Monk strange early levelphase 1-14
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Monk Leveling:
It should be mentioned that the level process of a monk becomes incredible smooth the moment you gain access to “Ice Strike” or “Tempest Flurry” with electrocute. Before you reach that specific point it’s better to use your regular weapon attack over most other active skills, because it’s simply faster, has higher dmg and can build combo for “Tempest Bell” compared to skills offered before Gem LV 5. One of the main problems is the choice of gems you get early on, leading to a situation where you’ll simply switch to a bow or auto attacks until you hit LV14. 1. Killing Palm The intention behind getting “Killing Palm” early should be to fuel “Falling Thunder” with power charges, which wouldn’t be a problem if “Killing Palm” was useful and not just utter garbage. The main reason behind this hard judgement is that you still need to use another skill (likely basic attack) to get the enemies into culling range, while you’re not allowed to kill them with said basic attack and must use “Killing Palm” afterwards only to get a single power charge to change “Falling Thunder” into a useful skill. Skill needs a rework to be worth taking e.g. via a buff component like “Gain a buff for 10+ seconds granting every skill “Culling Strikes”. Every culled enemy grants a power charge”. 2. “Falling Thunder” Basis attack speed and attack dmg are far to low and the whole skill is only useful if you can spend power charges which are unnecessarily annoying to obtain early in the game making it far easier to use auto attacks for more damage in the same amount of time only with a smaller AoE. An easy solution would be to either double the base damage to justify the effort you have to put into building up power charges and consuming them for appropriate damage or to reduce mana cost and double the attack speed so that it's worth to spend mana for “Falling Thunder” over auto-attacking. 3. "Frozen Locus" The only decent skill, capable of blocking and damaging charging mobs or bosses, with damage that is solid and a fulfillable trigger condition, even if it’s better to simply destroy/cleave it with auto-attacks instead of using a skill. 4. "Glacial Cascade" One of the worst starter skills in the game. Base damage and attack speed are a joke even if you hit a target with the final burst of the skill, which is barely above a basic attack. The inability to freeze is just unnecessary and consuming freeze for only 350% more damage is just not enough to justify freeze consumption. Destroying ice crystal could work as a combo with “Frozen Locus” if “Frozen Locus’” jump distance would be high enough to instantly hit the locus with “Glacial Cascade” or if every hit of “Glacial Cascade” could detonate the crystal and not just the final spike. Simply buffing base damage and cast time of “Glacial Cascade” and allowing it to freeze could make the skill viable especially if you’ d allow every hit to detonate ice crystals. 5. "Tempest Bell" Amazing skill even early on sadly hard to gain combo if you don’t use auto-attacks. Easiest solution would be to replace either “Falling Thunder” or “Glacial Cascade” with Tempest Flurry, allowing you to gain a useful combo-builder early on. Might need a reduction in mana cost and damage output to be balanced. 6. "Staggering Palm" Same problem as “Killing Palm” you need another skill to build up stun threshold, to be able to stun enemies with this skill. While this is working fine during boss fights granting you an extra stun and bonus damage via projectiles it’s hard to use on regular enemies because most of them die to early to utilize this skill. 7. "Vaulting Impact" Long attack time and fixed jump distance are annoying especially if enemies just move through your attack. Let it fixates an enemy or reduce attack time to avoid missing small/fast enemies. Last bumped on Dec 27, 2024, 6:51:17 PM
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Actually, a lot of classes got wierd dogshit leveling skills that you may never use them after campeign, it's not only a monk issue
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+100
Leveling the Monk felt so awkward compared to my Sorceress and Witch. Especially 1-14.. I felt forced to take totem, ice orb and use auto attacks. Glacial cascade felt pretty underwhelming compared to auto attacks, although it did give me some ranged. I feel like full release will provide a lot more options though it did feel like the rushed wind skills and doubled down on the lightning and cold skills, both in damage and in visuals/aesthetics. I wrote a whole thing on getting to level 41 for Whirling Assault just to find out how bad it feels and to be fair, it currently does not work the way the skill gem preview displays it as. My sorceress had great thematical choices for an archetype or a mixture. It felt like my sorcerer was a sorcerer. Great fire options, great ice options, and I stuck with spark until I got arc because it felt so satisfying. Firey sparks going everywhere. Basically, from level 3 she felt fully immersed whereas the monk felt really slow and ugly. Maybe my Monk hadn't been at the Monastery training for that long before I chose him? I love my Monk now though, using Stormwave and flicker strike, looks great, feels great, Charged Staff is amazing, Elemental Expression is amazing. Looks and feels great. |
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The reality is that Monk don't feel like Monk at all.
That is a thing about classes in PoE - it is meaninless without specialization. I was eager to try a unnarmed Monk and it is almost impossible until reach the unnarmed nodes in the skill tree. After reach it, isn't satisfying either. Close combat is dreadfull, no matter if for a miracle (itemization and crafting doens't help) you can stack 75% in all resist, 99% Evasion (because that Wild Entropy One Hit KO will get you someway somehow) and on death/ground hazard effects seems to completely ignore defenses. Worst Monk implementation in games so far... Almost going back to my Kung Fu Panda in WoW. |
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" That is correct and as I already mentioned most of the problems are solved the moment you reach level 14, BUT it should never be the call to use auto-attacks over skills because they deal more DPS, while costing 0 mana and are able to build "combo", which most of your other skills don't or don't do in a reliable way. It's just a weird behaviour which can be easily fixed. |
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" So according to you, GGG should remove all range attacks and spells because they trivialize most fights at their level?^^ Remember you can still take a Bow and just spam "Lightning Arrow" while dealing higher DPS without a requirement to keep a specific distance to hit the final burst of "Glacial Cascade" until you reach Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry. |
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" As far as I know unnarmed combat isn't fully implemented and missing nodes and legendaries, so it might get better later on.^^ |
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Staggering Palm gets more fun once its buff duration increases and you give it the support gem to Fully Armor-Break enemies it Heavy Stuns. It's projectiles inherit that property as well, so you can fully break a whole room with enough Physical Damage/Stun Buildup.
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" Monk's specializations are horrendous. Chayula is just interesting, but very bad, as monk gets no special chaos based attack skill for the staff. Invoker is like a dumbed down version of the Sorc's ascendancy... making her a better monk at every turn. As for the skills themselves, I feel that Vaulting Impact should at least use your mouse pointer as the distance to travel to (assuming it isn't past its maximum range). Attack animation isn't much of an issue, if you could control the distance as you do with, say, Leap Slam. Falling Thunder could have a bit longer ranger or higher damage without the charges, to make it worth use it early on. Falling Thunder should also not get completely neutered by every other pixel on the path that has a collision box. I'm thinking, if monsters can hurl attacks at you and slam effects past that very pixel, your lightning carpet should also find a way through. Or something. Killing Palm and Sundering need to wait for an aim-assist fix first, as the game really doesn't like to let you use travel skills in the direction your mouse pointer is, sometimes not even if there is no enemy nearby. Unless you stop all actions for a second. Funny enough, same aim assist will NOT assist you with targeting a monster that is away from you but slightly offset from the "character-mouse" axis. |
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" I remember the devs saying that they wanted to make autoattack be a meaningful option. And it looks like they stuck to it. I don't mind buffing the auto-attack with support gems. What I do mind to some extent is that not all classes have to rely on auto-attack for starters as much as a monk does, if the monk decides to stick to his class-specific weapon. For melee, you could just pick a 2H mace and roll-slam all over the place instead. Slamming Monk. Fixed! :D |
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