TheViper reacts to Hera's 'Monk are still totally broken' and gives his opinion

TheViper | Professional Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Player for GamerLegion | Sponsored by Re-Bo

[jaspernemo]

I feel like the monk counter play should not be so much more expensive that the techs for monks themselves. Like Faith should be a common tech to get if you're up against a lot of monks ((not for your own monks, but for your army), like getting pierce armor upgrades against crossbows. Maybe make it a castle age upgrade with a lower percentage and then an imp tech to get to the full 50%. Now it is an extreemly expensive tech that would be useless by the time the time you already in a 10 vs 10 monk war. Even if light cav counter monks it, shouldn't be the only option.

[snophund]

One counter argument Hera forgets is how many monks often get sniped before they give any value back..

[JaDabird]

It's kinda funny to hear the discussion about monks being OP. I only really use monks for relics and healing. It's difficult to target conversions, and I'm too slow to get them most of the time. Usually I don't have any issues playing against them, just make more army. Monks being OP seems like a problem only for the top handful of players.

[rubenmaessen]

I have always been amazed by conversion range. Reducing by one tile range would be an overall monk nerf.

[roscaris]

I have heard a good point elsewhere that the RNG aspect does serve the purpose of nerfing "deleting" as a viable counter to monks. I can imagine a world in which the conversion time is precisely set where pro players just get insanely good at timing their deletes. I also like the slight element of risk and comeback potential. All that said, the RNG range should definitely reduced.

[andrewcooper]

I think the RNG aspect is very important because if it was a fixed timer, you would know depending on distance and DPS whether or not it's worth to dive a monk, thus we would see perfectly timed deletes. I would like to see the range narrowed a bit, perhaps by 1 or 2 seconds on both ends.

I agree with the points about Heresy for all and more expensive Block Printing.

[Payhellbay]

Roxy roasting him while Hera gets more and more agitated made my day 😂

[ColinAoC]

All these pros want to balance the game for Arabia. How am I going to go full missionaries on Michi if all civs get Heresy?!

[ocircles]

1. conversion speed based entirely on faith
2. start faith on 0 (or higher with tech)
3. conversion timer resets when target is out of range (but it remains if new unit is picked without losing range, still allowing monk zoning with good micro)

[oldmanyellsatscreen]

@01:22 Hera slowly losing his grip on reality. Meanwhile this one guy in chat reminding himself to buy bread and that he is loved.

[momobo]

Viper`s suggestion for more monk techs neglects one important principle of aoe: Simplicity (on the surface at least) . We dont want deter new players. For me even the current amount of monk techs were too many and complicated at the beginning.

[sourathghosh]

100% agree with Viper's take on heresy being available to all civs. If not all civs at least it must be available to all Elephant and siege civs.

[Atlassian.]

Just making conversion time standardized would eliminate so much frustration

[JoycenatorGaming]

“Hussar spam boy complains about monks”

[ellisroe]

Thanks for the video Viper, I love these debates.

Speaking as some1 who watches the game more often than playing it now, I will agree with Hera that I'm tired of seeing monks dominate the meta. Its true that recency bias makes it seem worse because TTL3 had a lot of monk friendly maps, but its also true that many of those maps would not have seen heavy monk play 10, 5, or even 2 years ago. Hera is right when he says that pro player speeds are needed to fully take advantage of monks, but I think one thing to add is that while monks haven't really ever been buffed to my recollection, they have been indirectly buffed by all the little quality of life things we've had since user patch on Voobly, then Wololo Kingdoms, then DE. Things such as farm queuing, then unlimited farm queuing, select-all hotkeys, other new hotkeys, multi-queue, reduced latency, etc. All of these things have made it so pros can keep a strong eco with less and less time spent looking at their TCs, and thus more time looking at their army. And no army benefits more from close attention than monks. So the reason we're seeing a monk meta these days is not just maps, its that in the past, even the best players were not able to unlock the full potential of monks.

So I think Hera is more or less right about the need for a significant nerf. Some good ideas that have been suggested are things like increasing the cost of Imp monk upgrades, decreasing the cost of heresy and giving it to every civ as Viper suggested, and decreasing monk base range by 1. And why not make the conversion time not random (or shrink randomness window even more) So what if people know the conversion timings? They'll either delete their units or not depending on their apm and timing ability. Better that than the frustration and unfairness of RNG on such important game swings. I also really like Viper's idea of separating the conversion of siege from the conversion of buildings into different techs, perhaps that come one after the other.

[sobek]

Great video. I do think monastery should have a cheap technology that allows monks to convert units, so it will give a little bit of time . 100 gold for heal and convert instantly is too good imo. Just a random idea to slightly nerft the unit.

[chronographer]

Is there some way that making redemption conversations lower range could be balenced? Like rams and trebs are already only converted in melee range, what if mangos and bombards were 4-7 range or something. Or would that just kill the viability completely?

[davidhill]

Really enjoyed the video. I like the slower meta of walling up creating minimal army and shooting for faster castle time.

[geepfish]

Breaking it down from what I understand, monks are:
1. Converting at random times
2. Cost effective
Hera's (primary) argument:
1. Xbows used to counter Monks (I don't see why skirms can't fill this role since monks have low hp and no armour but hey, maybe just give skirms +5 to monks and call it a day lol)

Why not make monk conversion speed based on distance? A unit further away takes longer to convert then a nearby unit, it doesn't change the idea that knights are not effective against monks, and would make ranged units as viable as before, the math behind the calculation could be that the more monks are present, the less impact distance has.

Formula for conversion with distance should probably look like this:
(distance^2 / monk's range^2 * 7) + 5
So at point blank, 5s conversion time, at 4 range this is 6.38s conversion time, at 8 range 10.53s conversion time etc,
5 is the minimum conversion time, 7 is the max time, 12 - minimum.

The max might be too harsh here, maybe 10 is more reasonable and the min is probably too small, but the key point is the exponential growth curve for distance to give ranged units an "edge" at countering monks effectively. I imagine something similar to how multiple vills working on constructing a building would be appropriate for having multiple monks affecting their "distance" debuff, but not sure if that's necessary.

This would make it harder for siege (mango's, bombards) to get converted at range too so it would resolve the points brought up, another extension is to make it bound to unit type so monks are still effective against ships for example (there was a vid awhile ago of some pro player trying to convert the same turtle ship 2 or 3 times and getting the worst RNG each time lol)

Also kind of fits the in game situation, hard to be convinced to betray your kingdom by someone screaming sermons at you from the other side of the battlefield lol

Not going to comment about costs of the techs or staggering them, that can open an unexpected can of beans for some whacky strategies

[harooooo]

It seems again that the issue is in how powerful walling is rather than monks? and it speeds up the meta into low eco boom playstyles with little military, where monks excell