Pure vs monk splash for a hybrid build?

[Maelodic]

I've been considering 12 Ranger, 6 Monk, 2 Pal or pure for a build focused around swapping between melee full time and ranged full time via dex focus, feat selection, and enhancement/gear resets. I don't have time to do an alt, and I want to be able to drastically switch playstyles on the fly.

Monk is great because wind stance and ten thousand stars, ranger is great for dance of death.

Pure seems to win in melee, but not defenses
Splash seems to win in sustained range damage, but might suck in melee.

Thoughts?

[Kodwraith]

I posted a build awhile back called The Switch Hitter with the 8 Fighter / 6 Monk / 6 Ranger split. It worked quite well then and had a ridiculous amount of feats. I think it's actually the maximum number of feats in the game of any build. You can actually go 6/6/6 and put the last two level in whatever you want to get PL in. I did Human, but Elf would be the more logical choice if you ever want to go full AA with a enhancement respec. Also Displacement.

Given the change to Fighter making level 8 no longer a prereq for One with the Blade, (so you can now be fully centered after level 17), it should work much much better now.

The basic idea was to use no armor, Be DEX based, Take T5 Kensai in heavy blades for centered khopesh and take tempest and shintao enhancements for more PRR. Then switch to bow when needed. You have Multishot AND 10k stars and all the ranged feats (PBS, IC:Ranged) so you are a quite competent archer and an almost full melee. It was fun running around with DEX khopeshes. But I found I wasnt as effective as a dedicated fulltime archer and I didnt do nearly as much melee dmg as a fulltime zerg barb. But I could do a lot of both. I used shortswords and longbows up until I got khopeshes.

That said, the build didnt really have much in the way of dump stats and you didnt get above core 3 in anything enh tree. I did monk 2 -> Ranger 6 ->Monk 4 -> Fighter 6 -> 2x whatever.

This is the non-updated build. If I had it to do over again, I'd try to squeeze in a Dragonmark but there's not really any point since your AP are spread thin as it is.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...6Ranger-6Monk)

[Kodwraith]

Might also check out the NoYellowBar 2.0 build which is the 14 Pally/6 Ranger split. It's not an evasion build, but it does have way better self healing and defenses. Holy Sword works on bows and swords at once which is also nice.