You want an honest answer from a monk main who suffered since day 1?
Go Monk.
People saying monk is awful is because monk WAS awful. It was the worst class in the game before AoV. It was terrible. Heck, who knew what would happen if I didn't gather what remained of the monk community to make a huge topic about it. Monk was trash and it was only those who invested time and money into that class to make it appear decent.
But now...
Right now every class can easily kill things and do it well.
Monk can solo fine like every other class, but for a class Monk has absolutely garbage mobbing. You put 6 points into their only AoE and it still has a cooldown and long animation while the other tanks and DPS classes can enjoy strong AoE with relatively no cooldown.
For a tank you have no heal or party buffs. You're as useless to a party unless it was with guildies/friends. Your AoE sucks and you can't fight off multiple monsters as easy as other tanks.
For a DPS you have only few advantages - You have defensive buffs, high health, an easy burst combo, and the best stun in the game. Compared to Assassin, they have higher damage, defensive buffs (including healing), decent health, high critical and dodge, an easy burst combo, and a very strong stun.
Basically Monk right now has potential thanks to Summon Spirit Sphere making their skills double effective.
So Monk being worst class is not the case anymore. Knight is the worst class at the moment.
Once they fix AGI and hit/dodge, monk should have the highest dodge rate in the game, making them the best 1v1 class. No other class can potentially shut down a character for 10 seconds, have a burst attack of 1680% x2, and have a 5% chance to cause a stun state where your 1680% becomes only 1680% + 100% more damage. But right now its more of a... miss miss miss miss.
Edited by Meconopsis, 28 January 2014 - 09:37 PM.