Starkjade wrote on Mar 12
th, 2015 at 10:13pm:
Unarmed falls well behind weapons into epic levels, just because a lot of the crit modifiers from destinies don't apply to handwraps.
You can make it work with short swords pretty easily, or with staves, although you'd want to splash at least 6 rogue for the thief-acrobat enhancements. You can do longswords, too, but you'd probably need fighter levels for the feats.
I'm fairly certain stunning fist does not work with weapons, though, so if you're a pick-em-off-one-at-a-time type, unarmed could work for you.
Get +stunning items and +exceptional combat mastery items. Seal of Dun'Robar has +10 stun or excep +5 (along with +7 or +2 insight con/str/dex and dodge 8%), Consuming Darkness is a better choice for the excep. because it also has seeker.
You'll want Arkat's Cord (belt) or Prisoner's Manacles on a BF since you can't wear the +dmg step robes.
Black Dragon docent, heroic and epic.
Heal amp gear, since your single recon won't always save you.
Ring of the Master Artificer for recon spell power and an emergency heal.
Deadly/accuracy, of course.
Something with Improved Deception can help, especially if you're soloing. Backstabbers' Gloves, Golden Guile, lootgen weapons, or you can get it through enhancements if you have access to the Harper tree, although you'll be locking out other Tier 5 abilities. Better through gear, I think.
A sheltering item, the lvl 19 guardian's ring is awesome until you get to the ENecroIV helms.
I'm not listing stuff by level, and there might be some slot swapping you'll have to do, but this should give you some idea of what to look for.
Um, just wanna make sure this advice isnt taken too seriously: black dragon armor fucking sucks on unarmed, srsly there is no weapon or fighting style or w/e that would benefit less from the in itself already shitty black gh armor. Stone heart would likely be best for lvls 23-25, if u would wanna bother.... then onto shadowscale outfit.
In that same light you would say that the seeker on consuming darkness is not something u wanna get excited about. Monks crit 10% for x2, assuming you got IC. 10 seeker therefore comes down to an average of 2 damage per hit, on targets with 0% fortification (10 × 2 × 10%). Unarmed shouldnt bypass a lot of fort cuz, u know, it can hardly crit less: no precision or dragons edge so pretty much no dps gain vs the uncrittable...
Arkat's cord and the prisoners manacles are awful, gross, terribad items. But do not fret! For .5 x 1d8 is a shitty 2.25 damage per hit.
Unarmed's advantage is stunning fist. It should be on cooldown non-stop, stunned targets are automatically always vulnerable to sneak damage, therefore an (improved) deception item wouldnt do much for ya. However the sneak attack bonus items are super neat on a stunner.
I rambled enough. These items are an absolute must-have for unarmed IMO:
Greensteel smoke. Stacking hp/sp but its mostly about the perma-blur and 3 min displacement clickie, this item will save ur life most often by far.
Epic boots of the innocent. Stunning +12, nuff said.
Belt of the sun-soul -> Epic belt of thoughtful remembrance.
Bracers of the sun-soul -> Epic ethereal bracers.
Epic spare hand.
Mythic emerald gaze.
Grave wrappings or even better: stunning wraps with a red slot (lootgen or fuly upgraded antipode) for a ruby of reconstruction 90/114. So you're not stuck with that lame epic ring of master artifice.
As u get the stunning boots @ 27, only then can u smack bitches with TF, without losing 10 stun DC.
Epic ring of the stalker is nice for ghostly and SA, seal of avithoul as well.
Oh, and yeah the ML 19 guardian's ring is the best source of prr until lvl 27.
Good luck, have fun and keep ur rape whistle at hand.