The monk folder on here seems to have dried up after months of lots of activity. I'm wondering if a lot of people have made their monk a distant alt because of the changes. I'm not playing mine much, but that's because I'm focusing on a different character, not because I don't like monks.

who profession monk
Brave Adventurers Questing:
(names redacted)
Total: 8


>who

Active Players: 319

Classes have had me swamped lately so I haven't had time to play much of anything.

I still like my monk, but actually I'm looking at starting a new paladin alt. I'm a bit disappointed more in systems peripheral to open UAC combat than anything else. I'd probably like my monk more if he used a different combat system, but as a dwarf his agidex fits well with UAC rt. I tried ranged with him but he can't hit the eyes yet. I also don't have a returner/bandolier and monks can't bond so hurling seems out.

So I feel like he's wedded to UAC and as Rathboner says it doesn't work well with monk cmans (requiring weapon use) and our selection is limited to start. However another fun damping thing is that our UAC gear is limited in what neat weapon scripts it can acquire. Most of the flashy RtCF combat scripts aren't compatible with UAC gloves/boots. I realize that alot of it is old code, but it seems like UAC isn't always being included in the recent combat developments whether its cmans or scripts. And that's disheartening.

Its much like how I was disappointed in being a pure wizard compared to a warmage, a large part of which was that runestaves were boring compared to weapons. That changed so I still have hope for UAC gear, too. The reason I'm thinking of trying a pally is I have an old weapon I'd like to build a character around, one of the old black ash mattocks with exceptional damage weighting. I think it'd be a neat undead basher (especially non corp). So I guess that's a part of it, I like items as much as classes :)

Maybe I should try the mattock with the monk, but I'd rather use it with a bonding class to mitigate the chance to lose it.

Considering that all 3 of my rogues are all better at UAC than my monk (not to mention being able to wear much better armor), my monk is definitely on the back shelf. Someday I'll get her up to level 10 ... maybe ... so she can use her 4x gear, but I can't really see her going much further as things are now.


The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

My monk has kept my interest and has stayed about my third most played character. Approaching level 40 now and I suppose part of my interest was in seeing how he handled shan which are likely one of my favorite hunting grounds. I'd say he handles the area pretty darn well. No weapons to be disarmed effectively removes the shan warriors from the picture. Being a burghal with 3x PF/1x perception and 1220 up I rarely get hit by boil earth or spikethorn. Inner harmony as a cman nullifies the arachnid webbing and the area webs the...clerics? sometimes cast. I'll actually be a bit sad once this area is behind me as whatever my next area is will be less exciting and dangerous.

But while I'm still plodding along and enjoying the journey I see where everyone else is coming from with their discontent. I have a few things that I'm patiently waiting for that will will let me flesh out my monk in ways I had originally intended. For me the biggest would be the illusion spell Shroud of Deception.

Many cman requests have been made also and a lot of them do make sense for their benefit or how they fit a monk. For those wanting an improvement to feint to allow you to do it barehanded, what about we suggest adding that functionality into jab? I find I rarely use jab unless I need to for a tier opening. What if you could 'jab feint' with the same result. As this is a feint the damage dealt could be removed as the tradeoff.
The biggest cman I wanted to see improved and I'm very likely in the minority is Internal Power. I had posted either here or in the Cmans folder some suggestions to give people a reason to train in ranks 2-4 as currently it is either rank 1 or 5 IMO.

Lastly I'd love for a reason for MoC to be offensively useful with regards to uac. Up until recently my sorcerer hunted Faeroths near TI, they have a maneuver that I don't believe is overpowered but it sure would be FUN. I don't have anything in my logs so I will copy from KP,

When the hit lands, it can make the victim prone and in roundtime.

With a piercing howl the lesser faeroth becomes a blur of fists and feet directed at you!
You collapse under the flurry of blows!
Roundtime: 7 sec.

Also, there aren't a lot of fancy toys (yet). I won't even upgrade my armor unless I can make sure it is altered into a shirt of some sort. I just can't wear robes/vestments and still hoping the alter rules are changed to reflect the variety of clothing all our many different types of monks might wear. One of the items sold that I've been enjoying however is Wyrom released some UAC gear with the dhyne scripts. The delay between the ambient scripts is definitely lengthy enough to enjoy but not be constantly drawing attention.

Lochiven

>>Internal Power looked neat but someone tried it and said Rank 5 leaves scars behind.
Ya that was me. I dumped all my points into IP as I was able cause..I thought it would be pretty bad ass to not bleed (staunching) and simply let a wound close up immediately after forming. Leaving a scar behind though still makes it look like I was on the wrong side of the meat grinder however by the end of a few hunts.

>>I went with "tunic" for my robe alters.

I like my isiqiri whose exact description was stolen from the Erithian tea event done by the mentors last year. They do some great work. Solhaven also has some white shirts that are robe armor and very awesome for those just starting out. But if I buy robes with better stats, no telling how many times I"ll be turned down before I can get them to not be robes or vestments.

Lochiven

My monk is now in his early 20s (forget exactly, but likely 20 or 21) and while I enjoy playing him still, I can see where everybody is coming from though. The new shield mans and the wide variety of cmans available for warriors now has me turned to playing my level 22 warrior (mace and shield) now, and I even rolled up another warrior for the TWC and have him closing in on level 10 rapidly. Waiting to get more levels for him to make use of some cmans and armor enhancements. The level 22 warrior is a blast to use shield trample, followed with MSTRIKE equals gravy fun!

The monk is looking a tad boring when compared to other combat alternatives. I love UAC still, and have 2 other classes that I use it with. Well only one of late as I haven't hunted with my Locksmith (level 71) who has brawling, but my bard makes it looks like a cake walk! Sadly, it seems more fun to use UAC on my bard than it does my monk. However, I still pull out the monk for a stint or two a few times a week. At level 20 ish he still quite capable of hunting solo, if it is at times frustratingly slow.

I think many suggestions of opening some cmans for monks are valid, but more importantly some form of exceptions may need to be applied to some to allow them to be useful to a monk as well. Namely disarm and feint shouldn't require a weapon in hand for a monk to utilize them.

--Zizzle

>> I can see feint not requiring a weapon, but disarm has the problem of open hand disarm has always the reward for disarm mastery of a guild skill. That is equal to rank 6 disarm + 1/3 rank

Anybody with rank 5 cman disarm can already disarm barehanded. This doesn't add new capabilities to anybody, just new flexibility.

>>I can see feint not requiring a weapon, but disarm has the problem of open hand disarm has always the reward for disarm mastery of a guild skill. That is equal to rank 6 disarm + 1/3 rank,as disarm is limited to 5 ranks, giving away a skill mastery reward, the reward would have to be replaced, so what let guild disarm masters disarm open handed and end up holding the weapon instead of dropping it would be the only fair replacement do you want that.

Not sure if I posted my suggestion for disarm already but I rather like to see some skills tied together to flesh them out a bit. I propose that for monks (only?) every rank learned of Crowd Press would double as an additional rank of disarm, provided you have at least one. This would be for offensive purposes only and if one needed the defense against a disarm they should train in the CMan Disarm skill accordingly.
I feel this limiting factor would have to be there so that the weapon users that do use crowdpress aren't in essence getting an entirely maxed disarm skill for the 2 CM points rank 1 disarm would cost.

Lochiven

Aluvius is speaking for himself of course.

Gave up the monk after the whining got UAC changed for armor/shield and eventually nerfed for monks - frankly it made the monk character one dimensional and pretty boring. Plus rogues and warriors can do UAC quite a bit better now (no empirical evidence, just from playing several of my square characters fixskilled over to UAC) than monks. Although on Lnet I still get called out for being that character. He was traded away. The overall class was an example of congressional fiat. A GREAT starting idea and beginning implementation, watered down and changed to be almost unrecognizable and stale due to compromise and caving in by the powers that be.

-player of Oritori Martinae, and others.