fist and shield [CLASS BUILD] Monk of Deep Crimson

[Desmodeus]

So my first character in game was monk. Shield monk. I clearly didn't knew what I did but I kinda still like that old bugger. He was stupidly defensive and I quite liked using him as my secondary tank. So I desided today that maybe it worth to post him here. Went in with a bit of tweaking for sake of Fashion of Eternity( Pillars of fashion?) Anyway, here is monk of Sanguine order.

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Karmesin Ordensschwester aka Sister of Pure Crimson

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Difficulty: PotD

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Class: Monk

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Race: Wild Orlan

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Background: The White that Wend - Aristocrat

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• MIG 18 (16 base -1 Orlan +2 Broad Belt of Power
• CON 14
• DEX 3
• PER 12 (9 base  +2 Orlan +1 The White that Wend )
• INT 19 (15 base + 4 Gwyn's band of Union)
• RES 20 (17 Base +1 Orlan +2 Broad Belt of Power)

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Skills:

• Stealth: 1 (0 Base +1 Monk)
• Athletics: 3 (2 Base +1 Monk)
• Lore: 8 (6 Base +2 Aristocrat)
• Mechanics: 0
• Survival: 14 (11 Base +1 Monk +2 Sanguine Plate

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Ability:

• Defiant Resolve (racial)
• Swift Strikes
• Turning wheel
• Clarity of Agony
• Duality of Mortal Presence - Other Defences
• Crusible of Suffering
• Flaggelant Path
• The Dichotomous Soul
• Soul Mirror

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Talents:

• Weapon and Shield Style
• Cautious attack/Veteran recovery/Weapon focus: Peasant
• Weapon Focus: Peasant/Lightning Strike
• Lightning Strike/Scion of Flame
• Superior Deflection
• Bear's Fortitude
• Bull's Will
• Snake's Reflexes

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Equipment:

• Head: Sanguine Plate's Helm
• Body: Sanguine Plate (Legendary, Shock-resistant)
• Arms: Blood Testament
• Accessory: Hiro's Mantle
• Ring1: Ring of Deflection
• Ring2: Gwyn's Band of Union
• Belt: Broad Belt of Power
• Legs: Shod-in-faith

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Weapon slots:

• Fist + Redfield(Legendary, Durgan-refined)
• Steadfast + Redfield (legendary, Durgan-Refined)[cloned using mold from adventure for sake of looks]

Quick slots:

• Potion of Flame Shield - it works with turning wheel and we already have retaliation from mantle
• Scroll of Revival - we stupidly survival, so we have decent chances to stay last if things go south
• Scroll of Fire Wall - one of best spells in game
• some defensive scroll according to situation

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Nothing too strange here - defensive character focused on breaking through enemy attempts of disabling party, while dealing quite strong strikes with all monk lashes and retaliation

At lvl 16 character has 135 Deflection/107 fortitude/106 reflex/121 will with cautious attack on. Additionally harbinger from shield provide +3 deflection against enemies in 2m radius

DR stats: 25 Slash / 24 Crush / 28 Pierce / 12 shock / 20 other

And in case you are afraid about wound gain: Ogre guard  from The Celestial Sapling give you 3 wounds on graze. So no, you are not untouchable.

Cautious attack does not stucks with priest buffs, however don't discount fact that  you can enter the fight with it, while buffs still needed to be casted. Veteran recovery can be decent replacer for it. Alternatively scion of Flame also useful here as it affects Turning wheel bonus

Originally build used little savior and rocked different helmet, but hey, with this setup character is 20% cooler

Edited December 26, 2020 by Desmodeus
Added image, small format fix

[Desmodeus]

Would appreciate some critique/advices. for example I personally not a big fun of rooting pain on this but maybe I am not getting something.

[Boeroer]

Rooting Pain: depends if you like to spend (and gain back) a lot of wounds or if you like to keep 10 for stuff like Turning Wheel/Blood Testament Gloves.

You might want to check if Redfield's Harbinger enchantment targets will (I don't remember). If that's the case I wouldn't wear it in fights with enemy ciphers. They sometimes have Psychic Backlash and that means you'll get stunned every few seconds. It's the same with Threatening Presence (Barb) and can completely mess up the fight, so a backup shield would be good to have. 

[Desmodeus]

It targeta will but it has very small radius(2m) and I do not exactly remember many melee ciphers though might be wrong here

What shoeld would be good backup here, which is also look good with auch setup?

[Boeroer]

2m is only the base radius. It scales with INT.

Temple of Skaen has several ciphers for example. Also some bounties have them. Not all of them have Psychic Backlash. But anyway no big deal: just use another shield for those IF the shield triggers Psychic Backlash. I just wanted to mention it so that you don't run into that issue unprepared. 

Aila Braccia is an excellent backup shield especially against all sorts annoying ranged enemies - and it works in combination with Soul Mirror (Aila Braccia reflects 100% of ranged grazes and also converts them to misses, Soul Mirror reflects 50% of the direct misses). 
 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Boeroer

[Desmodeus]

To be fair I already finished game with this one, though it was lomg ago, it was male hearth orlan, he didn't have lightning strikes, instead opting for nature mark, was wearing garod helmet with retal and wielded little savior and Ilfan Byrngar's Solace. Just cleaning him up in this post as more experienxed player and also tried to make him look nicer xD but well, thats first chars for you. Bound to make stupid mistakes

Thank you for Alia idea. Totally forgot about that shield

[Raven Darkholme]

20 hours ago, Desmodeus said:

To be fair I already finished game with this one, though it was lomg ago, it was male hearth orlan, he didn't have lightning strikes, instead opting for nature mark, was wearing garod helmet with retal and wielded little savior and Ilfan Byrngar's Solace. Just cleaning him up in this post as more experienxed player and also tried to make him look nicer xD but well, thats first chars for you. Bound to make stupid mistakes

Thank you for Alia idea. Totally forgot about that shield

Psychic Backlash wasn't always broken.

According to it's description it still isn't

(But they broke it when they buffed it, don't even remember what the buff was, but ever since thenm it's unlimited procs instead of 1x per encounter, which is nice for a dragonslaying cipher pc and less nice for a pc that utilizes a will aura)

[Boeroer]

Yes, it was buffed "secretly" pretty late and without any change of description, information or patch note - shortly before the last patch was done.

It's particularly awesome against Dragons or other enemies with fear auras (some banshees etc.) but excruciatingly bad for Barbarians who picked Threatening Presence - since you cannot switch that ability off (like you could switch from one shield to another).
It's always there and active once you took it. In fights against Ciphers with Psychic Backlash you will be stunlocked until the rest of the party brings the Cipher(s) down. Only retraining would change that. That lead to the situation where I wouldn't take it anymore at all - although I nearly always used it before. 

It's kind of a just punishment though because I was one of the forum users who consistently complained about the 1/encounter limit of Psychic Backlash before.   

Edited December 29, 2020 by Boeroer

[Desmodeus]

Thats actually makes me want to roll tanking cipher. Wonder if its possible to get some self-targeting will attacks to reliably trigger it xD

Anyway, still torn about use of swift attacks here. Attack is slow anyway but torment reach with one fist is unremarkable xD

[Raven Darkholme]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yes, it was buffed "secretly" pretty late and without any change of description, information or patch note - shortly before the last patch was done.

It's particularly awesome against Dragons or other enemies with fear auras (some banshees etc.) but excruciatingly bad for Barbarians who picked Threatening Presence - since you cannot switch that ability off (like you could switch from one shield to another).
It's always there and active once you took it. In fights against Ciphers with Psychic Backlash you will be stunlocked until the rest of the party brings the Cipher(s) down. Only retraining would change that. That lead to the situation where I wouldn't take it anymore at all - although I nearly always used it before. 

It's kind of a just punishment though because I was one of the forum users who consistently complained about the 1/encounter limit of Psychic Backlash before.   

I played pretty far with a barbt he other day, when I tried out your leech build and in most fights it's not an issue if you know it is coming (most ciphers have original names like "xy cipher").

I had a couple retaliation items and also targeted the ciphers from stealth with leap + Hof.

At the end of the day at least if you play solo a lot, it is the same principle as tagreting adragan or similar first. because otherwise they will eventually disable you.

With Carnage triggering from retaliation and the initial HoF with duration steal buffing your durations like crazy (the base 1 or 2 sec duration from Carnage 25% damage boost, sometimes goes up to 20+ for me) IF a cipher survives the initia HoF the melees will rush you and usually the ciphers just die to retaliation.

That being said I didn't make it to WM2 with the barb, yet.

[Boeroer]

Uh? Retaliation triggering Carnage is new to me.

[Raven Darkholme]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Uh? Retaliation triggering Carnage is new to me.

Hm, maybe it just seemed that way to me, and they were close enough to be hit by it, idk they def didn't attack me in melee.

Come to think of it, maybe they just died to smth else than retaliation, 90% of the time ciphers are squishy enough to die to initial HoF, so if one somehow survives they are on 1 hp.