Shield of the Magi doesn't have class restrictions!</p><p> I may have to look into that.  I'm not trying to be a "raid tank" monk, but I am trying to be a decent tank.  I have the Shield quest, but haven't finished it yet.  Could make tanking EoF nasty heroic instances a lot easier!</p>

[DynamicPerforman]

My thinking is mainly based on my typical grind group (3 mages, a troub, a fury)  Where my dps is far overshadowed by the mage dps.  And by my typical raid group (dirge, swashbuckler, mystic, templar, fury) where my holding aggro and surving are far more important than dealing any damage I MIGHT be able to do in defensive stance.  I also plan to be stuned by Stone stance to increase my survivabilty as much as possible.On a side note, does anyone know where the hammer drops?

[SouthernAvenger]

Its interesting, but how often would that proc..... and is 300 ward really worth the loss in dps... seeing is how dps is part of how we keep agro....

[Kinless]

I actually have this and tried it out on heroics. Not as good as I hoped. Not willing to try it on epics, didnt proc enough and 300 ward is next to worthless honestly against epics. Kinz Monk of Forsaken LDL

[Duave]

<cite>Kinless wrote:</cite><blockquote>I actually have this and tried it out on heroics. Not as good as I hoped. Not willing to try it on epics, didnt proc enough and 300 ward is next to worthless honestly against epics. Kinz Monk of Forsaken LDL </blockquote>I get hit for 300 by grey triple downers!

[DynamicPerforman]

Well its not just the ward. Also we're assuming theres no problems with aggro, trying to max SURVIVABILITY of the monk (or brawler I suppose) tank.   Mainly I'm trying to stimulate some actual discussion on how we can help ourselves tank. I'm sick of all the threads asking SOE to help us tank, when i'm certain there are things WE can do ourselves.

[Bladewind]

<p>I don't see an advantage to using the shield of the magi in place of a weapon.  The stats are not so hot, a 10% proc 300 point ward is a minimal help at best, and an extra 163 to all spell resists isn't going to make or break anything.  I'd rather dual wield with a health siphon adornment attached to both weapons.</p><p>What is the perceived weakness you see using the shield and a 1 hander rectifying?  Other than the small ward proc, I don't see any real defensive benefit to the shield - it has no shield factor, so your avoidance will stay the same.  The two items combined don't have stats that are out of the ordinary - a pair of fabled dual wielders will give you similar.</p><p>You mentioned wanting to maximize your time in stun stance.  I don't see how gimping your auto attack damage helps you any there.  You could just as easily use a 2 handed hammer with a threat proc (mallet of the overlord from DT is one, i think) instead of a 1 hander and a symbol item.</p><p> I'm not trying to rain on your parade.  I am just curious what real advantage you see coming from going that route.</p>

[DynamicPerforman]

Perhaps no advantage, but I thought it might be worth a shot ^_^  later in the week i'll post my write-up on what I consider survivability.  I've looked at the 2handers, but I don't see anything really good. For this conversation, assume I'm taking 50 hits of 1000 damage each And I want to have as much HP left over as possible when the barrage is over. Note that this is only melee damage (mitigation and physical avoidence). As there are far too many variables for resists, and capping them versus a particular mob should not be too hard.<ul><li>55%mit * 1000 damage => cach hit is now 450 damage, 100 hits of 450 damage.  </li><li>60% avoidence => 20 hits left. 20 hits of 450 damage.</li><li>shield proc => (20/10)*300 warded = 600 less damage taken.</li><li>(20*450)-600 => 8400 damage.</li></ul><hr /><ol><li>Would I take less damage with 2 dw?</li><li>Would I take less damage with a 2hander?</li><li>Would the fight end sooner with either 1 or 2? a.k.a. would i take less damage overall because the mob died sooner.</li></ol>

[Bladewind]

<p>You can get extra avoidance (avoidance mods and +agi) from a good 2 hander or dual wield weapons.  In addition, there are several adornment options to increase survivability.</p><p>1) Health tap.  These are great, but in your stun-stance case, probably not the best way to go.</p><p>2) Raw bonus to parry or defense.  Additional increase in avoidance ebyond what the weapon's native stats give.</p>

[MageChild]

<p>Pardon me for sticking my two cp's in, but what i don't think you have addressed here is where your stats are compared to the soft/hard cap.  If you can find a couple of items with the right stats, you will probably find a better survival rate in that than you would in, say, the shield and hammer.  If your weapons had siphon adornments, that would be even more, because instead of resisting damage, you are absorbing it back from the MoB (and increasing your agro, a good thing unless you aren't tanking...) which means the MoB dies that much faster.</p><p>Now I have to admit, I haven't tried stun tanking yet.  How do you tank when you are stunned? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of being the tank, since you can't do anything to the mob for 30 seconds, you just sit there and drool a little while the Mage or Warlock or Healer does a damage/Heal agro dump, you can't do anything when suddenly the Mob decides it wants something different for lunch...?  I'm level 49 and I haven't even used my stun/mit skills yet, for this reason (I do however live in the Skin Like Mountain line when doing nasty heroics and the like)</p><p>Again, if I sound like I haven't got a clue, it's because I'm reading this to learn and get one.</p>

[DynamicPerforman]

Stun tanking only works if you have a good aggro base. Having a troubadour in DPS groups (20% hate decrease for all non-fighters)  and a dirge in MT group (hate gain and agression increase) as well as a good swashbuckler (more hate gain) is required.<br>

[Fleaba]

<p>I've ever only found ONE reason to use my stun def stance while tanking, and only ONE. When tanking one of the 3 princes and me holding agro is not an issue, rather just staying alive while we burn down the first prince. By the time tsunami and my other stance is down, I've taunted and dps'd enough that I can sit there stunned for 30secs and the healers can spam all the heals they want and still won't snag agro from me...</p><p>Other then that, it has always been a little idea of monks to use slow weapons when tanking. Fewer hits on the mobs while still doing good dps against them due to high damage rating = less ripostes from the mobs. Fist of bashing and Hardshell fighting baton being the two that come to mind for me. The armorer in inner sanctum drops a nice slow brawler weapon but I have yet to see it drop. (remember royal great flail all you old timers? I almost shed a tear when I came back to the game this last august and finally broke down and sold it to the merchant because I was in the mid 60's and outgrew it.....it was my first ubber loot and best loot as a lvl 50 monk)</p><p>There are very few duel wield weapons in the game that compliment a monks haste, so if you get a chance to loot one, go all in on your dkp <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> There are more then enough 1.6 speed weapons that we durn near speed cap in def stance. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> No wonder we have to work harder then bruisers to get up there on the parse LOL</p>

[kopingOwen]

ok just wanted to add a thing to stun tanking.. you CAN use your single target taunt still.. and with the new ap tree and added points in the sigle taunt it have a pretty darn fast refresh rate. entering stun tanking before you get a safe amount of aggro is bad tho. lets say using stun tanking is for the players that have a good know how about aggro control and as previous mentioned you need a real good group set to get it to work. have not tested this enough but i THINK this might be the best thing for survivability for monks.. tsunami, magic ward, 30 sec mit buff, 30 sec stun mit buff. Monks have quite a few things to make them take quite the pummeling. but it takes some skill, know how and when to use them in a given situation for example.

[Junaru]

I have a question.. Would using the Shield of the Magi work with unarmed combat Monks? Since I'm STR, WIS, INT AA's based Monk would I be able to use the Shield of the Magi and still go unarmed? If so this might help unarmed Monks to tank.

[Kainsei]

<cite>Junaru wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have a question.. Would using the Shield of the Magi work with unarmed combat Monks? Since I'm STR, WIS, INT AA's based Monk would I be able to use the Shield of the Magi and still go unarmed? If so this might help unarmed Monks to tank. </blockquote>I don't think so. Shield of the Magi needs to be put in the secondary slot and you need both slots empty to use the str line. I have it, tbh it's not that great, it has no avoidance (if it added "protection" we wouldn't be able to use it anyways), the stats are meh, and the ward isn't worth the dps loss imho.

[Junaru]

<cite>Kainsei wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have a question.. Would using the Shield of the Magi work with unarmed combat Monks? Since I'm STR, WIS, INT AA's based Monk would I be able to use the Shield of the Magi and still go unarmed? If so this might help unarmed Monks to tank. </blockquote>I don't think so. Shield of the Magi needs to be put in the secondary slot and you need both slots empty to use the str line. I have it, tbh it's not that great, it has no avoidance (if it added "protection" we wouldn't be able to use it anyways), the stats are meh, and the ward isn't worth the dps loss imho. </blockquote> I understand the way the STR line works. I just didn't know if it only check if "weapons" were in both hands.