Monk build - Int as a dump stat?

[Daemonjax]

...every time I cast my cone i do about 20-40 damage.

 

Rooting Pain is decent (aoe stun when taking a wound).  The class needs more abilities like that that are active.

 

I never said monk wasn't viable, it's just mechanically weak when compared to some other classes for a tank slot.

 

There's a lot of things that could be done to make the class competitive, but they just aren't.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Ceranai]

 

...every time I cast my cone i do about 20-40 damage.

 

Rooting Pain is decent (aoe stun when taking a wound).  The class needs more abilities like that that are active.

 

I never said monk wasn't viable, it's just mechanically weak when compared to some other classes for a tank slot.

 

There's a lot of things that could be done to make the class competitive, but they just aren't.

 

I was talking about the level one cone, ive been hitting like a train since i started the game.

[Dongom]

I'm going to build an awesome monk tank, since i've tried and tried but the dps build doesn't touch any of my ranged builds I've made on most classes. (even gun wizard who I'd consider my "main", guns 2 stronk).  

 

I'm going to dump Int, and Con will be left at 10 (my pally tanks with 8 con no problems). Decent per/res and then distribute Mig/Dex.  Race will be Wild Orlean or Amthua.  Chest will have to be high DR, 9-12. I'll need to then DW the two leech one-handers, and troll healing belt.  Mig/Con ring. Con boots.  Possibly deflect ring/cape/hat if he takes too much dmg.

 

Does anyone know where to get those Monk Unique Gloves that give 2% more dmg per wound?  

Edited April 2, 2015 by Dongom

[Arctic]

monks are GREAT tanks,  just get all you can that reflects damage ... and a shield .. (dont go bare fisted with a tank monk)

 

19 18 4 18 4 14 fire godlike ..

 

get also a +1 engagement weapon

[Ceranai]

I'm going to build an awesome monk tank, since i've tried and tried but the dps build doesn't touch any of my ranged builds I've made on most classes. (even gun wizard who I'd consider my "main", guns 2 stronk).  

 

I'm going to dump Int, and Con will be left at 10 (my pally tanks with 8 con no problems). Decent per/res and then distribute Mig/Dex.  Race will be Wild Orlean or Amthua.  Chest will have to be high DR, 9-12. I'll need to then DW the two leech one-handers, and troll healing belt.  Mig/Con ring. Con boots.  Possibly deflect ring/cape/hat if he takes too much dmg.

 

Does anyone know where to get those Monk Unique Gloves that give 2% more dmg per wound?  

where are the leech weapons, i really think im gonna need them?

 

I know about the spider dagger but not any other ones

[Arctic]

 

I'm going to build an awesome monk tank, since i've tried and tried but the dps build doesn't touch any of my ranged builds I've made on most classes. (even gun wizard who I'd consider my "main", guns 2 stronk).  

 

I'm going to dump Int, and Con will be left at 10 (my pally tanks with 8 con no problems). Decent per/res and then distribute Mig/Dex.  Race will be Wild Orlean or Amthua.  Chest will have to be high DR, 9-12. I'll need to then DW the two leech one-handers, and troll healing belt.  Mig/Con ring. Con boots.  Possibly deflect ring/cape/hat if he takes too much dmg.

 

Does anyone know where to get those Monk Unique Gloves that give 2% more dmg per wound?  

where are the leech weapons, i really think im gonna need them?

 

I know about the spider dagger but not any other ones

 

 

im not sure if its random, but i got a draining flail in the temple in the first village.

[mahe4]

The way wounds work is that t is calculated after DR and before things like deflection so as soon as combat gets started i have enough wounds to cast torments reach pretty much once every 1-2 seconds, in fact i can cast it faster than the animation plays some fights. this is combined with a set up that can tank on par with a warrior/paladin.

 

they are calculated after DR as you said.

that means 15 damage hit with 6 DR would give you 0.9 wounds instead of 1.5 wounds (10 damage threshold for wounds)

that is exactly the counter intuitive way.

by increasing your avoidance/mitigation (deflection/DR) you decrease you wound generation

and vise versa.

or did you just wrote it the wrong way around, and wounds are calculated before DR

that would be new for me, and it would certainly make the monk a good tank class.

[Arctic]

 

The way wounds work is that t is calculated after DR and before things like deflection so as soon as combat gets started i have enough wounds to cast torments reach pretty much once every 1-2 seconds, in fact i can cast it faster than the animation plays some fights. this is combined with a set up that can tank on par with a warrior/paladin.

 

they are calculated after DR as you said.

that means 15 damage hit with 6 DR would give you 0.9 wounds instead of 1.5 wounds (10 damage threshold for wounds)

that is exactly the counter intuitive way.

by increasing your avoidance/mitigation (deflection/DR) you decrease you wound generation

and vise versa.

or did you just wrote it the wrong way around, and wounds are calculated before DR

that would be new for me, and it would certainly make the monk a good tank class.

 

 

thats why you do retaliate monk tanks, so you dont need to attack or use skills to hit them , if they hit you they die xD

[Ceranai]

 

 

The way wounds work is that t is calculated after DR and before things like deflection so as soon as combat gets started i have enough wounds to cast torments reach pretty much once every 1-2 seconds, in fact i can cast it faster than the animation plays some fights. this is combined with a set up that can tank on par with a warrior/paladin.

 

they are calculated after DR as you said.

that means 15 damage hit with 6 DR would give you 0.9 wounds instead of 1.5 wounds (10 damage threshold for wounds)

that is exactly the counter intuitive way.

by increasing your avoidance/mitigation (deflection/DR) you decrease you wound generation

and vise versa.

or did you just wrote it the wrong way around, and wounds are calculated before DR

that would be new for me, and it would certainly make the monk a good tank class.

 

 

thats why you do retaliate monk tanks, so you dont need to attack or use skills to hit them , if they hit you they die xD

 

Oh i thought it meant you got more wounds per life by tanking, oh well not exactly what i thought it was however still pretty decent, living longer lets you use your wounds more reliably

 

 

 

 

[mahe4]

 

 

 

The way wounds work is that t is calculated after DR and before things like deflection so as soon as combat gets started i have enough wounds to cast torments reach pretty much once every 1-2 seconds, in fact i can cast it faster than the animation plays some fights. this is combined with a set up that can tank on par with a warrior/paladin.

 

they are calculated after DR as you said.

that means 15 damage hit with 6 DR would give you 0.9 wounds instead of 1.5 wounds (10 damage threshold for wounds)

that is exactly the counter intuitive way.

by increasing your avoidance/mitigation (deflection/DR) you decrease you wound generation

and vise versa.

or did you just wrote it the wrong way around, and wounds are calculated before DR

that would be new for me, and it would certainly make the monk a good tank class.

 

 

thats why you do retaliate monk tanks, so you dont need to attack or use skills to hit them , if they hit you they die xD

 

Oh i thought it meant you got more wounds per life by tanking, oh well not exactly what i thought it was however still pretty decent, living longer lets you use your wounds more reliably

 

 

 

 

 

as i already wrote, they are decent.

but so are barbarian tanks...

and i would still prefer fighter, paladin or maybe chanter (haven't tested chanter tank yet, so i don't know) over monk.

if they just change the way wounds are generated, it would be a pretty beautiful tank class.

either by calculating wounds before DR (which would be the cheap way)

or by implementing them the way they were meant to be.

that they take part of the damage away after DR and create a dot on you for that taken away part.

and when you use your wounds, the dot goes with them.

that would give monk another layer of mitigation, and counter the low deflection that you need to generate wounds in the first place.

[Arctic]

there is a talent that reduces your wound minium damage to 8 .. but still, you need wouds for doing damage, tanks dont need to do damage, they need to survive, couse you will have 0 attack speed, but you will do damage either way with the monk tank couse you reflect damage .

 

Warrior is the best tank, but not for doing more damage, its for having a higher engagement limit.

[Dongom]

ugh well that didn't work out well, i just ended up a crappy version of Pally/Fighter tank.

[Ceranai]

ugh well that didn't work out well, i just ended up a crappy version of Pally/Fighter tank.

 

there is a talent that reduces your wound minium damage to 8 .. but still, you need wouds for doing damage, tanks dont need to do damage, they need to survive, couse you will have 0 attack speed, but you will do damage either way with the monk tank couse you reflect damage .

 

Warrior is the best tank, but not for doing more damage, its for having a higher engagement limit.

How did you build it?? my build gave me a high dps high survivability machine, how do monks reflect damage? i am not aware of this? unless you mean the ranged thing and the shockwave thing? those seemed very minor buffs to me

[Whipstitch]

Actually, in my experience just about any monk build does OK against bears as long as they take Force of Anguish as an emergency button--I've done it even as a glass cannon. 10 seconds is a long time for a dual wielder w/ Fighting Spirit to be beating on you unopposed.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Whipstitch

[The Josip]

Not true, i went for torments reach and force of anguish and i find them very useful, with 18 might it hits for 25 or so, true it only hits one maybe two enemies but so what? how many foes am i likely to hit with 18 intelligence?

 

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.

[Incendax]

I ran a monk with 10/10/4/18/18/18. It worked very well as an actual tank, stunning groups of enemies with Rooting Pain, knocking some prone for quite a while, and hitting 3-5 enemies with Torment's Reach when they are piled up in a chokepoint. I honestly wish I had dumped Might and pumped Con.
But I want to be very clear, this was a super defensive tank. It did that job VERY well.

 

In retrospect, I think Int is better for DPS Monk than Tank Monk. Torment's Reach is hard to position when you are the tank. It's easy to position and catch many enemies when you are attacking from the side of a tank engaging 4+ enemies.

But I could have easily dumped Int. So my conclusion? Monks are just really flexible to build. The biggest benefit seems to come from one extreme or the other; either dump it or pump it.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Incendax

[Matt516]

3 things:

 

Fists scale very well - they will outdamage even superb fast weapons by the time you get to high levels (transc suffering 4 is +8 damage and accuracy). They're (right now) the best DW weapons in the game right now, raw stat-wise.

 

INT does decrease or increase DoT damage. The tooltip is usually wrong - in reality a DoT will do the same damage per tick and INT just makes it tick more or less.

 

I don't know that it's really fair to call a build OP that includes Moon Godlike - Moon Godlikes are just OP. No way of knowing if it's the build or the race in this case (though I agree the build and monks in general are very good).

[The Josip]

In retrospect, I think Int is better for DPS Monk than Tank Monk. Torment's Reach is hard to position when you are the tank. It's easy to position and catch many enemies when you are attacking from the side of a tank engaging 4+ enemies.

 

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.

[Incendax]

 

In retrospect, I think Int is better for DPS Monk than Tank Monk. Torment's Reach is hard to position when you are the tank. It's easy to position and catch many enemies when you are attacking from the side of a tank engaging 4+ enemies.

 

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.

 

I read your reply, tested it, discovered that I can reliably hit more enemies with 18 Int than 4 int (edited one of my games quickly), and concluded that you may be mistaken.

 

Positioning does matter, because in your average tanking scenario (non chokepoint) you have a tank engaging 4 enemies that are partially surrounding him. When my test monk was being DPS, she was able to reliably hit 3 out of 4 simultaneously depending on positioning (6 out of 10 attempts on bandits), and never less than 2 at once (the other 4 out of 10 attempts on bandits). Meanwhile, when the test monk was tanking it became difficult to wiggle into position to hit more than 2 without eating engagement attacks.

 

Reloading the game after modding my stats down to 4 Int, when my test monk was being DPS, she was able to reliably hit 2 out of 4 simultaneously depending on positioning (8 out of 10 attempts on bandits), and only hit 1 occasionally (the other 2 out of 8 attempts bandits). She never hit 3 enemies simultaneously with 4 int. Meanwhile, when the test monk was tanking, there was no real difference in number of enemies that could be hit due to positioning issues.

 

In a chokepoint situation, where enemies were piled up behind the primary target, the number of enemies hit depended entirely on the size of the enemy being tanked. 18 Intelligence was able to frequently hit a 3rd enemy (5 out of 10 attempts against wicht) if they were smaller (wicht sized) but rarely 2 if they were medium (skuldr sized) (3 out of 10 attempts against skuldr). 4 Intelligence was never able to hit a 3rd enemy if they were smaller (0 out of 10 attempts against wicht), and was able to hit a 2nd medium enemy with similar consistency to the high intelligence monk (2 out of 10 attempts against skuldr).

 

These sample sizes are somewhat small, but all I had time to test.

 

The value of intelligence depends highly on what role you want to play. The impact was not terribly impressive on a tank (unless you consider Force of Anguish and Stunning Fist duration), but it was notably more impressive on a DPS monk attacking the side of an engagement line.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Incendax

[The Josip]

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.

[Daemonjax]

 

 

 

PS-

18 might, 19 con, 10 dex, 9 per, 4 int, 18 res, moon godlike is what im running with no weapons and the heaviest armour i could find.

 

 

 

How useful (or not) is action speed for Monk?

 

action speed is useful for any party member who wants to deal damage with weapons.

attacking more often is good.

especially if you dual wield, which unarmed from monk is, as far as i know.

 

besides, don't take monk, for a monk to work properly, you have to send him on a suicide mission.

what i mean is, for a monk to use his abilites (besides one or two) he needs wounds.

and he gets wounds by getting hurt.

so for him to use his abilities, you have to let him getting hit.

if you micromanage it well, it can work out, but i recommend to dump the deflection stats (perception and resolve), so that you get hit easier.

and then try to only get engaged by one enemy.

and have a good healer by your side, because a monk will need it.

the current monk is as counter intuitive as it gets, and is pretty bad designed for now.

 

 

It's usually optimal to have your cipher shoot your monk in the back of the head shortly after combat starts in order to generate wounds for the monk and focus for the cipher... as long as the monk has less deflection than the enemy, it's often the smart play -- which is rather ridiculous if intended, and is a symptom of a class design problem even if not.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Incendax]

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.

The only time I was noticing a real consistent damage benefit was 18 Int on a DPS monk hitting horizontally from an engagement line against small circle enemies. This happens frequently enough to be worth considering for a DPS monk build, but other stats may generate better results unless you're already running 18+ Str and 18+ Dex. You would never want to take 18 Int just for the damage of Torment's Reach, though. You want it for the increased CC duration.

 

But yeah, I only tested 4 and 18. Int seems very All Or Nothing for the monk.

[Casildar]

 

Not true, i went for torments reach and force of anguish and i find them very useful, with 18 might it hits for 25 or so, true it only hits one maybe two enemies but so what? how many foes am i likely to hit with 18 intelligence?

 

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.

 

 

I haven't tested anything for size of Torment's Reach, but this is absolutely not true for Rooting Pain.  The difference in radius between 4 Int and 15 Int is roughly 1.25-1.3x the width of a human-sized targeting circle.  If a monk is surrounded by two ranks of human-sized mobs, the 4 Int Rooting Pain will only hit the innermost rank.  The 15 will hit both.

 

Now the value of that increase will obviously vary wildly depending on what you have your monk doing and what its fighting.  I have no idea how wide the various gradations of hit box sizes are when it comes to relatively minor changes in model size:  Elf to Human to Shade to Aumaua, for instance.  I don't know the frequency with which you will encounter packs that will allow you to take advantage of that extra size.  I'm testing builds for a solo run so I don't have any concerns about mobs running off after other party members.

 

I'm not going to test an 18 Int because there's no way I can build a monk with 18 Int, but the difference in size between 15 and 18 is going to be so negligible that it's not going to get me to a second rank of considerably larger mobs (ogres or something) and even if it would I'm not willing to drop 3 points elsewhere to get it.  Again, no idea on the ramifications of high Int on Torment's Reach, but I'd certainly lean toward Incendax's observations of improvement, although I would like to see some tests in the 13-16 Int range.  I doubt Int is really all or nothing for a monk, at least when that range is nothing=4 and all=18.  The area coverage of both abilities is so small that point-for-point Int does very little.  (The swing from 4 Int to 15 is 66% though, and it's worth noting that I had problems several times hitting enemies that seemed to be adjacent to me with Rooting Pain at 4 Int.) But the breakpoint for general usefulness on Torment's Reach may or may not be 18.  For Rooting Pain by itself, I think spending 3 points to go from 15 to 18 is probably a waste and its breakpoint for hitting a second rank might even be 13 or 14.

 

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.

 

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.

 

I'm really on the fence about Con:

 

18 Con Monk Lvl1 End=53, Health=313 -- Lvl11 End=226, Health=1355

15 Con Monk Lvl1 End=49, Health=290 -- Lvl11 End=210, Health=1256

10 Con Monk Lvl1 End=42, Health=252 -- Lvl11 End=182, Health=1092

 

Leaving Fort changes out, that's only 16 more Endurance and 99 more health going from 15 to 18.  The full swing from 10 to 18 is only worth 44 End and 263 Health for 8 points, but for my purposes I'm guessing that 263 Health (well 164H if I go with 15C) is going to end up being important in a TCS attempt.

[The Josip]

I'm really on the fence about Con:

 

18 Con Monk Lvl1 End=53, Health=313 -- Lvl11 End=226, Health=1355

15 Con Monk Lvl1 End=49, Health=290 -- Lvl11 End=210, Health=1256

10 Con Monk Lvl1 End=42, Health=252 -- Lvl11 End=182, Health=1092

 

Leaving Fort changes out, that's only 16 more Endurance and 99 more health going from 15 to 18.  The full swing from 10 to 18 is only worth 44 End and 263 Health for 8 points, but for my purposes I'm guessing that 263 Health (well 164H if I go with 15C) is going to end up being important in a TCS attempt.

 

 

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.

[Casildar]

 

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.

 

 

Yeah it's all fairly frustrating.

 

In your case definitely the Con.

 

For the solo deal, I was mostly looking for a way to shave points where they could be shaved so that I didn't have 3s in stats.  Not that I'm against dump stats at all.  My non-solo build is all about them.  What concerned me most wasn't the positive gain in one stat over Con (for instance) but in lessening the negatives from having 3s.  I ended up not dumping Int because I didn't want the -14 Will.  But I feel like the defensive side of the offensive stats really doesn't matter that much for a group.

 

On the Rooting Pain thing, I was just saying that Int really does help it out.  In a group I doubt it matters much, although it might be useful if you were building a passive tank monk that you just wanted to send in and not micro.  Solo, I thought it would be good to be able to hit a second rank of targets.  But on PotD, Rooting Pain's problem is it does somewhat low damage and doesn't benefit from Turning Wheel or the DR bypass from Vuln Attack.  It's not really a stun, either, just a high interrupt.  So after all that, I finally decided not to even take it for the solo build. Or TW, as mentioned in that other thread.

 

If anyone's curious, I ended up going 18/13/10/10/10/17.  I wanted to dump Int.  It's not the AE or duration of FoA that made me keep it at 10.  I was afraid that -14 Will would just mean eating every paralyze thrown my way.  I'd never do that allocation for a group monk, though.

 

PS. Access to 18 Silver Tides must be comedy.