The Josip

Ok i did few more tests and apparently i was somewhat wrong. I used Mausoleum as a perfect test area since enemy is difficult and not a trash mob. My balanced tank+caster/arbalest party gets owned hard here because of squishies with medium endurance. So melee monks do much better with three wins one defeat so far. Although it could be argued that moon godlike makes most of the difference. Without it, my casters die in 1-2 ranged hits and tanks dont really help against that. This means that in closed quarters dps melee party i have is really much better and i overrated the other one. As for FoA i did extreme test with 22 int and rooting pain. Rooting pain alone dealt about 3x more dmg than other dmg character did, in both tested situations. Then i sent one char only vs revenants and those ghouls (6-7 of them). She killed all but two who were half dead. The tactic was FoA spam. I did one more test and that was the usefulness of Per and Res in tough battles. In this case Mausoleum. With standard mediocre P and R enemies missed once (total combined for entire battle) or not at all. Just as i suspected considering how math is done in this game. So much for balanced stat proponents who have no clue as usual. No wonder all pros advise min maxing. tl;dr My current estimate is that for me ideal monk build is max int, then max m and c, and then almost max d. I think that utilities are more important than raw dmg or defense. An enemy thats on the ground for crit 24sec after using FoA is doing less dmg than standing enemy beating your 10-point per and res. Btw with 22 int Stunning Blow is 5sec. x2 thats ten sec cc that can be used right away. Ive still to test torments reach with 22 int but considering my battle lineup i feel swift strikes is better with high int. Unless TR is better than stunning blow and unless ive extra wounds after foa spam. Not saying its bad skill, but somethings gotta give. Perhaps Stunning blow because it attacks fortitude and that seems to be a huge issue because whenever i tested it it never worked well. I usually have lots of wounds so TR might still be nice.

I did 4th Mausoleum battle and interesting enough didn't notice enemies are missing me. That means mediocre deflection is practically useless in such case. Then I went outside and saw a "miss" vs trash mob when it didn't even matter. Turning Wheel shouldn't work any better with Swift Strike than TR, well, not in my case where there are plenty of wounds. Of course you can have both Swift and TR. And Swift just increases speed, not damage, so DR still reduces TW to nothing. Not according to my experience. They're just a liability and require too much micromanagement at too much risk, and when it matters (tough fights) they are weak and that's that. And sure, Priest can use spells on them but those are per-Rest. Plus I don't like Priest class in this game (from RP standpoint, cause none of the available gods are even mediocre acceptable). Normal party can just nuke everything in a tough battle and that's it. You don't even want melee dps then, it's just a hassle. I only did 6 monks because I wanted to try it out but it feels tactically one-dimensional and limited. I'm going to try with high Int and low P and R, and then just abuse FoA see how it goes.

I replaced it on 5, because console command didn't work on PC so he still had FoA (it's a bug, you can't press "Enter" in some cases). Anyway, I died in Mausoleum so let's just say that TW wasn't much of a help here because it's just raw multiplier and if you don't hit in the first place then nothing happens. On high DR enemies TW is I think worse because of how it's calculated (separately against DR if I read correctly, so if you would get +10 burn damage after 8 DR that's... uh, 2?). As for FoA, let's just say that the boss was immune to it. Yup, you're not gonna hit him with FoA, not with all the Terrified debuffs and his high defense. But that works for Stunning Blow as well - equally useless on every enemy that matters. I even switched to fists+accuracy offhand weapon. Nope, not gonna happen. However.. it does work on knights. I did this battle again and now replaced TW with FoA and the win was easy. I couldn't CC the boss, sure, but I could knights. It should also be said that in the first battle I experimented with all weapons, first fists then fist-offhand for accuracy buff (which didn't help) and then with 2H to get over all the armor. In the second battle I went with fists only and for whatever reason it worked better. Or maybe it worked better because of FoA alone I dunno. Either way, I'd say utility skills like FoA are worth it over raw dmg increase. I'm not sure about Stunning Blow though. In theory it's full attack + stun but stun is very short, it might graze, it might miss, and I've usually plenty wounds to cast FoA multiple times. I'm glad to get rid of TW because it doesn't synergize with other monk abilities but instead negates them. I think it would be worth it, if Wounds did not expire in 12 sec though. ps: Another thing I discovered is that Lore 2 is all that's needed (except maybe for Ressurect). Fan of Flames is ridiculous, especially on dps melee. I used it twice in first lost battle and zero times in second won, but spells are just ridiculously good in this game. IMHO, melee dps is just so much inferior to alternatives. It has huge problems with positioning, being hit by all debuffs every time (which ranged can avoid easily), it's tactically crippled. Dps melee kinda kills trash mobs fast, but when it comes to difficult battles then casters and chanters rule and melee dpsers are totally inferior. pps: High Int on monk might be good for FoA alone. But need to test further. ppps: I did the Mausoleum battle for the third time. It seems I lost in the 1st battle because I experimented with fist+1H and then with 2H weapons. Or, because one character was badly placed and couldn't attack in the beginning Anyway, In third battle I used no FoA at all and still won mostly just autoattacking with fists. But what's interesting is that I still couldn't notice the effect of TW. It gets reduced so much that I maybe dealt +1 point of damage because of it.

How do you take big toughies out of the fight? Does switching to +accuracy weapon before using this ability help? Unfortunately these scenarios you mentioned don't really work for me since I use 6 dps monks who, obviously, charge together into battle with reckless abandon.

On 4 Int it lasts 7 sec for me (just for the reference). And costs 2 Wounds. I actually replaced it with Turning Wheel and will see how it goes. While Force of Anguish is good in theory, I had serious issues in practice. In easy fights I don't need it, and it only prolongs combat. In difficult battles, it doesn't seem to be useful at all because if I kick the mages/ranged enemies they are temporarily out of battle (which is good, but I used 2 Wounds I could've used on damage) but then they're back up, alive, and kiling me from the distance. It would be much more useful to actually kill these squishies than to push them to safety. And if enemy isn't mage/ranged, chances are I'm not going to push/prone them at all, or if I do it's going to be a graze. So enemies I actually do need to push (melee, like troll for example) are immune or semi-immune to it. The ability is fun, no denying that, and on paper it looks good. But I did some calculations and if I took another Ability + used 2 Wounds on something else (like Torment's Reach) I would benefit more. Now, if I had high Int this would be much better.. but before I try high Int + FoA I need to know how much damage will I take more if I lower P and R just to have high Int? How much more am I going to be hit with that much less deflection? (I'm not dropping M C and D).

Well for me the jury is still out on both of those (Rooting and TW). Unfortunately, until I test it in practice I won't be able to know how useful it is because testing it just in one zone against generic enemies is obviously not enough. I think that in my case Rooting might be more useful as my team does get hit a lot, which really wouldn't be the case for all those teams that use tanks + dps monk kill stealing in the rear. Rooting Pain doesn't seem that bad when you look at the alternatives. I'll open new thread so you can see how Force of Anguished worked for me in practice and why I removed it although in theory it looked good. Oh and I can confirm low Int isn't a problem in the group. I mean, yea, it's invonvenience but you have to sacrifice something. Silver Tides are insane, I wouldn't even know they're that good of an ability if it wasn't for the uselessness of other racial abilities that made me look further. What's more is that healing depends on Might and when you have high Might and high level character that's about 50 Endurance each Tide (so 150 per character). And then x6. Your whole party is like one wave going up and down and not dying unless the battle is prolonged.

So from 10 to 18 you get +25% more Endurance. What would you get from 8 more points in R or P or I? (in cases where you're not maxing deflection completely aka building a tank) I will also add that this might depend on the build. For example, I run 6 dps monks (I know I said it already but there's a point to it) which get healed per Endurance lost (being Moon godlike). Having higher Endurance is therefore much more useful in this case, as each heal bumps Endurance back up, and the higher the ceiling more is regained. Also, the higher the Endurance less frequently bonus heal activates, and you don't want 75% 50% and 25% to activate in first 3 seconds of the battle and then after that you're in trouble. So in this case there's a certain synergy behind higher Endurance. I've read forum posts on how Endurance is not that good, but I haven't seen yet what do the alternatives do. I can get more interrupts/deflect if I get my Perception from 10 to 18, sure. Is that going to help my survival more? How much more likely am I gonna be hit in that case by more dangerous enemies? How many more interrupts is that anyway in practice? And how much does it reduce enemy damage/ability potential? If I'm about to give up on 25% of Endurance, I need to know what I'm getting for it. When I tested Int I really didn't see any difference between 4 and 18 when it comes to Rooting Pain and Torment's Reach, although there's a difference in FoA and Swift Strikes. If I reduce Con by 8 points and increase Int by 8 points is 4 sec longer duration of FoA going to save me? My problem with this game is that for people who don't have time to study the system there are just too many uncertainties. It's a bad system. You never know what you're getting here. In Guild Wars when enemy was blinded everyone knew what that means - you don't hit with your attacks. In PoE if enemy is blinded no one knows what that means without checking the tooltip. This game uses the "spray and pray" system - you go with something and pray it's going to work. Because maybe it's bugged, and maybe it's coded in a different way so it actually doesn't work the way you think it does because of how multipliers stack. And other than that you always have to re-read the tooltip. There's a monk ability that inflicts Weakness. What is that? How much does that help? No one knows. And I mean, no one. Until they check the description again, and then after they test it on various enemies.

For me it's easier to get lots of Wounds because I use 6 dps monks without armor and one good hit can results in 8+ Wounds. Since they are all Moon godlike endurance gets restored fast, making it easier to accumulate more Wounds (and not to die of course). Regardless of that I'm still testing whether Turning Wheel is worth it because: a) I've read that thread before b) They negate other monk abilities; you either benefit from TW or you use other abilities and thus have no Wounds (damn if you do damn if you don't). c) That 12 sec wound duration is BS, and to be honest the more I read about the monk more frustrated I am because it seems that everything that could be coded wrong is coded wrong. Thankfully, 90% of battles in this game are over within these 12 sec which is a reason I even went with 6 dps monks (instead of using Chanters which are even more broken class).

"removetalent" works, thanks

There is one to add ability but I need one to remove it as well. Does it exist?

How to monk? One monk in the team didn't work for me but 6 dps monks in a properly built party is insane. On Hard ironman I'm plowing through enemies, and it's so ridiculous that I mostly don't even bother using any abilities. Just clicking on the enemies is enough since they drop like flies. I decided to spice things up and enter the Raedrick's Courtyard from the inside. While my monks were slaughtering 9 enemies right in front of the gate, several other enemies spotted the battle and rushed to aid their fellow knights. Only at this point I had one monk knocked down because archers shot him, while others were in safe zone. After the battle was over the corpses were all over the floor. My previous parties used corridor tanking, hit-and-run, and all these tactical approaches took a lot of time. But these monks just sweep through the area in seconds.. I also gave them nice names: Typhoon, Tidal Wave, Tornado, Hurricane, Storm, Cyclone. And they suit the style.

I don't feel like testing it again because I'm short on time, but yeah, it's possible the effect varies depending on enemy size. Still, I'm going to remain sceptical because during my testing I didn't notice any difference, and while it's entirely possible your testing (which I appreciate) gave slightly different results I doubt they are astronomical and more than situational. From practical point of view it doesn't change much for me because I can't afford 18 int on my monks anyway. I would have to completely lower P and R and I'm not sure that would pay off (I use max M, C and D, the rest split between P and R). And your tests, if I got it right, were with 18 int.. and anything less and benefit becomes even more marginal. I'm also not using tank to lure 4 enemies, but atm using 6 melee monks so battles are more chaotic and enemies are not piled up on doorways and such (but during the testing I had a bunch of enemies around me of course). I'd like to see more tests on this to be honest, with different INT, different enemies, and from more people. If if turns out that 10 int or 18 int really results in a worthwhile difference I'll consider dropping P and R for int. But right now I'm quite satisfied with 18-19-19-10-4-8 spread for my 6 dps monks in Hard ironman.

Yes. (Just ignore all the posts with "I believe.." and "I think.."; people can't spend 1min on testing stuff ingame so they post disinformation.)

OK racial issue is solved. I did some testing and lvl12 Moon with 18 Might (Might does affect the healing) heals 53 Endurance per each wave. This is insane. So I will still go with godlike, and thankfully the Moon one looks the best of them all and I think there's one without horns. I already tried that trick and while it's very effective it's extremely time demanding. I mean, if people have time to play 3 battles for 3 hours then ok but I can't.. Unless there's a hotkey for weapon switch instead of manually mouse-clicking.

It's good to read the whole thread you're replying to, or at least the last post in the thread. As I said, Torment's Reach has the same range with 4 or 18 Int. Your positioning doesn't matter because you have to hit the enemy behind your target, which means you need to have longer range than the 'circle' of adjacent enemy. We're not talking about Chanter's melee range Invocations here.

That's exactly what PotD is. It's more difficult but not in a fun way, it just forces you to use niche builds and skills, and it's overall frustrating. The difficulty consists of enemies having inflated stats so forget about using most of the abilities in the game - it's not worth it there. Miss miss miss - that's PotD. If you find Hard easy like me, then you can make it intentionally more difficult by taking less party members or like me atm, going with a full monk dps party (ironman) and seeing how far I get. People play PotD because they want a sense of achievement that way, that's about it. Ever played Guild Wars 1? PotD is just like hard mode they added there. Inflated stats so in normal mode elementalists nuke everything in seconds, and in hard mode all their normal damage spells are useless because of armor reduction, and what works are utilities and armor ignoring spells. That's fine if you don't mind that now you're restricted to few skills/abilities instead of a hundred.

A group of 6 light dps masochists, or wounded beasts, in Hard ironman.

With 18 Int you'd hit the same amount of foes as with 4 Int. I tested it. Because the initial size is small, even if you increase it by a lot you will never hit non-adjacent enemies with it. This is the same for both Rooting Pain and Torment's Reach.

1. I read in the forum it reduces the deflection bonus of the shield which makes sense, and it also fits the description of the flail. Wiki however says: "+ 30 % grazes to hit range". Is this one of the cases where Wiki is talking nonsense? I quite like flail as a weapon, it looks cool, and it's unorthodox, and would like to use it. 2. I know many say Aumaua racial bonus of +1 weapon is useless unless constantly switching ranged weapons, but wouldn't this be a perfectly OK option for melee dps class? I mean, Human racial bonus gives what, +15% dmg and some accuracy when endurance drops below 50%. I think overall the ability to switch weapon in battle depending on the current enemy would give bigger bonus- even if I'm a monk and already have fists as well. For example, I need reach weapon because positioning failed - weapon switch. Then I get hit hard and I need leech weapon - weapon switch. Then I need weapon with different attack (slash / crush / pierce) because enemy group doesn't consist of one enemy type, then I need more accuracy so I switch to fist+1handed in off-hand. And if flail works then against shield enemy I switch to flail. I know some of this might be avoided by knowing the enemy stats but I don't want to browse a website before every battle on a first playthrough. And I also don't want to spend 1min before every battle switching everything cause time is valuable. If however +1 weapon slot is really not needed then what is better for a monk: - Coastal Aumaua - Dwarf - Pale Elf - Human - A mix of coastal/dwarf/elf to not put all eggs in one basket regarding resistances) I'm not interested in other racials because for melee dps wood elf is useless, godlike race is so ugly (no wonder considering all the gods in this game are twisted and none seem normal), and that gremlin race is just as repulsive.

Guild Wars (1) Necromancer for example. But I would agree that it can be fun, and I'm also a fan of unorthodox styles. Archetypes bore me. Especially melee ones. I thought that Christian monks practiced flagellation to keep their senses under control, to suppress desires, and perhaps as a form of self-punishment also. But you may be interested to know that the PoE line you quoted is Buddhism.

I've spent most of the time with a Chanter and the more I become familiar with the game the more I realize Chanters are useless. The battles are too fast. The Chanter isn't weak, it's just not designed properly for this game. It's like Mesmer in Guild Wars (1) PvE back in Prophecies. You cast your hex.. but by the time it can do anything the enemies are dead because elementalists nuked them. Or even better analogy, like a Ritualist. Sure, it's super strong after it spawns all the stationary Spirits with the key word being "after".

That's it, I'm making a full monk party. Typhoon time. (Because.. FFS I've been annihilating enemies left and right and then my PC steps on a trap, drops on the floor.. and I'm like "oh come on more of these annoying instant-kill traps".. and then I unpause so he can regain endurance and we can move on but oh wait what, is that a pulse trap? *puff again* ..and now my PC is not only maimed but dead. As in gone for good in ironman Hard. But as always I learned a lot from this short trip to catacombs; for instance that 90% of battles in PoE are over under 10 seconds so why bother with some builds and classes).

On topic of class balance and damage dealt, we all know that melee dps has potential for highest damage. So boasting that some dps class has high damage is no indication of overall contribution when the only thing that character does is damage. On top of that it seems that many didn't notice that statistics don't include indirect damage. I noticed that when looking at the Chanter. Insane amount of damage done by Phantom evaporates along with the Phantom. I prefer utility more than raw damage. Right now my party consists of: Paladin tank (speed aura) Chanter tank (speed chant) Chanter (Ila) And each one of 6 party members has speed Talent. With this I can kill anything as long as there's space for running - without a scratch. And have fun doing it. If there's no space for running I block the passage with 1-2 tanks. If there's no space for blocking the passage I just unload all the spells needed from two druids and a wizard, plus scrolls on anyone else. These are usually story-triggered scenes and thus rare. To be honest, this is a bit of overkill for Hard ironman. Does it get more difficult later on? Because if Hard will be this easy up to level 12 then I could just remove Chanters and go with 6 melee classes and plow through everything. When I do hit-and-run attacks the battles last long enough for me to use Invocations, but otherwise most battles are over in several seconds. I had my first Stronghold defense yesterday and was looking forward to it. And everything was over in seconds because hirelings spawned near the nemies. I spiritshifted druids because I estimated they would not even be able to reload arbalest once, and they managed to reach the enemy, make a hit, and battle over. In Hard ironman I noticed that I can just right click the enemy, and 90% of battles will be won just by doing autoattacks without any additional micromanagement. That's a bit disappointing considering that no one in my group is good at autoattacking (as in, has additional bonuses worth mentioning). 3 casters, 2 chanters (one of which no-damage tank), 1 no-damage tank.

There's no need for PoTD elitism. That mode is in itself broken, as it's usually the case when you make hard mode by simply inflating the stats. Then the balance is completely off and many skills and playstyles become pointless. So let's talk about Hard (possibly ironman) balance. And if 6-man hard is too easy let's talk about 5-man hard or 4-man hard - it doesn't matter. My first impression of a monk (first several levels) is that it's underpowered, fragile, and requires too much micromanagement. Now, I'm not giving up on a monk yet (although I rage-remove it from the party after 2 minutes every time I try him), and will try it with leech weapon which I did not have before. If leech doesn't help enough then the class is useless because "taking others down with me" is not a successful tactic. My current party can win most battles without a scratch so why do I need a monk? People say he does a lot of damage. I have a few problems with that claim: 1. Dps monk is a liability, and you don't want that in ironman mode. Non dps monk is for my party worse than other tanks. I still remember when I played PotD how FoA ability never pushed any enemy that was actually dangerous - it only worked on weak useless enemies (and that's when it actually managed to hit of course). In Hard I hoped that would work better but let's say that the whole wound + maybe hit + maybe pushed combo did not work well for me so far and I quickly lost patience. 2. Monk dps may do a lot of damage in ideal circumstances but if he gets hit hard then what? He's dead and useless or has to run back and do autoattacks. And if he doesn't get hit no wounds. 3. Monk requires a lot of micromanagement which is a stat in itself. 4. It has no synergy with the rest of the party. True, neither do some other classes but then again I don't use these other classes either. My experience with the monk goes like this: Phase 1: Battle started and I've no Wounds.. argh Phase 2: Argh I got hit! 1/3 hp/end down. Oh look, Wounds! Phase 3: FoA.. yeah.. finally some action. (a moment later) *missed* ..ffs.. Phase 4: Argh another hit! 2/3 hp/end down. Evacuate! Oh wait can't because of disengagement mechanic. Phase 5: Fight to the death! Phase 6. Death.

I've been trying to like the Chanter and make it useful but so far I'm failing (PotD, sometimes Ironman). Considering that I lack experience I am not going to make any claims but merely gonna post my observations. In PotD (especially Ironman) Chanter seems a liability. 15 seconds is a loooooong time (and that's if using short phrases). The battles in this game are very fast. First few seconds seem crucial. But with a Chanter the team is a man down first cca 15 seconds. That's insane. It means others lose health and endurance more than they would if they had actual support from the first second, which then either increases the frequency of Rests or the chance of defeat. When people in the forum complained about Chanter being slow I thought it could be they just like faster battles on Normal non-Ironman difficulty. So in a way, Chanter would be like a Mesmer in GW1 PvE (Prophecies) - by the time it can actually do anything elementalists blow the place up with AoE's. However, after actually trying the Chanter and playing this game, I realize there's some truth in that. Battles are really fast. If you position your tank and block the door then yeah, no problem, but in this case you win even without the Chanter. There's something else that's important: time. Time is money as they say. Chanters make battles slower. So you might as well just burn the per-rest spells and abilities, and then travel where you can Rest. It's probably going to take about the same time as making Chanter useful. One thing that worked for me was making 4 Chanters and then in the open areas (first few levels) I would start a combat, retreat (while maintaining combat active) and assail the enemy once I had Invocations ready. This makes battles take longer but is probably safer as long as you can run away. My problem here (other that boredom and repetitiveness) was that I had Phantom summon (which seemed really awesome) and when I ran into those Boars the Phantoms died quickly and couldn't hit anything (PotD Ironman) which wiped out my whole party because other than the summon Chanters were freakin useless so when the summon did not work neither did the class. (Of course, I learned not to put all the eggs in one basket.) Related to that, I've been testing Thunder invocation with Kana, and that's even more disappointing. This invocation almost always misses so you can imagine how happy I am waiting for 15sec to do something and then seeing "missed". That's a huge gamble I don't think gambling works in PotD Ironman. Lack of burst. This could, I suppose, be fixed with scrolls. Or maybe making the Chanter a tank or off-tank. Placement. He has to be closer to the frontline which means he's more likely to die, and if he's more back it means his chants are not covering the front. If he's in the middle he is also blocking possible Druid spells for example, and from what I've seen Druid does so much more (although it's rest-limited). Most of the chants are highly situational. If a chant only helps 1-2 allies engaged in combat, then it doesn't help the other 4-5 and you might as well go with Priest or something. If it debuffs enemies then it's either going to take a while to see any difference (endurance loss) or the chance will be only relevant for 1-2 enemies (with certain damage type) while others are unaffected. And while I do lack experience in this game (as I said) the numbers on paper just don't seem so great. I get the idea of "a bit of everything" class, but I'm afraid in combat what helps is a tank who is nothing but the tank, which is why people use 1-2 tanks and not 3 semi-tanks semi-melee damage dealers. I really like the names of Chants and Invocations and would like to have a Chanter in the party because I've always liked more unorthodox classes. But I need something that works. I've tried ranged Chanter, tank, and off-tank and wasn't satisfied with either. This is only first few levels. But what scares me is that Chanter doesn't seem to level well. Higher phrases are longer, so it means less Invocations (while other classes get more spells and abilities). Advice is welcome on any kind of Chanter that works because right now I'm about to give up on this class, especially considering that half of the nerfs in new patch are intended for the Chanter.