Returning player: Questions about WF/Monk

[Ardkor]

OK, rolled him up and ran him through all of the Korthos Island stuff (Solo through Elite) to get a feel for how to play a monk. Then I took him over to Stormreach and ran through most of the Harbor quests.

My first impressions on playing a monk solo:

Having your hotbars set up properly makes a world of difference in actual gameplay - LOTS of button mashing as a monk. You are always moving around, jumping over monsters and things and changing your stance/power moves. I've got one hotbar just for stances, one for attacks/finishers, one for healing/potions, and two set up for quick changes of clothing and self buffing.

Regular attacks don't mess up the combo chains you build towards the finishing moves (something that wasn't explicitly clear to me from the class descriptions on the wiki). So it goes something like "boppitabopitaboppita (regular attacks until you have plenty of Ki) then Fists of Light, then more boppitaboppita while FoL cools down, then another FoL, more boppitaboppita, the third FoL (the finisher icon changes to a big sunburst now and lights up to show its loaded)." At that point you can run around using normal attacks until you need the big finisher attack, but if you use any of the power moves EXCEPT another FoL you will lose the finisher move and have to start the chain again. Opening a door or pulling a lever wipes it clean too. This is very cool when you know there is a big fight coming because you can load up the finisher on the minions, then work your way to the boss while holding the finisher ready, then drop it on him. It took me a while to figure this out (some days, my character is a lot smarter than me the player, I admit).

I'm *really* missing the ability to open locks. I just HATE not getting every chest and opening every locked gate, and the little bit of extra goodies that I am now passing up. I'm either greedy, OCD, or both I guess. Too many adventures as a rogue, maybe, because I still figure 'anything that is not nailed down is mine to take, and anything I can pry up is not nailed down'.

I thought I would suffer without the ability to locate and disarm traps, but the combination of Monk saves, WF immunities, and Way of the Monkey energy resistance has neutered every trap so far. I use timing and positioning to avoid the ones I have memorized, and the ones I don't see usually miss me or do nothing of notice. I expect this will be more of a problem as I reach more challenging content (higher DCs and damage, plus I won't have the locations memorized).

I really like the way Fists of Light hurts undead. An extra 4d6 of damage and they just wither under the glowing white fire effect. It offsets the way zombies suck so much when you gotta kill them with your fists, too.

[TPICKRELL]

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Having your hotbars set up properly makes a world of difference in actual gameplay - LOTS of button mashing as a monk...
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I thought I would suffer without the ability to locate and disarm traps, but the combination of Monk saves, WF immunities, and Way of the Monkey energy resistance has neutered every trap so far. I use timing and positioning to avoid the ones I have memorized, and the ones I don't see usually miss me or do nothing of notice. I expect this will be more of a problem as I reach more challenging content (higher DCs and damage, plus I won't have the locations memorized).

I really like the way Fists of Light hurts undead. An extra 4d6 of damage and they just wither under the glowing white fire effect. It offsets the way zombies suck so much when you gotta kill them with your fists, too.

Hot bars and especially shortcut keys are critical for my monks. I have a couple of dozen shortcut keys and I use those for things that need to change in the midst of battle. As you level it becomes more important that you leverage your high attack speed and offhand attacks by swtiching to the best weapon you have for the situation. So you get more to manage as you level. I rely on keystrokes for thinigs i use or need to switch in battle and visible hotbars for things that have timers I want to see or things that I don't need access to super fast. All my main strikes are on hot keys for immediate access. I'm left handed, so the keypad is my home base for such stuff.

EDIT: I keep 9 visible hotbars open on all my toons, but that started because my monks needed more and more things visible as they leveled.

As you level you should be careful in traps especially on elite, but there are still very few traps that are a real danger to a monk and especially a dex monk with monkey stance. You don't want to stand in them like a fully speced rogue will, but you can generally just go through them quickly and ignore them.

If you have or can craft a set of holy of undead bane kamas, its might be worth it for zombies at low levels until you can get decent disruptor handwraps. I generally don't bother unless its a quest where zombies are dangerous (most ar not if you have ac).