I remember hearing some good things about this particular combination, good Damage output, good penetration, able to not concentrate on Res and just on Mig/Dex/Con/Int instead.

 

Don’t have the beta though, would anyone like to volunteer their thoughts?

Monk unarmed attacks are still bugged in that after a save load they revert back to an unbuffed state. This makes testing an unarmed monk near impossible, but when it is working fists appear to be the king of damage output with good damage at the fastest weapon speed. Good fast damage increased by soul whip and the occasional soul annihilation dump of all focus into raw damage will be pretty strong.

 

The Cipher Soul Blade brings soul whip for damage, a +1 penetration to weapons, soul annihilation for a focus dump and access to the Cipher powers, while the Shattered Pillar gets you attack speed increase from swift strikes, a 30% lash from lightning strikes, increased penetration and damage from Thunderous blows and a spammable Torment's Reach that stuns in a cone. Plus both gain wounds/focus from doing damage.

 

Lots of potential synergy, just have to see a game version where Transcendent Suffering works. Plus we'll have to see how power levels affect unarmed damage and what high level abilities will be gated off by multiclassing.

I think the damage of Soul Annihilation is based on Resolve, so you cannot dump Res if u wanna use it.

Is Soul Annihilation considered a spell effect then. Hmm can’t dump Res then, as you say.

I wouldn't dump any stat on any class except for a nuking wizard dumping strength and adding it to Constitution.

 

With a base 10 resolve Soul Annihilation is still going to do an awful lot of raw damage basically for free. Its not as if the difference between a 15 Resolve with +15% damage will make that much of a difference.

 

I'd look at something balanced like this:

 

Strength  18

Constitution  10

Dexterity  15

Perception  10

Intellect  15

Resolve 10

 

Strength will multiplicatively increase your large bonus damage from soul whip, dexterity is always good for attacks and spells and intellect helps with everything duration based. Maybe go with nature's Godlike for the increase to power levels to help with the unarmed damage output.

The low Con worries me a bit. I remember playing a high Con monk back in POE I and that was already a bit of a dicey proposition.

The low Con worries me a bit. I remember playing a high Con monk back in POE I and that was already a bit of a dicey proposition.

 

Its a Shattered Pillar Monk so you gain 'wounds' by doing damage just like how a Cipher gains focus so there is no need to take a beating so Con doesn't help as much. Plus the change to health only without endurance means as long as you don't get Ko'd you have enough Con and healing can overcome a normal or even low con easily.

Ah, so you play more like Melee Cipher than off Tank Monk? (Ie you let your tanks engage, them flank’em for massive damage)?

Worth noting that Hammering Thoughts only adds penetration to proficient weapons, IIRC, and currently there’s no unarmed proficiency in the game (though it seems like there will be in the end.)

 

Soul Annihilation based on RES is just the umpteenth shaft to the Cipher class...

Worth noting that Hammering Thoughts only adds penetration to proficient weapons, IIRC, and currently there’s no unarmed proficiency in the game (though it seems like there will be in the end.)

 

Soul Annihilation based on RES is just the umpteenth shaft to the Cipher class...

 

Hammering Thoughts doesn't require weapon proficiency and works with unarmed attacks (even though the description specifies "weapon" unarmed counts as a weapon).

Great. Anyway: if I do remember correctly they want to include and unarmed weapon proficiency at last.