[Class Build] The Juggernaut - a heavy armored Monk

[KDubya]

Juggernaut 3.0 - Work in Progress

 

What is the Juggernaut at its essence? - Damage and durability. I distilled the Juggernaut down to its essence and built for 3.0. This is what I have:

 

Boreal Dwarf, Living Lands, Colonist

 

Might - 21 - Since the Juggernaut uses fists there are not many damage adds such as what weapons get. This makes Might a larger influence, percentage wise.

Con - 17 - Everything else goes here. A large endurance and health pool is what drives the whole durability aspect of the build

Dex - 10 - Any buffs you can get are great as you won't be getting to zero recovery

Per - 10 - changed from original, added more Might and Con. Hitting is not a problem and you do not need crits.

Int - 10 - easily buffed by an item and food to 14+

Res - 10 - thought of dropping for intellect but scared of the concentration loss and I hate taking potions

 

level one - Swift Strikes - lasts for ten seconds, more helpful than a single torment's

 

level two - Lightning Strikes - extra lash damage

 

level three - Torment's Reach - what you will spend most wounds on

 

level four - Peasant Focus - more accuracy

 

level five - Force of Anguish - changed from original. I spend wounds as fast as I can so Turning Wheel was wasted. FoA is great to knock a few guys down while you concentrate on

one at a time. On demand 10+ second prone is stellar.

 

level six - Two weapon style - more speed = more damage

 

level seven - Duality of mortal presence - usually set to defense as its CC that gets you killed

 

level eight - Vulnerable Attack - fast attacking fists benefit a lot from this

 

level nine - Crucible of Suffering - +10 to all defenses

 

level ten - Savage Attack - fists can't be enchanted so any damage add is great

 

level eleven - Flagellant's Path - become the Juggernaut

 

level twelve - Apprentice Sneak Attack - again any damage add is great

 

level thirteen - Dichotomous Soul - summons the Twins. It has been reduced from 20 to 15 seconds but still really good. The summons have huge amounts of endurance and can soak up a lot of damage.

 

Alternate level thirteen - Iron Wheel for extra DR or Enervating Blows for the debuff

 

level fourteen - Either a defense buff like Bull's Will or Bear's Fortitude or Wound Binding. A 40% health heal is huge when you have a health pool 2500+ Veterans Recovery is also viable

 

level fifteen - Resonant Touch - with a little micro you can get a lot out of this

 

Alternate level fifteen - Iron Wheel for extra DR or Enervating Blows for the debuff

 

level sixteen -  Either a defense buff like Bull's Will or Bear's Fortitude or Wound Binding. A 40% health heal is huge when you have a health pool 2500+, Veterans Recovery is also viable

 

 

 

Items -  really depends on what your team is made up of. For boots the +4 dex ones add more dps than the special monk sandals. The priorities are defense buffs, con, might and dex.

 

Armor - heavy is best early to mid game. When your endurance pool is large enough you can try swapping to lighter faster armors, really depends on your team.

 

Running this on PotD with a four man team of Juggernaut, Pellagina (hammer and shield), Kana (sword and shield), and Devil (Flail (starcaller) and shield (spell thrust one)) The higher Might and higher Con make a big difference in damage output and survivability compared to the original Juggernaut build. The changes to Survival also make a big difference

Edited April 10, 2016 by KDubya

[Boeroer]

Finally! FoA!

[KDubya]

Finally! FoA!

 

With a six man team it was easy enough that I did not see the usefulness of proning a few guys for a long time. Now with a four man team it is much more helpful and required. If surrounded I can prone a few to lower the incoming damage, or even prone a guy to break engagement to reposition to line up a better Torment's.

 

With the new improved Chanter Regen it could even be beneficial to take Veteran's Recovery to go with the huge Might. At level 16 Kana's two regen aura are good for like 9.8 endurance for 67 seconds. With a 21 Might Veteran's Recovery gets you another 9.3 endurance. All in that's 19.1 for 45 seconds and 9.8 for the next 22 seconds, something like 355 endurance regen without any healing. Add in some Shod in Faith and you are not going down - you're Wolverine

 

I'm even toying with the idea of skipping the Twins and Resonant Touch, replace with Enervating Blows for the de-buff and Iron Wheel for the extra DR. In my first run through White March II Zahua did not get a lot of use out of the ability, maybe 50-60 damage against one guy as I tend to kill them one at a time instead of hit everyone a few times. Maybe some sort of Long Fist ranged Monk could spread the pain around better.

 

The Twins take a long time to summon and don't last as long as they used to. Might be better to skip the summon and spend the eight wounds on a few FoA to thin the pack or a few Flagellant's to debuff and line them all up for rapid fire Torment's spam. Going with Iron Wheel would also let you go lighter on the armor and get out your damage faster.

[dainbramage]

 

Although it still doesn't act completely like carnage (Weakening from Enervating Blows, Dazed from Glittering Gloves and bonus damage from Turning Wheel do apply only to the main target), you gotta check the damage it deals...

 

Also in case you are not aware: link

Yeah... something's not right in PoE at the moment. Double ACC malus from Savage Attack, Thrust of Tattered Veils procs twice, and now I discovered that Iconic Projection hits multiple times while it passes the enemy/allies. It not only does it's described damage/healing, but a lot more. If the target is big (Spidr Queen, Ogres and the like) they get hit up to 6 times with it. I can't say I saw that in former game versions - prior to 3.0. They screwed up some core mechanic or something.

 

 

Pretty much all on crit effects seem to be proccing twice.

 

As for iconic projection, the target doesn't need to be large. I had zahua take 200 damage from a single projection (he got hit something like 20 times) a couple of days ago.

[Boeroer]

Yeah - but if the target is larger it eats even more hits. Right atm that spell is totally overpowered.  

[Anaeme]

Cannot decide whether to chose Scion of Flame for the 20% stack with Turning Wheel

 

or

 

Just choose Apprentice Sneak Attack for circumstantial damage...

[Elric Galad]

On endgame, Apprentice sneak is not so circunstancial. 20% more damages on 50% lash is only about 10% damages, and having 10 wounds seem much more circonstancial than sneak attack. Snake attack bonus does apply to transcendant suffering bonus damage in 3.02.

 

Scion of flame does apply to dichotomous soul fire clone, scrolls and gives 5DR to fire. Not too bad but I'll take Sneak attack.

[Blunderboss]

Elemental Talents only shine when you have something with elemental Base Damage , some heavy number spells or Biitercut or Firebrand

Im more and more convinced that if you take Apprentice Sneak Attack at level 10+ when your party has ton of spells to debuff with you get free 15% of damage

Edited May 2, 2016 by Blunderboss

[KDubya]

Even just simply flanking the target gets you the extra +15% damage. I'd get Apprentice Sneak Attack.

 

With Juggernaut 3.0 at level 13 still have not taken Turning Wheel, took Force of Anguish instead at level 5 and it has been good. I don't use it often but when I do it is nice to have a 10+ second prone whenever I need it. Last ability to pick is coming up at level 15 and it will be between Turning Wheel, Enervating Blows and Iron Wheel.

 

The jacked up regen chants from Chanters are really nice. With the base 17 Constitution (effectively 25 with Gift of Machine, Durance sacrifice, +2 food and a +3 item) you have a huge endurance pool that will be full (no red) but still have 10 wounds.

 

Another big change is that I've changed to wearing lighter armor, wearing the Superb Hide armor with the stun protection and before that the Padded Armor with the +survival skill. The increased attack speed is noticeable and the bigger endurance pool combined with the regen keeps you in the fight better than the higher DR from plate ever did. At low levels heavy is the way to go but once your endurance pool is big enough swap to lighter armor.

 

The team with Juggernaut 3.0 is only four guys, PotD, with Kana, Pellagina and Devil. So far just tearing it up.

[Stasis_Sword]

Are the monk only accessories (Sandals of the Forgotten Friar, Blood Testament) worth using?

 

Any other equipment recommendation for the 3.0 build?

[Boeroer]

If you like to accumulate wounds with Turning and Iron Wheel then I'd recommend the gloves. 20% raw damage (if you have 10 wounds) is better than a normal lash. Maybe Gauntlets of Swift Action are better for dps (don't know for sure), but you have to find them first.

 

The sandals are not monk-only. Everybody can wear them. One of my unarmed cipher twins uses them. If you're a fist fighter I'd recommend them. Not only because they add +2 base damage (which gets multiplied by the dmg mods), but also the nice ACC spell with the hughe radius that's on them. 

[KDubya]

Are the monk only accessories (Sandals of the Forgotten Friar, Blood Testament) worth using?

 

Any other equipment recommendation for the 3.0 build?

 

It depends on what else your team is wearing and what is available.

 

The sandals add some damage which can be good but if it is these or to use Shod in Faith I'd go with Shod in Faith. With your low deflection but high endurance you are optimal for taking a crit and activating the healing aura from Shod-in-Faith. Another good choice are the ones with the +4 dexterity, they'll add more DPS than the sandals.

 

For gloves the raw damage ones are OK. I usually use wounds fairly quickly so if I average five wounds they'd add +10% raw lash, around +3-4 per hit. The vambraces with the +3 DR bypass would do about the same but not need any wounds. I'd opt for the DR bypass ones. The Mourning gloves with all of the on kill effects are nice as well, more healing and defenses whenever you kill are very good. The +15% attack speed ones are also always useful, especially since you can't durgan enchant your fists. This makes the gloves one of the only ways to increase your speed beyond Swift Strikes.

 

I'm going with lighter armor this time and it has helped the damage output while not really changing the durability aspect much. I use the +2 Survival Jack of waters pajamas for sleeping and the Wayfarer's Hide for battle. They start with superb and the extra defense is nice. Another option is Maneha's armor with the extra healing or the superb Golden Scales. The Wael robes with the mirror image on crit could be good as well but the DR is low and you'd need to enchant up to Superb or beyond with scarce resources.

 

For a helm I'm going with the cowardly Garodh's Chorus with the Might and the defense buff.

 

Rings are protection and bartenders. I try to remember to swap bartenders when spirits and vessels are not around but I forget a lot.

 

Belt is just a plain +3 Constitution at the moment. The extra health and endurance serve as a big reservoir to draw on with the massive regen and healing from +60% resting, Shod-in Faith, Veteran's Recovery, the two Chanter regen auras and the on kill heals from the gloves. Juggernaut 3.0 just does not die. Four man PotD just finished WM 1 and has never been KO'd.

[prototype00]

Query: Love the build and might start a playthroughs with it. However, is it not worth the cost to be more leader-y? (Ie, have slightly higher Resolve, possibly perception?)

[Stasis_Sword]

Query: Love the build and might start a playthroughs with it. However, is it not worth the cost to be more leader-y? (Ie, have slightly higher Resolve, possibly perception?)

 

How much of a min/max gamer are you? The attribute allocation for this build is optimal for it's goals (receiving and dealing damage). With that said if taking 2 points from might and 4 points from con to boost perception by 6 makes you happy by all means do it. The character will still be viable and it's your character/game after all.

[KDubya]

Query: Love the build and might start a playthroughs with it. However, is it not worth the cost to be more leader-y? (Ie, have slightly higher Resolve, possibly perception?)

 

As Stasis_Sword said above the Juggernaut 3.0 focuses on that which makes the Juggernaut the juggernaut, namely Max Might and High Con. Even then everything else is still at base 10.

 

My thoughts on the dialogue opened up by stats is that it is nice flavoring but not essential. For Perception the cape with +3 is pretty early to get, add in some food and you are at an easy 15 Perception. If you need more you need the Card Nua resting bonus for another +3 to get 18.

 

Resolve can get up to 16 with resting and a +3 ring, 19 is achievable with some expensive Dragon food. Other than a few dialogues, Resolve does not help this build. You would not want to dump it due to getting interrupted from a bad concentration, but getting hit is not a problem and is actually required. With a high Might fueled regen, Shod in Faith boots, combined with two Chanter regens and a high base Con you can Health tank any fight. A little bit more deflection means nothing.

[prototype00]

Noted. Thanks for the replies, everyone. While story stuff might be a minor concern next to KILL EVERYTHING, it is nice to take into consideration for a completionist playthrough.

[prototype00]

Have been playing around with this build with a Moon Godlike. Doing great so far! Couple more questions:

 

I get the impression that Pallegina might be more useful than Eder (with Tidefall eventually) with this character tanking with his face?

 

Early game CC is about this characters only weakness, anything I can do to help that?

 

What skills are the best? Right now I am just rushing survival.

 

Thanks!

[dambros]

I have some questions:

 

1- Since you have to get hit, won't you end up resting a lot due to low health (not endurance)? Speacially with lighters armor and low DR.

 

2- Can you use AI for this build or does is requirres heavy micro? If AI is ok, which options?

Edited July 2, 2016 by dambros

[Boeroer]

For 1:: That's why monks have a much bigger health pool (with the same CON) than fighters or paladins. If you balance it right you will not rest much mroe often than with other frontliners. A little bit more CON does add a lot of health because the base health is already high and CON adds +5% per point.

[KDubya]

I have some questions:

 

1- Since you have to get hit, won't you end up resting a lot due to low health (not endurance)? Speacially with lighters armor and low DR.

 

2- Can you use AI for this build or does is requirres heavy micro? If AI is ok, which options?

 

1.) Like Boereor said having a high Con makes the issue go away. I would not go with less than a 15 base and more is better. Sacrificing Durance and the gift from the machine gets you the equivalent of like an extra 3 con and 15% health, or endurance, either way more of a big number is what you want.

 

Look at it like this Plate armor has 14 DR and hide has 7 DR. With the knights quest you get +2, Exceptional is +8 and Superior is +12, paladin Zealous Endurance gets you +3 and some drink gets you another +2. With Exceptional Plate you get 29 DR, with Superior Hide you get 24 DR (I use exceptional Plate as there are not any Superior Plate available while there is a nice Superior Hide available early in White march). This is 17% less, with just +3 Con you'll have +15% endurance and health that works against all damage. Think of your high Con as a sort of universal armor, plus you'll have faster attacks.

 

2.) Zahua has stats that makes a nice Juggernaut, not as good as a focused build will have with regards to damage output and the main character perks, but still does a fine job. For the AI I use  the aggressive setting and it does a fine job of banging out Torment's Reach. Sometimes it is slow to refresh Swift Strikes so you'll need to watch that. The other abilities the AI does not activate so you have complete control of when, where and who you use Flagellant's Path or Force of Anguish on. Which is what you want anyway. I would not use the Disabler AI as it tends to just get you hit a lot from disengagement attacks, much better to either prone your surrounding foes with FoA and run to the back or just Flagellant's Path right to the offending Wizard in the backline.

[prototype00]

I wonder if with Iron Wheel, you can start wearing lighter armours? I mean with the 10 extra DR, potentially, suits like Vengiatta Rugia start to become really attractive for the damage...

[KDubya]

I wonder if with Iron Wheel, you can start wearing lighter armours? I mean with the 10 extra DR, potentially, suits like Vengiatta Rugia start to become really attractive for the damage...

 

Actually once you get a good sized endurance and health pool you can start lightening up the armor. Getting iron wheel definitely makes it viable to go lighter. When you add in the massive regen you can get from Veteran's Recovery and the two Chanter auras you end up as Wolverine, you just won't go down and the faster attack speed of lighter armor helps tremendously. I'd still go with Brigandine or Plate until level six or so, it makes a huge difference early. Buying the Brigandine from the caravan merchant is a game changer.

 

In my Juggernaut 3.0 run I went with the Superior Hide Armor from the first area in White March. It had a nice defensive boost and the Superior grade made up for a bunch of the difference from Exceptional Plate. Manneha's Armor would also be nice with the healing bonus.

[Boeroer]

Iron Wheel = one of my favorites.

 

BUT: thicker armor is especially good at the early game. And you can feel the difference immediately. That is because you put a flat damage reduction as protection on top of a small endurance/health pool. So let's say you have 12 DR from plate and 50 endurance. Your DR will be nearly 25% of your endurance. If you get hit and only 2 MIN damage make it through (instead of 12) you can take 25 hits before you go down. Without armor it's only 5 hits (almost only 4). So that is a huge effect. It's like having 300 endurance instead of 50 (250 damage catched by DR and 50 endurance). That's six times your endurance as a "virtual" pool. Later on your endurance will climb to very high levels while your DR can't keep up with that.

When you add additional "virtual" endurance like regenration and other healing, DR starts to look even more unimportant at higher levels.

Even 30 DR are only 7,5% of 400 endurance (which a monk can reach easily with high CON). And MIN damage from enemies is also higher. It's still useful for characters with low endurance pools, but monks can easily wear lighter armor without loosing too much sturdiness. THat's also a reason why barbs with even max CON are so squishy at the beginning (and many players dump them then) but grow into great meat shields later on. Iron Wheel on the other hand is quite useful because it doesn''t slow you down and will give you lots of wounds when you need them (when you have none) but will protect you once you collect more and more wounds. It has a good synergy with Turning Wheel, Blood Testment Gloves and Rooting Pain: when you have 10 wounds you don't want to take any more damage. Since you can't prevent that completely the automatic adaption of Iron Wheel's DR is a good thing.  

Edited July 8, 2016 by Boeroer

[Kazuma]

Though it's obvious I didn't think there'd be as big of difference in terms of damage taken with this build compared to a pally. I don't know what I expected given that 10 wounds = 100 endurance. That said the damage with even auto-attacks on Zahua is better than what I'm getting on anybody else in the party. Might have to do with dual wielding, speed, accuracy, and ultimately how hard he tends to hit. vs everyone else using weapon and shield

 

Does take some micromanaging for sure and I quickly moved Shod-in-faith to Zahua. I think my go to strat will be putting my two pally's on either side of him and the chanter behind him in any instance I can't use a choke point. If he gets surrounded he can quickly fall even with the boots. But spamming Torment's works PDQ. Only lvl 8 atm so it'll probably get better further in survivability wise.

[Climhazzard]

Iron wheel synergizes incredibly well with monk mechanics.  You can run him on point and the enemy alpha strike will immediately put him at 10 wounds, at that point he'll be very tanky due to iron wheel.  With items like shod in faith and hunter's mail, he'll be back to full endurance by the time aggro spreads out and he'll then be able to go to town on everything in sight.  I especially like using flagellant's path and long pain, so he can be everywhere and hit everywhere.

 

Props to the developer that thought of iron wheel.  Highly recommend it to monks that want to fight neck deep in their enemies.  Healing, DR, and "other" defenses (reflexes, fortitude, will), are the best defenses for a monk; and iron wheel gives the monk as much DR as he needs to survive, or as little as he needs to accumulate more wounds.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Climhazzard