How to set a monk up for tanking

Fwedewi · 09-16-2007, 01:39 PM

I keep hearing that monks cant tank. Even on this monk forum everyone seems to be of this opinion. I haven't seen a post where anyone has said that a monk can tank, let alone given advise on how, so heres my rough guide.

The key to tanking as a monk is to remember that you don't have good mitigation and no matter how hard you try, you will never have good enough mitigation to take the hits a plate tank does. What you need to do therefore is AVOID getting hit.

Most monks you bump into will have around 45-55% avoidance. If you want to tank effectively you will need to do better than that, 70%+ should be fine. This is easily attainable and not expensive either (not many monks bother to get good avoidance gear so the items you need tend to be the ones no-one buys). The stats you are after to improve avoidance are Deflection, Defence, Parry and Agility.

AA's- the 4th box down in the AGI, STA and INT trees are the key ones you need. I personally have STA 64481 and AGI 54681 as my set up. you will also want to gain evade check, enhance tranquil vision, enhance tsunami and enhance outward calm. I would recomend enhance heal, enhance spirit like mountain and enhance will of the heavens 1&2.

Weapons: there are many weapons out there with +5 deflection (marrs fist, Jade Chokidai baton, Vikomts kama) if you want save money do the lockless chest quests in SOS and get a pair of fists. Yes people will laugh at you for having weapons you chose for the deflection rather than the dps, but you don't need dps to be a tank.

Equipment: theres a lot of good avoidance gear out there but heres a few key items I have with good stats:

Wu's fighting sleeves: +5 deflection

Eye covered boots: +8 defence

Cresent moon gloves: +8 parry

Cresent moon wristguards +7 deflection

Drakota skin leggings: +4 defence (cost me about 20g on the broker)

Soaked guard of Xhorroz: +3 parry (from claymore)

Soaked slacks of Xhorroz: +3 defence

Keeping aggro: Monks get aggro from hitting stuff, don't be scared to cycle through targets to get a few hits on each. Spam your taunts and use the aggro transfer you got from your aa's on that annoying warlock/ranger/wizard. when it all goes wrong, just remember that it goes wrong for plate tanks too, but their healer didn't have altruism on them SMILEY

Couching · 09-16-2007, 03:37 PM

It's doesn't matter what class you are if you want to be a good tank.For survivability, a good tank = less probability of getting one shotted. Avoidance is the least stats we need to worry about as a brawler.How to choose gears for tanking? The equation is hp/(1-% of mitigation). The higher is the better for less chances of getting one shotted.For aa, since we didn't have any line to boost mitigation, the best choice is hp from wis line. The next would be parry from int line since it's too easy to get defense and deflection from gears.For monk tree, put 1 point on TV, 9% hate transfer worths 1 point but not more. It helps you to hold mobs better.Superior riposte isn't too bad for riposte 1 hit every minute. For aggro, the best way to keep aggro is dps. If possible, try to tank in offensive as long as group healer(s) can keep you up. For multiple encounters, with crane flock and position mobs in right place, you should be fine. For taunt, I use it mostly in the initial pull to tag mobs rather than spamming during the fight. Last, use tsunami wisely in pull or before dying. As a good monk, you shouldn't die with tsunami and mend up.

Balmore · 09-17-2007, 01:50 AM

Guys, what about Taunts enhancing AAs in Monk tree? Are they worth it?Thanks!

Couching · 09-17-2007, 11:34 AM

It's unworthy to get enhanced encounter taunt imo. I had it before. 25% extra encounter hate every 20 sec didn't help much. I have 3 points on enhanced single taunt so that I can get our deaggro stance.Our 9% hate siphon and deaggro stance is a nice combo for any dpser who has problem in aggro.That's the only usefulness of our deaggro stance i can think in raids.It's not necessary if none of your dpsers has problem in aggro in raid.

Kantaro · 09-29-2007, 06:35 AM

I tank as a monk, and I have to disagree with all the naysayers that claim that monks cant do the job. I'd never reroll as a plate ;P I have complaints about our AAs, though. In order to get a good setup, you really need to bob and weave throughout the trees and test thoroughly to get the prime tanking setup. And by prime, I dont mean they are perfect in any way; theres no line that specifically contributes to tanking and hate gain, which is disappointing. Fwedewick, thanks for making the post and I concur with most of what you said, but I do disagree with ignoring mitigation for the most part. I dont know what the avoidance softcap is, but most monks dont need to work -too- hard to get close to it. Whereas when it comes to mitigation, theyre not so close, therefore I focus primarily on mitigation with avoidance being second in line. Monks wont get plate tank mitigation, but they can get closer than most people think. Unbuffed, I stand at about 50% mit and 70% avoid. With face of the mountain, its around 54-55% and with Mountain stance its 65%+. I can get Mountain Stance (stun one) off during a raid while holding argo with the right group setup. Albeit not too long, but I still can. With the right group buffs as well, the mitigation becomes even more juicy. Balmore, I went 5 down each taunt bubble and I dont regret it. The single taunts recast is dropped down to 4 secs, which is absolutely vital for holding agression when you use your Mountain Stance stun. You also need as much argo as you can get with multiple encounters, so I also love the group taunt. Also like Fwedewick stated, you'll need to cycle between mobs to keep argo most of the time, but its just an extra click here and there. Usually just a quick tab and super-fast single taunt on other members of the mob works great.

Morrias · 09-29-2007, 09:07 AM

Waves@Oasis wrote:

Guys, what about Taunts enhancing AAs in Monk tree? Are they worth it?Thanks!

No, the atuntsreally arent worth wasting AAs on, not to say theres anything good in our EoF tree! SMILEY Enchanced our single target taunt wouldnt be bad though I guess.

Oh, and I can tank just fine, im set INT 4-4-8 WIS 4-4-8-6-1 and STA 4-4-1 and all combo's cept for heal and our self cure enchanced on EoF.

Fleaba · 09-29-2007, 11:26 AM

+ to Avoidance is ok, but I'll take a + to vs. slash, pierce, crush over + to def, defl etc. any day. Mitigation and max health is the trick to a successful monk tank IMHO, at least for epic mobs.I may be full of b.s. though, BUT I was the only tank in our raid force that could off tank Prince Tharnig while the raid force took his two buddies down in EH.

Quind · 09-30-2007, 01:29 AM

I do a lot of tanking on my monk, and so far I've been fairly pleased with my ability to grab and hold aggro, mitigate/avoid, and take care of myself. I'm slacking in the DPS department, but that's just because I suck at timing CAs. I used to be specced 4488 Sta/Int, but switched to 44681/44781 in the same for Eagle Shriek and Mantis Leap. Duoing heroic instances with a dirge, Eeagle Shriek is great. I'm finding Mantis Leap quite useful in raids either for a guaranteed crit on Devastation Fist or for getting right over to the adds I need to be offtanking or pulling off squishies. In EoF, I went Body and Awareness. Evasion Check is invaluable as a ghetto second encounter taunt, and I find superior riposte to be a nice little bit of extra mitigation when I remember to spam it. I am a fan of the taunt enhancement AAs, which I have maxed, as well as the mend, tsunami, and +mit to the root mit buff AAs. The improvements to our cure line are very important, imo, as a lot of rent-a-healers are slow to cure, if they cure at all, and sometimes the healers just have other things to do. On Kira, I go for as much +deflect and +parry as I can. Numerically, you get much less defense out of +defense and agility. With my roommate's +str/agi buff on me, I gain maybe 2.5% evade- roughly what I get from a few points of deflect or parry. I find it easier to seek out +skill gear or adorn for parry and deflect than to balance agi in with everything else I'm looking for. When looking for an upgrade, I look first at mitigation and hitpoints, and whether or not it has +parry/deflect on it. After that, it's sta/wis/resists. Then I start in on str and agi. My goal is always to gain more mitigation, hitpoints, and +parry/deflect without losing too much sta/wis/str. Resists are harder to tweak on a piece by piece basis, but I'm trying to pad myself with high wis so that I have more room to lose 200 resist here and gain 350 there. When I'm tanking, I usually run in Black Widow unless I absolutely need the mitigation and evasion edge that defensive stance gives. A large part of my aggro management is active though, and comes from cycling targets and getting some of my harder-hitting CAs in. Losing accuracy on my attacks for a little mitigation isn't usually something I want. It's just as easy to spam my root/mit buff if I'm needing the edge. I've started popping superior riposte on incoming, since that's when mobs have my back and an open opportunity for some of their nastier positional debuffs- the ones that have those, anyway. For longer pulls, I'll tsunami on incoming. In camp, I move around a lot, especially if I don't have rogues in the group who need to have the mobs' backs. Ideally, all of the mobs are in front of me and inside Dragonbreath's cone. That means that I'm making the most of my deflection, which is at this point nearly half of my evade. It also means that I'm getting a little extra aggro from ripostes, and that I can hit my cone whenever it's up for cross-encounter aggro. I make a lot of use of the PBAoE for even more cross-encounter aggro. What I carry in my backpacks varies with the zone I'm tanking. In HoF, I like to have cure trauma potions to get rid of the nasty mit buff some of the Droags use.. In Acad and Kaladim, I like freedom of mind. When I'm helping people through SoS, I like out-of-combat HP regen totems. Mana regen totems for Acad's first few rooms (the mana thirsters). I've always got the final Mith Marr miracle and the first blessing loaded, unless I feel like one of the others would be more useful on a given raid. My biggest advice to monks who want to tank is to look at all of your defensive tools and learn how to use each of them. Even the stun+mit buff has its time and place. Oh. And make friends with a dirge, because parry song and stoneskin make everything better. ^^

Bewts · 09-30-2007, 05:31 PM

Depending on your situation, there is also a miracle on the Brell line that gives you 10% or 15% extra WORN mitigation for 10 minutes. Granted few raids only take 20 minutes with an hour between the encounters, but if you are going to be called on to tank only a specific named or two in a raid instance, this isn't such a bad choice. There is also a very nice AE skill under the Brell Diety that drops around 7k dmg AE in 6 seconds. Again these are both short term twice and its gone skills, but they can be useful depending on your situation as a tank.

The hate transfer is definitely a great way to add some more hate. I personally swap TV depending on the encounter. If I need to hold down multiple mobs, I do a quick review of the ACT to see which AE classes are doing good dps because I'll get more hate for the entire encounter from them than I would one of the top single target dps classes. Vice Versa for any single mob encounter. I let whoever has TV know that I'm syphoning 9% hate from them this encounter and I need them to stay alive but keep the dps up as high as they can push it. Nothing sucks more than seeing someone taking the encounter 'off' and they had your TV on them.

I use wisdom and intelligence KoS lines to the max. I know I will take some hard hits, and sometimes with the intelligence line you can push 7k mit if you have all your mit buffs rolling. Of course you don't want to be in this situation very often, but when you hit that point, I'd rather have the 7k mit to survive an unlucky two hit combo from the mob than not.

Master's evade is a good one on incoming, I tend to save Tsunami until the encounter is locked in and everything is stable. I announce when its up, and when 3 seconds are left. Good healers will duck out of heals at full health, so they need to know that real soon you may see a spike of damage. As soon as Tsunami fades, its off to our lesser mit buff for 30 seconds.

I hate using our stun mit buff, but I think it can be used rather well if you have a well hotkeyed out raid setup. Basically you have to have everyone dump their big combat arts before you use it (IE Dispatchs, Decaps have already been used). Then you drop in your taunts, rescue and pop the buff. This ensures someone doesn't jump the chart on dps while you are relying on a single taunt to maintain aggro. I just think this is over the top because if you are stable from incoming through our root mit buff - there is no need to chance a mistake by stunning yourself.

I really hate using defensive stance because you see such a significant drop in your ability to hit a mob. I'd really only consider using it if you had the +c/p/s to hit bonuses from a warden in your group. Otherwise my suggestion is to run in Black Widow unless you find yourself avoiding nothing and its all about survivability and not aggro generation.

09-17-2007, 01:50 AM	#3
Balmore Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 171	Guys, what about Taunts enhancing AAs in Monk tree? Are they worth it?Thanks! __________________ "Happy people play the game; angry people play the forums." -- Scott Hartsman

09-29-2007, 06:35 AM	#5
Kantaro Server: Antonia Bayle Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: CA Posts: 8	I tank as a monk, and I have to disagree with all the naysayers that claim that monks cant do the job. I'd never reroll as a plate ;P I have complaints about our AAs, though. In order to get a good setup, you really need to bob and weave throughout the trees and test thoroughly to get the prime tanking setup. And by prime, I dont mean they are perfect in any way; theres no line that specifically contributes to tanking and hate gain, which is disappointing. Fwedewick, thanks for making the post and I concur with most of what you said, but I do disagree with ignoring mitigation for the most part. I dont know what the avoidance softcap is, but most monks dont need to work -too- hard to get close to it. Whereas when it comes to mitigation, theyre not so close, therefore I focus primarily on mitigation with avoidance being second in line. Monks wont get plate tank mitigation, but they can get closer than most people think. Unbuffed, I stand at about 50% mit and 70% avoid. With face of the mountain, its around 54-55% and with Mountain stance its 65%+. I can get Mountain Stance (stun one) off during a raid while holding argo with the right group setup. Albeit not too long, but I still can. With the right group buffs as well, the mitigation becomes even more juicy. Balmore, I went 5 down each taunt bubble and I dont regret it. The single taunts recast is dropped down to 4 secs, which is absolutely vital for holding agression when you use your Mountain Stance stun. You also need as much argo as you can get with multiple encounters, so I also love the group taunt. Also like Fwedewick stated, you'll need to cycle between mobs to keep argo most of the time, but its just an extra click here and there. Usually just a quick tab and super-fast single taunt on other members of the mob works great. __________________ I do more than play games. I draw too -> www.silverbobcat.com also Dyshieva Silverscale - 70 Swashbuckler Jakahl Metaphysical - 40 Wizard Rheim Volker - 40 Inquisitor

09-29-2007, 09:07 AM	#6
Morrias Server: Antonia Bayle Guild: Dynasty Reborn Rank: Member Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 552	Waves@Oasis wrote: Guys, what about Taunts enhancing AAs in Monk tree? Are they worth it?Thanks! No, the atuntsreally arent worth wasting AAs on, not to say theres anything good in our EoF tree! Enchanced our single target taunt wouldnt be bad though I guess. Oh, and I can tank just fine, im set INT 4-4-8 WIS 4-4-8-6-1 and STA 4-4-1 and all combo's cept for heal and our self cure enchanced on EoF.

09-29-2007, 11:26 AM	#7
Fleaba General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 179	+ to Avoidance is ok, but I'll take a + to vs. slash, pierce, crush over + to def, defl etc. any day. Mitigation and max health is the trick to a successful monk tank IMHO, at least for epic mobs.I may be full of b.s. though, BUT I was the only tank in our raid force that could off tank Prince Tharnig while the raid force took his two buddies down in EH. __________________

09-16-2007, 01:39 PM	#1
Fwedewi General Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 17	I keep hearing that monks cant tank. Even on this monk forum everyone seems to be of this opinion. I haven't seen a post where anyone has said that a monk can tank, let alone given advise on how, so heres my rough guide. The key to tanking as a monk is to remember that you don't have good mitigation and no matter how hard you try, you will never have good enough mitigation to take the hits a plate tank does. What you need to do therefore is AVOID getting hit. Most monks you bump into will have around 45-55% avoidance. If you want to tank effectively you will need to do better than that, 70%+ should be fine. This is easily attainable and not expensive either (not many monks bother to get good avoidance gear so the items you need tend to be the ones no-one buys). The stats you are after to improve avoidance are Deflection, Defence, Parry and Agility. AA's- the 4th box down in the AGI, STA and INT trees are the key ones you need. I personally have STA 64481 and AGI 54681 as my set up. you will also want to gain evade check, enhance tranquil vision, enhance tsunami and enhance outward calm. I would recomend enhance heal, enhance spirit like mountain and enhance will of the heavens 1&2. Weapons: there are many weapons out there with +5 deflection (marrs fist, Jade Chokidai baton, Vikomts kama) if you want save money do the lockless chest quests in SOS and get a pair of fists. Yes people will laugh at you for having weapons you chose for the deflection rather than the dps, but you don't need dps to be a tank. Equipment: theres a lot of good avoidance gear out there but heres a few key items I have with good stats: Wu's fighting sleeves: +5 deflection Eye covered boots: +8 defence Cresent moon gloves: +8 parry Cresent moon wristguards +7 deflection Drakota skin leggings: +4 defence (cost me about 20g on the broker) Soaked guard of Xhorroz: +3 parry (from claymore) Soaked slacks of Xhorroz: +3 defence Keeping aggro: Monks get aggro from hitting stuff, don't be scared to cycle through targets to get a few hits on each. Spam your taunts and use the aggro transfer you got from your aa's on that annoying warlock/ranger/wizard. when it all goes wrong, just remember that it goes wrong for plate tanks too, but their healer didn't have altruism on them

09-16-2007, 03:37 PM	#2
Couching Server: Crushbone Guild: Pwn Pwn Pwn Rank: CEO Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,370	It's doesn't matter what class you are if you want to be a good tank.For survivability, a good tank = less probability of getting one shotted. Avoidance is the least stats we need to worry about as a brawler.How to choose gears for tanking? The equation is hp/(1-% of mitigation). The higher is the better for less chances of getting one shotted.For aa, since we didn't have any line to boost mitigation, the best choice is hp from wis line. The next would be parry from int line since it's too easy to get defense and deflection from gears.For monk tree, put 1 point on TV, 9% hate transfer worths 1 point but not more. It helps you to hold mobs better.Superior riposte isn't too bad for riposte 1 hit every minute. For aggro, the best way to keep aggro is dps. If possible, try to tank in offensive as long as group healer(s) can keep you up. For multiple encounters, with crane flock and position mobs in right place, you should be fine. For taunt, I use it mostly in the initial pull to tag mobs rather than spamming during the fight. Last, use tsunami wisely in pull or before dying. As a good monk, you shouldn't die with tsunami and mend up.

09-17-2007, 11:34 AM	#4
Couching Server: Crushbone Guild: Pwn Pwn Pwn Rank: CEO Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,370	It's unworthy to get enhanced encounter taunt imo. I had it before. 25% extra encounter hate every 20 sec didn't help much. I have 3 points on enhanced single taunt so that I can get our deaggro stance.Our 9% hate siphon and deaggro stance is a nice combo for any dpser who has problem in aggro.That's the only usefulness of our deaggro stance i can think in raids.It's not necessary if none of your dpsers has problem in aggro in raid.

09-30-2007, 01:29 AM	#8
Quind Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 89	I do a lot of tanking on my monk, and so far I've been fairly pleased with my ability to grab and hold aggro, mitigate/avoid, and take care of myself. I'm slacking in the DPS department, but that's just because I suck at timing CAs. I used to be specced 4488 Sta/Int, but switched to 44681/44781 in the same for Eagle Shriek and Mantis Leap. Duoing heroic instances with a dirge, Eeagle Shriek is great. I'm finding Mantis Leap quite useful in raids either for a guaranteed crit on Devastation Fist or for getting right over to the adds I need to be offtanking or pulling off squishies. In EoF, I went Body and Awareness. Evasion Check is invaluable as a ghetto second encounter taunt, and I find superior riposte to be a nice little bit of extra mitigation when I remember to spam it. I am a fan of the taunt enhancement AAs, which I have maxed, as well as the mend, tsunami, and +mit to the root mit buff AAs. The improvements to our cure line are very important, imo, as a lot of rent-a-healers are slow to cure, if they cure at all, and sometimes the healers just have other things to do. On Kira, I go for as much +deflect and +parry as I can. Numerically, you get much less defense out of +defense and agility. With my roommate's +str/agi buff on me, I gain maybe 2.5% evade- roughly what I get from a few points of deflect or parry. I find it easier to seek out +skill gear or adorn for parry and deflect than to balance agi in with everything else I'm looking for. When looking for an upgrade, I look first at mitigation and hitpoints, and whether or not it has +parry/deflect on it. After that, it's sta/wis/resists. Then I start in on str and agi. My goal is always to gain more mitigation, hitpoints, and +parry/deflect without losing too much sta/wis/str. Resists are harder to tweak on a piece by piece basis, but I'm trying to pad myself with high wis so that I have more room to lose 200 resist here and gain 350 there. When I'm tanking, I usually run in Black Widow unless I absolutely need the mitigation and evasion edge that defensive stance gives. A large part of my aggro management is active though, and comes from cycling targets and getting some of my harder-hitting CAs in. Losing accuracy on my attacks for a little mitigation isn't usually something I want. It's just as easy to spam my root/mit buff if I'm needing the edge. I've started popping superior riposte on incoming, since that's when mobs have my back and an open opportunity for some of their nastier positional debuffs- the ones that have those, anyway. For longer pulls, I'll tsunami on incoming. In camp, I move around a lot, especially if I don't have rogues in the group who need to have the mobs' backs. Ideally, all of the mobs are in front of me and inside Dragonbreath's cone. That means that I'm making the most of my deflection, which is at this point nearly half of my evade. It also means that I'm getting a little extra aggro from ripostes, and that I can hit my cone whenever it's up for cross-encounter aggro. I make a lot of use of the PBAoE for even more cross-encounter aggro. What I carry in my backpacks varies with the zone I'm tanking. In HoF, I like to have cure trauma potions to get rid of the nasty mit buff some of the Droags use.. In Acad and Kaladim, I like freedom of mind. When I'm helping people through SoS, I like out-of-combat HP regen totems. Mana regen totems for Acad's first few rooms (the mana thirsters). I've always got the final Mith Marr miracle and the first blessing loaded, unless I feel like one of the others would be more useful on a given raid. My biggest advice to monks who want to tank is to look at all of your defensive tools and learn how to use each of them. Even the stun+mit buff has its time and place. Oh. And make friends with a dirge, because parry song and stoneskin make everything better. ^^

09-30-2007, 05:31 PM	#9
Bewts Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 323	Depending on your situation, there is also a miracle on the Brell line that gives you 10% or 15% extra WORN mitigation for 10 minutes. Granted few raids only take 20 minutes with an hour between the encounters, but if you are going to be called on to tank only a specific named or two in a raid instance, this isn't such a bad choice. There is also a very nice AE skill under the Brell Diety that drops around 7k dmg AE in 6 seconds. Again these are both short term twice and its gone skills, but they can be useful depending on your situation as a tank. The hate transfer is definitely a great way to add some more hate. I personally swap TV depending on the encounter. If I need to hold down multiple mobs, I do a quick review of the ACT to see which AE classes are doing good dps because I'll get more hate for the entire encounter from them than I would one of the top single target dps classes. Vice Versa for any single mob encounter. I let whoever has TV know that I'm syphoning 9% hate from them this encounter and I need them to stay alive but keep the dps up as high as they can push it. Nothing sucks more than seeing someone taking the encounter 'off' and they had your TV on them. I use wisdom and intelligence KoS lines to the max. I know I will take some hard hits, and sometimes with the intelligence line you can push 7k mit if you have all your mit buffs rolling. Of course you don't want to be in this situation very often, but when you hit that point, I'd rather have the 7k mit to survive an unlucky two hit combo from the mob than not. Master's evade is a good one on incoming, I tend to save Tsunami until the encounter is locked in and everything is stable. I announce when its up, and when 3 seconds are left. Good healers will duck out of heals at full health, so they need to know that real soon you may see a spike of damage. As soon as Tsunami fades, its off to our lesser mit buff for 30 seconds. I hate using our stun mit buff, but I think it can be used rather well if you have a well hotkeyed out raid setup. Basically you have to have everyone dump their big combat arts before you use it (IE Dispatchs, Decaps have already been used). Then you drop in your taunts, rescue and pop the buff. This ensures someone doesn't jump the chart on dps while you are relying on a single taunt to maintain aggro. I just think this is over the top because if you are stable from incoming through our root mit buff - there is no need to chance a mistake by stunning yourself. I really hate using defensive stance because you see such a significant drop in your ability to hit a mob. I'd really only consider using it if you had the +c/p/s to hit bonuses from a warden in your group. Otherwise my suggestion is to run in Black Widow unless you find yourself avoiding nothing and its all about survivability and not aggro generation.