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2021-01-19, 07:39 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2014
How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high lv?
I have heard a lot of great things about both the way of the astral self and the way of mercy monk. What do you think of those two subclasses? How do they compare? Which one scales better into high level?
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2021-01-19, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
They're very different in purpose and effect, it's hard to compare them.
The Way of Mercy adds damage, healing and a poison AoE to your toolset, with interesting choices in action and ki economy. Still it plays mostly to what you'd expect from a Monk, in the thick of things and using your moves to hinder the enemies and assist fellow frontliners, only in a slightly different way.
The Way of the Astral Self let you focus on WIS more, and encourage you to stay further away from the enemies than usual for a Monk.
Both are good at what they do, from what I can tell, but choosing either is more a question of choosing what you want to do rather than how well you want to it.
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2021-01-20, 12:03 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2020
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
I have seen Way of Mercy praised everywhere I've seen it discussed, from a pure power perspective.
Astral Self seems to have more mixed reviews.
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2021-01-20, 12:13 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2014
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
Thats fair! Other than both seeming pretty powerful for a monk subclass they aren't that similar. I am curius about scaling though, I have heard that in general monks don't scale great into high levels, I am curius if either subclass scales better.
Yeah way of mercy seems amazing, it honestly looks like one of the most fun play experiences in 5e. My one problem with it is that I can't think of any characters that fit it (The plague doctor thing feels kinda unsupported, and I can't think of any fictional characters that I would stat as a way of mercy monk. I guess theres the one arc in god of highschool where mori jin uses acupuncture? Or kenshie ma from kenichi strongest disciple? but neither of those seem to be what the subclass is going for. Awesome mechanics though.
what negative things have you heard about astral self?Last edited by Rfkannen; 2021-01-20 at 12:14 AM.
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2021-01-20, 05:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
- Location
- Maine
- Gender
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
Monks scale fine they just have very few drastic jumps in power like some classes so it's easy to overlook the granular progress monks have.
Mercy is an interesting option in that it allows the monk to dip into the one area of play they couldn't with recovery. They scale well with both ki and action economy. No bad features is a rarity for any subclass. 11 is a high point with 1ki for a mix of any 2 of hands of healing, unarmed strikes, or hand of harm*. Once per turn limit for harm still applies.
Astral self is probably the most straight forward of all the monks in the striker concept. It's good at what it does but might feel bland past the flavor on top. Hard to call it anything but good though.what is the point of living if you can't deadlift?
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2021-01-20, 05:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2016
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
Yeah way of mercy seems amazing, it honestly looks like one of the most fun play experiences in 5e. My one problem with it is that I can't think of any characters that fit it (The plague doctor thing feels kinda unsupported, and I can't think of any fictional characters that I would stat as a way of mercy monk. I guess theres the one arc in god of highschool where mori jin uses acupuncture? Or kenshie ma from kenichi strongest disciple? but neither of those seem to be what the subclass is going for. Awesome mechanics though.
what negative things have you heard about astral self?
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2021-01-20, 05:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
- Location
- Maine
- Gender
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2021-01-20, 07:44 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2020
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
I feel like some of those reviews miss the utility of grappling, underestimate what advantage from party darkness can do, underestimate reach, and do not take into account the effective feat gains from Sadness.
Astral self is actually a perfectly adequate striker (monks aren’t great strikers usually), it just has some rather nasty levels (which is the usual monk problem tbh) that’s helped by proper builds.
Fighting initiate really helps this class in the early levels for instance.
The only unfortunate part of this class IMO is that you can’t get Crusher bc of the force component.
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2021-01-20, 08:26 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: How do the way of the Astral self and way of mercy compare? Which is best at high
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2021-01-20, 08:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2016
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2021-01-20, 10:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2016