Dear Devs, Designers, and Dooly Hard Working Kobolds at DDO,

Monk Enhancement Suggestions

I broke my piggy bank early to give you my 10 cents of ideas on the Pass you will one day be giving our beloved Monk. I am a regular who has played 4-5 days a week for more than four years always with pure monk or monk with splashes. My favorite is to play pure monk, but I cannot deny that a monk splashed with a few fighter or even warlock levels is a stronger design than a pure monk. With just a spash of 4 fighter levels I can easily surrender a few level 20 stat bonuses and maybe a couple other things at level 20 core for haste boost as soon as I can level 2 along with 3 bonus feats which help me get whirlwind at level 6 and much prr and mrr through fighter enhancement trees). There are bonuses to DC’s, armor class and hit points more melee power, and damage from the fighter trees that the pure monk trees cannot compete with. And all these extra feats and available powers come as a low level monk rather than waiting for level 20.

Conceptually as designed by dnd as well as the description of the monk in ddo -- no class was to be as fast in the monk in the number of strikes. Bare hands are faster and more dexterous than any weighted weapon. Thus “flurry of blows.” Providing that ddo replaces speed with potential more strikes by giving a +1 to hit every four levels does not quite satisfy the hope of watching the monk be a blur of kung fu in action. And while Whirlwind does provide as a feat such a view it is actually easier and earlier to get as a pure fighter. But I stray from trees to feats, so pardon me.
it seems untenable that a monk warrior solely dedicated his body and mind to pure kung fu action is slower and less powerful than one who is divided his training by splashing and is not solely dedicated to the perfection of his body as a weapon both internally and externally. This is my primary motivation in providing what I hope are helpful suggestions to boost the pure monk design when you give a pass to his/her trees.

Shintao Tree
This appears to be the tree you have dedicated to benefits of open hand fighting. Henshin is staff and mystical. Ninja is poison and backstabbing. I think while it could go in any or all of the monk trees, one of the great equalizers would be to give the same haste boost option as the Fighter receives at level 1 or even the acrobatic rogue gets at level 2! Even the rogue supersedes top monk speeds with this boost. Now the pure monk too would live up to his reputation of being the fastest even if for a short duration.

Shintao Core:
These are focused on the healing benefits to balance the monk’s duel role of defense and offense. So I see no reason to add fighting benefits in the core so long as the some of the tree branches bring some better and stronger fighting options to buff up the monk especially in open hand fighting. The final core tier (level 20) should be made stronger as almost all pure classes should have for dedicating themselves completely to a class. A few stat bonuses are ok but you can get more stats easier by cross training and taking tree enhancements that offer many of these. Make the Level 20 include +2 wisdom, no mediation of war drawbacks and at least one more substantial bonus, like +4 to all monk dc’s (including quivering palm) which are definitely needing more buff s for epic elite, etc. Or perhaps here would be a further reward of +1 die increase to open hand attack damage.

Shintao Tree Line 1
I do like the idea of balancing fighting benefits with body healing benefits. It shows the wisdom and balance of the monk as to other warrior classes. Like the core this is the line/branch on more meditative and healing aspects of a monk keep him a unique warrior from the others. That the monk can only heal himself and not others in this line is fair to the other healing specialists and warriors, as the monk has perfected his own body. This limits him from being overpowered, though he is balanced.

However this line is extremely weak and redundant and too slow to incorporate having to make 3 strikes with his heal special ki ability if he chose the path of light and this is assuming one has the necessary 40 ki to pull this off. One can buy a potion of all these heals and use so much quicker and easier than spending 2 ap to get a simple cure ability that takes so much ki and so much time to prep (at least 18 seconds) Most of all non-healing classes just buy vast quantities of elixirs to implement a simple heal – a cure in a bottle is easier and quicker. By the time a monk can fix the ravages of blindness or weakness from a ray of enfeeblement they have probably exposed me to long devastation of attacks and that is all based on the hopes they had the necessary 40 ki when they got injured to fix it. No – all the monks will just click a potion also.

Here is my fix for these cures to make the 10 ap worth getting the reasonable tier 5 “rise of the phoenix” cap that a monk can raise oneself from the edges of death.

Make each heal a simple ki related expenditure that is immediate. No need to toggle the different cures (since you can only have one cure at a time without toggling the options). No need to use the path of light cure 3 times to set up the final heal with a cure. Earn the 4 different heals and have them in a clickie that simply costs like 15 ki to use like a spell uses sp. Keep in mind the monk can’t heal others, only himself with this ability so it is not overly strong or making a monk a cleric or other healer.

I would raise “the heals” to be a bit more powerful options for the monk as well in tier 4. I would suggest a line that may build from cure blindness to lesser restoration to remove curse to level 4 being remove negative levels. Remove disease is kind of redundant as at level 5 the monk is supposed to by inherited ability/feat be immune to diseases anyway. Increase that to include magical diseases because otherwise that is a pretty useless feat for the game for natural diseases only. Removing negative levels is a reasonable tier 4 self – cure in my opinion – especially since the Shintao monk is supposed to be an expert in fighting tainted creatures like the undead.

(And as a side note observation, rise of phoenix states that you “bring yourself back from death’s door like the resurrection spell.” If this really a recovery and not a raise the dead in its theory and application, should there be an experience penalty in quest for using this as though you did die and raise yourself? That is probably way too much work to adjust code for just that, but I thought worth a small note)

Final Product: Cure Blindness – Lesser Restoration – Remove Curse – Remove Neg. Levels – Rise of Phoenix

Shintao Line 2
This line seems inconsistent with reed in the wind and then everything else is about tainted and extra planar creatures.
Likewise in line/branch 4 in tier 2 there is “Dismissing Strike” which seems it should be in line 2 rather than 4 as it regards extra planar creatures. Lets switch them out so line 2 is consistent in its direction.

One other important note in this line regards the tier 5 Kukan-Do as it dc is based on Charisma which is not a monk stat that is ever built (unless cross training like with a Paladin. Fact is if it’s in the monk tree the dc should be based on a monk stat like wisdom otherwise it becomes a very weak ability for tier 5 for almost all monks. Why build to a cap that is useless because the dc will be low – as no pure monk would care much about such things?

Final Product: Smite Tainted Creature --Dismissing Strike – Jade Strike -- Tomb of Jade -- Kukan-Do

Shintao Tree Line 3
Here we have a line in which the first and last enhancements are offensive and the middle two defensive. The problem is that two of them are only useful if in earth stance. Make the defensive benefits of Ironskin (prr) and the tier 5 Violence Begets Violence not limited to only earth stance. While I don’t mind fighting in earth, it limits me from exploring the options of wind, fire and water if I want to be an open hand specialist. Either take out the limitation to being in earth style only or at least build 3 other lines within the 3 trees for water, fire and wind to gain some exceptional powers as a melee artist.

Also reduce the tier 4 Instinctive Defense from 2 ap to 1 ap each just as it is in the fighter tree.
I would also place Conditioning in this line as it is very consistent with the idea of defense and offense (it is currently in line 5 tier 2
Final Product: Deft Strikes – Conditioning -- Iron Skin -- Instinctive Defense – Violence Begets Violence


Shintao Tree Line 4
Within the Shintao tree at line 4 is where I would dedicate a line for open hands and monk weapon development to bring the monk melee class its proper due respect that it has been missing after others have received their passes (leaving the monk in the fighting dust comparatively) I would dedicate the 4th line to more melee benefits such as the all the other warrior/melee classes get. After all this is what monk is primarily classified as (Melee) and such as we envision from all the cheap but wonderful kung fu movies we have ingested.
Get rid of the heal/intimidation tree enhancement (these are not even class skills and so they are a lot too little too late. There is no significant way to build the monk to intimidate and heal is limited since it is a cross skill. Instead here is the line I suggest for equalizing the monk as a warrior open handed – for at least this one tree climb:
Tier 1: Haste Boost (as per the others – fighter and rogue -- 1 pt each) (Flurry of More Blows)
Tier 2: Attack +1 +2 and +3 (1 pt each) (Pin point Striking)
Tier 3: Damage +1, +2 + 3 (1 pt each) (Anatomical Study)
Tier 4: Melee Power +2/+4/+6 (Chi Kung)
Tier 5: Empty Hand Mastery -- as it is but moved from line 5 to line 4 cap: dmg die changes from 1-6 to 1-8. (Empty Hand Mastery)
This line brings those who want a monk competitive with other warrior classes in line again after passes that made Paladin and Bard and others into miniature fortresses or destructive storms both for heroic and epic play.


Shintao Tree Line 5
Within the Shintao tree we can now place those unsual elective strikes in one line such as they belong and Meditation of War makes a perfect cap in alignment with this line (more than cap of line 4). Final Product:
Tier 1 Reed in the Wind
Tier 2 Elemental Ki Strikes
Tier 3 Constitution or Wisdom +1
Tier 4 Constitution or Wisdom +1
Tier 5 Meditation of War

Go forth grasshopper!

Henshin Tree
The Henshin tree represents the mystical monk using ki for unusual powers similar to spells. In addition the staff becomes the monk weapon of choice as there are numerous benefits to increase its power in melee fighting in this tree. I’ve have less changes in this tree in part because I have experienced it less. Assuming the Shintao line brings in the more developed pass of fighting upgrades as I’ve shown, I would leave the Henshin with only a few suggested upgrades:

Tier 1
The elemental words Tier 1-4 in line 1 build to the great and well-loved vorpal strike, however they themselves seem weak and short in duration. As they cost 2 ap as well, I would make each elemental word do 25% damage instead of 10% and have them last at least 1 minute. Otherwise at least reduce the ap requirement from 2 to 1.
Mystic Training is a very limited enhancement as it only affects finishing moves. Either apply it to all dc’s like trip, stun, quivering palm and other monk abilities or at the very least reduce the requirement form 2 to 1.

Tier 3
Embrace the Void I believe should only be 1 ap instead of 2. 6 ap spent here seems a lot to gain a few more meditations.

Tier 4
Focus should also be only 1 ap instead of 2. I stopped using this anyway as it seemed a long preparation for a very short lived buff. Please adjust the times on this to a more reasonable use or just make it a clickie that immediately starts you at +10 and goes down every 3 seconds by 1. Groups don’t like waiting for such long preps either.
That’s all I have for this tree….let others more experienced with it make more suggestions as they deem fit.
Go forth fire-fly!


Ninja Spy Tree
Here are a few with only a few suggested upgrades in this tree for upcoming Monk pass:

Tier 1
Faster Sneaking should cost only 1 ap per level and not 2 ap.
The touch of despair modifiers from Ninjitsu should be strengthened or at least reduced to 1 ap each. You can only use one at a time and this makes them weak. Perhaps they should be a cumulative effect as you gain each one, so that they stack. After all you have to do 3 consecutive attacks just to load the touch of despair and then use the touch of despair (which is 40 ki and 18 seconds minimum just to do this little bit xtra damage. If they stacked then by the time you got to tier 4 it would be fairly worth the 8 ap expenditure. Of course the cap is what people work towards, but the chain should not be so useless. Otherwise just charge us 10 ap for the cap touch of death if that is what u think it is worth. And if it is just a decent tier 5 cap for this tree then also make the chain along the way useful..

Tier 5
Touch of Death is fine for heroic levels, but is not so great in epic levels as many of the warrior classes are dealing out 100-500 pts of damage per hit due to melee power upgrades and other enhancements. The ninja spy should likewise have a bit stronger cap here or have it deal like 1000 pts in the epic levels. I am not sure this even scales with the epic level melee power upgrades. But as there is a save, In many cases only ½ damage is being done anyways.

Crippling Strike from my observation is just so-so and more like a tier 3 than a tier 5 enhancement. Something stronger and more ninja-esq would be be nice as a cap. Maybe in addition to Crippling Strike it also does slicing tendon on a sneak attack.

I post this suggestion from DC Nightfire:
Any chance when the monk enhancement pass comes through that the bonuses to weapon crits can move to tier 5 instead of tier 0 lvl 20?
I so very much want to have a ninjaspy/assassin but it's so hard to give up the SS crit bonus. And most other trees have weapon bonuses in tier 5 (or lower) Barb, kensai, assassin, are all tier 5, Bard is tier 0 level 3 I believe.

Go forth slithering snake!