Monks?

[Minymoto]

Are monks being out DPS by equivalently geard Warriors?

[wyld]

In my testing, it looks like Monks are out DPS by nearly everyone.

Here's a T3 dummy parse of my 800AA T3 geared monk with the Bloody Skullcracker with 2 +damage augs and epic 2.0+2.5 in offhand versus a level 70 Necro and level 70 Mage pet with less than 50 AAs and summoned gear:



The necro does an additional ~2500 DPS with dots. The mage does around ~1000 additional with nukes (again no dot or nuke AAs yet as these are newer characters). So a new level 70 necro is doing 2.5x as much damage than a seasoned 800AA monk and an even newer 70 mage is doing a little less than double what the monk does.

It's worth noting that both pets have more AC and HPs than the Monk as well. It's really embarrassing that a pet classes pet can totally outclass a fully geared Monk with 800AAs. It's obvious that Monks should be doing quite a bit more damage. First we need to agree on where they should sit with damage output among the other classes with equal gear and equal AAs. Above warriors is a given. Right behind Rogues and Wizards of equal gear seems logical. Definitely high above any level 70 class with 0 AAs.

• Give monks flurry, harder crits, better accuracy.
• Increase base haste, haste cap. Give a haste AA (you think of Monks like Bruce Lee, fists just flying everywhere, lighting fast strikes).
• Make strikes that proc off of Flying Kick 100% chance to land (they seem to miss A LOT - i don't know why).
• Something in Flying Kick and strike needs to scale somehow as a character progresses through the tiers. The damage is fairly flat and tapers off quickly at T1. Warriors easily out damage monks because their class advantages scale of weapon damage where Monks do not have anything scaling off weapon damage.
• Monk specific items just aren't as good relative to other class-specific items. See this post: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13398&start=10#p79292
• GIve monks higher proc chance or higher damage/healing modifier on procs
• Give monks active strikes that can AE or make Destructive Force last a lot longer
• Jack up that reward for being light weight. Maybe bigger AC boost or more haste or crits. I'm still walking around at 14 stone but there's not much benefit to it anymore.

Any thoughts/feedback from other classes? I'm curious what other properly geared T3 classes with all of their offensive AAs are parsing at the T3 parser. I definitely feel like I should be head and shoulders above my mage and necro who have just a few AAs and pretty weak gear.

[Vaion]

Made a couple adjustments here:


Monks:
o Increased the base chance of a Death Strike occurring from 5% to 15%.
o Increased the max chance of a Death Strike occurring from 10% to 25%.
o Technique of Master Wu is no longer required to have a chance at Death Strike occurring; Level 60 is still required however.
o The base damage of Death Strike now scales with the players level based on the following chart:

Level 60: 15,000
Level 61: 15,800
Level 62: 16,600
Level 63: 17,400
Level 64: 18,200
Level 65: 19,000
Level 66: 19,800
Level 67: 20,600
Level 68: 21,400
Level 69: 22,200
Level 70: 23,000

Additionally, I modified the Beastlord Feral Strike ability some.

Beastlords:
o Increased the base chance of a Feral Strike occurring from 5% to 15%.
o Increased the max chance of a Feral Strike occurring from 10% to 25%.
o Players must still have the Feral Strike AA for the chance of a Feral Strike to occur.
o The base damage of Feral Strike now scales with the players level based on the following chart:

Level 60: 4,500
Level 61: 4,900
Level 62: 5,300
Level 63: 5,700
Level 64: 6,100
Level 65: 6,500
Level 66: 6,900
Level 67: 7,300
Level 68: 7,700
Level 69: 8,100
Level 70: 8,500

These will both be live in the next update. Please continue updating this post to let us know how these affect things.

[wyld]

Thanks Vaion! I definitely appreciate your time and attention. I look forward to testing these changes.

I like the idea and flavor of bringing up a Monk's base damage output with Death Strike, however if we are focusing on Death Strike as the only vehicle to bring Monk DPS up to par I suspect we will still run into the same issues albeit a tad later in progression.

Mainly that there is no method for a Monk to continue to improve the frequency or output of Death Strike beyond the base as they progress from level 70 through T1-T8. Warriors (and pets) on the other hand gain additional flurry and critical benefits each time they upgrade a weapon, reduce delay, increase haste. Same is true for Rogue back stab damage and Wizard nukes.

Death Strike triggers from Flying Kick which has a flat fixed refresh time (which cannot be reduced by focus effects) and endurance cost (which cannot be reduced by focus effects). It's damage output is fixed and does not scale with Focus effects or weapon damage. So even of the changes above add additional 2500 DPS needed to match a 50AA Necro, the damage added will be flat. 2500 DPS at T3 is significant but 2500 at T8 is much less so.

[wyld]

Can't edit post for some reason but wanted to correct myself saying Flying Kick does not have endurance cost

[Vaion]

I understand that these changes are small but I would rather make small adjustments to even everything out and line up the classes appropriately than make major bumps all over the place and then have things severely out of portion.

[wyld]

Understood and agreed. I expect that to really dial this in there will need to be at least two vehicles - one that is gear/buff/focus independent (Death Strike changes you mention above are perfect for this - Dragon Fang could be another candidate as its current format becomes insignificant by T1) and another that is gear/buff/focus dependent so that it scales through the tiers. There are several options for the latter but it'd be super neat to implement them in a way to enhance the flavor and distinction of the class.

[wyld]

Here's some initial testing after the patch:

Good improvement on T3 Monk with 800AAs (1.8-2.5k before --> ~4k after).
INSANE improvement on T2 BST with 339AAs (1.5k + 2.7k warder = 4.1k before --> 6k + 2.7k warder = 8.7k after).

We did three parses where BST (6k) and Warder DPS (2.7k) was very consistent. Monk was all over the place (3.8k, 4k, but most 5k). Two of the 3 minute parses post-patch are below
Wymok - T3 Monk 800AAs
Melug - T2 BST 339AAs
Vabann - WoS pet





This is right in line with what I predicted. All of the monk chance to do Death Strike comes from the Flying Kick timer so it is fixed. BST chance to do Feral Swipe comes from every auto attack. Faster weapons and more haste gives BST more chances where MNK see no benefit.

Even without pet, lower geared, lower AA BST outdamages MNK handily - does this make sense?

This patch gives flat DPS increase that will stay the same all the way through T8. As MNK gets better weapons and better gear, they will see no additional DPS increase from this change.

For the next adjustment, Monk needs additional DPS increase in the form of something that will scale. I propose adding flurry (Fists of Fury):

or greater crit damage.

Another option unrelated to DPS is to revamp Dragon Fang as it becomes fairly useless pre-T1. I think it'd be useful as a one-strike Destructive Force, doing PBAE damage, around 6000 (or based on xxx% of main hand weapon damage). It's on a 30s timer so it doesn't really add DPS, just enough to pull adds off the healer or caster without it being an actual Taunt.


Does Return Kick have a chance to proc Technique of Master Wu or Death Strike?

[Vaion]

Alrighty,

Great feedback thus far and I like how the previous changes panned out. To give a little insight, those are approximately the values I was looking for when I made the changes. I was aiming to essentially double the DPS being done by Monk's Death Strike abilities and quaddruple the damage done by Beastlords Feral Strike. Both abilities were initially designed to give a boost during the early progression but as you mentioned tapered off quickly during the later tiers.

So, incoming round two:

For Beastlords, I think that is essentially a good place to leave them for now. As mentioned feral strike is governed by basic attacks after obtaining the Feral Strike AA and even has possibilities to double strike with the right buffs/worn bonuses. So for now, we will leave them be.

Monks....
So we look at Monks and think Jackie Chan, a whirlwind of fists that just destroy everything as they go right? I can get on board with that So similar to the Beastlords Feral Strike ability which can activate on every attack, I have created a new Monk ability called "Flurry Strike". Below are the details for this ability.

Monks:
o Added Flurry Strike ability to improve their overall DPS.
o Flurry Strike will only activate after obtaining at least 1 rank in Technique of Master Wu AA.
o Flurry Strike will have a chance to activate on every hit using the following equation:

Level / 14 + (Item Haste + Spell Haste + OverHaste) / 25

o The maximum chance that Flurry Strike will activate is 15%.
o Flurry Strike's damage is determined by the following equation:

For level 59 and lower:

2500 + (2500 * Special Strike Modifiers) / 100
For Level 60 and higher:

2500 + (2500 * Special Strike Modifiers) / 100 + (400 * (Level - 60))

The basic idea here is to follow suite with the Beastlords Feral Strike but make it more of a haste oriented ability. Yes it will scale as you progress in levels but only up to a certain point. Past that it will continue to progress depending on what items and buffs you maintain. Fail to keep an 80% haste buff on your monk and you instantly lose 3.25 chance of Flurry Strike from activating.

Please Note that this is probably not the final version of this ability. I have done some internal parsing on different tiers and gear sets and feel that its a step in the right direction but want more feedback from everyone. So after the next code patch, please get in there and supply us with some more hard numbers to evaluate.

[wyld]

Hey! Neat ideas!

Some questions.

o Flurry Strike will have a chance to activate on every hit using the following equation:
Level / 14 + (Item Haste + Spell Haste + OverHaste) / 25
o The maximum chance that Flurry Strike will activate is 15%.

Is this based off the numbers that are shown in #mystats or is the base 100 factored in as shown in the Stats page? For example, in #mystats I have

item:55 + spell: 68 (cap 100) | Over: 8

so ignoring the cap that gives me 131/25 = 5.24%. Is there enough item/spell/over in the game at later tiers to get to the 250 needed to hit the max contribution?

OR, is this based on what i see in Stats tab which is 208 (100 base + 100 item/spell cap + overhaste). With our bard around that 208 gets up to 225 from the extra bard overhaste. Since Item+spell are capped, I would need to rely on getting a full 50% overhaste from bard later in the game to hit cap?

o Flurry Strike's damage is determined by the following equation:
For level 59 and lower:
2500 + (2500 * Special Strike Modifiers) / 100
For Level 60 and higher:
2500 + (2500 * Special Strike Modifiers) / 100 + (400 * (Level - 60))

What are Special Strike Modifiers?!

Flurry Strike

What about Fury Strike or Furious Strike since it is a different mechanism than Flurry (so there is no confusion).

Wymok unleashes a Furious Strike! or maybe
Wymok unleashes Fists of Fury! as a nod to Bruce Lee

I think I really like Furious Strike.