Monkey character DLC

[Oxolot]

Hi, I like the game but I like the idea of playing a character that focuses on enhancing the guns that you're using. I know the Dog exists, but I don't have an interest in dual wielding.

What I'm asking is, when I look up if the monkey's gun build is worth it or decent compared to others people tend to say it's not very good. Is this an exaggeration? I want to know what people think. Thanks.

[nul]

The problem with the monkey gun build is that adding a few levels to your weapon isn't that big, especially not as a temporary buff that you have to stop to apply. Tao bloom build had the same issue in the earlier days, while that was strong, it wasn't fun to play because of the "speed bump" effect.

Having to stop what you're doing to press Q every once in a while kind of sucks.

A majority of the other characters can run a better gun build than he can.
Any elemental weapon will work with Crown Prince, especially fire or lightning.
Qing Yan works really well with powerful, slow weapons. Like shotguns, deafening mortar, etc.
Lei Luo too, but more suited for single hit weapons rather than multi hit weapons, like fire tower, sniper rifles, etc.
Tao works great for rapid fire weapons, no matter what kind of build you're running. But even just a pure gun build works great for her. Especially since she gets things that cast her abilities without having to press any buttons now.
Li can run a fire weapon build, just not as well as Crown Prince can. But both her Flame Dance and Energy Draining are fun to play around with.

The rest are either Ao Bai which you expressed no interest in, Qian Sui and Zi Xiao who are more skill build based, and Nona, while viable with a handgun build, is too inconsistent with how narrow the ascensions for it are.


Edit: It also doesn't help that his Weapon Mastery blessing is the only one that's really meant for weapon builds. And it's just straight up weaker than Overconsumption, which is available to all characters.

[Eudicots]

There is the issue of how much his ascensions actually boosts weapon damage. Even if you max out Concentrated Essence a +9 stack is only a 135% weapon damage boost. This boost is insignificant when compared to how much bonus damage your skills will get not just from your weapon, but from your ascenions and blessings. Keep in mind Monkey's skills scale off of his weapons. This makes his secondary and primary far stronger than his pure weapon builds.

[nul]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

There is the issue of how much his ascensions actually boosts weapon damage. Even if you max out Concentrated Essence a +9 stack is only a 135% weapon damage boost. This boost is insignificant when compared to how much bonus damage your skills will get not just from your weapon, but from your ascenions and blessings. Keep in mind Monkey's skills scale off of his weapons. This makes his secondary and primary far stronger than his pure weapon builds.

To add to the problem... That +135% weapon damage boost, is that it's not "2.35x damage", it's adding that to the existing increase from already upgrading your weapon.
Whereas other characters tend to get multiplicative boosts, or other more useful boosts like RoF and such.

[Oxolot]

Originally posted by nul:

The problem with the monkey gun build is that adding a few levels to your weapon isn't that big, especially not as a temporary buff that you have to stop to apply. Tao bloom build had the same issue in the earlier days, while that was strong, it wasn't fun to play because of the "speed bump" effect.

Having to stop what you're doing to press Q every once in a while kind of sucks.

A majority of the other characters can run a better gun build than he can.
Any elemental weapon will work with Crown Prince, especially fire or lightning.
Qing Yan works really well with powerful, slow weapons. Like shotguns, deafening mortar, etc.
Lei Luo too, but more suited for single hit weapons rather than multi hit weapons, like fire tower, sniper rifles, etc.
Tao works great for rapid fire weapons, no matter what kind of build you're running. But even just a pure gun build works great for her. Especially since she gets things that cast her abilities without having to press any buttons now.
Li can run a fire weapon build, just not as well as Crown Prince can. But both her Flame Dance and Energy Draining are fun to play around with.

The rest are either Ao Bai which you expressed no interest in, Qian Sui and Zi Xiao who are more skill build based, and Nona, while viable with a handgun build, is too inconsistent with how narrow the ascensions for it are.


Edit: It also doesn't help that his Weapon Mastery blessing is the only one that's really meant for weapon builds. And it's just straight up weaker than Overconsumption, which is available to all characters.

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation and list, exactly what I was looking for. I do enjoy Tao, I did fixate heavily on getting high rof weapons, but I think a bit too much, and I would end up limiting myself to this one SMG (angelic buster I think is the name?), but I guess I shouldn't do that. I just don't know the RoF minimum and range she should be targeting but it's something I can also find out.

Again thank you! Shame that the monkey is undertuned. Maybe he'll get a buff???

[Epicwhitefox]

Is this with having a spirit blessing on orrrr just in general his gun build is doodoo?Because at that point id just be like Tao and have first strike as my first spirit blessing if I want a gun build and with monkey id tried to get total eradication and then its just. Star Ring + 160 mag weapon + Share magazine Gemini = Profit .Or just replace the star ring with any weapon that has decent inscriptions

[nul]

Originally posted by Oxolot:

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation and list, exactly what I was looking for. I do enjoy Tao, I did fixate heavily on getting high rof weapons, but I think a bit too much, and I would end up limiting myself to this one SMG (angelic buster I think is the name?), but I guess I shouldn't do that. I just don't know the RoF minimum and range she should be targeting but it's something I can also find out.

Again thank you! Shame that the monkey is undertuned. Maybe he'll get a buff???

He's not a bad character, his skill builds are alright. But being a diverse character only to have your builds be:
Gun: lacking
Primary: viable
Secondary: in the middle of the two
does kind of suck.

Originally posted by Epicwhitefox:

Is this with having a spirit blessing on orrrr just in general his gun build is doodoo?Because at that point id just be like Tao and have first strike as my first spirit blessing if I want a gun build and with monkey id tried to get total eradication and then its just. Star Ring + 160 mag weapon + Share magazine Gemini = Profit .Or just replace the star ring with any weapon that has decent inscriptions

The problem with relying on First Strike/Overconsumption/Counterviolence is that you can also just run that on any of the other characters.

[Eudicots]

Originally posted by nul:

He's not a bad character, his skill builds are alright. But being a diverse character only to have your builds be:
Gun: lacking
Primary: viable
Secondary: in the middle of the two
does kind of suck.

His secondary skill build is one of the few S tiers. One of the strongest builds in the game as long as you have a hybrid build. Just needs the player to have the sunder since it's the highest damage-dealing pistol. While having a pistol equipped your primary will trigger your secondary skill with each hit with 200% increased dmg. Easy way to speedrun the highest difficulty.

[nul]

Originally posted by Eudicots:

Originally posted by nul:

He's not a bad character, his skill builds are alright. But being a diverse character only to have your builds be:
Gun: lacking
Primary: viable
Secondary: in the middle of the two
does kind of suck.

His secondary skill build is one of the few S tiers. One of the strongest builds in the game as long as you have a hybrid build. Just needs the player to have the sunder since it's the highest damage-dealing pistol. While having a pistol equipped your primary will trigger your secondary skill with each hit with 200% increased dmg. Easy way to speedrun the highest difficulty.

I tried running a hybrid build using pistols before but couldn't manage to get it running. I was probably doing it wrong.

[SM5T001]

Monkey plays more like a caster. He's not weak, but when i play as him i tend to pick the weapons that will maximize the damage of his ult. And then just spam ult because why shoot one enemy when ult targets several enemies at once? And then i never play as him bc his ult is kinda boring and has low AoE compared to fox's ult, so when i want to play as a caster i'll pick her. :D

I actually rarely play casters, i prefer to do pure gun builds. And for that dog is probably the best. The best thing about him is that he combines top damage with top survivability — you know, just like Salvador from BL2 .
If you don't like the dog, bird can be VERY good with shotguns, and for snipers obviously pick the tiger.

So, if you are into gun builds, you don't really need DLC characters.

[Epicwhitefox]

That is true Nul I didnt think about it like that. I did try Monkeys Weapon Mastery exclusive blessing and people are kind of sleeping on it. Its actually not bad if you know what combos you need/pretty great for early game. Need to Reload at Mach 10 have a rocket launcher.Need some serious speed, have a sword in your backpack. Want a Wish.com version of free lucky shot chance, have an injector in your secondary while you blast folks with additional pellets with your shotgun while having additional pellets from Weapon Mastery.

[nul]

Reload speed is the only one you'd even really want, honestly. But it also works best with weapons that actually benefit from reload speed... Which tends to be the launcher itself.
Lucky shot chance is worse compared to the damage ascensions anyone can get, because it's only a 75% benefit vs Overconsumption +300%, as well as options like first strike for high mag weapons. Counterviolence with a non-crit weapon provides an average of +75% damage that will stack multiplicatively with other sources of lucky shot.
+75% projectiles from shotgun is also alright in some situations.

I also wish the Total Mastery spiritual link was much better. Making something go from 75% to 87.5% isn't really all that great. Especially when compared to every other spiritual link that requires a blessing.


The movement speed was funny, especially if you also take lone wolf and overconsumption for max speed. +125% speed right off the bat