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Sepulchrel

07-12-2010, 10:37 AM

I've been having some great fun on my (new) monk, but I have some questions. I've recently returned to EQ2 after a long break, pardon (perhaps some stupid) questions: 1. What our we about, in theory ? Are we suppose to be a tank or more DPS oriented ? Offensive tank maybe ? 2. Ok so much for the theory, in practice; what is our role in regular grouping? It appears to me (can be a wrong perception) a big portion of the player community rather not have us as the main tank, but joining a group as DPS is not exactly desired too, cause they appreciate scouts for that role. Are we desired in groups throughout our career or are we always secondary next to crusaders? 3. Are there enough weapons available for the Monk class that drop, similar to that available for crusaders? I mean crushing hammers or fist weapons, or are these in general harder to find ? 4. What factor does compensate the "leather armor only" aspect of monks ? Is it our buffs ? Some hidden better default mitigation (was the case with EQ1 Monk) or ? 5. I assume with all the self-haste we are extremely dependent on auto-attack ? Is our hit rate that of scouts or better ? 6. Whats the number one AA ability a (leveling up) monk should shoot for, Chi in the STR line ? Your input is appreciated.

Aull

07-12-2010, 11:07 AM

<cite>Sepulchrel@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I've been having some great fun on my (new) monk, but I have some questions. I've recently returned to EQ2 after a long break, pardon (perhaps some stupid) questions:1. What our we about, in theory ? Are we suppose to be a tank or more DPS oriented ? Offensive tank maybe ?Since monks are listed in the fighter arch-type theoretically they are tanks. In the lower to mid levels monks should be the best dps of all the fighters at least on single targets even though monks are considered to be the defensive brawler.2. Ok so much for the theory, in practice; what is our role in regular grouping? It appears to me (can be a wrong perception) a big portion of the player community rather not have us as the main tank, but joining a group as DPS is not exactly desired too, cause they appreciate scouts for that role. Are we desired in groups throughout our career or are we always secondary next to crusaders?Gear and skill again will determine how good or bad a monk will be able to tank. Yes most seasoned players will opt for a plate tank before using a monk as mt. Monks can tank very well given the gear and once tsunmai becomes available in the mid 50's they get better. At the low to mid levels monks are very versitle and can serve as main tank, offtank, and dps. Their utility at the lower lvls isn't as good as later.At the end game it is up in the air for desirability. It can be great or not so great. Hard to say.3. Are there enough weapons available for the Monk class that drop, similar to that available for crusaders? I mean crushing hammers or fist weapons, or are these in general harder to find ?There are enough weapons. Just not as flashy as the swords.4. What factor does compensate the "leather armor only" aspect of monks ? Is it our buffs ? Some hidden better default mitigation (was the case with EQ1 Monk) or ?Basically the concept of being agile and avoiding hits. Someone else may need to clairify this.5. I assume with all the self-haste we are extremely dependent on auto-attack ? Is our hit rate that of scouts or better ?Yes. Monk auto attack is great with all the self haste and at the end game the high double attack, flurry, and procs from gear will make for great damge. Monk combat arts are not to shabby either.6. Whats the number one AA ability a (leveling up) monk should shoot for, Chi in the STR line ?I would go strength line for the crits. Then double attack. Crits affect both auto attack and combat arts. I would go for that first.Your input is appreciated.</blockquote>Hope that helps some.

circusgirl

07-12-2010, 12:38 PM

Monks are tanks. We are not dps, though sometimes you can get a group as dps if there aren't any real dps classes about.Our role in groups is to be the tank. Our role in raids is as an offtank. Our role solo is to punch things in the face.We have 360 degree avoidance instead of just frontal like plate tanks, along with immunity to strikethrough on our defensive stance. We have more contested avoidance (what you use for groups) by a mile, and on the high end once you have the mythical the difference in mitigation is more like chain/plate than leather/plate.Autoattack is important. Time your CAs so you don't overwrite it.Crane flock is our best endline by a mile.

yzyh

07-23-2010, 05:39 PM

Well monks/bruiser are tanks but kinda only once you got some raiding gear.Well they do just fine in instance but brawler are behind plate user till they get some raiding gear and have speced to be immune to strike trough.its kinda suck that SoE solution to balance brawler has been given with itemisation mostly.I think the archtype class was a bad way to go for EQ2. Many would had been happyer if monk where DPS rather then tanks so you could be a melee DPS class outside of a scoout (their is not a single frontload melee DPSer in this game).But well many brawler are happy with their tanking status. Just be happy that brawler are probably in their prime time.

Shredderr

07-26-2010, 01:51 AM

We are a thorn in the side of SoE . We are the illegitimate child they wish they could shut the door on and hear nomore from . We are the constant and undeniable reminder that these men are not gods but human that fail and can fail badly . The idea of an a voidance tank was a mistake in this game and we are proof of that . We are not MT because we canonly temp buff to adequate mitigation and our avoidance is nil in offensive so whatever dps we might be able to pull off stops short due to jousting in leather , heck the scouts were given chain to survive having to do damage up close and personal . And most have some sort of tricks to avoid AE's . We are in leather and tsunami wont cut it . Should we get excited that we can tank mobs Swashies can also tank while out dpsing us as well as the utility they bring ? We can tank zones now ? well on Naggy many a sorcerer has been known to tank the common instances . Cheers we can barely tank zones now that half the other classes can tank them also .I cant tell you how many times an assasin starts pulling mobs and tanking them cause i am pulling them 1 at a time due to pathetic aoe aggro evne with 3 blue slots of 5% aoe auto proc gear on . Then lt them pull to see how long they can last tanling and get your feelings hurt <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> . Like what do you need me for again ?All our aa is devoted to trying to give us survivability tricks and very incremetally tbh so not much for dps enhancement just tryiing to live and not very good at either .So I rolled a pally to maybe get the opportunity at tanking and wow at lvl 20 he has 24% uncontested avoidance he can give to the MT to use as well as his mitigation then assist heal the MT and do it all in his offensive stance ... hahah .I have watched summoners get fixed , whole aa lines and we'd need something like that to be a viable anything at this point .When people post lvl 90 monk lfg I feel for em cause even being a monk I have no idea why one would get an invite UNLESS they just wanted to fill a spot and anything would do . The tougher zones are real hard cause a well planned group setup is needed .So all in all SoE does not know what they want us to be other than the crappiest tank there is .

Caethre

07-26-2010, 06:37 AM

(( What we are ... has changed over time. It has been necessary to adapt.Two expansions back, we were really just DPS. A fighter subclass yes, and officially a tank class, but in reality few monks, at least, few non-raidgeared monks, would be tanking instances. This was not so bad because at that time with instance gear and upgraded abilities, our DPS was not much less than scouts (amongst non-raidgeared folks), so getting invites to groups as DPS was actually not all that difficult. I know Lorianna was out-parsing most scouts she grouped with at that time.Last expansion, our DPS took a huge (relative) step backwards. Equivalently-geared scouts were now outparsing us by a considerable amount. Tanking, however, was still not really viable. It wasn't looking good. I know I continued to try to group purely as a DPS role, but it was becoming more and more difficult to get slots.At that time, the monk community seemed very divided on what we should be. This was not really the fault of the players, but more it was down to SOE's decisions, since the monk class had somewhat oscillated in its design over the previous couple of years, it was hardly surprising our role was not clear to the playerbase! Some felt we needed our DPS putting back (relatively) where it was, others felt that we needed to be made viable tanks. At that time, I was in the former camp, but really, it didn't matter, as long as at least one role or the other was made viable and balanced.Sentinel's Fate release changed things a lot. The decision was made, we are now tanks, and viable ones. I know that came as a culture change for some of us, as some of us who had played monk a long time had only ever played as DPS-Monks and had never tanked an instance before (me included!).I know a few months back I started to tank instances, albeit very tentatively at first. However, once we build our AAs, get the instance drops and start getting adornments, we are not half bad at the role!When one finally gets quite a few of the fabled tanking drops (with malice procs, ward procs, pestilence procs, etc), gets to 250 AAs, picks up all the masters, and puts adornments in all the available slots, we become really very capable instance tanks indeed. In my case, from joining a few (a very few) pickup raids, I've collected a few of the earliest raid armour items, and those help as well.This is not to say things are balanced. Without a dirge, monks without heavy raidgear are still going to struggle like hell to hold aggro with 20K+ parsing scouts or mages in group, in a way that a Paladin or Shadowknight seldom will. This means that all things being equal, a monk is still considered by most to be an inferior instance group tank to a crusader (or beserker).However, it is viable! I am running 10-20 successful pickup instance groups a week on Antonia Bayle these days.So don't despair. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ))

Gilasil

07-28-2010, 06:43 PM

My thoughts:1. To say monks are good instance tanks once they are raid geared is a HUGE fail for SoE. Any class doing instances should be able to get all the gear they need to do a decent job from instances. Otherwise what are they supposed to do? Raid until they can do instances? As if any raid would want them if their gear is too crappy to even do instances?2. That said, raid geared level 90 monks can indeed MT on raids. No doubt about that whatsoever. But remember most raids don't need more then two tanks of ANY of the six fighter classes. Another fail for SoE. At least when brawlers could do passable DPS they could take advantage of the fact that raids typically wanted lots of DPS people.

Shredderr

08-01-2010, 06:42 PM

<cite>Felishanna@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>(( What we are ... has changed over time. It has been necessary to adapt.Two expansions back, we were really just DPS. A fighter subclass yes, and officially a tank class, but in reality few monks, at least, few non-raidgeared monks, would be tanking instances. This was not so bad because at that time with instance gear and upgraded abilities, our DPS was not much less than scouts (amongst non-raidgeared folks), so getting invites to groups as DPS was actually not all that difficult. I know Lorianna was out-parsing most scouts she grouped with at that time.Last expansion, our DPS took a huge (relative) step backwards. Equivalently-geared scouts were now outparsing us by a considerable amount. Tanking, however, was still not really viable. It wasn't looking good. I know I continued to try to group purely as a DPS role, but it was becoming more and more difficult to get slots.At that time, the monk community seemed very divided on what we should be. This was not really the fault of the players, but more it was down to SOE's decisions, since the monk class had somewhat oscillated in its design over the previous couple of years, it was hardly surprising our role was not clear to the playerbase! Some felt we needed our DPS putting back (relatively) where it was, others felt that we needed to be made viable tanks. At that time, I was in the former camp, but really, it didn't matter, as long as at least one role or the other was made viable and balanced.Sentinel's Fate release changed things a lot. The decision was made, we are now tanks, and viable ones. I know that came as a culture change for some of us, as some of us who had played monk a long time had only ever played as DPS-Monks and had never tanked an instance before (me included!).I know a few months back I started to tank instances, albeit very tentatively at first. However, once we build our AAs, get the instance drops and start getting adornments, we are not half bad at the role!When one finally gets quite a few of the fabled tanking drops (with malice procs, ward procs, pestilence procs, etc), gets to 250 AAs, picks up all the masters, and puts adornments in all the available slots, we become really very capable instance tanks indeed. In my case, from joining a few (a very few) pickup raids, I've collected a few of the earliest raid armour items, and those help as well.This is not to say things are balanced. Without a dirge, monks without heavy raidgear are still going to struggle like hell to hold aggro with 20K+ parsing scouts or mages in group, in a way that a Paladin or Shadowknight seldom will. This means that all things being equal, a monk is still considered by most to be an inferior instance group tank to a crusader (or beserker).However, it is viable! I am running 10-20 successful pickup instance groups a week on Antonia Bayle these days.So don't despair. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> ))</blockquote>wow how selfish is that so now that you ... a monk from a raid guild can tank zones with some raid gear all is well . How ever the rest of us never fear once we get all the fabled pieces from these zones we wont be invited to we can muck on though it horaay ?

Caethre

08-02-2010, 07:45 AM

<cite>Shredderr wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Felishanna@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>(( .... So don't despair. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> ))</blockquote>wow how selfish is that so now that you ... a monk from a raid guild can tank zones with some raid gear all is well . How ever the rest of us never fear once we get all the fabled pieces from these zones we wont be invited to we can muck on though it horaay ?</blockquote>(( Whisper *to Shredder* - Umm, you have made a bit of a massive assumption there and got it very badly wrong.I am not, nor have I ever been in any raid guild. The guild I have been in for the last 5 years currently has 3 active members, and has never had more than six. Furthermore, until 2 weeks ago, I had never been on a raid of any kind with my monk since Sentinel's Fate release. Everything I posted above is purely as an *instance group only* non-raidgeared monk. Read that again - nonraidgeared, instances only, ok?[Now, yes, I've been on four (yes four - wow!) raids in the last two weeks, semi-pickup raids in the SF zones on easy-mode. I've been super-lucky, as the only brawler on the raid, and picked up no less than five tier 1 raid items. Some people on the raid thought it was a "gear up Lorianna" raid LOL. They are only marginally better than the instance gear apart from having Crit Mit (which is of no real use in heroic instances). But that is irrelevant to this thread, don't you think?]Yes, the Monk class has its issues, and I not only sympathize, I empathize. I have been there. I am just dragging myself up by the heels, and have got the 250aa, bought all my masters, and grinding the instances to earn many hundreds of marks, to get my instance gear to a level where I can tank instances easily and successfully. The easy ones (library, conservatory, ERH, DB, OV, Labs) I can do now with almost any scratch pickup group as long as I have a dirge with me, and some of the harder ones I can do with a stronger group. I still can't tank Palace, as I can't handle the second named fight, I just can't hold aggro on them. But some day I will do it.Are we able to do it as well as a crusader in the same gear level? No, we can't. And I believe you, me and others have every right to make constructive negative feedback on some aspects of our class. But are we able to do it at all, indeed, do it well, and without raid gear, especially in the easier instances? Yes we can, and very easily too!So, I suggest to you, keep giving the feedback on what we need, yes, but don't go overboard and say that it is all just impossible, because it isn't.~Lorianna ))

Caethre

08-02-2010, 08:20 AM

(( I wanted to add something else. This is some basic advice I would give to any new, non-raidgeared monk trying to tank Sentinel's Fate instances.- Form your own groups. Then you can control who is in them.- Tank in defensive stance. Ignore those telling you otherwise, this is the way to go. Yes it will hurt your DPS, but defensive stance makes it doable.- Make sure you get a dirge in your group. Make sure that dirge gives you their +37 hate buff (assuming they have taken the Master2 choice of their tier6 ability, which for a level 90 dirge would be sensible as none of their other tier6 abilities will be being used at level 90!). Make sure they buff YOU with all their best buffs, not the swashie or assassin in group. You need it all to help keep aggro. If the dirge refuses, or some DPS class gets shirty, calmly explain why, and if they still refuse, replace them with someone who understands how the game works!- Pull one encounter at a time. I still get those who do not understand our class (or raidgeared characters who are used to grouping with raidgeared tanks), telling me to pull whole rooms at once because all the SKs and Pallies they group with do that, but I refuse of course, explaining that that would just kill the group with a nonraidgeared brawler tank. You can, however, chain pull single encounters nonstop. We don't have the AE aggro of crusaders, and that is not the way a nonraidgeared brawler should be doing things if they want to clear instances and look competant.Start by just doing Library and Conservatory and possible Demetrik's Bastion. Do them every day. Collect a LOT of marks and get some mark gear.Hope it helps. It worked for me anyway. ))

Shredderr

08-05-2010, 09:27 PM

<cite>Shredderr wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Felishanna@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>(( What we are ... has changed over time. It has been necessary to adapt.Two expansions back, we were really just DPS. A fighter subclass yes, and officially a tank class, but in reality few monks, at least, few non-raidgeared monks, would be tanking instances. This was not so bad because at that time with instance gear and upgraded abilities, our DPS was not much less than scouts (amongst non-raidgeared folks), so getting invites to groups as DPS was actually not all that difficult. I know Lorianna was out-parsing most scouts she grouped with at that time.Last expansion, our DPS took a huge (relative) step backwards. Equivalently-geared scouts were now outparsing us by a considerable amount. Tanking, however, was still not really viable. It wasn't looking good. I know I continued to try to group purely as a DPS role, but it was becoming more and more difficult to get slots.At that time, the monk community seemed very divided on what we should be. This was not really the fault of the players, but more it was down to SOE's decisions, since the monk class had somewhat oscillated in its design over the previous couple of years, it was hardly surprising our role was not clear to the playerbase! Some felt we needed our DPS putting back (relatively) where it was, others felt that we needed to be made viable tanks. At that time, I was in the former camp, but really, it didn't matter, as long as at least one role or the other was made viable and balanced.Sentinel's Fate release changed things a lot. The decision was made, we are now tanks, and viable ones. I know that came as a culture change for some of us, as some of us who had played monk a long time had only ever played as DPS-Monks and had never tanked an instance before (me included!).I know a few months back I started to tank instances, albeit very tentatively at first. However, once we build our AAs, get the instance drops and start getting adornments, we are not half bad at the role!When one finally gets quite a few of the fabled tanking drops (with malice procs, ward procs, pestilence procs, etc), gets to 250 AAs, picks up all the masters, and puts adornments in all the available slots, we become really very capable instance tanks indeed. In my case, from joining a few (a very few) pickup raids, I've collected a few of the earliest raid armour items, and those help as well.This is not to say things are balanced. Without a dirge, monks without heavy raidgear are still going to struggle like hell to hold aggro with 20K+ parsing scouts or mages in group, in a way that a Paladin or Shadowknight seldom will. This means that all things being equal, a monk is still considered by most to be an inferior instance group tank to a crusader (or beserker).</blockquote>wow how selfish is that so now that you ... a monk from a raid guild can tank zones with some raid gear all is well . How ever the rest of us never fear once we get all the fabled pieces from these zones we wont be invited to we can muck on though it horaay ?</blockquote>Ok my bad you dont raid then . but still 20k is average . AB is known as a very good server so I know this is an average parse . on Naggy if they are a good dps class they are hitting 30 , 40k assasins 40k and if they catch aggro its not a big deal so far cause if I can survive it then so can they . We get nowhere as a class saying well we are much better than we used to be so we should be happy with that . how many mobs from TSO did u tank while the cap was 80 ? we were tanks then and for the most of us unable . Now we can tank some instances and are supposed to shout hurrah ? No biggie not raging just keeping it real I know what most will say reroll . So I have to a plate tank hoping Monks will be able to do something well enough to be sought after in groups / raids . I always check but never see any guilds raiding or not actively recruiting a brawler .To finish up is the last part of how u said it that kinda ticked me offHowever, it is viable! I am running 10-20 successful pickup instance groups a week on Antonia Bayle these days.So don't despair. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> ))Like ok you are getting pick up groups now so you are satufied all is well no prob while this is a big prob for many others to say the least those of us who are not on such a populated pve server .