Monk Damage temporary fix

Ianir

Hi everybody,

As we all know, monk damage has been a bit ridiculous recently. I've worked with a few envoys to try and provide a small patch for the outlier damage before war and ascension. This is meant to bring them in line with other classes and try to ensure combat is at least somewhat fun to take part of.

These numbers may change or be entirely reverted in the coming weeks based on feedback by envoys, but I wanted to open the forum up to allow for input. Of course, if you have concerns still, you should bring them to your envoy, but I also understand that it's sometimes better to bring in discussion from more than one person per guild, so I'm opening a thread here.

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them, but I encourage each of you to test these changes of your own accord.

~ Ianir the Anomaly

Not So Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: How big of a decrease is this?
A: From my testing with a few envoys on my test server, we've brought the damage of a weapon-weapon-powerkick form down from ~4400 to about ~2400. This is without modifiers or anything. Punch-punch-kick, weapon-weapon-kick, or any variation thereof should be a bit lower. THESE NUMBERS MAY CHANGE.

Q: Did you just decrease numbers or decrease outlier scaling.
A: A little of both. I've decreased the values for the basic punch, basic kick, and basic weapon attack a bit. However, I've also added scaling for any outlier damage; anything with enough modifiers (prone, form modifiers to damage such as hard, etc) above a certain point will be reduced at a scaling level.

Q: Hi, I think this change is terrible for <X> and you should revert it.
A: I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this. Please feel free to ask your envoy to relay this information to me, or post it here! I will monitor this thread from time to time.

Q: This isn't a monk overhaul, is it?
A: No, just a band-aid fix.

Ciaran

Iosai was right!

All (not named Tarken) hail Ianir!!!

Shaddus

Sweet jab, bro.

Enyalida

I had some strong words about the necessity of this temporary change, so I'm going to emphatically come out and applaud it. 

I know that many monks were consulted with or worked with those who got directly talked to by admins and were involved in the implementation of this temporary fix, and it is a respectable thing to have supported it. 

Malayn

Monk envoys have a good record of self nerfs. 

Consensus is the reason Monkish exists!

Danquik

So now that these self nerfs have been put in how much do monks, honestly, see in a decrease? I have been hearing various reports that though damage is lower, the bleeding is what is ramping up and making the nerf not as effective as hoped.

I am not saying, nerf monks more, I am just asking for honest monk opinion on them matter.

Shedrin

I'm seeing roughly ~2500 damage a form without burps/shoulderguns. The bleed and affliction output is still pretty strong. I'll post some logs when I can later.

Malayn

We lowered damage a lot, but the "old base damage is what you should be able to hit with when in full form. So you shouldn't see 6k', but like 3K and maybe a bit more should be doable if you are spending power. Bleeding is based partly on damage I believe, there COULD be a break though somewhere. Like maybe bleeding is being calculated before the scale down, so the bleeding is higher than it should be. This is possible, so if you have a log of specifics, that'd be great. I show bleeding on prompt, so it is easier for me to demonstrate. 

There is also some mods that might do things wonky.  I will look into it.

Ianir

Bleeding is calculated separately to an extent, and I didn't modify that in these changes because I wasn't entirely sure if it was an issue. Numbers can be adjusted, but logs would be helpful.

Falaeron

So from the logs I have seen it's not just the damage, which at ~2500 is still higher than other classes, bleed or affs, but also the speed at which they can deliver this. I saw a log of ~2.5s balances, which is significantly faster than almost every other class in the game.

Xenthos

Falmiis said:

So from the logs I have seen it's not just the damage, which at ~2500 is still higher than other classes, bleed or affs, but also the speed at which they can deliver this. I saw a log of ~2.5s balances, which is significantly faster than almost every other class in the game.

The 2.5s balance is due to a level 6/7 BODYSCAN AGILITY bonus (we mathed that out last night).

I thought you were there, actually?  Maybe I am misremembering.  Even so, 3s * .82 (18% bonus, level 6 agility) = 2.46s.  Stealth apparently provides a huge chunk of balance bonus, and then Monks have some from other options as well.  The number seems a little excessive-- I'm not sure of anyone else who can reach that level of balance buff.

Shedrin

A few quick excerpts:
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/WjZJn5Dr
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/NzgD0hv1
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/mENUY3M4
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/lsNc5UvE
I don't have bleeding on prompt but I think I'll add that.


And a bonus:

Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.
Flapping his wings furiously, a caliginous dream phoenix with glowing wings made of sparks creates a
gust of wind that slams into Tarken.
--> You appear to have caused an untrapped error in the code. Please don't execute this command
again right now.

Falaeron

Xenthos said:

Falmiis said:

So from the logs I have seen it's not just the damage, which at ~2500 is still higher than other classes, bleed or affs, but also the speed at which they can deliver this. I saw a log of ~2.5s balances, which is significantly faster than almost every other class in the game.

The 2.5s balance is due to a level 6/7 BODYSCAN AGILITY bonus (we mathed that out last night).

I thought you were there, actually?  Maybe I am misremembering.  Even so, 3s * .82 (18% bonus, level 6 agility) = 2.46s.  Stealth apparently provides a huge chunk of balance bonus, and then Monks have some from other options as well.  The number seems a little excessive-- I'm not sure of anyone else who can reach that level of balance buff.

Yes, what I'm saying is that they can both reach higher levels of balance buffs and also have a lower base balance than most other classes, which results in them being significantly faster overall. Add the fact that their damage is still higher than other classes and the overall damage output is also still significantly higher.

Deichtine

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/7gK0c4tW

Damage from Wobou. Fairly easy to tank.

Pre nerf I couldnt stay in the same room as him constantly without getting damage killed. Now I can easily tank his initial and higher mo form damage.

Sure monk damage is a bit higher than most other classes but its fairly tankable levels now. Monks do good damage and afflictions. Other classes bring better utility/burst damage/better instant kills/etc.

I sort of think Monk damage seems in a pretty good place.  I mean 2700 damage every three seconds vs a warriors open cavity vs a quickened cosmic fire. It's not a world of difference.

Yarith

Comparing quickened cosmic fire to open cavity and monk damage is a pretty weak comparison (read: extremely).
The issue with monks is that they don't deal damage in an isolated form. In your example, the guardian forgoes dealing burst and afflictions to deal somewhat comparative damage. They don't deliver ~700 bleeding, and 2-7 afflictions on the quickened balance (comparative to stealth monk balance).

Deichtine

I can stand there and tank Tarken and Wobous entire offense mostly AFK now though.

Guardians/bard/melders/etc bring better burst damage, better passives, better instant kills, good utility and decent sustained damage to the fight. 

Monks have good sustained damage with afflictions right now but with this nerf they are really not that scary any more.

Deichtine

I know people may disagree with me but I'd like you to comment why if were talking about numbers?

Also I say this after testing with the two monks after the bleed and damage nerf.

Enyalida

The assertion that guardians/bards/melders as a general class have better burst damage, better passives, good utility, and decent sustained damage than monks as a general class is at best misleading and useless.

Yah sure, if you lump what... 12+ very different classes together they will collectively have better everything than 4 very similar classes lumped together. Sure, a class based almost entirely around passives will have more passives than a class based around actives. That doesn't mean that the first class deals more afflictions necessarily, it doesn't mean much. 

It's true that monks are probably  more or less okay* now, especially in light of the upcoming overhaul changes tbd. Don't go overboard.

*At least, no more obnoxious for everyone involved than they have always been.  

Malayn

As a note, I want to give credit to the still practicing monks on these changes.

There is no hardlocks, their insta's are neutered, they agreed to these changes on the understanding they are no longer viable 1v1.

I want everyone to understand they accepted this for the improvement of the game, and did not do this on the expectation of getting anything in return. They might be able to kill you given time, or large buildups of bleeding, but they are not expecting it now. Not many classes can say they have agreed to this.  They are the silent heroes.

Yarith

You mean like most classes in the game?
Also, silent heroes don't usually spend the preceding four months literally two-three hitting people while asserting that they're in a fine position.

That said, the hotfixes seem to be putting them in a better position, even if the affliction rate is, as has always been, absurdly high.

Enyalida

Don't sprain something patting yourself on the back so hard. 

Maligorn

Regardless, you can now begin to work on instakills that are fair now that the disgusting damage problem is fixed. That's always how it's been, throughout all classes. You nerf your ridiculous aspects and compensate for killing power later in a palatable way.

Lerad

Yarith said:

You mean like most classes in the game?
Also, silent heroes don't usually spend the preceding four months literally two-three hitting people while asserting that they're in a fine position.

That said, the hotfixes seem to be putting them in a better position, even if the affliction rate is, as has always been, absurdly high.

This is the first post in the combat logs thread where monk damage was logged with evidence (below): You can see that I even made a post after that that is based of my then-understanding of the combat status quo. 

Yarith said:

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/IOR8HTLk

Perfectpvpexperience

Edit: In the monk's defence I did just have my rebounding pipe decay. Probably wouldn't have made much of a difference looking at the balance windows.

This post (click on the name-link to see it) was in December 2016. I made arguments based off all the available data and information I knew at the time. I take part proactively and in as much combat related discussions on this forums and in-game as I can, especially those centered around monks.

In short, until the post quoted above, there had been no definitive logs to have raised alarm bells for me (edit: I'll also add that even then, I hadn't been convinced until more logs showed up that definitively changed the weight of the arguments)

Today is the 5th of February.

Tarken woke from dormancy, at the most, a month or so before your log was posted. He literally asked me to do his Rite of Idols (GR2 to GR3 rite) on the 26th November. He joined the Nekotai and immediately set to learning monk combat, and it still took him a month or two to learn and set everything up. I wasn't even around often enough to give up that many conversations in-person, we mostly communicated via messages, with me explaining stuff to him that way. The first combat related message I got from him was 5th December.

Four months two-shotting people. Don't worry, I won't sprain my arm patting myself on my back - you're also welcome to take that hyperbole and put it back wherever it came from.

Ianir

Shedrin said:

And a bonus:

Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.
Flapping his wings furiously, a caliginous dream phoenix with glowing wings made of sparks creates a
gust of wind that slams into Tarken.
--> You appear to have caused an untrapped error in the code. Please don't execute this command
again right now.

Thanks for the logs. I'll also look into that error; for some reason, the game thought you were a pile of gold sovereigns.

Veyils said:

I know people may disagree with me but I'd like you to comment why if were talking about numbers?

I was approached by several envoys on the matter, including a monk envoy and an envoy I am aware was a monk envoy in the past. There are other fixes that could be done before numbers, yes, but I wanted to ensure things were scaled down a bit before War and Ascension. Monks were, from envoy testing and my own testing, a huge outlier. If there are other major outliers, I'm generally happy to look at them too.

Xenthos said:

Falmiis said:

So from the logs I have seen it's not just the damage, which at ~2500 is still higher than other classes, bleed or affs, but also the speed at which they can deliver this. I saw a log of ~2.5s balances, which is significantly faster than almost every other class in the game.

The 2.5s balance is due to a level 6/7 BODYSCAN AGILITY bonus (we mathed that out last night).

I thought you were there, actually?  Maybe I am misremembering.  Even so, 3s * .82 (18% bonus, level 6 agility) = 2.46s.  Stealth apparently provides a huge chunk of balance bonus, and then Monks have some from other options as well.  The number seems a little excessive-- I'm not sure of anyone else who can reach that level of balance buff.

I'm not willing, for a simple hotfix, to spot-target single skills unless I absolutely have to. This was discussed on envoys today (and I believe you were both there, so this is probably old news, but I'm repeating it for posterity anyway) and we decided in general both against a general balance time increase across the board and spot fixing the stealth balance bonus at this time.

Maligorn

So you're saying it's been 2 months instead of 4 months. So?

Deichtine

All I was saying is monk sustained damage is pretty easy to handle now if you match their buffs with your resists, its a bit higher than others but not by much really. 

Deichtine

Me tanking Wobou: 
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/7gK0c4tW


Me just standing there to let Tarken kill me:

Without reboundng and just standing:

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/q3EkjSf0


With rebounding and me kicking to pretend im in a fight.

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/aTZrOKaw


So if you stand there and let a monk attack you straight for 3-5 mins they eventually will build up enough to kill you. 

Deichtine

Notes:

It took Tarken one min to break the 2k damage on his combos. It took Wobou about 50 seconds. Prior to that their combos were doing less damage than a fully buffed cosmic fire/bard song does to me. 

I've not counted up the combos yet but from a brief look over all three logs the majority of the combos are doing less than 2k damage.

I could also improve my stancing to potentially avoid more 

Shedrin

Ianir said:

Shedrin said:

And a bonus:

Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.
Flapping his wings furiously, a caliginous dream phoenix with glowing wings made of sparks creates a
gust of wind that slams into Tarken.
--> You appear to have caused an untrapped error in the code. Please don't execute this command
again right now.

Thanks for the logs. I'll also look into that error; for some reason, the game thought you were a pile of gold sovereigns.

That's gold, Jerry! Gold!


Anyway, I think monk damage is both significantly higher than other classes with less setup and cost, and high priority afflictions as well. This is most relevant in group contexts, which is the primary balance focus. The lack of kill ability 1v1 is unfortunate, but was sacrificed for now. The monk overhaul should hopefully finally bring monks into a good place in all contexts if done correctly.

Lerad

Maligorn said:

So you're saying it's been 2 months instead of 4 months. So?

So I'm saying that

1) The statement is factually wrong
2) The statement is a hyperbole intended to belittle and undermine Malarious' comment about said monks, making them out as though they were abusing things without making any effort to fix them.

Which, by the way, they were (edit: they were actively working with me to provide feedback and logs etc, is what I mean, that is).

In other words, I'm white-knighting for those people, so that they don't become fodder of delusional people thinking they are some kind of poorly treated victims of a grand conspiracy. I mean, if you can't see what's wrong with something that is literally a false statement, I don't know what else to say.

-----

Regarding the monk agility balances thing, I was vocal about not having agility bonuses in the new buff system when it was first put in place, and I still maintain that stance. The difficulty of balancing speed bonuses is always a sore point. Given that my previous opinion was overruled, though, I intend to balance based on the existence of this mechanic.

Stealth as a skillset has traditionally limited combat applications, a point I've been improving bit by bit recently, and I do intend to continue improving Stealth to be more relevant in combat. As has been noted in the discussion, the agility bonus is one of the few abilities of Stealth that provides a direct, and notable, advantage for the user in combat. I'm firmly opposed to a straight nerf, but I'm perfectly willing to do a re-work (I like re-works), to position the ability, and therefore the skillset, in a different direction or application of the idea of agility. This is a digression for this thread (which is about monk damage), but I am more than happy to accept suggestions here.

Yarith

While that may be the first log, monks have been in that form for far longer than that instance, alas.