Druid/monk?

[DrakHar]

Okay, I'm completely confused as to how this works, as I don't understand how natural attacks and monk stances, strikes, stuns, trips, ki, etc interact. Any explanation?

And just as importantly, any example builds? I played around on the character builder and just am not sure where to take the monk levels, how many to take, and ended up making like 6 characters, heh...

[wax_on_wax_off]

Okay, I'm completely confused as to how this works, as I don't understand how natural attacks and monk stances, strikes, stuns, trips, ki, etc interact. Any explanation?

And just as importantly, any example builds? I played around on the character builder and just am not sure where to take the monk levels, how many to take, and ended up making like 6 characters, heh...

I'd go with none or 2 for feats. With the way it works you're best off going sword and board and picking up shield mastery and improved shield mastery if you want a combat focused druid, the shield melds into your form giving you PRR (physical damage resistance) and if you have shield mastery/improved shield mastery you get the doublestrike benefits to your form.

You don't get any offhand benefit in animal form, it's just mainhand again and again but 1.3x faster than normal which can give decent damage if stacked up with lots of doublestrike, this makes monk less than ideal to mix with druid.

[unbongwah]

On Lami I made a HE monk / druid (got as far as monk 2 / druid 5). IIRC, in wolf form I could use monk stances & strikes (inc. Stunning Fist) as well as kept my WIS AC bonus (so long as I was in my jammies, natch). But as wowo said, TWF feat(s) don't boost animal-form DPS. I suspect I had higher DPS in human form w/unarmed fighting (or flame scimitars for flavor), but I got a kick outta seeing a wolf "punch" people senseless and using Takedown.

My endgame goal (had I gotten there) was unarmed fighting in elemental form, so wolf form would've been a temporary gig at best. In hindsight perhaps I should've taken Shield Mastery or Natural Fighting first, then swapped it out for TWF when I reached elemental.

[Failedlegend]

You don't get any offhand benefit in animal form, it's just mainhand again and again but 1.3x faster than normal which can give decent damage if stacked up with lots of doublestrike, this makes monk less than ideal to mix with druid.

Very disapointed that Drunks don't work in DDO...still looking forward to playing a full druid group with my staic group though (were holding off until after the enhancement update for that though) the idea being that we have each person play a different kind of druid...I'll likely be rolling as a Bear tank. Than when we hit Lvl 7 (starting at lvl 1) if someone is not liking Druid he or she can just Vet Status a different build

[unbongwah]

I had hoped to make a "drunk dwarven bear tank" after the Enhancement changes rolled out and we finally got Dwarven Defender. But it sounds like a ftr-splashed bear tank w/Shield Mastery & Natural Fighting will work better.

BTW, are there any decent leather armors out there for such a build? The relative lack of PRR vs. heavy armor builds seems like it would be a problem for bear tanks.

[LupusVai]

As a warning note to anyone thinking about adding a monk splash to a druid.

It gimps your base damage. (found this out the hard way)

Winter wolf should do base damage of 1D10 and Dire bear should do a base damage of 1D12. However, once you take a level of monk the monks base damage of 1D6 takes over. So you loose quite a chunk of base damage.

[Chimeran1]

As a warning note to anyone thinking about adding a monk splash to a druid.

It gimps your base damage. (found this out the hard way)

Winter wolf should do base damage of 1D10 and Dire bear should do a base damage of 1D12. However, once you take a level of monk the monks base damage of 1D6 takes over. So you loose quite a chunk of base damage.

So that's why my Druid sucks?
Yes it did seem to go down hill dps wise when I took my Monk levels. It was like someone turned my power attack off.

Fix this rubbish !!!

[Failedlegend]

So that's why my Druid sucks?
Yes it did seem to go down hill dps wise when I took my Monk levels. It was like someone turned my power attack off.

Fix this rubbish !!!

Yeah Monk Damage and Animal form damage should stack since its all unarmed damage...it would give a cool reason to actually make a drunk

[LupusVai]

Yeah Monk Damage and Animal form damage should stack since its all unarmed damage...it would give a cool reason to actually make a drunk

Lol , I'm all for buffing druids because they really need it, but i don't think they should stack. Sensible would be that the highest effect should take precedence.

Stunning fist, stances and extra feats are a cool enough reason to make a "drunk". The side effect bug of reducing the damage die though is enough to make baby Jesus cry.