TOPIC: Weapon Bracers - Please Change Them

There are currently 5 bracers that count as weapons. Right now, they occupy both a wrist and hand slot. With the gradual increase in power of the wrist slot, it's made those weapons substantially weaker over time. Compare using 2 assassin's blades (with a Whetstone) plus any of a dozen useful wrist slot items to these 5 (also with whetstones.) Below UR rarity, you can't really make a case to use them. The quivering palm bracer is interesting but if you are using a several year old UR bracer as a weapon, your builds likely don't have that as your only UR. Giving up 4 charm slots (legendary) or guided strike plus a variety of UR+ flurry compatible weapons (with better damage wheels and bonuses to hit as well as special abilities) in order to use those bracers seems like a pretty substantial drop in usefulness.

I recommend one of two solutions for this:
1. Have weapon bracers no longer take up a wrist slot - just use them as handed weapons. Considering how much more powerful handed weapons have become over the past several years, these wouldn't be more powerful than what we already have. If the concern is quivering palm, limit it to using only 1 of those and only as an off-hand weapon. This change would let people reasonably use the bracer-weapons without a rather dramatic drop in power. It would also fix an exception rule the programmers have had to deal with for quite a while.
2. Add a second wrist slot and have each weapon-bracer only take up 1 of them. This solve the problem (partially) but sets up a rather substantial power creep for everyone else not using weapon-bracers as you could then have +4 charm slots and something like guided strike, etc..

The list of weapon-bracers is:
tokendb.com/weapon-handedness/bracer/

Fred

Alternatively, and by far the better solution, substantially drop Monk strength and give them a bonus for using bracers and bare fists.

Edit:
In this hypothetical world:
Monks have 9 base strength, but have +4 hit and +4 damage with open fist and bracers weapons. Furthermore, they get -2 hit and -2 damage when using 2 non non bracer, non fist weapons. This would give monks some interesting trade offs when compared to other classes.

Pro: Monk has 2 pucks, great base non str stats, great abilities, built in +4 weapons

Con: penalties to using 2x non bracer weapons, low str, and minimal armor access

Lets just theorize with that for a minute with small changes, -2 to str, and just adding +3/+3 to bare fists and out of date bracer weapons. Let's also assume some poor monk has invested in a decent build, and is wearing +3 VSF /+3 VSF and a sub-par belt for a VS Set bonus. In this "new world" is it better to ditch the investment and go bare handed, with say a new strength belt. Let's also assume they invested in a Benrows because they heard the gloves should be + str gloves, and not Flying Fists. In this world, the bare fists do as much as their weapons, unless the creature takes poison damage, luckily there are no entire dungeons of monks and obsidian creatures that are all immune to poison in this game. That and if these out of print bracers suddenly become so powerful, there will be a secondary market that crashes into them, as suddenly a bare fist and a +3 weapon are almost the same in damage, and a +5 legendary and a +2 Bracer weapon have almost the same power level, though one only hits creatures with resistance at +4, and the other does at +5 with a few added bonuses.

That on top of the fact that while character monk is well trained and or ambidextrous, and quite proficient in both hands. However, to make this a game with mechanics, there is difficulty placed on the player in a unique weapon wielding method.

I do think monk strength should be addressed, -2 wouldn't be that bad, and adding a +1 to hit & damage with bare hands, is an entirely reasonable solution to "rein in" some of the monk damage. In this scenario a newish +1 assassin blade wielder with a whetstone isn't outclassed by a bare handed monk. A re-imagining of bracer weapons as "wrapped fists" that Arnold suggested in the social discordant media's might be a decent solution also, not taking the bracer slot, though I don't believe they should be considered bare fists if there is an additional bonus to hit and damage unless that is considered in the token design also.

I also just realized that the +2 + +3 is a rare bracer with a slotless booster, almost on par with a legendary at the "just give them a +3 bonus" in my evaluation. Also, that the only UR doesn't even have a bonus to hit.

Per the OP, Bracer weapons should be re-thought.

I’ll try to post a much more in depth post later, but I do believe it would be desirable and good if the “optimal” choice for a 5th level, mostly rare token monk was to slide empty pucks or bracers weapons.

I also believe the best way to do that is not to creep bracers to be more powerful than weapons (thus making Monk be even MORE ahead of the damage curve), but to reduce Monk effectiveness with non open first / bracer weapons.

I was with you Endgame, until "reduce Monk effectiveness with non open fist / bracer weapons."

Maybe consider proposals that would make "bracer" weapons (or fist wraps) more appealing, without removing current options, thus adding to build diversity through thoughtful addition rather than what I will generously call thoughtful disassembly.

macxdmg wrote: I was with you Endgame, until "reduce Monk effectiveness with non open fist / bracer weapons."

Maybe consider proposals that would make "bracer" weapons (or fist wraps) more appealing, without removing current options, thus adding to build diversity through thoughtful addition rather than what I will generously call thoughtful disassembly.

I would not recommend removing current options - as in, I would not recommend removing Monk from the +1 assassins blade.

Let’s start with 3 assumptions.

1) we cannot increase overall Monk damage in any equipment layout, as Monk is already dealing more damage than desired when compared to other classes.

2) it is desirable that Monk use open fists and bracer weapons. I come to this conclusion based on several sources. The first is based on the class description from the Monk card “monks are the least token dependent class as their fists are as good as weapons”. The second comes from DnD class description of Monk (I pulled this from beyond DnD: “monks channel uncanny speed and strength into their unarmed strikes.”

3) for a given budget, most players will select the most optimal choices most of the time.

Given the constraints listed in our assumptions above, to make a +1 adem bracer or open fist build be an equally appealing choice to a +1 assassin’s blade + brawler’s horn + bracers of lightning build, we need to reduce the base effectiveness of the assassins blade builds by at least +2 hit and +2 damage, while not altering current performance with open fists and bracers. (Likely this means adding at least +2 hit and damage to open fists and bracers)

At UR level, we would need open fists / bracers to compete with a +2 VSF + brawlers horn + charm bracelets meaning we need to reduce hit and damage by at least 4 to satisfy assumption 3, while also adding +4 hit and damage to open fists and bracers.

At relic and legendary level, changes to the character card are no longer really appropriate to satisfy our requirements. Relic and legendary bracers and / or tokens that improve bare fists would be needed. Solutions to general class balance could be major reworks (ex: monks only get +damage on 1 puck) And are really beyond the scope of this discussion.

The most straightforward way / method of least disturbance to make those adjustments to the 5th level Monk is to adjust base strength and modify dragon strike on the level 5 card appropriately. The 4th level card needs a dragon strike equivalent for completeness.

You should play a 10 pack monk for 4 dungeons, and see if the “low token” statement is accurate. It was.

I agree, at 5th level, that statement should be removed from the card. It is not a valid statement once a player is investing to reach 5th level as it requires significant investment for just that ability. I also have a strong suspicion that prior to returning shuriken, a monk carried the most tokens per run, before consumables, in most runs.

Quartermasters, I see you, you carry more, and we appreciate you, whatever your class.

macxdmg wrote: You should play a 10 pack monk for 4 dungeons, and see if the “low token” statement is accurate. It was.

Based on Assumption 3 (for a given budget, most players will select the most optimal choices most of the time.), at any level beyond "10 pack only", Assumption 2 (it is desirable that Monk use open fists and bracer weapons.) is violated. For less than $2 ($1.75 from Trent and tdtavern) the optimal choice is to equip an assassin blade. I do not believe this is a desirable outcome.

macxdmg wrote: I agree, at 5th level, that statement should be removed from the card. It is not a valid statement once a player is investing to reach 5th level as it requires significant investment for just that ability.

If that statement is removed from the card or not, I believe assumption 2 is still in play. When thinking of the archetype Monk, a typical player with DnD experience is likely to think unarmed. It is not impossible through a simple card tweak to make using a rare bracer weapon with whetstone a viable alternative to using a +2 flaming blade that would satisfy assumption 3.

Endgame wrote:

macxdmg wrote: You should play a 10 pack monk for 4 dungeons, and see if the “low token” statement is accurate. It was.

Based on Assumption 3 (for a given budget, most players will select the most optimal choices most of the time.), at any level beyond "10 pack only", Assumption 2 (it is desirable that Monk use open fists and bracer weapons.) is violated. For less than $2 ($1.75 from Trent and tdtavern) the optimal choice is to equip an assassin blade. I do not believe this is a desirable outcome.

macxdmg wrote: I agree, at 5th level, that statement should be removed from the card. It is not a valid statement once a player is investing to reach 5th level as it requires significant investment for just that ability.

If that statement is removed from the card or not, I believe assumption 2 is still in play. When thinking of the archetype Monk, a typical player with DnD experience is likely to think unarmed. It is not impossible through a simple card tweak to make using a rare bracer weapon with whetstone a viable alternative to using a +2 flaming blade that would satisfy assumption 3.

Maybe your assumptions are not the same assumptions everyone has. They’re not bad assumptions. I notice something about them though, they align with your viewpoints quite nicely.

what you folks are forgetting is new players. if a new monk pulls that in their starter pack ..that is an awesome weapon for them until they go down the rabbit hole most of you have gone down.
so while the weapon bracers might not be great for you now, it is for someone else as it is

macxdmg wrote:

Endgame wrote:

macxdmg wrote: You should play a 10 pack monk for 4 dungeons, and see if the “low token” statement is accurate. It was.

Based on Assumption 3 (for a given budget, most players will select the most optimal choices most of the time.), at any level beyond "10 pack only", Assumption 2 (it is desirable that Monk use open fists and bracer weapons.) is violated. For less than $2 ($1.75 from Trent and tdtavern) the optimal choice is to equip an assassin blade. I do not believe this is a desirable outcome.

macxdmg wrote: I agree, at 5th level, that statement should be removed from the card. It is not a valid statement once a player is investing to reach 5th level as it requires significant investment for just that ability.

If that statement is removed from the card or not, I believe assumption 2 is still in play. When thinking of the archetype Monk, a typical player with DnD experience is likely to think unarmed. It is not impossible through a simple card tweak to make using a rare bracer weapon with whetstone a viable alternative to using a +2 flaming blade that would satisfy assumption 3.

Maybe your assumptions are not the same assumptions everyone has. They’re not bad assumptions. I notice something about them though, they align with your viewpoints quite nicely.

I’m basing my recommendations on those assumptions. If those assumptions are wrong for some specific reason (say some post from TD staff I’m not aware of), we should have a conversation on that, and I’ll adjust my recommendations.