Climhazzard

For soul annihilation I use "self: has 90 focus" and "nearest target", seems to work just fine. I think it's real oversight that max focus isn't an option though, my focus can often get very high from kills during fights, and ascendants pretty much require it to be set to max focus. I hope more conditions and priority settings get added.

One thing of note, you should actually be able to just offhand the scepter with the way offhanding ranged weapons works in this game. You will still receive the benefit of dual wielding, but you'll be able to use your abilities with your main hand. There's not much downside to doing it since very few monk abilities are full attacks. Being able to use your abilities would let you CC anything that got close to you, or allow you to move into melee and use your fist when you want to do more damage. With instruments of pain it might even be possible to use your abilities at range while generating wounds with the scepter, then you could just sit behind your team+dichotomous soul and blast/cc your foes to oblivion.

So I was thinking offhand scepter with it's modal would be really good for monk builds. Pretty much all wound spenders are primary attacks except for 1 tier 9 ability, and the modal would allow you to generate wounds from range as long as you're not shattered pillar. It'd probably be a pretty good way to multi class cipher as well, spend your wounds on anything that gets to close to you, blast away with cipher abilities the rest of the time. Even endlessly summon the dichotomous soul while you blast away with cipher abilities. Assuming scepters with their modal can generate enough focus.

I actually go there first because I can quickly finish the quests and area.

There are some decent encounters scattered around the world map, but there are a lot of lame ones too, some enemies just do very little damage. In this game I once decided to kill my main character to try to reset her bugged aura, accidentally soloed all but one dude, then had to reload the game because he was doing 7 damage per swing and couldn't overcome rapid recovery. In PoE even the boars and wolves in the 2nd or 3rd zones did more damage than this.

Not everyone has engagement slots in this game, so you can be attacked by someone without being engaged by them. Also if you stagger enemies they lose their ability to engage. So threatened just means you are being attacked by someone who hasn't engaged you, whether that be from range or melee.

If you only want them to be used once you can set them to "Always true" then use a long timer like 5 minutes on the reset. I just have all of mine set to Always True, but I also set the cooldowns to the particular duration of that character if they are buffs I will want permanently active. For trash fights where I'm steamrolling and I bounce from fight to fight before the cooldown is up, it honestly doesn't matter. For any of the "real" battles though, it works as I need it to. I just tested the 999 limit too, and it does act as a global timer, not just a per encounter one. Although, 999 should be sixteen minutes, and I'm not sure if it will lock out abilities for that long (*I was at the three and a half minute mark before moving into the next area). It also seems to only count for the currently loaded area you are in. If you make a transition, it seems to reset. Sad, it really should be per encounter. I changed it to 3 minutes, works better now.

If you only want them to be used once you can set them to "Always true" then use a long timer like 5 minutes on the reset.

Only 35 intelligence... no brains, lol.

I thought it was working... I'll keep an eye on it though, perhaps it wasn't.

Raised torment spam is great crowd control, you can set the AI to "greatest number of enemies" and it will do a decent job of stunning all kinds of things if you'd rather not do it yourself. You're just using turning wheel for a 25% fire lash.... SP uses their 4-5 wounds worth of turning wheel to constantly CC enemies, I don't really see how that's worse than a 25% fire lash on your auto attack.

Blade turning sucks for Shattered Pillar, I'll give you that. The rest of the abilities are fine though.

What exactly would you use that condition for? It's already handled by the Self:Enemies conditional and Greatest Number of Enemies or Allies priority. Just using greatest number of enemies won't prevent your character from using a skill on a single target if the enemies aren't grouped up. With target: allies in melee range > 0 or Target: allies in melee range > 1, you have a bit more control over when the ability will activate. Also, to add to my monk set, if I'm using shattered pillar with it's better offensive wounds generation I usually don't specify Target: allies > 0 because I don't mind if it's being used to stunlock a single target.

I'm not sure that's actually how it works. If you look at the default AI packages, they are always set for greatest number of enemies when using area of effect skills or spells. Why would they be setup to cast area of effect spells when the target is surrounded by your allies? It's not your allies, it's the targets allies.

I don't usually go over 5. My Paladin character handles most of the healing anyways.

Monk gets tenacious too fyi, and it might be kinda cool to use monk skills in ogre form if you can, but I really have no idea about that.

Naplazca is definitely the best monk, but imo it's a pain in the ass to manage. I've played both Shattered pillar and Naplazca to high levels now, when it comes to steady wounds generation Shattered Pillar wins pretty easy. Having a lower wounds cap isn't even a downside if you can pump out raised torment fast enough to stunlock enemies. I still think Naplazca is the best monk due to the incredible stat boosts from drugs, but even with the soul void amulet I'll probably never play one again.

Also here's the one I use for Maia for her scout class. CONDITION ABILITY PRIORITY RESET TIMER Self: Health below 75% Second wind None 0 Self: Threatened by multiple enemies Smoke Veil None 10 Self: Engaged by anyone Evasive roll None 10 Target: Is spellcaster Gouging strikes Farthest target 17 Target: Has perception affliction (not) Target: Only ranged weapon equipped Gouging strikes Farthest target 17 Target: Has perception affliction (not) Target: My animal companion is attacking Crippling strikes Being attacked by animal companion 18 Target: Has dexterity affliction (not) Target: My animal companion is attacking Crippling strikes Being attacked by animal companion 18 Target: Has dexterity affliction (not) Always true: Marked for the hunt Highest deflection 180 Always true: Accurate wounding shot Marked prey 8 One trick you'll notice I'm using is copies of the same set, this can be done to limit the number of times a set can be used within a time period. It's a bit resource hungry on the rogue side atm so it probably needs adjusting idk...

Quite a few requests to nerf blade turning, I feel like people asking for that never tried using it. You're basically stuck in a loop of animation and recovery, and even then hits get through during the animation... it's not really that powerful imo and one of the only survival abilities monks get.

Persistent distractions would also help get sneak attacks.

I've been running her as contemplative. Dual wielding fists is kinda nice because you have low recovery which lets you react quickly with abilities like withdraw and suppress affliction. Devotions of the faithful is a good buff for martial characters too so there's a bit of synergy at least, and later you can use minor avatar. I mostly use suppress affliction, withdraw, consecrated ground, and devotions for the faithful. Rest with a standard dual wielding monk setup... the special upgrades on her shield are worth using if you'd rather be more defensive though.

That room was the biggest culling of my Ironman attempts, lol....

Personally always hated relying on consumables, I stack in some heal potions for emergencies and that's it. Nalpazca is kinda turning out to be a headache too even if it really is the strongest monk.

Boarding ships is the lowest investment option. If you take the Berath's sails blessing you can pretty much complete the game without investing a single copper into your ship. You can go pretty light on crew as well, you don't need cannoneers at least. If you want to make the fights easier then level up the companions and sidekicks you aren't using. Or as someone else put it, 1,1,1,1,1,1,2.

Now I really want to see what some of them look like, lol, especially the "energy blade". One thing I really liked about the Watcher's Blade was the purple glow, none of the other swords I found looked nearly as cool