Monk forum page

[Deleted]

I know that MMO has been around for many years and that people may have the view "If it 'ain't broke, don't fix it", but I have a few suggestions that may make this forum easier to read/look up information on.

At times it is difficult for people to find the answers they seek when viewing the threads, specifically the class guides. As it stands the monk thread is split into three spec guides which have a sticky. However following these guides are currently e.g. Mistweaver - 116+ pages of discussion. The topics discussed which follow are usually recent changes by Blizz, upcoming raids, questions regarding specific bosses, haste caps, crit gemming, PTR discussion etc. Essentially a mix of topics all bundled together.

I recently rerolled to mistweaver (~4 mths ago) and found the guide on mmo the most comprehensive around. However, I had several follow up questions I wanted to ask, and I know that other people have/had, as they are littered through the recent changes/discussions following the guide.

My suggestion would be that in future for the class guide to be sticky'd and any pertinent questions posted by ppl relating to learning/setting up their monk be posted after it. E.g. Is this haste cap correct? Shall I change to crit gems? Is this enough spirit? etc etc. I would also suggest that two other sticky'd topics be used to allow for discussion. for example; Mistweaver - Discussion of theorycrafting and class changes, Mistweaver - Discussion of talents/mw specific tactics for 5.4 bosses. (I'm sure the same would follow for WW and BrM.)

I realise that this may be problematic having 3 threads with a sticky for each class, rather than once each. However, reading through 100+ pages of people posting trying to find answers to all their questions in the middle of an unrelated discussion can get confusing. In essence I am trying to suggest a method of making finding the information you are trying to find easier, and hopefully easier to follow the various discussions that are going on.

Am I alone in thinking that it would be easier if we could break the spec related threads down a bit into easier to follow topics? Or is it just my pathological need for order acting up again?

Denkles

[Totaltotemic]

Elitistjerks.com does something like that with a "Simple Questions" thread for each class, but I don't think it has to be attached in a sticky. If you look down the forum at the amount of simple question threads, you'd be taking away a good 75% of the forum traffic by condensing it into one sticky per spec, and this forum doesn't get nearly enough traffic for threads like that to be considered disruptive.

In the history of this specific subforum, the stickied guides have evolved into "current events" threads because each spec typically has only 5-10 people that regularly talk about that spec on this forum on a weekly or daily basis. Concerns over muddled discussion aren't really brought up because the amount of people that haven't been there for the entire 100+ pages previously that suddenly want to know all of that information is practically nonexistent.

Simple things like stat priorities are already contained in their respective guides. If you made a thread right now asking if people in 510+ ilvl still go for the 9158 haste breakpoint for ReM, the responses you would get would range from "yes" to "yes, that's what the guide says, didn't you look at that first?" After you have your answer, the thread would fall off the front page and down into the abyss of the forum archive, which is in my opinion preferable to stuffing the already bloated discussion threads with questions like that. Requiring a new thread for each of those questions is a handy automatic cleanup tool and a good way to make sure that your question is answered rather than posting in the same thread as 10 other people asking 10 different questions.

I'm not a mod so my opinion isn't terribly important on a matter like this, but I think that forcing discussion into certain threads instead of letting it evolve organically would probably be bad for the forum in general.

[Rockets]

There does seem to be an effect where newcomers look at the stickies, look at the (for BrM) 220+ page count, and then don't read the guide in the first post.

That said, I dunno how much of a difference it would make to have the actual guides be stickied separately from the general ongoing discussion threads. I kind of get the feeling that a lot of the people who come to the forums with a particular question in mind ("I keep dying, are my stat choices bad or what??") would still make a new thread even if the appropriate guide didn't have hundreds of pages of discussion attached to it.

I mean, as I see it there are basically a handful of things going on here, per spec:

1) The guide, maintained by an active poster and kept up to date with the latest consensus.
2) The ongoing discussion about how the spec works, theorycrafting, experimental logs, etc.
3) help what stats do i use?? (answer: copy/paste relevant section from the guide)
4) help i keep dying / my numbers are low, here is a log, what am i doing wrong??? (answer: you are not doing X, Y, Z that the guide says you should be doing)
4b) No seriously it's just a problem with this particular fight, are there any tricks I should be using on Boss X? (this actually has some useful stuff sometimes)
5) Monks are the worst class in the game right now y/n

Some of the posts from 3-5 end up in the big spec discussion threads, but I agree with Totaltotemic that generally it's nice to have them get answered and fall off the front page. It would be even nicer if folks would read the guides and answer their own questions that way instead of making new threads, but somehow I doubt we can reach that ideal.