[sadbot]

I've said my points on ki awoken in pretty much every balance thread on it in recent memory, so I'll summarize.

I'm also of the mind that it should be a base stat increase to make the buff actually matter when diminishing returns are taken into account. I think that this should be the same for all skills that increase/decrease stats for the same reason.

However, in the damage race that is sigrogana combat, hp costs don't fly. Blood spike and scarlet twister don't see much use unless it's for a huge pay off like dragging someone through several prophylaxis tiles or something similar, and their hp costs are far tamer than ki awoken's.

I've done the math on several occasions, and the short version is this. As it stands right now, even a build of almost all soft caps to lean into ki awoken and get a roughly +8 all will break even on damage gained/mitigated vs the 5% hp lost at best. Every turn after the first and 10% hp loss plus? You're literally just spending your own momentum to do your opponent's job for them. It's laughably bad.