Ki Bolt, Magic Missiles, and Ruin Make Muggle Monks Moan

[Tilomere]

Really interesting seing a druid hybrid.

Edit: Hmm, I realize now I can solo Threats. Next time I rebuild I think con primary, dex secondary, which eliminates need for falconry freeing up all AP. I think Shintao will be stronger then HeM for a staff build. Maybe also avoid 10 stacks with a flaming sphere?

The ES warlock splash for Kemton above won't work well as ES aura will trigger and eat draconic procs which you want to save for ki bolt.

 

[saekee]

Really interesting seing a druid hybrid.

Hmm, I realize now I can drop stacks without ddoor in Threats by going T5 Shintao and just dying + phoenix. I could have gone secondary stat dex based with racial ap on qstaff, then gone C5 Shintao, T5C6 HeM. Next time I rebuild I think con primary, dex secondary, which eliminates need for falconry freeing up all AP. I think Shintao will be stronger then HeM for a staff build. Maybe also avoid 10 stacks with a flaming sphere?

Will need to add that to my old flaming sphere thread!

I had gone Shadowdancer for the DDoor. It worked surprisingly well since the epic moment kills all the trash mobs around the portal keepers.

The issue came up in the red wizard phylactery room since the wizards get their circle damage buff when not engaged. A lot of running about could mitigate it but it is not fun.

 

[DBZ]

When do we get to see the new and improved shiny dragon disciple version

 

[saekee]

I switched to SWF kukri and am sitting on nearly 80 Doublestrike in the city (caps with Rapid Slash which does not break invisi) and almost 300 melee power (with crappy gear and few PLs). I took Patience so 15-20/4, Henshin capstone and tier 5 Henshin. Am spamming void strike which procs on 19-20 due to PSWF for some hilarious instakills (I erased Kirmudy out of ToEE, such a relief).

I might TR into an SDK in the future, weakening the ki bolt a bit but getting lockpicking/trapping and a cheap trance out of FvS. Then I get the chain too. Right now I need to refarm a ton of dread ingredients

Helm: Elder
trinket: Periapt of Str (MRR cap)
glasses: ToEE
necklace: Elder
armor: Dread crafted, dread set
gloves: Staggershockers (for lesser displacement and procs, swappable)
cloak: Forest Blade with DS sun augment
Ring: ToEE
ring 2: Black Abishai
wrist: Dread (Artifact)
Belt: Dread (Lindal)
Boots: Dread (Admiral, Magma swap)

Weapon: Attuned kukri (Meltscale/Meltfang/Irridescent claw: acid/Flamehorn)

Since the sun spell crit damage augment is broken we cannot use it in the augment system; I have the rare helm with exceptional seeker but no easy way to integrate it.

As an SDK I would do capstone/tier 5 VkF and use the SDK racial tree for improved chains and displacement, would be really effective.

 

[Tilomere]

I've been thinking about revamping my used build version to make some sort of melee/ranged/caster triple dot threat hybrid, trying to see if I can have 10k shuriken + first blood, Staff + qq/wide sweep, and ki bolt, on a dex secondary stat build, saving AP for some NiS shurikens and Inq First Blood. That way we can add another AoE DoT in. To keep button parity would get rid of quick strike, reaper boost, cauldron, and acid vulnerability. Replace no-fail reflex feat with Inquisitor no-fail saves to pick up the quality hp from falconry via Unyielding.
Edit: first blood shurikens was nerfed and no longer functions.

I haven't been liking how ... weak or useless outside of reaper those buttons are overall or how cauldron nerfs your ki bolt dps, or how circles make me keep moving and ending cauldron when I do use it for defense, and wanting to replace them with something more substantial. The weapon focus feats and toughness feat also feel underutilized compared to 10k/shuriken expertise. I feel like I can have both substantially more dps and some additional defense with the same amount of buttons and gain much stronger effective use of feat slots and buttons, and falconry is feeling dated. I also want to drop HeM for Shintao for self-rez and passive defense instead of cauldron at the same time. Triple + Hamp offhand with affirmation for the shuriken. I can just look at it and see everything will improve.

When I originally designed this, I made a framework that works with any weapon instead of a single weapon build, just to provide the flexibility of building whatever you wanted, but technically it doesn't have to be just a single weapon. I want meaningful button pushes. Every iteration I seem to be able to increase VOD 1 difficulty, so with this AoE ranged dps dot and increased mobile defenses I'm expecting to push through to R1.

 

[saekee]

That’s interesting—was wondering how a thrower would do outside the Shiradi mantle.

I have found the ki bolt so much stronger than other stuff that I have turned all my other efforts into support. So I am using Draconic mantle, US and then tier 5 SD (more spellpower); I have guard up as my main epic strike and From the shadows as my faux/strike (gives the buffs for all the SD epic strike upgrades). So ki bolt—>go invisible—>from the shadows—>guard up—>Rapid slash/Blessed blades (still invisible!) then ki bolt again or whatever; any attacks for a bit have the melee distance boost so the area attacks of Rapid slash and blessed blades will smack a lot of foes. Then ki bolt and usually abundant step.

The jumping around invisi makes a complete mess of the mob AI . Feeding from tier 5 SD gives 10 seconds of temp hp too which helps with survivability.

It is not great but works in groups anyway. This is why I was thinking SDK but am waiting for dragon disciple to see what they offer. I suspect it will have an elemental
imbue which will be insane.

For pure monks I think going INT, tier 5 Henshen and capstone Harper would have the strongest Ki bolt.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

There's a ton of cool Ki Bolt variants (like 13/4/3 FvS/WM/Monk has pretty much full healing w/wall and decent boss DPS via Ki Bolt, or the Monk/SF tank splits), but the best DPS I've come up with is 12/4/4 Wiz/Monk/WM as a WF - 38ish EK, 22 WM, 12 Harper, 6 HM, 11 WF.

EK gets both a bunch of melee power, a bunch of spellpower, boosts to both, and stacking buffs to both (a la Arcane Warrior, another great feat for these builds).

Chaosmancer gets immunity stripping, but Warforged has self-heals and 15 MP (and 25 USP with more racial AP) which is better if you bring a buddy.

This build scales with Crit Chance, Crit Multi, MP (not at 100%), and spellpower - and the best way to max those that I could find is EK, which coincidentally leaves you with passable melee DPS. I did wraps melee to test how it worked with imbue (pretty well), but obvs a style with +MP is better for Ki Bolt directly (and like Savant tree, but Harper is more DPS even if less Ki Bolt).

We were running Ice b/c better raid debuffs and pushing Fire raids, back with level 32 cap - I'm posting now because I don't think anyone is running Ki Bolt builds anymore. The big numbers are fun, but they're just highlight reel - and there's more to building than just single-target DPS, and these splits are pretty one-dimensional. Also Inquis has surpassed the DPS of this build (my best Cloud Giant bench was 76s, and even Alchy Inquis is down to 48s while also being ranged, way more survivable, and having better utility).
I also really like how accessible Ki Bolt is (not the numbers below, but the general theme - I was capping at like 60k on my healer split) to get newer players into better DPS as well; the endgame vets can already do better than this, but for a new player hitting 60k is a whole new world lol.

FS strike is also pretty decent, and Turn the Tide is decent for party (caster-heavy splits running T5 Magus w/Timestop)

If you're going to post screenies, get the real busted ones with a party's worth of buffs/debuffs too XD

Skeletons (Time Stop):

Biggest standard hit in FoM (w/TS):

Biggest non-TS hit (ice vuln boss):

Possibly biggest hit in DDO? (Rudus has like 10x negative vuln and we spent a few hours trying to coordinate buffs/debuffs for any devs watching this post, also building for negative DoT is a terrible choice in DDO):

I have video but don't really know how to blur names and voices etc out lol
13.6m from that ki bolt if you include the procs while dead (3.5m, 3.6m, and 1.7m for the other tics) - I mean it was super fun to oneshot Rudus and looks great, but also I was getting oneshot during setup, it's one boss in DDO, and there was a lot of setup.

My best hit outside Ki Bolt is 300k without Time Stop, but that toon was significantly more useful in almost every way than this one. Actually survivable, AoE, CC, utility, etc. Single-target DPS not even much worse, and it was THF Barb.

Anyway Happy New Year's, hope this helps your quest!

 

[saekee]

Awesome stuff SpartanKiller! Best things about ki bolt builds are good PRR for a new toon, excellent single target ranged dps, and for me: RUN SPEED.

I am addicted to the fast monk speed and abundant step, especially when sneaking stuff. My assassin at +20 feels too slow.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

Awesome stuff SpartanKiller! Best things about ki bolt builds are good PRR for a new toon, excellent single target ranged dps, and for me: RUN SPEED.

I am addicted to the fast monk speed and abundant step, especially when sneaking stuff. My assassin at +20 feels too slow.

I haven't had more than 3-4 Monk on any of the like 20 ki bolt builds I made TBH, but I was also optimizing for max single-target DPS or other utility. Heavier Monk splits seem really good for doing "anything other than Ki Bolt" lol.

 

[saekee]

big changes coming in February. Will devs reprogram ki bolt (the said they are speeding it up) or have they just made ki bolt monks have some options with the tree revamps? The big question for me. Right now Dragon Disciple eliminates Henshin as the other tree.

 

[Tilomere]

Dragon Disciple looks to be a much weaker dragonlord, less crit, no helpless, no visage, but I think swapping to Shintao for staff builds will be very strong. Apparently they stealth nerfed shoot first + shurikens, thinking of building instakill DCs on top of ki bolt and qq.

My prediction is that Dragon Disciple will be converted to melee power by Lammania, and you will have an alternative to Ki Bolt. This is a perfectly balanced method of building.

 

[Uska]

all of this is now a futile effort now

 

[Tilomere]

Why do you say that? Pursuit is the meaning.

Spoiler: Some raid solos

I have to figure out which mobs during end fight I can leave up to solo this faster. Maybe the regular fire elementals + oozes + caster, killing bone gaurdian + magma brute. I think Karliath and the fire elementals have the same stacking debuff? Also somehow my character was 1 shot by a dead Marileth. I think move away from it after it is dead and cure poison. Also do not need to kill the bone gaurdians/casters in the starting hallway. Not as fast as Epicsouls inquisitor ... yet, but if I knew this raid better I think I could get there. Also reset the dragon's hp due to not shattering phylactery before he hit 85% or so. It's good to not shatter it immediately and use the fire resistance on it, but not sure exactly when it needs to shatter. Mostly seeing if I could, I'll go in and play with the dragon and elementals alone at start to see how the raid actually works later.

Cha stat damage on psionics in LoB is a bit rough, but the LoB himself is a pushover.

The only issue with MA is that the end boss doesn't activate to become vulnerable due to lag on server. Had to kill the titans 4x before he became targettable.

Let the bodies hit the floor.

T5 Falconry has 10 MP and 25% hp and clears the dungeon slightly faster:

L. Chronoscope Conjoined Abishai hit for poison damage vs. MRR and add a stacking poison debuff, so can't go past normal on end fight, but can get to it on hard solo:

 

[saekee]

The big questions for me in the current iteration are 1) what changes might happen to ki bolt scaling (the build dies) and 2) will Sting stack poison vulnerabiltiy as before. It looks like Elemental vulnerability is gone from elemental words.

If Sting stacks still to double poison damage, and they keep the dart spray vulnerability to poison for poison-immune mobs, then poison may be the way to go for me.

Right now Ninja has 30 MP added; if we go SWF kukri we start at 50 MP, toss in 3 cores from Henshin for trance and 9 mp so we have a tremendous 59 MP base. 8 ninja Sneak dice + Shadowdancer’s 5d6 would have a solid scaling for melee. Doublestrike will sit easily at 80% without shadow double and it would be easy to hit a high Quivering Palm DC (something I have skipped).

 

[tapmatic]

It looks like Elemental vulnerability is gone from elemental words.

This makes me sad. Say it ain't so Devs.

 

[mikarddo]

I am trying to understand how the mantle can hit for 100k dmg from ki-bolt (sorry if I missed it somewhere).
9.5 (base) * 27 (CL) * 15 (1400 spell power) *3 (special for ki-bolt) * 3 (crit) * 3 (major debuffing) = 100k
does infact make for 100k - but I am not even sure you can debuff the target shown and certainly not to 3* damage alone.

Or if it has melee power times 3 and spell power but less debuffing
9.5 (base) * 27 (CL) * 8 (700 spell power) *10 (300 melee power times 3) * 3 (crit) * 1.7 (some debuffing)

In either case we are taking about some urealist spell power or mix of spell power and melee power - and assuming the target can even be debuffed. So I am wondering if these calculations are missing another multiplier.

 

[Tilomere]

Or if it has melee power times 3 and spell power but less debuffing
9.5 (base) * 27 (CL) * 8 (700 spell power) *10 (300 melee power times 3) * 3 (crit) * 1.7 (some debuffing)

In either case we are taking about some urealist spell power or mix of spell power and melee power - and assuming the target can even be debuffed. So I am wondering if these calculations are missing another multiplier.

These numbers aren't that far off. The sorc DC variant gives an exact breakdown of dps and all the stat tables that add to it. But ya, 100k isn't so unrealistic to hit. The numbers SpartanKiller has above are unrealistic to hit outside of unique mob vulnerability or ninja poison double damage debuffing.

 

[mikarddo]

We were running Ice b/c better raid debuffs and pushing Fire raids, back with level 32 cap - I'm posting now because I don't think anyone is running Ki Bolt builds anymore. The big numbers are fun, but they're just highlight reel - and there's more to building than just single-target DPS, and these splits are pretty one-dimensional. Also Inquis has surpassed the DPS of this build (my best Cloud Giant bench was 76s, and even Alchy Inquis is down to 48s while also being ranged, way more survivable, and having better utility).

Are those numbers for the Cloud Giant on R1?

 

[SpartanKiller13]

I am trying to understand how the mantle can hit for 100k dmg from ki-bolt (sorry if I missed it somewhere).
9.5 (base) * 27 (CL) * 15 (1400 spell power) *3 (special for ki-bolt) * 3 (crit) * 3 (major debuffing) = 100k
does infact make for 100k - but I am not even sure you can debuff the target shown and certainly not to 3* damage alone.

Or if it has melee power times 3 and spell power but less debuffing
9.5 (base) * 27 (CL) * 8 (700 spell power) *10 (300 melee power times 3) * 3 (crit) * 1.7 (some debuffing)

In either case we are taking about some urealist spell power or mix of spell power and melee power - and assuming the target can even be debuffed. So I am wondering if these calculations are missing another multiplier.

For screenshots ya gotta factor high rolls (not just average), stacking buffs, and boosting too. Like Prowess Swapping, stacked Arcane Warrior, EK boost giving both MP & SP, and all of EK, Tide Turns. And then debuffs, yeah.

I'm not sure how the MP scaling quite adds in, because it's not a linear scaling as far as I can tell. I did extensive testing and have a spreadsheet that approximates results pretty well (within a few percent), but that didn't really help me come up with the equation (if you extrapolate to 0 SP/MP you end up at a negative number, which obvs doesn't work).

Not sure they're quite accurate, but the numbers I currently have in my spreadsheet:
9.5 x 26 (pre-ML34) = 266
183.6 multiplier (1380 SP & 354 MP = 322% MP scaling? Idk) = 48.8k
3.03 crit multi = 148k

10% Ice Vuln (Monk T1)
20% Vuln
21 Ash
10 Shattered
10 Ooze
86% ez/common debuffs = 275k

x 2 Time Stop = 550k

Un-debuffed average value of the above split is 117k (69% crit chance) while full boosting. No boosts (1100SP w/274MP) average 37k pre-crit, 69k post-crit average.

These numbers aren't that far off. The sorc DC variant gives an exact breakdown of dps and all the stat tables that add to it. But ya, 100k isn't so unrealistic to hit. The numbers SpartanKiller has above are unrealistic to hit outside of unique mob vulnerability or ninja poison double damage debuffing which is getting removed next patch.

Eh, aside from THTH boss none of those were unique mob vulnerability or ninja poison. We were all running Ice, because we had a few Cold Sorc/Druids around so getting immunity stripping was easy, Frozen Wanderer, and Quench (which idk how the math works for).

Just lots of buffs, debuffs, and Time Stop. Makes everyone look good XD

 

[SpartanKiller13]

Are those numbers for the Cloud Giant on R1?

Yep. Although I might have had Ooze and not Ash at the time, so maybe could be improved marginally.

It's the best benchmark I have a good bit of data on currently, but YMMV.