EX Dragon Punch: DMerceless' Guide to Monk

Hello everyone! Since PF2 released in 2019, the Monk has always been my favorite class, but I've noticed a lack of more in-depth guides about it. After playing a considerable amount of different Monks and building more of them than I'd like to admit on Pathbuilder, I decided to give a try at making said guide.

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE GOOGLE DOC.

If you have any feedback or things you'd like to discuss about the class, you're more than welcome to do so.

Thanks for making this :)

Yeah. I love monks; looking forward to giving this a read in a day or two when I'm free.

Marking for interest.

Added to my collection: HERE.

^Shouldn't that be here? Your link's busted.

^Shouldn't that be here? Your link's busted.

Yup, thanks.

Finally, a real, up to date Monk Guide! The contents seem generally solid to me. I've found it useful in evaluating the monk build I'm currently working on.

Thanks for doing this!

Strength monk builds:
Standard dragon stance monk, also works with any other normal stance.
Can go a lot of different ways

Standard mountain stance monk

Temple sword with duelist dedication for dueling dance

Bo staff with staff acrobat dedication for whirlwind stance

Any other major directions for str builds?

Dex monk builds:
Standard Dex monk, like standard str monk has a lot of choices.

Crane stance monk

Bow monk

Very nice guide!

You might want to mention the Stick-y Monk build when discussing Tangled Forest stance. Using the stance for its own attacks is somewhat weak-ish, but adding its pasive to a big stick is one of the best movement denials in the game.

Very nice guide!

You might want to mention the Stick-y Monk build when discussing Tangled Forest stance. Using the stance for its own attacks is somewhat weak-ish, but adding its pasive to a big stick is one of the best movement denials in the game.

Hey, I never realized that the reach clause on that one was so open. Nice. I'll add a mention to this soon, thanks!

Finally finished -- thanks for filling this in. Looking forward to the General Archetypes.

Wolf drag can be powerful, but only because it has good old fashioned monk efficiency weirdness. It is a two action ability... but you have much better options if you only have two actions.

Trip monks in general- regardless of the stance- can use regular trips with athletics, and combined them with flurrying/stunning fist to cripple an opponent (waste 2 actions). this also has better damage potential than wolf drag since it has two attacks that can combine agile with trip's debuff. Athletics can also be a slightly more reliable trip since it can go legendary.

But what if you have three actions to spend? Then, this becomes a contest of MAP.

Once you factor in the trip debuff, the attack routines are:
Trip+Flurry+regular attack= 0(trip)/-2/-6/-6.

But wolf drag has:
Wolf drag+Flurry= 0 (powerful attack with deadly)/-2/-6.

In the end, you have the same mix of trip, three attacks, and stunning fist. However, wolf drag puts one of those attacks in the best position to crit, and it also boosts that crit.

Three action attack routines are not an academic discussion for trip monks either. As mentioned, trip monks can use stunning fist and trip to waste 2 actions. So you will often end your turn next to an enemy with little fear of counter attacks. They will often have 3 actions to spend on an enemy right next to them.

So a wolf stance trip monk will often use trip+flurry to go around and disable enemies, and then they can keep wolf drag in their back pocket when they want to focus on tearing the target apart.