Monk Builds

The Spirit Monk

Introduction

Welcome to my Spirit Monk guide. In this guide I will try to explain things that will lead people to make their own builds, by understanding aspects of a spirit monk. I will try not to say “Do this!” but understand some things are a must. What can I say about Spirit Monk? Well they use attacks that consume Spirit Spheres. Their 3 main attacks, Occult Impaction, Throw Spirit Sphere and Guillotine Fist are very different to make them versatile. I guess you can say they “Attack the weak point for massive damage.” While damaging, the monk is not overpowered. They are among the weakest in HP mod and armor defense.

The monk is not the best option for any player that is new to Ragnarök Online simply because as Acolyte will introduce a road with hardships. The prerequisites of skills for Monk from Acolyte almost demands to change at job 50.

Stats

First I will like to give somewhat of a ratio on how much attention you should pay at stats.
Str: 3
Dex: 3
Int: 1
Vit: 1
Agi: none
Luk: none

Ok now for the explanations.

Str

All your skills will be based on Str. On the leveling section of the guide I have put down how much Str you need for each spot. Think of Str giving you the ability to walk. If you have below the required amount, you are crawling.

Vit

Good stat to have in all areas of combat.
Max HP. In PvM you have Heal, so why raise max HP at all? Simple, all high level maps have aggressive monsters. Aggressive monster, which often attack in groups. Obviously a group of monsters give fast exp. If you can’t take a little damage, say bye to that nice exp.
In WoE other players hurt you…a lot. Nuf said.

• Efficiency of HP items is useful in WoE. Healing items take place over Heal in WoE.
• Vit reduces duration of Curse, Silence and Stun status ailments. The most re-occurring is Stun from the Dancer skill Dazzler. Curse can be cured with Bless and Silence with Green Potions however Stun is the most dangerous and you are unable to cure yourself alone.
• So what about Acid Bomb? This skill makes players question how much Vit to invest in if any at all. However when planning keep in mind that Acid Bomb is not the only skill out there, many others will KO you if you have low HP.

Int

• Max SP. this is most important for casting Guillotine Fist as it increases damage with current Sp.
• Regenerating increases by 1 every 6Int and 100 SP. Normally most classes and builds increase Int by this manner but with Monks it might not be the case. Monks can gain back SP by Spiritual Sphere Absorption which I will explain more in Tips. For that reason Dex is often more important in this scenario.
• Efficiency of SP items is useful in WoE. The more Int the less items you have to use to gain back your desired SP amount.
• Heal amount is useful in leveling since in WoE you will be using potions and Heal will be a waste of time and SP. As I see it, it is the ideal way of raising Int for leveling.

Dex

All your skills have a cast time as well (Yes what a downer). 150Dex means your cast will be instant. 1Dex will reduce cast time by 0.66%. At 100Dex your cast time can be seen as fast. Also like Str for walking, think of Dex as running. The more Dex you have the faster the exp will be.

Tips

Dancing

Dancing is a neat little trick that is best used with Occult Impaction. The official iRO site states that the skill has a 0.5 second skill delay, this is not true. It is a delay caused by the animation which can be skipped.
When your cast reaches its end, click on a tile away from your sprite. Doing so will enable you to recast almost immediately.
This will take practice.

Absorbing SP

Spiritual Sphere Absorption can be used on monster to regenerate SP. It is not actually absorbing anything, monsters do not have a Max SP amount so this can be done over and over. Most common problem with this is you need to have /noshift turned on for it to work.

Leveling Spots

Turtle Island 2

Good place to level up with a priest. The aim here is for the Priest to Lex Aeterna on a Turtle monster for you to be able to KO it with one Occult Impaction.

• 100 Str Monks will KO every Turtle with one Lexed Occult Impaction and Pests with level 3 non-Lexed Throw Spirit Sphere.
• 90 Str Monks will need Impositio Manus or The Sign for Soliders. Take note that Impositio Manus does not last long.
• All monsters are brute, I recommend Triple Clamorous Chain.

Juno Field 11/Sleepers

Here you can KO Sleepers with one Occult Impaction without Priest aid, regenerate Sp from Geographers and run/teleport from Demon Pungus.

• 110Str Monks will need a x2x1 Chain and The Sign
• 120Str Monks may just use x3 Chain.
• Do not use size cards, only elemental or race.

Juno Field 6/Sleepers

This map is similar to Field 11 but faster exp. The differences are more Sleepers, more Demon Pungus and no Geographers. Best way of leveling here is by saving in an Inn and memo the map. Every time you run out of SP you can use teleport level 2, rest at the Inn and warp back to the field. Pick up loot to cover the expenses. I find saving at Rachel Inn to be the best for 2 reasons, very close to storage and Spirit Spheres do not cancel out if you warp or teleport.

The Combo Monk

The primary goal of the Combo Monk is to PvE. While it may be possible to attempt to WoE with a Combo Monk, you are probably going to be ignored by most players or someone may simply zap you out of existence. In either case, Combo Monks are very fun to play with being one of the melee finesse classes in Ragnarok Online.

Introduction

If you were wondering what a melee finesse class means, it is simply a character that needs constant attention to what you are doing. Unlike knights who simply repetitively mobs and brandishes or Dual Dagger Assassins that click on monsters, to play a Combo Monk, requires that you buff yourself, chain combos as necessary and even heal yourself. This type of monk also gains you the best of two worlds (but a master of none) namely some thief like skills and yet retain some Acolyte skills.

Stats

Str

Being a melee character, there is no doubt that this is the primary attribute of this build. Do not be fooled by what others may have told you. Melee classes deal damage and damage is primarily strength based. More strength, much more damage, means faster leveling! You should target 120 if possible 110 is bare minimum.

Agi

Because the Combo Monk needs to spread out his stat points all over the place, hybrid stat builds is not an option. You end up spreading yourself too thin to do anything useful. In this case, I would highly recommend that Agility being your primary defensive stat (Vit being the other defensive stat). You need to pump this to an target amount that you are comfortable with your final leveling (end game mode). This typically means you need to achieve 210 or more flee to play with turtles. This roughly translates to approximately 80 agi. Another reason why this is your primary defensive attribute is that the job bonus of a monk is tilted (albeit by one point) toward agi and you do have the passive Flee skill to improve your flee.

Dex

Dexterity is important for two reasons. You have to connect (hit) the foe or otherwise, you end up wasting SP when you perfom quadruple blows. I wasted a lot of SP trying to hit hunter flys since I cannot connect my blows at all. The next reason is to lower down cast time of spells. While you will not be the fastest caster, you still need to lower down cast times to more reasonable levels. Your target here is to get 60 to 70 dex.

Int

Having pumped up 3 attributes, intelligence is where the rest of your points should go. It serves two purposes: increases the sp storage capacity and increases healing strength. The first is because higher level monsters give up more sp per absorb, you don't want to waste that sp that you successfully absorb (the fail rate is pretty high in my opinion) and the second is to conserve sp when healing yourself since heal boosts occur every 8 base+int levels. Your target here is around 20-30.

Vit

Because of the point requirements of the previous stats. This is usually set to 1. If you for some reason have some spare points, you can definitely add it here. Hybriding agility and vitality is not such a great idea since the HP modifier of a monk is pretty low and your flee skills will suffer greatly. Pumping all 80 points into vitality instead is another option but if you asked me, since the HP modifier is low to begin with, why even bother. If you wanted to do that then you may be interested in a Spirit Monk or WoE based monk builds instead.

Luck

With the Fury status of the monk, it may be possible to actually add to luck and try to get a crit monk going. Sadly, I have never actually seen one in action which means either I don't get around a lot or they simply do not exist in practice (not as a experiment to prove other people wrong.)

The Pringle Build

Stats

At level 99, I am aiming for this with buffs and equipment

• Str 120
• Agi 80
• Dex 70
• Int 30
• Vit 1
• Luck 1

Recommended equipment

All headgears: Hotblooded Headband or any total +2 or +3 str headgear
Garment: Mocking Muffler
Armor: Saints Robe. Either use +1 int or any flee enhancing card
Weapon: Fists for combos and chains for Occult Impaction
Shield: race reduction bucklers
Foot wear: Flee enhancing footware (ChonChon) or SP enchancing footware (Sohee)
Accessories: 2x Mustle Rings

Skills

Pure Combo Type

This is a skill build That maxes out the combo trees. I would recommend that if you go this route, you might as well max out the flee skill and the iron fists as well. The only Spirit skills that are truly required is Occult Impaction and Absorb Spirit Sphere for turtle leveling fun. Also I would never go past level 5 triple blows since, I prefer 25% chance to chain to quadruple blows rather than 20% at level 10.

The Hybrid Type

This is pretty much how Pringle was built. I have low levels of nearly all skills. The only skills that I could not get were Mental Strength, Snap and Spiritual Cadence. I have all other skills. Why such a weird skill tree. In essence, this build was meant for PvM, exploring and just downright fun! It is funny to combo into an gfist or root then gfist things. Plus, this build survived the times. This is a four year old build and when I first learned of OI's usefulness against turtles, I was immediately down there, no remake, no skill reset. The drawback? I die within 1 second of setting foot in PvP or WoE situations.

Tips

• Hunt things you can kill fast. You are not a mobber and therefore you need to make up for not killing mobs at one time but rather kill things that you can kill really, really fast. Use your ASPD to your advantage.
• When comboing, do not use anything past quadruple blows unless you know what you are doing. Combo strikes beyond quadruple blows pushes the enemy around and can get you in a lot of hot water if it got pushed to a mob.

Leveling Spots

• You will need to level like a thief/assassin but at lower levels. There is no one recommended place to level since you have the capabilities to move around and check monster flee rates to see where you should level.
• Combo monks are not the best but for me, they are capable of doing collection quests also since they can solo-explore lots of places.
• By the time you get enough flee, TI surface is a good place to begin your journey into TI. With the right fists and strength, you may not own TI surface like hunters do but you can at least level pretty quick.
• When you are finally confident to go play with turtles, OI comes in handy with your dexterity.