Unarmed Fighting...are you doing it?

[Lich King]

I agree that WoM is supposed to be more challenging, and not easier than other builds. But it still needs to be fun in order to have the players seriously consider doing it. If you have a low damage output - and you have without weapons - then you should at least have decent crit to make up for it.
The players also need some equipment upgrades to look forward to, otherwise it will get boring to go all the way from mid game to end with the same gear.

In the current state of the game light armor is pretty much the only meaningful way to go. Unarmored has the abovementioned problems, and heavy is also lacking. While the best light armors have bonuses, heavy armors only have penalities. And even the Heavy armor mastery skill only gives 20% bonus to BC and only negates AP penality and even that only by 25%. While Light armor mastery gives 30% bonus. That means that you get +4 BC to a 14 BC light armor, and also only +4 BC to a 22 BC heavy armor. And that's body armor only, head gear, gloves and boots don't even have much variety in heavy, and they give only slightly higher BC than the light variant, or none at all.

[ornsio]

The way of the monk was added as something that is supposed to be difficult. If you want to fight with no armor and no weapon, you cannot expect it to be easy. I do think we should add a specialization skill though. Sure, you can't get it early, but it should be available at some point.

That makes sense . Personally, I think it would be cool to have it be more difficult than the standard approach for most of the game, but have it ramp up in the end game to have a bit of an edge over other builds at that point. Otherwise there's not much appeal to it until you have already played the game to death with other builds. However, I do understand that some players like having an approach that's just all around more difficult, just for the challenge of it. But I think those kinds of players are also the type that like to accomplish that in other ways with self-imposed limitations, such as no use of Increased Fortitude.

Personally I want to try it just for something different. My brother and I are playing through the game at the same time for the first time right now, he went with dual wield, and so I like to pick a different build so there's more variety when we talk about the game together. I originally went wep+shield, but I haven't been impressed and started over with the intent of going Monk when I came across this thread. Dual wield seems like the best to me due to the high crit potential, and if I were just playing on my own that's probably what I'd go with for this first time completing the game (that is, completing what's there to complete )

[rijackson741]

Well, balancing options in the game is a never ending task, and no matter what we do there always be some that disagree that it's balanced. It's like politics in that respect.

[ornsio]

Well, balancing options in the game is a never ending task, and no matter what we do there always be some that disagree that it's balanced. It's like politics in that respect.

Lol I'm sure! Well it's a very cool game and you won't get any complaints from me, even if you don't do exactly what I want