Following on from a post I made to guilds.monks...

We've now got unarmed parry, and a small reduction to dodge. But unarmed parry
doesn't work with shields. So, without having a lot of levels from another
guild, we can't use shields to protect ourselves from crits without loosing
the ability to parry. As we have quite a lot less hp than other tank
background/guild combinations I find that I can't stand in the front row of a
party if the party is tackling monsters of the same size or bigger than those
that I can normally solo.

Please, please, please can we have some protection against crits.

Perhaps if unarmed parry skill provided this protection along with its normal
effect. The more you parry the more crit level reduction you get. This could
also be effected by the vital points skill, which at the moment is next to
useless for monks.

normal could to Heh, so you want the full benefits of a shield without a shield, because
monks got unarmed parry they didn\'t have before?

And your whining about less hp is useless because crimsons (for example)
don\'t get tarmalen to go with.

Maybe you\'d consider it fair for a one guild monk but suggesting these
you should also consider what it would cause with a combo. Your idea would
make monktarmas for example unstoppable compared to other tank guilds when
it comes to tanking big monsters.

I don't think it would actually make monk tarmas that much more use against
large mobs. How would they be much more powerful?

I accept that tarma levels are very useful, and I'm not saying that monks
should be made into considerably better tanks.

I could use a shield now, but then I'd be defensively worse off than before
unarmed parry was introduced - cos dodge is lower. And what is the benefit of
allowing crit reduction without a shield? Seems that you get one MA attack
rather than a shield bash. This isn't going to make monks much more powerful.
Remember that there are templar monks out there - they get monk benefits with
parry and riposte.

But I do understand your point - if a monk could stand in the front row like a
nomad tank then monks would become the tank of choice for many occasions.
However, I see this as only being the case for much higher level players.

The main point of my post was simply that as things stand I seem to be better
off carrying a shield and not using unarmed parry (not being able to). Whereas
before the tune I would have at least had some more dodge.

Surely it's not unreasonable to ask for a skill or some such that allows monks
to be able to get some shield type of benefit without loosing some of their
defensive ability?

Monk/Templar -tarmas are already extremely good tanks, and in most
occasions better than their Crimson counterparts. Due to the healing
abilities. Only very few monsters that hit Extremely hard favor Crimsons
as tanks due to their high hp-max.

Monktarma and Templartarma are both class-combos that already can tank
pretty much any monster while casting heal spells while doing it. They
most definitely do NOT need any upgrades defense-wise.

I think I was just repeating what many people already said. If you really
feel like you lost a lot when 20 dodge was taken away from you, get it
back via items. You have two held slots crimsons don\'t have, and
dodgestaves are easy to come by. And with those two staves you have
100dodge/100parry but no crit-reduction, but you do have heal spells (as
doubleguild), that is Extremely Powerful.

OK fair enough. I can understand that shield + parry would make templar a bit
redundant.

I just can't see the point of unarmed parry at the mo. Seems to me that a
shield is more beneficial when fighting tough mobs than the extra defense from
parry (when you have lowish hp).

I like being monk at the mo because it's more fun to solo than a nomad guild -
I don't think I'm at all better than a solo tank though. It's just that as a
lower level monk it's a shame to be so totally useless in all but the most
newbie party. Someone said on the monk channel that monks are always quite
solitary fantasy characters and I agree with that, but it's a shame that my
monk skills are just not very useful in a party. Of course if anyone has any
suggestions of what I may be doing wrong in this respect you are quite welcome
to mail be advice.

I'd just like to see a way for monks guild to be possible to use as either a
reasonable front row party member or useful in some other way in a party -
just the monk part that is - not by getting lots of other levels.

At the mo I'm just pissed off that such a large proportion of the crits I
receive take me straight out of the fight.

bit that a defense from nomad guild - just that as a most quite that my any welcome either a - crits I Monks make excellent solo/offtanks, they hit decently and IP is good, they
don\'t run out of EP fast and they have means to regenerate them, and
with just a few levels in tarmalens they can effectively heal themselves
in solo/offparties.

There\'s nothing wrong with monks, I have no idea why you are trying to
say it\'s a bad thing you now have unarmed parry. You suddenly get a
100% defense skill you didn\'t have before and you see that as a bad
thing? I\'m sure mages would be happy to get 100% unarmed parry and I
doubt many of them would whine \'waaaaaaaaah we want regular parry to
get use of a shield!\'. Just don\'t understand why whine that a huge
upgrade is not huge enough.... this totally eludes me.... and because of
this I\'m probably repeating myself like mad.

I'm not trying to argue that the addition of unarmed parry was not a nice
upgrade. For many monks I'm sure it was. I don't want to appear to be whining
about dodge/parry whatever not being enough for monks.

Really my only point is that I find that the size of crits, even from quite
small mobs, makes me no use as a front row party member. After reading the
various replies that have been sent I can see that giving monks more
protection wouldn't work. Not that I was very surprised, I expected that a
simple addition of crit protection would make monks and monk combos a little
powerful.

Maybe more powerful monks work quite well as offtanks but lower level monks
like me just don't have the hp to be front row party members. I'm not looking
for a major upgrade - just a way in which I can be more useful in a lowish
level party

and monks had no parry before so if you use shield you get old system back, no
shoeld you get parry, alas, an upgrade? and you want more?

---
Blux


---
Blux

it seems to me that defense sense is the skill that ought to take care of crit
protection. The more aware you are of your opponent the less likely you are
gonna eat that haymaker. Or, add a seperate skill. Personally, I think all
monk skills should take minus when you start wielding weps etc. But, hey, I
am pure like that