Monk Game Play

[slimkj]

Try hard or elite difficulty.

Yep, that's it. More HP = more fuel for monk abilities. When levelling a monk up to at least Gianthold, if not Reaver's Refuge, it's best to run the higher difficulties. You can run harder any time after that too of course but before then they have such low HP on normal you rarely build up enough ki to really play around with their class benefits.

[bonscott87]

I found Ki generation is no problem at all once you get level 6 or so. Also, run the lower quests on hard and that will help. A properly built and played Monk can easily solo quests at level up to 6/7 or so on hard most times. My wife and I run a pair of monks (one light, one dark) and we can pretty easily run quests a level higher on normal just the two of us with no problems.

At level 11 right now my ki is rarely below 80 in a dungeon and well over 100 most times and that's using healing curse a lot.

[bonscott87]

As for builds...this was my first monk. I did a half-elf with the Cleric dilly and went light side. Wasn't sure what my playstyle would bring so I went dex/wis monk but my strength started at 14 (16 with tome). Even had finesse. Well my style ended up being Fire stance and healing amp and strength became more important so I dumped finesse and picked up another toughness. I did my first two ability raises in Wisdom but once I hit level 12 I plan to put that in strength and the rest as well in Str on the way up.

I don't stun much so I *may* use a heart of wood to take those 2 ability raises and swap them to strength but not sure it's worth it at this point as that one ability bonus either way probably won't make much difference. But I also may want to lower dex a bit and put into str or wis.

But I'll say, I'm liking the Str/Wis build so far using Fire stance, Tortoise and healing amp. At level 11 I've got over 225 hit points, can heal 2-3 pts per hit with healing curse and healing ki heals 40-50 per use and heals my party 20-30 per use. That along with the full use of cleric wants and scrolls like raise dead and heal, who needs a cleric in the party? I love just keeping the healing curse up on a boss and nobody loses any hit point during the fight.

My only thing is with AC. I've about given up on it. Buffed I can get my AC to 40/41 which will be marginal in Gianthold so I've given up on trying to do the "uber AC monk" thing and concentrate on DPS and healing amp. Since I can roll off heals several times per battle and top off after I'm not too worried about my personal AC. Now my wife and her halfling dark monk has great AC.