Feedback:User/Ravencroft0/Unarmed Combat Profession

I'm just as curious and excited about the upcoming GW2 release as everyone else, but I am morely curious about how Cantha would be reintroduced. With Guild Wars Factions, introduced were the Tengu as more than just a feather farm, the Assassin and Ritualist professions, Allegiance faction, and all those items of import.

=Awakened= I can only speculate (read: HOPE) that we'll get another playable race (TENGU FTW!!!) and another profession, thus this suggestion page. At the top of the page it says "Unarmed Combat Profession." What do I mean? Exactly what the title says, but I am going to call this profession "Awakened." I won't go into details about why I chose the name just yet, but I will post it, pending inquiries.

Awakened are unique to Guild Wars in the fact that they excel in dealing unarmed damage and they make use of a new mechanic I am calling "auras." Auras are skills that target allies or enemies depending on their location to the npc, using the mechanic of Area of Effect. The awakened class will have many aura spells, but like stances, they can only be used one at a time. Also important to the awakened is the use of stances. Stances, like in current GW play, will be used for IMS and IAS buffs, as well as for defense.

Armor
I have thought extensively on this. In theory, an unarmed combatant will need to be as fast as possible in order to land those fast kicks and punches, so the lighter the armor the better. Based on current GW standards, spellcasters will ultimately have the lightest armor, so I'm going to go with there respective armor rating for simplicity and practicality. Wait a minute. Your "Awakened" is going to be up front, in the nitty gritty, with what comes down to being 60 AR: the lowest armor rating? Yes.

Primary Attribute: Enlightenment
I'm going to be getting some hate and haha's with this, but I'm going to use the D&D monk as reference. If you played D&D (most of you have in some form or another), you will already be familiar with the monk and how its Wisdom modifier will give a bonus to the monk's relatively weak AR or AC or... whatever. This is what the Awakened's Primary Attribute, "Enlightenment," will serve to do. For each rank in Enlightenment, the Awakened will get one point of AR added to their base of 60, or the GW2 equivalent. Does this seem OP? Well it could be, but it's a gray area really. If you put 10 ranks into it, you'll effectively have 70 armor. Quite the upgrade. Raise Enlightenment to 15 or 16? Yeah, you'll have almost as much armor as a Warrioring tank. Why would you want to give that much armor bonus from an attribute. "That's so IMBAXORZ!!!"? You'll read why when you get to the New Energy Cost section. It will all work out. I promise.

In addition to this, for every 3 ranks in Enlightenment, the Awakened will receive 1 point of damage reduction. I was going to go with every 4 ranks, but leaving it at 3 leaves room for negotiation. I suppose the profession could do without this little tidbit, but it doesn't hurt to try to throw in a little extra. :)

Function
How does Enlightenment fit into the Awakened repertoire of attributes? Normally there would be an in-game tutorial (possibly a series of quests) to help new Awakened learn their trade, but for you I will make the exception so you can get an insider's exclusive first look. Enlightenment, in the Awakened sense, means to have a level (rank) of harmony with the energies that comprise the universe; energies that permeate every facet of existence. What energy would this be? Pure, unadulterated, raw energy, or '''chaos energy. By being in harmony with the energies of existence, the Awakened will be able to manipulate those energies, using them for destruction, protection and other types of support for their unarmed strike skills and the skills of their allies.'''

Enlightenment will also be an important part of how Awakened gain kinetic energy for their special abilities.

Example skill: Signet of Synergistics Ki Signet. 1 30 If fully charged,  when you activate this signet, you receive  strikes of ki energy.

New Energy Cost
I am proposing a new form of energy called ki energy,, or kinetic energy, as some of the other Awakened npcs call it. Basically, it functions much the same as adrenaline does, only reversely. If you think about it, whenever you hit something (go ahead, try it) you don't feel as much of the impact as the object you're hitting would feel it. The impact of receiving a hit creates more kinetic energy than the impact of attacking. Awakened can harness this energy either way, but they are able to power up their skills faster when they take hits. In fact some of their skills involve the enemy attacking faster, as opposed to slower, just so the Awakened can collect energy faster. Wow. All that "incoming" with only spellcaster's armor to protect you? A risky business, no? Oh, wait. You get an armor bonus with every rank in Enlightenment. ;)

Main Attack Attribute: Unarmed Strike Mastery
As the Warrior has Swordsmanship, and the Dervish, Scythe Mastery, and so on, the Awakened will have Unarmed Strike Mastery. So will it be like Dagger Mastery, where you will get the chance to Dual Strike with more ranks? No. With each rank in Unarmed Strike Mastery (abbr: USM for simplicity hereon), your attack speed, while unarmed will be .03 seconds shorter. It's not much really, but with 12 ranks (or the GW2 equivalent), one unarmed strike will attack at .89 seconds. That's just as fast as a sword with an IAS buff of 33%. You won't be doing as much damage as a sword, but you will be attacking just as fast, which will come in handy for skill charging. I've done the math for this, but please feel free to play with the numbers yourself to see if you feel there are better or more balanced ways going about it. USM will also, like the other Masteries, be the main attribute for attack skills.

Unarmed Combat
How do I mean?

Combat without the swords, staves, daggers, guns, and whatever else GW2 is going to throw at us. We've had all it before and then we'll have it again with GW2. There's a good chance that ALL the current GW professions will somehow all be rolled into at least six distinct professions, so what new weapon type does that really leave the GW2 team to work with? Nothing. Exactly nothing. Which is the beauty of the unarmed combatant: they fight with nothing but their own body parts, i.e. Bruce Lee. What would be the deciding factor as to how much damage can be done? I have been playing with 5-12 blunt damage. Five is the lowest damage on any max weapon in GW as seen here. I'm using Daggers as a reference, because they are the closest to unarmed combat as GW comes. Also, with The Throwdown in a Norn Town, we saw the implementing of Thunderfist's Brass Knuckles, which is more or less a fist with a little extra hardware, so use of daggers as a reference is viable. A fist can still do a considerable amount of damage in real life as well, so 5-12 blunt damage is what I've determined to be an accurate representation of unarmed damage.

Blunt Damage
Unless you have natural claws or spikes protruding from your hands or feet, that leaves blunt, which makes perfect sense.

Attack Speed
Again, I'm going to use the dagger set as reference. Daggers currently deal damage at a base rate of 1.33 sec/hit, the lowest time in the game (shared with axes and swords) excluding IAS buffs. One would think that the only reason it would take that long is due to the weight of the daggers. Well how long would it take to throw a punch with little to nothing in hand, at a beginner level? I'm thinking something slightly less than dagger time at about 1.25 seconds, a well rounded number for a beginner who has not properly trained his/her muscles to move faster.

Elemental Meditations
Elemental Meditations will be the skills that, as the name implies, will relate to the manipulation of raw energy to bring about elemental effects.

Example skill: Balthazar's Aura Enchantment. For seconds, your attacks deal fire damage. Your critical hits inflict burning for seconds.

Harmonic Meditations
Harmonic Meditations will be skills that deal primarily with Holy damage and with skills that remove negative effects and provide buffs, such as enchantments, stances, IMS and IAS skills.

Example skill:  Kerrsh's Metabolic Meditation  Enchantment Aura. For seconds, you attack 25% slower and your nearby allies attack 25% faster while inside nearby range.

Chaotic Meditations
Chaotic Meditations will deal primarily with hex auras and skills that can inflict some type of condition. Also skills that deal chaos, dark and sometimes shadow damage will use Chaotic Meditations as their primary attribute. Some skills will also have something of an elemental flavor, but the skills effects and what it affects will determine whether or not it needs to be here or in the other.

Example skill: Frostbite  Hex Aura. 10 3 20 For  seconds, nearby foes suffer weakness and move 66% slower. When the hex ends, all foes that were afflicted suffer burning for seconds.

=Lore= I'm throwing around different and multiple possibilities for the lore of awakened. Currently I have a concept of Brother Mhenlo being one of the first to display awakened abilities:

With the coming of Shiro Tagachi and Factions, we saw how Brother Mhenlo had a connection with the Shing Jea Monastery. What if later on, 20 or 30 years after the events of GWEN, Mhenlo went back to Cantha. Here we see that Mhenlo is a broken man. Cynn was lost to him, fallen in battle with a Charr or some remaining servant of Abaddon. For some reason or another, Mhenlo was not able to bring her back and it nearly destroyed his faith in the gods. The dragons have not yet rose up in the world and Cantha's borders are still open. Mhenlo goes to Shing Jea island and becomes little more than a recluse. After a short time, he travels the island doing good works for the people. He spends some time at the monastery helping to teach and instruct some of the students as best as he can. Without his faith as it once was, Mhenlo cannot do much as a monk anymore, but he still believes in a greater good and finds he can still work minor acts of divine magic, so if he can't exactly perform magic, he can at least teach about it. With more traffic coming in from Elona, in arrived more dervishes and paragons as well. Mhenlo studied the abilities of the dervish and with the aide of Kahmu, and he was able to call upon the spirits of wind and earth. Mhenlo began to see how all the different hero professions were inlaid with aspects of all the gods and he meditated on that knowledge. Not long after that, a corsair fleet docked at Seitung Harbor and began attacking the town, making their way to the Monastery. Mhenlo gathered a group of students and led an evactuation outside the monastery walls well into Sunqua Vale where Mhenlo ordered the students to watch over the refugees while he went back to see what he could do to help defend his chosen home. Much of the grounds inside the walls had been laid to waste. The bodies of students and instructors alike littered the ground here and there. He came upon a the elementalist instructor Herta, a native of Elona. She was a beautiful woman and in many ways she had reminded him of Cynn. Mhenlo became fond of Herta the more time he spent with her and grew to care for her as he had Cynn. Seeing her lying there he could feel his heart breaking and he collapsed at her side. Herta was alive, though not for long. She said to him with her last breath, "i love you mhenlo. Now get up and fight." Mhenlo heard blades being drawn behind him, lewd remarks being said about his lost love from one of the corsairs. He sat there and started to shake. To the corsairs it looked as if Mhenlo was merely quietly sobbing, but there were no tears in Mhenlo's eyes. There was rage. He stiffly rose up and turned to the pirates, stopping them with his glare. They looked down to Mhenlo's fists and saw they were glowing with a red haze, as if they were metal heated nearly to the point of melting. Their gaze travelled lower and saw his feet were as well. Mhenlo bellowed in rage and dashed to the pirates, attacking wildly, but with purpose. Each of his blows connected and the pirates could do no more than be bludgeoned under the man's wrath. More corsairs ran at Mhenlo with swords and axes. Mhenlo took them all on, weaving under their swings, using their own momentum against them as they attacked each other. He used his own fists to parry with their blades, his fists still holding their glowing haze. He sundered the hafts of the axes, he grasped the wrists of the swordsmen, crushing bones with a wrench. More corsairs piled atop Mhenlo, but he would not stop fighting. All he could hear were herta's last words, "... Now get up and fight." Mhenlo screamed a primal yell, and to those around him it would sound as if he had screamed, "Dwayna!", as a wave of force exploded from mhenlo crashing all those around him to the ground. Those nearest to Mhenlo were certainly dead, further back they were unconscious and those farther, merely dazed. The corsairs left standing looked on at Mhenlo and felt the fight go out of them and fled the monastery. Mhenlo still seethed with rage. He then heard a voice where Herta had been laying. Herta was breathing, alive. Mhenlo ran to her and helped her to a sitting position and asked her how. She looked at him with tears filling her eyes and said that the last thing she remembered was a smiling priest of Balthazar saying, "That's my boy," and she was back. Mhenlo held Herta close and started sobbing.

Note: The skill Mhenlo uses when he screams "Dwayna!" is called Dwayna's Rage 20 ki  60  Elite spell. All foes in the area are Knocked Down. Foes adjacent take lightning damage and have cracked armor for  seconds. Foes nearby take lightning damage and are weakened for  seconds. Foes in the area take lightning damage and are dazed for  seconds. All your skills are disabled for seconds and you are exhausted. Elemental Meditations

=Acquiring the Awakened as a Secondary Profession= Also I realize that any class introduced will have to alternatively be playable as a secondary class (or the GW2 equivalent) meaning full use (with the exception of primary attribute skills) of all the secondary's abilities. This will be achievable with the other classes and visitors from the northern lands of Tyria/Elona, by undertaking a separate set of quests designed to help them understand the concept of chi energy and usage of Awakened skills. In other words, the player is effectively able to use Awakened skills when, and only when, they have taken the Awakened Secondary profession quests. The profession changer seems like cheating to me, and having the quests adds more game content than what would otherwise be provided by simply paying 500g to a profession changer.

I'm afraid I'll have to stop for now, but I'm leaving you with this information to dwell upon. There is much more to this cla...erm... profession that you see before you. If you all are interested, please leave a positive remark in the discussion panel, and I'll comply as best as I can. This concept of a profession keeps bugging me, so I'm going to try to flesh it out. Thanks for your patience.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate any constructive feedback.