Brother_Solar
04-17-2009, 12:19 PM
Allow me to preface by saying all of the below suggestions are driven by my own opinions and experience as well as my desire to make my favorite class both balanced and elegant. I will not touch on the problems we have had with handwraps and unarmed combat; those are largely the result of bugs and odd implementation.
Any time I list multiple suggestions under the same problem, I am considering them mutually exclusive (that is, I’m advocating either Suggestion 1 or Suggestion 2, but not both at the same time).
Ki Strikes and Finishing Moves
Problems: When auto-attacking, ki strikes do not always go off when the button is pressed, depending on the progression of the attack animations. This becomes frustrating when trying to set off a combo-finishing move. Any lag at all can make the finishing move APPEAR to be ready, but poor communication between the client and game server can cause the finisher to “step back” a move and ruin the combo. Ki strikes are limited both by a three-second cooldown and by ki generation/retention; the cooldown seems arbitrary and redundant. One other issue with the ki strikes is that they slow down your attack animation for some reason when you use them (I don’t know what causes this, and I have no suggestions for fixing it).
Suggestion 1: Remove or reduce the cooldown on energy ki strikes. The three second cooldown timer makes building finishers awkward and cumbersome.
Suggestion 2: Remove the necessity to press the energy damage ki-strike button every time you wish to use it. Instead, make them toggle abilities that add a set amount of elemental damage to your attacks, but cause ki to degenerate at a faster rate. Unfortunately, while much easier on the user’s fingers, hands, and wrists, this method would also require a re-work of the current finishing move system (which I think would be a good thing, as the current system is buggy, unreliable, and frustrating).
Cleansing Enhancements
Problems: These abilities cannot target “self.” It is more reliable simply to utilize cleansing potions that can be used both on self and/or a friendly target instead of spending 2 AP per ability on cleanses that can ONLY be used on friendly targets.
Suggestion: Allow Lifting the Veil, the Receptive Earth, Restoring the Balance, and Difficulty at the Beginning to target “self” as well friendly targets.
Earth Stance
Problems: Earth stance does not provide any means of gaining aggro, and all of the damage reductions provided are lower than those attainable through wearing a shield. In short, the stance which COULD be the monk “tanking stance” is instead the “stance that no one uses.” Unless the additional ki gained on being “critically hit” activates on critical hits that are negated by 100% Fortification, that portion of the stance is also entirely without merit.
Suggestion: Remove the “gain additional ki when critically hit” component of Earth stance, and replace it with “attacking causes you to generate X% additional hate.” Some players would advocate gaining monster hate when the monk gets hit, but that does not seem balanced to me and could potentially make monks the most desired tanks in the game (they should not be the best, in my opinion, but they should at least have the option of being a valid tanking choice).
Fire Stance
Problems: Fire stance seems to be a DPS oriented stance as it requires the monk to give up defensive capability (through the reduction of Wisdom). The issue here is that Air stance is more effective at increasing DPS through simple attack speed increase, but Air stance also increases defensive capability (through the increase of Dexterity). What purpose does Fire stance serve then? Ki builds faster, certainly, but ki still builds fast in Air stance if the Elegant Crane enhancement is taken. The ki built up through Fire stance needs to have some outlet other than pressing five different ki-strike buttons one after another to get the first one pressed off of cooldown.
Suggestion 1: Give Fire stance a small, static addition to damage dealt in addition to the Strength increase it provides.
Suggestion 2: Give monks an entirely new ability that be toggled on to cause additional damage on all attacks but at the same time increases the rate of ki degeneration. Alternatively, rather than creating a new ability, the “Void Strike” enhancement could be altered to do this; it is another enhancement that few monks take or use as it is vastly inferior to the elemental ki strikes and has no “upgrade.”
Suggestion 3: Give us some ki strikes that require larger amounts of ki (the current energy ki strikes only use 5 ki) and do more damage/have greater effect.
That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading.
Any time I list multiple suggestions under the same problem, I am considering them mutually exclusive (that is, I’m advocating either Suggestion 1 or Suggestion 2, but not both at the same time).
Ki Strikes and Finishing Moves
Problems: When auto-attacking, ki strikes do not always go off when the button is pressed, depending on the progression of the attack animations. This becomes frustrating when trying to set off a combo-finishing move. Any lag at all can make the finishing move APPEAR to be ready, but poor communication between the client and game server can cause the finisher to “step back” a move and ruin the combo. Ki strikes are limited both by a three-second cooldown and by ki generation/retention; the cooldown seems arbitrary and redundant. One other issue with the ki strikes is that they slow down your attack animation for some reason when you use them (I don’t know what causes this, and I have no suggestions for fixing it).
Suggestion 1: Remove or reduce the cooldown on energy ki strikes. The three second cooldown timer makes building finishers awkward and cumbersome.
Suggestion 2: Remove the necessity to press the energy damage ki-strike button every time you wish to use it. Instead, make them toggle abilities that add a set amount of elemental damage to your attacks, but cause ki to degenerate at a faster rate. Unfortunately, while much easier on the user’s fingers, hands, and wrists, this method would also require a re-work of the current finishing move system (which I think would be a good thing, as the current system is buggy, unreliable, and frustrating).
Cleansing Enhancements
Problems: These abilities cannot target “self.” It is more reliable simply to utilize cleansing potions that can be used both on self and/or a friendly target instead of spending 2 AP per ability on cleanses that can ONLY be used on friendly targets.
Suggestion: Allow Lifting the Veil, the Receptive Earth, Restoring the Balance, and Difficulty at the Beginning to target “self” as well friendly targets.
Earth Stance
Problems: Earth stance does not provide any means of gaining aggro, and all of the damage reductions provided are lower than those attainable through wearing a shield. In short, the stance which COULD be the monk “tanking stance” is instead the “stance that no one uses.” Unless the additional ki gained on being “critically hit” activates on critical hits that are negated by 100% Fortification, that portion of the stance is also entirely without merit.
Suggestion: Remove the “gain additional ki when critically hit” component of Earth stance, and replace it with “attacking causes you to generate X% additional hate.” Some players would advocate gaining monster hate when the monk gets hit, but that does not seem balanced to me and could potentially make monks the most desired tanks in the game (they should not be the best, in my opinion, but they should at least have the option of being a valid tanking choice).
Fire Stance
Problems: Fire stance seems to be a DPS oriented stance as it requires the monk to give up defensive capability (through the reduction of Wisdom). The issue here is that Air stance is more effective at increasing DPS through simple attack speed increase, but Air stance also increases defensive capability (through the increase of Dexterity). What purpose does Fire stance serve then? Ki builds faster, certainly, but ki still builds fast in Air stance if the Elegant Crane enhancement is taken. The ki built up through Fire stance needs to have some outlet other than pressing five different ki-strike buttons one after another to get the first one pressed off of cooldown.
Suggestion 1: Give Fire stance a small, static addition to damage dealt in addition to the Strength increase it provides.
Suggestion 2: Give monks an entirely new ability that be toggled on to cause additional damage on all attacks but at the same time increases the rate of ki degeneration. Alternatively, rather than creating a new ability, the “Void Strike” enhancement could be altered to do this; it is another enhancement that few monks take or use as it is vastly inferior to the elemental ki strikes and has no “upgrade.”
Suggestion 3: Give us some ki strikes that require larger amounts of ki (the current energy ki strikes only use 5 ki) and do more damage/have greater effect.
That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading.