Somethin' up with low level monk?

Been messing around a bit after seeing that there appear to be some changes to monk.. however something seems a bit out of whack!

Monk from level 1 to 11 get zero attack skills.. or skills of any kind besides Evasive Style, Foresight, and Ki Blast. I get the impression there should be some quest series from Hasera with some explanation of New Stuff (tm) and whatnot which I presume will be abilities and all.. but if it's supposed to be available to a monk from levels 1-11, it isn't for some reason!

School levels are warrior 10 and monk 11, and that's it. I did her kill beetles and her kill spiders quests both (albeit it a bit difficult-ly given the lack of abilities!) in hopes that something would open up.

I am on a free account at the moment, if that makes any difference with her offering her quest.

Edit: After digging around a bit it looks like they don't get ANY sort of.. anything really until 20, now? That's pretty rough, considering. :( Also surprised to see none of the disciples seem to have any fancy access to this newfangled stuff. Ah well, neat idea anyhow!

Monk at levels below 20 does get some offensive abilities including: Ki Strike at 1, Critical Strike at 6, Stunning Blow at 16, Coordinated Strike at 18, and Ki Strike 2 at 18. However, the new Monk school really opens up at level 20 with Combat Trance and One With The Wind.

And a little extra feedback.. the monk npc you're supposed to fight for the first monk initiate quest - after the beat up the wood golem thing.. pretty much instantly one-shots a character anywhere close to level 20 via pummel, can't even survive long enough to do anything, and foresight didn't save me. :( He hits for about 150 three times right after a 70+ damage ki strike, which is a insta-kill for most that level I imagine.

I like that it uses the combo system that was tested out a while back, but it's an utter slog/chore without the chain strikes or anything else pre-20. Critical does very low damage with unarmed/wraps, coordinate is barely-normal damage, and ki strike is more a debuff than damage. I could see the whole monk stance thing opening up at 10 personally, but 20 is pretty rough.

Just another quick snippet - I really think fleshing out monk was a great idea, and some similar love (with elemental nuances) would make all the disciples a lot more interesting! While having a bolt or blast was handy, it never felt like it really made up for what you got with monk (and some abilities, i.e. the ice disciple's frost buff punch, felt a bit redundant next to dispirit/ki blast/etc.)

The swapping between the two stances can be a bit confusing due to the abilities showing up in the general category, and thus being hard to find at first, and I had trouble getting much text from Hasera as guidance besides the pop-up window quest text. None the less, it's a lot of sprucing-up for monk and I'd love to see more of the same!

I want to follow up on what Losian said about Miew Keng (the apprentice you need to fight after the wood golem), the said NPC hits WAAAAAY to hard and has an inordinate amount of HP for any character not over leveled by like 10 to handle. I'm level 21 and can't even get my chain off before dying almost immediately to a pummel (which does a lot more damage than my own, even though I'm supposedly a higher level monk than the apprentice).

The fight should be challenging to be sure, but I've been thoroughly trashed four times now and had to stop because my death points started to add up. Miew Keng's health needs to be reduced and his damage brought down on par with that of an actual 20th level character. Otherwise it's just a fight someone needs to leave the area and level five times in order to actally be competitive in.

For a little more clarification, Miew Keng just killed me in one shot with a Pummel consisting of 156, 147, 150 damage. Conversely, my pummels typically deal less than half that (around 60x3). Additionnaly, Miew Keng can automatically use Pummel, without actually having to use the other two attacks in the chain, so more often than not he can kill you with his opener before you can even use a single ability. It's incredibly frustrating.

As someone who has tried to do these monk quests. The fights and quests can be quite HARSH. You have to add too many potions and enhancements just to survive. The last fight was equal to any Epic my ancient dragon has ever fought. My ancient dragon could not survive the last fight and I stopped there.

I want to bring this up again, as I just attempted to do the apprentice trial (the second trial) with my Monk. I purposefully over leveled (I'm 44th level, the quest can be attempted at 30th) and still had my a$$ handed to me by the disciple I need to fight. The damage that they deal is over DOUBLE what I can deal, and even running with my most powerful defensive abilities going, I get virtually one shot. Also, looking at my damage logs, I see that the disciple does not actually use the "follow up" before using the "closer". They simply go from the "opener" to immediately use the "closer", which saves them a few seconds and makes their attacks faster than mine could ever be.

I'm not entirely certain why these disciples are so insanely strong. It's very much overkill, especially if someone nearly 15 levels higher than the encounter is getting destroyed. I would strongly encourage that the disciples have their damage halved and brought down to the level of the player. Make it a fair fight, I mean jeez, I feel like Hasera owes me a drink.

What lvl Armour were you wearing, were you buffed with pots and spells, wearing the correct hand wraps ?I've done these quests a few times now and never had a problem apart from the final one (which is ment to be hard that's why it tells you to bring friends)

I was wearing the highest tier armor available to me, it wasn't teched out except for a dodge increase on my boots. I don't use handwraps, I saw a marked decrease in my damage when I used them last, so I haven't tried them since. I believe I had a potion of strength running, but no other "outside" buffs. I was using the Monk's self buffs of regeneration, the passive dodge stance, I use evasive stance and flow like water as well as foresight when I need to.

I only have monk levels with this character, no other classes save the initial 10 in warrior. That could be a factor. My biggest issue is the damage the disciples do. It's completely unrepresentative of anything a Monk of that level could ever hope to achieve. It would still be a decent fight if they did the damage of a player monk of that level, I don't see why that would be a problem. Over 2x the damage of the player as well as the ability to skip a step in the chain makes this fight overkill. I shouldn't have to go over the top and get the best teched gear and a massive amount of buffs in order to do a simple quest, the rewards for which (while cool) are relatively mediocre.

It only gets worse. As you level up and do the monk's quests, you will have a much harder time fighting the quest subject. The next to last quest in monk is where you fight yourself. This would not be so bad if it was an exact copy of yourself. The copy looked like me in most ways except hit points. I was fighting as a human and had about 2500 hit points. My copy had 25000 hit points. I would love to be able to have 25000 hit points. That fight was not fair at all due to the extra hit points my copy had. The last fight is with the ghost cat on that island. This fight is about equal to any epic fight I have ever been involved in. The problem I had and so did the 3 others who were fighting with me is we could NOT hit the monster. I was monk lvl 100 with a lvl 100 gnome as a Elemental Archer. I had 2 ancient dragons with me also, one was a fighting dragon and the other was a spell dragon. None of us ever hit the monster (ghost cat) for 1 hit point. The gnome and I both died and the 2 dragons finally just left out of frustration. I will never try that again. The developers went too far with these fights. But as one of the developers is fond of saying, I just adjusted that bi-ped school to make it better. Yep sure did. Slimey on Order

I wanted to let you know we recognize your concerns and I've added a task for the team to look into the difficulty. I don't have any ETA for this or any conclusions at this time, but I appreciate your patience.

Thanks Amon, we appreciate it. I want to reiterate that the class is fantastic, just these fights are overkill.

I can't speak for the lower level quests, though I wouldn't be surprised if the disciples got stats that are way above their level lol.

I can however for the last 2 quests; The one where you fight yourself didn't seem particularly difficult at all for me? As for the one where you fight the Illusion of Hasera and get rewarded with the main material for the Epic weapon: Dark Tiger's Grasp, it was difficult yes, but not impossible and I managed without any help after 2 fails. With some of the newer changes it should be a few times easier than it was at the time. Preparation is key.

It *is* an epic quest, for an epic weapon still too. That ghost *is* equal to the likes of Daknor & Fafnir honestly, just hits faster & stuns more often but at the same time she's a lot squishier & has no adds. I can't say that I missed much attacks though, looking through my recording I only missed during 2 attacks near the end of the fight.
Are you sure your gear is up to date for your level & that you had sufficient preparation? I can't imagine it being hard at all with 4 people honestly... Especially since your hit rate should be a lot higher when the target is focused on another player.