Guild Wars 2

I rarely get to see a martial combat styled class in MMO’s. I love them. The fist weapons, staves, kicks and twirls, etc. I’m not talking about a “healer class” . I’m talking about another type of combat style in addition to the others already in the game.

Hmm. A melee fighter in light armor. Could work.
But what kind of unique mechanics, fighting style and F1-F4 skills would it have, in order to feel a legitimate profession?

Here’s my try on the concept:
- Primary Mechanic (F1, F2 and F3) – “Way of the Three Paths”: Tiger, Dragon and Phoenix
- Each “Way” provides a unique set of skills.
- Some skills build Yin, and some build Yang (two separate gauges next to each other that grow in opposite ways, like a dual Life Force).
- You begin in Way of the Tiger by default and when you are defeated.
- Way of the Tiger (F1) requires 50% Yin and 50% Yang gives access to Way of the Dragon (F2) and Way of the Phoenix (F3)
- Way of the Dragon (F2) requires 100% Yang and gives access to Way of the Tiger (F1) and Way of the Phoenix (F3)
- Way of the Phoenix (F3) requires 100% Yin and gives access to Way of the Tiger (F1) and Way of the Dragon (F2)

• Can only use 1 set of weapons like Elementalists
• The auto-attack skill, as well as some other weapon skills, change their effects and generate Yin or Yang based on wich Weapon skill you perform before it.

• Weapons (One handed) – Fist (either hand), Claw (either hand), Sword (mainhand)
• Weapons (Two handed) – Staff
• Weapons (Aquatic) – Spear

The gameplay could be somewhere between the supportiveness of the Guardian, and the squishy aggressiveness of the Thief – but even squishier.

That would be simply amazing.
Would be great if it came in a Canthan expansion.

New Race – Tengu

New Profession – (Whatever it’s called)
haha

Nurvus, I really like that. It kind of has some elements of the rune master in the lotro expansion…where you can like build up power in two directions, and that defines what skills you have available. I like the east Asian spin you put on it.

Seriously though…very cool idea. Nice job. I would love to see a martial arts style profession added.

light armor mele: because a mid armor thief isn’t squishy enough.

I LIKE IT!

There would have to be a serious amount of active defensive abilities to make it viable, but that would probably result in too steep of a learning curve. Only basing that off the trouble people seem to have with the guardian and thief classes now. Only other issue I would have is that none of the light armor really seems to lend itself to a martial class as it is all “scholar” armor. I can’t imagine trying to pull off a Chuck Norris style roundhouse to the head while prancing around in a ruffly skirt…

Just to get it out of the way: It probably wouldn’t be called monk without any healing ability due to Lore. Monks in GW1 were the Healing class.

With that done, on to some constructive feedback.

Not quite sure one the “path” setup you suggest or the Yin and Yang.

My idea:

F1-F4 are different Stances, giving a different set of abilities, and as you suggested no in combat weapon switching like the Elementalist.

Stances could include Offensive and Defensive Stances. Base abilities would build Chakra which would be spent on advanced moves that could give boons to allies and conditions to enemines or be some other more powerfull attack manuver.

I would suggest limiting to traditional monk type weapons. Fist Wraps, Nunchucks and Staff, perhaps Claws or Fans, but not Swords. Underwater weapon could be a Trident or Spear.

Monks should NOT be squisy but instead recieve extra armor/toughness bonuses based on active abilities. There should be plenty of traits that also increase survivability via either healing or damage avoidence.

Both Nurvus and Drake’s ideas are nice, well thought out.

I’m really sorry to burst your bubble, but ArenaNet have said multiple times that they will not be adding more classes, even with expansions. We will, however, see new races.

I imagine them focusing on healing, speed, and evasion. Like a supportive thief in a way. Their main mechanic could be a series of counter skills in the f1-f4 keys that require perfect timing to set off.

Radthor Dax.3697:

Both Nurvus and Drake’s ideas are nice, well thought out.

I’m really sorry to burst your bubble, but ArenaNet have said multiple times that they will not be adding more classes, even with expansions. We will, however, see new races.

ow, got any source for that?

My two cents on a Martial Monk Class

F1 – Hard Style (High damage moves used mainly for interruption like Knock Downs/Backs, stun/daze, and cripple)

F2 – Soft Style (Lower damage, but more of condition skill base: Weakness, vulnerability, inflicts longer C/D, perhaps even a ‘drain/regen’ move)

Note: Hard style and Soft style work similar to Ele’s intune, where the weapon’s skill changes depending on the style selected.

F3 – Stances – fists only (Similar to Rangers collecting pets, Monks can discover certain scrolls/tomes to teach them different forms. When activated, the Stance skills must be used in a similar fashion to GW Assassin’s chain move fighting format – with the first three setting up the chain and the last two being the finishing move depending on how the chain is set up. IE 1-2-3-4 or 1-3-2-5. To keep from the character from being dependant on F3, Stances can only stay activated while being stationary within a small area – think 1/2 the size of a Ranger’s trap circle.)

As mentioned by OP, no weapon swap as F3 is technically the Monk’s option to ‘swap’ to a fisting fight format and the ability to use different fighting styles, along with the the skills that comes along with each styles, will make up for it.

Choices of weapons -

Main Sword, Mace

Off Hand Mace, Dagger (throwing purposes)

Both Staffs (used as a phyiscal weapon), Hammers

Armor – Light

Class Specific Accessory: Brands on the forearms.

Stalker/Drake Agressive – “I will beat some sense into my opponent by beating them senseless.”

Crow/Snake Passive – “Everyone has a breaking point, I just need to find it and apply the right amount of pressure.”

Bear/Wolf Adaptive – “If my enemy is strong, I will be like water and flow around them. If my enemy is quick, I will be like a mountain and obstruct them.”

Playstyle – Monks are incapacitators. Adhering to a strict belief to uphold and protect all creatures’, good or evil, right to live. Despite this belief, they understand that sometimes battle is unavoidable. The Monks set of skills are built around disrupting an enemy’s defenses and incapacatating their offenses. The Monks battle philosophy is to convince an enemy that surrendering is better than to keep fighting.

I agree completley. A martial arts class could be an excellent addition to the game. As long as it isn’t a KUNG FU PANDA!!

I actually started coming up with a few skills and ideas for this profession the last 2 weeks, but there isn’t a good place to post it for discussions so it halted and just on paper now, haha. Also Gw2 seemed to be having lots of existing issues right now to be thinking of something completely new.

Sometimes I get interesting ideas of the games I played and like to share them, when I was playing Dota, I suggest new heros, skills and stuffs. And I think one of the later heroes got a very similar skill from me lol, they just change the name and stuffs. But of course, there is no exclusive idea in this well-connected world right now.

Maybe we can have a subforum for profession/race/skills suggestions.

I believe monks in GW2 should be about Balance.

Lore
Monks are all about finding balance in the world. Not ‘pure’ balance in all things like Kodan, but within the context of their culture.

• Human monks know that balance is not depending in the gods, but not forgetting about them. Not losing their roots, but being open to the new.
• For the charr, is not losing a battle, but also not losing oneself in the battle. Machines are made for war, and war is made for a reason. Charr control them, not the other way around.
• For the asura, like all things, is the Eternal Alchemy, and not forgetting that there’s more in it than numbers and formulas.
• Norn balance is not only about balance between the material world and the mists,but also communing with the spirits, keeping both the wisdom of their humanoid forms and power of their beastly forms in balance.
• And for silvary, is the mystery of their very existence. For them, Balance is finding their place in the world.
  Most monks left their cultures for a little while, or had another monk as a master and mentor that did left, which gave them the perspective needed for balance.

Color scheme:
- Black&white.

Sumbol:
- Quarter moon.

Special ability:
- Balance

• Three skills F1, F2, F3, placed over the weapon skills. Like warrior’s adrenaline skills, they change depending on weapon, but instead of weapon type, they vary with range of the main weapon. Short range melee weapons with mainly 130 to 300range will share a set of 3 skills, while longer range weapons with 900 and 1200 range will have a different set, and mid range of 600 will have the third set.
• F1 is a mainly support skill, F2 is a mainly control skill, and F3 is a mainly damage skill.
• Between the skills there’s two rows of dots 6 dots or disks. These disks can be either white or black. White to the left, black to the right, the ones at the borther between the two colors can ‘flip’ like reversi/otherllo pieces, as if they were playing tug of war.
  F1 OOOOOO F2 OOOOOO F3
  F1 OOO OOO F2 OOOOOO F3
  F1 OOOOOO F2 OO OOOO F3
• This dot bar is “the balance”, and has a passive effect on the monk, that affects how traits and skills behave.
• To use the F1 skill, all 12 dots must be white. To use the F2, 6 must be white, and the other 6 must be black. To use F3, all 12 must be black.
• Most weapon and some utility skills affect the dots by flipping them to white or black, while the healing skill and 1st skill never do that.
• Also, chain skills may have a different third skill depending on Balance.
• Although the weapon skills themselves do not change based on balance like ekementalist skills with attunements, their effects vary with it. For example, a healing skill may provide 1 stack of regeneration for every 3 white dots, and one of might for every 3 black dots, or a skill that both damages foes in AoE and heals allies in AoE may damage more and heal less when all dots are black, but heal more and damage less when all dots are white.
• Some skills change their flipping behavior with balance too: Some will flip to the majority (e.g.: if most are white, it flips dots to white) and some oppose it (e.g.: if most are white, it flips to black instead), and some will stop flipping dots if they are 6 white/6 black, keeping the balance to 50/50.
• Some traits trigger only while in a certain balance statuses, like a trait effect that unleashes an effect every time you go from all black to all white or vice-versa; others change their behavior depending on Balance state, like granting one boon or another depending on balance, etc… the possibilities of using this are endless.

The key of using Balace is keeping the dots the way you want them, and they are an extra factor when choosing the order of your skills.

Armor
- Light

Weapons:
Monks are a two-set profession.
Their weaponry would be inspired in martial arts and the Eighteen Arms of Wushu.
They have an equipping quirk like thieves. They can equip most 1h weapons as 2h ones. To do so, simply equip a 1h weapon with no offhand, and you’ll get 5 skills instead 3. Equip an offhand to get 2 different #4 and #5 skills.

Ground

• First weapons (new type of weapon that includes any weapon loosely similar in handling like cestus, katars, bracers, tonfa, knuckles, push daggers, etc) 2h, main hand and offhand. 130 avg. range.
• Dagger: 2h, main hand and offhand. 130 avg. range.
• Sword: 2h, main hand and offhand. 150 avg. range.
• Mace: 2h, main hand and offhand. 130 avg. range.
• Spear 2h or main hand. 900 avg. range. with thrown skills, 600 with others.
• Whip main hand only. 300 avg. range.
• Shield offhand only.
• Quarterstaff 2hand only. 600 avg. range.
• Polearm 2hand only. 600 avg. range.
• Short bow. 1200 avg. range.

Underwater (all 2 handed)

• Trident. 600 range.
• Spear. 1200 range.
• Dagger 150 range.

I’ll need more room if I wanted to write more. I may consider the wiki,

Well I hope Radthor Dax is wrong in his assertion that ArenaNet says no more new classes even in expansions. If that is true, then ArenaNet has gotten the last $ from me. I will not pay to level the same classes again as a different race…even with new racial starting areas.

I really love the warrior monk concept laid out here and I see no reason why it could not still be called monk or warrior monk. The combat dynamics and skill set up of GW2 would be a perfect fit for a warrior monk class. It would also give the world some more class variety which with so few skills compared to other MMOs is key (at least for me)

Well, I can see something like this fitting in quite nicely when Cantha opens its doors. The Eastern feel of the continent would fit the martial artist and inner peace ideals of a monk, instead of the healer and occasionally holy damage roles that Tyria would scream out to many Guild Wars players. Then again, even the name “monk” would suggest this – so maybe another name (but please nothing uninspired like “martial artist”) would address the stigma attached to monks.

If it’s done properly, I think the profession would have a lot of potential. Plus there’s clearly demand for it, if the number of similar threads are anything to go by.

Just a little addition – perhaps an option of a main-hand dagger and bare-handed weapons? Obviously there would still need to be an item equipped for bare hands though, otherwise that’s a lot less gear to get.

Adding another class, especially a martial art class requires a new weapon entirely. Which is a fist system, wouldn’t it be cheap if only the martial artists get to use fists? Besides martial artists I really don’t see fist go well with other classes. realistically thinking i think this concept would spark a heap of class problems as well as new pvp balancing issues. great idea, however i really don’t see how will they do all that just to put in a martial art class.

Well, if they actually do add other races/professions in late expansions, then there will need to be additional balancing in any case. This will be the case if new weapons are added as well.

Is there anywhere we can share our ideas on new stuffs, and also participate in sensible discussions.

So I’ve been spending the last grogy half a day on trying to fine tune the profession mechanics and for the first time I am quite happy with it.

I don’t think this forum has a good place to discuss about new professions/skills/races etc. I’ve looked at other options like Guru and they don’t seem to have a subforum dedicated to such game ideas suggestions too.

Anyway I’ll continue working on it for the meanwhile as it is still at very primary stage, and hope it won’t just be stuck on my tabletop only, for the start, my opinion on such a class is that there is no fixed or correct type of “Monk” or whatever you call it, and that is my direction.

I’ll certainly consider buying expansions if they have attractive new race/profession/looks. If just for new areas, at the moment I don’t think it is that big a draw as discussed elsewhere. PvE will require more drawing power to simply just depend on new maps for expansions. Some people talk about the many things you can do, but for PvE it is not that many and it is not right to assume that everybody will like to do every single one of it.

I like Nurvus’ idea. Perhaps like a ritualist/assassin/monk mix.

There are some very well thought out ideas here, but my thoughts are that having “just” a fist as a weapon would mean limited drops for your character that would be useful, and a huge reduction in crafting possibilities. I would suggest having something like brass knuckles as the basic weapon which can be modified, such as the addition of claws or spikes to do more damage.

The martial artist as a profession from Cantha is well appreciated. The ideas presented in here are all good. But for a more in depth into martial arts, I suggest taking inspiration from a specific game with that feature: Age of Wulin. A simple martial artist who uses daggers, staffs, maces isn’t quite fitting. Here is a link to that.
http://en.wulin.gpotato.eu/Game/Sects/Sect-Features

if there is going to be a monk make it like in gw1 not some assassin class.

Nurvus.2891:

Hmm. A melee fighter in light armor. Could work.
But what kind of unique mechanics, fighting style and F1-F4 skills would it have, in order to feel a legitimate profession?

Here’s my try on the concept:
- Primary Mechanic (F1, F2 and F3) – “Way of the Three Paths”: Tiger, Dragon and Phoenix
- Each “Way” provides a unique set of skills.
- Some skills build Yin, and some build Yang (two separate gauges next to each other that grow in opposite ways, like a dual Life Force).
- You begin in Way of the Tiger by default and when you are defeated.
- Way of the Tiger (F1) requires 50% Yin and 50% Yang gives access to Way of the Dragon (F2) and Way of the Phoenix (F3)
- Way of the Dragon (F2) requires 100% Yang and gives access to Way of the Tiger (F1) and Way of the Phoenix (F3)
- Way of the Phoenix (F3) requires 100% Yin and gives access to Way of the Tiger (F1) and Way of the Dragon (F2)

• Can only use 1 set of weapons like Elementalists
• The auto-attack skill, as well as some other weapon skills, change their effects and generate Yin or Yang based on wich Weapon skill you perform before it.

• Weapons (One handed) – Fist (either hand), Claw (either hand), Sword (mainhand)
• Weapons (Two handed) – Staff
• Weapons (Aquatic) – Spear

The gameplay could be somewhere between the supportiveness of the Guardian, and the squishy aggressiveness of the Thief – but even squishier.

UMM SORRY TO DO THIS BUT THIS IS KINDA BOTHERING ME. In eastern belief the TIGER (Even more so does the white tiger) symbolizes YIN and the DRAGON symbolizes YANG. As far as the Phoenix goes it would not be a stretch to make them symbolize balance.

Coltz.5617:

Adding another class, especially a martial art class requires a new weapon entirely. Which is a fist system, wouldn’t it be cheap if only the martial artists get to use fists? Besides martial artists I really don’t see fist go well with other classes. realistically thinking i think this concept would spark a heap of class problems as well as new pvp balancing issues. great idea, however i really don’t see how will they do all that just to put in a martial art class.

They have already hinted at new weapons fist weapons would not be a stretch. And how would fist weapons not go with a ranger or Thief?

tom.7468:

if there is going to be a monk make it like in gw1 not some assassin class.

There can’t be a monk like in GW1. There are no bars for click and heal, targeting players to give specific heal won’t work, having a class specialized on AoE heals without a combat system is suicidal and there is guardian which does just that.
Monk won’t be chosen as name but something similar. Sacerdotal, Monastic, Preacher

We see Rytlock use powerstone gauntlets to fight flame devourers. Warriors, Thieves, Rangers, perhaps even elementalists for all your Legend of Aang/Korra element bending.

For warriors they would be heavy hits regarding a single target and perhaps focusing on knock back, they could even play on the ability to pick up enemies, letting you carry them for maybe, 5 seconds tops (sems OP but warrior would be locked out as well) and be able to throw them.

Thief and Ranger are the hardest to think up styles for, probably because i have the least experience with those classes, thief could have a very evasive and controling move set, Ranger… im not sure…

Elementalist style could be a series of reasonably fast, medium ranged attacks which hit for a moderate amount of damage. The difference between the Scepter style being that it doesnt hit mutliple times, meaning it has a greater emphasis on damage then crit effects.

Just what i thought of while seeing this thread

I support this!! I’d love a profession that can go with hand to hand, brawling, use claws, mitts, tonfas, anything. Be it a monk or some other archetype. (Maybe a hulking dreadnought…)