Thoughts about UC. (in General)

I've been doing a lot of calculations lately thinking about UC. I've generally been working off the concept that to double one's damage one would need to double their STR and X's or quadruple one. And then I tried to see how would one build a UC team, these where some thoughts.

Good things about UC:

1. HUGE PTH (results in many small hits = easy to VA)
2. Innate evasion
3. SoC capablities

Bad things

1. Doesn't hit til melee
2. Huge investment for small damage output (8 million str and 12 million UC hoping for 800k damage per hit)
3. equips limiting: have low AC, and little mage defense
4. Results in being quite fragile and very vulnerable to GA

So far we all know that the bad outweighs the good, but a few things really bother me:

1. No matter what I do, GA will always destroy me.
2. I require too many rounds to take out an opponent, and not enough defense to survive.


As I see it, UC can either get an offensive boost, or a defensive one. I think it needs a defensive one more because it'll be more in trend to Jon's attempt to make battles last longer. There are a few ways to do this I think.

1. Endurance. (less effective if low relative str)
2. Life leach. (non DMable)
3. More AC.
4. VB Effect

I like the first idea since it requires UC to balance both str and dex to make use of evasion and endurance. It'll also prevent people from spamming UC wall just for it's endurance.

Another Idea I was considering, is to have kind of set places in UC where one's hit gain abilities. Like in DnD (3.5 that is) the monk's fist would gain abilities at higher levels to keep up with it's lack of weapon. For example, if one trains 100 effect of UC, suddenly their UC has a life leaching effect.

If we want to go the offensive boost route, perhaps we have have an innate amount of BL trained.


Yeah, just my two cents.

Which would benefit a UC tank more: a gi + elven cloak, or a ToA? Would the ToA add 1/3 of it's networth into PTH somehow? I know there is no weapon, but would it still grant some sort of bonus to PTH? Generally, is it more beneficial to train UC higher than strength, or visa versa? Also, I know UC tanks are already exp heavy as they are, but why not include DM to counteract GA?

Oh, by the way, I do agree with you that UC is underpowered. Also, I like your ideas. I especially like the bloodlust idea, and some sort of natural leech. All of your ideas, either individual or combined, would greatly enhance UC.

The best way to go with UC is to train it the same way you would a DD on a mage. Bigger the better.

I used to be a big UC head but I tried it on my current guy and it was frankly rubbish. As rubbish as people used to say it was.

The changes to evasion have left UC in a mess. The loss of defensive dex...you could train a decent AMF and equip a decent ranged weapon and take on mages. And do pretty well. But without the defensive dex taking on tanks suffers. My suggestion would be to give UC's evasion that defensive dex back. Only UC's evasion mind you, not regular evasion.

The other thing that always helped was VA. A VA helm would be nice. The other ideas are pretty cool, but for me keeping it simple, and 'classic' work better.

I'm pretty sure ToA does boost UC PTH, quite a bit.

And the big problem with training DM, is that you're going to get eaten by decay. And since you're forced to go into melee not a good idea. And having more than one minion going UC is a bad idea because of the exp concentration that is lost.

With a 4 minion team, one of them going UC, each minion having virtually equal experience, I have an 8-person fightlist with challenge bonuses from 40-60%. Just some info, not sure if that's bad or good, but I feel like I'm doing fairly well. Probably because GA is so overpowered and I use it.

vampiric gloves please

I wish :P

innate life leach is not a bad idea either, i think my previous ideas for UC weren't too bad and might help out more. MY denfesive idea was for UC to also train Steel skin passively to make AC more effective, this is a small boost but it helps. The major boost i think UC needs is a offensive one cause it just does not damage so my idea of adding some sort of base damage over coarse of training UC would greately make it more viable and igve it a well deserved offensive boost. UC is defenseless against GA, well thats the weakness of the strat every strat needs to have a weakness.

Another idea i thought of is instead of having endurance-like pasisveness another interesting and not too powerful boost to UC would be to have passive magic DD resistance. Which would rise over the course of the UC level by a small percentage. UC is also extremely weak against Mages. I think UC is okay versus tanks cause their evasion helps and only other boost they would need is some damage one based on my idea of adding small base damage (not multiplier) over course of levels. Even though they won't be making as big hits as tanks it would be enough to be competitive cause UC does have evasion and maybe even Steel skin if incorporated which would balance out Monks having low AC.
Passive magic DD resistance should be strongly considered since it would give monks a chance at getting being decent versus mages, cause right now, its not at all possible to fight mages with monks. i tried lol and i have AMF being trained, it just doesn't do anything really. AMF trained plus passive magic resistance, smell like a decent combination to hold up though. Passive endurance would give onks physical resistance and i don't think monks need that, cause their way of fighitng style i think if you need physical endurance you can equip a ToE if you want so that is not needed but magic endurance would be a good welcome.

What do you guys think?

Also there currently is no shields for monks, i was eyeing the buckler of mandos, traditionally speaking, buckler are actually quite small and can be strapped easily on one hand and not effect fighitng style in real life, so either introduce a new shield thats small for monks or make Buckles of mandos with no UC penalty which actually would give monks the magic resistance they need not passive but with this item. this will probably be the easiest thing to implement. to remove the buckler UC penalty.

Also UC seems to train not linearly, probably because it passively trains evasion. I was thinking why not keep passive evasion trained asymptotically but have damage-wise UC be linear like weapons multipliers are cause right now at high levels its really hard to get an extra level effect in UC which is only way the multiplier seems to be changing otherwise it stays the same right? Unless I'm seeing something wrong. Like when i fight in my stats for UC is says 2100 UC and i'm guessing thats the multiplier for damage but its harder to increase it cause for each level to gain you need more exp than the previous level which seems to be tired in with Evasion effect. When evasion effect goes up then UC multiplier goes up, why not keep them separate, UC multiplier linear and keep evasion asymptotic? Is this hard to program in, i guess if it is ignore my complaining lol.

A defensive boost to UC would be better imo, making more variation from a counterpart melee skill like Bloodlust.

i think a damage increase is needed as well as some type of defensive boost against non-melee damage.

evasion is still effective at reducing melee opponents hits against us, our multi hit damage just doesn't equate to their single hit damage often. with a damage increase though that would help against those opponents.

where we do need a defensive boost is against all other damage types. i would say either give uc an inherent amf such as the robf grants or make uc able to counter ga damage.

i am not saying to do all of these things together, but as of now there is nothing that the uc minion is necessarily a counter for. give us a purpose! ; )

hmm, perhaps I should mention that the endurance I was talking about before was the old endurance.

I'm not too hot on the steel skin idea, because UC doesn't have much AC to begin with. It'll give a nice boost to the combat GI, but you'll get almost no exp from all your elven gear you have equipped.

UC does have a shield by the way, it's a SoC, and it's not bad for reducing and returning damage.

I really really like the idea of the X increasing linearly, I haven't noticed that. It is kind of ridiculous the amount of exp you need just to add 20 X to UC at higher levels.

i also think the linear x would be great, even if it meant trading for a flat evasion effect of 100 or so.

I don't think a RoBF-like percentage reduction would even be enough for UC. Since it's likely to be single or double minion, it'll probably be taking huge SG/concentrated CoC or FB/ or rounds and rounds of MM then decay

"I'm not too hot on the steel skin idea, because UC doesn't have much AC to begin with. It'll give a nice boost to the combat GI, but you'll get almost no exp from all your elven gear you have equipped. "

Exactly that is why Ss is perfect it is a negligible defensive boost that probably won't affect much battles if at all anything but does help a lil and make it fair. Like you said cause monk has low AC, him having more effective AC thanks to SS will be like having a higher AC without SS you see? Also SS actually makes sense realistically, imagine a monk/ninja fighting it only makes sense that his skin gets harder and stronger and have better AC/defense over time and SS is natural skill of skin not some hocus pocus so it goes in line with what a monk is supposed to be and represent. Adds more real character to the monk.

I'm really glad you guys like the linear idea for dmage multiplier because like someone said its ridiculous for each UC level you go up based on evasion you only get X20 to damage which is nothing compared to the XP input required which only increases noticeably at each level trained. I think this 3 changes will make UC a very interesting character to play with and viable and realstic and and still keeping his weaknesses as they ought to be.

SO passive SS, increase base damage over chunk of UC level increase, and linear multiplier increase not asymptotic like evasion keep the two separate, and if I can squeeze in a 4th change would be to make BoM UC friendly. Which makes sense since ninja/monks have a sort of meditative power thats should be able to decrease magic damage somehow. AT least first 3 changes are crucial, 4th change would be nice to have.

though there is a little voice inside of me that is telling me linear X growth would be OP. UC was never meant to keep up with big 5 weapons without ironically giving away a arm and leg of exp.

I would like to see the angle of Monk's being good versus SG taken up a bit more. I mean the CGi is already the perfect anti SG armor, so yeah Steel skin's not a bad idea.

Random thought that's probably very, very bad.

Why not make UC a DD spell?

Fires only in Melee, hits first target, Damage is related entirely to strength. Probably make it immune to AMF (Though you could KEEP it with AMF, and have it as a magical effect. The Ki in the punch is getting dispelled).

Basically it would be a DD spell that works exactly as a UC hit works now. Except you'd be able to train an additional skill with it.


This is a random, not properly thought out idea that needs kicking. It's just making sense to me at the moment for no real reason :)

So you have to train STR and UC like usual without the benefits of VA :( or multi-hits :(:(

^I think Daz is saying make UC just not take up a skill slot, but keep it the working exactly the same. A pretty good idea imo.

no. making it a DD like spell would only make it weaker.

Right now UC's biggest strength is it's PTH bonuses, this late in the game UC is the only practical way to do quad or even quint (6?) hits.

The whole concept of flurry of blows (DnD term) is built into UC and I believe should stay.

in other words, we love UC because it's like a trainable tank. Make it more like a tank and steer far far away from DD.

We like it because it's different.

"though there is a little voice inside of me that is telling me linear X growth would be OP. UC was never meant to keep up with big 5 weapons without ironically giving away a arm and leg of exp."

ACtually I thought the changes i proposed would keep it still weaker physically wise against weapons when comparing damage to damage, cause remember an elite weapon has high base damage, UC has a very low damage, increasing even 1 base damage over lets say 100-200K of trained UC won't affect damage too much just a lil. Same thing with linear UC multiplier change as you still have to pump experience in which increases your PR while a weapon you just put in money and I believe the X of weapon doesn't go into PR, only + right? So comparing PR to PR, the tank with equal STR and one of good weapons should be dishing out much more damage per hit in melee anyways. All this would do is make monk over time of UC do more damage, not significantly more but make it more fair by making it linear at least. Cause asymptotically seems like UC is going nowhere and is completely useless at higher levels. Its actually very good at lower levels so I won't complain thats why most things i proposed regarding damage actually wouldn't matter until higher levels anyways which would help out a bit but not overkill.

pay no attention to the little voice in my head. It's crazy.

But you're right, regular weapons have linear X growth, why shouldn't UC?

I think you've hit the real problem with UC: scaling.

Weapon damage goes up by the square root of the upgrade. An x2000 weapon does 1.4 times as much as an x1000. So no it's not linear.

What i meant by linear is UC itself doesn't train linearly meaning you don't get X multipliars linearly but need more and more exp for a small X multiplier improvement in UC. Its becomes a big problem at large levels. Get it? Doesn't matter if weapon itself is not linear of X1000 to X2000 as UC itself has a hard time gaining the X multiplier itself, which has an asymptotic investment curve whereas upgrading a weapon is linear with regard to money investment is constant.

I didn't realize UC worked like that. If that's true, then yes I agree it should be made to scale better.

I just realized i was talking about BoM like it was a Mage shield i got the two confused. replace where I said Bom with Mage shield. Thats the one thats suggested to be UC friendly not BoM althouh BoM would be cool too but it wouldn't balance out the magic problem UC faces. Also someone mentioned SoC as an option for UC but currently SOC is not UC friendly it posts a -5 to UC. at high levels each level is so h ard to get that -5 is actually a big deal.

Given the asymptotic curve of UC damage multiplier it would seem at some point there is no point in training UC anymore as it won't dish out more damage but instead concentrate on Strentgh correct?

Mage shield knocks 5 off UC as well.

Yea I know, the suggestion was to make it UC friendly meaning not having a UC penalty.