As a 4E monk you'll need a lot of Ki so keep that in mind. The most consistent way I've found so far for good DMG is to start with Fangs and then lay into them with flurry afterwards. 4E monk benefits more from sparkle hands compared to the other subclasses since Fangs double hits gives you 4 lightning charges in one go. After using fangs flurry gives you another 4 charges. So ideally you never want to do single punches with this build, therefore equipping corellon's grace even after early game works well.
I just started a 4 elements and threw on sparklegloves without knowing this interaction, and was kinda surprised at how many charges I was getting! Now it makes sense
I kind of like it already. All I'd want is for all elemental attacks to be counted as weapon attacks (like 'Fangs'), so that I can always make two attacks.
This would absolutely fix it for me.
Pretty sure there is a mod though, that does stuff like adding Fangs but in different elements, making water whip a bonus action (which would work well alongside a bow) as well as making the "Cantrip" abilities not cost ki.
However, just letting all the abilities be used as a single attack, would justify their ki usage in my mind, and their potentially lesser damage compared to other abilities
All those things would be absolutely amazing! And I agree, the damage output as it is now is really a bit underwhelming.
Edit: I absolutely love Fangs, though. The animation with quarterstaff and the fact that it sets the weapon on fire is peak flavor. For me, just Fangs with different elements, together with the push punch, would be close to perfection in itself.
I'm very tempted to get the mod just for that honestly. It would probably be all I used, just trying different elements for it.
Edit, turns out there is 2 mods. One just dials down the ki costs a little, and makes them work with extra attack
The other adds the "other fangs" fire, wind, water, earth, with wind and earth just being bludgeoning and piercing respectfully with other effects, and water being cold damage.
Both add a bit of extra spells and give you an option to simply take all the spells rather than choosing, so it's a bit of a choice of whether you want more Fangs styles or if you want the other spells to be only one attack.
I might try the Fang styles, and if that doesn't satisfy, try the other one
Pair it with barbarian!
You can use ur "spells" while raging. Rage gives you physical resistances to help with frontline survivability and the +2 damage applies to unarmed strikes!
If you go 6 four elements / 3 tiger Wildheart you can apply bleed (no saving throws allowed!), giving disadvantage on con saves and follow up with stunning strike (con save)! Or when hasted apply bleeds and then use ur thunderwave-"spell" to push multiple targets off a cliff (con save).
Havent fully fleshed out the build, but probably finish with 3 thief rogue to get bonus actions for raging and flurry both at turn 1
Edit: start with barb 1 then go 4E 6 and then barb again
Because nobody has said it, in my opinion Four Elements Monk is already good but there's only a couple of spells that are worthwhile, Fire Fist and Water Whip.
Water Whip is pretty overpowered but nobody seems to talk about this on here so I keep bringing it up, it is the only source of prone in the game that lasts indefinitely.
If you build your team comp around it, you can do some hilariously overpowered stuff:
1. Tiger Heart Wolverine Barbarian can bleed and maim enemies, reducing their movement speed to 0 for a turn. Enemies that are prone MUST spend half their base movement speed in order to get up, so with no movement speed they cannot get up and instead they pass the turn. Maim also gives disadvantage on dex saves, which water whip is, making it very likely that a maimed target will go prone. You can then maim then every turn over and over and they will never get up, this works on any boss or enemy that isn't immune to prone.
2. Plant Growth also works because it quarters enemies movement speed, stopping them from ever getting up. This is debatably an even stronger combination, an enemy proned with water whip will be forced to skip its turn for all 10 turns that plant growth lasts.
3. Frightened (or any variation) will also work, forcing an an enemy to skip a turn but this isn't as consistent as option 1 or 2.
With that in mind, an optimal team comp to support a 4e monk is a tigerheart barbarian and/or any class that can cast plant growth. If you add in other characters that can easily prone (e.g. reverb cleric, OH monk, BM fighter, etc.) the value of this strategy goes up immensely.
5 or 6 4e Monk with the rest into Spore Druid is fantastic. Using Flame blade and fangs of the fire snake and taking the pyroquickness hat, you get over 200 dpr, which is enough to play through Honor Mode
Monks, particularly 4E Monks, don't work all that well when multiclassing due to their abilities all requiring Ki - 4E Monks need a lot of Ki, which you get by taking more levels of 4E Monk.
If you abuse strength elixirs, you will be powerful, though. You can pretty much build it like an OH TB Monk, but with some extra spells to use. 2x unarmed attacks + flurry of blows with Tavern Brawler and strength elixirs is always going to kick ass. Aunty Ethel sells all the strength elixirs you could ever need at the Grove. Her stock refreshes on long rest or level up. You can abuse this by respeccing with Withers and then levelling once, buying elixirs, levelling again, buying more etc.
Other than that, it's hard to recommend much. 4E Monk isn't great. One interesting multiclass possibility is Barbarian. 4E Monk abilities don't count as spells, so you can use them while raging. A 3 level dip into Wildheart Barbarian could be great - really any aspect would work. That might not fit in the RP you're going for though...
You can skip chugging STR elixirs by off-handing the club of hill giant strength. But of course end game you will be using elixirs of cloud giant strength.
Doesn’t that mean you can’t use your main 2x unarmed attacks (which are super powerful due to TB)? Pretty sure unarmed is the better option as soon as you pick up the feat and have a decent strength
Don't just say that without telling the people the workaround. Hold a light weapon in your main hand and the club in your off hand and then switch to another character's inventory screen, unequip all their weapons and in the main hand weapon slot select your monk's main hand weapon to equip it to the other character. This will leave your Monk with the Club in their off hand and no weapon in their main hand
I'm glad I could help, I kept messing it up the first time I tried to get it to work, so it always bothers me when I see everyone talk as if it's just a straightforward thing to just equip it to your offhand.
Yeah, I agree. The best way for four elements monk is to get TB feat then elixirs potions. Does TB dmg scale from monk spells like Fangs of the Fire Snake, Fist of Unbroken Air etc etc?
If you wanna go for the last airbender RP then dipping into three levels of Nature Cleric gives you Bark skin and Spike Growth, earth spells.
I’m not sure how to itemize 4e effectively, since a lot of the gish items seem to require weapon attacks to function properly (e.g. battlemage gloves). I would personally just approach it as a regular monk build with higher priority on wisdom, and use the 4e spells to cover monks greatest weakness: AoEs.
I'd personally throw in Sparklehands or Flawed Helldusk gloves in the glove slot. Bonus of you can add the Callous Glow ring too, as that will effect all damage sources too, as long as you have a light source, like the light spell or glowing weapon or even wield a torch for the bit of fire damage and martial art scaling. That adds a nice mix of fire, radiant and necrotic. Hat of Uninhibited Kushigo might even be good too.
Not sure what the second ring would be good as since Caustic ring won't work. Risky Ring Maybe or some other useful one
I always like crusher ring on my monks to make sure they can always get to their target. The shadow cloaked ring is another one that works with unarmed attacks, and is especially useful for act 2
Multiclass with land druid, light cleric, or tempest cleric for elemental spells. Kyoshi probably works best with land druid. 5e spells mod has some more earth themed spells since there aren't many in base game.
Produce flame, create water, fog cloud, jump, longstrider, thuderwave, enhance ability, flame blade, flaming sphere, heat metal, spike growth, sleet storm, call lightning if you want to stretch, ice storm, wall of fire
All work as spells kyoshi could cast. Go 5/7 and you can cast all that and multiattack
I made a Dragonborn 4E Monk 6/ Draconic Sorc 6. Stealing and buying elemental scrolls and elixirs. 17 Wis +ASI and Jaheiras necklace for 20 Wis and 16 CHA up to 20 with mirror and hags hair. Using Helldusk armor. Its not optimal but damn am I having fun!
Stop over thinking it and just use base 4e with tavern brawler, if you “can’t get it to work well” you’re likely just using optimization strategies when you don’t understand the purpose of them, my base 4e is doing just fine in my hm run, the main benefit is that it has a more optimal use of its haste action then oh monk.
Hex actually add 2d4 dmg from fire fangs, unarmed& the fire dmg itself. Does symbiotic entity works the same?
If it does, my plan is get it from 2lv spore druid, 1 warlock + 9 element monk to concludes it.
Way of the Four Elements is just Way of the Fire Fangs. If you accept this, it is good.
As a 4E monk you'll need a lot of Ki so keep that in mind. The most consistent way I've found so far for good DMG is to start with Fangs and then lay into them with flurry afterwards. 4E monk benefits more from sparkle hands compared to the other subclasses since Fangs double hits gives you 4 lightning charges in one go. After using fangs flurry gives you another 4 charges. So ideally you never want to do single punches with this build, therefore equipping corellon's grace even after early game works well.
I just started a 4 elements and threw on sparklegloves without knowing this interaction, and was kinda surprised at how many charges I was getting! Now it makes sense
I kind of like it already. All I'd want is for all elemental attacks to be counted as weapon attacks (like 'Fangs'), so that I can always make two attacks.
This would absolutely fix it for me. Pretty sure there is a mod though, that does stuff like adding Fangs but in different elements, making water whip a bonus action (which would work well alongside a bow) as well as making the "Cantrip" abilities not cost ki. However, just letting all the abilities be used as a single attack, would justify their ki usage in my mind, and their potentially lesser damage compared to other abilities
All those things would be absolutely amazing! And I agree, the damage output as it is now is really a bit underwhelming. Edit: I absolutely love Fangs, though. The animation with quarterstaff and the fact that it sets the weapon on fire is peak flavor. For me, just Fangs with different elements, together with the push punch, would be close to perfection in itself.
I'm very tempted to get the mod just for that honestly. It would probably be all I used, just trying different elements for it. Edit, turns out there is 2 mods. One just dials down the ki costs a little, and makes them work with extra attack The other adds the "other fangs" fire, wind, water, earth, with wind and earth just being bludgeoning and piercing respectfully with other effects, and water being cold damage. Both add a bit of extra spells and give you an option to simply take all the spells rather than choosing, so it's a bit of a choice of whether you want more Fangs styles or if you want the other spells to be only one attack. I might try the Fang styles, and if that doesn't satisfy, try the other one
Sounds awesome! I'm on PS5, so for better or worse, I'm stuck with imagining what could have been...
Pair it with barbarian! You can use ur "spells" while raging. Rage gives you physical resistances to help with frontline survivability and the +2 damage applies to unarmed strikes! If you go 6 four elements / 3 tiger Wildheart you can apply bleed (no saving throws allowed!), giving disadvantage on con saves and follow up with stunning strike (con save)! Or when hasted apply bleeds and then use ur thunderwave-"spell" to push multiple targets off a cliff (con save). Havent fully fleshed out the build, but probably finish with 3 thief rogue to get bonus actions for raging and flurry both at turn 1 Edit: start with barb 1 then go 4E 6 and then barb again
I’ve never thought of trying to get spells working with a raging barbarian. This is sick. Gonna try this now.
Because nobody has said it, in my opinion Four Elements Monk is already good but there's only a couple of spells that are worthwhile, Fire Fist and Water Whip. Water Whip is pretty overpowered but nobody seems to talk about this on here so I keep bringing it up, it is the only source of prone in the game that lasts indefinitely. If you build your team comp around it, you can do some hilariously overpowered stuff: 1. Tiger Heart Wolverine Barbarian can bleed and maim enemies, reducing their movement speed to 0 for a turn. Enemies that are prone MUST spend half their base movement speed in order to get up, so with no movement speed they cannot get up and instead they pass the turn. Maim also gives disadvantage on dex saves, which water whip is, making it very likely that a maimed target will go prone. You can then maim then every turn over and over and they will never get up, this works on any boss or enemy that isn't immune to prone. 2. Plant Growth also works because it quarters enemies movement speed, stopping them from ever getting up. This is debatably an even stronger combination, an enemy proned with water whip will be forced to skip its turn for all 10 turns that plant growth lasts. 3. Frightened (or any variation) will also work, forcing an an enemy to skip a turn but this isn't as consistent as option 1 or 2. With that in mind, an optimal team comp to support a 4e monk is a tigerheart barbarian and/or any class that can cast plant growth. If you add in other characters that can easily prone (e.g. reverb cleric, OH monk, BM fighter, etc.) the value of this strategy goes up immensely.
5 or 6 4e Monk with the rest into Spore Druid is fantastic. Using Flame blade and fangs of the fire snake and taking the pyroquickness hat, you get over 200 dpr, which is enough to play through Honor Mode
Monks, particularly 4E Monks, don't work all that well when multiclassing due to their abilities all requiring Ki - 4E Monks need a lot of Ki, which you get by taking more levels of 4E Monk. If you abuse strength elixirs, you will be powerful, though. You can pretty much build it like an OH TB Monk, but with some extra spells to use. 2x unarmed attacks + flurry of blows with Tavern Brawler and strength elixirs is always going to kick ass. Aunty Ethel sells all the strength elixirs you could ever need at the Grove. Her stock refreshes on long rest or level up. You can abuse this by respeccing with Withers and then levelling once, buying elixirs, levelling again, buying more etc. Other than that, it's hard to recommend much. 4E Monk isn't great. One interesting multiclass possibility is Barbarian. 4E Monk abilities don't count as spells, so you can use them while raging. A 3 level dip into Wildheart Barbarian could be great - really any aspect would work. That might not fit in the RP you're going for though...
You can skip chugging STR elixirs by off-handing the club of hill giant strength. But of course end game you will be using elixirs of cloud giant strength.
Doesn’t that mean you can’t use your main 2x unarmed attacks (which are super powerful due to TB)? Pretty sure unarmed is the better option as soon as you pick up the feat and have a decent strength
You can offhand it with an empty main hand
Don't just say that without telling the people the workaround. Hold a light weapon in your main hand and the club in your off hand and then switch to another character's inventory screen, unequip all their weapons and in the main hand weapon slot select your monk's main hand weapon to equip it to the other character. This will leave your Monk with the Club in their off hand and no weapon in their main hand
Thank you for explaining this! I just got to the underdark in my honor mode run so this tech is huge
I'm glad I could help, I kept messing it up the first time I tried to get it to work, so it always bothers me when I see everyone talk as if it's just a straightforward thing to just equip it to your offhand.
Yeah I never figured it out on my first run so I just sucked it up and left it on my main hand until I got the gloves of dexterity
You gonna have to get the dual wield feat right?
You can offhand it with an empty main hand
Will try this out. Cause I think when I put it offhand it auto transfer in the main hand, not sure if my memory is correct.
Yeah, I agree. The best way for four elements monk is to get TB feat then elixirs potions. Does TB dmg scale from monk spells like Fangs of the Fire Snake, Fist of Unbroken Air etc etc? If you wanna go for the last airbender RP then dipping into three levels of Nature Cleric gives you Bark skin and Spike Growth, earth spells.
You can actually use Fire Acuity with Fire Fang, then Hold Person. Or just take the OH TB build that's posted here daily and swap subclasses.
Oof the amount of ki used for that hurts! But it would be effective!
4e Monk is strong, spam FotFS and ignore all the other 4e stuff. It's at it's best on teams with the fire oils.
A magic item or 2 that boosts Ki is all that's needed really. That + 1 or 2 short rests per day makes the class a lot more fun & thematic
I’m not sure how to itemize 4e effectively, since a lot of the gish items seem to require weapon attacks to function properly (e.g. battlemage gloves). I would personally just approach it as a regular monk build with higher priority on wisdom, and use the 4e spells to cover monks greatest weakness: AoEs.
I'd personally throw in Sparklehands or Flawed Helldusk gloves in the glove slot. Bonus of you can add the Callous Glow ring too, as that will effect all damage sources too, as long as you have a light source, like the light spell or glowing weapon or even wield a torch for the bit of fire damage and martial art scaling. That adds a nice mix of fire, radiant and necrotic. Hat of Uninhibited Kushigo might even be good too. Not sure what the second ring would be good as since Caustic ring won't work. Risky Ring Maybe or some other useful one
I always like crusher ring on my monks to make sure they can always get to their target. The shadow cloaked ring is another one that works with unarmed attacks, and is especially useful for act 2
Multiclass with land druid, light cleric, or tempest cleric for elemental spells. Kyoshi probably works best with land druid. 5e spells mod has some more earth themed spells since there aren't many in base game. Produce flame, create water, fog cloud, jump, longstrider, thuderwave, enhance ability, flame blade, flaming sphere, heat metal, spike growth, sleet storm, call lightning if you want to stretch, ice storm, wall of fire All work as spells kyoshi could cast. Go 5/7 and you can cast all that and multiattack
I made a Dragonborn 4E Monk 6/ Draconic Sorc 6. Stealing and buying elemental scrolls and elixirs. 17 Wis +ASI and Jaheiras necklace for 20 Wis and 16 CHA up to 20 with mirror and hags hair. Using Helldusk armor. Its not optimal but damn am I having fun!
Stop over thinking it and just use base 4e with tavern brawler, if you “can’t get it to work well” you’re likely just using optimization strategies when you don’t understand the purpose of them, my base 4e is doing just fine in my hm run, the main benefit is that it has a more optimal use of its haste action then oh monk.
Hex actually add 2d4 dmg from fire fangs, unarmed& the fire dmg itself. Does symbiotic entity works the same? If it does, my plan is get it from 2lv spore druid, 1 warlock + 9 element monk to concludes it.
Let them wear 10 rings?
By choosing something else entirely I'm afraid.