One With The Blade

[difasja]

Can anyone explain to me if the Kensei fighter enhancement One With The Blade (Tier 5) does anything for your character if you don't have any monk lvls? Another question: Do the advantages of 2 Monk lvls out weigh not having the fighter capstone enhancement? What do you gain in addition to Evasion, I've never played a monk. Thanks for any advice.

[EllisDee37]

Can anyone explain to me if the Kensei fighter enhancement One With The Blade (Tier 5) does anything for your character if you don't have any monk lvls?

Only if you're running with Grandmaster of Flowers active and you choose abilities that require being centered.

Another question: Do the advantages of 2 Monk lvls out weigh not having the fighter capstone enhancement? What do you gain in addition to Evasion, I've never played a monk. Thanks for any advice.

In addition to evasion you gain stances, which can get you some PRR/MRR and a +1 crit multiplier on 19-20. (Earth stance.)

But then you lose heavy armor, which is a bunch of PRR/MRR, and stalwart defender stance, which is even more PRR/MRR plus additional bonuses like saves, +6 str or con, and +20% hit points.

The bonuses from heavy armor and stalwart defender stance outweigh evasion and monk stances without even considering the capstone. Adding the capstone in makes pure fighter the clear winner.

[Krelar]

But then you lose heavy armor, which is a bunch of PRR/MRR, and stalwart defender stance, which is even more PRR/MRR plus additional bonuses like saves, +6 str or con, and +20% hit points.

The basic stalwart defense stance doesn't have an armor/shield requirement so you can still get the prr/mrr and saves, you just miss out on the greater stance stat and HP bonuses. It also stacks with monk stances. Grandmaster earth stance with Shintao enhancements can give you another +30 PRR, which only puts you 6+BAB behind a heavy armor user. (As well as giving you +4 con and an AC boost)

[EllisDee37]

The basic stalwart defense stance doesn't have an armor/shield requirement so you can still get the prr/mrr and saves, you just miss out on the greater stance stat and HP bonuses. It also stacks with monk stances. Grandmaster earth stance with Shintao enhancements can give you another +30 PRR, which only puts you 6+BAB behind a heavy armor user. (As well as giving you +4 con and an AC boost)

Oh, right, good point.

[unbongwah]

Another question: Do the advantages of 2 Monk lvls out weigh not having the fighter capstone enhancement?

Up until about a year ago, ftr 12 / monk 6 / pal 2 BF builds like Cetus were quite popular for their combination of offense (Keen Edge, Power Surge, Div Might, wind or earth stance) and defense (Evasion, Div Grace, Shadow Form, Recon SLA). Since then, however, the pendulum has swung the other way: hvy armor is more desirable thanks to PRR/MRR and Gtr Defensive Stance changes; and the DPS buffage to bards, pallies, barbs, and rogs leave Keen Edge (and ftrs in general) in the dust.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

if you are say, a pure fighter, one with the blade will make you centered when using an appropriate weapon and wearing robes. the only advantage gained in this example though, is twisting dance of flower from gmof for +1.5[w], but that doesnt outweigh the prr/mrr/str gains from using heavy armor.

splashing only 2 levels of anything is really stupid on a fighter if you are going to play in epics. either stop at 12 fighter at the most, or go pure. splashing 2 levels into an otherwise pure fighter used to be popular because the capstone was 10% doublestrike which is a lot better for thf than twf, when twf builds were way more popular, and you gained evasion which was basically the only meaningful defense to be gained from class levels, while 18 fighter was the minimum level required for keen edge. nowadays you can get keen edge with 8 fighter levels, so if you dont care about maxing str (which id say is mainly for dcs, though since mp came out it is a more significant amount of dps to be gained than before) you dont even need to go 12 fighter for power surge. fighter levels 13-18 however dont really add much, and if you arent going pure then they are absolutely 100% not worth taking. 18/2 is just a really bad, bad, bad, dumb, pointless fighter build currently.

12/6/2 fighter is still fairly strong id say, but nowhere near as strong as it was pre u23 when it was pretty much tops. if i was to do that build today, id definitely go human for a couple reasons.

1) i dont like the idea of having to wear the anti quell goggles, even if swapping to them was convenient (like if my gogs were a wis item anyway, which they are now thanks to doj) to use bf heal.
2) u23 really shifted the balance of power in the game as well as amongst different kinds of melees. used to be 12/6/2 was great because of the huge offense with the best overall defense you could get. now that blitz is much less of your total damage by itself, and total damage being lower as a whole, while avoidance defense was devalued due to the massive increase in value of mitigation, this build suffered a huge hit in power (trust me i know, i was still using it when u23 came out). the burst heal of bf ends up being used much more than it used to because you are killing things more slowly, while not having gained any meaningful amount of defense from u23 changes with the build, meaning that if you werent dipping into pot/sp items regularly before, you would be now. scrolls/cocoon are more sustainable, and positive healing is overall better than repairing, making human a much better choice defensively.
3) humans get an extra feat for more melee power.
4) human racial tree is very powerful with only a handful of points spent, while the bladeforged tree requires at least 20ish points spent if you are melee bf. spending less ap in racial tree means you can take more mp from harper, as well as kta, which will help with your dcs due to missing out on +6 str from defensive stance.

ultimately though, no matter how you build a fighter they remain highly item dependent in epics unless you consistently run with support characters.


my only exception to all that though, is if youre just doing a 1-20 fighter life and tring immediately on 20, splashing 2 levels of monk into a fighter wont matter and is in fact better than going pure, though not better by as much as splashing say, 2 paladin/fvs/cleric and 6 monk.

[difasja]

I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to respond. Some stuff there that really helped me out.