Gameplay -- Underpowered

[Variaz]

2)-4) Unnecessary combat tricks that do not really help much. That is really the problem though with abilities in general is they will not all be equally useful/efficient/effective and some will seem unnecessary until you reach a point in the game where you have to redesign from scratch. So it may be that my choices made these not worthy and thus when I reincarnated I put no points in them.

Abilities like Spin Kick, Ki Punch and the like are more designed for a Combat Feats-based build. Since you didn't have much combat feats, these skills weren't very useful to you. They would be more useful for a more Combat Feats-oriented Monk.

Not all builds will use all 10 abilities. So I'd say more testing needs to be done with the appropriate builds before saying that these skills are useless.

10) Perfect Union - this seems like a combination of several earlier abilities and it did not perform as I expect a level 10 ability to (I was still doing the same general damage and not really seeing an impact with it even with multiple points in it. I am not certain this fulfills it's role.

If by "multiple points" you mean 2(based on your Testange build that you've posted), then no, you won't notice much difference. Remember that as of 0.5, passive damage bonus are now additive, so two points merely added +20% to Spiritual Warrior's +120% that you get with 12 points. It also doesn't add a +20% to magic damages, so it didn't affect your spells power.

Another thing to note is that up until alpha 1.1 that I've uploaded yesterday, dodging was broken and wasn't working at all. So the bonus to dodge rolls certainly didn't pay off, but should be better now.

Perfect Union is more geared toward mainly melee monks, hence the melee and dodge bonus, and extra wisdom adds some power to healing and make more support spells available. However, in your case, you seemed to be a bit more magic-oriented, and Spiritual Warrior is better for actual spells damages.

Again, as I've mentionned, not all builds uses all 10 abilities. The class has many options, and you've explored one of them. However, the other ones will need to be tested.

[Gando]

I am not saying that it makes Caster Monks unplayable that these abilities are underpowered but I think biasing the class towards melee isn't really a natural ideal. The problem is the division of stats between Wisdom and Dexterity and to a lesser extent constitution and strength. The Wis casting monk needs all 4 stats or just can't really excel in melee. I think we have seen that split focus characters just die vs CR2+. Even before there were such ratings, the more difficult monsters just ate those kind of hybrids for breakfast. It might be that there is no point in even making a Caster Monk but then the wisdom based abilities are dead weight. So it seems like 2 distinct classes rather than one class that benefits fully from all abilities. Not sure I have a real point but I felt it needed to be said.

[Gando]

Also my last build is a reincarnation. My original build had 10 points in ability 10 and only 10 in ability 1.

[Gando]

Question regarding Fighters and dealing with Ghosts and other physical immune monsters...how does a fighter without any branded weapons deal with them? None of their starting abilities address this. Seems like a MAJOR problem.