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Omegganog's Guide to Monks

Monk

Through longstanding discipline and unwavering obedience to ancient teachings, the Monk wields their mind and body as a devastating, holistic weapon against their enemies.

The Monk is a versatile dps class that is able to scout, pull, off-tank, and explore fearlessly due to ability to Feign Death and survive in single combat.

Class Resources

Readiness

Readiness is gained by taking or dealing damage. You’ll find this naturally generates during combat and you will spend it liberally.

Chi

Your Chi is a passively regenerating resource used to power a wealth of abilities. Chi regenerates at 5 Chi per second, up to a maximum of 50.

Chakra Gates

Monk’s Chakra Gates are combat states triggered, or “Opened”, by certain abilities. There are five Chakra Gates:

  • Anger
  • Balance
  • Peace
  • Soul
  • [Unknown Name]

Once opened, another Chakra Gate can’t be opened until the active one closes. Gates remain open for 5 seconds, during which time abilities specific to the open Gate may be used.

Group Roles

Puller

In Pantheon, mobs cluster together and have social aggro. This means that parties need to be careful about what monsters they anger lest they incite a mob. Better yet, why not just let the monk do it? The monk is uniquely to skulk about and pick apart groups of enemies one by one to help dismantle even entire strongholds without triggering alarm. This role requires you to survey and learn your surroundings which can mean a lot of exploring too! You’ll be the first in to reveal many dangerous and beautiful places.

Happily, Monk gets a very early projectile ability with Soul Shuriken which is excellent for tagging a mob and pulling it back to camp. The distance of the attack will also give you an opportunity to use Feign Death to clear aggro in case anything goes wrong.

As a puller your goal should be to balance the party’s downtime vs what the party is able to kill. Too many mobs too quickly and your casters may be running out of resources and the Tank struggling to live. This should be your key to pull less frequently and spend more time DPSing mobs you pull. If mobs are dying too fast, the party will be left waiting between mobs keeping your team from earning as much experience as they could.

DPS

Monks are highly potent damage dealers. You have a wealth of ways to deal damage, bypass armor, and otherwise bring baddies down.

The majority of Monk abilities are geared towards doing damage and debuffing mobs. You will also be able to exploit the Opening Gap state which is applied by casters by using Spear Hand Strike and Scorpion Kick. The effect these have is determined by what type of weapon you have equipped.

Learn to be considerate of your Tank when you have one! Monks do a lot of damage. Knowing when to start attacking so your Tank is holding aggro is very important and will help your group be effective. You can also use Feign Death to lessen the Threat you’ve generated and get the Tank on track if you accidentally earn priority.

Off-Tank

When needs be, Monks can stand in as an Off Tank as well. This can be critically useful to help your party control hairy aggro suitations or unexpected company to relieve pressure and the primary tank and keep the casters casting.

Being able to Off Tank means you need to be able to peel mobs off others by generating the most Threat. The Monk primarily does this by dealing damage and using the Gate of Anger which increases Threat generated by 300% (as well as increasing your block chance by 30%).

To sustain damage, you can also sacrifice damage dealt for a defensive state using Rock Stance, reducing your attack speed by 50% to increase Block by 50%, Dodge by 25%, and Armor Class by 3 per level.

Monks also earned a handful of abilities to self-heal which will help you sustain.

Which Race do I pick?

Please note!

Racial abilities are not fully implemented at the time of this writing. It will still be important to consider your racial bonuses since they will be implemented in the near future.

Monks can be played as either Archai, Dark Myr, Human, or Skar. Choosing a race is always a matter of preference for aesthetic and flavor OR for their raw class effectiveness. I’ll review the options and offer some insight on how effective each race is as a Paladin.

Archai

Archai’s Living Reservoir and Elemental Attunement traits will have no known meaningful impact on Monks.

Effervescent will make you immune to endurance drains which can be useful as a puller to keep you on your sprint. [Natural Acclimation] is a perk that gives an innate bonus to acclimation based on your Elemental Attunement (Fire = Scorching, Water = Frigid, Wind = Windshear, and Earth = Toxic).

Dark Myr

Dark Myrs’ Embittered Psyche increases Stealth effectiveness and Awareness by 10 points.

While Stealth itself is a moot concern for Monk, Stealth Awareness can be quite useful in your role exploring dungeons and pulling mobs.

Similarly, Dark Myrs’ other traits all give some unique bonus to your ability to explore and traverse: Vestige of Syronai grants underwater breathing and increased swim speed, Perceptive gains a boost to Insight by 10 points, and Born of Deep Waters grants an innate bonus to anaerobic and pressure acclimation.

Human

Humans’ Shield Specialization and Thronefastian Charm are both moot traits for Monks.

A People Inspired will give a 2% melee and ranged haste. This is always nice!

Wanderlust will give you a bonus to neutral faction gains and increase experience given from Exploration. Having good faction could be quite useful for pullers if planned carefully to lessen the amount of social aggro they experience.

Skar

Long-Suffering increases maximum health by 5%. As a percentage, this trait doesn’t have quite the impact as it might for a true Tank class but will certainly aid in survivability.

Fear of the Nine God grants an innate 20% resistance to fear effects. For a puller, a Fear can be a death sentence and this perk seems particularly strong for Monks.

Pack-Hunter increases move speed up to maximum of 5% when in range of Skar group members. This perk may not show it’s usefulness as often as the others but movement speed is critical for Monks navigating your party’s camp and dungeons.

Feedback?

I hope you find this guide useful and would love any feedback in the comments. I plan on building some level guides as I get time in game but please ask any questions you have and I’ll address them. Thanks!

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