Monkey King Skills

eirghan

Just curious what everyone's opinions are on the best set up for Monkey King. All opinions welcome, including moods/basic skills

Yeah, I did try to find something in forum threads.... But y'know. Forums still not quite there yet. If there is old discussion if anyone minds linking me

catgirldesu

Here's my personal preference regarding the Monkey.

Mood: Indifference, especially if you manage to get it max level. That takes a while though, and it requires some luck. However, I've used Indifference even at level 3, and it's decent. The Tidal-like skill helps the Monkey avoid debuffs, DOTs and one-tick DOT attacks like Absorb Soul (correct me if I'm wrong, I kind of forgot). The additional Spirit skill (makes it unselectable) has its uses as well.

Skill set: Original Monkey skills plus magic defence base buff. First off, I use Pounce quite a lot for a couple of specific reasons so I didn't want to remove it. This left only one slot free for modifications. I chose magic defence because it benefits the Monkey the most, as I wear AA myself.

Later on I got the chance to test and compare two Monkies, one with magic and the other with physical defence buffs. Honestly, the magic defence Monkey seemed to survive more. Most AOEs it gets caught into are magical. Most damage it takes is magical (range, casters etc.). Sure, it is vulnerable to physical attacks, but I didn't see a significant improvement with the second Monkey personaly. Assassins' DPS skills (Elimination etc.) kill it fast either way. Blademasters, Archers, Barbarians might need more hits (depending on what skills they use that is), but I didn't think the difference was worth it.

On the other hand, unless your Venomancer went R9 recently, I recall that she is HA, so in your case, the physical defence buff might have a bigger impact. As you know the Venomancer's gear affects the pet.

Other: Some Venomancers remove Pounce (or in some extreme cases, Rule the World) to teach their Monkey both buffs. That is a very reasonable choice as well. It just didn't work for me because I want to keep Pounce and I don't want to delete any of the original Monkey skills. You can't re-learn them.

There are also Venomancers that keep Flesh Ream, but you are Sage so it doesn't really concern you. Frankly, I wasn't too impressed with the damage of Flesh Ream/Bleed on a target with 0 physical defence. I can see how well it works on other PW servers that use R8r mostly, but with our "endgame" gear in PWI pet damage just tickles. That's not to say Flesh Ream + Demon Ironwood combo is useless in PWI, but I wasn't impressed personally so I would rather have the Monkey sport a buff skill to help with its survival. Others might disagree.

Last thing to mention, unless you are lucky with the Inherit Stats, opt for defence, hp, defence levels first. Later on, with more rerolls you might get decent attack as well.

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eirghan

thanks for the reply. Yeah the forum is like. Switching to html now so bbc isnt working. I dont know what they are doing

My veno is still sage HA but I am looking to R999 her in the future when I am able to save/farm enough for it. Yup, finally taking the leap. Seems all HA's do in time But that brings up a question for me. If you have more magic defense as an AA venomancer, does the pet inherit that high magic defense, or does it inherit high physical defense to be the counterpart of your high magic defense? So would the phys buff not be more beneficial in the sense of "balancing" the pet's defenses? Or am I misunderstanding how that works? @__@

I can understand definitely though how a higher magic defense (inherited stats plus buff) would be be good... I see so many HA classes that just tank pets.... Seems you are right when you say a pet will get caught more in magic crossfire, or an AA who is wary of the pets damage will try to get rid of it.

I guess I was just hoping to avoid farming a magic def buff. I have strong, bless and claw in my bag... And not in a faction with base buffs atm. Thought i was done once i finished my walker ;___; ah well. Back to base questing.

catgirldesu

Well, I'm no maths person so I can't say say for certain, but to me it felt like the Monkey with magic defence buff was all-around better at surviving (though it still dies a lot during intense TW etc.) compared to the one with physical defence buff. Monkey one appeared to benefit more when I tried do a comparison of Monkey one vs. magic damage and Monkey two vs. physical damage.

Then there are more things to consider like the fact that most magic skills require channeling, usually leaving you room to heal the pet (such as during a 1v1), excluding skills like Cleric UVD Cyclone. The physical classes usually have either good DPS or zerk-crits or just stunlock you well and kill the pet etc. before you can heal. With all that in mind it just looked to me that teaching the Monkey a physical defence buff over the magical one wasn't worth it. That is if one doesn't plan on using both buffs on the pet.

There are however a few Venomancers that chose physical over magical so I suggest to look for them and ask them to share their own experience. They might have a thing or two to say about physical Monkies. As you can see I am very biased towards the magical buff. Though, I have kept Monkey two with the physical one. Part of it because it's pricey to switch and part of it is because... well I guess it doesn't hurt to keep it that way, but you will see I mostly use just the magic Monkey xD. ​​

eirghan

I was going to clip pounce and do both phys and mag buffs at the suggestion of a friend who had both, but for now I'm testing magic buff with pounce and i'm doing pretty well. That might change in the future once I switch from HA but I appreciate the feedback magic buff is working well for me. Monkey definitely meets more magic aoes than physical attacks.

catgirldesu

There is actually a chance I might get both buffs on the second Monkey as well, to try it out. Pounce can be re-learned in the future if it's really needed.​​