The Hammer -- DPS Kensai Monk

[Absolute-Omniscience]

With the new changes to monks, a pure monk is going to be pretty viable DPS as well, they'll just bring a little different set of tools than the 12/7/1.

Aye, indeed. ~22 extra elemental damage for each grandmaster strike will be quite nice. Though not enough to surpass 30% haste boost, +11 str, 4 gws, 2 kensai, 1 enhacnemnt, etc etc.

[Dark-Star]

Well a pure monk starts with 2d10 base damage vs. 1d8 for our builds, or 11 vs. 4.5 average for 6.5 difference. That covers the damage of power surge and kensai. We'll have a bit more from gws and fighter str, and likely more starting str, too. We'll have 1d6 +3 more sneak attack damage.

Grandmaster elemental damage is now 1d20 or 10.5 average. Mountain is 16 raw damage +2d10 acid on crits, or ~17 per hit before stuns are considered. Spamming 2-3 of those is a lot of added damage. Tier two for us is 2d6 or 7 average.

Our builds' haste boost is 30% for 20 seconds, or if averaged over a minute a 10% haste increase. Grandmaster of Wind is exactly the same. One has superior burst speed, one has superior sustained speed. A pure monk will not need haste.

The pure monk has two stuns, vs. our one, but our DC will be higher. The pure has Finger of Death. We have intimidate, he has Otto's Irresistable Dance. He has a much better healing and fire finisher than we do. A pure should have more AC, better saves, improved evasion and will have 10DR/epic. We'll have no fail UMD, he'll cap at about 30.

ToD rings are a wash.

It's kind of shocking, but the DPS is not too far apart after all of the changes. Add in the prestige enhancements for monks (hopefully in January), and we could get outpaced.

[zealous]

Well a pure monk starts with 2d10 base damage vs. 1d8 for our builds, or 11 vs. 4.5 average for 6.5 difference. That covers the damage of power surge and kensai. We'll have a bit more from gws and fighter str, and likely more starting str, too. We'll have 1d6 +3 more sneak attack damage.

Grandmaster elemental damage is now 2?d20 or 21? average. Mountain is 16 raw damage +2d10 acid on crits, or ~17 per hit before stuns are considered. Spamming 2-3 of those is a lot of added damage. Tier two for us is 2d6 or 7 average.

Our builds' haste boost is 30% for 20 seconds, or if averaged over a minute a 10% haste increase. Grandmaster of Wind is exactly the same. One has superior burst speed, one has superior sustained speed. A pure monk will not need haste.

The pure monk has two stuns, vs. our one, but our DC will be higher. The pure has Finger of Death. We have intimidate, he has Otto's Irresistable Dance. He has a much better healing and fire finisher than we do. A pure should have more AC, better saves, improved evasion and will have 10DR/epic. We'll have no fail UMD, he'll cap at about 30.

ToD rings are a wash.

It's kind of shocking, but the DPS is not too far apart after all of the changes. Add in the prestige enhancements for monks (hopefully in January), and we could get outpaced.

The monk could trade the DR, 1 AC and 2 base damage for no fail UMD, intimidate, 1d6+3 SA and haste boostI. Trade another level, loosing ~nothing and gain e.g. sprint boost, skill boost and +3 damage, +1 AC against 1 FE.

Think the attack speed would be at a slight advantage for the 12ftr/monk/rogue, esp when you pass the 2min mark, difficult to say exactly til cforce updates the speed index. =)

I've read that you need to circulate some 6ish elemental attacks to get it on every attack, also there's the issue of the ki generation. As far as my approximations go this will generally put the 12ftr/monk/rogue some 3-6 damage/swing ahead if you only can rely on earth, still at advantage, 1.5-4ish, if you can use earth+1 other element and ~2ish advantage for the 18monk/1rog/1ranger if you can use all elements. This is against non-FE and the number of elemental attacks to circulate will likely be higher when haste boosted.

Monk PrCs will very likely push the dps advantage in the 18/1/1s favor, at least theoretically, my approximations are probably overestimated. Won't have the feats to fit raid class intim though and the AP and stat requirements for obtaining GM in all elements is quite steep. Judging by the rings and the changes to the elemental strikes I think there's a moderate-high likelihood of the monk PrCs being over the top.
___
As a side note I think a 15pal/4monk/1rog should be quite similar to the hammer/monkster/slapper performance wise.

[Absolute-Omniscience]

Well a pure monk starts with 2d10 base damage vs. 1d8 for our builds, or 11 vs. 4.5 average for 6.5 difference. That covers the damage of power surge and kensai. We'll have a bit more from gws and fighter str, and likely more starting str, too. We'll have 1d6 +3 more sneak attack damage.

Grandmaster elemental damage is now 1d20 or 10.5 average. Mountain is 16 raw damage +2d10 acid on crits, or ~17 per hit before stuns are considered. Spamming 2-3 of those is a lot of added damage. Tier two for us is 2d6 or 7 average.

Our builds' haste boost is 30% for 20 seconds, or if averaged over a minute a 10% haste increase. Grandmaster of Wind is exactly the same. One has superior burst speed, one has superior sustained speed. A pure monk will not need haste.

The pure monk has two stuns, vs. our one, but our DC will be higher. The pure has Finger of Death. We have intimidate, he has Otto's Irresistable Dance. He has a much better healing and fire finisher than we do. A pure should have more AC, better saves, improved evasion and will have 10DR/epic. We'll have no fail UMD, he'll cap at about 30.

ToD rings are a wash.

It's kind of shocking, but the DPS is not too far apart after all of the changes. Add in the prestige enhancements for monks (hopefully in January), and we could get outpaced.

It's 2d20 for grandmaster stances though.
And the 30% haste boost is 30*0,667=20% increase per minute, not counting different stacking etc, so it'll probably be more. To be confirmed with Cforces attackspeed estimator. Pure Monk wont need haste, which is sweet, though he'll lose 5% if he doesn't use madstone.

Yeh, can't wait for the Monk Pres, though if they give a lot of dps increase, monks will go from underpowered (mod 8) to totally overpowered (mod 11?). As then they'll have the best dps, combined with all their other funky stuff.

[Thanimal]

One more comment re pure Monk vs. Kensai II/Monk:

I haven't figured this out super-carefully, but I think Kensai II/Monk has a huge to-hit advantage, and there is some speculation that this will be quite important in Epic content. I'm thinking 11 points of STR (+3 Fighter enh, +8 Kensai II Surge), +2 Focus feats [technically Monk could have these I suppose], +2 Kensai, for somewhere around +9 or +10 to-hit compared to a pure Monk. In other words, better with WF-enhance PA on than pure Monk is with PA/CE off.

[Dark-Star]

To hit is an issue in epic content. Looked like some red named trash has AC in the high 60's to low 70's.

[Dricul]

Not too be disrespectful to the Hammer build (rolled one lated night) but I wish you guys would show up in the monk forum more often. I love playing an uarmed build and been trying to get help on a WF pure monk over there. Everybody wants to think the same way though and not really try to help make a dps monk. Can we get something started over there with some actual desire too make something not dex/wis based? Would appreciate it.

[Thanimal]

Not too be disrespectful to the Hammer build (rolled one lated night) but I wish you guys would show up in the monk forum more often. I love playing an uarmed build and been trying to get help on a WF pure monk over there. Everybody wants to think the same way though and not really try to help make a dps monk. Can we get something started over there with some actual desire too make something not dex/wis based? Would appreciate it.

Hope you enjoy it!

But a big reason I made this build (and it probably influenced Dark and A-O's builds as well) is that this direction has quite a lot more DPS than a STR-based Monk. I tend to agree that the way to take best of advantage of being a "real" monk is to go WIS based halfling.

I also rarely post in class forums. I'm not very interested in the classes per se, only how to build characters with all the tools available.

[phreek]

6: Fighter Attack Boost III (prereq to Kensai)
6: Fighter Critical Accuracy III (prereq to Kensai)
6: Fighter Kensai II

Can loosen up 6 AP's since Fighter Kensai only requires Attack Boost and Critical Accuracy II.

Other than that, nice toon.

[Thanimal]

6: Fighter Attack Boost III (prereq to Kensai)
6: Fighter Critical Accuracy III (prereq to Kensai)
6: Fighter Kensai II

Can loosen up 6 AP's since Fighter Kensai only requires Attack Boost and Critical Accuracy II.

Other than that, nice toon.

Sweet! Thanks for the heads-up. I'm confident something fun can be done with those!! Hopefully I'll have time to revisit this at some point. Anyone have suggestions?

[phreek]

Sweet! Thanks for the heads-up. I'm confident something fun can be done with those!! Hopefully I'll have time to revisit this at some point. Anyone have suggestions?

Well, I would go Monk 7 first. You'll loose out on +1 dex enhancment, but that can be adjusted by getting +3 tome instead (wich is more realistic anyway). Will loose 1 AC.

But mainly why i would go Monk 7 is cause of Wholeness of Body - That's a free "inbetween fight" heal right there. Wich in my opinion surpasses 1 (kind of unrealistic) AC.

If you do this, you'll have 8 AP's left over.

I would go Monk Improved Recovery II, Racial Toughness II & Monk Fist of Light.

Loose 1 AC, gain more healing power/HP.

[cforce]

But mainly why i would go Monk 7 is cause of Wholeness of Body - That's a free "inbetween fight" heal right there. Wich in my opinion surpasses 1 (kind of unrealistic) AC.

Semi-necro!

I'm necroing this build in an attempt to get Thanimal to update the OP to 12/7/1. I'm only now starting to understand how awesome Wholeness of Body is when outside of the standard 'full party, raid-by-the-numbers' mindset. Anytime you happen to be running without a dedicated healer, Wholeness of Body offers too much to pass up. Even if you only find yourself running in a short-man party in one quest out of 40, its net worth puts it higher up on my list than +1 DEX full time.

[Dark-Star]

In the mean time you may want to take a look at the Beotch Slapper, 12f-7m-1r.