Back to the game after 3 years

[Imrahil56]

Hi all. So I felt the urge to re-sub and take a look at the changes yesterday. I'm a bit lost.

I have a TR'd 20 Shintao monk (I'm a purist) with both ToD Shintao pieces and nice Dragontouched vestments and hand-wraps of endless light, but I'm pretty sure that stuff is **** by now. Where should I be going to level? Is soloing possible? How crappy is my gear? Are there any great guides out there?

[Lerl]

I can't really say much towards you gear, but I can give you

https://sites.google.com/site/bookofsyn/

There are other monk guides out there, but this is the one I could find.

Welcome back, and Happy Hunting!!

[Saekee]

Are you TRing back to level 1 or looking at epics now? The above guide is excellent and fun to read.
The big difference to the past is that you can take enhancements from any one of the 3 trees regardless of Monk path. The stances (water, earth etc) are auto-granted so you don't need to take them. Also, the toughness feat became nearly unnecessary yet in a bizarre twist of fate, the dodge feat became relevant.
Quivering palm got nerfed.
The dragontouched vestments aren't bad; they are just not worth the effort to make them. But since you have them you can use them for a few levels.

[Imrahil56]

Thanks for the feedback. And that is indeed a great site. Yeah, I think I'm going to TR (again).

[Saekee]

Another change is that the Stunning Fist DC is no longer based exclusively on monk levels. So people splash stunners, sometimes doing even 18 rogue to activate the sneak attacks on a helpless mob. Also, as long as a person has even 1 monk level, he or she can use a feat and take the next level of monk stances, i.e. at level 6 adept of forms, 12 master of forms, 18 Grandmaster. So sometimes one might splash two monk and then use two feats to get master of forms for the earth stance crit boost.

The result is that there are A LOT of builds with monk splashes, fewer pures.
Note also that the ninja spy tree favors a weaponized monk if one wished to go pure ninja.