After a full night in Vex Thal as well as spending a few hours soloing (mostly in FG) ... this is what Ive found.
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1 - High lvl soloability has only been marginally affected. Those with high end game equiptment have not really been effected much at all. For example on a 10 FG shroom run where I was running almost full health b4 the patch, with no down time and simply constantly pulling as 1 died, it seems to be about the same now. No down time ending 94-100% health at the end of the runs.
On the other hand a monk lvl 60 with 100+aa not in high-end equiptment fighitng next to me had a very hard time soling single shrooms that he normally was able to, ending at 50% health.
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2 - High lvl raid situations. Spending the night in Vex Thal fighting I did notice that mitigation was lower and while b4 the nerf I would have no problem tanking until the warrior's taunt pulled it off me, tonight I tended to FD earlier and then get back up. We didnt have a healer in our group the whole night and even with 1500 AEs I didnt die once, while almost always getting agro at least once during each fight. I also tanked a few times when we had more then a few non-mezzables come in. If I had had a healer in our group I prolly wouldnt have FD'd at all during the fighting, except on the named NPCs (where it's simply bad to agro, for the guilds sake)
I was in a fighting group and not the pull group tonight. Our pullers didnt die any more then normal, although it WAS obvious that tactics were adjusted to make up for the mitigation decrease. More tags were made vs single monk pulling.
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In conclusion ... Mitigation has been adjusted down and it's obvious in all content. The mid-level and non-uber guild monks have been hit, by FAR the hardest on this latest patch. As I mentioned b4 no high end content guild purposely uses monks to tank, and as such not much has changed in the high end content for monks, other then you may end up FDing a lil more then normal. The real issues come with the mid-lvl monks who may have created the character with the thought as a soling class now being unable to to so anymore. It would be like creating a Mage or Necro, because you liked the ability to solo, and then having thier soloability removed.
For the game's long term viability, an adjustment was needed to align some of the mitigation issues to better fit the "big picture" of melee class balancing. Although I dont like the more dramatic effect that it has had on the mid-level and non-uber guild monk community, I do think it may allow for a better game in the long run.
I sort of felt like my old self .. sneaking in doing some major damage, then when I got to agro .. FDing off a bit or deciding to take some heat b4 backing out (FD) and then stepping back up to the plate .. felt a lil more RP tonight then I have in a while 8-)
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</p>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub35.ezboard.com/uirontaail.showPublicProfile?language=EN>Irontaail</A> at: 10/16/02 11:38:55 pm