Problem:
Monks as a whole are considered to be slightly overpowered given the reliability of their offense in giving high level warrior afflictions at a fast rate. However, they also suffer from disproportional ka costs and the limitations of the momentum system.

Potential Solutions (Updated: 10-21):

-Adjust momentum scale and ka weighting:

0>1mo 250 ka
1>2mo 250 ka
2>3mo 250 ka
3>4mo 500 ka
4>5mo 500 ka
5>6mo 750 ka
6>7mo 750 ka
7>8mo 1000 ka
8>9mo +1500 ka (needs boost)



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Please make your suggestions and discuss.

I'm not an envoy, nor a particularly active combatant, nor am I familiar with anything really outside of the general monk system and nekotai afflictions. Thus, what I have to say is probably less informed, less thorough and less well thought out than the average contributor to such a thread. With that in mind, my word ought to be taken with a substantial rock of salt.

Its pretty obvious, and pretty well conceded that doing anything with Monks is particularly difficult. They walk a fine line, in my opinion and in as far as I am aware, between overpowered, and crushingly flat or useless (maybe not underpowered, per se.) To give an example, I feel like as a Nekotai, the other skills we have are, in general, superfluous given Oothai. That is, Oothai, and monk grappling by extension as a Nekotai, is so good, that it's almost not worth bothering pursuing any other method of momentum gain and damage. Its true, Nekotai have good vessel potential, so I've heard, but Oothai is just so much more cost-efficient in terms of effort. The consequence this has is that A.) Nekotai do not have much incentive to do anything except grapple to build momentum, and then use Oothai, or perhaps Amihai to end grapples (Nekotai combatants are, in fact, encouraged to do this.) B.) The skillset feels as though it has no variety, and you're on a one-track route to killing people - It detracts from the amusement of playing such a skillset because of the illusion of lack of variety.

That being said, I don't think Monks can be fixed without doing something drastic (again). See the last two paragraphs/sentences to skip to the point, without my pontification and silly ideas

Part of me thinks that the entire momentum/ka/monk system should be thrown out altogether and redeveloped using some other method. This has the slight advantage of looking back on the monk experience and trying to redesign it in a way that isn't so much like warriors on speed. This also has the HUGE disadvantage of having to throw out everything that was painstakingly coded, and frankly isn't practical at all.

I do think that momentum is completely unnecessary. Every ability is already measured in ka, and while the momentum-ka system is not difficult to figure out or work around, it is needlessly complex (doing a conversion between ka and momentum level to do anything). Instead, if momentum was done away with, the system would be measured exclusively in ka. what this does (hypothetically) is frees up the balancing of the monk skillsets. Instead of being chained to determinate momentum levels and pre-fixed ka amounts, each individual ability in the skillset can be gamed by much smaller amounts, resulting in a much finer balancing rather than the large swings that the skillset currently sees (in my opinion).

What this may require (or open up) is some kind of unique method for generating ka. Hypothetically, ka could be generated by factoring in some or all of the following: speed, dexterity, balance levels, accuracy, and/or abilities themselves (i.e. your ka generation is increased or decreased depending on how much ka you just spent). This also has the advantage of allowing fine balance tuning.

Furthermore, such a system could open up creative variety on the part of the administration - Nekotai and Shofangi, hypothetically, could be reimagined as skillsets which have low-ka cost abilities which nickle and dime the enemy minorly, but have an overall large effect, whereas tahtetso and Ninjakari have larger ka-cost, but much greater effect in each of their strikes. As I'm typing this, the limitations of such a system jump out at me, and I realize its not well thought out.


In short, I think momentum chains the monk system to wide balance disparities. Its pretty easy to see, I think, how unnecessary it is, and fixing ka costs to momentum levels only makes balance harder. An "easy" solution is to just get rid of momentum, have everything measured in ka, and fix ka generation in some way

I am not an envoy, nor have I been, I don't understand at all how the Lusternia system is coded, other than it is not at all object oriented, and so everything I'm proscribing maybe absolutely impossible to work out. I guess what I'm driving at is, "just saying..."

In short, I think momentum chains the monk system to wide balance disparities. Its pretty easy to see, I think, how unnecessary it is, and fixing ka costs to momentum levels only makes balance harder. An "easy" solution is to just get rid of momentum, have everything measured in ka, and fix ka generation in some way


I remember a momentum-less ka system during the PPK monk era (before ruptures or momentum). You'd gain max ka and max forms towards a kata chain with increased skill in kata and your kata spec. You see some vestiges of this system with some of the kata performance chain mechanics.

Name: Hunt1
Action 1: kick right
Action 2: nekai left
Action 3: nekai right
Modifiers:
Used ka: 250

All Forms
Max forms: 11

Looking back at the lack of detailed problems or solutions from the former "Delete Monk" crowd, I'm feeling like monks are closer to balance than ever. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and reinvent monks all over again. I'm still fairly confident that we can be brought two more notches closer to balance (and ultimately fix the OP/UP problem).

I'm not sure what you are suggesting, that there be a sort of momentum type of system in place, where doing each form nets you a certain gain of resource (ka), and each move burns a certain amount? A more freeform momentum, that through changing those two values, is more tailored to each guild?

It need not be tailored to each guild, that was just a suggestion, or an example.

EDIT: I don't really agree with Janalon, but as I tried to mention repeatedly, I don't know anything. If anyone knows anything about monk balance its her, or at least certainly not me, I guess. I'm still not convinced that momentum is useful or necessary

Momentums use is to limit ka. Ka has to be hard capped or mix maxers will utterly wipe things. Plus allows -mo costs. <.<

That said I am writing something up I will reveal later.

For those who dislike my ramblings, tl;dr - I agree with Janalon. (You can literally skip everything below this.)

Momentum is effectively a reimagination of the kaido system from other IREs. It is very obviously DIFFERENT, but the basic concept is, I imagine, similar. The more you attack, the more you generate the ability to use stronger attacks. For pure lusternians, kaido worked like this: you start with 0 kai, and everytime you attacked, you gained a certain amount of kai that decayed over a few seconds. There are strong kai attacks that require a flat and hefty kai cost, and don't generate any kai (or generate significantly less) This means that a monk will punch and kick and generate a pool of kai, and then fire off a strong kai attack to capitalize on what limb damage (wounds) they have been building for an end-fight move.

The limitations of such a system is that the end-move that requires usage of the temporary resource (momentum, or kai) should be helpful to the monk, obviously, and is envisaged to be a big step toward their end-fight conditions - BUT THEY HAVE THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING OVERPOWERINGLY HELPFUL. This is also related to lusternian combat theory in general: min-maxers in lusternia are able to reach outlier levels of tankiness. 10k health, 40 to 50% damage reduction from stacked dmps, great mobility, faster curing from tradeskills, etc etc. This requires a monk's momentum-usage attacks to become more and more powerful, to give the monk a reasonable boost toward their end-goal conditions. If against a tough opponent, spending all that momentum only tickles them, then the system will fail. However, making those moves able to seriously threaten tanky targets will then make them able to completely overpower weaker targets. The balancing of such combos are thus very delicate.

Worse still, because monks share affliction pool (deepwounds) with another archetype, such a burst offense is deemed unfair. Because they use the same afflictions, are limited by the same defenses (rebound, dodging, stancing), the warrior archetype simply doesn't compare to the burst moves that monks are capable of. A warrior looks at what a monk can potentially do, and sees that it is what he would struggle to do in 3-4 rounds, and with great luck, and feels reasonably shafted.

This problem is also exacerbated by the need for monk momentum to be fluid in gains and losses. Monks cannot be forced to be at low momentum for long periods of time, because they can't reach their end-fight conditions at all with the resources available to them there. Momentum is then made more reasonable to be gained. As a balancing factor, switching targets cause momentum loss. To counter that, some abilities were buffed. To counter that, etc etc. Ensuing series of nerfs and buffs to momentum gain and loss (and how easily it can be hindered) has led to the current status quo, where a monk can reach his full potential in a few short and well-planned moves against a single target, but finds it increasingly difficult to perform similarly in group situations.

I feel that the solution that will appease warriors will be to lower the top end potentiality of a monk's burst offense (ie. so that stacking several -mo attacks will not have the potential to completely lock up a target with huge damage and regen affs) while raising the low end viability of a monk's offense (ie. so that staying at low momentum can still reasonably threaten and reach end-fight goals over time.)

Afterall, warriors are not taking offense to how long a monk needs to take to overpower someone with a barrage of regen affs, but instead, in the fact that monk can do the overpowering-with-regen-affs combinations in the first place when they can't ever hope to come close to such a possibility. Of course, this will require huge changes to the monk archetype and the way they give regen affs, as well as a re-examining of the end-fight conditions of a monk offense. For obvious reasons, such wide-ranging changes is not going to be well-received by the admin.

The alternative, as Janalon already mentioned, is to stick with the current status quo (and unfortunately ignore the warriors' major complaints) of requiring a monk to work toward high end burst offense through weaker attacks. Her suggestion to tweak the momentum model will force monks to spend more time (and forms) before they can reach that high end potential, but also at the same time open low-mo forms to variety and strategy. Such a restructuring of the momentum building model will also give future envoy reports the room to tweak individual abilities with more options, to bring it in line with long term goals. For example, right now, making an ability remove 1 momentum is considered hefty, and remove 2 momentum is considered a WOW! move. By extending the model, you allow the possibility of moving the WOW! moves to remove 3 momentum instead (neccessitating even longer recovery time) while allowing those abilities that don't really justify a -1mo in the current system to keep the penalty and still receive a buff (because -1mo in the new model will have less penalty effect than in the current model).

Not going into it but a couple notes:

- We need to look at giving specific actions/affs a power cost. This would be a good way to add alternative costs
- The lunge mods could use alterations
- I would really like to see ka moved into a closer pool where min isnt so low so you see more than grab or raze as opener.
- We are looking at two paths, one where admin say keep 5 base levels,and one where we can change that.

I have heard complaints to either change :/ so its a coin flip on that. We will see when the proposals are finished.

Lerad, I always appreciate the depth of your analysis. For anyone who might unfortunately tl;dr and skip this post, here is a very salient argument:

Lerad:

This problem is also exacerbated by the need for monk momentum to be fluid in gains and losses. Monks cannot be forced to be at low momentum for long periods of time, because they can't reach their end-fight conditions at all with the resources available to them there. Momentum is then made more reasonable to be gained. As a balancing factor, switching targets cause momentum loss. To counter that, some abilities were buffed. To counter that, etc etc. Ensuing series of nerfs and buffs to momentum gain and loss (and how easily it can be hindered) has led to the current status quo, where a monk can reach his full potential in a few short and well-planned moves against a single target, but finds it increasingly difficult to perform similarly in group situations.

When I first re-envisioned how momentum might be made more meaningful to both monk and opponent, I naively thought increasing levels of momentum alone could solve the problem. No. You only delay the end-momentum by a few seconds. As Sahmiam pointed out, any fix also needs to readjust action penalties. Malarious has pitched similar ideas to me when brainstorming solutions to Nekotai specific issues.

Look at the following:

+-------+
| KICKS |
+-------+

Actions
-=-=-=-
KA MO Action EFFECT LIMBS
-- -- ------ ------ -----
100 +/-0 Kick Basic unarmed 1-foot kick Any
250 -1mo Sprongk Pinch nerve & add cure balance Vitals, Arms
250 -1mo Sprongk Pinch nerve: add sip balance Head
250 -1mo Sprongk Pinch nerve: add smoke balance Chest
250 -1mo Sprongk Pinch nerve: add eat balance Gut
250 -1mo Sprongk Pinch nerve: add apply balance Vitals, Arms
250 +/-0 Spronghai Adds haemophilia & bleeding Any
500 -1mo Sprongma Hard kick collapses lungs Chest
500 -2mo Sprongma Severs spine causing paralysis Gut
This kick requires both feet
1500 -1mo Finalsting Advance crotamine w/dart kick Any
Bypasses all poison immunities
Adds noticeable bleeding damage

OOops, it's not carrying over proper spacing. No matter.

What you might notice is that first, momentum loss is used as a penalty for nearly every action. This is to prevent spamming an attack ad infinitum (creating sort of a soft lock). So yes, there should be some sort of limit placed on something like a Sprongk. Momentum loss is one way to cap attack spam.

Main issues are A ) there are more powerful attacks with the same momentum cost, and B ) ka caps imposed by momentum drop precipitously, meaning any Spronk strategy is negated when you enter the 2mo and 3mo territory. Adjust momentum loss and this UP skills becomes way too OP. Too bad there aren't incremental -0.5mo or -0.75 momentum loss penalties.

However, If momentum was increased, there would be a TON more wiggle room to more precisely tune momentum loss. Not to mention make middle momentum more useful so monks could more fluidly use the full range of their attacks rather than spam the ones without momentum penalties (oothai/vessels).

Yes, the whole purpose of a monk report would be to adjust momentum to make middle-momentum combat limited-ly viable with more of a focus on providing more "room" for other adjustments AND readjust action penalties using a smart combination of momentum requirements, ka costs, momentum loss, and dare I say power costs for certain afflictions.

In my opinion, a general problem with the momentum system is that balance stealing and delaying abilities are not balanced with momentum in mind. You had balance stealing stuff in before momentum existed.

I think that balancing monks would be best done not from the perspective of monks alone, but by making a list of all the things that can slow a monk down, then balancing those things based on how monks and their momentum is meant to be balanced.

For example, my axelord knight was useless against most acrobatics monks, but could walk all over psymet monks even as a tae'dae by just spamming the easy knockdown. It wasn't really balanced and gave monks another reason to ignore a specialization option. Making axelords work equally well or close to it against both kinds of monks would be ideal in my mind. Put cooldowns on web, hangedman, etc. Once the things that counter or slow momentum are better balanced, balancing monks shouldn't be too difficult.

Jello:

In my opinion, a general problem with the momentum system is that balance stealing and delaying abilities are not balanced with momentum in mind. You had balance stealing stuff in before momentum existed.

I think that balancing monks would be best done not from the perspective of monks alone, but by making a list of all the things that can slow a monk down, then balancing those things based on how monks and their momentum is meant to be balanced.

For example, my axelord knight was useless against most acrobatics monks, but could walk all over psymet monks even as a tae'dae by just spamming the easy knockdown. It wasn't really balanced and gave monks another reason to ignore a specialization option. Making axelords work equally well or close to it against both kinds of monks would be ideal in my mind. Put cooldowns on web, hangedman, etc. Once the things that counter or slow momentum are better balanced, balancing monks shouldn't be too difficult.

Without commenting on the merits of proposed idea, I would suggest you look back to report 349:

Estarra:

Some of these are old reports and in may cases I can't recollect exactly what our thought processes were, though we do write notes on most reports. That being said, I've included some comments.


CODE
Report 349:

Problem: Blackout is a debilitating affliction with only one cure: Allheale. Allheale's delay is very long. Further, there are a couple of skills that not only give blackout but give a -very long- blackout (8 seconds). So, once allheale balance is used, blackout is pretty much a shut-down except for diagnosing and trying to keep up with what the opponent has tried to slip in behind it (not counting timed instant-kill effects that don't show up on Diag at all).

Solution #1: Make "Focus Mind" a cure for blackout (you regather your thoughts and pull yourself together). However, make it the -very last- thing cured by Focus Mind, so if other afflictions are being piled on they will be cured first. Using blackout by itself won't be as effective obviously, but this way it requires a bit of prep-work to make it "stick".
Solution #2: Give all blackout a cap (at somewhere between 2-4s).


Many of our combat expert admin were flat out against this, and coders were insofar that it would cut into a lot of skillsets that would then need to be rebalanced. It was remarked that this was only looking solely from the viewpoint of group combat. Thus, it was rejected.

Seems like adjusting balance loss skills would have too far-reaching in that it has the potential to cut into a lot of skillsets and possibly cause other imbalances that would need subsequent reports to envoy. In other words, create more problems than it would solve.

EDIT: Problems with acrobatics seems a narrow enough focus to be addressed through our current envoy system, and therefore not require a special report.

Jello:
Put cooldowns on web, hangedman, etc. Once the things that counter or slow momentum are better balanced, balancing monks shouldn't be too difficult.

Like moving? The biggest hinderance for me, fighting in groups, is where the target moves or dies. I'm not a great combatant, but I feel like unless I use Hyperactive I am permanently stuck at low level momentum because of that -2 penalty. Conversely, that penalty does nothing to balance 1v1 combat. Nor am I able to just wait around, as often by the time the target has re-entered (or not at all, in the case of deaths), speaking from experience, my momentum has already dwindled to a negligible point anyways. My belief is that this, combined with the lack of incentive and variety in things other than grapple, makes group combat undesirable, as I feel like I contribute absolutely nothing whatsoever to my team with my 1mo and 2mo grapple forms that do basically nothing. This perhaps is due to my approach to nekotai combat. /shrug. Point is, I'm often not hindered by anything

Janalon:


Without commenting on the merits of proposed idea, I would suggest you look back to report 349:



Seems like adjusting balance loss skills would have too far-reaching in that it has the potential to cut into a lot of skillsets and possibly cause other imbalances that would need subsequent reports to envoy. In other words, create more problems than it would solve.

EDIT: Problems with acrobatics seems a narrow enough focus to be addressed through our current envoy system, and therefore not require a special report.

I understand what you're saying, but this strikes me as a special case. The whole class has their offense hinge upon things that were put in before they were even conceived of. It's a real problem IMHO.

My immediate thought Janalon was "Oh my god stop formatting your kata tables like that"... cant we just use

Momentum Max ka
1 250
2 350
3 450
4 750
5 1000

Even if the formatting dies, you get the idea. Instead of using those nasty arrows. 0 momentum is the same as being at 1. Done!

Second thought was:
Increasing the number of levels of momentum will either mandate altering costs (which will actually increase our number of problems when you do things like introduce -3 mo) or it will do little that we cannot do more efficiently without adding levels I think. This is speculative and I have concluded my "report" version will focus on skills, as we can selectively alter some skills or add a couple to fill in cracks.

As a note, man Shofangi have so few skills (4 grapples, and 4 enders).

Anyway, back to my workin!

I have my own ideas, and actually...I think it's a sweet fix all away around, although it only gets half of the problems. It doesn't address the lack of versatility, unfortunately, but it does solve some of the over arching problems.

Expect them soon when I get everything organized.

We have like 3 reports now, should we have narrowed this in monkish first?

Nah, we can conduct more swiftly here I think. Although we have some really odd versions in some cases.

I am curious as to see this report that gets... half of everything? Is this a mechanics change or a skills change? Janalons is mostly mechanics, mine is mostly skills. Ideally we would combine the two but first let me finish my fine tune tweaking! Will post it afternoon. Bed time!

Sorry about my tables. I love tables and charts as a means to express the "narrative" behind the numbers. Especially with comparison of data.

ANYWAY, as Sahmiam has said, momentum fix only address half the problems. Reworking kata action penalties to work under a tweaked momentum system is the other half. To further the conversation, let me help define the language of monk balance.

MOMENTUM

Is the system that controls the max ka ceiling (i.e. how many actions and mods can be combined at a certain time). I've explained my logic in a previous post, but here is my the revision that I have settled upon:

0>1mo 250 ka
1>2mo 250 ka
2>3mo 250 ka
3>4mo 500 ka
4>5mo 500 ka
5>6mo 750 ka
6>7mo 750 ka
7>8mo 1000 ka
8>9mo +1500 ka (needs boost)

Since this proposal suggests compresses kata forms required to move through momentum from five to four, we can all begin to standardized what afflictions should be available at what time. With my previous post in mind, I'd love to see others take up variations on the same theme to find the most optimal mix of momentum and max ka.

KA WEIGHT

If momentum determines the ceiling, then an action or mod's ka weight determines the floor, or how early an action can be introduced. It also determines the strength of actions and how many mods can be stacked at any given time. Since my momentum proposal works around an existing momentum structure, no read weight adjustments are necessary. This saves a ton of time and work. I would ask that no ka weights be adjusted downward. I'd like to see that work solved through individual envoy reports so changes can be vetted and monitored over time.

However, there is one change that I would like to see made: reduce kata spec momentum gain actions from 350 to either 250 or 150 ka, but increase power cost from 1p to either 2p or (or more realistically) 3p. This way monks have a cost-appropriate action to move through momentum if they find themselves stuck.

MOMENTUM REQUIREMENT

Raising ka weight alone can be problematic, as you can literally out-price an action from being effectively combines with other actions and mods. You cannot balance on ka weight alone. There is an interesting mechanic in place to require the monk gain a certain level of momentum before the affliction can be delivered.

The skill also helps prevent action spamming certain actions IF they are also associated with a momentum loss penalty (mentioned next). I would leave it to each guild to determine if ka weight is overpriced, and offer lowered ka to be adjusted against momentum requirements and loss as the balancing factor. For example, check out REPORT 698.

All momentum requirements will need to be readjusted with the newly proposed momentum system in mind. I would guard the special envoy against any plans to lower ka costs with introducing momentum requirements. Too many changes at once. Leave that work to the month-to-month envoy reports.

MOMENTUM LOSS

Momentum loss is perhaps the single most used penalty in all of monk-dom. At one time, every action in Nekotai had an associated momentum loss penalty (eep). Under the old system, this approach was extremely inflexible due to very little wiggle room and the precipitous drop from 4mo to 3mo. Under the new system, I would hope that momentum gain and loss would be much more fluid since we provide a more linear taper to middle momentum.

All momentum loss requirements would need to be readjusted with the newly proposed momentum system in mind. This should be done with momentum requirements in mind.

Take for example the Sprongk action to double curing balance time. This action would be ideal at middle momentum where Nekotai are trying to stick their herb based afflictions. The skill is appropriately priced at 250 weight, meaning it would most likely be used at 3-4mo with angknek and without speed mod, and more reliably at 5-6mo.

Under the old system, the action already receives a -1mo penalty. There is no direct port from a 5mo system to an 8mo system. Would you double cost to -2mo, or keep the action at -1mo? You could make it -1mo with a 5mo requirement (meaning it couldn't be spammed more than three times). Either way, this should give you a taste of the conversations to come.

POWER COST

There is very little in the way of power cost associated with kata actions (right now, only for momentum boost actions). I'd like to see a few more.

Power cost would prevent the action from being spammed in a hyperactive strategy, and would be another means mitigate kata action costs given the other alternatives of ka weight, momentum requirement, and momentum loss.

Without going into too much detail, I'd like to at least theorize whether we should introduce slight power costs to regen afflictions and adjust penalties in the other areas. This is especially true for the setups where regen aff prone spamming or other soft locks occur.

CONCLUSION

Once a revamp of the momentum system is decided upon, it comes time to readjust kata action penalties on a guild-to-guild basis. Lots of tedious work, but one that could only be achieved through a special report.

Power costs for monks definitely need to happen. During my albeit brief and incompetent time as a Shofangi, I was shocked at what was possible to achieve without spending a drop of power. In fights, my power either went to green, hyperactive or scissorflip. The offense really requires no power whatsoever, which makes it unique in Lusternia as far as I can tell.

That's inaccurate, actually. For the Shofangi specifically, they require little use of the boost mechanism. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Shofangi power-insta was not viable for a very long time, and was largely ignored for practical use. For the other guilds, however, Tahtetso/Ninjakari require power for their instas. Nekotai require it for their greenlock.

The monk lunge also costs 3 power.

The recent change to make +2mo cost power has also increased power usage for monks.

At top levels of combat, power is used constantly for the lunge and +2mo, and usage of the 5p boost is almost a requirement to reach end-fight goals for a Nekotai. I'm not sure how dependant on the instas Ninja/Tahtetso are, but both are viable, at least.