bonesbro
07-22-2005, 01:58 AM
<DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#3399ff size=5>This FAQ has not been updated to reflect the DoF changes. It will be updated soon.</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This FAQ is an instructional guide on how to be an effective tank or damage dealer for your group or raid. As the game evolves and we learn more about our class this guide will continue to improve, so please post followups with suggestions for improvements. And regardless of whether you believe Monks should fill the tank role or DPS role, I think everyone can agree that we should still train ourselves to be the best we can be at whatever role we're filling.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Big thanks go out to all the community members who've helped out on these community guides!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT size=6><STRONG>Tanking</STRONG></FONT></DIV> <DIV>Monks have to work a bit harder to be a good tank than some of the other fighters. Avoidance is our primary defense, and you have to work carefully to position yourself so that you can avoid attacks from all your opponents. When avoidance fails, we have to rely on our lower mitigation, so keeping your gear topnotch is crucial. We lack some of the taunting ability of warriors and crusaders, so holding agro takes more work. Finally, you'll have to work against the preconceived notion of many players that a Monk cannot tank, so just doing an ok job isn't good enough.<BR><BR><B>Choosing your equipment to tank</B>:<BR>Focus on armor with high mitigation (as measured by armor class) agility, and stamina. Try not to let any of your gear turn blue and fall behind unless it is very high quality (legendary or fabled). Handcrafted armor just isn't good enough, and if you're planning on tanking regularly then most treasured armor won't cut it either. Make getting some legendary crafted armor a priority, starting with the tunic, legs, shoulders/bracers in that order. Good jewelry is also important, though handcrafted will suffice here until you can find something better. In general, it's better to sell rare gems than make jewelry out of them - you'll be able to buy a few pieces of new armor which will provide you a much greater benefit to your tanking abilities.<BR><BR>A two-handed weapon is generally recommended for use while tanking to minimize the number of ripostes you take, though you will usually suffer a str/agi penalty. My opinion is that it's worth it, though I haven't seen any detailed parses comparing tanking damage taken with 2h vs. DW, though I don't think it's going to be a big difference. <P>It won't matter much until endgame, but once you hit your 40s start keeping an eye out for armor and jewelry with good resistances. Thulzite armor has good resists, but it's new and sometimes rather pricey. There are some great cold resist pieces dropping in Everfrost these days - keep an eye out for the Tundra Walker's and Heavy Wool Threaded armor. Some of the epic raids, like Vox and Articae, require huge amount of cold resist. Remember that most pieces of armor for an equipment slot will always have the same stats - sleeves are always cold/poison, bracers always have +str and +int, etc. Before you throw away some junky loot, doublecheck to see if it has a nonstandard set of resistances that make it worth keeping around for special occasions.<BR><BR><B>Tanking: Pulling the mobs</B>: <BR>There are two good ways to actually agro your pull to bring it back to your group: do something to it, or creep close enough to 'agro pull' it (described later).<BR><BR>In most circumstances it's safe to use one of your skills to agro the mob and pull it back to the group. Running up and hitting it is probably the worst option. You did a tiny bit of damage, and now it's going to hit you the whole time you're running back to the group. Instead, here are a few better ways to pull:</P> <UL> <LI>A taunt. You're going to want as much agro as possible when you make it back to the group, so why not lead off with a taunt? Most taunts have a decently long range, so if you're pulling back a short distance you should be able to pull with a taunt and make it back to the group before they catch you. This is the preferred pull strategy when you are not using agro pulls. [does taunt lock an encounter?] <LI>For long range pulls, the quickest way is to use either Focused Strike or throw a ranged weapon at them. You get some additional running room but you will have much less control over the encounter's agro, so use this only when you can't get close enough to taunt. <LI>A hex doll. This has more range than anything else we can do [it is longer than a ranged weapon, right?] and it lets your group benefit from some sort of debuff. It has a very slow 8 second cast time so while it's casting a pull can wander away, get taken by another group, or get blown up by the bored wizard in your group. I generally only use this as a last resort.</LI></UL> <P>About the 'agro pull': some mobs have social agro, like in EQ1, and will bring nearby encounters if you agro them. However, if you creep close enough that they turn and attack you they'll leave their buddies behind. Once they're safely away from their friends you can take action. This behavior is the exception, not the rule, but it's important to recognize what's happening on your first few pulls so you can compensate. Let the group know there's a higher risk for adds, and use safe agro pulls rather than pulling them with damage, taunts, or a hex doll. Because pulling with agro doesn't lock an encounter, it lets you get back to the group at full speed - though I've had a named encounter stolen from me once or twice because of this.<BR><BR><STRONG>While you're running back:<BR></STRONG>Get agro. Get as much as possible. If the mob is chasing closely you can use your other taunts; getting off an AE taunt before the encounter makes it to the group is very important. Not only does it help ensure that the mobs will say stuck to you, but the sooner you use it the greater the chance it'll be back up for use again during the fight. Your group buff (the Call of Arms / Wisdom of Zephyl line) adds a lot of agro. Use it while running back to the group. If you've pulled with a taunt and used your AE taunt and your group buff you're going to have a much easier time holding agro throughout the fight. Now is also a good time to hit Martial Focus.<BR><BR>Finally, try to position the mobs so they face away from the group. Barrage is a dangerous AE melee attack that many mobs have, but it only hits players in front of the mob. The strategy I favor, if I have room, is to pull off to one side of the group and to run past them, sort of in a flattened question mark shape. Not only will this face the mobs away from the group but it will tend to bunch multiple mobs up together so it's easier to keep them all in your frontal arc (and thus, so you can deflect attacks from all of them).<BR><BR><B>Tanking: Ok, I've pulled em, now what?</B><BR>You should be starting the fight with a good chunk of agro, so now it's time to focus on staying alive. First, try to get as many mobs in possible to be directly in front of you. Generally, if you can't see the mob in first person mode then you can't deflect it. Because most of our defense comes from deflection, any mob that's to your sides or behind you is really going to do a lot of damage. If your strafe around the mobs in a circle you can usually get most of them in front of you, but if you pulled four or more mobs it's almost impossible to get them all in front of you. Don't worry about it too much - I've been grouped with tanks that spent so long trying to get all the mobs in the perfect position that the group could have killed half of them before he settled down enough to allow us to start doing real damage. Be smarter than them.</P> <P>If you're fighting in an area where you're going to be getting a lot of adds, you might want to ask your group to create an /assist macro instead of just attacking through you. If your group is just attacking whatever you have targetted, then when you switch targets to taunt an add, someone in your group might land a huge damage spell and steal agro on a brand new mob. Or, worse, if someone in your group is mezzing, when you switch to taunt a mezzed add, someone else will attack right through you and break that mez. Now it's eating the enchanter. Great.</P> <P>An /assist macro will keep the group focused on the original target, so you're free to target adds and taunt them. Ask your group to create a social that does "/assist yourname" and to use it at the start of the fight. You should create a social that says "Everyone kill %t!!" EQ2 will automatically replace the %t with the name of whatever you have targetted. Then your group hits their /assist macro and you're now free to change targets during the fight to taunt.</P> <P>Personally, I find that using /assist is more work than its worth in most places, but I'll admit that I've had a fair share of group wipeouts that could have been avoided if the group was using /assist instead of just attacking through the MT.</P> <P><STRONG>Holding Agro:</STRONG><BR>Your job as a tank is to minimze the damage your group takes while allowing the rest of your group to maximize their damage. You maximize your group's DPS when you allow <STRONG>everyone</STRONG> to do maximum damage, and you don't do that by playing whack-a-mole with your combat arts. That elf in the bathrobe? He's going to be nuking less if you can't hold agro. That slows down the whole group. You maximize your group's DPS by allowing the high DPS classes like sorcerors to do their maximum damage without drawing agro. Here are some tips:</P> <UL> <LI>Use your taunts when they're up. Remember Velan's Taunting Cry, that level 10 training taunt? It's awesome. It's the best taunt we get. Spam it. <LI>Your group buff (Call of Arms/Wisdom of Zephyl/Quiet Purity) adds a HUGE amount of agro. It's especially awesome if your group has multiple encounters on you at once, because it will build agro on every mob, not just the ones in the encounter you have targetted. <LI>Completing a HO adds a bit of agro. If your group isn't doing many HOs, start doing your solo chain. It'll add a bit of damage and some nice HO agro. <LI>In a long fight, you're going to run out of power. If things look like they're gonna take a while, don't use some of your combat arts so you can save that power for taunts. Some of your CAs have pretty bad damage/power ratios. Grappling Bear, Shoulder Charge, and Flying Kick are especially inefficient.</LI></UL> <P><STRONG>Other Tips:</STRONG></P> <UL> <LI>Keep your opponent useless. If you took Lu'Sun's Stifle at 20, use it constantly. Your biggest threats are special attacks and spells, and stifle is both a guaranteed interrupt and 4.9 seconds where it's impossible for your target to use either. A second or so after the stifle drops, land a stun. A second after it wears off, drop another stun. Stifle them again when it's back up. By alternating stifle and stuns as often as possible you will massively decrease the DPS of your target. <LI>Watch for adds. If your group has a mezzer, ask them if they prefer you to taunt adds or leave them to be mezzed. Even if they want to mez them, pay close attention as an add gets near. If the enchanter is resisted they might not be able to mez it before it crushes them like a bug. Remember that it can be dangerous to target a mezzed add to taunt them, because anyone in the group attacking through you will break the mez. It's best to use your group buff to gain agro on mezzed adds. It won't break mez, and it will probably get them to hate you more than the mezzer. <LI>Face of the Mountain adds a lot of mitigation, but it takes a lot of power and is a pain to cancel if you lose agro or need to get an add. Use it carefully. <LI>Stone Stance is pretty tough to use. Not only does it stun you, but against crushing damage it really isn't that good. Against a slashing or piercing mob, however, you're almost invulnerable. This is really more of an offtank skill than a skill to use while playing main tank. If the MT is getting hammered or dies, try this: use Rescue to grab agro, then use Stone Stance. If you can, fire off your group buff right after the Rescue to grab a bit more agro. If you're lucky, the mob will be glued to you for 10-20 seconds and you won't take much damage. That gives the MT time to get rezzed and get ready to fight again. And if it doesn't work and you get obliterated, hey, the other tank did too! </LI></UL></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=6><STRONG>Damage Dealing</STRONG></FONT></DIV> <DIV>As a preface, Monks are in the Fighter archetype, so the intention is for Monks to be more about tanking mobs and less about doing DPS. If you're looking for someone who, longterm, is going to do the best melee DPS, you're probably better off rolling up a Swashbuckler or Assassin. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about how you can be all you can be.<BR><BR>Please note that none of these tips apply exclusively to the Monk class. I'll be talking about specific Monk weapons and combat arts that might not be available to other classes, but the general principles should apply to scout and other fights. Even a weird melee priest, I guess.<BR><BR><B>The Basic Stuff:</B><BR> <UL> <LI>Upgrade your combat arts (CAs). Try to at least get the adept1 for all your damage skills, though you can skimp on low-damage attacks like shoulder charge. Adept3s are pricey but add about 10-20% damage to a skill. Masters are even more expensive but will add another 10-20% or so. <LI>Attack the mob from behind. If you're behind a mob (or off to the side) the mob can't block/parry/riposte you. Just moving around behind them can double your DPS against high-defense mobs. <LI>Keep your weapon at least white-con or better. With a weak weapon, you're supposed to lose damage on your CAs, though I haven't actually seen proof this actually works. </LI></UL>The next few sections will go into much more detail about weapon and armor choices.<BR></DIV> <DIV><BR><B>Equipment Selection:</B><BR>Get +strength gear, obviously. Some slots, like sleeves, generally don't have strength on them, but with a bit of broker-searching you'll be able to find something. Even if they're grey and have terrible mitigation, you're not tanking right now, right? So who cares what your mitigation is? Just remember, if the mob you're fighting starts to AE, your mitigation and resists will be awful. Don't forget about hex dolls - a pair of +12 strengh hex dolls will help out quite a bit. And with all this +strength you're adding you can easily carry a few teak strongboxes around to hold tanking and resist gear.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Haste is another obvious goal. Any armor item with +haste is probably going to increase your damage by more than anything else for that slot.<BR><BR>Also, don't forget about food and potions. A nice T5 jerky will add +10 str, and you can get +17 (common) or +24 (rare) strength potions.<BR><BR>There's one slot where you should ignore the +str stat, and that's the weapon. Stats like the damage rating and delay on a weapon mean MUCH more than a few piddly points of strength. Speaking of which...<BR> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG>Weapon Selection:</STRONG></DIV> <DIV>Use a two-handed weapon: the slowest one you can find. Currently, the ultimate weapon for monkly damage is the Royal Great Flail, a 3.8 delay fabled T5 weapon with a 12% 250dd proc. Slow weapons do more damage than fast weapons for several reasons:</DIV> <UL> <LI>With a fast weapon, you're going to cap your delay at 0.8 seconds, so a fast weapon allows you to take advantage of much more haste. In a good raid group you'll easily get 100% or more haste, which takes a 1.6 delay weapon down to the cap. You would need 475% haste to get the RGF down to 0.8 delay, which might be doable but is really hard. But if you're getting more than 100% haste you're wasting a lot of it with a fast weapon. <LI>You don't get autoattack swings while your combat art is "casting" (the progress bar is going up, right before your attack lands). Especially when hasted, a fast weapon will be missing one or two autoattack swings during that cast time. If you time your attacks correctly (discussed in more detail later) then a slow weapon won't miss any swings but a fast weapon will always be losing some swings. If you're spamming combat arts, you might only get an autoattack swing in every two seconds. Because slow weapons hit for more damage per hit than fast weapons, if you're forced into taking fewer swings you will increase your damage by using a weapon that does more damage per hit. <LI>Slow weapons have a greater chance to proc on each hit, because proc % is normalized to a 3.0 delay. That means a 1.5 delay weapon will have half the chance to proc on each hit as a 3.0 delay weapon. Now, if you just autoattack and leave, you'll get the same number of procs per minute. But if you're only swinging every few seconds (because your attacks are being delayed by CA casting) then you'll proc more on the swings you do get if you're using a slower weapon. <LI>Not confirmed: a slow weapon increases your chance to proc on CA hits.</LI></UL> <P>Because you probably don't have access to one of the top fabled items yet, here are some suggestions on items to watch out for in the meantime:<BR></P> <UL> <LI>Imbued 2h Bo Staff. A bit quick at 1.7 delay, but it's two handed. <LI>Imbued Cestii. The slowest DW weapons you can get at 2.0 delay. <LI>Imbued Great Hammer. 2.5 delay (oh so yummy!) but they require rare metals, so are a bit more expensive. A non-rare one is a good value purchase. </LI></UL> <DIV><B>Timing your attacks between Combat Arts:</B><BR>As I've already mentioned, your autoattack swings don't happen while you're casting a combat art. Your delay timer is still ticking down, but once your weapon is ready to swing it will wait until you're done casting before actually doing damage. (I am 99% sure it will also wait until the Recovery Time on the CA is finished too, which starts after your CA lands). Only then will it swing.<BR><BR>Short version: Use the slowest weapon you can find. Fire off a CA. Right after it finishes, watch your combat spam. The moment you see your autoattack swing, start the next CA. Repeat. After practicing for a few minutes, that brief pause will become second nature. You can occasionaly use skill queuing, but queuing more than two in a row will probably cause you to miss a combat round.<BR><BR>Long version: So, what you want to do is minimize the amount of time that your weapon is waiting to swing, but cannot swing because you're still casting. To do this, you want a weapon that is at least as slow as the average casting time of your CAs. So, if you figure that you have a 1.0 average cast time, a 0.5 second recovery time, and an average 0.5 seconds between seeing your swing and starting the next CA, then you want a weapon with at least a 2.0 delay to avoid losing some swings. However, you should figure that you're going to have your haste from Everburning Fire (36%) and from your FBSS (15%), so 51% haste takes a 3.0 delay weapon down to the 2.0. If you are regularly hasted by a bard, enchanter, berserker, or inquisitor, then you can see how even a 3.8 delay weapon is going to be swinging faster than your CAs.<BR><BR>Let's look at a quick example using some fake numbers. We'll take Fistwraps of Fast with a 1.2 delay, and Hammer of Ponderous Crushing with a 2.4 delay. At 51% haste, the fistwraps swing with a delay of 0.80 (delay / (1 + haste%)). The hammer swings at a delay of 1.6. Because they have the same damage rating, the hammer hits for twice as hard as the fistwraps. We'll say the fistwraps hit for 10 damage and the hammer hits for 20 damage. Over the course of a minute, with just autoattack on, the fistwraps will hit twice as often for half the damage, so everything is equal. However, let's say that I'm spamming combat arts, so each swing happens two seconds apart. Over the course of a minute, the fistwraps hit 30 times for 10 damage each (300 damage total) and the hammer hits 30 times for 20 damage each (600 damage total). Even though the weapons do identical autoattack DPS, the hammer is much better if you're spamming CAs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG>Other Tips:</STRONG></DIV> <UL> <LI>Maximize the damage on Rapid Swings by stunning the mob, then running around behind it before using Rapid Swings. This is only really useful when soloing, but it almost guarantees that you'll get them all to land. You can use this to ensure that other skills land when you really need them to, like Silent Fist.<BR></LI></UL><p>Message Edited by bonesbro on <span class=date_text>09-19-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:09 PM</span>