Extra Damage Types for Monks (plus also Warrior ideas)

Qistrel

So this idea has been floating through my head for the past week. Initially, I thought of assigning each element of Harmony to a damage type, but that would give harmonic monks access way too many damage types, so instead I have come up with this:

New Harmony Skill
Vibrations
MANTRA VIBRATE
If you are harmonized with the element corresponding to your nexus, you can imbue your weapon with elemental vibrations and alter the type of damage it deals to denizens.

Pool of Stars
You can draw on the icy waters of the Sea of Keph, causing your Tahto to deal cold damage. You must have at least one water mantra active in order to draw upon this power.

Mother Moonhart Tree
You can draw on the fungal spores of the Tryko Forest, causing your Shofa to
deal poison damage. You must have at least one wood mantra active in
order to draw upon this power.



This would only change the weapon damage, so your kicks would still deal blunt damage.

Of course, it would not be fair to leave the evil stealth monks out, but I don't know enough about stealth or illithoid to come up with a decent equivalent. So envoys, play with this idea if you like.

Tarkenton

Moar poison for stealth monks, obviously.

And fire.  Because we're southern and OP.

Edit: I sound like I'm saying this is a terrible idea, and I'm not.  Though I imagine warriors would be like "really, monks get damage typing?  wtf".   Really, poison is the only damage type I can see being linked to stealth.  Possibly asphyxiation.

Marcella

We already pay 250 credits for runes that do this....and only to 1/6th of the damage.

Qistrel

Yeah, I know warriors need something too, but I haven't thought of a way to do that, I can only try to solve one problem at a time! :P

Saran

You could probably work something in with their terts.

Like Trackers might be able to coat their weapons in poison (cause I can't think of something else shhhh)

Paladins might bless their weapons using Sacraments

Ur'Guard defile them with Necromancy

All I can think right now for Templars and Sentinels is that they can make them Anarchic and Axiomatic >_>

Maybe Moon Serenguard and Night Ebonguard with Drawdown or Nightkiss up could like... channel an attack through their weapons. Right now my mind is imagining moonfire running down a sword converting the damage source to physical or brute magical.

And like Stag Serenguard or Crow Ebonguard might have something similar for Stagform/Crowform?

Qistrel

Weapon imbues for warriors? You can imbue your
weapons with magical energies to do different damage. Drawback is it
only really makes sense for those who take rituals/totems, not tracking.


Paladins: Holyfire (50% divinus/50% fire)
ur'Guard: Gravechill (50% excoro/50% cold)
Moondancers: Moonglow (25% divinus/75% magic)
Ebonguard: Nightshroud (25% ecoro/75% poison)
Templars: Runefire (50% magic/50% fire)
Sentinels: Stormbound (50% cold/50% electric)

Marcella

Can we not give paladins the two *best* damage types.

Qistrel

Didn't know fire was better than other stuff. Anyway, the exact stuff can easily be changed, Was just the first things that popped into my head. Templars and Sentinals probably need something cooler too like psychic or something. I also don't know their lore very well, not sure if Templars really are the type to etch blazing runes on their weapons.

Lerad

I made a lot of noise when damage typing (for mobs) first came out, and never got anything from the admin. I have a vague impression Jan tried to get non physical damage for monks (via envoy reports), but was turned down because the admin wanted monks to only have physical damage. I might be remembering wrongly due to bitterness and jealousy, of course.

If the admin are willing to reconsider that stance (assuming I'm not remembering wrongly), I will be very happy indeed - don't care which damage type who gets. Anything other than just physical will give us more versatility (and make bashing nicer) and I'll be positively thrilled, so good luck getting them to agree to think about it.

Qistrel

I remember that, part of the reason I was limiting it to only working on denizens, in case the problem was with monks being able to hit other players with unusual damage types.

Elanorwen

Qistrel said:

Weapon imbues for warriors? You can imbue your
weapons with magical energies to do different damage. Drawback is it
only really makes sense for those who take rituals/totems, not tracking.


Paladins: Holyfire (50% divinus/50% fire)
ur'Guard: Gravechill (50% excoro/50% cold)
Moondancers: Moonglow (25% divinus/75% magic)
Ebonguard: Nightshroud (25% ecoro/75% poison)
Templars: Runefire (50% magic/50% fire)
Sentinels: Stormbound (50% cold/50% electric)

I feel like not enough research has been done here. If warriors will be doing 100% non-physical attacks, why would they ever use physical attacks in the first place? One of the best things to happen to a warrior is that an enemy will sip for health rather than apply to cure wounds, which is rather why their damage is so low in regards to PvP. If you're going to give any warrior full on non-physical attacks, their damage will spike yet again. I'm quite firmly opposed to this, and to monks getting damage typing of any kind, even less so when it's poison. They do plenty of hp damage against players even with fully physical attacks to give them one of the best PvP damage types.

This is why the runes for damage typing exist, so you can at least convert part of your damage to some elemental and thus gain a bit of a boost.

TL;DR - We don't need yet more classes having access to straight on damage kills... and who's going to be buying artifact damage type runes if everyone can change their damage typing?

Synkarin

Warriors/Monks already have access to elemental runes and some warrior guilds have skills that change damage types (Chaosaura give psychic damage, Paladins can get 1/6 divinus etc)

Tremula

I think she already said the idea would be for denizens rather than PvP. Personally, I think it would take their hunting up a bit, and would be a nice change. Having a skill set in (for hunting, mind you) means that they don't have to shell out hundreds of credits to buy a whip or weapon artis to be a better hunter!

Elanorwen

Tremula said:

I think she already said the idea would be for denizens rather than PvP. Personally, I think it would take their hunting up a bit, and would be a nice change. Having a skill set in (for hunting, mind you) means that they don't have to shell out hundreds of credits to buy a whip or weapon artis to be a better hunter!

You wha? Warriors need skills to be better hunters? When I flex sentinel, I run around with completely unruned bashing rapiers/hammers (Even though I'm not specced BM/BC, meaning 10% miss rate with oil of sharpness) and I can generally kill faster than I can with a whip unless it's against something that has very high physical resists.

Steingrim

Elanorwen said:

Tremula said:

I think she already said the idea would be for denizens rather than PvP. Personally, I think it would take their hunting up a bit, and would be a nice change. Having a skill set in (for hunting, mind you) means that they don't have to shell out hundreds of credits to buy a whip or weapon artis to be a better hunter!

You wha? Warriors need skills to be better hunters? When I flex sentinel, I run around with completely unruned bashing rapiers/hammers (Even though I'm not specced BM/BC, meaning 10% miss rate with oil of sharpness) and I can generally kill faster than I can with a whip unless it's against something that has very high physical resists.

Agreed, if for no other reasons then because of the way crits work, even with damage overflow monks will as far as I know outpace the vast majority of non-monks. Monks can also chain their attacks for additional speed.

Aerotan

My Templar generally only has problems hunting because I can't keep armour on her or keep making good bashing weapons. When she has those things, she generally slices things to ribbons and whistles while she does it, only having to slow down when she runs out of potions or runs out of stuff to kill. And that's with her taking extra fire damage and hitting a lot of mobs that deal it. I usually stop having problems hunting on Warriors once I can afford actual bashing weapons and plate.

Enyalida

Monks and Warriors are also generally the tankiest players, with the highest physical armor values and good elemental/cosmic dmp. Warriors get obvious benefits from Athletics, but Monks have access to very powerful defensive skills on top of their great offense - arguably some of the best defenses in the whole game.

Steingrim

Aerotan said:

My Templar generally only has problems hunting because I can't keep armour on her or keep making good bashing weapons. When she has those things, she generally slices things to ribbons and whistles while she does it, only having to slow down when she runs out of potions or runs out of stuff to kill. And that's with her taking extra fire damage and hitting a lot of mobs that deal it. I usually stop having problems hunting on Warriors once I can afford actual bashing weapons and plate.

That's a good point; DSP often neglects tankiness. Even those with great damage typing may have to hit and run, which does slow down how fast they kill things. Before I was a demigod and when I was a tahteso (and before that a knight), being able to stand there and soak damage while dealing out attacks often meant I was killing denizens not only faster, but denizens which were harder to kill. There were times many years ago, when I'd be tanking a couple illithoid, or some worms, get jumped in the GIP and still kill the attacker.

Is isn't only damage output that makes knight/monks great and fast bashers, it is also the ability to stand toe to toe with much that many cannot.

Lavinya

Yeah I really don't think monks or warriors are hurting for viable bashing at all.

Death seal is traditionally dominated by warriors and monks. This year it was won by a monk, third was a monk too. When you think of the best bashers in the game, these names come up as often dominating hunting challenges/seals - Kelly, Morkarion, Xena, Malarious, Leolamins. Monks and warriors. Other classes do very well, not disputing that, but I don't think warriors or monks need any bashing buffs to possibly put them even further ahead.

Lerad

Steingrim said:

Elanorwen said:

Tremula said:

I think she already said the idea would be for denizens rather than PvP. Personally, I think it would take their hunting up a bit, and would be a nice change. Having a skill set in (for hunting, mind you) means that they don't have to shell out hundreds of credits to buy a whip or weapon artis to be a better hunter!

You wha? Warriors need skills to be better hunters? When I flex sentinel, I run around with completely unruned bashing rapiers/hammers (Even though I'm not specced BM/BC, meaning 10% miss rate with oil of sharpness) and I can generally kill faster than I can with a whip unless it's against something that has very high physical resists.

Agreed, if for no other reasons then because of the way crits work, even with damage overflow monks will as far as I know outpace the vast majority of non-monks. Monks can also chain their attacks for additional speed.

This is untrue - monks in Lusternia do not get any inherent advantage over non-monks in bashing. I've explained it before, let me do it again:

First, a monk form will NOT hit a second creature in the room even after the first creature has died from one of the three hits a monk form does. This is even if the creatures share the same name. Two cavefishers in a room, and I world-shattering the first (and kill it) with my first punch. The following punch and kick hits nothing, and the form is terminated, the balance is taken as per normal.

Second, a monk can't start a form unless he is on full balance, this means when a form is terminated early as in the above scenario, he can't hit again until he has regained balance, just as though as he was a caster with a 1-hit attack.

Thirdly, due to DamageShift, caster crit-kills will almost always have more damage to pass on than a monk crit-kill. Because, you know, monk damage is split into three attacks, and a crit-kill using one of those will have a lower carry-over.

Lastly, ALL MONKS have their damage permanently split between cutting AND blunt. Only the Tahtetso have a full-blunt repertoire. Most mobs that are weak to cutting are strong to blunt, and vice versa. Some mobs are strong against both. Very few are weak to both. Monks ALWAYS have their damage typing disadvantaged against them.

Unlike IRE's Tekura monks, Lusternian monks have zero advantage over casters if both have 0% crit-rate. Damage is never transferred over to the next creature in the room when crits are out of the picture. With crits, monks were better off, slightly, because there is LESS wastage. A caster's world-shattering will waste a HUGE amount of damage, whereas a monk's will not. However, with DamageShift, that wastage is drastically reduced for casters, and monks do not get as much benefit out of it because of the points above.

Now, to address the final point about monk speed chains: No one uses that except the inexperienced. First, the speed boost only kicks in after the THIRD consecutive form. Second, there is ZERO way to shield or run when chaining forms. To terminate a form prematurely, you put yourself off-balance on top of the balance already used for the form. In other words, if I start a chain of, say, five forms, I will start recovering balance faster on my FOURTH form, and if at any point my health dips because of mob-guards, or an extra aggro creature walking in, I cannot run or shield, and if I try to terminate my chain, I recover balance LONGER that it would normally take me if I attacked without a chain.

In short: rather than speeding up bashing, chaining forms kills you.

In summary: no, monks do not have an advantage in bashing. I'll concede the point about tankiness, regardless of the fact that most of monk tankiness comes from high level abilities (psymet dmp also scales with lessons, and regeneration is not an early-skill) because tattoos give a big benefit, that much I don't dispute. However, the myth that monks bash faster is... well, a myth.

Lerad

Lavinya said:

Yeah I really don't think monks or warriors are hurting for viable bashing at all.

Death seal is traditionally dominated by warriors and monks. This year it was won by a monk, third was a monk too. When you think of the best bashers in the game, these names come up as often dominating hunting challenges/seals - Kelly, Morkarion, Xena, Malarious, Leolamins. Monks and warriors. Other classes do very well, not disputing that, but I don't think warriors or monks need any bashing buffs to possibly put them even further ahead.

Death seal winners don't win only using their physical bashing bashing attacks.

Daraius

I've been bashing wrong all this time.