[Exxy]

Personally I had a completely different direction than you on where I would like to take the skills and how they interact with Ki. If Neus would allow, I'll throw up a (very) rough draft in the next 2-3 days (if I don't die from work, car dealerships, RP and over-saturation of caffeine.

Well, other than dying, I failed to write an in-depth Redux (and I won't post the draft as-is, because I imagine you're part-way into it already-- maybe) but I'll throw a few more points of concern into the mix that I failed to mention in previous posts.


Known Issues and Concerns

* = Attack Scaling for Offensive Skills is split into -many- different types. Strength, Celerity, Skill, Defense and Faith all play into different ones (this is basically a different Skill that dictates part of your damage for every Offensive Skill excluding Dense Thunder). This is probably one of the bigger hindrances to them out of everything and tends to leave them drawing on their Base Class Skills more often than the Promotion (aside from when the effects of Dense Thunder and Terra Strike are applicable).

This along with a poor Utility when you account for what the Skills offer to do (in comparison to their Base Class) leaves Monk in a very bad spot unless you're trying to crit-stack with Basic Attacks or drawing from one or several of the non-Offensives.

* = Many complain about how Ki Management is an issue; while this is true to a degree, I believe the main issue lies in that Monk has little going for it in terms of Ki Costs for Skills (as in not getting bang-for-buck) and no real Main Class Skills (as in compared to other Class Branches, you're better off running one of them as Main currently). So often times, you wind up Sub-Classing Monk in the current Meta (if even using it at all) and miss out on the extra Ki from Spirituality as a result.

This could either be alleviated by removing the Main-Preferred from Spirituality (this would lessen the handicap without solving any of the real issues but is a semi-decent band-aid) or by implementing new Skills that would either be heavily Main-Preferred or Main-Only outside of the ones that fall into (of which, I have no ideas for - sorry). Although with this said, I believe a rework of how Ki works would be a better solution (with the amount you can receive per-Turn and from Power-Up being adjusted or the consumption from the Skills' Ki Triggers being less taxing).

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At least, these seem to be the biggest areas to me and I'm aware of others complaining/commenting about these same areas in the recent past (relative to the past 2-3 months). Regardless, here's to hoping it gets a little more love.