If I had to list an order of important definitely agility and strength are the most important,
followed by stamina and the other stats you can do without.
Agility is the primary stat that decreases your damage over time via avoidance. I.e. agility
improves your armor class (AC)4 and avoidance skills: defense, parry, and deflection. As
a result, the monsters (mobs) will hit you less often and you will block/parry/dodge more
often. For monks, it’s extremely important to avoid damage since our damage mitigation
is substandard versus the other tank subclasses (e.g. Guardian, Paladin, etc.).
Arguably agility is the most important stat for the monk, but for the other fighter sub-
classes strength or stamina is the most important. Why? Monks are considered
“avoidance” tanks since our successful tanking requires us to avoid damage versus taking
damage. Other fighter subclasses are ”mitigation tanks” and tank successfully because
they have heavy armor that allows for significant damage absorption. Overall they will get
hit more often, but for less damage.
Agility and the monk’s reputation
Agility is the #1 stat for the tanking monk and will directly relate to the reputation. A monk
that can tank well (and believe me, monks can out-tank any other fighter subclass
assuming their agility is high enough) will be well loved by all groups. Monk’s especially
need a reputation boost in the tanking role since there is a widely held belief by a lot of
EQ2 adventurers that monks can not tank and are strictly a DPS subclass. Compounded
with the fact that there will be other monks out there that are convinced they are not tanks,
your role in a group will be limited to DPS.
Agility effectiveness table (for tanking)
Effectiveness Agility Value
3 Stats refer exclusively to strength, agility, stamina, wisdom, and intelligence.
4 AC is an overall quantitative value that measures your ability to sustain damage over time. The
higher the AC value, the less damage you will take over time.
Substandard < 100
Average 140-170
Above
Average 170-200
Exceptional > 200
These values are most relevant for a monk who is trying to tank and the higher agility
scores (e.g. 140+) are generally not possible to achieve unless you’re grouped with a
fellow adventurer that can buff your agility. As a general rule of thumb, once your agility is
above 170-180, your ability to tank group mobs will be better than any other fighter class.
Agility scores of <140 will cause you problems when tanking, and agility scores of 140-170
will put you on par with your fellow tank subclasses.
Expected agility values (solo)
Effectiveness Agility Value
Substandard < 100
Average 100-139
Above
Average 140-180
Exceptional > 180
These values represent the typical agility scores you could achieve based solely on your
self buffs and quality of items. I.e. Higher quality items will yield higher agility modifiers. I
would strongly recommend trying to maintain an agility value of >120 so if you ever decide
to group, you would prove to be at least an average tank. Again, that would assume
someone (e.g. druids or bards) in the group could buff your agility to at least 140 or
greater.
Do I need to have a high agility score when soloing?
No! Agility is generally only valuable in groups and only when you are tanking. The solo
mobs in EQ2 are fairly easy to kill and are ”tuned” so that any class, even if they have
substandard equipment and stats, can kill these mobs. If you are strictly soloing, I would
primarily focus on strength versus agility. However, it should be noted, if you ever plan to
group and tank in your EQ2 adventures, you definitely want to maximize your agility