Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 – Monk

Monk are holy followers, often dedicating their entire life to pursue their strong beliefs.

Nevertheless life is a journey and the only constant is change. There is no fixed path or way of life for monks. At different stages, they adopt different means, quickly adapting to the changing environment.

Monk are primarily a combat profession. Their skills vary from close combat, strategic skirmish, to the more sacred spells. A lot of their time have been spent in cultivation, managing conditions and channeling negativity into other forms. They possess resolute mental strength, stamina and have high vitality. They are very versatile fighters and likewise protectors.

Monk wear light armor but can be often identified in multiple appearances. Some appear in a more holy bishop outfit, others in a medieval monk cape, traveler clothing, and also but not limited to chinese monk robes and martial arts gear.

The following contents consist of skills and traits of the Monk. Please note that all numbers serve as a guide and are not conclusive.

It took quite some time to come out with the details of this age-old yet exciting profession. Hope you can take some time to look through the contents as a whole.

I’ve also created a thread at gw2guru which I feel could be a better consolidation and discussion forum.

The details are listed in online word document for better and more comprehensive viewing. They are separated into two files, one on skills and the other solely on traits. Last but not least, I would like to thank you for your time.

Monk skills

Monk traits

When I read this topic, I smiled

My guildmate is literally waiting for the monk class to appear in GW2. I told him it won’t until another year. Even so, it might not even come out at all. But nope…he’s been saving up dungeon tokens, filling his bank all-ready for a monk class. He really wants to play a monk class.

Cute
I’m sure they have ideas for possible future professions – but for the first expansion, I think they should add a few weapon-types – up to 3 – rather than add in a whole new profession.

Very well thought out and I like the idea of a Light armour based melee class. (Why did they give Elementalists daggers? idk.. poor decision however.)
I also suggested a sort of Magus Fighter which would be a medium armour mage based fighter. It is a mix of Mesmer, thief, and Elementalist but completely different kit and style of combat.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestion-Profession/first#post392965

Oh god, the clip art!

I could see a kind of Shaolin monk: Battle for gloves (leather straps), whip, brass knuckles, nunchaku …
compétances with meditation or other special cry.

I kinda like the idea, but with the guardian already a “holy” proffesion, I feel as if the only difference between the two would be light and heavy armor. However I also feel that guardians are lacking in the holy department, they may have some skills relating to it, but as you stated in your guru post I feel more like a meat shield than a holy warrior. Question for you OP, do you feel like if your suggested skills and traits, and a “monk” orriented storyline for guardians would satisfy you?

Lord Aargadon, I don’t think the name of a Guardian is acceptable. A name is the cover page of a book, if it is not right, it probably would not draw your attention or you would not pick it up.

As for the skills and traits, I feel they complement each other, but we’ll only know the answer if we get to use it in “beta”. Haha.. I also believe the appearance and animations (skills etc) of a profession can also affect the way you view it. So off the internet, and it all starts from the point of making your character. I think Anet can do well because they are pretty good at packaging and introducing their offers. But to meet expectations, they could really seek users’ feedback. As for the profession, I think it’ll work, in more simple words, I wanna use it.

Nevertheless, it is always good if more people could share their ideas to refine something, there is where the feedback come useful… I’m sure there could be some brilliant ideas that didn’t strike me.

No thank you, this is just silly…

Guardians already fill in the holy warrior archetype…they are knight/holy man.

What does a monk bring to the game? Bare fists do not work in this game’s set up, you must use weapons and must use AVAILABLE weapons in the idea so that it atleast looks viable in all content already in the game. You must also bring something new to the table, holy is filled by guardian so we go in a different direction.

Now, get your mind away from GW1 (seriously the monk class there would be chewed up and spit out by any monster here in GW2, it really had no offensive strengths at the higher levels of play) and lets look in a different direction. Shaolin monk styles COULD be viable here. They train with swords (one hand), axes, hammers, staves, and pray using beads (focus). Now every class has access to 2 ranged weapons and while it is uncommon, the monks do train with bows (shortbow would be more in line with the playstyle) so lets add that to the list of available weapons. As for utility we give them shouts, signets, prayers (provide block while praying but the monk is locked in place and the buffs provided only effect others), serene blessings (create fields of fire/cold/earth/air that follow the monk around for a set time but provide no other benefit – this set would be GREAT to have traits really alter in the way symbols can be hugely effected for guards). This should provide a mix between the melee fighting style of a real world monk and a support playstyle for those missing the GW1 monk playstyle that will never be fully seen here in GW2.

Well thought out ideas! +1

An expansion with Cantha and Monks would be cool.

i would like to see some heavy armor profession next because we have 3 light (mesmer, ele, necro) , 3 medium (thief, hunt, engin) and only 2 heavies (war and guar)

so can wee see some kind of unholy knight, or i dont know risen runaway called forsaken or something , class who can carry hammer and gs at one time, and who can lets say heal as they attack and spread diseases (yea looks like wow dk but you can imagine something else). but i want some heavy armor for sure

THIS! THIS I WANT! I dont understand why they havent made this! Im a huge fan of hand-to-hand combat as so far the only mmo i saw that has it is balde and soul (after aion im no gonna give ncsoft a second chance). SO PLEASE, preety, preety please with sugar and chocolate and sweet sprinkles and honey and weed and anything you want, MAKE A MONK PROFESION! T_T

I’m thinking incorporating a brand new weapon type like brass knuckles or cestus’ and including those within the currently existing classes selection of equipment would be a more likely scenario. A brand new class isn’t exactly necessary when the weapons + the class determine the skills used. I’m thinking warrior, guardian, thief, and maybe the elementalist or mesmer would get the fist weaponry.

^

Missing out a whole lot… how about the utility and elite.. all empty? Weapons doesn’t make new classes.

My only gripe is with them being holy. Also, monks in guild wars 2 have the holy feel going towards them anyway because of the original guild wars.

i’d say make the skills less ‘holy’, because the class has to fit with the athiestic charr and the sylvari’s view of the world. The skills are great as they are, and i havent had a look at the traits yet, but you’ve got a very good idea for a class. i definitely like it.

edit: had a second look through the skills, and you’ve seemed to make this a primarily pvp class, especially with the elites. Lose the added effects and add chill in place of stopping skill cooldowns and weapon swaps.

Elite Skill – Sound of Mountains – Let out a scream so loud and blow up enemies eardrums in a cone infront of you. Stun 3 seconds, Damage 500, bleeding damage 200 over 10 seconds.

You wouldn’t be able to call it monk do to GW lore and guardian having many monk skills from GW1 . You would need to call it pit fighter or brawler something to that effect. It wouldn’t exactly be holy either

If anyone here read the Guardian profession lore you would know guardians is what became of the pargaon/monk class in a nutshell over the 200 years of tyrian history…what would be the point to have a monk/paragon inspired class if we are going to reintroduce the monk class back ?

Many classes in GW2 is mixed with classes from GW1. We don’t really need a new class, we need more options with weapon/utillities/elite/healing skills for the existing classes.

Hastur.6231:

If anyone here read the Guardian profession lore you would know guardians is what became of the pargaon/monk class in a nutshell over the 200 years of tyrian history…what would be the point to have a monk/paragon inspired class if we are going to reintroduce the monk class back ?

the monk in guild wars 1 was more of a priest profession rather than a hand to hand profession. i had mentioned that the monk has a holy inclination from guild wars 1 and suggested the removal of the holy aspect of it.

the point was to make a hand to hand combat inspired profession. the monk was not a hand to hand profession.

I’d really like to see hand to hand/brawling fight style/weapon added to the game. I support this!!

They are highly unlikely to name a class “monk,” because that name carries certain expectations based on the first game having one, and two problems with this are:

1. This game doesn’t have dedicated healers. I know that your suggestion is not for a dedicated healer, but that is mostly what a Guild Wars 1 monk was.

2. Many of the best-known monk abilities (or abilities with the same name as them, to be more specific) are already in this game. The guardian has quite a few of them.

Furthermore, there lore justification for guardians has to do with them being derived from the old monks. They have pretty clearly broadcast that there will be no player profession called “monk” in Guild Wars 2.

/support I would love a h2h class

Monks existed in Guild Wars, and will probably exist here in an echo of what they used to be, if they exist at all.

Class mechanic is interesting, I’ll give it that. No real criticism here.

However, skills...

Hand to Hand.

Auto Attack chain. Four hits in 1.75, final is unblockable, 50% chance to cause daze for 1 second, middle causes 5 seconds of vulnerability. Oh, and it’s got 75% of the damage of a greatsword warrior.

Karate Chop. A cripple, with a 15% bonus to critical damage, and pretty good base damage. Mixed with the daze on auto attack, this is already insane.

Sweeping Twirl. A two second block with a two second knockdown if hit. A good skill.

Flash Step. A ranger’s Serpent Strike, only for more damage, and it’s a leap finisher, and you take glancing blows.

Dragon Hook. A fast, high damage but short distance launch. Not too bad of a skill.

Longbow: Puts a ranger to shame. Massively overpowered.
Composed shot. Your monk should never easily outclass a traited ranger on auto attack. You’ve got a 156 base damage on a 900 range, 3/4 second shot. This will shoot five times in the time it takes the ranger to shoot three. In 3 and 3/4 seconds, you will do a base 780 damage. Ranger, in the same time frame, same range, 687. Ranger, at max range, 951, which you will close up before he even makes his next shot. You can do this damage without any special positioning, and that just makes the longbow ranger ineffective.

Splitting Shot. You’ve got an effective, small damage AoE every six seconds, with good damage on it’s main target, but this skill is so *Hugely* outclassed by the warrior, who has nearly the exact same skill on their button 2. It wouldn’t be that bad of an insult to a ranger, except you already outclass them in AoE by skill number 5, giving you more is just adding insult to injury.

Focused Shot. The spike ability of this, from range, gives it quite an upper hand in PvP, especially considering you could start it up, fire it as soon as the target is in melee range, and then immediately swap to a melee weapon set. A bit overpowered, considering not even rangers, the "masters of the bow" get a long range big spike in a single shot.

Ghastly Arrow. This is, hands down, the worst idea ever created. Actively designing a skill that can fire through terrain obstacles would make it possible to spike down players, siege, and npcs in WvW in a zerg. Or to shoot from defensive positions, where you can’t have fire returned to you. Oh, and throw a debilitating condition on it, that stacks in duration while you’re at it? Rangers take a major trait to be able to pierce targets like gates. All terrain though? I can’t describe the number of ways this could be used to break something.

Red Rain. Rangers have to use Barrage, and Sharpening Stone, and stand in place for a few seconds, while not getting interrupted, to get the same effect that you get in a half second cast, oh, and on a shorter cooldown.

Staff: All over the place, and full of exploitable, overpoweredness.

Blue Ring. A linear heal that damages an enemy. Like a non-AoE water elementalist.

Pugilist’s Staff. A protected leap with good range, and good damage. Oh, but it moves you faster than a warrior’s equivilent. So you’ve got a ranged weapon that can close better than a warrior.

Bane Feedback. A long range block/knockdown, on a ranged weapon that can heal and has a gap closing skill.

Channeling. A ranged, condition removing skill, that causes up to four conditions, that also does a base 750 damage over four seconds?

Telekinesis. A stun break that leaps you to longbow range away from your target, and blinds him.

Let me get this straight, you made a ranged weapon with good damage, block, knockdown, charge, retreat, heal, condition removal, and blind. None of these skills would be overpowered on their own, but on a single weapon all together, that’s an insane amount of utility, with sacrifice to hard damage.

Mace:
Auto attack chain. Slower than a guardian or warrior, but with the same damage, and an evade/flank like a ranger’s serpent strike. On your auto-attack.

Whirling Mace. An AoE whirl with a one second stun afterwards that matches the warrior’s Adrenal skill. On a ten second cooldown.

Weaving Mace. A four second, mobile, projectile blocking attack, on a fifteen second cooldown.

A high damage one handed weapon, with a long lasting, mobile projectile block, AoE stun that beats the warrior’s adrenal skill, and evade/flanks like a sword ranger, only on auto attack. Again, wildly overpowered.

Scepter.

Winds of Change. An auto attack that grants you stability, and does the damage of an Air Elementalist.

Totem of a Thousand Barbs: A stationary ranged object, think like a trap. Only this trap does the base damage of Hundred Blades on steriods, and puts 10 stacks of bleeding on a target, with a half second cast time, and 15 second recharge. I actually had a hard time deciding if this, or the arrow that clips through terrain was the worst idea.

Intangible Energy. A slow moving projectile that is *invisible* to enemies. Nevermind whatever else it does, any attack that is by design impossible to know is coming is bad. Now add that it does more damage than anything but a fire elementalist, and inflicts vulnerability.

So you’ve got a scepter with a ranged attack that does 33% more damage than Hundred Blades, and applies 10 stacks of bleeding, shoots out invisible waves that inflict vulnerability, and grants you stability on auto attack. Wildly high damage, with even more wildly overpowered aftereffects.

In the off hand, we have
Focus:
Transposition. You gain swiftness, and take nothing but glancing blows for 2 seconds. Nevermind that your enemy has a 100% critical hit chance, and you have 25 stacks of vulnerability on you, you barely got damaged.

Totem of Steel Body. Summons another object, so like a trap. Only this one grants super powered retaliation, capable of dealing huge amounts of damage, and the damage scales higher the more armor the aggressor has. So, on a defensively built warrior, he will simply die faster for defending himself.

Torch.

Glaring Flame. A huge, bright particle effect needs to be put in the description as an actual effect of the skill, because it’s meant to be dangerously bright. Otherwise, it’s a 5 second fury on a 25 second cooldown, and probably the only underpowered skill mentioned so far.

Heated Fog. A five second smoke field that inflicts burning, on a medium-size radius, with a 35 second cooldown... A kind of mediocre skill.

I don’t have the energy to go on right now, but that should be enough.

TL:DR
Knuckles are insanely overpowered.
Longbow is insanely overpowered.
Staff is insanely overpowered.
Mace is insanely overpowered.
Scepter is insanely overpowered.
Focus is insanely overpowered.
Torch is quite underpowered.

Look at other skills that exist in the game for a base of what you should be capable of doing with just your weapon slots, then design a class.

Hey Nel, thank you for your detailed feedback, it showed you really spent time and effort to go through it. I’m not that good with numbers so I’ve declared that all figures are for examples only, but it is great that you gave advice on them. Perhaps if certain abilities and numbers are tweaked then it can be a lot more reasonable and playable.

Some skills might have been misunderstood like the Ghastly Arrow, yes it go through terrain, but you must first have a valid target to lock on and in range to cast the skill. It only hits a target, the first one it touches.

Totem of Steel Body, the damage is actually scaled on the defender’s armor, which gave rise to the skill name, if you have a tougher armor, it’ll hurt the aggressor more. Again the numbers could be way off, haha. I actually like the idea, but maybe the numbers make it look outrageous in your view, just like the other Totem.

It is common for people to just take a look at skills and skip the traits, but when you really start playing a profession, traits are actually equally or more important. I like some of the ideas and synergy in the traits but again, I wouldn’t say that they are under or over-powered, the numbers are there to help understand the ability better.