Ultimate loot grinder

[Sun Wukong]

You can play one one the surface and there are always few orcs around on the surface. In fact the Dragonspear Castle in game is currently populated by grey-orcs, as is the misty forest. (Both as mobs...)

But yeah, you can play a grey orc on the surface.

[Egg Shen]

Alright, couple more questions for the monk experts.

Is ki step awesome? Particularly for a loot grinder?

If ki step is awesome, should I bother with other things that burn up stunning fist attempts, such as the willow strike thing, and fiery fists? Keep in mind I'm a str based quarterstaff wielding brute. I read somewhere that fiery fists works on quarterstaffs, posted by Steve maybe? But surely it doesn't stack with flame weapon, and my guy can use wands, so maybe it's a waste of a feat regardless?

If I don't take some number of these feats, it will just be boring stuff like dodge and skill focus: spot. So if they are good fun to have I could be persuaded to roll with them.

[Sun Wukong]

Blazing Aura (Epic feat) works with all weapons.

As for Ki Step: https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Ki_Step <= This here makes it sound like a pretty fun thing to have. So go for it.

Based on the description, Fiery Fist should not work with staff.

[Arn]

Ki Step used to be absurdly broken, but they thankfully nerfed it. It now has a limited distance (I want to say like 20 to 30 feet?) and a 30 second cooldown. I think for loot grinding purposes, it won't save you that much time.

Just tested Blazing Aura and Fiery Fist for you. They both work with quarterstaff.

I would not be surprised if they'd also stack with Flame Weapon, but I am currently unable to test that out.

[Egg Shen]

Thanks for the info! I won’t have the wisdom for blazing aura, so as goofy as it would be for flame weapon to stack with fiery fist, im really hoping it does. I’ll probably take ki step for funsies. It sounds neat. I don’t think i’ll bother with the willow strike as the dc will be a little sub par.

[WatWatsen]

Is ki step still fun/worth picking up in its nerfed state? I've never tried it but it does sound cool. Mostly I'm wondering cause I'm trying to cram toughness/steadfast determination into my lowbie monk's build. At the moment he's taking those in the epics at the cost of two great wisdoms. The only pre-epic feats I could see dropping are maybe ki step and improved critical: unarmed. I could try to get the latter from an item...

[Arn]

Ki Step is fun, but not necessary. I use it as an RP skill. There is mechanical benefit to it, but I don't usually use it in combat. I probably under-utilize it, though.

Unarmed crit range is so low that I personally don't see the benefit in taking Improve Crit. The way I see it, monks generally don't rely on crits for damage.

[Theodore01]

My monk crits a lot with his many attacks, i always take pcrit and icrit on my monk builds.

Ki step was fun, now i barely use it at all.