Monk optimization

[Epinephrine]

A friend of mine is possibly running a game, and mentioned that he'd be interested in seeing a decent monk build. I am having trouble coming up with anything a monk can do that is in the same ballpark as a sorcerer (for AoE) or a rogue (single target). I just don't see monks as being very strong, lacking in minor action attacks, limited to 1/turn on their turn striker effects, etc. Obviously the monk movement powers work well hybrid, since you can use the at-wills while using attack powers from a class that can actually hit well.

Are there good monk builds?

[vasharanpaladin]

Ignore ki focus.

Superior Implement Training (accurate dagger) goes in. It's in a Dragon, don't have it open at the moment. Multiclass rogue via Sneak of Shadows, power swap for low slash and trade up to tumbling strike for your off-action attack.

If you want single-target output, you put this on a Desert Wind monk (Heroes of the Elemental Chaos). Otherwise, ignore everything I just said and also ignore the fact that the class entry says "Striker." Iron Soul and Eternal Tide are extremely good at faking Defender (pick up a pair of babau gauntlets ASAP, do NOT use Internalize the Basic Kata if you're concerned about damage) and Centered Breath is good for diving into a furball and tripping people onto the rogue's knife.

Regardless of your path, get Unarmored Agility ASAP, it's a great help with survivability.

[wolfstone]

Ignore ki focus.

Superior Implement Training (accurate dagger) goes in. It's in a Dragon, don't have it open at the moment. Multiclass rogue via Sneak of Shadows, power swap for low slash and trade up to tumbling strike for your off-action attack.

If you want single-target output, you put this on a Desert Wind monk (Heroes of the Elemental Chaos). Otherwise, ignore everything I just said and also ignore the fact that the class entry says "Striker." Iron Soul and Eternal Tide are extremely good at faking Defender (pick up a pair of babau gauntlets ASAP, do NOT use Internalize the Basic Kata if you're concerned about damage) and Centered Breath is good for diving into a furball and tripping people onto the rogue's knife.

Regardless of your path, get Unarmored Agility ASAP, it's a great help with survivability.

I noticed, however on the DDI character creator, that Accuracte daggers are only available as a flat +1 weapon with no higher levels or other effects. Can magical weapons like a +6 Frost Weapon or a +6 Battlemaster's Weapon also be an Accurate Dagger item for a +7 total (like a +6 Accurate Staff of Ruin can be both an implement and a weapon with a +7 total bonus for implement attacks)?

If so, the DDI CC was never updated to reflect this. :(

[Epinephrine]

Superior Implement Training (accurate dagger) goes in. It's in a Dragon, don't have it open at the moment. Multiclass rogue via Sneak of Shadows, power swap for low slash and trade up to tumbling strike for your off-action attack.

Right, but that's where I feel like I can do better as a rogue. Or any other striker and take those feats.

(pick up a pair of babau gauntlets ASAP

Low magic campaign (inherent bonuses), can't expect any enchantments, especially rare/set ones. I may just do a rogue/sorcerer to get a bit of the mystical rogue thing and some close blast powers. Can multiclass monk if I really want to punch something.

[vasharanpaladin]

I noticed, however on the DDI character creator, that Accuracte daggers are only available as a flat +1 weapon with no higher levels or other effects. Can magical weapons like a +6 Frost Weapon or a +6 Battlemaster's Weapon also be an Accurate Dagger item for a +7 total (like a +6 Accurate Staff of Ruin can be both an implement and a weapon with a +7 total bonus for implement attacks)?

If so, the DDI CC was never updated to reflect this. :(

They can, yes. DDI turned to crap shortly after PH3's release, or at least the one Wootsie "maintained" did.

@Epinephrine: All Striker damage features are 1/turn now. As I said, if you want to play a monk and you're concerned with damage, go Desert Wind. Blistering flourish adds your Cha bonus to melee damage for a turn each time you use it (or it did last time I looked at it, don't quote me on this). Your flurry of blows is a melee attack (even with Starblade Flurry or Unseen Hand, and notably a separate attack line. Yes, as a monk you'll attack once for 1d8+Dex damage and then again as a free action for 2+Cha, or whatever your build secondary is.

The trick for the other builds is, they are not designed for damage output, but for tricky fighting. Eternal Tide is Str-secondary, and thus doesn't require MBA-fixing. For Iron Soul, if you can't get a pair of babau gauntlets (note: if you can only have one magic item, request these), then yes, take Internalize the Basic Kata, but now you've got to keep a hand open for making OA's. Centered Breath doesn't really care, they're going to be moving people around to put them where another Striker can hit them hardest.

How many players do you expect will turn out for this one?

EDIT: CharOp handbook for the monk is here. He does not have builds for Eternal Tide or Desert Wind listed, but the latter should be pretty straightforward anyway (go Dex/Cha, take blistering flourish, spam blistering flourish, etc). Stone Claw Mantis might be fun, but admittedly I've never tried a bleeder build that didn't just use ongoing fire damage as a trigger for gaining bonuses to everything.

[Zaq]

In Paragon+, a hybrid Desert Wind Monk|Elemental Pact Warlock is hugely damaging. Use your second wind at the end of every short rest to make sure that you're attuned to fire. The Elemental Pact Boon carries over between encounters—it specifies "the next enemy you place your Warlock's Curse on," so if something died at the end of one combat, you can Curse something at the start of your next combat, and since they're "the next enemy," they get the vulnerability. Anyway, my character that used this combo used Speaker of Xaos's AP feature to target two enemies with Burning Brand, thereby doubling up on the vulnerability pings from it (and don't forget that Flurry is an "attack," so FoB triggers Burning Brand's damage immediately). You can make Stoke the Flames ping immediately by tacking a slide on it somehow, moving the target one square out and one square back (thereby into the aura)—I used satyr as my race, since their racial power makes that easy. Naturally, you want to be a Sarifal Feywarden for the aura of crazy vulnerability (and since Elemental Pact vulnerability explicitly stacks with existing vulnerability, it doesn't matter whether your GM reads Feywarden's vulnerability as being different from Elemental Pact's vulnerability).

Without Elemental Pact providing easy stackable vulnerability, you lose some of your damage output, but the character really plays like a Monk, not a Warlock. I took as few Warlock powers as possible—you really just need the pact boon and nothing else.

Desert Wind can still do decent damage on its own with Feywarden, but it really becomes terrifying when you hybrid.

[vasharanpaladin]

In Paragon+, a hybrid Desert Wind Monk|Elemental Pact Warlock is hugely damaging.

As a counterpoint, at earlier levels you're better off going straight Desert Wind Monk with Infernal Prince on a dead tiefling. Grab an incendiary dagger (since you won't likely get a proper item bonus to damage) and Hellfire Blood. That's +3 to-hit (untyped feat, theme and the superior implement bonus) and +3 damage as long as you use fire attacks that target Ref (which you always will as long as you use blistering flourish at least every other turn), and the damage bonus scales up with your level!

Zaq's build, however, is interesting, if only because I had taken Elemental Pact to be useless fluff-oriented stuff. Will have to reexamine that.

[Epinephrine]

Your flurry of blows is a melee attack

From what I can tell, it's not an attack at all (part of why it is weak). It is a "Monk Feature" It is not an attack power, as those have the word "attack" in the top line, e.g. Monk Attack 1 on the top line of a power like Five Storms

(even with Starblade Flurry or Unseen Hand, and notably a separate attack line.

I see no attack line. The word “attack” is shorthand for “attack power.” Flurry of Blows has no attack roll, nor is it an attack power. I've checked the errata for PH3.

If flurry of blows were an attack, it would be decent, allowing you to do those things, and to take advantage of the fey theme Sarifal Feywarden. But from what I can tell, it does not.

[Dimers]

A friend of mine is possibly running a game, and mentioned that he'd be interested in seeing a decent monk build. ... Are there good monk builds?

I didn't respond before because my op-fu is not strong, but if "good" is good enough ...

Dex+Wis Centered Breath monk, MC avenger for accuracy and for access to fury's advance (L3) or soulforge hammering (L17), either Ooze Master or Beguiler for a minor-action implement attack. Select encounter and daily monk powers that have multiple attack rolls, even if they have only one attack line or if only one attack deals damage -- like feeding the doves, thundering waterfall, spinning leopard maneuver or crane dance. Melee powers are best, since those benefit from Oath of Enmity and each uses a separate attack roll. Use a blurred strike ki focus to flurry twice per round instead of once, by hitting twice with implement or weapon attacks (those without either keyword can't use the ki focus properties).

Like many builds, this gets notably stronger in paragon tier when your number of flurry targets jumps from 1 to 3 -- I say three because who would NOT take Starblade Flurry feat as soon as possible? There's nothing that prevents you from using both Starblade Flurry and Skipping Stone Flurry to peg enemies all over the board -- by RAW you don't need to load the sling (or even use ammo), so you don't need a hand free. (Also by RAW you don't get back the daggers you throw with Starblade Flurry, so you'd better have a bandolier full of nonmagical ones.) So you hit one guy, flurry him and his two buddies twenty-five feet away, zoom over to them, hit them, flurry them and the first target ...

Radiant Fist works well for a PP. You can take Solar Enemy as your freebie Channel feat, benefitting from action point use and Painful Oath feat, then ramping up much more after you reach 16th level and start dealing radiant damage with your flurry.

This compares decently against a sorcerer's multi-target damage, slides enemies around like crazy (nice with storm pillar / flame spiral tactics) and has the monk's usual excellent mobility. In heroic tier, it's just another monk that happens to have a couple minor-action attacks. But monk is a solid class anyway. Good defenses, evocative powers, many more options than other characters get for move actions. They play fun, and even without optimization they're effective enough that it's only in the most high-op parties that they'd be considered pointless.

[vasharanpaladin]

From what I can tell, it's not an attack at all (part of why it is weak). It is a "Monk Feature" It is not an attack power, as those have the word "attack" in the top line, e.g. Monk Attack 1 on the top line of a power like Five Storms


I see no attack line. The word “attack” is shorthand for “attack power.” Flurry of Blows has no attack roll, nor is it an attack power. I've checked the errata for PH3.

If flurry of blows were an attack, it would be decent, allowing you to do those things, and to take advantage of the fey theme Sarifal Feywarden. But from what I can tell, it does not.

As of Heroes of the Fallen Lands anything written as a power block is either an attack power or a utility power. If it has a target line and inconveniences the target in any way, it's an attack power. Hail the only good thing that came out of Essentials.

Flurry of blows, by virtue of being a separate damage instance, is a separate attack. When you use flurry of blows, you are making a second attack during the round you use it. The distinction to be made now is for effects that depend on the attack roll (which flurry of blows doesn't have) and whether you hit or miss with an attack (which flurry of blows doesn't do).

[Dimers]

As of Heroes of the Fallen Lands anything written as a power block is either an attack power or a utility power. If it has a target line and inconveniences the target in any way, it's an attack power.

Does that apply to existing powers that are called utilities but target enemies with unkindnesses? -- or have "Ally" on their Target line but clearly and directly affect an enemy? I don't own HotFL so I have no idea about the wording.

[Epinephrine]

As of Heroes of the Fallen Lands anything written as a power block is either an attack power or a utility power. If it has a target line and inconveniences the target in any way, it's an attack power. Hail the only good thing that came out of Essentials.

Flurry of blows, by virtue of being a separate damage instance, is a separate attack. When you use flurry of blows, you are making a second attack during the round you use it. The distinction to be made now is for effects that depend on the attack roll (which flurry of blows doesn't have) and whether you hit or miss with an attack (which flurry of blows doesn't do).

Ok, if it's an attack, then I can make some stuff work. Thanks!

[vasharanpaladin]

Does that apply to existing powers that are called utilities but target enemies with unkindnesses? -- or have "Ally" on their Target line but clearly and directly affect an enemy? I don't own HotFL so I have no idea about the wording.

It's a blanket statement to cover any cases that weren't specifically printed or reprinted as such. Mostly racial powers and the like, since some races got reprinted and others didn't.

[GPuzzle]

I didn't respond before because my op-fu is not strong, but if "good" is good enough ...

Dex+Wis Centered Breath monk, MC avenger for accuracy and for access to fury's advance (L3) or soulforge hammering (L17), either Ooze Master or Beguiler for a minor-action implement attack. Select encounter and daily monk powers that have multiple attack rolls, even if they have only one attack line or if only one attack deals damage -- like feeding the doves, thundering waterfall, spinning leopard maneuver or crane dance. Melee powers are best, since those benefit from Oath of Enmity and each uses a separate attack roll. Use a blurred strike ki focus to flurry twice per round instead of once, by hitting twice with implement or weapon attacks (those without either keyword can't use the ki focus properties).

Like many builds, this gets notably stronger in paragon tier when your number of flurry targets jumps from 1 to 3 -- I say three because who would NOT take Starblade Flurry feat as soon as possible? There's nothing that prevents you from using both Starblade Flurry and Skipping Stone Flurry to peg enemies all over the board -- by RAW you don't need to load the sling (or even use ammo), so you don't need a hand free. (Also by RAW you don't get back the daggers you throw with Starblade Flurry, so you'd better have a bandolier full of nonmagical ones.) So you hit one guy, flurry him and his two buddies twenty-five feet away, zoom over to them, hit them, flurry them and the first target ...

Radiant Fist works well for a PP. You can take Solar Enemy as your freebie Channel feat, benefitting from action point use and Painful Oath feat, then ramping up much more after you reach 16th level and start dealing radiant damage with your flurry.

This compares decently against a sorcerer's multi-target damage, slides enemies around like crazy (nice with storm pillar / flame spiral tactics) and has the monk's usual excellent mobility. In heroic tier, it's just another monk that happens to have a couple minor-action attacks. But monk is a solid class anyway. Good defenses, evocative powers, many more options than other characters get for move actions. They play fun, and even without optimization they're effective enough that it's only in the most high-op parties that they'd be considered pointless.

Holy crap, this build looks brilliantly fun. I want to play it.

[vasharanpaladin]

Holy crap, this build looks brilliantly fun. I want to play it.

Aye. Use this one if you want to optimize your bursts, use Desert Wind if you want to focus on killing one thing dead.

I'll admit it's easy to cotton on to Radiant Fist here, but I'm kinda stunned that my group never thought "MC avenger"... maybe because monks work best when they're in a position where oath of enmity can't be used? Eh. If you play it, tell me how it goes!

[wolfstone]

I have a related question. If I MC into Fighter as a Monk, would the Kensei PP give it's +1 atk bonus if you use a weapon like a dagger or staff as an implement? For clarification, the effect reads:

"Kensei Focus (11th level): You gain a +1 bonus to weapon attack rolls with a melee weapon of your choice."

[vasharanpaladin]

"Kensei Focus (11th level): You gain a +1 bonus to weapon attack rolls with a melee weapon of your choice."

Bolded the relevant qualifier. Monks make implement attacks, even if it's with a weapon used as an implement. Kensei will not grant its bonus.

[wolfstone]

Bolded the relevant qualifier. Monks make implement attacks, even if it's with a weapon used as an implement. Kensei will not grant its bonus.

*Sigh* Okay. Guess for extra accuracy, it'd have to be Lyrander Wind-Rider with a lightning weapon instead.

[wolfstone]

They can, yes. DDI turned to crap shortly after PH3's release, or at least the one Wootsie "maintained" did.

So if I want an accurate dagger with a magical effect, would it be safe to assume that any dagger with a Parrying version in the DDI CC items inventory would also have an Accurate version, as well as all of the other types listed in DM 385?

[vasharanpaladin]

So if I want an accurate dagger with a magical effect, would it be safe to assume that any dagger with a Parrying version in the DDI CC items inventory would also have an Accurate version, as well as all of the other types listed in DM 385?

An accurate dagger can, by dint of being a dagger, bear any enchantment that a dagger could, yes.

[Dimers]

An accurate dagger can, by dint of being a dagger, bear any enchantment that a dagger could, yes.

I think the question is more "is a parrying dagger superior weapon* still a DAGGER?" Wearing the DM hat, I'd say that the RAW doesn't support it, but would still approve it for a character that badly needs the optimization help. (I.e. not anything in this thread.) The parrying dagger's own text gives exactly one way in which the parrying dagger is treated as a dagger, which to my mind means it was intended NOT to be treated thus for any other purposes.

* Which should have gotten a name that didn't involve another weapon type's name, like "main-gauche".

[vasharanpaladin]

I think the question is more "is a parrying dagger superior weapon* still a DAGGER?" Wearing the DM hat, I'd say that the RAW doesn't support it, but would still approve it for a character that badly needs the optimization help. (I.e. not anything in this thread.) The parrying dagger's own text gives exactly one way in which the parrying dagger is treated as a dagger, which to my mind means it was intended NOT to be treated thus for any other purposes.

* Which should have gotten a name that didn't involve another weapon type's name, like "main-gauche".

In which case, the answer is: Different entry, different weapon. Ignoring anything other than the table, a parrying dagger is never a dagger, period. The text outside the table gives a single exception: A parrying dagger is only a dagger for the purpose of the Rogue Weapon Talent feature.

The same applies to several weapons introduced in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, relevant to this discussion would be the widow's knife.