Re: Aegis Thousand Year War - DMM Online Game
People will swear by monks, caliming they are cheap units with good stats, 2block and dodge. Personally I don't find much use for them.
I'm not one to swear by them since I foresaw their limitations as I started progressing through the early game.
Gina definitely helped in the early game, especially when people are starting out. I found her to be extremely useful for the fairy rescue dailies as a new player because of Rush! and being able to block 2. She just doesn't transition well into the late-game because of her poor stats. The one thing I've noticed that stopped me from using Gina completely is how fast she gets destroyed by the kappa or kamaitachi in the Oriental Country story missions. Anything that attacks fast or hits hard with decent speed just makes monks cry.
I don't have much to comment about Ling, but I find Ur to be an exception among the monks. I haven't raised her to a usable state yet, but her high attack stat has great synergy with her skill (Rush!). She also gets the option to have true damage with her Skill AW. Her low defense will still scare me against powerful enemies.
I would say Angels are the class that made Monks irrelevant, or rather, placed into a niche position. At a slightly higher cost, you get a fighter with phenomenal stats, blocks multiple units, attacks all blocked units (CC+), and has high magic resistance. The only set-back is their inactivity while their skill is on cool-down, but people can work around that and it isn't long before it's ready again. As long as they can kill multiple units fast, without dying fast, then they serve a better purpose than monks can.
What monks needs is a better class-trait. Make it similar to AW Sailors, whereas monks get more evasion or defense on skill use instead of an AoE that Sailors get. Where is my Iron-Body monk!?
From another perspective, late-game content just makes certain classes ineffective choices, but not necessarily bad choices. Available units and team composition can make certain classes/characters work. Extreme Katie fans will build a team that makes her the "MVP," and sure as hell it is going to work because they will make it possible. We're all building teams around our standard compositions (healer, tank, duelists, fighters, and ranged dps), and that makes it so we don't usually have a lot of opportunities to build around other units. I'm trying my best to make my gimmick team and I will make sure it's going to work in the future, even if it's not as effective as my standard event-clearing team.