Some heavy duty APU rebalancing (PVE)

Inspired by wargolem, i'd like to share some ideas I had the other day about the balancing issue. Actually, i do adress PVE, while i will only strife onto some PVP issues.

I did not play an MONK for a long time of period, although i tried some times to gather on. The last encounter was on the testserver, when i tried to get a hybrid up and running, because i could not believe it wasn't possible anymore. Well it is possible, but not that comfortable if you can barely use blessed spells with like 30 % of the power. The main reason i did not fulfill this setting, wasnt the PPU spells. Those are fine if i do not think of the shield reduction thingie, which would be another topic.

The main reason for me to play an monk was their ability to do great, fast damage on their enemies. A monk was the most reliable damage dealer after the gentank, that's why it was so irresistible to play. Long time ago it was my favorite character type, which i did play all day long. I hunted warbots with my holy energy halo and did also go after doomreapers, decayed horrors and decayed brutes and even some hoverbots when i had the chance.

This was possible because of
1) the high damage the monk made back then
2) the high frequency without fail
3) no requirement of the line of sight
4) the long range the attacks would work on

All that was changed within an blink of an eye, when suddenly the monk became the most lame class (okay, PE may be even worse atm). Low damage, low frequency cap, line of sight req, pistol-like range, the recticle and last but not least the many failcasts one monk has nowadays.

I really hate this settings, so i did not play an APU for a long time, as i said before, even i really really want to play this character class again, though it's so frustrating.

As i said before i don't talk PVP and i can not tell you about those issues, as i don't do a lot of PVP. For me it's the PVE aspects.

To make this class fun again, there need to be changes:
1) Damage 20 % down
2) Frequency 200 % up
3) Range 200 % up if the recticle still exists or
4) Range 150 % up and loose the recticle for PVE
5) No more failcasts.

To point 5:
There is no way a son of crahn with all it's hightech equipment should fail at all. If i see other weapontypes hit the target for 90 to 95 % of the time, my modules will fail and produce 70 to 80 % hit chances in reality.

Don't get me wrong - i do want this for PVE only. There shall not be Monk'o'Cron again with monks owning all other players. Just let them make the same damage or even higher damage the tank does. Therefore they do have very low constitution and will die kinda fast. It's like the old kamikaze thing: Make the most damage in the shortest amount of time - or die.


The old holy energy halo did heavy damage on a very high frequency with an awesome range.
The new holy energy halo does middle damage on a low frequency with an pistol range.

It's nerfed too much. And i know this is mainly because of the ownage in PVP (although an APU could be killed very fast without a helping PPU at his side, that's what most of the old whiners forgot about). PVP shall be an extra topic. Let it stay the same, i don't blame you.


But please :( Change the PVE experience again. I want fast-paced action, definately NOT a slow creeping up to the enemy while fearing to die before in range to shoot them with 70 to 80 % chance of a hit while hoping that the module will not failcast and being frustrated about the low damage kinda thing.

Just a small big wish from your best customer :)



So it's up to the other users:
Blame me for my idea (explain yourself) or
Agree with me (also explain yourself) or
Bring up your own idea.

Love to see your postings :)

Get rid of the reticle/damage calculation and give them a set of spells that has the equivalent range of a decent rifle so that they can stand a chance of getting out of the way of damage on certain mobs. Problem addressed (not solved) in 2 lines. From there you can look at tweaking things like RoF etc.

The problem with the monk nerf (both PVE and PVP) was that it was too many drastic changes too quickly. One or two of those changes that were implemented may have been enough to balance the class by themselves but not ALL of the changes being brought in at once. For PvP the only thing that really needed to change was the RoF on the Holy Lightning (as that was all anyone used) and POSSIBLY the fire apoc. However this would only be a consequence of the fact that the HL would be less effective.

For PVE - APU for me is the most similar in terms of his stats to the Pistol Spy currently. His range/abilities/equipment/defence all are akin to that of the pistol spy. The great thing about pistol spies is that they have the option (if the pistol range is too tough to cope with) to change to Rifles or even Drones.

I would like to see the APU have a high end set of spells (lances possibly?) that have a nice long range and have a chance of missing/fizzling if the reticle is not closed. I think that this reticle closing = damage thing is terrible. I have never been a fan of that. I do not think that APU should go back to no reticle at all but if they are going to have a chance in PVE they need more range.

The %s you post mean nothing to me. They have no comparison or equivalent. You might as well have just pulled them out of thin air. This is not a flame but trying to be constructive. I am a huge fan of small changes and these small changes - in the short term - in my opinion would go a long way towards bringing the fun back into the class.

I would also like to see Warbot drop rates go back to the old days - this would give APU's a soloable opponent also.

I would also like to see Nannites work a little better than they do currently. This would give APUs some new options for defence/resists.

I would also like to see lots of other things changed that nerf APUs and pistol users generally by proxy but this thread is about monks solely.

I've leveled my apu fully unsupported from sewers til woc5 on terra, and aside from the tank and the droner, it is by far the most effective pve'er currently in play, at least for leveling the fact that its oae is actually more powerful than most tank/drone aoe is a large part of that, but if you actually wait for the recticle to close, the cast will almost never fail (unless ur out of range) and will do damage based on how far the reticle is closed. And the only reason it doesn't work against firemobs is because the firemobs do invisible damage u can't hide from.

in pve, I really don't see any sides that need boosting much, and your percentages would make apu by far the most overpowered pve'er, outdamaging dissy's/healing lights on single targets and outdamaging drones and wockets for aoe... 200% frequency increase with only a 20% damage reduction would make it far too powerful.

in pvp it is another story, but that has been addressed many times before.