Monks and the recent AGI nerfFollow

I don't play a monk, but from my understanding of the situation, the AGI factor was scaled wrong from the beginning allowing monks and scouts to tank mobs if very high level by pumping their AGI very high. The purpose of AGI is to help in avoidance. To counter this "fix" you should still concentrate on AGI for the avoidance factor, but go for raw AC items if you want to be an effective tank.

AGI was a bonus to Scouts and Monks as they could only wear medium armor. Up until now, it didn't matter what armor they wore as long as they pumped their AGI to an insane value. Monks did not get nerfed, nor did scouts, instead they fixed an exploit in combat calculations which allowed for ridiculous tanking ability.

Something that must be understood is that while monks/bruisers are part of the Fighter class, they are the lesser of the 6 types in terms of damage absorbing ability. However, they are the highest in damage output. Just as base class roles are differentiated, so are the sub class roles.

Fighters are divided into basically 3 main categories: Warrior, Knight, and Brawler. Each one is a degree of seperation from the next. Warriors are the meat of a group, they take the damage that the other two cannot. With that in mind, they also dish out the least about of damage of the three class divisions.

Knights, are a good balance of damage input and damage output. We cannot take near the hits a warrior can, and we cannot output as much damage as a brawler.

Brawlers, while able to do faster, more disrupting damage, cannot take the beating that a plate wearing fighter can.

To me this is the way it should be. We are all, as fighters, capable of tanking for a group geared to our levels. Within this realm, each division of the base class is more capable in one area than the other, or in the case of crusaders, more well-rounded and across-the-board even in all departments.

For example, brawlers, to my knowledge get faster attacks, and more stunning, knockdown attacks than a warrior, allowing them to prevent attacks from even getting off at the rate they would to a warrior. Less attacks getting off, means less hits incoming.

Monks WILL without doubt take more damage from single hits than a warrior or cruisader, however it is not the damage you should be concerned with, it is the amount of times you get hit.

Use your ailities and self buffs (i.e. cruisaders: Knights Stance - SK: Zarn's Aura and the lvl 30 upgrade). These buffs enhance your class-types main defensive/offensive aspects.

As I have mentioned, I do not play a brawler type, and I do not have a want or need to, I love playing a ShadowKnight. So my best advice is to experiment with your armor/weapons, and abilities.

Might want to get together with a few monks and experiment with different things. Try buffing yourself using different self abilities/spells, and see how that works out for you.

not really, see where they are talkin about is where monk or scouts were gettin mass buffed like 150+ agi added on an tankin fights like 10 levels over the pt and never even being able to be hit. monks are still great tanks if they have the agility and instead of really haveing a healer they have a warder since wards only go down when they eat hits, thus with a rarely bein hit monk being warded they might still never take a hit. so what they did was kinda put a ceiling on how much excessive buffin would help out. atleast thats what i was read it as, and from what ive seen monks still damn good tanks with someone who can cast wards

i shouldnt even hafta explain it. but pre-patch your grandma could be the person tankin those fights and it wouldnt have mattered. i used monks an scout class as they already have higher agi, so for those that like to over analyze ****, im sorry i wasnt as clear

Crap. I didn't mean to say that monks should be able to tank mobs so far over their level. I meant that some of the encounters that scouts were tanking should have been tankable by monks but not scouts. That was the problem as I understood it.

Monks are good tanks but with lack of good taunts they are better as a damage dealet over time.

Well, I got some more experience with this issue last night. As a 17 monk, I found myself the main tank in a Blackburrow group with two scouts, a cleric and a shaman. We flat out rolled through that zone. We took out the Captain/Commander/Hero rooms a few times each without breaking much of a sweat. Occasionally one healer would run out of power healing me, but for the most part, I heard complaints that they weren't even able to use the cool new instant heal (or some other new healing spell/skill) they had just gotten recently, as they were largely unnecessary.

Later, I joined another group that was in need of a healer, so I logged my 16 cleric alt instead. This group consisted of a cleric (me), crusader, brawler, scout and summoner. I think the crusader was 17 and the brawler 18. It was no contest. The crusader ran me out of power in no time when he tanked, often causing me to draw aggro keeping him healed, while the monk could tank much more effectively. When the summoner left the group, we pretty much had to have the brawler do all the tanking, because the crusader just didn't have the staying power for the longer fights caused by our lessened damage output.

Bottom line, I don't see any issues at all with brawler AGI resulting from the changes. It remains to be seen how this will parse out for actual monks at later levels.

On a side note, the upcoming increases to heavy armor mitigation will be a welcome change for the plate class tanks, I'm sure. ;)