Looking for a build

[dredre9987]

Looking for a build. First life was a WF dark monk. Second had started as a helf light monk but I lost my planner sheets and decided to LR into a challenge farmer ( Ellisdee37 ) , and needless to say I am not a human and the Ddoor dragonmarks of course cannot be taken.

This character has +3 tomes to all stats and a lot of monk gear. currently sitting at level 13 with a pending LR.

I do not enjoy str monks as I feel it is a waste of special moves to not go with wisdom.

Anyone care to help out?

[Darkrok]

Just to be clear...you're currently level 13, pure helf monk, and you have an LR pending that allows no level swaps, correct?

[dredre9987]

Correct

[Darkrok]

Assuming what I listed there is correct then I think you're definitely on the right track.

Light or Dark is a choice you'll have to make. It's not one better than the other - it's more personal preference.

Next, there are many ways to build a successful monk. I'm just going to give you two decent options to go with.

[Darkrok]

Generalist Light Monk

Dilettante: Cleric

Stats: 15str, 15dex, 15con, 16wis, 8int, 8cha (Note: I took these stats specifically to give flexibility in Grandmaster stance selection assuming a +3 tome to each stat. You could optimize more if you'd like, going so far as to drop str, dex, and con down to 14 and going 18wis if you'd like. Again, as long as you can qualify for the stances you want and get at least 16wis you're golden.)

Feats (7 levels, 3 monk, 2 epic, no particular order): Monk Past Life, Toughness, TWF, iTWF, gTWF, PA, Cleave, Stunning Fist, Dodge, Improved Sunder (can replace with mobility if desired but I really like Improved Sunder), Vorpal Strikes, Improved Martial Arts. It's possible to fit in overwhelming critical but it dilutes your wisdom by needing to get to a base+tome strength of 23 and costs you a heroic feat.

Enhancements: Not going to go into too much detail here as tons of this are personal preference. The upside is that with the stats, tomes, and feats listed you'll do really well in any of the stances. Get as much healing amp as possible without hurting other goals, play around with different stances...heck, even try out Void IV if you're so inclined. The build itself is flexible enough to let you try out a new enhancement setup every 3 days.

[Darkrok]

Generalist Dark Monk

Dilettante: Cleric (possibly start as rogue dilettante and/or switch to rogue dilettante when/if you get a UMD you're comfortable with for self-healing)

Stats: Same as above with same reasoning. Feel free to play there - as long as we start at 16+wis, put the levelups in wisdom, and can qualify for the stances we want we're in great shape but this layout gives a lot of enhancement-respec-only options.

Feats (7 levels, 3 monk, 2 epic, no particular order): Monk Past Life, Toughness, TWF, iTWF, gTWF, Precision, Stunning Fist, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack or Power Attack

Enhancements: Same as above...really depends what you want to do but these can be swapped every 3 days for a nominal cost. Obviously qualify for ninja spy, get some healing amp (though you probably want to spend less as a dark monk than a light unless you plan on tanking). I will say that wind stance + Touch of Death is really fun so it's definitely worth considering that as a stance. If you want to dip your toes into tanking a dark monk in earth stance with maxed out dodge, 25% incorporeality, and 20% blur/50% displacement clickies along with improved evasion and high saves is very hard to kill.

[dredre9987]

Thank you very much! any particular reasons for dodge mobility and spring attack?

[Darkrok]

Thank you very much! any particular reasons for dodge mobility and spring attack?

They now give a stacking 3%, 2%, and 2% bonus to dodge respectively.

In heroic levels that totals up to 13% total dodge before items/stances when you figure in the monk's natural 6%. I can say from experience that the dodge there is significant. Each individual feat isn't critical (other than Dodge on the dark monk - it's a ninja spy requirement) but taken together they add a ton of survivability.

I'm on a light monk right now but I have a 10% incorporality item. My dodge right now is 21% (3% from Grandmaster of Flowers, 13% as listed above, a 2% item and a 3% item). And I have a constant blurry item on for 20% blur. Taken together that means I get missed over 43% of the time. A dark monk with better gear that made use of several displacement clickies could push that up over 71% of the time (55% when displacement isn't up). From a non-numeric perspective most of my fights go something like this:
-186
Incorporeal
Blurry
-183
Dodge
-179

Without those defenses stacking like they do I'd be dead after those hits. With them there's time for me to scroll, healers to heal, etc.

[TrinityTurtle]

*blinks* What happened to Dre's Request a Build service? Now you're on the forum seeking builds! LOL I am going to tease you mercilessly later you know. If Beeg ever lets me out of the stupid kobold thing.

[dredre9987]

Thank you again...

And Turtle, I lost all my paper work

[dredre9987]

One other thought...Improved crit?

[Darkrok]

One other thought...Improved crit?

I could see dropping one of the defense feats though I wouldn't be crazy about that. I also wonder about dropping the monk past life. If I'm not mistaken that works out to about 1.75 damage per hit (0.5x 1d6). Improved crit is worth quite a bit more than that against 0% fort mobs but someone that knows the numbers on the various mobs better than I do would have to step up to give an average number for the average wisdom-based monk on how much Improved crit will normally give damage-wise. That said, if you feel you're likely to end up in either fire or earth stance, want to take Overwhelming Critical, or feel you can get to the dodge cap (25%) elsewhere then dropping a defensive feat to fit it in would work as well.

[TrinityTurtle]

Thank you again...

And Turtle, I lost all my paper work

Paper? I don't buy it, you use the computer for EVERYTHING.

[dredre9987]

Hehehe not when I wipe my comp once a month

[HGM-Chi]

The above builds are solid, I'd just add that if you're not too worried about getting hit you can go with Improved Martial Arts and Vorpal Strikes and get more DPS out of it. I took this when I switched my monks to wisdom based. I can't recall if I kept improved sunder on them, or if I figured with the str drop it wouldn't be worth it.

[Darkrok]

Just an updated thought...

If you're lousy with Lesser Hearts from lotteries like I am there's a feat list that could be fairly fun to play from until you finally want to pick up stun but or so. It works much better on a human as you can fit in all of the relevant feats but you could delay TWF until 9 and iTWF until 12 (skipping out of Toughness altogether until you LR into a more traditional build later).

Feats (in order): Power Attack, Human (TWF) - otherwise this gets put off until after the others, Dodge, Mobility, Combat Expertise, Spring Attack, Whirlwind, TWF on non-human/iTWF if human, Stunning Fist or Toughness on a human, gTWF

The goal is to get Whirlwind at level 6. On a non-human I'd probably look into some nice staves - Souleater would be an outstanding choice against the living - though I haven't tested this yet on a non-handwrap setup.

With handwraps you hit with both hands on your Whirlwind and both attacks hit for full attack bonus. It hits everything in a decent radius and 360 degree arc. You can doublestrike if you have doublestrike chance for additional hits as well. Cooldown is only 5 seconds and the attacks are done at 4[w] which basically means an additional 3d6 damage on all attacks that hit on the whirlwind.

I'm playing a build like this right now - it's level 4 monk/1 arti/1 fighter at the moment and is following this build - and it's easily the most powerful killing toon I've played at level 6. Sorc when it first gets fireball is amazing but it is possible to run out of spell points. On this as long as you keep moving you rarely get hit. With all of the dodge you'll have (7% from feats, 6% from monk dodge = 13% at a minimum) if you toss on the trinket from the cove with blur on it and Shadow Fade from Ninja Spy you're looking at about half of all hits outright missing before AC even gets a chance to cause a miss. And those Whirlwinds are basically a melee fireball...gather up a bunch of enemies, jump in the middle with a Whirlwind, jump out, kite for a few seconds and repeat.

By no means do I recommend this build at cap. Stuns are far too critical, other feats too useful (especially Toughness!), but at low levels for someone that knows the quests, has the gear to bridge the gap on the hp's that waiting on Toughness creates, and enjoys the caster philosophy of gather and nuke picking up Whirlwind at level 6 is phenomenal.

[Darkrok]

Oh, one other comment on that build:

I had Whirlwind at cap on my previous life. Healing amp + vampiric wraps + stack of mobs + Whirlwind = MASSIVE healing. I think I averaged 3 hits on each mob per whirlwind and was getting 2 points of life back on every hit. If I got 6 or 7 mobs in the whirlwind I was getting about 36 points of life back each time I hit Whirlwind. That was in addition to anything I got back on regular attacks from Fists of Light (I was light monk on that life) so some pretty decent healing each time you pop all those mobs. If I'd gone with fire stance I could have seen even more as I could have pushed Lesser Vampiric to 3 points per hit - so 54 points of life back from a group of 6 bad guys.