How Can I Rescue this monk?

[Osco]

I have a level 14 first life human light monk (handwraps). I'm 99.9% solo with this character. I haven't played him since the 6th anniversary Christmas celebration, so he's completely out of date. Here are his particulars:

Naked stats:
STR 16
DEX 17
CON 16
INT 8
WIS 19
CHA 8

SKILLS
Balance 20
Concentration 16
Hide 6
Jump 14
Move Silently 7
Spot 7
Tumble 4
UMD 7
Heal 4
Listen 4

FEATS
Inherent Constitution 2
Inherent Strength 2
Inherent Widom 1
Heroic Durability
Improved Heroic Durability
Two-Weapon Fighting
Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
Curse of the Void
Toughness
House of Denieth skill bonus
House of Phiarlan Skill Bonus
Improved evasion
Stunning Fist
Weapon Finesse
Weapon Focus Bludgeoning Weapons
AC Bonus
Abundant Step
Adept of Fires of Purity
Adept Flowing Water Strike
Adept Storm Strike
Adept Strike of the Enduring
Adepts of Flame, Rain, Rock, and Wind
Diamond Body
Diamond Soul
Evasion
Fast Movement
Finishing Move: Breath of the Fire Dragon
Finishing Move: The Gathering Storm
Finishing Move: The Raging Sea
Finishing Move: The Trembling Earth
Finishing Move Path of Harmonious Balance: Aligning the Heavens
Finishing Move Path of Harmonious Balance: Dance of Clouds
Finishing Move Path of Harmonious Balance: Grasp of the Earth Dragon
Finishing Move Path of Harmonious Balance: Healing Ki
Finishing Move Path of Harmonious Balance: Walk of the Sun
Finishing Move Path of Path of Inevitable Dominion: Flurry of Blows
Finishing Move Path of Path of Inevitable Dominion: Ki Strike Lawful
Finishing Move Path of Path of Inevitable Dominion: Ki Strike Magic Fires f
Master of Forms: Master Fires of Purity
Master of Forms: Master Flowing Water Snake
Master of Forms: Master Storm Strike
Master of Forms: Master Strike of the Enduring
Master of Bonfires
Master of Stone
Master of Thunder
Master of the Sea
Meditation
Moment of Clarity
Purity of Body
Slow Fall
Still Mind
The Way of the Air: Storm Strike 1
The Way of the Air: Wind stance
The Way of the Earth: Mountain Stance
The Way of the Earth: Strike of the Enduring 1
The Way of Fire: Fires of Purity 1
The Way of Fire: Sun Stance
The Way of Water: Flowing Water Strike 1
The Way of Water: Ocean Stance
Unarmed Strike
Wholeness of Body
Path of Harmonious Balance: Fists of Light
Exotic, Martial, and Simple Weapon Proficiencies
Luck of Heroes


No enhancements, since they hadn't been invented before I stopped playing. I have 55 AP to spend.

Tell me, doc. Is there any hope??

[Tilomere]

Use the +3 heart that was given away for free after imbue pass to get 2 sacred fist levels (2nd WWA and divine healing from enhancements) and 1 dark apostate cleric level (turn undead charges/magical training)

go Wisdom, get WWA + TWF feats, and color spray from FI

Then combo Color Spray > WWA (feat) > WWA (enhancement from SF), while divine healing is ticking

A good way to design a character is to assume every pack is a group of 6 mobs and 2 reapers, then think about how you will approach them.

Standing toe to toe with them and trading blows while killing 1 mob at a time under a self-healing penalty is generally not the right approach.

[Abyx]

First, yes, this is not beyond saving !

You're pure, that's good. Even if monk is not the "best amazing such fast much wow" class, it can handle itself.
You're solo, you should take a hire. Except if you play on normal where your AC/Dodge + healing finisher (light light light) is more than enough to overcome everything.

Like Tilomere said, if you got the +3 Lesser Heart, you can undergo a lesser resurrection to swap feats mainly, and to get 2 levels of SF (sacred fist enhancement tree up to tier 2 to get that Ki Whirlwind attack).
However that is not necessary.

My advice :
1) Do not play Reaper. You do not have any AOE attack right now, you will die far too often. Even Elite is gonna be challenging.
2) Try to respec feats if you have the required stuff (see wiki). There is also a quest in marketplace that can give you a free token (look for Lockania in north-north-east part of Marketplace). The goal is to get Whirlwind attack (a very good spammable aoe attack). For that, you need the following feats : Dodge, Mobility and finaly Whirlwind Attack. Getting Weapon Critical - Bludgeoning is also useful. You can discard the following feats : Weapon Focus, Weapon Finesse (sur you have a bit more Dex than Str, not enough to justify a feat slot). If you play a bit, at level 15 you will also get a new Feat.
3) As far as enhancements goes, spend them mostly in Shintao tree. Must-haves are Deft Strikes, Empty Hand Mastery with Tomb of Jade, Kukan-Do, Iron skin, Elemental Curatives more than useful.
Human tree is good and has mainly Heal Amplification, Greater Heroism that can be useful for a monk.
4) If you own Ravenloft, do the Into the mists quest to get Barovian Handwraps. Will very probably be much better than your old weapon. If you do not own, nevermind that.
5) If you are planning to spend money and buy Falconry tree, get that WIS to hit/dmg. Falconry is amazing, you can also get 30% bonus dmg to helpless creatures (mobs stunned by your Stunning Fist). But that's very not mandatory.

TL;DR : try to get Whirlwind attack (through LR / feat swaps). At level 15 you will get another feat.
Enhancements wise, get Shintao. Then Human.

[Tilomere]

To level a high powered melee build, you have to start it with 10 levels of caster because there isn't high amounts of melee/ranged power to level with, which means only spell power is in high availability. Wiki gives a selection of 5 casters that 10/10 split still give a monk past life. I've used sorc and arti and Favored Soul as example 10/10 splits.

High Power Leveling Melee Monk

Dragonborn 10 FvS, 10 Monk
Max + levels charisma, decent str (THF), or just balance skill (SWF)

1 FvS Maximize, Aureon (THF) or Vol/Olladra (SWF), Fire
2 FvS Grace of Battle
3 FvS Empower
4 FvS
5 FvS
6 FvS Quicken
7 FvS Purity of Heart
8 FvS
9 FvS Melee Feat
10 FvS
11 Monk Melee Feat
12 Monk Melee Featx2
13-20 Monk Melee Featx3


13 AP Dragonborn (Breath, +1 caster level Fire)
23 AP AoV (+3 Fire caster level)
23 Falconry 30% helpless
4 WS Trance
Optional: 11 FI for GCS as replacement for soundburst if your evo DC is too low to hit fort saves

Combined with divine augmentation this lets you do combos like soundburst > flamestrike and/or dragonbreath at caster level 15, then start to melee. This lets you edit pack sizes down to a relevant amount of hp remaining for melee.

See example of build archtype at work editing group sizes down here.

From wiki:
In the case of a tie, the dominant class is the first listed on this list:
Barbarian
Bard
Cleric
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Sorcerer
Wizard
Monk
Favored Soul
Artificer
Druid*
Warlock*
Alchemist

[C-Dog]

First, welcome back to your alt!

I have many(!) alts that were shelved from back when alts were a thing, and I, too, have anguished over resurrecting some of them into fully productive members of my account's society.

I have a level 14 first life human light monk (handwraps). I'm 99.9% solo with this character. I haven't played him since the 6th anniversary Christmas celebration, so he's completely out of date...

Some of the above "solutions" are a bit extreme. Tilo's build is excellent, and the "+3 Heart" solution can work too, but I'm guessing not what you're looking for - and nor do you need to resort to such measures.

In the current game it's easy to level, so, depending on your goals*, a pure monk should be quite workable.

* So, first - what are your goals? Do you want to make 20 and park as a raid toon, or 20 and do some light farming and TR eventually, or immediately continue and push on to 30/32, or just limp to 20 and reincarnate asap, or what? Each has different requirements...

Then there's the question of what "type" of Monk you want to run - double-fisted, quarterstaff, other weapons? Any of these a dealbreaker/strong preference?

Also, many builds (esp Wis-based) call for Falconry, which is a new(ish) Universal Enhancement tree, available via (700!) Free Agent favor, or 1,495 DP. It's not a dealbreaker if you don't have it, but it is a good thing, and makes for some of "the best" builds when talking Wisdom-based damage.

o https://ddowiki.com/page/Falconry_enhancements

Tell me, doc. Is there any hope??

Well, he'll never play the violin, but then again he's not a bard, so... probably, yes.

But, question - are you hoping to simply swap a feat and press on from where he is now, or are you willing to use the free Lesser Heart of Wood that you have? The latter is MUCH more promising, the former might(???) be doable, esp if only going to 20 for TR.

Here are his particulars:

Naked stats:
STR 16
DEX 17
CON 16
INT 8
WIS 19
CHA 8
...
FEATS
Inherent Constitution 2
Inherent Strength 2
Inherent Wisdom 1
...

"Inherent Feats" are +Ability Tomes. Looks like something like a 32-pt 14/16/14/8/16/8 build, with 2 level-ups in Wis and 1 in Dex - but in the end that doesn't matter; whether we rebuild or keep, they are whatever they are, and he can focus on either Wis or (if he has to) Dex or even Str from here out.

Old characters from your era all received a free +20 Lesser Heart of Wood (look in Inventory or personal Bank), so if(?) you're willing to use that, you can do almost whatever you want with this build, complete makeover, even into a completely diff class/dual-class. However, now, every character starts with a standard Lesser Heart of Wood, so he has that too, and so rebuilding a pure Monk is easy (and you can save the +20 for a real emergency/"oops" moment).


Some of the feats that he currently has are probably undefined in the current game, so are wasted slots and "need" to be rebuilt. In theory you could simply "swap" them via Fred*, but that can get expensive after the first, depending on your bank (and bankroll - not every old character has a rich uncle ).

(* https://ddowiki.com/page/Fred#Feat_respec )

There are many diff types of "monk" - when I see a decent build on the forums, I copy/paste it into a "Builds" txt file. The problem is that there have been some significant changes recently, meaning that almost any build doesn't reflect these changes. The good news is that they are almost all streamlines to older Feat chains (specifically making Whirlwind Attack easier to get!), so any old build can simply be buffed up to grab that gem. The bad news is that almost no currently posted builds reflect that change, so you're on your own re making the best of that change. :/


Without much editing, here are some of the Monks that looked reasonable...

o This dropped yesterday, fist monk. Read thread for suggestions/alternatives https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6555153

o Oct '22 quarterstaff build https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6537756 (non-human, so you have +1 Feat to add)

Anything older than those has to be taken with a grain of salt due to the aforementioned changes, but many older builds are quite serviceable, even improved because of them. You don't have to be The Best of The Best to make it to 20, or beyond.

o Modern-ish discussion/guide https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6503114

o early '19, discussion w/ several suggested links https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6187756
& late '18 https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6070277

(At worst, you can get a feel for how "modern" monks are built, as compared to your dinosaur. If you find a specific build that looks promising, just link it here and the build gurus will tell you how to polish it up to modern(ish) standards.)





o older "unarmed monk guide" ('17) - a lot has changed, but the basics are still there https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post5991533

[Osco]

I'd like to stay a pure Fist Light Monk. I could maybe be talked into quarterstaff, if I get cool kung-fu moves.

I just checked my inventory, and I have a regular Lesser Heart of Wood, as well as a +3 and +20. I'd like to run him for as long as possible, depending on how we end up changing him (though I prefer pure Monk.)

I'm using +5 Vampiric Stonedust wraps right now (+5, +6 Stunning, Minor Vampirism, Chance of Stoneskin for each hit taken when in Mountain Stance, Change of Flesh to Stone on target on a nat 20) and +4 Handwraps of Weakening.

I also have one Feat Exchange token.

15 of my attacks are grayed out since they moved them to the Enhancement trees. O.O

[C-Dog]

Sounds like you own neither Falconry nor Vistani Knife Fighter (from Ravenloft) trees - no problem, this is a 1st life build and not expected to have everything you might want, so those will come and you'll only get stronger later.

You'll be using the no-bonus LHoW - save the +20 and +3 for another time, those are if you wanted to go multiclass.

TR'ing can give you some nice benefits, and is fast enough (MUCH faster than when this alt last played!) - you can just keep building better and better Monks as you earn DP and gain PL perks. Monk PL's give +1 damage each (stack up to 3x), and then you can chase Racial PL's for a few bonus stats and free bonus Racial AP's! Half Orc Monks of doom!

o https://ddowiki.com/page/Racial_Past_Life_Feats

I, personally, recommend that 1st-life don't try to get to 30, for exactly some of the reasons you're experiencing - no content (which you can earn via DP from leveling, and possibly buy this Black Friday - Sharn is a good thing). You have some nice weapons, so that's on your side (and probably some equivalent other gear, but all that's going to have aged some since it was "good"). But some have ignored that advice and done fine despite the uphill trek - a ymmv thing.

15 of my attacks are grayed out since they moved them to the Enhancement trees. O.O

Okay, for now, follow this build's "Option 1" AP spread - nothing Premium, so you have access to all of it. It will cost some 100's of plat to respec later, but this will get you up and running for the time being. (If you have Harper (another Premium Enhancement tree, earned in Eveningstar), you can consider Option 2.)

o https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post5991533

If you have no patience, you could even use that as a model for your rebuild. It's not "the current best", and it might have some hiccups if the AP costs have changed, but it'll be very close and still solid. (But I suggest you wait and don't rush into it - a better suggestion may appear, give it time.)

(If you go with it, dump Combat Expertise - no longer needed as requisite for other feats - and you can lose the Int 13 requisite as well (and go with 10 or so?). Not sure what to suggest in its place, but it opens some options.)

Meanwhile, look over the links I listed, and see if something strikes you as doable. (and hope a Monk expert weighs in, which I do not consider myself one of).

[Osco]

Actually, I just purchased Falconry, Sharn, and Feywild! Thanks for all the help you've been giving me!

[Saekee]

First life will get you to 20 fast—save the lesser hearts for other situations. You can join groups and let leader know in advance you are gimp; many will be fine to tow you under their wing. Tilo has done it a lot for Cannith folks…

At 20 you can then reincarnate so only six speedy levels.

[Osco]

First life will get you to 20 fast—save the lesser hearts for other situations. You can join groups and let leader know in advance you are gimp; many will be fine to tow you under their wing. Tilo has done it a lot for Cannith folks…

At 20 you can then reincarnate so only six speedy levels.

Thanks! I'll try that!