12 ic ranged
15 empower heal
18 stance.

I don't see the point in empower heal earlier than necessary.

kierg10 wrote on Aug 8^th, 2013 at 1:21am:

You want your 6th Monk level much earlier, so you benefit from Shadow Veil.  Personally, I'd start with this path after U19:

1 Monk
2 Ranger
3 Ranger
4 Monk
5 Monk
6 Monk
7 Monk
8 Monk

That will net you Sprint Boost at level 3, and Shadow Veil at level 8.  If you're TRing before U19, you only need 1 Ranger to qualify for Sprint Boost early on.

I'd also plan to have Improved Evasion before you farm Enter the Kobold at level 18.  At most you'll only be Manyshotting when it's off cooldown before you can equip Pinion, even if you have the Abbot bow.

Quote:


d'oh I wrote down 10K stars when I wrote the build down on paper then forgot to put into my post xD

And I might consider making a black scale robe when I get some more comms of heroism on my less than played character who is being LR'd into this......

I have been attempting to plan an archer build based on some of the discussion in this thread. I will be taking an old character with no epic destiny xp out of retirement and TR it when the update goes live.

Is going for a Metamagic and boosting cure moderate wounds useful? Will the healing be meaningful in Epics?

I find the enhancement trees for Ranger rather underwhelming and end up wanting to spend my points on passives in the monk trees rather than climb the ranger ones. What is a good enhancement breakdown for something like this?

How does the build look?

12 Ranger, 6 Monk, 2 Fighter

Base Stats
(36 point and I only have +3 Tomes available)
Two Ranger Past Life Feats to start (will add a third if I find the build enjoyable)

STR 16+4 Level ups
DEX 18
CON 12
INT  8
WIS 16+3 Level Ups
CHA 8

1R      Power Attack      
2M      Zen Archery
3M      Cleave, Precision
4M      
5M      
6M      Great Cleave
7M      Dodge
8R      
9R      Point Blank Shot      
10F      Improved Critical
11R
12R      Master of Forms
13R
14F      Weapon Focus
15R      Maximize      
16R
17R
18R      Grandmaster of Forms
19R
20R
Epic Feats: Overwhelming Critical, Combat Archery, + others (undecided)

Yes, I wanted it to get the tier 2 kensai bonus to hit/damage.

lux-aeterna wrote on Aug 12^th, 2013 at 5:53am:


tbh on your build I would either drop a level of ranger for another level of fighter ('cause ranger lvl 12 is meh), or swap ranger 12 for fighter 12 and do ftr 12 mnk 6 rngr 2.....you could still get all the feats with a bit of work, and then you would have even more DPS with powersurge and access to up to tier 4 kensei stuff ...

LafoMamone wrote on Aug 14^th, 2013 at 10:40am:

I never finished building it.  I spent more time testing THF v. TWF concepts.

I wouldn't play the 2 Fighter version.  Taking Stunning Fist/GTWF for the 30 seconds where you can't use 10k/Manyshot seems silly.  Also, spending ki on Stunning Fist when you want to generate ki for 10k stars is antithetical.  Losing Empower Heal Spell when Rejuv Cocoon is your only source of healing is a suboptimal choice.

Carpone wrote on Aug 15^th, 2013 at 1:46pm:


I'm thinking more for being in groups that actually need that stunning fist crowd control than for yourself. If the entire group is ranged it's no big deal to have no way to lock down mobs but if you've got a group of melee having that stunning fist in the group can be invaluable. That said, it's pretty far down my list at the moment as I'm really a junky for self-sufficiency and flexibility - I'm really interested in that 3 arti splash and 2 fvs splash choices.

I started building out the 9 mnk/8 rng/3 arti. We want 5 heroic feats that have fairly high level/BaB gates: Improved Crit is 8 BaB, 10K Stars is 6mnk, Master of Forms is 6 mnk/12 total level, IPS is 6 rng/11BaB, and Empower Healing is 8 rng.

From that list, Master of Forms must be 12+, IPS with our class splits must be 12+ (and optimally 15+ since we'd like to put off 8 ranger) and while Empower Healing can technically be 9+ (1 mnk/8 rng) we don't really need it that early and would prefer to get 6 mnk earlier than that split would offer.

Given that, I'm thinking that going 6 ranger/3 monk at level 9 is optimal from a feat perspective since we would qualify for Improved Critical at 9 then with our 8 BaB. We would still hit 6 rng/6 mnk at level 12 and since 12 would be a monk level we would get both 10k stars and Master of Forms then.

Given that rationale, here's my leveling guide for this. I'm going Human here both because I loathe being an elf and because I really feel we need the feat on this build.

Stats: 16str,16dex,14con,8int,16wis,8cha (you may need to adjust...I have 36-point build, +5str tome, +4 all other tomes - wisdom would be where all losses would have to go to meet Overwhelming Critical/Combat Archery gates)

1 Monk Point Blank Shot/PA/Clv (wouldn't take 1 monk until 7 except we need to be able to spend freely on our ranger levels for balance, otherwise we waste too many skill points)
2 Ranger
3 Ranger Zen Archery
4 Ranger +1str
5 Ranger
6 Ranger Great Cleave
7 Ranger
8 Monk +1 str/Precision
9 Monk Improved Critical: Ranged
10 Monk
11 Monk
12 Monk +1 Wis/Master of Forms/10k Stars
13 Artificer
14 Artificer
15 Monk Improved Precise Shot
16 Ranger +1 Wis
17 Monk
18 Ranger Empower Healing
19 Monk
20 Artificer +1 Wis
21 Overwhelming Critical
22
23
24 +1 Dex/Combat Archery

Edit: Removed parts about level order 13-18 not mattering much as the skills were really harder to fit in than I'd thought. Updated level order allows for 22 Conc/Heal/Spot/Balance and 23 UMD as well as 3 Jump/1 Tumble. Approach to skill spending is to focus on the following order of skills:
Ranger Levels: Heal->Conc->Spot->UMD->Balance
Monk Levels: Balance->Conc->Spot->UMD->Heal
Artificer: With this leveling plan every arti point goes to UMD

rest wrote on Aug 16^th, 2013 at 2:08pm:


I guess the right way of putting it is that for this particular character it's gated by 6 monk and 12 cl both because I won't have the free t2 stances until 6 monk. You're right that you can take the stances just based on character level...I just need to have 6 monk first for the free t2 stances similar to how 4 ranger is required for this build to take Improved Precise Shot because I need me free Precise Shot first.

Munkenmo wrote on Aug 16^th, 2013 at 5:29pm:


Hrm...Open Lock would be very hard to fit in even if I dumped Balance. I can't afford to take any arti levels before 13 and need all of the points from those for UMD. So to pick up Open Lock I'd end up paying 2/1 for all the points in there meaning I wouldn't be able to get past 12 points there. I'm not excited about balance or jump either one but I really had to pick a monk skill for the balance and jump slots both in order to spend full points on it. I may revisit that though with an LR at one point if I find I'm wishing I could pop more locks.

Have there ever been a reason to go light on ANY toon with 1-20 monk levels ?