@sahmiam

Allowing monks to indefintely maintain momentum would be a bad idea. Classes who do not have godly hindering must run if a monk gets to high momentum. If you take that away the situation will get worse, not better.

I retracted the statement implicitly in my previous post.

My apologies. I should read the whole thread before replying.

First of all, it's not going to be greater than 2.2 seconds and will be more in the ballpark of 2.8s WITH SPEED and 3.3s without speed. I am an outlier in speed, having 2 cosmic knight runes and being aslaran which makes me a full 0.6s faster than the average monk. If you want to address the <2s times, you need to tackle hyperactive.

Secondly, the forms that hit for 5-7 afflictions are more than likely afflicting things that are easily cured, two of which are caused by poisons. You won't see the "overly difficult" afflictions until a higher momentum (which keep coming because of the boosters). As far as I can tell, Ninjakari can apply a max of 8 afflictions. Three of which are going to be numbs (basically useless and cured by applying health, which will also cure the wounds at that part), another two from poisons. That leaves 2 for a jakari with dhatogh (prone + rare wound-based chance of stun) and 1 from the other hand action.

Any forms that are going to hurt you are going to do on average 3-5 afflictions (2 may come from poison) and cause varying momentum loss if the skills are balanced.

I think the best thing to do would be to change the boosters to greatly slow the rate of high-risk afflictions and let the envoys handle the ridiculous OP skills. In fact, solution 1 would actually be better suited to keeping a monk down because they would lose momentum periodically over time. The reason it needs to be faster than a normal skill is because if it's the same speed, monks will (smartly) choose to use other skills that give the same momentum gain and afflictions.

Finally, the monk guilds can't really be compared to one another. Keep specific problems to the guild, and if the specific problems exist across all of them, then you can address problems with the archetype. The majority of the complaints I've heard about monks originate from one skill in a particular monk guild in some way or fashion. Then people hear about it and wrongfully assume that it applies to the entire archetype. Throw in the fact that many monk skills are bugged (positively or negatively or unknown), the problems get exaggerated due to hearsay, and people don't understand the complexity of the class, the result is angry mobs complaining about 1.5s balance times.

Alright, so.

1) 5-8 "easily cured" afflictions in 2.2 seconds, plus health and wounding damage, is not balanced by any stretch of the imagination. The fastest affliction classes can't match that, and they don't have an attrition backup like monks do. This makes monks strictly better than one branch of the competition, which is pretty much the definition of imbalanced. Monk speed must come down for this reason, or all ka costs must go up to prevent those combos from happening, and they must go up to a degree that makes all monks wince and wonder what just happened to them. If you want to whip out attacks at a hex pace, they should have effects in line with a single hex toss.

2) 2+ major afflictions in one combo with comparatively little setup is an issue too. The closest match here is the knight, and you don't see warriors administering these same afflictions with anything near the same regularity. Plus, when a knight does these things, he's probably just trying to knock down stance and parry, because he doesn't have access to the monk damage kill, no matter how wounded an opponent gets. The knight needs to deliver a beating just to be able to deliver a beating, whereas momentum rewards even the most trivial and random actions. Momentum needs the nerf stick, or all high-momentum monk skills should to be brought in line with other classes' minor power attacks.

3) If you don't want to nerf your skills, then you should accept that momentum itself is a broken mechanic. You can beat on an armored beast and maintain your momentum level until trouble shows up. Even if you don't, once a monk hits five momentum, it's no longer practical to fight that monk. You can't be expected to sit and whore web for 30 seconds just because you didn't kill your opponent in 15 seconds. If you can't bear to part with the power in your five momentum combos, then the people you fight need a way to directly and immediately lower your momentum level, just like every other guild has to deal with an opponent's curing getting in the way of offensive progress.

Monks make me so distraught I don't even know where to begin... It's really tempting to switch to monk and ride the OP trolley for the years it'll take to fix them.

I've been on that ride in two incarnations of the archetype. It was a boring ride both times, because there was absolutely no challenge to it. I could walk into a group of 4 to 5 demigods and expect to kill my target if those fighters did not use some drastic form of hindering like choke+stun+pinleg. 1 on 1, there was absolutely no chance any class would defeat me in the second incarnation unless that person was a monk like me. It was absolutely silly, and each time I would mention that fact. It was more silly than when I was an Axelord with double tap stun, and I felt that was absolutely boring and overpowered to be.

Axelord double tap wasn't even that strong all things considered. A decent hinder and good curing made them ineffective. Everything else, we agree on perfectly.

Ditto.

And, Hyperactive may be considered separately from monk forms only after it is removed or nerfed itself. It costs power, and it lasts a limited amount of time, but that doesn't make it any less of an IWIN button.

ITT: Everyone pointing out that monks need major nerfs while the people who deny this are monks who want to ride the ez train.

From the perspective of most of the people in the game, monks add absolutely nothing to their respective commune or city other than a feeling of being tacked on.