Posted by: GothicSaint



Your first post saying monks are SOLID CLASS in terms of power....



Correct, but that's only one variable when it comes to class balance. In terms of power, we feel that monks are doing pretty well. But in terms of build and play style diversity, resource management and budgeting, and offensive passives, we feel that there's still room for improvement. There's a lot that works for monks right now, but there are definitely areas that could be better.



Posted by: Kegsta



Oh, and what is with this "we can't just tweek numbers to ballance the class" do you read your own patch notes? what was the last game mechanic change you made that did not involve either "doubling it" or cutting it in half? WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN THERE? of course you can tweek numbers to buff weak skills. ugh all you ever do with your patches is change a variable in a formula and now all of a sudden you can't? who actually believes this load?



I think you may have misunderstood. The kinds of changes we're currently considering for monks (the changes we feel would best benefit the class) go beyond simply upping one number or lowering another. The examples Vaeflare provided for Dashing Strike and Lashing Tail Kick fall into this category. Adjusting numbers is fairly easy to do, but redesigning how a skill or skill rune works is much more complex. While we still may tweak some skill values in the future, right now we're looking at changes that require a little more development time.



As for "what was the last mechanic change you made that did not involve either 'doubling it' or cutting it in half"? From 1.0.5, the changes to Companion and Sentry are great examples, and we're redesigning some runes this patch too. From 1.0.4, witch doctor pet improvements were pretty notable. We also changed the format for how damage over time is dealt for a number of skills, as well.



Posted by: Teufelhunde



Ohh I get it, you mean nerfing OWE, right?



What Wyatt said previously still holds true:



In terms of passives, it's pretty clear at this point that One With Everything is considered a mandatory passive for all monks. While "mandatory" passives aren't great, making any major change would do more harm than good, particularly when a) incoming damage is so high and b) monks need the extra durability in order to survive. Additionally, as a result of this passive, monks are more heavily tied to their current gear, so making changes to One With Everything would have very noticeable negative repercussions to the gear monks have invested in.



While we'd prefer that there wasn't an "absolutely mandatory" passive, we're going to let this one ride for now. If we do try to make changes we'll ideally do it in a way that doesn't invalidate the passive, doesn't hurt monk survivability, and doesn't undermine the gear people are currently wearing.



We don't have any changes planned for OWE right now. That may change, but if it does, we'd still want our approach to be as outlined above.