Sacred Fist Monk Splash

[Amideus]

Since Stunning Fist and other features from monk don't get the Charisma treatment (feels weird now that they removed them a few years ago) is there much benefit to a Sacred Fist Multiclass?

You still need 12 Monk for Imp Martial Arts. If you do 8 levels of Sacred Fist you can get more HD, level 2 ki spell, the imbue for light damage (I'm averaging 180-220 at level 30) and paladin defensive stance. I just feel like the fact that not all the features take from Charisma keeps it from competing with falconry.

[C-Dog]

There's a strong argument for 1-3 Monk splash for the stances.

Also splashing Favored Soul/Cleric can give a Wisdom Trance for bonus damage.

Here are a couple early threads that discuss same:
o https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6570919
o https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6559902

o 16/3/1 build https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...=1#post6541456

[unbongwah]

Since Stunning Fist and other features from monk don't get the Charisma treatment (feels weird now that they removed them a few years ago) is there much benefit to a Sacred Fist Multiclass?

Two big things which pure Sacred Fist lacks: a Battle Trance* and access to monk stances. Hence why the most common splashes are monk and either cleric or Favored Soul. Also if you splash cleric or FvS before Sacred Fist, you can pick a deity and wind up with two: Path of Light (auto-granted by Sacred Fist) and whatever you chose. This in turn means having more than one Favored weapon to start which might open up new build options: e.g., dagger (Blood of Vol), longsword (Sovereign Host), or short sword (Vulkoor), all of which can become centered weapons with the correct feat or enhancement (Deadly Blades, Whirling Steel Strike, and Basic Ninja Training, respectively).

*SSG should've given Sacred Fists Warpriest instead of Radiant Servant. Rather than trying to shoehorn the party-healer role onto a class without Heal or Mass Cure spells, give them the tree which ups their tanking/survivability and also preserves access to Divine Might.

You still need 12 Monk for Imp Martial Arts. If you do 8 levels of Sacred Fist you can get more HD, level 2 ki spell, the imbue for light damage (I'm averaging 180-220 at level 30) and paladin defensive stance.

I am wondering if anyone does, say, monk 12 / Sacred Fist 6 / FvS 2: e.g., tier-5 Shintao for crit bonuses etc., tier-3 Sacred Defender for Durable+Hardy Defense (+25 PRR/MRR, +6 CON), tier-2 Warsoul for Haste Boost and Divine Might.

[Amideus]

Two big things which pure Sacred Fist lacks: a Battle Trance* and access to monk stances. Hence why the most common splashes are monk and either cleric or Favored Soul. Also if you splash cleric or FvS before Sacred Fist, you can pick a deity and wind up with two: Path of Light (auto-granted by Sacred Fist) and whatever you chose. This in turn means having more than one Favored weapon to start which might open up new build options: e.g., dagger (Blood of Vol), longsword (Sovereign Host), or short sword (Vulkoor), all of which can become centered weapons with the correct feat or enhancement (Deadly Blades, Whirling Steel Strike, and Basic Ninja Training, respectively).

*SSG should've given Sacred Fists Warpriest instead of Radiant Servant. Rather than trying to shoehorn the party-healer role onto a class without Heal or Mass Cure spells, give them the tree which ups their tanking/survivability and also preserves access to Divine Might.

I am wondering if anyone does, say, monk 12 / Sacred Fist 6 / FvS 2: e.g., tier-5 Shintao for crit bonuses etc., tier-3 Sacred Defender for Durable+Hardy Defense (+25 PRR/MRR, +6 CON), tier-2 Warsoul for Haste Boost and Divine Might.

I agree with the issues surrounding the class. When I first heard about the Sacred Fist being Paladin I was confused since I always associated it with Cleric in PnP, mostly because Cleric had a better synergy. But with Paladins having so much more in DDO it makes a lot more sense. What doesn't make sense is how kneecapped it feels. It's almost as if they are afraid to give melee anything at all. This game just can't seem to get any real changes.

If it's not a spellcaster or a ranged character it's apparently not allowed to be at the top, which is just kind of silly to me. A melee character, because they must be in melee and take more risks, should be given more to compensate. It was so strange when I read that they were nerfing monk damage a few years ago because unarmed was "the most effective monk build" as if there wasn't FIVE YEARS of nothing but monkcher characters and nothing else came even close. It's honestly a pretty big slap in the face it makes me wonder why I keep coming back to check if Monk has been fixed yet.

The lack of Channel Divinity/Divine Might is glaring to me. And the fact that they didn't give the Paladin class more options for an unarmed and unarmored tank is kind of silly too. I loved running 16/4 Monk/Fighter in the past because of access to the fighter tanking spec for a bit more power. I really like the idea of making a Monk tank, but they just keep pushing the heavy armor and shield as the only viable tank option, which is really boring for a game where the strength is the flexibility of your build paths.


My current life is 12/8 Monk/Sacred Fist and it feels ok, not amazing just pretty mid. I wanted the second level spells to use the imbue with Sacred Flame, but that spell is so... I just don't udnerstand why Monks are not allowed to have buffs that last longer than 1 minute. The martial arts finishing moves are so terrible now it's really sad. Their duration is pathetic, always has been, but there's even less reason to use them now because of the fact that you have to make yourself vulnerable to do it and lose a lot of power, and the lack of duration prevents an effective pre-buff.

I know I am ranting a little here, but I really would like to see updated finishing moves with REAL durations, like 5 minutes. And Sacred Flame to last longer per caster level. It's seriously so weak of a spell that 20 seconds duration causes it to LOSE damage just to have to stop and cast it, and you can't pre-buff. It just feels like someone was so scared to do anything new or interesting that it led to getting a super mediocre archetype for unarmed and that's REALLY disappointing since I have been almost exclusively unarmed handwraps since Monk released.

I'm going to finish doing my farming on this life, play around with a few things, maybe theory craft a bit off some other suggestions.

I really have a few main goals: Make the unarmed damage as strong as possible. Make the Sacred Fist/Monk into a viable tank. I'm going to see how far I can take a Monk and Sacred Fist combo.

Also I just learned that they DECIMATED Unarmed Strike feats. Seriously who thought that was a good idea? Let's take the main scaling factor for monk wraps and just eliminate it entirely. First we lost the die scaling upward, they we lost the [W] scaling. Which means that interesting ways to stack it with Sacred Fist also mean nothing now too. Just, it just feels like every option and choice is irrelevant anymore and that's a REALLY bad way to feel about a game like this. I miss building interesting characters. Now all I see are casters one shotting things that take me at least 10 seconds to kill and I just don't feel like my choices matter.