Monkey_Archer
Well-known member
Deadly instinct, tier 4 falconry.
How would you buff/rework monks?
- Thread starter TeamScorpioRI
- Start date
Arkat
Founder & Super Hero
saekee
long live ROGUE
what if the elemental attacks were shifted into imbues?
- I would shift the crit multiplier of ninja spy from capstone up to tier 5
- No mercy should not cost 2Ap per rank
- ninja poison should stack PER HIT plus multiple times on crits
- change vorpal capstone to: your ninja poison can now stack to X more (like to 40 instead of 20)
- tier 5 shadow double should do something also like adding Improved deception to your weapons for 12 seconds so it actually seems more ninja-like and shadow-doubly. Maybe also increasing melee power for a bit too, idk since there is no melee power in this entire tree!
- flash bang should get stunning bonuses to DC
- Instead of the four 'finisher' modifiers, have them as toggles that activate anytime that one uses the basic dark ninja strike. They are not that big of a deal
Nickodeamous
Well-known member
Trying to break this down a bit more. Thanks for sharing!
There are some probable trade-offs to get to 106. Its really all preference.
- Take Astral Plane, Arborea, or Ethereal? Each has its own merits.
- Run in water stance? or Fire? Or wind? again, its a preference.
- Constantly drinking essence of despair and owl potions?
- Use filigrees to gain wisdom vs. using filigrees for other things like damage/melee power
QP was nerfed when DC casters were complaining about it being up there with FOD. However, you can FOD a mob well in advance vs. having to be in proximity of the mob to even hit QP. It wont hurt to give full monk levels to this and would not be game breaking. some folks are not gonna be close to this DC at 32. Others will.
Perfect example of how the stat squish hurt QP disproportionally: The beetles in the Dryad Raid. I used to QP them in fire stance (prob 30-40% chance). After stat squish, (and even in water stance), I may QP the 10% of the time. If everything was in sync, i should still be able to hit QP 30-40% of the time while in fire stance. after all, SSG did say the monsters were nerfed more...but again, QP took another beating here.
Just my 2 cents. thanks again for sharing breakdown. it makes sense to me!
Nico
Nickodeamous
Well-known member
Thanks! I have those...maybe I should just glamour them! lol.
TeamScorpioRI
Well-known member
I think changing mediation to a trance does not make sense. You are supposed to be meditating, trying to still your mind and center yourself. That's a little hard to do while moving. Maybe give bonuses to it, granted over time, and tie them with the granted class feats.
For example:
Level 2 - Meditation: 2x per rest increases your passive ki generation by 7 for 30 seconds.
Level 4 - Purity of Body: add in "mediation will now cleanse all disease and poisons.
Level 7 - Wholeness of Body: Change from a separate action to be part of meditation meditation will now heal for (monk level)/2 + Wisdom modifier every 2 seconds
Level 11 - Diamond Body: Meditation also will cure curses
level 13 - Diamond Soul: Meditation also removes stat damage (2 points per 2 seconds)
level 17 - Timeless Body: Mediation will remove negative levels. rate 1 per 2 seconds (15 total)
Level 20 - Perfect Self: You are in tune with your thoughts and can meditate while moving and in combat. Meditation duration is doubled (60 seconds).
This would combine the meditation and the Wholeness of body (removing a granted feat, but making mediation more useful). I would also add the ability to get more mediation charges in the enhancement trees. I believe this is already available in henshin mystic, so add the same to ninja spy and shintao as well. Tier 2 maybe, or put it in the core's.
The problem there is most of those features are easily replicated by simple potions or with a bit of UMD either a heal or greater restoration scroll. It would feel pretty bad to have 5 class features that could easily be replaced by a couple of cheap items. The level 20 one might see some use since using mediation currently is a good way to have the rest of the party leave you far behind but even than it's still not very good.
You'd also need another option for a WIS trance then, otherwise you'll still need to put a bunch of points in Falconry.
I've ben playing DDO since Monks were added and I have played Monk the most out of any class archetypes. For me, these issues stick out the most to me:
1. Stances and Stance buffing items haven't kept up with the rate of changes to the main game. It's pretty clear that each stance is meant to support a specific gameplay style for Monks, and while originally meant as a "Jack of all trades" kind of swap they have become less and less effective over time. And now some of the items that buff stances don't even make sense. Would really like to see some of these bonuses tweaked slightly to be more in line with the game's current direction.
2. MMR Cap. Monks need it raised baseline somehow. It's just absurd at this point. Take it onto unarmored defense, perfect body, or the Sacred Fist "heavy armor" qualifier or something. But they need at least +30 to the cap since all the casters get it rolled into their sets.
3. Revert the QP nerf from ages ago. Assassinate DC bonuses on QP. It's not overpowered, no one uses it, and casters are mass one shotting mobs in R6+ all the time anyway. I fail to see how a 6 second cd that requires pure monk class investment is so scary, especially with stuff that is immune anyway. "But monks can instant kill a target!" Yea they SHOULD. They put all 20 levels into it and invested all their bonuses on Tactics. We don't cry about casters doing the same and clearing entire rooms before melee are even to the target. There is just no legitimate argument against QP at this point aside from pure class bias.
4. Rework Unarmed Strike to be something more than useless. +1 to attack per stack is just a joke. At least make it +1/+1 attack and damage. This one change single handedly gutted unarmed damage. And all because of a single item that got changed ANYWAY.
It just gets really really boring when the only argument for nerfing Monks keeps being "It's better than other melee at something" when they SHOULD be best at one thing. They aren't the best defenses in the game, they can't tank, they aren't the best CC class, they aren't the best melee dps. Someone gets to be the best at something, if the argument is "not monks" all that means is you're willing to pick and choose who gets to be. Let monks feel GOOD again even if it's not the best. Most of the above is purely to fix the bad feelings. Stances and stance items feel bad because they are completely outdated and their effects did not keep up with current design. MMR cap feels bad because monks are the only class that get screwed over by being stuck at 50. QP nerf feels bad because it's such a heavy investment and then it's just not usable for something other builds get to work towards as a primary feature. It's also a core monk identity that just gets tossed by the side. Imp Unarmed Strike feels bad because it's another core identity feature of monks that just got essentially made useless for some reason.
1. Stances and Stance buffing items haven't kept up with the rate of changes to the main game. It's pretty clear that each stance is meant to support a specific gameplay style for Monks, and while originally meant as a "Jack of all trades" kind of swap they have become less and less effective over time. And now some of the items that buff stances don't even make sense. Would really like to see some of these bonuses tweaked slightly to be more in line with the game's current direction.
2. MMR Cap. Monks need it raised baseline somehow. It's just absurd at this point. Take it onto unarmored defense, perfect body, or the Sacred Fist "heavy armor" qualifier or something. But they need at least +30 to the cap since all the casters get it rolled into their sets.
3. Revert the QP nerf from ages ago. Assassinate DC bonuses on QP. It's not overpowered, no one uses it, and casters are mass one shotting mobs in R6+ all the time anyway. I fail to see how a 6 second cd that requires pure monk class investment is so scary, especially with stuff that is immune anyway. "But monks can instant kill a target!" Yea they SHOULD. They put all 20 levels into it and invested all their bonuses on Tactics. We don't cry about casters doing the same and clearing entire rooms before melee are even to the target. There is just no legitimate argument against QP at this point aside from pure class bias.
4. Rework Unarmed Strike to be something more than useless. +1 to attack per stack is just a joke. At least make it +1/+1 attack and damage. This one change single handedly gutted unarmed damage. And all because of a single item that got changed ANYWAY.
It just gets really really boring when the only argument for nerfing Monks keeps being "It's better than other melee at something" when they SHOULD be best at one thing. They aren't the best defenses in the game, they can't tank, they aren't the best CC class, they aren't the best melee dps. Someone gets to be the best at something, if the argument is "not monks" all that means is you're willing to pick and choose who gets to be. Let monks feel GOOD again even if it's not the best. Most of the above is purely to fix the bad feelings. Stances and stance items feel bad because they are completely outdated and their effects did not keep up with current design. MMR cap feels bad because monks are the only class that get screwed over by being stuck at 50. QP nerf feels bad because it's such a heavy investment and then it's just not usable for something other builds get to work towards as a primary feature. It's also a core monk identity that just gets tossed by the side. Imp Unarmed Strike feels bad because it's another core identity feature of monks that just got essentially made useless for some reason.
Leesun
Active member
remove all staff fighting from Henshin Mystic, and double down on ki manipulation / ki sla with wisdom to-hit/damage in tree
create new staff dedicated tree
perfect self gives dr of a lawful outsider
adjust dc of finisher moves, quivering palm, touch of death
finisher moves don't always activate which is annoying.
revert nerfs to unarmed fighting
create new staff dedicated tree
perfect self gives dr of a lawful outsider
adjust dc of finisher moves, quivering palm, touch of death
finisher moves don't always activate which is annoying.
revert nerfs to unarmed fighting
Totally forgot about the finishing moves too. Which also feel very lackluster and limited.
So I have been brainstorming this a bit as I plan out what I would like to play at level 32 if I finally get racial completionist finished in the next 100 years. I have come up with the following suggestions for a rework/fix to the Monk archtype that I think would not only really help bring the monk into a better position, but also solidify the core gameplay strategy that SSG has been going forward with.
1. Replace all monk elemental strikes with imbues. This helps further the goals of making monk mechanics feel better, and it directly allows Monks to incorporate imbue bonuses outside of only Henshin Mystic. Replace Henshin's Imbue with something more effective. We don't need all of them to be imbues. But fire, frost, acid all seems reasonable. Light and Dark could also become imbues for their specific types. Like Light damage and bonus on crit against undead, etc. Might need to remove the healing curse effect, however if the healing ki is reworked as outlined below that loss should be cancelled out by the relatively more reliable healing ki.
2. Because monk strikes are changing, we would need to remove the finishing move system. In its place, rework the finishing moves into Ki-Spell abilities. We have them for Sacred Fist and we have them in Henshin Mystic. Moving these finishing moves to spells instead would make them feel WAY less clunky, they would actually get used way more often, it gives early level monks a Ki dump, it resolves the lag error dropping finishing moves, and it makes monk combat more fluid. Let's face it, finishing moves sound absolutely cool and their implementation is absolutely unfun. It takes a lot of time and ki to build up to some finishers, they are interrupted by doing ANYTHING including looting, sometimes you just have to hold the finisher which feels really weird, and sometimes they just don't even fire for some reason. Turning them into ki spells eliminates ALL these issues and makes them function in a way more effective and consistent manner.
3. Update the enhancement trees to support the new baseline monk focus. Shintao is already very solid, and only requires some minor updates. Mainly the curative stances would need to work off the new healing ki spell instead, and Violence Begets Violence should be bound, gagged, locked in a trunk, and thrown off a cliff to be replaced with something else because that enhancement is useless. I would suggest that Violence Begets Violence either be reworked to give something like stacking melee power OR remove it altogether and replace it with something that grants MMR cap increase (20 please) and another tank adjacent bonus, since it would ALSO work for Sacred Fist.
4. Give Henshin more focus on buffing the Ki Spells and Imbues. Some bonus imbue dice, bonus DC on ki spells, etc. This is already what the spec wants to do anyway. Go ham.
1. Replace all monk elemental strikes with imbues. This helps further the goals of making monk mechanics feel better, and it directly allows Monks to incorporate imbue bonuses outside of only Henshin Mystic. Replace Henshin's Imbue with something more effective. We don't need all of them to be imbues. But fire, frost, acid all seems reasonable. Light and Dark could also become imbues for their specific types. Like Light damage and bonus on crit against undead, etc. Might need to remove the healing curse effect, however if the healing ki is reworked as outlined below that loss should be cancelled out by the relatively more reliable healing ki.
2. Because monk strikes are changing, we would need to remove the finishing move system. In its place, rework the finishing moves into Ki-Spell abilities. We have them for Sacred Fist and we have them in Henshin Mystic. Moving these finishing moves to spells instead would make them feel WAY less clunky, they would actually get used way more often, it gives early level monks a Ki dump, it resolves the lag error dropping finishing moves, and it makes monk combat more fluid. Let's face it, finishing moves sound absolutely cool and their implementation is absolutely unfun. It takes a lot of time and ki to build up to some finishers, they are interrupted by doing ANYTHING including looting, sometimes you just have to hold the finisher which feels really weird, and sometimes they just don't even fire for some reason. Turning them into ki spells eliminates ALL these issues and makes them function in a way more effective and consistent manner.
3. Update the enhancement trees to support the new baseline monk focus. Shintao is already very solid, and only requires some minor updates. Mainly the curative stances would need to work off the new healing ki spell instead, and Violence Begets Violence should be bound, gagged, locked in a trunk, and thrown off a cliff to be replaced with something else because that enhancement is useless. I would suggest that Violence Begets Violence either be reworked to give something like stacking melee power OR remove it altogether and replace it with something that grants MMR cap increase (20 please) and another tank adjacent bonus, since it would ALSO work for Sacred Fist.
4. Give Henshin more focus on buffing the Ki Spells and Imbues. Some bonus imbue dice, bonus DC on ki spells, etc. This is already what the spec wants to do anyway. Go ham.
My worst fear is that this goes the way of the Dark Apostate, where all the feedback was that it was weak and they responded by nerfing it.
Thinking on it, one of the biggest problems with current monk is that it does have some really good, really strong features which get disregarded.
If you want to do good DPS you don't go wisdom based, it's the unfortunate truth that Sun and Air stance are strictly better dps but people are hyperfixated on wisdom based monk..
But if you don't go wisdom based you don't meet the DCs for the crowd control and and some of the debuffs monk has to offer- both of which are very good and the debuffs are actually unique in some cases.
A quick and dirty fix I'd probably go with is Henshin has "Your monk attacks now use your highest ability score for their DC" and Ninja Spy would have "Dex or Wisdom"
Shintao is overall an issue of being the handwrap dps tree and the monk 'tank' tree and it does not do a good job at either.
I feel Shintao was just designed originally to give very little DPS as the default monk package gave so much extra damage to handwraps/unarmed and those default bonuses ended up interacting in a very unhealthy way with a later revamp to handwraps to make them into genuine weapons.
That default package got nerfed, the handwraps themselves got nerfed and Shintao never got tuned up to address this.
Whenever there is a discussion about handwraps monk players are very fixated on giving that default damage back but I would argue this is simply the wrong answer.
Handwraps as a category are in fact incredibly powerful, no other melee weapon has full damage modifier on the offhand by default and it has the highest rate of attack of all two weapon fighting animations.
When it comes to monks and handwraps Shintao simply needs damage buffs and monk players need to stop sacrificing DPS by using a stance which offers none and playing focused on a stat with awful metasupport.
Wisdom is honestly the weakest stat in the metagame for everything, the filigree options are inferior, the racial options are overall lacking in comparison. The only wisdom class that excells is druid and that's simply because they're simply overtuned enough even relative to sorcerers and alchemists to offset the difference.
If you want to do good DPS you don't go wisdom based, it's the unfortunate truth that Sun and Air stance are strictly better dps but people are hyperfixated on wisdom based monk..
But if you don't go wisdom based you don't meet the DCs for the crowd control and and some of the debuffs monk has to offer- both of which are very good and the debuffs are actually unique in some cases.
A quick and dirty fix I'd probably go with is Henshin has "Your monk attacks now use your highest ability score for their DC" and Ninja Spy would have "Dex or Wisdom"
Shintao is overall an issue of being the handwrap dps tree and the monk 'tank' tree and it does not do a good job at either.
I feel Shintao was just designed originally to give very little DPS as the default monk package gave so much extra damage to handwraps/unarmed and those default bonuses ended up interacting in a very unhealthy way with a later revamp to handwraps to make them into genuine weapons.
That default package got nerfed, the handwraps themselves got nerfed and Shintao never got tuned up to address this.
Whenever there is a discussion about handwraps monk players are very fixated on giving that default damage back but I would argue this is simply the wrong answer.
Handwraps as a category are in fact incredibly powerful, no other melee weapon has full damage modifier on the offhand by default and it has the highest rate of attack of all two weapon fighting animations.
When it comes to monks and handwraps Shintao simply needs damage buffs and monk players need to stop sacrificing DPS by using a stance which offers none and playing focused on a stat with awful metasupport.
Wisdom is honestly the weakest stat in the metagame for everything, the filigree options are inferior, the racial options are overall lacking in comparison. The only wisdom class that excells is druid and that's simply because they're simply overtuned enough even relative to sorcerers and alchemists to offset the difference.
Vox
Well-known member
Ninja Spy, specifically for a shuriken thrower, needs a whole lot of active abilities & to be rebuilt as a ranged tree with everything scaling off dexterity &/or ranged power.
Context - leveling my alt as a pure monk thrower. It is tediously boring as the best dps is loading up an auto clicker and holding w. There isn't anything else to do because there are basically no active effects or attacks in the tree. KI is very limited because contemplation (heshin) powers 10k stars refreshes & that's about it.
I'd recommend three or four active attacks that don't use ki (or they do and extra ki gen is added to allow them to be used).
- t2 Fan of knives (copy straight from vistani)
- t3 smoke bomb (a la alchemist spell, but make it the pre-nerf version & with shorter duration)
- t4 glue bomb (a la alchemist spell, same cooldown)
- t5 ranged attack to cause helplessness (a la falconry's diving attack)
Change sting of the ninja imbue to t1.
Remove elemental strikes & change ninjitsu to ranged attacks which allow debuffs to stack:
- poison exploit, for 10s each subsequent shuriken attack adds +5% unique poison vulnerability
- something to lower prr (up to -10, stacks with all other debuff sources)
- something to lower mrr (up to -10, stacks with all other debuff sources)
- something to lower saves etc
Cores should add in +1 imbue & + 3 ranged power
t5 should include a ranged version of assassinate, assassins trick, and a fan of knives effect but for CC (sleep darts?)
Context - leveling my alt as a pure monk thrower. It is tediously boring as the best dps is loading up an auto clicker and holding w. There isn't anything else to do because there are basically no active effects or attacks in the tree. KI is very limited because contemplation (heshin) powers 10k stars refreshes & that's about it.
I'd recommend three or four active attacks that don't use ki (or they do and extra ki gen is added to allow them to be used).
- t2 Fan of knives (copy straight from vistani)
- t3 smoke bomb (a la alchemist spell, but make it the pre-nerf version & with shorter duration)
- t4 glue bomb (a la alchemist spell, same cooldown)
- t5 ranged attack to cause helplessness (a la falconry's diving attack)
Change sting of the ninja imbue to t1.
Remove elemental strikes & change ninjitsu to ranged attacks which allow debuffs to stack:
- poison exploit, for 10s each subsequent shuriken attack adds +5% unique poison vulnerability
- something to lower prr (up to -10, stacks with all other debuff sources)
- something to lower mrr (up to -10, stacks with all other debuff sources)
- something to lower saves etc
Cores should add in +1 imbue & + 3 ranged power
t5 should include a ranged version of assassinate, assassins trick, and a fan of knives effect but for CC (sleep darts?)