Some thoughts on Shintao Enhancements

[jamkriz]

After playing around with the new Shintao enhancement tree there seems to quite a bit of room for improvement.

1. The tree seems to be geared specifically to monks using Earth stance with no benefits to any of the other stances. For instance at Tier 2 there is "Iron Skin" - only available to Earth stance while at Tier 5 "Violence begets violence" also only available to Earth stance users. Even "Meditation of War" seems to be pushing players towards Earth stance to get the insight bonus to HP and PRR.

2. "Meditation of War" - Using this enhancement in Fire Stance is fairly useless because as it provides and insight bonus to tactics this will not stack with items that provide Combat Mastery and so what was meant to help reduce the drawback of the lost wisdom in Fire Stance really provides no benefit at all. This is unlike most other tactical enhancements whether they are racial or from for example the Kensai tree which provide stacking bonuses.

3. Let's not forget "To seek perfection" - a fairly useless capstone when compared the other monk trees or almost every other prestige enhancement tree. +2 Wis and +1 to benefits of tainted and no negs from taking Meditation of War (which is an optional enhancement)? That definitely needs to be beefed up a bit probably with some ki generation Henshin has passive, Ninja has it on sneak but nothing for Shintao? another possibility would be to do something similar to Ninja Spy by giving an enhanced crit range against tainted foes or something.

Just a couple of cents, since I don't like it when I get too pigeonholed into a particular stance because the devs seemed to have forgotten that the other stances exist when it came to building this tree.

[Archangel_666]

After playing around with the new Shintao enhancement tree there seems to quite a bit of room for improvement.

1. The tree seems to be geared specifically to monks using Earth stance with no benefits to any of the other stances. For instance at Tier 2 there is "Iron Skin" - only available to Earth stance while at Tier 5 "Violence begets violence" also only available to Earth stance users. Even "Meditation of War" seems to be pushing players towards Earth stance to get the insight bonus to HP and PRR.

2. "Meditation of War" - Using this enhancement in Fire Stance is fairly useless because as it provides and insight bonus to tactics this will not stack with items that provide Combat Mastery and so what was meant to help reduce the drawback of the lost wisdom in Fire Stance really provides no benefit at all. This is unlike most other tactical enhancements whether they are racial or from for example the Kensai tree which provide stacking bonuses.

3. Let's not forget "To seek perfection" - a fairly useless capstone when compared the other monk trees or almost every other prestige enhancement tree. +2 Wis and +1 to benefits of tainted and no negs from taking Meditation of War (which is an optional enhancement)? That definitely needs to be beefed up a bit probably with some ki generation Henshin has passive, Ninja has it on sneak but nothing for Shintao? another possibility would be to do something similar to Ninja Spy by giving an enhanced crit range against tainted foes or something.

Just a couple of cents, since I don't like it when I get too pigeonholed into a particular stance because the devs seemed to have forgotten that the other stances exist when it came to building this tree.

Agreed completely.

Especially on point three. My Monk has 42 AP spent in Henshin, not because I want anything in Heshin, but simply because I don't use Meditation of War and that's where they moved the Ki Regen. The rest are spent in Shintao. It's bloody stupid that my Shintao is technically a Henshin simply because of that capstone.

IMO All three should have the Ki Regen as part of the capstone.

[Saravis]

1. All the mountain stance enhancements need to be adjusted so that they provide bonuses to all stances.

2. One idea for ki regeneration is that you regain ki based on being hit by positive energy, in other words being healed. It could be something like, "You regain ki based on 10% of positive energy received, minimum of 1 point of ki regenned, maximum of 20 points of ki regenned." Healing curse would regen 1 pt for every hit and being healed for a 1000 pt heal wouldn't be OP and regen 100 points.

[TeacherSyn]

In agreement with the OP.

The positive side to the weighted use of Earth Stance for Shintao (which my tanker Monk does appreciate, thanks) is the fact that all Monks are granted all elemental stances now as feat and don't have to pick and choose. That alone gives much versatility for ki, speed, offense and defense--but not as a Shintao, I admit.

In the Mystic and Ninja trees, switching stances helps in ki, defense and speed (Fire, Water, Wind, respectively) with no direct disadvantages to the most of the class tree's abilities in choosing any stance. But you're more or less stuck in Earth Stance in most Shintao gameplay. With the Way of the Soul set on as a Epic character, I'll switch to Fire to get Restorations-on-criticals to remove neg levels conveniently but can never stay in that stance for long. My tanker's defenses are greatly reduced in any other stance.

Again, while I like the Shintao stuff, it (and the other trees) can still be improved. I remind myself that U19 was a MASSIVE underwriting of enhancements for all classes, so that was a lot of work that can't focus to perfect any one tree or class just yet.