Monk finisher success stories?

[Angelus_dead]

Perhaps some people should try a better "starter" if you want to make the best use out of the offensive "finishers". Fist of Darkness could be near DC 40 by level 16. That would make your finishers more likely to succeed.

FOD inflicts Shaken. All bosses are immune to Shaken, and other creatures get Shaken frequently anyhow. Damage a character wearing a Fearsome robe and you're auto-shaken. So having a high DC on the shaken effect isn't too impressive, because it's not uncommon for things to be shaken without a save at all.

Nonetheless, it's true that in some common situations, a finisher which involves FOD can be considered to have an effective +2 DC, because you'll debuff the monster on the way towards executing the finisher.

You'd have to play a Domination monk though! Is that a "bad word" in DDO now? I see people giving monk advice and they only talk about the healing moves.

That's because the healing moves are better when it matters. Domination moves have an intrinsic self-contradiction in their value: they are single-target debuffs, meaning they are most useful against powerful individual monsters... but the powerful individual monsters are red named bosses, which means they're immune to most Domination debuffs.

Domination Monks vs Bosses
Fist of Darkness shaken: immune
Touch of Despair healing-resist: vulnerable (but almost always irrelevant)
Pain Touch nauseate: immune
Falling Star blindness: immune
Freezing the Lifeblood paralysis: immune
Karmic Strike damage: vulnerable (and he could one-shot you with his next swing)

Back when monks were first released on Risia, I put in a suggestion that when a red-named creature is immune to a monk's debuff, it should instead suffer some kind of reduced penalty (dazzled instead of blinded, sickened instead of nauseated, reduced caster level instead of no casting, symbol-of-pain instead of paralyzed, etc). But until something like that is done, I see Domination as the weaker choice. Against bosses your debuffs are harmless, and against other monsters your group will probably kill them too fast for a debuff to be valuable.

[feynman]

Perhaps some people should try a better "starter" if you want to make the best use out of the offensive "finishers". Fist of Darkness could be near DC 40 by level 16. That would make your finishers more likely to succeed. You'd have to play a Domination monk though! Is that a "bad word" in DDO now? I see people giving monk advice and they only talk about the healing moves.

And it may be that the dark side is preferable at end game, but early on, offensive strikes simply don't work often enough to be worth it. The healing move, by comparison, works every time if you do it right and helps save the clerics SP. You don't even have to spend the ki on FoL if you just charge up first.

[valczir]

Meh. I've been doing a lot of the water/dark/water finisher (paralyzing attack), and it's better than Stunning Fist whenever I manage to land it. However, at the level I'm at, the enemies are dead mere seconds after they've been paralyzed. *shrug* Seems to me it could end up being useful in that it's basically a Stunning Fist that costs less Ki and lasts longer, albeit with a max of one use per three attacks.

[Mhalak]

makes me think of a monk with hide/move silent who has Freezing the lifeblood queued before battle... sneak in, Freeze the lifeblood to take one mob down very quickly with autocrits.

its the monk assassin build!

[winsom]

I think Shaken should be changed to work on all bosses. It is only a debuff, with a minor fear effect on AI behaviour. Make the purple bosses immune to the fear behavior but leave them invulnerable to the -2 attack and save penalty.

Back when monks were first released on Risia, I put in a suggestion that when a red-named creature is immune to a monk's debuff, it should instead suffer some kind of reduced penalty (dazzled instead of blinded, sickened instead of nauseated, reduced caster level instead of no casting, symbol-of-pain instead of paralyzed, etc)..

I think that is a great idea. This should occur whenever there would be an "immunity" to any ability or spell. The spell or ability should always do SOMETHING rather than nothing.

The City of Heroes game has at least a couple tiers of "bosses" similar to DDO. On lesser bosses you need to stack control-effects for them to work. i.e. Hit with your mesmirize power twice in a row. When one effect wears off the boss becomes immune to the single remaining control. This would be a good system for the red-named bosses in DDO.

Turbine should add Spell Resistance to most bosses and change DDO spell resistance to work as it does in D&D = damage spells can be resisted too. I am very surprised this artifact of the original DDO design team is still in play. It was a bad idea then and should be fixed in the current improved version of DDO. Turbine can then raise/lower the SR, Resistances and natural DR of bosses to create the challenge that they want. It seems like such an easy solution to their boss-challenge adventure designs.

[Inspire]

I Remember You Saying Monks "Curse Of Healing" Didnt Work On Boss Mobs.

(Combat): Stormreaver's curse of healing healed you for 1 point.

[Maegin]

I play a balanced stat monk and went wisdom based with the darkness path, and so far, I use cleave/g cleave with fire stance to get a ton of ki, then water with FoD to debuff/para/kill/stun/disable the **** out of anything. The combos are cheap, I hardly run out of ki, freezing the life seems to work all the time, it basically costs you no resources other than button pushing, and for the boss(es)? Well, i let all the bad a$$ dps'ers get aggro and do what they were designed to do, and i'll chip in my few pp of dps (comparing to a thf g.axe barb). Obviously none of the sweet darkness powers work on bosses, but bosses are ment to be dps'd, not 1 shotted or para/stunlocked and killed.

My personal testimony is that I had great success with it all, and I also live by spring attack, since, and im not sure, that finishers interrupt your attack chain and use your first attack, thus not using you last attack with the better +to hit. Tumbling into that cleaving mob with water stance on, using weapon finese to negate the minus STR, getting like +9ish AC for tumbling with water stance and mobility, FoD + Unbalancing + (insurance from spring attack) Imp Trip/insert finisher, has been very kind to me.

Depending on the mob, they will determine the debuff/stun/crit/whatever I use.

Oh and unbalaning strike and eagle claw attack count as fire moves in reguards to the chain needed for the darkness finishers (ie unbalaning strike -> FoD -> ocean II -> para .......or eagle claw -> FoD -> Fires II -> Karmic. I think the others do too, not sure.

Love it, hate it, w/e.

[Maegin]

Oh and the DC for stunning fist is 10+1/2 monk lvl+WIS, where as the combos are DC 10+monk lvl+WIS.

Combos take a second to set up, but they have a better DC, and saves you from the boring, 'hold right-click' style of fighting.

[llevenbaxx]

While I cant recall any specific stories, I do use my finishing move almost constantly. I dont understand how people can build up huge reserves of ki while in combat, Im constanly firing mine off for either a little bit of extra damage, minor but seeminly useful debuffs(im dark and lightning atm) or even just a stunning blow. These attacks work about 2/3 of the time if you throw them out enough and against the right mobs. Finishing moves are difinitely not "uber" but if you use them alot, they can be fun and affective. Not to mention they dont seem to work very well on bosses(save...save...etc), I stick to damage on them.

Imo the class is kinda vanilla w/o throwing these out at fairly regular intervals.

[Angelus_dead]

I Remember You Saying Monks "Curse Of Healing" Didnt Work On Boss Mobs.

No. I said it doesn't work on Arraetrikos.

[Angelus_dead]

Oh and the DC for stunning fist is 10+1/2 monk lvl+WIS, where as the combos are DC 10+monk lvl+WIS.

No. Both Stunning Fist and Finisher Moves have a DC of 10+level/2+wis.

The only ability that adds full monk level into DC is Fist of Darkness shaken, which is unimpressive because Shaken is such a minor effect (high level barbs can get an AOE shaken with no save on a successful Intimidate)

[Zaius]

No. I said it doesn't work on Arraetrikos.

Yup. It doesn't work on captain suulomades, either. It works on shroud portals (bug? who knows), velah, the stormreaver, and I bet even the warforged titan and his pillars... but not the two most useful targets in the entire game for the attack to go on.

[Maegin]

No. Both Stunning Fist and Finisher Moves have a DC of 10+level/2+wis.

Ah, your right. I stand corrected. ^_^

I went on my monk right after typing that and realized, 'hm... ****. i was just reading the FoD...err..."

[Maegin]

Possibly to make the finishers more attractive, I think they should make them 10+monk lvl+wis, eh? And as for light? scale up the healing!

[Eladrin]

Some Monk related tidbits on things I've been working on:

• Monk finishing moves that apply beneficial effects now generally stack with similar arcane effects, and have longer durations.
• Aligning the Heavens now functions as expected.
• The Monk Fire-Fire-Fire finisher has been renamed "Breath of the Fire Dragon", and no longer caps at 5d4 damage.
• Due to the increased difficulty of completing an attack chain, the Save DC's for Monk Finishers have been raised from 10 + Half Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier to 10 + Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier.
• The Monk enhancement "Way of the Tenacious Badger" now functions as expected.
• The movement speed penalty on Mountain Stance has been reduced.
• Higher levels of Mountain Stance now grant more Ki when critically hit, and have increased Damage Reduction.
• Higher levels of Sun Stance now grant more Ki on critical hits.
• The thrown weapon speed bonus from Ten Thousand Stars has been increased. (Note: The nature of Ten Thousand Stars may change in the future, but it will remain a "more thrown weapons" type of ability.)
• Updated the description of Healing Ki to "Heals all nearby allies for 1d4 points of positive energy, plus an additional 1d4 every two monk levels."
• Fixed errors in monk character generation advice.

Arraetrikos is, indeed, immune to curses.

[Gratch]

Some Monk related tidbits on things I've been working on:
...

Ooh... nice changes. Nothing on making wind stance work at some %'age with haste? Any fixes to the finishing move such as:
-grabbing collectables, using door/levers, hanging on ledges, moving on ladders no longer breaks the ki chain
-hitting the finishing move button when you don't have enough ki no longer takes away your finishing move.

Or are these Codog changes?

[maddong]

[*]Due to the increased difficulty of completing an attack chain, the Save DC's for Monk Finishers have been raised from 10 + Half Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier to 10 + Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier.[*]Higher levels of Sun Stance now grant more Ki on critical hits.

Wow. Some things like dual wield paralyzing strike are going to be pretty nasty now.

Is that a nerf to sun stance, ie instead of on every hit? If so that probably balances the stances pretty well.

[Angelus_dead]

Due to the increased difficulty of completing an attack chain, the Save DC's for Monk Finishers have been raised from 10 + Half Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier to 10 + Monk Level + Wisdom Modifier.

I'd prefer if this were addressed by reducing the difficulty of completing finishers, but leaving the DCs the same. That change would also help improve finishers which do not involve DCs.

Arraetrikos is, indeed, immune to curses.

It would be cool if someday we can loot the Curse Immunity trinket off of Arraetrikos or Suulomades. (VOD doesn't have enough named items anyway...)

[Detton]

You have made my day

Could we have a sneak peek on when those things might be going live?

I do wish it could be made so that clicking on things didn't inturrupt your attack chain, but I like the increased DCs very much, so don't think i'm complaining too loudly now. (Can I have both? )

[winsom]

That's great news Eladrin !

This is very good news, but it wasn't soon enough to save my Domination monk. She recently converted to the Harmony path. I really wanted to make Domination work for me, but the current implementation is not worth it at all.

I hope you also consider changing the Dark + Dark + Dark finishing move to something that is useful. The current effect is poor. Seriously poor. I would like Domination to have some group-buff effect so they can contribute something to the group other than debuffs and killing effects.

Domination monks that chose to frequently debuff with Dark (prior to a stun, for example) they deserve a result that is more on par with the Light x3 healing result. Consider that Light x3 and Dark x3 take a bit longer to progress to the finisher because of the wait time on light or dark to refresh. Mixed Light or Dark with Elemental finishers can be performed after only a couple of seconds.