Monk ki strikes buffed.

[TreknaQudane]

Very nice stuff

[Borror0]

Since you're around, Eladrin, is there any plan to make the other Dominion debuffs, well, useful?

Most of them don't apply on named characters and the ability to just them on trash mobs is fairly weak. As a result, the spec just pales in comparison to Balance.

[Monkey_Archer]

Touch of Despair
You strike your opponent down with a terrible curse, halving all positive energy healing done to the target, reducing its fortification and increasing its negative energy vulnerability by 25%. A successful Fortitude save negates this effect. (DC 10 + Monk Level + Wisdom mod) The target receives periodic saves to attempt to break free of this effect.

At this time this fortification reduction will permit critical hits on creatures that normally cannot be critically hit, but will not remove immunity to sneak attacks.

Very nice.
Good to have 1 dark ability that will be helpful on raid bosses.. (this does still work on raid bosses right?)

Time to tell the clerics to load up Harm

[Monkey_Archer]

Since you're around, Eladrin, is there any plan to make the other Dominion debuffs, well, useful?

Most of them don't apply on named characters and the ability to just them on trash mobs is fairly weak. As a result, the spec just pales in comparison to Balance.

Assuming touch of despair still works on raid bosses, as a practicing dark monk, I have no complaints about the usefulness of dark strikes at this time.

[Eladrin]

Assuming touch of despair still works on raid bosses, as a practicing dark monk, I have no complaints about the usefulness of dark strikes at this time.

Touch of Despair works on bosses and raid bosses that are vulnerable to curses.

As for dark abilities in general, we're looking for a few more ways to make the path of dominion more interesting.

[atxken]

any changes to remove blindness curse, etc.
they arent hardly worth it, as is. if they were party effect instead would be more useful. or a siple aoe like walk the sun.

Even the rez it seems most wot take it because u either have to previosly saving ki, or have to meditate for teki, which by then someoen else has brought them back to life.

what about changes to abundant step since favored soul with there wings now make us seem slow.

[Valiance]

Aligning the Heavens:
The local area has been cleansed of things that might make spellcasting difficult, reducing your spell point costs by 25%. (Previously 10%)

Imo this is a pretty big change. This is an extra 750 sp for your average 3000sp favored soul. An extra 500+ for your cleric. This as well as other useful buffs/debuffs plus more dps might just make at least one monk a "nice to have" for most raids.

V

[Monkey_Archer]

As for dark abilities in general, we're looking for a few more ways to make the path of dominion more interesting.

Good to know.
On that topic, It would be nice if all finishers (both light and dark) had some sort of upgraded effect for high level monks (16+). Pehaps increase the duration of buffs based on monk level and the time between saves on debuffs, have freezing the life blood become a hold monster effect (my favorite dark finisher that I rarely get to use since there are few humanoids at high levels )... just ideas...

[rimble]

Imo this is a pretty big change. This is an extra 750 sp for your average 3000sp favored soul. An extra 500+ for your cleric. This as well as other useful buffs/debuffs plus more dps might just make at least one monk a "nice to have" for most raids.

BTW, it's already in game. I try to catch the group with it before mass buffing at the entrance to quests, and after shrines. Other than that it's kinda tough to keep up with everything else you have going on.

[rimble]

Good to know.
On that topic, It would be nice if all finishers (both light and dark) had some sort of upgraded effect for high level monks (16+). Pehaps increase the duration of buffs based on monk level and the time between saves on debuffs, have freezing the life blood become a hold monster effect (my favorite dark finisher that I rarely get to use since there are few humanoids at high levels )... just ideas...

Not as good as Hold Monster (no auto-crit), but we do get Shining Star, which is kind of fun.

[The_Phenx]

Apologies for leaving these out of the release notes...

Treasure:
Reduced the chance of Anarchic and Anarchic Burst handwrap drops.
Added Force, Force Burst, Metalline, Maiming, Bleed, and Pure Good to randomly generated handwrap treasure tables.

You going to add all this to staves? Along with cold iron, adamantine, flametouched iron, etc?

Since staves can be shod only makes sense.

Oh and thanks for the new awesome staves you already did put in.

[Monkey_Archer]

Not as good as Hold Monster (no auto-crit), but we do get Shining Star, which is kind of fun.

Yes but shining star is a 1 shot strike... Freezing the lifeblood is a 4 move finisher that requires more time/ki to use

[lanthan]

shining star is a 4 move finisher as well you have to use earth air fire before you can use it.

[Monkey_Archer]

shining star is a 4 move finisher as well you have to use earth air fire before you can use it.

Oh.. did not know that

[Vhlad]

How about a buff to ten thousand stars?

It's really just 1 moderately slow star right now. An ability like ten thousand stars sounds like it should give something like multishot for shurikens.

Maybe just a name change will suffice. Call it "throw 1 star a little faster"

[Junts]

Touch of Despair works on bosses and raid bosses that are vulnerable to curses.

As for dark abilities in general, we're looking for a few more ways to make the path of dominion more interesting.

There is, ironically, no need to reduce anarchic/burst effect occurance, because due to the wierd nature of handwrap coding, they don't apply a negative level. I've tried to bug that a few times, but the bug and play ticket interfaces often don't work right for me, so maybe it was never logged properly.

[Thanimal]

The monk elemental ki strikes now do 1d6 for first rank 2d6 for second 2d10 for third and 2d20 for fourth.

I'm not exactly knowledgeable on straight up Monks (to put it mildly), so I need a little clarification here. I thought the old progression was 1d6, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6?

If so, this is an interesting buff in that it went from linear to "almost linear for 3 levels followed by a massive jump." In particular, 2d10 is only a half point more than 3d6, but 2d20 averages 21 compared to 4d6 averaging 14, or a full 50% increase over what it used to be at that tier.

Is the point of this to make there be a really good reason to stay with mostly Monk? (If so, I approve. Just trying to undertand.)

[lanthan]

I'm not exactly knowledgeable on straight up Monks (to put it mildly), so I need a little clarification here. I thought the old progression was 1d6, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6?

If so, this is an interesting buff in that it went from linear to "almost linear for 3 levels followed by a massive jump." In particular, 2d10 is only a half point more than 3d6, but 2d20 averages 21 compared to 4d6 averaging 14, or a full 50% increase over what it used to be at that tier.

Is the point of this to make there be a really good reason to stay with mostly Monk? (If so, I approve. Just trying to undertand.)

The old progression is 1d6, 2d6, 2d6 + 2d6 on crit, 3d6 + 3d6 on crit.

[Angelus_dead]

Touch of Despair works on bosses and raid bosses that are vulnerable to curses.

But um, it only has an effect if the boss actually has healing of some kind, which is just a slim minority of them. (Pit Fiends often have healing, but are also usually curse-proof). I almost want to try Touch of Despair out on Barnizdu in New Invasion... except that the new feat respec costs make it insane to switch to test (and back).

1 million fragments...

As for dark abilities in general, we're looking for a few more ways to make the path of dominion more interesting.

It's needed now more than ever, since Harmonious monks have received a large boost in raid-boss effectiveness thanks to increasing Aligning the Heavens from 10% to 25% spellpoint conservation. That's a BIG help to the casters and healers in a raid. Literally, 5 sorcs + 1 monk have more spell damage capacity than 6 sorcs (and they also have whatever martial DPS the monk provides).

[Visty]

2 million fragments...

fixed

you need to swap it back too