Upgrade terrible monk enhancements so that they're useful

[waterboytkd]

A bit ago, on a separate thread, QuantumFX posted some fantastic ideas to make the bad monk enhancements actually useful. I had implored him to post a new thread about it, but alas, it did not happen. So I am doing it. Some of these ideas are mostly his with slight tweaks, some are mine, inspired by his. The abilities he talked about were the light monk spell enhancements that culminated in Rise of the Phoenix. I'm also going to include a the dark monk attacks that lead to Touch of Death (since they are possibly the most useless enhancements ever; ToD might as well just have an AP cost of 12). Here we go:

Light Moves
(note: These would all be on separate cooldown timers)

Lifting the Veil
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack your opponent and suffer no chance to miss due to concealment or incorporeal. Also, the target must make a Reflex save (DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier), or lose all concealment and incorporeal for the next 30 seconds. The target can make a new save every 6 seconds to break this effect. This attack counts as an air move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

The Receptive Earth
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack your opponent and ignore up to 5 points of DR. Also, the target must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier), or have its DR reduced by up to 5 points for 30 seconds. The target can make a new save every 6 seconds to break this effect. This attack counts as an earth move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Restoring the Balance
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent and gain back a number of hit points equal to 1d4 per monk level. Also, the target must make a Will save (DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier) or, for 30 seconds, any character with a ki bar that hits the target gains +1 ki per hit, and any character without a ki bar that hits the target heals +1 hit point per hit. The target can make a new save every 6 seconds to break this effect. This attack counts as a fire move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Difficulty at the Beginning
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent and gain a +2 to the DC of all your Stun, Trip, and Sunder attacks for the next 6 seconds. Also, the target must make a Will save (DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier) or suffer a -2 to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will for the next 30 seconds. The target can make a new save every 6 seconds to break this effect. This attack counts as a water move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Rise of the Phoenix
Ki cost: 50 ki (but no hp cost)
You attack the opponent, channeling a massive amount of healing ki into the strike. Against undead, the attack deals an additional 10 points of damage per monk level (Will save DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier for half). Also, against any target, for 6 seconds, any character that hits the target regains 10 hit points per hit. This does stack with the healing curse from Fists of Light. This attack counts as a light move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Dark Moves
(note: These would all be on separate cooldown timers)

Static Charge
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent and, for the next 30 seconds, deal an extra 1 electricity damage per hit. This effect is cumulative (the second time you use it, you gain an additional 1 electricity damage per hit for a total of 2; due to the cooldown on this attack, the max damage bonus is 3 electricity damage per hit). This attack counts as an air move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Porous Soul
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent and deal an additional 10 points of untyped damage. Also, for the next 6 seconds, all your attacks ignore the target's elemental resistances. This attack counts as an earth move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Winter's Touch
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent and inflict them with freezing pain that deals damage over time. For the next 30 seconds, the target is will take 1 cold damage per monk level every 6 seconds. The effects of this attack are not cumulative. This attack counts as a water move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

All-Consuming Flame
Ki cost: 20 ki
You attack the opponent, dealing an additional 1 point of fire damage per monk level. On a critical hit, you deal an additional 4 points of fire damage per monk level (for a total of 5 per monk level). On a vorpal strike, you deal an additional 5 points of fire damage per monk level (for a total of 10 per monk level). This attack counts as a fire move.
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Touch of Death
Ki cost: 50 ki
You attack the opponent with twisted ki, dealing an additional 25 points of untyped* damage per monk level. The target can make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + monk level + Wis modifier) to take half damage instead. This attack counts as a dark move.
Cooldown: 15 seconds

*I say untyped, but what I would like is for it to be the same kind of damage as Horrid Wilting. Not sure how much it matters, but what I don't like is the negative energy damage that Touch of Death deals now--when you're spending 12 AP for one attack, it should work on most everything. Of course, with the idea of the prereq enhancements getting a boost, maybe the Touch of Death could stay negative energy...

What do you think?

[QuantumFX]

First, the Devs tend to be very selective on what threads they will read and then very selective on how they read it. If you look in the Lammania forums you will see Eladrin’s epic reading comprehension fail when I pointed out some of the negative reprocussions of turning the tier I stances into feats. (Level 1 monk enhancements aren’t “Which enhancement is good to get?”. Instead they are “Which enhancement sucks the least.”)

Second, you might want to frame up exactly why the Rise of the Phoenix chain needs a revamp. Otherwise people will try to pass along the shortsighted and incredibly clueless “The PrE’s are what balances Light/Dark monks” argument.

The counter-argument for this is:

The Rise of the Phoenix enhancement chain is not balanced against Monk Improved Recovery III to qualify for the Shintao Monk PrE. (Fill in the details about how the curative clickies are unwieldy, redundant, expensive and ultimately useless vs. Improved Recovery’s incredible synergy with Curse of Healing/Healing Ki.)

It is also not balanced against the Touch of Death enhancement chain for the upcoming Henshin Mystic PrE. (Because, let’s face it, Touch of Death is awesome and would continue to be awesome even if they did something to scale it.) If it remains unbalanced then Turbine has only managed to create 2 PrE's that default to Inevitable Dominion and one PrE that won’t take Rise of the Phoenix anyway.

[TeacherSyn]

I'll add on to Quantum's thoughts on this older thread.

Your list tries to rewrite light abilities to make any monk simply attack, and attack, and attack. That's not what they are for.

The differentiation of the Light and Dark monk is purposeful. Light monks are more like uber-battle clerics with their healing and curse/effect removals (abilities that I use A LOT in many groups where a cleric is overburdened or doesn't exist). While Light monks don't have many starting offensive ki attacks as do the dark monk, taking the Shintao Monk PrE fixes that fast. They begin to bypass DR by hands alone (up to Silver by L18--their fists become a metalline weapon) and have attacks that can banish or freeze outsiders and undead. The dark monk has a greater complement of similar attacks and more of them--at the compromise of no buffing spells.

While a dark monk might slightly out DPS a light monk, both give nasty damage based on their purpose. If you are complaining about the initial lack of offensive attacks on a light monk, perhaps you should easily reset your enhancements and go to the dark side. If you aren't using the special abilities of a light monk (rather than proposing a strange dark-monk-clone rewrite), you're likely playing that philosophy wrong. A rewrite that you suggest would make the monks generic in ability and remove the reason philosophies are there in the first place.

[Raodin-bel-iori]

what I would like to see out of these though are remaking the dark moves from temporary vulnerability to actual debilitating or damaging effects. I'll admit that my dark monk doesn't use the vulnerability moves very often like consuming flame etc just because I'm busy using other, more effective damaging attacks. It'd be cool if they could cause effects such as sickened, unable to cast spells, or reductions of DR and SR.

[waterboytkd]

Your list tries to rewrite light abilities to make any monk simply attack, and attack, and attack. That's not what they are for.

This is where we're going to disagree. Monks are a dps-oriented melee class. Attacking is what they do. Now, dark monks do that almost exclusively. Light monks sacrifice some dps for the ability to do some light buffage. But it's real light, and most of it is done by doing chains of attacks (to build up finishers).

While Light monks don't have many starting offensive ki attacks as do the dark monk

My concern, actually, is not that light monks have less attack clickies. Monk has enough already. What I was more concerned with is that those spell-like clickies that light monks get, and the energy vulnerability attacks that dark monk get, are terrible, and borderline worthless. At least, the light ones can all be covered with potions...

If you aren't using the special abilities of a light monk (rather than proposing a strange dark-monk-clone rewrite), you're likely playing that philosophy wrong. A rewrite that you suggest would make the monks generic in ability and remove the reason philosophies are there in the first place.

If you look at my abilities, you'll notice something: none of the light monk attacks deal extra damage, with the exception of Phoenix on undead...the whole idea was to actually give benefits to your teammates. Veil and Earth both can lead to more damage for the monk, but it also works for the whole team. Balance is another, stackable fists of light for non-monks on the team, and for the monks, it's maybe even better. Beginning was meant to be a nice boost for the spellcasters in the group.

The dark monk abilities were all more dps attacks, and they only worked for the dark monk. They in no way increased anyone else's dps, or gave any kind of buff to anyone. They were pure, selfish dps. Pure dark monk.

But, none of these abilities are alike. Light and dark monks, under this system, would have pretty different abilities, and pretty different feels. Not sure why you think they would be the same...