Dark Monk Shortsword Recommendations?

[Lil'man]

I'm almost finished being flagged for the shroud and I want to make myself a pair of shortswords for my halfling dark monk, but I'm not sure what would be the most useful for him, should I get the blinding shortsword for my sneak attacks or should I go for just raw damage, or should I do something more defensive like the perma-blur one with the displacement clicky?

[Ikeas]

Hi!

I think dark monks won't have a significative amount of sneak attack damage to make a radiance greensteel worth, and lots of mobs are fire resistant, so the weapon loses half is damage capacity against many of them. Anyways, the no-save blindness is a 50% miss chance, so makes a great defense layer for your otherwise PRR starved monk.

In the end, I would go for lightning (air + pos + air/pos) or mineral (earth + pos + earth/pos) shortswords for raw DPS. You can always craft another item for the displace/blur (I have mine on goggles).

[Lonnbeimnech]

I'm almost finished being flagged for the shroud and I want to make myself a pair of shortswords for my halfling dark monk, but I'm not sure what would be the most useful for him, should I get the blinding shortsword for my sneak attacks or should I go for just raw damage, or should I do something more defensive like the perma-blur one with the displacement clicky?

Displacement clickies are swap items, you do not want to use them as a weapon. Make a staff so that it is easy identifiable as not your main weapon, so you dont waste time smacking mobs with it, also because if you ever do a build with 1 wiz or 1 sorc or more you will use the clicky as your character level instead of the caster level of the staff, and also because it will not uncenter you on monk lives.


As far as making a greensteel weapon, well if you are planning on tring a bunch of times, just pick a weapon type that is useful for many different builds at level 12-18, short sword isn't a bad choice.

If it's for this life, why bother? It will be worse than lootgen ml20 junk. Just get the star of day from eveningstar cleric comm turn in until you get something better, like celestia or a t3 tunderforged shortsword.

[Therrias]

I'm almost finished being flagged for the shroud and I want to make myself a pair of shortswords for my halfling dark monk, but I'm not sure what would be the most useful for him, should I get the blinding shortsword for my sneak attacks or should I go for just raw damage, or should I do something more defensive like the perma-blur one with the displacement clicky?

Handwraps.

[Saekee]

Displacement clickies are swap items, you do not want to use them as a weapon. Make a staff so that it is easy identifiable as not your main weapon, so you dont waste time smacking mobs with it, also because if you ever do a build with 1 wiz or 1 sorc or more you will use the clicky as your character level instead of the caster level of the staff, and also because it will not uncenter you on monk lives.


As far as making a greensteel weapon, well if you are planning on tring a bunch of times, just pick a weapon type that is useful for many different builds at level 12-18, short sword isn't a bad choice.

If it's for this life, why bother? It will be worse than lootgen ml20 junk. Just get the star of day from eveningstar cleric comm turn in until you get something better, like celestia or a t3 tunderforged shortsword.

Yes--you can get Radiance on a Star of Day and also benefit from their better base damage and reach.

Handwraps.

Can't make GS wraps

Hi!

I think dark monks won't have a significative amount of sneak attack damage to make a radiance greensteel worth, and lots of mobs are fire resistant, so the weapon loses half is damage capacity against many of them. Anyways, the no-save blindness is a 50% miss chance, so makes a great defense layer for your otherwise PRR starved monk.

In the end, I would go for lightning (air + pos + air/pos) or mineral (earth + pos + earth/pos) shortswords for raw DPS. You can always craft another item for the displace/blur (I have mine on goggles).

Also a dark monk might want to consider how to take advantage of Sting of Ninja. If you have rogue levels you can use venomed blades but you can also use lootgen weapons with poison or Envenomed blades out of LoD chain. This kind of stuff has better synergy than GS.
I have lots of nice shortswords but I feel they are weak. There are nice named ones like the Fury ones and they are easy to farm. I would save your Shroud materials for something else. Heroics don't really need strong weapons anymore.

[TeacherSyn]

I'm almost finished being flagged for the shroud and I want to make myself a pair of shortswords for my halfling dark monk, but I'm not sure what would be the most useful for him, should I get the blinding shortsword for my sneak attacks or should I go for just raw damage, or should I do something more defensive like the perma-blur one with the displacement clicky?

In addition to other's thoughts:

• It never hurts to have a Green Steel Mineral II weapon. It's an optimium devil/demon destroyer in Heroic and reusable in the next life as early as level 11.
• Same is very true for a Triple Positive weapon. It's a Greater Disruptor that will be more handy against really tough mummies. You should use disrupting handwraps on anything else that's undead, such as skeletons.
• I generally make Displacement and perma-Blur clickies for the ninjas so their miss-chance stays very high. IMPORTANT: You can only have one non-weapon GS item equipped. Else, a special curse will activate with two items equipped that will kill you quickly. You can remove this "Taint of Shavarath" with a special ingredient but it takes 20 Shroud runs to get it.
• As Saekee already noted, Green Steel is one of the few crafting options present that will not allow creating handwraps. Other options can make strong or even superior wraps to what the current GS might have made.
• If Green Steel has a formula to make a stat-damaging weapon, (especially against CON) make it! "Wounding" is the key. Ninja Spies have finishers that work very well when an enemy's Fortitude is dropped. This will serve you well into Epic play as well. I'm tearing through CR18 dungeons with a Tiefling Assassin's Blade, a level 4 weapon with Poison and Wounding that simply melts through enemy defenses when I'm also using ninja paralysis, poison, blinding and spell-muting skills.

[Lil'man]

Hi!

I think dark monks won't have a significative amount of sneak attack damage to make a radiance greensteel worth, and lots of mobs are fire resistant, so the weapon loses half is damage capacity against many of them. Anyways, the no-save blindness is a 50% miss chance, so makes a great defense layer for your otherwise PRR starved monk.

In the end, I would go for lightning (air + pos + air/pos) or mineral (earth + pos + earth/pos) shortswords for raw DPS. You can always craft another item for the displace/blur (I have mine on goggles).

That's fair, but just for clarification, I'm both halfling and ninja-spy which gives me I think 7 hit die for sneak attack, so full DPS is still better than 7d6?

[ToastyFred]

nvm

[TeacherSyn]

That's fair, but just for clarification, I'm both halfling and ninja-spy which gives me I think 7 hit die for sneak attack, so full DPS is still better than 7d6?

The Halfling enhancements definitely aid for Sneak Attack die and augment the ninja's overall weaker bonuses.

But even with a full Rogue, it's a matter of when and how you apply it.

A halfling Rogue Assassin can have at least 10 Sneak Attack die will the full enhancement training that I counted. A Ninja Spy halfling should gain 7 die. Sneak Attack advantage goes to the Assassin.

But Ninja Spies have a tactical advantage while in combat. If the enemy is aware of you, Sneak Attack is mostly worthless. But even with a perfect Sneak Attack opportunity, you may only get 1 or 2 strikes before the enemy is quite annoyed at you.

Ninja Spies have a combat DPS advantage that leverages Sneak Attack damage using a finishing move and an enhancement: Freezing the Lifeblood and No Mercy.

Freezing is a special paralysis move that's different from the weapon or spell-based varieties. Unlike standard paralysis, it makes an enemy Helpless. That means that enemy takes 50% more damage while in that state...and Freezing has strong DC that paralyzes for a full minute and is very reliable with a good WIS on your character and other effects such as Wounding to reduce enemy Fortitude.

Then the No Mercy enhancement kicks in, adding up to 30% more additional damage from an attack.

Now add in the ninja's Sneak Attack die on this total. The DPS is not only tremendous, but the ninja's finishers (two others can slow or stop enemy attack) form a crowd control where enemies are made helpless, blind or mute, with all that Sneak Attack damage + Helpless damage coming to full bore more often in general than with a typical Assassin, whose DPS will drop without Sneak Attack.

A good party with effects that make more enemies Helpless or keep high aggro can bring the Assassin to a similar DPS level as a ninja, I'm sure. But in small or solo parties, a properly trained Ninja Spy has the strongest DPS advantage when using dark finishers that make enemies Helpless, in combination with their Sneak Attack die and No Mercy. I haven't trained a lot of Sneak Attack on my ninjas in retrospect, but I maximize what damage those die provide me.

You can read up on how I've used ninja finishers and leveraged the marginal Sneak Attack I trained on my blog (link below in signature). Search for "Kiricletica," "Ryncletica" and "Freezing the Lifeblood." Here's one specific post where I talk about it.