Your videos deserve so many more views. This build is so original, literally no other RU-vidr has made a stealth build nearly as good or as original as this one. I didn’t even realize Shadow Monk was so good until I watched your solo Moonrise Towers video a while back. I have been playing Shadow Monk ever since and it’s seriously now my favorite subclass in the game. Thanks for the build!
I love this build, and after playing with it for 30h, i discovered a trick to quickly activate the helmet of grit effect, if you feel like it is needed more than half of your hp before a fight. Replace the amulet of Bhaal with the amulet of greater health, set your constitution to ~8 and simply unequip and re-equip it whenever you want that extra bonus action.
Thank you for everything, well done and the play through at the end really put things together on how the mechanics work. Kudos! i would love to see more of this so I can actually be a better player. I suck to be honest and this guide was very helpful in assisting me in how to think differently in my play through regardless of class, as I progress. Thank you!
Took a lot of inspiration from your build to do my own shadow monk solo tactician playthrough. Using a half orc even let me OTK Raphael. Wonderful guide, def my favorite way to play monk/rogue. Cheers
finished tactician with this build - very flexible and comfortable fights, especially moonrise towers/any strong warriors like giths. The only problem was last fight - the whole area was illuminated, so no benefit from the shadows. Orin was destroyed, but probably because I was DU, not sure UPD was watching the build progress by videos , not just created and finished
I started this build solo tactician without any companions and I recommend every person to start with Rogue and not Monk class, otherwise a great build. Lv 3-5 is hard though! You will have to reload very often :)
The only video I ever found which actually teaches a newbie like me is how to use stealth classes in game . Everyone is like here are the levels there you go but like what am I supposed to do with these tools ? This video teaches it .
How in the world did you figure all this out?!?!?! 😂 I’ve never seen any build like this before. I finished my first play through played through blind on purpose & seeing all these crazy strategies other people come up with is amazing
Kind of figured most of the build just from comments you had made in previous videos but was very good to see it in this video. Quality voiceover (software?), also cool guide on how you manipulated the mechanics to work in your favour. Was already doing a Shadow Monk Dark Urge playthrough before started watching your videos but you have given me food for thought on how to improve my playthrough. I'm doing it with a party with Astarion (Gloomstalker Assassin), Shadowheart (Trickery Domain Cleric) and Lae'zel (Battlemaster Fighter). The latter two have pretty much just been along for the ride as my Shadow Monk and Astarion obliterate our enemies.
Bit late to the party on this but looking to do a solo HM run as a shadow monk and found your channel and build, superb work ser. My query was is it worth having a two handed weapon (Shars spear for example) as your bonus action is quite busy already (even when you have 2 of them) to be making off hand attacks?
Really great video - this seems like lots of fun - thank you! I love the hide and seek with the armour - I’m no where near solo runs yet so how do you think you would optimise this build and strategy if you had a whole party?
Thanks for that! Interesting build. Monk is my fave class but I usually go Open Hand. Your build uses armour; don’t you mind losing the monk movement speed and AC bonus from wisdom? I guess with shadowstep you are not really relying on movement all that much but what about AC?
Yeah shadow step pretty much eliminates any mobility problems. Not only that, because of the extreme distances you make with shadow step especially with two bonus actions, you could pretty much manipulate the enemy AI to waste their turn dashing on you which means they won't get to do any attack. Of course ranged enemies will still be able to attack or cast spells on you which is why you must then hide inside darkness. With both shadow step and darkness you're pretty much invulnerable.
This build looks amazing, I'm testing it out, but damn I can't even finish off the first enemies with solo tactician, you have any tips on how I can survive til I get my first good abilities?
Kite, never go melee. If you can, memorize the best setups/cheeses in every act 1 fight. For example, the hyena gnoll fight. Convince them to go inside the cave and then take 2 firewine barrels and wait for them to gather in a single spot or use minor illusion, then place both barrels and then shoot with fire arrows that should kill most if not all the gnolls. Things get really tedious that early in a solo run and its true for most weapon based classes.
@@unbidden6948 Ok thank you for the tips, especially with the barrels that‘s a good one! I‘ll come back from time to time to give some information on how it‘s working out for me!✌🏻 You got a new sub my friend!
Looks like a super fun build! Was wondering how the playstyle might work out in co-op however? Specifically the entering and exiting combat aspect while a friend is still engaged?
You wouldn't be able to exit combat if your coop partner is still in-combat. Also, this build favors hit and run defensive playstyle rather than stand-your-ground kind of playstyle so your other party members would likely get all the aggro and damage however you could still be extremely effective by utilizing darkness whether by isolating and blinding priority targets like enemy casters or protecting your party so that they can't be targeted. Keep in mind however that darkness would blind anyone without blind immunity.
I'll probably be doing this with friends next time. If you wanted to escape and re-engage combat while friends fight, you can just shadowstep away from the enemies far enough until you can flee the combat. Personally I won't, but it is still there if you wanted to do hit and run tactics while your friends do their own thing.
Good build. My main question is why you left out caustic ring, but that is a fairly small point. I also don't see the strange conduit ring in your list of suggestions. Or the arcane circlet, I don't think. Do you find, as I do, that enemies, seemingly at random, don't get surprised when you'd expect them to, regardless of any sort of stealth roll, and/or regardless of you being invisible? That's why I never want to be an assassin subclass. I feel like surprise often not working would be extra frustrating. I feel like this is a bug and/or bad coding, not anything intended and not a result of some enemies having the 'alert' feat. I do have an actual solo tactician pure shadow monk (which sucks compared to multiclassing of course). My only death, halfway through Act 3, is once to the forge guardian before figuring out how to do it right (the right way I figured out has to do with hiding in darkness and using minor illusion for parts of the fight). I'm pretty sure that dual-wielding quarterstaves (Incandescent and Mourningfrost) is more damage than savage attacker with shortswords prior to Orrin, or at least prior to the Bhaalist armor (I don't know Act 3 all that well.) It may be the case that you can't sneak attack with quarterstaves however, as a monk-rogue dual class, so that would be the deciding factor depending on how that works. Dual wielding also lets you use the +3 +1-8 radiant miracle mace at lvl 10. Everything is massively worse than being a gloomstalker, imo, so other builds, including this one, are for testing/fun/interest. So, no matter what, my build for anything other than a gloomstalker will be far worse. (Shadow monks are basically really bad gloomstalkers, missing out on the bonus init, bonus wis and int saves proficiency, fighting style, missing ALL armor proficiency, many weapon proficiencies, missing the free ambush attack, and getting relative crap in return, like just shadow step, missle deflect, evasion, and dex-based maces and quarterstaves and such.) Unfortunately, my build had basically nothing for it in Act 3 from merchants (maybe there is good stuff far later such as in House of Hope). I actually am a duergar for the double-invis because umbral shroud is somewhat unreliable and a good way to get yourself killed by accident in some situation. I was stacking the damage from helldusk (or justiciar) gauntlets, strange conduit ring, arcane synergy circlet, caustic ring, drakethroat glaive, dipping in a candle, and, for much of act 1 and 2, morninglord's radiance. So, high damage, but unavoidably squishy. If I were to do it again, I'd likely pick a race with medium armor prof and take heavy armor prof at 8 or 12 and use the silly armor of persistence that basically makes any character nigh-unkillable. Or, of course, do the damage stacking you pointed out once I learn to get the Bhaal and Orrin items early into Act 3.
Because eversight ring and risky ring pretty much outshines any other ring in the game for this build, yes you get extra 1d2 acid and 1d4 psychic damage riders but you would not have the permanent advantage on attack rolls and the darkness blind immunity. Yeah I do find triggering surprise rounds to be inconsistent at times, the game is very good but it still has a lots of bugs that I'm certain Larian would fix later. The best variation of the shadow monk is a dual wielding crossbow with sharpshooter, this probably has the best kiting capability of any build in the game thanks to shadow step, but I didn't really like ranged gameplay and really wanted a dual wielding melee build, which is why I made this. So you could say this build is equal parts thematic and optimization. I do see the appeal of ultra minmaxed gameplay (I do it myself) but I don't think I would like to play a dual wielding quarterstaff monk lol plus coupled with bhaalist armor this build could finally compete if not surpass the best single target classes like Paladins, granted it's only in act 3 you could do this. Hmmm, do you really need these proficiencies and AC if enemies waste their actions on dashing to you or when they can't even pathfind to you with how darkness works? If I were to truly minmax this build, like I said I would pursue dual hand crossbows and just kite away with shadow step, the enemy AI is not that smart in this game so you could easily manipulate them.
My experience in a Coop run says is viable, but u need to sync your actions and communicate with ur team for u to open/start the combats in order to acess all ur buffs and mechanics... its get pretty annoying sometimes, even more with a paladin dude wanting to jump in front of every one and start the fight...but if are the one controlling all ur party i Think u can handle pretty well
@@TheTheYawaYou need to be wielding a finesse weapon to be able to trigger Sneak Attack. If you are not wielding a weapon, you cannot use sneak attack. HOWEVER, due to the way the game is coded, if you are wielding a finesse weapon in your main hand and use your bonus action to do Flurry of Blows / unarmed strike, the game considers you as still having said weapon, and therefore eligible for sneak attack. This is unintended, not incredibly broken either. It just means you have more opportunities to land hits and trigger sneak attack.
