Redoing Assassin MA's Skills

[zjat]

In my mod I didn't really know how to "fix" MA skills on the ASN so one thing I did do was make certain traps (bomb, static, claw) deal weapon damage of claw class weapons. I also removed "basic attack" from claw class weapons, requiring all MA's to need a real finishing move.
I've attempted to make each MA do it's effect as it charges, and am looking into continuing this more fully.

For example I have Tiger Strike add 7% damage or so per swing (21%), and then the unleashing of the charges deals double (42%). I want the Assassin to work more similar to the Monk in D3. I want to keep as many spells similar as possible.

So I'm looking for information on a way to softcode/txt files to make fists of fire for example do fire dmg on first strike, an explosion on second strike and fire/sec on third strike, and if possible retaining the charges.

OR

Simple adds fire to attack passively, and adds charges as used.

OR

Any other ideas in this train of thought. Kinda just trying to figure out what can be done with them, and what others may have done.

Monk Reference:

[edit]
After revisiting the actual Martial arts skills, I realize there is a distinct breakdown of style. For example almost all of the charge ups grant a large AoE bonus upon release. The main thing that this seems to make me scratch my head is that she is an assassin. I thought assassin were meant to get a single target job done, not kill everyone around them. So in redoing her skills I think I want to take a lot of her AoE out of the equation. I want to her to be more single target, but allowed to still kill minion waves when need be.
Also, I'm wondering on the possibilities of modified charge ups like Feral Rage, and if it might be possible to combine the coding of Asn charge ups and druid charge ups...

[Dew]

I personally have always disliked all the sin charge ups. so i got rid of em and made new buffs and single target skills that inflict debuffs to the target as well as damage them. optionally you could make the release all the charges at once so they would be more of all build up and do massive single target damage skill. just my thoughts.....

[zjat]

I have ended up retaining only 3 charge up skills: Tiger, Cobra, Phoenix.
I just wish I could edit Cobra more... I wanted it to grant tohit while charging (to offset tiger strike granting dmg% while charging), as well as I wish I could get it to do flat life/mana steal like I've done with the rest of the game, but it seems to be hard coded to the prgdam cell...
[edit]
I think I will write a short article about the charge up skills after this. I've done much less tinkering than you (all, anyone else) have done, but there's a lot of simple and complex features that can be done with these and it's been a ... "fun" time.
For example: I've finally figured out how/why tiger strike works so that it grants partial damage passively and full to its release. In discovering this I have started redoing my completed project (after like 10 hours of work) to rework the elemental martial arts skills so that I can gain elemental damage while charging AND get a bigger bonus on release
I wasn't even sure if it was working (cause I messed with skilldesc) so I went over to blood raven and released charges from a weaponless, bootless assassin. she took... quite a bit of damage, so I question if I'm doing too much atm, haha.
(This also works for tohit and other type modifiers like I wanted with cobra, woot)