Although I commented this in another threat, I repeat it here as well:
No buff
Not an issue. Did you ever skipped the second priest, because he won't add another party buff? Did you do the same with a Warrior and a Knight together in one raid? Or bypassing the 2nd Sorc to get the Soulmaker buff instead? Do you really mean that if you have 600 STR, the 10% STR buff grants such a great bonus? (BTW: its +2.8% parry, +120 Physical attack value).
No Agi:
Rather than AGI, you get an additional boni from INT instead. This is an replacement. Usually titles, cards, etc give a bonus to multiple stats, so the monk profits twice. Whining about the lack of AGI feels a bit short-thoughted to me, as you can always put less stat points into STR instead.
In addition, AGI is only useful if your AttackPower is above 2.2k. Since it takes 11 points in AGI to get a 44 bonus to Crit. Chance and 44 means +1%, it's equal useful than getting +11 on strength instead, which means +22 AttackPower or +1% if your BaseAttack is 2.2k.
No Self-Heal:
It''s a compromise. That's why you get Summon Spirit Sphere instead. This cooldown-reset it unique to all tanking classes and with it, you can use your damage prevention skills more often. All in all, in a raid where Aromine deals up to 3k damage with a single whip attack, I believe that being able to use a 50% damage reduction skill outweights a lowsy heal ability.
BTW: I always mention this, because people seem to be unable to count it well...... what is better:
Knight: 18% every 20sec (uses 3 aura)
Warrior: 60% every 120sec (or 54% if you use it with 90 rage (=9 Aura)) distrubuted over 20sec
So if the Knight uses the Aura Heal 3 times in a row, he can heal himself by 54% over 60sec or 108% over 120sec. So which skill sucks???? Really the Knight skill?
Added: A Knight with ~7000 HP heals the same amoiunt as a Master Red Potion by using his skill (usable every 20sec). Sounds unfair, right?
No Crowd Control:
Although Knights don't want to accept it, they are Off-Tanks. Since we all agree on this for the Warrior, it leaves the Beastmaster and Monk as Main Tanks.
Main Tanks however don't need Crowd control, since they usually soak the damage of the main boss and ignore the adds. The role of the Offtank classes however is to prevent the mob to ever reach the support classes / characters.
That's why both the Warrior and the Knight have Mass Provoke and decent 10-target AoE skills.
On contrast, the Main Tanks have more HP than Off-tanks and more extreme damage prevention skills (Beastmaster = 100% damage reduction for 10sec || Monk = 50% damage reduction combined with Summon Spirit Sphere to use it more often).
All tanking classes have their usual 3-target AoE Skills:
Warrior and Knight = Magnum Break
Beastmaster = Beast Tornado
Monk = Lightning Crush
In addition, the Monk benefits from another skill: Heavy Tackle. This is another skill that allows to hit multiple targets and even deal a hell lot of damage.
So if compared to the other MainTank class - the Beastmaster, you'll see that you actually have a better croud control.
No Damage over Time:
Actually, I don't think this is such a big issue. If you really depend on DoT to keep the treat up, you're doing something wrong (or other classes have superior gear). F.e. if a Knight has 2.5k Attack Power, the only DoT deals between 7%-10%, this means 175-250 damage every other second... ergo 87-125 damage per second. So do you really think that this is essential, welll.... leaves me speechless.
Permanent -10% Attack Power:
This is comparable to the Warrior Defender skill. If you want to take the defensive role, you have to accept a damage debuff. That's not that special. Defender also got this -10% damage adjustion.... and overall, the Knight does the same, but with gear not with a skill. The shield grants ~40% defense bonus, but the damage output of a Knight weapon compared to a Warrior weapon is lower (f.e. 659 vs. 829 = ~20% damage debuff). The beastmaster doesn't have such a debuff, but he can't profit from the damage bonus from the Bear Form any more.
Damage is bad:
That's simply not true. I tested this as well (Warrior vs. Monk). The monk could compete. (We both have a Main-Tank build) this means that my Warrior has Aura Armor, Parry, Endure and Defender. But maybe this depends on certain stat builds, cards, runes, etc., but it was nearly the same.
Let's compare it on skill base:
Raging Blow vs. Bash => both at 25%
Heavy Tackle vs. Aura Strike => 47% vs. 45% (24% + 3x 7%)
Crushing Blow vs. Bowling Bash => both at 21%
Fury Explosion vs. Berserk => 20% vs. 30%; same cooldown (Warrior receives 10% more damage)
So it goes down to:
Rage Strike: 90% damage, cooldown 20sec; consumes 50 rage
Asura Strike: 120% damage, cooldown 60sec, 3 spheres are consumed by Fury Explosion instead
Well, Rage Strike might sound great but it isn't. It has a longer animation time than Aura Strike, so the additional animation time eats up most of the damage advantage. Hitting multiple targets is useless against bosses, so I prefer to perform a double Aura Strike (45% + 38% = 83%). Asura Strike on the other hand doesn't require any spheres, since the cost is in the Fury Explosion instead.
The Monk weapon deals less damage (404 vs. 829 [Warrior]) or (404 vs. 659 [Knight]), but he also has the much higher attack speed.
However, both Knight and Warrior have an inbalanced skill called Battle Tactics. With the right gear, I can have 30% crit. chance and 200+ INT. Therefore I have a 30% chance for +80% damage... or in other words an always active 24% overall damage increase by spending 2 skill points. This is by far better than Berserk (+20%, but +10% damage taken; usable for 30sec every 60sec). Compare it with any non-BattleTactics builds and you'll see that the damage output is quite fine. Since the BT builds abuses the lvl 50 cap, rather fix that skill than fiddling around the Monk overall damage.
Battle Tactics and a high crit. chance can make it hard for the Monk early on, especially if the Assura Strike is a miss.
Gear is bad:
Gear isn't bad.
Colo Armor:
Warrior: STR 118; AGI 13; WIS 31; VIT 119; Dodge 76; Parry 31
Monk: STR+INT 110; WIS 31; VIT 119; Dodge 76; Parry 31
I wouldn't call this "bad". STR and INT mean the same, so you can just add both values to compare the gear.
Your suggestions:
... are all aweful in my opinion and address more Colo-specific dislikes than actually comparing / balancing classes. My Warrior hasn't any movement boni either or can put any movement debuff on opponents. My Warrior has to use an aweful jump attack that forces me to stand still and select a red circle in a blue circle instead.... a bugged teleport attack is still better. My Warrior doesn't have any ranged attack at all. The Warrior Bowling Bash also has an ugly animation and doesn't deal more damage. My Warrior has NO skill that resets Provoke at all.
In addition, lets compare the three variants:
Knight: 20% damage reduction; 10sec duration; 60sec cooldown
Warrior: 40% chance for half damage; 10sec duration; 60sec cooldown
Monk: 20% chance for zero damage; 10sec duration; 60sec cooldown
Now tell me what makes you think that a monk should get a 40% dodge bonus instead?
Final notes:
Well, it seems that ppl just don't understand the concept behind a monk... or simply ignore it Yes, the Monk has no AGI, but you can compensate this by distributing stat points in another way. A card set bonus or title grants +28 to all stat is basically +56 STR for the Monk. Yes, the Monk lacks a few things, but he compensates it in other ways (Healing vs. Summon Spirit Sphere f.e.).
So maybe they could redesign both the Knight and the Monk by switching their roles => Knight = Main Tank; Monk = Offtank... maybe people would like this more because the image of a Monk is defined this way.
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If I were to change a few things, than I would do the following changes to all tank classes:
Parry, Flee, Aura Shield => 30sec duration
This would make the defensive skills more comparable to the offensive variants (Berserk, Concentration, Fury Explosion).
Endure, Shield Fortress, Ki-Explosion => 6sec duration, 40sec cooldown
This is an adjustment that follows the above improvement to Parry and co. The duration is reduced to match it with other durations like Frost Driver f.e.
Provoke, Intimidate, Beast Roar => grant an additional threat bonus, a 10sec damage debuff on the target and a 5sec confusion/silence debuff.
Rather than a static defensive skill that grants additional threat for no reasons known, this should come from the regular use of this Provoke skills instead.
Edited by Greven79, 28 October 2013 - 08:13 AM.
