A question regarding Monk AA's and Def/par/Dflt

[Vadack]

<p>I have a question regarding which is better...Defense, Parry or Deflection regarding the AA's?</p><p>I know most go STA/INT, but the AGI line gives reuse bonuses and DEF bonus...I dont want to screw up my "free" respec. I usually Duo with a Fury...the rest of the guild has left. Oh well...</p><p>I currently have Agi 4-4-4-5, STA 4-4-4-4 and INT 4-4-4-4. I have been thinking of dumping Agi and using points in other lines.</p><p>Any help is greatly appreciated.</p>

[Bladewind]

The order of checks is parry, deflect, base defense.  Therefore, you get the most bang for your buck in the same order.  I personally have now gone wis.int and am enjoying the extra health and aoe hate gen ability that wis gives.  Prior to the changes, I had been sta/int forever for bonuses to deflection and parry.

[Eloxos]

I think the order is Deflection, Parry and then Defense, in order to get the most Avoidance, at least it used to be that way <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Raidi Sovin'faile]

It's parry first, so you can Riposte the attack before even getting into just avoiding the blow. 20% (or 1/5th) of parries are made into ripostes. So parry is rolled first, and potentially made into a riposte, then the block or deflection roll is made, then if that fails the defense roll is made. Also, in the end.. the amount of avoidance ends up the same no matter which order you have them in (I did some math to test this), although having Deflection first would LOWER the amount of parry you'd do over the course of the game, and thus the amount of Ripostes you end up making.. So in the end, it's better that parries are made first. I'm not sure when the offtank buff (giving another person a chance at using your avoidance) and the AA parry/riposte abilities go off. I'm guessing the riposte check is probably done before anything else. That way you can attack back. The "uses your avoidance" buff may happen first, or it may only happen after the target has failed all of his avoidance checks. Since the avoidance buff goes off fairly infrequently for near 50% chance of using it, I'm guessing it might happen after. This would be a hard statistic to track though.. checking the % vs the number of attacks made against the target, and factoring in your own avoidance percentage... and then taking into account the number of attacks the target avoided himself... too much to bother for me. Would be nice to know just how much these kinds of buffs were helping though.

[Eloxos]

<p>I didn't say in wich order the defensive maneuver will trigger or wich is the best....</p><p>I just stated wich gives you the most Avoidance, because thats what the OP probalbly wants to know.</p><p>15 Deflection gives you more Avoidance then 15 Parry is all im saying.... at least it was that way before patch.</p>

[Nokrahs]

parry/deflection/defense is my opinion either. pure AGI to boost the avoidance is a "fake" to me since it won't help that much at all (the adorns/gear is focused on STA/STR better). used sta/int line so far and switched to wis/int since GU for testing (aoe dps/hategain comes in handy). noticed my "deflection" went down about 2,5% without the points in STA but it is still "ok" imho. I would love to see some skill movements in the brawler aa trees anyways such as parry/deflect/mitig moved to the monkey tree for instance to make it a "tank" tree and arrange the other stuff in the same way...but that's another story and was posted in many threads already so excuse me please for saying this all the time...can't help it <img src="/smilies/1cfd6e2a9a2c0cf8e74b49b35e2e46c7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> cheers, Nokrahs

[Ocello]

The bonuses go like this for avoidance % 10 points of agility give .3 avoidance 1 point of defense gives .25 avoidance 1 point of deflection gives .2 avoidance and 1 point of parry gives .15 avoidance THEORETICALLY. Hope that clears things up :0)

[Couching]

Don't forget diminishing return. I will suggest you to get something that is lowest in your stats. In most cases, parry is the lowest we have. That's why most players will get parry instead of others. PS: Since our defensive stance gives extra defense and deflection, it's better to pick up parry.

[Bewts]

<p>couching~</p><p>I'm not debating your advice, but from other threads I have read - isn't deflection our primary skill for avoidance that is uncontested?  Am I mistaken or is only a portion of our deflection uncontested?  If so, what value is applied to be uncontested.  I'd like to know before I respec after finding some success tanking in Lycem last night.</p><p>To the OP, I've found that in regards to tanking, bumping both deflection and parry are very beneficial.  Defense is like haste - easy to come by.  Especially in the group formats.  I've also found that as an avoidance tank you want to kill things fast enough that they don't have a chance to get in a few lucky strikes back to back.  That means after around 20-30 seconds the fights should be over or finishing up.  The majority of that time you should have your CA's cycled to keep the mob either stifled, stunned or dazed on your own and that doesn't count anything your group mates would be doing too.  That means more often than not, our avoidance becomes minimally important unless we fight orange con targets that would hit us more often and harder than anything yellow or white con.</p><p>My suggestion is to run a DPS build for everything except if you plan on tanking epic content or plan to solo level.  I know I personally run in Offensive mode in 99% of all groups and switch to our middle stance versus orange con heroics.</p><p>I'd also like to plant the thought that although going fully down the intelligence line seems important for someone planning to tank - just how often are you really below 30% health, and more importantly when you reach sub 30% health how long do you really stay there?  For me, if I hit that 30% mark, I fire off my own heal.  I'd much rather be able to churn out DPS when I need to instead of waiting to hit critical mass for those few seconds before the healers fire off their insta heals, emergencies, etc to keep you alive.</p><p>Regards,</p><p>Sanctum, 70 monk</p>

[Bladewind]

<cite>Bewts wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>couching~</p><p>I'm not debating your advice, but from other threads I have read - isn't deflection our primary skill for avoidance that is uncontested?  Am I mistaken or is only a portion of our deflection uncontested?  If so, what value is applied to be uncontested.  I'd like to know before I respec after finding some success tanking in Lycem last night.</p><p>To the OP, I've found that in regards to tanking, bumping both deflection and parry are very beneficial.  Defense is like haste - easy to come by.  Especially in the group formats.  I've also found that as an avoidance tank you want to kill things fast enough that they don't have a chance to get in a few lucky strikes back to back.  That means after around 20-30 seconds the fights should be over or finishing up.  The majority of that time you should have your CA's cycled to keep the mob either stifled, stunned or dazed on your own and that doesn't count anything your group mates would be doing too.  That means more often than not, our avoidance becomes minimally important unless we fight orange con targets that would hit us more often and harder than anything yellow or white con.</p><p>My suggestion is to run a DPS build for everything except if you plan on tanking epic content or plan to solo level.  I know I personally run in Offensive mode in 99% of all groups and switch to our middle stance versus orange con heroics.</p><p>I'd also like to plant the thought that although going fully down the intelligence line seems important for someone planning to tank - just how often are you really below 30% health, and more importantly when you reach sub 30% health how long do you really stay there?  For me, if I hit that 30% mark, I fire off my own heal.  I'd much rather be able to churn out DPS when I need to instead of waiting to hit critical mass for those few seconds before the healers fire off their insta heals, emergencies, etc to keep you alive.</p><p>Regards,</p><p>Sanctum, 70 monk</p></blockquote><p>Currently, the uncontested portion of deflection is solely determined by which stance (none from offense, 8% from master mixed, 16% from master defensive) you are using and the quality of that stance (adept, master, etc).  Sadly, we have no way to increase this on our own. Due to both diminishing returns and the order of checks, I'd go for parry, then deflection, then base defense.</p><p>As a dedicated tank, I found the end-line in int only really useful for soloing.  When you are in a group/raid, the extra mit it provides below 30% is insufficient to keep ou alive, assuming the content is challenging. </p>

[Taiken]

<p>To be honest. It doesn't matter.. Because once you reach our level of 70.. No one will want you and you'll wish those AA points affected your tadeskilling, as that is more useful than a monk in a raid/group anyday. For myself, I went down the wis line, and then down the int line.. I also have 8 str, and 8 agi... and also have half the resuse time slot done.. Maxed out. Even with all that.. I'm still putty in a green ^^^'s hand. </p><p>Have fun reaching 70, cuz after you reach it.. The fun stops there. Taiken.</p>

[Couching]

Just as what Bladewind posted, our uncontested avoidance is determined by stance. We have 0% uncontested avoidance in offensive stance, 8% in balance stance (master 1) and 16% in defensive stance (master 1). For OP, I would recommend you to respec to int and wis line rather than agi and sta. By game mechanics, agi and sta are worse than wis and int. The agi line gives reuse bonus looks handy but it gives you less dps than critical hit or aoe hit from wis line. For example, in your current setting, you have only 4 points on critical hit and 5 points on reuse bonus. If you put extra 4 points on critical hit, it's about another 9% critical hit. It's definitely better than 7.5% reuse bonus since critical hit works on both auto attack and CA. You get an average 1.3 times damages of CA in critical. If your total damage of CA is X, you can get X*1.3*0.09 = 1.17X. From 7.5 reuse bonus, you get about about 1.075X. It's much worse than what you can get from critical. Not to say, I didn't count what you can get from auto-attack. Generally speak, the most viable choice of brawler tree is int and wis line. Unless you have special purpose to get final ability of agi or sta, it's less efficient comparing to int and wis lines.

[Bewts]

<p>Thanks for clearing that up fellas.  I'd definitely go for parry as well then.  Without a doubt I think you'd see greater returns increasing parry than deflection.  Last night in Lycem I was around 38% deflection in defensive stance, almost 50% base and only 9% parry.  I think that is why Dirge is so important due to the increase they give to the parry mod (minus all the other nice things they do!)</p><p>I'll also be respecing back to wis/int now (was STR/INT) that at least one of my weapons (Bashing) is over the 57 DR rating.  I'd like to find another weapon over the 100 base damage range that id duel weild but with the upcoming weapon changes I'm not too sure what 1hers will be viable from KoS content (what I raid) let alone what DW's will see an increase.</p><p>Thanks again,</p><p>Sanctum</p><p>PS, what do you guys reccomend for an adorn on bashing?</p>

[Couching]

For KoS raid, hp drain adornment is nice for solo/group/raid. For EoF, I would suggest power drain adornment since most named in high end raids have mana drain aoe. Also, the named fights duration are longer than the named fight duration in kos.