Monk Players, what do you think about these changes?

Monk
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I am currently in the process of creating feedback in visual form, but before I post the final version of it, I would like to hear your feedback on the changes that I propose, so I eventually can make certain adjustments to it in the final version.

So let me hear your thoughts.

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Monk

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This kind of change to the 2piece bonusof the Uliana set would solve an issue that the build is struggling with since a long time.

Instead of the third hit of your Spirit Generators applying the unruned version (aka the useless version of EP) of Exploding Palm on all enemies hit, it could buff your next use of Exploding Palm by increasing its damage and allowing it to be applied on additional enemies, which means that also your chosen rune would get applied in an area and nut just the unruned version.

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Exploding Palm’s on death explosion damage multiplier increased from 100% to 300%.

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On top of that, as a QoL change the base version of Exploding Palm (and with that all of its runes) could also hit the initial target and 2 additional nearby enemies instead of just the initial target, and the Shocking Grasp rune could increase that number to 3 (which currently is just 1 additional enemy).

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This chance to Flying Dragon is not totally necessary, but I thought it would be neat.

Flying Dragon could not just double your attack speed, but also increase your damage while the buff is active.

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So what are your thoughts on these proposed changes?

Any adjustments or improvements you could think of?

Ty!

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The main issue I have with Uliana / SSS / EP is the lack of single-target damage so whilst it can be very easy to clear elites with trash, it’s really, really slow to finish off a lone elite and guardian fights, if they have no adds, take way too long. I’d like to see something that increases the damage of EP if it hits 3 or fewer targets.

It’s a fun build. I played it for an entire season a couple of seasons ago but it’s far too frustrating to spawn a guardian in good time but then be unable to kill it after minutes of hitting it.

2 Likes
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Gungdo Gear could add another 300% increased damage to Exploding Palms on-death explosion when the explosion only hits 3 or less enemies (or even 600% additional damage) and the Lion’s Claw could increase the damage of Seven Sided Strike by e.g. 800% or 777% as well, for some additional single target damage.

Would that be enough?

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Make it 777% to stay thematically correct.

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Well, if it is balanced, then yes :smile:

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Does it stack? (I mean the additional dmg delt when you hit with the third attack)

I would not do too much op stuff. I somewhere told that uliana is currently round 8 lvl below swk tr (for me). But I used shenlong setup (non season). Uliana has better dmg scaling than tr has, so to get almost on line with tr you would only need gungdo to be a +300%.
But to be honest I would love to have uli and all other monk builds be on the same level and competative with other classes builds. so giving it some more power would be welcome.

The FD additional dmg is very welcome for generator and ltk build. Both are far behind. For generator this might be enough to compete with tr (dmg will be enough, toughness won’t). For ltk there needs to be much more buffs, dmg and defense.

The change on ep runes i don’t understand the background. But I’d welcome to get not only the ep doom when you apply sss but as well the rest of the dot (lags incoming).

All in all I like the ideas, numbers can be adjusted a bit but they are not tooo much to the moon :smiley:

1 Like
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No, it would not stack.

If the buff on Gungdo Gear from 100% to 300% is enough as you say, then the 2piece bonus on the Uliana set can also simply be:

“Every third hit of your Spirit Generators causes your next Exploding Palm to be applied on 10 additional enemies within 15 yards.”

My intent for putting a 200% damage bonus on top of that was to give players more of an incentive to use their Generators before applying EP, but the increased spread would eventually already be enough, dunno.

I am someone who primarily plays LoD build, because sadly there is only a single set build that I somewhat like (which is the UE MS DH), and I actually like to play LoD builds that use Exploding Palm, but it just applying on one single enemy feels kinda weak or at least disapointing.

So my proposed changes to EP are mostly for people that use EP in a LoD build.

There would be a way to get rid of the lag and that is to redesign how Area Damage works.

First, Area Damage only hits up to e.g. 5 additional enemies in a 10-15 yards radius instead of all enemies within a 10 yards radius. To compensate for that overall damage loss, the damage of an Area Damage hit can be increased.

Secondly, Damage over Time Effects (like Locust Swarm, Rend and also the DoT from Exploding Palm) and Lingering Ground Effects (like the scorched ground from Meteor, Blizzard, Earthquake, Acid Cloud, etc) should no longer trigger Area Damage at all.

That would significantly reduce the lag.

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Ouch, Clueso that is an interesting idea for the problems that area damage can create. Just don’t forget that some builds would become severely gutted with a change like that. Take WW rend as an example were rend is the actual damage dealer.
As for the exploding palm, could second or third explosion help out?

1 Like
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I know, but these would simply require a buff on the set or a legendary or the skill itself.

For example, my idea to buff Dame over Time Skill is by giving them an additional effect, like:

“Enemies under the effect of Rend/Locust Swarm/Haunt/etc” take 20% more damage from your attacks"

Sure, that number can be different and also can be adjusted, but you get the point. It should buff itself as well and the multiplier should be multiplicative, rather than additive.

The same things goes for many Lingering Ground Effects, e.g. “Enemies take 20% more damage while they are in Blizzard’s area of effect.”.

Sure, 20% is not much compared to the loss of Area Damage, but it is a bit, and you also need to keep in mind that now there is one more affix for these builds and that the rest can simply be adjusted via buffs to sets and/or legendaries.

For example, the 6 piece set of Wrath of the Wastes can be increased from 10.000% to 30.000% or the 2 piece set can increase the duration of Rend to 45 seconds instead of just 15 (which will be massive damage buff in combination with Ambo’s Pride). And if not enough, then buff further.

It kinda would be antithetical to what Exploding Palm actually does, which is exploding an enemy. Once the enemy is exploded, there is nothing left to explode, and it also would cause more Area Damage procs, so I’d rather go with an additional damage multiplier or increasing one of the ones that are already there.

1 Like
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This is a bad change as it removes the possibility to apply the palm efficiently without having both EP & a generator on your bar. 2p Uliana is currently widely used to apply a physical DoT (aka bleed) on many targets to proc pain enhancer.

Also, it does not particularly solve the issue of mythic rythm being a pain to maintain (unless it is an implied change, but even if it’s implied in the wording, it should be made obvious on your “changelog”).

Gungdo - it’s not a mechanic change so whatever floats your boat

EP mechanic change - How would that work with mythic rythm ? Anyway, it doesn’t seem that needed of a change so I don’t really understand why it’s needed. Your palms already get spread very fast with both gundgo and 2p uliana, and for non uliana builds like Inna EP, you are aiming for very specific low health enemies so applying a couple more random ones is completely useless.

Flying dragon - Probably should be changed to always double attack speed (maybe double attack speed for 5 seconds after dodging an attack or something). I would not put a damage buff that big on it though, because it basically renders all other daibos useless (for example flow of eternity is far from giving 300% damage). It would become like the wizard’s deathwish. Not great for build diversity. 300% on “martial” attacks (generators, LTK) would make it a bit better at least.

Regarding the single target “issue” of uliana, I think a good way to change that would be that each consecutive hit of SSS on a single target would increase your damage by 100%. So on a single target that you hit 14 times, the first explosion would deal “normal” damage, the second explosion would deal twice that amount, third 200% (×3), and so on. If there are two targets, you might get lucky and explode the first one 7 times in a row then the second one 7 times in a row, or get unlucky and do 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 (…) 14 times.
100% is probably too high of a number balance wise btw.

What I mostly see is that you’re proposing damage buff but no toughness buff. Monk is quite squishy, so buffing its damage (while necessary) would accentuate that issue.

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You mean for support builds?

An offensively oriented Uliana build would definitely have EP on the bar, since the third hit does not apply the runed version of EP on enemies, but the only the unruned one.

I think we should focus on the way the set is actually meant to be played first, and since I assume that there is a technical issue that prevents the third hit of a Generator to apply the runed version of EP, my suggestion to solve this is a much easier fix since the code is already there (on the Shocking Grasp rune).

My idea was that since the 2piece bonus is basically doubling down on Mystic Rhythm by giving it another 200% multiplier, this issue would be “solved”.

Or you remove the 200% from my suggested 2piece bonus, and only let Mystic Rhythm work with Secondary Skills.

But the buff is not constantly active.

You first had to write code for that.
The only thing that comes close to that is BotS, but even that had to be re-written.

What do you suggest which items / sets should be buffed in what way?

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Yes, I meant for support build. Support monk is currently dying, and there is nothing in sight to bring either a dps monk or a zmonk back into the 4p meta. I’m not saying it needs to be top of the meta but at least currently it is a tech choice if you need toughness and/or PE proc. If you remove the PE proc, that’s even more of a tech choice.
If at least your change to the 2p was useful, it wouldn’t be too bad. Here, it’s straight-up useless.

Unless MR stops working, players will just use both. Or I’m not sure I understood what you meant ?

The current flying dragon is one of the worst mechanics in the game. Having to rely on a random proc to do damage feels clunky. Making this clunky mechanic even more powerful means it’ll be used more, and more people will get annoyed by it. Because yes, even if “it has to proc”, build guides always go for the best item, and FD would still be the best daibo for an uliana build by far, which would make uliana builds feel worse to play (for example). And as you know, most players tend to blindly follow build guides. Espeically if it says “ok, so you can clear potentially 8 grift level higher if you play flying dragon instead of flow of eternity” (small note at the end of the page : but you’ll have to spend 8 times more keys)

Well, ideally we get new items, but a good candidate would be band of the rue chambers (that’s easy, just make it give DR based on %age of spirit generated, up to 80% for example, so say you have 200 max spirit and in the last 5 seconds you generated through generators 100 spirit, boom you get 50% DR - it would be in addition with its current effect) and some spirit stones. There’s one that empowers inner sanctuary by giving spirit regen while in the sanct, it could be buffed to make IS more easy to fit on your skill bar for example by having a zodiac-like effect on it, maybe even make you get more damage while standing in sanctuary.

1 Like
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What if it applies EP on ALL enemies within xx yards, instead of just 10 additional enemies? I guess that would solve the issue.

I am not a Monk main, though I would like to play a lot more Monk, so I am not familiar with all the background mechanics. You mean that MR is bugged and does not work as intended?

Maybe it can only work for secondary skills instead of all damage dealing spririt spenders.

I see what you mean now.

My intention for this buff was more to make it viable for speed farming or at least for non-GR content.

A possible fix for this would be to give the Flying Dragon e.g. 50% increased weapon damage as a normal magic affix that is not a legendary affix and therefore it would not require the attack speed buff to be active.

What do you think? Is 50% increased weapon damage enough or too much? Which number would be better here to make it viable for non-GR content?

That is interesting.
I could consider to make a mockup / concept art about it sooner or later.

Thanks for mentioning it!

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At the moment, you get the MR after you use your generator 3 times, and then it applies palm to all the mobs hit. One of the mobs hit also get the MR palm, all other palms are non buffed palms. So the gameplay becomes “use generator 3 times, lose MR palm because you applied it on one of the mobs → reuse generator 3 times on the same mobs, you only refresh the palms and not reapply it = you still have MR up → go to a new pack of mob, apply palm manually, it has MR → spread this palm in the rift with gungdo bracers only → all mobs take 40% dmg from MR”

Your change would mean you can no longer do that, unless all mobs get the MR palm applied.
Either way, the 2p change is just bad, there is no reason to change it. It’s working nice as it is currently, except for the MR issue (which could be fixed by simply not applying MR palms with 2p set, or applying only MR palm with 2p set).
But again, you’re asking for a change on something that doesn’t need one. Like, there are way more issues on monk sets than this, for example the 4p raiment set absolutely sucks, making your dash cost 70 (70 ffs !) spirit. You literally have to use ALL RCR, CDR & spirit regen gear to hope keeping your dashing strike cost within reasonnable values. That’s something that needs to be adressed if you want a dashing strike build to be viable. Or how mystic allies, which used to be used to proc palms in the old Inna EP build now do pathetic damage compared to the palm, which means you can no longer play the build because it takes forever to explode a single mob, but once it does explode, everything just vanishes => buff items that buffs mystic allies.

Again, if you want to make FD more viable you need to make the double attack speed more reliable (ex: proc on dodge) and if you want it to make it actually used, it needs to be the BiS in a build that is played. Currently, gen monk absolutely sucks to play especially as a speed farm build (because shenlong is so clunky, although having 100% uptime on flying dragon and some more toughness & resource regen with band of the rue chambers would alleviate this), and LTK monk (my favorite build, btw) is just too weak to compete with TR/WoL/Uliana. So, if you buff flying dragon, which is already used in LTK, so that it makes LTK viable you’ll probably see it used more.
My point is that, too little damage, it’s not gonna be used, and too much damage, it’s always going to be used, and I don’t think there is a single value where it’s gonna be perfectly balanced because it depends on the strength of the alternatives for other builds.

1 Like
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The easiest change to that would be be to let MR not work with EP in general, but buff a legendary by ~40% (or 20%, since you also can choose another Passive) to compensate for that.

So it is not that the 2piece is not applying runed versions of EP even if you have chosen one, but rather that is does runed versions of EP, but simply not with the MR Buff and MR only works with applying EP manually.

Am I understanding this correctly?

I based my redesign on the knowledge that I had back then that the problem with the Uliana set is that due to bug, the 2piece only applies the unruned version of EP, even when you have EP on the skill bar with a rune choosen.

So I tried to circumvent that bug, while still remaining somewhat true to the original way it worked, by basically giving letting every third hit of a generator buffing your next EP and spreading it to a large amount of enemies. That would have worked more easily since the cod for Shocking Grasp is already in the game and you simply had to copy it into the buff and adjust a few numbers.

That would have been easier to do than to go through the code of Mystic Rhythm, EP and the Uliana set and finding the bug first.

That was my reasoning for that redesign, if that makes sense.

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Uliana 2 pc applies whatever rune you have selected or it applies un-runed EP if you don’t have the skill on your bar. An easy test is to see what color EP is applied when you use Uliana 2 piece. With no skil selected, it will be a red EP. If you select a rune, then the EP will be the corresponding runes color (not as apparent for the fire or physical runes since they are shades of red but cold lightning and holy are very different). As Kikaha stated, when you use the Uliana 2 piece to apply EP to a pack of 10 mobs for example, 1 of those 10 will have a MR buffed EP and the rest are normal EP. The only way to overwrite a non-MR EP is to apply EP manually, hence the wonky snapshot mechanics. That is why you generate a MR buff and dash or run to a new pack and apply EP manually (that EP will have MR on it). Then when you SSS, the EP detonates and Gungdo Gear spreads a MR buffed EP to mobs in the area. Once everything around you has EP applied (a MR EP), then any further uses of Uliana 2 piece will not overwrite the MR buffed EP with a non-MR buffed EP. It can be a pain to get the snapshot mechanics working properly, but a 40% multiplier is not insignificant.

2 Likes
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Thanks for clearing up my misconception of that issue.
I understand the issue now.

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Based on all your suggestions, I came up with these changes:

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^^Gungdo Gear EP Explosion Damage increased from 300% to 400% to make up for the loss of Mythic Rhythm (it is a 30% increase, and then you can also pick up another Passive Skills, so a 30% increase should be enough).

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^^ this mechanic seems easier to implement than getting Damage Reduction for every x Spirit spend and it still fit the theme of the ring.

Then also revert the changes to the Uliana 2piece set and Flying Dragon.
Based on your feedback, this should be better.

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At the end of the day, those posts are very bad feedbacks. Let developers create interesting items and mechanics.
What you should focus on in feedback threads are what issues exists with builds and broad way to fix them.
Ex: gen monk is too squishy, increase its toughness
Ex2: Inna EP lacks single target damage to kill bosses and even trigger the first EP explosion. Buff mystic allies.

The way the devs decide to make things, either by buffing sets/items or creating new things should be up to them. I still think they’re doing a great job at it (cf ambo’s pride for example).

Especially things like your band of the rue chambers… I mean, currently gen monk is already using unity (or has no space for it), so your BotRC would just leave you as squishy as before, with a bit more spirit regen (if you find a way to fit it in, which you wouldn’t for 50% spirit regen). Did it fix anything ? Not really.

1 Like
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they rely on feedback and already it happened that they put the communities feedback into the game, so some of the Barbarian and DH changes of the last few patches.

No one is saying or demanding that they should do it a certain way. Most of us, including me are offering suggestions, not demands.

Increase the damage reduction from 50% to 60% or even to 80%, like the Barbarians Band of Might.

What I am doing here in this is not giving feedback to the devs, but rather asking the Monk community about what they would think about this if I would give this feedback.

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I have no idea why rue chamber is a ring you are thinking about since the additional spirit reg ist not really needed. Even on Shenlong specs the generator is regenerating spirit fast enough if played correctly. But if you add some dr, then make it 80% :slight_smile:
This is not ment offensive, its just a wasted stat on the ring (the spirit reg) in my opinion. I’d like some really new here like a epi related ring that makes it last forever, giving each rune (and then change fire to +50% dmg) or something like that or around the dash, also giving all runes and/or some dr with at least 60 or more preferred 80%. Right now only the tr build has enough toughness for 130+ (if you have less than 4k para). Dash is not part of it. Or as suggested often times have a dr buff of 60% and 80% if epi is not running. There are so many possibilities.

tl,dr: All monk builds are still too squishy :wink: