First question is what society are you playing? If you are sunfist I'd recommend not bothering with PerfectSelf and the surge/burst prerequisites. I have rank 5 perfectself and the necessary rank 3 surge/burst on my CoL monk and I benefit from it continuously. Surge/Burst each have a duration of 90 seconds and at 3 ranks they also have a soft cooldown period of 90 seconds. So to be efficient with your stamina you can always have 1 active and the other on cooldown. On a grizzled creature I'll pop both just to wrap up my hunt and head in.

With the masteries I'd only bother with one myself. Pick whichever one you'd like to both tier up from using and which one you'd like to use exclusively at excellent. I believe punch is mechanically the best choice for this as it does decent damage even while at decent tiering, has the second best chance to provide a tier up opportunity and is tied for fastest RT. I think Grapple has more style personally. Assuming you are able to read fast enough to see your Fatality before moving onto the next one.

If you're looking at a UAF booster (sounds like these appeal to you) Coup de Grace is also a likely candidate for that. Your success with it will depend on how well you know your targets, how well you can gauge their remaining life pool, and of course how many ranks you've invested into the skill.

Krynch seems to be the goto offensive stance. Haven't played with it since my first month however so I can't say much about it.

Popular defensive choices are Mobility, Emastery, Toughness. Slippery Mind is a possible defensive stance. It is one I like, I just haven't invested points into it just yet.

Lochiven

>> Coup

>>Coup does sound pretty interesting. I was reading about it the other day and 50% HP insta kill at rank 5 seems nice. The only part that makes me hesitate is if I have a creature at 50%, chances are I'm already tiered up and a kick should kill it.

I recommended Coup because you and any witnesses can get an AS boost from watching your kill. Here is the clip from KP

A successful Coup de Grace will result in the immediate death of your target, along with a temporary boost to your morale and the morale of everyone in your group (in the form of a bonus to Attack Strength) and a reduction in the morale of any creatures that are around to observe the killing of their companion (in the form of a reduction to their Attack Strength).


In order for you to be successful, your target must be incapacitated in some way, and must have significantly reduced health (a maximum 10% of hitpoints remaining at Rank 1, 20% at Rank 2, 30% at Rank 3, 40% at Rank 4, and 50% at Rank 5)

The Attack Strength bonus can be between 10 and 40 points depending on the end roll of the maneuver. If multiple coup de grace maneuvers are successfully completed before the time period elapses, the higher of the end rolls will be dominant.



>> emastery

>>Evade mastery seems crazy good. Especially since we wear robes. I had one question though, if rank one in cloth is 9% dodge, is that 9% + base dodge rate? or 1.09 x base dodge rate? Basically additive vs multiplicative bonus.

Additive.

>> slippery mind

>>This skill really appeals to me, but I question focusing so much emphasis on TD abilities. My initial thoughts are if an area has brutal TD, can't I just switch to a different area? I'm not familiar with how loot works, so unless the TD areas have godly treasure, wouldn't it be best just to move on?

Definitely a niche ability, one reason why I am putting it off myself. You have a lot of hunting selection until level 60 or so.

I'd suggest looking at Feint, its great for killing turtled npc's and keeping casters in rt. Of course you need a weapon to use it before rank 5 (though hopefully that might be changing!).