Proposal: How to fix Monk Stances

[Kodwraith]

This is a proposal for how to fix the monks stances design wise. It ties into ideas about how to fix the enhancement trees: more on that later.

Basic Idea:
Give buffs in 4 areas with each stance picking up TWO of those areas:
+ physical Defense / AC PRR
+ dmg and DCs
+ magical defense / saves
+ attack and speed
Then give enhancements in the 3 trees that buff an APSECT of the underlying buff (ie: a more "physical dmg pls" line, instead of "more fire stance please") sOyour stance let's you pick two of 4 areas to shine in right now. Your enhancements let you rebalance your play style, gear etc.

Water:
+ physical dmg AND Magical Defense
Air:
+ attack speed AND physical defense.
Fire:
+ physical damage AND attack speed
Earth:
+ physical defense AND magic defense.

So fire would be the most offensive, earth the most defensive. Instead of "buff earth stance" it's "buff physical damage" which shows up in water or fire. Yes you could add as core ability meta stance that pick up 3 aspects, but that's likely OP. (Steam = {dmg, attack, magic def}; Lava: {physical and magic def, dmg}, etc...)

Each stance should also do FIXED elemental damage every hit (1d4, 1d8, 2d6, 3d6) with stance feats. (initiate -> GrandMaster)

We should keep the elemental strikes for finisher cause those are just fun. We can also have each stance still have some unique buff for jsut that stance (water +ki, fire + healing?, air + doublestrike, earth + crit).

The buffs themselves shoudl pick up power from a combination of the FEATS (grandmaster, etc), CORES in henshin and enhancements in the various lines.

Physical damage (aspect of crane):
Pick up [+W] and +1 DC as you go, +1W per level, +.5W per enhancement level?
Physical defense (aspect of turtle):
% AC boost AND +5/+10/+15/+20 PRR
Magic defense (aspect of dog):
+ saves boost and + MRR boost.
Attack Speed (aspect of monkey):
+ haste/enhancement* style and double strike. * Note that there should still be a viable reason to be in this stance even if you're perma hasted or wearing goatskin boots. Now that we give out permahaste on lvl 28 items or lvl 27 feats, this needs to be reworked to have some point at cap. +10% double strike is weak.

Other Stuff:
+ ki should be a separate thing in the ladder and not always follow water imho. Buffs for +1 passive always and buffs for + on hit.

I'll make a separate post on how I propose we re-org the trees, but super short version as follows:

Hesnshin: the stance and ki and ki ability tree
Shintao: the weapon tree so I'd put staff AND hws AND Kamas in here (and make them mutually exclusive like Arti trees has with bsword/xbow)
Ninja: the stealth, sneak attack and treachery tree

This lets folks choose the balance of what types of things to specialize in independently from what weapon type to hit things with. Remember that for a monk your weapon choice is basically locked in at feat selection time. You go THF and you get to use sticks OR TWF with hws/kamas/shortwords and that's it.

There is no viable SWF weapon for monks full stop. I'd love to see an intrinsic centerd / kensai option but that's not gonna happen. Mostly because I want a SWF jedi monk build.