The Dark G Star

[Vish]

The Dark G Star

Deep gnome monk20
Lawful neutral
Dark path
Requires a LR+1

Str 6
Dex 17 +3
Con 14
Int 14
Wis 18 +4
Cha 9
+6 tomes

Skills concentration, balance, jump, Umd, hide

1 monk shuriken expertise
Feat point blank shot
2 monk twf
3 rapid shot?*
Monk dark fists
6 monk 10k stars
Feat precise shot
9 ic:thrown
12 dodge
15 imp precise shot
18 icierce

21 oc
24 itwf
26 PTWF
27 blinding speed
28 doubleshot
29 chaos
30 astral
Gtwf

41 ninja
13 henshin
16 Shintao
8 Harper
2 dg

The playstyle.
30 sec 10k stars and 30 sec twf poison attacks

The perilous is the split
Kta is untested by I.
So I don't know how good it is, was going there with the Shintao build...
But,
The eta on u34 is now january,
So I'll save unarmed until then.
So I've decided to go full dark ninja
On a deep gnome. Barely makes the difference
I built this with multi playstyle, like a traditional ranger
It's all untested.
So I'll give up most of December delving into an iconic.
Lots of feedback to give here,
But shuriken and shortswords should do the job.

The trade off is abilities to go deeper into gnome
Or to lose Harper and do the same. For at least blur.
I'll have to switch it up and see.
Plenty of flexibility in the build,?*
Can already see its split hard and won't reach the 76 wis I saw on my henshin...
And the finishers are more crucial.
It'll be a twist to play both ranged and melee,
Like a good ninja, gotta know where to engage
Like a bad ninja, a touch of death.
Well at least heroics will be fun.
For all 5 levels of it...

I imigine this will be a shuricannon, or furyshuri
Never played one gonna see what it's about...

Still 30 as henshin, again.
Farming slavers and seeds for another week
2 epic martials and a monk
This run

[adrian69]

Feels like it is trying to do to much, but that's just my opinion.

My concern for a thrower is not maxing dex. What is your dex and wisdom looking like at cap? It seems this build is made for cap?

Otherwise, I've heard monk DCs are still poo-bar, so I'd toss all level ups into dex for 7% chance of extra projectile with DS% chance for another extra if you find DCs lacking at cap.

Interesting concept otherwise.

[unbongwah]

See my drow ninja thread. Free Shuriken Expertise is nicer than +2 WIS, IMO.

A few specific pointers:

3 rapid shot?*

If your question is "does Rapid Shot affect throwing weapons?" the answer is "yes, it does." But Quick Draw is more important and I don't see it listed anywhere. EDIT: duh, forgot Henshin lvl 6 core provides free Quick Draw - and it's even in my build! So NM...

9 ic:thrown

BAB is too low on a pure monk to take Improved Crit before lvl 12; recommend moving ITWF to lvl 9 and IC:Pierce to lvl 12. IC:Thrown is only +1 crit range on shuriken, so it can be delayed or skipped, IMO.

12 dodge

Drop this: you don't need it and you can't spare the feat if you want TWF+thrower DPS.

[Vish]

Couple notes
For U,
Shuriken expertise taken as monk feat is gravy,
The question mark gets inserted sometimes, no question
Core3 henshin sounding staff gives quick draw
And yes I have to take ic at 12. Thx.
I backloaded gtwf to 30 as kinda capstone

On LR+1
When you reincarnate using +1 or greater on an iconic
You have to choose class at character creation, not iconic
This will change your first level to what you want.
Learned that the hard way.
Thanks to Dionysus for quick response to ticket.

[DrawingGuy]

I've found melee/ranged hybrids to be quite fun, though the ones I've done were THF/Bow with many shot. And there are quite a few mixes out there that you can do that works well. And unbongwah, there is more to Deep Gnome than +2 WIS and INT (INT helps KtA): size. A smaller character makes it much easier to line up Improved Precise Shot... HOWEVER unless they've fixed it, Deep Gnome is throwing at Human height, thus negating this advantage. If this is what you are looking for, Halfling is the way to go (and they work well with throwing builds anyways).

If TWF + Throwing is a way that you are looking to play for fun rather than any form of meta gaming, then I really only have a few suggestions (other than considering race if the throw height is broken where you would be better served by Halfling or Drow):

Scion of Ethereal over Astral. Seriously boosting your SA all you can works well with TWF and Shurikens due to their volume attack style, and would give you MUCH more DPS than 8% DS would. Tactics is a non factor here as you're not investing into stunning moves of any type. You should be able to get your hide to 100+ and having it grant you ~35 SA damage before the 150% power scaling. Rogue past life (active) essentially becomes a +25 SA (before scaling) clicky, also making it a worthwhile investment.

You will be better served by Legendary Dreadnought. Without being backed by a Slaying Arrow, Furyshot loses much of its clout, and LD is superior DPS.


If you're considering Meta, honestly TWF would be a DPS loss over a properly set up shuri thrower. You should be getting a higher volume of attacks with a shuricannon than you do with TWF, hit multiple targets unlike TWF, are at the safety of ranged... and if you have proper SA, shuri would actually be superior DPS as well. Essentially you're just putting yourself in danger for no gain. And once you fully commit to ranged, there are a few other considerations:

Going Elf and diving to Arcane Archer to gain imbues (which you can make work with shuri and are very powerful) and a Many Shot bow swap for increased DPS. Though you can't go for a slaying arrow fury combo and capstone Ninja with this.

While the damage is very RNG and will require you to wear universal spellpower items to get proper damage, Shiradi is tree where you can give up a little DPS potential for a good chunk of CC. Especially if you lack imbues, nerve venom could actually push you ahead of LD for trash DPS while making it easier on you. Really, outside of a Slaying Arrow setup on a shuri build, I consider it being between this and LD.

[Vish]

D, thx for your insight
Yes I planned this build to cover several approaches
First it's a shuriken build, with twf thrown in
That's because I wanted a thrower and a deep gnome and a ninja
But the finishers are all melee attack
And building ki is all melee attack
So it's got a dual purpose
And I'm testing kta on this too
So I'm covering a lot of bases in this build
Mostly wanted to see dark path for monk
So it's got to be able to melee
Thus the twf and ic pierce
In addition to thrower build

So far I've tested in Gianthold and it's holding up
Got a tier2 Greensteel shuriken and pair of brushhooks
With 10k stars everything dies pretty fast
And it's all kill before it touches you easy
But the melee and touch of death require to close distance
Or like traditional ranger
Shoot until they close and melee finish them
So same playstyle

Now at epics, I plan to try out 3 Ed
Fury, shiradi and ld
I was thinking of a primal past life tho I could go martial
Because I want to do another epic as a dg Shintao
Almost same build, just ua
I want to see how each plays out,
Ya mostly a test build
So I haven't done any rouge lives yet
So can't take past life
But I maxed out hide on this build
Thinking of sneak attack cap
I'll have to look at numbers but I favor astral
Maybe if I do 2 epic thrower lives I can switch out and see the diff.
But now I'm inclined to go rogue next life...

[DrawingGuy]

Dark Monk is much better than Light Monk when you look at the finishers - tons of CC and debuffs, with some DPS moves, and Touch of Death is solid. Unfortunately Dark Monk is crippled by low DCs. They're fine in Heroic or EN, but outside of that they are trash. Even on a 100 WIS Monk you will not have them work. *IF* they fix Dark Monk DCs, I see it eclipsing Light Monk pretty heavily - not to the point of the early days of Monk as they did buff the finisher and FoL damage slightly so it is now strong enough to sustain you (if albeit a bit painfully) so there's more reason to go Light Monk beyond anti-stun for TOD... though they need to buff Harmonious Path finishers to have it actually compete with a Dark Monk that can reach end-game DCs.

Unfortunately all of this means that the only reason to go Dark path is for Touch of Death. Touch of Death used to proc on off-hand strikes (part of the reason everyone went Dark), but as the game scaled and this move did not. Now it finally does, and Melee Power actually takes it beyond what it used to do, but IMO, not enough to build around. However if you're already invested into Ninja Spy and plan on doing a solid amount of Melee, it is worth it as Cocoon is enough for self-sustain anyways.


Now for DPS comparison it really depends on how hard you hit vs your hide and melee/ranged power values. A quick and dirty way to see is before you take the level throw your shuri (throwing it multiple times and averaging the damage would be more accurate) and multiply that damage by .08 and you'll get about the DPS increase of Astral. Compare that to your hide value divided by 3 and then multiply it by your Melee Power (converted to decimal, so 150 MP would be 2.5 as you would need add +1 to include the base) followed by multiplying by 1.5 to cover the improved scaling Sneak Attack has. You then have to multiply this number by the number of shurikens. A quick example being extremely generous in favor of Astral:

1000 damage per shuriken * .08 = 80 average damage per throw

100 hide / 3 * 2.5 (150 MP/RP) * 1.5 = 125 damage per shuriken. This means that if you're throwing 3 shuris, that is 125 * 3 for 375 damage per throw. Depending on how high you can get your DEX, you can get yourself safely into a 3-4 throw with 10K stars adding a shuri and a chunk of RP which scales better with SA.

As you can see, though, Ethereal is significantly more damage. The problem, of course, is that Astral works on everything while Ethereal only helps on targets that you can get SA on. That's where Deception items, CCs like pin, imbues, and venom matter, etc. The more reliably you can make sure your SA lands, the more unquestionably Ethereal is the winner. If you're looking for DPS, many cases Arborea or Ethereal will beat out Astral. Astral, however, comes with 4 dodge cap, 4 Reflex, and 4 DCs. On tactics heavy builds or a Rogue Assassin, that can make a big difference if you are borderline (such as with Quivering Palm), and dodge cap is nice too. Essentially you're giving up DPS in favor of utility. I do that, but I also have 9 tactics-based moves I use.