This last idea sounds very interesting, but potentially overpowered. 50% Damage to Stamina can be a strong effect on its own, depending on the conversion ratio. If it's 1-on-1, then it's usefulness is suspect, since you will be having 400-500 Stamina in late game; so if you buff Ki Shield, or Ki shield proves to be powerful as it stands, then the interaction with Inner Peace may become very strong (1 damage is converted into 80%*60%-assuming 40% Mind resist-=less than 0.5 Stamina). It all hinges on how strong Ki Shield turns out to be, especially with the introduction of Inner Strength. In any case, if you go with the Mind resist option, it might be a good idea to simplify the skill so that it just grands you either standard (percentage) resistance or flat damage resistance , as per Antimagic shield.grayswandir wrote: Confusion resist sounds good, but I don't want it to overlap too much with Inner Clarity. Maybe half the bonus to physical and mental saves as well?
Actually, I just got a neat idea. What if Ki Shield instead converts 50% of all damage you receive to mind damage, and then lets Mind damage hit stamina instead of health? That could make this a bit stronger, and would be pretty cool thematically, I think.
Probably a good idea, can scale it back if it is too strong.grayswandir wrote: I'm thinking about also making this give a flat 20 stamina per level, or something like that. That way it would have some benefit at low levels as well.
The thing is, Unflinching resolve removes some of the most common lethal effects in the game, in my experience. So the issue is, are there enough mental effects (and are there common enough) to justify leveling up this talent?grayswandir wrote:Unflinching Resolve covers 5 specific effects, only one of which is mental. This covers every single mental effect. Having no mental effect last longer than 2 turns is definitely worth a small reduction in speed for some characters. It's also instant, which means you can use it after you get hit. Adjusting the speed penalty is probably the hardest part. For instance, a speed penalty of 5% would make this skill way too good, I think. Right now I have it ranging from 18% to 10%.necronomist wrote:Inner Clarity: This appears to be quite limiting-monks have access to the Condition tree (Unflinching Resolve), which provides a similar and broader effect and should have decent Mental saves, especially if investing in Inner Peace. Maybe change it so that it provides a bonus in Physical and Spell saves as a proportion of your Mental saves? However, that would make it quite similar to Chant of Fortitude.
This version helps deal with all stealthed or invisible NPCs, while also helping a lot when blinded.grayswandir wrote:I was told last night that this overlaps a lot with some new stuff in b42, so I rewrote it. Now it gives a passive mindpower% chance to see any creature within talent level spaces, as if you had telepathy with them. You can activate it to blind yourself and give yourself blind fighting. It also allows you to always see yourself when blinded.necronomist wrote:Inner Sight: By my reading, the main benefit of this talent is that it grands you blindfighting; while this is quite useful against some NPCs (namely Dreads), the use of this talent would be quite limited. What if it reduces vision range instead and gives telepathy all within the reduced vision range starting at say radius 3, while higher levels gradually increase the vision and telepathy range?
The Conditioning tree provides a lot of sustainability, just through Unflinching resolve, so locking the tree would certainly need testing. Also of note may be the interaction between Adrenaline Surge and the new idea for Ki Shield (damage to mind damage to stamina)- a very nice combo, but likely not overpowered, since it is only available for a few turns in an encounter.grayswandir wrote:I mainly wanted a will based generic tree for monks who didn't go antimagic. Since willpower is their main stat, I wanted there to be a generic tree for it. I'm considering locking Conditioning, but I'll have to test it out, first.necronomist wrote:Also, note that Monks currently have access to 3 generic trees, excluding Combat training. Another generic tree provides options, but also put more strain in terms of how to level them up, especially if they go anti-magic.
I like the sound of all of these ideas; I also noticed that the monk has quite a few interesting choices to make when spending class points (Combat veteran seems quite good!), so it probably is a good idea to put a new class skill in a lower priority.grayswandir wrote:Stance Mastery is definitely an idea. I kind of wanted to make skills that affected all stances equally, though. Like a passive that gives you 5% of the bonus for each stance even if you're not in that stance, or a boost to each of the first tier skills. Maybe the highest skill would give you a new ability for a stance if you have 20/19/18/17/16 points in that tree. However, Monk already has a lot of places to spend class points, so this tree is pretty much my lowest priority.necronomist wrote:Stance Mastery: Locked tree, starting at lvl 20. Would include 4 active skills that all start immediately available (similar to Mindslayer Shields) that would each switch you to a stance and do something else (eg Dragon skill could provide healing) and also increase the effectiveness of the stance passive abilities-this can be done in a way similar to Mindslayer, by increasing the effective Stance tree level for the purposes of calculating stance passive benefits. This tree would give you more options in combat and allow you to more readily switch to the Stances you are most heavily invested in. A good idea would be to include some AOE skills on this tree, since this appears to be an area that the monk is lacking in.
Some ideas for AOE:grayswandir wrote: Adding some AOE is definitely a good idea, though. I just have to find a place for it.
Modify Leaping strike (Tiger), to that it travels a short distance and affects everyone in a line (like Temporal Wake)-might want to slightly increase cooldown.
Modify Dragon's Eye, so that it affects everyone in a radius around the monk; might also need to increase cooldown, but maybe not since the talent might be a bit underpowered as it stands. Does Dragon's Eye stack with Daunting Presence? Do they stack?
Modify Flare strike to also do fire damage in the radius as well as blind-might definitely want to increase cooldown, then.
This sounds interesting, has nice interplay with Quivering Palm; the danger is that it could lead to perma-stun (of very nearly) situations, which could make the early game quite easy. I'm assuming that the the first hit of the Pounding Blows still stuns for one turn; otherwise, the only source of stuns becomes Quivering Palm, as far as I can tell.grayswandir wrote: Also, I'm planning on a small change to Pounding Blows. Instead of stunning for a turn for every hit, I want it to apply a 1-turn debuff that increases their stun duration by 1 every time they're hit by physical damage. So once you get the high attack speed for phoenix stance this naturally gets better.
Lastly, is Ki combat likely to be fixed in the next version?