Current Monk Status: It seems to me, Naga the chronic complainer, that the current Monk status is not all that great. I honestly think at times that VR hates the class. Here are my whiny quibbles:
Abilities: Monk’s get no abilities from level 16 to 20, then get 2, then none for four more levels...meaning over 8 levels, from 16 to 24, they get a total of 3 abilities.
I expect that’s because they still haven’t fleshed out the classes. But it’s still really bad.
Blazing Fist: was nerfed, and the quite useful ability to control the intensity of the punch was removed.
Feign Death: has been broken for many, many months now. While VR acknowledges it, they haven’t fixed it in half a year. It is our only way to prevent deaths on pulls, so kind of critical. (BTW Thank you for giving us FD at 10, it was a terrific change) I think you should have done Feign Death like EQ did: once you get it you have to practice it hundreds of times to get it up to level 100, in other words it was not level based, but the amount of time the monk spent practicing it. The more diligent you were, the better you got...like Safe Fall, which I’d also love to see in game.
Flurry : was recently nerfed by reducing damage done, a significant amount. Flurry is almost never used in grouping, Monks instead using Concussive Strike, Scorpion Kick for mob/caster controls, and Expose and Spear Hand Strike for openings/closing as their 4 Techniques. The nerf really only hurts solo monks then, as Flurry was one of our better attacks, and one that really made you feel like a Bruce Lee-type monk. Maybe make Flurry a normal attack ability instead of a Technique?
Resonating Strike: has been all over the place over the last year, with both nerfs and enhancements occurring. Since it is kind of the EQ Equivalent of Mend in that it is the In-Combat way a Monk heals, it really should always hit, now there are far too many misses.
Union: If Resonating Strike can’t be changed per above, I’d suggest the healing portion of the Resonating Strike ability be removed, and Union which is currently a very quick heal over time, and only out of combat... converted to an instant heal even while in combat. I'd also make the cooldown shorter. This would make it nearly identical to, or better than, the EQ Mend. Mend could do damage to you, and I'd be ok with that entering the game as well.
Weapons: Unique: One of the things that has really bothered and disappointed me was the recent categorization of some monk weapons, the hand-to-hand ones mainly and some staves...to unique status.
I think this is really a horrible mistake. It used to be that Kyan “The Bolt” Serevatti’s Charged Battle Gloves were able to be dual wielded, in fact you needed two of them...they NEEDED to be dual wielded to get the electricity damage buff on them. It used to be a really wonderful “milestone” or achievement to get a pair of these, again you really “felt like a Monk”, now you can only have one. What a total letdown. (and you nerfed the Dobok as well) There are others too: The Bloodstained Hand wraps from the Ulthirian Sacrificer, the Cracked Staff, Rotten Fist wraps from Rotfist. Pretty much all other Monk hand to hand including fistwraps, knuckles and batons, crafted or dropped, are able to be duel wielded.
Please change it so that all hand to hand can be used in both hands. Armor: I feel bad here, I’ve been a complaining PITA to Joppa so many times on this that he must be sick of even hearing my name...but where the hell are our new Gi’s shown months ago? 
And let’s sure make to bring back the old Gi styles too please, they were awesome. Loved the white and gold look but would like to see other colors too. 
Quests: I really miss the starter headband quest, especially when the headband had stats on it, think it was +1 Strength. It was indeed an easy quest, but it was the very first thing you could do for the Monk Dojo leaders, other than the kill the hornets quest. Please bring it back.
One with the Wind is broken on the third step, you can’t get the Grandmaster to do anything.
The monk Mysterious Traveler quest is also broken, you can’t get past the second dialog branch.
Crafting: It seems to me that Nephele needs some more programming support, he’s an awesome VR asset (and a good person) and I’m afraid he’ll get burnt out or get frustrated and leave, or both.
Saying that...the Tier Two crafting mechanism of playing Chest drop Whack A Mole just sucks, and big time. I honestly don’t know what you guys were thinking when this was implemented. YOU set up a system where people were encouraged to just loot chests all day and night for high end schematics and high-end item drops, not craft, not adventure unless they had to, and become super rich compared to the people that did the crafting and fighting. This totally screwed up the economy, and I know you know that.
I personally refuse to play that game. I’ve pretty much stopped crafting altogether, and feel terrible about it, it was a big part of my game life advancing and progressing to make new stuff for me, alts, friends and guildies. You ruined it. (and hurry up and remove the adventuring level requirement, let us advance crafting as a separate system/sphere)
But other than abilities, weapons, armor, quests and crafting...everything is fine. (Let the flaming begin...)
I've only played Monk to level 12 but I'll chime in. Having played rogue, shaman, warrior to 10, monk has been by far the most enjoyable. There were instances where I was taking on 4 mobs of equal level due to respawns & I survived. Were I on any of my other classes it would have been certain death. Imo monks are very powerful. That said we agree on many things.
Monks are supposed to be STR/CON focused. Know what I focus on instead? DEX because if Resonating Strike misses even once, you are probably going to die & I have many times solely for this reason. Should it always hit the target? I'll let VR decide but until it does I'm going to continue to stack DEX because you can't afford for it to miss.
It is my opinion that feign death should not be available until much later on. After trying to use it & dying several times I learned that:
1: Its currently broken. Which is fine, its EA.
2: Its not intended to work until later levels. So essentially we have a skill that even if you max out to your current level, isn't intended to work until late game. Why even give it to monks early on if it won't reliably work for another 10-20 levels?
Overall I'm pretty happy with the direction monks are heading in but rather then continue to nerf them, maybe buff classes that need more love (rogue/warrior)?
