What is the state of monk?

[Sebastien]

I am thinking of rolling a monk as my alt.  It seems like they would be good at soloing, compared to other fighters,  and I like the idea of being able to turn up the dial on my tanking or my dps, via buffs, depending on the situation.  However I recall that avoidance tanking was always kind of borked in this game.  Is it better yet?  Will I have fun soloing and can I realistically ever tank for a group during a dungeon crawl, with mobs that are still yellow to us?

[Bladewind]

Avoidance is more or less balanced, finally.  Our main weakness is area aggro, but even that has been greatly overstated on these forums.  I've tanked every group instance in the game successfully (no deaths and chain pulls) and several t7 raid encounters and nameds in addition.  There are still many players in the general population (including many monks) who do not pereive monks as effective tanks, but that perception is simply flawed.  You'll have to deal with it, though.

 

Just like any other fighter, we can take AAs to focus on tanking or being damage dealers.  Judicious use of specialty equipment and group buffs allows you to improve your ability at these roles as well.  You'll have to somewhat commit to one or the other, but building up a set of equipment (don't forget adornments, too) for each role and knowing how others' buffs benefit you for each role will allow you to still do fairly well at the one you do not commit to.  For example, I am fully tank specced, and my dps (usually 800-1100 range) comes in 300-400 below what I would expect if I were dps-specced. It is not insane dps, but it is also not a wasted spot on the raid since I can tank if needed and also offer utility through FD and offtank abilities.

 

We are pretty strong soloers.  I'd place us fourth behind root 'n nuke classes, shadowknights, and rogues as far as what we can successfully take down.  Thanks to our short reuse feign death, I'd put us at the top of the list for being able access content solo in dangerous areas.  So, you can get just about anywhere as a monk, and kill what is there within reason once you arrive.  At 70 with solid gear, I'd say nameds 6-7ish levels below and regular heroics 4ish levels below would be about my limit.

 

If you have mostly legendary equipment, tanking yellows should not be a problem.  I don't have experience in worse equipment since the combat changes, so I can't give you a reliable opinion there.  In my current state, I am about 65-70% fabled, and I breeze through any single group instance (except nizara and MMC - those are doable but require effort).

[Chanah]

I am playing an inq since november 2004, a year ago i decided to make a monk cos i thought they could solo better then inq, I found out that that is not true, both almost full fabled equiped now and I can solo alot tougher mobs with my inquisitor then on my monk, I was able to kill a level 68 ^^^ named on my monk, but was very close, with my inquisitor I solo level 70 nameds ^^^ with full hp left and like 40 % power.Anyway I do have alot of fun playing my monk, I love the FD and the dps, I can tank places like crypt/oob/hof when grouped, but with no agro transfers in the group its a pain to keep agro when you got like a wizard in the group.The thing that phucks us monks up is the 3 min recast on our heal, its ridiculous that bruisers get 1.30 mins recast on theirs and we 3 mins.

[SykeAuttic]

Bruiser mend is 90 seconds self only.  Monks are 3 minute usable on anyone.  Would be nice to have an aa to reduce that...but relatively fair trade off as I use mend on others during raids and groups when needed...and thats usually at least once... 

[Kainsei]

It would be nice if we had separate timers. For example 90 sec or 2 min recast if I use it on myself and 3 min if I heal others.

[Sebastien]

Thanks for the detailed reply; sounds good. =)