I do love playing a monk. Let me start by first saying this. But (and please correct me if you feel I'm wrong), they're not a patch on Barbs. When you start out as a monk everything is great. You can get the highest resists in the game with OWE, and you're doing decent dps. you've probably also got LOH on weps so you're pretty much unkillable. What a great char...
The second you hit 100k dps things change. Everything that was cool about a monk is pretty much gone. Your LOH is gone from your weps in favour of LS - because LOH weps have relatively low dps and your sockets have shifted from purple to green in any event. Barbs can get LS on belts - so you're already down to a measly 3% vs the Barb 6% if you've managed to get a decent 3% LS OH. you can try scrounge some LOH on rings...but best case scenario you're looking at 500 LOH.
Resists? you're lucky if 3 or 4 of your items have double resists. Compare Immortal King set to Inna. 80 RA is pretty much standard on IK gear. How many monks have the cash to cough for 80 RA Innas?
you will spend a truck of gold on getting a 100k monk. a truck. Getting a 100k barb is easy. you cant tell me that a Skorn bearing ww barb doing ridiculous dps doesn't irritate you. And if that Skorn happens to have LOH on it that barb with his/her 6% LS is going to be pretty much unstoppable. And of course ww means that the slow proc of the Skorn is ignored. How nice. Because all their skills focus on improving dps, they can afford a resists shout - so their resists are actually higher than monks... We've given up with the RA shout by this time and we're using overawe.
so we're more squishy with a lot less dps than a barb. OWE just doesn't happen because no monk set items have double resists. Well not ones that can be bought for realistic sums at any rate.
Barbs are 10x cheaper, do more dps and are tougher. And with that ridiculous farting ww nonsense they run 2x faster so can farm much more efficiently. sure, a belt with LS for a monk might help... but short of that what's the solution? high dps used to work for tearing up elites before they could damage you. This doesn't work with high MP. I know a lot of barbs that can handle mp8+. I don't know any monks that can survive at that skill.
Please....correct me if I'm wrong. If I've built a rubbish monk then please, show me the error of my ways.
Here's my monk Whistle. I'd love to be corrected on this. As tanks, monks SHOULD be equal to barbs. I've seen so many 20k dps monk tanks that I HAVE to wonder how they aren't pulling their hair out at mp5+. Do you drink your coffee while you kill something??
RA 800, LS 6%, DPS 150k. This is easy for a barb. How do we do it?
Everything you're ranting about is old news/arguments. The only fix they really need to make is either get rid of LS on belts for barbs, or make it accessible to every character.
Of course their is a huge list of minor things I could rant on about the Monk class (a lot of our abilities need fine tuning, mantra's especially) the LS on the belt is just a stupid imbalance that could easily be fixed.
Also, our big classy state "Life for spirit Spent" is utterly useless with any competitive build (bad design, bad planning, bad testing), and the budget cost for the stat itself is messed up.
There is some imbalance yes, but barbs are not superior on every level, there are many things that monks have that a barb doesn't. The class can use some tuning to be sure, but its not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Monks have a higher skill cap than barbs, but a good monk is easily able to keep stride with a good barb any day.
Monks can use skorn too, and you can get 6% LL on it. Its very easy to break 150k dps with a skorn. On a side note, sheet dps means nothing when you compare two different classes side by side, since abilities are vastly different between classes. Ever notice MoC doesn't increase your sheet dps by 48%? A WD with 100k dps spamming zombie bears will blow a 100k dps ww barb out of the water for actual damage done during a fight.
Monks also have things going for them that barbs don't, such as serenity (4 second invulnerability), sss which deals a ton of damage while the monk is invulerable. Tempest rush is basically the same mechanic as whirlwind, sweeping winds is incredibly efficient aoe dmg. Monk have a very high combat mobility due to the teleport associated with many of their attacks. Spirit regen means you start every fight with full spirit. Monks can have double resist in many areas, and if you just go with a single resist its way cheaper than a barb with OWE.
The only thing I think that makes monk sub-par to barbs is that they are very vulnerable to ground aoe's since their main stat does not provide mitigation against that damage like a barb's strength does. You cannot dodge molten/plague/etc etc, which means that you are going to take more damage than a barb to those damage sources. You can potentially offset this by getting higher resistance than a barb can, but that means getting double resist rolls and sacrificing dps stats.
Well.. but you forget, that you are a great support.
I like running with a friend monk, heal with dps boost, mantra of conviction, aoe blinds are really helpful.. they allows me to focus on pure destruction even more
dude, class balances happen. upon release till 1.0.3 hit, barb along with WD suffers on the bottom of hell while DH and Wiz rules it all in inferno. monk at least is always at steady position and never be the position of early WD and Barb, hell i can't even tell which class is the worst at the moment but ww barb has it really easy in terms of farming. i don't see major difference on monk since release, just be grateful you don't get hit by major nerf like DH ss and wiz armor. And please do not mention IAS nerf because that hits everyone especially DH and Wiz with their item value wiped got hit so hard especially those who spent in RMAH.
i loved barb i played it even so it is painful to do so before 1.0.3 but I made a DH too for farming goblins to find gears and helping me with repair gold. When DH and goblins got nerf. I made monk and boy how easy it was to progress through inferno with a monk early on compared to barb. My advice is if you can't beat them join them! I took a break when WW barb started to come out and came back this month. and now WW barb is all the rage but my monk doesn't feel much difference. I don't play my monk now (i play for a bit till paragon level 9) but I am sure one day I will play him again.
And please don't cry regarding legendaries, IK is far from being the armor to go to. There are sacrifice to be made just like any legendary for any class. Notice IK is lacking of VIT on the chest piece, glove and helm is far from ideal too, high end barb avoid IK anyway, maybe only use one or two piece. Majority of ww barb don't run with skorn too by the way. lifesteal belt on mighty belt i think that is fair enough, it fits the lore. what blizzard needs to do is buff spirit based stats to be more viable. Maybe for monks heal based on dodge, re design passives to be more interesting, I feel guardian path has a lot of potential and offer alternative viable defensive passives.
It all comes down to your item planning, If you choose to use 4 piece Inna of course u can't really get double resist, hell barb doesn't even have double resist why don't i complain about that? Its the same for 3/5 piece IK barb, the same with legacy DH natalya. The point is double resist is available for you on every single piece of armor to take it or not it is ultimately your choice. Do you know how is it more convenient for monk to choose resist. If a gear with all resist/double resist is expensive just go for single chosen resist and the price is not as much as all resist / double resist. for barb they can't do it like that. and one class SHOULD never be equal to another class. It should be different.
You mention monk to be equal as a TANK. WW barb is no TANK, I am not too familiar with monk tank but I feel monk has MUCH more potential being a better tank at the moment. Your offensive skills such as deadly reach, thunderclap, lashing tail kick, seven sided strike is all offensive skills that offers good escape mechanism/mobilty.
full CC break like serenity (short cooldown FTW?) compared to 3 minutes WotB?
inner sanctuary? near death experience passive? thats much more tanky potential out of monk.
furious charge u can escape some cc, leap offers mobility but little offensive power and not as spam-able as monk skills.
Barb main attack don't offer any escape mechanism unless u count knock back from bash which doesnt help when you are surrounded..
as if monk doesn't have heal... so dont rant abt rend/revenge/overpower (yes its barb heals are better but its not as if you dont have one)
ground stomp. but monk has those too in blind.....
the only reliable barb skills is ignore pain but monk has pacifism passive (which gonna be crazy in PvP)
Having said all these i do want to see monk improves. I wanna see exciting things from monk, maybe a dual wield tanky build that doesn't suffer too much on dps (i wanna see sword and board barb option too). Maybe interesting utility skills in group environment (monk always better anyway for providing group utility than a barb). Barb resist shout got nerfed btw in case you didn't know and many 100k+ dps barb has drop the skills (maybe not for higher MPs). I don't see OWE is nerfed and I didn't even read once WW barb complained why their resist got nerfed and OWE is untouched. It goes both way mate we go on and adjust
thanks orangedrop - some interesting points. Let me clarify some of what I said:
firstly, VERY few monks use full Inna - it's WAY too low on resists - and that's my point. to get a monk over 100k dps your resists end up in the toilet. I've never seen a monk with 100k dps and 800 resists. Have you? double resists is a BIG deal to monks. It's such a big deal that Bliz have said that they'd love to do something about the 'compulsory' passive OWE - but they recognise that it's so tied to monk gear now that it would be unfair to change it. But that's part of my point - it's easy to have double resists, and use all the cool attacks you're talking about if you want to stay sub 100k. The minute you want to do real dps the build becomes cookie-cut, with very little space for variation. Yes you can go single resist on an item - but then you've got inferior resists AND you cant do the dps that barbs do. Karpo touches on this a lot in the post above yours. Also, as Karpo says, serenity is an 'oh shit' use only. It's not effective in battle... if you have huge LS you dont need it anyway - and this is where the barb is so strong... barbs simply dont need escape mechanisms...
monk tanks tend to have pathetic dps. sure they're nice to have in the party - but what incentive is there to use this build? you cannot play high MP at all... they probably couldn't even kill Deckard Cain... If Bliz want monks to be tanks and barbs to be damage dealers ok fine - but then at least make monk gear viable for SOME sort of decent dps. why create incentive to play high MP when it's pretty much impossible for monks? I get what you're saying about gear planning - ok suggest a monk build that can clear mp10. the AoE in mp10 is impossible for a monk sub 800 resists to handle. And if your dps is less than 100k well... go fetch some coffee, because each fight is going to take ages. It's just not viable...
every ww barb has escape mechanism! WotB which can last forever as long as you gain fury. combined with partial escape mechanism ,the whirlwind, I agree it feels over the top. yes as proza mention as well, high end barb can get away with 500 res. I feel that is very unfair too, higher mp should punish barb with 500 res.... it is not being tanky, I think barb sustainability is just ridiculous. one thing I have to add is that barb heals only work well in mob situation. one on one with a boss it gets really sad. monk will have the upper hand 1v1 or 1v2 as barb will not be able to heal enough (pre 1.0.3 anyway). I am running older build of your monk with no second fury generator and the combination passive. I have blind instead and serenity works as not only "oh shit" button. Back when I was doing brick wall of inferno, I use blind and serenity alternatively one short wait time between them, you get to control the fight much better, like semi kiting. when life is low pop blind hit a few times to get cyclone out and regain some health and run 20 yard away and hit a different mob, when life goes low again pop serenity this time gain some life and move away again by then your blind should be near off cooldown. I this fighting style better than zerg style ww barb it just not efficient sadly. I can't wait when monk gets better though and i would really love to play it again soon. Why don't you try barb yourself? I notice you have DH too. I am not very good with DH, I am playing from Japan on US server the rubber branding and delay is instant kill for me. A lot of the time I died when I already moved away from flying orb or exploding things on my screen =(
As many have said in this thread, it is difficult to compare classes like this before they have truly been balanced (they've stated they are still working on balancing monks).
However, in the game's current state, I think you will be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think that Barb's are the easiest / cheapest to gear up / play at high levels. They have quite a few advantages, many of which you've pointed out.
It isn't just the monk that is left behind compared to the barb; it's all classes.
I expect them to continue to make changes to the classes, specifically the monk, to adjust this imbalance.
Guys, monks are a fantastic class, if you are not able to appreciate that - you should go ahead and read this guide.
As the OP in the guide says - only about 5% of monk players actually know how to play a monk. Those of us that played barbs (such as myself) can easily tell you - barbs are possibly efficient farmers, sure. However - you have virtually no build diversity simply because you are stuck forever with the exact same build in which you can't exactly change anything, ever. Monks have a variety of efficient builds, WDs have nearly a dozen efficient builds, Wizards have a few, no idea about DHs, but barbs, the only and only build... until you go insane your eyes bleed and your wrist hurts from moving mouse in the circle all day long - believe me - that is VERY far from actually being fun or enjoyable.
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not saying it is not a great class mate but its hard to say 5% monk knows how to play monk where 50% mp4-6 ww barb is face palming around and do not know what they are doing. look at how many please help me find upgrade thread in barb section. they just buy it off AH they dont know how build a set and do upgrade plan its ridiculous. i saw a barb help me thread and he has mempo, 3 piece IK, ice climbers all decent and higher roll str and he said he is having trouble with mp3... i look at his gear and he use square gems... and a few flawless square... WTF right????
I saw a european guy as well with hota build killing elites in 4-5 hits and clear alk run in like 20 minutes i think maybe less. it looks like playing in hell mode instead of inferno mp5 its stupid. monk build is quite limited too like the OP said and i agree. but for a long time barb only has ww and ranged barb. hota and new rend build is just starting to become popular (RIP revenge sword and board barb). I am really crossing my finger for a dual wield monk tank build comes out after blizz revamped the class. it fits the lore so well, martial arts as a self defense.
thanks orangedrop - some interesting points. Let me clarify some of what I said:
firstly, VERY few monks use full Inna - it's WAY too low on resists - and that's my point. to get a monk over 100k dps your resists end up in the toilet. I've never seen a monk with 100k dps and 800 resists. Have you? double resists is a BIG deal to monks. It's such a big deal that Bliz have said that they'd love to do something about the 'compulsory' passive OWE - but they recognise that it's so tied to monk gear now that it would be unfair to change it. But that's part of my point - it's easy to have double resists, and use all the cool attacks you're talking about if you want to stay sub 100k. The minute you want to do real dps the build becomes cookie-cut, with very little space for variation. Yes you can go single resist on an item - but then you've got inferior resists AND you cant do the dps that barbs do. Karpo touches on this a lot in the post above yours. Also, as Karpo says, serenity is an 'oh shit' use only. It's not effective in battle... if you have huge LS you dont need it anyway - and this is where the barb is so strong... barbs simply dont need escape mechanisms...
monk tanks tend to have pathetic dps. sure they're nice to have in the party - but what incentive is there to use this build? you cannot play high MP at all... they probably couldn't even kill Deckard Cain... If Bliz want monks to be tanks and barbs to be damage dealers ok fine - but then at least make monk gear viable for SOME sort of decent dps. why create incentive to play high MP when it's pretty much impossible for monks? I get what you're saying about gear planning - ok suggest a monk build that can clear mp10. the AoE in mp10 is impossible for a monk sub 800 resists to handle. And if your dps is less than 100k well... go fetch some coffee, because each fight is going to take ages. It's just not viable...
Ehm, I farm MP10 with no problem - 596 all resist and I plan on going down to 500. All resist gets less valuable post 500-ish so why stack to 800? You get twice as much EHP from the first 200 resist as you do for the next 200 and so on. Don't stack too much. And remember to have as much dmg reduction from armor as you get from all resist. If there is imbalance, you'll lose EHP. It's similar to the 1/10 ratio between crit dmg and crit chance.
You state that monks seem to be intended as tanks. No. Far from it. We are among the best dps classes in the game, in addition to have some of the best support. Life steal and high dps is way better than hig all resist. I'm a way better tank than any barb I've seen.
High dps + life steal is the way to go my friend. I get 13500 hp/sec when doing single target dps. Even more when I do aoe. I have lots of dps, ok, but I've had the same mentality since I started playing monk in july (or was it august? not important). High dps, balanced defensive stats + life steal.
GAMEPLAY: Barbarians are a lot easier to play and don't need to rely on so many different attacks and active skills/buffs as monks do.
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Barbs need to refresh War Cry, WoTB and Battle Rage.
Monks need to refresh Breath, Mantra and (sometimes) Sweeping Wind. Not that big difference.
We can use Deadly Reach (+ armor or dmg), Breath of Heaven, Blinding Flash, Seven Sided Strike (4 great runes) or Serenity. Any combination is good, but there will always be a cookie cutter spec that is slightly better. In fact, Deadly Reach - Foresight is better than both Blinding Flash and Breath of Heaven, but ppl tend to think it's not. Cookie cutter is not always the way to go. (I use to change it up now and then and use the most common build atm.)
Apart from sometimes 3 dps boost abilities up, not really a difficult task, monks have a VERY simple play style. I do not agree with you, and would claim both barbs and monks a bit too dull to play. Monks win though, since we have bubble, teleport and much better alternative skills.
Well - good points all - but I can't help but notice you're not actually disagreeing with Mortac's dps and ehp summary there Rhye. I've had a look at your monk and you can't argue that you must have spent a ton of gold on that gear There are VERY VERY few monks doing 200k dps... whereas there are many barbs that easily do that and more. I must have been a bit vague in my OP - what I meant was monks tend to end up relegated to the roll of tank because they just get too squishy on the high end. this clearly isn't true for you - but I think you'll agree IS true for 99% of monks. Your weapons alone cost more than a billion in gold now. a barb with about 100m in gold can easily kit out to do higher dps. That just isn't right to my mind...
@diseasept: how is it fair that barbs can have 6% LS with ease, not to mention more from skills? If you're going high dps you cant use LOH. LS is your only option. If you want to survive on MP10 you need both high dps and high LS. Take all other factors and set them aside and it comes down to just that. monks cannot regen health as well as barbs. If monks could mitigate more damage then it might even out, but as I hope I've pointed out that just isn't the case...
@diseasept - haha no man. It's a big deal though... there's a large imbalance between the two classes. Should there be or shouldn't there be? what say you?
@diseasept - haha no man. It's a big deal though... there's a large imbalance between the two classes. Should there be or shouldn't there be? what say you?
I wholeheartedly disagree for reasons already stated. but I would like to add something. I feel monks are the strongest class in the game, but I understand most think barbs are. Either way, there are 3 classes that have worse design/itemization, so there is really no reason to cry. No barb or monk on my friends list (people that started playing in may) have quit. There are only 2 out of 37 on my list that are DH's and 1 wizard. Barbs and monks don't quit. The other 3 classes vanish. Just putting it out there.
Yes, monks are definitely more demanding to play. Barbarians more or less jump right in there and hack their way through. With Leap, you can just go wherever you want on the screen at almost any time, while monks can get stuck between mobs getting arcane enchanted or desecrated to death or what have you. Spirit management is also definitely more tricky than handling fury, and you have to maintain Sweeping Wind + the 3s duration mantra buff, and use your attacks while doing it. Keeping a permanent WotB isn't ever tricky because all you need to do is to hit things. The rest is taken care of passively.
Barbs don't even need life steal. 3% Life steal is reduced to, what is it, 0.6% if I remember correctly? Now put up Rend instead, and you'll leech 9% out of 700% of your weapon damage on each mob it hits. Suddenly life steal on your equipment becomes almost pointless. You'll zoom to full and pretty much stay there. A monk on the other hand has absolutely no way to recover health in this manner. They have to rely on LoH and LS on their equipment (which reduces their item budget for DPS and other survivability boosts even further), and then get in there and actually hit things or they're screwed. Rend heals you to full and lets you forget about surviving for its duration. Not to mention it just keeps getting better and better by a huge margin as your DPS increases.
Again, I'd also like to point out how crappy dodge is in this game compared to armor, because you will repeatedly take spike damage due to RNG and die, where with armor you can anticipate the damage much easier and adjust, without having to deal with the spikes that kill you. You may say monks have higher resistances, but that's hardly true. Barbarians can focus more of their item budget on resist all, while they have easier access to resist all on the IK set to begin with. Now, barbarians using War Cry with Impunity is a direct armor increase by 25% and resist increase by 20% iirc, without having to obtain specific one-resist gear or use a passive for it. It's an enormous increase to steady incoming damage compared to some spiky dodge that will kill you whenever the RNG feels like it.
Ok, stop. Barbs have leap. We have Serenity. Moot point.
Barbs can regain life with Rend. We can regen much faster with Breath of Heaven, life steal/LoH (faster attacks) and we can go immune for a few sec with seven sided strike (immune to dmg, gaining tons of life, saving us from death) AND we can use inner Sanctuary or Dashing Strike. Again, there are alternatives for monks. Stop crying.
The second you hit 100k dps things change. Everything that was cool about a monk is pretty much gone. Your LOH is gone from your weps in favour of LS - because LOH weps have relatively low dps and your sockets have shifted from purple to green in any event. Barbs can get LS on belts - so you're already down to a measly 3% vs the Barb 6% if you've managed to get a decent 3% LS OH. you can try scrounge some LOH on rings...but best case scenario you're looking at 500 LOH.
Resists? you're lucky if 3 or 4 of your items have double resists. Compare Immortal King set to Inna. 80 RA is pretty much standard on IK gear. How many monks have the cash to cough for 80 RA Innas?
you will spend a truck of gold on getting a 100k monk. a truck. Getting a 100k barb is easy. you cant tell me that a Skorn bearing ww barb doing ridiculous dps doesn't irritate you. And if that Skorn happens to have LOH on it that barb with his/her 6% LS is going to be pretty much unstoppable. And of course ww means that the slow proc of the Skorn is ignored. How nice. Because all their skills focus on improving dps, they can afford a resists shout - so their resists are actually higher than monks... We've given up with the RA shout by this time and we're using overawe.
so we're more squishy with a lot less dps than a barb. OWE just doesn't happen because no monk set items have double resists. Well not ones that can be bought for realistic sums at any rate.
Barbs are 10x cheaper, do more dps and are tougher. And with that ridiculous farting ww nonsense they run 2x faster so can farm much more efficiently. sure, a belt with LS for a monk might help... but short of that what's the solution? high dps used to work for tearing up elites before they could damage you. This doesn't work with high MP. I know a lot of barbs that can handle mp8+. I don't know any monks that can survive at that skill.
Please....correct me if I'm wrong. If I've built a rubbish monk then please, show me the error of my ways.
Here's my monk Whistle. I'd love to be corrected on this. As tanks, monks SHOULD be equal to barbs. I've seen so many 20k dps monk tanks that I HAVE to wonder how they aren't pulling their hair out at mp5+. Do you drink your coffee while you kill something??
RA 800, LS 6%, DPS 150k. This is easy for a barb. How do we do it?
Of course their is a huge list of minor things I could rant on about the Monk class (a lot of our abilities need fine tuning, mantra's especially) the LS on the belt is just a stupid imbalance that could easily be fixed.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Parra-1124/hero/26392693 (150kish DPS)
Monks can use skorn too, and you can get 6% LL on it. Its very easy to break 150k dps with a skorn. On a side note, sheet dps means nothing when you compare two different classes side by side, since abilities are vastly different between classes. Ever notice MoC doesn't increase your sheet dps by 48%? A WD with 100k dps spamming zombie bears will blow a 100k dps ww barb out of the water for actual damage done during a fight.
Monks also have things going for them that barbs don't, such as serenity (4 second invulnerability), sss which deals a ton of damage while the monk is invulerable. Tempest rush is basically the same mechanic as whirlwind, sweeping winds is incredibly efficient aoe dmg. Monk have a very high combat mobility due to the teleport associated with many of their attacks. Spirit regen means you start every fight with full spirit. Monks can have double resist in many areas, and if you just go with a single resist its way cheaper than a barb with OWE.
The only thing I think that makes monk sub-par to barbs is that they are very vulnerable to ground aoe's since their main stat does not provide mitigation against that damage like a barb's strength does. You cannot dodge molten/plague/etc etc, which means that you are going to take more damage than a barb to those damage sources. You can potentially offset this by getting higher resistance than a barb can, but that means getting double resist rolls and sacrificing dps stats.
I like running with a friend monk, heal with dps boost, mantra of conviction, aoe blinds are really helpful.. they allows me to focus on pure destruction even more
also good skorns with LL are so expensive (
i loved barb i played it even so it is painful to do so before 1.0.3 but I made a DH too for farming goblins to find gears and helping me with repair gold. When DH and goblins got nerf. I made monk and boy how easy it was to progress through inferno with a monk early on compared to barb. My advice is if you can't beat them join them! I took a break when WW barb started to come out and came back this month. and now WW barb is all the rage but my monk doesn't feel much difference. I don't play my monk now (i play for a bit till paragon level 9) but I am sure one day I will play him again.
And please don't cry regarding legendaries, IK is far from being the armor to go to. There are sacrifice to be made just like any legendary for any class. Notice IK is lacking of VIT on the chest piece, glove and helm is far from ideal too, high end barb avoid IK anyway, maybe only use one or two piece. Majority of ww barb don't run with skorn too by the way. lifesteal belt on mighty belt i think that is fair enough, it fits the lore. what blizzard needs to do is buff spirit based stats to be more viable. Maybe for monks heal based on dodge, re design passives to be more interesting, I feel guardian path has a lot of potential and offer alternative viable defensive passives.
It all comes down to your item planning, If you choose to use 4 piece Inna of course u can't really get double resist, hell barb doesn't even have double resist why don't i complain about that? Its the same for 3/5 piece IK barb, the same with legacy DH natalya. The point is double resist is available for you on every single piece of armor to take it or not it is ultimately your choice. Do you know how is it more convenient for monk to choose resist. If a gear with all resist/double resist is expensive just go for single chosen resist and the price is not as much as all resist / double resist. for barb they can't do it like that. and one class SHOULD never be equal to another class. It should be different.
You mention monk to be equal as a TANK. WW barb is no TANK, I am not too familiar with monk tank but I feel monk has MUCH more potential being a better tank at the moment. Your offensive skills such as deadly reach, thunderclap, lashing tail kick, seven sided strike is all offensive skills that offers good escape mechanism/mobilty.
full CC break like serenity (short cooldown FTW?) compared to 3 minutes WotB?
inner sanctuary? near death experience passive? thats much more tanky potential out of monk.
furious charge u can escape some cc, leap offers mobility but little offensive power and not as spam-able as monk skills.
Barb main attack don't offer any escape mechanism unless u count knock back from bash which doesnt help when you are surrounded..
as if monk doesn't have heal... so dont rant abt rend/revenge/overpower (yes its barb heals are better but its not as if you dont have one)
ground stomp. but monk has those too in blind.....
the only reliable barb skills is ignore pain but monk has pacifism passive (which gonna be crazy in PvP)
Having said all these i do want to see monk improves. I wanna see exciting things from monk, maybe a dual wield tanky build that doesn't suffer too much on dps (i wanna see sword and board barb option too). Maybe interesting utility skills in group environment (monk always better anyway for providing group utility than a barb). Barb resist shout got nerfed btw in case you didn't know and many 100k+ dps barb has drop the skills (maybe not for higher MPs). I don't see OWE is nerfed and I didn't even read once WW barb complained why their resist got nerfed and OWE is untouched. It goes both way mate we go on and adjust
firstly, VERY few monks use full Inna - it's WAY too low on resists - and that's my point. to get a monk over 100k dps your resists end up in the toilet. I've never seen a monk with 100k dps and 800 resists. Have you? double resists is a BIG deal to monks. It's such a big deal that Bliz have said that they'd love to do something about the 'compulsory' passive OWE - but they recognise that it's so tied to monk gear now that it would be unfair to change it. But that's part of my point - it's easy to have double resists, and use all the cool attacks you're talking about if you want to stay sub 100k. The minute you want to do real dps the build becomes cookie-cut, with very little space for variation. Yes you can go single resist on an item - but then you've got inferior resists AND you cant do the dps that barbs do. Karpo touches on this a lot in the post above yours. Also, as Karpo says, serenity is an 'oh shit' use only. It's not effective in battle... if you have huge LS you dont need it anyway - and this is where the barb is so strong... barbs simply dont need escape mechanisms...
monk tanks tend to have pathetic dps. sure they're nice to have in the party - but what incentive is there to use this build? you cannot play high MP at all... they probably couldn't even kill Deckard Cain... If Bliz want monks to be tanks and barbs to be damage dealers ok fine - but then at least make monk gear viable for SOME sort of decent dps. why create incentive to play high MP when it's pretty much impossible for monks? I get what you're saying about gear planning - ok suggest a monk build that can clear mp10. the AoE in mp10 is impossible for a monk sub 800 resists to handle. And if your dps is less than 100k well... go fetch some coffee, because each fight is going to take ages. It's just not viable...
However, in the game's current state, I think you will be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think that Barb's are the easiest / cheapest to gear up / play at high levels. They have quite a few advantages, many of which you've pointed out.
It isn't just the monk that is left behind compared to the barb; it's all classes.
I expect them to continue to make changes to the classes, specifically the monk, to adjust this imbalance.
As the OP in the guide says - only about 5% of monk players actually know how to play a monk. Those of us that played barbs (such as myself) can easily tell you - barbs are possibly efficient farmers, sure. However - you have virtually no build diversity simply because you are stuck forever with the exact same build in which you can't exactly change anything, ever. Monks have a variety of efficient builds, WDs have nearly a dozen efficient builds, Wizards have a few, no idea about DHs, but barbs, the only and only build... until you go insane your eyes bleed and your wrist hurts from moving mouse in the circle all day long - believe me - that is VERY far from actually being fun or enjoyable.
I saw a european guy as well with hota build killing elites in 4-5 hits and clear alk run in like 20 minutes i think maybe less. it looks like playing in hell mode instead of inferno mp5 its stupid. monk build is quite limited too like the OP said and i agree. but for a long time barb only has ww and ranged barb. hota and new rend build is just starting to become popular (RIP revenge sword and board barb). I am really crossing my finger for a dual wield monk tank build comes out after blizz revamped the class. it fits the lore so well, martial arts as a self defense.
Ehm, I farm MP10 with no problem - 596 all resist and I plan on going down to 500. All resist gets less valuable post 500-ish so why stack to 800? You get twice as much EHP from the first 200 resist as you do for the next 200 and so on. Don't stack too much. And remember to have as much dmg reduction from armor as you get from all resist. If there is imbalance, you'll lose EHP. It's similar to the 1/10 ratio between crit dmg and crit chance.
You state that monks seem to be intended as tanks. No. Far from it. We are among the best dps classes in the game, in addition to have some of the best support. Life steal and high dps is way better than hig all resist. I'm a way better tank than any barb I've seen.
High dps + life steal is the way to go my friend. I get 13500 hp/sec when doing single target dps. Even more when I do aoe. I have lots of dps, ok, but I've had the same mentality since I started playing monk in july (or was it august? not important). High dps, balanced defensive stats + life steal.
Edit: spelling
Barbs need to refresh War Cry, WoTB and Battle Rage.
Monks need to refresh Breath, Mantra and (sometimes) Sweeping Wind. Not that big difference.
We can use Deadly Reach (+ armor or dmg), Breath of Heaven, Blinding Flash, Seven Sided Strike (4 great runes) or Serenity. Any combination is good, but there will always be a cookie cutter spec that is slightly better. In fact, Deadly Reach - Foresight is better than both Blinding Flash and Breath of Heaven, but ppl tend to think it's not. Cookie cutter is not always the way to go. (I use to change it up now and then and use the most common build atm.)
Apart from sometimes 3 dps boost abilities up, not really a difficult task, monks have a VERY simple play style. I do not agree with you, and would claim both barbs and monks a bit too dull to play. Monks win though, since we have bubble, teleport and much better alternative skills.
Edit: spelling
I wholeheartedly disagree for reasons already stated. but I would like to add something. I feel monks are the strongest class in the game, but I understand most think barbs are. Either way, there are 3 classes that have worse design/itemization, so there is really no reason to cry. No barb or monk on my friends list (people that started playing in may) have quit. There are only 2 out of 37 on my list that are DH's and 1 wizard. Barbs and monks don't quit. The other 3 classes vanish. Just putting it out there.
Ok, stop. Barbs have leap. We have Serenity. Moot point.
Barbs can regain life with Rend. We can regen much faster with Breath of Heaven, life steal/LoH (faster attacks) and we can go immune for a few sec with seven sided strike (immune to dmg, gaining tons of life, saving us from death) AND we can use inner Sanctuary or Dashing Strike. Again, there are alternatives for monks. Stop crying.
Who is the first character reaching paragon 100?
Among the first 100 paragon characters, there are how many monks and how many barbs?
Nothing needs to be changed, and I accept the challenge and fun playing monk as it is.