This is my compilation of monk builds. I tried to make a lot of builds because this is all speculation. For example, I probably won’t run with maximum damage build without utility but I included it anyway because there’s no telling how this will all pan out.
Maximum damage with almost no utility. This build could be useful if there are enough heals in your group already.
- 2H build with most of the + % damage modifiers:
- Increased Seven Sided Strike damage
- 55% Conviction Aura
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage rune
- Exploding Palm with 7 spirit generation per monster hit for more ability spam
- Dashing Strike with + movement speed for some mobility
Like the name says, this build is focused on buffing / healing the party and preventing damage. No idea if this will even be necessary. 2h for increased spirit generation
- 2H with passive for increased spirit generation. Also, Crippling Wave AoE with 7 additional spirit for every crit to make sure you have enough spirit.
- Stronger Breath of Heaven heal
- Inner Sanctuary with health regeneration rune
- Serenity with rune to extend the effect to all allies. Paladin bubble for the whole party
- Mantra of Conviction with 75% chance of health regeneration when hitting the enemy for the whole party
- Blinding Flash to buy time if necessary
- Passive to increase damage for you and party when healing, should be active almost all the time
I tried to make this build better for soloing. The idea is to keep yourself healed by generating massive spirit and dumping it as soon as possible to keep your health up with Transcendence passive (42.6 health for every point of spirit spent). For example, because I have Beacon of Ytar, Seven Sided Strike will cost 75 spirit. That is 3195 health every time I use it. Whether spamming that will be enough to keep yourself up is unknown. I’m thinking dual-wield with increased attack speed from Mantra of Retribution rune will generate more spirit for the purpose of the build. Exploding Palm with rune for increased spirit generation and Sweeping Wind to help take down larger groups. Blinding Flash to help with sticky situations.
Almost the same as the above build but I dropped Mantra of Retribution and Blinding Flash (less useful with larger groups) and grabbed Mantra of Conviction with healing rune and Breath of Heaven with improved heal rune. Mantra of Conviction heals may proc the Guiding Light passive (+16% damage for party) because the Mantra is under “active skills” but this isn’t for sure.
This is a neat build that has been brought up a lot. This is my take on dodge monk. I’ll probably use this to solo farm more difficult areas.
The abilities that increase dodge are:
- Fist of Thunder rune (2.5% chance to dodge per application, stacks 8 times for 20% dodge. I noted there was no duration on the dodge effect; it will probably be added later.)
- Dashing Strike rune: You can spam this endlessly to have the 30% dodge up at all times
- Mantra of Evasion: 30% dodge
- The Guardian’s Path (passive): 10% dodge when dual-wielding
- Sixth Sense (passive): Increases dodge by 50% of your critical strike chance
- While technically not a dodge ability, Seven Sided Strike is nice in that you are invulnerable while performing the attack, making it even better than dodge.
I didn’t include defense and resistance abilities because it’s hard to tell right now how these will affect the game. I’m hoping the constant dodging and healing from Transcendence will be enough to sustain the monk (more speculation).
With this build, I will be fighting large groups of enemies. The offense comes from Sweeping wind AoE, massive damage from Wave of Light with the pillar rune (900% total weapon damage; hopefully this is AoE as it isn’t stated directly in the description), and my favorite, the Mantra of Evasion rune which deals 120% weapon damage as fire damage to ALL nearby enemies on every dodge. That just seems amazing on paper. Hypothetical Situation: Fighting a group of 8 monsters with 69% chance to dodge. They all attack you, 5 of them miss, that is 600% instant weapon damage to all enemies by just standing there. Throw in your stacks of improved Vortex from Sweeping Wind doing an additional 108% weapon damage per second. Ok, enough speculation.
This build would seem to work best in PvP situations. Its purpose is to be very annoying and either disable enemies by stunning, blinding, or fearing or make them do very little damage while slowing them down as well.
Abilities:
- Crippling Wave is great for this build. It slows down enemies by 45% and reduces their damage by 50%. For 9 seconds. It’s an AoE as well.
- Dashing Strike: Serves 2 purposes, it gives the monk much needed mobility to be in the right place, and has a 50% chance to stun for 3.5 seconds on hit so you can actually get some attacks in after dashing towards an enemy.
- Blinding Flash: obvious choice, mass crowd control to help control the fight. 30% chance to miss for enemies as icing on the cake.
- Lashing Tail Kick: Another AoE damage dealer with a more reliable 100% stun for 3 seconds.
- Breath of Heaven: another multi-purpose ability. When under heavy attack, you can dash into the fight, use the ability for the solid heal and it also fears all nearby enemies for 9 seconds buying more time to get back in the fight.
-Mantra of Conviction: Constant 20% increased damage for you and your allies and 45% less damage from all enemies with the rune. Good
Passives:
- Transcendence to help keep yourself alive while you are spamming all of these control abilities.
- Pacifism: You are useless if you are dead; this + runed Mantra of Conviction will probably go a long way for your survivability
- Guardian’s Path: Not sure about this one but I was kind of worried about the spirit generation.
I might have missed something here with the passives.
I tried to balance this build between damage, healing, and utility.
- Way of the Hundred Fists with movement and attack speed bonus rune
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage taken rune
- Dashing Strike with +55% movement speed rune for mobility
- Breath of Heaven for heals + rune for AoE fear
- Seven Sided Strike with Crimson Rune for more damage
- Mantra of Conviction with Golden Rune for party healing
Passives:
Transcendence, Pacifism, and Near Death Experience. All survivability passives for PvP.
This is my personal favorite build. This build is high aggression, high crit, fast movement speed, and loads of increased attack speed. This build will probably generate the most spirit due to dual-wielding and faster attacks.
Bread and Butter:
- Way of the Hundred Fists: Very important to this build as every crit increases attack speed by 22% and movement speed by 11%, stacking 3 times for 66% increased attack speed and 33% increased movement speed.
- Crippling Wave: for movement speed debuff and additional 80% damage to enemy from all sources to line up big combos with some coordination
Other Skills:
- Lashing Tail Kick: With Beacon of Ytar, highly spammable and has a reliable 3 second stun with the rune to keep the enemy in place
- Seven Sided Strike: Main damage dealer. You can ideally spam this multiple times when going for the kill. With increased damage rune (234% weapon damage), and assuming this can hit the same target multiple times if there is only 1 target in the area, that is 1638% weapon damage to one target while being invulnerable.
- Dashing Strike: Cheap mobility with +55% movement speed rune to fit the theme.
- Mantra of Retribution: Allies reflect 40% of melee damage taken, but the main reason I took this ability is the constant +40% attack speed for the monk and allies. With Way of the Hundred Fists stacks, that gives the monk 106% increased attack speed.
Passives:
Transcendence: This build in theory has the most spam so Transcendence might be enough to sustain the monk
Beacon of Ytar: Allows for spam of abilities. With the higher spirit generation, this fits nicely in the build and even boosts healing from Transcendence
Exalted Soul: 100 extra spirit to work with
Essentially the same as the above build but changed the rune on Lashing Tail Kick to extra damage and replaced Dashing Strike with Breath of Heaven for group healing. I also changed Crippling Wave to Exploding Palm because enemies die a lot faster and more often in PvE than in PvP.
Theoretical Party: Monk, Barbarian, Wizard
The barbarian can use Frenzy to increase attack speed by 75% while also having the Retribution Mantra from the monk to increase it by another 40%. The wizard can use slow time with alabaster rune to increase attack speed by another 140%. Just an example of some possible synergy.
Those are all the builds I came up with so far. Please comment, change a build, or share your own builds.
This is my compilation of monk builds. I tried to make a lot of builds because this is all speculation. For example, I probably won’t run with maximum damage build without utility but I included it anyway because there’s no telling how this will all pan out.
Maximum damage with almost no utility. This build could be useful if there are enough heals in your group already.
- 2H build with most of the + % damage modifiers:
- Increased Seven Sided Strike damage
- 55% Conviction Aura
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage rune
- Exploding Palm with 7 spirit generation per monster hit for more ability spam
- Dashing Strike with + movement speed for some mobility
Like the name says, this build is focused on buffing / healing the party and preventing damage. No idea if this will even be necessary. 2h for increased spirit generation
- 2H with passive for increased spirit generation. Also, Crippling Wave AoE with 7 additional spirit for every crit to make sure you have enough spirit.
- Stronger Breath of Heaven heal
- Inner Sanctuary with health regeneration rune
- Serenity with rune to extend the effect to all allies. Paladin bubble for the whole party
- Mantra of Conviction with 75% chance of health regeneration when hitting the enemy for the whole party
- Blinding Flash to buy time if necessary
- Passive to increase damage for you and party when healing, should be active almost all the time
I tried to make this build better for soloing. The idea is to keep yourself healed by generating massive spirit and dumping it as soon as possible to keep your health up with Transcendence passive (42.6 health for every point of spirit spent). For example, because I have Beacon of Ytar, Seven Sided Strike will cost 75 spirit. That is 3195 health every time I use it. Whether spamming that will be enough to keep yourself up is unknown. I’m thinking dual-wield with increased attack speed from Mantra of Retribution rune will generate more spirit for the purpose of the build. Exploding Palm with rune for increased spirit generation and Sweeping Wind to help take down larger groups. Blinding Flash to help with sticky situations.
Almost the same as the above build but I dropped Mantra of Retribution and Blinding Flash (less useful with larger groups) and grabbed Mantra of Conviction with healing rune and Breath of Heaven with improved heal rune. Mantra of Conviction heals may proc the Guiding Light passive (+16% damage for party) because the Mantra is under “active skills” but this isn’t for sure.
This is a neat build that has been brought up a lot. This is my take on dodge monk. I’ll probably use this to solo farm more difficult areas.
The abilities that increase dodge are:
- Fist of Thunder rune (2.5% chance to dodge per application, stacks 8 times for 20% dodge. I noted there was no duration on the dodge effect; it will probably be added later.)
- Dashing Strike rune: You can spam this endlessly to have the 30% dodge up at all times
- Mantra of Evasion: 30% dodge
- The Guardian’s Path (passive): 10% dodge when dual-wielding
- Sixth Sense (passive): Increases dodge by 50% of your critical strike chance
- While technically not a dodge ability, Seven Sided Strike is nice in that you are invulnerable while performing the attack, making it even better than dodge.
I didn’t include defense and resistance abilities because it’s hard to tell right now how these will affect the game. I’m hoping the constant dodging and healing from Transcendence will be enough to sustain the monk (more speculation).
With this build, I will be fighting large groups of enemies. The offense comes from Sweeping wind AoE, massive damage from Wave of Light with the pillar rune (900% total weapon damage; hopefully this is AoE as it isn’t stated directly in the description), and my favorite, the Mantra of Evasion rune which deals 120% weapon damage as fire damage to ALL nearby enemies on every dodge. That just seems amazing on paper. Hypothetical Situation: Fighting a group of 8 monsters with 69% chance to dodge. They all attack you, 5 of them miss, that is 600% instant weapon damage to all enemies by just standing there. Throw in your stacks of improved Vortex from Sweeping Wind doing an additional 108% weapon damage per second. Ok, enough speculation.
This build would seem to work best in PvP situations. Its purpose is to be very annoying and either disable enemies by stunning, blinding, or fearing or make them do very little damage while slowing them down as well.
Abilities:
- Crippling Wave is great for this build. It slows down enemies by 45% and reduces their damage by 50%. For 9 seconds. It’s an AoE as well.
- Dashing Strike: Serves 2 purposes, it gives the monk much needed mobility to be in the right place, and has a 50% chance to stun for 3.5 seconds on hit so you can actually get some attacks in after dashing towards an enemy.
- Blinding Flash: obvious choice, mass crowd control to help control the fight. 30% chance to miss for enemies as icing on the cake.
- Lashing Tail Kick: Another AoE damage dealer with a more reliable 100% stun for 3 seconds.
- Breath of Heaven: another multi-purpose ability. When under heavy attack, you can dash into the fight, use the ability for the solid heal and it also fears all nearby enemies for 9 seconds buying more time to get back in the fight.
-Mantra of Conviction: Constant 20% increased damage for you and your allies and 45% less damage from all enemies with the rune. Good
Passives:
- Transcendence to help keep yourself alive while you are spamming all of these control abilities.
- Pacifism: You are useless if you are dead; this + runed Mantra of Conviction will probably go a long way for your survivability
- Guardian’s Path: Not sure about this one but I was kind of worried about the spirit generation.
I might have missed something here with the passives.
I tried to balance this build between damage, healing, and utility.
- Way of the Hundred Fists with movement and attack speed bonus rune
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage taken rune
- Dashing Strike with +55% movement speed rune for mobility
- Breath of Heaven for heals + rune for AoE fear
- Seven Sided Strike with Crimson Rune for more damage
- Mantra of Conviction with Golden Rune for party healing
Passives:
Transcendence, Pacifism, and Near Death Experience. All survivability passives for PvP.
This is my personal favorite build. This build is high aggression, high crit, fast movement speed, and loads of increased attack speed. This build will probably generate the most spirit due to dual-wielding and faster attacks.
Bread and Butter:
- Way of the Hundred Fists: Very important to this build as every crit increases attack speed by 22% and movement speed by 11%, stacking 3 times for 66% increased attack speed and 33% increased movement speed.
- Crippling Wave: for movement speed debuff and additional 80% damage to enemy from all sources to line up big combos with some coordination
Other Skills:
- Lashing Tail Kick: With Beacon of Ytar, highly spammable and has a reliable 3 second stun with the rune to keep the enemy in place
- Seven Sided Strike: Main damage dealer. You can ideally spam this multiple times when going for the kill. With increased damage rune (234% weapon damage), and assuming this can hit the same target multiple times if there is only 1 target in the area, that is 1638% weapon damage to one target while being invulnerable.
- Dashing Strike: Cheap mobility with +55% movement speed rune to fit the theme.
- Mantra of Retribution: Allies reflect 40% of melee damage taken, but the main reason I took this ability is the constant +40% attack speed for the monk and allies. With Way of the Hundred Fists stacks, that gives the monk 106% increased attack speed.
Passives:
Transcendence: This build in theory has the most spam so Transcendence might be enough to sustain the monk
Beacon of Ytar: Allows for spam of abilities. With the higher spirit generation, this fits nicely in the build and even boosts healing from Transcendence
Exalted Soul: 100 extra spirit to work with
Essentially the same as the above build but changed the rune on Lashing Tail Kick to extra damage and replaced Dashing Strike with Breath of Heaven for group healing. I also changed Crippling Wave to Exploding Palm because enemies die a lot faster and more often in PvE than in PvP.
Theoretical Party: Monk, Barbarian, Wizard
The barbarian can use Frenzy to increase attack speed by 75% while also having the Retribution Mantra from the monk to increase it by another 40%. The wizard can use slow time with alabaster rune to increase attack speed by another 140%. Just an example of some possible synergy.
Those are all the builds I came up with so far. Please comment, change a build, or share your own builds.
What about a build that focus on damage reduction? I have yet to see this.
For example:
Crippling Wave with Concussion rune - enemies inflict 50% less damage for 9 seconds
Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation - enemies inflicts 45% less damage
By just stacking these one will receive an enormous damage reduction %. I think a good combination could be to focus on high damage reduction and high damage output.
@craig_g: Yea, I was aware of the spirit generator combo but I didn't really explore the options, I was just planning on using Crippling Wave/ Hundred Fists twice then Exploding Palm for the explosion. Yea some of the descriptions are quite vague so we will just have to wait to see how some of the attacks work. I like all of your active skill choices; I do want to test out Lethal Decoy to see how effective it is. I chose Breath of Heaven because the people I will play with wanted the heal since wizards don't have many ways to heal effectively on their own. I will probably change Exploding Palm rune to Indigo myself because it seems devastating, I was just worried about spirit generation but after watching some more videos, spirit seems to generate pretty quickly.
One thing I would change with your build: If you use a 2H weapon, I think Guardian's Path would generate more spirit than Chant of Resonance if you keep up a nice pace. On just 1 hit with a spirit generator it will generate .20 x 6 = 1.2 additional spirit in addition to more spirit on regular hits as well. And if you generate more spirit with higher damage and/or crits, the passive will get better and better as your gear improves because it is a % and scales. If you dual-wield, then disregard this
What about a build that focus on damage reduction? I have yet to see this.
For example:
Crippling Wave with Concussion rune - enemies inflict 50% less damage for 9 seconds
Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation - enemies inflicts 45% less damage
By just stacking these one will receive an enormous damage reduction %. I think a good combination could be to focus on high damage reduction and high damage output.
Check out the Debilitation Build, its listed there it focuses on either incapacitating the enemy or reducing their damage drastically, I have both of those abilities in it, it does seem very nice
On a more serious note, I think these builds are by far the best ones I've seen on these forums. Even though most of it is speculation, I feel like you put a lot of thought and effort into making these builds. I'll definitely try these out, especially the "Group PvE" with my friends, and "Pure Damage" for PvPing. That IAS from "Solo PvE" is also looking promising. Good luck, do me up when you start playing.
I am really focusing on increasing my attack speed while maintaining static damage increases. I was swayed to this build when I was trying to decide between using SSS with the rune that increases it's damage or to opt for several sided strike which will increase the amount of hits that it does.
I looked at it like this: hypothetical damage per hit 5000
The attack that had a lower damage modifier but more hits is far more effective of a damage dealer. So I started thinking about effectiveness and for me, it makes sense that being able to do many more slightly smaller hits in the same amount of time will slice through mobs quicker and do more damage overall. The only thing you slightly give up is the ability to post the largest hit single target.
I further evaluated this when picking mantra of retribution for the 40% increased attack speed.
Weapon: fist 1.4 attacks per second
Base Attacks Per Minute (APM)- 1.4 * 60 = 84
APM with retribution - (1.4 * 60) * 1.4 = 118 (rounded)
Again taking the hypothetical 5000 damage per combo move -
Base: 5000 * 84 = 420,000 damage per minute
W/retribution: 5000 * 118 = 590,000 damage per minute
This is pretty huge, a difference of 170,000 damage per minute.
Some may say, "well why don't you just get over-awe for 50% more damage". It's true it would increase the damage done to (5000 * 84)* 1.5 = 630,000 DPM (Damage per minute) but you greatly sacrifice resource generation.
Standard generation 6 spirit per combo move.
With no attack speed increase or opting for over-awe: 6 * 84 = 504 spirit per minute
With 40% increased attack speed: 6 * 118 = 708 spirit per minute
Having the increased attack speed gives the monk an additional 204 spirit per minute or the ability to completely unload a resource globe one additional time per minute. For me this is substantial as I look to marry these benefits with skills that statically increase my damage like BoH for 20% increased damage (almost a half over-awe permanently up since BoH is like my only spirit dump) and WotHF for the opportunity to increase my attack speed 66% on top of the initial 40%.
Crippling wave with alabaster was selected as another static increase 80% more damage taken.
I also selected the passive that increases my damage 16% after I heal a player (another static/passive increase) since I will be playing with someone almost all the time and my only real spirit cost is BoH and I'll need to dump 3 globes or more per minute of battle.
Im trying to reach 116% increased damage permanently up through resource management and correct rotational design and a potential 106% attack speed increase peak (more likely will maintain 60+% increased attack speed due to the crit requirement on WotHF).
It is by no means the easiest when it comes to cycling my spirit builders for maximum efficiency, but done right it can lead to huge damage.
At first I thought I was building an attack speed monk, but really it is a Breath of Heaven build. My goal is to keep a melee with me at all times (my brother is playing a barbarian) and with all of the spirit I will be generating I will try and use BoH as much as possible. Guiding light gives 16% more damage for 10 seconds which means to keep it up consistently it would have to be done 6x per minute.
75 * 6 = 450 spirit per minute
Given I look to generate 700+ spirit per minute I have 250+ spirit to spend on dashing around like a madman. The other interesting piece is that with level 7 runes my BoH + Transcendance is healing for 10k+ each time or 60,000hp per minute for me and everyone inside of my party.
First, this is an awesome thread! Love your builds.
I am just about to declare my self a Monk! Can't say anything for 100% till release, but what I've seen so far in Beta, and on the Calculator, I keep coming back to the Monk as my Favorite!
Here is my favorite build that I have come up with so far. It isn't really themed, but I suppose you could call it the "Tactical Strike" build?
Overview:
This is the build I came up with by trying to be greedy. I wanted good damage, good mobility and good survivability. I WANT IT ALL! I have a AoE spirt generator, a single target spirit generator, mobility spells, some utility and passive increase to damage done. I'll give an overview of what I was thinking for each skill below.
Skills: Way of the Hundred Fists: This is the Single target spirit generator. When a Elite or Rare mob needs to die fast, I'll be using this on his face. I chose the Indigo rune for the stacking attack speed buff on Crits as I plen on having alot of crit on the gear. Sweeping Wind: This is my AoE spirit generator. I again chose the Indigo rune to increase the area of effect of the vortex. Dashing Strike:I chose the Golden rune so that it will cost only 3 spirit (down from 10) because I want this to be avaiable as much as possible if I need it. Seven Sided Strike: I chose the Crimson rune for the teleport and increase damage. Blinding Flash: I chose the Golden rune for the increase Blind duration. This should combine really well with the Crimson Seven Sided Strike. Mantra of Conviction: Went with the Indigo rune here. At level 7 it slows everything around you (20yds) by 48%! That seems really huge. Especialy if it effects their attack speed. Even if it doesn't, it should make it clear to any potential teammates who is effected by the Mantra.
Passives: One With Everything: This seems like almost a must for any Monk who wants to go all the way. Find one great piece of gear with ANY resist on it and you then have good resist for every shcool. Obviously, we don't know how big of a deal resists will be, but I bet it will be a pretty big deal in inferno. Transcendance: Heals for 42.6 life for each point of spirit spent. So each time you teleport into the fray with Crimson Seven Sided Strike, you'll heal up for over 2000 health. Each time you cast Blinding Flash, you heal for over 2000 health.
Sieze The Initiative: Increases my Defense by 25% of my Attack. Since I plan on concentrating almost entirely on Attack and Precision on my gear, this will be great.
Style: So the basic idea here is that you have 100 Spirit, use Crimson Seven Sided Strike to get into the fray (50 spirt) then Cast blinding flash (50 Spirt) then build up your stacks of Seeping Wind (With the increase Fire AoE range) and if needed switch over to Way of the Hundred Fists for single, tough targets. Hopefully you'll be able to save up 100 spirit for the next battle. Meanwhile, everything that is within 20 yards is getting slowed and takes more damage.
For your gear, you focus almost completely on +Attack which should hlep your damage and help your defense. Grab one piece of gear with a Crapton of any one resistance, and then go to town.
Essentially the same as the above build but changed the rune on Lashing Tail Kick to extra damage and replaced Dashing Strike with Breath of Heaven for group healing. I also changed Crippling Wave to Exploding Palm because enemies die a lot faster and more often in PvE than in PvP.
Theoretical Party: Monk, Barbarian, Wizard
The barbarian can use Frenzy to increase attack speed by 75% while also having the Retribution Mantra from the monk to increase it by another 40%. The wizard can use slow time with alabaster rune to increase attack speed by another 140%. Just an example of some possible synergy.
Those are all the builds I came up with so far. Please comment, change a build, or share your own builds.
I like the fact that if you changed the rune in SSS to Indigo you could do 56 hits in a row without taking any damage.
My build is mostly based around buffs.
Buffs received from build:
Way of the hundred fists speed buff
deadly reach dmg buff
conviction mantra dmg buff + heal on attack buff
dashing strike dodge buff
Breath of heaven dmg buff
Spirit Generators - way of the hundred fists with obsidian rune for attack speed buff will generally be combo 1 and 2 and combo 3 will be deadly reach with crimson rune for dmg buff.
Mantra - Conviction with Golden Rune, dmg buff plus healing me for attacking, and attacking is what I will be doing the most of. I talk about this more at the bottom of my post.
Spirit Spenders - Dashing strike with Obsidian rune for 30% dodge for 12 seconds after use, most likely this will always be up.
Breath of Heaven with Obsidian Rune, a healing spell that gives a good dmg buff for a long period of time, depending on how high spirit is I will pre cast this for the buff
I didn't really know what to take for my last skill so I took serenity with crimson rune as a kind of oh shit button, but i'm not sure that I will need it. I am also worried about my lack of aoe, so maybe i will change serenity to an aoe dmg ability
A very good spell synergy that I haven't seen anyone mention is mantra of conviction with golden rune (75% chance to heal for ~1k on every hit) combined with way of the hundred fists which hits a lot of times very fast (seems too op to me, they will surely put in an internal cooldown or max of 1 heal per action rather than hit - maybe they already have and that is why no one else has these spells together?).
Have mystic ally to help, and help generate spirit (with gold runestone-optional).
Spirit Generator: Exploding palm, seems it will work well with both single and multiple mobs.
Spirit Spender: Seven-Strike with teleport for extra dmg and a teleport, best thing ever imo.
For mantras, Use Mantra of COnviction at start of the fight, or continuously (every 30 sec) if the fight is long.
Then use mantra of Evasion with backlash after a few sec if there is alot of mobs(with the extra dodge, your bound to dodge at least once and do aoe dmg), and then Mantra of Healing sometime after 3 sec, or till your life is low or whenever. Rinse and repeat.
(note, Mantra of Conviction would be the main mantra to use, I chose Reclamation for constant heals, but Overawe is a good choice for extra dmg. )
What about a build that focus on damage reduction? I have yet to see this.
For example:
Crippling Wave with Concussion rune - enemies inflict 50% less damage for 9 seconds
Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation - enemies inflicts 45% less damage
By just stacking these one will receive an enormous damage reduction %. I think a good combination could be to focus on high damage reduction and high damage output.
Are you sure these two reductions will stack? Even if you do it multiplicatively it's a pretty massive reduction in damage. You can throw in some other easy reductions like the Barb's Threatening Shout and you're taking very little damage. That's before you even factor in resistance, armor, or the damage reduction from defense.
The purpose of the build is to min/max on damage modifiers while having enough speed to churn through mobs with the +run speed with blazing speed as well as sudden assault.
Blazing Wrath seems so damn good, but it is a lot of spirit to use every time you enter a pack but I'm hoping Exalted Soul will compensate enough to just front load a room... or every second room.
The only problem I see that could take the wind out of the sails of the fun machine is possible spirit generation problems. Only time will tell though.
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This is my compilation of monk builds. I tried to make a lot of builds because this is all speculation. For example, I probably won’t run with maximum damage build without utility but I included it anyway because there’s no telling how this will all pan out.
Pure Damage: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#eUYjdR!ZYg!abcZYZ
Maximum damage with almost no utility. This build could be useful if there are enough heals in your group already.
- 2H build with most of the + % damage modifiers:
- Increased Seven Sided Strike damage
- 55% Conviction Aura
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage rune
- Exploding Palm with 7 spirit generation per monster hit for more ability spam
- Dashing Strike with + movement speed for some mobility
Pure Healer / Support: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#eXfaSR!dZf!bYbbbb
Like the name says, this build is focused on buffing / healing the party and preventing damage. No idea if this will even be necessary. 2h for increased spirit generation
- 2H with passive for increased spirit generation. Also, Crippling Wave AoE with 7 additional spirit for every crit to make sure you have enough spirit.
- Stronger Breath of Heaven heal
- Inner Sanctuary with health regeneration rune
- Serenity with rune to extend the effect to all allies. Paladin bubble for the whole party
- Mantra of Conviction with 75% chance of health regeneration when hitting the enemy for the whole party
- Blinding Flash to buy time if necessary
- Passive to increase damage for you and party when healing, should be active almost all the time
Solo PvE: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#hUjYaV!Ydg!YbZcbY
I tried to make this build better for soloing. The idea is to keep yourself healed by generating massive spirit and dumping it as soon as possible to keep your health up with Transcendence passive (42.6 health for every point of spirit spent). For example, because I have Beacon of Ytar, Seven Sided Strike will cost 75 spirit. That is 3195 health every time I use it. Whether spamming that will be enough to keep yourself up is unknown. I’m thinking dual-wield with increased attack speed from Mantra of Retribution rune will generate more spirit for the purpose of the build. Exploding Palm with rune for increased spirit generation and Sweeping Wind to help take down larger groups. Blinding Flash to help with sticky situations.
Group PvE: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#hUjYXR!fZg!YbZcYb
Almost the same as the above build but I dropped Mantra of Retribution and Blinding Flash (less useful with larger groups) and grabbed Mantra of Conviction with healing rune and Breath of Heaven with improved heal rune. Mantra of Conviction heals may proc the Guiding Light passive (+16% damage for party) because the Mantra is under “active skills” but this isn’t for sure.
Evasion Tank AoE: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#hZjdkb!ZWY!YaZccZ
This is a neat build that has been brought up a lot. This is my take on dodge monk. I’ll probably use this to solo farm more difficult areas.
The abilities that increase dodge are:
- Fist of Thunder rune (2.5% chance to dodge per application, stacks 8 times for 20% dodge. I noted there was no duration on the dodge effect; it will probably be added later.)
- Dashing Strike rune: You can spam this endlessly to have the 30% dodge up at all times
- Mantra of Evasion: 30% dodge
- The Guardian’s Path (passive): 10% dodge when dual-wielding
- Sixth Sense (passive): Increases dodge by 50% of your critical strike chance
- While technically not a dodge ability, Seven Sided Strike is nice in that you are invulnerable while performing the attack, making it even better than dodge.
I didn’t include defense and resistance abilities because it’s hard to tell right now how these will affect the game. I’m hoping the constant dodging and healing from Transcendence will be enough to sustain the monk (more speculation).
With this build, I will be fighting large groups of enemies. The offense comes from Sweeping wind AoE, massive damage from Wave of Light with the pillar rune (900% total weapon damage; hopefully this is AoE as it isn’t stated directly in the description), and my favorite, the Mantra of Evasion rune which deals 120% weapon damage as fire damage to ALL nearby enemies on every dodge. That just seems amazing on paper. Hypothetical Situation: Fighting a group of 8 monsters with 69% chance to dodge. They all attack you, 5 of them miss, that is 600% instant weapon damage to all enemies by just standing there. Throw in your stacks of improved Vortex from Sweeping Wind doing an additional 108% weapon damage per second. Ok, enough speculation.
Debilitation: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#edaYXR!eYZ!cabaaa
This build would seem to work best in PvP situations. Its purpose is to be very annoying and either disable enemies by stunning, blinding, or fearing or make them do very little damage while slowing them down as well.
Abilities:
- Crippling Wave is great for this build. It slows down enemies by 45% and reduces their damage by 50%. For 9 seconds. It’s an AoE as well.
- Dashing Strike: Serves 2 purposes, it gives the monk much needed mobility to be in the right place, and has a 50% chance to stun for 3.5 seconds on hit so you can actually get some attacks in after dashing towards an enemy.
- Blinding Flash: obvious choice, mass crowd control to help control the fight. 30% chance to miss for enemies as icing on the cake.
- Lashing Tail Kick: Another AoE damage dealer with a more reliable 100% stun for 3 seconds.
- Breath of Heaven: another multi-purpose ability. When under heavy attack, you can dash into the fight, use the ability for the solid heal and it also fears all nearby enemies for 9 seconds buying more time to get back in the fight.
-Mantra of Conviction: Constant 20% increased damage for you and your allies and 45% less damage from all enemies with the rune. Good
Passives:
- Transcendence to help keep yourself alive while you are spamming all of these control abilities.
- Pacifism: You are useless if you are dead; this + runed Mantra of Conviction will probably go a long way for your survivability
- Guardian’s Path: Not sure about this one but I was kind of worried about the spirit generation.
I might have missed something here with the passives.
Balanced PvP: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#iedXjR!YeV!caYaZb
I tried to balance this build between damage, healing, and utility.
- Way of the Hundred Fists with movement and attack speed bonus rune
- Crippling Wave with +80% damage taken rune
- Dashing Strike with +55% movement speed rune for mobility
- Breath of Heaven for heals + rune for AoE fear
- Seven Sided Strike with Crimson Rune for more damage
- Mantra of Conviction with Golden Rune for party healing
Passives:
Transcendence, Pacifism, and Near Death Experience. All survivability passives for PvP.
Speed Demon: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#eiYjdV!Ydg!acaZYY
This is my personal favorite build. This build is high aggression, high crit, fast movement speed, and loads of increased attack speed. This build will probably generate the most spirit due to dual-wielding and faster attacks.
Bread and Butter:
- Way of the Hundred Fists: Very important to this build as every crit increases attack speed by 22% and movement speed by 11%, stacking 3 times for 66% increased attack speed and 33% increased movement speed.
- Crippling Wave: for movement speed debuff and additional 80% damage to enemy from all sources to line up big combos with some coordination
Other Skills:
- Lashing Tail Kick: With Beacon of Ytar, highly spammable and has a reliable 3 second stun with the rune to keep the enemy in place
- Seven Sided Strike: Main damage dealer. You can ideally spam this multiple times when going for the kill. With increased damage rune (234% weapon damage), and assuming this can hit the same target multiple times if there is only 1 target in the area, that is 1638% weapon damage to one target while being invulnerable.
- Dashing Strike: Cheap mobility with +55% movement speed rune to fit the theme.
- Mantra of Retribution: Allies reflect 40% of melee damage taken, but the main reason I took this ability is the constant +40% attack speed for the monk and allies. With Way of the Hundred Fists stacks, that gives the monk 106% increased attack speed.
Passives:
Transcendence: This build in theory has the most spam so Transcendence might be enough to sustain the monk
Beacon of Ytar: Allows for spam of abilities. With the higher spirit generation, this fits nicely in the build and even boosts healing from Transcendence
Exalted Soul: 100 extra spirit to work with
Speed Demon PvE: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#iUjYXV!Ygd!cbZccY
Essentially the same as the above build but changed the rune on Lashing Tail Kick to extra damage and replaced Dashing Strike with Breath of Heaven for group healing. I also changed Crippling Wave to Exploding Palm because enemies die a lot faster and more often in PvE than in PvP.
Theoretical Party: Monk, Barbarian, Wizard
The barbarian can use Frenzy to increase attack speed by 75% while also having the Retribution Mantra from the monk to increase it by another 40%. The wizard can use slow time with alabaster rune to increase attack speed by another 140%. Just an example of some possible synergy.
Those are all the builds I came up with so far. Please comment, change a build, or share your own builds.
Can I join your clan?
For example:
Crippling Wave with Concussion rune - enemies inflict 50% less damage for 9 seconds
Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation - enemies inflicts 45% less damage
By just stacking these one will receive an enormous damage reduction %. I think a good combination could be to focus on high damage reduction and high damage output.
One thing I would change with your build: If you use a 2H weapon, I think Guardian's Path would generate more spirit than Chant of Resonance if you keep up a nice pace. On just 1 hit with a spirit generator it will generate .20 x 6 = 1.2 additional spirit in addition to more spirit on regular hits as well. And if you generate more spirit with higher damage and/or crits, the passive will get better and better as your gear improves because it is a % and scales. If you dual-wield, then disregard this
@ TheKingofNowhere: ya bru
Check out the Debilitation Build, its listed there it focuses on either incapacitating the enemy or reducing their damage drastically, I have both of those abilities in it, it does seem very nice
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...XVe!Yfc!YcccYa
Hopefully it works now.
I am really focusing on increasing my attack speed while maintaining static damage increases. I was swayed to this build when I was trying to decide between using SSS with the rune that increases it's damage or to opt for several sided strike which will increase the amount of hits that it does.
I looked at it like this: hypothetical damage per hit 5000
SSS - (5000 * 1.35) * 7 = 47,250
SSS + crimson - (5000 * 2.34) *7 = 81,900
SSS + indigo - (5000 * 1.35) * 14 = 94,500
The attack that had a lower damage modifier but more hits is far more effective of a damage dealer. So I started thinking about effectiveness and for me, it makes sense that being able to do many more slightly smaller hits in the same amount of time will slice through mobs quicker and do more damage overall. The only thing you slightly give up is the ability to post the largest hit single target.
I further evaluated this when picking mantra of retribution for the 40% increased attack speed.
Weapon: fist 1.4 attacks per second
Base Attacks Per Minute (APM)- 1.4 * 60 = 84
APM with retribution - (1.4 * 60) * 1.4 = 118 (rounded)
Again taking the hypothetical 5000 damage per combo move -
Base: 5000 * 84 = 420,000 damage per minute
W/retribution: 5000 * 118 = 590,000 damage per minute
This is pretty huge, a difference of 170,000 damage per minute.
Some may say, "well why don't you just get over-awe for 50% more damage". It's true it would increase the damage done to (5000 * 84)* 1.5 = 630,000 DPM (Damage per minute) but you greatly sacrifice resource generation.
Standard generation 6 spirit per combo move.
With no attack speed increase or opting for over-awe: 6 * 84 = 504 spirit per minute
With 40% increased attack speed: 6 * 118 = 708 spirit per minute
Having the increased attack speed gives the monk an additional 204 spirit per minute or the ability to completely unload a resource globe one additional time per minute. For me this is substantial as I look to marry these benefits with skills that statically increase my damage like BoH for 20% increased damage (almost a half over-awe permanently up since BoH is like my only spirit dump) and WotHF for the opportunity to increase my attack speed 66% on top of the initial 40%.
Crippling wave with alabaster was selected as another static increase 80% more damage taken.
I also selected the passive that increases my damage 16% after I heal a player (another static/passive increase) since I will be playing with someone almost all the time and my only real spirit cost is BoH and I'll need to dump 3 globes or more per minute of battle.
Im trying to reach 116% increased damage permanently up through resource management and correct rotational design and a potential 106% attack speed increase peak (more likely will maintain 60+% increased attack speed due to the crit requirement on WotHF).
It is by no means the easiest when it comes to cycling my spirit builders for maximum efficiency, but done right it can lead to huge damage.
At first I thought I was building an attack speed monk, but really it is a Breath of Heaven build. My goal is to keep a melee with me at all times (my brother is playing a barbarian) and with all of the spirit I will be generating I will try and use BoH as much as possible. Guiding light gives 16% more damage for 10 seconds which means to keep it up consistently it would have to be done 6x per minute.
75 * 6 = 450 spirit per minute
Given I look to generate 700+ spirit per minute I have 250+ spirit to spend on dashing around like a madman. The other interesting piece is that with level 7 runes my BoH + Transcendance is healing for 10k+ each time or 60,000hp per minute for me and everyone inside of my party.
I am just about to declare my self a Monk! Can't say anything for 100% till release, but what I've seen so far in Beta, and on the Calculator, I keep coming back to the Monk as my Favorite!
Here is my favorite build that I have come up with so far. It isn't really themed, but I suppose you could call it the "Tactical Strike" build?
Here it is: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#ihdjaR!UYX!cYbZbc
Overview:
This is the build I came up with by trying to be greedy. I wanted good damage, good mobility and good survivability. I WANT IT ALL! I have a AoE spirt generator, a single target spirit generator, mobility spells, some utility and passive increase to damage done. I'll give an overview of what I was thinking for each skill below.
Skills:
Way of the Hundred Fists: This is the Single target spirit generator. When a Elite or Rare mob needs to die fast, I'll be using this on his face. I chose the Indigo rune for the stacking attack speed buff on Crits as I plen on having alot of crit on the gear.
Sweeping Wind: This is my AoE spirit generator. I again chose the Indigo rune to increase the area of effect of the vortex.
Dashing Strike:I chose the Golden rune so that it will cost only 3 spirit (down from 10) because I want this to be avaiable as much as possible if I need it.
Seven Sided Strike: I chose the Crimson rune for the teleport and increase damage.
Blinding Flash: I chose the Golden rune for the increase Blind duration. This should combine really well with the Crimson Seven Sided Strike.
Mantra of Conviction: Went with the Indigo rune here. At level 7 it slows everything around you (20yds) by 48%! That seems really huge. Especialy if it effects their attack speed. Even if it doesn't, it should make it clear to any potential teammates who is effected by the Mantra.
Passives:
One With Everything: This seems like almost a must for any Monk who wants to go all the way. Find one great piece of gear with ANY resist on it and you then have good resist for every shcool. Obviously, we don't know how big of a deal resists will be, but I bet it will be a pretty big deal in inferno.
Transcendance: Heals for 42.6 life for each point of spirit spent. So each time you teleport into the fray with Crimson Seven Sided Strike, you'll heal up for over 2000 health. Each time you cast Blinding Flash, you heal for over 2000 health.
Sieze The Initiative: Increases my Defense by 25% of my Attack. Since I plan on concentrating almost entirely on Attack and Precision on my gear, this will be great.
Style: So the basic idea here is that you have 100 Spirit, use Crimson Seven Sided Strike to get into the fray (50 spirt) then Cast blinding flash (50 Spirt) then build up your stacks of Seeping Wind (With the increase Fire AoE range) and if needed switch over to Way of the Hundred Fists for single, tough targets. Hopefully you'll be able to save up 100 spirit for the next battle. Meanwhile, everything that is within 20 yards is getting slowed and takes more damage.
For your gear, you focus almost completely on +Attack which should hlep your damage and help your defense. Grab one piece of gear with a Crapton of any one resistance, and then go to town.
I like the fact that if you changed the rune in SSS to Indigo you could do 56 hits in a row without taking any damage.
My build is mostly based around buffs.
Buffs received from build:
Way of the hundred fists speed buff
deadly reach dmg buff
conviction mantra dmg buff + heal on attack buff
dashing strike dodge buff
Breath of heaven dmg buff
Spirit Generators - way of the hundred fists with obsidian rune for attack speed buff will generally be combo 1 and 2 and combo 3 will be deadly reach with crimson rune for dmg buff.
Mantra - Conviction with Golden Rune, dmg buff plus healing me for attacking, and attacking is what I will be doing the most of. I talk about this more at the bottom of my post.
Spirit Spenders - Dashing strike with Obsidian rune for 30% dodge for 12 seconds after use, most likely this will always be up.
Breath of Heaven with Obsidian Rune, a healing spell that gives a good dmg buff for a long period of time, depending on how high spirit is I will pre cast this for the buff
I didn't really know what to take for my last skill so I took serenity with crimson rune as a kind of oh shit button, but i'm not sure that I will need it. I am also worried about my lack of aoe, so maybe i will change serenity to an aoe dmg ability
A very good spell synergy that I haven't seen anyone mention is mantra of conviction with golden rune (75% chance to heal for ~1k on every hit) combined with way of the hundred fists which hits a lot of times very fast (seems too op to me, they will surely put in an internal cooldown or max of 1 heal per action rather than hit - maybe they already have and that is why no one else has these spells together?).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#bQgRUj!Vdg!ZbYbaZ
How it works,
Have mystic ally to help, and help generate spirit (with gold runestone-optional).
Spirit Generator: Exploding palm, seems it will work well with both single and multiple mobs.
Spirit Spender: Seven-Strike with teleport for extra dmg and a teleport, best thing ever imo.
For mantras, Use Mantra of COnviction at start of the fight, or continuously (every 30 sec) if the fight is long.
Then use mantra of Evasion with backlash after a few sec if there is alot of mobs(with the extra dodge, your bound to dodge at least once and do aoe dmg), and then Mantra of Healing sometime after 3 sec, or till your life is low or whenever. Rinse and repeat.
(note, Mantra of Conviction would be the main mantra to use, I chose Reclamation for constant heals, but Overawe is a good choice for extra dmg. )
Are you sure these two reductions will stack? Even if you do it multiplicatively it's a pretty massive reduction in damage. You can throw in some other easy reductions like the Barb's Threatening Shout and you're taking very little damage. That's before you even factor in resistance, armor, or the damage reduction from defense.
Same question for the stacking of damage increases by means of debuffing mobs. For example would
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#SZ!!ZZ
stack with
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#eR!!aZ
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#iYjkXR!dfg!cZZccZ
The purpose of the build is to min/max on damage modifiers while having enough speed to churn through mobs with the +run speed with blazing speed as well as sudden assault.
Blazing Wrath seems so damn good, but it is a lot of spirit to use every time you enter a pack but I'm hoping Exalted Soul will compensate enough to just front load a room... or every second room.
The only problem I see that could take the wind out of the sails of the fun machine is possible spirit generation problems. Only time will tell though.