Hey Free, its kind of hard for me - maybe I should take the time for that but time is whats missing right now (and got another hardhitter today) and of course that Iām not a native speaker. But thank you for your hints, maybe I could point it out a litte more in future.
As stated above its kind of hard right now but I try to go the short way:
Dmg wise Monk is so much behind other classes (except barb maybe), this is posted on many other threads. I personally can only compare it to a vyr chant build since this is the only non monk build I played lately. I also can compare the performance of me as inna wol monk in a group vs other classes I played with (this are thrones crusader and impale dh) and of course vyr chant (and I got carried with 2-3 runs with a firebird sp wiz before the patch.
In groups, dmg is pretty okish compared to only bk chars (dh, cru) since I can choose gogok (more defense and cdr) and most of the time I play kind of spotter, collector and tk together. During me killing a big group of trash, there are 2-3 elite packs within and the bk typ of players just kill him. Defense wise dh and cru are simply stronger and I have to watch out all time long whereas they are more or less without any problem. We did some grift 120 kills together and had lots of fun. The non fun part is that if you change my pretty well played wol monk against me playin vyr chant (and Iām even not very good in playin that style + my gear is bad) we can simply go 3-5 levels higher. Those buff numbers are oriented on solo play and compared to sorcs. If you buff monk the way it is explained, other classes obviously also need a buff. But these are only numbers to change.
But there is another just very bad thing: Monks got so many defense spells - but on a solo play there is absolutely no room for those skills. All builds are pretty non changable in terms of selected skills, maybe you can switch a bit but if you take any offense skill off you do not do any dmg at all. When cru was top of all lists (I have no idea about the build but it was not thrones), they could easily equip eso gem. I could not since my dmg would be gone then. But those developers think you can use it for defensive options which is simply non accurate. Monks are maybe the squishiest classes of all. We have no defensive ring (use unity if needed but then you can not take part in group play), only swk set has a defensive buff, uliana gets it by using 3 items (belt, shells and unity or leve shoulders) to get defense up. All other styles simply have no defense. This yields almost all players to a wol build since you then play non melee style, even if theoretically ltk is almost even dmg wise and gen is superior. Gen monks also have another issue: 3 passiva have to be there (sti, soul and the ias on generators whose name I forgot). Then you can take only one defensive passive and thats it. And another problem: Since its a 0 cdr build you can not choose any defensive typ of omg button (since its always under cd). The gen build needs a perma cc immunity, all monk builds need that - maybe uliana can go without. WoL and LtK builds get this immunity by the orotz ring which then is mandatory. So gear is almost set then: You almost always need orotz and rorg, choose between coe, unity or ew set? hm, not that difficult since ew set gets you highest boost.
Then there are some things missing: On Kyo blade, scarbringer, cesars bracers, flying dragon (and maybe something I forgot right now) there are some limitations which are simply outdated. Swk set is so bad to play (have you ever tried? there is coe and unity, so no perma epi or f&r set, so no immunity). It needs a change and wol and tr are builds that are originally 2h builds. So why not a 2 hand set for monks with a daibo? Then you need to get over the only 12 caldesan, only 1 weapon with stats thing but hell why not give a hughe 2 h buff for that set. That would be a game changing element. As I said, almost all builds are kind of fun (except gen monk since you always die and you can leave at first enemy with knockback - but if you get over this restriction it can be a fun build), but all builds are squishy. Many people do not beleave since they see healers in a 4 man matchup - but as described above: healers are not monks and vice versa. healers have all defensive skills equipped with lots of loh, lots of hp and so on. A gen monk or an ltk player needs perfect gear and many paragon and many loh on gear to have a chance of not dieing immediately. Uliana is a very fun build, but if you need the mr passive to buff it on an okish lvl dmg wise (solo its just bad compared to wol, in a group its nice but not that much stronger) then there needs to be a possibility to get the buff on your palms AND on all those palms that get distributed by gungdo gear. That point is part of the massage of khord and he is right.
Thats kind of hard to acieve, there is that celtic guy who also has done some deep analysing of builds but no other real high monk player ever seen here. I wouldnāt call me a top monk but Iām on rank 80ish non season eu lb which would be a rank 33 on us lb and I did it with just para 2.6k. Iām also playing with players at around 2-3k para so our analysis is depending on some thoughts, but we can not tell absolutely sure - I can only think of gen monk being playable @6k para because then you can put 3k in vita and use that gen gem (with the heal ability). That sounds kind of crap compared to other classes that just are strong or have the defensive items. I see a 80% reduction ring for sorc or dh, that is stronger than a unity and my desert shroud rune together (which is 75% reduction) in one single item. And I even see non picking players since defense is simply enough. Monks also have e.g. ds with defense rune (but it does no flat reduction) and if you take crystal fist you lose half of your dmg delt (dropping rs on wol or ltk - or even more with other builds as uli, gen or swk wol/ltk and even lon wol/ltk would lose more).
To put it simple: Monks defense is just bad (since there are so many def skills but no way to use them since you can not without dropping lots of dmg).
Solo dmg is bad compared to other classes (except barb maybe)
Some stupid restrictions on gear (kyo, scar, cesar, fd,ā¦)
Little game changing things (2h buff on swk or mr for uliana)
In groups we are put into supp role (Iād take even away defensive skills such that we can not do that job again) since sorc is just better even with bad gear as tk and as a bk (which could be gen or ltk) we do not have enough defense and no possible groupbuffs.
Just if you are interested: I did some vids for our comm to see the difference of playing grift 110 vs 114 vs 118 with an inna WoL monk. As you can see: you should never kill elite packs on higher lvls since you can not kill them. That for example is a stupid limitation - but you chose a tk build. The text is German of course but most of the time I explain what I saw on the hp bar and if I can kill an elite or not. And: 10 Bio in EU are 10 Trio (since we count mio mrd (non existing in us calculus) and then bio. Just if you are uncertain what you see. And sorry but quality is kind of bad but otherwise those vids were 10 gig or so.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uWMRE1UlJ04-oQM83BB65vwNxWu3kghy
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fWXQnW85HlZVUpyZf5mPVzGyvG8ckz9G
Maybe a bit OP for one single item, that wont come.