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2 week review
It's been about 2 weeks since Gaudiguch and Hallifax finally received access to their monk archetypes with a brand new secondary skill, Zarakido.
At this point in time, there should be a general understanding of how these skillsets work, how they interact and how they can be effective. I do not believe enough time has elapsed to really give a deep understanding of the intricacies involved with these skillsets and their interactions, as that will likely take more time, more effort and more experience using them.
With that in mind, I would like to hear your thoughts. The good, the bad and the ugly. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I've seen both raves and rants already about these skillsets, from absolute love to 'weaker versions of chemwoods.'
And when I say the good, the bad and the ugly, that's exactly what I mean, your post should include a good thing, a bad thing, and an ugly thing.
At this point in time, there should be a general understanding of how these skillsets work, how they interact and how they can be effective. I do not believe enough time has elapsed to really give a deep understanding of the intricacies involved with these skillsets and their interactions, as that will likely take more time, more effort and more experience using them.
With that in mind, I would like to hear your thoughts. The good, the bad and the ugly. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I've seen both raves and rants already about these skillsets, from absolute love to 'weaker versions of chemwoods.'
And when I say the good, the bad and the ugly, that's exactly what I mean, your post should include a good thing, a bad thing, and an ugly thing.
4
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
Bad: Really, guys? Preemptive banning of Michaelangelo?
Ugly: I still have no clue how these stances work, and I miss momentum. Luckily, I'm mostly hunting on my Gaudi monk and stances don't matter as much.
Firstly: I think Zarakido is probably the best example of how to implement effective defensive aspects into a skillset. The defensive aspects of Zarakido have an exceptionally large opportunity cost and require windows of smart application. Each of the defensive abilities is sufficiently strong but measured by being toggled and drawing a large body from a small pool of resource. I personally would love to see all defensive skillsets have an increased defensive potential but require smarter play such as is required by Zarakido. It is, in every way, superior to 'put up your 12 defences in Aeonics and pray to rng', it also makes being defensive an active part of gameplay which is both rewarding and fulfilling.
Zarakido has a lot of extremely strong abilities, I'm going to come out and just nail now that the 10% crit buff is pretty insane, even with the 20% fumble chance on all criticals. That said and aside, each of the abilities in Zarakido has an immense opportunity cost and really does require smart micromanagement of your eflow and context to make use of in any capacity. Zarakido is, to date, my favourite skillset in the game.
Secondly: After playing 'extensively' with Tessenchi and looking at Nunchaku, I'm of the opinion that these monks are far milder in their upfront potential to mangle their opponent into 'spam ice/hope you can stand/react in the next 3 seconds before they lock you out of ice again'. As a person who was very vocal on the monk changes coming through their overhaul, I feel that Tessenchi and Nunchaku do a much better job at keeping mild on the lockdown while still giving the monk a large pool of afflictions to work with. The burst mechanic is unique and the skillset feels very capable, even if it is a little slower off the mark.
I'm torn about the ultimate abilities however. I dislike damage instakills because they give rise to min/max thresholds and can be temperamental to balance as in the case of meteor, for example. I'm also not sure if I'm a fan of the out-of-form follow up that is possible (that is, thundercuts from surge to killer, then out of form thundercuts again). I'd rather see the 'instakills' be more reliable and restricted to forms, though ultimately this is a design choice and works in the pursuit of not enabling collateral aff stack -> easy instakill.
I feel there is an argument to be made for Nunchaku with the 1s slush balance, and I personally am of the opinion that it might be a touch more difficult for them to land a finishing billionslams but I am not in the position, having not played with it at all, to make that deduction.
Overall, I think they're great. If there was anything I'd change about either of the monks it'd be more kick variety but all in all I think they're a great take on the monk archetype.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
Nunchaku feel like they are missing an arm action compared to Tessenchi or other monks. Ok technically they can do insanity as well as an arm action but that doesnt help them build stacks or hemo like more traditional afflictions.
EG under surge.
Nunchaku(3) can only do disloyality, pacifism or vomiting on arm actons until surge.
Vs
Tessenchi(6) can do sickening, vomiting, stupidity, powersap, dysentery, clumsy.
vs
Tah(6) can do blind, sensitivty, sickness, clumsy, damgaedskull, crushed chest. (Get stun as well technically+1)
etc
Really think Nunchaku could do with a center arm action for a few more afflictions. You could even tweak Nangao to do insanity on head, and afflictions on other body parts to give them some more variety to play with. EDIT: Also add a fourth affliction to Xianchuk to give it the choice of four from the start would be nice.
Zarakidos ability to build insanity and timewarp while it has been nerfed already still seems really strong. Not sure if its too good or not as I've not had that much opportunity to test it in groups but a Nunchaku seems to be able to pummle people to high insanity without too much effort in groups.
The Bad/Less Good: (I don't know how much of this applies to Nunchucku, probably a fair amount based on what I do know although often mirrored instead of identical).
Compared to Shofangi, I feel Tessenchi is very poison dependant, which is disappointing because poisons are so terribly unreliable and RNG. Unlike Shofangi, who has access to ice and dust hemo affs from base, Tessenchi only gets a slush aff (which is the least useful stack, since it is fast and doesn't feed our kill mechanics directly). That means from the get go, we are subject to parry/dodge/failure to transfer/shrug/immunity to try and stick hemo affs. I know there's a report (approved I think) to give nekotai a dust arm action at base for parity, and I really think the same could be done here. Trade tessreflection chest with hemorrhagicstrike chest (and move hallucinations to centre maybe to compensate, trade with tessreflect head or arms).
Though poison dependant, there aren't actually very many of our kill requirements that we can give with poisons. In a way, that's cool because it requires good use of the burst mechanics. On the other hand, it limits our actual viable kill routes.
Like Yarith, I'm a little worried about thousandcuts and how it will work (or if it will work?) against some well-kitted out characters. My worry is probably less that 'thousandcuts won't work' and more that there is no alternative. I would have liked to see a kill condition in Zarakido (maybe tempins/timewarp related) to give an alternative. I'm sure this can be adjusted as needed, and maybe the 'only viable kill' status is valuable to make sure there is reason to make those adjustments, but... Generally, I think two options is nice. RIP Deathtouch 2017-2017.
Admin response to "issues" with the skillsets (some bugs, sometimes I am just dumb and missing something - sorry) has been great. I think the only real outstanding item I have might be more of a balance concern issue than a bug. Hiddenflux is potentially a really cool skill, especially for classes that need to build affs to build toward kill conditions. As is, I think it is... at the least, really hard to judge how useful it actually is. Part of that is because it will hide the affmessage from things that are still easily discernible from the flavour message - like basically all kata attacks. Based on the message (aka ability) and where it hits (which has to be there to allow parry) you can 'know' what the aff is. On the other side, hidden affs are a weakness of SSC *at this point* - whether hidden via hiddenflux or under blackout, SSC does not pick up affs based on even obvious symptoms (like blind or haemophilia). Currently you cannot tell SSC to 'assume' you have a certain aff. In other words, it might seem very effective right now, but as SSC evolves, it may become useless. IMO it should hide poison effects only (like surgelow bonus for tessenchi).
Have to go, more later.
The report for nekotai was to give them access to their hemo affliction. They didn't have a way to actually afflict their dust hemo affliction at all out side of poisons. I do sort of feel that monks should have a way to be throwing out their hemo bonus afflictions off early arm actions at least.
1. Parry and parry bypass. This is hard to judge because there is an approved, unmplemented, under specified report to bring back stancing and remove bypass mechanics from existing monk specs. This does not put monks “on equal footing with warriors” because warriors have parry bypass that accelerates their kill condition instead of trading off (like monks sacrificing arm actions). Monk specs have unequal access to prone/clumsiness methods to bypass, and because we need certain affs, I actually think parrying can be very strong against monks too - it’s just that only a handful of people have bothered. This point might just be general anxiety about not knowing how the report will be resolved, but I will hope that whatever resolution is planned was considered as part of these monk specs.
2. It may be that Tessenchi (avoiding claims about Nunchucku) are good group combatants and excellent for bashing/influencing, and the trade-off is that they have only one 1v1 PvP kill condition which may not even work on sufficiently tanky targets. If that’s an intentional design decision that will be applied across the board (aka strengths and weaknesses, not all identical) that’s fine with me. I haven’t heard it articulated clearly like that, but that’s my feeling so far. If the goal is for less variance in strengths and weaknesses, then I would suggest nerfing Esotericflux and adding an alternate kill route in Zarakido.
As for Nekotai, that was one reason, but giving it from base is to provide hemo build. I agreed with the report, and I still do. Tessenchi cannot give their steam hemo aff natively and have few/no (not at my computer to double check) steam affs on kata actions, even though steam pool is the key for our kill. We have several slush affs (which I predict will see little to no use). I think @Danquik said Nunchuku are the mirror - need slush affs but can’t give them natively. Thus my statement about poison reliance. In reality this is probably a good design decision even if it seems counterintuitive, if I could stack steam affs it would lower the hemo requirement to burst substantially. As it is, especially with hemo cap, no native steam affs, few steam poisons, it’s a tight window to burst 5 affs, poison two more, beast spit the 8th, and hope they don’t cure even one of them before thousandcuts.
The 5p aoe skills feel very lackluster for their cost. I don't think they will see much use, though blackout might be useful in some situations. I reckon lower to 3p and go from there.
Burst/"insta" aside I think these are much better tuned than the other monk specs. On tessenchi in particular, the actions available feel a bit limiting in terms of actually useful body parts to hit, which makes them more reliant on poisons than your average monk spec and can become more swingy as a result.
I think the "instas" might be too good in groups, especially if there are even two monks. I was told that they can proc RoA. If that is the case then I can see them being very frustrating to use.
CrypticFlux has already had use in supporting very quick Illuminates and while we haven't seen Timequake be a factor yet it might well become one if timewarp is made into a build rather than burst mechanic with the SR.
I suggested they should ignore RoA and illusoryself. I think most folks could get behind that change. Other damage based skills bypass RoA already and considering these are the monks main kill route feels they should too.
EDIT: I shouldn't say instakills, they're more like damage burst with instakill maxima.
EDIT: Minor fixes.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
That said, all of this stems from the fact that these are the "insta" equivalent of the other monk specs and these new monks have no other kill path so if that is fixed (Zarakido insta?) then it is less of an issue if these ones have such drawbacks
I'm sort of ok with monks and warriors kills being parryable. Not too invested in it though. Would be ok with that staying the same or changing.
Good: The skillset, as echoed by the people above me, feels very flexible. Not only in Zarakido, which provides a tidy wealth of possibilities for any combatant to explore, but also in Tessenchi itself, having at -least- two solid ways of building hemorrhage in its own skillset. Ushaara was also dealing out some heavy bleeding with a third route!
Bad: This problem isn't prevalent because many combatants nowadays don't even bother parrying properly, but I foresee parrying being a big deal when people get that together. We do have Clumsiness in Tessreflection, but it's a mental affliction AND on an arm action to boot - Tessenchi cannot make mental afflictions stick, and it is questionable to use a clumsiness poison due to its unreliability. Segue into the point about Tessenchi being pretty reliant on poisons - at least this seems intentional, and they were given Tessenbane (10% more poison app chance for those that don't want to go look) so that we're not left out to dry. But even then, the poisons you choose are another little customizable part of your offense.
Ugly: Please don't hate me for this, Kalikai said to include something Ugly. The lines for Zarakido skills are a little flavourless, it feels like. Similarly, the Tessenchi ReverseOsmosis and InertialKick lines seem super filler. Would it be possible to IDEA new flavour lines for the Tessenchi kicks? Or should we ask the Halli pantheon?
edit: You know, I'll give Zarakido flavour lines a little credit. ReverseOsmosis and InertialKick are still lame tho.
They have hallucinations as a bonus aff so I'd be sticking that on the beast to spit for the free bonus hit. Then from center plus they can be throwing out stupidity/clumsy+2 venoms. With boosting you just need 1 poison to land from the beast or the weapon hits to be on top of their curing. Put the clusmy hit on your first action and the second action will always land. It's on the arms as well so you can vary it and bounce it around to get around parry if folks are smart enought to parry arms. Plus get a little bit lucky with stupidty and hallucinations and folks will prone and stun themseles. Also add in the natural poison chance and also the passive hidden bonus you get to slip one of the affs in under the radar to slow curing bit as well.
The dust stack is an easier stack for you to do for sure but does heavily focus on the gut and chest. What I'd do is focus on dust from base because what other option do you have. Then if they are parrying gut/chest too well then switch to the slush stack at center for a cycle or two.
It does go back to my original point about the new monks options being a bit limited due to what feels like missing actions. Most monks have two viable stacks from base and giving nun and ten this as well sounds like a good idea to me.
EG
Tah-have 2x dust and 2xslush from base.
Neko- have 2x slush 1x dust from base.(pending report to give 2x dust from base)
Shof-2x dust 0xslush from base but have an approved report to give them 2x slush from base.
Nun-2x steam 1x dust
Ten-2x dust
A bit of an adjustment to give nun and ten a slush/dust option from base would be a nice tweak to me. +1 dust for nun and +2 slush for ten. Also gives more variety in afflictions you can land and more general choice which is always handy. If we did that and assuming the Neko report is approved then that'd leave the majority of monks with a slush and dust route right from base.(Replace nun with steam for their own special reasons)
I like the concept of it but its either too much of a build or too cheap to use. Not sure what would be better make it very expensive so you can burst to massive quickly like this but you can only do it once/people have to run hinder or avoid it or make the build smaller but more sustainable.