Make Monk fighting more fluent - monk finishers

[TylerTheTiler]

You buff the casters, who buff the team... that's not a reward for you paying attention in combat or making a good build. That's something any level 3 light monk can do. What makes YOU better? Do you want them to bring you for something ANYONE can do? Are you sure you want to be the portable SP-efficiency improver?

Really? Allowing the team to have 25% more spells cast during combat isn't a reward? I think it is. And the monk is a support character anyway. So yeah, they do support roles. They're not as armored as a fighter or paladin, they're not as tough as a barbarian. They don't cure as well as a cleric and they don't buff like a bard. They assist all these classes with their roles.

Now the other things you mentioned are all combat-related and you can do the proposed finishers in those situations. Throwing light heals will be even easier! (30 Ki cost instead of 40 Ki and reduced preparation time, due to reduced cooldown, which has to be reduced due to new max delay between strikes.) Doing a quick fire-fire-fire would also be easier, when needed, provided you have enough Ki and provided you can hit your target. That's the goal here - make finishers much easier to use IN combat, but impossible OUT of combat as a trade off. Out of 3 of your scenarios it would greatly improve 2, but make one impossible.

Using your system, I would not be able to aim my fire, it would just go off on it's own on the last hit of the combo. Again with the heal, sometimes archers and mages need the heal too. They're not always on the front line with you. The Ki is being focused on the monk, and they're emitting the heal so where and when they do it, should be entirely up to them and not your system of punch activated healing. Or should the monks have to punch themselves to activate it too? HB monks are much less direct combat oriented. It's like you're trying to remove that aspect of the class from the game. I disagree with your system, at least as far as with the harmonious balance path.

It's not that not hitting something is ruining your concentration. It's that you need to apply your Ki onto something to make a combo. Without applying Ki onto an enemy your Ki isn't properly/fully molded and hence isn't ready for combo. It's simply a way you choose to look at it. It's not like we have a real monk we can study and see how he works - it's fantasy and background story of it is subject to discussion.

Why does ki have to be directly applied to something else for the monk to release the effect? The fire, the monk is channeling the energy to emit the flame. The fire isnt' comming out of the enemy, again I think that contradicts the ki theory you have in place. Ki can be focused inward at the monk himself, which is implied for the buffing aspect of the monk class.