My Monk Needs help

[CavernDragon]

I feel like i'm getting my butt kicked a lot, the damage just don't seem to even be close to what my other toons are doing. I like my monk, and don't mind doing EH or a few EE with the guild. What Can I do to make him a LOT better? I have LR hearts and LR+3 hearts but a total loss as to what needs to be done to him.

Halfling
3rd life all Monk
Helm: Wis +10 Resistance +10
Neck: Mystic Eidolins (Green slot): Power 250 * Used for casting Energy resistance boost from ED
Trinket: Giant Craft Compass EE Diamond Insightful Wis +2 & Con +2
Cloak: Jeweled EN yellow Slot( True Imperial Blood Colorless OPEN
Belt: Sun Soul (used for Concentration 15 and Con 7
Ring: TOD kyosho ring: Only good for holy burst) So open for anything.
Glove: Epic charged gauntlets holding for something better.
Boots Cannith
Ring: epic buccaneer : Green Slot, Draconic soul gem.
Wrists: +10 Str +50HP
Shadow Outfit: Blue slot Nat armor +6 Green slot: Golem Heart
Goggles: Green Steel Air (dex skills and HP)

[peng]

Ok, a whole buncha questions:

What are your goals with this build? Where do you feel you fall short? boss dps? trash? survivability? healing? ki generation? dc's?

What feats do you have? What weapons do you use? Do you have decent umd? What ED/twists do you use? What's your stunning fist dc? qp? dismissing strike/jade strikes? flash bang? What stance(s) do you spend the most time in and why?

Why do you use knock on the sky and not fists of iron or unbalancing strike? Why don't you have any t5 enhancements besides empty hand mastery? Do you find the faster sneaking enhancement helpful? Why do you spend ap on acrobatics and nimble reactions in the halfling tree?

Do you have/can you farm a pair of epic boots of the innocent? A +5/6 combat mastery item?

[TeacherSyn]

Hi, there. I'm mostly a helper for newer Monks and getting started through Heroic. But here's my take, based on my Epic experience.

• Your stats seem OK. More STR is the rule for a Shintao's damage. If you're doing the Ninja Spy route, it's DEX only if using shortswords or kamas.
• Your fortification is low. While 145% isn't bad for EN, on EH and higher you're likely to get a serious crit, especially if your miss-chances are low. I don't know what your Epic Destinies are, but you should train Unyielding Sentinel to get Brace for Impact for an additional 40% stacking fortification to bring you to a very safe range. Add an Exceptional Fortification item and you might go 200%+ for excellent EE-level fortification.
• How are your miss-chance defenses? Not sure what Monk stance you tend to use, but Earth Stance is the one fitted/biased for Shintao. Ocean Stance improves Dodge but isn't the best offensive stance. Your Dodge is very low for a Epic Monk. I lived with 18% on my tanker Shintao. Get to this higher % or more. Being Halfling, you have racial skills to help. You have Shadow Veil trained for 25% Incorporeality (remember to use it), so if you are Blurring yourself with a finisher or wearing a Blurry item this should do.
• Where is your PRR? You essentially have none and taking a lot of damage. If you use Earth Stance you have 15 PRR. You get additional stacking PRR from Grandmaster of Flowers, Shintao training, and a Sheltering or PRR +14 enhancement item. Try to have at least 60 PRR to absorb some of that damage. Even outside of Earth Stance you should see 37-47 here.
• How's your AC? Are you using Combat Expertise? This feat will add 10% to your AC. Combined with Earth Stance's 20% bonus, that's a 30% AC increase. The Legendary Dreadnaught's Improved Combat Expertise adds 20 PRR while Combat Expertise is active. Downside: Training Combat Expertise requires 13 base INT.

[TeacherSyn]

One other note:

Keep in mind that Epic monsters have higher DR against bludgeoning. You need to ensure that you train up feats to even the score, such as Vorpal Strikes, or items that add effective slashing/piercing damage.

[Tobril]

There are many ways to gear.

Here is a list that should be fairly easy to get and provide
a noticeable boost to many aspects of your character.

There is some overlap of abilities and that is OK. Feel free
to enhance and customize this list later.

(this list presumes staying level 28…leveling gear will look different)


Head: Epic Minos Legens - Fortification 150%, Vitality +40, Insightful Fortitude Save +2, Sheltering +24, Unbreakable Adamancy
Neck: Good spot for a GS HP item (golden guile if not using Avithoul ring)
Trinket: Epic Litany! OK good luck with getting that quickly, in the meantime do whatever you like here. Planar focus trinkets and antipode are still decent.
Cloak: Somewhat decent spot for GS HP, better choices might be the Epic Cloak of Ice or Ghost Waking Cloak. Of note, the DR from the ghost waking cloak will be applied AFTER prr reduction, so it works better than advertised
Belt: Epic Belt of Thoughtful Remembrance - Deathblock VII, Constitution +11, Concentration +20, Resistance +11, Dodge +11%, Greater Regeneration
Ring (swap) Consuming Darkness - Epic Normal (ML26): Seeker +10, Combat Mastery +5, Yellow Augment Slot
Gloves: Iron Mitts - Gloves - Strength +8, Healing Amplification: +60 Competence Bonus, Vitality +40, Resistance +7, Colorless Augment Slot
Boots: Epic Boots of the Innocent - Resistance +11, Speed XV, Vertigo +12, Stunning +12, Shatter +12, Greater Heroism
Ring (perm) Avithoul – (less rare with drop rate increase, keep your tod ring here for the meantime and wear a Golden Guile instead)
Bracers: Epic Ethereal Bracers - Dexterity +11, Riposte IX, Ghostly, Deadly X, Speed XIV, Feather Falling
Armour
Goggles: Epic Glimpse of the Soul - True Seeing, Diplomacy +20, Intercession Ward, Bluff +20, Illusion Save +6, Enchantment Save +6, Wisdom +11


Wraps:

EE Thunder and Lightning
Thunderforged
Anything big with a red slot for devotion


Regarding slotting:

Green slots, in order of importance: (ignore anything listed already provided by gear)

Heavy Fortification
Sheltering
HP
Luck
Natural AC – Don’t slot this unless you are absolutely out of blue, yellow, and colorless slots.


Yellow slots, again in order of importance:

Spellpoints
Deathblock
Draconic Soul Gem
Fear Immunity
Blindness Immunity
Poison
Disease


Colorless slots:

Missing main stats – rare but possible
Globe of Imperial Blood
Missing +2 insight to a single important stat



This setup provides:

Ghostly for miss chance and handling incorporeal monsters
Dodge to help with defense
Sheltering to increase PRR
Healing amplification for bigger cocoon, potions, etc
Higher saves
High main stats
High tactics DC


This setup is missing:

High % doublestrike item
HP from a blue slot, easy to fix when upgrading abbot items
HP shroud item, neck or cloak are good choices, make a 45 HP Smoke II for permanent blur and a few displacement clicks

[CavernDragon]

Thank you all for the input, I will start working on the gear asap, as for the feats and ED info.

Most of the time I run in GMoF or Unyielding Sentinel and for stance I jump from one to the other based on what roll I have and ki is needed.

I don't run to many EE with this toon as my main can handle them just fine. I put this toon on hold for some time to work on my SB/Bard. But I would like to start running him again.

I do have Vorple strike when needed.

[Tobril]

Run earth stance for sure, especially in grandmaster. Tons of PRR is good.


Use fists of iron, earth 3, earth 4, and the earth finisher. Stunned monsters will melt.

You'll need to pull the correct versions on your hotbars, it looks like the level 1 moves are on your bar instead of level 4.


Use the neck slot for an oremi or alchemist necklace if you run into ki issues. (sorry about spacing out on ki gen)

Another option might be the spider outfit, that also covers reinforced fists and should be cheap to acquire.
(on further inspection, I see an antipode...if it's upgraded all the way definitely use a planar trinket for more PRR)

Eventually you'll want black helm+outfit for the highest DPS, but finding a decent black helm can be tricky.

[unbongwah]

I will second the recommendations to use Earth stance and reconfigure your enhs / EDs accordingly. Your PRR should be:

• 15 PRR from GM Earth Stance
• 15 PRR from Iron Skin (Shintao)
• 10 PRR from Meditation of War (Shintao)
• 15 PRR from Standing with Stone (GMoF)
• 24 PRR from Guardian's Ring until you can upgrade to one of the +30 Sheltering items

That gets you 79 PRR (~44% dmg reduction) for very little effort.

[Tobril]

I will second the recommendations to use Earth stance and reconfigure your enhs / EDs accordingly. Your PRR should be:

• 15 PRR from GM Earth Stance
• 15 PRR from Iron Skin (Shintao)
• 10 PRR from Meditation of War (Shintao)
• 15 PRR from Standing with Stone (GMoF)
• 24 PRR from Guardian's Ring until you can upgrade to one of the +30 Sheltering items

That gets you 79 PRR (~44% dmg reduction) for very little effort.

All of this, though I will respectfully disagree with the ring, as I feel there
are far more potent DPS options for rings and many ways to get high sheltering
from other slots.

[Mercureal]

I feel like i'm getting my butt kicked a lot, the damage just don't seem to even be close to what my other toons are doing. I like my monk, and don't mind doing EH or a few EE with the guild. What Can I do to make him a LOT better? I have LR hearts and LR+3 hearts but a total loss as to what needs to be done to him.

Halfling
3rd life all Monk
Helm: Wis +10 Resistance +10
Neck: Mystic Eidolins (Green slot): Power 250 * Used for casting Energy resistance boost from ED
Trinket: Giant Craft Compass EE Diamond Insightful Wis +2 & Con +2
Cloak: Jeweled EN yellow Slot( True Imperial Blood Colorless OPEN
Belt: Sun Soul (used for Concentration 15 and Con 7
Ring: TOD kyosho ring: Only good for holy burst) So open for anything.
Glove: Epic charged gauntlets holding for something better.
Boots Cannith
Ring: epic buccaneer : Green Slot, Draconic soul gem.
Wrists: +10 Str +50HP
Shadow Outfit: Blue slot Nat armor +6 Green slot: Golem Heart
Goggles: Green Steel Air (dex skills and HP)

I'm going to offer a few comments, which may or may not be useful.

On DPS, you could unlock a fair amount of additional damage by rejigging your enhancements. Sneak Attack works great with stunning fist and there's 7d6 of total SA available in your enhancement trees. You probably can't get them all without compromising other abilities you want, but I think you can squeeze out a few more without giving up too much. I'd consider maybe dropping Reed in the Wind and Dismissing Strike from Shintao, and Flash Bang from Ninja Spy. The Halfling SA enhancements are only 1 point each, so you should buy those first (you have to buy 1 point in Cunning to open them up, but it's still cheaper if you get more than 1).

You can probably drop Nimble Reaction in the Halfling tree, since there's no cap on Dex bonus to armour with robes and it doesn't look like you're close to your Max Dodge bonus anyway. As someone else said, you should switch out Knock on the Sky. Fist of Iron is much better for pure DPS, and Unbalancing Strike is great if you have a reasonable amount of Sneak Attack.

I also note that you say you have one item for SP to cast Energy Resistance (I assume the Uny Sentinel ability?), but you also have a Draconic Soul Gem and these two effects don't stack. So you're only getting an extra +5 resistance whenever you cast the ED ability, although it does have Area of Effect.

[Tilomere]

Epic Necro gear, run the chain 20x and replace all your outdated gear. Should bump dps up linearly 30%, livability up 30%.

TF T3 Mortal Fear Handwraps, or Kamas. Should increase dps linearly ~100%.

Save your LR+1-3 to make a Bladeforged monk next life that can self heal with reconstruct SLA, which lets you run in LD instead of US (renewal), with balanced attacks/sense weakness twisted. Should multiply dps ~2x. Use a feat to get magical training, for more mana. Livability up 30%. Adds infinite burst on demand self healing (God Mode).

Tank mode (earth stance + PRR enhancements + gear) + GS permablur/mana for more reconstruct. Livability 2x. -30% dmg.


The combo of everything above should bring you to around 4x damage, 3.2x livability, with God Mode enabled. Ish.

Edit: Some powergamers will say this isn't viable, since it isn't a paladin. But it will be just fine in any EE.

[peng]

I'd swap out weapon finesse, weapon focus, power critical, and maybe toughness. Your strength is barely lower than your dex, and attack bonus shouldn't be much of an issue. Power critical is barely worth the feats on a fighter with a good crit profile. Unarmed, in earth stance, with overwhelming critical, and with legendary dreadnaught's devastating critical (19-20/x5), it adds an average of 1 damage per hit. That's not worth 1 feat, and you have to take weapon focus as a pre-req.

Good alternatives could be power attack or precision to boost dps, cleave and great cleave for some aoe dps, improved sunder to debuff fort saves and fortification, dragonmark for some healing, or mobility, spring attack, combat expertise, and whirlwind attack for some dodge and an aoe attack.

I don't know what your epic feats are, but my choices for unarmed monk epic feats are improved martial arts, vorpal strikes, overwhelming critical, perfect two weapon fighting, and tactician.

I have to agree with what others have said. Earth stance provides the best combination of dps and survivability of all the stances. Ocean can boost your saves when running through traps, or give some ki generation outside of fights, while fire can give a quick ki boost, particularly if you cleave. However, my monks stay in earth stance 90% of the time or so.

If you have greensteel mats or can farm them, making a few displacement clickies can really boost your survivability. With 25% incorporeality, 50% displacement, and 20% dodge, that's a 70% miss chance.

If you can keep blitz up, dreadnaught is probably the best dps destiny for monks, though crusader and all the martials are pretty decent.