The Josip

Indeed, I realized with SS on all the monks I spend most of the time watching their icons instead of enjoying watching the combat, selecting one monk with the most wounds and spamming Torment's Reach or FoA. My SS ability lasts long because of high Int but even so I noticed a huge drop in fun but not noticeable increase in killing speed. In fact, the more I play the more it seems that utility skills are the real gamechanger, and most damage increase options are not. Either because the bonus is too small to matter, or because they're bugged.

Does Swift Strikes monk ability reduce only recovery or also attack speed? I don't mean in theory, I mean in practice. If someone can test it I'd appreciate it. The reason being, someone said he tested dual wielding talent and it appears to decrease only recovery.

No one posted their experience on Clarity of Agony so I'll do it now that I've tested it a bit. It seems like a very situational skill that's probably useful in only a few fights in the entire game, but when playing Ironman one permastun battle is enough to lose. To be fair, it's theoretically useful in many battles but being a per-rest ability means it has to be saved for boss encounters or when things go wrong. I found ideal situation in order not to take this on all 6 monks. One monk gets this ability + scroll that does the same. In time of need I can activate Clarity of Agony just on this monk, and then he casts the scroll for the benefit of the entire party. In worse case scenario this monk could be the first to die but I think it's pointless to plan for all the contingencies. One thing that's great about Clarity of Agony and that I wanted to test to be sure, is that it can still be used while under those deadly conditions it's meant to protect against. Pre-buffing is thus not needed. --- As for Swift Strikes ability I'm a little bit disappointed. It doesn't always activate when I press this ability. Gets tedious. Sometimes I press it on 4 party members only to find out that only 2 activated it. Then I check if the other two were interrupted but nope. In the end I spend half of the combat spamming Swift Strike on party members until it actually works. On top of that I'm not even sure if it just reduces recovery time or really affects attack speed (dual wield talent seems to only decrease recovery according to someone's test). Many swear by this ability but I'm on the edge of dumping it for something more fun like Stunning Blows (which should be a great counter for those Shadows etc, as it targets Fortitude).

Actually it's a perfectly valid way to talk about class potential because Time is a resource like any other. If class X takes 3x longer to finish the game than class Y then it's clearly 3x worse in performance. If a class A requires a lot of micromanagement to be 5% better than class B then it's clearly worse in performance (unless that 5% results in a fail). This is why I'm enjoying my group of 6 monks. I can micromanage Torment's Reach and pause every second, but most of the time I don't need to - melee autoattacks alone decimate most enemy groups in seconds. I've cleared first several levels so much faster than with a balanced group. Of course that micromanagement is needed. Most classes are pointless without it. But it's a resource like any other. I've also seen games where 2 classes would be "balanced" but in a way that they're only equally strong when second class is mastered, and played with full focus to the best of the ability each and every time. While with the first class every beginner can get to that level of strength in 10min of learning, and playing with one hand. That's not balance. On a related note, I find classes that don't require any micromanagement extremely boring. Fighters, Paladins, Rangers. Terrible. Skill selection is awful or non-existent. And no, I'm not saying that knockdown isn't useful but that's all you got as a Fighter, and my monk has FoA which does the same thing 3x better, unlimited amount of times per combat, and in a more fun way. Ranger is just terrible - they take one of the archetypes and make it into such a boring and bad class, it's a crime. You could make so many skills for a ranger, easily, and what does he have? Nothing. It's the most boring ranger I've ever played in any game. Even pets look like poodles. Caed Nua with a chanter? Use speed boost chant. Run back and forth with bows until you can summon phantasms. gg

Not even close I have 6 dps melee monks and they like to be touched But to be fair yes i massively cc with FoA that takes non-immune enemies out for 15sec, and have carefully tailored build. Of course if the team relies on a tank he needs deflection but no deflection means surprisingly little if you compensate it in other ways.

level 6 hard here. Around 30 deflection. All party members. Didnt notice any difficuly with Per and Res on 3. If it stays like this till endgame this must be the most overrated stat in the game.

No. Thats just using semantics to avoid responsibility. Exploit is something unintended. Everyone is free to enjoy the game in any way and thats fine. But lets call bugs bugs and exploit exploits. Or I'll RP that console is special divine power bestowed on me, and perfectly legit. The problem isnt that people use exploits and bugs. The problem is they do that and then in forum boast how they did trple crown and what not, or claim class X is great because bugged skill X does instakills. That doesnt help.

Well good to know. I won't patch my game from this day on I like it concept too much. I feel like Gutts from Berserker :D If you want to abuse bugs why not patch and just use console and set your Might to 99? Theres no difference really.

Wait what? So I dont get 20% faster attack speed but less since it affects only recovery? Is there anything in this game that works according to the tooltip? And btw why reroll? Just use console to change it, if its not bugged like in my case sometimes. Looks like im gonna end up with Deep Pockets because everything else seems less useful.

First two for my dps monk were obvious (Lesser Wounds + Two Weapons). After that I've no idea what to do. But this doesn't have to be monk-only discussion. Perhaps this is a "good balance" but none of the remaining talents seem like obvious choices. And many seem marginally useful. Some I hear are bugged and thus useless. I could really use some feedback, and perhaps a ranking of talents the way race and class rankings were made in the forum. Right now I payed attention to Vulnerable Attack as some suggested it, but not sure what to think of it as results differ a lot. Many talents show an increase or decrease in something but I don't know how much that means in practice (-5% accuracy translates to how much less hit chance vs tougher enemies?). Oh, and, I'm not taking Weapon Mastery yet as I don't know what weapon I'll use.

There is a way to achieve that. I have an entire party full of dps melee (monks), and if one of the characters was dps melee cypher I don't think it would be a problem. So it's technically like having a full team of tanks except they're not protecting cypher but dueling on their own. Since you have a wall of melee characters it's much easier for cypher not to get gangbanged. Still, as I don't play cypher I don't know how good he is at getting out of trouble. If my monk gets gangbanged that's great, because I spam FoA on every enemy around him, and gg. Cypher would probably have to be manually checked here and there so he isn't the one that sticks out, but in melee team he would have much easier time that in a team with 1-2 tanks. Disclaimers: Needs a proper build. Works first several levels, can't guarantee for the rest as I'm not there yet.

Did anyone try Clarity of Agony? Need feedback on that skill. Are 6 melee characters going to run into perma stun? I don't want to lose ironman party because of some stupid OP AoE that enemy keeps recasting so I can never move, much like the Spider Queen when I needed to switch to ranged weapons which thankfully I decided to keep. And if I should take it, when? At level 5 I need to choose between Swift Strikes and Clarity of Agony. At level 7 I take Rooting Pain and neither of the previous two. At level 9 I'll have to choose between Flagellants, Swift, and Clarity. Level 11 the same. Unless something else turns out to be better. But to be honest I don't seem to have problem with damage or survival at this point, but mostly enemy abilities that cripple crowded melee party in various ways. Meanwhile.. I'm at level 5 now. Didn't notice any significant increase in crits. When they happen I check it out, and then I see stuff like "roll 90" or "roll 87". That's fair enough. I also decided to give nice heavy armor to my monks. Not plate because it's ugly (never liked it anywhere), but nice mail, scale and brigandine. I'm obviously not going for 100% optimized party anyway; I like to do it with style. Anyway, although I was at first sceptical about this it turned out to be good. Enemy still dies fast, but now I'm able to micro more easily with less pause, since attacks are slightly slower, and since I'm getting hit less in the first place. Life signs are more stable now and health rarely drops much, and if it does usually on just one character that gets focused at.

Okay.. So where is the ignore option on this forum to put all these patients where they belong? I don't want to go through all this garbage while searching for good posts. You learn to play then you won't need to abuse bugs etc and pretend everything is swell. It's not difficult to win that way, most politicians do it easily. And we don't even care if you abuse bugs and use exploits, as long as you don't pretend here in the forum that bug is not a bug and exploit not an exploit. Regarding Monk vs Barbarian / Rogue I've a few issues with that comparison. Classes that are only about dps should obviously be better at that than other classes. On the other hand my monks with Force of Anguish provide a LOT of utility with just that skill, and while I don't know how their dps is compared to Barbarians and Rogues, it's very good so far (hard ironman). Will it be good later? Will I run into problems if entire enemy tough mob has high Fortitude? No idea, can't tell. You say that if not solo I should have a tank and supporters.. well I've neither. I've 6 dps monks and that's it. If they get hit they get Wounds, so they can defend themselves with FoA or offensively. If they don't get hit, the situation is going well. Considering how good autoattacks are on dps melee, I really don't feel like I'm losing anything even if some characters don't have wounds. At this point they're more useful than chanters I used to have, no-dmg fighter tank, or casters who would always save their spells "when needed" and until then - autoattack. Is this going to work later on? Again, I don't know. Does anyone know if 6 dps melee can run into some perma AoE stun/paralyze? In other words, do I need Clarity of Agony until level 11, or I'm fine? I'm testing it right now on one character, and it's 15sec per cast, so if I cast it twice in a battle that's 30sec of 50% debuff duration. Would get me out of perma stun etc but don't know if I need it that badly.

Does DR number on armor means general, global DR against all kinds of damage types? And then specifically named damage types are exceptions? For example, if Armor says: "DR: 10 (Slash 14, Crush 6)" .. is the number "10" just average of these two and only these two, or does that armor provide 10 DR vs all damage types, but a bit more for Slash and a bit less for Crush? I suppose that's the case because Robe gives "DR: 3" without saying anything further, but just to be sure.

That's true, but then again have you tested it? As in, how many more crits over normal hits you get in tough fights (not against normal mobs). I'm going to assume 'no' here and that's my problem. I accept test data, like when that guy did dps on fists vs other weapons on unarmored target (although I'd prefer he did it on armored). That's something that helps. The rest really does not, because I'm supposed to spend 12-16 points on "maybe not getting a crit" "unknown number of times per swing" "in theory". And considering how game works in theory it doesn't even matter because if you're decreasing one type of defense you're increasing another. So maybe I have higher Reflex or Will, at the cost of the same amount of Deflection, but - since I'm also gaining a huge amount of utility it pays off, which is again at the cost of something - in this case interrupting the enemy plus being interrupted myself. But - since I don't need interrupts due to FoA which is a much better interrupt on enemies it works on, and, since I attack fast and tough enemies attack slower - in theory I'm at a huge win which my quick few tests show. I am constantly changing my opinion and optimizing, but I need to be faced with the ingame circumstances that will force me to adjust, or a convincing forum data/calculations/tests. And just to repeat - I always keep in mind my own team build; I am never talking about what would work better for someone else. Buddhist monks are not atheists and neither was Buddha.

I've a related question. If dragon hits me for 80 burn damage of what relevance is 5 DR? Am I missing something

Fair enough but in that case you're still trying to max in a way, with talents and items. I can't test your results vs tough enemies as I don't have such character but from what I saw if someone doesn't develop it further it's better not to do it at all. Besides, was it you who said something about playing solo? If yes, then I don't really want to comment on that as solo may have some rules that don't apply to builds that are part of the group. My point is that something's gotta give, and I enjoy playing for something, rather than trying to be a jack of all trades. It's not as fulfilling nor does it seem so effective to me. My deflection will be lower, sure, but unless crits become a serious issue I'm not overly concerned as I intend to compensate low deflection with 16 sec duration FoA spam from 6 characters (24 if crit!). I know it's not gonna be possible to FoA every enemy but I want to give it a go.

No. You don't have bad saves because the game doesn't work like that. It's impossible to have bad saves in this game because every stat saves something, or more precisely, two saves. Yea, you lose Will if you min Resolve, but you max Int so it's still the same as if it would be if you kept these stats on equal level. Not only that, but mediocre saves are not going to do much in tough battes, or won't do anything at all, so two mediocre saves actually translate to none, while one maxed actually means something. That whole "saves" thing is a myth, along with deflection, and if I managed to notice that in 2 weeks of gameplay I'm very sceptical towards all the veterans of the game who are active on the forum for years and still didn't notice that in a tough battle that actually matters mediocre deflection results in 0-1 total misses by all the enemies combined. In other words, it's absolutely useless. So just like in every other game I played I have to rely on my own skill and knowledge and testing and observation because as usual there are few people who get the game and the rest just generates noise and disinformation. A bit harsh, but I'm really tired of playing the game and seeing how almost everything I test goes contrary to what people are saying in the forum.

Oh wow, an atheist monk? What else comes on your mind after a dose of svef? Steel water? Maybe it was an atheist baked like a monk after self-immolation.. interesting.. (Speaking of which, I bet that some of the designers smoke weed.)

Not to be ungrateful but my problem with these video guides is that they're just a waste of time. it's either enumeration of what I can see by myself on wiki or ingame, or it's outdated incorrect info, or it's just incorrect info. Forum offers more useful data and faster, if you filter the "I think.." "should be.." and similiar posts made by people who don't know, don't test, but still want to say something. As for the above video, for instance: 1. Stats are not min maxed. This for me is a dead giveaway of a lack of expertise even though the person may know something, but that something is just not enough for me. For example, is interrupting worth it or not? If not, why Perception? Are monk utility skills more useful than occasionally interrupting an enemy for 1/3 of a second? If yes, why not Int over Per? Are you going to be a frequent target of enemy attack? If not, why Resolve? If yes, why not max Resolve and Perception and go with the tank build? Is this the build for jack of all trades monk or dps monk? If it's for dps monk why is the title wrong? If it's for jack of all trades monk then why play monk and not chanter? And is there a need for jack of all trades guide? Because you can randomize stats in that case, in any way you want. Not min maxing didn't make sense to me even when I just got the game, and it does less now when I saw that mediocre Per and Res has near-zero impact deflection-wise in any battle that matters, at least on the level I'm currently at (with no reason to believe otherwise). I'm talking about 1 miss that 5 enemies had combined in entire battle. Is it worth 15 points? No. These kind of things make me wonder what else is incorrect / not optimized. 2. Race and background are suboptimal which can be RP choice but when you're making a guide you should choose what works best, or at least tell people what each choice does. 3. I for the love of me can't see why anyone would link that video above as it provides no useful info, and half of it is just killing wolves in the beginning which everyone can experience. And then it tells you what you can choose at level 4 (which is outdated anyway, should be level 3 for FoA). There are numerous posts in this forum, single posts, that are ten times more useful.

1. I'm on Hard atm exactly because PotD makes many abilities useless due to too high defenses which is just not fun, and I don't want to have 2 characters doing debuffs and buffs just so that 1 character can do what it's supposed to do in the first place. I was about to say the same thing though before I saw your reply - that -20 fort might result in more crits, and not only that, but in this case -2 speed is not irrelevant because the enemy will be slow to return to the battle once prone ends. Still, I need to see just how often I crit because I don't want to end up with chanter-like ability which I gain when most of the battle is over. 2. In this case per-rest doesn't bother me because it's not something that's going to be used in normal battles. But yeah I share the sentiment, which is why I stay away from per-rest casters no matter how strong they might be, it's just not a fun mechanism. The reason I'm interested in this skill is that there are AoE's that would in balanced group target only tanks, but in my group where I have 6 people close by, in melee, enemy AoE can easily affect all 6. And that's an issue. Clarity could be good to nullify "spikes". Either way, the jury is on. Enervating vs Clairy of Agony.

Enervating Blows is self-defeating skill, that's the problem. It gives -20 Fortitude which you don't really need vs trash mobs, And against targets you do need, you're not likely to crit them. I suppose there are few enemies in between these two cases but I'm not entirely convinced until I observe the amount of crits I get per battle vs enemies that have high fortitude (trolls, bosses..). Another problem with this skill is that it doesn't do anything in itself. It just lowers defenses that's more or less it. So unless it's followed by something useful like FoA (which has to pass deflection check and then fortitude check) it's not gonna do anything. Of course, that doesn't make skill useless - many debuffs work like that. But I can choose only 6 Talents, so don't want something that has extremely limited usability unless it's a lifesaver in some cases. Regarding defensive talents, I only find Clarity of Agony interesting in my case. It looks like one of those skills that are generally useless and then you run into a boss that CC's you like crazy (much like this one in Mausoleum, with stun and terrified), and then it saves lives. I am purely theorycrafting here so if you have empirical data that would indicate otherwise feel free.. Agree with the rest but let's say that Stunning Blow is not something to be bothered with during battles with generic mobs. Too much micro then. It's something you heavily micro when it really matters. If it can pass fortitude check of course. I don't even micro Torment's Reach unless it matters. So in a typical battle I don't bother unless for fun. It's autoattacks only.

How good would Spears be in comparison? I intend to run minimum Resolve so want to avoid the effect of being interrupted by maintaining high attack speed. Plus, obvious reason is: mastery peasant. For sabres it means another mastery which I don't mind if it's better but I do need to plan in advance.

Is there any consensus on monk weapons? Do fists become obsolete and at what point? What is the weapon of choice for a monk in that case? When should you use high dmg weapons and when high speed? What are the best enchants not counting 50k one because I'm not sure if you get that much money in the game (well, not for 6 characters at least)? What is the consensus on (dps, non-monk specific) monk talents? Is Peasant mastery the best, or not really because one uses weapons later on? In which case, what mastery is advisable and why? What of the other offensive talents? Some give + and - effects, does it still pay off or only marginally? If I use fist+offhand weapon then I don't get two weapons talent speed bonus right? Which means this is what I use when I need more accuracy at the expense of speed and thus damage?

Tested Torment's Reach with 22 Int. Now I have to say that range is not only noticable but quite impressive. To the point where I can't prioritize Swift Strikes over TR because I usually have plenty wounds while SS is once-a-15-sec ability. But I don't think I can prioritize Stunning Blow over SS either, because Stunning's only advantage is that it does not require wounds, which means it can be used right in the beginning of the battle. But I'm able to survive first hits, and then I have enough wounds for FoA anyway. And both FoA and SB attack Fortitude. If SB attacked something else it might be worth it in cases FoA fails. I'm not sure why my previous testing on 18 int didn't show much of an effect on TR. Perhaps bad positioning and not enough testing, or perhaps of exponential benefit and now on 22 I hit enemies that were so far away I had to double check if I saw correctly what happened. Still, my issue with TR is that I usually gang up on 1-2 enemies and surround them, trying to take them down asap. So while TR works in bottlenecks, in a typical fights (in my case) it's much less useful. But - I think after further testing, and with more micromanagement, this could be improved. Right now I'm thinking of: 1 Torment's Reach 3 Force of Anguish 5 Swift Strikes 7 Rooting Pain 9 Flagellant's Path (not totally sure but it's fun to use, can be useful in many ways, and don't see anything better) ..and no idea what on 11, perhaps Stunning Blow then.