The Dark Intellect: Arcane Monk

[k1ngp1n]

This strikes me as a very 'Phidius' build.

Therefore I like it. :P

[Cyr]

Fascinating build Gem. You know my aversion to arcane sword builds, but this particular take is very promising. Let me read over it some more and see if I have any suggestions for tweaks.

[Phidius]

This strikes me as a very 'Phidius' build.

Therefore I like it. :P

The sad thing is that Phidius wasn't one of the 4 I chose when I went Premium... maybe someday I'll pay the TP to unlock him again.

Gotta buy some content first...

Fascinating build Gem. You know my aversion to arcane sword builds, but this particular take is very promising. Let me read over it some more and see if I have any suggestions for tweaks.

I do know, and I'd appreciate it - he's level 3 now, but I'm hoping to get 4 today at lunch.

Not expecting great DPS, but it would be interesting to see how the Monk9 + ToD compare to old Ranger6 + Khopeshes. I'm OK at figuring out basic damage, but when it comes to damage over a time period with strikes on timers, I give up pretty quick.

But everyone loves big numbers, even if you don't get them very often

[quickbunnie]

The sad thing is that Phidius wasn't one of the 4 I chose when I went Premium... maybe someday I'll pay the TP to unlock him again.

Gotta buy some content first...



I do know, and I'd appreciate it - he's level 3 now, but I'm hoping to get 4 today at lunch.

Not expecting great DPS, but it would be interesting to see how the Monk9 + ToD compare to old Ranger6 + Khopeshes. I'm OK at figuring out basic damage, but when it comes to damage over a time period with strikes on timers, I give up pretty quick.

But everyone loves big numbers, even if you don't get them very often

Remember, a fair portion of Monk DPS comes from Ki strikes, ToD bursting rings, and base damage die. This build won't get too far on the base damage die, but a good set of handwraps and good management of your ki strikes will help DPS at lower lvls. Not sure if you will spend enough time to craft burst rings (no reason to if you are gonna TR back to 12/6/2).

My main pair is a +4 icy burst, force handwraps of pure good ML:10, which is great overall - very little is immune to force or good damage. Other wraps I use: +1 holy handwraps of greater undead bane, and Devouts for any metal DR I can't bypass. I have a few more pairs that are situational. I run a lot with a guildie who is a pure FvS WF greatsword melee build and currently I am fairly consistently out-pacing him on the kill counts. Of course, he has a lot more mana than I do and heals me when I run out of mana (no regen yet).

The finishers can also help DPS some - try grabbing the fernian wraps from Threnal (BTA). It makes the Breath of the Fire Dragon finisher pretty potent, if you are in sun stance and have a combustion item on (50% insight bonus to fire finishers and lvl 1 fire spells). The mechanism may be broken however, since BotFD is currently 1d6 per character level rather 1d4 per 2 monk levels like the description. Still, doesn't cost any mana, and until you get touch of death, not much to spend ki on. I don't do this too much, but its pretty funny against mummies and icy mobs.

Touch of Death in its current implementation is 60 DPS by itself. Ki strikes will add on to that - depending on how much ki you have. 500 dmg with an 80% chance to double proc every 15 seconds = 60 DPS. I use this as a baseline for estimating dark monk DPS. According to my numbers, against 50% fort, its okay DPS, slightly behind most melees. Against 0% fort, its actually pretty bad, falling 20-30% behind most melees. But does very well against heavy fort mobs - surpassing most non-monk builds.

[Phidius]

Finally have an update on this build - I ended up taking Monk9 at level 19 so I could play around with Touch of Death before I hit 20. I've not been impressed by this build, so I've been planning on TR-ing to the new and improved version (linked at the very top - a modification of the original build).

Now that I've got ToD, I thought I'd share a discovery that many people probably already knew - the Touch of Death is not improved in any way by Pale Master 1's 25% bonus to negative energy spells (nor by any other boost to negative energy spells).

I didn't really expect it to, as it's not a finisher, but it was worth checking out

Getting 250 - 1000 damage every 15 seconds is a nice toy, but still on track to TR once he hits 20.

[Fecerak]

Well, since I am considering making one of these gimps I am currently doing dps calculations on all kinds of battlemages :P

Ill let you know what I discover if you want

For this build, its dps is actually lower than your gemstone build, even without tempest I and when we also start to consider the fact that you cant make GS handwraps and so on this build is falling behind a bit. The dpscalc I am using may not be working for U7 however :P

Its made preU7, so yeah.

[Fecerak]

Well, now I have gone through all the combos I could think of with 12 wizard levels (bar barbarian stuff as I don't think that would be very playable even if it were better dps)

Here is the numbers I got: (Number 1 is 0% fort, number 2 is 50% and number 3 is 100%)(All numbers are assuming fighting against evil outsiders)(And all THF numbers are assuming eSoS)

Wiz 11/Mnk 9, TWF Unarmed: 262, 221, 192 (However these numbers are without ki strikes and ToD)
Wiz 12/Rgr 6/Mnk 2, TWF: 315, 245, 193
Wiz 12/Pala 6/Mnk 2, TWF: 319, 241, 193
Wiz 12/Ftr 6/Mnk 2, TWF: 326, 239, 189
Wiz 12/Rog 7/Ftr 1, TWF: 376, 265, 178
Wiz 12/Rgr 6/Mnk 2, THF: 292, 238, 184
Wiz 12/Pala 6/Mnk 2, THF: 315, 259, 200
Wiz 12/Ftr 6/Mnk 2, THF: 297, 241, 184
Wiz 12/Rog 7/Ftr 1, THF: 325, 251, 178

EDIT:
Decided to do barb versions as well, just to be done with it lol :P

Wiz 12/Barb 6/Rog 2, THF: 320, 262, 203
Wiz 12/Barb 6/Rog 2, TWF: 351, 260, 204

But keep in mind that while barbarian perhaps may be the highest dps of these, this is assuming rage, death frenzy and so on. Another problem with it is the fact that all these builds assumed dps over 5 minutes, which favor things that have haste boosts and such that wouldn't be possible to sustain indefinitely, so the dps numbers would be more in favor of things like ranger and paladin with longer amount of times (assuming they are able to keep up their buffs and divine sacrifice spamming, ofc)

Personally I wish it was possible to go with more than 3 classes in DDO lol

Then I would probably go 11 wiz/6 pala/2 monk/1 rgr for the sprint boost and such

[Tobril]

Did you manage to finish capping yesterday?

[Phidius]

Yup, hit 20 right after running the Reaver for the 19th time... so I'm going to wait until Thursday to TR, giving me one more chance to not pull a +3 tome.

Then it's off to Korthos!