Guild Wars 2

Using Weapons such as Handwraps, daggers, bows, and staff (yes I know that daggers, and bows don’t fit perfectly but they would definitely need some variety.) Has F1 and F2 abilities, F1 a more group support stance, ex. one skill could be place a mark on an enemy for 10seconds doing X damage, whenever an ally hits this marked target they gain back Y health. F2 could have more abilities focused around weakening an enemies defenses against certain attacks and doing more damage ex. one skill could be place a mark on an enemy for 5 seconds target enemy takes 20% more Fire Damage… and other abilities similar to this. This way it would play a bit like an Ele but relying more on the party members to hit said target or do something specific rather than the ele using healing rain on them or something of the sort.

Thank you for all the feedback with this in mind here is a another option of how it could work.

Going more along the lines of the guild wars 1 assassin having combinations, but not in the way of combo fields.
VERSION 2
Use a bar similar to the warriors adrenaline except that it would refill much faster1/2 of a bar (5bars total) for each hit that lands F1 your next attack becomes your lead attack it consumes 2 bars of “focus” and does 10% more damage,F2 your next attack becomes your off hand attack use 1 bar of “focus” and does 25% more damage, F3 your next attack becomes your dual attack and hits twice. F4 use all of your bars of focus gaining 50% faster attack speed for 1 second for each bar of focus used, while also gaining a debuff “you’re wide open” that you lose 50% of you armor while your 50% increased attack speed is going on.

P.S. thank you TheSwede.9512 for your focus and energy idea.
Thank you to everyone else for your input.

You need a unique class mechanic. You essentially have the Ele mechanic here. Which means as you said it will feel like a reskinned ele when you play it. You just have to weapon swap to get all 4 skillbars.

Not opposed to a martial art class per se but the class mechanic needs to be unique to give it that feel of being different. And as it will touch every build with that class it is one of the most important things as it helps denote the archtype it fills.

If you use an existing class to describe your idea chances are it won’t cut it and you are better off polishing your idea more. Love to see what you come up p with that in mind

Do yourself a favor and dont call it a Monk since that was the healing class in GW1 .

how bout a monk class like the d3 monk?

Here’s an idea for how such a profession’s Unique mechanic could work:

Tha martial artist Only has One weapon slot, however it Has a bar not unlike Warrior’s Burst or Necromancer’s Death Shroud, however it fills differently.
This bar is filled when Energy is spent or recovered in battle, and it’s called Focus. The idea is that the Martial artist grows more ferocious the further he’s pushed, a crouching Tiger so to speak.

It’d use three of the Profession keys: F1, F2 and F3 by default.

F1 would Unleash, and would have a slightly larger icon on the toolbar. In this mode, the Martial artists stows his weapon and gains access to 5 Hand-to-hand combat abilities that Does not have Cooldowns, instead they consume a chunk of the meter each time they’re used, save for the Auto-attack.

F2 Would be called Form of Ferocity and would, when activated, consume about 20% of your Endurance to gain 20% Focus. Less loss but also less gain than actually dodging, however -this- would be the core way of gaining Focus, whereas the dodging is just extra cake.

F3 Would be called Form of Tranquility and would basically be the opposite, consuming about 50% Focus to gain 50% Energy. The high Treshold means that the Player would lose a lot of offense, but make sure the gained energy always mattered.

Focus To Energy isn’t of course a 100% trade-off. Instead, you gain about 25% focus every time you dodge, and 1% Focus for every 5% Energy recovered while in battle.
The Martial artist I’d imagine has light armor and medium Health, making it a high-risk, high-reward profession that relies on Mobility and Endurance to both keep themselves going as well as tossing down DPS on enemies.

Furthermore, I’d imagine the Unarmed combat would differ. With melee weapons, it’d be highly offensive and damage-oriented, whereas with ranged weapons it’d instead focus on defensive maneuvers and CC.

One-handed weapons: Single target High DPS
Two-handed Melee weapons: AoE damage
Ranged weapons: Defense and CC

I could see them use swords (M/O), axes (M only), warhorn, greatswords, hammers, Longbows and shortbows.

If I followed that correctly you have 2 resources to manage (3 of you count that it can sacrifice endurance to fuel focus) for a mechanic that works like thief initiative?

For a martial artist(I would prefer fighter as it encompasses a bit more than monk) you would be better off with a bar. You can call it focus or energy doesn’t matter. For this example I will call it focus. It is an ebb and flow mechanic. Majority of the skills would beMark as wwaxing or waning. When used waxing skills would increase the focus level. Just as waning skills would deplete. Un marked skills would be considered neutral and not move the focus. Focus would affect the overall effectiveness of your skills.

Thus high reward skills could have shorter overall as using them often would result in you being less effective. In general I would find this class has some of the lowest cooldowns (baring the theif). For ease I would suggest similar to gw1 using an arrow system to denote the current focus. You could gain a max of 5 arrows in either direction, i suggest each being a 3% shift in skill output. Of course that could change with playtesting. Out of combat focus would trend to neutral.

Possibly add in the previous idea of an unarmed state on F1. Difference being tie it to the focus level when activated. The focus stance lets call it would not be bound by the ebb/flow effectiveness of the skills. Instead depending on where you are on the meter determines what stance you take and what skills it has. For example. Neutral give or take one would result in a balanced stance of aggression and support. Have 2 or more waning and you get a more defensive stance. Have 2 or more waxing and you ate in an adhesive stance.

To me that let’s you build a class that can be set up multiple ways in various themes but still gives a mechanically distinct way of playing as opposed to any other classes

Screw Monks, gimme Shaman!
Something similar to Ritualist, but slightly different…
Class capable of communing with The Mists and binding spirits to it’s will…
SoS v2.0 pls!
He would be a good support class, though I’d give him a powerful Lightning-based spells too…
If new class will be introduced in Cantha Expansion, Shaman would fit perfectly…
Yes, yes Shaolin-Monk-type o’ class would fit too, but Shaman is closer to Ritualist…
And we had Ritualists in Cantha Expansion before, why change that now?
Or…you know what? Why not add both? That’d be awesome!!!

maybe the names Shambhala, hwa rang do, or something else along those type of lines would better fit the name then since ppl associate healing to monk as that is what the class did in GW1. Any other ideas for a good name for this profession would be appreciated.

Im against this, monks don’t fit to GW2. They fitted to GW1, because they were their the religious type of class that is a human only thing.
There exist no religious classes anymore in GW2 and thats a good thing.

However, I know what kind of gameplay you want with monks and thats standing on an other tablet, which I like.. but that kind of gameplay I absolutely don’t want to see with a new monk class.
I want to see that kind of gameplay as improvements for the existign classes.

3 Classes come into mind that should be able to do martial artistical/melee attacks in general with staves.

1st. and most fitting – the Thief, they should be the most martial artistical class of all, they are the combat ACROBATS among all classes, they even have an acrobatics traitline and are the spiritial successors of the GW1 assasins which were already there the kind of martial artistic class. Something the thief currently is heavily lacking, except their death blossom skill, they have sadly no martial artistic like looking combat moves

2 nd, the Ranger.. a ranger with staff in druid style with nature magic and melee staff combat would be awesome, less martial artistical than the thief, but you should feel a difference in regard to playing an Ele or Necro with Staff…

3rd: The Warrior, as the guardian already uses staffs in a magical way, the warrior should be the melee counterpart. Again less martial artistical than a theif/ranger, but more powerful looking moves that launch a playe or deal vulnerability, while a skills of an thief would be quicke, have better criticals and stun for example or can block attacks.

Anything martial artistical in first place should belong to the thief.
No extra new class needed.

TheSwede.9512:

Here’s an idea for how such a profession’s Unique mechanic could work:

Tha martial artist Only has One weapon slot, however it Has a bar not unlike Warrior’s Burst or Necromancer’s Death Shroud, however it fills differently.
This bar is filled when Energy is spent or recovered in battle, and it’s called Focus. The idea is that the Martial artist grows more ferocious the further he’s pushed, a crouching Tiger so to speak.

It’d use three of the Profession keys: F1, F2 and F3 by default.

F1 would Unleash, and would have a slightly larger icon on the toolbar. In this mode, the Martial artists stows his weapon and gains access to 5 Hand-to-hand combat abilities that Does not have Cooldowns, instead they consume a chunk of the meter each time they’re used, save for the Auto-attack.

F2 Would be called Form of Ferocity and would, when activated, consume about 20% of your Endurance to gain 20% Focus. Less loss but also less gain than actually dodging, however -this- would be the core way of gaining Focus, whereas the dodging is just extra cake.

F3 Would be called Form of Tranquility and would basically be the opposite, consuming about 50% Focus to gain 50% Energy. The high Treshold means that the Player would lose a lot of offense, but make sure the gained energy always mattered.

Focus To Energy isn’t of course a 100% trade-off. Instead, you gain about 25% focus every time you dodge, and 1% Focus for every 5% Energy recovered while in battle.
The Martial artist I’d imagine has light armor and medium Health, making it a high-risk, high-reward profession that relies on Mobility and Endurance to both keep themselves going as well as tossing down DPS on enemies.

Furthermore, I’d imagine the Unarmed combat would differ. With melee weapons, it’d be highly offensive and damage-oriented, whereas with ranged weapons it’d instead focus on defensive maneuvers and CC.

One-handed weapons: Single target High DPS
Two-handed Melee weapons: AoE damage
Ranged weapons: Defense and CC

I could see them use swords (M/O), axes (M only), warhorn, greatswords, hammers, Longbows and shortbows.

absolutely beautiful. love it.

However the martial art “monk” profession is made I cannot wait to play it and actually enjoy it. I’m really picky when it comes to professions and only want one character that I focus on. I have 4 80’s but something about them just doesn’t hit the spot like a martial artist would. Currently D/D ele is the closest thing (in a weird way that would take me a lot of explaining if you don’t catch the drift) I also enjoy my warrior in a way.