I'm a relatively new player. I've been in and out for several months experimenting. I found I like playing a human as a fighter or a ranger. Then I discovered I could have both in multiclass. This is complicated trying to balance fighter and ranger multiclass. The two general ideas are fighter/ranger or ranger/fighter. The question here is... do I start as a fighter and multiclass into ranger or start as a ranger and multiclass into the fighter. This is a legitimate problem. I'm trying to get a good feel for TWF or two weapon fighting, and I know both fighter and ranger both do great at TWF, but is combining them an option? What I am going for. Could someone point me in the right direction, please!?

Monk

Whitefang1984 wrote on Jan 6^th, 2018 at 1:12am:


Welcome! Either fighter or ranger are good choices, and I'm actually going to give you a different recommendation than I normally would; since you're a new player, you're probably not interested in mitigating your early game performance for endgame aptitude (makes the game very unenjoyable for a first-timer), or running the highest difficulty available; and I'm also going to assume that you don't have any P2P (pay-to-play) classes available. If you do, please let me know, as Fighter synergizes extremely well with Monk (P2P), which very well could be the driving force in your decision. Also, note, that it is much better to go either 20 Ranger or 20 Fighter rather than multiclassing fighter and ranger with each other, as that leads to sub-optimal performance; you end up getting the best of neither, with an ultimate deficit in terms of performance.

In terms of choosing your class, you're going to want a thorough understanding of the essentials;

• Rangers (dual-wielders) specialize in eliminating crowds of mobs at once using the ability Dance of Death. Tempests output higher damage to groups, as their base damage is amplified and distributed to 4 different enemies simultaneously, which is currently one of the best AoE (area-of-effect) damaging class types out there. As a ranger, you passively benefit from a plethora of accessories that fighters do not get; upon reaching your 9th level as ranger, you gain Evasion - which lets you completely ignore traps provided your Reflex Save exceeds the Trap DCs (difficulty checks). On top of this, should you receive any damage, rangers have Cure Light/Moderate/Serious Wounds inscribed in their spellbooks - which allows you to recover from any wounds your character may take throughout his adventure. As a ranger, you also gain the ability to invest into Deepwood Stalker, which places an arsenal of stealthy abilities and generic damage amplifications at your disposal. Rangers gain multiple abilities to temporarily increase the number of strikes they output each second, as well as improving the damage dealt with each individual hit; making for a true maelstrom of quick, deadly, attacks. As rangers benefit from evasion, Light Armor is required, which allows you to incorporate Dodge into your character - or a moderate chance to outright avoid physical damage. As you progress through levels, Rangers also automatically receive feats that increase ranged aptitude, which allows you to switch between Melee and Ranged combat whenever the situation calls for it.

Overall, rangers output extremely high DPS (damage per second) to many mobs at once - while retaining the ability to extensively recover from incoming damage through healing, and avoiding traps along with enemy hits.

• Fighter TWFs are nearly unrivaled in terms of focused, single-target dps; Fighters can sustain one of the highest critical profiles in the game (chance for you to critically hit, along with how hard each critical hit is), and they have access to a much wider array of feats, as well as many more feat choices upon level progression. Being the designated supremacist of the battlefield, Fighters have an arsenal of CC (crowd-control) effects: Stunning Blow, Trip, Sunder, etc, all designed to eliminate and nullify your opponent's ability to fight back, ultimately leading to swift eliminations of individual targets. Through the sheer number of feats Fighters have access to, abilities such as Cleave and Great Cleave are at your disposal - which allow you to relay your damage to every enemy standing around you with several devastating attacks. Compared to a Ranger, the AoE damage is not as consistent - but Fighters hit much harder, and have a multitude of abilities that turn the tide of battle into their favor. On top of this, Fighters are extremely durable and very difficult to take down; clad in heavy-armor, they benefit from much larger Damage Mitigation - PRR and MRR (Physical Resistance Rating and Magical Resistance Rating - both a % reduction to your incoming damage). Fighters also receive much more Hit Points - these, along with an increased physical/magical reduction, allow you to take many more hits before your character becomes incapacitated.

However, Fighters are stronger when synergized with Monk; the Kensei tree allows the Fighter to master any type of weapon and treat them as Ki Weapons. This changes the play-style of the Fighter completely, and allows you to explore a much wider and more devastating series of attacks, at some costs. If you do own the Monk class, please let me know, as this will change the fighter completely.

• If you ultimately decided on Ranger, you will want to specialize in using dexterity as your ability to damage, and focus primarily on wielding Rapiers. This choice allows you to get the most out of the special abilities in your enhancement trees. Some feats you will want to take as you level are:

Power Attack
Dodge
Mobility
Cleave*
Great Cleave*
Improved Critical: Piercing
Quicken Spell

*(normally, taking Cleaves on a tempest are a DPS-loss with Dance of Death active, but it will make your beginning game more enjoyable, as you won't get overwhelmed by crowds of mobs early on that may kill your morale with the class. It is not an entirely bad choice even at a later-game perspective, as you can use these when your Dance of Death on cooldown).

Quicken Spell is good for healing yourself as quickly as possible, in emergencies, when your character is in true danger of dying. I did not list every feat you will want, as you can take these feats with your own consent, as you see fit with your character. Also note that you do not need Two Weapon Fighting feats, due to these being automatically granted. You will also receive Favored Enemy feats, I recommend some of these to be Undead (most common type of enemy you will face), Human, Monstrous Humanoid, etc. Take whatever favored enemy feat that you feel you are fighting the most of.

• If you choose Fighter, the number of feats you can and should take are much larger. Fighters are passively granted more feats, though, so this is not a problem. You will want to invest into strength, and dual-wield Khopeshes. Due to Khopeshes being exotic weapons, your feat selection will be different. You will want it to be along the lines of:

Two Weapon Fighting
Improved Two Weapon Fighting
Greater Two Weapon Fighting
Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Khopesh
Cleave
Great Cleave
Weapon Focus: Slashing
Weapon Specialization: Slashing
Greater Weapon Focus: Slashing
Greater Weapon Specialization: Slashing
Superior Weapon Focus: Slashing
Heavy Armor Master
Heavy Armor Champion
Tactical Mastery
Tactical Supremacy

Once again, these are not all the feats you will need, these are just a basic list to point you in the right direction - and this is not the order in which you will take them; the order and the remainder of the list is completely up to you, as it is up to you to prioritize what abilities you want your character to specialize in earlier, depending on what lies ahead of you.

This is only a basic overview of the capabilities of each class; I hope this was helpful, and if you have any concerns, reply to this thread or PM me. Best of luck!

Symb, how would you say your pure reaper monk compares to a 18f 2 monk or a 12f8m?

SpaceGoat wrote on Jan 8^th, 2018 at 11:01am:


Pretty much this:

Rubbinns wrote on Jan 8^th, 2018 at 11:55am:


I keep telling myself that 18 Fighter/2 Monk has a possibility of matching a shintao with the colossal surplus of Melee Power from Prowess, as it scales through the monstrous critical profile of 18/2 to a greater extent than a monk's 17-20 x3; but Prowess is extremely inconsistent on Fighters (Power Surge is considered an action boost, and during that minute-long duration, any other boosts you use will not proc prowess - so you either use it once every minute, or never use power surge), but even if it worked properly, it's ultimately hopeless. The sheer attack speed and damage/hit monks can output is way too much to even hope to compare the two.

One of the only few exceptions I can see is dual-wielding Flow (new rapier) with Balizarde as a Half-Orc and using this chain of attacks; Fists of Iron -> Raging Crush -> Deadly Strike -> A Good Death, to vaporize a single mob ASAP with a flurry of critical hits. 18/2 used to be slightly ahead in terms of DPS, but lacked the utility of Jade/movement speed/abundant step/shadow veil in emergencies; it was just as viable as monk, for its own reasons. Now, monk is the most viable way to go about running high skulls at endgame as a melee, due to the colossal power-flood known as duality. Sure, there are other builds out there that can more than perform at this caliber, but monk is godlike in its current state.

On top of this, I literally think monks can do 100k+ dps to helpless, while specializing in bringing mobs to a helpless state. This combination is way too good; I haven't TR'd since ravenloft was released because of this, along with the extremely stacked defense/utilities monks benefit from.

And that prowess shit with Kensai drove me bonkers last TR.

Wipe wrote on Jan 9^th, 2018 at 1:49pm:


I'm not sure, I used to use the giant in EE Tracker's Trap but since the deception change you get knocked back all the time now. 

While clearly doing more damage from bigger numbers my beatdown times are about the same as they were in late 2016.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deAZfNw-ULA

The knockback is that much now though I guess you could say it's a real-world condition.

What funny is I really think SSG balanced stuff at level 20 and is oblivious as to what happens once you pile on the EDs, PLs, epic feats (broken amounts of sneak attack now) and gear.  Having leveled a Pure THFing fighter with a Monk I out killed him 95% of the time levels 6-29.   At 30 it's not even close in the other direction.

How do you get a monk to 17-20x3?