hmm, now I am having the same problem with Gift of Anguish ... are you certain it's not just a mechanic of our harmonious bonds that means thay might drop t any time? 

Actually, dispite my poking fun at them with this poll, I hope they fix a few of the Monk issues that they broke in the last patch.

Nice list, where did you find it?

Can we get this stickeyed?

Yeah I noticed that the endurance drain was way less than the description suggested it should be, though I hadn't worked out how much less it was yet, to be honest I only used it a few times to start off, and then stopped since it made so little difference.

I think I saw in the patch message that tehy changed the off hand ratio again, from 50% down to 30%.  i wasn't really paying attention to the specific disciple changes at the time though, but I'm sure if you trailed through the archived messages you'd see te one I mean.

Atelic Sceadugenga

Do you mean "knuckles" as in a pair of knuckle dusters? Or "knuckles" as in your own clenched fist?

There is a specialisation for Fist Wraps, and a specialisation for Ulak and Claws, both of which are governed by Hand to Hand skills.  I am lead to believe that using a bare fist instead of a weapon will mean you lose any weapon specialisation bonus, however an empty fist is considered a "rare" weapon that scales with your level.  So if you have crap weapons, you might well be better off with no weapon equipped at all!

I wouldn't mind seeing the stats for bare fist fighting show up in the empty weapon slot so it can be properly compared.

Atelic Sceadugenga

I'm wondering what the deal is with these bonds we can form.  I see we get two main types; nice ones to put on our friends and horrible ones to put on our foes, and we can only maintain one bond at a time.

An example of a horrible one would be "Touch of Woe", I don't have a problem with these types of bonds, since they "do exactly what it says on the tin".  I pop it on stuff, and it does it's job!  Sure there might be a few line of sight issues that need to be worked out, and the range seems kinda dubious to me, but it works at least.

An example of a nice bond is "Kiss of Heaven", now this baffles me!  It states that I form a harmonious bond with an ally and heal a bunch of HPs over about a minute, sounds good huh?  Well it's not that simple it would seem, sometimes I pop this on an ally, and it comes right off, sometimes it will stay for 30 seconds, sometimes it will last almost to the whole minute.   What i want to know, is what am i doing to cancel it's effect?

I've tried doing nothing, I've tried doing lots.  I've tried only casting and not fighting, I've tried only fighting and not casting, heck, i think I've tried everything and I really can't figure out why sometimes it lasts for while, and sometimes for only a few seconds.

Right now it's not a problem, I've only one beneficial bond to worry about, and i can live without it I suppose.  But soon I'll get one that can replenish an ally's power, one that replenishes an ally's endurance, I'll even be able to enhance an ally's damage eventually, and when that time comes I'd really like to be able to understand the mechanics of this ability type.

Does anyone have any insights into what's going on with my bonds?

Atelic Sceadugenga

I've been wondering the same thing, what is most important for a disciple?

I'm only level 15 now, so I have a somewhat limited experience of what I'll need throughout, but there are a few things I'm sure I'm right about:

WIS: Wisdom = power pool.  From what I have seen so far, the only spell lines that seem to be directly impacted by our power pool are our "magical" heals. There are a few others which use power, but nothing that seems to really dent it that I've come across yet.  Even so, since we are a healer class, I think our heals deserve a lot of attention, so a nice big power pool would be a good idea, ESPECIALLY in the light of recent changes, which have seen the power cost of all heals raised for all healer classes. The description against WIS also suggests that the higher your WIS the less likely you will be countered, I suppose that's good news for landing heals.

DEX: Dexterity = dodge! We don't get the heavy armour of clerics, the magic absorbant skin of bloodmages' husk spells, and the critters we finght are not slowed.  What we get is a serise of crippling counter attacks and a dodge modifier spell.  The recent changes to the dex / avoidance skill relationship makes dex more important than ever for our defensive capabilities. Dex also relates to crit chance, i already find my finishing moves critical to both my solo and group gameplay, the higher the crit chance the better i say!  Finally, under the dex description it suggests that a high DEX will give you a chance to completely avoid incoming spells (detrimental spells only I hope ahaha), if this is true, then a nice fat DEX score will be a lifesaver when facing those horrible AOE casters who are impossible to avoid when you are a melee based character.  I can only summise, since I'm only lvl 15, but I predict that disciples should ignore dex at their peril!

VIT: Vitality = life!   Vitality is important for every healer class, not just for the power regen, which is of course nice, but for the bonus it grants to heal spells.  Perhaps I have misread the description, but it suggests to me that you need to maintain a good vitality score to get the most out of any heal spells that you cast, someone correct me if I'm wrong on that please.  the good news is that back in beta, VIT actually related to endurance regen instead of power regen, and as such it was a stat widly added to melee weapons and armour, that's bad news for monks, but great news for us!  Because it seems common to a lot of items, I think you could get away with not maxing this stat, but don't neglect it either!

CON: Constitution = HP I'ts like our last line of defence, if you fail the dodge roll, all you have left is your HP pool between you and death! I'd like to hope that with a good enough DEX score you wouldn't need CON at all, but experience of other mmorpgs tells be different.  CON also directly effects your resists to magics, though from what i have seen, only by a negligable amount.  Obviously resists are going to be critical in the high end game, especially when taking on raid content, but without knowing the availability of resist gear or the bredth of abilities given to raid mobs, it's hard to know if CON will be a make or break stat for avoidance classes.

STR: Strength = Damage With every mob you take on, you have to kill it! I've not yet seen someone heal a mob to death, just lasting the distance is not enough.  that said, we are a heal class,not a dps class, that's the job of a monk, but we still need to be able to lvl up, and if you prefer to solo, then STR is going to help you no end.  I think its' worth keeping an eye on STR, don't let it fall too far behind, but being that we buff this stat and it's so important so many other classes, I expect it will be one of the more common stats to find on medium ac gear, and should pretty much take care of itself.

This is just my take on what is important.  I'm sure I'm wrong on some accounts and I've not thought of a lot of stuff too.  Even more likely is that VG will change our classes and the combat system a few times yet, so it will all change,  I expect if they change things too dramaticly they will offer a respec facility so we can rethink things.

Atelic Sceadugenga