Rating
+1

2.3 Death's Breath Farmer (Sage's Fire Monk)

Regular
Hybrid
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Skills

  • Crippling Wave Mangle
  • Cyclone Strike Implosion
  • Dashing Strike Way of the Falling Star
  • Mantra of Conviction Annihilation
  • Breath of Heaven Infused with Light
  • Epiphany Inner Fire
  • Exalted Soul
  • Harmony
  • Seize the Initiative
  • Alacrity

Items

More Details
  • Legendary Gems

    • Bane of the Powerful
    • Simplicity's Strength
    • Bane of the Trapped

Kanai's Cube

  • Flying Dragon
  • Eye of Peshkov
  • Ring of Royal Grandeur

- Having a Hellfire Amulet with Beacon of Ytar as 5th passive is helpful in keeping BoH running constantly with no downtime (don't forget Diamond jewel in Helmet). Momentum passive is also desirable due to the fact that you're always dashing and usually have the elites killed before the Momentum dmg bonus is expired.


- The only real survivability this build offers is procc'ing Flying Dragon + Life per Hit. Be careful about pulling blue packs with fire chains.


- Nemesis bracers = more elite packs = more death's breath


----------- Magefist vs Andariel's Visage -------------

You need atleast 2 pieces of Sage's to make this work with Ring of Royal Grandeur. This gives you the choice of getting + Fire% on Gloves or on Helmet. I recommend using Magefist gloves over Andariel's Visage helmet, as Magefist also gives attack speed, but doesn't come with a cost (take more fire dmg) like the Visage helmet does.


---------- Why only 2 set Raiment? ---------

This is a personal preference, and here's why: Dashing costs 75 spirit with 4 spirit, so doing a few dashes while having full spirit (which is also max dmg) will remove almost half of your spirit and a huge chunk of your damage. Because we're not running higher lvl GR's, we only hit enemies a few times before they're dead - not enough to constantly keep re-building your spirit due to the 75 spirit dashing cost. Quicksilver dash is an option if you want more dash charges, but if you're flowing quickly from elite to elite, you dash won't have enough time to recharge to 3 charges anyway.


---------- If you are dying and need more defense, use this setup instead ---------

Passives Option:

- Change Exalted Soul passive to Guardian's Path

- Change mantra to Mantra of Salvation / Agility


Gear Option 1:

- Wear Spirit Guard wrists instead of Nemesis Bracers

- Wear Eye of Peshkov as Helmet, and switch Armor cube power to Nemesis Bracers

- Doing this will cost you ~20% Fire skill dmg (since you'll need sages gloves instead of magefist), but you will gain a ton of toughness just by attacking


Gear Option 2: Wear all 3 pieces of Sage's and ditch the Ring of Royal Grandeur cube power, replacing it with Unity (assuming your follower also has Unity and 'Can't Die' relic). If you are still really hurting, you can ditch Nemesis Bracers altogether (not a good option IMO) for Spirit Guards as well.


Gear Option 3: Use St. Archew's Gage as gloves, and Sage's Helmet. If you're skipping white mob and just bouncing from elite to elite, I'm finding the shield given is actually quite amazing (especially if you're HP is 850k+).

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Maximum Resource
Primary Stat
Vitality

Offense

Attack Speed
Cooldown Reduction
Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage

Defense

Resist All
Life
Armor
Life Regeneration

Utility

Life on Hit
Resource Cost Reduction
Area Damage
Gold Find

Build Guide

This build is focused on movement speed and quick pulling and destroying of mob packs and elites, to get as many death's breath as possible in the shortest amount of time. While T10 farming almost guarantees 3 death's breath per elite, it can be less efficient due to the increased time it takes to kill T10 elites. T8 farming for Death's Breath is most likely more efficient, and that is what this build is designed for.


The basic idea is to keep Epiphany and Breath of Heaven cast on cooldown, while dashing into elite packs (this will not proc Focus/Restraint since we aren't running the 4 set bonus of Raiment - you need to pull with Cyclone to proc it), pulling and killing quickly with Crippling Wave / Mangle.