[Class Build] The Glass Tsunami - Monk Edition

[Dr <3]

Oh my. Now I have to build Zahua into a draining machine when I pick him up.

 

I suppose a paladin with FoD would also drain decent endurance from the big lashes? I still want to find a way to make good use of the Rose of Salthollow. It looks so nice... Maybe a draining Bleak Walker would be ok?

 

And I never tried a chanter with a draining weapon plus Mith Fyr and Old Siec. Since I alsways thought Old Siec is weak. But since both Old Siec and Mith Fyr also work with spells and invocations...

Since you are already willingly to test it... What about to add to the mixture fire godlike + scion of flame? Old siec and mith fir both should work with retaliation too... :3

[Boeroer]

Yes, they do. I already tested a chanter retaliation build with Battle Forged and Mith Fyr, but it wasn't terribly effective because of chanter's lowish health pool. Needs tons of potions or Wound Binding (which is only good with a lot of healing bonuses).

 

And it's also difficult to keep him under 50% endurance if you use Ancient Memory/Veteran's Recovery/Beloved Spirits.

 

It also seems to be a bit quirky to get to 50% endurance, then hit with a good amount of Battle Forged retaliation, draining good endurance from all the burn damage and hop over the 50% hurdle, loosing Battle Forged in the process. Maybe a good way to lose a lot of health without using Battle Forged too much.

 

With multiretaliation (retaliation on helm or armor + Supper Plate + Flame Shield) and DR bypass and reduction (Vulnerable Attack, Ryona's Vambraces, Devil in the Pool, Hel Hyraf) it's cool. Or hot... You'd just have to look at the retaliation not as damaging tool but healing tool.

 

One could also try to NOT use all that regeneration and only rely on draining to heal - you'll have more control over the healing/draining for Battle Forged and spare three talents. Hmhmhm... maybe I have to test. 

 

I will def. try out the Bleak Walker with the Rose to see if it's fun to play. Always Tidefall/Rumbalt/BotEP is kind of boring... 

[BlackHat]

So I have this Zahua in a party, was wondering if anyone knows of an item with "infuse with vital essence."  I built him a lot like OPs build, but I'm finding that his health is often so low after every fight that I often have to trek back to an inn/camp way too often.  Maybe not viable for POTD or I'm doing it wrong.  Figure if I can swap on an item and use vital essence right before the combat ends, it might mitigate the drudgery of backtracking, and i really don't want to have to take field triage or wound binding to make it doable.  If not, i'm tanking him and taking back Pallegina, lol.  Big Bird of Burning feels more dangerous at this point, and I don't have to keep camping her after even moderately difficult fights.

[mosspit]

Just craft potion of Infuse with Vital Essence.

[Braven]

So I have this Zahua in a party, was wondering if anyone knows of an item with "infuse with vital essence." I built him a lot like OPs build, but I'm finding that his health is often so low after every fight that I often have to trek back to an inn/camp way too often. Maybe not viable for POTD or I'm doing it wrong. Figure if I can swap on an item and use vital essence right before the combat ends, it might mitigate the drudgery of backtracking, and i really don't want to have to take field triage or wound binding to make it doable. If not, i'm tanking him and taking back Pallegina, lol. Big Bird of Burning feels more dangerous at this point, and I don't have to keep camping her after even moderately difficult fights.

I understand it feels like wasting a talent taking binding wounds, but it really provides a ton of value. It is basically worth several points of CON (10+). No one complains about +15% damage or +5 deflection talents, but those are worth at best 5 stat points; less than half the value binding wounds provides. With high healing modifiers (like from Survival and Might), it is even a bigger difference. This is why lowering CON is better than other stats; it can be more efficently compensated for with a talent (as long as a smaller endurance pool is not a problem; not usually with high endurance-regeneration strategies.)

 

Potions restore something like 50 health each; maybe 100 or so after healing modifers. Binding wounds however can restore hundreds or thousands of health points depending on stats, equipment, and current level. The potions are good early, but bad late game because of the scaling issue.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Braven

[mosspit]

True, but Field Triage and Binding Wounds are also per rest. Poster will still need to head back to rest to recharge those abilities, which he/she is trying to avoid.

 

Also I havent tested this but the healing done by the potion healing should also be improved by modifiers.

 

What I find interesting is that Zahua's CON is actually quite decent. So that character shouldn't need to be rested that often. So the poster might be using Zahua in a way that makes him take more dmg than he needs to. Maybe.

Edited November 5, 2017 by mosspit

[Braven]

True, but Field Triage and Binding Wounds are also per rest. Poster will still need to head back to rest to recharge those abilities, which he/she is trying to avoid.

 

Also I havent tested this but the healing done by the potion healing should also be improved by modifiers.

 

What I find interesting is that Zahua's CON is actually quite decent. So that character shouldn't need to be rested that often. So the poster might be using Zahua in a way that makes him take more dmg than he needs to. Maybe.

Unless you plan to guzzle hundreds of potions, you will need to rest eventually. “Health”, in general, can be thought of as “per rest”. If Binding wounds was per encounter or unlimited use, it would be completely broken since it would render health completely meaningless and provide infinite value. Might as well just have endurance and get rid of the concept of a seperate health pool. High endurance regeneration builds would be crazy good then.

 

Binding wounds provides the best value with high CON (it is just not normally needed since they are not the characters who usually run out of health first or very quickly. I usually only take it if running low CON for this reason).

Edited November 5, 2017 by Braven

[mosspit]

 

True, but Field Triage and Binding Wounds are also per rest. Poster will still need to head back to rest to recharge those abilities, which he/she is trying to avoid.

 

Also I havent tested this but the healing done by the potion healing should also be improved by modifiers.

 

What I find interesting is that Zahua's CON is actually quite decent. So that character shouldn't need to be rested that often. So the poster might be using Zahua in a way that makes him take more dmg than he needs to. Maybe.

Unless you plan to guzzle hundreds of potions, you will need to rest eventually. “Health”, in general, can be thought of as “per rest”. If Binding wounds was per encounter or unlimited use, it would be completely broken since it would render health completely meaningless and provide infinite value. Might as well just have endurance and get rid of the concept of a seperate health pool. High endurance regeneration builds would be crazy good then.

 

Binding wounds provides the best value with high CON (it is just not normally needed since they are not the characters who usually run out of health first or very quickly. I usually only take it if running low CON for this reason).

 

Well I am just focusing on answering that poster's query in his/her situation. Prefer not to digress into what could be broken or what's not. In fact, I still kinda treat the IwVE effect as a bug as it is supposed to be temporary. But it is what it is.

Edited November 5, 2017 by mosspit

[BlackHat]

True, but Field Triage and Binding Wounds are also per rest. Poster will still need to head back to rest to recharge those abilities, which he/she is trying to avoid.

 

Also I havent tested this but the healing done by the potion healing should also be improved by modifiers.

 

What I find interesting is that Zahua's CON is actually quite decent. So that character shouldn't need to be rested that often. So the poster might be using Zahua in a way that makes him take more dmg than he needs to. Maybe.

Yup, pretty much.  Took your advice with the potions, and yeah, I was using him badly: my party has a lot of micromanage since its pretty caster heavy, so he kept running into some bad positioning.  Turned off his ai and he's surviving a bit More, but I'm thinking I can't use him as a fire and forget weapon the way I use eder sometimes.   Shoulda been obvious, but its just foolishness and forgetfulness on my part. 

As for bind wounds/triage, no doubt they have uses, but I like to avoid taking talents that I can replicate with items.  Vital Essence does that, which is probably why they didn't make any x/day-use-items with it.  Though for Zahua, with his high con, I'm thinking it's not gonna remain viable at higher levels (40% of total for bind wounds heal, vs a flat 50hp/end+bonus). 

 

Don't get me wrong Braven, its a good build, and my Zahua's very similar (minus the stat block and 2 talents) but it does require timing and a bit of micro.  I think If i ditch Hiravias or Aloth and stick Zahua back in, I should regain the time to focus on controlling this mad berserker monk.  Felt like I was pausing every .1 second - the irony being that since he's a lighting quick dps machine, my fights were going by very very slowly as I reassigned him orders that didn't include "charge into the middle of 6 mobs."  POTD isn't forgiving sometimes, heh. 

 

Bit off topic but does anyone else use AI?  I find myself turning it off on POTD because positioning feels so much more important.  Except for Eder and my MC werewolf.

[mosspit]

@Blackhat

 

For me, I have never used AI from my first playthrough till my most recent one. I just find micro-managing fun. But I am completely aware that ppl have different concept of fun and might hate micro. So I try not to impose or be negative about it.

Edited November 5, 2017 by mosspit

[BlackHat]

^ true.  I'm playing POE and not LOL, but this tiny part of me wants to see the party in as much action as possible, and putting the game on rapid-pause gets kind of grating sometimes.  Still, I'm adjusting, and frankly I think it's my own damn fault for picking 5 casters and a Eder for my main party hehe (if you count Zahua as a caster, which I kinda do given how often I'm doling out FoA and varied self-heals).

These problems are gonna fix themselves once I level up a cpl more times and find him some slightly better armor, but lets face it - his raggedy potato-sack pants are part of his charm.  And his svef use, this ol' badger *smh*

[Boeroer]

I consider monks to be more powerful (or to have the potential to be more powerful) than fighters but it's true that monks require a lot of micro, especially when using Torment's Reach, while the fighter does not (necessarily).

 

I just picked picked up Zahua for my last playthrough and parked Edér (only offensive talents+abilities + max regeneration) in the stronghold - just for his questline. I play them both in the same way with the same items (plate armor + Tidefall and so on). I don't know why but although Zahua has a lot more health and not that much less deflection I notice that he's running out of health a lot faster than Edér did. Although I have Iron Wheel. Why is that? I can only guess that Lagufaeth like to attack monks more than they like to attack fighters? When I enter an encounter usually it's Zahua now who gets all the Blowgun-darts. They never bothered to attack Edér. Is this just coincidence or is there a part of enemies' AI that prioritizes monks over fighters?

[BlackHat]

I consider monks to be more powerful (or to have the potential to be more powerful) than fighters but it's true that monks require a lot of micro, especially when using Torment's Reach, while the fighter does not (necessarily).

 

I just picked picked up Zahua for my last playthrough and parked Edér (only offensive talents+abilities + max regeneration) in the stronghold - just for his questline. I play them both in the same way with the same items (plate armor + Tidefall and so on). I don't know why but although Zahua has a lot more health and not that much less deflection I notice that he's running out of health a lot faster than Edér did. Although I have Iron Wheel. Why is that? I can only guess that Lagufaeth like to attack monks more than they like to attack fighters? When I enter an encounter usually it's Zahua now who gets all the Blowgun-darts. They never bothered to attack Edér. Is this just coincidence or is there a part of enemies' AI that prioritizes monks over fighters?

It's because he's on drugs.   This is what happens when you dose psycho hippies and send them to the front lines.

Also, its the damage resistance/ early CC.  Health gets chunked a lot less when you're getting hit for minimum damage, but with the monk you need to get smacked to generate wounds - so while you can heal endurance 3x faster through dps, you still lose the health, while Eder just gets hit for minimum damage - and if you're charging with him, he's out of contact with most of the enemies for 2 or 3 seconds that the monk isn't.  Plus he tends to Knock Down one or two enemies at the outset, so those guys just aren't punishing him the same.

Or maybe the Langfueths just hate old people.  They see this crazy old dude, and think "there! that's the weak one, obviously!"  Oh how wrong they are, they shouda focused the casters.

 

Oh, also, Iron wheel only helps nearer the end of the fight, so for the first 5 to 10 seconds of the scrap you're getting all the pain on maximum volume.  I'm thinking I might take field triage with Aloth and/or Hiravias, rather than filling out the elemental talents, just to help with the post battle healing.

Edited November 5, 2017 by BlackHat

[Boeroer]

I don't had Charge yet and Zahua has higher DR, health and only -5 deflection. So in theory he shouldn't be forced to rest a lot more often than Edér - unless he gets attacked much harder...?

Edited November 5, 2017 by Boeroer

[BlackHat]

Maybe he draws more aggro for causing more damage to a wider array of enemies?  But that wouldn't explain why he gets targeted by ranged enemies right off the bat, which I have noticed.  I've got boots of speed on him right now, so I notice that he gets to the fight first, and that in and of itself makes him a prime target, so I never really considered that the AI might be giving monks higher threat priority, which would seem even more likely if it thinks of him as a caster-type.  I've noticed that enemies seem to target people who have lower health (though not sure if it's by percentage, or by actual quantity of HP lost).  Maybe the Ai gets confused by the sudden loss/regaining of HP and calculates him as a soft target?