How do you build/use Red Monika? Infiltration or Skirmsher?

[Gameghis Khan]

I can't tell if she is more effective with either of the builds. Unlike the other characters where you see a signifcant change in the perks you choose her perks don't seem to affect her that much. Since a large portion of her damage comes from executes, ripotse counters, and from the enemy being sundered/bleeding/poisoned.

Also I can't tell if I should prioritize evade+crit, crit+haste or evade+haste?

Maybe i'm playing her wrong? How do you guys use her?

I tend use garrison or Bretto to apply bleed/sunder which gives her a massive dmg boost without expending more that 15 mana and using a slow move.

Generally using execute to finish people. I almost never use Ambush or stealth.

Any tips will be much appreciated.

[Sidetrack]

I use her in the same Bretto, Garrison and Monika setup. Currently at level 22 I went with a full crittical build with some points into AP up from the other tree. It works really well up to now.

[Dorok]

Monika Tank with Gully backup, as soon as there's no plenty enemies AOE it can work amazingly well... randomly ha ha. I think she made me master flee, but also beat some combats without taking any risk.

Build her mainly for Evade, so the Evade bonus perks, confident counter for many free overcharge, distracting shot to reinforce the taunt, Evasive Maneuver II, and Fade Strike II, Lighting Reflex II.

But she is also equipped for evade, she has base 30% evade and only 8% comes from perks.

One trick is tanking can work even in steath, and gives a slightly better evade bonus 25% than Evasive Maneuver 20% with the perk. And the best but randomly is Fade Strike II followed by a stealth giving 35%. And on top of that, at least some turns you can add 10% evade from Lightning Reflex that lasts 3 turns. This gives from 50% to 75% evade.

So it's all about choosing between different stances and balance attacks and more defensive depending of the current state. And for Abilities I use them all but Fire Bomb and Exploit Weakness. For example:
- Stealh when tanking if party can sustain a bit of attacks (it's random and or dependent of enemy). Stealth could be sometimes just to try avoid any attack when not tanking.
- Ambush is perfect after a stealth tanking if I want favor damages instead of tanking protection. Ambush instead of Execute because it will do more damages in stealth context, and in case there some defavorable counter damages.
- Risposte II is nice during tanking because of the speed, you can check the initiative result and decide. So sometimes get a free attack and continue tank.
- Lightning Reflex is good for many thing including the tanking by adding 10% evade during 3 turns.
- Evasive Maneuver II is no way lost of time, it's tanking and cumulating overcharge. But it's also when tanking is going less good, to ensure the damages reduction.
- Fade Strike II is cool to try a free Stealth when tanking, or eventually could be followed by Ambush.
- Chimera String is the usual opening move but after it's more balanced and use as well Fade Stike or Wild Shot.
- Wild Shot, has clearly reasons to be used.
- Cleansing Bomb, sometimes handy when Alumon had better to do.
- Frost bomb sometimes to reduce a bit speed of an oponent. It's often more to test and see the effect, than real clear purpose.
- Distracting Shot II, obviously. But she can't tank constantly, so it's not systematic.
- And obviously Execute.

So I use them all (but fire and weakness), and there's multiple reasons, I listed onyl some.

Now to be clear my opinion is it's the less strong character of all, overall, it is based on random and this doesn't help in combats that can evolve very fast. There's various design problems and the worse is how Stealth is broken easily,

[Lavender Gooms]

Infiltrator pretty much all the way.

End game I had her with a 31.4% base crit chance. Give her equipment enchants that give crit boost, accessories that give crit boost, and all the crit boost Infiltrator perks.

First turn I would open with wild shot, making the most of the +20% crit chance on the first turn, since each of the two shots has its own chance to crit. Base they would individually hit for ~900, with a crit (with all the crit boost perks) doing around 2000.

With crits happening so frequently this would mean enemies would pretty often be poisoned by the poison on crit perk. Add in the rank 1 burst and that's double poison, with one of the poison stacks counting upwards each turn. If the enemy has been sundered by Gully or Calibretto that's a guaranteed crit using Exploit Weakness, which results in an absolute ton of damage.

Execute is also ridiculous with this setup, even if the enemy isn't under 30% health. Each individual hit of it is pretty likely to crit, resulting in waaaaaay more than its listed damage.

Her rank 3 burst can basically guarantee a full enemy death given the amount of debuffs they get stuck with. Whatever survives you can have her use an Exploit Weakness to finish the job.

The highest amount of damage I managed with her was when she was stealthed (from Fade Strike, I never used the stealth ability), using Ambush. The 100 point Infiltrator Mastery perk stacks up Ambush damage off of every other attack she does, whether a normal action or an ability. Skirmisher Overcharge (the only skirmisher perk I had) stacks with Infiltrator Overcharge 1 and 2, so since Ambush costs 20 (if you're using overcharge, which you should for everything) you get +60% crit chance on it. Getting the crit made it end up being 42,010 damage.

So yeah, have Gully as the immovable tank drawing all the hits and Calibretto as the person healing nonstop. Monika will do the majority of the damage.

[Gameghis Khan]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Monika Tank with Gully backup, as soon as there's no plenty enemies AOE it can work amazingly well... randomly ha ha. I think she made me master flee, but also beat some combats without taking any risk.

Build her mainly for Evade, so the Evade bonus perks, confident counter for many free overcharge, distracting shot to reinforce the taunt, Evasive Maneuver II, and Fade Strike II, Lighting Reflex II.

But she is also equipped for evade, she has base 30% evade and only 8% comes from perks.

One trick is tanking can work even in steath, and gives a slightly better evade bonus 25% than Evasive Maneuver 20% with the perk. And the best but randomly is Fade Strike II followed by a stealth giving 35%. And on top of that, at least some turns you can add 10% evade from Lightning Reflex that lasts 3 turns. This gives from 50% to 75% evade.

So it's all about choosing between different stances and balance attacks and more defensive depending of the current state. And for Abilities I use them all but Fire Bomb and Exploit Weakness. For example:
- Stealh when tanking if party can sustain a bit of attacks (it's random and or dependent of enemy). Stealth could be sometimes just to try avoid any attack when not tanking.
- Ambush is perfect after a stealth tanking if I want favor damages instead of tanking protection. Ambush instead of Execute because it will do more damages in stealth context, and in case there some defavorable counter damages.
- Risposte II is nice during tanking because of the speed, you can check the initiative result and decide. So sometimes get a free attack and continue tank.
- Lightning Reflex is good for many thing including the tanking by adding 10% evade during 3 turns.
- Evasive Maneuver II is no way lost of time, it's tanking and cumulating overcharge. But it's also when tanking is going less good, to ensure the damages reduction.
- Fade Strike II is cool to try a free Stealth when tanking, or eventually could be followed by Ambush.
- Chimera String is the usual opening move but after it's more balanced and use as well Fade Stike or Wild Shot.
- Wild Shot, has clearly reasons to be used.
- Cleansing Bomb, sometimes handy when Alumon had better to do.
- Frost bomb sometimes to reduce a bit speed of an oponent. It's often more to test and see the effect, than real clear purpose.
- Distracting Shot II, obviously. But she can't tank constantly, so it's not systematic.
- And obviously Execute.

So I use them all (but fire and weakness), and there's multiple reasons, I listed onyl some.

Now to be clear my opinion is it's the less strong character of all, overall, it is based on random and this doesn't help in combats that can evolve very fast. There's various design problems and the worse is how Stealth is broken easily,

I just found out that the stealth evade bonus only works if you use the the stealth skill. Stealth from perk and stealth from fade away doesnot give her the bonus.Originally I wanted my Monika to be a stealth assassin but when I realized this it kinda killed it for me because that 25% evade is essential in avoiding damage while stealthed.

So now I am trying to figure out how to build. But I havent tried the RNG tank build. Ill give it a shot.

[Gameghis Khan]

Originally posted by Lavender Gooms:

Infiltrator pretty much all the way.

End game I had her with a 31.4% base crit chance. Give her equipment enchants that give crit boost, accessories that give crit boost, and all the crit boost Infiltrator perks.

First turn I would open with wild shot, making the most of the +20% crit chance on the first turn, since each of the two shots has its own chance to crit. Base they would hit for ~900, with a crit (with all the crit boost perks) doing around 2000.

With crits happening so frequently this would mean enemies would pretty often be poisoned by the poison on crit perk. Add in the rank 1 boost and that's double poison, with one of the poison stacks counting upwards each turn. If the enemy has been sundered by Gully or Calibretto that's a guaranteed crit using Exploit Weakness, which results in an absolute ton of damage.

Execute is also ridiculous with this setup, even if the enemy isn't under 30% health. Each individual hit of it is pretty likely to crit, resulting in waaaaaay more than its listed damage.

Her rank 3 burst can basically guarantee a full enemy death given the amount of debuffs they get stuck with. Whatever survives you can have her use an Exploit Weakness to finish the job.

The highest amount of damage I managed with her was when she was stealthed (from Fade Strike, I never used the stealth ability), using Ambush. The 100 point Infiltrator Mastery perk stacks up Ambush damage off of every other attack she does, whether a normal action or an ability. Skirmisher Overcharge (the only skirmisher perk I had) stacks with Infiltrator Overcharge 1 and 2, so since Ambush costs 20 (if you're using overcharge, which you should for everything) you get +50% crit chance on it. Getting the crit made it end up being 42,010 damage.

So yeah, have Gully as the immovable tank drawing all the hits and Calibretto as the person healing nonstop. Monika will do the majority of the damage.

I havent leveled up that far. I have 68 points right now. Will Infiltrator still work?

[Lavender Gooms]

Originally posted by MrKhan47:

I havent leveled up that far. I have 68 points right now. Will Infiltrator still work?

Absolutely. That was just my end-game overpowered state. From the moment I got her all the way to the end of the game I focused on crits and she was always wiping the floor with enemies. If you don't have Wild Shot yet, Chimera Shot is good just for the random debuffs that are nothing to sneeze at.

The Keen enchant for weapons gives +crit, and you'll have to do the fire elemental hunt to access the place to give +crit enchants to armor.

Her rank 1 burst ability cannot be mentioned enough. It completely wrecks anything with enough health for you to use it on, and you'll be building enough burst through regular fights that you can use it quite often.

I don't know how it would work with other party setups, admittedly. I had Gully focus on health, armor, and damage reduction so she could have everything but AoE attacks hit her. Calibretto I had heal as well as backup damage, plus the guaranteed sunder of his attack action, and later on to give more overcharge once he had that action.

[PowerSworder]

I used her with bretto and gully up until about level 23, then I ditched Gully and swapped in Garrison.

There's a sweet spot where you start to do so much damage that you just don't need a tank any more. It's hard to let go, but trust me, Gully is dead weight much better taken up with another dps. While you're still at the point where fights can drag out, it's a good idea to go for damage/stamina gear on Monika so she take some hits and give bretto a chance to heal her.

I built her focusing on crit and focusing on the infiltrator tree. The epic lvl 20 pistols you get for her give you +10% crit and +1000AP on her fist attack, so I was merrily one-shotting trash mobs with crits using wild shot. Eventually you get the legendary pistols which are about as powerful as that with every shot. :-)

With bretto sundering, you can use expose weakness for some nice quick, big damage hits, or use basilisk shot to stun anyone nasty like mages.

Garrison is an absolute beast and the two work really well together, with his burst 2 relentless ability making her executes completely ridiculous. When you get both their legendaries at ~lvl 27, you can usually wipe most monster packs in a single round.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by MrKhan47:

Originally posted by Dorok:

Monika Tank with Gully backup, as soon as there's no plenty enemies AOE it can work amazingly well... randomly ha ha. I think she made me master flee, but also beat some combats without taking any risk.

Build her mainly for Evade, so the Evade bonus perks, confident counter for many free overcharge, distracting shot to reinforce the taunt, Evasive Maneuver II, and Fade Strike II, Lighting Reflex II.

But she is also equipped for evade, she has base 30% evade and only 8% comes from perks.

One trick is tanking can work even in steath, and gives a slightly better evade bonus 25% than Evasive Maneuver 20% with the perk. And the best but randomly is Fade Strike II followed by a stealth giving 35%. And on top of that, at least some turns you can add 10% evade from Lightning Reflex that lasts 3 turns. This gives from 50% to 75% evade.

So it's all about choosing between different stances and balance attacks and more defensive depending of the current state. And for Abilities I use them all but Fire Bomb and Exploit Weakness. For example:
- Stealh when tanking if party can sustain a bit of attacks (it's random and or dependent of enemy). Stealth could be sometimes just to try avoid any attack when not tanking.
- Ambush is perfect after a stealth tanking if I want favor damages instead of tanking protection. Ambush instead of Execute because it will do more damages in stealth context, and in case there some defavorable counter damages.
- Risposte II is nice during tanking because of the speed, you can check the initiative result and decide. So sometimes get a free attack and continue tank.
- Lightning Reflex is good for many thing including the tanking by adding 10% evade during 3 turns.
- Evasive Maneuver II is no way lost of time, it's tanking and cumulating overcharge. But it's also when tanking is going less good, to ensure the damages reduction.
- Fade Strike II is cool to try a free Stealth when tanking, or eventually could be followed by Ambush.
- Chimera String is the usual opening move but after it's more balanced and use as well Fade Stike or Wild Shot.
- Wild Shot, has clearly reasons to be used.
- Cleansing Bomb, sometimes handy when Alumon had better to do.
- Frost bomb sometimes to reduce a bit speed of an oponent. It's often more to test and see the effect, than real clear purpose.
- Distracting Shot II, obviously. But she can't tank constantly, so it's not systematic.
- And obviously Execute.

So I use them all (but fire and weakness), and there's multiple reasons, I listed onyl some.

Now to be clear my opinion is it's the less strong character of all, overall, it is based on random and this doesn't help in combats that can evolve very fast. There's various design problems and the worse is how Stealth is broken easily,

I just found out that the stealth evade bonus only works if you use the the stealth skill. Stealth from perk and stealth from fade away doesnot give her the bonus.Originally I wanted my Monika to be a stealth assassin but when I realized this it kinda killed it for me because that 25% evade is essential in avoiding damage while stealthed.

So now I am trying to figure out how to build. But I havent tried the RNG tank build. Ill give it a shot.

For now it's very secondary, Monika is chaining dodging plenty and Fade Strike stealth not providing additional dodge bonus isn't cool but a detail. Anyway setup a build on a 25% chance is risked. It doesn't make Fade Strike pointless, there's still the 10% evade bonus. Riposte II is a better option to tank and do damages at same time. But Fade Strike does damages and increase dodge it can be a valid option. I can use stealth actively during tanking, typically after to have cumulate mana points. It's still a bit better dodge than Evasive Maneuver II and it opens options like not fully tank.


EDIT: Yes RNG tank, which is weird, but frankly it feels like the effective dodging is higher. But the two other characters need actively participate to damages. But as this reduces a lot damages received, it's doable. Also you need a backup plan when it is going wrong and to wait RNG is with you again. For me it's Gully.

[Gameghis Khan]

Originally posted by PowerSworder:

I used her with bretto and gully up until about level 23, then I ditched Gully and swapped in Garrison.

There's a sweet spot where you start to do so much damage that you just don't need a tank any more. It's hard to let go, but trust me, Gully is dead weight much better taken up with another dps. While you're still at the point where fights can drag out, it's a good idea to go for damage/stamina gear on Monika so she take some hits and give bretto a chance to heal her.

I built her focusing on crit and focusing on the infiltrator tree. The epic lvl 20 pistols you get for her give you +10% crit and +1000AP on her fist attack, so I was merrily one-shotting trash mobs with crits using wild shot. Eventually you get the legendary pistols which are about as powerful as that with every shot. :-)

With bretto sundering, you can use expose weakness for some nice quick, big damage hits, or use basilisk shot to stun anyone nasty like mages.

Garrison is an absolute beast and the two work really well together, with his burst 2 relentless ability making her executes completely ridiculous. When you get both their legendaries at ~lvl 27, you can usually wipe most monster packs in a single round.

I am around level 24 and I too have gone with Bretto, Garrison and Monika. They sync of each other really well. Any team comp I place gully in feels like that teams takes forever to kill stuff and dungeons become twice as long. Although Gully team tend to stay healthier in most situation and never has to use revival potions.

[UHDNRT]

I dunno. I'm at level 20 and have been running a gully, monika, knolan team. They absolutely wreck everything. Taunt + elemental shield + protection = constat chill/fire stacks. Combined with Chimera shot (and using execute when chimera shot stuns), poison on crit, dispel on basic (knolan), I haven't been seriously challenged since I hit level 16.

[EIGHTYGR8]

I normally do the classic gully garrison bretto team. But I'm thinking about ditching gully for Red and making her full on damage. Haven't looked at her yet tho, my team is level 30 and she's lvl 13. I'll probably take her to the arena for levels

[bunk juggs]

Her evade is great with the Collector's evade jacket rhat she gets from shadow coins. It's good until Alumon can Devastation-taunt, which is about the time that jacket's evade fades a little in use. I just made that switch in my game with Bretto healzs. Off to the Crimson Garden now!