Monk Tanking, What's Your Method

Harvash · 04-09-2007, 04:46 PM

Have read over many, many posts in this forum and it always leaves me wondering ~ Monk's are Fighters, by default a tank.

How some people choose to play their toon is not the subject of this post, I have a brigand that made a fine tank all the way up to 70 when i respect'd to DPS for raiding. What I am really looking for is input on why people think that monk's are not a viable tank for all content. Further, I am looking for some of you monklet tanks to post here on what you think are good strats, gear and methods that work for you.

My monk has been with me for years, I have leveled him up at various stages of my gaming, never truly leaving him behind. I have been a tank, dps, healer and, on occassion, useless. LOL. But my passion is to see the Monk class get just due in their abilities. I have tanked all sorts of areas, all tiers. I have done instances, etc. but not tanked a raid. It occurs to me, in my experience, that there is very little I cant do just as well as any plate tank, I just have to do it different. I dont see this as a weakness, I see it as one class being different than another - furys are not wardens, brigs are not swashys, etc.

I dont see many of the laments I read about here as out of the ordinary, Hate issues effect all tanks one way or another, any that says they havent seen spike damage on a plate tank needs glasses and some healers work better with one style than another. The list of whines is endless ~ solutions do present themselves to those who look for them. I am doing just that, looking for more solutions from the monk community.

As an aside, although it will be ignored, I am not looing for what you think is "broke" unless you have a constructive view point on it. I am not looking for the host of "roll a plate tank" replies ~I am looking for helpfull advice from experienced people that can add to this convo in a meaningfull way.

Thank you, and be safe.

DynamicPerforman · 04-09-2007, 06:11 PM

Very nice post! My compliments to the thought chef. I'll give a little background before I post a reply.
My forums account is bugged and any endlines or formatting I use is deleted when I hit submit. So I use alot of bullet points T_T
I've been a level 70 monk for a year now, and I've raided every zone in the game, either as tank or as dps. (excepting the gods, wuoshi and matron, none of which my casual playstyle allows me to do) I also spend alot of time reading stratagies for the different raid mobs in the game.
I'm on a PVP server so I have access to pvp gear (check the stickys at the top for pictures) which is very nice fabled level 70 gear. I'd say progression armor set wise its: Wu's < Crescent < PVP < Excarnate (fabled pieces) < Perception
I lead a guild who raids with an x3 tops. More likely we have an x2 and a few stray dps tossed into a third group. We're a family guild and have little time to raid. We're fairly casual.
My guild has 1 70 guardian, 1 70 zerker, and 1 70 monk. I do the tanking because my mitigation is greater than either plate tank. And because I lead the raids. Its much easier for the tank to lead imho.
My recent acheivements include taking down the first 3 labs named with 15 people (1 level 57). First pulls this time too. Very proud of my guild right now.

There thats done, I'll go into some details of how I tank.

I Have a troubadour in my dps group. to reduce the mage's aggro by 20%. I have a swashbuckler in my group to give me 28% of 1.2k dps (right now) I do 500-600 dps Plus 300dps in taunts. 1136. Mages can do up to 1420 dps. Somtimes I have a dirge and my hate goes up to 1820 dps. I still need some dps increases but i've been holding aggro fine as long as the mages don't spike.
Last night (labs) I had 4175 mit in defensive (58%) and 12000 avoidence (65.4%) I was avoiding around 63% of all melee attacks. 0% of aoe's (3 melee aoe's total, so statistically unsound as a test sample, and they didn't hit me that hard anyhow)I had 11200HP. My MT group was the following: Mystic, Conjuror, Monk, Berzerker (avoid buff, off tank adds), Templar, Swashbuckler.
That is just the stats. In the real world I have some issues with spike damage on the pull, overnuking wizards, and running out of power on long fights. However, having been on raids with many plate tanks, these are the same problems they face. Strategies differ from mob to mob, but here is how we did The Slavering Alzid:
Preheals, Jesters cap, Outward calm, Mantis star (ranged sta debuff on the named), Single taunt named, Group taunt named. Tsunami for 12 seconds. off tank pulls adds one at a time to the rest of the raid and burns them down. After tsunami is down, I use stone stance for 30 seconds(stunned). Adds were down about 1/2 way through, but single taunts held aggro fine. When stone stance is down i hit mountain stance (rooted) for 30 seconds. Burned all my attacks into the named. After mountain was down tsunami was ready, so I hit that and switched to offensive. Mob is at low health (6-7%) so i call for a manaburn from a wizard and the mob goes down.

On most fights I tend to use similar strats. I like to open with preheals, hit tsunami when they go down, let healers catch up again, hit stone stance and have a slow burn for 30seconds (mobs usually nearing 50%) Then mountain stance, fast burn useing rescue if i need the aggro then switch to tsunami and finish it off. So for then entire fight (~2 minutes) I have 5k mit or higher (63% mit). There are some problems with this though.

I am stunned for 30 seconds of the fight. so the raid dps is not as high at that point as it could be.
After the ~2 min are over I have nothing more to cast. I'm out of buffs, out of power and out of luck.
However, if my raid is doing is doing the projected 10k dps (which it was last night) a 2 minute fight is 1.2mill damage total. Perfect.

I spend most of my time at work calculating strategies for the next raid mob my guild is going to take down. Now that i've gone over the good, i'll talk about the bad.

Perception of the monk is bad. We arn't seen as dps or as tanks. I get wows from people when I do simple things like tank den with no wipes. This makes it difficult to actually test the monk as a tank, as many people just don't want to give us the chance. I'm very thankful my guild lets me tank. And supports me in doing so. I only do so because I feel i'm the best tank for the job. If we get a better tank I would let him tank and I would offtank, but I only know of 5 tanks on the server who are distinctly better at tanking than I am, and they all tank for raiding guilds. I got turned down to tank a pick up raid I attended recently (some guildies need a lower level update and I was free) a guardian in treasured, with less raid buffed mit than I had in the dps group, and less health was choosen. He couldn't hold aggro and he died over and over. I ended up just taking aggro with one taunt and holding it for most of the hard fights. I tanked better imo with 1 healer than he did with 3. THIS is the problem we face right now. Not any real issues, but percieved weaknesses in our class.

I would advise any brawlers out there that want to raid tank to stand tall and show people what you can do. Form groups, start people talking about that one brawler who was the best tank they ever grouped with. Make a name for yourself. Be proud, and confident. But be careful to not be cocky. Confidence is often mistaken for arrogance, but the differance is the confident person says he will and succeeds, the arrogant person says he will and fails. Lets show them what we're made of ^_^

Bewts · 04-09-2007, 09:25 PM

Your strategy for tanking mobs (sequencially using tsunami and both mit buffs one after the other) is something that never occurred to me in regards to tanking epic content.

Do you advise your DPS/debuffs to not use their massive dps skills during the stun duration considering your only source of hate at that point is our taunt?

What AA setup do you use?

Is the MT group you provided in your labs raid what you prefer?

Do you view the Dirge > Swashy for monk MT reasons? If not please explain your reasoning as well as your reasoning for the prior question.

Do you prefer the zerker as your fighter class in the MT group? I see benefits to many of fighters in conjunction with the monk.

Do you use TV on someone or is the second chance at avoiding from another fighter your preference? What about a Bruiser in defensive for the second high avoidance hit?

What weapons do you prefer to tank with? The best overall DR setup or do you specifically use DW or 2HB?

Have you tested the AA skill to add aggro siphon to TV? Will it work in conjunction with say the additional hate from the swashy?

Thats a lot of questions, but I have always believed brawlers can tank - just differently and perhaps requires a well organized and trained raid.

Sanctum, 70 Monk, Everfrost

Zutan · 04-09-2007, 10:01 PM

I dont officially tank raids but I do take agro from the soft skins from time to time. I've even "kept" the agro for the remainder of fights before. Usually when I see agro shift to me I hit tsunami. THen I click Defensive stance then Spirit like Mountain before Tsunami wears off. I also click on Storm Advance if its not already on.

That tends to give healers enough time to notice I'm tanking. They have never had trouble keeping me alive doing this.

For groups I never have any issue unless someone goes nuts with agro. I tank very well unless the healer is a reactive ward healer. Those just dont work for monks.

Harvash · 04-10-2007, 02:40 PM

Wanted to thank everyone for their input, and hope others will contribute as well.

Another personal note, as I had indicated in the original post, is that I have no trouble tanking instances. Last night was a Den's and PoA run, one wipe in den's due to my not paying attention and the lateness of the hour. PoA was a breeze and typically no wipe's is the standard, not the exception. My usual group is a Mystic, Dirge, Swash, Wiz the last slot being filled by either a healer or additional DPS depending who is on.

As a group, we are all guildies and have run together for some time now ~ I believe this is one of the keys to success in any group. I have never had my tanking questioned by them. If I run with other groups I tend towards a DPS role, but I really feel this is not the strength of the monk class.

DynamicPerforman · 04-10-2007, 03:11 PM

Bewts wrote:

Your strategy for tanking mobs (sequencially using tsunami and both mit buffs one after the other) is something that never occurred to me in regards to tanking epic content. Thank you I put alot of thought into my raiding.
Do you advise your DPS/debuffs to not use their massive dps skills during the stun duration considering your only source of hate at that point is our taunt? Aye. Mostly it consists of slow dps to begin with (stunned) then for the last minute of the fight they fast burn.
What AA setup do you use? I play on a pvp server, so I use STA and INT to the bottom. I can't give up mantis leap, and I don't intend to tank EH for awhile
Is the MT group you provided in your labs raid what you prefer? Swash, dirge, warden, mystic, conjuror, Monk. Thats my preferd setup. However I often have to spread out the buffs more to save the raid from aoe's.
Do you view the Dirge > Swashy for monk MT reasons? If not please explain your reasoning as well as your reasoning for the prior question. Dirge gives me 40% hate increase, swash gives me 28% of their hate. From a hate standpoint Its quite equal. However the dirge also increases my survivability.
Do you prefer the zerker as your fighter class in the MT group? I see benefits to many of fighters in conjunction with the monk. Not really. We have only 3 active fighters, 2 monks and a zerker. The other monk is DPS speced, so I don't really have any options for offtank.
Do you use TV on someone or is the second chance at avoiding from another fighter your preference? What about a Bruiser in defensive for the second high avoidance hit? PVP server T_T no bruisers. And the other fighter's avoidence chance is always prefered. However when I get the chance to form an offtank group. The zerker will be going there. Its much easier on the healers that way.
What weapons do you prefer to tank with? The best overall DR setup or do you specifically use DW or 2HB? DR, stats, resists etc are useless on weapons, for tanking. All that matters is survivability. I prefer DW slashing weapons with the +2% uncontested riposte adorn on each. I don't have any right now, but i'm working towards then.
Have you tested the AA skill to add aggro siphon to TV? Will it work in conjunction with say the additional hate from the swashy? I don't think the aggro transfer is worth losing my master's evasion, or 1 point from any of my other AA's. Aggro is not a problem for me when the raid is paying attention to my dps calls. I'm not sure if it stacks but I would think so.
Thats a lot of questions, but I have always believed brawlers can tank - just differently and perhaps requires a well organized and trained raid. My raid force is undergoing training. The problems I face are that any well tuned raid force out there won't want me to tank (used to plate) and my force is not up to taking out anything harder than the slavering alzid. We just don't have the numbers or the masters. Out of everyone in my guild: I have the most mit, I have the most health, I have the most avoidence. I have the best resists versus all (4k minimum, 5.5k on average) I'm about 1/2 raid geared now. But the rest of my guild is not. Our wizards are just starting to parse 1k on average. And I can hold that, but with their new masters they are having to learn to NOT freehand catalyst ice nova on the pull. (something like 15k damage or something T_T they die pretty quick after that)
Thank you for all the questions and I hope I answered them sufficiently. I'll answer anymore you have. FOR FREE! What a deal.
Sanctum, 70 Monk, Everfrost

Tsunami, when it works, is our greatest skill. I've heard some mobs ignore it, but I have yet to see one that consistently hits through it. I'll be trying HoS next saturday, so hopefully i'll have some more insights into yellow tanking. As of now I've only tanked blues, whites and the MoA named with my guild, x4 named that is. Maestro was hard but doable with my x2.

Shankonia · 04-10-2007, 04:18 PM

Good feedback and tanking strats Dynamic. I've found all of them to be true. Let us know how HoS goes. Have you tried LoA yet? Tanking that as a Monk would be alot of fun and very challenging, however since your guild is full of goodies, it shouldn't be so bad as no Warlock will be present.

As far as group setup is concerned, my personal favorite setup for an instance is Monk, Dirge, Zerker, Inquisitor, Conjuror, Fury. Try this setup with some good players and you'll love it. Could also insert a swash for the Fury or Inquisitor. Really depends on how good the healer is if you're gonna have it solo healed, however this group works great for any zone in the game minus Nizara where you're going to want a mezzer in place of the Zerker (or in place of you), and probably a templar subbing in for the Inqui.

Two DW slashing weapons w/ the Reposte adornment is a good idea as well I think. Something i've never even thought about as I spend most of my time trying to up my DPS. I prefer to use two slow delay DW's myself when tanking for increased proc chance alah increased hate, and also because you take less reposte damage from mobs overall w/ slower weapons.

Gasheron · 04-10-2007, 04:46 PM

I'm a 70 monk, but my equip is only half legendary and i still don't have a single master, so I can't really give much advice as to raid tanking.

However, when it comes to group tanking, I actually find that all you really need is to pay close attention to what is going on. Know what is going on, and when something occurs, such as a mob breaking off during a grouped encounter. If you pay attention, even with only decent equipment, we have the tools and resources to handle nearly any situation. I know I was able to tank Unrest the first day it came out with a pickup group with relative ease, having only 2 wipes due to not knowing the encounter (the bartender and in the dining room), while a friend of mine went in with a raid equipped plate tank and raid healers and had to give up.

A plate tank has many advantages over us in that they can relax a lot more easily during an encounter than we can. Their reactive taunts and group taunts allow them to keep group aggro much easier, and their mitigation base makes their damage a more constant amount than our sudden spikes. Also, they can tank very well with much less effort put into their build than we can, but because of our hybrid nature, we are much more adaptive than they are.

I guess the point is that monks (and bruisers for that matter) just have to pay more attention, and can pull off a lot of things that people dont think we can do due to our raw stats and abilities. This class takes work, but is worth the effort.

Although, I still think that an avoidance based class should get a much bigger increase from agility than it currently gets, as agility is pretty much a worthless stat at the moment.

Harvash · 04-10-2007, 05:47 PM

Shankonia wrote:

, however since your guild is full of goodies, it shouldn't be so bad as no Warlock will be present

Not derail my own thread, but warlocks are a neutral class available to all cities...i have an elven Lok in Kelethin.

Harvash · 04-13-2007, 09:56 PM

I know this post is growing a little long in the tooth, and I dont want to necro it, however wanted to give a small update relavent to this topic.

1st. I wanted to give a very surprising update on a recent Labs run, seems I did quite well in holding aggro and staying alive against slavering alzid ~ after both MT and MA folded like cardboard. We didnt progress farther at this point as it was a pickup raid and we had been in zone for quite some time and called off at this point. Wondering if I may have done a better just tanking it myself, even given what I consider crap gear.

2nd. In related topic, recently hitting 70 has sent me back to the drawing board in improving my toon. Several pieces of armor, keeping in mind Mit, Avoid and overall resists (very important for a monk tank, imho), have all been upgraded. Another surprise here, I went back and respected my character traits and was astounded at the difference. Careful re-selection of many choices has found substantial improvements in all areas. As a bonus, I had taken my STR/WIS buff master II, but recently bought the current T7 verison, leaving me to make another choice for the level 54 spell. Well as fate would have it, I considered the M2 choice of Calm Tranquility against the level 65 Swift calm, and found only a 2% haste difference. This 2% is uncontested (there is no resist consideration, etc.) and would cost me in excess of 10p to get, not a wise choice. So, I use the 54 M2 and thought myself a day wiser and copper richer.

Several other changes, to numerous for this post, had excellent results, I recommend everyone take their free respec at 70 (if still avail.)

Have now done OoB, Acad, PoA, Dens and the depth of several common dungeons ~ adding more challenging content at each step. Next challenge I think high on my list is BSS and CoV. Eventually leading into the castle itself, but must work more diligently at getting better worn gear.

As always, I welcome constructive replies to this thread ~ and I am somewhat amiss for more responses.

P.s. Anyone firing up pickup raids on Butcherblock is welcome to send me a /tell, I am an experienced raider with my brig and capable in all KoS zones - just want to switch gears and get my monk up there.

Anjin · 04-15-2007, 08:41 AM

What is you character name and server, dynamicperformance?

Chay · 04-15-2007, 10:59 AM

My monk has mostly Mastercraft stuff so I kind of defer to the plat raiders to tank. I wouldn't mind tanking more if I though I could handle the spike damage/to hit bonuses of the bosses. I did tank a couple things in CoV when the MT went LD and in OOB. But I was nervous and wasn't sure if I could handle it if I came out of defensive. More experience will probably help and getting use to playing with more people outside my guild will help me adapt faster.

Harvash · 04-15-2007, 01:26 PM

CoV went well last night, Last named was given some trouble as it was VERY late and my mystic was nodding off..lol. Group FD would have been helpfull here, but NP ~ just rebuffed ran back and burned auto-aggro skele's down. On a lighter note, two named, two wood chest. The final named dropped not one, but TWO class set armors - No-trade, and not usable by any of us. Oh well, theres always next time.

Chay · 04-15-2007, 05:28 PM

No Trade is the worst evil of all. SMILEY

Savanja · 04-15-2007, 09:56 PM

Honestly, I only tank when there isn't a plate tank to do so, or if the plate tank around is lower level. I hold my own in a group as tank, I have to work a bit harder on occasion to keep aggro off of the silly people who insist on slamming multi-target encounters with encounter dmg spells. But with the right healer, I can live through anything that a plate tank can. IMO, Monks are pretty diverse and can be used to fill the MT, assist, or dps spots as needed. I like that.

Chay · 04-16-2007, 01:30 AM

I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden).

Couching · 04-16-2007, 02:17 AM

Chayna wrote:

I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden).

Usually there are two situations that monk can't keep agro. The first situation is that you are poorly geared comparing to the dpsers in your group and you are in defensive stance. I would recommend you switching to offensive stance as long as group healer can keep you up. The second situation is that you have problems to keep agro in multiple encounters. Since we have only 1 encounter taunt and no passive taunt, you need to switch your targets to keep agro on you. In most cases, monk can keep agro fine with offensive stance. As long as group healer can keep you up, there is no reason to tank with defensive stance.

Chay · 04-16-2007, 09:48 AM

I think you described my situation pretty accurately, though I was in Black Widow. Luckily had excellent healing. Think it would be smoother in the future.

Harvash · 04-16-2007, 12:39 PM

Chayna wrote:

I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden).

I had read the responce to this and wanted to add what I hope is some helpfull info. Question first, what level are you, what is your weapon choice and what quality are your stance arts? Running the 2h AA line for me for the extra knockdown art works very well, also firing up thundering fists before pull to put a lil more zing on it is nice.

Damage = Hate, a very important formula for the tanking monk! I find it crucial to use the following strategy: I have M2 Enc. taunt, but I use STA line AA throwing art to pull, fire up Fists while mob closes on us, Challenge, AA knockdown art then TAB THROUGH EACH MOB AT LEAST ONCE! I want to emphasize how important this last is! We do indeed have passive aggro skill, its Dragon Stance - and it has a 50% (!) chance to proc-taunt on mobs upon successfull melee strike - at almost 80% haste in spider stance, hitting mobs several times in a few short seconds is pretty much a guarantee this is going to work..lol. I make sure I run in Balanced stance (Black Widow) as much as possible, it has a small Aggression bonus on it without nerfing the heck out of combat skills. Full offensive stance has no aggression bonus and can be counter productive sometimes.

My crew and I have run together for some time now, and we are on vent, but letting your dps people know to do mental count off 4-5 seconds before really laying into the mob will work wonders for you. This count usually finds them - and you - on the last mob with hate built up on the others. Use Challenge when ever up, AA knockdown when up and dont be afraid to tab a lil bit if you think your gonna lose it.

I typically have no real hate issues to speak of, make sure that taunt stance is upgraded as much as your budget will allow, haste rules the day as well. Also, dont forget to take advantage of aggro transfers from Swash, Asssassins, Dirge and Coercers - I LOVE my group dirge! Also, I have some points in Ag transfer from AA line, although I think the % is weak sauce and they really should up it some. Maybe start at 5% then add 1% per point or something, but thats another topic altogether.

Chay · 04-16-2007, 01:42 PM

My monk is 70 (76 AA... Sta 4/4/5/8 Int 4/4/8/8/1... EoF Combinations) , my Black Widow is Adept 3 (haven't seen a master I could afford), her weapons are pretty crappy: A Strifewing Clawed Fist and a Imbued Dragon Hide Fist. I keep looking for something better but I really don't raid (did enough of that in EQ). I've been looking at 2hers but prefer fists. I think the tabbing through is the key. I didn't do that at the start because typically I don't have to. I keep looking for masters for my taunts and passive agro but I'm tight with my coin! LOL Anyway... thanks for the advice. Didn't mean to highjack this thread. Any additional advice feel free to PM me.

DynamicPerforman · 04-16-2007, 05:02 PM

Some updates! I tried Lyceyum and HoS with the following MT setup: Templar, Swashbuckler, Conj,Fury, Warden . raid was an x3 with levels 55+ for dps. raid dps was 10k

Got my rear handed to me in lyceyum. Blame it more on the lack of a mystic and terrible dps
Did well in HoS. Cleared to the inert Pain NPC. Lack of dps meant we took forever. Gave up after 2 hours of clearing trash for no profit.

Its going well ^_^

Bewts · 04-16-2007, 08:22 PM

Another suggestion....

Establish someone else other than yourself as the Assist person. Being a monk I tend to 'Tab Cycle' through encounters to better utilize my hate procs. When people use the implied targetting through you, they are switching targets with you so you end up killing all the mobs at the same time instead of one at a time. This extends fights and increases the chances you get a few bad rolls in a row (Read: better chance of you dying and group wiping).

As you establish someone else to assist through - the Main Assist will /assist and then everyone else will use the implied targetting off of them. I rarely find myself losing aggro as long as I stick on the first mob for 2-3 combat arts. I tab, use 2 combat arts, tab 2 arts, tab single target taunt. Normally I end up back on the first target on the 4th tab although each encounter is different. You just need to develop knowledge about your group at that point. Do you have:

A handful of AEing mages? A handful of primarily single target DPSers? Or a well rounded mix? Is the encounter a single ^^^ or one ^^^ with three more ^ mobs? Knowing that helps you devise plans of attack (that typically comes with experience). If you have 4 or 5 no arrow mobs in a heroic with a group of AE DPS you know to blow through your AE's at the start. If you have that same encounter with single target DPS like yourself, you know that a group taunt and AE should hold the aggro as you burn through each mob. Those are just a few of the examples. There are tons more things to consider IE level of your DPS vs levels of the mobs (people hitting yellow/orange con mobs will do significantly less dps). Consider how to best cater to your group setups and it ALWAYS helps to run with the same people on a nightly basis. Teamwork develops and people learn when to throw out a big nuke or a strong combat art combination and when not to.

Deathspell · 04-17-2007, 06:47 AM

Last time I tanked Achadecism with 2 Furies and 1 Wizard. I had great problems with getting aggro from one particular Fury. I don't know how or what, but when I body pull, the mobs tend to go to that fury. I immediately use my Master2 group taunt, but they were always and instantly sticked on that fury like glue. It was just impossible to get aggro back, since mobs were green there were already dead before I got aggro back. When the wizard got aggro, it was a lot easier to get aggro back and i never had problems with the other fury. I just don't understand, I got relic fabled/legendary gear, 2 fabled weapons with same delay, adept3 offensive stance and Master1 dragon/aggro buff. Do we really suck that bad on grouped encounters or am I missing out on something. It [Removed for Content] me off, I was getting tired of those chaotic and hectic group fights that I loaded my parsing tool and noticed that during problematic times, that fury was top DPS,...

Zooce · 04-17-2007, 07:56 AM

DynamicPerformance wrote:

Very nice post! My compliments to the thought chef. I'll give a little background before I post a reply.
My forums account is bugged and any endlines or formatting I use is deleted when I hit submit. So I use alot of bullet points T_T
I've been a level 70 monk for a year now, and I've raided every zone in the game, either as tank or as dps. (excepting the gods, wuoshi and matron, none of which my casual playstyle allows me to do) I also spend alot of time reading stratagies for the different raid mobs in the game.
I'm on a PVP server so I have access to pvp gear (check the stickys at the top for pictures) which is very nice fabled level 70 gear. I'd say progression armor set wise its: Wu's < Crescent < PVP < Excarnate (fabled pieces) < Perception
I lead a guild who raids with an x3 tops. More likely we have an x2 and a few stray dps tossed into a third group. We're a family guild and have little time to raid. We're fairly casual.
My guild has 1 70 guardian, 1 70 zerker, and 1 70 monk. I do the tanking because my mitigation is greater than either plate tank. And because I lead the raids. Its much easier for the tank to lead imho.
My recent acheivements include taking down the first 3 labs named with 15 people (1 level 57). First pulls this time too. Very proud of my guild right now.
There thats done, I'll go into some details of how I tank.
I Have a troubadour in my dps group. to reduce the mage's aggro by 20%. I have a swashbuckler in my group to give me 28% of 1.2k dps (right now) I do 500-600 dps Plus 300dps in taunts. 1136. Mages can do up to 1420 dps. Somtimes I have a dirge and my hate goes up to 1820 dps. I still need some dps increases but i've been holding aggro fine as long as the mages don't spike.
Last night (labs) I had 4175 mit in defensive (58%) and 12000 avoidence (65.4%) I was avoiding around 63% of all melee attacks. 0% of aoe's (3 melee aoe's total, so statistically unsound as a test sample, and they didn't hit me that hard anyhow)I had 11200HP. My MT group was the following: Mystic, Conjuror, Monk, Berzerker (avoid buff, off tank adds), Templar, Swashbuckler.
That is just the stats. In the real world I have some issues with spike damage on the pull, overnuking wizards, and running out of power on long fights. However, having been on raids with many plate tanks, these are the same problems they face. Strategies differ from mob to mob, but here is how we did The Slavering Alzid:
Preheals, Jesters cap, Outward calm, Mantis star (ranged sta debuff on the named), Single taunt named, Group taunt named. Tsunami for 12 seconds. off tank pulls adds one at a time to the rest of the raid and burns them down. After tsunami is down, I use stone stance for 30 seconds(stunned). Adds were down about 1/2 way through, but single taunts held aggro fine. When stone stance is down i hit mountain stance (rooted) for 30 seconds. Burned all my attacks into the named. After mountain was down tsunami was ready, so I hit that and switched to offensive. Mob is at low health (6-7%) so i call for a manaburn from a wizard and the mob goes down.
On most fights I tend to use similar strats. I like to open with preheals, hit tsunami when they go down, let healers catch up again, hit stone stance and have a slow burn for 30seconds (mobs usually nearing 50%) Then mountain stance, fast burn useing rescue if i need the aggro then switch to tsunami and finish it off. So for then entire fight (~2 minutes) I have 5k mit or higher (63% mit). There are some problems with this though.
I am stunned for 30 seconds of the fight. so the raid dps is not as high at that point as it could be.
After the ~2 min are over I have nothing more to cast. I'm out of buffs, out of power and out of luck.
However, if my raid is doing is doing the projected 10k dps (which it was last night) a 2 minute fight is 1.2mill damage total. Perfect.
I spend most of my time at work calculating strategies for the next raid mob my guild is going to take down. Now that i've gone over the good, i'll talk about the bad.
Perception of the monk is bad. We arn't seen as dps or as tanks. I get wows from people when I do simple things like tank den with no wipes. This makes it difficult to actually test the monk as a tank, as many people just don't want to give us the chance. I'm very thankful my guild lets me tank. And supports me in doing so. I only do so because I feel i'm the best tank for the job. If we get a better tank I would let him tank and I would offtank, but I only know of 5 tanks on the server who are distinctly better at tanking than I am, and they all tank for raiding guilds. I got turned down to tank a pick up raid I attended recently (some guildies need a lower level update and I was free) a guardian in treasured, with less raid buffed mit than I had in the dps group, and less health was choosen. He couldn't hold aggro and he died over and over. I ended up just taking aggro with one taunt and holding it for most of the hard fights. I tanked better imo with 1 healer than he did with 3. THIS is the problem we face right now. Not any real issues, but percieved weaknesses in our class.
I would advise any brawlers out there that want to raid tank to stand tall and show people what you can do. Form groups, start people talking about that one brawler who was the best tank they ever grouped with. Make a name for yourself. Be proud, and confident. But be careful to not be cocky. Confidence is often mistaken for arrogance, but the differance is the confident person says he will and succeeds, the arrogant person says he will and fails. Lets show them what we're made of ^_^

How on earth do you manage to get higher MIT than the plate tanks? Every piece of armour my Zerker friend has (and we are similarly equipped) and I mean every piece, has higher MIT than I can expect. What is you char. name?

Zooce

DynamicPerforman · 04-17-2007, 02:23 PM

Monk in fabled > Zerker in handcrafted *shrugs*I have more mit because I have completed claymore. And I have 2 light citin rings. My self buffed mit sits around 3.3k (50.1%) I'll be adding ~ 200 more mit from increase to my armor that will be happening soon ^_^.

Chay · 04-17-2007, 04:25 PM

Deathspell wrote:

Last time I tanked Achadecism with 2 Furies and 1 Wizard. I had great problems with getting aggro from one particular Fury. I don't know how or what, but when I body pull, the mobs tend to go to that fury. I immediately use my Master2 group taunt, but they were always and instantly sticked on that fury like glue. It was just impossible to get aggro back, since mobs were green there were already dead before I got aggro back. When the wizard got aggro, it was a lot easier to get aggro back and i never had problems with the other fury. I just don't understand, I got relic fabled/legendary gear, 2 fabled weapons with same delay, adept3 offensive stance and Master1 dragon/aggro buff. Do we really suck that bad on grouped encounters or am I missing out on something. It [Removed for Content] me off, I was getting tired of those chaotic and hectic group fights that I loaded my parsing tool and noticed that during problematic times, that fury was top DPS,...

Was the fury that was getting aggro buffing you with a damage shield or something? Or maybe attacking before the pull? Maybe nuking early. In which case it was their fault. A good nuker knows how not to go overboard. I've only seen things like what you are saying when damage shield or ward is up and the encounter hightails it straight to the healer in question.

Couching · 04-17-2007, 05:10 PM

DynamicPerformance wrote:

Monk in fabled > Zerker in handcrafted *shrugs*I have more mit because I have completed claymore. And I have 2 light citin rings. My self buffed mit sits around 3.3k (50.1%) I'll be adding ~ 200 more mit from increase to my armor that will be happening soon ^_^.

No, even mastercraft plate armors have higher mitigation than fabled leather armors a LOT. For example, mastercraft plate legging and bp are 412 mitigation. The rest pieces are 384 mitigations. The full suit (7 pieces) mastercraft plate armors has bout 500-700 mitigations more than different monk fabled suits. The rewards from claymore quests give you 430 mitigations. Even you have best fabled armor with claymore rewards, the berserker with mastercraft armors still has higher mitigation than you. Not to say, you are far from top geared. Besides, light citin rings are so easy to get. I have no idea why your berserker didn't have a pair? Moreover, your berserker will gear up from raid day by day. An EoF Berserker suit is 3822. An EoF Guardian suit is 3858. An EoF monk suit is 2130. A mastercraft plate suit is 2744. See the difference?

Bewts · 04-17-2007, 08:24 PM

I'm a 70 monk and I can reach approx 64% mit self buffed (5.9k total) if I combine both short terms... and I can reach over 7k mit if I'm under 30% health too for almost 69% mit. Those are situational and one time uses (maybe twice on the short term mit buffs) and the 1400 extra mit if under 30% is passive so it works whenever I spike on health.

Granted, just standing there self buffed in defensive stance I'm sitting at 46.7% or 2912 mit.

Harvash · 04-17-2007, 11:55 PM

could be mistaken here, but the poster said HANDcrafted, not MASTERcrafted...and that is a big difference. Also, the plate tank may have no accessories or adorns that add to Mit. I have tanked in groups where the plate wearers may be very close to my mit, or slighty above...but one look at their 20% avoid tells me who is tanking.

As a side note, I usually allow the plate wearer to tank ~ right up till the healer sends a tell asking me to take over.

Bewts · 04-18-2007, 12:28 AM

I normally defer to plate tanks because everyone is comfortable with that situation in groups. I'll let the plate tank fail, then take over if he dies. After a few times of that I'll normally see someone in the group say lets try the monk. Never turn back after that. My normal response with the "who's tanking" question is

Monks are not popular tanks (tm)

Its my way of saying that I can probably tank just as good if not better than your current tank.

04-09-2007, 06:11 PM	#2
DynamicPerforman General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 298	Very nice post! My compliments to the thought chef. I'll give a little background before I post a reply. My forums account is bugged and any endlines or formatting I use is deleted when I hit submit. So I use alot of bullet points T_T I've been a level 70 monk for a year now, and I've raided every zone in the game, either as tank or as dps. (excepting the gods, wuoshi and matron, none of which my casual playstyle allows me to do) I also spend alot of time reading stratagies for the different raid mobs in the game. I'm on a PVP server so I have access to pvp gear (check the stickys at the top for pictures) which is very nice fabled level 70 gear. I'd say progression armor set wise its: Wu's < Crescent < PVP < Excarnate (fabled pieces) < Perception I lead a guild who raids with an x3 tops. More likely we have an x2 and a few stray dps tossed into a third group. We're a family guild and have little time to raid. We're fairly casual. My guild has 1 70 guardian, 1 70 zerker, and 1 70 monk. I do the tanking because my mitigation is greater than either plate tank. And because I lead the raids. Its much easier for the tank to lead imho. My recent acheivements include taking down the first 3 labs named with 15 people (1 level 57). First pulls this time too. Very proud of my guild right now. There thats done, I'll go into some details of how I tank. I Have a troubadour in my dps group. to reduce the mage's aggro by 20%. I have a swashbuckler in my group to give me 28% of 1.2k dps (right now) I do 500-600 dps Plus 300dps in taunts. 1136. Mages can do up to 1420 dps. Somtimes I have a dirge and my hate goes up to 1820 dps. I still need some dps increases but i've been holding aggro fine as long as the mages don't spike. Last night (labs) I had 4175 mit in defensive (58%) and 12000 avoidence (65.4%) I was avoiding around 63% of all melee attacks. 0% of aoe's (3 melee aoe's total, so statistically unsound as a test sample, and they didn't hit me that hard anyhow)I had 11200HP. My MT group was the following: Mystic, Conjuror, Monk, Berzerker (avoid buff, off tank adds), Templar, Swashbuckler. That is just the stats. In the real world I have some issues with spike damage on the pull, overnuking wizards, and running out of power on long fights. However, having been on raids with many plate tanks, these are the same problems they face. Strategies differ from mob to mob, but here is how we did The Slavering Alzid: Preheals, Jesters cap, Outward calm, Mantis star (ranged sta debuff on the named), Single taunt named, Group taunt named. Tsunami for 12 seconds. off tank pulls adds one at a time to the rest of the raid and burns them down. After tsunami is down, I use stone stance for 30 seconds(stunned). Adds were down about 1/2 way through, but single taunts held aggro fine. When stone stance is down i hit mountain stance (rooted) for 30 seconds. Burned all my attacks into the named. After mountain was down tsunami was ready, so I hit that and switched to offensive. Mob is at low health (6-7%) so i call for a manaburn from a wizard and the mob goes down. On most fights I tend to use similar strats. I like to open with preheals, hit tsunami when they go down, let healers catch up again, hit stone stance and have a slow burn for 30seconds (mobs usually nearing 50%) Then mountain stance, fast burn useing rescue if i need the aggro then switch to tsunami and finish it off. So for then entire fight (~2 minutes) I have 5k mit or higher (63% mit). There are some problems with this though. I am stunned for 30 seconds of the fight. so the raid dps is not as high at that point as it could be. After the ~2 min are over I have nothing more to cast. I'm out of buffs, out of power and out of luck. However, if my raid is doing is doing the projected 10k dps (which it was last night) a 2 minute fight is 1.2mill damage total. Perfect. I spend most of my time at work calculating strategies for the next raid mob my guild is going to take down. Now that i've gone over the good, i'll talk about the bad. Perception of the monk is bad. We arn't seen as dps or as tanks. I get wows from people when I do simple things like tank den with no wipes. This makes it difficult to actually test the monk as a tank, as many people just don't want to give us the chance. I'm very thankful my guild lets me tank. And supports me in doing so. I only do so because I feel i'm the best tank for the job. If we get a better tank I would let him tank and I would offtank, but I only know of 5 tanks on the server who are distinctly better at tanking than I am, and they all tank for raiding guilds. I got turned down to tank a pick up raid I attended recently (some guildies need a lower level update and I was free) a guardian in treasured, with less raid buffed mit than I had in the dps group, and less health was choosen. He couldn't hold aggro and he died over and over. I ended up just taking aggro with one taunt and holding it for most of the hard fights. I tanked better imo with 1 healer than he did with 3. THIS is the problem we face right now. Not any real issues, but percieved weaknesses in our class. I would advise any brawlers out there that want to raid tank to stand tall and show people what you can do. Form groups, start people talking about that one brawler who was the best tank they ever grouped with. Make a name for yourself. Be proud, and confident. But be careful to not be cocky. Confidence is often mistaken for arrogance, but the differance is the confident person says he will and succeeds, the arrogant person says he will and fails. Lets show them what we're made of ^_^ __________________

04-09-2007, 10:01 PM	#4
Zutan Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 497	I dont officially tank raids but I do take agro from the soft skins from time to time. I've even "kept" the agro for the remainder of fights before. Usually when I see agro shift to me I hit tsunami. THen I click Defensive stance then Spirit like Mountain before Tsunami wears off. I also click on Storm Advance if its not already on. That tends to give healers enough time to notice I'm tanking. They have never had trouble keeping me alive doing this. For groups I never have any issue unless someone goes nuts with agro. I tank very well unless the healer is a reactive ward healer. Those just dont work for monks. __________________

04-10-2007, 03:11 PM	#6
DynamicPerforman General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 298	Bewts wrote: Your strategy for tanking mobs (sequencially using tsunami and both mit buffs one after the other) is something that never occurred to me in regards to tanking epic content. Thank you I put alot of thought into my raiding. Do you advise your DPS/debuffs to not use their massive dps skills during the stun duration considering your only source of hate at that point is our taunt? Aye. Mostly it consists of slow dps to begin with (stunned) then for the last minute of the fight they fast burn. What AA setup do you use? I play on a pvp server, so I use STA and INT to the bottom. I can't give up mantis leap, and I don't intend to tank EH for awhile Is the MT group you provided in your labs raid what you prefer? Swash, dirge, warden, mystic, conjuror, Monk. Thats my preferd setup. However I often have to spread out the buffs more to save the raid from aoe's. Do you view the Dirge > Swashy for monk MT reasons? If not please explain your reasoning as well as your reasoning for the prior question. Dirge gives me 40% hate increase, swash gives me 28% of their hate. From a hate standpoint Its quite equal. However the dirge also increases my survivability. Do you prefer the zerker as your fighter class in the MT group? I see benefits to many of fighters in conjunction with the monk. Not really. We have only 3 active fighters, 2 monks and a zerker. The other monk is DPS speced, so I don't really have any options for offtank. Do you use TV on someone or is the second chance at avoiding from another fighter your preference? What about a Bruiser in defensive for the second high avoidance hit? PVP server T_T no bruisers. And the other fighter's avoidence chance is always prefered. However when I get the chance to form an offtank group. The zerker will be going there. Its much easier on the healers that way. What weapons do you prefer to tank with? The best overall DR setup or do you specifically use DW or 2HB? DR, stats, resists etc are useless on weapons, for tanking. All that matters is survivability. I prefer DW slashing weapons with the +2% uncontested riposte adorn on each. I don't have any right now, but i'm working towards then. Have you tested the AA skill to add aggro siphon to TV? Will it work in conjunction with say the additional hate from the swashy? I don't think the aggro transfer is worth losing my master's evasion, or 1 point from any of my other AA's. Aggro is not a problem for me when the raid is paying attention to my dps calls. I'm not sure if it stacks but I would think so. Thats a lot of questions, but I have always believed brawlers can tank - just differently and perhaps requires a well organized and trained raid. My raid force is undergoing training. The problems I face are that any well tuned raid force out there won't want me to tank (used to plate) and my force is not up to taking out anything harder than the slavering alzid. We just don't have the numbers or the masters. Out of everyone in my guild: I have the most mit, I have the most health, I have the most avoidence. I have the best resists versus all (4k minimum, 5.5k on average) I'm about 1/2 raid geared now. But the rest of my guild is not. Our wizards are just starting to parse 1k on average. And I can hold that, but with their new masters they are having to learn to NOT freehand catalyst ice nova on the pull. (something like 15k damage or something T_T they die pretty quick after that) Thank you for all the questions and I hope I answered them sufficiently. I'll answer anymore you have. FOR FREE! What a deal. Sanctum, 70 Monk, Everfrost Tsunami, when it works, is our greatest skill. I've heard some mobs ignore it, but I have yet to see one that consistently hits through it. I'll be trying HoS next saturday, so hopefully i'll have some more insights into yellow tanking. As of now I've only tanked blues, whites and the MoA named with my guild, x4 named that is. Maestro was hard but doable with my x2. __________________

04-10-2007, 05:47 PM	#9
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	Shankonia wrote: , however since your guild is full of goodies, it shouldn't be so bad as no Warlock will be present Not derail my own thread, but warlocks are a neutral class available to all cities...i have an elven Lok in Kelethin.

04-15-2007, 10:59 AM	#12
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	My monk has mostly Mastercraft stuff so I kind of defer to the plat raiders to tank. I wouldn't mind tanking more if I though I could handle the spike damage/to hit bonuses of the bosses. I did tank a couple things in CoV when the MT went LD and in OOB. But I was nervous and wasn't sure if I could handle it if I came out of defensive. More experience will probably help and getting use to playing with more people outside my guild will help me adapt faster. __________________

04-09-2007, 04:46 PM	#1
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	Have read over many, many posts in this forum and it always leaves me wondering ~ Monk's are Fighters, by default a tank. How some people choose to play their toon is not the subject of this post, I have a brigand that made a fine tank all the way up to 70 when i respect'd to DPS for raiding. What I am really looking for is input on why people think that monk's are not a viable tank for all content. Further, I am looking for some of you monklet tanks to post here on what you think are good strats, gear and methods that work for you. My monk has been with me for years, I have leveled him up at various stages of my gaming, never truly leaving him behind. I have been a tank, dps, healer and, on occassion, useless. LOL. But my passion is to see the Monk class get just due in their abilities. I have tanked all sorts of areas, all tiers. I have done instances, etc. but not tanked a raid. It occurs to me, in my experience, that there is very little I cant do just as well as any plate tank, I just have to do it different. I dont see this as a weakness, I see it as one class being different than another - furys are not wardens, brigs are not swashys, etc. I dont see many of the laments I read about here as out of the ordinary, Hate issues effect all tanks one way or another, any that says they havent seen spike damage on a plate tank needs glasses and some healers work better with one style than another. The list of whines is endless ~ solutions do present themselves to those who look for them. I am doing just that, looking for more solutions from the monk community. As an aside, although it will be ignored, I am not looing for what you think is "broke" unless you have a constructive view point on it. I am not looking for the host of "roll a plate tank" replies ~I am looking for helpfull advice from experienced people that can add to this convo in a meaningfull way. Thank you, and be safe.

04-09-2007, 09:25 PM	#3
Bewts Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 323	Your strategy for tanking mobs (sequencially using tsunami and both mit buffs one after the other) is something that never occurred to me in regards to tanking epic content. Do you advise your DPS/debuffs to not use their massive dps skills during the stun duration considering your only source of hate at that point is our taunt? What AA setup do you use? Is the MT group you provided in your labs raid what you prefer? Do you view the Dirge > Swashy for monk MT reasons? If not please explain your reasoning as well as your reasoning for the prior question. Do you prefer the zerker as your fighter class in the MT group? I see benefits to many of fighters in conjunction with the monk. Do you use TV on someone or is the second chance at avoiding from another fighter your preference? What about a Bruiser in defensive for the second high avoidance hit? What weapons do you prefer to tank with? The best overall DR setup or do you specifically use DW or 2HB? Have you tested the AA skill to add aggro siphon to TV? Will it work in conjunction with say the additional hate from the swashy? Thats a lot of questions, but I have always believed brawlers can tank - just differently and perhaps requires a well organized and trained raid. Sanctum, 70 Monk, Everfrost

04-10-2007, 02:40 PM	#5
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	Wanted to thank everyone for their input, and hope others will contribute as well. Another personal note, as I had indicated in the original post, is that I have no trouble tanking instances. Last night was a Den's and PoA run, one wipe in den's due to my not paying attention and the lateness of the hour. PoA was a breeze and typically no wipe's is the standard, not the exception. My usual group is a Mystic, Dirge, Swash, Wiz the last slot being filled by either a healer or additional DPS depending who is on. As a group, we are all guildies and have run together for some time now ~ I believe this is one of the keys to success in any group. I have never had my tanking questioned by them. If I run with other groups I tend towards a DPS role, but I really feel this is not the strength of the monk class.

04-10-2007, 04:18 PM	#7
Shankonia Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 231	Good feedback and tanking strats Dynamic. I've found all of them to be true. Let us know how HoS goes. Have you tried LoA yet? Tanking that as a Monk would be alot of fun and very challenging, however since your guild is full of goodies, it shouldn't be so bad as no Warlock will be present. As far as group setup is concerned, my personal favorite setup for an instance is Monk, Dirge, Zerker, Inquisitor, Conjuror, Fury. Try this setup with some good players and you'll love it. Could also insert a swash for the Fury or Inquisitor. Really depends on how good the healer is if you're gonna have it solo healed, however this group works great for any zone in the game minus Nizara where you're going to want a mezzer in place of the Zerker (or in place of you), and probably a templar subbing in for the Inqui. Two DW slashing weapons w/ the Reposte adornment is a good idea as well I think. Something i've never even thought about as I spend most of my time trying to up my DPS. I prefer to use two slow delay DW's myself when tanking for increased proc chance alah increased hate, and also because you take less reposte damage from mobs overall w/ slower weapons.

04-10-2007, 04:46 PM	#8
Gasheron Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 121	I'm a 70 monk, but my equip is only half legendary and i still don't have a single master, so I can't really give much advice as to raid tanking. However, when it comes to group tanking, I actually find that all you really need is to pay close attention to what is going on. Know what is going on, and when something occurs, such as a mob breaking off during a grouped encounter. If you pay attention, even with only decent equipment, we have the tools and resources to handle nearly any situation. I know I was able to tank Unrest the first day it came out with a pickup group with relative ease, having only 2 wipes due to not knowing the encounter (the bartender and in the dining room), while a friend of mine went in with a raid equipped plate tank and raid healers and had to give up. A plate tank has many advantages over us in that they can relax a lot more easily during an encounter than we can. Their reactive taunts and group taunts allow them to keep group aggro much easier, and their mitigation base makes their damage a more constant amount than our sudden spikes. Also, they can tank very well with much less effort put into their build than we can, but because of our hybrid nature, we are much more adaptive than they are. I guess the point is that monks (and bruisers for that matter) just have to pay more attention, and can pull off a lot of things that people dont think we can do due to our raw stats and abilities. This class takes work, but is worth the effort. Although, I still think that an avoidance based class should get a much bigger increase from agility than it currently gets, as agility is pretty much a worthless stat at the moment.

04-13-2007, 09:56 PM	#10
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	I know this post is growing a little long in the tooth, and I dont want to necro it, however wanted to give a small update relavent to this topic. 1st. I wanted to give a very surprising update on a recent Labs run, seems I did quite well in holding aggro and staying alive against slavering alzid ~ after both MT and MA folded like cardboard. We didnt progress farther at this point as it was a pickup raid and we had been in zone for quite some time and called off at this point. Wondering if I may have done a better just tanking it myself, even given what I consider crap gear. 2nd. In related topic, recently hitting 70 has sent me back to the drawing board in improving my toon. Several pieces of armor, keeping in mind Mit, Avoid and overall resists (very important for a monk tank, imho), have all been upgraded. Another surprise here, I went back and respected my character traits and was astounded at the difference. Careful re-selection of many choices has found substantial improvements in all areas. As a bonus, I had taken my STR/WIS buff master II, but recently bought the current T7 verison, leaving me to make another choice for the level 54 spell. Well as fate would have it, I considered the M2 choice of Calm Tranquility against the level 65 Swift calm, and found only a 2% haste difference. This 2% is uncontested (there is no resist consideration, etc.) and would cost me in excess of 10p to get, not a wise choice. So, I use the 54 M2 and thought myself a day wiser and copper richer. Several other changes, to numerous for this post, had excellent results, I recommend everyone take their free respec at 70 (if still avail.) Have now done OoB, Acad, PoA, Dens and the depth of several common dungeons ~ adding more challenging content at each step. Next challenge I think high on my list is BSS and CoV. Eventually leading into the castle itself, but must work more diligently at getting better worn gear. As always, I welcome constructive replies to this thread ~ and I am somewhat amiss for more responses. P.s. Anyone firing up pickup raids on Butcherblock is welcome to send me a /tell, I am an experienced raider with my brig and capable in all KoS zones - just want to switch gears and get my monk up there.

04-15-2007, 08:41 AM	#11
Anjin Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 423	What is you character name and server, dynamicperformance?

04-15-2007, 01:26 PM	#13
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	CoV went well last night, Last named was given some trouble as it was VERY late and my mystic was nodding off..lol. Group FD would have been helpfull here, but NP ~ just rebuffed ran back and burned auto-aggro skele's down. On a lighter note, two named, two wood chest. The final named dropped not one, but TWO class set armors - No-trade, and not usable by any of us. Oh well, theres always next time.

04-15-2007, 05:28 PM	#14
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	No Trade is the worst evil of all. __________________

04-15-2007, 09:56 PM	#15
Savanja Fansite Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 397	Honestly, I only tank when there isn't a plate tank to do so, or if the plate tank around is lower level. I hold my own in a group as tank, I have to work a bit harder on occasion to keep aggro off of the silly people who insist on slamming multi-target encounters with encounter dmg spells. But with the right healer, I can live through anything that a plate tank can. IMO, Monks are pretty diverse and can be used to fill the MT, assist, or dps spots as needed. I like that. __________________ ~Savanja~

04-16-2007, 01:30 AM	#16
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden). __________________

04-16-2007, 02:17 AM	#17
Couching Server: Crushbone Guild: Pwn Pwn Pwn Rank: CEO Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,370	Chayna wrote: I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden). Usually there are two situations that monk can't keep agro. The first situation is that you are poorly geared comparing to the dpsers in your group and you are in defensive stance. I would recommend you switching to offensive stance as long as group healer can keep you up. The second situation is that you have problems to keep agro in multiple encounters. Since we have only 1 encounter taunt and no passive taunt, you need to switch your targets to keep agro on you. In most cases, monk can keep agro fine with offensive stance. As long as group healer can keep you up, there is no reason to tank with defensive stance.

04-16-2007, 09:48 AM	#18
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	I think you described my situation pretty accurately, though I was in Black Widow. Luckily had excellent healing. Think it would be smoother in the future. __________________

04-16-2007, 12:39 PM	#19
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	Chayna wrote: I had a hard time tonight tanking the Nest keeping agro. Almost has a wipe at the very start of the zone but that may have been my lack of experience tanking the zone (I've mostly done it as a Illusionist or Warden). I had read the responce to this and wanted to add what I hope is some helpfull info. Question first, what level are you, what is your weapon choice and what quality are your stance arts? Running the 2h AA line for me for the extra knockdown art works very well, also firing up thundering fists before pull to put a lil more zing on it is nice. Damage = Hate, a very important formula for the tanking monk! I find it crucial to use the following strategy: I have M2 Enc. taunt, but I use STA line AA throwing art to pull, fire up Fists while mob closes on us, Challenge, AA knockdown art then TAB THROUGH EACH MOB AT LEAST ONCE! I want to emphasize how important this last is! We do indeed have passive aggro skill, its Dragon Stance - and it has a 50% (!) chance to proc-taunt on mobs upon successfull melee strike - at almost 80% haste in spider stance, hitting mobs several times in a few short seconds is pretty much a guarantee this is going to work..lol. I make sure I run in Balanced stance (Black Widow) as much as possible, it has a small Aggression bonus on it without nerfing the heck out of combat skills. Full offensive stance has no aggression bonus and can be counter productive sometimes. My crew and I have run together for some time now, and we are on vent, but letting your dps people know to do mental count off 4-5 seconds before really laying into the mob will work wonders for you. This count usually finds them - and you - on the last mob with hate built up on the others. Use Challenge when ever up, AA knockdown when up and dont be afraid to tab a lil bit if you think your gonna lose it. I typically have no real hate issues to speak of, make sure that taunt stance is upgraded as much as your budget will allow, haste rules the day as well. Also, dont forget to take advantage of aggro transfers from Swash, Asssassins, Dirge and Coercers - I LOVE my group dirge! Also, I have some points in Ag transfer from AA line, although I think the % is weak sauce and they really should up it some. Maybe start at 5% then add 1% per point or something, but thats another topic altogether.

04-16-2007, 01:42 PM	#20
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	My monk is 70 (76 AA... Sta 4/4/5/8 Int 4/4/8/8/1... EoF Combinations) , my Black Widow is Adept 3 (haven't seen a master I could afford), her weapons are pretty crappy: A Strifewing Clawed Fist and a Imbued Dragon Hide Fist. I keep looking for something better but I really don't raid (did enough of that in EQ). I've been looking at 2hers but prefer fists. I think the tabbing through is the key. I didn't do that at the start because typically I don't have to. I keep looking for masters for my taunts and passive agro but I'm tight with my coin! LOL Anyway... thanks for the advice. Didn't mean to highjack this thread. Any additional advice feel free to PM me. __________________

04-16-2007, 05:02 PM	#21
DynamicPerforman General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 298	Some updates! I tried Lyceyum and HoS with the following MT setup: Templar, Swashbuckler, Conj,Fury, Warden . raid was an x3 with levels 55+ for dps. raid dps was 10k Got my rear handed to me in lyceyum. Blame it more on the lack of a mystic and terrible dps Did well in HoS. Cleared to the inert Pain NPC. Lack of dps meant we took forever. Gave up after 2 hours of clearing trash for no profit. Its going well ^_^ __________________

04-16-2007, 08:22 PM	#22
Bewts Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 323	Another suggestion.... Establish someone else other than yourself as the Assist person. Being a monk I tend to 'Tab Cycle' through encounters to better utilize my hate procs. When people use the implied targetting through you, they are switching targets with you so you end up killing all the mobs at the same time instead of one at a time. This extends fights and increases the chances you get a few bad rolls in a row (Read: better chance of you dying and group wiping). As you establish someone else to assist through - the Main Assist will /assist and then everyone else will use the implied targetting off of them. I rarely find myself losing aggro as long as I stick on the first mob for 2-3 combat arts. I tab, use 2 combat arts, tab 2 arts, tab single target taunt. Normally I end up back on the first target on the 4th tab although each encounter is different. You just need to develop knowledge about your group at that point. Do you have: A handful of AEing mages? A handful of primarily single target DPSers? Or a well rounded mix? Is the encounter a single ^^^ or one ^^^ with three more ^ mobs? Knowing that helps you devise plans of attack (that typically comes with experience). If you have 4 or 5 no arrow mobs in a heroic with a group of AE DPS you know to blow through your AE's at the start. If you have that same encounter with single target DPS like yourself, you know that a group taunt and AE should hold the aggro as you burn through each mob. Those are just a few of the examples. There are tons more things to consider IE level of your DPS vs levels of the mobs (people hitting yellow/orange con mobs will do significantly less dps). Consider how to best cater to your group setups and it ALWAYS helps to run with the same people on a nightly basis. Teamwork develops and people learn when to throw out a big nuke or a strong combat art combination and when not to.

04-17-2007, 06:47 AM	#23
Deathspell Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 727	Last time I tanked Achadecism with 2 Furies and 1 Wizard. I had great problems with getting aggro from one particular Fury. I don't know how or what, but when I body pull, the mobs tend to go to that fury. I immediately use my Master2 group taunt, but they were always and instantly sticked on that fury like glue. It was just impossible to get aggro back, since mobs were green there were already dead before I got aggro back. When the wizard got aggro, it was a lot easier to get aggro back and i never had problems with the other fury. I just don't understand, I got relic fabled/legendary gear, 2 fabled weapons with same delay, adept3 offensive stance and Master1 dragon/aggro buff. Do we really suck that bad on grouped encounters or am I missing out on something. It [Removed for Content] me off, I was getting tired of those chaotic and hectic group fights that I loaded my parsing tool and noticed that during problematic times, that fury was top DPS,...

04-17-2007, 07:56 AM	#24
Zooce Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 62	DynamicPerformance wrote: Very nice post! My compliments to the thought chef. I'll give a little background before I post a reply. My forums account is bugged and any endlines or formatting I use is deleted when I hit submit. So I use alot of bullet points T_T I've been a level 70 monk for a year now, and I've raided every zone in the game, either as tank or as dps. (excepting the gods, wuoshi and matron, none of which my casual playstyle allows me to do) I also spend alot of time reading stratagies for the different raid mobs in the game. I'm on a PVP server so I have access to pvp gear (check the stickys at the top for pictures) which is very nice fabled level 70 gear. I'd say progression armor set wise its: Wu's < Crescent < PVP < Excarnate (fabled pieces) < Perception I lead a guild who raids with an x3 tops. More likely we have an x2 and a few stray dps tossed into a third group. We're a family guild and have little time to raid. We're fairly casual. My guild has 1 70 guardian, 1 70 zerker, and 1 70 monk. I do the tanking because my mitigation is greater than either plate tank. And because I lead the raids. Its much easier for the tank to lead imho. My recent acheivements include taking down the first 3 labs named with 15 people (1 level 57). First pulls this time too. Very proud of my guild right now. There thats done, I'll go into some details of how I tank. I Have a troubadour in my dps group. to reduce the mage's aggro by 20%. I have a swashbuckler in my group to give me 28% of 1.2k dps (right now) I do 500-600 dps Plus 300dps in taunts. 1136. Mages can do up to 1420 dps. Somtimes I have a dirge and my hate goes up to 1820 dps. I still need some dps increases but i've been holding aggro fine as long as the mages don't spike. Last night (labs) I had 4175 mit in defensive (58%) and 12000 avoidence (65.4%) I was avoiding around 63% of all melee attacks. 0% of aoe's (3 melee aoe's total, so statistically unsound as a test sample, and they didn't hit me that hard anyhow)I had 11200HP. My MT group was the following: Mystic, Conjuror, Monk, Berzerker (avoid buff, off tank adds), Templar, Swashbuckler. That is just the stats. In the real world I have some issues with spike damage on the pull, overnuking wizards, and running out of power on long fights. However, having been on raids with many plate tanks, these are the same problems they face. Strategies differ from mob to mob, but here is how we did The Slavering Alzid: Preheals, Jesters cap, Outward calm, Mantis star (ranged sta debuff on the named), Single taunt named, Group taunt named. Tsunami for 12 seconds. off tank pulls adds one at a time to the rest of the raid and burns them down. After tsunami is down, I use stone stance for 30 seconds(stunned). Adds were down about 1/2 way through, but single taunts held aggro fine. When stone stance is down i hit mountain stance (rooted) for 30 seconds. Burned all my attacks into the named. After mountain was down tsunami was ready, so I hit that and switched to offensive. Mob is at low health (6-7%) so i call for a manaburn from a wizard and the mob goes down. On most fights I tend to use similar strats. I like to open with preheals, hit tsunami when they go down, let healers catch up again, hit stone stance and have a slow burn for 30seconds (mobs usually nearing 50%) Then mountain stance, fast burn useing rescue if i need the aggro then switch to tsunami and finish it off. So for then entire fight (~2 minutes) I have 5k mit or higher (63% mit). There are some problems with this though. I am stunned for 30 seconds of the fight. so the raid dps is not as high at that point as it could be. After the ~2 min are over I have nothing more to cast. I'm out of buffs, out of power and out of luck. However, if my raid is doing is doing the projected 10k dps (which it was last night) a 2 minute fight is 1.2mill damage total. Perfect. I spend most of my time at work calculating strategies for the next raid mob my guild is going to take down. Now that i've gone over the good, i'll talk about the bad. Perception of the monk is bad. We arn't seen as dps or as tanks. I get wows from people when I do simple things like tank den with no wipes. This makes it difficult to actually test the monk as a tank, as many people just don't want to give us the chance. I'm very thankful my guild lets me tank. And supports me in doing so. I only do so because I feel i'm the best tank for the job. If we get a better tank I would let him tank and I would offtank, but I only know of 5 tanks on the server who are distinctly better at tanking than I am, and they all tank for raiding guilds. I got turned down to tank a pick up raid I attended recently (some guildies need a lower level update and I was free) a guardian in treasured, with less raid buffed mit than I had in the dps group, and less health was choosen. He couldn't hold aggro and he died over and over. I ended up just taking aggro with one taunt and holding it for most of the hard fights. I tanked better imo with 1 healer than he did with 3. THIS is the problem we face right now. Not any real issues, but percieved weaknesses in our class. I would advise any brawlers out there that want to raid tank to stand tall and show people what you can do. Form groups, start people talking about that one brawler who was the best tank they ever grouped with. Make a name for yourself. Be proud, and confident. But be careful to not be cocky. Confidence is often mistaken for arrogance, but the differance is the confident person says he will and succeeds, the arrogant person says he will and fails. Lets show them what we're made of ^_^ How on earth do you manage to get higher MIT than the plate tanks? Every piece of armour my Zerker friend has (and we are similarly equipped) and I mean every piece, has higher MIT than I can expect. What is you char. name? Zooce __________________

04-17-2007, 02:23 PM	#25
DynamicPerforman General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 298	Monk in fabled > Zerker in handcrafted shrugsI have more mit because I have completed claymore. And I have 2 light citin rings. My self buffed mit sits around 3.3k (50.1%) I'll be adding ~ 200 more mit from increase to my armor that will be happening soon ^_^. __________________

04-17-2007, 04:25 PM	#26
Chay General Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 490	Deathspell wrote: Last time I tanked Achadecism with 2 Furies and 1 Wizard. I had great problems with getting aggro from one particular Fury. I don't know how or what, but when I body pull, the mobs tend to go to that fury. I immediately use my Master2 group taunt, but they were always and instantly sticked on that fury like glue. It was just impossible to get aggro back, since mobs were green there were already dead before I got aggro back. When the wizard got aggro, it was a lot easier to get aggro back and i never had problems with the other fury. I just don't understand, I got relic fabled/legendary gear, 2 fabled weapons with same delay, adept3 offensive stance and Master1 dragon/aggro buff. Do we really suck that bad on grouped encounters or am I missing out on something. It [Removed for Content] me off, I was getting tired of those chaotic and hectic group fights that I loaded my parsing tool and noticed that during problematic times, that fury was top DPS,... Was the fury that was getting aggro buffing you with a damage shield or something? Or maybe attacking before the pull? Maybe nuking early. In which case it was their fault. A good nuker knows how not to go overboard. I've only seen things like what you are saying when damage shield or ward is up and the encounter hightails it straight to the healer in question. __________________

04-17-2007, 05:10 PM	#27
Couching Server: Crushbone Guild: Pwn Pwn Pwn Rank: CEO Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,370	DynamicPerformance wrote: Monk in fabled > Zerker in handcrafted shrugsI have more mit because I have completed claymore. And I have 2 light citin rings. My self buffed mit sits around 3.3k (50.1%) I'll be adding ~ 200 more mit from increase to my armor that will be happening soon ^_^. No, even mastercraft plate armors have higher mitigation than fabled leather armors a LOT. For example, mastercraft plate legging and bp are 412 mitigation. The rest pieces are 384 mitigations. The full suit (7 pieces) mastercraft plate armors has bout 500-700 mitigations more than different monk fabled suits. The rewards from claymore quests give you 430 mitigations. Even you have best fabled armor with claymore rewards, the berserker with mastercraft armors still has higher mitigation than you. Not to say, you are far from top geared. Besides, light citin rings are so easy to get. I have no idea why your berserker didn't have a pair? Moreover, your berserker will gear up from raid day by day. An EoF Berserker suit is 3822. An EoF Guardian suit is 3858. An EoF monk suit is 2130. A mastercraft plate suit is 2744. See the difference?

04-17-2007, 08:24 PM	#28
Bewts Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 323	I'm a 70 monk and I can reach approx 64% mit self buffed (5.9k total) if I combine both short terms... and I can reach over 7k mit if I'm under 30% health too for almost 69% mit. Those are situational and one time uses (maybe twice on the short term mit buffs) and the 1400 extra mit if under 30% is passive so it works whenever I spike on health. Granted, just standing there self buffed in defensive stance I'm sitting at 46.7% or 2912 mit.

04-17-2007, 11:55 PM	#29
Harvash Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 247	could be mistaken here, but the poster said HANDcrafted, not MASTERcrafted...and that is a big difference. Also, the plate tank may have no accessories or adorns that add to Mit. I have tanked in groups where the plate wearers may be very close to my mit, or slighty above...but one look at their 20% avoid tells me who is tanking. As a side note, I usually allow the plate wearer to tank ~ right up till the healer sends a tell asking me to take over.

04-18-2007, 12:28 AM	#30
Bewts Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 323	I normally defer to plate tanks because everyone is comfortable with that situation in groups. I'll let the plate tank fail, then take over if he dies. After a few times of that I'll normally see someone in the group say lets try the monk. Never turn back after that. My normal response with the "who's tanking" question is Monks are not popular tanks (tm) Its my way of saying that I can probably tank just as good if not better than your current tank.