I think overall there's been a bit too much of a knee jerk blind panic with monks as a new thing. Monks are killing people easily because most people are not curing their worst afflictions right. Recongnise most of your systems are not curing it right, fix that, then test it in more detail. I'm seeing targets not curing simple afflictions and then come running to the forums about how overpowered something is. Sure it may be overpowered or not but its really hard to tell when your not curing right. Aeons super overpowered if you dont focus dust and smoke right.
Fix your systems, adjust your prios and get some good logs for people to look at.
Fixing the order you're eating dust in does not make monks any less of monks in groups, which is the problem with monks as has been stated several times over and is the ongoing theme within the special reports.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
I realize that there's a lot of pushback re: new monks have only been released for a week, but monks have had the full package of affliction burst, damage, bleeding and survivability all in one for years. It's really aggravating.
No. All classes in the game do not do damage and afflictions simultaneously and those that do have rates and damage far inferior to what monks do. Saying otherwise is blatantly incorrect.
?
Bard songs generally do have at least one affliction and one health damage. Similarly for all mage/druid melds. Guardians generally speaking only have afflictions on their pets (specifically the older Celest/Mag ones), and so a hexen guardian would be aff-only, and would be the closest to a class that doesn't do affs and damage simultaneously. Wiccan ents generally do both. Warriors certainly do damage/bleed plus afflictions at the same time.
Like I said, cutting down on places where Nekotai-specific bleeding is too high a burst is my current priority. I don't know about the other monks - I'm leaving it to their own envoys to work out what needs to be cut down. I've also explained why the Nekotai dust affliction rate is so high - and acknowledged that there is something that can be done about it.
Aff rate wise, monks certainly are head-and-shoulders ahead (see previous paragraph), but saying that other people's damage is "far inferior" is also "blatantly incorrect", really. A full monk combo now does around 1.5k damage. Two-handed warriors do around that amount as well. A mage meld, passives alone, do around 600-1000, depending on the spec. Given that most monk actions have an additional bleed modifier on top of the normal bleed formulae, they certainly do more damage/vitals pressure, if you put a warrior and a monk side by side to compare. Tweaking that downward certainly is not out of the question - but "far inferior"? Uhhh.
I think it's disingenuous to compare monks and generic guardians. A Celestine, for example, does not do 3-8 afflictions every 3 seconds while doing greater than symbol damage with bleeding ranging between a couple hundred to a thousand plus.
They do symbol damage. Every 10 seconds they give 2 afflictions.
Does this sound like a hyperbola? It's not.
Edit: There's no point pushing this point since it will derail but you can't argue that any class in the game is comparable to what monks do in their balances, especially when they don't have to fight lust, or keep a mob alive to achieve what they do.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
My comparison was specifically in reply to your comment of "double-dipping" - that phrase literally (not figuratively) raises the issue of monks doing something they're not supposed to do. In context of your sentence:
I think another way to handle it is to make monk attacks, each of the strikes, only either do the damage + bleeding, or do the affliction associated with it at the discretion of the user.
This would remove the double-dipping...
You are specifically referring to the fact that damage/bleeding and afflictions should not be given at the same time - therefore your suggestion of making monk actions be one-or-the-other.
I'm disputing that simultaneously giving both is not "double-dipping" - because other classes do it too. I'm not saying that "oh, we're doing it at the same rate they are doing!" - nowhere did I imply anything like that, when I compared the classes.
If your complaint is that the rate is too high - like I said, I'm definitely okay to change the way Nekotai stick haemophilia. There are many ways to lower and change the current haemophilia sticking interaction (overload with dust affs until target must cure something other than haemophilia) in the current system - I listed a number of them I'm considering in general in my previous post.
Burst bleeding at Surge, as I mentioned as well, is something that needs to be controlled - I'm speaking specifically to the Nekotai surge burst bleed, which is fairly huge, and as I have repeatedly said, something that needs to be re-looked at.
(monks are better at draining mana than a class that's supposed to be able to drain mana into an Absolve 1v1)
As a note, a haemophilia centered bleed strategy doesn't need to drain the target's mana to work - obviously, that's not the way most monks function now, partly because of the way haemophilia has always functioned. But that can change.
As it is, it was a fact that draining mana was a core part of making bleeding work - and if the admin, at the end of the day decide that bleed should still be made viable through draining the target's mana instead of through haemo, then yeah, I don't see why a monk shouldn't be pretty damned good at draining mana.
Warriors only deal one affliction plus poisons with a handful of bleeding (read: a couple hundred) They do not deal 3-7 afflictions, a lot of bleeding (read: several hundred to a thousand plus) while dealing the same amount of damage.
Do I consider that doubledipping, that is, the best of both worlds? Yeah, I do.
Also why shouldn't monk be damned good at draining mana?
Because at what point is it worth it to have any other class other than a monk? If they can out-do manakillers for mana drains, outpace guardian for affliction rates, have access to the best group separation ability in the game as well as being in the top-tier for tankiness while having access to revolt-wildnode-seal-event changing abilities like Veil, why would you pick a guardian when you can pick a monk?
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
and if the admin, at the end of the day decide that bleed should still be made viable through draining the target's mana instead of through haemo, then yeah, I don't see why a monk shouldn't be pretty damned good at draining mana.
The definition of a mana-killer is a class that kills by draining the target of mana. Bleeding doesn't have to kill by mana, but it is currently what most bleeding killers need to do first. If the admin are okay with making the way bleeding kills be a function of something other than mana (ie. haemophilia), that's fine for me. I'm perfectly willing to work with that.
But if the admin decide that bleeding must kill by first pressuring mana to zero, then bleeders are, by default, mana killers.
I'm not saying that a monk has to be able to kill by mana, or be a mana killer. I'm saying that a monk has to be able to kill by whatever mechanic the admin choose for the class. And if the pre-requisite for killing a target with a bleeding instakill is to first drain their mana, then they are effectively mana killers, must be able to drain mana to do so.
If the admin don't want to make them mana killers, sure, okay. I'm fine with that as well.
Because at what point is it worth it to have any other class other than a monk? If they can out-do manakillers for mana drains, outpace guardian for affliction rates, have access to the best group separation ability in the game as well as being in the top-tier for tankiness while having access to revolt-wildnode-seal-event changing abilities like Veil, why would you pick a guardian when you can pick a monk?
You say you don't like hyperbole, but you seem keen on using it yourself.
I've addressed affliction rates, and said, repeatedly, that I'm perfectly fine with changing how it currently works for Nekotai specifically - so that their rates are lower - as long as their kill remains viable. Are there specific imbalances when comparing the monk affliction rate to guardians? Yep. Can that be made more fair? Yep. Am I willing to do it? Yep. I've avoided using hyperbole myself, but since you're not even putting in the effort, here's one for you: I'm even fine with reducing Nekotai aff rate to only 1 aff per form, in their entire repertoire if needed, as long as the mechanics of their class makes it viable for them to kill.
If by the "best" group separation ability, you mean scissorflip, I'd like to remind you that there are a number of abilities that are effectively scissorflip clones. Whirlwind, for one. Squall for another. As an additional kicker, those both have lower power costs than scissorflip. Additionally, I personally rank fearaura higher than these. There are also plenty of other separation abilities that are more situational, and therefore less effective in some specific situations... but more effective in others. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how unconstructive it is to say things like "best group separation ability in the game" to justify your points, when group separation works in many different ways, and each such ability has different effectiveness depending on what situation it is.
Why would you pick a guardian? Because there are plenty of things a guardian can do that a monk can't. Here's one I can name you that immediately gives all guardians a group combat role that monks cannot fill: timed instakill.
I've repeated, again, and again, and again - I fully acknowledge where some of the complaints raised are coming from, and am perfectly amenable to discussing changes about it. But then off-hand comments like "monks are better at draining mana than a class that's supposed to be able to drain mana into an Absolve 1v1!" are made, and when I respond, you make it sound like it's entirely out of the question.
One last time, just so that we're clear: currently monks function like manakillers because of the way bleed works. I'm fine with changing that. But if the admin decide they want bleeding to require mana draining - then monks need to be able to mana drain at a viable rate to kill with it.
The power cost is because whirlwind doesn't stun. They just become displaced by one room. (Also whirlwind and squall are stopped by bonds. Not so for scissorflip)
Also only one guardian of all 4 of the guardians has a proper timed instakill, sans Soulless which you should never go for in groups (because hey, they'll be dead to the monk before 7 balances are through). Further, the claim that monks do not have access to a time-instant kill is incorrect, since harmony deathtouch exists. If you're going to consider soulless as a timed insta, you should consider deathtouch as well.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
I don't think this is hyperbole. Monks have a higher affliction rate with better vitals pressure than most guilds can do, and with little setup.
Whirlwind and Squall are both weaker than Scissorflip as scissorflip stuns, even on failure, and both are blocked by Bonds. A timed insta has some use, but other kill methods are generally superior. I'd say Empress is a better example of a top-tier skill that monks can't get (though bards can, and I think bards have a number of issues of being too generally good at everything as well).
Anyway, this all comes down to using bleed as the main mechanic, which I've given a number of comments on, just doesn't work well. I think we're all in agreement there, so we can hopefully look for ways to change bleeding and/or monks to something more fun and balanceable.
Personally I don't even think monkss are THAT bad, when it comes to affliction/bleed. That is their role, rather than being F1-mashing damage bots now. New toys that people will need to take the time to work out, and adjust to, just like everything else that has been implemented. People handle Healing a lot better than they did when it first came out, for instance.
To me, what makes the afflictions a problem to deal with, is the fact they have such ready access to blind on top of all these (namely haemo/para which are already super good for the monk). It makes it hard to be able to properly fight back against them, in between everything else. Not to mention centre stance proning capabilities (which even fire on razes/void...) - It's not really any issue with any other class except monks, because the others aren't giving higher priority afflictions than blind with their attacks (warriors who beast spit niricol for instance, isn't that big a deal)
I don't really think they're as OP as is being stated, their bleed could likely use some tuning yes, but outside of that they aren't excessively broken. In my opinion, blindness being accessible to them on top of everything else they have, is the unfun thing.
(Have yet to fight Ninjakari, though. I hear they're nutso)
Okay, harmony monks have deathtouch, forgot about that. Sorry.
But uh, I get that soulless has a longer set up than other timed instakills... but to say that you should never use it in a group? What? Timed instakills are generally speaking better in groups than solo. It's certainly situational, but it's better than no timed instakill. Of course, now that I've been corrected about deathtouch, that's not a valid point for harmony monks at least. But hey, Shedrin has helped to name another pretty good role that guardians can play which monks, harmony or otherwise, also can't do.
This isn't the first time I'm saying this in this conversation, but I do see the complaints about monk aff rate being too high, comparatively. I've said this from the very start, from when I first responded to the double-dipping comment. If at the end of the day, your complaint is that monks are doing too many affs, that's fine. We can change how things work and aim to lower the aff rate and continue to keep the kill method viable. I do object to the idea that monks have to be limited to only doing only one or the other.
Specifically regarding the aff rate and how it works with haemophilia, I'll say this again. I'm certainly fine with making changes as to how monks in general (but Nekotai specifically, if you want to zero in on a spec) go for their kill, with the intention of lowering their aff rate. And I'm certainly open to discussing different ideas on how to do so. I don't think balancing bleed is an impossible task. At the end of the day, my goal is to make sure the class I'm currently an envoy for has a viable kill method, and balance for groups as much as is possible. If some things cannot be changed, either by admin mandate or by some other consideration, then I'll just roll with the punches and make do with it. And if that involves bleeding needing to drain mana to work, then I'll just work with that in mind. I hope this puts to rest the fuss about monks being mana-drainers.
Personally I don't even think monkss are THAT bad, when it comes to affliction/bleed. That is their role, rather than being F1-mashing damage bots now. New toys that people will need to take the time to work out, and adjust to, just like everything else that has been implemented. People handle Healing a lot better than they did when it first came out, for instance.
To me, what makes the afflictions a problem to deal with, is the fact they have such ready access to blind on top of all these (namely haemo/para which are already super good for the monk). It makes it hard to be able to properly fight back against them, in between everything else. Not to mention centre stance proning capabilities (which even fire on razes/void...) - It's not really any issue with any other class except monks, because the others aren't giving higher priority afflictions than blind with their attacks (warriors who beast spit niricol for instance, isn't that big a deal)
I don't really think they're as OP as is being stated, their bleed could likely use some tuning yes, but outside of that they aren't excessively broken. In my opinion, blindness being accessible to them on top of everything else they have, is the unfun thing.
(Have yet to fight Ninjakari, though. I hear they're nutso)
Right now, blindness is used as one of the higher-priority-than-haemophilia afflictions (at least by Nekotai) in order to stick haemo. That was my intention, at least, for giving it to a center-and-higher arm action I didn't give paralysis to any Nekotai action, wanted to use blindness instead, since it would then avoid the problems with prone. Given that it's currently stacking with paralysis to do the same thing, it certainly is obnoxious. If there are nerfs to paralysis, blindness will then become the premium affliction in any dust stack because people need to cure it first - though a paralysis nerf should also, on theory, lower its ability to prevent the opponent from hitting back.
Either way, I'll look into whether or not it's too easy to give blindness right now. At least Nekotai have it locked behind the center stance, but if need be, we can increase the stance requirement, or swap it out for another affliction.
Researchers are one of the absolute best to fight monks, with Foresight, Timelessbody (Insight for poisons if applicable) and their vitals-healing and aff curing crystalplex. But uh...they're a pretty big outlier. Healing with its various baubles (Succor especially) also makes monks 'manageable'.
Reylari, monks aren't that bad when you're playing the strongest 1v1 / most defensive class in the game...
Shedrin said it well. They basically get everything. Lockdown, affliction pressure, vitals pressure, and a conditional instakill. They also get the amazing defensive qualities of acrobatics (dodge/springup/contort/somersault).
It's too good.
Edit to elaborate: The bleeding is insane in groups, manageable one on one. I think that's pretty much settled.
What I've had more problems with, despite my curing for monks being pretty darned optimized, is the affliction stacks they can achieve. Monks affliction output generally outpaces cure balances, even without them sticking locking afflictions. Wobou can build full ice affs without even using slickness, just be dealing them faster than it's even possible to cure. Tahtetso give dust affs faster than dust can keep up with. The other two specs I'm not sure about, but I suspect they suffer the same imbalances.
(All of that is just within their primary spec, not including the utility of acro/psymet/harmony/stealth)
That log is very informative, Reylari, thank you. At the tail end of that log, from 17:38:19:062, onwards there was a burst of bleeding. As far as I can tell from Reylari's log, here's what happened:
Reylari stands at 1069 bleeding, surge form comes in:
Your eye starts to throb, and blood trickles out of your eye. You are afflicted with burstvessels.(m&mf): (this aff, burstvessels, is missing from m&m's affmessages db - this is a minor thing) Twirling a black steel nekai, Tarken shreds your left arm in the Angkai style, sending piercing pain through your nerves. You are afflicted with sickening. You are afflicted with vomiting. Tarken cuts a black steel nekai with an Angkhai arc into your left arm. You are afflicted with damagedleftarm. Twisting in a circle, Tarken plunges his left foot into your left arm.
Stance gave 3 vessels, and because of the twist form bonus, +15% of current bleeding (at 1069 current bleed, that's around 150). Nekotai slash/slash/kick does around 1200 damage from the logs, and this is around 90+90+150 bleed, based off normal bleed formulae. Mantekarr adds +100 bleed to each action (so plus 300). [I actually didn't realize this was happening until now, I had forgotten about the basic kata stance, and was getting confused at the huge burst bleed] Lastly, sprongma triggered off 5 poison affs (sickening, vomiting, haemophilia, blindness and relapsing) for 700 bleed. In total, 150+330+300+700 = 1430 The stance itself gives +10% to bleeding done, so if you add 143 to the above number, that's 1573. As a note, that's not exactly how this modifier works - it actually applies before the sprongma flat bleed is added, but after the mantekarr flat bleed is added. It also doesn't apply to the twist form bonus. But for simplicity, we'll assume it applied to everything in the form up to this point. Add the 1069 from previously, and it comes to the 2600+ bleed shown in the next succor.
Ironically, the two percentage multipliers in the Nekotai stance itself contributed fairly little, and if anything, they seem to be contributing the least numbers (150 each), which would almost be in the realm of "not quite enough" - it's the flat bleed from mantekarr and sprongma that's pushing things ridiculously high. With an existing 1000+ bleed, the surge form should certainly do a large amount of bleed to act as a finisher, but if the majority is coming from flat bleed, then the previous 1000 bleed is basically fluff. Sprongma and mantekarr alone almost met the insta requirements on its own, without any need for the previously existing bleed.
Another thing I noticed was that Reylari didn't seem to have used focus curing much at all, which allowed haemophilia to stick for long periods based on the current meta of overloading with dust afflictions. The only focus done in that log was for a paralysis, once. [Edit: Counted wrongly, Reylari focus-cured on paralysis 4 times. Out of 16 times when she ate dust while under haemophilia, 3 times were to focus paralysis, and 5 times she managed to cure haemophilia (unfocused). The other 8 times, it ended up curing something else randomly.] At the end of the day, it didn't matter much (because the flat bleed was so high), but I think this is a fairly good picture of how I intended Nekotai to interact with haemophilia - with the large amount of dust affs and the high prio ones like paralysis and blindness, it lets the haemophilia stick long enough to get the bleeding to stay.
The more the bleeding stayed, the more the Nekotai should have been rewarded, as it is a sign of his afflicting locking up the target. That last part isn't quite happening - the multipliers are giving very little bonus to all that haemophilia sticking, and instead 1000 of the 1500 bleeding done in the surge form was coming from flat sources of bleed, making any work done at making haemophilia stick almost irrelevant.
With previously existing bleed at 1000 due to sticking haemophilia over long periods of time, the Nekotai should get a finisher burst of bleed from doing that work, but instead, it's mostly coming from flat sources.
My next step will be to re-look at how sprongma's flat bleed is triggered, and maybe narrow the afflictions it can fire from. This also confirms my existing report that the scaling of the effects may need to be re-tiered to be lower as well. My existing numbers on that report will seem to be still too high, I'm betting. The exact specifics of the new values... will need some thinking about. At the same time, once Reylari puts in more focus curing, haemophilia won't stick for long. Not to mention, once m&m's problem with clotting under haemophilia is fixed, it would make bleed a lot harder to stick, flat or not flat. Therefore, lowering the flat bleed and changing haemophilia so it can actually help to make bleeding stay would be a conclusion from this log as well.
Edit: Actually on a second look through the log, blindness didn't help stick haemophilia on Reylari much. Out of 10 times faeleaf was eaten to prioritise blindness, only twice were done while under haemophilia. Tarken was using the blind action mostly on forms when she wasn't giving haemophilia. This doesn't change much, systems in general will probably prioritise blindness over haemophilia (except Ciaran's when I sparred him), so it should play a role in sticking haemophilia, if only as a super high priority affliction. Moving away from blindness as a crutch to stick haemophilia would be a good idea, anyway.
Another thing I noticed was that Reylari didn't seem to have used focus curing much at all
I dunno why, honestly. Both para and haemo should be focused (that's how I have it set anyway). I only really died in the end because I thought I could get him cauterised. We very nearly hit arena timeout, for context of how long we fought for. At least a bug got confirmed by my log, with aurasense incorrectly reporting aurawarp levels.
Dunno that my class comes extremely into play in this scenario. If you actually read my log you'd see futureglimpse had faded, healingauras were largely not doing anything (cause im dumb and put wrong ones up), foresight expired (didn't bother reapplying), yet I was still managing to comfortably sit toe to toe with him, until I got cocky. Monks can, after all, be hindered.
Of course monks are going to be good in groups. Everything is decent in groups if you actually make the most of your class. Are monks too good in groups? It's quite possible, new things tend to be, I dunno that they're brokenly OP though.
edit for clarity-- these are my wafer prios:
(m&mf): wafer balance priority list (clear gaps):
^ v (20) asthma
^ v (19) paralysis
^ v (18) truedeaf
^ v (17) haemophilia
^ v (16) blind
both para and haemo should be focused, with asthma focused under aeon. Bleed wasn't really why I died though, getting cocky was.
Also how does succor make them any more manageable? You know bleeding shows on GMCP right?
Just a couple of things I'd like to point out before we get too far off track here.
1) We knew there would be issues in group settings with monks when we released them. It was acknowledged both by the player testers and the admin that we would still need to address certain things with monks upon release, but we didn't want to delay the release any longer because the best testing in actual live testing. This is why the special report opened immediately upon release, to address said issues and we made it clear that we would address things. We've already done minor testing on some of the reports and we'll continue to do so.
2) There is a special report open to address issues with monks. If you believe there is an issue and there isn't a report already, talk to your envoy (or an active envoy) and they can post a report. You can see all special reports by doing REPORT LIST SPECIAL (and I'm pretty sure everyone can read them now.) I do want to encourage that any concerns be backed up by logs and data, and particularly by logs that don't have glaring curing issues as those kind of issues should result in punishment or death.
3) If players feel strongly about it, particularly the monk envoys, we can have special reports that move monks away from bleed/bruise kill methods and focus on more affliction-based ones. This has been open since we first presented the plan for monks to the general public at large and since that time, nobody has really thrown out viable alternatives. I'll note that the current monk instakills do have affliction tradeoffs and the potential to making those more viable.
Again, I want to thank all the envoys and player testers that assisted in testing monks prior to release. A lot of good changes were made as a direct result of their testing. I also want to thank you, the players in general, for your understanding that this in in flux and we'll address things as they are reported.
Whoever still participates in either sides of daily combat and does consider this dust burst&vital pressure to be at a decent level. Please focus your effort and time to PvE instead and enjoy the hack&slash. Because this isn't PvP anymore.
The problem is -groups-, but in no way the groups need to be big as it seems. Just bring one person that can concurrently follow you with bleeding+dmg+entangle and guess what? More dust affs in another single balance and your target is ultimately locked out from offense, defense, curing and movement. This really is unfun to play against, not sure how fun it's to play with though
"Oh the year was 453CE, how I wish I was in Serenwilde now... aletter of marque come from the regent to the scummiest aethership I ever seen, gods damn them all...I was told we'd cruise the void for auronidion and dust, we'd fire no turrets, shed no tears.. now I'm a broken man on a Hallifax tier, the last of Saz's privateers."
At this point, I've added a whole host of things to my system to try and mitigate this. Advice from Veyils and Shedrin as well as things I've done myself have been added to try and optimise my curing, yet all has had a negligible impact in a group setting. As Saz has stated above, it's the instant lockdown that is ultimately the most frustrating and it honestly is just not fun anymore.
I'm going to be honest and say that I'm also actually very frustrated with all of this. It feels to me like monks are just (or continue to be?) allowed to be balanced by a different measure to everyone else.
Everyone else has to consider the effectiveness of their skills in groups even if it means their viability in 1v1 is reduced (to the point of being unviable in many cases). Consider succumb, for example. It is overpowered in groups. Nobody denies this, but it is still not really enough for Moondancers to really achieve anything in 1v1. Succumb is getting nerfed. With monks, it seems it doesn't matter how overpowered they may be in groups. The focus always seems to be on whether or not they are viable in 1v1.
When 100% of all combat with real consequences in this game revolve around groups of varying sizes (revolts, domoths, wild nodes, flares, war challenges etc) it is frustrating to see that one class, time and time again, appears to be allowed to get away with so many things that break this group combat dynamic with ridiculously overtuned numbers/offence/defence/everything. If 1v1 is the direction we want to balance the game around then just make that the mandate so the rest of us can stop worrying about how our unviable 1v1 offences can be buffed without being overpowered in groups.
Personally I don't even think monkss are THAT bad, when it comes to affliction/bleed. That is their role, rather than being F1-mashing damage bots now. New toys that people will need to take the time to work out, and adjust to, just like everything else that has been implemented. People handle Healing a lot better than they did when it first came out, for instance.
To me, what makes the afflictions a problem to deal with, is the fact they have such ready access to blind on top of all these (namely haemo/para which are already super good for the monk). It makes it hard to be able to properly fight back against them, in between everything else. Not to mention centre stance proning capabilities (which even fire on razes/void...) - It's not really any issue with any other class except monks, because the others aren't giving higher priority afflictions than blind with their attacks (warriors who beast spit niricol for instance, isn't that big a deal)
I don't really think they're as OP as is being stated, their bleed could likely use some tuning yes, but outside of that they aren't excessively broken. In my opinion, blindness being accessible to them on top of everything else they have, is the unfun thing.
(Have yet to fight Ninjakari, though. I hear they're nutso)
The dust stack is getting nerfed already so that when you cure any dust/blind affliction paralysis will cure as well I think is the proposal but yea everyone recognises the dust stack is pretty powerful right now but so is the icestack as well.
Generally though as the weeks go on and I see people start to fix their systems Im seeing a people die much less to just a few bashes. Which is kind of what I thought would happen. Just people panicking about a new thing and not taking the time to fix up their curing.
Okay, I'm going to address the last few posts frankly. I've honestly got a feeling I'm going to regret speaking up at all in a few hours, but here goes.
Monks were given a test on a test server. We allowed every envoy access to this server and allowed envoys to submit a request for access. I received five access requests and all were granted. This is 31 individuals who had access to the test server, could look at numbers and provide feedback on them. We only received feedback from seven individuals. Seven individuals even bothered in a month of testing. We modified a lot of numbers, even rewrote major parts of the skillset and spec, based on the feedback of those seven. We realise this is not an ideal environment, but it was what we had at the time to gain empirical data. But given we had so few active testers, 1v1 data was all that was gathered.
When the announcement went up that the skillset was going live, we made it very clear that this was to be considered a live test. We have been gathering input, and even temporarily putting up tests of wide-reaching changes including changing how bleeding works across the entire game on the test server. We are listening, analysing, and do plan to make changes. Shortly, in fact, as envoys have been given a three day limit as of today to finalise the special reports and comment on them.
We understand the frustration. Everybody up here was, at one point, a player. Hell, I'm frustrated. But at this point, we are doing and have done everything we can to make this go smoothly, and can only do so much with a lack of data. When given more data, we can only analyse it so fast and, given some of these changes being requested are sweeping changes which do require testing and changing major subsystems, implement them so fast. And it has literally been 8 days since release.
So, there's a lot of criticism here. How about solutions?
I could, in about an hour, entirely revert us to the old state of monks where they use nothing but pre-overhaul afflictions and continue to deal absolutely large amounts of damage. We can use that revert and gain absolutely zero data, zero input, and as such make zero progress.
I could devote all of my spare time to fixing this. I can't ask anybody other coder or god to spend more time on it, and our manpower is limited, so it would fall to me. This means, when I'm not dealing with administrative matters, my full attention would be on analysing monk logs, making test tweaks, ensuring things work, and trying to encourage literally anybody else to test. This means all of my own projects, including: moving all non-overhaul afflictions out; refactoring major parts of the affliction system out of necessity; implementing the Jan-Feb (and soon to be March) envoy reports; writing server-side curing; working on Factions; implementing feature requests and fixing bugs; revamping the clothing system; pouring through five special report requests and making my own notes on and testing each of them; latency improvements; and assisting with the multitude of requests I get from envoys and players alike every single day would be put to the wayside.
I could do nothing.
Or we can all wait for us to look into this. There is a special report, meaning any envoy can submit any number of reports they would like on the matter. We read every report, we consider every report, and we read every log attached. Sometimes, we're sitting there invisible in the fighting analysing things ourselves. But things take time. We rely on our envoys for information, and while we do read all this, there is nothing that has been said here we aren't aware of or haven't considered, or hasn't been raised in one of the special reports. We don't just blindly implement - we are human, we do make mistakes, but we do try to consider everything with what data we have available so we don't make them.
It's been a week. We haven't forgotten you or monks. The world's not ending.
Whoever still participates in either sides of daily combat and does consider this dust burst&vital pressure to be at a decent level. Please focus your effort and time to PvE instead and enjoy the hack&slash. Because this isn't PvP anymore.
The problem is -groups-, but in no way the groups need to be big as it seems. Just bring one person that can concurrently follow you with bleeding+dmg+entangle and guess what? More dust affs in another single balance and your target is ultimately locked out from offense, defense, curing and movement. This really is unfun to play against, not sure how fun it's to play with though
This is an issue independent of monks. You dont get to attack back if five of any class are focusing you down. Groups fights are basically if your focused you dont fight back you just try and survive with serpent or tumble while your team kills the enemy.
I'm going to be honest and say that I'm also actually very frustrated with all of this. It feels to me like monks are just (or continue to be?) allowed to be balanced by a different measure to everyone else.
Everyone else has to consider the effectiveness of their skills in groups even if it means their viability in 1v1 is reduced (to the point of being unviable in many cases). Consider succumb, for example. It is overpowered in groups. Nobody denies this, but it is still not really enough for Moondancers to really achieve anything in 1v1. Succumb is getting nerfed. With monks, it seems it doesn't matter how overpowered they may be in groups. The focus always seems to be on whether or not they are viable in 1v1.
When 100% of all combat with real consequences in this game revolve around groups of varying sizes (revolts, domoths, wild nodes, flares, war challenges etc) it is frustrating to see that one class, time and time again, appears to be allowed to get away with so many things that break this group combat dynamic with ridiculously overtuned numbers/offence/defence/everything. If 1v1 is the direction we want to balance the game around then just make that the mandate so the rest of us can stop worrying about how our unviable 1v1 offences can be buffed without being overpowered in groups.
Well monks are aimed to be balanced around groups is the issue.
They are single target damage and afflictors. Their damage is on the average level in itself 1k-1.5k to me from a 13/13 buffed monk(I've got pretty good resistances though). With a 3.5 base balance. 2.5ish with good buffs and boosting so not sustainable. A solo monk just bounces off me damage wise.
To compare a bard doing their bashing chord damage will far outstrip a monks damage in single target with just that alone. Add in some bards have some forms of passive damage, healing hinder, damage boosts or just flat normal hinder etc. Or compare to a druid in a group. A druid in a group fight can push upwards of forty or more afflictions in a ten second window due to the aoe effects. If were looking at stuff from a group perspective.
Its a question we should be asking about every class. What does this class bring to the group fight? Mages/Druids can bring powerful aoe damage, pretty good single target damage, effective instant kills and afflictions. Monks bring high single target afflictions, a bit of utility and good single target damage. Bards bring insane utility and amazing single target damage and burst etc. Guardians bring amazing lock down and utility. Wiccans powerful mana burn and kills. Warriors bring pits and err well small damage and small afflictions. Yea warriors could maybe do with a few early game buffs in exchange for their long term instant kills.
Sure things can be tweaked but overall it makes total sense for monks to do more single target afflictions than any other class. That's their role, they have been designed to be a burst affliction class.
Like personally right now I'd be more worried about fighting against two bards than two monks. Bards could deathsong kill a target easily or set up an octave kill in 6ish seconds if they have good buffs. Two monks are going to have to beat on me for quite a while to drain my mana down and then bleed me out or instant kill me.
Balancing for groups is a must - I'm not sure where people are getting the impression that the admin, or anyone, is working on the concept that group balance should be sacrificed for 1v1 viability.
Group balance and 1v1 viability are not mutually exclusive, however, and I intend to aim for both. It's not going to be easy, obviously, and I don't expect to be able to snap my fingers and solve it immediately. But I'm strapped in for distance running. I have no intention of up and disappearing, and leaving things as they are. At the moment, monk in groups, or specifically, Nekotai in groups (I keep saying this, because I'm limiting my comments to the skillset I'm focused on working on) is not balanced. I've acknowledged this multiple times now, and I have offered more than a few different personal thoughts about how I've been mulling over changing it. Whether you want to contribute or not, I'll continue to mull over them and decide on the follow up suggestions and changes.
I've tried my best to respond to every issue that is raised, and not dismiss any single one of them. But general comments that do not point out a specific issue, are unaccompanied by logs, are hardly helpful. And now, we've apparently moved into the territory of comments saying monks are being intentionally made to be ridiculous in groups, despite all the posts I've made that acknowledged that very problem. I think, at this point, I'm going to stop responding to everything that gets posted.
I am probably one of the luckier envoys in this position - most of the monks probably are in a similar situation as the Nekotai, but so far, most of the logs posted have only featured Nekotai. Thanks to those who posted, by the way. Even excluding the unhelpful comments, at least I have abundant material to work with, to pore over, and to use.
If anyone has anything constructive to bring up, I'm all ears. But if you're only going to be unhelpful, you can at least rest with the assurance that I'll continue to suggest changes - without you. Like I said, whether you want to contribute or not, I don't care. I'll work with the limits I'm given, and with the material I have.
I want to clarify that my frustration and comments aren't aimed at the admins who designed and implemented these changes. My frustration is aimed at certain players who propagate this 1v1-first mentality when it comes to monks, "refusing" to nerf their class while some of us have tried to come up with ideas using the same envoy system to make our classes actually somewhat viable in 1v1 but have had hurdle after hurdle thrown at us by these same people in the name of group balance.
Monks are a bursty class. The problem here is that their burst comes every <3s with no prior set up or cost. It is just incomparable with every other class out there. This isn't even taking into account the fact that monks have arguably the best defence as well.
Comments
Fix your systems, adjust your prios and get some good logs for people to look at.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
Bard songs generally do have at least one affliction and one health damage. Similarly for all mage/druid melds. Guardians generally speaking only have afflictions on their pets (specifically the older Celest/Mag ones), and so a hexen guardian would be aff-only, and would be the closest to a class that doesn't do affs and damage simultaneously. Wiccan ents generally do both. Warriors certainly do damage/bleed plus afflictions at the same time.
Like I said, cutting down on places where Nekotai-specific bleeding is too high a burst is my current priority. I don't know about the other monks - I'm leaving it to their own envoys to work out what needs to be cut down. I've also explained why the Nekotai dust affliction rate is so high - and acknowledged that there is something that can be done about it.
Aff rate wise, monks certainly are head-and-shoulders ahead (see previous paragraph), but saying that other people's damage is "far inferior" is also "blatantly incorrect", really. A full monk combo now does around 1.5k damage. Two-handed warriors do around that amount as well. A mage meld, passives alone, do around 600-1000, depending on the spec. Given that most monk actions have an additional bleed modifier on top of the normal bleed formulae, they certainly do more damage/vitals pressure, if you put a warrior and a monk side by side to compare. Tweaking that downward certainly is not out of the question - but "far inferior"? Uhhh.
They do symbol damage. Every 10 seconds they give 2 afflictions.
Does this sound like a hyperbola? It's not.
Edit: There's no point pushing this point since it will derail but you can't argue that any class in the game is comparable to what monks do in their balances, especially when they don't have to fight lust, or keep a mob alive to achieve what they do.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
You are specifically referring to the fact that damage/bleeding and afflictions should not be given at the same time - therefore your suggestion of making monk actions be one-or-the-other.
I'm disputing that simultaneously giving both is not "double-dipping" - because other classes do it too. I'm not saying that "oh, we're doing it at the same rate they are doing!" - nowhere did I imply anything like that, when I compared the classes.
If your complaint is that the rate is too high - like I said, I'm definitely okay to change the way Nekotai stick haemophilia. There are many ways to lower and change the current haemophilia sticking interaction (overload with dust affs until target must cure something other than haemophilia) in the current system - I listed a number of them I'm considering in general in my previous post.
Burst bleeding at Surge, as I mentioned as well, is something that needs to be controlled - I'm speaking specifically to the Nekotai surge burst bleed, which is fairly huge, and as I have repeatedly said, something that needs to be re-looked at.
As it is, it was a fact that draining mana was a core part of making bleeding work - and if the admin, at the end of the day decide that bleed should still be made viable through draining the target's mana instead of through haemo, then yeah, I don't see why a monk shouldn't be pretty damned good at draining mana.
They do not deal 3-7 afflictions, a lot of bleeding (read: several hundred to a thousand plus) while dealing the same amount of damage.
Do I consider that doubledipping, that is, the best of both worlds? Yeah, I do.
Also why shouldn't monk be damned good at draining mana?
Because at what point is it worth it to have any other class other than a monk? If they can out-do manakillers for mana drains, outpace guardian for affliction rates, have access to the best group separation ability in the game as well as being in the top-tier for tankiness while having access to revolt-wildnode-seal-event changing abilities like Veil, why would you pick a guardian when you can pick a monk?
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
But if the admin decide that bleeding must kill by first pressuring mana to zero, then bleeders are, by default, mana killers.
I'm not saying that a monk has to be able to kill by mana, or be a mana killer. I'm saying that a monk has to be able to kill by whatever mechanic the admin choose for the class. And if the pre-requisite for killing a target with a bleeding instakill is to first drain their mana, then they are effectively mana killers, must be able to drain mana to do so.
If the admin don't want to make them mana killers, sure, okay. I'm fine with that as well.
You say you don't like hyperbole, but you seem keen on using it yourself.
I've addressed affliction rates, and said, repeatedly, that I'm perfectly fine with changing how it currently works for Nekotai specifically - so that their rates are lower - as long as their kill remains viable. Are there specific imbalances when comparing the monk affliction rate to guardians? Yep. Can that be made more fair? Yep. Am I willing to do it? Yep. I've avoided using hyperbole myself, but since you're not even putting in the effort, here's one for you: I'm even fine with reducing Nekotai aff rate to only 1 aff per form, in their entire repertoire if needed, as long as the mechanics of their class makes it viable for them to kill.
If by the "best" group separation ability, you mean scissorflip, I'd like to remind you that there are a number of abilities that are effectively scissorflip clones. Whirlwind, for one. Squall for another. As an additional kicker, those both have lower power costs than scissorflip. Additionally, I personally rank fearaura higher than these. There are also plenty of other separation abilities that are more situational, and therefore less effective in some specific situations... but more effective in others. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how unconstructive it is to say things like "best group separation ability in the game" to justify your points, when group separation works in many different ways, and each such ability has different effectiveness depending on what situation it is.
Why would you pick a guardian? Because there are plenty of things a guardian can do that a monk can't. Here's one I can name you that immediately gives all guardians a group combat role that monks cannot fill: timed instakill.
I've repeated, again, and again, and again - I fully acknowledge where some of the complaints raised are coming from, and am perfectly amenable to discussing changes about it. But then off-hand comments like "monks are better at draining mana than a class that's supposed to be able to drain mana into an Absolve 1v1!" are made, and when I respond, you make it sound like it's entirely out of the question.
One last time, just so that we're clear: currently monks function like manakillers because of the way bleed works. I'm fine with changing that. But if the admin decide they want bleeding to require mana draining - then monks need to be able to mana drain at a viable rate to kill with it.
Also only one guardian of all 4 of the guardians has a proper timed instakill, sans Soulless which you should never go for in groups (because hey, they'll be dead to the monk before 7 balances are through). Further, the claim that monks do not have access to a time-instant kill is incorrect, since harmony deathtouch exists.
If you're going to consider soulless as a timed insta, you should consider deathtouch as well.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
Whirlwind and Squall are both weaker than Scissorflip as scissorflip stuns, even on failure, and both are blocked by Bonds. A timed insta has some use, but other kill methods are generally superior. I'd say Empress is a better example of a top-tier skill that monks can't get (though bards can, and I think bards have a number of issues of being too generally good at everything as well).
Anyway, this all comes down to using bleed as the main mechanic, which I've given a number of comments on, just doesn't work well. I think we're all in agreement there, so we can hopefully look for ways to change bleeding and/or monks to something more fun and balanceable.
Personally I don't even think monkss are THAT bad, when it comes to affliction/bleed. That is their role, rather than being F1-mashing damage bots now. New toys that people will need to take the time to work out, and adjust to, just like everything else that has been implemented. People handle Healing a lot better than they did when it first came out, for instance.
To me, what makes the afflictions a problem to deal with, is the fact they have such ready access to blind on top of all these (namely haemo/para which are already super good for the monk). It makes it hard to be able to properly fight back against them, in between everything else. Not to mention centre stance proning capabilities (which even fire on razes/void...) - It's not really any issue with any other class except monks, because the others aren't giving higher priority afflictions than blind with their attacks (warriors who beast spit niricol for instance, isn't that big a deal)
I don't really think they're as OP as is being stated, their bleed could likely use some tuning yes, but outside of that they aren't excessively broken. In my opinion, blindness being accessible to them on top of everything else they have, is the unfun thing.
(Have yet to fight Ninjakari, though. I hear they're nutso)
Discord: Rey#1460
But uh, I get that soulless has a longer set up than other timed instakills... but to say that you should never use it in a group? What? Timed instakills are generally speaking better in groups than solo. It's certainly situational, but it's better than no timed instakill. Of course, now that I've been corrected about deathtouch, that's not a valid point for harmony monks at least. But hey, Shedrin has helped to name another pretty good role that guardians can play which monks, harmony or otherwise, also can't do.
This isn't the first time I'm saying this in this conversation, but I do see the complaints about monk aff rate being too high, comparatively. I've said this from the very start, from when I first responded to the double-dipping comment. If at the end of the day, your complaint is that monks are doing too many affs, that's fine. We can change how things work and aim to lower the aff rate and continue to keep the kill method viable. I do object to the idea that monks have to be limited to only doing only one or the other.
Specifically regarding the aff rate and how it works with haemophilia, I'll say this again. I'm certainly fine with making changes as to how monks in general (but Nekotai specifically, if you want to zero in on a spec) go for their kill, with the intention of lowering their aff rate. And I'm certainly open to discussing different ideas on how to do so. I don't think balancing bleed is an impossible task. At the end of the day, my goal is to make sure the class I'm currently an envoy for has a viable kill method, and balance for groups as much as is possible. If some things cannot be changed, either by admin mandate or by some other consideration, then I'll just roll with the punches and make do with it. And if that involves bleeding needing to drain mana to work, then I'll just work with that in mind. I hope this puts to rest the fuss about monks being mana-drainers.
Either way, I'll look into whether or not it's too easy to give blindness right now. At least Nekotai have it locked behind the center stance, but if need be, we can increase the stance requirement, or swap it out for another affliction.
Shedrin said it well. They basically get everything. Lockdown, affliction pressure, vitals pressure, and a conditional instakill. They also get the amazing defensive qualities of acrobatics (dodge/springup/contort/somersault).
It's too good.
Edit to elaborate:
The bleeding is insane in groups, manageable one on one. I think that's pretty much settled.
What I've had more problems with, despite my curing for monks being pretty darned optimized, is the affliction stacks they can achieve. Monks affliction output generally outpaces cure balances, even without them sticking locking afflictions. Wobou can build full ice affs without even using slickness, just be dealing them faster than it's even possible to cure. Tahtetso give dust affs faster than dust can keep up with. The other two specs I'm not sure about, but I suspect they suffer the same imbalances.
(All of that is just within their primary spec, not including the utility of acro/psymet/harmony/stealth)
Reylari stands at 1069 bleeding, surge form comes in:
Your eye starts to throb, and blood trickles out of your eye.
You are afflicted with burstvessels.(m&mf): (this aff, burstvessels, is missing from m&m's affmessages db
- this is a minor thing)
Twirling a black steel nekai, Tarken shreds your left arm in the Angkai style, sending piercing pain
through your nerves.
You are afflicted with sickening.
You are afflicted with vomiting.
Tarken cuts a black steel nekai with an Angkhai arc into your left arm.
You are afflicted with damagedleftarm.
Twisting in a circle, Tarken plunges his left foot into your left arm.
Stance gave 3 vessels, and because of the twist form bonus, +15% of current bleeding (at 1069 current bleed, that's around 150).
Nekotai slash/slash/kick does around 1200 damage from the logs, and this is around 90+90+150 bleed, based off normal bleed formulae.
Mantekarr adds +100 bleed to each action (so plus 300). [I actually didn't realize this was happening until now, I had forgotten about the basic kata stance, and was getting confused at the huge burst bleed]
Lastly, sprongma triggered off 5 poison affs (sickening, vomiting, haemophilia, blindness and relapsing) for 700 bleed.
In total, 150+330+300+700 = 1430
The stance itself gives +10% to bleeding done, so if you add 143 to the above number, that's 1573. As a note, that's not exactly how this modifier works - it actually applies before the sprongma flat bleed is added, but after the mantekarr flat bleed is added. It also doesn't apply to the twist form bonus. But for simplicity, we'll assume it applied to everything in the form up to this point.
Add the 1069 from previously, and it comes to the 2600+ bleed shown in the next succor.
Ironically, the two percentage multipliers in the Nekotai stance itself contributed fairly little, and if anything, they seem to be contributing the least numbers (150 each), which would almost be in the realm of "not quite enough" - it's the flat bleed from mantekarr and sprongma that's pushing things ridiculously high. With an existing 1000+ bleed, the surge form should certainly do a large amount of bleed to act as a finisher, but if the majority is coming from flat bleed, then the previous 1000 bleed is basically fluff. Sprongma and mantekarr alone almost met the insta requirements on its own, without any need for the previously existing bleed.
Another thing I noticed was that Reylari didn't seem to have used focus curing much at all, which allowed haemophilia to stick for long periods based on the current meta of overloading with dust afflictions. The only focus done in that log was for a paralysis, once. [Edit: Counted wrongly, Reylari focus-cured on paralysis 4 times. Out of 16 times when she ate dust while under haemophilia, 3 times were to focus paralysis, and 5 times she managed to cure haemophilia (unfocused). The other 8 times, it ended up curing something else randomly.] At the end of the day, it didn't matter much (because the flat bleed was so high), but I think this is a fairly good picture of how I intended Nekotai to interact with haemophilia - with the large amount of dust affs and the high prio ones like paralysis and blindness, it lets the haemophilia stick long enough to get the bleeding to stay.
The more the bleeding stayed, the more the Nekotai should have been rewarded, as it is a sign of his afflicting locking up the target. That last part isn't quite happening - the multipliers are giving very little bonus to all that haemophilia sticking, and instead 1000 of the 1500 bleeding done in the surge form was coming from flat sources of bleed, making any work done at making haemophilia stick almost irrelevant.
With previously existing bleed at 1000 due to sticking haemophilia over long periods of time, the Nekotai should get a finisher burst of bleed from doing that work, but instead, it's mostly coming from flat sources.
My next step will be to re-look at how sprongma's flat bleed is triggered, and maybe narrow the afflictions it can fire from. This also confirms my existing report that the scaling of the effects may need to be re-tiered to be lower as well. My existing numbers on that report will seem to be still too high, I'm betting. The exact specifics of the new values... will need some thinking about. At the same time, once Reylari puts in more focus curing, haemophilia won't stick for long. Not to mention, once m&m's problem with clotting under haemophilia is fixed, it would make bleed a lot harder to stick, flat or not flat. Therefore, lowering the flat bleed and changing haemophilia so it can actually help to make bleeding stay would be a conclusion from this log as well.
Edit: Actually on a second look through the log, blindness didn't help stick haemophilia on Reylari much. Out of 10 times faeleaf was eaten to prioritise blindness, only twice were done while under haemophilia. Tarken was using the blind action mostly on forms when she wasn't giving haemophilia. This doesn't change much, systems in general will probably prioritise blindness over haemophilia (except Ciaran's when I sparred him), so it should play a role in sticking haemophilia, if only as a super high priority affliction. Moving away from blindness as a crutch to stick haemophilia would be a good idea, anyway.
Edited some pronouns.
Dunno that my class comes extremely into play in this scenario. If you actually read my log you'd see futureglimpse had faded, healingauras were largely not doing anything (cause im dumb and put wrong ones up), foresight expired (didn't bother reapplying), yet I was still managing to comfortably sit toe to toe with him, until I got cocky. Monks can, after all, be hindered.
Of course monks are going to be good in groups. Everything is decent in groups if you actually make the most of your class. Are monks too good in groups? It's quite possible, new things tend to be, I dunno that they're brokenly OP though.
edit for clarity-- these are my wafer prios:
both para and haemo should be focused, with asthma focused under aeon. Bleed wasn't really why I died though, getting cocky was.
Also how does succor make them any more manageable? You know bleeding shows on GMCP right?
Discord: Rey#1460
Just a couple of things I'd like to point out before we get too far off track here.
1) We knew there would be issues in group settings with monks when we released them. It was acknowledged both by the player testers and the admin that we would still need to address certain things with monks upon release, but we didn't want to delay the release any longer because the best testing in actual live testing. This is why the special report opened immediately upon release, to address said issues and we made it clear that we would address things. We've already done minor testing on some of the reports and we'll continue to do so.
2) There is a special report open to address issues with monks. If you believe there is an issue and there isn't a report already, talk to your envoy (or an active envoy) and they can post a report. You can see all special reports by doing REPORT LIST SPECIAL (and I'm pretty sure everyone can read them now.) I do want to encourage that any concerns be backed up by logs and data, and particularly by logs that don't have glaring curing issues as those kind of issues should result in punishment or death.
3) If players feel strongly about it, particularly the monk envoys, we can have special reports that move monks away from bleed/bruise kill methods and focus on more affliction-based ones. This has been open since we first presented the plan for monks to the general public at large and since that time, nobody has really thrown out viable alternatives. I'll note that the current monk instakills do have affliction tradeoffs and the potential to making those more viable.
Again, I want to thank all the envoys and player testers that assisted in testing monks prior to release. A lot of good changes were made as a direct result of their testing. I also want to thank you, the players in general, for your understanding that this in in flux and we'll address things as they are reported.
The problem is -groups-, but in no way the groups need to be big as it seems. Just bring one person that can concurrently follow you with bleeding+dmg+entangle and guess what? More dust affs in another single balance and your target is ultimately locked out from offense, defense, curing and movement. This really is unfun to play against, not sure how fun it's to play with though
-Kilian
Discord: Pharanyx#4357
Everyone else has to consider the effectiveness of their skills in groups even if it means their viability in 1v1 is reduced (to the point of being unviable in many cases). Consider succumb, for example. It is overpowered in groups. Nobody denies this, but it is still not really enough for Moondancers to really achieve anything in 1v1. Succumb is getting nerfed. With monks, it seems it doesn't matter how overpowered they may be in groups. The focus always seems to be on whether or not they are viable in 1v1.
When 100% of all combat with real consequences in this game revolve around groups of varying sizes (revolts, domoths, wild nodes, flares, war challenges etc) it is frustrating to see that one class, time and time again, appears to be allowed to get away with so many things that break this group combat dynamic with ridiculously overtuned numbers/offence/defence/everything. If 1v1 is the direction we want to balance the game around then just make that the mandate so the rest of us can stop worrying about how our unviable 1v1 offences can be buffed without being overpowered in groups.
The dust stack is getting nerfed already so that when you cure any dust/blind affliction paralysis will cure as well I think is the proposal but yea everyone recognises the dust stack is pretty powerful right now but so is the icestack as well.
Generally though as the weeks go on and I see people start to fix their systems Im seeing a people die much less to just a few bashes. Which is kind of what I thought would happen. Just people panicking about a new thing and not taking the time to fix up their curing.
It's a good thing all pvp of consequence, and, in fact, any pvp of consequence is in a 1v1 scenario.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
Monks were given a test on a test server. We allowed every envoy access to this server and allowed envoys to submit a request for access. I received five access requests and all were granted. This is 31 individuals who had access to the test server, could look at numbers and provide feedback on them. We only received feedback from seven individuals. Seven individuals even bothered in a month of testing. We modified a lot of numbers, even rewrote major parts of the skillset and spec, based on the feedback of those seven. We realise this is not an ideal environment, but it was what we had at the time to gain empirical data. But given we had so few active testers, 1v1 data was all that was gathered.
When the announcement went up that the skillset was going live, we made it very clear that this was to be considered a live test. We have been gathering input, and even temporarily putting up tests of wide-reaching changes including changing how bleeding works across the entire game on the test server. We are listening, analysing, and do plan to make changes. Shortly, in fact, as envoys have been given a three day limit as of today to finalise the special reports and comment on them.
We understand the frustration. Everybody up here was, at one point, a player. Hell, I'm frustrated. But at this point, we are doing and have done everything we can to make this go smoothly, and can only do so much with a lack of data. When given more data, we can only analyse it so fast and, given some of these changes being requested are sweeping changes which do require testing and changing major subsystems, implement them so fast. And it has literally been 8 days since release.
So, there's a lot of criticism here. How about solutions?
I could, in about an hour, entirely revert us to the old state of monks where they use nothing but pre-overhaul afflictions and continue to deal absolutely large amounts of damage. We can use that revert and gain absolutely zero data, zero input, and as such make zero progress.
I could devote all of my spare time to fixing this. I can't ask anybody other coder or god to spend more time on it, and our manpower is limited, so it would fall to me. This means, when I'm not dealing with administrative matters, my full attention would be on analysing monk logs, making test tweaks, ensuring things work, and trying to encourage literally anybody else to test. This means all of my own projects, including: moving all non-overhaul afflictions out; refactoring major parts of the affliction system out of necessity; implementing the Jan-Feb (and soon to be March) envoy reports; writing server-side curing; working on Factions; implementing feature requests and fixing bugs; revamping the clothing system; pouring through five special report requests and making my own notes on and testing each of them; latency improvements; and assisting with the multitude of requests I get from envoys and players alike every single day would be put to the wayside.
I could do nothing.
Or we can all wait for us to look into this. There is a special report, meaning any envoy can submit any number of reports they would like on the matter. We read every report, we consider every report, and we read every log attached. Sometimes, we're sitting there invisible in the fighting analysing things ourselves. But things take time. We rely on our envoys for information, and while we do read all this, there is nothing that has been said here we aren't aware of or haven't considered, or hasn't been raised in one of the special reports. We don't just blindly implement - we are human, we do make mistakes, but we do try to consider everything with what data we have available so we don't make them.
It's been a week. We haven't forgotten you or monks. The world's not ending.
This is an issue independent of monks. You dont get to attack back if five of any class are focusing you down. Groups fights are basically if your focused you dont fight back you just try and survive with serpent or tumble while your team kills the enemy.
Well monks are aimed to be balanced around groups is the issue.
They are single target damage and afflictors. Their damage is on the average level in itself 1k-1.5k to me from a 13/13 buffed monk(I've got pretty good resistances though). With a 3.5 base balance. 2.5ish with good buffs and boosting so not sustainable. A solo monk just bounces off me damage wise.
To compare a bard doing their bashing chord damage will far outstrip a monks damage in single target with just that alone. Add in some bards have some forms of passive damage, healing hinder, damage boosts or just flat normal hinder etc. Or compare to a druid in a group. A druid in a group fight can push upwards of forty or more afflictions in a ten second window due to the aoe effects. If were looking at stuff from a group perspective.
Its a question we should be asking about every class. What does this class bring to the group fight? Mages/Druids can bring powerful aoe damage, pretty good single target damage, effective instant kills and afflictions. Monks bring high single target afflictions, a bit of utility and good single target damage. Bards bring insane utility and amazing single target damage and burst etc. Guardians bring amazing lock down and utility. Wiccans powerful mana burn and kills. Warriors bring pits and err well small damage and small afflictions. Yea warriors could maybe do with a few early game buffs in exchange for their long term instant kills.
Sure things can be tweaked but overall it makes total sense for monks to do more single target afflictions than any other class. That's their role, they have been designed to be a burst affliction class.
Like personally right now I'd be more worried about fighting against two bards than two monks. Bards could deathsong kill a target easily or set up an octave kill in 6ish seconds if they have good buffs. Two monks are going to have to beat on me for quite a while to drain my mana down and then bleed me out or instant kill me.
Group balance and 1v1 viability are not mutually exclusive, however, and I intend to aim for both. It's not going to be easy, obviously, and I don't expect to be able to snap my fingers and solve it immediately. But I'm strapped in for distance running. I have no intention of up and disappearing, and leaving things as they are. At the moment, monk in groups, or specifically, Nekotai in groups (I keep saying this, because I'm limiting my comments to the skillset I'm focused on working on) is not balanced. I've acknowledged this multiple times now, and I have offered more than a few different personal thoughts about how I've been mulling over changing it. Whether you want to contribute or not, I'll continue to mull over them and decide on the follow up suggestions and changes.
I've tried my best to respond to every issue that is raised, and not dismiss any single one of them. But general comments that do not point out a specific issue, are unaccompanied by logs, are hardly helpful. And now, we've apparently moved into the territory of comments saying monks are being intentionally made to be ridiculous in groups, despite all the posts I've made that acknowledged that very problem. I think, at this point, I'm going to stop responding to everything that gets posted.
I am probably one of the luckier envoys in this position - most of the monks probably are in a similar situation as the Nekotai, but so far, most of the logs posted have only featured Nekotai. Thanks to those who posted, by the way. Even excluding the unhelpful comments, at least I have abundant material to work with, to pore over, and to use.
If anyone has anything constructive to bring up, I'm all ears. But if you're only going to be unhelpful, you can at least rest with the assurance that I'll continue to suggest changes - without you. Like I said, whether you want to contribute or not, I don't care. I'll work with the limits I'm given, and with the material I have.
Monks are a bursty class. The problem here is that their burst comes every <3s with no prior set up or cost. It is just incomparable with every other class out there. This isn't even taking into account the fact that monks have arguably the best defence as well.