Nerfing Monks

Viper said on one of his streams that priests will be nerfed. I think that would be very dumb. Right now priests are regulated to getting relics and sometimes two or three are made to defend your base or heal your units. You rarely see them in higher level games. I still don’t think monk rush is viable for highly skilled players but you do see it more often. I think it would be dumb to remove this dynamic from the game. I played against someone who used them in imperial. It was different and fun. Don’t change it!

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I play the Teutons so it feels pretty balanced to me ahahah.

AoE 1 topic?

I wouldn’t say that. I watch a lot of Viper, and as you know, he’s quite handy with his monks, and I’ve seen a fair few games where other players make use of them. Granted, the Viperability of a strategy is sometimes greater than the Viability of a strategy for less-skilled players. But they’re ubiquitous on Arena, at least for the early-mid Castle window, and monk/siege pushes aren’t that rare, but they’re obviously not used extensively in late game due to the diminishing returns of having to micro them against huge armies, regardless of their conversion speed. This was true even before DE increased their conversion rate.

The issue is, these powered-up monks are fairly significant deterrents to expensive units that are less likely to bee seen right out of the gate in Castle anyway (with the exception of knights) - units such as battle elephants and powerful unique units (Teutonic knights, any elephant UUs)…so, they kind of solved a problem that didn’t need to be solved, and push these units further to the sidelines. So I would love to see this uncalled-for buff reverted back to how it was in HD. Honestly, it feels like every civ was given the Inquisition tech for free (and given that, it comparatively nerfs that tech for Spanish).

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I would say I’d like to see a clip of that because that’s not something that has been on the table at any point afaik.

Maybe he refers to this problem:


Is this issue already addressed?
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That would make sense. Yes, devs have already stated that this will get fixed.

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I think it would be terrible if they changed it back. You rarely see more than a few monks created in high level games. To stop a monk rush in arena games you just need to drop a castle. I don’t think it’s a viable strategy for high level players. Yes, it does counter (somewhat) players who go fast castle, castle drop, unique unit, which I’m happy about. Most common units for this stray are conquistadors, mangadaui, and plumed archer. First, that’s a really annoying strategy where the player just does hit and run. Being able to use monks as a deterrent is great but still a big investment. If a player goes feudal aggression and someone does the castle drop, it’s basically gg if they can’t get into their walls. Now with monks there’s a shred of hope to defend and the player will need to create more UU to be effective. The defender will still need to make big investments in the monks to defend. I think it adds to the rock, paper, scissors greatness of AoE2.

The only viable strategy where you make more than 3 monks is Aztec monk rush, which is much more viable now but still extremely difficult, and there’s lots of ways to counter it. Viper has even said himself that no one should lose to a monk rush. It’s such a big investment for Aztecs given all the upgrades you need to get and how bad your eco is relative to the other player. I would really like to see more monks in games and now it seems like this small change could allow for this.

Aztec monk rush is such a a fun and different way to play and play against, I hope they don’t change it making it once again a strategy that is barely ever used. We may start seeing more monks in imperial age. The 1 second improvement is a great change and adds to the diversity of the game. Please don’t change it!

Do you enjoy playing against AI abusing its infinite APM to control many (50+ in some games reported by players) monks at once?

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How base does someone have to be to play against the computer. This conversation is for sentient beings.

Could you explain what exactly do you mean by this?

This conversation is about whether to remove unintended buff to the monks. Because this buff affects balance of monks both in hands of human and AI players, it means, that both situations need to be considered.

There have been complaints about AI being too good at microing monks. Current unintended buff makes AI monks even harder to deal with than before. This is highly likely not welcomed by many people who like to play against AI.

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