Monk Finisher System Improvements

[Alcides]

I thought what he was getting at is pretty clear: make TWF feats apply to unarmed and Q-staves attacks. From what I've read on the forums, they do not.

I'm not sure about the Q-staves, but unless your character had an arm amputated, it makes sense that the TWF chain should apply to unarmed attacks.

Yep, there are no rules against using unarmed strikes with Two Weapon Fighting and Flurry of Blows at the same time in PnP.

Quarterstaves are considered a double weapon in PnP, which allows you to use the TWF feats with it for more iterative attacks. The same penalties apply as if you were attacking with a weapon in each hand, and you do 1/2 str damage with the "off hand" attacks.

The problem is DDO isn't coded yet to take into consideration double weapons.

[BillBob]

Buff Abilities:

1) I'd like to see the monks buff abilities lengthened to that of 6/secs per lvl (haste duration)

2) Party friendly unique/stackable buffs: all with a haste duration

Harmony
Replace heroism with Monks Guidance: a +1 stackable bonus to attacks, saves, skills.
Replace blur with Monks Acuity: a + ~5% stackable concealment (10% maybe on monk only tho it would be a bit overpowering).

Domination
Monks Turmoil(group): creatures receive ~2 ac when successfully attacking the player.

Some of the Finishing Moves 4. If you attempt a special attack while blocking and do not spend Ki or make the attack, it should not count towards a finisher. It should mean nothing.

I don't mind the charging while blocking as it does give the opportunity to be applying the combos often at the beginning of battle. Since the battles or encounters are quick and the duration on the buffs are so short, it can be annoying trying to build, sustain and execute at the right times. It this were to be changed then the duration and or the ki cost may have to be revisited.

[silverraven]

That makes no sense, and is also untrue.


That's untrue as well.

oh ok, so your telling me that when your trying to smash five boards with your hand you can just do it without concentrating. that's talent

[Angelus_dead]

Because the dev tracker has been so slow, many of you may have missed Eladrin's update on future monk changes, including a modification to the Finishers:

# Due to the increased difficulty of completing an attack chain, the Save DC's for Monk Finishers have been raised from 10 + Half Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier to 10 + Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier.

I'd like to reiterate that this is a bad way to address the problem. The problem is that finishers are awkward to use because too many things can break the combo, so the direct solution (as described above) is to reduce the number of actions that break the combo. Instead, they're apparently leaving finishers as unwieldy fragile things, but boosting up the saving throws to make them more powerful to compensate for the trouble it takes to execute them.

What's wrong with that? A list.

1. The change takes us into the troublesome situation where, at level 20, a creature who fails on Stunning Fist or Quivering Palm 25% of the time will fail against Pain Touch or Freezing the Lifeblood 75% of the time. That means the monk's finisher attacks and other attacks are in whole different categories: Finishers are "mostly work" and others are "mostly resisted". A +10 DC is huge. Finishers already somewhat overshadow QP because they cost less and allow twin attacks, but the change will make that worse.

2. The change will do nothing to benefit finishers that have no DC, such as Karmic Strike. It's unfair to the no-DC finisher attacks.

3. In the moderately common situation where the enemies have low saves (such as all those hapless monsters who fail DC 28 Finger of Death 95% of the time), the change provides the monk no real benefit. They mostly failed before, they mostly fail now, and he's still got an awkward and delicate process to launch the combo.

4. It doesn't help low-level monks. The difference between DC 12+wis and DC 14+wis is hard to detect, so at low level it won't seem any stronger. But it's low level monks who face obstacles completing a finisher sequence: their Ki reserve is probably not enough to prep and fire the finisher without pausing for more Ki in the middle, and their low number of special attacks means they'll have to wait on a cooldown to use the same attack repeatedly in the prep. Monks can gain 4 finishers at level 1 and another 5 at level 3, and then that's all they'll ever have. A fix which doesn't kick in until many levels after you gained the feature is barely a fix at all.

5. It remains counterintuitive. The finisher system is poorly documented, and players are expected to sort of figure it out by messing around and noticing when the icon lights up. But, there are too many actions which break the combo for no apparent reason, and almost as many that maintain it when you'd expect a break. To reliably deploy finishers the player must memorize a bunch of arbitrary yes/no rules. That's simply less fun than easier-to-activate finishers that are somewhat weaker in DC.

6. This is hard to explain, and I'm not going to spend the time right now to elucidate it carefully. But, have you ever tried to fight with an open beverage in your offhand? That's what using monk finishers will become... you've got something fragile and valuable restricting your movements so you can use it later on. It takes you out of the rough&tumble hitting so that 80% of your effort is spent protecting your drink. With the upcoming change, using finishers means like doing a special "dance" in the middle of combat to prepare it, and then you get the payoff of a hard-to-resist debuff.

Overall, it'd be much better if finishers kept a DC in line with other monk abilities (which could be universally raised if that were needed to make the class more powerful), and were easy to use as a sideline to regular melee. If a monk just restricts his attacks to APA in place of APE to qualify for Dance of Clouds even though the E strike would be stronger than the A strike, that's the acceptable kind of tradeoff we should be looking for monk players to make. But if a guy does AP and then holds back on looting a sparkly because it'd break his combo, that's bad. Or if a guy does ANA but then holds back from using even one A or E attack so he can keep holding the Falling Star Strike until he finds a valid target, that's bad too.

[winsom]

Angelus_dead is mixing up two issues that do not need to be linked. Each needs a separate solution:

1. Monk finishers are not as fun as they could be.

Spending 5 Ki to add +2d6 damage on a Prue-finishing attack is insignificant damage when a monster has many 100s of HP. The cost of a Ki cost of a Finisher is actually 5 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 30 ki. This is too high of a cost for what finishing moves currently do. The process of setting up a finisher or holding-the-charge can be interrupted in a number of ways, such as opening a door or chest. This should be changed to be more fun.


2. Domination monks are not nearly as useful or powerful as Harmony monks.

Harmony Monks can raise the dead, heal allies, and provide buffs that are useful against multiple monsters. The Domination Monk's attacks only help against a single creature at a time, provides no group buff, and the monster can resist the Domination or be completely immune to it. The darkness x3 combo produces a finishing move that is useless in 99.9% of the game. I call it completely useless because I'd rather stun or instant-kill the healing monster rather than give it a de-buff to its healing ability.

Some finishers produce results that are equal-in-use, or less useful than Stunning Fist, so these finishers are not used by monks with Stunning Fist. It is more costly to set up a finisher like Freezing the Life-Blood than it is to use Stunning Fist, and the result is the same. In fact, Stunning Fist works against a wider variety of creatures.

Falling Star Strike's cause blindness attack is a fort save and several creature types are immune to it. The only creatures that are vulnerable to this blindness finishing move are also vulnerable to Stunning Fist and the auto-critical hits. Why go to all the trouble just to blind, when you can stun and kill? The Falling Star Strike could be changed to a Will Save, and it should work on constructs & undead.

Domination attacks could be area-of-effect rather than single target, or the debuffs could spread from 1 monster to nearby monsters. Domination De-Buffs should work against boss monsters! Several Arcane spell debuffs work against bosses, so too should the relatively minor de-buffs from a Domination monk. I think a Domination monk should be allowed to Blind a boss as that would give them something that no other class can do. Currently we can use Cloud spells to give bosses 20% miss. Wouldn't it be OK to inflict 50% miss, with a chance of the boss resisting the effect?

Domination monks could be given a Raise Dead ability too. Why should Raise Dead & party-buffs be exclusive to Harmony, such that a party leader might decide that inviting the harmony Monk is preferable to Domination Monk?

The current Harmony Buffs could be given to Domination monks, such that Domination becomes the Buff & De-Buff variation, while Harmony retains the Heal + Remedy monk variation. Harmony could be given different healing and remedy finishers to make up for the buffs that become part of Domination. Domination needs a big improvement and they need to provide a benefit to their team.

Because the dev tracker has been so slow, many of you may have missed Eladrin's update on future monk changes, including a modification to the Finishers:

I'd like to reiterate that this is a bad way to address the problem. The problem is that finishers are awkward to use because too many things can break the combo, so the direct solution (as described above) is to reduce the number of actions that break the combo. Instead, they're apparently leaving finishers as unwieldy fragile things, but boosting up the saving throws to make them more powerful to compensate for the trouble it takes to execute them..

[Angelus_dead]

Angelus_dead is mixing up two issues that do not need to be linked. Each needs a separate solution:

No, I am not. This suggestion is to improve finishers for ALL monks.

It is true that Domination monks will get a very slightly higher benefit from my suggested change, because unlike harmony they don't have a single finisher that is useful once combat is over (when the inconveniences matter less). That is just a minor side-effect of the suggestion.

You will notice that I suggested removing the increased save DC on finishers, which is a change that would benefit domination much more than harmony.

[Angelus_dead]

Spending 5 Ki to add +2d6 damage on a Prue-finishing attack is insignificant damage when a monster has many 100s of HP.

I don't know what you're trying to say. "Prue" must mean "Pure"...? But there's no finisher which costs 5 Ki, and no finisher which adds +2d6 damage...

Oh wait, "Prue" means "Pre", and you're talking about the attacks taken to prep the finisher. Ok, it's true that 2d6 damage on a large monster doesn't count for much. But it's really 5 Ki for 4d6 damage, because it's doubled when you TWF. And it takes a TWF monk fire-stance monk 3 double attacks to regain that Ki, meaning he can afford that damage boost on 33% of his attacks. That comes out to 4.6 damage per attack overall, which is about the same as Greater Weapon Specialization, except that it demands intense button-pressing from the player to achieve that bonus.

Harmony Monks can raise the dead, heal allies, and provide buffs that are useful against multiple monsters.

The Raise Dead ability is too weak to count as a serious advantage for Harmonic. The same goes for all their other status cures. And their buffs are not useful presently, although that may change in the future if they start stacking with Heroism and Blur, or if the water buff improves to more than a 0% boost.

Some finishers produce results that are equal-in-use, or less useful than Stunning Fist, so these finishers are not used by monks with Stunning Fist. It is more costly to set up a finisher like Freezing the Life-Blood than it is to use Stunning Fist, and the result is the same. In fact, Stunning Fist works against a wider variety of creatures.

The advantages of the finishers are
1. Didn't cost a feat on Stunning Fist.
2. Works with weapons besides handwraps, which means they're usable by higher DPS monks.
3. Works with weapons besides handwraps, meaning you can TWF and force the mob to roll two saves for the same effect.

However, those advantages are not enough to compensate for the weaknesses of finishers (fragile preparation steps + need to be domination to get most of them). And also those kinds of advantages are not a good approach... the solution to the DPS inferiority of unarmed monks should not be that weapon-using monks only get finishers instead of Stunning Fist.

A monk should be able to select the unarmed combat style for reasons aside from Stunning Fist. Handwraps should give decent DPS too.

Why should Raise Dead & party-buffs be exclusive to Harmony, such that a party leader might decide that inviting the harmony Monk is preferable to Domination Monk?

The good reasons to prefer a harmony monk are Fists of Light and Healing Ki. It would be foolish to invite a monk for Raise Dead services or party buffs.

[winsom]

I hope that the game is modified such that:

1. monk special attacks are not applied twice if the monk is TWF with kamas, unless unarmed strikes are allowed to benefit from the TWF feat and game similar benefits. A monk should not be able to cause two saves, rather than one, when he is dual-wielding, unless that is also allowed for unarmed strikes.

Unarmed Strikes should never be considered a weaker-attack form, and that is how I see the case of causing half as many saving throws and half as much bonus damage from monk-elemental damage attacks. TWF with kamas has other benefits that are worth the cost in feats. Those other benefits are fine.

2. Stunning Fist and Quivering Palm should be usuable regardless of the weapon the DDO monk has in her hands. TWF kamas + Stunning Feet. Yes!

This is how it works in D&D. That should be enough said on that. I do not care if DDO inserts the special stunning fist animation and makes my kama briefly vanish then reappear again. I want the D&D functionality of that attack feat. It is just wrong that DDO invents a Stunning Blow feat and allows it to be less restrictive than Stunning Fist.