Base class balancing look-see

[Syveril]

I think a lot of the burst-type classes have suffered in favor of the long-term classes, with the advent of increased hp and glacious stones. Remember how awesome stances were? They're still cool, but everyone does the same thing; sit them out. It's not like you could flee anyway, cause you're probably battle locked, and fleeing takes so many rounds now that you're going to eat a stance if you don't have withdraw.

SM used to be an occasional equalizer for classes that were good at drawing things out (it even shows up on the class descriptions you see on the website), but it really hurts not to have sustained oomphf. Having a ton of kung fu attacks used to be pretty cool, but now it doesn't really mean anything unless your kung fu attacks have vanishingly short prevention times.

I'm not saying that the natural progression is wrong, but I'd like to see some of the natural imbalance being addressed. For example, a class's base hit/dam is largely irrelevant now (warlocks have one of the lowest base hit/dam, I believe) -- but it used to factor into footpads being accurate hitters. Where does that stand now? Perhaps footpads should derive more +hit from their dexterity than other classes. Barbarians could scale more strongly with +str (although their str gains have appeared to be balanced around the current system, so I don't know how it should be adjusted).

Anyway, I wanted to make a non-incendiary suggestion in the spirit of usefulness. =P I do end up with tons of ideas about Nodeka, and what keeps me playing more than anything is the sense that I can sometimes contribute to its improvement. Thanks for listening.

[Bihzad]

Remember how awesome stances were? They're still cool, but everyone does the same thing; sit them out.

=(

a class's base hit/dam is largely irrelevant now

Monk's have nice class bonuses, but, yeah, their hands can't keep up with SU weapons, as has been mentioned before.

Where have all the monks gone? I'm often the top-ranked monk on, and I'm only 33k rank. Something needs to be done with my class (especially Monk of the Mystic).

After talking with some formerly large monks, these are a few of the suggestions I've heard:

1) Give monks hand eq.
2) Give monks new buffs to allow them to compete with other fighter classes.
3) Remove nullified regeneration from radical defiance.
4) Increase vicious fist's damage output.
5) Scrap qekon-oku. Replace it with an ability allowing monks to choose what kind of damage their hands do (my favorite--thanks Hex).
6) Decrease prevention times on stance of symmetry and annulment stance and increase their duration.

[Gideous]

Monks are actually pretty powerful, imo.

[grimm]

Originally Posted by Bihzad

=(
5) Scrap qekon-oku. Replace it with an ability allowing monks to choose what kind of damage their hands do (my favorite--thanks Hex).

Wow that's an awesome suggestion. Be very interesting to see monks get that.

I'm up for this!
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