Devs: Need Tomes for Void Strike IV?

[Aerendil]

Sol, while your argument certainly has some merit - and yes, we would have *some* of those abilities already - it's just an issue of inflation of things to purchase that makes it become almost impossible to buy.

Monks were pretty tight for APs previously before the stance cost revamp, especially if you went for Rise of the Phoenix / Touch of Death.
Then we had to figure out where to pull the APs for the PrEs if we wanted to pick a PrE.
Now this new void strike line has been added which is just another source of APs we don't have. It's a culmination of everything, really, and that's the issue. And while it has been argued that it could be a good thing, forcing us to choose between our abilities (i.e. you can't have it all!), it does make life considerably more difficult.

Also keep in mind our other level 18 ki strikes already do 2d20 damage (or 2-40 in the new D&D dice terms ), and this one is doing 8d4 (8-32)... so it's not exactly a dps gain. It's probably about the same dps as what we already do with our elemental ki strikes. Only difference is less things are force-immune than fire/lightning/cold-immune, but then that's why we had the earth strike line.
And also, it's still asking a *minimum* of +9 AP for Void IV if you just count the Void AP costs and not add up all the pre-reqs, which is a bit high.

/shrug.

*edit* - in other words, it may come down to Touch of Death vs. PrEs vs Void strike line, and only have enough AP to get 2 of the 3.
Chances are the void strike line will be left to rot, unless you're a Light monk, which seems to be a rarity these days :/ (see various other threads on Shintao PrE rants)

[Schmackdown]

Sorry for a potential hijack, but does anyone know if the U5 change from Force to Void for the damage type will mean Void Lore items will affect Void Strike throws?

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

It's a trap the soul effect without level cap, not a death effect? That would be interesting if so, but it's still going to be going off so rarely... even with a 6 second cooldown you're looking at it going off on average once per 2 minutes of NON STOP fighting, which realistically never happens. Really it'll happen maybe 3 times per quest if you spam the strike constantly, which means I really couldn't care less about it unless it works in epics.

trap the soul works in epics (try it on the lower CR mobs e.g. the first few scorps in offering, dogs in wizking and spectators in von1), and this attack is like trap the soul, so yes it should work on epics. It's actually better than tts because tts is capped at 30 HD (DEVS WHEN ARE YOU ADDING 40HD GEMS?!?!?).

Luckily my TR monk has the stats required, from a combination of 34 pt build and lots of tomes... I'll have to try it out.

Garth