Twinking a monk w/ 20k
 

Hi all,

I have 20k cash to work with to twink my monk. He currently has an FBSS, Jade Mace, Wu's Quivering staff, and a bunch of random other pieces like a sarnak mask, tattered mantle, exe hood, orc fang ears, hp/ac rings, etc.

Alternatively, I could just grind out another 20k on my druid through ports and buy a fungi tunic sometime in January.

What say you, all?

fungi > anything else you can buy tbh

prob best to save up for that and maybe get a sos to go with jade mace as you level up

I leveled my monk soloing to 32 without fungi (32-40 was done pulling CE in MM). And have done mix of solo/group/duo to 50. I had FBSS, basic low weight gear with hp/AC/STR (I am iksar so some Regen).

I'd agree with the above, save for fungi - only thing I'd buy in mean time is Stave of Shielding for 30+ (I used 2 but that was when they were 1-1.5k each).

Overall you'll be powerful, Fungi will let you solo with much less downtime, but with bandages and killing greens that gave xp + low blue cons I felt very powerful even without fungi.

You got 20k to screw around with then I would dump all that lesser equipment and get yourself a complete set of Black Pantherskin Armor.

Keep the weapons, earrings and rings but dump the rest...

I've been fastidiously farming for the past couple of weeks and am up to about 33k. Might just keep doing it and get the fungi. Prices have gone up, however. Ugh... The life of a poor man.

Get a Circlet of Vallon over the Exe Hood, get a Targishin's Bone Mask over Sarnak Hide. Basically load up on AC and HP secondary. There is never a point where choosing AC is not the right choice. But as others have said, a Fungi is huge and should be a priority.

Whatever you do, don't touch the Black Pantherskin, it is utterly terrible with really bad AC.

This is actually solid advice.

I was healing in karnors the other day.

One monk had geared with All/All low weight AC items (those mentioned above, azure sleeves, and so on).

The other had geared with ... I don't know, just a mix of random stuff; wu's, str gear. I'm not sure what the strategy was.

They were the same level but different weapon set ups.

The monks did within 10% of each others damage, but the monk that didn't gear for AC was taking about 33% more damage. This, coupled with his lower max hp meant he reached 'critical' hp much earlier, so required way more frequent cheals when he was tanking.

I think the morale is to get a decent set of weapons and the best tier haste you can, then focus on tankiness. Any +str you accumulate will be a small dps boost compared to the base your offense/weapon stats give you. As a monk you WILL be taking hits (pulling, soloing, filling in for tanks) and ac makes a big difference to that on classes with decent defence skill. Hp gives you more wiggleroom.

I'd just get a couple of weps and leave the rest unless you're planning to solo - might as well spend the 33k or whatever but nobody is going to inspect you if you just intend to group.

I know I'm going back a few years but my cleric leveled in a mix of banded armor, bronze armor and whatever else...nobody saw my gear and said "actually, we'll find someone else" :p If you're a good puller that goes far beyond anything you're wearing.

I've grouped with several people that had horrible gear, didn't understand the mechanics, never grouped before, etc. They were all nice, decent people willing to learn and do their best. I've never been in a group where that person got kicked out.

Conversely, if the group is asking you to snare, pull, etc. and you refuse or "didn't buy that spell" or are constantly AFK....you'll get kicked almost every time.