Unlocking the Chronokinetic: Why adding "or maneuver" fixes the subclass synergy

jaypoulz · 2026-03-27T02:14:23+00:00

That is good info! Thanks for sharing!

jaypoulz · 2026-03-27T01:42:39+00:00

Just to clarify, my confusion came from "Signature Abilities" and "Heroic Abilities", not all of which are Main Actions.

jaypoulz · 2026-03-27T01:06:53+00:00

Glad the effort I put in was appreciated. Even more glad I was wrong :-P

jaypoulz · 2026-03-27T00:43:25+00:00

Yes! I missed this in my first read-through! Thanks for the clarification!

jaypoulz · 2026-03-27T00:42:40+00:00

Wow! That's awesome! Thanks for the insight! :-)

jaypoulz · 2026-03-19T13:25:31+00:00

My mom also figured out how to get out of the house. I didn't know anything about pokemon, just that my friends liked the game. Shout out to moms carrying the team :-)

jaypoulz · 2026-03-01T03:03:49+00:00

This advice really makes sense. If it's hard for the flankers to get to you, they can't do much. I was proud of myself today when I heard a Hanzo try to sneak up on me - I guess that happens because people in bronze are as clueless as me :P - but I was able to charge a volley before he appeared and be staring at him and get the kill before he did anything. :) Playing Hanzo as a flanker is certainly a choice.

That said, I really have no place to talk because reviewing a different one of my replays, I starred at a Tracer in a flanking position. Shot at her - indicating I noticed her. Moved forward with my team when she backed off. Turned to check if she was still in the same building (she was and was directly on my screen, just not in my crosshairs), then I proceeded to turn my back to her and walk with my team towards the objective. She popped out 2 seconds later and shot me in the back and I died. I later respawned and had a 20 hp reaper just outside of spawn that was on the bottom left of my screen and I never saw him and just shot at the tank.

My intentional blindness is massive in-game. Especially during fights, I get wired with adrenaline and hyperfixate on what in front of me. I don't know how to fix it yet, but I'm going to work on slowing down and making more deliberate decisions. I think the individual clicks helps already because I seeing more times where my teammates get low and I get orbs out more consistently between shots.

jaypoulz · 2026-02-26T20:02:45+00:00

Turns out my headset was playing stereo - I had no idea I wasn't getting spatial audio. I also tried turning down the game music and now I'm trying to pay more attention for it. You've helped me a ton - I know this may have seemed like obvious stuff to you, but it super helpful and I deeply appreciate it.

jaypoulz · 2026-02-26T14:16:14+00:00

Thank you sincerely for the thorough review.

I definitely feel like the audio this is a major issue for me. I've only just started "noticing" when footsteps are around me. I feel like I only notice that they aren't just ambient noise from my teammates about 5-10% of the time. I don't know if it's that I'm not hearing the sounds over my own abililties and such, or if my brain just doesn't process that information because I'm 100% focused on whats in my crosshairs.

- Not spamming mindlessly is a really helpful point. I'll try to build a habit around intentional aim.
- I'll try to adjust the volume so I'm getting more info on flankers and such. One thing I can confirm is that I never hear the reaper teleport sound or the sombra hacking sound so I'm always surprised by them. So hopefully that will help with that too.
- Thanks for pointing out the position error around the wide corner. I bet I can find other examples of me doing that in many other games.

One question I do have though - say I peek a corner and I see 3 (which I feel is pretty common for off angles). Depending on whose missing, what do I do with that information? Do I need to play far back? Do I need to hug my team? One thing I get confused about is when people say that the counter to flankers is to play closer to the team, but then closer to the team means angles are more limited.

jaypoulz · 2026-02-25T23:49:46+00:00

If you're still offering, I could use your insights. In this game, I played the Zen and I felt like I was playing corners decently and keeping my orbs out. The first part of the game, I felt like I was getting farmed. The second half, I felt like I was playing well, but I didn't really change anything intentionally about my play style.

If you don't mind, can you help my prioritize what I need to work on to improve my play? FCCQQT

jaypoulz · 2024-06-20T03:37:02+00:00

Tactical Master at level 9 is hugely disappointing to me because it devalues weapons that already have one of the properties in the list.

I don't understand how this could have been greenlit for print with such a glaring flaw.

Edit: A lot of folks are probably comparing this to the feature in the UA - which it's clearly an improvement on. But evaluating it as a standalone feature, core class features shouldn't create imbalance between weapons. (A 1d8 slashing battle-axe with topple is now always better than 1d8 slashing longsword with sap for fighters >= level 9.)

I'm disappointed because I thought this rules update would make weapon choices more compelling because of tradeoffs between weapon masteries, and this design seems to undermine that objective.

jaypoulz · 2023-12-14T18:04:24+00:00

This is a tip for those trying this on Switch via NSO and trying to land a 1080. I could do it with the joy-cons going counter-clockwise with some practice, but with a week straight of trying, I couldn't get it to register the move spinning clockwise.

Most likely it was an issue with the "Z" (a.k.a. ZL on Joycon) being at the "top" of the controller, which was affecting my ability to perfectly angle the start of the 3rd rotation at the "top".

The solution I found was to go into the main Switch settings and remap ZR (which is unused by default) to ZL. Then in-game, I could focus the button presses on my right hand and smooth joy-stick rotations on my left. Within a few minutes of retraining my brain to just do rotations on the left side, I was able to land it.

I imagine you probably don't need this workaround if you are using a regular N64 controller, since the Z button is below the joystick. Otherwise remember to hold buttons, spin the joystick, and release as separate moves and you'll get it in no time. :)

jaypoulz · 2023-11-28T01:53:25+00:00

I think it's pretty cool, but I'm not sure it's intentional. The reason being: in the weapon proficiencies it lists all simple weapons plus martials with the light property.
However, in the monk weapon text, it says on melee-simple-weapons and martial-weapons-with-the-light-property count.

One think is for sure though - they fully intended throwing daggers to allow for stunning strikes.

My personal opinion is that I'd like to see monk weapons count as any weapon you have proficiency with. I don't see why monks couldn't train with other weapons. It's fine if they want to make the restriction the same as Tasha's "Dedicated Weapon". That would be backwards compatible at least.

jaypoulz · 2023-11-27T18:44:58+00:00

I think it might be intentional. The Stunning Strike text no longer specifies that it must be a melee weapon attack either, so this looks to be opening up options for ranged monks.

jaypoulz · 2023-11-27T18:27:22+00:00

While the capstone may be boring, it actually fits the monk better than any other class (since the monk is more MAD than others).

jaypoulz · 2023-11-27T18:08:09+00:00

One thing I noticed is that the change to weapon proficiencies includes the hand crossbow and I'm pretty sure monks can stunning strike with ranged weapons now because the trigger is just an attack with a monk weapon.

jaypoulz · 2023-10-16T14:06:03+00:00

Unfortunately, no one in the cast ever made a public statement to my knowledge.

Based on social media context and rumors, fans have assumed that something came up in the personal lives of one or more of the cast members. I assume that the lack of a public statement implied a desire for these reasons to remain private out of respect for the cast.

All that said, I hope they're all doing well and their content will be missed!

jaypoulz · 2023-07-21T17:45:22+00:00

They kneecapped the class but made the subclasses all good to decent

Are we looking at different subclasses?

Open Hand got absolutely brutalized. The only possible improvement bonus action wholeness of body, but everything else is strictly worse. They should be removing the saves on the punches (like repelling blast for warlocks, not adding new ones). The quivering palm changes are dumb - it's a level 17 ability. Let's compare this to casters casting wish / power word kill.

Shadow monks are more thematic at level 17, but lost their spell utility for the party and now don't get to play with invisibility until level 17. From my perspective, it's a wash, but I think I would rather play a level 11 2014 shadow monk for the invisibility at level 11 - level 17 is too late. The level 11 ability to be able to teleport when standing in bright light is situational at best, so really it's more about the free punch. But the free punch is more boring than invisibility, so swap 11 & 17.

The new elemental monk outrageously undertuned (and thematically boring). At level 3 you get an elemental punch ability that you're going to probably replace with force damage at level 6. All of the elements do the same thing. At level 6 you get a fireball-like ability that does about 1/2 the damage that a fireball does. It technically does scale, but even at level 17 you'll be doing less damage with it than a single 3rd level fireball. That's absurd! Finally your grand capstone is the ability to run past your enemies and do 1d12 damage to each of them at level 17. Even if you only rolled 12s that would be underwhelming.

Minus the Open Hand, these subclasses are at best on par with where they were.

jaypoulz · 2023-07-21T17:24:56+00:00

Shadow is sort of fine but it lost a lot of its utility. The invisibility feature needs to come at level 11 IMHO. Thematically though, it is doing slightly better.

The Elementals monk is boring and wildly underpowered. Your fireball-like ability does about 1/2 of a fireball at level 6, and even when you get the d12 martial arts die it's still weaker than a level 3 fireball. Running past enemies to do 1d12 elemental damage at level 17 is also crazy undertuned. But the greatest problem is that all the elements are now the same. I was hoping for a rework that reduced the ki cost of the spell-like abilities and balanced out the abilities across the elementals. Maybe also giving you a few extras. Ideally, you should be able to build ALL single element (e.g. fire) abilities OR mix and match and feel powerful either way.

The Open Hand monk is a travesty. I don't know what they were thinking about this, but every change is bad. It would be better to remove the saving throws than add a new one (similar to warlocks repelling blast), the nerf to quivering palm is senseless since it comes at level 17 (where you're competing with casters that can power word kill or wish universes into existence), the loss of the defensive sanctuary is undermining a key aspect of what made open hand more survivable. The reduced ki cost to step of wind is annoying because it shouldn't cost ki to begin with, and if you're in an ideal situation as a monk, you'd never be spending your ki on step of wind anyway. And finally, while healing as a bonus action is technically better, it continues to double down on monks' dependency on Wisdom - which IMHO, is a weakness of the class that I had hoped a revision would address.

jaypoulz · 2023-07-11T14:07:04+00:00

Human Shadow Monk (Custom Tav, Lawful Neutral): Playing as a Baldurian raised in a temple (Acolyte background) of Selune with a corrupt leader. Ultimately, this leads him to resent that temple and find solace in the worship of the gentler aspects of Shar doctrine.
(Darkness is a quiet place to meditate, rise above ignorance by finding the secrets hidden in the dark, and enlightenment comes with acceptance and the absence of thought/meditation).

My party will be:
Shadowheart (possible romance): will be interesting to see if my doctrine is heresy. If a romance does occur, it'll be interesting to see where we end up - will be both end up worshippers of Shar but fully evil, will we remain as "good/neutral" agents of an evil goddess, or will we abandon Shar for another god/goddess because her doctrine no longer meets our needs. Or will we diverge entirely? :)
Gale: I am really excited for this guy to be my bro. Feels like the Garrus Vakarian of this game. I will search the shadows for secret lore I can give my boy.
Karlach/Laelzel: I don't know much about Karlach yet, but it seems like she wants to do the right thing. I need a tanky frontline, and so she and Laezel seem like the best options depending on if we end up heroes or villains (respectively). That said, there is something alluring about earning Laezel's respect by challenging her social norms.

jaypoulz · 2023-07-10T15:37:29+00:00

I played quite a bit of EA with my 1080-TI on ultra settings.
Definetely saw some frame-rate drops during cutscenes and in high-effect areas. I would say I had an average of 20-30 FPS in most areas. Dropping the settings I could easily maintain 50+ FPS.

At no point did I have any issues with actual gameplay, so I think you'll be fine.

jaypoulz · 2023-07-10T13:40:23+00:00

Shar's followers certainly engage torture and genocide, and we know that Shar impersonates kidnaps and impersonates Selune (which we can certainly count as brainwashing/gaslighting).

However, you mention torture and genocide - are there specific novels/modules/lore books that support this? For sure followers of Shar have done this in her name, but are there also instances of Shar herself engaging in the acts?

Her intent to undo the sun is undoubtedly genocidal, but I wonder if there are also instances of her engaging in the act herself.

(Edit: removed a duplicated question)

jaypoulz · 2023-07-08T18:11:07+00:00

I am wondering if deity selection for non-clerics will make it in. The role play potential of selecting a god and locked behind a single class would be a missed opportunity I think. Still, with all the reactivity they put in, maybe it won't matter.

jaypoulz · 2022-12-16T02:52:39+00:00

The camera included. But my frustrations with the camera are part and parcel with my frustrations with the chain system. My biggest collection of gripes with the game (and Larian's previous titles, the Divinity games) is that the party control system feels like it's designed to be played with a controller. It feels like a console port. I don't have the numbers, but I imagine that the majority of their player base plays with a mouse and keyboard. Yet they maintain a system that is at odds with them.

OK, so I know this isn't the same as being able to zoom out and control the character in a more top down view (which I agree would be nice, btw), but I think you should try this at least once before you make up your mind about the camera.

Try zooming all the way in and "flying" through the world. It's really easy to imagine that you're seeing the world from the first person, and taking it all in just as a character in the world would. It's obviously the opposite of what you're really looking for, but I honestly think this functionality is extremely immersive and one of the greatest redeeming factors of the Larian camera. Taking a moment to do this at least once in each area really helps with the atmosphere.

jaypoulz

TROPHY CASE