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Build Guide

The video I've attached is of my GR90 clear, which is the point where the build really starts to struggle. Up until 87, though, this build is a really fun (and fairly easy) way to clear rifts and lock in a good rank on the leaderboards. I would recommend at least skipping around the video to watch how the build is played, but I'll write out a basic guide as well.

General Gameplay

For play this spec in general, there are two very key portions of your damage that you must respond well to in order to succeed in higher rifts. Firstly, you must have an 80%+ damage Oculus ring on your follower. When you see the oculus rings spawn, you need to do your best to be in them while you're doing damage, and that's doubly true when you have the fire CoE buff up. Oculus ring buff gives more damage than Zei's does, so it's always worth it to be in an oculus ring even if it's close to mobs, so long as you don't die. However, the oculus ring circle is fairly large, so standing on the far edge of the circle from your target will grant you additional damage from your Zei's.

The second key to this spec, is your utilization of Convention of Elements. For monk, your elements cycle through in the following order: Cold - Fire - Holy - Physical - Lightning. Each element lasts for 4 seconds. During Cold you want to attack enough times to proc an Oculus ring buff so that you can stand in it during the subsequent fire buff. During holy/physical/lightning your primary goal is to still be attacking and doing as much damage as possible, but also to be gathering more density and ensuring that the next oculus+fire combo will be able to do maximum damage to the most amount of mobs.

Staying Alive

The first key to staying alive is making sure you're maintaining your blinding speed debuff. That's the 40% dodge chance gained by your dash. With just a CDR gem in your head in addition to Beacon of Ytar (20% CDR passive), you're able to keep 100% uptime on that buff. If you are playing without it, you'll notice it hugely. If you're also running with Crystal Fist, you'll be taking down two birds with one stone since 100% uptime of Blinding Speed equates to 100% uptime of the Crystal Fist buff (40-50% DR) as well.

Additionally, while this build is powerful, around ~85 you'll start to feel your survivability cap out until you augment. If you're starting to feel like you're struggling with survivability you should take a step back and first evaluate whether you're struggling with bad mob type/affixes or if you're really too squishy. Often times a rift can be frustrating enough that you'll feel like you need to change build to do it, but in reality it was just a bad combination.

If you really are just too squishy, then you have a few options:

-Use Near Death Experience: Probably the easiest and fastest to do, and can often fix a lot of your problems. In addition, it can sort of serve as training wheels for properly positioning since it'll help you realize if bad positioning is the cause of your death or not.

-Use Diamonds instead of Emeralds: If you put diamonds in your chest/leg sockets instead of emeralds, you'll get a significant increase in toughness at the cost of a moderate amount of damage. This won't result in you pushing as far as your character can, but it may be easier to reach your goal GR if you are a little tougher, so it can be worth trying.

Entering the Rift

Cast Sweeping Wind immediately after loading in!
When you load into your greater rift, you need to evaluate two things quickly: the mob type and the map type. Both of these factors are extremely important for pushing, and while sometimes a great mob type can make up for a poor map (and visa versa) a combination of good mobs and map will make for an extremely viable pushing rift. For this build (and most builds) you're looking for either Spires of Heaven or Core of Arreat. Spider Caves and Vault can also be viable maps, but in a perfect world Spires/Core will be better. For mob types, you're looking for anything with Lacuni, Unholy Thralls, Phasebeasts, or Grotesques, along with good density. Unburied/Goatmen or Leaping Assassins/Exarchs are also strong mob types. By no means do you require one of those mob types or one of those maps to push, but it's key to remember in what situations your spec should be thriving. When you're close to the ceiling for your gear, these two things will determine the outcome of a rift significantly. It is still up to you to play the rift properly, but some maps/mobs are simply impossible to push on past a certain point. Don't take failure to clear too hard until you've seen an okay rift with okay mobs so you can give the set a fair chance.

Clearing the Rift

Easily the most important stat for this build is Area Damage, and that stat shapes how you do rifts. Essentially area damage is an exponential multiplier on your damage: the more mobs you are attacking the more damage you do to each one. You want to fight less than 10 targets almost never, the only exception being the rift boss. Elites/Champion packs are an afterthought in your rift. You want to kite them if you can, but if you can't it's not worth spending time to kill them unless they're below 10% health. Your rift speed will be most affected by your ability to do maximum damage during fire CoE and oculus ring procs. In the section above I outline exactly how you should be maximizing your CoE in a rift, but if you'd prefer to look at the video clear of my GR90 and skip to around 3:30 there's a good example of how to play properly.

Killing the Rift Guardian

This is a pretty big weakness of the class. You will definitely kill the guardian slowly, and with Seize the Initiative on one target while dual wielding, you have a moderate chance of dropping stacks if you don't crit perfectly. You need to manually click to attack, you can't just hold down or spam as quickly as possible. You'll have to figure out the proper rate to attack for your gear and attack speed. Bosses that are pure single target who will attack your pets/templar are moderately good, but your best bosses are ones that spawn a few adds which you can spawn oculus rings from. At the end of it, stricken will be what carries you. You probably won't have enough spirit to constantly spam, so just make sure you are able to straight cast through fire and then outside of that cast as much as you can to make sure you get strick stacks and pray.




Thanks for reading my guide! I'll respond to any questions posted in the chat.
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