It is a class that thematically does not fit me in the type of fantasy that dnd sells. I find it very cartoony, very anime.
Mechanically, well, it seems to me the class that has the worst subclasses. And besides, what it gives you from base is worse than what other base classes give you.
I understand that there are people who like it, and it's been in dnd for a long time (since 3.0 if I remember correctly. I think it wasn't in 2.0), but I really can't handle it. Luckily very few monks are seen in the games I play. They take me completely out of the immersion.
Thematically I freaking love the monk. I just wish they didn't suck so bad mechanically.
Are you sure you're playing the right game? Because Monks are objectively and mecahnically one of the most powerful classes there are. They lack in skill versatility and social interaction, though.
Don't say that on Reddit. Community consensus is that Monk is the single worst class by a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide margin.
I'd agree with them but then we'd all be wrong. :P
Apparently the "optimizer" subcommunity, spearheaded particularly by a YouTuber called TreantMonk, has done loads of math and shown the monks have the worst damage output in the game, and their ki points are insufficient to fuel them throughout an adventuring day, leading them to functionally operate without a class for long stretches of the game.
I often find him abrasive, and his priorities in the game are wildly divergent from mine, so I'm not a huge fan.
However, he is likely the least irritating, toxic, difficult, and gatekeep-y of the "optimizer" figureheads out there. He seems to legitimately like the game, and not a grumpy grognard out to take a dump on everyone's fun. So if you're going to get into optimizing, you could do a lot worse. There's folks out there without a lot of very stupid complaints that are largely bad-faith arguments meant to smokescreen issues with a "woke agenda*." TreantMonk is very earnest, and seems to be very straightforward. I never doubt his motivations, just whether or not they align enough with mine for me to listen to him.
*(the idea that anyone could think WotC is "woke" is hilarious to me, they make the barest-minimum of media-accepted corporate moves to piss off the least number of people at once. they're not "woke," they just don't wanna go out of business)
I often find him abrasive, and his priorities in the game are wildly divergent from mine, so I'm not a huge fan.
However, he is likely the least irritating, toxic, difficult, and gatekeep-y of the "optimizer" figureheads out there. He seems to legitimately like the game, and not a grumpy grognard out to take a dump on everyone's fun. So if you're going to get into optimizing, you could do a lot worse. There's folks out there without a lot of very stupid complaints that are largely bad-faith arguments meant to smokescreen issues with a "woke agenda*." TreantMonk is very earnest, and seems to be very straightforward. I never doubt his motivations, just whether or not they align enough with mine for me to listen to him.
*(the idea that anyone could think WotC is "woke" is hilarious to me, they make the barest-minimum of media-accepted corporate moves to piss off the least number of people at once. they're not "woke," they just don't wanna go out of business)
If your priority has anything to do with combat effectiveness, Treantmonk is your guy. I'm not saying you'll always agree with him, but that's his focus. Also, I watch a number of DND content creators who give opinions about optimization. None of them really strike me as gate keepers, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by that.
To me WoTC is "woke", and so is Treantmonk. I'm "woke" and I wear it as a badge of honor. "Woke" is just a buzz phrase certain groups came up with as a pejorative. It's meant to cast a negative light on the very idea of having the audacity to have empathy for others.
If your priority has anything to do with combat effectiveness, Treantmonk is your guy. I'm not saying you'll always agree with him, but that's his focus. Also, I watch a number of DND content creators who give opinions about optimization. None of them really strike me as gate keepers, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by that.
To me WoTC is "woke", and so is Treantmonk. I'm "woke" and I wear it as a badge of honor. "Woke" is just a buzz phrase certain groups came up with as a pejorative. It's meant to cast a negative light on the very idea of having the audacity to have empathy for others.
The thing of it is: His priority isn't combat effectiveness, it's combat superiority. He wants literally the best in any category, and anything that isn't that is "weak" or "bad." And he takes feats and multiclassing, which are optional/variant rules, for granted. That's part of his issue with Monks, that they can't take or get any use of the big combat feats (cbe/gwm/ss/pam/etc), which means they can't "keep up" with other martials. But the thing of it is, in a featless game (AKA, the game as balanced, intended, and released), the Monk has more opportunities to hit than any martial until Fighter gets a 3rd attack at 11, and can add their ability mod to the "offhand" attacks of Flurry of Blows, if you go with his interpretation of Flurry as "two-weapon fighting built into the class." This makes them one of the most consistent martial damage-dealers in the entire game. But everyone craps on them despite the fact that they're assuming nonstandard rules when they do their math. Most white-room theorycrafters or "optimancers" make an awful lot of assumptions that don't necessarily represent typical gameplay, and then reach skewed conclusions that end with them making broad proclamations that thousands of players take as gospel. Treantmonk is likely the least of these, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have a negative effect on the state of the game.
On gatekeeping: I'm referring more to the rank-and-file of people who discuss optimization online than Treantmonk (who I actually said doesn't really do this) or any of the other YouTubers. I see a lot of gatekeeping, particularly on Reddit (sadly one of the best places for discussion of D&D there is), much of it just toxic people saying things like "there's no point in playing a Fighter without GWM," at best, and "if you play a monk you're an idiot" closer to the other end of the spectrum. There's just an awful lot of "your fun is wrong" out there, and it's more prevalent among "optimizers" than non-optimizing players.
On "wokeness": Frankly this is too big a topic to discuss as an aside to fan-ranking D&D classes, but I'm very much in favor of "wokeness," in its intended meaning. It's a black-coined term that isn't really mine to use, but as I understand it, it fundamentally boils down to "being aware of invisible or insidious systems of oppression." That's great. I'm very onboard. I like to flatter myself that I qualify. But at the same time...no matter how well intentioned, WotC is a corporation, and Hasbro moreso. It is...basically impossible for any for-profit organization in a capitalist society to actually behave in a manner that reflects that wokeness, and if the corporation doesn't behave in accordance to those beliefs and that awareness, then it's pretty hard to say they have it. Stuff comes out all the time of at least moderately racist hiring practices or coddling of employees with a history of sexual harrassment, so I just can't take seriously any claims (traditionally from grumpy, toxic, gatekeeping grognards mad that kobolds don't have sunlight sensitivity anymore) that Wizards of the Coast is "woke." They're not. There are some good people working there who want to make the hobby more welcoming to all, and many more who simply recognize that inclusivity is good business, because the more peope there are who want to play your game, the more people will pay to play your game.
WotC is at least moderately left-leaning and progressive, but it's not nearly enough for me to call them terribly "woke," it's mostly corporate performative maneuvering to offend the least number of people possible to maximize product movement. For what it's worth, I haven't seen anything from Treantmonk indicating regressive morality or the white supremacism and misogyny and homo/transphobia that frequently leaks out around the edges of people in this hobby, which is the only reason I broached those subjects in the first place. He seems a decent dude, I'm just not remotely interested in playing the types of games he does. I'm currently playing a DEX-build Rune Knight who took the Piercer feat and put several ASI into CHA. I'd get obliterated in his games, but at most tables, I'm a pretty solid frontliner with a lot of options. My issues with him are primarily: 1) I don't want to play the way he does, and 2) A lot of people I interact without there (these forums, Discords, Reddits, etc) who hang on his every word do tend to lean into the anti-empathy Ben Shapiro alt-right side of things that you so often find in geek spaces. He doesn't seem terrible, but a lot of terrible people seem drawn to him, which puts me off a lot of his stuff just by association. In my experience, anyone who seems to think there's only one "correct" way to do anything tends to attract those people, whether they mean to or not.
I always assumed I hated Treantmonk. Maybe I saw one of his early videos or something, idk. I've seen some of his stuff lately and he's good. Very reasonable dude.
The Monk sucks, but it doesn't take the bottom spot for me because... at least it's cool and unique.
The thing of it is: His priority isn't combat effectiveness, it's combat superiority. He wants literally the best in any category, and anything that isn't that is "weak" or "bad."
I have to stop right here in the beginning, because this is not only not true it's ridiculous to the point of absurdity. First of all, in his subclass rankings he has an "S" tier, which he explains are problematic due to being overpowered. He's very direct that he recommends not playing them. It's A through F (being the worst), then S for being OP.
But second of all he's always encouraging people to play what they like, and in his subclass reviews it makes it clear that C and even D tier sub classes are still playable. I don't know how you cooked up this perception of him. I've watched tons of him and he has a very calm and kind demeanor, and he loves D&D.
Here's a build idea he presented based strictly on flavor.
But second of all he's always encouraging people to play what they like, and in his subclass reviews it makes it clear that C and even D tier sub classes are still playable. I don't know how you cooked up this perception of him.
Maybe it's the fact that he can put out a near hour-long video about how monks suck ass and aren't worth playing, and within that video just say once something along the lines of "I'm sure someone has fun with it, and that's okay." Minor lip-service to the fact that a thing can be enjoyed barely makes a dent in the overwhelming amount of content that's just "this is bad and sucks and it's wrong and terrible."
I've watched tons of him and he has a very calm and kind demeanor, and he loves D&D.
Yeah, and I get that. It's why I didn't slag him off as a bad person or whatever. I even said he seems very earnest in liking the game and in what he cares about, and rarely engages in bad-faith arguments (though the fact that he's talked about his adventuring days being 6-8 encounters with one short rest makes me side-eye him a little) unlike many others who echo or follow him as a tastemaker. I don't think he's a bad person, I just don't care about the parts of the game that he does. The game I'm currently in is the first one in the 3-4 years I've been playing where I've taken a feat, and I took Piercer for my rapier-wielding melee DEX-build Fairy Rune Knight. When I was granted some out-of-levelling-progression feats by the DM, I took Mobile and Squat Nimbleness. I have zero interest in playing the game the way Treantmonk does, I've never taken Crossbow Expert, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or Sharpshooter, and I have no inclination to. I've also never felt "left behind" or like I was "falling off" compared to the rest of my party without those feats.
He gets very into "[feat x] is a must-have," "you can't play without [spell y]," and "there's no reason to play as anything but [subclass z]," and in my experience...that's all blatantly inaccurate. I have no interest in "breaking the game" or "winning D&D," and I've never felt remotely penalized for it. There is not a single thing he prizes in his discussions that has ever once affected me. I have no issues with him as a person, but the way his mathematical right/wrong assessment of the value or worth of certain options affects the community can negatively affect my games by virtue of what players take from what he says. Because while he himself says "play what you want" and "D&D is for everyone," a lot of his audience gloss right over those sentiments (easy, given they're 0.02% or less of the runtime of each video) and just pick up on the statistical comparisons and you end up getting Variant Human Gloom Stalkers with Sharpshooter in basically every game, which gets real dull real fast.
Optimization makes D&D into a competition between party members, and I just have no affection whatsoever for that model of the game.
I think all depend on roleplay skills , campaign settings and sheer will to have fun / win fight
as topic says we are sharing our least favorite class, IMO there is no use to shoot'a long videos which class sucks which is superior/inferior - most of the time its personal case;
last year we tried with friends one same one-shot campaign schematic of wave-after-wave last stance in kind of shelter:
background was "splitting personality nightmare relic-room that force you to split into 5 same persons with differend (rolled) main characteristic BUT class and lvl was same
so we played almost each class in this scenerios (focused on almost none-roleplay aspect other then meme/joke playing) forcing to make most beefy/dps builds
and MONKS where ... honestly good, maybe not smooth but very funny , much more funny then sorcerer/wizzards BUt not even near as funny as playing artificers and barbarians (those two made us laugh so hard and battles were so easy srlsy) ((btw: taking 5 clerics was like newbe lvl of difficulty, damn is there something clerics can do?))
so long story short, still , monks and artificers are hardest pick for me both roleplay and battleready BUT they are surely fun to play and kinda unique and depending on campaign setting less or more immersinve and climatic.
currently I am trying my best to "feel" climat of mastermind rogue, and every hour of our sessions and beggins to hate it more and more, as my bestie took face role with SWASHBUCKLER <3 and im so jelaous (
Something I've noticed about monks is that, no matter how much they get ragged on by the community, any time I'm playing with a monk or watch an actual play show with a monk, I eventually get jealous of one or more of their abilities. Whether it's their ability to casually run up the side of buildings, immunity to poison, or just the ability to stun an enemy and turn an otherwise deadly encounter into a farce... Monks are cool. They get a ton of great features, many of which are always-on.
I think the problem is that they don't excel in any one feature like other classes. If you just want to put a beat down on enemies without relying on spell slots or limited-use abilities, a Fighter will get the job done more reliably. If you've got a lot of exploration and tricky acrobatics to pull off, any spellcaster can just cast Fly and resolve the issue more easily. Even their ability to output more attacks per-round than any other class isn't that helpful because there's not as much they can tack onto that. Although a side-effect is that there's very few situations where a Monk isn't helpful... even if they're not as impactful as another class in that same scenario, they still perform well.
Yeah, in a game where everyone's expected to get an A+ in one or two things and a C, D, or F in everything else, the class that's a B (maybe B-) in literally everything gets kinda dumped on.
But second of all he's always encouraging people to play what they like, and in his subclass reviews it makes it clear that C and even D tier sub classes are still playable. I don't know how you cooked up this perception of him.
Maybe it's the fact that he can put out a near hour-long video about how monks suck ass and aren't worth playing, and within that video just say once something along the lines of "I'm sure someone has fun with it, and that's okay." Minor lip-service to the fact that a thing can be enjoyed barely makes a dent in the overwhelming amount of content that's just "this is bad and sucks and it's wrong and terrible."
I've watched tons of him and he has a very calm and kind demeanor, and he loves D&D.
Yeah, and I get that. It's why I didn't slag him off as a bad person or whatever. I even said he seems very earnest in liking the game and in what he cares about, and rarely engages in bad-faith arguments (though the fact that he's talked about his adventuring days being 6-8 encounters with one short rest makes me side-eye him a little) unlike many others who echo or follow him as a tastemaker. I don't think he's a bad person, I just don't care about the parts of the game that he does. The game I'm currently in is the first one in the 3-4 years I've been playing where I've taken a feat, and I took Piercer for my rapier-wielding melee DEX-build Fairy Rune Knight. When I was granted some out-of-levelling-progression feats by the DM, I took Mobile and Squat Nimbleness. I have zero interest in playing the game the way Treantmonk does, I've never taken Crossbow Expert, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or Sharpshooter, and I have no inclination to. I've also never felt "left behind" or like I was "falling off" compared to the rest of my party without those feats.
He gets very into "[feat x] is a must-have," "you can't play without [spell y]," and "there's no reason to play as anything but [subclass z]," and in my experience...that's all blatantly inaccurate. I have no interest in "breaking the game" or "winning D&D," and I've never felt remotely penalized for it. There is not a single thing he prizes in his discussions that has ever once affected me. I have no issues with him as a person, but the way his mathematical right/wrong assessment of the value or worth of certain options affects the community can negatively affect my games by virtue of what players take from what he says. Because while he himself says "play what you want" and "D&D is for everyone," a lot of his audience gloss right over those sentiments (easy, given they're 0.02% or less of the runtime of each video) and just pick up on the statistical comparisons and you end up getting Variant Human Gloom Stalkers with Sharpshooter in basically every game, which gets real dull real fast.
Optimization makes D&D into a competition between party members, and I just have no affection whatsoever for that model of the game.
His "Monks suck" video is directed at WoTC for never fixing it like they did with the Beast Master (and Rangers in general). Believe it or not he's big on balance, and he complains on both sides of it. You should see how much contempt he has for the Twilight Cleric!
Incidentally, since you brought up feats, in his latest video he complained that a handful of feats are vastly outshining other feats (or taking ASI) in power levels. He complained that it causes cookie cutter builds instead of having lots of variety at the table. See #1
Yeah, in a game where everyone's expected to get an A+ in one or two things and a C, D, or F in everything else, the class that's a B (maybe B-) in literally everything gets kinda dumped on.
I would call them an A+ in mobility, a D in damage, D+ in defense, C+ in battlefield control (would be higher, but limited Ki), party support/buff F (or C- for Way of Mercy), enemy debuff F
Note: all classes will score F in at least one or two categories.
Something I've noticed about monks is that, no matter how much they get ragged on by the community, any time I'm playing with a monk or watch an actual play show with a monk, I eventually get jealous of one or more of their abilities. Whether it's their ability to casually run up the side of buildings, immunity to poison, or just the ability to stun an enemy and turn an otherwise deadly encounter into a farce... Monks are cool. They get a ton of great features, many of which are always-on.
I think the problem is that they don't excel in any one feature like other classes. If you just want to put a beat down on enemies without relying on spell slots or limited-use abilities, a Fighter will get the job done more reliably. If you've got a lot of exploration and tricky acrobatics to pull off, any spellcaster can just cast Fly and resolve the issue more easily. Even their ability to output more attacks per-round than any other class isn't that helpful because there's not as much they can tack onto that. Although a side-effect is that there's very few situations where a Monk isn't helpful... even if they're not as impactful as another class in that same scenario, they still perform well.
Yeah. When, against my better judgement, I watched the above video, as he was talking about all the things people say the monk is good at that he says they aren't, my first reaction was pretty much "yeah, but the monk can do all of them as needed, without requiring any specialization". (My second was, "Even I, who does not care or really think about optimization, can see some of the cards you're palming to make your argument.")
And jacks-of-all-trades do not look good in a paradigm where you're optimizing all your characters to be The Best They Are At What They Do (tm Wolverine). If they are optimizable to compete with the specialists, they're likely overpowered.
In the world where the vast majority of D&D players live, where you multiclass because it fits a cool idea, and you take Polearm Master because you like glaive-guisarmes, is the Monk underpowered? I don't know; I haven't played enough Monks, but it does feel like they could stand to have a bigger hit die, a bit more chi, and another attack eventually.
On the other hand, Monks can run up the side of a building, smack down the enemy there with a flying windmill kick, jump off the building, land unharmed next to another enemy, and give them another beatdown, all without breaking a sweat.
I'd be curious to see if it unbalanced things too much to give Monks something like... 3x Proficiency Bonus for their Ki instead of Ki equal to their level. It's a huge boost early on, but at max-level they'd have less than what we get in the current game. Maybe even 2x Proficiency Bonus would be enough of a boost... the main problem with monks is that, until they get to around 8th level, they almost never have enough ki to do all the cool stuff they can pull off. Since Ki recovers on a short rest, you don't really need 20 of them, even at max level...
I'd be curious to see if it unbalanced things too much to give Monks something like... 3x Proficiency Bonus for their Ki instead of Ki equal to their level. It's a huge boost early on, but at max-level they'd have less than what we get in the current game. Maybe even 2x Proficiency Bonus would be enough of a boost... the main problem with monks is that, until they get to around 8th level, they almost never have enough ki to do all the cool stuff they can pull off. Since Ki recovers on a short rest, you don't really need 20 of them, even at max level...
I've actually wondered about just giving them one additional attack, starting at level 1, and change nothing else. It would be a big bump in damage but they're fairly squishy. And you'll need to rely on tactics and your mobility. Very monk-like game play.
I never cared that much about Monks, mostly because I just prefer spell casters in general, but I'm gonna blame the current discussion about Monks to 50% that I now have an interest in playing a Monk.
The other 50% I blame on this guy (yes, yes, I like anime games, just look at my signature xD)
The class I dislike the most is Druid, something about it aggravates me to an unreasonable degree.
The class I'm most disappointed in is Sorcerer. I love the concept, which is why I hate that they are just Wizard but less and using Charisma. I could start another rant about the dndnext sorcerer, but frankly I've ranted enough about that in various places.
I never cared that much about Monks, mostly because I just prefer spell casters in general, but I'm gonna blame the current discussion about Monks to 50% that I now have an interest in playing a Monk.
The other 50% I blame on this guy (yes, yes, I like anime games, just look at my signature xD)
I love monks thematically. I think it's because I'm old (born in 1973). Ninja movies were huge, Karate Kid, the show Kung Fu, and so on. I want to play test my idea of a Monk with one additional main attack.
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I'd agree with them but then we'd all be wrong. :P
Apparently the "optimizer" subcommunity, spearheaded particularly by a YouTuber called TreantMonk, has done loads of math and shown the monks have the worst damage output in the game, and their ki points are insufficient to fuel them throughout an adventuring day, leading them to functionally operate without a class for long stretches of the game.
I agree with him on most things, but not all. He's right on this one. He makes a pretty damming (misspelled on purpose) case here.
I often find him abrasive, and his priorities in the game are wildly divergent from mine, so I'm not a huge fan.
However, he is likely the least irritating, toxic, difficult, and gatekeep-y of the "optimizer" figureheads out there. He seems to legitimately like the game, and not a grumpy grognard out to take a dump on everyone's fun. So if you're going to get into optimizing, you could do a lot worse. There's folks out there without a lot of very stupid complaints that are largely bad-faith arguments meant to smokescreen issues with a "woke agenda*." TreantMonk is very earnest, and seems to be very straightforward. I never doubt his motivations, just whether or not they align enough with mine for me to listen to him.
*(the idea that anyone could think WotC is "woke" is hilarious to me, they make the barest-minimum of media-accepted corporate moves to piss off the least number of people at once. they're not "woke," they just don't wanna go out of business)
If your priority has anything to do with combat effectiveness, Treantmonk is your guy. I'm not saying you'll always agree with him, but that's his focus. Also, I watch a number of DND content creators who give opinions about optimization. None of them really strike me as gate keepers, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by that.
To me WoTC is "woke", and so is Treantmonk. I'm "woke" and I wear it as a badge of honor. "Woke" is just a buzz phrase certain groups came up with as a pejorative. It's meant to cast a negative light on the very idea of having the audacity to have empathy for others.
The thing of it is: His priority isn't combat effectiveness, it's combat superiority. He wants literally the best in any category, and anything that isn't that is "weak" or "bad." And he takes feats and multiclassing, which are optional/variant rules, for granted. That's part of his issue with Monks, that they can't take or get any use of the big combat feats (cbe/gwm/ss/pam/etc), which means they can't "keep up" with other martials. But the thing of it is, in a featless game (AKA, the game as balanced, intended, and released), the Monk has more opportunities to hit than any martial until Fighter gets a 3rd attack at 11, and can add their ability mod to the "offhand" attacks of Flurry of Blows, if you go with his interpretation of Flurry as "two-weapon fighting built into the class." This makes them one of the most consistent martial damage-dealers in the entire game. But everyone craps on them despite the fact that they're assuming nonstandard rules when they do their math. Most white-room theorycrafters or "optimancers" make an awful lot of assumptions that don't necessarily represent typical gameplay, and then reach skewed conclusions that end with them making broad proclamations that thousands of players take as gospel. Treantmonk is likely the least of these, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have a negative effect on the state of the game.
On gatekeeping: I'm referring more to the rank-and-file of people who discuss optimization online than Treantmonk (who I actually said doesn't really do this) or any of the other YouTubers. I see a lot of gatekeeping, particularly on Reddit (sadly one of the best places for discussion of D&D there is), much of it just toxic people saying things like "there's no point in playing a Fighter without GWM," at best, and "if you play a monk you're an idiot" closer to the other end of the spectrum. There's just an awful lot of "your fun is wrong" out there, and it's more prevalent among "optimizers" than non-optimizing players.
On "wokeness": Frankly this is too big a topic to discuss as an aside to fan-ranking D&D classes, but I'm very much in favor of "wokeness," in its intended meaning. It's a black-coined term that isn't really mine to use, but as I understand it, it fundamentally boils down to "being aware of invisible or insidious systems of oppression." That's great. I'm very onboard. I like to flatter myself that I qualify. But at the same time...no matter how well intentioned, WotC is a corporation, and Hasbro moreso. It is...basically impossible for any for-profit organization in a capitalist society to actually behave in a manner that reflects that wokeness, and if the corporation doesn't behave in accordance to those beliefs and that awareness, then it's pretty hard to say they have it. Stuff comes out all the time of at least moderately racist hiring practices or coddling of employees with a history of sexual harrassment, so I just can't take seriously any claims (traditionally from grumpy, toxic, gatekeeping grognards mad that kobolds don't have sunlight sensitivity anymore) that Wizards of the Coast is "woke." They're not. There are some good people working there who want to make the hobby more welcoming to all, and many more who simply recognize that inclusivity is good business, because the more peope there are who want to play your game, the more people will pay to play your game.
WotC is at least moderately left-leaning and progressive, but it's not nearly enough for me to call them terribly "woke," it's mostly corporate performative maneuvering to offend the least number of people possible to maximize product movement. For what it's worth, I haven't seen anything from Treantmonk indicating regressive morality or the white supremacism and misogyny and homo/transphobia that frequently leaks out around the edges of people in this hobby, which is the only reason I broached those subjects in the first place. He seems a decent dude, I'm just not remotely interested in playing the types of games he does. I'm currently playing a DEX-build Rune Knight who took the Piercer feat and put several ASI into CHA. I'd get obliterated in his games, but at most tables, I'm a pretty solid frontliner with a lot of options. My issues with him are primarily: 1) I don't want to play the way he does, and 2) A lot of people I interact without there (these forums, Discords, Reddits, etc) who hang on his every word do tend to lean into the anti-empathy Ben Shapiro alt-right side of things that you so often find in geek spaces. He doesn't seem terrible, but a lot of terrible people seem drawn to him, which puts me off a lot of his stuff just by association. In my experience, anyone who seems to think there's only one "correct" way to do anything tends to attract those people, whether they mean to or not.
I always assumed I hated Treantmonk. Maybe I saw one of his early videos or something, idk. I've seen some of his stuff lately and he's good. Very reasonable dude.
The Monk sucks, but it doesn't take the bottom spot for me because... at least it's cool and unique.
I have to stop right here in the beginning, because this is not only not true it's ridiculous to the point of absurdity. First of all, in his subclass rankings he has an "S" tier, which he explains are problematic due to being overpowered. He's very direct that he recommends not playing them. It's A through F (being the worst), then S for being OP.
But second of all he's always encouraging people to play what they like, and in his subclass reviews it makes it clear that C and even D tier sub classes are still playable. I don't know how you cooked up this perception of him. I've watched tons of him and he has a very calm and kind demeanor, and he loves D&D.
Here's a build idea he presented based strictly on flavor.
Maybe it's the fact that he can put out a near hour-long video about how monks suck ass and aren't worth playing, and within that video just say once something along the lines of "I'm sure someone has fun with it, and that's okay." Minor lip-service to the fact that a thing can be enjoyed barely makes a dent in the overwhelming amount of content that's just "this is bad and sucks and it's wrong and terrible."
Yeah, and I get that. It's why I didn't slag him off as a bad person or whatever. I even said he seems very earnest in liking the game and in what he cares about, and rarely engages in bad-faith arguments (though the fact that he's talked about his adventuring days being 6-8 encounters with one short rest makes me side-eye him a little) unlike many others who echo or follow him as a tastemaker. I don't think he's a bad person, I just don't care about the parts of the game that he does. The game I'm currently in is the first one in the 3-4 years I've been playing where I've taken a feat, and I took Piercer for my rapier-wielding melee DEX-build Fairy Rune Knight. When I was granted some out-of-levelling-progression feats by the DM, I took Mobile and Squat Nimbleness. I have zero interest in playing the game the way Treantmonk does, I've never taken Crossbow Expert, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or Sharpshooter, and I have no inclination to. I've also never felt "left behind" or like I was "falling off" compared to the rest of my party without those feats.
He gets very into "[feat x] is a must-have," "you can't play without [spell y]," and "there's no reason to play as anything but [subclass z]," and in my experience...that's all blatantly inaccurate. I have no interest in "breaking the game" or "winning D&D," and I've never felt remotely penalized for it. There is not a single thing he prizes in his discussions that has ever once affected me. I have no issues with him as a person, but the way his mathematical right/wrong assessment of the value or worth of certain options affects the community can negatively affect my games by virtue of what players take from what he says. Because while he himself says "play what you want" and "D&D is for everyone," a lot of his audience gloss right over those sentiments (easy, given they're 0.02% or less of the runtime of each video) and just pick up on the statistical comparisons and you end up getting Variant Human Gloom Stalkers with Sharpshooter in basically every game, which gets real dull real fast.
Optimization makes D&D into a competition between party members, and I just have no affection whatsoever for that model of the game.
I think all depend on roleplay skills , campaign settings and sheer will to have fun / win fight
as topic says we are sharing our least favorite class, IMO there is no use to shoot'a long videos which class sucks which is superior/inferior - most of the time its personal case;
last year we tried with friends one same one-shot campaign schematic of wave-after-wave last stance in kind of shelter:
background was "splitting personality nightmare relic-room that force you to split into 5 same persons with differend (rolled) main characteristic BUT class and lvl was same
so we played almost each class in this scenerios (focused on almost none-roleplay aspect other then meme/joke playing) forcing to make most beefy/dps builds
and MONKS where ... honestly good, maybe not smooth but very funny , much more funny then sorcerer/wizzards BUt not even near as funny as playing artificers and barbarians (those two made us laugh so hard and battles were so easy srlsy) ((btw: taking 5 clerics was like newbe lvl of difficulty, damn is there something clerics can do?))
so long story short, still , monks and artificers are hardest pick for me both roleplay and battleready BUT they are surely fun to play and kinda unique and depending on campaign setting less or more immersinve and climatic.
currently I am trying my best to "feel" climat of mastermind rogue, and every hour of our sessions and beggins to hate it more and more, as my bestie took face role with SWASHBUCKLER <3 and im so jelaous (
Something I've noticed about monks is that, no matter how much they get ragged on by the community, any time I'm playing with a monk or watch an actual play show with a monk, I eventually get jealous of one or more of their abilities. Whether it's their ability to casually run up the side of buildings, immunity to poison, or just the ability to stun an enemy and turn an otherwise deadly encounter into a farce... Monks are cool. They get a ton of great features, many of which are always-on.
I think the problem is that they don't excel in any one feature like other classes. If you just want to put a beat down on enemies without relying on spell slots or limited-use abilities, a Fighter will get the job done more reliably. If you've got a lot of exploration and tricky acrobatics to pull off, any spellcaster can just cast Fly and resolve the issue more easily. Even their ability to output more attacks per-round than any other class isn't that helpful because there's not as much they can tack onto that. Although a side-effect is that there's very few situations where a Monk isn't helpful... even if they're not as impactful as another class in that same scenario, they still perform well.
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Yeah, in a game where everyone's expected to get an A+ in one or two things and a C, D, or F in everything else, the class that's a B (maybe B-) in literally everything gets kinda dumped on.
His "Monks suck" video is directed at WoTC for never fixing it like they did with the Beast Master (and Rangers in general). Believe it or not he's big on balance, and he complains on both sides of it. You should see how much contempt he has for the Twilight Cleric!
Incidentally, since you brought up feats, in his latest video he complained that a handful of feats are vastly outshining other feats (or taking ASI) in power levels. He complained that it causes cookie cutter builds instead of having lots of variety at the table. See #1
https://youtu.be/aO4kLG3Rovw
I guess we're going to have to disagree. I get that you gave him some credit, but the things you accuse him of, I just don't see it.
I would call them an A+ in mobility, a D in damage, D+ in defense, C+ in battlefield control (would be higher, but limited Ki), party support/buff F (or C- for Way of Mercy), enemy debuff F
Note: all classes will score F in at least one or two categories.
Yeah. When, against my better judgement, I watched the above video, as he was talking about all the things people say the monk is good at that he says they aren't, my first reaction was pretty much "yeah, but the monk can do all of them as needed, without requiring any specialization". (My second was, "Even I, who does not care or really think about optimization, can see some of the cards you're palming to make your argument.")
And jacks-of-all-trades do not look good in a paradigm where you're optimizing all your characters to be The Best They Are At What They Do (tm Wolverine). If they are optimizable to compete with the specialists, they're likely overpowered.
In the world where the vast majority of D&D players live, where you multiclass because it fits a cool idea, and you take Polearm Master because you like glaive-guisarmes, is the Monk underpowered? I don't know; I haven't played enough Monks, but it does feel like they could stand to have a bigger hit die, a bit more chi, and another attack eventually.
On the other hand, Monks can run up the side of a building, smack down the enemy there with a flying windmill kick, jump off the building, land unharmed next to another enemy, and give them another beatdown, all without breaking a sweat.
I'd be curious to see if it unbalanced things too much to give Monks something like... 3x Proficiency Bonus for their Ki instead of Ki equal to their level. It's a huge boost early on, but at max-level they'd have less than what we get in the current game. Maybe even 2x Proficiency Bonus would be enough of a boost... the main problem with monks is that, until they get to around 8th level, they almost never have enough ki to do all the cool stuff they can pull off. Since Ki recovers on a short rest, you don't really need 20 of them, even at max level...
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I've actually wondered about just giving them one additional attack, starting at level 1, and change nothing else. It would be a big bump in damage but they're fairly squishy. And you'll need to rely on tactics and your mobility. Very monk-like game play.
I never cared that much about Monks, mostly because I just prefer spell casters in general, but I'm gonna blame the current discussion about Monks to 50% that I now have an interest in playing a Monk.
The other 50% I blame on this guy (yes, yes, I like anime games, just look at my signature xD)
The class I dislike the most is Druid, something about it aggravates me to an unreasonable degree.
The class I'm most disappointed in is Sorcerer. I love the concept, which is why I hate that they are just Wizard but less and using Charisma. I could start another rant about the dndnext sorcerer, but frankly I've ranted enough about that in various places.
I love monks thematically. I think it's because I'm old (born in 1973). Ninja movies were huge, Karate Kid, the show Kung Fu, and so on. I want to play test my idea of a Monk with one additional main attack.