Monk Design Discussion

[Rootin and tootin]

So much PGCC
Ya i got yang to go
im working throw bad but thematic builds of Mortal Kombat characters
made an undying monklock 19/11 (Shang Tsung) damage immunities seem to work and CL is 25 with 2 masterpoints in mind and 3 in body
tried on armor of immolation to test ki barrier, that seems to work
tried out Equipoise, it is very unsatisfying, doesn't seem to take much to get it to falter and the bite-back is too low to notice. It basically feels like a trap feat versus just drinking a potion death armor

Imma keep plucking away at stuff in a somewhat chaotic fashion unless given some form of direction, just to see how things interact.

[Security_Blanket]

I think you should scrap the Martial discipline and move a lot of those feats over to Body. There's a missed opportunity to incorporate the trinity into the monk disciplines, which is Mind, Body, and Spirit, all martial abilities would just be a part of Body, which they are. I also think the Mind discipline is very lackluster, bonus to crafting, to leadership and bluff, or the situational immunity bonus to psychic damage, where the other disciplines have more with combat related benefits.

[ReverentBlade]

That said - if anybody would like to help with the PGCC testing, all you have to do is just drop into the PGCC and make a character.
These are the things I'm mostly interested to hear about:
Class feeling - are the systems cryptic or just nuanced enough to feel at home in Arelith?
Does it still feel like a monk?
Can you build your current character with the new version? Is it stronger? It is weaker?
Busted class combos we didn't think about.
Fist monks vs weapon monks.

And lastly, hard numerical data.
Maximum AB/AC, APR, damage averages. CL, buff flexibility, effective combat peak duration. Anything that determines the combat potential of a character will be appreciated.

Transferred my character to PGCC to try and salvage her.

Systems are too cryptic. There is no IG documentation regarding how to set up your mastery points or how they are gained (I am not using any external documentation on principle). How they interact with the feats you can choose is also unclear.

I guess it still feels like monk.

I cannot build my current character to anything resembling her current state.

She is currently 27 defiler 3 monk, focused on touch attacks and unarmed fighting.

Staying 27/3 she loses either Ki AC or the ability to fight unarmed and gains nothing at all - significant nerf. Ki shield or Ki Strike are still worse than default and UBAB.

Going 23/7 and taking Ki shield, the yin thingy for divine CL, and ki strike for unarmed gets her a little bit closer, but it still loses either an epic spell or an epic spell focus - still significant nerf, with Ki Shield and Ki Strike still being worse than default and UBAB.

Brawler also doesn't seem to be giving me an extra attack back. (Note that feat description literally says it doesn't work with monks...)

Using the 23/7 With all cleric buffs, haste, elemental avatar and ki shield active, my AC is 51, and AB with disciple's wraps is 36/31/26.

Currently on live, she gets 52 AC, and 37/34/31/28/25 AB...and doesn't lose an epic spell or epic spell focus, and doesn't have to push another silly button on an already ridiculous wind-up time for her AC. Significantly better.

I still cannot say I am a fan of the changes. Her melee ability is already only useful in mid-level PvE content (and requires putting away her Crozier to do so, RIP spell slots), and sacrificing any caster ability to retain that RP flavor feels really bad.

The yin thingy is a nice touch, but it feels a bit like a bandaid (or a trap) for how badly this class' "dippability" is getting gutted.

I honestly feel like we are tryharding to make the class cool and complex and only succeeding in removing it as a flavor option. Go full or go home, I guess. I'll probably go with bard or specialist instead and that makes me pretty depressed, the ki and martial arts were a cornerstone of her RP.

If the goal of the rework is more and cooler niche monks, I think it fails.

[ReverentBlade]

Some other tangential thoughts but related to reworks in general:

If I were able, I would love to be able to take this character into a more pure monk direction because the RP is that significant to her.

Unfortunately, we've made the VERY BAD decision to stop with DM-assisted remake requests. She is an award race, and her first level is locked into cleric with spell focus conjure. I do not (and likely will never) have a reward to remake her from scratch, because I don't play the "grind disposable characters" game.

So as it stands, I either have to eat a significant nerf to stay true to her RP, or come up with some lame excuse as to why she is a bard dip now instead of a kata-practicing, meditating martial artist with a religious objection to weapons.

Sweeping reworks should not exist on a server where we are locked into our first level choices permanently. Either reintroduce assisted remakes (with RP support) or stop with the overhauls. Having it both ways is annoying and toxic for people that care about RP and long-term stories. Thanks for hearing my rant.

[JubJub]

I like the concept but at the moment just seems way too complicated.

[Kroatius]

I have 9 APR right now. Feeling super cool and chilling.
But anyway, as a player, I wanted to know if there are any plans for Vigilante, Warpriest, and Shaman. They're classes that have or used to have Monk synergies with this update and all the feats working with only Monk now. Vigilante Ki 3, Ki 4 and Ki 5 are currently not working at all, and Warpriest Monk has nothing in their progression.

[Security_Blanket]

After further examination, definitely merge the Martial Discipline into Body, the Martial Discipline is sorely lacking in feats and utility. You're split between some of what you'd want to grab for your build because it's in another discipline. Then do what Iceborn said and increase the mastery points to 1 per 3 levels so you get 10 at 30. This would allow for heavily invested monks to go in whichever direction makes sense for their character.

Mastery in both spirit and mind, but only a practitioner in body since they spend most of their time meditating and self-reflecting. Or the ironskinned kung fu master that is a master in body and mind, though their spiritual abilities are lacking. Or maybe your character is on the path to enlightenment, and so they're a master of spirit while being adept in both body and mind. With four disciplines instead of three, it feels too clunky and stretched thin with not enough mastery points to go around.

[Llopast]

About the update's wording:
"- Reduced Mastery feats required from 3/6/9/12 to 0/1/2/3. Level requirement still in place.
-- Masteries are no longer automatically gained. Instead, you will have to select them manually using mastery points."

Do I understand correctly that you do not need to take 0/1/2/3 feats, but instead invest 0/1/2/3 mastery points to gain Novicer/Practicioner/Adept/Master tiers respectively?

[AstralUniverse]

You need to take 0/1/2/3 feats instead of 3/6/9/12 feats. You, also, need to invest mastery points.

[Rootin and tootin]

The number of feats required isn't matching
I invested in ONLY "Martial" list feats (0 Mind Feats)
was still able to place 3 mastery points into "Mind" to attain Adept
but then couldn't place the 4th

Human pure monk i just leveled to 21 to check things

do humans get bonus perk? or is bug?

[Llopast]

You need to take 0/1/2/3 feats instead of 3/6/9/12 feats. You, also, need to invest mastery points.

Right. Now I see it too. This is super complicated.
Also if it indeed requires 4 mastery points to achieve the Master rank it is crazy scarce. Honestly, I though that 4 points requirement was a bug.
A quick math:
1) 7-10 Monk = 2 points: 2x always go to the Body (because Ki barrier starts granting the full AC on the Practicioner) and thats all;
2) 11-13 Monk = 3 points: 2x go to the Body, another 1x is not enough for anything significant rather than dropping a point into the Body if you are unarmed. Adept tier is available;
3) 14-17 Monk = 4 points: 2x go to the Body, another 2x are not enough for anything significant (1 dmg in the Martial or 26 SR via a spirit shield or a Master tier in the Body). Master tier is available;
4) 18-20 Monk = 5 points. 3 points to spend. A little better: one can go for the +1 DMG & +1 AB via a Martial or 32 SR + death save in pvp via a Spiritual;
5) 21-24 Monk = 6 points. 4 points to spend: +1 DMG & AB & SR or 36 SR + 2x death godsaves. 1st level of the Balance is available: 2/1/2/1 -> 2/2/2/2 (not sure if its worth it);
6) 25-27 Monk = 7 points. 5 points to spend. 2nd level of the Balance is available: Body 2/ Martial 1/ Spirit 2/Mind 1 -> 3/2/3/2 combo can be done, but 1 point is going to be unused;
7) 28+ Monk = 8 points. 3rd level of the Balance is available: Body 3/ Martial 1/ Spirit 3/Mind 1 -> 4/2/4/2 combo can be done.

So, unless you an armed CHA/INT monk and you do not need Ki barrier and body discipline overall, you will always invest 2 points in the body discipline to get your full AC. Thus, your effective mastery points pool is reduced by 2. Thus, according to the math above the sweetest spots for the monk investment are № 1, 5, 7. 11-20, 25-27 monk are not an effective investment imho.
It should be taken into consideration that:
Sweet spot №7 is only a sweet spot the unarmed monk; 30 armed monk is awful AB&DMG-wise.
Sweet spot №5 showed the best of it as a milestone for the caster dip (fi 21 monk/9 cleric with 30CL). Armed monks can be mediocre or plainly bad at this point.
Sweet spot №1 is only viable for an armed monk (fi 8 monk/10 valiant knight/ 12 fighter). Armed monks are the most powerful AB&DMG-wise at this point (due to other classes, obviously). №2 also works pretty well for an armed monk.

[Iceborn]

An update has been deployed and should be live in the PGCC.
The changelog should arrive soonish, but the main dish is that the UBAB should be working as intended.

[Coolguy McMagic]

I've been trying to wrap my head around this rework and I feel like I am losing my mind. There is so much going on, I don't even know where to start, so I will concentrate on one thing for now:

What in the world does Ascension of Discipline do? Can someone explain this to me?

It states it doubles the bonuses of certain tiers:

21+: Practitioner tier bonus doubled
26+: Adept tier bonus doubled
28+: Master tier bonus doubled

Okay, easy enough. But THEN it also states that "only bonuses specified as +X are doubled". Now if we look at the actual instances of X in this document, not a single one of them is tied to a specific tier. So what does it mean that at level 21 Practitioner tiers are doubled but at 28 Master tiers are doubled? Not a single tier-specific bonus scales is marked with an X. So either Ascension simply doubles every single instance of X and thus works exactly as well at level 21 as it does at level 28, or it only doubles the instances of X that are tied to the bonus of a specific tier (of which there are, again, zero), in which case it does... nothing at all?

On a side note, Stance:Epiquoise only lasts a single round for me, even though I had a hard CON modifier of +3.

On another side note, the document claims that the -disc command shows you how many feats you have for each discipline. That does not seem to be the case at the moment.

[Rootin and tootin]

I've been trying to wrap my head around this rework and I feel like I am losing my mind. There is so much going on, I don't even know where to start, so I will concentrate on one thing for now:

What in the world does Ascension of Discipline do? Can someone explain this to me?

It states it doubles the bonuses of certain tiers:

21+: Practitioner tier bonus doubled
26+: Adept tier bonus doubled
28+: Master tier bonus doubled

Okay, easy enough. But THEN it also states that "only bonuses specified as +X are doubled". Now if we look at the actual instances of X in this document, not a single one of them is tied to a specific tier. So what does it mean that at level 21 Practitioner tiers are doubled but at 28 Master tiers are doubled? Not a single tier-specific bonus scales is marked with an X. So either Ascension simply doubles every single instance of X and thus works exactly as well at level 21 as it does at level 28, or it only doubles the instances of X that are tied to the bonus of a specific tier (of which there are, again, zero), in which case it does... nothing at all?

On a side note, Stance:Epiquoise only lasts a single round for me, even though I had a hard CON modifier of +3.

On another side note, the document claims that the -disc command shows you how many feats you have for each discipline. That does not seem to be the case at the moment.

If you look just under the title and description for each Discipline it tells you bonus for that discipline. Mind is Reflex saves, Body is Fortitude saves, and Spirit is Will saves. (X) is the mastery rank (Novice=1, Practitioner=2, Adept=3, Master=4)

I got the (X) in the "Technique: Open hand of Deliverance" to double (though the healing didn't work)
The (X) in Ki-Strike (tied to number of ranks in Body Discipline) doesn't double
I dont know how to test (X) in worship on pgcc
the (X) that does seem to almost mostly work is the +(X)to ___ Saves for each discipline...+/-1
I was getting odd numbers to the save bonuses which seems odd since they are "doubled" so should always even numbers

[Paint]

I have 9 APR right now. Feeling super cool and chilling.
But anyway, as a player, I wanted to know if there are any plans for Vigilante, Warpriest, and Shaman. They're classes that have or used to have Monk synergies with this update and all the feats working with only Monk now. Vigilante Ki 3, Ki 4 and Ki 5 are currently not working at all, and Warpriest Monk has nothing in their progression.

D-... did vigilante have monk synergies? I really hope not... Or are you saying that ki barrier doesn't function like it used to when classes dip vig on PGCC?

Anyways, my opinion is, new monk is kind of a different beast. A similar beast, but a different beast. Any synergies it has with other classes should be measured carefully after the class is feature complete. The cautious approach would be to see how new monk does on live before adding those synergies back in, but that'd burn a lot of people, so. We'll see, I guess.

[AstralUniverse]

Not sure what synergies you were thinking of, when there's an alignment mismatch.

[Paint]

Not sure what synergies you were thinking of, when there's an alignment mismatch.

Hence my confusion, yes.

[Coolguy McMagic]

If you look just under the title and description for each Discipline it tells you bonus for that discipline. Mind is Reflex saves, Body is Fortitude saves, and Spirit is Will saves. (X) is the mastery rank (Novice=1, Practitioner=2, Adept=3, Master=4)

I got the (X) in the "Technique: Open hand of Deliverance" to double (though the healing didn't work)
The (X) in Ki-Strike (tied to number of ranks in Body Discipline) doesn't double
I dont know how to test (X) in worship on pgcc
the (X) that does seem to almost mostly work is the +(X)to ___ Saves for each discipline...+/-1
I was getting odd numbers to the save bonuses which seems odd since they are "doubled" so should always even numbers

I know about the passive increases you get from progressing through each tier. I just fail to see what exactly the wording is meant to imply. Say you have 21 monk levels and mastery in the Body Discipline, for example. According to the wording, your practitioner bonus will be doubled. But what does that mean? X can take any value from 0-4, depending on your tier. Technically speaking, each tier gives you a bonus of +1 each. X equals 4 for you. So is X just doubled and you get a bonus to 8? Or is the bonus you get specifically from the 2nd tier doubled so you end up with X equals 5, as each tier is just a +1? But then why word it like that? It's just really weird and unintuitive-

[Rootin and tootin]

If you look just under the title and description for each Discipline it tells you bonus for that discipline. Mind is Reflex saves, Body is Fortitude saves, and Spirit is Will saves. (X) is the mastery rank (Novice=1, Practitioner=2, Adept=3, Master=4)

I got the (X) in the "Technique: Open hand of Deliverance" to double (though the healing didn't work)
The (X) in Ki-Strike (tied to number of ranks in Body Discipline) doesn't double
I dont know how to test (X) in worship on pgcc
the (X) that does seem to almost mostly work is the +(X)to ___ Saves for each discipline...+/-1
I was getting odd numbers to the save bonuses which seems odd since they are "doubled" so should always even numbers

I know about the passive increases you get from progressing through each tier. I just fail to see what exactly the wording is meant to imply. Say you have 21 monk levels and mastery in the Body Discipline, for example. According to the wording, your practitioner bonus will be doubled. But what does that mean? X can take any value from 0-4, depending on your tier. Technically speaking, each tier gives you a bonus of +1 each. X equals 4 for you. So is X just doubled and you get a bonus to 8? Or is the bonus you get specifically from the 2nd tier doubled so you end up with X equals 5, as each tier is just a +1? But then why word it like that? It's just really weird and unintuitive-

its JUST whatever discipline you got practitioner in
Body stays 4+1
lets say you are Practitioner of Spirit
then Spirit goes 2+1--->4+1
no more changes

yeah its worded funky and is kinda clunky in pgcc. Imo ascension isnt like, goood, compared to discipline Balance
21 monk levels going up a tier just feels better and is more noticeable than +2 to one save
Martial-1-->2
Body---2
Spirit---2
Mind---1-->2

[Rootin and tootin]

I made this charty thing, lemme know what you think

[Good Character]

Martial Discipline Feedback
After going through the feat list again I have to wholeheartedly agree with Security_Blanket. The martial list seems completely overdone and unnecessary. Two trains of thought here:

1. A monk masters a specific weapon (flavor diminishes as it sound like a weapon master), or
2. A monk is well-rounded in a specific set of weapons.

If it's the former, the majority of these techniques are outright worse compared to the rest which means for you to be optimal you have to use more than one feat. If it's the latter, all of the Martial feats should be combined into a singular one and served as a singular package. Regardless, you can only have a single technique going at a time and it has a cooldown and it's subjected to the weapon-swapping-AB-malus for a round. Doubling down on this bloat issue is Thousand Hand Godly Fist is crazy better than Dragon Sundering Eighteenth Palm because the former has double the damage compared to the latter.

That single packaged feat should be placed under the Body discipline. You should still only be allowed to use a single technique at a time but you're not tossing away your feats.

The Undying Monk Concern
Prayer, Hymn, and Reincarnation. A PvP fight is roughly three to six rounds. A monk with these three feats is able to save themselves from the brink four times.

Entry Fee to Play
This rework is complicated. I personally enjoy that but I admit it took me roughly twenty minutes just to figure out what the very basics of this rework were. New players or unfamiliar players who see monk and want to grab it are not going to have a good time.