Climhazzard

With your high deflection, 95+, does that not limit the amount and rate of wounds that you gain? Less wounds = less FoA and Torments, so less offense. A crit would just get you more wounds faster right? Or is it the attached debuff/status effect that you are trying to avoid critting you? Curious about a high deflection monk, from what I understand from a small amount of game play and from the forum is that big con gets you a larger pool to draw from and that you convert your wounds to damage either AoE style with high intellect or more single target focused with low intellect. A high deflection would keep you from getting wounds, right? It doesn't really get that high until the end of the game, it does limit the amount of wounds you receive, but against endgame opponents it just makes the rate you receive wounds controllable. I can always take off the ring of deflection if I don't need it, and I don't take superior deflection until level 12 so that my deflection doesn't get to high through the mid levels, but duality of mortal presence is a really good skill to take at any time because you can choose to turn it off or set it to "other defenses". I also tend to wear next to no armor so that the hits that get through my deflection give me enough wounds, but then I have the option of having a decent deflection and a decent DR for very hard fights so i think it works out well. I've played with more constitution instead and it felt basically the same, the differences are definitely minor, but i kind of like having resolve if I'm going to use average speed or slower weapons, so that my attacks aren't interrupted a lot. And my saving throws are more balanced so that I'm not getting crit by domination spells. The one thing that might persuade me to start making my monks more constitution based are those "shod-in-faith' boots. They synergize extremely well with monks, but you have to get crit for them to activate. Once you do though you have some major healing to keep you going through all the incoming damage. I had a few situations though where my health would get low without ever getting crit because my deflection was a bit to high, so the boots might be a bit more useful if you don't have as much deflection. It should also be noted that i sometimes purposely use friendly fire to generate wounds faster, fireball for example is really good for this since it doesn't have impressive damage but it casts fast. I don't mind using something harder hitting like fan of flames for this purpose either, because doing so softens up my opponents quite a bit. It helps a monk get around the limitation of needing to be hit by enemies to generate wounds.

It's pretty easy to use casters on hard with just enchanted robes, maybe because I often have 3 melee in my teams. Not sure about PotD though.

So I was thinking about doing a playthrough with a cipher as my main character, decided to add some comments here based on my experiences so far with grieving mother. Cipher is very glassy, the best ways I've found so far to melee with cipher is to either use a reach weapon, or to use mental binding on your target first. If you're generating focus fast enough to recoup the costs of mental binding and then some before you have to recast it, then that would be ideal, just keep them paralyzed and generate focus while killing them. The bonus to this strategy is that your opponent will be easy to hit once they are paralyzed, however since you don't want the duration to expire to soon it might not be wise to dump intelligence. With a reach weapon you can melee in relative safety as long as you're behind your tanks, you might suffer from area of effect attacks though. Been thinking about what talents I might use if I make a cipher who uses melee frequently. Talentwise two handing has an advantage over dual wielding because you really need vulnerable attack and two weapon style to get the most out of dual wielding, and bows have an advantage over guns/crossbows in that they don't need the reload trait (as far as I understand it). It's not really a problem when you are focusing on one or the other, but if you plan to be a bit of a hybrid then I think 2 hand + bows is the most efficient course for talents. If you were only dual wielding for the focus generation and not the damage you could pass on vulnerable attack. Options I'm considering so far, note I am trying to stick with only 3 offensive talent options outside of the cipher talent options. Adventurer's weapon focus+two handed style+marksman: Can freely switch between melee or ranged. Would use the "Drake's Bell" estoc because it looks like a sith weapon, and the Borresaine warbow because it's just good. Peasant weapon focus+two handed style+marksman: Your melee option is a reach weapon. Your ranged option is a hunting bow. There is a good option for each found in early levels of the endless paths. Ruffian weapon focus+two weapon style+vulnerable attack: Sabers/stilettos are both good dual wielding options, and blunderbuss could be used for focus generation against targets that don't have a high deflection rating. Blunderbuss reload time would be long and its accuracy low. Alternatively... Ruffian weapon focus+marksman+gunner: No longer a melee hybrid, but has high focus generation potential. Soldier weapon focus+two handed style+gunner: or.. Soldier weapon focus+two handed style+marksman: or.. Soldier weapon focus+gunner+marksman: First two options are hybrids using pikes/arbalests, last just uses arbalests. I suppose I could consider taking all 4 talents here. Pretty sure there is a recovery time on weapon swapping that hurts the melee/ranged hybrids a bit, not positive though. I am having a hard time deciding which option to go with, but I honestly hate using guns and arbalests so I'll probably use either the peasant or adventurer option.

For me, minor blights always makes it so my wizard can't use any abilities anymore, even after the battle is long over and I've started a different one, not sure what i'm doing wrong there. In my opinion wizards suck at ranged attacks that aren't spells, and should stick to talents that keep them alive or make their spells stronger, but if you really want to attack stuff in between casting spells then use wands/rods/scepters since wizards have talents that support their use. They'll certainly speed up the early game, they don't make much difference after level 9 though.

Well monk at least only wants to wear as much armor as he needs to safely generate wounds, to much and they generate to slow, not enough and he's dirt napping. If you know what you're doing you could probably get away with never using armor on your monk in normal or hard difficulties, it just sort of makes life easier. Other classes, I tend to keep my casters in light armor or robes but partly for aesthetic reasons. Having a lower recovery is nice when you really want to get off that mental binding spell right away, but might not be necessary in some cases. For example i never really have my priest attack when he isn't buffing or debuffing, this way he is always available to respond when needed no matter how much armor he is wearing.

Yeah but if monks are running naked to generate wounds faster then they merely have to upgrade their armor to compensate for harder hitting opponents. On my monks I usually have decent deflection so I just vary what armor I'm using depending on my opponents. On hard it goes from naked to enchanted scale (I like Eder's starting armor), on PotD it might go from enchanted scale to enchanted plate. I don't play on PotD though so I couldn't say for sure.

The saber "Purgatory" has a draining effect, but is not available until almost the end of the game and is easily missable. The stilleto "Oidhreacht" is the only stiletto with a draining effect, you get it from the spiders on the first level of Od Nua, it's easy to get at the beginning of the game. By the way I noticed an earlier post in the thread placing the flail "Gaunn's Share" in the defiance bay catacombs, but it's actually in the Temple of Eothas found in Gilded Vale. Here is a relatively spoiler free list from the wiki, though I doubt it is completely free of spoilers. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Unique_Weapons It's not yet complete for all the weapon locations, for example it doesn't list the location of the purgatory saber, which is a very good weapon, but it's still a pretty good resource. Was trying to come up with a list, but it was awful, so instead here's a link to a thread with additional information about weapon locations. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/74340-named-weapon-locations/page-6

I really hope that the gods of balancing eventually make it so that retaliation doesn't factor into these conversations. If you are considering retaliation then barbs easily win since one stands alone affects retaliation damage, groups of mobs explode just from touching a barb using that combo.

It's possible that investing in perception just for interrupt is not worthwhile, I think investing in perception can be worthwhile though. Consider that it raises reflexes, an interrupt character will have high reflexes. You could make this character a pale elf, so not only is this character better than others at interrupting, it can now also play the role of decoy for your wizards and druids, being highly resistant to their reflex based ice and fire aoe spells like fan of flames. It's also worth considering that high reflexes characters will have an easier time surviving against a certain OP dragon that you meet in the game.

So many people still think monk sucks that I seriously doubt there is any nerfing in the foreseeable future for monks. Anyways I don't really think monks are OP, they are perfectly balanced if you ask me, not as good as amplified wave, disintegration, or a petrified boss, but great overall.

In my opinion the problem is that rogue, and a few other melee classes, are basically auto attack classes after using one or two per encounter abilities, which isn't to interesting. I think pretty much all melee class abilities should be per encounter, and have more uses than they currently do, which wouldn't make them as interesting as the caster classes, but would make them more interesting than they are now.

If you say so, my monk will have 10 wounds by half health, which is pretty much enough to clear every mob on the screen, including the tough ones. Drop a pain tolerance on him and he's an unstoppable killing machine. Wear the boots "shod-in-faith" and you can accumulate so many wounds without getting knocked out that nothing else will compare. But if you'd rather imagine him as a squishy front liner who can't do any damage, then I guess that's okay with me, maybe he'll get buffed as a result so he becomes OP. I just hope he doesn't get nerfed directly after when people realize he was really good to begin with.

Take a decent hit and you'll easily have +5 wounds, it's really not hard to spam torment's reach at all, and it has a very short recovery time. You can even set it up by tossing a fire ball at your monk and his opponents, he won't take to much damage but will get some wounds to start dishing out the pain. Swift strikes basically equals frenzy except you can keep it up a heck of a lot longer. All I'm seeing here is a bunch of theorycrafting by people who haven't ever played a monk seriously, or who haven't ever played barb seriously. I've run both on quite a few of my teams and from my experience barb wins at aoe and monk wins at single target, total damage done is almost always nearly equal. But anyways, it doesn't matter what I or anyone says, this thread is just going to be an argument between fanboys who've never seriously played the opposite class, I suggest to the OP that you just try them both out and see what you think for yourself.

Fists at endgame do the same damage as average speed weapons, with the same attack speed as fast speed weapons, they equal superb weapons, lash enchant included. It's not until you factor in endurance drain and +crit that they are outshined, but saying "outshine fists by miles" is a huge exaggeration.

Nah I haven't done any solo runs, though 95 deflection is more than enough against almost all enemies on hard. And honestly I don't take superior deflection until level 12 because some enemies through midgame will have a hard time hitting you which sucks, at least with duality of mortal presence you can choose if you want the deflection bonus. I can see why some people like to min/max, and the more experienced you are with the game the more you can get away with lower scores in certain defenses, it's just not something I prefer to do myself. I once played up to level 8 or 9 once with a character that I had dumped intelligence on and kept base resolve, and I was getting crit by dominates for like 35 seconds, but with balanced defenses that's never happened. I've finished the game with 16-12-16-10-8-16 and 18-10-16-10-10-14 and felt like both of them were better than the few times I tried to min/max, though maybe I didn't really go about min/maxing correctly. I honestly believe that non min/maxed characters are just as good as min/maxed characters because they don't have self created weaknesses, but "believing" something is true isn't the same as it being true. Anyways my original point was just that I don't think min/maxing is or should be a qualifier on whether or not someone is an experienced player.

Same with barb before monk gets enough wounds. We are talking about maximum possible dps. If you are using one stands alone + retaliation then yeah, barb wins np, if you think thats legit and not bugged, well have fun with it.

Huh I think monk is going to kill everything on the screen before a chanter has 2 ogres out, just saying.

Huh my monk at the end of the game has 95 deflection without a shield which I don't really consider mediocre. If i thought deflection was useless, dumped perception and/or resolve, didn't take duality of mortal presence and superior deflection, didn't use a ring of deflection, well my monks deflection could easily be around 55-60 instead. Crits would be rocking her world and she'd be a major liability to the team.

I'll chime in that monk matches and beats barbarian on single target damage, a reach barbarian beats a monk on aoe though, as well as previously mentioned cheesy retaliation/one stands alone builds. When considering threatening presence + brute force you should keep in mind the fact that the majority of enemies in this game have higher fortitude scores than they do deflection scores, which pretty much negates 2 talent picks against those enemies, just read through the stat scores in the bestiary if you don't believe me. You'll benefit from them, but not all the time, monks on the other hand have 5 more accuracy than barbs which works against every enemy in the game. Threatening presence is extra utility outside of dps though since it is lowering fortitude scores. Anyways, i can tell that this discussion is just going to boil down to lovers of each class arguing about why their class is the best. For the record, monk is mine.

Seems like there's been a lot of numbers crunched already, I can't take credit for this and can't give credit for this because I don't know who did it but anyways... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SHdaQ8yNSvJhxcqFeP9ykXdua_EsjSAb9ypzPA8Oink/edit#gid=1848365110 Dual wielding sabers is the clear winner atm, but that estoc wins against targets with very high armor. Consider running your tests with vulnerable attack instead of two weapon style, I don't know which benefits dual wielding more but I can tell you that vulnerable attack benefits a dual wielder a lot more than it does a two hander user. Used with stilettos you have 8 DR bypass, with the bleak fang stilleto you would have 11, which basically negates the huge penalty fast weapons get from armored opponents.

Monks are quite the active class, definitely my favorite to play so far, especially once you get flagellant's path.

Min/maxing isn't really necessary on a monk, if you dump perception or resolve you'll have bad saves and deflection, if you dump intelligence you'll only be able to dps with a torments reach that hits one guy. I wouldn't of gone with 12 intelligence, but that's just me. I think you could make a dangerous implements glass cannon that is really min maxed, but most monks have to spend some time on the front lines so being a glass cannon makes them a liability.

Honestly when I make one of each, and am not using some cheesy retaliation/one stands alone build on my barb, they're about even.

Finally finished my 2nd playthrough, on hard with another monk, sabers this time. Probably going to give this game a break before I play again with a different class.

Hmm a potion of Llengrath's displaced image helped enough for him to actually tank a bit, still ended up using withdraw and petrify to win on this playthrough though. Heck of a lot faster than solo kiting him to death with a bow.