Arelith

Updates have gone through. What are people's thoughts now?

"negative now does half damage and heal" Not sure exactly what that means but over all I think the update was on point, I dont feel like the class lost anything fundemental to stay top tier. The 50% movement slow for cold imbue is really nice. perhaps too nice.

Astral wrote:"negative now does half damage and heal" Not sure exactly what that means but over all I think the update was on point, I dont feel like the class lost anything fundemental to stay top tier. The 50% movement slow for cold imbue is really nice. perhaps too nice.

if before they did 5d4 damage/heal they now do 5d4/2

Are monks still the defacto choice or are there more standard spellswords now?

Jeloran wrote:Are monks still the defectors choice or are there more standard spellswords now?

This is of course a matter of debate but monk spellsword's dps with imbue got hit by the nerf way more than everyone else because of the flurries thing so they might no longer be at the top, as they dont have umd on this build.

Monk/SS is definitely more of a gamble than it was before. The AC numbers will be a little higher than are available for a conventional dex spellsword. But there's a distinct tradeoff:

Pros
- Still gets 8 APR with a quarterstaff, 7? flurrying with a single kama. This is significant, since dex spellswords are still hitting for probably 35-40 a hit prior to procs, which is very respectable.
- Wis AC probably overcompensates for lost shield AC by 2 points on most builds.
- Movespeed advantages synergize very well with the acid dot and the cold slow.

Cons
- Lack of UMD.
- Qstaff build requires a 3-feat investment in dual wield, which probably burns abj focii and AD:abj, which makes the monk SS probably the most vulnerable archetype to dispelling, and also the one that relies most heavily on a full suite of stat buffs.
- Single kama looks awful, and full use of the available APR requires flurrying, which costs 2 AB. It also no longer grants shield AC.

Coming back from a honestly far too long hiatus. Wanted to drop back into my favorite class (props to Kirito). What's the best build? It seems monk was until the change in how on-hit effects react per flurry.

Interested in playing a dual-wield, non-monk build. Are those still good?

Not as good as a single rapier and an empty off-hand.