New Monk - Questions?

T

Tsun

Dalayan Beginner
So I am starting a monk here in sod, and am currently doing the armor quests at the monk guild in Newport. Someone was kind enough to point me in the direction of the greenmist ritual mask, and between that and my knuckles of the learner I am leveling up a couple of items already!

I have reviewed the wiki, and have a couple of questions.

With regard to stances - I am using 2 and 3 variously depending on my health, mainly staying in the hasted stance. With respect to /s 5 - when I get Kinetic Focusation do I want to mainly stay in that stance as I level up? Can I maintain more than one stance at a time?

With respect to the combo system (awesome system!) are there level requirements before using these? I see Massive Kick is a combo of three round kicks - can this be combo'ed at level 5 when you get round kick?

On weapons - I have a storebought ulak and the knuckles of the learner right now, would it be better to go straight fists or should I try to save up some money for a mithril claw (saw a post about them being the best option until 45 or so?)

And lastly, with a druid box, would it pay to level up tailoring as I level up to get access to the crafted gear for both characters, or do you think I would be better served by trying to sell any tradeskill components I find along the way.
 
You can only swap stances once every 8 seconds? it tells you that you cant swap in so many seconds if you try eairly

I have no idea about combos

From what I have heard it is best for monks and beasts to get MAX h2h mod and go fists till high teirs. IE h2h mod charm + item mods
 
I know that at level 65 the two proc stances are lower dps than stance 2, I'm not sure if the same is true as you level though. In either case it's probably a very minor difference so I wouldn't worry about it too much. You can only have one active stance at a time.

I believe combos work at any level, but you should be able to test that yourself as soon as you get Round Kick. The first kick has to land in order to initiate a combo.

Check the wiki for monk bare fist ratio, which improves as you level higher. Buy a Charm of the Brute in Erudin for 60pp; every +5 Hand to Hand gives your fists 1 higher base damage (capped at +25 skill). The Charm alone probably makes your fists much better dps than anything else you can buy, and there are some other items you can keep an eye out for too... High Paw's Hand is probably the cheapest, I think most/all of the others have high rec levels.

Trade skills are a huge money sink and only worth doing if you are a masochist or plan on spending a ton of time and effort crafting and selling to other players.
 
Thanks. Going to have to start saving up some tradeskill stuff to sell... 60 pp is a lot when you are new.

The wiki says the weight limit for monks is not actually in place - is that accurate?
 
Can I multi-bind abilities to one hotkey effectively? (kick, disarm, intimidation?)

On partnering, does it make sense long run to box a druid instead of a shaman - taking ports out of the equation, are the DS/DPS of the druid worth sacrificing the slow/haste of the Shaman?

It looks like some of the combos can provide haste, and you can land a slow with intimidation - do these equalize some of the issues with not having a shaman on hand?

Also - looks like mithril knuckles are pretty pricey too, I am going to have to start saving for this stuff - are there any early level tradeskill drops that are more worthwhile to harvest - silks vs. skins and whatnot?

Or would I be better off heading to this Cesspits zone? I have seen a couple posts saying to just go there and grind for xp and drops until I can't anymore...

Thanks for all the help!
 
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Druid or shaman both work nicely with a monk. Druids heal a little better but shaman offers more in the way of buffs/debuffs to turn things in your favor. It really depends on which class you like better.

Combos work as soon as you can get the skills. The haste from the combo is much lower % than a real buff, but I think it is actually overhaste, which would stack.

Money wise, I think bone chips are probably the easiest thing for lower levels, people buy them at 10-20pp per stack.

Cesspits is an awesome zone and has very nice items for new characters, but I don't think there are any weapons except for Franci's Staff. And there's not a ton of money to be made there unless things have changed.

Like people said above, the Charm of the Brute and bare fists is probably the best way to increase your damage. If you can find me in game I'll port you to Erudin and give you the money to get one, it makes life so much easier.
 
Cesspits is pretty amazing for the duration you can be there. I got a 16 bst / dru combo I like to run in there when I feel the urge. As for shaman over Druid don't forget the general utility in having a Druid. solid buffs either way but ports tracking and DS make up for alot. Not to mention you get solid heals and damage with the Druid. Shaman should still have solid dot's which work well, just gotta decide where you feel the higher value is in a box.
 
So, barefist is pretty much going to be best for you, except when leveling. I'm a pretty darn well geared monk, with 1hb/fist weapons that are on par/above the rest of my gear, and those are worse than barefist. I actually swap out some very awesome gear for +h2h mod items, and pretty cheapily bought gloves. Leveling, especially at the beginning levels, if someone is super cool you can probably get them to donate mithril items to you, those will do big damage in the early levels. Heck if you see Gegen/Aakadar online I will gladly hook you up with some mithril for both characters of yours.

Just checked wiki to make sure I wasn't blowing smoke, Mithril Ulak has a better ratio till the level 40 fists, there are other items that can replace mithril along the way too. If you got a Charm of the Brute that would obviously change things slightly at the high end.

At 65, you will most likely be using your barefists, and you will not need a charm other than the 60pp Charm of the Brute, for a long time, which will save you money for other things.

I recommend druid/monk, solely for the fact that healing with a druid in the end is a lot easier and you can focus on monking. Shaman/monk is good as well, you get added utility and better damage potential probably, but you have to be much more active on the shaman because you are using single target heals 100% of the time, whereas with a druid you get you use pretty darn effective HoTs.

Combos: You can use each combo as soon as you get the skills pertaining to it AFAIK. The best combo is round kick+round kick+round kick, does big DD and gives you a haste bonus (this bonus is overcap haste), unless something has changed, it will be your highest DPS combo. When you are tanking and you use that combo... be careful you can and will die fast, so you might end up using different combos if you are duoing since you won't have good gear.

For leveling, I honestly would use kinetic especially if you are having issues with running your healer out of mana or dying too much. Obviously you can't use kinetic 100% of the time as it uses your stamina up. Other than that kinetic/aggressive are basically the same DPS till you're at 65 (basically), just use aggressive at that point 100% of the time when you are using /s 15 for better dps.


Susvain has run a ton of numbers, although I'm not sure about stuff pre-65, but he can answer more in depth than I can.
 
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The haste combo is such a minor percentage and such a short duration that you lose dps by using it instead of 3x round kick or the lifetap once you get that one.

Mithril Ulak is 5/13 which is definitely the best option early on. If you get a charm and also a random pair of cheap gloves with 2 elemental damage you'd probably switch to bare fists at level 25 or 30 and never look back.

Any healer partners great with a monk, I've always preferred druids to shaman though.

If you PM me with when you think you'll be online this week I can hop on and give you some plat and items to make the leveling process smoother, if that's something you want.
 
Thanks for the info and for the offers of help! I may see if any of you are on later today, planning to ride the boat to Erudin to continue the Windwoven newb armor quests. I have a few more questions in the interim.

With respect to Deity, from my review of the wiki, I am going to want to pledge to either Althuna or Sihala - are either preferred over the other for raid concerns? I have noticed early quests that have alignment shifting results and I would like to make sure I start moving those in the correct direction.

In the badlands - looking at Silver Crown vs. CoI - is it silly to have the monk do one and the druid the other? Should I just have them both choose the same and then wait for some alts on a later date to choose the other options?
 
With respect to main quest sc/coi/blackscale, I did my characters one blackscale and one SC. I think it would have been easier to do them both the same way, from a gameplay standpoint.
 
Tsun said:
Thanks for the info and for the offers of help! I may see if any of you are on later today, planning to ride the boat to Erudin to continue the Windwoven newb armor quests. I have a few more questions in the interim.

With respect to Deity, from my review of the wiki, I am going to want to pledge to either Althuna or Sihala - are either preferred over the other for raid concerns? I have noticed early quests that have alignment shifting results and I would like to make sure I start moving those in the correct direction.

In the badlands - looking at Silver Crown vs. CoI - is it silly to have the monk do one and the druid the other? Should I just have them both choose the same and then wait for some alts on a later date to choose the other options?
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It is completely up to you. It will absolutely take more travel time to do one of each. Quite a bit of it in fact. Yet if you enjoy questing, you could easily do both.
 
Having a duo on the same faction means they can both do the quests together which will save a ton of time. Having them choose diferent paths would be viable either for the fun of it or for alignment issues.
 
Thanks for feeding my information demands. To recap, almost all my questions have been answered, but a couple are still hanging open:

1. Does the slow from intimidation proc enough to disregard a slowing class?
2. Are there any low level tradeskill drops (other than bone chips) worth collecting to build some funds? - on that note, is foraging useful? Should I bind a forage key to druid heal?
3. For Monk (and for Druid?) pledge to Althuna or Sihala or something completely different?

Thanks!
 
Bone chips are simply the easiesy to get and tend to get bought often, some items don't come in demand unless someone's leveling a tradeskill at that time.

Forage comes in handy as you can pull food and drink out of no where and there will be foraged quest items in your Druid's future iirc.

I don't know about your slow problem but when in a duo you don't need the slow it is just a useful tool. If you feel what you are killing needs to be slowed find someone who can to join you or find a new hunting ground. There is always another place you could go more suited to your dynamic.
 
Gargate said:
MNK-DRU > MNK-SHM imo
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I agree with this. Utility from ports is really nice, and you always have a DS. I think that healing with druid hots is waaay easier, and shaman slow usually isnt worth casting unless you duo mobs with huge HP pools. Whichever you choose though, you want to make sure both the healer AND their pet are aux tanking. It reduces damage output by a ton.
http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Auxiliary_Tanking
 
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