Monk versus Serpent Hunting

Asami

I am trying to decide between monk or serpent for hunting right now. So I had a couple of questions after collecting a bit of data.

As serpent, I can do about 3.28% per second on a certain denizen with a lash. On that same denizen, in monk, I do 3% per second.

So my questions are, will learning more subterfuge increase BOTH damage and accuracy, or just the latter?

Does learning tekura increase damage or just accuracy (ignoring other stances)?

How fast is scorpion compared to eagle?

Devran

Also consider crits.

As a monk, you should outdps Serpent since it's a single attack versus a combo. That's why Knight used to bash with Rapiers. The speed outweighed the damage of broadswords due to crits.

Sena

Subterfuge and Tekura both increase damage and accuracy of their respective hunting attacks. And also speed in the case of garrote (not sure about tekura combos).

The advantage of multiple attacks for crits has always been overstated, and the advantage has been drastically reduced with the battlerage changes (both because of the increased denizen health and because everyone has several attacks now). So it's only a slight advantage now, and on top of that, artied serpent (dex+lash) isn't that much slower than monk, since serpent can get close to 3 garrotes in the same time as a monk combo.

The reason rapiers were better for knights was because they had by far the highest DPS, crits or not.

Ahmet

EDIT: Curse you @Sena and your ninjas.

Sena

Another thing to consider if you're not getting artefacts is that monk is much tankier than serpent. Even just passively, with weathering and the fact that monks don't need to spec dex and sacrifice con, monks will have a much easier time surviving.

Edit: Since Ahmet edited it out, I'll restate that serpent can get a lot more benefit from artefacts, in terms of offence. Serpent is similar to other classes unartied, but much more powerful when fully artied.

Devran

Thank you Sena for correcting me. It would appear my information is definitely outdated, because you are of course correct. I completely forgot about Battlerage.

I'm glad someone was able to answer you @Asami!

Gror

Devran said:

Thank you Sena for correcting me. It would appear my information is definitely outdated, because you are of course correct. I completely forgot about Battlerage.

I'm glad someone was able to answer you @Asami!

Sena is always right. /end fanboy

Szanthax

I've contemplated getting serpent parties for hunting.... But I think I'd still hunt in Dragon fire the tankyness... Unless the difference is that extreme

Antonius

@Szanthax You have the artefacts that dragon is a total waste 99% of the time, though if you want a fast bashing class pick Bard over Serpent. Even before the Serpent nerfs, Bard was at worst comparable in terms of clear speed for the areas I generally hunt, and in every other case far superior. Serpent struggles against anything that deals a moderate amount of damage as a result of having to spec dexterity to maximise attack speed, and the need to hit and run slows it down a lot.

Cooper

If you are artied out serpent you aren't bothered by damage. Exceptions being fissure, possibly dks (haven't hit them post cape), and that's really about it. Might be a few specific rooms (like Shale/Clynalia, 3 sidhe/upside, etc), but other than that it's smooth sailing. Can do almost all of it without potash too.

This assumes dragon level, cape, soa, and level 2 healing set. Runes and blessings not required.

I've never been bard, but if I ever hit 110 I'll nut it and compare.