The monk is finally starting to grow on me...

[Benedictous]

I always thought the Monk was pretty sub-par, low damage, takes a lot of damage, can't multi-engage, by design needs almost every stat at 20. No neat items changing their fist damage types.

 

But after 2.0....every time I design a party it just keeps slipping itself in there. Now everyone takes damage, so you mise well get Wounds from it. Monsters break engage anyways so whats the point of multi-engaging.  Rogues are really squishy, so why not take the sub-par damage for surviving, heck the monk actually discourages microing with AI because you want that sucker surrounded.

 

And what are you going to replace him with? a Chanter? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[KDubya]

I don't see the sub par damage with my Monk, granted he is not a Wizard but I'd say he is top of the melee classes. As you say a Rogue is too squishy, and a Barbarian will out damage a Monk but will not have near the defenses.

 

Fists are faster and do more damage than other weapons. At level 12 I tested a monk with fists against a guy with a Superb, Kith slaying, great Sword with a lash. Just auto attacks, no abilities and they dropped their identical targets within a few swings of each other. It was a tavern brawl so only health damage counted and the targets had 1600+ health.

 

With a 20+ Might, 16+ Con, in Sanguine Plate and Shod in Faith boots he is a destroyer. Take the Duality and the better defenses after attacked ability and your defenses are comparable to a Paladin, no stun lock or paralyze for you Maybe one Monk gets locked down with a graze but the other is exacting vengeance on the fish people.

 

Throw in AoE damage from Torment's Reach, Speed boost and Lightning lash from Lightning Strikes and the cool AoE debuffing zipping through the lines that is Flagellent's Path and it is total ownage.

 

And if you ever need to slow down the wounds you can just swap Duality for +8 deflection, swap a small Superb shield in for +20 deflection, or even another +6 with the Weapon & Shield talent.

[Boeroer]

And/or take Iron Wheel for growing DR with each wound which makes you supertanky when you need it without slowing you down. Use the lvl 13 duplicates together with some spell binding items that are good for melee (Alacrity armor, Mirrored Image Cape and so on) to get two buddies that have unlimited uses of these spells and do tons of elemental damage. My lvl 13 monk just walzed the adra dragon alone. Force of Anguish is also a great ability for long time CC.

[dusklight]

What's wrong with a chanter?

 

Rooting pain with high perception is really good.

[FlintlockJazz]

So how do monks play out in practice then?  Are they best unarmed and unarmoured like they were originally intended or can they be sensible and have weapons and armour without screwing themselves up?

[Boeroer]

I'm using robes when I'm not abusing the spellbind/duplicate thing and it's working. When you don't run into the middle of the mob that is. Instead I engage the clustered enemies from the sides, using Torment's Reach to spread the damage. When you get Iron Wheel you can even tank with robes. I use fists but keep a set of weapons with another damage type (spears) available because there are some immune enemies. Some have very high crush DR. And you can get some nice Spears in the game - like Cladiwhatever with stunning enchantment vor draining etc. and also Danyula (speed) vor Rizzeti's Thorn, which is valiant, if I recall correctly. But that's just for backup, since fists are superfast and do more damage than sabres in high lvls.

[Boeroer]

Ah - and Apprentice's Sneak attack (together with "vicious" items) combined with Enervating Blows is also great.

[Ymarsakar]

The super high dps shock monks that attack on the flanks or behind enemy lines, tend to wear medium or light armor. I like to use full plate on my monk, as then have him pull the enemy. He gets lots of wounds that way and because he's always hitting enemies, it's not hard for him to draw attention that way. A paladin's lay on hands and reinforcing exhortation is needed to keep him alive without a priest though, at times.

 

Savage attack for -5 accuracy is also pretty good, since paladin aura zealous focus gives +6. Not a lot of stuff buffs base damage bonuses.

 

Dual wield, peasant focus, penetrating, savage blow, on top of torment's reach is very good dps.

 

Duality, iron wheel, and some other stuff makes him tougher as well.

 

The two things that probably helped the most with the monk's tactical contribution to my party, is the paladin buffs to the speed and per encounter usage of lay on hands and the introduction of the new AI that allows auto use of wounds.

 

A chanter increases the monk's dps further and also aoe paralyzes in a cone.

 

Swift strikes + lightning upgrade + torment's reach + fire lash.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[Torm51]

The super high dps shock monks that attack on the flanks or behind enemy lines, tend to wear medium or light armor. I like to use full plate on my monk, as then have him pull the enemy. He gets lots of wounds that way and because he's always hitting enemies, it's not hard for him to draw attention that way. A paladin's lay on hands and reinforcing exhortation is needed to keep him alive without a priest though, at times.

 

Savage attack for -5 accuracy is also pretty good, since paladin aura zealous focus gives +6. Not a lot of stuff buffs base damage bonuses.

 

Dual wield, peasant focus, penetrating, savage blow, on top of torment's reach is very good dps.

 

Duality, iron wheel, and some other stuff makes him tougher as well.

 

The two things that probably helped the most with the monk's tactical contribution to my party, is the paladin buffs to the speed and per encounter usage of lay on hands and the introduction of the new AI that allows auto use of wounds.

 

A chanter increases the monk's dps further and also aoe paralyzes in a cone.

 

Swift strikes + lightning upgrade + torment's reach + fire lash.

Too bad Lightning upgrade and Turning Wheel don't stack :-/ not sure if that's a bug or on purpose.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Torm51

[Boeroer]

Has to be a bug. It's stupid!

[Ymarsakar]

Does swift lightning not stack with Turning due to too many lash effects on screen or it just doesn't work period together?

[Boeroer]

Heh? I don't get exactly what you mean but in the combat log you either see turning wheel's burn damage OR lightning strikes' shock damage. Turning Wheel get's overridden if you trigger swifts. It's only visible in the combat log.

[Ymarsakar]

Okay, then it just always bugs out all the time, no situations where they work at the same time. Before I was wondering if it was a bug that only showed up in certain situations, that is what I meant.

[Boeroer]

I think it's always the case. Never saw them working together. Blood Testament and Turning Wheel do stack though. So it's not a matter of "there are too many damage modifiers".

Edited September 25, 2015 by Boeroer

[Torm51]

I think it's always the case. Never saw them working together. Blood Testament and Turning Wheel do stack though. So it's not a matter of "there are too many damage modifiers".

Lets report it! Maybe its intended but lets find out.

[Boeroer]

I did some time ago. But it certainly wouldn't hurt if some other players would do it as well.

[dusklight]

I'm pretty sure lightning strikes 25% damage and turning wheel stack. It says so in the combat log, the numbers add up correctly. Just tried today.

[Boeroer]

Heh? Which patch? In 2.01 it doesn't work for me. Either burn XOR shock damage. They never add up for me.

[Ymarsakar]

2.02 beta is out on steam right now, that might be it.

[Boeroer]

Cool! Maybe they fixed it. That would be awesome and boost the monk's DPS.

[rheingold]

Yup, I must say that for the first time ever I'm actually enjoying playing a monk. Still not necessarily my favourite, traditionally I've always gone for rogue, ranger, Druid or Paladins, and never ever monks. But the pillars monk is a different beast to ye old d&d monk it's a really cool class. Major problem though is the character creation screen. It's now becoming really difficult to choose.

[Boeroer]

Tehehe.

 

I think the PoE monk is the most powerful class overall. He has very good, long lasting single target CC, lots of (aoe) damage, can summon at higher levels, can be very tanky and can run very fast. And this starts at level one. To be honest the monk was the only class with which I managed to slaughter the caravan at the beginning of the game (without cheesing). From time to time, before an encounter, I save and then send only one of my chars into the fight just to see how he/she performs solo. And the monk is (most of the time) the only one who will not only win the battle but also win it quite fast. You can achieve the best balance between survivability, cc and damage with him. The only other class that can pull this off is the wizard with defensive buffs. But he's very weak at the beginning and without his per-rest-buffs. Every other class always fails to kill a big group of mobs because it either does not enough damage to win the battle, has not enough defenses and dies quickly or has no possibility to do some good (and enough) cc. I'm talking about "normal builds" that are not meant for soloing. Of course you can built any class into a good solo char with extreme builds and equipment.

 

The only thing that keeps me from playing monks more often: the enormous amount of micromanagement. You have to pause a lot to get the best out of the monk.