Meat-Head wrote on Jul 20
th, 2015 at 11:38am:
....
Yes, yes. But, EEs are more fun, and almost anything can steamroll EHs. Too late now anyway. I rolled a dorf version of the pally/rogue yesterday. Maybe it'll suck. I'll let you know.
Besides, this is my ranged alt--not my main. So, I'm looking more for easy/fun. The repeater build fits the bill a little better, I think.
I followed your Pally build for dummies on my main, btw. I like that one.
11Rog/6Ranger/3 Monk or 13 Rogue/4Ranger/3 Monk steamroll EE's from level 20-28. At least, mine does. I've been doing back to back eTR's and I haven't experienced any real slowdowns. And I don't have perfect gear setups for each level like many people.
I haven't had a pure monk in about 3 or 4 updates, so I can't comment. But on the general stuff:
1. UMD is a huge issue, and something I've longed complained about with the Pure Monk builds. If you can't no fail a Tensers, you're failing I think. Although, with 3 Bard PL's, and 3 Skill Master EPLs, I think you can get pretty close, but you have to wear a UMD item and a CHA skills item if I'm not mistaken.
2. Blue Bar: While having ranger levels doesn't make a huge difference for this problem, it's better than no ranger levels on a Pure Monk. By and large is a problem for everyone who has to self heal with SP and isn't a caster. How did you avoid this problem on your Monkcher? Slayer Arrow + Heals and buffs eats up SP too.
3. Armor, of course these classes don't have PRR and MRR. But considering you should be in damage range of physical attacks about 10% of the time of a melee, you shouldn't need any more than 10% of the Damage mitigation. and Reaching 40-50 PRR is not difficult with all the 30 Sheltering items laying around. I will admit that there is a bit of an MRR disadvantage to Robe wearing characters right now, as mobs in EE's have started doing legit damage with non-evadable spells. Even so, they are rarely unavoidable if you move.
*4. Ki: I found I had to take points in Henshin and either Twist Enlightenment or run in Water to always have Ki for 10K, let alone Shadowfade or Abundant Step. Realistically, you need all 3 to use all those things with any regularity. Which is a huge investment. It's why my builds eventually abandoned 10k Stars.
Sounds like you largely lacked practice and experience to be successful with a thrower (you admittedly never had one before), and in my
opinion chose the simplest but also least compelling and lowest power variant (short of a non-monk version).
Yes, 14 pally or 18 Rogue xbow characters are currently the newb friendly ranged builds of the day, and they are super easy button.
You have given me the idea to try a heavily armored Halfing thrower, however.