Interesting Dreamspitter/Staff of Shadows Change for Dark QStaff Monks

[Darkrok]

Happy to report that these changes have now been made for Update 9: Life-Stealing will return to its original behavior of occuring on all critical hits.

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."

Digesting that, we see that a dark monk using a quarterstaff can fire off fire-dark-fire and be guaranteed a drained level if he can confirm a crit roll. Consider me intrigued about the possibilities here.

[DevHead]

Digesting that, we see that a dark monk using a quarterstaff can fire off fire-dark-fire and be guaranteed a drained level if he can confirm a crit roll. Consider me intrigued about the possibilities here.

Oooh, very nice.

[voodoogroves]

May have possibilities for the Monk / Wizard battle casters too ... either Monk 3 / Wizard 17 (see the Dreamstealer build in the builds forum) or a Mok 6 / Wizard 12 / Fighter 2 (for more melee oomph, less casting). Pale Master for either should help with the HP costs.

[voodoogroves]

Shadow Staff is also Vampiric, so another option there. Fun fun fun!

[DevHead]

May have possibilities for the Monk / Wizard battle casters too ... either Monk 3 / Wizard 17 (see the Dreamstealer build in the builds forum) or a Mok 6 / Wizard 12 / Fighter 2 (for more melee oomph, less casting). Pale Master for either should help with the HP costs.

Or you go Helf and take the Cleric dilly line?

[Arysta]

Oh, niice.. My completionists next life is a planned QS dark monk..

With the Helf Cleric dilly line (she has it now.. I love it).

[voodoogroves]

Or you go Helf and take the Cleric dilly line?

Sure.

[Darkrok]

Next question...and someone may know the answer to this...when it says your 'next attack' gets the effect does that mean the next time you trigger an attack or does the attack happen when you hit the finisher. Application here would be that if it doesn't trigger until you hit the attack you take cleave as a feat. You set up the finisher (possibly even out of combat), run up, cleave, and all mobs are hit for a critical + level drain. Again, not sure how it works as I've never played with this finisher.

[Aeolwind]

Building towards this myself with an acrobat dark monk TR. Haste boost, dreamspitter, air stance, fire-dark-fire finisher...should make cleaning up high HP mobs like Prey easier, run the shadow staff on bosses for the vampirism with about 260% healing amp. Should make