Speak Of The Daredevil : GW2

The Heart of Thorns specialization for the Thief class was officially announced today, although anyone who cares probably heard about it a couple of days back, when most of the details were data-mined and posted on Reddit. Even those of us who weren't really paying attention could hardly avoid hearing about it, since speculation and scuttlebutt about the new Elite sub-classes is common currency in map chat most days.

At The Frozen Maw last night someone asked what people thought of the new Daredevil, which is what the new spec is called. It does seem an odd choice. The conversation rapidly spiralled into a heated discussion over whether Daredevil uses a staff or nunchucks with the participants clearly at cross-purposes over whether we were talking about the upcoming addition to the game or the guy in the comics.

For me, as a lifelong comics fan, it was Matt Murdock, Marvel's blind superhero that came immediately to mind. He was created in the 1960s by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, which I remembered as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby until I fact-checked. I would have been a demon on the New Yorker back in the day! On second thoughts maybe not... they didn't have Wikipedia back then, did they? The wiki entry does mention "an unspecified amount of input" from Jolly Jack, though, so I wasn't entirely off the money.

Daredevil was always a second-string hero until Frank Miller's (and David Mazzuchelli's) seminal run on the series in the 1980s. The name has been pretty well nailed down ever since because of that, despite the best efforts to the contrary by one of the least successful Marvel movie adaptations a decade ago. That disgrace has since been largely wiped from memory by the current well-received tv show but whether GW2's thiefly version will be able to shake itself free from the baggage attached to the name remains to be seen.

Mrs Bhagpuss probably couldn't pick Daredevil out of a line-up but having read the skill set

she has her own take on where we've seen it all before. When I got into game tonight and grouped up for the Jungle Wurm daily she asked "Did you hear thieves are going to be EQ monks?".

And yes, now that I read the details, the whole thing does have a monkly sheen. This part especially:

"Fist Flurry: Strike your enemy multiple times. If all attacks hit, gain access to Palm Strike.

Palm Strike: Strike your enemy once to deal massive damage and stun your enemy, marking them with a Pulmonary Impact. After a few moments, Pulmonary Impact delivers a second blow. This ability cannot critically hit enemies".

Isn't that D&D's Quivering Palm?

Indeed, the whole staff-wielding warrior-acrobat thing pretty much screams "Shaolin Monastery" (unless it screams "Friar Tuck"... no, he was hardly an acrobat, was he?). I'm not sure it's something I'd have associated with fantasy thieves. There's a crossover when it comes to stealth I guess but then we're going to be obligated to start talking ninjas and no-one wants that.

Whether we're getting Matt Murdock or Shang Chi, it's probably all going to remain hypothetical as far as I'm concerned. I might have a level 80 thief but I haven't got the first clue how to play one. I never got on with the monk class in Everquest either, unlike Mrs Bhagpuss, who had a max level monk back in the PoP era. About all I remember was "You have fallen to the ground" ten thousand times as I tried to train up Feign Death and not being able to loot any copper pieces because of the weight penalty.

So that's thief out. Just the unnamed Engineer specialization to go now and the full details of the long-ago revealed but never codified Druid spec for Rangers, which also uses a staff. That's probably the only one I'm really interested in so sod's law says it's the last to get a full reveal.

Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

I totally did not come up with this post just so I could do this link.

Monks of Pantaloonia

 
The whole monk thing used to mystify me, I confess. Everywhere you went in fantasyland there they'd be, hopping and jumping and throwing shapes, hurling themselves on the ground like possums. They'd hold out their quivering palms like traffic policemen at a minor road accident and expect you to drop dead from fright not laughter.

And now they are pandas and somehow that's supposed to be a silly bridge too far? 

I thought fighting monks were pretty ridiculous when I first encountered them back in the 1970s. Martial arts were absolutely everywhere back then; on tv, in comic books, on the big screen, even in the charts. Even I had a set of nunchuks, although since the wood bits flew off the end every third revolution when the screw fitting unwound they made for more slapstick than violent assault.

Hey! I saw you blink!

I'd pretty much forgotten all about monks by the time I came to MMOs so it was a little disconcerting to step out of the main gates of Qeynos to find bare-chested men lying all over the ground. It was a popular class, for sure. I even had a monk of my own, aptly nicknamed the Drunk Monk because I created him on one of the Zek pvp servers and only ever played him when I'd been drinking.

Thousandth time's the charm

Kunark brought a whole new level of monk silliness. Seven foot tall lizards that spun on the balls of their clawed feet and swiped at you with their tails. Thousands of them, hissing, swiping, spinning and falling down. It took an EQ monk hundreds, thousands of attempts to raise his Feign Death skill and for months wherever you went in Norrath all you heard was the sound of Iksars falling down and getting up again, grunt, hiss, thud.

Zen garden with fox

I never took to the monkly life until I played my first Disciple in Vanguard and then suddenly it all clicked. A martial artist whose every punch and kick put heart and health back into his companions. The perfect combination of melee and healing I hadn't known I'd been looking for all along. It would scarcely have seemed silly at all, if he hadn't been a three-foot high fox, pirouetting on his hind legs.

That led indirectly to my playing a Bruiser in EQ2. I'd tried a gnome monk and a kerran bruiser before but neither stuck. It was only when I stepped out into The Commonlands as a three-foot high ratonga (that's a rat with attitude) that again it all clicked into place. Ninety levels fell like rain.

OMG! What happened! Were you mugged?

The Disciple remains my favorite ever class in any MMO and if anything could induce me to try WoW again it might easily be a melee-healing Panda. (Although the panda part could still be a sticking point. If it was a melee-healing squirrel it'd be a done deal). A character that can kick ass in close combat while keeping all his friends alive and fall flat on his back and giggle his whiskers off if everything goes south, well what's silly about that?