For those of you who don't know, I play Dinoniel in lusternia. A mostly afk manse forger who for the most part doesn't participate in anything lusternian anymore. I used to be a seren zergling back in the good ol days, sort of interested in combat but never good enough to kill anyone 1v1.
I thought bards were okay when they were introduced but monks were really annoying for me. Why do they get to do all of the warrior afflictions I'm too terrible to get myself. If I rant about it, who would listen to a mediocre fighter who barely plays anymore? It was the holidays, I had time and I was bored, so I made a shofangi alt named Jurgo.
First of all here are some logs, showing how stupidly easy it was, as well as how noobish I am. They're not the most interesting logs ever and maybe probably not the most accurately indicative of the status of monks but here you go anyways.
Jumped while hunting - Jumping a monk while bashing -> bad idea
Against Melville - Crunch
If I had known what confusion was I probably would of cured it instead of waiting on diagnose (i'm a noob)
Part of the ffa today. Sever spine got me
(and it was narsrim, cmon)
In the end I had alot of fun, but it was guilty fun
The following were my observations and some suggestions for the monk report I keep hearing about. Yes I could speak to my envoy, except my guild doesn't have one so if I have to approach one OOCly anyways I might as well do it on the forums.
Monk momentum
Getting 5 momentum is usually pretty easy. I have to be fighting somebody who is very good at keeping their opponent off balance/equilibrium, or prone, or just knowing when to run to have any real problems here. I say very good, but I really have no idea how good that is if that makes any sense. I certainly wouldn't be able to stop any monk.
My suggestion is increase the max momentum. Spread the same amount of ka across maybe 8 momentum. This way it will take longer for the monk to be at maximum offense which is the equivalent of warriors at critical wounds on ALL body parts, minus damage.
Shofangi spec
I chose shofangi because it seemed like the general agreement on the forums was that shofangi was the least broken, but all monks in general were broken. I probably read this wrong but whatever, they weren't any particular shofangi or nekotai being complained about so why not. (maybe i missed seren a bit too
)
I think the shofangi spec theme is great. I dunno why but bone smashing messages felt more satisfying to me than bloody ones.
The best strategy I found was to break/crack/mangle as many limbs as possible while prone slitlocking so that they can't fight back. It was a bit too easy though and the reason for this is the moves to do this were just too cheap, ka wise. Buck costs 250 ka, costing even less than heelslam which is essentially the same thing except has generally less useful afflictions. Slit throat costs 125-150 ka (i'm forging, too lazy to check exactly). Compared this to the nekotai tendon/slit throat move which costs 500 ka that's pretty weird eh? According to a Narsrim post, tahteso mangle costs 400. I hear buck cost is being increased though, so that's good.
Crunch... at first I thought was cool idea but too hard to pull off. After a while though I realized that it works really well with the constant limb/slit locking. Smash all the limbs and/or true lock, and you're going to have extra some time to do something. No point and reafflicting what they probably still haven't cured yet so... crunch. (*points to melville log*) It really is quite comparable to behead/bash brains. In either case you essentially need critical head wounds, and its random even if you hit. For warriors the higher the wound damage past critical the higher chance to get that bash brains (if I read desitrus' post right) and for shofangi the more times you crunch the better. It's not guaranteed win however, since you have to perform two afflictionless forms to crunch once and if you get hindered at all in between they'll writhe out before you can crunch. Also acrobat contort is always faster, so you have to be creative to crunch them. If it the new changes make it harder to keep somebody locked, crunch could maybe do with a small upgrade but it's fine the way it is now.
I haven't actually transed shofangi yet btw. Bullrage seems pretty useless right now, but if shofangi ka costs get increased to be on par with other specs then it would probably be much more worthwhile. Dunno if it'd be worth 10p though..
Summary: increase ka costs
Compared to warriors
Okay so they're not the same archetype. Monks do less damage. Warriors do more wounds. Maybe I shouldn't compare them but its hard not to. Both are supposedly affected by stance/parrying, rebounding and they share alot of afflictions.
Monks get around stancing and parrying much easier. Essentially you just have to prone on the first hit and you're set. Shofangi also have an advantage with cracked limbs. One handed warriors are similiar except they're always trying to build wounds on important body parts, so that first hit is more likely to by parried/stanced in the first place. For monks depending on the form, you might not be losing much by hitting with paralysis in a useless body part first.
Rebounding means very little against a monk.
So.. warriors supposedly do high damage and wounds per hit, where monks are more affliction oriented right? Wellll warrior damage can be pretty negligible unless your a demi with elemental runes to be honest. And monks afflicting critical wound afflictions at 0 wounds > building wounds to do good afflictions anyways. Also, warriors have to deal with randomness (for swings, and random affliction on hit body part).
Critical warrior afflictions are supposed to be hard to get. A great example of this is sever spine. Axelords only have one other gut affliction, opengut, so going hinderless to build up critical wounds on it could be totally useless. It was also introduced after it was decided two handed warriors needed better afflictions to be comparable to one handers. But certain monk specs can do it just by having enough ka? That is just ridiculous. Please take these out, or add some sort of other requirement to be able to afflict these (wounds, randomness). I'm not sure if some people are under the impression that there already is an additional requirement but:
This is false. The only requirement for mangle is that it is in a form, if you shofangi buck outside of one you can not mangle. Why would you ever not be in form
Can't speak for tahteso mangle or sever spine, but the nekotai tendon and sever spine kick require ka only (though it is very ka costly).
Summary: Monks are warriors++
The end. I might still play Jurgo every now and then so I hope the shofangi don't hate me forever. I noted alot of problems with the spec, but remember that's just because shofangi was the one I was playing. I dunno if the others have similiar problems nobody's discovered/speaking up about
You're welcome to disagree with me (this is the internet, I don't even know why I had to say that) and I'm the first to admit I suck 
I thought bards were okay when they were introduced but monks were really annoying for me. Why do they get to do all of the warrior afflictions I'm too terrible to get myself. If I rant about it, who would listen to a mediocre fighter who barely plays anymore? It was the holidays, I had time and I was bored, so I made a shofangi alt named Jurgo.
First of all here are some logs, showing how stupidly easy it was, as well as how noobish I am. They're not the most interesting logs ever and maybe probably not the most accurately indicative of the status of monks but here you go anyways.
Jumped while hunting - Jumping a monk while bashing -> bad idea
Against Melville - Crunch
If I had known what confusion was I probably would of cured it instead of waiting on diagnose (i'm a noob)
Part of the ffa today. Sever spine got me
(and it was narsrim, cmon)In the end I had alot of fun, but it was guilty fun
The following were my observations and some suggestions for the monk report I keep hearing about. Yes I could speak to my envoy, except my guild doesn't have one so if I have to approach one OOCly anyways I might as well do it on the forums.
Monk momentum
Getting 5 momentum is usually pretty easy. I have to be fighting somebody who is very good at keeping their opponent off balance/equilibrium, or prone, or just knowing when to run to have any real problems here. I say very good, but I really have no idea how good that is if that makes any sense. I certainly wouldn't be able to stop any monk.
My suggestion is increase the max momentum. Spread the same amount of ka across maybe 8 momentum. This way it will take longer for the monk to be at maximum offense which is the equivalent of warriors at critical wounds on ALL body parts, minus damage.
Shofangi spec
I chose shofangi because it seemed like the general agreement on the forums was that shofangi was the least broken, but all monks in general were broken. I probably read this wrong but whatever, they weren't any particular shofangi or nekotai being complained about so why not. (maybe i missed seren a bit too
)I think the shofangi spec theme is great. I dunno why but bone smashing messages felt more satisfying to me than bloody ones.
The best strategy I found was to break/crack/mangle as many limbs as possible while prone slitlocking so that they can't fight back. It was a bit too easy though and the reason for this is the moves to do this were just too cheap, ka wise. Buck costs 250 ka, costing even less than heelslam which is essentially the same thing except has generally less useful afflictions. Slit throat costs 125-150 ka (i'm forging, too lazy to check exactly). Compared this to the nekotai tendon/slit throat move which costs 500 ka that's pretty weird eh? According to a Narsrim post, tahteso mangle costs 400. I hear buck cost is being increased though, so that's good.
Crunch... at first I thought was cool idea but too hard to pull off. After a while though I realized that it works really well with the constant limb/slit locking. Smash all the limbs and/or true lock, and you're going to have extra some time to do something. No point and reafflicting what they probably still haven't cured yet so... crunch. (*points to melville log*) It really is quite comparable to behead/bash brains. In either case you essentially need critical head wounds, and its random even if you hit. For warriors the higher the wound damage past critical the higher chance to get that bash brains (if I read desitrus' post right) and for shofangi the more times you crunch the better. It's not guaranteed win however, since you have to perform two afflictionless forms to crunch once and if you get hindered at all in between they'll writhe out before you can crunch. Also acrobat contort is always faster, so you have to be creative to crunch them. If it the new changes make it harder to keep somebody locked, crunch could maybe do with a small upgrade but it's fine the way it is now.
I haven't actually transed shofangi yet btw. Bullrage seems pretty useless right now, but if shofangi ka costs get increased to be on par with other specs then it would probably be much more worthwhile. Dunno if it'd be worth 10p though..
Summary: increase ka costs
Compared to warriors
Okay so they're not the same archetype. Monks do less damage. Warriors do more wounds. Maybe I shouldn't compare them but its hard not to. Both are supposedly affected by stance/parrying, rebounding and they share alot of afflictions.
Monks get around stancing and parrying much easier. Essentially you just have to prone on the first hit and you're set. Shofangi also have an advantage with cracked limbs. One handed warriors are similiar except they're always trying to build wounds on important body parts, so that first hit is more likely to by parried/stanced in the first place. For monks depending on the form, you might not be losing much by hitting with paralysis in a useless body part first.
Rebounding means very little against a monk.
So.. warriors supposedly do high damage and wounds per hit, where monks are more affliction oriented right? Wellll warrior damage can be pretty negligible unless your a demi with elemental runes to be honest. And monks afflicting critical wound afflictions at 0 wounds > building wounds to do good afflictions anyways. Also, warriors have to deal with randomness (for swings, and random affliction on hit body part).
Critical warrior afflictions are supposed to be hard to get. A great example of this is sever spine. Axelords only have one other gut affliction, opengut, so going hinderless to build up critical wounds on it could be totally useless. It was also introduced after it was decided two handed warriors needed better afflictions to be comparable to one handers. But certain monk specs can do it just by having enough ka? That is just ridiculous. Please take these out, or add some sort of other requirement to be able to afflict these (wounds, randomness). I'm not sure if some people are under the impression that there already is an additional requirement but:
QUOTE (Charune @ Jan 4 2009, 06:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
As far as I know, the mangles will not mangle unless there's a certain condition reached on the limb (though I can't remember the condition off the top of my head, but I want to say it's wound based or aff based). In testing, this problem came up and was dealt with in this manner. Once these sorts of things were handled in testing, I was able to handle a full monk 1v1 onslaught just fine with a test character.
This is false. The only requirement for mangle is that it is in a form, if you shofangi buck outside of one you can not mangle. Why would you ever not be in form
Can't speak for tahteso mangle or sever spine, but the nekotai tendon and sever spine kick require ka only (though it is very ka costly).Summary: Monks are warriors++
The end. I might still play Jurgo every now and then so I hope the shofangi don't hate me forever. I noted alot of problems with the spec, but remember that's just because shofangi was the one I was playing. I dunno if the others have similiar problems nobody's discovered/speaking up about
You're welcome to disagree with me (this is the internet, I don't even know why I had to say that) and I'm the first to admit I suck Man, you win. 
Had no idea who you were, but you almost killed me in a village revolt. >:|
Isn't crunch what shofangi have been saying is impossible to pull off? >_>
Had no idea who you were, but you almost killed me in a village revolt. >:|
Isn't crunch what shofangi have been saying is impossible to pull off? >_>
QUOTE (Deschain @ Feb 16 2009, 12:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Man, you win.
Had no idea who you were, but you almost killed me in a village revolt. >:|
Isn't crunch what shofangi have been saying is impossible to pull off? >_>
Had no idea who you were, but you almost killed me in a village revolt. >:|
Isn't crunch what shofangi have been saying is impossible to pull off? >_>
Notice how it took seven tries with him not curing in the least. It took Asmodea an hour and a half to pull off on Thoros. Namely, by the time you pull it off, I probably could have damage killed you.
QUOTE (casilu @ Feb 16 2009, 03:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Notice how it took seven tries with him not curing in the least. It took Asmodea an hour and a half to pull off on Thoros. Namely, by the time you pull it off, I probably could have damage killed you.
This is true, but it really is just as bad with behead/bash brains. I was in the ffa with Asmodea and Thoros, died 30+ minutes before he did, and the reason it would of taken so long is that Thoros was pretty good at getting away for long enough to cure his head wounds completely. I didn't have buck then though. Pretty sure I could crunch him now
QUOTE (MrShrimp @ Feb 16 2009, 05:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
This is true, but it really is just as bad with behead/bash brains. I was in the ffa with Asmodea and Thoros, died 30+ minutes before he did, and the reason it would of taken so long is that Thoros was pretty good at getting away for long enough to cure his head wounds completely. I didn't have buck then though. Pretty sure I could crunch him now
I tested it on myself, it took me about two dozen tries to crunch myself. I got to about 7k wounds before it crunched. Undeffed, no hood. The only big advantage that behead and brainbash would have is that you could have some normal offense while trying. Crunch uses every balance.
QUOTE (MrShrimp @ Feb 16 2009, 06:46 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
It's possible I've just been lucky with my crunches. It could have a really horrible random formula and/or an extremely low chance to succeed even with critical wounds that needs to get looked into.
It's your natural forging luck.
If you really have people locked that long you could just damagekill them while still doing afflictions, since they couldn't apply or anything.
You're right that Shofangi mainly seems that way since it's the one you experienced, but no one's denying that it's too good. You might find Nekotai interesting too, the style is also kinda cool (I do agree that ours is badass though, and I'm glad it's one thing players could do to make it more interesting...)
Rather than covering the things you described that make them warriors but with worse damage/better aff output (significantly better) the method of fixing monks seems like it'll involve skive, ka costs and so on. Shofangi have pretty lenient ka costs on the moves we do a lot (boganj is also pretty good in that regard as well as butojo and buck.) There's a complicating aspect to this though. If you nerf boganj such that the ka cost goes up, the main thing that happens is we still end up doing it twice, but skip the kick...since monk damage/wounds are already kind of sad, that really isn't a hindrance like it would be if you did something like forcing a BC to use both arms to get an affliction rather than using one to knockdown first for the stance/parry ignoring. I'm wondering why you forgot about the fact warriors can do that too but it's still relevant. That's an artefact of the fact warriors wanted dodge, stance, parry etc. all to not work when prone ages ago...I forget why that was, and whether it was valid at the time, but it's been pretty significant. Another thing you could do here is to make it so monks can't hit 3 seperate areas in a combo, although you'd then have to do that for 1handed warriors too. That would probably get ugly.
Relatedly, I don't know why you think raising the ka cap to 8 would work. It would make it more annoying and increase the buildup time, but it doesn't seem to actually make momentum harder to maintain or keep. The only way to do that would be to cut the grace window so hindering has more of a chance to take effect. In that case, GL trying to hit something like a nihilist with 1/10 or better of a brain.
What Charune means with the mangles is that ninja and tahtetso have to hit the same leg twice to mangle because it has a broken legs req (and does broken legs if there isn't one.) The reason for this is that Revan tried to make their mangle attack a mod such that they could do two per combo (supposedly Thoros could cure this and he and everyone else simply forgot how after test server finished), and by the time the complaint was registered the admin had already decided mod-based specs were a good idea and just nerfed this individual detail.
I forget how this works with the Nekotai thing, but Shofangi can "only" do one anyway so it never came up. Although we did have to make mangle cure take precedence over kneecaps because that was complete
.
EDIT: Incidentally, you should try and beat up Charune on test sometime. See if he can tank you. He could tank Yukio, Revan and various others but the strategy has been more refined since, as you would expect.
EDIT: And wait a minute...what do you mean your guild doesn't have an envoy? Are you talking about Shofangi or Ebonguard or something? Also, bullrage isn't that useless, you underestimated it.
You're right that Shofangi mainly seems that way since it's the one you experienced, but no one's denying that it's too good. You might find Nekotai interesting too, the style is also kinda cool (I do agree that ours is badass though, and I'm glad it's one thing players could do to make it more interesting...)
Rather than covering the things you described that make them warriors but with worse damage/better aff output (significantly better) the method of fixing monks seems like it'll involve skive, ka costs and so on. Shofangi have pretty lenient ka costs on the moves we do a lot (boganj is also pretty good in that regard as well as butojo and buck.) There's a complicating aspect to this though. If you nerf boganj such that the ka cost goes up, the main thing that happens is we still end up doing it twice, but skip the kick...since monk damage/wounds are already kind of sad, that really isn't a hindrance like it would be if you did something like forcing a BC to use both arms to get an affliction rather than using one to knockdown first for the stance/parry ignoring. I'm wondering why you forgot about the fact warriors can do that too but it's still relevant. That's an artefact of the fact warriors wanted dodge, stance, parry etc. all to not work when prone ages ago...I forget why that was, and whether it was valid at the time, but it's been pretty significant. Another thing you could do here is to make it so monks can't hit 3 seperate areas in a combo, although you'd then have to do that for 1handed warriors too. That would probably get ugly.
Relatedly, I don't know why you think raising the ka cap to 8 would work. It would make it more annoying and increase the buildup time, but it doesn't seem to actually make momentum harder to maintain or keep. The only way to do that would be to cut the grace window so hindering has more of a chance to take effect. In that case, GL trying to hit something like a nihilist with 1/10 or better of a brain.
What Charune means with the mangles is that ninja and tahtetso have to hit the same leg twice to mangle because it has a broken legs req (and does broken legs if there isn't one.) The reason for this is that Revan tried to make their mangle attack a mod such that they could do two per combo (supposedly Thoros could cure this and he and everyone else simply forgot how after test server finished), and by the time the complaint was registered the admin had already decided mod-based specs were a good idea and just nerfed this individual detail.
I forget how this works with the Nekotai thing, but Shofangi can "only" do one anyway so it never came up. Although we did have to make mangle cure take precedence over kneecaps because that was complete
.EDIT: Incidentally, you should try and beat up Charune on test sometime. See if he can tank you. He could tank Yukio, Revan and various others but the strategy has been more refined since, as you would expect.
EDIT: And wait a minute...what do you mean your guild doesn't have an envoy? Are you talking about Shofangi or Ebonguard or something? Also, bullrage isn't that useless, you underestimated it.
I'm aware, but I'm pretty sure the Ebonguard has an envoy.
Serenguard, too.
Serenguard, too.
QUOTE (Shiri @ Feb 17 2009, 06:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
If you really have people locked that long you could just damagekill them while still doing afflictions, since they couldn't apply or anything.
I suppose... I still think you could do it with just mangles. Melville probably isn't the best example since he didn't seem to apply to head that much, possibly his system assigns equal wounding weight to shofas and kicks even though kicks give about 3 times more wounds than one shofa.
QUOTE
You're right that Shofangi mainly seems that way since it's the one you experienced, but no one's denying that it's too good. You might find Nekotai interesting too, the style is also kinda cool (I do agree that ours is badass though, and I'm glad it's one thing players could do to make it more interesting...)
nahhh exploding bones > emo bleeders (sorry nekotai).
QUOTE
Rather than covering the things you described that make them warriors but with worse damage/better aff output (significantly better) the method of fixing monks seems like it'll involve skive, ka costs and so on. Shofangi have pretty lenient ka costs on the moves we do a lot (boganj is also pretty good in that regard as well as butojo and buck.) There's a complicating aspect to this though. If you nerf boganj such that the ka cost goes up, the main thing that happens is we still end up doing it twice, but skip the kick...since monk damage/wounds are already kind of sad, that really isn't a hindrance like it would be if you did something like forcing a BC to use both arms to get an affliction rather than using one to knockdown first for the stance/parry ignoring. I'm wondering why you forgot about the fact warriors can do that too but it's still relevant. That's an artefact of the fact warriors wanted dodge, stance, parry etc. all to not work when prone ages ago...I forget why that was, and whether it was valid at the time, but it's been pretty significant. Another thing you could do here is to make it so monks can't hit 3 seperate areas in a combo, although you'd then have to do that for 1handed warriors too. That would probably get ugly.
Boganj cost is okay, its mostly slit lock and buck I think needs to go up a bit. If boganj got increased to 200 I could do a double boganj/kick with skive at momentum 4. I'd lose a mod somewhere but it'd get the job done. My comparisions to one handers are probably bad considering I'm a axelord(and pureblade before that). I thought I did mention that one handers can prone first to get an affliction on the second hit though.
QUOTE
Relatedly, I don't know why you think raising the ka cap to 8 would work. It would make it more annoying and increase the buildup time, but it doesn't seem to actually make momentum harder to maintain or keep. The only way to do that would be to cut the grace window so hindering has more of a chance to take effect. In that case, GL trying to hit something like a nihilist with 1/10 or better of a brain.
I was thinking certain moves would have larger momentum drain too. If the momentum cap was at 8 then only losing one momentum for certain moves wouldn't make any sense anymore, since there would only be a maybe a little more than 100 ka difference between 7 and 8. Slitlock could stay at one I guess and mangle could move up to two. It would prevent people from mangling every second form wouldn't it?
QUOTE
EDIT: And wait a minute...what do you mean your guild doesn't have an envoy? Are you talking about Shofangi or Ebonguard or something?
Ur'guard have been champion and envoy-less since Vathael left. Just HONOURS DINONIEL to see what guild I'm in
Oh another thing I forgot to mention is the speed bonus towards the end of auto katas. Not sure if thats necessary.
