Sympathy for the Devils

The eternal battlefield. Are you too scared to take on the devils on their home turf? Leave your Epic excuses behind, stop being a baby and go fight for REAL.

I don’t know of many guildmates that bother to hang around in the Devil Battlefield much nowadays, especially with the Epic content in the Forgotten Realms.

But there is still much to be gained there between levels 18 and 24, especially for a Monk.

Before the Menace of the Underdark expansion, the Tower of Despair raid was a popular run, even for PuGs.

To run this raid required a character to complete the four flagging quests: “Genesis Point,” “A New Invasion,” “Bastion of Power,” and “Sins of Attrition.” You also needed to make sufficient runs through the two standalone quests, “Wrath of the Flame” and “Weapons Shipment,” to farm for four ingredients to make the special Boots of Anchoring, needed by melee classes in particular to avoid getting banished back to Eberron by one of the bosses during the raid itself.

Further, in comparison to other Level 19 quests, Shavarath enemies are demons and devils. They’re often filled with immunities and require at least Good-aligned weapons, never approach you short-manned and have bags of hit points to wear you down.

No wonder fewer people run this series.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, especially with Epic questing.

Reason 1: Yugoloth Potions

Today, the most important thing your characters can gain from the  Shavarath quests are Yugoloth Favor Potions. As the name suggests, you gain access to a special vendor when you have sufficient Yugoloth favor. This means you’ll need to run, at minimum, three of the four quests on Elite.

I found that you can leave “A New Invasion” on Hard and complete the others on Elite for sufficient favor, as the end-fight with “Invasion” is a claustrophobic nightmare of trapped floors and a very angry Pit Fiend, chasing you and chaining you to the floor to disembowel you on Elite difficulty.

So what’s special about the “Yugo potions?” They raise your ability scores, a +2 bonus that stacks with anything, including the DDO Store elixirs.

The downside to Yugo potions is that they also have side effects. For Monks, the four potions they’d favor might be the Essence of Betrayal (+2 DEX), Essence of Desire (+2 CON), Essence of Despair (+2 WIS) and Essence of Fury (+2 STR).

In addition to the ability score change, the Essence of Betrayal will also increase your Sneak Attack bonus but decrease your general attack bonus. The Essence of Desire adds a stacking +20 HP but slows your melee attacks by 5%. The Essence of Despair adds +4 to your Natural Armor bonus but saps -4 from your Reflex saves, while the Essence of Fury adds +8 to your Will saves against Fear while sapping your general Will saves to everything else by -4.

In Epic play, getting your WIS modifier and your STR and CON as high as you can is critical. The Yugo potions, in combination with the DDO Store potions, give you +4 to any ability score. The Yugo potions last 15 minutes.

Reason 2: Incredible Potential rings and their companion items

Any ring from the end-rewards of the Tower of Despair raid can be unlocked to show its “incredible potential.” For unarmed Monks, this means you can unlock a ring’s ability to add Holy Burst or other elemental burst effects to your attacks. Since a Shintao Monk can already train to bypass Silver DR, you become a natural Harry Beater with a Holy Burst ring.  Again, this works for unarmed Monks only. However, other effects of the rings, from spell power boosts to elemental absorption to Insightful stat bonuses, can also be available to any class.

It takes a while to make this work. First, get a ring from the raid. The drop rate isn’t high. Some in the party may be looking for the specific set ring for their class and choose instead to let others in the party to roll for their lucky allotment. All rings are Bound to Character on Acquire so you can’t trade them outside of the raid chest.

The rings are also Exclusive. If you happen to gain a second Monk set ring of the same name, you can’t keep it if you already have one in your inventory. I’d be biased and have any Monks roll for it first in party.

Each time you run the raid, you’ll also get a Shavarath War Trophy. You need 9 of these special ingredients, plus a properly imbued Shard of Great Power to unlock the ring.

Getting the class set item (for Monks, the Shintao Cord, Nyoko’s Necklace or Oremi’s Necklace) that matches the ring is a bonus but not required. You’ll find these items drop in the chests through all the flagging quests.

Teacher Syncletica has been the luckiest, owning an unlocked Kyosho’s Ring and its Shintao Cord. Wearing both gives her unarmed Good or Evil DR bypassing in addition to the Holy Burst on her ring.

Reason 3: Bragging Rights

The Devil Battlefield is, well, a battlefield. Nothing comes easy from a place that’s acquainted to eternal war. The mere victories of one adventurer mean nothing to those in Shavarath, unless you happen to come to their turf and kick their ass. A lot.

Which is exactly what GamerGeoff and his Gamer Girl recently did. Every quest, on Elite. They brought in level 20 and 21 characters. Hardly “Epic” characters that used strategy and the right firepower to complete. I know of many people that are horrified, and I mean horrified, to complete the Weapons Shipment at any difficulty, much less Elite. For characters like Szyncletica, it’s generally a turkey shoot. Lynncletica sees it as a good workout.

And I took Kiricletica through the whole Battlefield myself weeks before, dead-solo with no hirelings (except in one required quest, Genesis Point) and beat everything (that could find me while stealthy) on Elite difficulty to get her sufficient Yugo privileges.

Sure, few of us enjoy the devils. They’re tough. They’re meant to be.

But defeating the tough enemies, not getting an easy out…isn’t that what we play to do?

Go kick lots of Shavarath ass, or go home.

Update: Teacher Mernom also noted in the comments that there are alchemical ability score potions you can trade, using collectibles, from several vendors in House Deneith, that can also raise your ability scores, albeit very briefly (2 minutes). The Potion of Reason and the Potion of Health are two examples. You don’t need to go to Shavarath to get them, necessarily, unless the collectable you need happens to spawn there. I’ve played the game for over 4 years and never knew these existed. Thanks!

A Monastic Video Showcase

Please stand by.

After posting videos demonstrating the Heroic level and Epic Shiradi Shuricannon, I was reminded of times where differing opinions at least or flame wars at most occur on the DDO forums on what build or what class(es) and abilities will do this and that.

One thread long ago on the Henshin Mystic turned that way but it caught my ire because the dissenting poster, all the while stating that unarmed damage beats quarterstaff damage, also admitted to having not played a Mystic.

Now, I don’t claim in the slightest to creating or possessing characters that are the optimal for anything except for how I like to play. But my Monks don’t suck outright and do a good job of the one thing they’re meant to do: complete a quest or raid.

But I took offense to that poster because it was clear that their min-maxing multiclassing worldview completely dismissed the idea that something else could possibly work. I’m used to this with the Henshin Mystic. As I’ve said in past posts, I’m likely the only comprehensive resource so far (here and in The Book of Syncletica) on defining the Henshin Mystic class based on its enhancement tree, given it’s only been around for yet quite a year.

Rather than get into a debate of words, I realized I have to apply a social truism: “Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

So I’ll add some moving pictures–they’ll be worth hundreds of thousands of words.

Over the next few weeks I’ll add demonstration videos of the pure Ninja Spy, Henshin Mystic and Shintao Monk, each showing my interpretation of each class’s gameplay. Doing this also exposes my personal style, which you may or may not like.

I’ll choose a quest that illustrates their specialities. For a Shintao, it’ll be a brawling quest where undead, aberrations and extraplanar creatures roost. For a Ninja Spy, it may be a quest where a singular objective requires stealth, cunning and tactics to complete. Lastly, it will be Quintessica that will show what I think the developers had in mind, based on the class tree, of what a Mystic can do with a quarterstaff and their mystical ki powers.

Class trees are simply a launching point for players. There’s no point whatsoever in making a Mystic or any other class using only the racial tree and abilities from only one class tree. A Mystic or Shintao that adds in Shadow Veil for incorporeality miss-chance is going to stand a pounding better, as well as a Ninja Spy that adds in abilities from other trees to improve its attack or defense. None of my characters use only the abilities of their class tree.

That said, the purpose of the demo videos is to help new players decide what playstyle they might consider based on the class tree’s innate skills. It never means that a Shintao can’t use a bow or a Ninja Spy can’t use a staff or a Mystic not use handwraps. Versatility is important. However, effectiveness based on your skills makes sense economically for the action points you spend.

Most importantly, the videos can show what the class does flat out–a good illustrative video for players new to the Monk (the exact purpose of the Monk guide). Shintao Monks are self-healing stun-bot goddesses that are hard to kill. Ninja Spies can avoid half of an army to assassinate with deft blade work or unarmed fighting with a deadly skill set. And a Mystic can take on mobs like Neo takes on an army of Agent Smiths using a metal staff.

So, coming soon, I’ll finally make that video of Mystic Quintessica doing her “Burly Brawl.” Later, Lynncletica, the “Little Mountain” will go where Archons fear to tread, perhaps against an army of devils. Lastly, Kiricletica can represent the Ninja Spies somewhere.

If possible, these movies will get linked into their respective chapters in the Monk guide.

Much later, I’ll give the same treatment to the Elven Arcane Archer Monk and a Kensei Fighter I’m working on.

The Mystery of the Finishing Move

(Credit: Claudio Pozas)

I am not surprised, in my travels, on what monastic abilities are used more often than others.

By far, the most popular ability for most players is the feat, Stunning Fist, and for good reason.

But is that all there is to being a Monk? To stun things.

I say, “Nay, nay!”

My adventures with Kiricletica have allowed me to acquaint myself to the mystical powers inherent in the finishing moves available to all Monks. Since she plays completely alone, the solitude forced me to review and utilize anything I could do to gain an advantage against the hordes. Kiri may be a ninja, but the Conservation of Ninjutsu only goes so far.

A Primer on Finishing Moves

For those newer to Monks than others, a finishing move is a spell-like ability made by combining three ki attacks, often the elemental attacks from your training based on earth, wind, fire and water, which activates a specific attack or defense. Despite the name, a finishing move isn’t necessarily a “Finish him!” killing strike.

Once a chain is charged up, a special attack feat, Finishing Moves, changes its appearance to reflect the charged finisher, where then the Monk can activate it.

The Book of Syncletica lists all finishing moves for your technical review. Here, I’m going to highlight each finisher’s merits and why each should be used more often.

For those with some knowledge of the monastic arts, ask yourself: How many of these finishers have I used? How many did I forget existed, or what they did?

Foundational Finishers

All Monks can perform these four finishing moves, which are generated by using the same elemental ki attack three times in a row.

The Trembling Earth:  Long before any Monk can train in Improved Critical feats, this attack will raise an Monk’s critical hit multiplier. For unarmed attacks, this greatly increases potential damage. It’s also a great first-strike attack against mages since it inhibits their ability to cast spells for 30 seconds. Think of this move as your personal anti-magic cone. In fact, use it against a beholder to effectively make it powerless to hurt you.

The Gathering Storm: This finisher gives you, in effect, a concealment-like effect that is applied to the attacker rather than to yourself. By reducing the enemy’s chance to land attacks for 30 seconds, you are effectively using a Concealment ability. Combine this with true Concealment effects such as Blur (available for Shintao Monks through a later finisher) and you may increase your ability to attack more safely.

Breath of the Fire Dragon: This is an attack that emulates the spell, Burning Hands. It’s often good to destroy objects that require a fire attack when you might lack the STR to knock something down, such as a door. Unfortunately, the effect can be inconsistent in some locations where you should be able to use fire to complete a task but cannot (setting the tents on fire in “Undermine” “Siegebreaker” comes to mind). Great against trolls and icy creatures.

The Raging Sea: Enemy attacks are slowed by this finisher. Use it whenever you have a high attack speed enemy to cut down the damage rate to you and your party.

Light Finishers

Those that train in the Harmonious Balance philosophy will become Shintao Monks in principle. The Fists of Light, a new ki attack, is the keystone to these finishers, which create helpful buffs for you and your party. Of all the finishing moves, these five finishers certainly are most popular to others in a party.

These finishers only last 1 minute, but their effects (like Bard songs) cannot be dispelled, not even by a beholder.

Grasp the Earth Dragon: This finisher is popular in quests such as “The Dreaming Dark” and the raid “Tower of Despair” as it is the only anti-stun protection in the game.

Dance of Clouds: An easy way for a Monk to keep himself and his party with Blur at all times. Ki is regenerative, saving spell points from others.

Walk of the Sun: A great way to boost the saving throws of any in your party by 2. Stacks with everything. Rogues and trap-prone members of your party adore this move.

Aligning the Heavens: Arguably the most popular finisher, this one should be activated before a party begins mass buffs, as it reduces spell costs for all by 25% for 1 minute. I try to use this while in battle, especially when shrines are few and far between fights.

Healing Ki: This finisher is why Shintao Monks are extremely durable. This finisher is a mass-healing effect. It also activates any selected Elemental Curatives, which will remove blindness, curses, disease, or provide a Lesser Restoration to any party member in range. Healing amplification can amplify Healing Ki (and the Healing Curse vampiric effect  that a single Fists of Light attack generates) to the power of a Heal spell and beyond. A light Monk should be spamming this attack in raid battles to supplement healing and take a little work off the healers in the party.

Dark Finishers

Those that train in the Inevitable Dominion philosophy become Ninja Spies in principle. The Fists of Darkness is a keystone to these five finishers, all of which are attacking finishers. I’ve seen few ninjas I could identify that use any of these finishers, which is disappointing. Those players gravitate all too often to the ninja’s negative energy attack, Touch of Death, and a later ki assassination attack, Quivering Palm.

They underestimate these abilities. All of these require a Fortitude save equal to 10 + Monk level + WIS modifier. Finishers such as these is why experienced Monks know to pump WIS as high as they can to ensure that their attacks and finishers stick.

Pain Touch: Enemy is nauseated for up to 60 seconds. The Nauseated quality means that an enemy can’t do anything but move around: no attacks, defense, actions or spell casting. Only the Stinking Cloud spell shares this property. Nauseated is different from Sickened (what Troglodyte Stench does). Only a Heal or Panacea spell will remove this effect. This should be a common fight tactic against paralysis-immune enemies such as the Duergar.

Falling Star Strike: Enemy is blinded for up to 60 seconds. While ninjas later gain Flash Bang to daze and blind enemies for about 6 seconds, this finisher will blind for much longer. Against a single enemy, it’s a good way to flank and strike at them while they flail about in vain trying to hit you.

Karmic Strike: Produces a hit with critical threat at the expense of 20 hit points to the Monk, which cannot be reduced by effects such as damage resistance. Given that other training to improve critical threat are available, this might be a less than desirable move. Against tough named enemies that are resistant or immune, this finisher is better than nothing in trying to generate more damage. But it steals your own HP, so I would understand if most Monks skipped this finisher.

Freezing the Lifeblood: This move is, by far, the most under-utilized finisher that a ninja can make. You paralyze an enemy for up to 60 seconds. Now, unlike the Paralysis effect, which lasts only 6 or so seconds and has a low Will save to avoid or escape it, this move’s DC is as high as the Monk’s level and WIS modifier. This likely means that what you paralyze will stay paralyzed for the full minute, unable to move. Kiricletica uses this move a great deal. In stealth, behind a group of enemies all looking the other way, I use this finisher on every one I can. Often that means most or all of the entire mob is frozen; I slay them without a single counterattack. Freezing can be done at level 3, so even a low-level Monk can dominate the dungeon. It’s only condition is that the target must be humanoid. Aside from the obvious (humans, elves, halflings), the effect works on gnolls, orcs, kobolds, and lizardmen, but not monstrous humanoids or giants. Outsiders that look human (such as the Eladrin) are also immune. Red-named enemies are immune, but not others.

Touch of Despair: This move debilitates a target’s negative energy and fortification protections by 25%. A common finisher for ninjas, who follow it up with a Touch of Death attack that benefits from the negative energy vulnerability. But this finisher also activates one of the selected Ninjutsu moves, which will give a negative-level to all nearby enemies, inject or forcibly remove stacks of Ninja Poison, or suck a small amount of HP and ki from an enemy.

Special Finishers

With the proper prerequisites, any Monk can also perform four additional finishing moves in their highest levels of training. With Update 19, however, some finishers once restricted to a specific philosophy have now become effectively exclusive to one class tree.

Curse of the Void: Once a personal favorite attack for ninjas, this attack charmed enemies for up to 2 minutes. But since lesser Void Strike attacks disappeared with Update 19 for any Monk, only a Level 12 Henshin Mystic that trains the only Void Strike in the game, a tier 5 ability, can pull this off–and far slower than any past ninja.

Moment of Clarity: A finisher that I used in “The Shroud” to give brief Insight bonuses to attack and damage. But, like Curse of the Void, only a Mystic can perform this finisher.

Shining Star: The best named finisher (a pun on the song by the 70’s group, “Earth Wind and Fire”), this finisher uses (wait for it) the Earth, Wind and Fire ki attacks to form a finisher that (you guessed it) causes the target to dance: Your personal Otto’s Irresistible Dance. Unlike all other finishers, this move uses CHA (10 + Monk level + CHA modifier) as the DC. CHA is normally a complete dump stat for Monks, so wearing a Charismatic item or using a free tome if you find one is better to use this move.

The Henshin Mystic is All Masterful

With Update 19’s introduction of the Henshin Mystic, the game changed quite a bit on finishing moves. Before this update, no Monk could utilize more than 11 finishing moves (four Foundational, five Philosophical, 1 Void-based, and Shining Star).

But the Mystic gains the ability to add one special ki attack at level 12–a ki attack that’s opposite of the philosophy they chose at level 3. A Light-aligned Mystic can add a Dark attack, and a Dark Mystic adds a Light attack. These attacks then enable Mystics to complete the 5 additional finishers of their opposite philosophy, including Touch of Despair and Healing Ki.

Since the Mystic is the only class with Void Strike as well, this allows the Mystic to perform both Void based finishers.

As such, the Mystic can perform all 17 finishing moves.

The question you should ask yourself (be a ninja, Shintao or Mystic) is whether you’re going to push beyond your mere mastery of one or two finishers, and know what and when to use at the given time.

A Monk that uses only a few finishers is like a Wizard that casts only a Wall of Fire.

Update 20: The Half-Elf Inflatable Tank

Half-elves lose a key ability to being a durable light tank. But there’s a difference between a light tank and a tank that’s way too light.

Update: A poster noted that I was caught by Turbine Doublespeak Syndrome. The issue here would involve a Half-Elf (who gets the racial abilities of Improved Recovery, no matter the class) who takes Monk levels and then chooses Half-Elf Dilettante  Monk and then attempts to use the Dilettante Special Ability selection to gain the identically-named Improved Recovery options from there. To avoid people gaining triple amping using the Shintao line, the devs restrict the Shintao line (since all the cores add 5%) if you try to get around this trick. This makes sense.

So ignore this rambling in the post, which I will leave as a testament to anyone who later tells me that I post and don’t admit to being wrong. I was wrong.

A quick note as we all peruse through the changes of Update 20.

I noticed new language in some enhancement trees, designed to keep players from wasting action points by choosing abilities that are redundant to or conflict with something else from their class feats or other enhancement tree. The developers call these “Antirequisites.”

One caught my eye right away: The first Shintao Monk ability, “Bastion of Purity,” has a disheartening new antirequisite: By taking it, you cannot choose Half-Elf Improved Recovery I or II abilities.

I took several sips of coffee this morning to figure out why the change was made.

Note that Update 19 reduced racial healing amplification options to only Humans and Half-Elves, and left what was the old “Monk Improved Recovery” boosts split up into the Shintao core enhancements. Taking all Shintao cores will give you 30% amplification. If you aren’t either of these races, racial healing amplification is closed to you.

Frankly, this means that only a Human and their three tiers of Improved Recovery get the maximum healing amplification as a Shintao Monk. Half-Elves cannot use their options, even if they favor their human side, if I read this change correctly and didn’t miss other adjustments.

The only reason I could fathom to this change is that Half-Elf dilettantes, particularly the Cleric one, allows self-healing through wands and scrolls. Maybe the combined use of racial improved recovery and the dilettante seemed overpowered to the developers when used by Shintao characters.

As it is, my two Half-Elves are all Ninja Spies anyway. Both have maxed their racial Improved Recovery but also can use wands and scrolls for healing and buffing. They all rely on stealth and miss chance effects to reduce damage and do not lead a party except to scout.

Lynncletica is fated to be only a Human since she requires the maximum available healing amp that can only come from being a human Shintao Monk. Same is true for Syncletica, although I have some thoughts on her fate for a third life.

If you have a Half-Elf Shintao Monk, you’ll likely see a message indicating that your enhancements have been partially or fully reset. Sorry.

What annoys me is that the Shintao enhancement tree favors Mountain Stance too strongly. I love that the tree works as a tanking stance. But there are different ways to assist in light tanking and maximum defense isn’t necessarily the only way. We Monks survive by using ki and not plate and gear to regenerate ourselves.

My newest Monk, a Drow, has no healing amplification (save equipping her Jidz-Tet’ka bracers and using Fire Stance). But she’s a slippery devil with lots of miss-chance that is increasingly hard to hit, anyway.

If you’ve seen any other nerfing of enhancements, especially if they’re Monk related and/or have affected your characters, drop me a line.

Update: If you’re the kind of reader that reads only the end of a post, go back to the start. This only affects a specific min-max attempt by taking a dilly of the same class you that you are.

Enhancements Alpha: Shintao Monk

In the first part, we looked at how Humans fare in the new enhancements tree alpha recently shown on Lammania.

Next, let’s look at how the Shintao Monk fares as a tree-based prestige.

The interesting and potentially useful advantage to the class tree system, overall, is that it provides a cafeteria-style selection. You aren’t limited to only abilities from one class tree. A Monk can pick enhancements from any three to form many diverse characters with interesting gameplay results.

However, there is something gravely off in the class trees. This doesn’t affect just Shintao but the class itself.

Monk Stances Changed to Auto-granted Feats

This is, to me, a terrible change. As I looked through the class trees, I realized that the various elemental stances (Adept, Master, Grandmaster) weren’t in any of the class trees, as they are in the live version. I found them, eventually, sitting in the Feats tab.

In the current framework, you had to carefully select your elemental stance enhancements with the limited 80 AP. It was possible to have all four Grandmaster styles at a sacrifice to other enhancements such as Void Strike or a fully completed Prestige track. No more. In the alpha, every single elemental form is granted to you as feats, not enhancements, at specific levels.

This overpowers the Monk. One of my most powerful characters is an “Avatar,” which has mastered every Grandmaster style. Building Quintessica put limits on some Prestige advancements but gear and gameplay offset this quite well.

By giving all Monk elemental styles, it overpowers the class since these abilities augment ability scores, skills, and defenses greatly. It also throws out what little (but enjoyable) role-playing philosophy that was present in choosing a style. Effectively, everyone’s an “Avatar,” and that’s frankly not realistic.

Monk stance effects are special, stacking with all other buff, item and spell effects for skills, feats and abilities. That means that all the new enhancements make a Monk far more powerful than it probably should.

Sure, you could only play one style. Yet how does this limit your character’s power?

I understand why these were moved as developers would have had to add the advancement tree in all the class trees, which would be impractical.

So why not give Monk stances as selectable special feat slots given at specific levels and with the same ability score requirements? Elemental Feats, it could say. A player could add a new school or improve something else in the Feat tree, but still have a limitation. Perhaps moving the Void Strike enhancements here would help since there’s a serious design problem with that as well.

Taking more Void Strikes or elemental stances would give balance as you can take all of one or the other, not both, as it is on the live server. While you must take the feat, you can always use the feat trainer to swap it out (which is more expensive than retraining enhancements but keeps a bit of a limit in place while allowing some flexibility).

Of all the changes under consideration, let’s hope that Monk stances don’t stay as shown in the alpha.

Shintao Monk

The Shintao Monk currently is still one of the most resilient character builds, able to outlast, outgun and, if necessary, outrun their enemies, and using fewer resources than any other class, thanks to ki. The alpha has boosted the Shintao’s defensive and offensive abilities–at the price of the Prestige class’s theme, it’s flavor, it’s role-play feel.

Core Abilities: Bastion of Purity, Protection from Tainted Creatures, Iron Hand, Argent Fist, Touch the Void Dragon, To Seek Perfection

• CON: Bastion of Purity replaces Monk Improved Recovery and is only found in the Shintao tree. That means that if you’re a non-human, non-Half-Elf, Ninja or Henshin, you’re completely SOL for any kind of enhancement or class-based healing amplification, period. A Human or Half-Elf non-Shintao can get the similar Human and Monk Improved Recovery, but no others.
• Protection from Tainted Creatures gives a general buff against some effects, but this core item is more useful for the first level of unarmed DR metal bypassing for Byeshk defenses.
• Iron Hand just provides Cold Iron unarmed DR bypassing as did its predecessor in Shintao II live.
• Argent Fist improves the Tainted saves but adds the popular Silver DR unarmed bypass of Shintao III live, where the Shintao’s body is effectively a living, unarmed metalline weapon.
• CON: Touch the Void Dragon is an ill-named new effect that expends a Meditation turn for a nastily uber boost to all ability scores for one minute. This is a panic button that works like the Madstone or Rage effects, but it seems really overpowered, especially in combination with the auto-granted stances. (I say “ill-named” because this ability has nothing to do with any Void elemental attacks.)
• CON: To Seek Perfection seems thrown-in. You gain +2 to WIS and lose any penalties to a tier 5 enhancement called Meditation of War. I think this and similar high-level core abilities replace the heroic Capstones. If this is the case, we lose the enhanced ki effect and bonuses to Concentration here for Shintao students (it appears in the Henshin Mystic tree, to be discussed soon).

Tier 1:  Elemental Curatives, Reed in the Wind, Defensive Strikes, Ki Shout, Exemplar

• PRO (mostly): Elemental Curatives are the same spell-like abilities that are available to Harmonious Balance students: Difficulty at the Beginning, Lifting the Veil, Restoring the Balance, and The Receptive Earth. This is a select-one item where you can select others in higher tiers. What’s changed isn’t a bad idea: Your Healing Ki finishing move (in addition to its mass Heal effect) also activates any and all of these curatives as you get them. In battle, this can be awesome to heal, remove curses, blindness, disease and apply a lesser restoration all at once with a single finisher. There are two problems, however: Are the curatives now a mass effect or do you have to select a target? Also, using the curative now is FAR more expensive in terms of ki, since you need maybe 30-40 ki available just for a low-level use as you grind out your finisher.
• Reed in the Weed sounds thrown-in, especially since Monks had naturally received a good Dodge bonus as part of their class. It’s not a bad idea to have an improved chance to miss physical attacks. It’s just not spectacularly inspiring here and should be available to all Monks.
• PRO and CON: Defensive Strikes a toggled Monk stance that trades offense for defense. It looks to be a great option for tanking Monks. It does seem to be steep in prerequisites, however. As well, this seems to support a theme in these trees that Monks are unarmed bludgeons that need to be less swishy, versus a lightweight fighter that has superior evasive and Dodge. In other words, how does this differ a Monk from a Fighter?
• PRO: Ki Shout shows that the devs are looking to improve a Monk’s melee effectiveness by using Concentration as an ersatz skill to help intimidate. I’m all for this as tanker Monks have had to sink double-points into the Intimidate skill and use Earth Stance to gain some traction here.
• CON: Exemplar (up to +3 in Heal and Intimidate, and up to 10% additional Threat generation) is a complete waste of an enhancement slot. This isn’t worth the points at all.

Tier 2: Elemental Curatives, Smite Tainted Creature, Iron Skin, Elemental Ki Strikes, Conditioning

• Smite Tainted Creature is identical to its live counterpart in Shintao II.
• PRO: Iron Skin adds what seems to be stacking PRR to a Monk. Great promise for tanking. Hopefully the PRR bonuses in Mountain Stance remain to add to these damage reduction effects.
• PRO and CON: Elemental Ki Strikes are the optional ki attacks available through each elemental stance but with some new styles and changes. Eagle Claw Attack (Improved Destruction effect x2 and +2[W] damage, Fists of Iron (+3 [W] damage now!), Knock on the Sky (deflects damage and +1[W]) and Unbalancing Strike (same as the original). While very attractive, the problem I have with these is that they are found in two trees: Shintao and Ninja Spy. That’s a waste of good enhancement slots that ninjas or Shintao could opt for something else. One or the other need the same tree; not both.
• PRO: Conditioning isn’t anything bad as it gives more Concentration and HP. It’s more like the Animal Paths (now living on the Henshin Mystic tree), specifically, the Way of the Patient Tortoise.

Tier 3: Elemental Curatives, Jade Strike, Dismissing Strike, Wisdom/Constitution

• Jade Strike is identical to its live version.
• CON: Dismissing Strike, which banishes on a failed save, recharges slowly and thus hardly useful or  rarely relied on by anyone I’ve partnered. Banishing handwraps aren’t that rare. A better ability could be added here, or a better effect.
• CON: Wisdom/Constitution is thrown-in. It’s clear that the devs didn’t have anything better to add to this slot.

Tier 4: Elemental Curatives, Tomb of Jade, Instinctive Defense, Wisdom/Constitution

• Tomb of Jade remains the same awesome punch as the live version.
• PRO: Instinctive Defense is interesting. Should you fail your save, you take less damage while helpless. Can’t argue with that.
• CON: Wisdom/Constitution: Again, as with tier 3, this seems thrown-in.

Tier 5: Rise of the Phoenix, Kukan-Do, Violence Begets Violence, Meditation of War, Empty Hand Mastery

• CON CON CON: The change to Rise of the Phoenix actually made me angry. Light Monks offered Cleric-like abilities to supplement the real ones in addition to their fighting prowess. This change makes RotF into a self-centered invulnerability-meets-Diehard enhancement that  returns you to battle. Since when did this class become so selfish and not a  party-support class? Further, not everyone is going to go Half-Elf for a Cleric Dilettante,  make clickies or grind for special items, spend points in Use Magic Device or have huge bags of platinum, Turbine Points, or Astral Shards just to get a Raise Dead ability! This is the one enhancement change that could make my cancel my account outright–it’s just that ridiculous. I don’t always run with parties, but do often have to raise my own hireling cleric because they are coded for Stupid +10 sometimes. I know that many don’t use this ability, but in this alpha change, you get your Monk Improved Recovery III equivalent anyway for this class tree, which was what players often chose instead of Rise of the Phoenix. Have the devs watched any martial arts movies lately? Or even read the 4th edition D&D rulebook? Monks, as a class design, do not serve themselves. Don’t change this ability, devs.
• Kukan-Do is generally the same as it’s live version.
• PRO and CON: Violence Begets Violence is a new fascinating ability that increases your critical threat range (when Defensive Strikes is active) to help deliver punishing damage up to 20x your threat range. It resets when you’re critically hit. Again, however, this ability doesn’t seem very monastic. Fighters fight. Monks fight when required, and with skill, not as a fancy bludgeon. Again, this seem to taint the class philosophy/design.
• CON: Meditation of War gives special insight damage or effects based on your Monk stance. It’s not a bad idea. However, the feature for Fire stance, where you get +2 to your Stunning DCs, seems offset by the fact that Fire Stance removes points from WIS, which generates tactical DCs for Monks in the first place. In short, the features offset each other ridiculously. Maybe this should be the Ocean Stance’s ability?
• Empty Hand Mastery moves a Monk’s hit die from 1d6 to 1d8. That’s nice but nothing new in that all Monks gained this at level 20 prior to a recent update. Damage is good except that, again, this seems like a dev’s wish to make the Monks greater fighters when we didn’t suck to begin with.

So, the Shintao line seems three steps forward and two steps backward. The quasi-philosophical feel of the Monk, peaceful and contemplative until provoked into mystical kicking of ass, seems like it’s being pointed to kill-kill-kill more than kill-help-kill. That’s not how the D&D class envisioned it to be. I know DDO is less role-play than action, but it’s the little details that matter in keeping a class differentiated from others. I can learn to bludgeon just fine, unarmed, as a Fighter. That doesn’t make him a Monk.

Coming soon: The Henshin Mystic alpha enhancements.