A brief thought on - Ice Disciples

So I was perusing some of the schools and noticed the ice disciples titular unarmed buff ability seems kinda lackluster compared to the others.

The slow is a pretty small amount, and way less than other things - such as the Cleric's (masterable) dispirit! What's more, the elemental archer gets pretty much the same thing, but it also roots, while also having access to pretty much all the other disciples' abilities, too!

I think, with regards to ice, adding something else to the Freezing Touch would make it a bit better.. even just a little damage (significantly less than flame, obviously) to sweeten up the slow.. anything, really! Compared to lifetap, stuns, and DoTs, it just doesn't seem to have any real oomph at all, even as far as slows go.

I notice none of the disciples get any of the dodge boosting that monk received a while back, either!

Maybe give monk and the disciples a much higher base damage somehow?

Double the masteries' damage amount. Which also means you need to double the dmg on all handwraps, since I believe equipping a weapon replaces the mastery damage amount (My understanding of weapon mastery is that they are used when no weapon at all is equipped, for monks, who originally did not have handwraps, and for dragons, who originally did not have claw slots).

Monk and disciples need some love.

Another Idea along the lines of making monk more attractive, is giving them a group aura buff, along the lines of Illustrious stand, aura of health, etc, that is say a group evasion buff. Things like that will make monk and disciples a desired class to include in a group hunt.

Monk can be an evasion boost, plus some little extra amount of melee damage wards. So example:
Aura of the Monkey (Group buff)
+120 evasion
+60 Pierce Ward
+60 Slash Ward
+60 Crush Ward

For Flame Disciple:
Aura of the Ashen (someone can think up better names)
+120 Evasion
+120 Flame Ward
+60 Flame Resist

Ice Disciple
Aura of the Blizzard
+120 Evasion
5% chance to put an evasion debuff on the mobs, -250 evasion, for 20 seconds. (and make it work on epics too, especially Daknor. Grr evasion debuff immunity.. mobs cheat)

Storm Disciple
Aura of the Wind
+120 Evasion
-10% chance to hit, incoming ranged and spell attacks. (Maybe have it work on incoming melee also)


I'd love to see these. Give me a reason to finish leveling the disciples...

(This idea should probably be in suggestions, will copy it there)

I would like to see the Freezing Touch ability run on a counter and scale per hit, with an ever-increasing debuff. It would work something like this:

1. First application of Freezing Touch would apply the base value of debuff, or X (X = 2 for FT1, 4 for FT2, 6 for FT3), with a duration of 10 seconds.
2. If the second application of Freezing Touch comes while the debuff is still active, the duration is refreshed for another 10 seconds, and the value increases by the base value of the debuff (2 time X).
3. Subsequent applications of Freezing Touch would continue to refresh the debuff and increase the value by X until a maximum value of 20X is achieved (40 for FT1, 80 for FT2, and 120 for FT3).

The values of X and the maximum value could be tweaked, but the idea is to give the Ice Disciple a role in debuffing the attack speed of high hitpoint boss mobs in a way that rewards them for continually hitting the mob, with the goal of attaining a value high enough over time to justify the debuff and the role of the Ice Disciple as secondary melee/debuffer. A flat 20% just is not enough compared to special abilities of the other 3 disciplines.

If it is too hard to keep the refreshing of the debuff going in practice, either the duration could be extended, or at the end of the duration, the counter could go down by 1 instead of ending completely (e.g. a debuff of 10X at the end of duration without a refresh becomes 9X, then 8X, etc.

Another possibility is that Freezing Touch could debuff evasion as well as attack speed.

The trick is to come up with a value for the debuff that is comparable to the utility of the other disciples abilities. It should also stack with all other attack speed and evasion debuffs, or else there is no reason to have an Ice Disciple in a group.

Getting rid of the 45% base damage on Melee Flurry III for monks would help too. They already deal so little, going 45% and 3 extra attacks just makes your total damage like 20 higher lol. Barely an increase.

It'd be a nice buff for them. If it can be considered a buff lol, as the damage would increase with Melee Flurry, but without...

One thing id like to see i remember from a long time ago is they made mob evasion work better. I think they made mobs hit more tooe. And another side note they made nature damage less effective. Now i know they made monk evasion work bettter already with the fixes awhile back. But id really like to see even more of increase. I think it would help all classes cuz monk could be something everyone could take. Maybe perhaps makes some of the new dodges transferable to other classes. Or maybe even make it so you gain more evasion. But i heard evasion caps. So it would need to be more dodge.