I'll take a broader perspective, and focus on the end results.
With a nerf of the enchantress, it is harder to get, say, 6k armor, and you have to pay more to attain it in 1.0.5 than in 1.0.4.
To pay more means that it is more precious than before.
but that's being offset by the -25% damage decrease to enemies
if you're talking about monster power, rumors are that max monster power will only double enemy damage.
Which after the -25% damage decrease to enemies, 200%*(100%-25%) = 150%.
which is roughly what act 3 was back in 1.03
and since all monks are much better geared than they were back then, this seems like it is not a big deal.
I'm personally hoping that enemies will get tripled or quadrupled damage.
Now that I'm finally really well geared, I want to experience how hard diablo 3 was back around release.
That and I really want glass cannon monks to get kicked down a notch.
A few monk metagamers have been wondering whether sweeping wind cyclones shock for a total of 100% or 120% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
we know they shock once every 0.6 seconds, so either they shock 5 times or 6 times.
And what people weren't sure about was whether or not it shocks the moment it spawns.
I finally figured out a conclusive way to test this while doing some runs.
get 2 destructible objects (ie barrels or whatever), fairly far apart.
I used some bones in core of arreat floor 1, near the world portal.
there's a pair that spawns consistently just north of the WP
anyways.
get 3 stacks on your cyclone.
punch the first stack of bones.
occasionally you'll spawn a cyclone.
the cyclone will see the far away stack of bones and immediately destroy it.
Since there's no way thunderclap could have hit the far far away set of bones with its AoE, this confirms that cyclones shock the moment they are spawned.
QED this confirms that cyclones shock for a total of 120% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
One slightly under-appreciated stat on rings and amulets is average damage. You mention it in the guide, I just thought that I might add some numbers:
On rings, you can easily find some with +20-50 damage, and even +30-60 damage. Just for a comparison, with my current stat values, +90 to damage (or 45 average damage) is worth about 160 dex, or almost 40 crit damage.
Rings with attack speed, crit chance and + damage are often much cheaper than comparable rings with + crit damage. So it's a good alternative to trifectas.
PS: I was thinking about recording gameplay and then looking at the frames to see what hits when and how much. I hope someday I actually get to do it
i love average damage, i get it on all my jewelry, but it's by far the most OP on rings.
crit damage tho, so overpriced across the board. >_<
I use a Madstone, Stone of Jordan and Skull Grasp to beef up my main attack Crippling Wave for 29%. Is it worth or should
I focus more on the normal stats like IAS and Crit?
I love the both Stones for their spirit reg, slow 2h build.
why are you using crippling wave?
or fire ally.
i kinda understand searing light, but it will be obsoleted in 1.05
edit: Dropping this off for now, not gonna add it to the main guide til i get a video or w/e.
What MP should I farm infernal keys on?
7-10. Key's are 100% drops at MP 10, and close to 100% at MP 7
anything less is a bad idea.
Make sure you get 5 NV stacks, you'll probably not get a key drop even on MP 10 with 0 stacks. I know this because i've tried.
I recommend tackling machines at MP10, the damage isn't much more, just the health.
You might as well sink in the extra time to guarantee yourself an ingredient drop.
Teaming means more runs per key
You only need 1 key for 4 players to do a run.
So as a team, run acts 1-3 for keys. Should take less than an hour, if you're coordinated.
So basically you can get 4 infernal machine runs per hour.
Roughly 1 hellfire ring per hour.
When farming keywardens, run as a team when rushing for 5 stacks.
Focus on events, they're much easier than fighting elites, and they also give valor.
Try to remember where common easy events are, and abuse them.
when you are 5 stacked, split up to find the keywarden faster.
And last but not least, skip reflect damage mobs. They are literally impossible.
All 3 monks should have the following skills:
Serenity/Tranquility
Blinding Flash/Faith in the Light
Sweeping Wind/Cyclone
Fists of thunder/Thunderclap
One with Everything
Beacon of Ytar
basically all the above is standard fare with the exception of tranquility.
Tranquility will give your team more stun breaks, which is crucial at high MP.
beacon of ytar will mean even more stun breaks from serenity/tranquility, and further stunlock abuse from blinding flash.
Monk 1: Vortex Monk
This build revolves around 1 skill: Cyclone Strike/Implosion
You want to give this roll to a high defense monk with lots of spirit regen.
You want him to have overawe and resolve.
Because vortex will keep everything in overawe range as well as proc resolve.
This is crucial to maximizing AoE DPS and reducing kill times.
Ideally this monk should have such ridiculous spirit regen he can keep both overawe active 100% as well as cast cyclone strike regularly.
Monk 2: Exploding Palm
Needless to say, exploding palm is ridiculously overpowered on high MP.
so you're going to want 1 man dedicated to this.
Use either the creeping demise or the impending doom runes.
This monk will have the lowest spirit consumption, so give him Mantra of Evasion/Hard Target and make sure he spams it nonstop.
This monk will be able to use seize the initiative, so I recommend this job goes to the lowest defense monk.
Monk 3:Guiding Light
This one is straightforward
Give this guy mantra of healing/time of need with guiding light
he will make sure all the monks have +15% DPS at all times.
Player 4: Miscellaneous
4th player really doesn't need to be a monk.
if he is, seven sided strike/pandemonium and breath of heaven are reasonable options.
A question:
I was playing with Wothf on the ptr, and I saw a lot of cyclones. Maybe it's just from the IAS, but since you mentioned the bug with the second punch, I was wondering if maybe they fixed it on the PTR.
were you using fists of fury by any chance?
edit: just tried it out, and i saw a decent number of cyclones with fists of fury but still not as much as thunderclap.
fists of fury has better AoE so you'll do better if you're completely surrounded though
Thanks for your response. I'm using FoF, it's the only useful rune in in my opinion. Now I'm just wondering if I should drop FoT/TC and combination strike for dashing strike + a defensive passive. DS is a much better teleport than Thunderclap.
Also, what do you think about DS runes. Quicksilver is nice of course, though with high attack speed it's not such an issue. I was thinking about Flying Side Kick at least for boss fights, but the 1.5 second stun might be too short for bosses/elites. I've been using Blinding Speed a lot, but I feel I get better survivability by boosting my DPS with FoF.
all of the DS runes are pretty trivial, which is why I go with quicksilver.
falling star sucks since you don't need much movement speed in combat, and it doesn't give you the movement speed if you don't hit an enemy
but the stun rune is decent for ubers, elites, and so long as you aren't using a sledgefist anyways.
but it only affects 1 target which is why I think it's of pretty limited use.
the dodge rune is solid in that it's decent in every combat scenario, but just kinda trivial overall.
I use quicksilver because I use implosion, and I find myself short on spirit if I want to feed both my mantra and implosion.
but if that's not the issue, I guess you could go with the stun rune for ubers and dodge rune for everything else.
Bookmarked this thread, very useful and helped me get my monk from terrible to good. I really want to try that trio monk farm you explained earlier, sounds amazing.
quick question for more experienced monks. iam in process of leveling monk and id like to know if it is possible to gear up monk decently with approx 100 mil budget. I do have WD that is able to farm MP5 without any issues and MP4 very fast. Do you think it is possible to gear up with that budget for at least MP3 farm?
thank you for your reply. I play on EU servers. I might get more gold if I will be able to sell my WD gear (250 mil approx). I want to switch back to melee as casters are not for me
I'll take a broader perspective, and focus on the end results.
With a nerf of the enchantress, it is harder to get, say, 6k armor, and you have to pay more to attain it in 1.0.5 than in 1.0.4.
To pay more means that it is more precious than before.
if you're talking about monster power, rumors are that max monster power will only double enemy damage.
Which after the -25% damage decrease to enemies, 200%*(100%-25%) = 150%.
which is roughly what act 3 was back in 1.03
and since all monks are much better geared than they were back then, this seems like it is not a big deal.
I'm personally hoping that enemies will get tripled or quadrupled damage.
Now that I'm finally really well geared, I want to experience how hard diablo 3 was back around release.
That and I really want glass cannon monks to get kicked down a notch.
Defense should be duly rewarded and respected along with killing power.
Blizzard was just too kind to mark the limit of explosion. Some traps and unexpected events will create more challenge and excitement.
There are so many variables and possibilities in 1.0.5.
I wonder if a further reduction in armor by loosing the entrantress should have any impact on the monk fighting at higher difficulty levels.
Of course, this can be offset by putting in more DPS, which we all agree.
A few monk metagamers have been wondering whether sweeping wind cyclones shock for a total of 100% or 120% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
we know they shock once every 0.6 seconds, so either they shock 5 times or 6 times.
And what people weren't sure about was whether or not it shocks the moment it spawns.
I finally figured out a conclusive way to test this while doing some runs.
get 2 destructible objects (ie barrels or whatever), fairly far apart.
I used some bones in core of arreat floor 1, near the world portal.
there's a pair that spawns consistently just north of the WP
anyways.
get 3 stacks on your cyclone.
punch the first stack of bones.
occasionally you'll spawn a cyclone.
the cyclone will see the far away stack of bones and immediately destroy it.
Since there's no way thunderclap could have hit the far far away set of bones with its AoE, this confirms that cyclones shock the moment they are spawned.
QED this confirms that cyclones shock for a total of 120% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
crit damage tho, so overpriced across the board. >_<
or fire ally.
i kinda understand searing light, but it will be obsoleted in 1.05
edit: Dropping this off for now, not gonna add it to the main guide til i get a video or w/e.
What MP should I farm infernal keys on?
7-10. Key's are 100% drops at MP 10, and close to 100% at MP 7
anything less is a bad idea.
Make sure you get 5 NV stacks, you'll probably not get a key drop even on MP 10 with 0 stacks. I know this because i've tried.
I recommend tackling machines at MP10, the damage isn't much more, just the health.
You might as well sink in the extra time to guarantee yourself an ingredient drop.
Teaming means more runs per key
You only need 1 key for 4 players to do a run.
So as a team, run acts 1-3 for keys. Should take less than an hour, if you're coordinated.
So basically you can get 4 infernal machine runs per hour.
Roughly 1 hellfire ring per hour.
When farming keywardens, run as a team when rushing for 5 stacks.
Focus on events, they're much easier than fighting elites, and they also give valor.
Try to remember where common easy events are, and abuse them.
when you are 5 stacked, split up to find the keywarden faster.
And last but not least, skip reflect damage mobs. They are literally impossible.
All 3 monks should have the following skills:
Serenity/Tranquility
Blinding Flash/Faith in the Light
Sweeping Wind/Cyclone
Fists of thunder/Thunderclap
One with Everything
Beacon of Ytar
basically all the above is standard fare with the exception of tranquility.
Tranquility will give your team more stun breaks, which is crucial at high MP.
beacon of ytar will mean even more stun breaks from serenity/tranquility, and further stunlock abuse from blinding flash.
Monk 1: Vortex Monk
This build revolves around 1 skill: Cyclone Strike/Implosion
You want to give this roll to a high defense monk with lots of spirit regen.
You want him to have overawe and resolve.
Because vortex will keep everything in overawe range as well as proc resolve.
This is crucial to maximizing AoE DPS and reducing kill times.
Ideally this monk should have such ridiculous spirit regen he can keep both overawe active 100% as well as cast cyclone strike regularly.
Monk 2: Exploding Palm
Needless to say, exploding palm is ridiculously overpowered on high MP.
so you're going to want 1 man dedicated to this.
Use either the creeping demise or the impending doom runes.
This monk will have the lowest spirit consumption, so give him Mantra of Evasion/Hard Target and make sure he spams it nonstop.
This monk will be able to use seize the initiative, so I recommend this job goes to the lowest defense monk.
Monk 3: Guiding Light
This one is straightforward
Give this guy mantra of healing/time of need with guiding light
he will make sure all the monks have +15% DPS at all times.
Player 4: Miscellaneous
4th player really doesn't need to be a monk.
if he is, seven sided strike/pandemonium and breath of heaven are reasonable options.
edit: just tried it out, and i saw a decent number of cyclones with fists of fury but still not as much as thunderclap.
fists of fury has better AoE so you'll do better if you're completely surrounded though
falling star sucks since you don't need much movement speed in combat, and it doesn't give you the movement speed if you don't hit an enemy
but the stun rune is decent for ubers, elites, and so long as you aren't using a sledgefist anyways.
but it only affects 1 target which is why I think it's of pretty limited use.
the dodge rune is solid in that it's decent in every combat scenario, but just kinda trivial overall.
I use quicksilver because I use implosion, and I find myself short on spirit if I want to feed both my mantra and implosion.
but if that's not the issue, I guess you could go with the stun rune for ubers and dodge rune for everything else.
http://us.battle.net...22/hero/3153312 (wiz)
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/heavymetal-1322/hero/8654665 (monk)
my twitch feed (just messing around, no super player or anything)
http://www.justin.tv/heavymetalmak
You may need 60k DPS for MP3 and 80k DPS for MP5.
Take a look at the 60k DPS guide, the gearing strategies remain the same but the gear prices get substantially reduced for 1.0.5.
It is easy to build a monk of 60k DPS with 40M, and doable for a monk of 80k+ DPS with 100M.
BTW, are you on American server?