Are dark monks now pointless?

[thegreatneil]

PLEASE NOTE: ANY AND ALL USE OF THE WORDS GIMP, GIMPITUDE, GIMPITUDINAL, OR GIMPORIFFICAL IS NOT INTENDED TO ACTUALLY APPLY TO ANY CHARACTERS, PLAYERS OR MINOR DEITIES. I use them merely to raise a question in tongue-in-cheek fashion. I sincerely offer my deepest heart-felt apologies to any game users hurt by my insensitive approach to discussing how magnificently gimporiffical your beloved dark monks are. /note. You may now proceed to your regularly scheduled thread.


It used to be that dark monks got shadow fade at level 6 and then touch of death at 9. Together, these were such a potent combination of offense and defense that to not go dark meant any character with more than three levels of light monk was, to put it bluntly, utterly and irrevocably gimp.

After U19, if you go dark monk you get.... an activatable attack that does paltry damage (and is one of about 5 hotbars worth of activatable damage attacks you can choose from), a few random debuffs, and the ability to waste AP on some ninja poison special moves that you can use once a minute.

Light monks get the healing curse, and the ability to cast a decently boosted mass cure critical wounds approximately once a minute. Plus all the goodies dark monks used to get.

So, am I missing something, or has the gimpitude undergone a complete reversal?

Yes, Yes they are.

[whomhead]

another one for the list

Y U mad, bro?

[Munkenmo]

However I would like to question your reasoning on the levelling process, as I would still prefer to pick up tier 5 Shintao earlier rather than later on an unarmed monk, and so would prefer to have FoL/Healing Ki for easy-button self-healing. If you've tried out both, I'd be interested to hear your comparison.

t5 henshin = every 6 seconds, 100pt heal guaranteed + spell power + amp
fists of light finisher = every 9 seconds, 1d4 + (1d4 per 2 monk levels) + amp.

The henshin ability works out to be much more healing than fists of light in a shorter time period.

In heroic I'm mostly only interested in the frontloaded features from ninja / shintao:
shadowfade, deft strikes. I don't optimise for dps in heroic, Just a balance between speed and minimizing resource consumption.

The henshin heal also requires less Ki than trip pos, again helping with stunning fist / quivering palm. It's a waste of AP for sure, but It makes little difference before EE.

*note: This is just my perspective as a zerger/completionist.

Perhaps the conclusion is that both are only minimally useful at level cap, unless you go t5 Henshin? Which of course comes with the significant downside of being very expensive in terms of requiring AP on spent bad enhancements for unarmed monks. Does that about sum it up?

That Mostly sums up my feelings on the matter.

FWIW I've had good success with the neg level proc so far.
My (unbuffed) wisdom fluctuates between 52 and 64 depending on gearsetup and ED.
touch of despair is vs a fort save, so I do use an improved sunder before applying the curse.
The henshin +2 to the dc's of monk finishing moves effects touch of despair (I don't bother with it though).

[inspiredunease]

Thanks for the reply. Not going to make much difference next life as I'm getting a couple barbs outta the way, and so won't be levelling as monk anywho, but will definitely bear it in mind when it comes to getting fighter lives.