Henshin Mystic DC's and Ki Abilities

[HastyPudding]

Okay, let's talk business on henshin's unique kit. There's been some improvements, but none of them tackle the bigger issues with henshin. The way it looks, now, it's just a weak thief acrobat tree with some pretty (useless) ki abilities.

If any of this sounds terse or disgruntled, you would be absolutely right to think so. I pretty much think I've been the biggest and most vocal lobbyist for fixing henshin since day one and I'm not going to back down now that things are getting revamped.

- Ki DC's are low compared to other classes. Stunning fist and kukan-do gain benefits from stunning items and gear, but the unique ki abilities in henshin (and in shintao) gain no DC benefit from anything, putting them at hit&miss or unusable levels in most epic and legendary content, especially since they target reflex saves. A simple +3 to ki dc's in henshin just doesn't cut it, especially since we now HAVE to balance out strength with wisdom attributes due to this melee power nonsense.

- Elemental Words: not even touching on how useless 3/4 of these abilities are, but reduce the AP cost to 1 and I'll be satisfied. There's no reason why henshin needs two 2 AP chains going up the tree. It's a waste of space and a waste of AP.

- Ki Bolt seems decent, but incinerating wave needs some work. It's dead slow, targets reflex saves, and has less than half the power of ki bolt. Also, the animation is very clunky.

- Breath of the Fire Dragon will now be somewhat useful to a henshin? This should benefit from some DC increases, too.

- Lighting the Candle: make the damage scale with melee power and remove the ki regeneration penalty: it's almost like this pigeon-holes you into being fire stance, which reduces your wisdom and thus your ki dc's. This is just absurdly counter-intuitive.

- Cauldron of Flame is, hands down, one of the least seen moves, spells, or abilities in DDO. Why? It's insanely clunky to use, requires a use of meditation (meaning severely limited uses), and requires you to stand still and do nothing while the paltry damage slowly pinpricks away at your opponent's health. You would be doing a lot more damage by attacking with a staff and getting glancing blows than using this ability. This ability needs a total rework or else it's just a complete waste of the level 18 core.

- Focus, like cauldron, is very clunky to use. You're actually losing dps by using this ability, and, honestly, 100 HP shield refreshing every 3 seconds is going to last all of 1 second in epic and legendary content, making you vulnerable and -- literally -- a sitting duck while you use this.

- There's only 3 tier 5 abilities: two of which is okay, and the other has been horrifically bugged since the original enhancement pass. Add something. Anything.


Suggestions:
Add another +1 passive ki regeneration bonus to the capstone: anyone going pure henshin is obviously going for a ki-using type of monk and not a quarterstaff dps machine. At least grant them the dignity of the illusion of having enough ki to function properly.

Add +2 to ki ability DC's (excluding stunning fist) in each of the henshin cores. This will give them a +12 total bonus, which, while not approaching the levels that other classes get on their abilities, at least gives henshin a fighting chance without seeming broken.

Add a spell resistance passive to the tier 5's, maybe gaining spell resistance equal to half your wisdom score. Also a ki recovery clicky, like in grandmaster of flowers, would be helpful since henshin is obviously a very ki-focused enhancement tree.

[Shall]

Honestly, between the small degree of changes, the dev posts from the last few months stating that wraps recoding and a full monk pass were unlikely to be doable in a single update, the issues with the new handwraps as weapons system already being reported, and the mention of a planned universal enhancement tree that has wis to hit and damage which would likely upset any balancing efforts made in this update, I'm hoping u33 isn't the actual monk pass but just a minor adjustment of the enhancements for new gameplay systems like melee power to keep the class alive until a full pass happens after the universal tree is released.

That said, I wouldn't stop at reducing the cost of the elemental words, but would also mirror what they did with the other two trees by deleting the staff training line and adding its effects into the elemental words to free up points and make the words line less terrible. The staff crit enhancement would move to where void strike is now while void strike would be placed in the first core without the on vorpal part to open up the void finishers to all monks. In its place in tier 5, they could add an enhancement that would restore the on vorpal effect and improve either the elemental words, or the master and grandmaster level elemental strikes, say add an extra effect on critical that varies with multiplier similar to what they did with elemental arrows. Maybe if it wouldn't be too strong, make that a passive, always on part of a void stance toggle as often suggested on the forums that combines the other elemental stances for a net +2 to all stats after adding the +4 and -2 from opposing stances when the monk has grandmaster of forms and a net +1 when at the second highest "of forms" rank. After all, the background lore for the void disciple prestige class they borrowed from when making the henshin tree describes it as connected to the other four elements.

Eventually, the empty column from where staff training used to be could be filled with new, elemental themed abilities. A few of my previous posts in these recent monk threads have some very rough suggestions of more spells from the oriental adventure classes that ddo monks borrow from that could be adapted to the tree as situational abilities, but looking back they were mostly the same general things an acrobat gets just rationalized with more mystic flavor text so I'll leave it to other people to think of better ideas for abilities to fill the empty column in the tree removing staff training would leave.

Oh and replace negotiator with item defense since it looks like handwraps are extremely fragile now, it would benefit both wrap users and quarterstaff users, and it seems unlikely a monk would have high enough bluff, diplo, or intimidate for that enhancement to have any practical use anyway.

Aside from that and the suggestions you made, some other things I would also like to see the ability to regen meditation usages on vorpal added to one of the early cores and maybe for the fire fire fire finisher to emulate the fireball spell instead of burning hands so it would be able to break down doors.

[HastyPudding]

Honestly, between the small degree of changes, the dev posts from the last few months stating that wraps recoding and a full monk pass were unlikely to be doable in a single update, the issues with the new handwraps as weapons system already being reported, and the mention of a planned universal enhancement tree that has wis to hit and damage which would likely upset any balancing efforts made in this update, I'm hoping u33 isn't the actual monk pass but just a minor adjustment of the enhancements for new gameplay systems like melee power to keep the class alive until a full pass happens after the universal tree is released.

That said, I wouldn't stop at reducing the cost of the elemental words, but would also mirror what they did with the other two trees by deleting the staff training line and adding its effects into the elemental words to free up points and make the words line less terrible. The staff crit enhancement would move to where void strike is now while void strike would be placed in the first core without the on vorpal part to open up the void finishers to all monks. In its place in tier 5, they could add an enhancement that would restore the on vorpal effect and improve the other elemental strikes, say add an extra effect on critical that varies with multiplier similar to what they did with elemental arrows. Maybe if it wouldn't be too strong, make that a passive, always on part of a void stance toggle as often suggested on the forums that combines the other elemental stances for a net +2 to all stats after adding the +4 and -2 from opposing stances when the monk has grandmaster of forms and a net +1 when at the second highest "of forms" rank. After all, the background lore for the void disciple prestige class they borrowed from when making the henshin tree describes it as connected to the other four elements.

Eventually, the empty column from where staff training used to be could be filled with new, elemental themed abilities. A few of my previous posts in these recent monk threads have some very rough suggestions of more spells from the oriental adventure classes that ddo monks borrow from that could be adapted to the tree as situational abilities, but looking back they were mostly the same general things an acrobat gets just rationalized with more mystic flavor text so I'll leave it to other people to think of better ideas for abilities to fill the empty column in the tree removing staff training would leave.

Oh and replace negotiator with item defense since it looks like handwraps are extremely fragile now, it would benefit both wrap users and quarterstaff users, and it seems unlikely a monk would have high enough bluff, diplo, or intimidate for that enhancement to have any practical use anyway.

Aside from that and the suggestions you made, some other things I would also like to see the ability to regen meditation usages on vorpal added to one of the early cores and maybe for the fire fire fire finisher to emulate the fireball spell instead of burning hands so it would be able to break down doors.

I like the idea of combining the elemental words with the quarterstaff line. It just seems like henshin is having 2 full lines with heavy AP investment for little gain. Henshin, while actually on the lower end of the total AP needed to maximize the tree, has always suffered from having far too many 2 AP cost abilities. Simply put: the gain from the henshin tree does not outweigh the AP spent. More value is needed per AP spent in the tree.

I made a henshin overhaul here,( https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ystic-Overhaul ) a while back. I think the devs should have looked at it, before going on with their melee power idea, which I think is a massive blunder and the lazy route. However, I added what I thought was some interesting abilities that replaced the elemental words line. It played off the henshin mystic in PnP, as a mystic guru that fought with words and riddles (as well as fire-based abilities) to confuse enemies. I think a few of them are still relevant to what henshin could be in DDO:

Riddle of Invulnerability : 2 AP / 1 rank
- Every time you use a monk finishing move you gain a temporary bonus to your magical resistance rating equal to half your wisdom score that lasts for 5 seconds.

Riddle of Interaction : 1 AP / 3 ranks
- Activate to deceive an enemy into thinking you are an ally for 20/30/40 seconds. Will save negates. This is effectively a charm monster spell. (DC = 20 + monk level + wisdom modifier) (Activation cost: 20 ki, cooldown: 1 minute)

Riddle of Awareness: 2 AP / 3 ranks
- Rank 1 : Your attacks when wielding weapons or while unarmed have the ghost touch property
- Rank 2 : You are now immune to blindness effects and spells
- Rank 3 : You gain a +25 bonus to AC against flanking and backstabbing attacks made by enemies

Riddle of Confusion : 2 AP / 1 rank
- Activate to cloud the minds of nearby opponents for 10 seconds, causing them to attack both friends and foes, as per the confusion spell. Will save negates. (DC = 20 + monk level + wisdom modifier) (Activation cost: 20 ki, cooldown: 25 seconds)

Riddle of Equilibrium : 1 AP / 3 ranks
- Permanently gain +1/+1/+2 passive ki regeneration and +2/+4/+6 concentration