Rogue or monk splash?

[whomhead]

Hi everyone - newish player here with a pretty basic build question: Which is the better splash to go with a human TWF DPS pally? Here's the breakdown, the way I see it. Since both classes get evasion the basic difference comes down to more feats available as a monk VS more skills available as a rogue.

At level 20, the rogue splash has 23 base in UMD plus a nice assortment of utility skills (jump, tumble, balance, open lock, haggle, intimidate). Feats are EWP Khopesh, TWF, ITWF, GTWF, Power Attack, Toughness, Improved Critical, and Extend. Pretty standard. Potentially nice bonus could be 1d6+3 on sneak attacks.

Monk splash at cap has natural 11 skill points in UMD and either Intimidate or Concentration, plus some Jump and Balance. The major benefit of monk splash is the surplus of feats which would include the basics listed above, but also comes with two (!) bonus feats. It seems like these could be put to very good use in a variety of ways.

Monk option 1: DPS. Could go OTWF and Slashing weapon focus to give every swing the highest chance of connecting. An intriguing alternative would be Weapon focus and Power Critical.

Monk options 2: heals. Empower healing + Mental Toughness. If Empower healing stacks with the Pally devotion enhancements, then this toon could spam some major healing when it was necessary.

Monk option 3: Improved Sunder + ??? I don't know what else I should be looking at here, so suggestions are welcome.

Fundamental question: Better to go rogue or monk splash?

Bonus questions:
Is there any real advantage to having sneak attack as a DPS pally?
Is Power Critical worthwhile? Note: I assume it isn't, since no one mentions it, but worth asking.
Which way should I go on the monk feats, if that's the way to go?

[Timjc86]

Personally I prefer rogue splash, but I am thoroughly addicted to UMD and I also prefer having the ability to pick locks as well.

The extra feats from monk are nice, especially on a feat-hungry class like paladins, making monk a solid choice too. But were it me, I'd go with rogue and UMD.

[PurdueDave]

Is there any real advantage to having sneak attack as a DPS pally?

Yes. You won't always have the aggro. And haste boost is OK.

Which way should I go on the monk feats, if that's the way to go?

There's usually two you might ordinarily take...e.g. toughness and power attack.

[Cedwin]

The TWF line is being added to the monk bonus feats as of update 3 as well. I can see that being a build changer for some TWF splash builds.

[AylinIsAwesome]

Either can work, but I chose not to go with either, since I didn't want to lose Divine Might 4 and Weapons of good for an extra 12.5 damage per attack at level 20, and Divine Sacrifice 3 for an extra 9d6 on a single attack at level 19.

That said, if you just want DPS, then splashing is probably a bad idea, since a lot of Paladin DPS can come for those last two levels.


(Also remember that Divine Might, Weapons of Good, Divine Sacrifices, KotC damage and Exalted Smites will trigger once for each hand, so that's 10.5 damage per hand you'd give up by losing the capstone, 2 more damage per hand for losing Divine Might 4, another 6 damage per Divine Sacrifice... And all that adds up.)


I would argue that it's not needed for a Paladin to have Evasion, even though Evasion is a very nice feat. You can cast Resist Energy to negate most elemental damage that could be saved against with Evasion, and the main physical damage you avoid with it are traps (most of which you can time anyway).

[Thelmallen]

I've played a lot of paladins over the years. While the extra feats from the monk splash are compelling, the disadvantage is that it forces you to wear robes/outfits which in turn force you to put a lot of build points and APs into dexterity to maintain a reasonable AC. In my opinion these don't outweight the utility of UMD that you get from the rogue levels. However, as stated earlier, if you're just looking for DPS, go pure paladin as the capstone is very good against endgame content. Personally, I really like having evasion on my tanks and the UMD is the cherry on top so I would probably splash rogue.

[SUPERCREWJOHN]

2 or 3 levels of Rogue is what I would recommend. The added damage from snreak attacks is nice as well

take rogue at first level.

[Uska]

Monk wis is somewhat useful to a paladin as well and you dont get full benifit of rogue unless your first lvl is rogue

[elraido]

2 or 3 levels of Rogue is what I would recommend. The added damage from snreak attacks is nice as well

take rogue at first level.

Do not take 3 levels of rouge. You will be missing out on the top teir of any presige class you are looking at

[Barumar]

Monk wis is somewhat useful to a paladin as well and you dont get full benifit of rogue unless your first lvl is rogue

I renamed and rolled anew my Paladin, and made a mule of the old one (didn't have the heart to delete my first day of pre-release character and five inventory and 3 bank slots maketh a nice mule ).

Anyway, I never tossed his raid gear, and am now glad I kept it as with the newest form of Reincarnation (1,2,3 I think it is called?) it appears I will have the ability to make him 32 point as well as add a level or three that he did not have.

I ask as if they keep it the way it is now I will NOT be able to splash Rogue at level 1, but will have to add them at the end. Does that not skew this decision (2 levels of Rogue or Monk) towards Monk?

Oh, my goal with him is to go TWF with Evasion as my other Pally is a S&B DoS.

Barumar

[whomhead]

Thanks all for the advice. Very helpful!

Since I want to go the DPS route, I decided to give pure Paladin a shot. I figure that if I end up deciding that I really need evasion (most likely because the survivability ends up being too low), then I can splash 2 monk levels to pick it up plus the bonus feats.

I've read that it is almost always preferable to start any Paladin/splash build with the splash at first level. That makes sense for the rogue where you get so many bonus skills, but seems like less of an issue for monk splashes. I realize that this is basically the same as Barumar's question above, but is that a good analysis?

[Gercho]

Well, the problem is that you would want to start with different abilities if you go for pala 20, than monk 18/2, for pala 20 you may want to start with higher charisma so you get to 20 with a tome to be able to use Divine Might IV, with a splash you cant get more than DMIII so you can use some points from cha in wisdom, so you take advantage of the monk AC bonus (for pure paladins wis is a dump stat).
Besides, depending of the monk build you chose, you may go with finese, that means a little less str at the start than the typical melee paladin...