I normally don't post stuff like this on this board. However, since there have been some recent debates touching on warrior/monk and warrior/pal balance I felt it was appropriate. Everything following this is cut and pasted froma monkly-business post.
Buffs for each was Swift like the Wind, Focus of Spirit, Ferine Avatar. (monk had epic affect and bhili) (Pal had self hp buff and BSS)
Code:
Class AC HP ATK
Monk 1575 6650 1815
Pal 1897 8387 1518
War 1919 8471 1748
Warrior was using Vanazir
Paladin was using Vanazir
Monk was using Fiery Staff of Zha
No class had any shielding or avoidance mods.
NOTE (PLEASE READ):
I was somewhat hesitant to add the monk data. Mostly because the paladin and warrior parses were done in a more controlled situtation than the monk parse. When the monk parse was done there were no A valorian guards. However, since the DB and DI were the same from A valorian guard and A valorian guardian I grouped them together. Also the monk doesn't have a time weapon and was using bhili and epic. However, the differences between tanking ability of warriors and monks was rather large so I thought it warranted being put in reqardless. I will do another parse with the monk as soon as CT decides to drop a staff of transcendence.
DEFENSE COMPARISON of Monk, Paladin, Warrior all with max defensive AAs
The following information is collected from the hits A valorian guardian and a A Valorian guard did against each class. Bashes and kicks are discarded. Attacks made from a valorian sentry are ignored.
Code:
Class Time Total DPS AvgHit Mit% Hits Miss Hit%
Monk 061:38 186399 50.7 325.3 52.1 573 611 48.4
Pal 105:18 228298 36.1 275.4 64.0 829 811 50.5
War 083:21 165230 33.0 247.4 70.6 668 682 49.5
Time is the total time spent FIGHTING. No down time waiting for pulls etc was added in.
Total is the total damage taken by each class from punches.
DPS is the dps each class took from punches.
AvgHit is the average hit that each class took from punches.
Mit% is figured from using min hit (NOT DB) and max hit. ((MAXHIT - MINHIT) - (AVGHIT - MINHIT)) / (MAXHIT - MINHIT) 100% mitigation would mean every hit landed for MINHIT. O% would mean that every hit was for MAXHIT.
Hits are the number of attacks that landed.
Miss is the number of attacks that were missed, parried, riposted, blocked, and dodged.
Hit% is the percentage of attacks that made it through all defenses and landed.
DEFENSIVE SKILLS (Dodge, Parry/Block, Riposte)
I had to do this sepearately since I couldn't ignore dodges, parry/blocks and ripostes that came about from bashes or dodges. So the information gathered below includes attacks from A valorian guardian, A valorian guard and a A valorian sentry. Also no one was using an item that modified their DPBR skills.
Code:
Class Total Miss% Dodge% P/B% Rip% Hit%
Monk 1447 43.4 4.6 12.6 4.4 44.3
Pal 1873 42.5 3.7 5.1 4.6 49.8
War 1527 42.6 4.5 5.7 4.2 49.2
Total is the number of attacks made against each class.
Miss% (IMPORTANT) This is the percentage of attacks that were missed AFTER removing dodges, P/Bs and Ripostes from the total attacks made. The defensive avoidance skills are known to go off regardless if the miss would have missed or hit. If you want to see how many were missed after all skills are figured in see the Hit%.
Dodge% is the percentage of attacks that were dodged. Same for P/B% and Rip%.
Hit% is the percentage of attacks that made it through ALL defense skills and actually landed. Hit% and MIss% will not equal 100%. This Hit% is different than the one above in that it is figured from all attacks (bashes, kicks, punches) from A valorian guard/guardian/sentry.
DISTRIBUTION OF HITS
This is somewhat important in showing which class is more susceptible to spikes. In this case I used only punches from A valorian guardian. Hit%s are are given for hits from 1-20 where 1 is min hit and 20 is max hit. Check for information on damage intervals to figure out where the 1-20 comes from.
Code:
Hit# Monk Pal War
1 16.93 29.16 35.68
2 4.01 5.24 4.59
3 2.27 3.87 4.86
4 2.62 3.64 4.32
5 3.49 3.64 2.43
6 5.41 3.87 5.14
7 5.76 4.56 5.14
8 4.36 5.01 3.78
9 3.84 4.1 4.05
10 3.32 2.51 3.78
11 4.19 4.33 3.51
12 4.54 5.47 2.16
13 4.19 2.05 4.32
14 3.14 2.96 3.24
15 3.49 2.51 1.62
16 3.14 2.73 2.43
17 4.36 3.42 1.35
18 3.66 2.51 2.43
19 2.27 1.82 1.35
20 14.49 6.61 3.78
DEFENSIVE CONCLUSION
At first glance it looks like monks are in amazingly bad shape. I mean 50dps taken compared to 33dps by the warrior. Looking at that makes me want to shit bricks. The thing you have to remember is that I was using a Zha. A 20delay weapon. It is the pefect example of why dual wield is long dead for tanking. Take out the ripostes and you see a completely different picture. In this case we have an average hit for the monk of 325.3 and lets use an avoidance of 45% to be safe. Warriors average hit was 247.4 with an avoidance of 49%. So to compare these you would take 325.3 * 0.45 / 247.4 * 0.49 and find that the monk takes 21% more damage. This of course isn't universal. If a mob had 0 DI the monk would take 10% LESS damage. And on a mob with no DB the monk would take 35% MORE damage. All situations that won't come up and I bet 20% more damage is probably a good enough average to bank on. Is it too much? Yes, I think it is. I would like to see monks get pure misses 10% more often than a plate tank. Which would make them take within 10% the damage that a warrior would take. HOWEVER, we still have far less hp and are FAR more susceptible to damage spikes. Bottom line, if you gave us 10% more avoidance you would not ever see us taking a tanks spot in a group or a raid.
Next, it seems as if warriors are on a seperate defense table than knights. You can see this from the Mit% or check out the distribution of hits. Warriors are seeing no spikes at max while you still see one for the paladin. I have seen this pattern all over the place. From Emp Ssra to Xegony to Vallon Zek. Very rarely will a warrior get a spike at max. This makes them far less susceptible to damage spikes than the 10% extra mitigation % shows. (See 64% vs 70%) However, I still think warriors don't have enough hp. In the average exp group a pally will have at most a few hundred hp less than a warrior due to self buffs and BSS.
OFFENSIVE COMPARISON of monk, paladin, warrior.
In this case the monk had all offensive AA except double riposte and return kick. The paladin had all offensive AAs except crits. The warrior was missing raging flurry 3 and tactical master 3 and all double riposte AAs. The paladin was missing nearly 100 raw atk from items. Both the monk and the warrior have maxed worn item atk. The monk also had more attack from epic and bhili. (I believe that is 55 raw atk.)
All the information provided comes ONLY FROM THE WEAPON DAMAGE. Special abilities like flying kick, bash, and kick are not listed. Procs from weapons are NOT listed. This is purely crush damage from the Fiery Staff of Zha and Vanazir. The Fiery Staff of Zha is treated as a 35.2 damage weapon. This is because 20% of my max hits had the magic damage land.
Code:
Class Total DPS Hit% AvgMod Single Double Triple Quad+ Atk/Rnd Crit%
Monk 684793 134.5 52.0 3.8 33% 51% 14% 1% 1.81 3.9
Pal 762397 111.9 49.1 3.6 34% 59% 6% 1% 1.74 0
War 759716 136.6 52.5 3.9 32% 55% 10% 3% 1.84 6.9
Total is the total damage done by each class to A valorian guardian/guard/sentry through crushes.
DPS is the damage per second of crushes.
Hit% is how often the class hit its target.
AvgMod, this takes a bit of explaining. I take the avg hit subtract the damage bonus and divide by the weapon damage. In this case Vanazir has a damage bonus of 40 and a weapon damage of 60. Zha has a damage bonus of 14 and a weapon damage of 35.2. Avg mod will be affected by crit%s. It is also heavily modified by target AC and the atk of whoever is being parsed. The higher the better.
Single/Double/Triple/Quad are the percentage of attacks that fall into these categories.
Atk/Rnd is the number of attacks per round on average.
Crit% is the % of attacks that were criticals.
OFFENSIVE CONCLUSION
I put this in almost as an after thought. The information is there, but it is rather difficult to make heads or tails of what is going on. Perhaps I should have added a AVGHIT/EFF_DELAY. In this case the monk would be at 14.6, the paladin would be at 13.4, and the warrior would be at 14.4. The higher the number the better. In this case the Zha proves to be a slightly superior weapon than the Vanazir EVEN WITH DAMAGE BONUS INCLUDED. The fact that the monk is wielding a more damaging weapon is what is keeping him somewhat close to the warrior in this case. The warrior had a higher hit%, more crits, better atk/rnd, and a better AVGMOD.
Now, the higher hit % is understood because only 10.2% of the warriors attacks were blocked by ripostes, dodges, and parries. Compared to the monk being blocked by 12.6%, and the paladin being blocked by 15%. I don't understand the differences between the monk and paladin in the percent that the skills blocked their attacks (12.6% vs 15%). Obviously you can see the tactical mastery coming into play here and thus why only 10% of the warriors attacks were riposted/parried/dodged. The better Atk/Rnd that a warrior is seeing is coming from flurry most likely. The AvgMod is probably being influenced quite a bit by the much larger crit% and is only brought closer by the fact that the monk had approximately 55 more raw atk than the warrior.
In these tests both the paladin and the warrior have options to increase their dps other than a weapon. The paladin is missing quite a bit of atk which could be gained through items. He also has no crit AAs. With crit AAs and 100more raw atk you would see the DPS increased by a good 10%. This is far FAR closer to the warrior dps than alluded to by Kreugan and others. Sure paladins are hurt by a SLIGHTLY lower hit% and inferior SDTQ rates, but it is no 30% by any means. In this case you could say that the paladin is only doing so well due to double riposte. However, the paladin only riposted 86 times. And if it is true and you double riposte 80% of the time he got an extra 69 atks out of 6896 total atks he made. Or about a 1% increase in DPS. (You would see this amount get increasingly higher if you are tanking boss mobs. For instance, if you are tanking a mob that quads every second compared you would see about a 8% increase in dps from maxing flash of steel alone.)
The warrior dps will increase by maxing raging flury and tactical mastery and even flash of steel. It is of course questionable about how much the warrior would gain from getting those skills.
The monk can get flash of steel and return kick to increase his dps. Well that and Staff of Transcendence. Using the same crit% rates and SDTQ rates this monk would do 10.1% more damage with a SoT over Zha. Of note is that Vanazir would HURT his dps at this point. And of course getting flash of steel and return kick to increase dps is VERY questionable as a monk after looking at how god awful monks take hits. Obviously I have not included his special attacks. With Technique of Master Wu at lvl 5 he did approximately 10 more dps.
At this point paladins seem to be doing more damage than they feared. I see nothing wrong with their dps. Monks with Staff of Transcendence can expect to do 10% more damage than a warrior with Vanazir + another 10dps from maxed technique of master Wu. What would that add up to? I would quess that in a raid situation, with both monk and warrior given the back of a mob the monk would out dps the warrior by 25% (5% for tactical mastery being eliminated, 10% for staff of transcendence, 10% for technique of master wu.) HOWEVER, the warrior would quickly splat since the monk class has what is probably by far the best agro reduction ability in the game. A monk could let a wizard throw one SoS at a mob and the monk could do the other 40k of damage needed to kill the mob and it would never turn onto the monk.
OVERALL CONCLUSION
I think warriors are strangely over offensive. Flurries and higher crit % doesn't seem to fit a class that focus mainly on their defensive capabilities. They do actually have a rather significant tanking advantage over paladins outside of just defensive. I think warriors have too little hp compared to a paladin, especially in a grouping environment. I think it would be a boon to the class if they could actually keep agro on something without actually having to attack that mob.
Paladins seem fine. I see nothing wrong with their offensive capabilities especially when considering what they can do in an undead environment. Their defense is acceptable, even though they are surprisingly on a seperate defense table than warriors.
Monks seem to do ok in the damage department. The only problem I really have is that with a superior weapon (Yes, kiddies, Zha > Vana for DPS. Zha also procs 50% more per unit of time than vana, But I didn't include that in the parses.) the monk was unable to do more damage than a warrior. Tactical mastery, far greater crit %s and flurries give warriors a significant advantage. If I had been using a Vanazir I would have come out WORSE in this parse. The defense nerf to monks is unacceptable at this point. Perhaps it was reasonable when monks had about the same ac as warriors, but that is no longer the case. Even in the non-raiding game that is rarely the case anymore. The distribution of hits looks fine for monks. However, their avoidance is woefully inadequate. Block is fine, but the PURE misses needs to see at least a 10% increase. (ie my miss % should go to about 48% if not 50% from the 43.4% that I logged it at.)
EDIT: I rewrote my conclusion on monk defensive as I think it is highly misleading and is inappropriate.