On request from a commenter in the thread I posted for the Zen Archer build, I’ve made another video of the archer fighting within the gnoll’s mountain fortress in “Chains of Flame.”
Here, I put Pynthetica the Zen Master through a greater test for you to demonstrate how her interpretation of zen mastery wards off damage.
“Chains of Flame” Heroic Elite is level 15, and so is Pyn. Obviously the layout of the fortress and the number of gnolls weighed heavily against my odds if I simply tried to run through the place alone.
My tactics were simple: Stand and shoot. Only when champions showed up did I have to adjust my game a bit as they often had superior buffs, such as True Seeing, that penetrated one or more of my passive defenses.
I subject Pyn to a hail of arrows and spell attacks intentionally in several places to demonstrate the effectiveness of her miss-chances, spell resistance, evasion and saves. Just watch the volume of miss miss dodge deflected dodge incorporeal miss incorporeal messages that scroll over Pyn’s head as she continues to attack. She deals far more damage than she receives when fighting from a distance, even with a horde of enemy archers.
The video shows Pyn’s central weakness near the final path to the boss: Becoming uncentered. The Firebrand mages often threw spells that lowered my STR, leaving me overburdened and becoming uncentered. That turned off most of Pyn’s defensive powers, specifically my Dodge, Monk stance, and saves and the Incorporeality effect from the Ninja Spy Shadow Veil. Near the final battle I got too close to a group of mages that nearly took me down.
In this video I summon Tempys the Cleric, but use him primarily to heal a few points if needed between battles as well as a mobile Death Ward clicky. Sometimes I just healed myself using Wholeness of Body every 2 minutes since I didn’t do a bad job at regenerating ki on my own.
Tempys wasn’t allowed to fight throughout the adventure while I took advantage of distance to snipe the fortress dead. While I prefer to use an aggro-magnet for more confrontational battles using archers, “Chains” is large enough so that I could complete it without an attack dog. The Zen Master is also a ninja and uses their basic stealth techniques to sneak to places and set up assaults.
I just need to wear more STR to offset ability-draining attacks.
The video’s about 1 hour 10 minutes long. You can browse the video at time marks 1 minute 30 seconds, 18 minutes 20 seconds, and 48 minutes 25 seconds for specific examples of damage avoidance and deflection.
The Order of Syncletica 
May 20, 2015 @ 11:48:37
that was nice seeing those defenses at work. If you have the full miss chance and an arrow or two gets through, deflect. Nice combo.
I notice you didn’t use manyshot or 10K at that 18 min mark? Were they on cooldown?
May 20, 2015 @ 13:32:53
Sometimes I’m lazy. I trust in the defenses to stick it out and just shoot. Manyshot is my panic button and it will activate the 1 min cooldown on TTS and TTS will do the same on Manyshot, so I tend to be conservative. Notice that when a Champion appears, I start moving because they’ll often have at least True Seeing and even a Displacement won’t help.
May 20, 2015 @ 16:55:49
One thing I’m curious about is the order you took your enhancements while leveling to the early teens. So many good options to get sooner than later.
May 20, 2015 @ 18:32:17
Fair question. Monks gain slower BAB so certain feats can’t be taken until later. And we get three feat slots at level 1, 2, and 6 for martial arts feats, some that cannot be taken later. Deflect Arrows is one such feat, a key feature of this build and was taken first. Ten Thousand Stars must also be taken at level 6. The initial ranged feats were next, with advanced damage feats such as Precise Shot, Manyshot and Precision later. Improved Precise Shot is NOT this build’s forte’. In fact, it will get it killed because it can’t really hold sustained high DPS as a monkcher can. But the build kites very well with full Monk speed. It just enjoys the Archer’s Focus best and builds damage without worrying about movement most of the time. As for enhancements, priority went to getting Elf enhancements to make the bow DEX-to Damage and Displacement. Next, Ninja Spy training for ki regeneration and Shadow Veil, (incorporeality) and then Henshin Mystic for more ki regeneration. Harper enhancements build up the power, but the build’s fundamentals are up by level 12.
May 20, 2015 @ 19:02:34
Nice indeed. Chains of Flame is definitely a challenging quest to test out a build. Nice job!!
May 22, 2015 @ 00:13:52
Syn, how do I circle strafe? See I have carpal tunnel and it’s hard for me to run around in a circle and shoot. I just use the mouse and the arrow keys.
May 22, 2015 @ 08:45:17
I wish I can help better here. I believe the game defaults the right mouse button to toggle mouse-look. So, using whatever strafe left/right keys you use, that should do it. If your character spins in place, those are the wrong keys. Now, combine the turn keys with the forward key. With carpal tunnel, that’s going to be a strain unless you can somehow set your forward key to be toggled on/off for strafe mode.
May 28, 2015 @ 00:58:58
Strafing is activated through the default bindings. You need to be in “Mouse-Look” mode, which can be done through either holding down the right mouse button, or hitting T. Then simply hold down the left or right movement keys.
May 22, 2015 @ 07:54:01
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
May 23, 2015 @ 13:52:42
you can take ranger lvl, to unlock an ablitly that allows you to shorten the cooldown for deflect arrows up to 2 secs
May 23, 2015 @ 21:02:52
Ah, in the Tempest enhancements. Might give me a multiclassed idea if I can put some time to it.