Talk:Beginner's guide to playing a monk

I have capped a UAC monk, and a UAC rogue. There's a lot of experience behind my observations. I've hunted in the 70s on both sides of a warrior/monk partnership as well as a long running monk/sorcerer partnership that eventually broke down in the 90s because the monk was just impossible to play in a group. There's no one in the game comes close to the amount of group hunting I've done as a monk at the higher levels.

Weapon use as a monk is not supported by the design, this is fact. Look at the CMan list. Look at the changes that have been made to it in the years since monk release. Even a CMan which thematically is perfect for monks, Whirling Dervish, is not allowed to monks because its for weapons and weapon use is not supported for monks.

That UAC has to be used from ambush to be effective in multiplayer situations is fact. Open UAC requires set up before you can land a solid enough blow to get experience from it. Go out in a like level group and they will be fried while you are still clear, because the critters never last long enough for you to get a solid blow in and they are getting full credit for most critters while you are getting 10-25% credit for your setups and nicks at decent position. Ambush UAC allows the first attack on a critter to do substantial damage. There's a huge difference between a combat system designed to deliver a potentially deadly blow at time=0 and one that is designed to require 6s worth of setups. Solo in an empty hunting ground you have that time, group hunting you don't. Its negotiable with a partner at lower levels, but approach cap and they don't have the time to give you because their safety depends on killing fast.

That monks lack important functionality is fact. Every other class gets abilities for use in a multitarget environment. Where's the equivalent of ewave, trample, area warcries, mass calm, censure, major fire etc. etc. etc. for monks? Its not there. Fact. Its recognised as an important functionality and other squares have had major boosts to it in pretty much every slice of development they've had since well before the release of monks, but monks were released without it and have had no development for it.

If SIMU decides to support weapon use for monks, then weapon use being mutant becomes opinion, at the moment its no more supported for monks than it is for empaths. There are generic abilities that can be applied to weapon use, but get to a high enough level and you run out of them.

People coming to the game fresh would expect that classes are equal to one another. Monks aren't. Monks aren't just designed to be more complex they are designed to be underpowered compared to other classes. People coming new to the class deserve fair warning of this. FACT.

Reminder to please sign talk page comments with ~~~~ I really hope the powers that be take your comments into serious consideration. If monks were made to explicitly be played with UAC, perhaps they should get a unique UAC move (or two) that addresses the shortcomings you state. Time and time again I hear rogues are superior to monks in UAC. Overall I get the feeling from GM posts that monks were released for the sake of releasing monks, because RSN had to happen at some point. It seems that there's a base there that can be worked with, but the profession is seriously lacking. VANKRASN39 (talk) 10:11, 13 February 2015 (CST)