I like the idea of being able to track the status but I feel like it could be a bit overboard to know specific affs at this point. I really like @veyils idea for a general status assess that tells bleed/bruise and the amount which is being added by the kill affs.
@Sluelugh: I'd be fine with that too. I just couldn't think of a good RPish way to word that for the scenario where you're learning about this after kicking them. "You sense that their afflictions are worth x" just doesn't sound great to me, although that's a minor detail.
After a really good look at Tahtetso, I have to say... I find them pretty underwhelming. They have a total of 4 purity affs, two of which are on the same action. They have an extremely impressive ice stack, but their ice delay is attached to a grapple ender, which means there are times when it's not going to fire. In comparison, Ninjakari have theirs on a kick.
There's some other weird stuff going on in Tahtetso's skillset too. When would you ever choose to raktia'sho arms for a 1s balance loss when you can do gut for a 1s stun? Their parry bypass is also gated behind mutilated arms, which is weird since mutilated arms ALREADY bypass parry. I think we should move their parry bypass to rakita'sho and remove the 1s balance loss.
Another problem with Tahtetso is that they get two ways to cause bruising: a grapple ender, the other is a stance. It would be nice if they had a low-value way to add to bruising, maybe a 50-100 bruising kick? I think we can move some of the functions of bomol'sho over to starkick and open the way for bruising on bomol'sho. I'd suggest moving the prone on legs to starkick and adding a bruising option to bomol'sho. Start at 50 and we can adjust from there.
As I mentioned earlier, I think that Tahtetso don't have the purity affs to support their current 4 afflictions. That said, they do have some lucidity affs, and with the addition of a few more, I think they'd be better off. I would change twist low to sensitivity from rigormortis, bomol'sho's dysentary to anorexia, and bomol'sho's asthma to confusion. The paralysis/prone/balance loss on bomrakini seems fine, and might be necessary to hit their ender.
EDIT: I just realized I didn't address the ice delay! That might be a good addition to starkick on chest or head, or a surge or higher arm action. Having it on a grapple is awkward and really limits your options.
One little thing I'm thinking on is affliction tracking as well. It's much easier to track ice afflictions than dust/slush/steam afflictions.
Vessels will be pretty hard for neko to track as well.
It'll not be hard to shift my curing to always focus off these instant kill based afflictions but the monk would not be able to track these maybe I cured vomiting maybe I cured relapse.
The instant kills for dust/steam/slush are kind of going to be luck based and on estimations then. Would it maybe help to give monks a way of tracking for example if a target has x vessels or afflictions? Maybe an alternative assess which confirms the number of vessels/afflictions for the kill.
You look over and fancy assess wobou. He bleeds for 1000 bleeding and his afflictions make it seem he bleeds for 750 through the pain of the affliction.
I asked for this very thing in the preliminary rounds. A skill that would add to assess the ability to see only the affs that matter for your insta. I believe they rejected that idea before but said that it could be envoyed in after.
I kind of like the idea of having to pay some attention to what your target does but I also don't think it should be totally based on that. Even something that had a chance to give you that insight would be better than nothing.
The other route would be to have some configurable thing that would tell you at the end of a form you've already committed to what afflictions they have that work for your kill zone.
Something like:
You kick Veyils in the chest with your right foot. You sense that she is suffering from <aff list>.
So then you pay attention to their curing (and account for any passive curing) and try for your insta on the next form if you're close enough. If you wanted to reward people who pay perfect attention more you could make each aff have a percentage chance to not show even if they have it, or vice versa have an aff that they don't have at all show because your discerning magic isn't great enough. This would punish people who try to code an insta in automatically from this without actually paying attention to cures.
There is a big discrepancy right now between the specs and how easy it is to track the afflictions. The more ice affliction focused the easier it is.
Is it just me that finds it weird that three of the afflictions in the nekos instant kill they can't give directly with their abilities? Your making it reliant on poisons transfer rate and shrugging?
You'll need to use Creehai for the surge high stance then to have a chance to kill affliction wise.
"Surge High Stance Active Effect: Reduce resistance to 0 and hide first poison afflicted" But if I read that right it'll only let you hit with one poison?
I'm struggling to see a coherent plan for Neko to kill with outside of cycling vessels and your planning on shifting it so that they cant bounce back and forward to build right?
I can figure out a step by step to stick some of the kill afflictions for all the other specs and I assume they will have enough bleed/bruise to top up the kill. But I cant see a step by step with neko that'll result in a number of afflictions sticking.
Is neko going to be all about the pure bleed stack then? Afflictions will just be a sort of side show to it? Where as the other specs are more affliction focused?
EDIT:
Side question will attempting the instant kill use power or not if it fails?
Think part of the issue is that they are all on different balances. There isn't really a stack neko can do. Maybe look to shift the neko afflictions to one herb/slush balance? I'm sort of surprised neko isn't built around a dust style balance to tie into their past synergies.
First, I wanted to thank Bandeon on his assessment and suggestions for the proposed overhaul for Tahtetso. A few people have noted my general silence on the overhaul and I wanted to apologize if anyone felt I wasn't paying attention or cared about the Overhaul. I do very much, and I have passed many notes, questions, and requests to Malarious (since I am no longer Envoy), and while I have secured the permission of the Tahtetso to act on their behalf for the Overhaul, I have not received any formal permission from the Admin. Since it is now public, I suppose that isn't much of an issue. I'll first start with addressing the points Bandeon has made in his posts, then finish with any issues or answered questions I have seen.
After a really good look at Tahtetso, I have to say... I find them pretty underwhelming. They have a total of 4 purity affs, two of which are on the same action. They have an extremely impressive ice stack, but their ice delay is attached to a grapple ender, which means there are times when it's not going to fire. In comparison, Ninjakari have theirs on a kick.
-This is a major point that many people have brought up. On paper, it does seem the capabilities and affliction pool Tahtetso have compared to the other 3 guilds are fairly overwhelming. We have ice delays on our grapple ender as well as in one of our stances, but I think with the reliance on an ice stack, a more reliable method to take ice balance will be required. It is important to mention that Ninja's kick isn't the -same- as our Ice Delay. Ninja's kick will take away ice balance if they have it, or delay it an additional second if they do not. Our ice delays will increase the balance of the next ice cure applied to a certain amount. For the grapple, it will delay the cure as if the enemy had 2 levels of wounds higher than they actually did. So if they don't have any wounds, it will act as if they are heavy, light wounds will act as crit, and heavy wounds will act as crit. This is a double edged sword compared to the ninja ice delay, as it has an added effect in groups, specifically with knight who can wound. The stance will work the same, except it only adds one level. Another important note is that it won't actually take balance if they don't have it. I would like to see a similar effect to the ninja's kick (taking ice balance or extending balance 1s) on starkick, perhaps to gut or chest. I would also like to note that this should NEVER extend the balance past what it would be if the target has critical wounds (I believe this is 3.5s) if combined with the grapple or stance.
There's some other weird stuff going on in Tahtetso's skillset too. When would you ever choose to raktia'sho arms for a 1s balance loss when you can do gut for a 1s stun? Their parry bypass is also gated behind mutilated arms, which is weird since mutilated arms ALREADY bypass parry. I think we should move their parry bypass to rakita'sho and remove the 1s balance loss.
-This is an agreed point, there is really no reason to ever use a 1s balance loss when you can 1s stun instead. As for the point to having bypass parry gated behind mut-limbs I agree as well. I support the suggested to move parry bypass to Rakti'sho and remove the 1s balance loss. If the other classes have parry bypass gated behind mut-limbs, then that should be addressed as well.
Another problem with Tahtetso is that they get two ways to cause bruising: a grapple ender, the other is a stance. It would be nice if they had a low-value way to add to bruising, maybe a 50-100 bruising kick? I think we can move some of the functions of bomol'sho over to starkick and open the way for bruising on bomol'sho. I'd suggest moving the prone on legs to starkick and adding a bruising option to bomol'sho. Start at 50 and we can adjust from there.
-Crunching the numbers, we only have one way to burst bruise outside of the standard bruising done by our attacks. This is by the stance-grapple method outlined by Bandeon and Wobou earlier. If you grapple at stance 3, and end it with Bomrakobo on stance 4, your ending with about 450 bruising (300 from stance bonuses, 150 from grapple). This is also important to note that this is -not- including the 15% from stance 2 low bonus effect, nor the bruising numbers from the actual kicks paired with the grapples as well (because we don't have those numbers). It is also important to note that this particular combo will lead you directly into stance 5, which will allow you to attempt the insta. I think this combo will likely be key for Tahtetso, and will be the standard setup into the insta, but I also believe that a minimum of 450 bruising might be a bit too much. Perhaps gating some of the bruising behind an affliction requirement (Grapple does 50 bruising base. Grapple will do 50 bruising for each additional aff on the target: damagedskull, collapsedlung, etc.) My other suggestion would be what Bandeon suggested, which is adding a bruising to one of our kicks, and if the numbers seem a bit too strong on the grapple combo, we can nerf those numbers without completely killing our bruising potential. For the record, I prefer adding bruising to a kick, but I wanted to give mutiple suggestions for the admin to consider.
As I mentioned earlier, I think that Tahtetso don't have the purity affs to support their current 4 afflictions. That said, they do have some lucidity affs, and with the addition of a few more, I think they'd be better off. I would change twist low to sensitivity from rigormortis, bomol'sho's dysentary to anorexia, and bomol'sho's asthma to confusion. The paralysis/prone/balance loss on bomrakini seems fine, and might be necessary to hit their ender.
-I think the line of thinking behind the dust affs, was to allow us to stick rigormortis with a dust stack. This would be achieved by sticking with twist-low to stick rigormortis with dust poisons (paralysis-something else like haemophilia) and asthma kick. This would be a prereq to give mangles (as we don't really have a way to break limbs aside from stance 2, and raktiah'sho). I don't really think focusing on a lucidity stack is really needed, and the dust stack fits better with the overall theme of Tahtetso being ice breaks. Though I do think trying to get breaks just off a dust stack and relying on rigormortis is too much. This is negated simply by focusing rigormortis, or simply curing the breaks as they come. I would prefer to see Bomol'sho to add damagedlimbs to legs/arms (no mutilate progression though, just simple damagedlimb). This would remove the clumsiness (isn't really even required) and prone (we have enough of those) which I am fine with.
EDIT: I just realized I didn't address the ice delay! That might be a good addition to starkick on chest or head, or a surge or higher arm action. Having it on a grapple is awkward and really limits your options.
-I address this back on my first point.
Whew, ok, that was just my response on Bandeon's thoughts. Here are a few things I've noted or have questions about.
1. Is there a particular reason why Raktiah'sho has it's mutilate regulated to only stance 4, when the other guilds have stance 4 and 5? This just seems an odd requirement and I can't really figure out why, and I don't see any notes as to why. If there isn't an actual reason, I would like to suggest it be allowed on surge/killer stance.
2. Aegis stance (stance 1) the secondary effect is 1.5s off eq, while center stance (stance 3, the stance it's supposed to be buffing) is already 1 sec off balance. This really isn't doing anything aside from just adding an extra .5 sec, since for most things if your off bal you can use eq, and vice versa. I sadly, don't really have a suggestion to replace the boosted effect of aegis stance with, I'm sort of still at the drawing board with that one. I am welcome to suggestions.
3. I've noticed Starkick no longer has a chance to give prone, was this intentional or just forgotten? On a similiar note, is tidesweep still giving a chill level? Is bairak still giving periodic blackout tics or just the initial 2s blackout?
Anyway, that is all on my opinion so far, thank you for your time, an I look forward to the overhaul actually getting to test some things with the overhaul (if I'm allowed to).
A few points to reply to in this thread (mostly from Veyils' posts):
1) Nekotai Aff Stack
Regarding Nekotai aff stack, it's been argued that we have the strongest dust stack at the moment (meaning, currently, right now, before these changes in the spreadsheet). I Do want to push Nekotai to continue to be the best dust stackers, as a translation from our previous marjoram stack, with hefty help from poisons, but I'm mindful that dust is the strongest stack, with both paralysis and blindness inside, whereas the old marjoram stack is much less potent even if you put almost all of the affs onto the target.
I have therefore intentionally weakened the Nekotai dust stack a little by not asking for more dust afflictions to be natively given via our action abilities. The Nekotai will need to rely heavily on poisons to get a big dust stack going.
Nekotai does have a small number of native dust afflictions in their actions, notably haemophilia and sickening - to make things clear from the start: I intend on increasing this, but only after waiting-and-seeing the first implementation of the skillset. Haemophilia being a high priority affliction when fighting the Nekotai (because of our passive bleed from all our abilities) should help give our dust stack some bite even though we only have a small handful of them at the start, but my ideal is for Nekotai to have a strong dust stack and a weak ice stack. Note that the lack of ice-stacking affs in the Nekotai skillset (no ice affs on any kicks, no ice-delay mechanics etc) was deliberate. We still have access to a variety of strong ice afflictions, but without any real means to stack them, and I will have no qualms about shifting any of these into dust affs if need be, to further cement the strong-dust, weak-ice paradigm I'm pursuing.
2) Nekotai Poisons
Regarding poisons, yes, at the moment, the two poison stances are lacklustre, due to a combination of damagedorgans "stealing the thunder" so to speak from what used to be core Nekotai mechanics, as well as the admin being adamant about leg darts needing balance to change poisons.
Just to give everyone some context, Nekotai used to be able to lower enemy shrug chance AND hide ALL poisons on pretty much every single form via Scorpionfury (power cost). Alternatively, without investing power, we could do that on ALL of our advanced forms, meaning 4momentum and above. Old momentum mechanics meant we stayed at 4mo/5mo almost all the time, building large amounts of poisons and overwhelming curing systems with hidden affs until we were ready to greenlock.
This is obviously not suited for the new paradigm, where going past the climax and building up again is a core goal of the stance mechanic. I'll have to think of a way to make the poisons stances give Nekotai a proper niche, so as to ensure Veyils' concern, that the route becomes a "side-show" does not come to bear fruit. Just to answer one question from Veyils:
Is it just me that finds it weird that three of the afflictions in the nekos instant kill they can't give directly with their abilities? Your making it reliant on poisons transfer rate and shrugging? <br><br>You'll need to use Creehai for the surge high stance then to have a chance to kill affliction wise. <br><br><span>"Surge High Stance Active Effect: Reduce resistance to 0 and hide first poison afflicted" But if I read that right it'll only let you hit with one poison? </span>
Yes, the affliction requirements for Finalsting is meant to require a Nekotai to invest in the poison stances rather than the bleed vessel stances. Without going for the poison stances, the Nekotai will hardly have enough aff-stacking power to finalsting via it. The surge high stance effect is supposed to reduce resistance to 0 for ALL poisons in the form (basically the two arm actions) but only hide the FIRST one. It's an intentional limit to prevent hidden poisons from just overwhelming via brute force, and requiring smart use of poisons. I mean, this was a complaint about Nekotai before: too many hidden poison (see my paragraph above describing the old Nekotai poisons advantage), and I'm addressing that by reducing hidden poisons and giving actual full shrug bypass instead.
Again, just to reiterate, the poison stances are, all things considered, now weaker than they really should be. So I'll be trying to improve them, once I get some good ideas. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
3) Nekotai kill potential
I suspect that Finalsting's threshold will probably need to be increased, and the poisons contribution will also need to be increased. Bleed is, as Veyils described, probably a little too effective right now - current Nekotai threshold is 2000, and we do enough bleed to hit that reasonably. Dropping it to 1500 may make it too low. However, the new Nekotai will not have some of the same tools as currently - there's actually lot of bleed that comes from some afflictions that will not exist after the changes are put in, like slit-throat, sliced gut etc. This is why I did not ask to have the threshold be raised - yet, and also why I gave vessels a little more reliability than it currently does.
I'll definitely be tweaking the threshold to make things harder for the bleed route if it is too fast after the change - I'm sure the admin will too, anyway. At the same time, the poisons route being lackluster means I'll be making things easier on that front - if needed. Again, I'm sure the admins will observe and adjust there accordingly too.
----
One last thing, I noticed that the admin have made the monk Instas a full balance action again - meaning no arm actions at the same time as the insta. This is fine, but it does mean that a lot of my old considerations for limiting Nekotai abilities are invalid. I specifically refused to add certain bleed or poison bursts to arm actions because I feared they would overwhelm all other arm action choices when used with Finalsting. With this concern removed, I think we can put back some of the stuff into Nekotai arm actions. I fully welcome the change to make monk instas full balance only, though I admit I let out a sigh when I realised all my previous work to ensure Nekotai arm actions fit in with Finalsting without abuse went to waste.
I'll review the skillset again, and see if there's a need to change anything, or if we can wait-and-see before changing Nekotai arm actions to lighten the restrictions on not having burst bleed or certain specific afflictions. If there's a need, I'll make a list of suggestions before the Norns' deadline.
Anelissa just reminded me of a little point with tide kick. Synergy with other classes in the city/commune.
All monks are going to stack well with warriors, some more so than others and all monks are going to stack well with mana killers with bleed/bruise being part of every monks tool kit now.
But I'm not seeing a lot of specific styles that'll gell with with orgs better than others. Like tide kick to support aquamancers or a neko dust stack to support harbingers.
I can kind of see how ninja and mags disease stack will go pretty well together.
Also @lerad keep in mind that there's reports in to weaken the dust stack already. I mean if you want neko to switch from dust to something else that's fine but just right now the other monk specs on paper have a better dust or ice stack than neko and as you said with damaged organs on arm balance others have better poison delivery systems.
At the moment, I've too much on my plate to be looking at other monk specs. As long as Nekotai have a valid kill strategy at the minimum that is reasonable and thematic, I'll be good - I'll do cross-spec comparisons and buff or nerf accordingly after release. Naturally, if other monk specs have something that's unreasonably strong, I'll advocate as strongly as I always do for those to be changed if needed - just as I'm sure they will do the same for Nekotai abilities where applicable.
I'll take your point about Nekotai's dust stack and poison stack being weaker (ironically) than the other specs at face value for now, and review that when I have more time. I also take your point about dust stack being (hopefully) tweaked down in efficiency eventually - if that happens, I'll certainly push for Nekotai dust stack to be buffed in a way that ensures we're viable, or to move away from dust stacks entirely, as needed. Do continue to give your feedback, though. Having it officially in writing in the forums will let me come back and pick up ideas, as well as gather evidence, when I have to justify buffs (or nerfs) post release.
Don't mean to be pushy it just seems like it'd be best if all monk specs had a viable stack and kill route on paper now in the early stages instead of trying to adjust later on. Although I've never seen such a big over haul done before. Just not wanting any spec to be unable to kill and then having to wait the better part of half a year for minor tweaks like warriors did.
Don't mean to be pushy it just seems like it'd be best if all monk specs had a viable stack and kill route on paper now in the early stages instead of trying to adjust later on. Although I've never seen such a big over haul done before. Just not wanting any spec to be unable to kill and then having to wait the better part of half a year for minor tweaks like warriors did.
Keep in mind there will be testing prior to rolling it out in game. If we get the basics coded, we can play with them and figure out what works and what doesn't. Personally I think Neko's going to come out very strong, maybe a bit weaker than they are now. I'm actually more worried about tahtetso/ninjakari, as that ice stack could be either very very bad or very very good. It's hard to tell when you remove wounding from the equation.
Ya I'm super curious about actual bleeding and bruising numbers as well.
Ohh I've had a totally random point but well bruising is kinda a bit newish and only bone crushers do I right now. We may need to look at how pulp works because if you can stick 250 or 300 bruising on a target right now a bonecrusher can start a kill combo that'll damage kill anyone.
And like if monks need like a few hundred plus afflictions then I'm assuming they can at least stick a bit. So like a monk bonecrusher combo could be crazy.
Edit: ATM it's not an issue as like bonecrushers can't stack bruising themselves but pulp could get crazy if we have other classes starting to throw out high bruising.
Ya I'm super curious about actual bleeding and bruising numbers as well.
Ohh I've had a totally random point but well bruising is kinda a bit newish and only bone crushers do I right now. We may need to look at how pulp works because if you can stick 250 or 300 bruising on a target right now a bonecrusher can start a kill combo that'll damage kill anyone.
And like if monks need like a few hundred plus afflictions then I'm assuming they can at least stick a bit. So like a monk bonecrusher combo could be crazy.
Edit: ATM it's not an issue as like bonecrushers can't stack bruising themselves but pulp could get crazy if we have other classes starting to throw out high bruising.
Yeah, this is a point I originally brought up when I found the Tahtetso grapple bruising burst. I was told essentially we can adjust numbers of the bruising or adjust the mechanics of pulp down the road if it comes to that.
Ok, bout to start review. Will break my whole thing into piecemeal. Cause it could be huge... we will see.
Couple notes though:
1) Monkish only looked at the spreadsheet given to us, it was not our design. A lot of changes were made on feedback, like changing insta's, affliction stacks, etc. More coming.
2) I am fully okay with changing the Hunger skill to be stopped by things like paralysis to make the setup viable. Hard counters are bad, and can be adjusted to cope if needed.
3) I don't think "equilibrium affliction level" is a good chain of thought. This implies never curing up is totally okay on something designed to kill you.
Stances:
* Bear in mind that stances are passives. They happen regardless of goal, so they should never have the strength of an actual action. Afflictions here can be okay, but should be gauged by the goal.
* I would be careful about stacking. Caution is important here. I see +400 bleeding, then a form, then add 15% more max bleeding to two guilds, one of which does burst vessels too. This is not okay, I would suggest against these sorts of stacks.
:Base (1):
You should never expect to get 2 stances higher in 6 seconds now, unless you boosted into first form and second.
* Effect here is fine.
* Tahtetso: I would advise against "passive" effects that cause off balance and equilibrium. Remember this will be every 5 hits regardless. Make this only knock balance if they have balance potentially so good on opener, otherwise do less (like old winding).
:Twist (2):
* Effect on 'a' is fine. Suggest against giving random balance buffs at another stance without special reason. Keep balance more standard, or we risk level 9 balance on normal forms.
* Tahtetso a: Does Tahtetso break more than 1 limb if targeting more than 1 in the form? Is the break before or after the hit? Should probably only fire once.
:Center (3):
* This potentially gives a passive chance to negate a setup, not a big fan. Lets make this a flat prone, since everyone seems to prone at this anyway.
* Nekotai: Oh god, why dodging every 5 attacks? Gods no. With change above, the prone is also redundant. Replace with bleeding on first attacker (lashing out).
* Shofangi becomes stun.
* Tahtetso can off balance for 1s, regardless of balance status I suppose. I am not a fan, but I assume people wouldnt be happy if I ever said to not have stances, but we need not have all unique stances. Don't feel obligated.
* Ninjakari, does it just break the first targetted limb? Multiple? Same as before.
:Surge (4a):
* Would remove parry ignoring. Being able to ignore the defense against monks at will is ehh. Guaranteed grapple hit is good, for non grapple attacks give them a damage boost on attacks that hit maybe.
:Surge (4b):
* I hate you all. If we assume adding bleed/bruise is fine on this, it still poses issues on stacking with rest.
* Nekotai: Far and away one of the most powerful stances here. This shouldnt be passive, this should be an active at stance 5 on a kick or something to limit. Vessels are being treated like candy, we need to keep in mind these cause vital pressure in two ways and cure rediculously slowly (3 per 8s).
* Tahtetso bruising should come down if it can be done with the passive effect (the passive effect seems like an active perk by the way.....).
* Note the passive here is bleeding/bruising, if you start out of forming you expect to continue to do huge amounts of bleeding. This needs a form requirement in my opinion, or each action could potentially trigger this or such.
:Killer (5):
* Base effect is fine.
* Nekotai: This lets you set up using pure damage to increase bleeding, I like the idea here.
* Ninjakari: Every 5 hits will now hide the entire form. If this effect is felt encouraged, make it just hide the first hit. As a "coming back to your senses". Not a real blackout here.
* Shofangi: I begrudgingly accept a raze........ since you could still theoretically parry.
:Kills:
* Want to clarify you need to be in stance 5 to activate, not be ENTERING stance.
* Bleeding and bruising reqs suck, there should always be a pure affliction option. Some of us could clot it all off if you arent fighting Nekotai. Nekotai will fug you up.
* Nekotai: Concerned about vessels making the bleeding here too easy. Vessels cure slowly and with stacks that let haemophilia easily stick, this is disgustingly easy.
* Ninjakari: Feels pretty uninspired. I'd like to see them have something more tied to damagedskull, damagedthroat, crushedchest, and collapsedlung. Not sure how they can pull these insta's off though if having multiple at once.....
* Shofangi: Concerns for insta.
* Tahtetso: Does this restrict to real prone (sprawled)? Still potential concerns, need to review still.
Kata
* This skillset seems to exist almost exclusively so you have something as a novice and get basic stances.
* Damage on punches should be super low because they cannot be defended.
Proposed grapple changes:
* Remove the writhe cure from grapples, to normalize.
* Grapples do not stop attacks, make hold no longer stop stand, if a skill required it we could make hold special for those. Not sure if prone with hold is a req now.
* Grapples automatically wear off.
* Grapples no longer STOP movement, but instead will act as a decent delay of 2s for acros, 4s for non.
* Grapples will all wear off when any of the timers do. So multiple grapples would still not stack still.
Grapples have become far less powerful than before, where things like constrict and tendons were based on them. At the same time, the increase in people with faster writhe (via Furrikin) has gone up, meaning grapples are now both less a focus and not as important to be a focus. This helps simplify curing while being able to count on grapples.
Stance Mechanics * Make the power urchin cost 2p, as suggested. * Boost increasing speed is fine for the power cost. * Can we add a power cost to skip parry?
I like the design as a whole. The stance system is much better to momentum and I like the consistency between the monk guilds regarding the instakill theme. Unfortunately is hard to make flawless judgement from theorycrafting alone, especially when outliers exist within and without of monk tertiaries and particular artifact/guild-class combinations. The direction as a whole seems much, much better than momentum-froms.
As for specifics, I think Tahtetso is in a weaker spot comparatively to the other monks, I don't really see them getting to where they have to be. Particularly the Tahtetso killer stance. Damagedskull is really underwhelming when you're almost always going to be hammering starkick/Rakti'sho anyway, and even then it doesn't particularly contribute to gahtiarak'sho. It also seems pretty underwhelming compared to blackout and compounding target bleeding.
That said, it will really depend on the sheer amount of bruising output and how they can balance it with their offense. Should gahtiarak'sho hinge upon landing the conditional +bruising considerations, another method of giving damagedthroat may need to be added. Either that or adding damagedskull to the pool but decreasing the weight per aff.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
Nekotai vessels after this overhaul will actually be potentially lower than pre-overhaul. Currently, we can give vessels on every form 2mo and up. On theory, we could vessels on every form, period, but doing so on 0mo/1mo means the form will consist of only the vessel kick and nothing else (in other words, not very smart/effective).
By tightening the availability of vessels to only 2 out of our 5 stances, we're dropping a huge amount of the consistent pressure we used to have. In return, I've also tightened the reliability of actually giving vessels - there's no more chance of giving 0 vessels. The stances that give vessels will always give at least 1. The build is more burst based, which basically means it's more sensitive to hinders, and the window to take advantage is lower. But it also means we get spikes of vitals pressure, especially if we spend power to regress forms.
If the admin take up my later suggestion as brainstormed during discussion with Wobou, that should put the power expenditure to do huge bursts of vessels at a large enough amount to make it not really viable 1v1. A 1v1 Nekotai will need to actually properly plan their stance manipulation, calculate their opponent healing optimisations etc to try and get vessels to build enough bleed.
I don't think the Nekotai bleed stances are as much of a concern as you've said.
I also think Center stance is not a bad thing. It's a full defensive stance that can pretty much stop opponents in their track - but it's in the middle of the stance progression. Meaning, it interrupts the monk's own offense by cutting off their offensive benefits. If anything, giving bleed to the Nekotai center form is a bad idea. A monk that wants to rush offensively will actually want to boost to get out of Center stance (or jump over it, depending on what the admin go with) to hit their Surge asap. Dodging afflictions are a rare mechanic, and having it in a monk stance is a nice perk that I think we should keep.
I feel that stances should be meaningful and impactful, and should most certainly be the equivalent of an action. Or rather, be the main strategical consideration of what actions a monk uses in that stance. Note that all of the spec effects of stances (at least for Nekotai) will only trigger once. You can't "stay" at a form to do it again without using power (2p, hopefully) to move backwards. Stances should lead into one another, to provide a clear strategy, a clear instruction to the user, what exactly they should be aiming for. Their optimisations via their actions should then be used to support that. It gives monks a degree of predictability as well, without conpromising their viability to kill.
Surge stance bypassing parry is therefore definitely okay with me for that reason. And I think it's important to keep that. Some monk guilds will have better means of bypassing parry than others, through some of their aff stacks, but giving all of the at least one avenue through a stance should be something we want to have. As long as it is limited, which it is, I think it's a reasonable effect.
* Concerned about sprongk being spammable every form to completely hose curing. 0.5s should be the max, and we should not offer dust as an option. Due to stack.
* Sprongma needs to lower damage a fair bit. It is incredibly easy to build poison affs, even solo. The max damage should be 50% at 5 affs.
* I just want to note that Amihai says "5% of targets current bleeding or 200". It would take over 4000 bleeding to be higher than 200.
* Sensitivity is a lucidity cure, Finalsting color is wrong.
Worst case form for stacking dust:
Spronghai - Haemophilia
Angkai - Blindness
Angkhai - Relapsing
Envenomed - Paralysis
Envenomed - Vomiting
Scorpionspit - powersap
Beast spit - Sickening
Potential 7 dust affs at once. No Asthma in this, which is nice, though you are either dying or going to have no offense. You have to focus all these cures or risk never attacking back again. I don't like this situation.
I would suggest removal of scorpionspit entirely, but I will hold off on paralysis because of a pending envoy report to make it not stop attacks. I am not a fan of blindness though in this setup.
Concern still exists for vessels rate and how they pressure vitals. I'd rather see vessels expended as a resource to prevent them from building. Like, you can do some effect that is stronger if vessels built up to 4. Maybe an auto effect if a vessel form would push you over 6 vessels it just intsantly does something stonger and cures some. Not sure how to tackle this.
Skillsets seem so....... small.
Look at how many active attacks there are.
Anyway, stacks, vessels, and all the bonus bleed are my main concerns.
I just see them more like bards. Your entire spec is set and forget and you never really touch it sans two-or-three moves. I suppose mages too, to a lesser extent.
Edit: But there's obviously a lot more flexibility in the proposed monks than the above extremes.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
* Why is ninombhi locked to stance 3? Is this concerns of mutilates?
* Ninthugi hits ice balance, not sure that's a great plan, but will analyze.
* Umubah is wholly unreliable. Can we split that up? No one will use a skill that they cant guess. It just isn't useful to have no idea what will happen.
* If splitting is too complicated, they have blind in Akogh and skull from ninthu, give them confusion.
* Byahkari should stun if it isn't planned to. This at least used to cost power, doesnt allow curing, and faded after like 20 seconds. Without a stun or eq/bal loss, it isn't useful.
* Oolibah reduces shrugging by 50%? I think they would rather have it count as damagedorgans, or why have multiple ways to cause damaged? Make it reduce shrugging to 0 and guarantee transfers.
* Ninini is unlikely to be used. Maybe make it a prep. First form used when in ninini causes a stun from the momentum of the removal, but that potentially implies slicing yourself up. Some kind of change likely needed here.
* Is ninshi 100% ice stopper or what is the chances on it? They don't do much in ice, but this seems relevant if you got a mutilate or something.
* What is Jakarikoghu going to do? You made it's effect the automatic stance 5. Is it going to be more like tidesweep? Tries to prone all enemies and cause bleeding or brief stun (1s) on all enemies with bleeding? Maybe poison chance at a reduced rate since bleeding sucks. * EDIT: Where did yank go? Can we have yank back? Should be a high bleed move ender, maybe briefish stun and can transfer poisons (as normal hit)/
Worst dust stack:
Akogh - Blind
Umubah - Vomiting
Ninombhi - Dysentery
Ninaali stance - Sickening
Envenom - Paralysis
Envenom - Haemophilia
Beast Spit - Sicekning
Also 7 affs. That stance though.
Noticing poisons basically mean +3 in most cases. Having blindness is meh similar to before.
* Shofangtree? Really? I mean sure it kind of lines up, but man. At least fit their naming style, they dont start skills with "shofangi", call it Bogtree?
* Do not like headbutt. Random chance of stun or something? Meh. Why give them a random free stun? This can even mess with other stuns. I'd just remove this as an unneeded skill unless we have something more tied to it.
* Logami would play in well with grapple changes. Grapples already stopped movement, making this one be a FULL stop while it lasts (still auto times out) would give it the niche.
* I don't like stomp having eq/bal loss, but at least this is an active attack with a pre-req. Does this require prone or sprawled though? Is this easy to trigger by using with paralysis?
* Bogami means it doubles current bleeding or does twice the normal bleed? Should probably not be the first.
* Tomati does a crapton of bleeding, keep in mind other boosts. Not sure this is healthy if you can do 900 bleeding in one form. Should likely change gut to something else.
* I like ram, "destroy a wall or person blocking an exit". Block them at your own peril eh?
Dust is not majorly stacked, all their dust affs are grapples and enders really.
Not a lot to say here right now.
Still issues with too much bleeding available, but then the insta is questionable. Either you can affrod to clot and laugh or you can't.
* Can we not add chills to starkick? This may seem mundane, but with pending changes to make it mental, it's a twofer. If fire wasnt changing, sure.
* We giggled at Raktiah'sho. Yeah, the 2s off balance is the scary part of this. <.< There should just be a general effect when using any of these skills on mutilatedlimbs. A stun and higher damage perhaps. This should be on everyones.
* Bomrakini should not cause off balance. Paralysis stops the stand for 1s, leave at that.
* Bomolah'sho, again balance loss on a one hand action. Require prone to do 2s maybe, but shouldn't have so many off bal attacks everywhere.
Worst dust stack:
Bomol'sho - Asthma
Rakti'ini - Rigortmrtis
Bomrakini - Paralysis
Rakti'sho - Stun (counting for optimization reasons)
Beast - Blind
Envenom - Vomiting
Envenom - Haemophilia
6 real affs and stun.
Feels like something is missing here. They seem lackluster for some reason. Might need more combinations or something available. Too many off balance attacks.
Not a lot going on in this...... Usual concerns about the insta's.
* Concerned about sprongk being spammable every form to completely hose curing. 0.5s should be the max, and we should not offer dust as an option. Due to stack.
* Sprongma needs to lower damage a fair bit. It is incredibly easy to build poison affs, even solo. The max damage should be 50% at 5 affs.
* I just want to note that Amihai says "5% of targets current bleeding or 200". It would take over 4000 bleeding to be higher than 200.
* Sensitivity is a lucidity cure, Finalsting color is wrong.
Worst case form for stacking dust:
Spronghai - Haemophilia
Angkai - Blindness
Angkhai - Relapsing
Envenomed - Paralysis
Envenomed - Vomiting
Scorpionspit - powersap
Beast spit - Sickening
Potential 7 dust affs at once. No Asthma in this, which is nice, though you are either dying or going to have no offense. You have to focus all these cures or risk never attacking back again. I don't like this situation.
I would suggest removal of scorpionspit entirely, but I will hold off on paralysis because of a pending envoy report to make it not stop attacks. I am not a fan of blindness though in this setup.
Concern still exists for vessels rate and how they pressure vitals. I'd rather see vessels expended as a resource to prevent them from building. Like, you can do some effect that is stronger if vessels built up to 4. Maybe an auto effect if a vessel form would push you over 6 vessels it just intsantly does something stonger and cures some. Not sure how to tackle this.
Skillsets seem so....... small.
Look at how many active attacks there are.
Anyway, stacks, vessels, and all the bonus bleed are my main concerns.
Sprongk would knock one cure balance for 1s every 3.5 seconds - hardly going to "hose" any curing. If the cure is already off-balance, it'll only extend it by 0.5 seconds. Given that dust is 1.5s (I think?), a sprongk would give less benefit than giving an actual affliction. It is, however, a good choice if the Nekotai successfully tracks (or guesses, rather) his opponent's cures, to ascertain that a sprongk is a better choice than the other kicks he has access to for building a stack. A Nekotai that does sprongk every form will be operating at sub-optimal efficiency. It'll hardly be overbearing or overpowering.
I'm concerned with sprongma scaling being too low. Poisons and bleed are two separate routes in the Nekotai stance flow, and don't really mix well - possible still to mix them for a hybrid effect, but the way they are set up just makes it far weaker. Hitting a target when he has 6 afflictions WHEN you get a sprongma is going to be pretty much unseen, and even when you actually manage it through copious use of the poison stances, your bleed isn't going to be very threatening. So much so that I'm half wondering whether a maxed out sprongma will even do more damage than a normal kick. Of course, we don't know what it'll be (edit to clarify: we don't know because this is a totally new mechanic that I suggested. I've never had experience playing around with this in action before yet, so I'm just guessing at this point) - but if you're asking me for my opinion, I actually think I'll be making a report to change that scaling upwards after release.
Regarding the dust stack, I've said this to you before - but just so it is out here in writing, this will not be something the Nekotai can do repeatedly. Both scorpionspit and beastspit are on their own balances, so you certainly won't see 7 affs most of the time. It would certainly be a great burst choice for the Surge form, yes, so that the Nekotai can ensure he triggers the Finalsting requirements on his killer form, after the 3.5s curing window the opponent has. And finally, even after all of these considerations, there's yet another layer of restriction: the Finalsting affs are also designed to be not all dust cures. The four affs were suggested by me.
The picture of 7 affs every form overloading curing isn't realistic, really - outside of the burst at Surge, the envenomed slashes will be subject to the same RNG of transfer and shrugging as any other poison attack by anyone else, and even if the Nekotai regresses stances to stay at Surge, without cycling down and re-activating the twist stance poison transfer effect, the poisons will still not be guarantee'd, even when he regresses stance (there is very little incentive to repeat the Nekotai poison stances, and this is intentional) - not to mention the spit balances will be on cooldown. An average of 3 to 4 affs every form is more likely, with a burst when the monk has managed his balances well and is ready to go for the kill happening when he hits his Surge form.
If there's any problem, it'll be in the aff choice. Blindness being a one-handed native aff coupled with native haemophilia could be a problem. But I've mentioned this in my previous post as well, I've intentionally not asked for more dust affs because I'm mindful of the dust stack being strong. I most certainly don't think it'll lock up either curing or opponent attacking, though, especially since the set up is definitely weaker than the current status quo - which it should be, given the new insta thresholds and poison affs being contributory etc. I've already taken all of these into consideration when tweaking the set up, and gearing it for burst orientated style but without being obnoxious and frustrating.
Regarding vessels, you haven't qualified your concerns beyond repeating that you have concerns, really. I've presented an argument where I've shown how I feel the new vessels will actually be less than what Nekotai can do at the moment. Concrete example: if you're worried about a Nekotai spending 2p every form to give another 2-3 vessels each form for 5 forms running, a Nekotai can currently spend 0 power to give 0-3 vessels every form, ad nauseum. We're balanced at around this number to hit our Finalsting at the moment, (in addition to multiple sources of bleed from slicedbiceps/thighs/gut, slit-throat etc.)
Naturally, those extra bleed affs will be gone, vessels output is no longer every form (without power), and is still capped at 3 in the stances where it is available, but in return, vessels RNG is tightened and more reliable as well as being contributory to Finalsting itself, and the Finalsting threshold itself is also lower. I certainly feel this new set up has compensated the changes, and ported the Nekotai vessels over in a way that maintains general balance. Otherwise I'd have suggested higher numbers. At the very least, Finalsting will (likely) be viable at release. Whether it needs to be tweaked up or down, will need some testing first. I'm sure it'd be adjusted during the testing phase, where needed, as well, but I don't think your concerns about vessels being too high is really realistic either.
Furthermore, if my ideas from when Wobou and I were brainstorming are taken up by the admin, spending 2p to repeat the new (more reliable) vessels generation at Surge will no longer even be possible, and it will need to be done at Twist instead - which is also 3 stances away from any attempt at Finalsting.
Lastly, the Nekotai skillset has always been, in my opinion, the most balanced in terms of number of actions. Of course, from here on, it's just my subjective love for my class speaking. But we have 3 sets of punches, 3 sets of kicks, 3 sets of grapples, 4 spec-only modifiers and 2 types of grapple enders, as well as a handful of unique mechanics.
I think those are very nice numbers of skills to work with - I can go "high, mid, low" if I want, or "bleed, poison, hybrid" if I want, etc etc. As it is, I've left actions to be mostly hybrid or neutral, so they can be used in both poisons or bleed routes. I'm not really going to give only this punch a bleed effect, and only that punch a poison-synergy effect etc. Most of that is put into stances instead. I don't think Nekotai skillset is small, really, with the amounts of active attacks we have to choose from.
Definitely like the new concept, props to everyone working on it. This does leave me feeling like warriors are bland and lackluster in comparison, though.
Comments
Note: On my phone so no quotes, sorry.
There's some other weird stuff going on in Tahtetso's skillset too. When would you ever choose to raktia'sho arms for a 1s balance loss when you can do gut for a 1s stun? Their parry bypass is also gated behind mutilated arms, which is weird since mutilated arms ALREADY bypass parry. I think we should move their parry bypass to rakita'sho and remove the 1s balance loss.
Another problem with Tahtetso is that they get two ways to cause bruising: a grapple ender, the other is a stance. It would be nice if they had a low-value way to add to bruising, maybe a 50-100 bruising kick? I think we can move some of the functions of bomol'sho over to starkick and open the way for bruising on bomol'sho. I'd suggest moving the prone on legs to starkick and adding a bruising option to bomol'sho. Start at 50 and we can adjust from there.
As I mentioned earlier, I think that Tahtetso don't have the purity affs to support their current 4 afflictions. That said, they do have some lucidity affs, and with the addition of a few more, I think they'd be better off. I would change twist low to sensitivity from rigormortis, bomol'sho's dysentary to anorexia, and bomol'sho's asthma to confusion. The paralysis/prone/balance loss on bomrakini seems fine, and might be necessary to hit their ender.
EDIT: I just realized I didn't address the ice delay! That might be a good addition to starkick on chest or head, or a surge or higher arm action. Having it on a grapple is awkward and really limits your options.
There is a big discrepancy right now between the specs and how easy it is to track the afflictions. The more ice affliction focused the easier it is.
You'll need to use Creehai for the surge high stance then to have a chance to kill affliction wise.
"Surge High Stance Active Effect: Reduce resistance to 0 and hide first poison afflicted" But if I read that right it'll only let you hit with one poison?
I'm struggling to see a coherent plan for Neko to kill with outside of cycling vessels and your planning on shifting it so that they cant bounce back and forward to build right?
I can figure out a step by step to stick some of the kill afflictions for all the other specs and I assume they will have enough bleed/bruise to top up the kill. But I cant see a step by step with neko that'll result in a number of afflictions sticking.
Is neko going to be all about the pure bleed stack then? Afflictions will just be a sort of side show to it? Where as the other specs are more affliction focused?
EDIT:
Side question will attempting the instant kill use power or not if it fails?
1) Nekotai Aff Stack
I have therefore intentionally weakened the Nekotai dust stack a little by not asking for more dust afflictions to be natively given via our action abilities. The Nekotai will need to rely heavily on poisons to get a big dust stack going.
Nekotai does have a small number of native dust afflictions in their actions, notably haemophilia and sickening - to make things clear from the start: I intend on increasing this, but only after waiting-and-seeing the first implementation of the skillset. Haemophilia being a high priority affliction when fighting the Nekotai (because of our passive bleed from all our abilities) should help give our dust stack some bite even though we only have a small handful of them at the start, but my ideal is for Nekotai to have a strong dust stack and a weak ice stack. Note that the lack of ice-stacking affs in the Nekotai skillset (no ice affs on any kicks, no ice-delay mechanics etc) was deliberate. We still have access to a variety of strong ice afflictions, but without any real means to stack them, and I will have no qualms about shifting any of these into dust affs if need be, to further cement the strong-dust, weak-ice paradigm I'm pursuing.
2) Nekotai Poisons
Just to give everyone some context, Nekotai used to be able to lower enemy shrug chance AND hide ALL poisons on pretty much every single form via Scorpionfury (power cost). Alternatively, without investing power, we could do that on ALL of our advanced forms, meaning 4momentum and above. Old momentum mechanics meant we stayed at 4mo/5mo almost all the time, building large amounts of poisons and overwhelming curing systems with hidden affs until we were ready to greenlock.
This is obviously not suited for the new paradigm, where going past the climax and building up again is a core goal of the stance mechanic. I'll have to think of a way to make the poisons stances give Nekotai a proper niche, so as to ensure Veyils' concern, that the route becomes a "side-show" does not come to bear fruit. Just to answer one question from Veyils:
Yes, the affliction requirements for Finalsting is meant to require a Nekotai to invest in the poison stances rather than the bleed vessel stances. Without going for the poison stances, the Nekotai will hardly have enough aff-stacking power to finalsting via it. The surge high stance effect is supposed to reduce resistance to 0 for ALL poisons in the form (basically the two arm actions) but only hide the FIRST one. It's an intentional limit to prevent hidden poisons from just overwhelming via brute force, and requiring smart use of poisons. I mean, this was a complaint about Nekotai before: too many hidden poison (see my paragraph above describing the old Nekotai poisons advantage), and I'm addressing that by reducing hidden poisons and giving actual full shrug bypass instead.
Again, just to reiterate, the poison stances are, all things considered, now weaker than they really should be. So I'll be trying to improve them, once I get some good ideas. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
3) Nekotai kill potential
I'll definitely be tweaking the threshold to make things harder for the bleed route if it is too fast after the change - I'm sure the admin will too, anyway. At the same time, the poisons route being lackluster means I'll be making things easier on that front - if needed. Again, I'm sure the admins will observe and adjust there accordingly too.
----
One last thing, I noticed that the admin have made the monk Instas a full balance action again - meaning no arm actions at the same time as the insta. This is fine, but it does mean that a lot of my old considerations for limiting Nekotai abilities are invalid. I specifically refused to add certain bleed or poison bursts to arm actions because I feared they would overwhelm all other arm action choices when used with Finalsting. With this concern removed, I think we can put back some of the stuff into Nekotai arm actions. I fully welcome the change to make monk instas full balance only, though I admit I let out a sigh when I realised all my previous work to ensure Nekotai arm actions fit in with Finalsting without abuse went to waste.
I'll review the skillset again, and see if there's a need to change anything, or if we can wait-and-see before changing Nekotai arm actions to lighten the restrictions on not having burst bleed or certain specific afflictions. If there's a need, I'll make a list of suggestions before the Norns' deadline.
All monks are going to stack well with warriors, some more so than others and all monks are going to stack well with mana killers with bleed/bruise being part of every monks tool kit now.
But I'm not seeing a lot of specific styles that'll gell with with orgs better than others. Like tide kick to support aquamancers or a neko dust stack to support harbingers.
I can kind of see how ninja and mags disease stack will go pretty well together.
Also @lerad keep in mind that there's reports in to weaken the dust stack already. I mean if you want neko to switch from dust to something else that's fine but just right now the other monk specs on paper have a better dust or ice stack than neko and as you said with damaged organs on arm balance others have better poison delivery systems.
I'll take your point about Nekotai's dust stack and poison stack being weaker (ironically) than the other specs at face value for now, and review that when I have more time. I also take your point about dust stack being (hopefully) tweaked down in efficiency eventually - if that happens, I'll certainly push for Nekotai dust stack to be buffed in a way that ensures we're viable, or to move away from dust stacks entirely, as needed. Do continue to give your feedback, though. Having it officially in writing in the forums will let me come back and pick up ideas, as well as gather evidence, when I have to justify buffs (or nerfs) post release.
Also spit poison what's the deal with that under the new system?
Ohh I've had a totally random point but well bruising is kinda a bit newish and only bone crushers do I right now. We may need to look at how pulp works because if you can stick 250 or 300 bruising on a target right now a bonecrusher can start a kill combo that'll damage kill anyone.
And like if monks need like a few hundred plus afflictions then I'm assuming they can at least stick a bit. So like a monk bonecrusher combo could be crazy.
Edit: ATM it's not an issue as like bonecrushers can't stack bruising themselves but pulp could get crazy if we have other classes starting to throw out high bruising.
Yeah, this is a point I originally brought up when I found the Tahtetso grapple bruising burst. I was told essentially we can adjust numbers of the bruising or adjust the mechanics of pulp down the road if it comes to that.
- The Norns
Grapples have become far less powerful than before, where things like constrict and tendons were based on them. At the same time, the increase in people with faster writhe (via Furrikin) has gone up, meaning grapples are now both less a focus and not as important to be a focus. This helps simplify curing while being able to count on grapples.
Stance Mechanics
* Make the power urchin cost 2p, as suggested.
* Boost increasing speed is fine for the power cost.
* Can we add a power cost to skip parry?
As for specifics, I think Tahtetso is in a weaker spot comparatively to the other monks, I don't really see them getting to where they have to be. Particularly the Tahtetso killer stance. Damagedskull is really underwhelming when you're almost always going to be hammering starkick/Rakti'sho anyway, and even then it doesn't particularly contribute to gahtiarak'sho. It also seems pretty underwhelming compared to blackout and compounding target bleeding.
That said, it will really depend on the sheer amount of bruising output and how they can balance it with their offense. Should gahtiarak'sho hinge upon landing the conditional +bruising considerations, another method of giving damagedthroat may need to be added. Either that or adding damagedskull to the pool but decreasing the weight per aff.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
Nekotai vessels after this overhaul will actually be potentially lower than pre-overhaul. Currently, we can give vessels on every form 2mo and up. On theory, we could vessels on every form, period, but doing so on 0mo/1mo means the form will consist of only the vessel kick and nothing else (in other words, not very smart/effective).
By tightening the availability of vessels to only 2 out of our 5 stances, we're dropping a huge amount of the consistent pressure we used to have. In return, I've also tightened the reliability of actually giving vessels - there's no more chance of giving 0 vessels. The stances that give vessels will always give at least 1. The build is more burst based, which basically means it's more sensitive to hinders, and the window to take advantage is lower. But it also means we get spikes of vitals pressure, especially if we spend power to regress forms.
If the admin take up my later suggestion as brainstormed during discussion with Wobou, that should put the power expenditure to do huge bursts of vessels at a large enough amount to make it not really viable 1v1. A 1v1 Nekotai will need to actually properly plan their stance manipulation, calculate their opponent healing optimisations etc to try and get vessels to build enough bleed.
I don't think the Nekotai bleed stances are as much of a concern as you've said.
I also think Center stance is not a bad thing. It's a full defensive stance that can pretty much stop opponents in their track - but it's in the middle of the stance progression. Meaning, it interrupts the monk's own offense by cutting off their offensive benefits. If anything, giving bleed to the Nekotai center form is a bad idea. A monk that wants to rush offensively will actually want to boost to get out of Center stance (or jump over it, depending on what the admin go with) to hit their Surge asap. Dodging afflictions are a rare mechanic, and having it in a monk stance is a nice perk that I think we should keep.
I feel that stances should be meaningful and impactful, and should most certainly be the equivalent of an action. Or rather, be the main strategical consideration of what actions a monk uses in that stance. Note that all of the spec effects of stances (at least for Nekotai) will only trigger once. You can't "stay" at a form to do it again without using power (2p, hopefully) to move backwards. Stances should lead into one another, to provide a clear strategy, a clear instruction to the user, what exactly they should be aiming for. Their optimisations via their actions should then be used to support that. It gives monks a degree of predictability as well, without conpromising their viability to kill.
Surge stance bypassing parry is therefore definitely okay with me for that reason. And I think it's important to keep that. Some monk guilds will have better means of bypassing parry than others, through some of their aff stacks, but giving all of the at least one avenue through a stance should be something we want to have. As long as it is limited, which it is, I think it's a reasonable effect.
I suppose mages too, to a lesser extent.
Edit:
But there's obviously a lot more flexibility in the proposed monks than the above extremes.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
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Yes I'm a girl
get over it
* EDIT: Where did yank go? Can we have yank back? Should be a high bleed move ender, maybe briefish stun and can transfer poisons (as normal hit)/
Not a lot going on in this...... Usual concerns about the insta's.
I'm concerned with sprongma scaling being too low. Poisons and bleed are two separate routes in the Nekotai stance flow, and don't really mix well - possible still to mix them for a hybrid effect, but the way they are set up just makes it far weaker. Hitting a target when he has 6 afflictions WHEN you get a sprongma is going to be pretty much unseen, and even when you actually manage it through copious use of the poison stances, your bleed isn't going to be very threatening. So much so that I'm half wondering whether a maxed out sprongma will even do more damage than a normal kick. Of course, we don't know what it'll be (edit to clarify: we don't know because this is a totally new mechanic that I suggested. I've never had experience playing around with this in action before yet, so I'm just guessing at this point) - but if you're asking me for my opinion, I actually think I'll be making a report to change that scaling upwards after release.
Regarding the dust stack, I've said this to you before - but just so it is out here in writing, this will not be something the Nekotai can do repeatedly. Both scorpionspit and beastspit are on their own balances, so you certainly won't see 7 affs most of the time. It would certainly be a great burst choice for the Surge form, yes, so that the Nekotai can ensure he triggers the Finalsting requirements on his killer form, after the 3.5s curing window the opponent has. And finally, even after all of these considerations, there's yet another layer of restriction: the Finalsting affs are also designed to be not all dust cures. The four affs were suggested by me.
The picture of 7 affs every form overloading curing isn't realistic, really - outside of the burst at Surge, the envenomed slashes will be subject to the same RNG of transfer and shrugging as any other poison attack by anyone else, and even if the Nekotai regresses stances to stay at Surge, without cycling down and re-activating the twist stance poison transfer effect, the poisons will still not be guarantee'd, even when he regresses stance (there is very little incentive to repeat the Nekotai poison stances, and this is intentional) - not to mention the spit balances will be on cooldown. An average of 3 to 4 affs every form is more likely, with a burst when the monk has managed his balances well and is ready to go for the kill happening when he hits his Surge form.
If there's any problem, it'll be in the aff choice. Blindness being a one-handed native aff coupled with native haemophilia could be a problem. But I've mentioned this in my previous post as well, I've intentionally not asked for more dust affs because I'm mindful of the dust stack being strong. I most certainly don't think it'll lock up either curing or opponent attacking, though, especially since the set up is definitely weaker than the current status quo - which it should be, given the new insta thresholds and poison affs being contributory etc. I've already taken all of these into consideration when tweaking the set up, and gearing it for burst orientated style but without being obnoxious and frustrating.
Regarding vessels, you haven't qualified your concerns beyond repeating that you have concerns, really. I've presented an argument where I've shown how I feel the new vessels will actually be less than what Nekotai can do at the moment. Concrete example: if you're worried about a Nekotai spending 2p every form to give another 2-3 vessels each form for 5 forms running, a Nekotai can currently spend 0 power to give 0-3 vessels every form, ad nauseum. We're balanced at around this number to hit our Finalsting at the moment, (in addition to multiple sources of bleed from slicedbiceps/thighs/gut, slit-throat etc.)
Naturally, those extra bleed affs will be gone, vessels output is no longer every form (without power), and is still capped at 3 in the stances where it is available, but in return, vessels RNG is tightened and more reliable as well as being contributory to Finalsting itself, and the Finalsting threshold itself is also lower. I certainly feel this new set up has compensated the changes, and ported the Nekotai vessels over in a way that maintains general balance. Otherwise I'd have suggested higher numbers. At the very least, Finalsting will (likely) be viable at release. Whether it needs to be tweaked up or down, will need some testing first. I'm sure it'd be adjusted during the testing phase, where needed, as well, but I don't think your concerns about vessels being too high is really realistic either.
Furthermore, if my ideas from when Wobou and I were brainstorming are taken up by the admin, spending 2p to repeat the new (more reliable) vessels generation at Surge will no longer even be possible, and it will need to be done at Twist instead - which is also 3 stances away from any attempt at Finalsting.
Lastly, the Nekotai skillset has always been, in my opinion, the most balanced in terms of number of actions. Of course, from here on, it's just my subjective love for my class speaking. But we have 3 sets of punches, 3 sets of kicks, 3 sets of grapples, 4 spec-only modifiers and 2 types of grapple enders, as well as a handful of unique mechanics.
I think those are very nice numbers of skills to work with - I can go "high, mid, low" if I want, or "bleed, poison, hybrid" if I want, etc etc. As it is, I've left actions to be mostly hybrid or neutral, so they can be used in both poisons or bleed routes. I'm not really going to give only this punch a bleed effect, and only that punch a poison-synergy effect etc. Most of that is put into stances instead. I don't think Nekotai skillset is small, really, with the amounts of active attacks we have to choose from.