Monk Guide

Welcome to the *Monk Guide*! This player curated guide aims to help you make the best Monk you can **statistically**. Contributions to the guide are welcome. If you disagree with a large portion of the guide, you are instead encouraged to create your own guide. Make sure to tag it with the appropriate class guide category, so that users can find it.

## Character Creation

For the start of the guide, we're beginning at character creation. If your character is already created, or you're more interested in role-playing rather than optimizing, you can skip ahead to the Group Role section of the guide for advice on what your role in a group is.

Let's look at the races available to the Monk and what their starting racial statistics look like. Attributes with this  icon before them are important for the class.

The statistic bonuses of a race are only a small part of determining the best race for your character. Now, we need to look at the *Racial Passives* and *Racial Actives* for each race.

#####  Racial Passives

 **Archai**

A sub-par pick. The Archai's strong point is their ability to boost abilities of their matching element. And at this point in development (1-21), Monks don't have *any* elementally-aligned abilities. This leaves only 1 trait that directly benefits the Monk -- **Effervescent**.

 **Dark Myr**

From an optimization stand point, Dark Myr are perhaps the worst fit for the Monk. Their passives are more exploration based, and Monks get little benefit from them.

 **Human**

Probably the best pick for the Monk. Though Humans only directly provide **A People Inspired**, the haste effect is consistently useful.

 **Skar**

The second best pick. Skar's **Long-Suffering** trait is a nice bonus for Monks, who will often find themselves taking damage, whether because they're Pulling or Off-tanking.

##### Summary

Decent:  Human,  Skar. With only one beneficial trait each, it's hard to call either pick "Exceptional". Humans can be thought of as the more DPS forward pick. Skar, being more durable, make better off-tanks and pullers.

Poor:  Archai,  Dark Myr.

## Group Role

**DPS**. The role of DPS can be summarized easily: kill the party's targets. But each class that falls under the role of DPS has access to a range of abilities that do more than deal damage. DPS classes need to pay attention to the flow of combat and be ready interrupt important abilities or crowd control adds with roots, snares, stuns, mez and knockback abilities.

   Another important skill for all DPS (indeed, all players) to master is proper aggro management. A DPS needs to know how to deal the most damage the most efficiently, while not drawing agro away from the main tank and stressing their healers by taking unnecessary damage.

**Off-Tanking**. The role of an off-tank is to relieve pressure from the primary tank by drawing the attention of additional mobs (adds) to themselves. It is otherwise fundamentally the same as primary tanking:

   The role of the tank is to grab and maintain the attention (aka aggro) of hostile creatures (aka mobs), directing damage away from their allies. To be able to properly tank, it is important to understand the *Hate* game mechanic. Mobs have a hidden "Hate list" which contains every PC and pet that is in active combat with it ("on aggro"). Whoever is at the top of the list is the target that the Mob will attack. Nearly every action a PC takes while on aggro with a Mob generates hate, though the primary sources of hate are: *Dealing Damage*, *Healing* and using specific abilities designed to generate Hate (referred to as Taunts)

   While other classes might be able to fulfill the off-tank role, they usually struggle with maintaining agro. This isn't a problem for Monks, as they have direct access to taunt abilities ( Iron Palm). Combined with their generous self-sustain potential ( Resonating Palm), Monks are solid off-tanks.

 **Utility.**  Utility is a broad category. It can perhaps best be thought of as a sum of all abilities that do not fall under the other categories (Tanking, Healing, Damage Dealing, Crowd Controlling, Supporting)

  Monks express their utility primarily through their Feign Death ability, which is unique to them. Feign Death has a lot of creative uses, but the most notable is its use as a Pulling tool. Monks can use Feign Death to effectively split off a single target from a group of mobs, reducing or eliminating the need for a dedicated CC class in your group.