What is a monk you may be asking. The monk is holic's "jack of all trades" class. Monks have the highest single hit attack power around, and the overall 3rd highest dps. Monks are also the second best tanking class in holic. Monks also come with a variety of self and party curative abilties.Though a monks hp and defense seem to be lower than the standard tanking class, the monk ability spirit of cure more than makes up for this. Spirit of Cure is an hp regeneration ability that causes monks to rarely have to use potions and it also gives them great stamina in combat. Monks are one of, if not, the best solo leveling and party leveling classes in holic.
Solo as a monk: Keep spirit of cure going at all times. i will repeat that KEEP SPIRIT OF CURE ON AT ALL TIMES. Knuckles tend to be the best weapon for solo grinding as they have a high attack speed. Strike of sacrifice and megastrike are great moves to kill stronger mobs really fast. Monks also have a move to regenerate their mp. Solo aoe as a monk isnt effective against higher level mobs as it is with a warrior. So you'll want to stick to 1:1 knuckle combat if you're alone. If you keep your spirit of cure up and use your mp regen move, you'll do wonderfully solo and will fly through early levels with ease and even some later levels. You never pot, you never sit, you never run out of mp to keep your regen up. For these reasons monks are sometimes seen as an unfair class, but reap the benefits :3 Just remember without spirit of cure....you wont have much of a chance.
Party as a monk: Using 2h blunt weapons in a party is highly advised. Monks party the best with warriors, mages, and other monks. The monk's primary party purpose is mountain swing(2h charge aoe) what others have lured. Monks CAN lure, but it's not advised unless absolutely necessary, since mountain swing is not a 360 degree aoe like a warriors, but its a frontal aoe. If you've partied with a warrior the warrior should shout for aggro on the group and debuff, while the warrior is debuffing, stand off to the side of the group and charge your aoe. Once both you and the warrior have aoe'ed all of the mobs should be either close to dying or are already dead. From this point you can either attack with your 2h blunt or switch to knuckles to finish up what's left of the mobs.
Boss solo: This can be tough to do as a monk depending on how high of a level you are. The most accepted way to do this generally speaking is to use a 1h blunt and a shield. The shield provides extra defense and a small amount of flex. I'd recommend a glory 1h blunt with 2 blessing bracelets for boss solo.You'll probably have to use potions because of how high the boss damage is. Your hp will likely jump all over the place. The hardest thing about a boss solo as a monk is how unpredictable your hp is going to be. The higher level you are though, the more easily you can see a pattern in how your hp falls. A lot of higher level boss solo'ing monks wait until 7 levels past the boss they're trying to solo.
No matter what style/build you like to play, the monk play style is fast, furious, and really enjoyable.
Building:
Monks are a really great class because the building is very very flexible. Monks gain a lot of stamina from skills alone. Here's 3 builds to try out on your monk.
Full Blessing: This build focuses on strength and accuracy. Full blessing builders tend to use blessing weapons to have high crit which doubles their already high attack power. If you feel over acc in this build you can always use a glory weapon for even higher str, but realize that you'll be building fatal, which comes on the glory set of armor. This build gives you the lowest hp of any class, but you don't really need hp because of the spirit of cure.
Full Glory: Focuses on str, fatal, and health. This is for tanking monks primarily. This build yields much higher hp and level 50 and 60+ versions of this can have over 400 fatal blow. The damage is still great too. You build less crit, str, and accuracy but you're guaranteed to fatal almost every time. The only thing to really worry about on your accessories is accuracy, Make sure you have enough accuracy or your damage will be terrible. Since this is a fatal build i'll have to recommend a glory weapon. If you feel that you are missing too much or you are over fatal'ed(you do it everytime almost without fail and its nerfing other stats) or want to try to get more crit in addition to your fatal then go blessing.
Half and half( or any variation using both glory and blessing armors): This is the build I use on my monk. I consider this to be a solo build since you wont be bad at either of roles of a monk, yet you wont be the best at them either. 2:2 still gives wonderfully high str, its a good place to build crit out of, still has mediocre fatal, yet you have higher hp than a full bless, yet you don't have excess like full glory. I wouldn't suggest this build if you party a lot because you can get higher dps with a blessing build, or more stam for monk tanking out of a glory build. I definately suggest knuckles for this build and either kind will work just as good. Make sure you use accessories that match the kind of knuckle you have on. (ex. glory bracelet for a blessing knuckle, blessing brace for a glory knuckle) I carry both a blessing and a glory knuckle for this build. I use the blessing on lower level mobs as the crit rate is increased on those mobs compared to higher levels. For higher level mobs i use the glory knuckle as its str is increased and fatal works more often on higher levels. As with any hybrid build it's very flexible and adjustable based on the situation.
Effective moves to use:
Spirit of cure: Scales up and heals more hp per second as its level increases. This is the necessary move to make monks have stamina.
Strike of Sacrifice: Reduces mp to 0 and creates a brutally powerful attack based on how much mp the monk has remaining
MegaStrike: An attack that does more damage as the level increases and ignores defense.
Mountain Swing: a Frontal aoe attack requiring a 3.5 second charge. Very useful in parties.
Special notes on monk:
Monks work well even with the worst of gear. All a monk needs to be sucessful is str and accuracy.
Monks are versatile and the weapons for a monk all have different purposes. At higher levels its definately advisable to have all of them.
Monks are almost always wanted in parties because they're very self sufficient and deal wonderful damage.
Monks are the fastest class to level since they never have to rest, pot, and rarely have to run away.
Monks mp regen doesn't cost hp! well that's a bug...but, when its fixed the monk's mp regen doesn't really cost hp since spirit of cure will regain it so fast) So regen party members mp when you see it's low. You don't have to everytime, but it makes your party members happy since they don't have to use up mp pots and wait for a cooldown. Regening your own mp is a major aspect of gameplay too.
Hope you found my monk's guide helpful ^^
xbombr
Wed May 13, 2009 10:27 am by kamilek1996
Subject: xbombr's officially official guide to playing a monk