Adventures in Theorycrafting - Sohei of Vulkoor

[ValariusK]

This build would do really well with divine crusader. For weapons, unless you've got celestias, which I don't, I suggest a pair of tier-1 thunderforged shortswords. That's easy to get, doesn't even require raiding, and has ml 24. You can put devotion+150 on one of them and the touch of flames for more dps on the other. You don't really need 1st degree burns for 2 reasons: you have smite weakness already and...everyone else has 1st degree burns anyway and it only stacks 20. Or you could put combustion+150 on it.

[unbongwah]

I haven't gotten around to putting together a proper gear list, but for epic shortswords I was thinking about:

ML:20 - Star of Day, Cutthroat's Smallblade, eEnvenomed, eGaros
ML:23 - Celestia
ML:25 - Rebellion
ML:28 - Thunder-forged, EE Elemental Fury

[ValariusK]

One also might consider going dex-based on this build. I'm not usually keen on such, since you can't add divine might to it or primal scream, but drow DO have a significant racial edge in dex, since you get +2 to start and can take +2 in enhancements. You can also get dex to hit and dex to damage in ninja spy, where you need to go anyway.
Maybe
20 dex (16 points), 8 strength, 12 con (6 points), 14 int (4 points), 14 charisma (4 points), 10 wisdom (2 points)?
Then go precision instead of power attack. Dumping cleave and great cleave will give you a lot more feat flexibility since you're not building to overwhelming crit. Air stance can be the goto with doublestrike and attack speed (and more dex). Bolting on quick draw later is workable if you want a decent shuriken option, and you can even twist whirling wrists if you like.

[SamX]

I'm second guessing the deep multi classing now. Bear with me. :-)

Does the paladin add anything other than charisma to saving throws? For the moment, let's just consider /monk in the absence of paladin levels.

Monk6 vs. Monk2. The 3rd bonus feat is mostly wasted, but you get Adept of Forms for free. So all the +4 monk levels gets you are: finishers, 2% dodge, 15% incorporeal, 3 AC, and 1 feat. Going to /3 lets you keep sting and finishers.

Let's compare /6 vs /3. You are down one useful feat (adept of forms). However, blinding speed can be dropped. Haste can be obtained many ways. The main thing you gain with /6 is the incorporeality, of which 15% can't be obtained from gear. So, it's leap and 3-4 caster levels vs. 15% incorporeality. If I can leap, I think my avoidance increases more than 15% incorporeality adds.

Let's compare /2 and /3:
18/2 -- 9th level spells, haste
17/3 -- sting, finishers

Are finishers really relevant?
Water finisher: you have more SP due to higher FvS level. A wash.
Air finisher: you have perma-blur... and on others the spell lasts longer. Pointless.
Earth finisher: i'll probably take forced escape anyway. Unneeded.
Fire finisher: probably the biggest loss IMO; +2 stacking saves/skills can be very handy

The healing curse knockdown is probably a bug that will be fixed.
Sting of the ninja doesn't seem that useful when monsters die nearly instantly and players hit for 200 on a non-crit.
You can invest the AP saved from NiS into Xendrik weapon training; I'll wager that adds more than sting in most situations.
So, I think it's /3 for +2 skills/saves combo vs. /2 haste+9th spells.

At this point, I'm wondering why bother with monk at all. I could have gone 18/2 FvS/paladin for the saves. This would let me use elven scimitars instead of short swords, and I wouldn't need to true reincarnate at all!

I guess what I end up missing vs. your build is +1 crit on a 19-20 from earth stance and evasion. The wider crit range of scimitars likely cancels out earth stance's benefit. So, in the end, is /6 really just about evasion vs. 6 caster levels???

[unbongwah]

One also might consider going dex-based on this build. I'm not usually keen on such, since you can't add divine might to it or primal scream, but drow DO have a significant racial edge in dex, since you get +2 to start and can take +2 in enhancements.

That's negligible compared to all the STR you can get; heck, just Div Might and Primal Scream will probably be worth at least +15 STR. The main incentive for going DEX-based is Reflex saves, but Div Grace should take care of that.

Then go precision instead of power attack. Dumping cleave and great cleave will give you a lot more feat flexibility since you're not building to overwhelming crit.

You can choose to do that anyway if you'd rather have, say, more metas or ranged feats instead of CL/GC/OC w/out going DEX-based.

I have considered DEX-based druid 13 / monk 6 / ftr or wiz 1 builds before, but that's for another thread.

[SamX]

So, I wanted to quantify what we lose with splashing monk this deep. I prepared the spell list I would take at levels 12, 15, 16, 18, and 20. I think the overall summary is that these levels change your caster play-style as follows:

12 - good solo healing, buffs, and all divine dps spells
15 - raid healing possible
16 - death pact
18 - mass buffs (DW, SR, heal), leap
20 - caster stuff (edrain, implosion, cometfall)

From this point of view, I think the multiclassing trade-offs are more easily quantified:
12/6/2 trades raid healing for personal defense
15/3/2 gives up mass buffs for evasion
18/2 gives up caster ability for saves
20 DC-based caster

It is also clear that 16/2/2 is not worthwhile, because curse+finishers+sting > death pact. Skipping Paladin to go 17/3 probably doesn't make a lot of sense without the saving throws.

I already decided I won't aim for being a caster, since the gear requirement is too high. That means at least 18/2. I guess groups these days don't care about mass DW+SR. So, would I trade leap for evasion+stances+10% off-hand? Sadly, yes. That means at least 15/3/2. Now the tougher question: do I want to be able to heal a raid? This is where I am undecided. Blinding speed and 15% incorporeal are not that big a deal.

Is there anything I've missed that /6 monk gets you over /3 monk?
If it's really just blinding speed + 15% incorporeal vs. prot and cure moderate+serious mass, I think I prefer 15/3/2.

PS. Sorry to hijack your thread! I understand your build aims more solidly at the solo playstyle, and it's certainly a reasonable choice. It's just very close to what I want to play, except for the loss of caster levels!

For reference, I include the spell selection as I see it at these break points.
12.6: Heal
12.5: DivPun, ProtElt
12.4: DW, FoM, NPoison

16.8: death pact
15.7: ProtEltM, CSM
15.6: Heal, CMM, BB
15.5: DivPun, BreakEn, raise, TS
15.4: FoM, NPoison, Recitat, HolySm

18.9: heal mass
18.8: death pact, DW mass
18.7: ProtEltM, CSM, SR mass
18.6: Heal, BB, CMM

20.9 heal mass, implosion, edrain
20.8 death pact, DW mass, CCM
20.7 ProtEltM, CSM, SR mass
20.6 Heal, BB, Cometfall

[Caprice]

That is a nice breakdown on the pros and cons of the splits.

15/3/2 is excellent and I can see why you might prefer it. The Shoikan thread includes a lot of discussion around that split, if you aren't following it already.

16/2/2 appears to be quite viable as a CHA-based caster DPS build with ridiculous survivability; see Ghoststriker. There the Paladin and Monk splashes are basically just for high save Evasion and the actual Monk abilities are less relevant. You could make that work as a 15/3/2 I'm sure but having the level 8 slot for one of MDW or MCCW can be nice for switching to more of a raid healing role as needed.

12/6/2 and 15/3/2 also offer group buffs from the Monk finishers, which I think you undervalued a bit in your prior post. They aren't as good for solo play but I think that they can be in groups. Water is good for everyone that's buffing, not just you, Earth is good for preventing stuns on all the melees (e.g. Horoth in ToD), and Fire is situationally strong as well. I suppose Air has minor use in that it can't be dispelled but meh. However you are unlikely to be the only Monk around in most groups so that benefit as a whole may be considered situational.

[Loriac]

I'm a bit unclear, what exactly does the 15 level fvs version offer for raid healing that the 12 doesn't? MCMW is available in EA, and in all honesty if you're raid healing you probably should be in that destiny anyway.

I think 12/6/2 offers more than just extra defense; it allows you take staff specialization, which puts the 12/6/2 close to tier 1 melee. The cost as I see it is that your role in epic is much more strongly linked to the exact destiny you're in, with the upside that you can play as melee dps in most of them. Conversely, without using either the right destiny or appropriate twists, your nuking capability suffers a lot - but in some cases, e.g. LD or FotW, your core melee capabilities can more than carry you through, such that you're providing comparable dps to a more obvious melee build.

[Caprice]

I prefer US to EA for healing on my 18/2. The massive amount of extra HP and the option to become semi-immune to KD are pretty useful to me since dead healers aren't that good at healing and I find I get a lot of aggro whether I want it or not. I do have access to a lot more AoE heals from class levels but I find that the vast majority of my healing is Cocoon and Renewal anyway, although there are a few raids where I still need to use a lot of Mass casts. Renewal can be twisted of course but a tier 3 twist can take a while to unlock, and being able to self-heal with it is nice too and that is locked into the US cores. 12/6/2 is going to have a harder time not running as EA, but 15/3/2 may have the flexibility to do either between having more spell slots and more caster levels.

You're also going to be down a little spellpower from using a staff; using a faith weapon and taking WP enhancements gives you another stacking +12 implement bonus over other options. It's a relative drop in the bucket but worth noting.

Actually I wonder if Consecration + Sacred Ground might be a better AoE healing option for both. 300-400 healing (w/ reasonable Positive spellpower and some healing amp) every 3 seconds for 15 seconds out of every 20 is pretty good. The MCMW SLA cooldown is 9 seconds and that always feels like eternity when I'm healing actively.

[Cardtrick]

Actually I wonder if Consecration + Sacred Ground might be a better AoE healing option for bot

I don't know if it's better, but it's at least good enough that I don't feel compelled to swap to US or EA when healing on my divine crusader. Just twisting in Renewal and Cocoon seems to be enough.

But my build is an 18/2 like yours, so it's hard to directly compare. I do use MCCW and even Mass Heal sometimes.

[Gabrion]

Currently I'm running a Drow 12 FvS/5 Wiz/3 Monk that has a lot in common with this build. Actually he was 6 Wiz/2 Monk because I was testing whether a) boon of undeath procced magic backlash the same way as fist of light and b) if the negative aoe proc on T2 thunderforged weapons healed while in undead form. Since neither of these turned out in my favor, I LRed +1 to pick up another monk level and will be doing a +5 soon to actually be 12 FvS/6 Monk/2 Pally.

Overall I find the deep warpriest TWF to be a pretty strong concept. And with the stuns from magic backlash, solo clearing trash in EEs is a breeze in my experience. My problem is when I have to face bosses that aren't melee friendly. The first EE solo I ran was Lords of Dust. Pretty uneventful, like I said clearing through was very easy (it helps that all mini-bosses are orange named, so all can be perma-stunned). Then I fought Karas. Turns out he hits really hard on EE. As a partial wizard I had displacement, 10% ethereal, and 25% dodge (I know, should be 28%). I also had somewhere around 60-70 PRR and (lol) 10 DR. Still I spent half the fight casting the heal spell on myself after eating a few 300 dmg whacks. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but this is just an example of one enemy that hits pretty hard if you stand toe to toe.

So I got to thinking what it would look like to try to make a similar build with a solid ranged option (the big pick ups being Manyshot and Bow Strength). I think I ran one through the planner that managed it as FvS 12/Monk 6/Pally 2, but the cost was giving up the Cleave>Great Cleave>Overwhelming Crit chain...and a big problem is that it didn't even manage IC:ranged. So I thought about some other splits and came up with this idea:

11 Cleric/6 Ranger/3 Monk

It might look odd, but it allows the base build to operate mostly the same (perfect two weapon fighting being the normal combat strat...though full 100% off hand with this build), while also picking up IC:ranged and Manyshot for burst ranged dmg. Heck even if Manyshot is on CD, there are situations where it may be better to kite with a bow that try face stabbing. The whole draw of Cleric over FvS in this build is that it only takes 11 levels to get lvl 6 spells (and more of them, so you can cast a blade barrier if you want), which allows for a 7/3 split from the other two classes. This is crucial if one wants to take 6 ranger to pick up two tiers of TWF, Manyshot, and Bow Strength, while still allowing 3 monk levels to pick up Path of Harmonious balance for one of the best trash stuns currently in the game. So I guess my point is that like many build concepts, this one would try to attain some level of versatility in combat, though it will never do it as well as some.

The big trade offs are 1) Pally saves, 2) Replacing FvS with Cleric obviously changes things if you wanted anything from the AoV line, and 3) mitigation. The first point is a big deal for a high Charisma build...losing 10 to 20 to saves is sort of a game changer. Arguably the option to play ranged mitigates some of this by allowing more positional play, but it's still a big deal. The second one didn't factor into my thought process much...I originally wanted certain things from AoV myself, but almost every enhancement layout I've tried as been too tight to take much there. I really wanted a laser cannon pet, but never find the points to do it. Third, I actually overlooked mitigation and this was a low point when I looked at it. Obviously no Monk 6 means only 10% ethereal, and without a sustainable source of displace, one should expect only 20% blur most of the time. At one point I would have been strongly against this, but I would add that my experience in EE is that even as a wizard with access to extended displace, I often didn't use it vs trash. I noticed with a conc op item + torc I was better off letting them give me SP, which requires being hit. And most of the time I didn't even have to manage that vs how much it cost to heal as ameliorating strike was doing most of the work. Vs heavy hitters, this would be more of a problem, but I suppose scroll displace or using GS clickies could fill the game when needed. Oh and part of the point of having a ranged option is having an alternative combat style that can eliminate the need for all that miss stacking in certain situations.

Anyway, just another spin on this concept, which I like very much.

[SamX]

FYI, I TR'd my FvS/Monk into this. Currently up to level 13. It works great. I've been using two tiefling assassin blades (one with +devotion). I considered breaking down my min2 scimitars to make min2 shortswords, but couldn't stomach the cost of the dopant. So I plan to stick with the assassin blades till thunder forged items. I also have a sireth and heart in my pocket in case I want to switch from SS to staff later. I optimised your build's level-up order to make it more fun to play on the way to 20.

Lawful Good 30-pt Drow
14 Strength +5 level ups
16 Dexterity
12 Constitution
8 Wisdom
12 Intelligence
18 Charisma +2 level ups
... with +4 tomes to all stats

Since the level-up skill order matters, here's my formatting of it (divide umd by 2):

        con spl hea umd bal tum jmp
 1 Mo 5   4   1   2   4   4   1   1  PA, Cl		acid staff
 2 Fa 3           5                  vulkoor		shadowstar
 3 Mo 5   6           5   6          TWF,emp
 4 Fa 3       3   6					2x tiefling
 5 Fa 3       6                     			DR/5, voice
 6 Mo 5   8           6   8          GC, light		
 7 Fa 4      10						
 8 Pa 4          10					threnal robe (DB, fort)
 9 Pa 4  10      12                  ITWF
10 Mo 6  13              11
11 Mo 6  14          10  12				+20hp gem, GS opp goggles + air gloves
12 Mo 6  15          15              deflect, master
13 Fa 4  16      15                  
14 Fa 4  17      17  16              
15 Fa 5  18  11  18  18              GTWF
16 Fa 5  19  14  19  					2x envenomed
17 Fa 5  20  15  20  20
18 Fa 5  21  18  21                  quicken
19 Fa 5  22  19  22  22
20 Fa 5  23  22  23
21 IC:p							thunder-forged
24 ocrit
26 PTWF
27 blinding speed
28 forced escape
30 ...?

You'll notice I deferred IC: pierce to much later as I am using assassin blades (keen). In exchange, I get master stances earlier. I find water+air stances and earth strike useful while levelling. So far it's been pretty fun. Not having heal yet is a bit painful; ameliorating strike is not reliable enough. Once I accepted that I can't be a caster, I don't think the lack of maximise really matters, given how much spell power items grant in epics.

[pappo]

Reserved

Do you have any build links for a Bard/Ftr/Rog build ?

[unbongwah]

Do you have any build links for a Bard/Ftr/Rog build ?

Nothing recent, although I've been watching the Swashbuckler builds with interest. I've been thinking of bard 16 / ftr 2 / rog 2 and 12/6/2 SWF build options.