Current status of Monks

[Smorensky]

Here's my monk build, playing on hard atm lvl8:

Fire godlike

M:19

C:8

D:10

P:15

I:8

R:18

 

Skills by lvl:

1.Torment's Reach

2.Lesser Wounds

3.Force of Anguish

4.Weapon focus: Peasant

5.Turning Wheel

6.Vulnerable attack

7.Duality of mortal presence

8.Two weapon style

 

No weapons, for armor only Berathian robe (2DR, -5% recovery), DR belt for extra 5 pierce and slash resistance.

 

Atm on hard this character runs into the battle side by side with Eder. Usually Eder locks down 3 enemies while my monk grabs everything that's left. So far this build has excellent survivability and crazy high dmg output. Wound generation isn't a problem if you fight 2 or 3 oponents. Most fights I don't even have to use any abilities. For tougher fights, once I get a few wounds, I send a few enemies flying with Force of Anguish and use remaining wounds to obliderate anything that's left by spamming Torment's Reach, for those rly tough encounters, everything is the same except I use buffs from Durance and position him close enough to heal my monk.

 

Keep in mind that I haven't rly bothered with picking the right gear (still using stuff I had on me while I was lvl4), and haven't enchanted anything yet.

[colmortimer1066]

This is how playing a monk with Force of Anguish looks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_6QgHg4eTk#t=1m57

That's not a real monk, he did not got hit once, yet look at all the powers he used....

[Fen(rir)tastic]

To use a MMO term a monk is most effectively built in my experience as an offtank. Draw the majority of targets with your fighter/paladin and then use the monk to pick up the one or two that attempt to flank. If you are struggling buff the monk with your Ciphers DR buff if you have it or any applicable priest buff and then once your wounds pick up just wreck the other enemies. If you build high accuracy and run with leather/light armour you will have a basic DR and with the buffs will be durable enough to dish out the damage. 
 

If you want to build him as a tank, take all the tanking talents and abilities and use DR buffs. Not optimal but viable on hard i think with a good supporting cast. 

[View619]

This is how playing a monk with Force of Anguish looks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_6QgHg4eTk#t=1m57

 

Surprisingly accurate. xD

 

On a serious note, I am very disappointed that the Wounds mechanic was dumbed down to act like Cipher's Focus. Damage mitigation on Wounds sounded really cool and would have provided an interesting method of implementing a front-line class. It seems like the best way to play them is to pick up the 1-2 enemies that the tank isn't engaging and gain wounds like that.

Edited April 6, 2015 by View619

[draek]

This is how playing a monk with Force of Anguish looks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_6QgHg4eTk#t=1m57

 

If I could play with the Diablo 3 Monk in PoE - I would be loving it. 

[pswendel]

Not sure what the problem is. Hard difficulty play through #2, my monk off tank hits harder and faster than any other class. Sure there is a dmg sponge syndrome, but that's a ltp issue it seems. If you're having issues, perhaps it's because you're attempting to crush things which have a high crush DR? Not sure.

[Parsong]

1. Lower dmg than other melee-dps like barb and rogue. Including their off-tank specs.

 

2. Worse pure tank than fighter, pally, chanter.

 

3. If you still use fists, you're doing really bad dmg later on.

 

 

 

 my monk off tank hits harder and faster than any other class 

 

 

Build?   Maybe its some wild/secret Monk build I haven't seen yet, but that just doesn't seem possible numbers wise...when objectively comparing to barb,rogue,cipher, and a druid who blows all his spells.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Parsong

[Maydawn]

Here's my monk build, playing on hard atm lvl8:

Fire godlike

M:19

C:8

D:10

P:15

I:8

R:18

 

Skills by lvl:

1.Torment's Reach

2.Lesser Wounds

3.Force of Anguish

4.Weapon focus: Peasant

5.Turning Wheel

6.Vulnerable attack

7.Duality of mortal presence

8.Two weapon style

 

No weapons, for armor only Berathian robe (2DR, -5% recovery), DR belt for extra 5 pierce and slash resistance.

 

Atm on hard this character runs into the battle side by side with Eder. Usually Eder locks down 3 enemies while my monk grabs everything that's left. So far this build has excellent survivability and crazy high dmg output. Wound generation isn't a problem if you fight 2 or 3 oponents. Most fights I don't even have to use any abilities. For tougher fights, once I get a few wounds, I send a few enemies flying with Force of Anguish and use remaining wounds to obliderate anything that's left by spamming Torment's Reach, for those rly tough encounters, everything is the same except I use buffs from Durance and position him close enough to heal my monk.

 

Keep in mind that I haven't rly bothered with picking the right gear (still using stuff I had on me while I was lvl4), and haven't enchanted anything yet.

 

Those stats are exactly what I try to avoid when building a character, it might be the wrong term, but that's exactly what I'd call min-maxing. On every character I create, I try to RP as much as possible, so that build wouldn't suit me. I don't lower any stat below 10, and probably won't end up with a stat higher than 16. I've said that right off the bat when I opened this topic. Also, once more, the way I look at it, class balance is broken if you need a narrow set of favorable stats to perform well.

 

I might be in the wrong here, but in such an RP rich game, I'd rather avoid all those BG2 builds with 3 int / 3 wisdom on a fighter cause well, "useless", and having 18+ of a main stat. I don't want much from the class, just some basic DR to avoid getting 2 shot by the ogres in Endless Paths or the Raedric Hold fight and bad RNG.

 

Just out of curiosity: why two weapon fighting style ? it affects unarmed ? O.o

[Moira]

 

 

Here's my monk build, playing on hard atm lvl8:

Fire godlike

M:19

C:8

D:10

P:15

I:8

R:18

Those stats are exactly what I try to avoid when building a character, it might be the wrong term, but that's exactly what I'd call min-maxing. On every character I create, I try to RP as much as possible, so that build wouldn't suit me. I don't lower any stat below 10, and probably won't end up with a stat higher than 16.

Then put Might and Resolve at 16, and Con and Int at 10, and any leftover points where your roleplaying calls them At least on Normal difficulty the stats aren't so crucial that the difference between 16 and 18,19 would be the gamebreaker. I doubt that would be the case on hard difficulty either as long as you play your party wisely.

[Moira]

Just out of curiosity: why two weapon fighting style ? it affects unarmed ? O.o

Two fists, two blunt weapons. My monk isn't on high level yet so I haven't needed to decide between unarmed and enchanted weapons so far, and I'm just enjoying the heck out of the crazy speed of her fists :D

[portedgoblin]

1. Lower dmg than other melee-dps like barb and rogue. Including their off-tank specs.

 

2. Worse pure tank than fighter, pally, chanter.

 

3. If you still use fists, you're doing really bad dmg later on.

 

 

 

 my monk off tank hits harder and faster than any other class 

 

 

Build?   Maybe its some wild/secret Monk build I haven't seen yet, but that just doesn't seem possible numbers wise...when objectively comparing to barb,rogue,cipher, and a druid who blows all his spells.

Toward the end of the game (hard) my monk hit for 25-50 damage unarmed with around 2 attacks per second. He absolutely wrecks encounters. I don't know how crazy OP the other classes must be, but for hard the monk do WAY WAY more damage then needed in order to be viable.

 

The only problem I have is if I get dominated, I must rush to knock the monk down then or he will kill the party in seconds.

[dirigible]

1. Lower dmg than other melee-dps like barb and rogue. Including their off-tank specs.

 

2. Worse pure tank than fighter, pally, chanter.

 

3. If you still use fists, you're doing really bad dmg later on.

How can one person be so wrong?

Fists start out crappy and become incredibly strong later on.

 

Get the talent that increases attack speed by 20% when dual wielding (fists count)

Then get the talent that lets you toggle -20% attack speed for 5 armor penetration

Congratulations, you just added 5 damage to your melee attacks.

 

My endgame monk deals 19-24 damage with each fist (+5% burning lash per wound), and attacks very quickly.

He has significantly more HP than Eder, while having the exact same Constitution. Same Endurance.

His deflection is lower, but his other defenses are comparable to Eder.

 

He is easily the best source of dps in my party AND acts as a completely competent offtank.

[axedice]

I play a monk on hard and really enjoy it. The wound mechanic actually works for me, even though when I look at it it should not, for the reasons people have stated here.

 

My monk is unarmed and have no armor. I send him in just after my 2 tanks, Palegrina and Eder. He does crazy single target damage.

 

In an easy fight, he will not get hit and get no wounds and just auto-attack. That is fine, since his auto attack damage is quite good enough.

 

In a hard fight with many enemies, 1 or 2 will start attacking him, despite the 2 tanks (4 and 2 engagements respectively). So now he will get wounds, he will start doing aoe damage with Rooting Pain and his auto attack damage goes up with Turning Wheel (think of it as a fire enchant for the fists).

If he starts to take too much damage, I will heal him of course, but also I will start doing CC to the mobs attacking me. With 2x per encounter stuns and Force of Anguish I can get rid of all mobs attacking me if I need to. This is the part that works out. As long as things are hitting me I have endless CC!

His attacks so often that even a missed CC is no problem, another one coming up in 0.5s.

 

This is the most fun class I think I played in a long time!

Same here minus the aoe damage, I use all of my wounds for CC and a single swift strikes at the beginning of combat. 14 sec prones with max int, max str and dex for damage, min per and resolve, my monk gets hit all the time when he engages (which is the left overs from the tank, enough to get wounds but not too much to kill), and deals out damage and stuns/prones like a truck bomber plane. The class starts to shine after lvl4 when you get vulnerable attacks talent. No armor for max speed, clothes enchanted with might, 2 weapon fighting talent and works like a charm (unarmed attacks count as dual wield and the talent speeds them up too). Really like how the class turned out to be, though the wound raw damage over time mechanic could have been fun for tank builds too.

[Manty5]

Think of tank monk as a chanter with only one song:  "Flat on his butt, the foe dealt no more damage"

 

I think that there's a lot of room to build a monk badly, because people don't always take into account that you can spend your wounds(control-based offtank), or you can keep your wounds(turning wheel DPS), but it's difficult to do both and survive all the wounds that doing both would entails.  Also, there aren't enough attributes in the world to be excellent at everything.

[scrotiemcb]

I feel rather strongly that a Monk is currently very incentivized to wear armor, which is very bad for his RP.

 

I'd like to see something like these added to the game...

 

Masochistic Anticipation

Monk-only Talent

Passive

Available at level 2

+5 to DR. This bonus is lessened as you use heavier Shields (-2 for Small, -3 for Medium, -4 for Large).

 

Pauper's Grace

Monk-only Talent

Passive

Available at level 2

+12 to all Defenses. This bonus is lessened as you wear heavier Armor (-3 for Robe, -4 for Padded, -5 for Hide, etc).

Edited April 12, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Maydawn]

I feel rather strongly that a Monk is currently very incentivized to wear armor, which is very bad for his RP.

 

I'd like to see something like these added to the game...

 

Masochistic Anticipation

Monk-only Talent

Passive

Available at level 2

+5 to DR. This bonus is lessened as you use heavier Shields (-2 for Small, -3 for Medium, -4 for Large).

 

Pauper's Grace

Monk-only Talent

Passive

Available at level 2

+12 to all Defenses. This bonus is lessened as you wear heavier Armor (-3 for Robe, -4 for Padded, -5 for Hide, etc).

 

These are exactly the kind of ideas I had in mind. It makes no sense from an RP standpoint to have monks not wear armor, or just light, and from game mechanics perspective it's handicapping. There should be talents, or base class mechanic to compensate for it. I personally think they should have an innate DR that goes up with levels when wearing no armor. For example the monk would have DR at level 1 as if he wore light armor (3 DR), and by max level would reach 8 DR, like scale armor [if I remember values correctly]. I'd rather not have such mechanics based on talents, as they would feel mandatory to some extent in higher difficulties, and would rather spend talents on more personal playstyle customization, like Modals, Hold the Line [increases number of engaged enemies] and such.

[scrotiemcb]

I'm not a huge fan of binary choices, such as "no armor" vs "any armor," which is why I went very sliding-scale with my suggestions.

 

Also, I think it should be done in the form of optional picks, not automatic abilities. I had no problem making STRONG talents for armorless monks, but if someone wants to play a monk in full Plate, I'm not trying to directly rain on his parade; he can pick something else instead.

 

I also believe in uneven trades. Hence DR in exchange for Deflection, and vice versa. Keeps things more interesting and less of a math problem. So really I'm very much against giving DR to monks without armor... Give them Deflection instead. (Even makes more sense from RP perspective.)

 

However, instead of optional talents (even levels), they could be optional abilities (odd levels). Or one each. Whichever.

Edited April 12, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Furok]

Ok, i think alot of people dont realise that Monk's are late bloomer's, unlike Rogue's and FIghter's that has a fast power curve, monk's need alot of gear and talents to get them going.

However if you look at mid game and onwards there's not alot that can compare to a Monk for single target damage.

 

Allow me to embellish abit, Monk need a decent amount of health to get going but you dont really want to dump alot of points into con because constitution scales horrible, so you want to build a 18+ 10 15+ 10 10 10 -ish build, around level 7-8 your hp/level as well as talents means you are around 150 hp's and you got supporting talents like the lesser wounds talent as well as an assortment of other dps abilities, now if you take 25-30 damage hits its not the end of the world and for each one of these hits you get 3-4 wounds.

This is where the monk starts to outpace the competition, and one big reason for that is that you can fire of 3-4 torments reach / hit you take, and each torments reach will hit 2x for 25-30++ (+50% crush damage on each hit aswell) and turning wheel adds fire damage on top of this as does your additional 20% haste + 25% lightning damage selfbuff (Swift strikes, always lead with this when you decide to start spamming torments!). And its a aoe to boot, and you fire off torments reach faster then any other class can use their abilities.

 

This is just the dps basics, you can focus alot more on cc but the more cc you take the harder it gets to build wounds, the monk is alot like the vanilla fury warrior in another game i wont mention (Slam spam ftw!) aka the more damage you take the more damage you do, its easy to get carried away and overextending but that's why you have a priest with withdraw in the group

 

Monk is by far my personal favorite class when it comes to melee dps.

 

Now the monk struggles for the first 4-5 levels but mid/late game its a monster and even though it requires abit of babysitting even on higher levels i think people base alot of their opinions on the monks first 2-3 levels which is abit of a struggle compared to other melee dps classes.

[kaiki]

Hello

 

I know that balance is still being worked on, devs are still getting a TON of feedback a day about pretty much anything, and this is still a work in progress. But there's one thing that's bothering me, and I posted on a couple of related topics about it, but no one seemed to pitch in, and I figured maybe it was just overlooked or something.

 

So even with the bugs, and balancing issues, I really love this game. My only real problem is the current state of monks, and I was wondering maybe I'm the only one feeling that way. Monks are my favorite RPG class. I always picture them in my mind as these awesome martial arts guys, in light / no armor, kicking and punching faces, dodging / soaking hits in a decent manner.

But in this game, they really didn't live up to my expectations. The wounds system sounds awesome on paper, but you have to get hit for it to work. Now, I can theoretically run a monk with full plate armor, but it doesn't feel like it fits the class theme, or the way I picture them in my mind, and running with light / no armor gets me killed too quickly. I can avoid getting hit, but then there's no interactive play to it without wounds.

 

I'd really love it if they had some innate per-level damage reduction, for example starting at 3 DR, and reaching 9 or 10 at max level, so they are roughly equal to a breastplate. [Only when not wearing armor of course]. Maybe a boost to endurance, so they can soak the same damage as an equal level fighter with medium / heavy armor.

 

Anyone else feels the same way ? Or maybe I'm just picturing them differently than the devs ?

 

[i just want to note, I played with a monk on hard, got as far as Defiance Bay quests and gave up eventually, feeling very weak compared to other melee classes. Went with a balanced attributes, no min-maxing, trying to focus on RP as much as possible. Had 14 constitution]

 

I think this is just an issue of you have a different idea, of what a monk class should be, then the devs. Neither is better or worse, just different.

 

As for them seeming weak, I found monks are tough enough to tank while having the ability to burst down monsters with their wound powered powers. They aren't a class where each fight requires lots of active ability usage, like ciphers or wizards, but they don't need to. If you want a through monk build & battle tactics I'd be happy to get into that.

[Matt516]

Monks are absolutely godlike. My monk has over double the damage dealt of any of my other characters (save the PC since the personal tab reset bug prevents me from comparing them directly), and that's while wearing full plate armor (sanguine plate for the frenzy). By the time you get transcendent suffering 4, fists have +12 Accuracy (superb) and +9.3 or so damage (better than superb by a huge margin). Their fists beat any other fast weapon in the game, hands down (pun intended). Couple that with the hilarious attack speed buffs they get, as well as the stuns/prone on demand... Monks are crazy good.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Matt516

[peddroelm]

the accuracy from trancendent suffering does :

 

not matter for:

-flaggelant's path (since nothing except char level affects its chance to hit)

 

not work for (most monk special attack to Hit checks) unlike +accuracy on actual weapons (up to -23 accuracy vs specific enemy types AUCH!!) :

- force of anquish (prone)

- stunning blows (stun)

- torment's reach AOE

- enervating blows (weaken)

- rooting pain AOE

 

On top of that, endgame unique superb weapons can get extra enchatments like lash, annihilation, drain , coordinating .. Dual fist loses by a significant margin to endgame unique weapons .. Significant ..

 

////////////////

On topic - monks rule - this is what I use http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/79701-looking-for-a-detailed-monk-build-dps-off-tank/?do=findComment&comment=1694269

Edited May 27, 2015 by peddroelm

[JONNIN]

Well, there are two things going on here.  First, you are imposing your concept of a monk onto this game universe a bit.   Here, a monk is a guy that turns incoming damge into outgoing damage and who can, if he so desires, fight without weapons.    He might also wear full plate mail and haul a 2h axe around. 

 

second.. Armor ... you may need to use something heavier at low levels.  Before the end of act 1,  actually not to long after entering defiance bay, you should be able to score a set of exceptional leather armor, which is good enough to take a monk all the way to the end of the game.   Before you find that, you may have to use a breastplate or such.    If you do not want to use heavy armor early on,  dual wield hatchets until you get to DB and find a suitable light armor.   He could even fight with fist and shield, or hatchet and shield, for a bit.   A heavy shield is not very martial-arts but a buckler type (goes around your wrist and is the size of a dinner plate or so) would flow just fine and make sense in a world where blocking a sword with your arm is unwise.   There is this hat in the first zone that helps tank...

 

Once a monk has high DR (and modest deflection) you have a high dps tank.  They are extremely good but finding the right set of gear for one is more challenging than for other classes like fighters.   Finding the right deflection value is also useful, just enough to not get destroyed and not so much that you don't get any wounds.

[Shevek]

Monks are currently awesome. They do not need to be altered.

[Hillbillyden]

The Monk was always my favorite pnp and even BG style games type character. I had to pass on them for POE for all the reasons people mentioned but basically it boils down to the devs idea of a monk versus mine and seemingly every other rpg + the vast majority of fantasy fiction since the dawn of time.

 

Not being a min/maxer, I just can't get around the whole martial artist hand to hand specialist that requires and desires taking damage and not avoiding it. This just seems a far more applicable approach to some kinda masochistic tank subclass.

[Hillbillyden]

Monks are currently awesome. They do not need to be altered.

If this is the case for you then that's fine but a bunch of other people would like a different ... theme. Even if they add another more traditional Monk class or subclass then I would probably buy it as an dl, if offered.