What were devs thinking when they made Monks?

[Alanus]

Originally Posted by Raavak [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think that one pally named Alanus that did that stuff was a cheater.

Haha, you need to log in one of these days!

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by pasi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

From my perspective (long post):

Monks weren't great in classic. In general, melee weren't great in classic. Unlike here, you can pretty much ignore most PoSky sky itemization for the duration of live. Monk are a low/middle tier class.

Kunark was the initial attempt to bring melee in-line with casters. Weaponry makes probably the largest jump - monks especially benefit from this. However, Kunark was short-lived. Most hardcore players were not even 60, and the higher end spells were very rare. Epics were a rarity outside of Ragebringer, Celestial Fists, and Fiery Defender. At this point, no one figured out the myriad of ways to blow past the bottleneck shaman epic spawns. Monks are a medium/high tier class.

Velious was their first expansion without increasing the level cap. For the most part, casters don't scale well with gear, they rely on spells (and later mechanics such as AA and focus effects). Overall, the new spells were either utility or weak. This was really their first expansion developed specifically for raiding.

With Velious, a lot of gear ends up being all/all with absurdly high AC. At the time of launch, they probably did not care much about AC values as the AC hardcap was easily reachable on plate classes (not so much monks). Monks already had a fantastic combat skills tables for avoiding damage. You could counter-argue that gear got buffed as the expansion went along, but look at the AC on those items. Monks get a huge itemization buff as they introduce the primal/priceless weapon trader and fist of lightning (Fist of Nature should not be in the game until Luclin). For whatever reason, the developers were reluctant to greatly buff rogue top-end damage. My speculation is that is due to the strength and ubiquity of ragebringer. Rogues still make great strides in weaponry, but not nearly the same gains as monks. Monks also benefit from 2hander combat-tables and receiving triple attack. Monks are a top-tier class.

Monks are very strong coming out the gate in Luclin. Monk primal fists are relatively much stronger than other primal weapons (15/20 vs 13/20). This becomes less of a factor in Luclin as players obtain Vengeance gear (primal's ATK counted toward the ATK cap). Rogue Weaponry caught up and added things like backstab mods. The two big monk weapon upgrades were Vyzdra Fangs and Caens. Other than that, there wasn't a ton of great, new weaponry introduced for monks. My opinion is that they either over-budgeted the procs on the shiny new HtH weapons or that they feared giving BSTs insane weaponry. Fist of Acrylia was nerfed right out the gate. The only other upgrade was on XtC. Cursed and XtC have insanely large loot-tables. It was much easier to just get a Caen's and farm yourself a GCB.

Meanwhile, casters make great strides with focus effects, horses, AAs and new spells (and the fact that raid mobs have INSANE AC). Rangers get AM3/EQ which narrows the gap some. CHeal takes a nerf and the (essentially) AC-hardcap gets changed to a softcap which brings purpose to plate-armor again. All the while, warriors complain and get monk mitigation nerfed. Monks remained mid/high tier, but started to fall off as the expansion progressed.

PoP/LDoN is when monks significantly decline.
If monks hadn't lost their pulling role already to SKs, they definitely have to bards w/ FM. In exp groups, the new lull spells were a huge improvement to previous spells and defeated the need for a puller.

PoP toned down raid-mob AC which did benefit melee - just not enough to compete w/ castes.

A ton of fights in zones with charmable mobs meant that enchanter DPS was back on the menu if needed. Concussion Pants initially let wizards clown other classes.
Rogues got very large weaponry upgrades w/ Ifir, DoD, and JTFB. Necro became top-dogs when they shortened DoT duration and changed Extended Affliction to Burning Affliction. The implementation of LDoN curse spells only expanded this gap. Shaman got to piggyback on the DoT changes (and their LDoN curse). Shaman just lacked a (re-usable) way to drop aggro, but could arguably take the #2 spot if a tank was geared enough. Monks were a mid-tier DPS class and worse than necros, SKs, and bards at pulling. Low/Mid Tier class.

Even after the Luclin AC nerfs, monks still avoided melee damage better than knights (lol), but could not reliably hold aggro. If you compare monks to knights, I'm sure they look overpowered, but knights needed double-digit expansions before they graduated from trash.

Long Post.
TLDR: Velious is the sweet spot for monks. Monk dominance is transient. This server is capped at Velious.

So many acronyms! And no idea what those items are or stand for, too lazy to look it up.

I agree that Kunark really seemed to jump the shark with weaponry for all classes. Having a 2H weapon in vanilla that was a 2:1 ratio was like the gold standard, I seem to remember 3:1 being the gold for 1h weapons (like 8/24 Short Sword of the Ykesha). Then trash drops like 30/40 2Hers, insanity monk weapons (23/28 on wu's was ridiculous in itself, nevermind 28/30, 29/30 + 100DD stun). The new 1h standard was like 2:1 or close to it.

I really question if Verant was making crazy itemization for melee just for making money (i.e. you cannot compete without Kunark, so buy it today). I think by the time Velious hit they realized their err and tried to correct it but it was too late. I wish they didn't go so crazy in Kunark and make almost all classic weapons obsolete instantly (Is there even a relative weapon left from Classic to Kunark? Maybe Mithril 2her since haste was harder to come by, or maybe Ghoulbane for twinking.

[Daldaen]

I agree mostly with what Pasi said.

Luclin/PoP brought monks back down to earth, and brought most other classes up to where they should be.

Need Luclin and PoP. They make servers far better.

[Evia]

Originally Posted by Daldaen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I agree mostly with what Pasi said.

Luclin/PoP brought monks back down to earth, and brought most other classes up to where they should be.

Need Luclin and PoP. They make servers far better.

Consider Agnarr

[Lhancelot]

Originally Posted by Evia [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Consider Agnarr

Tried Agnarr, lasted 6 days. I struggle to even call that game Everquest, it's so altered and defiled now. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Baler]

oh Daldaen.. How the mighty have fallen.

You've ruined your own lands...

[mcoy]

I made it about 2 hours. Saw people selling stuff for krono, then realized I could buy stuff from marketplace with "cash" I had "earned" by being subscribed for a while. I mean seriously, a 40 slot bag? Pfft! Plus I hate the revamped freeport (didn't leave wfp). Camped out and didn't look back.

-Mcoy

[Dolalin]

Easy way to balance monks would have been for their evasion to be top notch, but each successful evade uses up endurance. Once they run out they lose their evasion.

Would result in tank classes being the best choice for sustained tanking (mitigation wouldn't use end), but wouldn't impact monks much for soloing and pulling.

[Atmas]

Monks on live at this point were pretty much at their peak. Velious was a melee expansion for sure and devs I think had a hard-on for them as almost all the high end encounters seem to have an awesome dedicated item. Devs on live took a look at their mitigation and nerfed them pretty significantly.

Monk damage avoidance is amplified on this server where mobs hit on the high end way too consistently. Avoiding a hit has tremendous benefits on this sever. A well geared monk can tank a lot of high end stuff but not to the point of a warrior because the real high end stuff has crazy attack and the potential for one or two bad rounds to take them out gets high.

As far as monks versus other tanks there are obvious trade offs and it gets a little more complicated when knowledge of mechanics are applied. For example, monks are great dps, but a warrior in beserking with a good weapon and the right disc can do phenomenal dps. As a Paladin main there are a lot of benefits monks have that I don't but the same is true the other way around. I'm too lazy to rehash all the discussions that have already come through about the benefits of healing or the efficiency of healing in a group with true snap agro control.

[Kalamurv]

I wish I could find the post from the devs back in the day, but I do remember them stating that monks were supposed to be a DPS class, not a pulling class. FD for monks and necros were in game for the purpose of shedding aggro, like a rogues evade, a rangers jolt, wizzys concussion etc. The ability to split mobs with FD was completely unintended, druids with harmony, bards lull, enchanters pacify etc were the original intended pulling methods.