Useful? Yes. Really useful!

Balanced? Yes. It has a time limit and I think it costs 10 power (if not, it should)

Trans worthy? Nope. It's not really that incredible. Then again, puissance never struck me as powerful and Harmony isn't all that great.

It is a touchy subject here. Is Veil worth having? Is it worth the trans skill slot?

Veil weak? Not the best trans guild skill to have ever graced the servers, sure, but weak? No. Give yourself a gem of cloaking and you're 100% untraceable in the UV, impossible to track at range, and if you scope out the area you're going to raid before you start bashing the kill button, you can make yourself difficult to find anywhere. I can raid Prime Serenwilde and be difficult to track without veil. The gloriousness of hiding with veil would be awesome. As would raiding without a demesne. Ahem.

I have never seen Akhangooshkrak used, not even in an arena fight.

I deal with (well fail to deal with) veil probably every day.

I bet if you took a poll of harmony monks they would swap Akhangooshkrak for veil in a second.

And then you could allow one person with veil up to scry someone else who had veil up.

The only thing monks need to spend power on that I know of is rushing, which leaves plenty for veil. Perhaps this will change but right now if I had the skill the power cost would not limit my usage of it one bit.

Veil is annoying. It lasts for 5 minutes for something between 3-8p, can basically be used indefinitely since monks don't really use power, and there is no skill to counter it.

Hey beautiful, its really not that bad, and yes it could be used indefinately but highly unlikely. And there is a counter, one that Celest has many of... But you need a demigod.

I could handle scan noticing them, since it won't give a room name and it doesn't seem to work indoors. But for their trans skill which I think it is 10p not 3-8p, it really isn't that bad. Like Estarra said earlier somewhere, we all (the monk comittee) members, well some of us, thought it completely sucked in theory. That was until it was tested and found out it is useful, but not too useful.

You could also think of it this way. We all wanted a phase skill, Estarra said "hells no". Now I know you played other IREs with phase skills, and imagine if Veil phased us like Phase works for Sabateurs or Serpents..... I think if you weigh out veil compared to phase, most people would likely agree that veil is a better choice to introduce to Lusternia than a true phase skill (more powerful than ghost or that dreamweaving crap).

Oh, yeah PM me, so I can tell ya more

You know what would be a good Trans skill or at least a 66% fabled skill? A combination of a rushing and kata-like skill that only dealt with movements and manipulations that would normally have no balance or equilibrium loss. A Stealth Monk could fill his body with power and move at lightning fast speed. A "Flash" technique.

To explain myself, a technique that allows you to move really fast, perform certain actions at lightning speed and have little or no damage as well as no hindrance. With say, one power per action and you have to set this actions beforehand.

Like this

Say, Malarious and Ixion died to Guards in Celestia at the Nexus and we want their corpses back to immolate. Revan, as a trans Stealth guy could use the UBBER Flash technique like this: "FLASH North, North, Get corpse, Get corpse, South, South" would cost you 6 power and would allow you to move north twice, get to corpses and head back south twice, no hasty message and probably no hindering due being quick enough that almost no Guard hit him.

If you think it's too much, how about this. You can also PIERCE through any kind of barrier for an aditional power. Even SLIP through the attacks of guards and maybe other effects (like demesne) with more power. So Revan would then do "FLASH North, Pierce, North, Slip, Get Corpse, Get Corpse, Pierce, South, South." For a total of 9 Power. Know that you have to plan your movement in advance and any miscalculation could be a waste of power and probably even death. Add if you want a 4, 5 or 6 equilibrium loss after flashing.

That's a great skill to have and worth Trans. It even goes with the "movement" aspect of Stealth

I'm pretty sure Veil was 5 power for ~5 minutes. Though, that's only when I was using it on the test server.

I'm sure it's 10 power now.

1 power per 30 seconds is quite awesome too!

I checked and veil is 5 power, not 10.

So it's 5 power spent, for 5 minutes of time.

Edit: As an aside, I haven't made use of it yet myself. So I don't know how 'powerful' it is. However, it doesn't really sound too bad to me. I mean it is of a stealth skillset, not having some sort of actual truly useful normal sneaky ability would seem silly (I guess there is masquerade, but that does rely on some other factors than ones inherent ability for stealth too, like having a mask).

I mean, it kind of ruins the whole concept of stealth in the first place if you can just go *scries and knows where they are*. I understand it would be kind of annoying to deal with, so maybe some sort of circumstance can be created as per how far they can go when using it. (Like wearing off after an aggressive action, or even losing veil time per every aggressive action they take). I however don't think it sounds real fitting to be adding in ways to scry them or simply know where they are otherwise. Otherwise it kind of goes against the entire concept of stealth in the first place.

Right now you can kill anyone and anything without it dropping. With only a need for rushing and given how fast power comes back to the prompt, with people who are capable of abusing it having no real power limitations, it essentially has no drawback.

Well to be fair, if you are killing a person, then they know you are there and I imagine they know who you are as well. So veil doesn't even matter quite as much at that distinct moment (unless/until you run), mobs on the other hand I'd imagine would be different though.

I just mostly think that there shouldn't be aims so much to make it countered by knowing where they are (scry-able in some fashion), but if anything more limited on what they can do to keep the theme of stealth and make it still very useful for escape, for sneaking in and etc. but not quite as 'abusable for killing things' as is being said. However, I haven't used it particularly yet, so I shouldn't say too much on the circumstances of it and it's use. That is just my opinion though, that 'if' (this being a key word, I don't know if it really is) it would seem too powerful and end up aimed towards being changed, that they don't actually remove the true stealth aspect of it because that kind of counters the usefulness of stealth and its concept in the first place.

hello Mr. Misconception! Veil is 5p for 3 minutes. That is all

3 minutes? then they ought to change what it says in the ability information if that is so.

Edit: I tested it myself, to verify what Revan said, and despite what the ab file says about it lasting 5 minutes, it does in fact only last 3.

So even though it claims it's 5 minutes for 5 power, it's only 3 minutes for 5 power.

Harmony is great for single man raiding becaue of the wind spirit mantra. Even if you get caught, you can wind, touch cubix, wind, and be back in Celestia regardless of entanglements. That said, nerfing cubix just means we start using pyramid.. Little slower, some set up, but it boils down to the same thing.

That said, there are plenty ways to deal with a cubix user, ranging from stun to ambushing at the fulcrux. You can catch them, and for 2000 credit price, it isn't _that_ bad to deal with. Annoying, hell yeah. Frustrating? Yep. Really effective way to kill angels/demons with a single man raid against defenders? Nope. Best I've gotten is around 5 mobs between ripple, defenders, and your normally hostile demons. Most just bugger out when having to deal with an actual threat, which to be honest, is a choice the used credits to have.

Some solutions would be for some method of making demons/angels temporarily invulnerable or strong enough that they will not be slain before defenders arrive in a reasonible fashion. Also, to the extreme, maybe a power to stop all planar movement on the plane? Or, least, add to the time it takes to move?

Just throwing out ideas, I don't really have a problem with the current system, but I'm biased. Personally, I feel for 2000 credits we can live with it. Only time cubix becomes a problem is in the hands of people commited to use it.

Just give it a cooldown or like was said earlier, have an orb or something that causes a stacking debuff of time on use that resets every hour. 0s, 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, etc.

Could someone remind me what the "wind spirit mantra" does exactly? From this it sounds like some kind of tumble? Any kind of "always escape" skill is going to cause huge frustration for the defending side. Combined with a cubix that just seems like something that would drive me crazy.

So a good harmony monk would never be pinned down while a good stealth monk would be very hard to find (and semi-hard to pin down)?

The reason why I suggested the diminishing returns on the cubix is precisely because it costs so much. It would only take affect in a specific area and only if you continued to use it to escape. You would still have instant movement that was far better than any other player. It would also never affect you if you were just out hunting and were jumped over and over. It would only be put in place to limit annoyance raiding.

Ask Lorick. Wind mantra is MUCH more difficult to fight against than tumble.

Yes, but in gaining wind tumble you get:

See generic shrouded movement.
+1 Room? Maybe +2
Increased chance to detect illusions

For your whole harmony skillset.