While developer updates are once per month with Visionary Realms, they will often touch on some of the subtler or under-the-hood aspects of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen’s design. This month; however, we were treated to the unveiling of the brand-new Monk class!
The Monk is a DPS class with a lot of depth and strategy to it. It uses a resource called Chi (50 of it, to be exact) that you can spend on your abilities. Your expended Chi will regenerate at a rate of 5 Chi per second so even if you drain your whole resource bar, you will be down for a mere 10 seconds. In most MMORPGs where combat is fast and arcade-like, 10 seconds is an eternity but with Pantheon’s approach to slower, more old-school combat, 10 seconds isn’t as long as you would think.
When you think of classes, such as the Wizard, you think of spell schools such as Fire, Cold, and Arcane. Monk abilities have their own schools too called Gates. For example, Backflip, an ability that causes you to avoid all physical damage for 2 seconds, uses The Gate of Balance. All other abilities that use that Gate can be used but abilities that open a different gate can not. A gate will remain open for 5 seconds, though, so you’re not locked out of your abilities forever but it does add strategy and depth to your playstyle.
Of course, if you are in a pinch or accidentally made the wrong choice, the Monk comes equipped with an ability called Inner Fountain which instantly restores all 50 Chi and closes all open gates. Use it wisely because it is on a 2-minute cooldown and can’t get you out of every situation or wrong decision!
With all of these abilities and decisions to make, the developers don’t want players also thinking about basic strikes and trying to weave them in between your more important abilities. Abilities like Elbow Strike and Roundhouse Kick are passives that when they are placed on your action bar, your auto attacks have a chance to trigger them and automatically weave them into your auto attack rotation. Essentially, you don’t have to do a thing except have them on your action bar and the game does the rest. The downside is, you need to dedicate space on your action bar for them, adding more to player choice and strategy because the more you add, the less space you have for other abilities you may need.
Blazing Hand Punch is another great ability that was highlighted. This is a chargeable ability in the sense that you can tap the ability for a quick strike or hold the ability for up to 3 seconds, charging it. You can release it at any point and the damage you deal will scale based on how long you held it. Wait the entire three seconds and your Blazing Hand Punch will also perform a knockdown which can be very useful for spell interruption!
The last cool ability I’ll talk about is Setting Sun and Rising Moon. This is a 2-in-1 ability that starts off as Setting Sun. It places a barrier on you which will store the all damage you take during the barrier’s window of activation (3 seconds). Be warned that Setting Sun reduces ALL of your defenses to 0 so you will be taking max damage. Once the damage is stored, the ability will transform into Rising Moon. Activating Rising Moon will convert 50% of that damage stored into armor class, increasing your defense, and the other 50% of that damage will increase your maximum health for 20 seconds!
These are just some of the things you can expect with Pantheon’s Monk class! The full one-hour dev stream and deep dive into the class can be checked out below:
To learn more about the game or support it through pledging, head to HTTP://www.pantheonmmo.com
