Notes from the Sacred Fist

[Marshal_Lannes]

I'm embarking on an adventure trying out the new Sacred Fist archetype released in U56. Let's see how this subclass comes together and how it fares in challenging content.

Pure or Multiclass?

The first question we ask ourselves is if we want to go pure or multiclass. There are compelling arguments for each. Since this is my first pass at Sacred Fist I'm going pure to experience everything in its entirety. Once you start building the Sacred Fist there are many feats you might find useful. Some possible class splits would include FVS for a CHA trance and two levels of fighter for feats. 16 Sacred Fist/2 FVS/2 Fighter might be worthwhile. If you want to use daggers and Vistani then cutting in some Rogue might be worth considering for enhanced sneak damage. I'm likely going to explore both of these in my three Sacred Fist lives but for now, we are going 20.

Race

What to pick, what to pick. Human gives us a bonus feat and that's fairly important for a pure 20 looking to hit whirlwind attack. You'll need 8 feats in heroic for that. Other than that, our three main attributes are CHA, DEX, and CON. Half-Elf and Drow are both worth considering if you are multiclassing or not going to take whirlwind attack. Dwarf makes for a beefier Holy monk. I'm sure you could make halfling work as well.

Feats

My feat breakdown is going to look like this:

1 - TWF
1 - Dodge
3 - Mobility
6 - Swords to Plowshares
9 - IC Bludgeon
12 - Whirlwind attack
15 - ITWF
18 - GTWF

It might jump out to you that we are missing Stunning Fist. Well, that is STR based and we aren't STR based nor do we have a trance to boost its DCs. We also don't have the feat slots for it. If you want Stunning Fist, I'd recommend the 16/2/2 split since you then get a CHA trance and will have the feats from fighter to take it. Magical Training, or splashing FVS, opens up the Feydark tree and GCS (greater color spray) could give you a Jedi type of build. However, APs are tight so consider what you want to do, you'll have to make sacrifices to get GCS.

Base Stats (for human)

STR - 10
DEX - 16
CON - 16
INT - 8
WIS - 9
CHA - 17

I have +8 tomes so you end up with 3 or 4 skill points for most of your levels. I spent those on Heal, Concentration, Jump, and Intimidate.

Your first 40 APs

The nice thing about Sacred Fist is there is no fluff in the trees. Everything is useful. I could quibble with the cost in Sacred Fist - why so many 2 AP abilities? This price seems high in modern DDO. Hopefully, some of these will come down in the future. But everything is good here.

Human - 3 APs Melee Power boost, Improved Recovery

Sacred Fist - First three cores, Sacred Strike III, Extra Smite II, Deft Strikes I, Fast Movement, Exalted Whirlwind, Exalted Smite I, Light of Hope, Charisma

Sacred Defender - First three cores, Extra Lay on Hands III, Durable Defense III, Resilient Defense III, Tenacious Defense III

How does it play?

I'm level 10 so far and the build has ridiculous saves. I was at +36 reflex saves at level 7. For a point of reference, this could be even higher because this character started with 0 reaper points (has 12 epic past lives). You don't get CHA to hit/damage until level 6 but that wasn't a major drawback. I could still take down Carnage Reapers in Waterworks solo without any trouble. Lay on Hands, even in reaper, heal for a surprising amount so self-healing is adequate. This is a high-defense fighter with good DPS. It feels like a monk that has been streamlined for those who don't like clicking a bunch of buttons. In fact, Exalted Whirlwind and Smite are the only two buttons you really push. Handwraps in general feels a bit light if you're used to using a THF in melee (which I am) so you aren't pulling those big damage numbers. However, you're really fast, and have high survivability. Sacred Fist seems to be pushed toward constant use of Exalted Smites. Looking to see how Violence Begets Violence, Sacred Fist V and Avenging Whirlwind add to the power of the build. I also haven't unlocked Whirlwind attack yet. VbV seems like it will be quite useful in heroics because I get missed a ton. AC is 72 at L10 and that gets misses on a regular basis in reaper. Will report more as I progress.

[Tepi]

How come you take whirlwind attack when you get it in t5 SF?

[Bjond]

Just a couple general points I found from recently playing cloth melee and power-attack melee:

DPS without Precision is great in heroics, but as you level up in epics, it starts to hurt. It's completely unsupportable for DPS in legendary; ie. will feel ridiculously gimpy, especially v reapers and bosses.

It's kinda the same for MRR. The low 50-cap MRR is a non-issue in heroics. Slight pain in epics. Pretty much unplayable without full elemental absorbs and MRR cap increaser in legendary.

---

BTW, for comparison, try a stick-build paladin sometime. They're amazing, especially if you farm up a bloom for heroics.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Levels 10-11

I decided to do a build test in Tharask Arena, solo, R1. It took me 12 minutes to complete. For a point of comparison, it takes me about 7-8 minutes on an AOE caster and 9-10 mins on a THF Barbarian or Bear. Next, I tried some quests two levels above me on R2 Newcomers and the two Ataraxia adventures in a small group (3). Newcomers and Reclamation felt heavy, especially champion dwarves where it would take a series of hits to bring them down. I am weirdly tanky, able to generate many misses through AC and dodge (17%). Sacred Fist seems to be performing best as the 2nd melee in the way a melee rogue used to excel when fighting next to a barbarian. I feel the Sacred Fist would benefit greatly from some sneak attack dice.

Next, I ran through the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil (R2) where performance was high. Extremely high saves and evasion made for SS level of defense in the elemental nodes. DPS was on par with other melee in the party which was, of course, dwarfed by that of casting and ranged. There is no ability in the Sacred Fist to compensate for AOE kills of caster or the ability to engage and kill at a quadruple distance that ranged has although this obviously isn't a problem specific to the Sacred Fist but also is shared by all melee builds. Sacred Fist crushes older content like Shadow Crypt where is speed and DPS overwhelms the mobs and quest.

Abilties we have and those we have not

Sacred Fist moves like a monk, you are extremely fast like a monk and your animations are like a monk. It feels natural that you should be able to make long leaps. Alas, no abundant step. You'll notice this. I sure did. I understand the need to differentiate between Monk and Sacred Fist but that doesn't mean the hole isn't there. TWF is a problematic playstyle in modern DDO. The main benefit - offhand effect strikes, doesn't apply to handwraps. Therefore we miss out on the Strikethrough from THF, the attack speed of SWF, and the offhand effects from TWF with weapons. I can't help but feel that handwraps should get something to bring this into balance. Not unique to Sacred Fist but certainly a concern.

Let's look at the two Sacred Fist spells I've had a chance to use:

Ki Bolt - I usually hesitate to say a spell or ability is useless because I'm just me and there are thousands of players out there who might find a better use for something than I have. With that caveat, Ki Bolt is on the margins of useless. For 10 Ki your entire attack animation stops, you go into a monkish casting stance and then launch what feels like a stone at Goliath without the spectacular results. From a cost-effective standpoint, this is virtually the same price as your far superior Exalted Whirlwind (12 ki). Let's put aside for a moment that the spell barely does any damage, the major currently insurmountable drawback is the animation change. You simply cannot use this in close combat the animation is so jarring and such an impediment to your attack sequence. As an opening move, it is poor as well because you use up 10 Ki eating into your ability to pull off an opening Exalted Whirlwind which, as already pointed out, is far superior. In order to save this spell it needs to be an AOE effect like fan of knives. Either that or drop the Ki cost down to 2.

Sacred Flame Empowerment - this spell is noticeably good and a welcome improvement to your DPS. However, it has a prohibitive cost, 18 Ki, which seems extremely expensive for an L2 spell, and one that is supposed to be in the arsenal of a low-level character where Ki is at a premium. 18 Ki is the same cost as the T5 Avenging Whirlwind attack. The 20-second duration seems to suggest that this is supposed to be used as an attack button buff but the cost is far too high for this to be practical. My suggestion would be to either drop the Ki cost down to 10 or increase the duration to 60 seconds. Right now, its too expensive to use on a regular basis when you're in a party. Sacred Flame Empowerment has the potential to be a key feature of the class with some cost or duration tweaks.

Question and Answers

I look forward to hearing all feedback on this class or my adventures.

How come you take whirlwind attack when you get it in t5 SF?

It's my understanding that Avenging Whirlwind, the T5 Sacred Fist enhancement, shares a cooldown with Great Cleave, not with Whirlwind attack. Having more AOE attacks is better for a TWF build that doesn't have Strikethrough. In practice, I don't think I'll have the Ki to sustain spamming Exalted and Avenging Whirlwind (that's 30 Ki if used in succession). Having Whirlwind attack basically cuts that cost in half or allows me 3 AOE attack for high-danger situations.

Just a couple general points I found from recently playing cloth melee and power-attack melee:

DPS without Precision is great in heroics, but as you level up in epics, it starts to hurt. It's completely unsupportable for DPS in legendary; ie. will feel ridiculously gimpy, especially v reapers and bosses.

It's kinda the same for MRR. The low 50-cap MRR is a non-issue in heroics. Slight pain in epics. Pretty much unplayable without full elemental absorbs and MRR cap increaser in legendary.

I don't agree with your overall conclusion about Precision in Legendary. When I play melee, I'm playing either a Barbarian or a Bear THF, neither of which uses Precision. Power Attack works fine and they have no trouble at all with Reapers or bosses. When I played THF Paladin, I experimented a great deal with both Precision and Power Attack. I agree Precision was better versus Reapers but I wouldn't say I ever felt ridiculously gimpy with Power Attack. There are many sources of Fortification bypass now. That's not to say Precision isn't good, it is, and not having either Power Attack or Precision is the trade-off cost of getting Whirlwind attack. One of the things I'm going to be paying attention to is are the T4 and T5 cores of Sacred Fist worth getting over Precision. Precision would be available in my proposed 16/2/2 multiclass split. I have no comment on the MRR cap at the moment since I'm in heroics. How cloth wearing melee fares in Legendary is certainly one of the metrics for this journey to test.

[Tepi]

It's my understanding that Avenging Whirlwind, the T5 Sacred Fist enhancement, shares a cooldown with Great Cleave, not with Whirlwind attack. Having more AOE attacks is better for a TWF build that doesn't have Strikethrough. In practice, I don't think I'll have the Ki to sustain spamming Exalted and Avenging Whirlwind (that's 30 Ki if used in succession). Having Whirlwind attack basically cuts that cost in half or allows me 3 AOE attack for high-danger situations.

The enhancement says it shared a cooldown with whirlwind.

[Axcarth]

...
It's my understanding that Avenging Whirlwind, the T5 Sacred Fist enhancement, shares a cooldown with Great Cleave, not with Whirlwind attack. Having more AOE attacks is better for a TWF build that doesn't have Strikethrough. In practice, I don't think I'll have the Ki to sustain spamming Exalted and Avenging Whirlwind (that's 30 Ki if used in succession). Having Whirlwind attack basically cuts that cost in half or allows me 3 AOE attack for high-danger situations.

What this means for Sacred Fist is that the Exalted Whirlwind ability is going to move to 1W for each hit, and keep its cooldown matching Cleave. Avenging Whirlwind (the tier 5) will now share its cooldown with the Whirlwind Attack feat (rather than Great Cleave), apply 1 stack of Vuln per hit (so 2 total), and be adjusted to 2W for each hit.

Avenging Cleave shares cooldown with Great Cleave.
Avenging Whirlwind shares cooldown with Whirlwind Attack.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Avenging Cleave shares cooldown with Great Cleave.
Avenging Whirlwind shares cooldown with Whirlwind Attack.

And yes, I can confirm in-game that this is correct. Tested today and they both share a cooldown, both reset at precisely the same time so one isn't faster than the other. This adjusts our feat selection and allows for some trips to Fred.

1 - TWF
1 - Dodge - I still think this a good choice for a build that doesn't have as much inherent dodge as a monk. We will leave this for now.
3 - Precision
6 - Swords to Plowshares
9 - IC Bludgeon
12 - ITWF
15 - GTWF
18 - Open. I'll look deeper into choices as I progress through mid-heroics.

[Hitstorm]

Levels 10-11

I decided to do a build test in Tharask Arena, solo, R1. It took me 12 minutes to complete. For a point of comparison, it takes me about 7-8 minutes on an AOE caster and 9-10 mins on a THF Barbarian or Bear. Next, I tried some quests two levels above me on R2 Newcomers and the two Ataraxia adventures in a small group (3). Newcomers and Reclamation felt heavy, especially champion dwarves where it would take a series of hits to bring them down. I am weirdly tanky, able to generate many misses through AC and dodge (17%). Sacred Fist seems to be performing best as the 2nd melee in the way a melee rogue used to excel when fighting next to a barbarian. I feel the Sacred Fist would benefit greatly from some sneak attack dice.

Next, I ran through the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil (R2) where performance was high. Extremely high saves and evasion made for SS level of defense in the elemental nodes. DPS was on par with other melee in the party which was, of course, dwarfed by that of casting and ranged. There is no ability in the Sacred Fist to compensate for AOE kills of caster or the ability to engage and kill at a quadruple distance that ranged has although this obviously isn't a problem specific to the Sacred Fist but also is shared by all melee builds. Sacred Fist crushes older content like Shadow Crypt where is speed and DPS overwhelms the mobs and quest.

Abilties we have and those we have not

Sacred Fist moves like a monk, you are extremely fast like a monk and your animations are like a monk. It feels natural that you should be able to make long leaps. Alas, no abundant step. You'll notice this. I sure did. I understand the need to differentiate between Monk and Sacred Fist but that doesn't mean the hole isn't there. TWF is a problematic playstyle in modern DDO. The main benefit - offhand effect strikes, doesn't apply to handwraps. Therefore we miss out on the Strikethrough from THF, the attack speed of SWF, and the offhand effects from TWF with weapons. I can't help but feel that handwraps should get something to bring this into balance. Not unique to Sacred Fist but certainly a concern.

Let's look at the two Sacred Fist spells I've had a chance to use:

Ki Bolt - I usually hesitate to say a spell or ability is useless because I'm just me and there are thousands of players out there who might find a better use for something than I have. With that caveat, Ki Bolt is on the margins of useless. For 10 Ki your entire attack animation stops, you go into a monkish casting stance and then launch what feels like a stone at Goliath without the spectacular results. From a cost-effective standpoint, this is virtually the same price as your far superior Exalted Whirlwind (12 ki). Let's put aside for a moment that the spell barely does any damage, the major currently insurmountable drawback is the animation change. You simply cannot use this in close combat the animation is so jarring and such an impediment to your attack sequence. As an opening move, it is poor as well because you use up 10 Ki eating into your ability to pull off an opening Exalted Whirlwind which, as already pointed out, is far superior. In order to save this spell it needs to be an AOE effect like fan of knives. Either that or drop the Ki cost down to 2.

Sacred Flame Empowerment - this spell is noticeably good and a welcome improvement to your DPS. However, it has a prohibitive cost, 18 Ki, which seems extremely expensive for an L2 spell, and one that is supposed to be in the arsenal of a low-level character where Ki is at a premium. 18 Ki is the same cost as the T5 Avenging Whirlwind attack. The 20-second duration seems to suggest that this is supposed to be used as an attack button buff but the cost is far too high for this to be practical. My suggestion would be to either drop the Ki cost down to 10 or increase the duration to 60 seconds. Right now, its too expensive to use on a regular basis when you're in a party. Sacred Flame Empowerment has the potential to be a key feature of the class with some cost or duration tweaks.

Question and Answers

I look forward to hearing all feedback on this class or my adventures.



It's my understanding that Avenging Whirlwind, the T5 Sacred Fist enhancement, shares a cooldown with Great Cleave, not with Whirlwind attack. Having more AOE attacks is better for a TWF build that doesn't have Strikethrough. In practice, I don't think I'll have the Ki to sustain spamming Exalted and Avenging Whirlwind (that's 30 Ki if used in succession). Having Whirlwind attack basically cuts that cost in half or allows me 3 AOE attack for high-danger situations.



I don't agree with your overall conclusion about Precision in Legendary. When I play melee, I'm playing either a Barbarian or a Bear THF, neither of which uses Precision. Power Attack works fine and they have no trouble at all with Reapers or bosses. When I played THF Paladin, I experimented a great deal with both Precision and Power Attack. I agree Precision was better versus Reapers but I wouldn't say I ever felt ridiculously gimpy with Power Attack. There are many sources of Fortification bypass now. That's not to say Precision isn't good, it is, and not having either Power Attack or Precision is the trade-off cost of getting Whirlwind attack. One of the things I'm going to be paying attention to is are the T4 and T5 cores of Sacred Fist worth getting over Precision. Precision would be available in my proposed 16/2/2 multiclass split. I have no comment on the MRR cap at the moment since I'm in heroics. How cloth wearing melee fares in Legendary is certainly one of the metrics for this journey to test.

Hi, i just finished an Aasimar Sacred Fist handwraps TR (at 20). Some of my experience :
- TWF is slooow at the beginning. Haste pots become an addiction
- Ki is somewhat secondary, until it suddenly becomes important (for Wave). I cast Ki bolt 3 times i think, its just not good.
- Sacred flame empowerment is for bossfights with few or no adds, i save all ki for wave/explosion
- Ki explosion makes me feel like a sorc. For those who have done a 2mnk/18EK(wiz/sorc), it feels very much this.
- Ki item is a must for AoE in mid-late heroics. Run to mobs, wave on the way there, build up more ki, explosion, rince+repeat.
- Exalted smite feels underwhelming (and slow), but boy, when it hits it HITS. Seen it at 1.7-1.8k, but that's once in a blue moon. Very fun when it does though
- Very good performance in heroics after a slow start. Late heroics is brilliant, but tapers off once mobs get 3k hps (like in IQ)
- I didn't take this into epics, but i suspect it will perform like a sad monk build. Wave + Explosion will have to carry this archetype, and i think it won't scale well.

My next build (which i TR'ed into yesterday), is a staff build. 1ro/1fvs, rest Pally or take 2-3 rouge once you get holysword+explosion.
The QoL with 1lvl of rogue (skill points (jump!), some trapping/spot, attackspeed in TA) is just unbeatable. Then 1 fvs for quarterstaff deity and
nightshield spell. THFx3, Swords2plowshares, Power attack, imp crit, +1 open. Simple but effective and fun so far.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Let's talk about the Sacred Fist enhancement trees. Radiant Servant is a total miss. I haven't taken a single point in this tree and I struggle to see why anyone would. None of the cores do anything except give healing power and who is going to make a healing Paladin with a spell point pool only a fraction of that for a cleric or FVS? The cores should at least give added HPs and/or HAMP to make them somewhat attractive. The best theoretical combination I could come up with is going to core 3 for the Positive Energy burst. You'd take 3 points into Bliss which would end up giving you 15 temp HPs from your (many) Turn Undead charges. That's basically useless on Live, and while it has some value on hardcore during low levels, almost everyone would be taking their first 40 points in Defender and Fist for offense/defense. Then I don't know, Divine Cleansing? Divine Healing? It's all filler. This tree needs major work. I get it, they didn't have an easy option to put here but Radiant Servant doesn't even have enough attractiveness to make this viable. Useful only if making a Turn Undead flavor Paladin.

Sacred Fist is a great tree low and mid-tier but lacks power in its 5th and 6th cores and on Tier 5. Core 5 - +1 saves, 1 sacred die, and 20-second Ki generation after a Turn Undead use. Compare this to Inquisitive Core 5 which gets +3 to saves, 10 ranged power, Slippery Mind, +3 law dice, and +4 DEX bonus to armor. I mean that blows Sacred Fist away. The same problems exist with the 6th core which should provide 20 Melee Power and multiple sacred fist die. Tier 5 has three abilities of questionable or overpriced value. Evasive Dance is a perplexing skill. 3 APs for something that gives you 50% of Improved Evasion. Considering many Sacred Fist are going to get full Improved Evasion from Shadowdancer in epics this doesn't feel well thought out. I would never take this since 10 points in Shadowdancer is a no-brainer for what we are building here. Did anyone think about this when putting together the tree? Divine Strike is the standard demon/devil stun. It's fine but in modern DDO it should be 1 point. I wanted to like Violence Begets Violence. I really did. Here is another ability that should be 1 point considering it is very situationally useful. In most group settings this will almost never trigger except in red-name fights. I'm not sure that will even be useful in a non-heroic red-name fight because the mob has to miss you. Epic reds almost all have True Seeing and will penetrate your defenses leading to far fewer misses. Am I missing something here? This one is hard to track on the combat results as well so I can't ever be sure how much extra DPS thru crits I am generating.

In general, the Sacred Defender tree is good but considering they changed the requirements for the Defender stance to include robes why didn't they adjust other skills in this tree to accommodate the monk playstyle? For example, Sacred Shield Mastery - you can't use a shield or you become uncentered. So why is this even in the tree? Not one Sacred Fist can take it. Defensive Boost is a PRR/MRR clickie but your MRR is capped at 50 fairly quick in heroics. One of the cores in SD should increase the MRR cap. Reinforced Defense is another one. It adds AC bonus based on Armor and Shield. No Shield use is possible so this shouldn't be an option. The Armor boost shouldn't scale off the cloth armor bonus because it's so low compared to the heavy/medium armor that vanilla Paladins are using. Harbored by Light gives major boosts to PRR/MRR but again, you're capped. It feels like these are rather easy fixes that could be made giving synergy with the cloth robes a Sacred Fist will be wearing.

What do you think about the Sacred Fist enhancement trees? Has your experience been similar?

[peng]

Feats

My feat breakdown is going to look like this:

1 - TWF
1 - Dodge
3 - Mobility
6 - Swords to Plowshares
9 - IC Bludgeon
12 - Whirlwind attack
15 - ITWF
18 - GTWF

It might jump out to you that we are missing Stunning Fist. Well, that is STR based and we aren't STR based nor do we have a trance to boost its DCs. We also don't have the feat slots for it. If you want Stunning Fist, I'd recommend the 16/2/2 split since you then get a CHA trance and will have the feats from fighter to take it. Magical Training, or splashing FVS, opens up the Feydark tree and GCS (greater color spray) could give you a Jedi type of build. However, APs are tight so consider what you want to do, you'll have to make sacrifices to get GCS.

Base Stats (for human)

STR - 10
DEX - 16
CON - 16
INT - 8
WIS - 9
CHA - 17

I have +8 tomes so you end up with 3 or 4 skill points for most of your levels. I spent those on Heal, Concentration, Jump, and Intimidate.

Stunning fist is WIS-based, not STR. Either way, if you splash a single level of fvs or cleric for a cha trance and gear appropriately, your DCs should be up to the task of stunning most mobs. You might even have ok DCs with the dex trance from horizon walker.

In general, the twf feats are more dps than imp crit/plowshares. With a +3 tome (you said you have +8) you can start with 14 dex, take a placeholder feat at level 1, then immediately replace it with twf and still qualify for the rest of the twf chain (your tomes apply after you leave character creation). With a +5 tome you could start with 12 dex and take twf at lvl 3.

Another decent feat is two weapon defense to increase your mrr cap by 10 and prr by 5.

So maybe something like this:

Stats
. . . . . . . .36pt . . Tome . . Level Up
. . . . . . . .---- . . ----. . .--------
Strength. . . . .8. . . .+8. . . .4: CHA
Dexterity . . . 14. . . .+8. . . .8: CHA
Constitution. . 16. . . .+8. . . 12: CHA
Intelligence. . .8. . . .+8. . . 16: CHA
Wisdom. . . . . 12. . . .+8. . . 20: CHA
Charisma. . . . 18. . . .+8. . . 24: CHA
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28: CHA

Feats

.1. . . . : Toughness
.1 Swap. .: Two Weapon Fighting replaces Toughness
.1 Human. : Stunning Fist
.3. . . . : Precision
.6. . . . : Improved Two Weapon Fighting
.9. . . . : Improved Critical: Bludgeoning
12. . . . : Greater Two Weapon Fighting
15. . . . : Swords to Plowshares
18. . . . : Two Weapon Defense


Also you might want to incorporate items that generate extra ki on hit in your gearset. The earliest you can get them are at lvl 12 (Ik'thanor's Signet Ring) and 15 (Moonrise Bracers).

[Marshal_Lannes]

Gear layout for early questing is 5+ Feywild set. You can pretty much go with whatever works for you and you have available mixing in Saltmarsh and IoD as you see fit. At 12 I fully geared out:

Goggles - Sight of the Sleepwalker w/+5 resistance slotted
Helmet - Crown of Leaves only there for a 4-piece Fey set
Necklace - Necklace of Bottled Sunlight only provides exhaustion immunity and 14 HAMP there for Fey set
Trinket - Dusk Heart
Cloak - Mantle of Fury
Belt - Braided Cutcord
Ring 1 - Perfect Pinnacle
Ring 2 - Nocturne Ring (True Seeing/Fey set) or Ring of Summer's Heat (see below)
Gloves - Green Steel 45 HPs
Boots - Golden Greaves with Vitality slotted
Bracers - Vambrace of the Summer Court
Armor - Disciple of the Dawn

This isn't ideal more of a what I had that fit without having to scour through all my characters for monk gear. It's solid though and more than capable of pushing you over 600 HPs. Since we will be changing out at 15 it's not that big of a deal and more of a guide on what works fairly well. Helmet and necklace can easily be replaced losing the +1 abilities from Fey with whatever you want.

Incinerating Wave

Had a chance to play around some with Incinerating Wave. This spell/ability is very good. Sacred Fist really leans into that Kung Fu movie hero surrounded by a swarm of enemies that they fight their way through. High defense affords you protection which keeps you alive while surrounded (in heroics anyway). For example, in R1 Into the Mists the non-champion scarecrows either couldn't harm me or when they did the damage didn't go through because of DR/PRR. In conjunction with this, our main attacks are 360-degree spins. Nice design. Incinerating Wave plays right into this because it emanates out from you hitting everything. The description says it scales 200% with melee power but I tested it to be sure. Using 52 potency from the Sleepwalker glasses it did the same damage when I wasn't wearing them. Next, I took off the glasses and put on the Ring of Summers Heat (59 to both fire and light plus 9% crit chance on each). Again, same damage and I didn't get any crit results so it seems you can't crit with the Wave, or if you can, it's not based on spell criticals. I'm hitting for 80-100 which may not seem like a lot but it's every target and that's your opening attack followed by a spin attack. Of course, that uses up 36 Ki which is a convenient transition into our Q&A section.

Questions and Answers

Also you might want to incorporate items that generate extra ki on hit in your gearset. The earliest you can get them are at lvl 12 (Ik'thanor's Signet Ring) and 15 (Moonrise Bracers).

Thanks to Peng for pointing out that Stunning Fist is WIS, not STR based. I had Stunning Blow on my mind from Barbarian play and forgot about Stunning Fist, been a while since I've played a monk. Still, Wisdom is mostly a dump stat in Sacred Fist so you run into the same problems as you do with STR. True, as Peng points out you can get the CHA trance by going FVS and I think that's the route you have to go, multiclassing, to really use Stunning Fist. I don't think the Horizon Walker DEX trance is a viable option because it's relatively high up (13 points spent) in the HW tree and APs are at a premium. What could we get for those 13 points? Core 1-3 which is marking, fortification debuffs, plus Haste. Tier one would be 3 dodge and +1 to hit. The problem is Tier two where you need to take 4 points of filler. And really, two of your cores are filler as well because you're not going to be marking single targets since the whole combat style of Sacred Fist is fighting multiple mobs around you. 6 points of filler is hard to stomach when DEX is only your secondary stat, not primary although it is possible. Peng's multiclass FVS option is something worth exploring if you want to use Stunning Fist, thank you for posting that. The Signet Ring is certainly something you want at L12. I have the Moonrise Bracers but not sure about the ring, would have to dig around for most likely just go to Element of Chaos and get one. Ki generation is a major problem at these levels in group play. I believe the Ki cost is too high for the Sacred Fist abilities. The class shouldn't be so reliant on one item only available at Level 12. Devs might consider cutting the costs for Exalted WW from 12 to 8, Avenging WW from 18 to 12, and Incinerating Wave from 18 to 15.

Since you are there, Id like a confirmation about Sacred Flame and Ki Explosion being Quicken metamagic sensitives.

I'm not there yet, that was a planned feat list. I'm only at 12 now but I do plan on taking Quicken to see how/if it speeds up the Ki spell animations.

thanks so much for going over this stuff. i've been excitedly eyeing the sacred fist specifically because i like the idea of monk but hate the fiddly combo system ddo decided to assign to monks, a purer "i punch things, they fall down" approach in sacred fist is extremely appealing to me as a consequence, but the build constraints do seem a little a little tight.

one thing i've been eyeing is using the tabaxi trailblazer as a starting point, and leveraging the iconic tree for quarterstaff hilarity. the fact they get spring attack for free that way is particularly exciting, and that single level of monk also gets a bonus feat slot without badly hurting the paladin progression.

what do you think?

You're welcome! Hopefully, we all get a chance to discover what this subclass offers through our collective experience. Your impression is right, this does play like a monk without the button mashing. On your Tabaxi idea, you're going to need a 15 STR to qualify for THF. You could push THF feats down the path and let your tomes cover the prerequisites allowing you to start at 12 or 13 depending on your tome. You'd need a good number of racial APs to get Springing Pounce or you'll have to sacrifice defense from Sacred Defender. You could probably make this DEX-based. Maybe it's worth it to go into the Horizon Walker tree for the Dex trance then. But then you're 30 points in between the Tabaxi and HW trees. I certainly think a QS variant of the Sacred Fist can be successful but the question becomes is it going to be better than the Henshin capstone for epics or the attack speed with staff from Acrobat in heroics?

[Tepi]

You're welcome! Hopefully, we all get a chance to discover what this subclass offers through our collective experience. Your impression is right, this does play like a monk without the button mashing. On your Tabaxi idea, you're going to need a 15 STR to qualify for THF. You could push THF feats down the path and let your tomes cover the prerequisites allowing you to start at 12 or 13 depending on your tome. You'd need a good number of racial APs to get Springing Pounce or you'll have to sacrifice defense from Sacred Defender. You could probably make this DEX-based. Maybe it's worth it to go into the Horizon Walker tree for the Dex trance then. But then you're 30 points in between the Tabaxi and HW trees. I certainly think a QS variant of the Sacred Fist can be successful but the question becomes is it going to be better than the Henshin capstone for epics or the attack speed with staff from Acrobat in heroics?

Isn't it a bit of a moot point whether another build would be better? I mean if you want to play a Sacred Fist, you want to play a Sacred Fist and the fact another build might be better but not be a Sacred Fist seems beside the point. T5 Henshin may be better but then you'd be a monk :P

[esotericist]

Isn't it a bit of a moot point whether another build would be better? I mean if you want to play a Sacred Fist, you want to play a Sacred Fist and the fact another build might be better but not be a Sacred Fist seems beside the point. T5 Henshin may be better but then you'd be a monk :P

yeah, that's basically where i am coming from. i could roll a monk, but i don't want to. enduring the mandatory monk level from the iconic for the secondary benefits it gets me (and not having to come up with an appropriate lesser heart) is reasonably acceptable to me, though.

it's also worth noting that i don't particularly care about hitting high performance... i just want to be able to level this and do content and not be miserable in the process. i don't do things like reaper or raids, for instance.

[Marshal_Lannes]

yeah, that's basically where i am coming from. i could roll a monk, but i don't want to. enduring the mandatory monk level from the iconic for the secondary benefits it gets me (and not having to come up with an appropriate lesser heart) is reasonably acceptable to me, though.

it's also worth noting that i don't particularly care about hitting high performance... i just want to be able to level this and do content and not be miserable in the process. i don't do things like reaper or raids, for instance.

With that in mind, try out a 16 Sacred Fist, 3 Rogue, 1 Monk. Why the split? One monk since you're an iconic and you've said you don't want to be a monk. 3 Rogue so you can spend 13 points in the Thief Acrobat tree getting Thief Acrobatics III, Haste Boost, free Swords to Plowshares feat, Quick Strike and Improved Secondary Strikes III (20% strikethrough). Your APs would look something like:

Tabaxi - 16
Horizon Walker - 13
Thief Acrobat - 13
Sacred Fist/Sacred Defender - 38

Once you start playing you'll be able to decide if you want to forego the Sacred Defender tree for the Dex trance from Horizon Walker. I would skip it personally because I think having say 36 points in Sacred Fist and 15 points in Sacred Defender is better overall (if you care about defense) than the DEX trance. For leveling, make sure you are Lawful Good then go Monk, Rogue, and Sacred Fist. Drop in Rogue levels when you want to up your trap skills, with the right gear you might be able to do them although stats are really tight. Starting stats (depending on your STR tomes remember need to hit 17 for improved and greater THF) STR 13, DEX 17, WIS 8, INT 12, CON 16, CHA 14 or something close to this. For feats I'd go 1 - Precision and Dodge, 3 - THF, 6 - ? 9 - ITHF 12 - IC Blud 15 - GTHF - 18 - ?. You have two feats to play around with depending on what you want (remember you get Swords to Plowshares for free from TA). If you decide to do this let us know if the Sacred Fist die triggers on Strikethroughs.