So i thought i'd share a build i was having an absolute blast with all night last night. The point of the build is you run literally in the middle of a mob of enemies, pull them in, take a bunch of damage on serenity's "reap what is sown" rune, then gtfo after it's up. But yeah i was tearing through mobs with it last night, and it's quite a lot of fun and offers some survivability just having serenity and breath of heaven on the hotbar.
Anyway, here's the important details:
So, here's the build: http://us.battle.net...fgkc!cYb!aaaZaa
The number keys that the skills are assigned to are important cause that's the order that you activate the combo in. I left out lashing tail kick as you dont really need the dash for it to work, and it just uses spirit.
1.Run in the middle of everyone, pull them all in with cyclone strike. Find a mob of enemies, the bigger the better, and if there's champion mobs then even better, cause the harder they hit, the harder this combo hits.
2. Immediately activate serenity with "Reap what is Sown" rune.
The mobs should be attacking you by the time you cyclone strike, then immediately hit serenity to begin building up your "damage bomb"
3. Activate Matra of Conviction with Overawe immediately after serenity
Hit this immediately after Serenity. Serenity has a 3 second duration, and so does this. So if you activate it just after you activate serenity, the explosion from serenity will take advantage of the "For 3 seconds after activation, the effect is increased to 48% additional damage." every single time.
4. Use tempest rush to get to safety.
At this step, you could also hit breath of heaven with circle of scorn rune as a 2nd AOE nuke from your position of being literally in the middle of everyone. Then after all of this, it's likely there's still be enemies surrounding you, but you just did quite a bit of damage. Tempest rush is great for getting out of there. I used the northern breeze rune to make it nice and cheap, as you are probably low on spirit by the end of the combo.
The point of this isn't to clear inferno, but is just to see if it's something you enjoy. For me, it's been pretty decent at taking down tougher mobs due to the fact that the harder they hit, the harder it hits.
There's usually some downtime between serenity cooldowns, I actually run with Beacon of Ytar passive rune to speed up my cooldowns, but i picked all low passives so some lower level people could try it if they wanted.
When i'm waiting for serenity to be off cooldown i pretty much hundred fists everything to dust. If there's no mobs nearby that require Serenity Explosion!™ i'll just spam Mantra of Conviction (overawe) for the damage boost so things go down quicker. But yeah i've been having a blast with it.
Have fun!
Also if anyone actually tries it out and finds runes that work better, or variations to the strategy, please post them. I'd love to try variations on this build.
I don't consider it something entirely useful especially when other rune choices may be better than that one, but it reminds me a lot of old school Reckoning Bomb Paladins had in Vanilla WoW.
Its fun until you try it in inferno against a fire chain plagued desecrator reflects damage group of skeleton's in the cathedral and die faster that your health can drop when serenity runs out. Good stuff. Well, minus the stacking revive counter.
Anyway, here's the important details:
So, here's the build: http://us.battle.net...fgkc!cYb!aaaZaa
The number keys that the skills are assigned to are important cause that's the order that you activate the combo in. I left out lashing tail kick as you dont really need the dash for it to work, and it just uses spirit.
1.Run in the middle of everyone, pull them all in with cyclone strike.
Find a mob of enemies, the bigger the better, and if there's champion mobs then even better, cause the harder they hit, the harder this combo hits.
2. Immediately activate serenity with "Reap what is Sown" rune.
The mobs should be attacking you by the time you cyclone strike, then immediately hit serenity to begin building up your "damage bomb"
3. Activate Matra of Conviction with Overawe immediately after serenity
Hit this immediately after Serenity.
Serenity has a 3 second duration, and so does this. So if you activate it just after you activate serenity, the explosion from serenity will take advantage of the "For 3 seconds after activation, the effect is increased to 48% additional damage." every single time.
4. Use tempest rush to get to safety.
At this step, you could also hit breath of heaven with circle of scorn rune as a 2nd AOE nuke from your position of being literally in the middle of everyone.
Then after all of this, it's likely there's still be enemies surrounding you, but you just did quite a bit of damage. Tempest rush is great for getting out of there. I used the northern breeze rune to make it nice and cheap, as you are probably low on spirit by the end of the combo.
The point of this isn't to clear inferno, but is just to see if it's something you enjoy. For me, it's been pretty decent at taking down tougher mobs due to the fact that the harder they hit, the harder it hits.
There's usually some downtime between serenity cooldowns, I actually run with Beacon of Ytar passive rune to speed up my cooldowns, but i picked all low passives so some lower level people could try it if they wanted.
When i'm waiting for serenity to be off cooldown i pretty much hundred fists everything to dust. If there's no mobs nearby that require Serenity Explosion!™ i'll just spam Mantra of Conviction (overawe) for the damage boost so things go down quicker. But yeah i've been having a blast with it.
Have fun!
Also if anyone actually tries it out and finds runes that work better, or variations to the strategy, please post them. I'd love to try variations on this build.
@OP- That sounds really fun, flirting with danger by getting yourself surrounded, dropping a bomb and then high-tailing it out of there.
I don't consider it something entirely useful especially when other rune choices may be better than that one, but it reminds me a lot of old school Reckoning Bomb Paladins had in Vanilla WoW.
Good times.