Monk too click-intensive for me, help?

[Kielbasa]

There is no need for fancy mice or outside programs in order to play an awsome monk all you need a a mouse with 2 thumb buttons to toggle up or down your hot bars. Makes it really easy to place 30ish skills on the 1 through 5 buttons that you can fire off quickly once you have those hot bars memorized. Very few monks that I see in game ever play up to their full potential.

[waryJerry]

I'm presently playing a 3rd life Halfling pure monk and it's proving a lot more fun than I'd anticipated though I agree with the OP that the monk fighting style, if you're playing it as intended, is a little too involved and subtle for my tastes because I'm a hack-and-slasher at heart. I hardly use the finishing moves at all and I'd prefer to use a staff if I didn't have those darn vampiric stonedust wraps which simply make unarmed combat a must. I don't really think I'll play a true monk again on this my main character but his speed and ability to shrug off damage make him a real joy to play at times.

[mezzorco]

useful things

Thank you very much
I'll give it a try

[the_one_dwarfforged]

you dont really have to, but you might be surprised at how much more you can get out of your toon by using every ability it has, not just autoattacking until youre dead.

personally, i use wasdqe to move, i often switch in and out of mouselook mode, i have weapons keymapped to nbvjuy, and various combat abilities keymapped to 1-0, g, shift 1-0, ctrl r, ctrl g, etc. with shift, control, and alt you can quadruple the number of buttons close to your left hand, but even so mine tends to move around a lot.

as for holding down the left mouse button, i find that i feel more comfortable spamming buttons with my left hand if i left click repeatedly instead of just holding the button down. also you dont have to be left clicking during an attack animation for things like cleave, trip, stun. just stop and start depending on ability usage.

[relenttless]

My pure human light monk has been endlessly E-Tr now for quite a while so this is only really applicable for epics, but to be honest I found her fighter lives to be more button orientated than playing monk.
Currently running in crusader, and hardly have time for any finishers apart from the light heal, by the time I've cycled through light, unbalancing, stun, QP, flash-bang, cleave, great cleave, chuck in the occasional consecration, the DC fire attack thingy, and stuff is usually dead anyway.

[iconiclastic]

My advice is don't play a monk then. The best played monk is one that uses his ki to stun encase kill or whatever. I go even further with the feat whirlwind attack to maximize the monks ability to kill things at the end of the quest the only other toon that has close to the same kills as my monk is a caster or another well made monk. If I were to just hit the stunning fist I'd have all that ki built up for nothing. Just play something else.

[LordKalkin]

When I first started playing a monk I read this. Note his hotkey setup. With keys 1 - 0 you can handle your attacks in easy combos. So left hand for those keys and right hand on the mouse. If you don't know, you can bind keys any way you want. I usually have 1 - 0 for attacks on one bar and F1 - F10 for pots, healing, etc. on another.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ghlight=Metaru

[LordKalkin]

My advice is don't play a monk then. The best played monk is one that uses his ki to stun encase kill or whatever. I go even further with the feat whirlwind attack to maximize the monks ability to kill things at the end of the quest the only other toon that has close to the same kills as my monk is a caster or another well made monk. If I were to just hit the stunning fist I'd have all that ki built up for nothing. Just play something else.

This also. Its a button mashing build.
Unless you play a Shuricannon and aren't doing melee.

[phillymiket]

I haven't been a pure monk in a while.

IIRC i used to put the elemental strikes in the same slot of different hotbars - earth on main hotbar, then the others on 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
Stun was on main hotbar, quivering, jade and diss strike in same slot on hotbars 2-4

That way I'd know what button to hit for everything, just a matter of switching between 4 hotbars.

Mostly I'd just stun, earth strike+3xearth finish, cleave with some jady quivers when cool-down were off so I didn't end up switching hotbars that much anyway.

The other elemental strikes - fire, water, air - were nice situationally but not always used. (for my build - others may vary)

I would often change my hotbar for a quest. for example place earth, wind and fire in a prominent place if i needed to dance an epic mob. Switch earth for water on main hotbar if i want to keep the SP buff up for a raid.

With all the cocoons, displacement clickies, heal scrolls, shadow fades and what-not these days I can't imagine Monking without getting at least two hotbars in use if not many more.

But as others said, Stun is the bread and butter. So that plus a few other things of your choice from among the bazillions of options for a monk will do just fine. You don't need to do everything.

[EllisDee37]

I don't understand how anyone can be effective by having to click things in combat routinely.

I feel the same way. I can't imagine clicking a hotbar during combat.

Clicking means you aren't holding down the left mouse button (if a non-caster), and it also means you have mouselook off (unless you toggle that with T, which I find causes issues). Mouselook is key to how I play. All other methods of turning don't have enough control or reproducibility.

I'm the polar opposite. Not only don't I use mouselook, I don't use the mouse at all during combat. I'm all keyboard, all the time when it comes to combat. (I use the mouse for running between fights.)

My left hand controls movement (WASD, plus Q is strafe left and E is strafe right) while my right hand does the attacking. For my monk, my key mappings are as follows:


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The "Ins/Home/PgUp/Del/End/PgDn" bank of keys is used for more exotic weaponsets. He's a challenge farmer so I like to have min/maxed weapons for demons, eladrin, giants, and whatever Gregor is in crystal cove. (Monstrous Humanoid? Magical Beast? I always mix those two up.)

Now that I have a real monitor (24" 1980x1024) I can comfortably fit five hotbars in a solid block, so I map the numpad and that separate bank of keys to hotbar buttons I can actually see. Not to click, but just for reference and ease of maintenance among my various characters. It's super helpful to see at a glance what all my melee attacks are when I switch between my various characters. Especially when switching between melee and casters.


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Note that power attack is in the "4" key slot. That's because attack can't be mapped to a hotbar, but instead has to be mapped to a key directly. So it's mapped to NumPad4, leaving that spot in my hotbars as free. Power Attack fits there nicely.

EDIT: The numpad picture is old; I haven't used storm strike in a very long time. As can be seen in the hotbar image, I use Unbalancing Strike instead, which is incredibly effective on challenge bosses. Particularly devashta.

[phillymiket]

I don't understand how anyone can be effective by having to click things in combat routinely.

Well, you could get a gaming mouse. (drop a hint to the BF/GF/Wife/Hubby/Mom/Dad/Parole Officer or whatever for a holiday gift)



Buttons 1-10 are slots one to ten your active hotbar.
button 11 is switches main hotbar to active, 12 switches to 2nd hotbar to active, 13 and 14 hotbars 3 and 4.

That gives you 40 buttons without having to go out of mouse look or stop swinging or move your hands at all ;-)