Class Idea: Monk

[Luckmod]

So the basic idea of the class is that they use staves as a melee weapon, possibly channeling elemental damage in them into elemental melee strikes. This would be a dex main class with possibly some con and magic on the side.

Class Talents:
Techniques: 2h Weapons - But have a slight twist of changing damage buffs more towards dex
Techniques: Combat Techniques
Techniques: Combat Veteran

General Talents:
Techniques: Combat Training
Spell: Staff Combat - Changing Channel Staff to a melee attack instead of ranged bolt
Techniques: Field Control

Something along these lines. What do you guys think? I don't know how hard it would be to set up. I'm trying to figure out how to make classes but I'm running into trouble otherwise I'd do this myself.

I'm starting to work on creating this class. If you guys have any tips or ideas for it please let me know.

[devilindupriest]

I believe the Alchemy pack addon has an alchemist class that is staff combat oriented instead of the golem stuff, you might take a look at it and see what directions they went with theirs and if it's what you're looking for first. Other than that, have you won the game and unlocked Adventurer? If so I think (roughly speaking) you could set up the trees you're looking at as an adventurer class to test the waters. The lower category bonuses for Adventurer and the fact that the stat spread would be all over the place that way (strength/magic looks like, actually not too bad) would limit it somewhat, but it gives you a chance to get a feel for if a class idea would be viable/fun. In this case you could also try running a zerker, go arcane, get a point of staff mastery from an escort then go pay 500 then 750 in Angolwen and get 1.2 mastery of staff combat. I've actually done that a few times to try staff+ 2hand techniques a few times working on ideas for ways to make Cryomancer easier for myself. heh.

Things I'll say right off the bat, with the current listed talent tree spread the class seems to be missing defense and ranged options (and burst damage...and sustained damage. But that's an issue pretty much for almost any melee that isn't dual-weapon flurry it seems). Combat Veteran will carry most characters through to 20 (on normal), but after that fast metab starts to lose out versus incoming damage and most especially burst damage. There are several defensive talents in trees that the brawler class uses (general-mobility, cunning-tactical) that might be appropriate thematically, but those are largely melee-only. Rush from Combat Techniques is a great mobility option, and Field Control offers disengage for an escape, so mobility isn't bad.

[Doctornull]

Spell: Staff Combat - Changing Channel Staff to a melee attack instead of ranged bolt

How would this be different from a bump attack?

[NemesisZeru]

Spell: Staff Combat - Changing Channel Staff to a melee attack instead of ranged bolt

How would this be different from a bump attack?

Added damage at a mana cost, I guess? Iunno

[Luckmod]

As far as the staff combat goes, it would allow you to make an element strike that is 100% an element instead of having to stack convert damage or on hit element.

It's really cool that you posted Devil cause I'm actually gutting your classes and the main games code to kinda teach myself how it all fits together. My first step has been to create a very basic class and get it to birth, but I'm having a problem with something being nil and it get's stuck at 100% after clicking new game.

This class idea will hopefully develop as I come to understand the coding more and gain experience so for now, I'm keeping things simple.

And while I am new to coding in Lua and the way all the pieces of code work together in TOME, I have a programming background so I'm hoping I'll pick up on this quickly. (Given that I have enough time while I'm not at work.)

[Doctornull]

As far as the staff combat goes, it would allow you to make an element strike that is 100% an element instead of having to stack convert damage or on hit element.

Just so you know, Staff attacks already work like that.

[Luckmod]

Ok, that's good to know.

What's the work look like for building a new talent tree with existing (or maybe new) talents inside it?

Could I say... mix some staff mastery and weapons mastery talents together?

EDIT: I just took a peak at that hedgemage class (i'm at work so i'll look more later). It feels like a stat swap of what I want to do. They used magic with melee offset, I want to do melee with magic offset.

[devilindupriest]

As far as the staff combat goes, it would allow you to make an element strike that is 100% an element instead of having to stack convert damage or on hit element.

It's really cool that you posted Devil cause I'm actually gutting your classes and the main games code to kinda teach myself how it all fits together. My first step has been to create a very basic class and get it to birth, but I'm having a problem with something being nil and it get's stuck at 100% after clicking new game.

This class idea will hopefully develop as I come to understand the coding more and gain experience so for now, I'm keeping things simple.

And while I am new to coding in Lua and the way all the pieces of code work together in TOME, I have a programming background so I'm hoping I'll pick up on this quickly. (Given that I have enough time while I'm not at work.)

I totally hacked apart DoctorNull's stuff to figure out how to do classes. =) His pack is really straight forward once you understand what gets read in what order to load which files. (and also has really excellent examples of a lot of what's possible in terms of new talents and such) Me, I'm a moron and that's why mine are pared down to individual classes in separate mods for now so I don't confuse myself. He also leaves much better annotation than I do.

As for the freeze at 100%, it's sitting there flickering, right?

Unclosed statement probably. Run a syntax and if it doesn't catch it go down each page and count off pairs of { }. If it evens out, check commas after talent trees and starting talents.

....I spent 3 hours with my first class mod trying to figure that out. =<

ETA: Also for an unregistered mod, make sure it's still unzipped in an appropriately named folder in the addons folder

[Luckmod]

Yeah, it just flickers a bit and doesn't move. I currently have the addon folder unzipped. I was talking to Aura last night and he was helping me out. We couldn't find what was wrong though. I changed the formatting of your code to something more my style that I developed while learning programming. Makes keeping track of brackets easier but I haven't had to keep track of so many commas before as well. I know the issue is not with the brackets cause I counted them in all my files like 5 times. I'll have to check the commas though. There might be a copy and pasted comma somewhere in there that shouldn't be.

If I remember correctly, I was getting some sort of Lua error with /data-monk/birth/classes/warrior.lua not being found or pointing to a nil in a data structure or something.

And yes, I realize that this class is not super planned out since I don't really know what my limitations are at this point or how easily I can change things like creating a new talent tree or changing the stat requirements or buffs of skills. Even in my code no I only have maybe 3 class talent trees and 3 generic which is nowhere close to what I want there to be.

The idea for the monk actually extended from what I wanted a brawler to be, but I felt like it would be easier to edit how a staff user works vs what I dream of a brawler being like since I don't like a lot of their current skills. (and the rework is coming)

[devilindupriest]

Yeah, check commas. If the shortname in init didn't match it wouldn't be making it that far. And sounds like from the error it makes it through load.lua fine. Hmm. I had one that just didn't work no matter what until I deleted the entire class description from the class file, but I'm pretty sure that was one I was using a multi-line description on. It was Riven, actually, which is why the in game class description just says something like 'Two handed mayhem' now or some such. Also if you started from one of the one's that was race restricted make sure you didn't get a superfluous leftover End somewhere up at the beginning. Did that once myself.

Pretty much every other single modder here is better than I am, unfortunately, so you're probably best off with chat or the irc. I'm mostly a cut and paste script kiddie at heart. What I do when one doesn't work is check for brackets then open it up side by side along one I know works and go line by line making sure how each statement should close, and where and when I need commas. And then when I finally get it to work I get the joy of loading a character and having to figure out why Combat Veteran doesn't show up before I remember to go back and name it combat-techniques-passive. And of course, manage to delete the closing quotation mark when I do that and it still doesn't show up and I spend an hour looking at my spelling before noticing that.

[Luckmod]

lol, well that's how you learn programming. People don't usually pull code out of their asses unless they were building that project from the beginning. And besides, it sounds like you were recently where I was, so maybe I'll just get people who are one step ahead of me to teach me and leapfrog up the skill tree of LUA and Tome programming.

EDIT: I haven't wanted to program in a long time and now that I want to do this I can't because I work from 830 to 630. (Including commute). Though it's funny cause i'm actually working as a QA Tester/Debugger. But i'm just testing the program at work, not writing it.

EDIT 2: Just took a peak at some of the Haunted (class addon) stuff that was posted. I downloaded it last night but never looked at it. It sounds like it could be kinda close to my idea of a brawler, except it's psionic.

Devil, what if I made a Blazing Fist class to match your Oozefist?

Blazefist ideas:
Wildfire
Fire
Fire Drake Aspect
Fire Alchemy
Unarmed Training
Pugilism
Combat Training

I'm leaning Wildfire, Fire Drake, Fire Alchemy, Pugilism, Unarmed Training, Combat Training
Unarmed Discipline

EDIT 3
So I got home and got my class to load. Guess what the issue was? I called T_STAFF_MASTERY "T_STAFF_MASTER" in my talents list

I forgot a y...