Dark Monks

[gamj]

Not going to create a new thread regarding monks getting shafted by U9 due to changes to stun, since there's already one and I completely agree.

What I want to ask here is : Can you fix Dark Monks in U9 ?

- Nyoko's Ring/Necklace is **** compared to Shintao's kit. (Sneak attack bonus? Meh.. there are so many other options like Tharne's, new gauntlets from Cove, cove hat, etc) And it doesn't have a special bonus if you have Ninja Spy PrE.

- Ninja Spy PrE is pretty Meh now compared to the upgrade to Shintao. (You get 3d6 sneak + small Ki increase while sneaking) compared to all the nice stuff Shintao got like bypassing every DR, Jade prison, ranged stun, etc.

- Dark move finishers are complete **** and useless against the mobs you'd like it to work on.

All Bosses are immune to Dark finishers, and most are also immune to elemental vulnerability enhancements (required for Touch of Death). And the mobs not immune to the finishers are usually dead before you can pull it.

I have to admit I'm not a expert at Finishers, but when most of the time it doesn't work I'm not trying to improve at something useless... Then again, I might be doing something wrong here, but that doesn't change the fact that they don't work on most Red and not at all with Purple.

Compared to light moves, while being more defensive in nature, have their uses (remove curse, restoration, etc). Healing curse works on everything, and I heard a light monk rescently saying one of their debuff (dont remember which) worked on Harry in Shroud...

[efreet5]

On my darkmonk I use the 3x earth finisher against casters to end spellcasting, the earth/dark/earth to render mobs helpless for an entire minute (nausea), water/dark/water to paralyze mobs, Shining Star (Earth/Wind/Fire), and I stun them.

-Don't EVER use fire/dark/fire...who the hell thought that was a good idea for an ability??

Between all of those I'm spamming earth strikes, Fists of Iron, and ToD. You want more....? I don't think all that's off timer before I could go through it all. If you completely dumped Wisdom, then yeah your finishers will suck, but my finishers land in epics well over 80% of the time. Dark monks have plenty to work with and far too many people don't fully appreciate the power of shadow fade's 25% incorporeal bonus. I'll take our 25% chance to evade any physical attack over some ranged stun any day.

[lazylaz]

On my darkmonk I use the 3x earth finisher against casters to end spellcasting, the earth/dark/earth to render mobs helpless for an entire minute (nausea), water/dark/water to paralyze mobs, Shining Star (Earth/Wind/Fire), and I stun them.

-Don't EVER use fire/dark/fire...who the hell thought that was a good idea for an ability??

Between all of those I'm spamming earth strikes, Fists of Iron, and ToD. You want more....? I don't think all that's off timer before I could go through it all. If you completely dumped Wisdom, then yeah your finishers will suck, but my finishers land in epics well over 80% of the time. Dark monks have plenty to work with and far too many people don't fully appreciate the power of shadow fade's 25% incorporeal bonus. I'll take our 25% chance to evade any physical attack over some ranged stun any day.

Well this has made me want to try rolling a monk again. Thank you efreet5.

[Therigar]

Dark monks have plenty to work with and far too many people don't fully appreciate the power of shadow fade's 25% incorporeal bonus. I'll take our 25% chance to evade any physical attack over some ranged stun any day.

Well, light monks do have Dance of Clouds for 1 minute of 20% concealment so I wouldn't over appreciate the value of Shadow Fade either.

[efreet5]

Dance of the clouds doesn't work against raid bosses, shadow fade does. Dance of the clouds is a crappy 1 minute blur. Any dark monk that uses shadow fade AND gets blur from a caster/wears an item that grants blur gets ~33% chance to avoid the physical attacks of any mob without true seeing. If you use a displacement clicky that chance is about 63% and, like I said before, light monks don't have much that's useful against raid bosses.

[Eladrin]

-Don't EVER use fire/dark/fire...who the hell thought that was a good idea for an ability??

We weren't very happy with it, so in Update 9:

The Karmic Strike finisher no longer leaves the monk helpless. The effect has changed to "Fire-Dark-Fire Finisher - You have learned to strike at the moment your opponent is most vulnerable - the same moment your opponent strikes you. This attack is guaranteed to produce critical threat if it hits, but costs 20 hit points to perform."

Thematically similar, but much more usable.

[sephiroth1084]

We weren't very happy with it, so in Update 9:

The Karmic Strike finisher no longer leaves the monk helpless. The effect has changed to "Fire-Dark-Fire Finisher - You have learned to strike at the moment your opponent is most vulnerable - the same moment your opponent strikes you. This attack is guaranteed to produce critical threat if it hits, but costs 20 hit points to perform."

Thematically similar, but much more usable.

Intereting!

[KreepyKritter]

So, I only just started dabbling in Monks, so I'll ask it here...

Blur and Dusk stack, Displacement, blur and dusk stack,


So, would blur/dusk/displacement/shadow fade stack together?

Alternately, would the 20% dusk granted by the Greater Nimble Trinket stack with the above, and could one then add Dance of the Clouds to the above?

To my mind, that would come out to 20% Dusk/20% Blur/50% Displacement + Dance + Shadowfade... would this combination make you temporarily untouchable?

Trying to decide whether or not to respec my Enhancements for Ninja Spy vs Shintao

[sephiroth1084]

Blur and Dusk don't stack.

Dance of Clouds is just Blur as handed out by a monk.

[efreet5]

So, I only just started dabbling in Monks, so I'll ask it here...

Blur and Dusk stack, Displacement, blur and dusk stack,


So, would blur/dusk/displacement/shadow fade stack together?

1) Blur, Displacement, and Dusk don't stack. They're concealment bonuses, so the game applies the highest of the three to your character. Blur is 20%, Displacement is 50%, and Dusk is X% (is it 10% or is it like some other effects that say 10, but are really 20%?).

2) Shadow Fade provides a 25% Incorporeal bonus to avoid incoming attacks. This means that any mob that doesn't have a ghost touch weapon (none do) will be unable to bypass this miss chance.

3) The Greater Nimble Trinket would be an example of an item that grants the Blur effect. If you wear this item, then you'll notice that someone casting the spell on you appears to have no effect (it won't show up visually or even on your buff bar). This is because the item grants the same effect and overrides the spell. With that trinket and shadow fade going you'd have a ~33% chance for enemy attacks to be evaded and that's not taking your ac into consideration; though your ac won't matter in epics, so I generally don't count on ac at all.

As far as which one is better for you, that all depends. Ninja Spy allows you to do a lot of quests with stealth or flat out zerging through them invisible (via shadow fade). I believe their finishers are much better than light monk finishers because they actually apply in combat. I tend to zerg a lot and I dislike playing characters that are built around making others stronger, so I like to have abilities that help me kill things faster or keep me alive longer, dark monks have those abilities. The downside is that dark monks will have a harder time getting good wraps to bypass raid boss dr, so that can put a huge wrench into the plans of a newer player.

Light monks offer a different play style. They have superior self healing with the healing curse, which can often carry you through early to mid level content without needing much healing at all. The ranged stun and jade abilities are quite useful for crowd control. When used in conjunction with shining star and stunning fist a light monk can bring quite a bit of cc to the table. Light monks also have little to worry about in terms of bypassing raid boss dr. By the time you get Shintao III you can bypass the dr of every raid boss in the game, except for maybe the Reaver (did they add mithril to metalline yet? We always put someone squishy as the "tank" for reaver and pike, so I haven't really hit the reaver in quite a while). This makes the equipment part much more forgiving. You get a pair of pure good or holy handwraps and you can hit raid bosses.

I don't want to make the choice for you. I prefer to kill things and get stuff done as fast as possible, so the free invis (shadow fade) and the ability to avoid the incoming damage from the mobs I'm trying to run past is the deal breaker for me. I could just as easily see myself stunning and beating down those mobs with a light monk (healing myself while doing it too!). My tips are:

1) Don't completely dump wisdom

2) Learn your finishers and what they do. Certain finishers and abilities are better against different types of mobs and you'll need to think about this when using them. For instance, I never used the water/dark/water until a guild member told me I was being an idiot for not using it to paralyze mobs, but it works best against mobs with low fort saves (casters). He was right!

3) You are NOT a tank. Move around in combat and use your CC abilities to control aggro, you don't have the hps to stand there and take it. (This should probably be tip #1)

4) Gear-wise, ToD is to a Monk what the Shroud is to any other kind of toon. Get in there, get a ****** ring, and put holy burst on it ASAP!!

5) Enjoy! ...but you may have to turn up your music and turn off sound if you're halfling due to the sound of 'Squeek-fu.'

[wiglin]

We weren't very happy with it, so in Update 9:

The Karmic Strike finisher no longer leaves the monk helpless. The effect has changed to "Fire-Dark-Fire Finisher - You have learned to strike at the moment your opponent is most vulnerable - the same moment your opponent strikes you. This attack is guaranteed to produce critical threat if it hits, but costs 20 hit points to perform."

Thematically similar, but much more usable.

I liked the older version better since it produced the critical hit with my acrobat ninja using quarterstaffs without leaving you helpless like it did with unarmed. Sure it might of been a little broke, but having a guaranteed critical hit every 6 seconds with the quarterstaff was a nice dps boost to an already low dps weapon.

[bobbryan2]

We weren't very happy with it, so in Update 9:

The Karmic Strike finisher no longer leaves the monk helpless. The effect has changed to "Fire-Dark-Fire Finisher - You have learned to strike at the moment your opponent is most vulnerable - the same moment your opponent strikes you. This attack is guaranteed to produce critical threat if it hits, but costs 20 hit points to perform."

Thematically similar, but much more usable.

While I'm all for looking at dark finishers... They could use a lot of work. Consider having each one do 1d6 damage per level of the corresponding element type in addition to the other affects. Against bosses and raid bosses are the times you actually have the ability to use finishers... and none of the dark monk finishers actually do anything to most of these.

It's way too hard to actually use finishers in combat against trash mobs.

[KreepyKritter]

Water Stance + Jidz-Tetka Bracers + brawling gloves = win.

Bracers in water stance paralyze and poison on vorpal strikes. Brawling gloves seem to also have a sunder effect on every strike.

[DevHead]

I wanna see Ninja Spy Tier III PrE. If they make it to where you add your Wis mod to damage, I'll be just fine with no more auto-crits.

[Gulnar13]

Water Stance + Jidz-Tetka Bracers + brawling gloves = win.

Bracers in water stance paralyze and poison on vorpal strikes. Brawling gloves seem to also have a sunder effect on every strike.

They don't have a sunder effect, it's just the graphic of the 1d4 piercing damage. As far as i know it, there are no sundering accesories that work with handwraps.
Also, displacement and blur don't stack, right now. Theire the same kind of bonus, and they are the same kind of bonus provided by the mabar clock, the desert trinket, and the abbot cloak. The only two things that provides incorporeality bonus are the shadow fade from the dark monk and the wraith form of the wizard.
As a last thing, right now the fire dark fire finisher has the problem that, with handwraps, it doesn't work AT ALL. With weapon, on the other hand, the helpless negative effect doesn't work, so it's a free crit when the cooldowns are down.

Also, i would like to point out to the poster above me that, even if only monks can have the shintao pre, every melee out of there want the shintao set. So the "ninja set is not awesome because there is no ninja pre third enh" theory is a lie.

[~herbstlich]

Dark-dark-dark works on epic bosses and pretty handy.
Elemental finishers land in almost all raids.

You probably should go and make your DCs higher if they don't.

[Therigar]

Regarding Dance of Clouds....

Replies have been that it is a poor blur effect with short duration and not anything to compare to Shadow Fade.

It is correct that there are differences between blur effects and incorporeal effects. And, there is a 5% higher level of protection with Shadow Fade. What is more, it is also true that Shadow Fade stacks with Blur or Displacement or a blur effect item like Dusk Heart. So, the two are not the same.

I did not mean to imply that they were.

What I meant to suggest is that we not over-value Shadow Fade. Like Dance of Clouds it is a short buff. It takes conscious effort to maintain it.

It is often ignored except when the character has aggro. Since monks should have trouble getting and holding aggro this most likely occurs because they are pushing ahead of the group and triggering the monsters. Or, it could be because they are soloing content.

In the first case that is just a play style thing and probably encouraged by the protections offered by group provided buffs. We all understand the second situation.

And, in that second situation where the group buffs are not available there is not much real difference between Shadow Fade and Dance of Clouds.

Don't forget that I'm not a big light monk fan. Check out my first post to the thread.

But, I don't agree that Shadow Fade is such a huge factor. As I originally said, dark and light paths are different. There are some neat options with both. Some are vastly different. Some are different and yet similar.

That is how I see Shadow Fade and Dance of Clouds. They are different but serve a similar purpose.

[Angelus_dead]

The Karmic Strike finisher no longer leaves the monk helpless. The effect has changed to "Fire-Dark-Fire Finisher - You have learned to strike at the moment your opponent is most vulnerable - the same moment your opponent strikes you. This attack is guaranteed to produce critical threat if it hits, but costs 20 hit points to perform."

I'd prefer if it was something like "The next attack on you (within 5 seconds) has +20 attack/damage", as that would convey the feeling of making yourself vulnerable to the enemy, instead of just zapping your own body making the swing. But the potential complexity in programming it probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

It's interesting that Karmic Strike is usable from level 3, but the hp cost is much worse for a lowbie than a capped character. So here's a suggestion:
The Karmic Strike self-damage is equal to your HD, not a flat 20.

[AylinIsAwesome]

That still wouldn't make SS better than wraps. There aren't any amazing Ninja Spy SS; the SS from the Cove are pretty cool, but I do way more DPS on just wraps.

I think it would just be cool to have "Khopeshes" on a Monk, for practically no cost.

This.

I'm rolling d10's at lvl 8, 2d6's if in Mountain stance, on every strike. Level 12 see's a bump again, and again at 16 and again at 20. Short swords, even dual wielding, are only 1d6. Sunblades go to 1d8. You're gimping yourself down pretty seriously (by my math) by using anything besides wraps in the first place, and that's all before enhancements, SA damage, elemental effects, prefixes, etc...

That's without figuring in crits, weapon focus, or any other feats, which will greatly enhance DPS on both lines, but even so, unarmed on a monk trumps weapon damage just about every time.

When comparing DPS between weapons, base damage is almost always meaningless. You'd want to compare the critical profiles, and, in the case of handwraps versus shortswords, Touch of Death, faster attack speed, full off-hand STR bonus, and slightly faster attack bonus. I suspect it would end up where below a certain STR value, Monks would be better off using shortswords or vice versa...though without taking the time to figure it out I can't say for sure.

Problem is, you're giving up stunning fist and touch of death (and quivering palm, but I don't think anyone uses that at 20) to use those. If you're just a monk splash, then it might be worth it but probably not otherwise.

With mob saves going up I doubt I'm going to be getting much use out of Stunning Fist anymore (plus it doesn't work on bosses anyway). The big loss is ToD.

I've done quite a bit of playing around with these two options lately. Here's the criteria you can use to choose which makes the most sense for you...

1) If you're highly concerned with healing amp then this is a no brainer. You spend the 10AP to go from Imp Recovery I (which you need for Shintao I) to III and call it a day.
2) If you're tight on enhancements and have enough low-level racial enhancements to bridge the gap between each tier of Imp Recovery then you can save 2AP by taking Imp Recovery II & III (again, we had to spend 2 AP on Imp Recovery I regardless).
3) If however you're like a lot of monks and finding it hard to spend those points before Imp Recovery II becomes available then Rise of the Phoenix becomes an outstanding option. On some of the human and half elven builds I've played around making it can save as much as 4AP that you would have been forced to spend on non-required fluff because you can get into the status cures much earlier than Imp Recovery II. It may cost 12AP for the entire Rise of the Phoenix line but if 6AP of that would have been spent on fluff you don't really want then you're coming out ahead AP-wise.
4) If you don't really have that much you want AP-wise anyways then I would take the healing amp. Everything from the RotP line comes on pots, scrolls, or clickies. You can't just pull more stacking healing amp out of the air.

I honestly think most of my future light monks will be taking RotP. As I've played my monk longer I've seen what I use and what I don't. Especially with the helplessness changes I'd want to try and fit in Void IV which means a TON of AP cost. Just about the only way you can make that work out and fit in anything else is with the RotP line.

My point was that Monks don't need to take RotP since they have an alternative cost. Healing amp is quite awesome though (plus it works all the time, instead of just when someone dies).

[gamj]

On my darkmonk I use the 3x earth finisher against casters to end spellcasting, the earth/dark/earth to render mobs helpless for an entire minute (nausea), water/dark/water to paralyze mobs, Shining Star (Earth/Wind/Fire), and I stun them.

Every dark finishers are Fort saves.

I have the same DC with Stunning fist than finishers (39) which works almost all the time in anything other than Crystal Cove 25 because of their boosted saves.

Stunning fist is 15ki. (6 sec cooldown)
Dark finishers are a minimum of : 5+10+5+10 = 30ki [most likely more since you'll want to use better elemental moves to actually do some damage at the same time]. (at least 1 sec per move, minimum 4 secs to pull it if you're fast and can maintain the combo that fast. Most likely you'll pull 1 finisher in the same amount to time as a Stunning Fist.)
Also, mobs get a regular save against any the finishers' effects. (unless the description is false)

With the changes of No-auto-crit on stunned/held, that double cost will show pretty quick since you get ki back more slowly.
With the higher saves, they will free themselves of effects faster.

Yes, some moves are nice. But why paralyse for a few secs when you can stun for longer and half the ki? Moreso, you can't adjust finisher to change the Save type, because they're all Fort. If Water-Neg-Water was will for example, then yes I could see use of changing from stunning fist to other finishers against different targets.

Sure, Shadow Fade is nice and I use it all the time, but my point here wasn't ShadowFade or ToD... ToD was nerfed in a rescent update, and it was a fair nerf.. Then again, with better saves the mobs will save vs ToD more often.

I just don't see the use of most finishers at the moment. And exept Shadow Fade, the other abilities from Ninja Spy are pretty dull... And Ninja II walk on liquid isn't working 95% of the time.

I guess I'll have to wait and see...