Monk or Rogue's are 'supposed' to be my fav class, but just aren't...

[QuiteGoneJin]

I love evasive, fast, active melee characters. Evasion, stealth, flourishes and alpha striking are my thing. Also anything with lots of actives and not too much reliance on auto attacking. I do not like ranged much no matter how effective it is I find it hard to play a caster or ranged character for long in any game.

 

PoE stealth is just too clunky and situational for me and they lack anything to make up for it, and I downright hate the idea of having to be someone an enemy can never engage. Having my beefier friend take the hits for me while I stab you in the back is just not ... cool?

 

I like the escape ability and early to mid game-play with the strikes for melee rogues, ranged rogues work well but as I said, can't hold my attention.

 

Sidenote; I think tyranny did a good job by shoring up defenses with talents that make one defense cover 2 types of attacks. Made it great to be a dodgy or parry type without being too weak.

 

I spend hours theory crafting and reading the builds of my betters, and spamming pm questions to them (thanks Boeroer for your patience these past few months!) just hoping with the right abilities, build and items I could come up with a build. Possibly a beefier rogue (please dont ask me to go shield and weapon rogue, ewe ewe ewe) with items that give fighter like actives is an avenue I should peruse.... but nothing has hit home yet.

 

Monks, they should be perfect for me, but I just can't manage my wounds. Either I never get them and then am autoing which I hate, or I spend too much effort trying to keep my frontline monk alive. The Anvil build seemed the right way to go but I think it is better for solo when you are being focused more. Either way its always feast or famine when I play the monk and I have a suspicion I'm not the only one. 

 

the story, nostalgia from my DnD PnP and BG days, and the discovery of the world keep me in PoE more then anything, but I am sincerely hoping for some melee love in the future.

 

 

On the polar opposite side Tyranny seemed to have everything I love, till I realized how brokenly easy the magic crafting and no friendly fire made the game, and a story that just ended abruptly when the game should have been at the 70% mark made me never go back. 

 

 

When I played the BG games I remember thinking, 'this is it, this is my new DnD', I was right, and sunk eons into it. 

 

When I played PoE I thought, 'this is it, this is my new BG', 1300 hours later I love the game still but not the combat nor the char creation (I just can't make the melee MC I want to RP) so much. 

 

When I played Tyranny I thought, 'this is it, my new PoE', till the game mechanics became obviously easy to break the game, the companions didn't seem to matter so much outside of combat and then the story ended 15 hours too early. 

 

 

good god I am picky, I should have went into video game design.   /endrat

 

 

 

Edit: on the plus side, multiclassing will probably make me a happy happy man. 

Edited February 11, 2017 by QuiteGoneJin

[Niclole]

I don't really find melee in general lacking in Pillars.  Like you Im a melee heavier player, always have been.  Things like mages and archers and druids were never my thing. Give me a single sword and a pistol and call it a day. I love archetypes like the battlefield commander, knights, fencers, pirates (single sabre + pistol fighter is still one of my favorite play throughs). 

I know a lot of players play the "shooty shoot" style with a large number of ranged characters, its boring to me.  My current playthrough is Single Mace Priest of Skaen PC with a Great Sword/Pike Barbarian, a Pollaxe/Warbow Chanter, Sword/Shield Fighter, Wizard (meh), and cipher with Stormcaller/Sabres).  At most my parties usually consist of 1 ranged weapon user and a caster, the rest are all primarily melee with ranged weapons in the event of a choke point.

One thing I'll say is I've always disliked rogues in almost every game I've played. In Pillars I find them quite alright, the only real problem I have with rogue is the two levels where its like "Oh...10% crit conversion...vs all this other stuff...yeah well seems a no brainer doesn't it?". Other than that I've never really had any problems with rogues, unlike you I don't find the stealth system particularly poor nor do I find Rogues to squishy/non defensive. They aren't fighters and they aren't barbarians but if you pick the right targets the rogue tends to hold their own fine in 1v1 engagements.  

If anything the thing I hate most in pillars is Weapon Focus.  Im still sad we can't just pick three weapons. In some of my builds usually end up picking two focus talents just cause I like themes and some of the themes dont work with just one focus.

 

All of this said I tend to play builds with higher con than most other players and it makes the game more enjoyable for me. I don't get the whole "Stack resolve, stack deflection!" mantra I see a lot of the times around the net. I get its a pretty powerful stat when stacked heavily, but I have yet to have any problems on PotD with my current party.  A few wipes here and there that were largely due to tactical errors or not casting "Immune to the Status Effect That you Need to Cast to Win this fight". Even melee heavy I find it fairly straight forward.

 

One thing I will say is early on in the game every class feels squishy to me, I don't know how far you've taken your rogue or monk builds, Im assuming quite far with all your play time but you might also be an altaholic since i dont know you. My Skaen priest, that felt squishy and pointless early on now just wades into battle after casting Aggrandizing Radiance (the only buff I use mostly) and just goes to town with a single mace (no shield) and average deflection.  She just wails away and its over, barely ever taking a scratch as long as she doesn't get surrounded by 3+ enemies.

Anyways, I agree there are things in Pillars that could use work and Rogues are lack luster in my opinion (for different reasons than you listed).  Mostly for me its the "crit conversion abilities (boring but too powerful to skip imo) and lack of tactical versatility due to subpar weapon focus talents imo (again of my builds I neither take a weapon focus nor a style bonus and tend to do just fine or I pick multiple). The second one applies to most classes I find anyways, but it always bugs me most when Im building rogues.

Be safe, have a good day and I hope you find a way to love the class you love!

P.S.; My favorite class is fighter, the one everyone says is boring.  I find you can do so much with this class.

 

P.S.S. (edit) I forgot to mention the monk which I find really fun and interesting in Pillars, more so than most other monks Ive played. The wounds system can be a bit iffy from time to time, and clunky.  Some fights you struggle to generate wounds and others its "Where'd all these wounds come from". But for the majority of the time I've played monks I them just as fun to me as my other favorite classes: Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin.

 

Edited February 11, 2017 by Niclole

[rheingold]

Not sure which builds you have been following. But have you tried heavy armour with a monk? I find that brigandine or plate is pretty much a must for most of the game. It prevents the monk from taking too many wounds too quickly. Also max constitution is important.

[Niclole]

Not sure which builds you have been following. But have you tried heavy armour with a monk? I find that brigandine or plate is pretty much a must for most of the game. It prevents the monk from taking too many wounds too quickly. Also max constitution is important.

Along this line if you dont like your monks/rogues using "heavy stuff" for RP reasons I find breast plates feel like a nice rp solution.  I dont like rogues and monks in plate, feels "wrong".  But the breastplate seems like something I could reasonably see a rogue/monk picking up.  Again it depends on what you are rping really, but you said you like "light nimble, dodgy types", so I'd imagine heavy armor might take away from that feel.

[the streaker]

The enemy's aggression typically goes on the first & closest character they see, so just send in your monk first and you should never be lacking wounds. Then buff the monk up with decent armor and spells, and you should be good to go. On my last run, my monk topped the party in total damage done, very impressive class.

For the rogue, if you're having trouble keeping them alive, best bet is to use a pike and hit from behind the front line.

[KDubya]

The big problem is expectations based on previous games and names of classes.

 

The name "Monk" makes one think of an eastern martial artist in light robes. Basically Jet Li, Bruce Lee or similar. This was how "Monks" worked in DnD, and in lots of games like BG2. Instead they should renamed the class "Flagellant" or even "Berzerker" because here they take incoming pain and convert it into outgoing damage. Monks in PoE are more like the Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin, big bruisers that fight better after they take some damage. Once you wrap your mind around a heavily armored berserker who punches stuff, you get a character that is lots of fun and really effective. Its how I came up with the "Juggernaut", my first few attempts were traditional robe wearers and they got slaughtered. 

 

Not a fan of Rogues in any game, here they seem to suffer from the game mechanics basically working against how a Rogue needs to act.

[QuiteGoneJin]

I definitely need to try a higher con build, I don't mind and do often wear heavy armor on monks, probably also need to work on my placement in formation. It wasn't a problem of me trying to make a Shaolin character, that was never the case. Loved dwarven monk/XXX dual classes in Never Winter Nights. 

Edited February 13, 2017 by QuiteGoneJin

[rheingold]

I'd say 17/18 con works well. Even more if you can get it. It''s one of the few stats I ever push for any character - most of the time having 17/18 in a stat is excessive. But constitution for a monk is their resource - just like mana for a caster... It does help having a dedicated tank in the party like a paladin. If you are still having survival issues with the monk send the tank in first otherwise put both of them upfront.

Having said that I tend to run quite heavy melee parties, find it more fun, so having a barbarian, paladin, monk and chanter upfront tends to spread the damage out.