Torment V rift: http://youtu.be/WE9jW7oBuGs
- sorry if it's choppy, not sure if it's overwolf or my computer
This primary focus of this build is to be in the mix and pounding away at mobs constantly, I really dislike the new Rainment 6pc and how you have to play. I like ground and pound, facing up mobs and decimating groups (if I wanted to run in and out I would have chosen a caster), so I had to find a way to make Sunwuko's 4pc work, and I think I did!
Things that did work for me:
- Attack speed combined with a worthy weapon proc (Thunderfury for me) and WotHF FoF for more weapon procs. It's really necessary to keep pumping spirit in, and doing a semi-decent amount of dmg to enable you to blow up a few mobs outside of your big hitters, in order to move seamlessly from pack to pack with sufficient spirit reserves. Since our normal attacks do little to no dmg by themselves and aren't reliable enough to kill anything but 10khp mobs, that's where the weapon proc comes in! (kinda sad that TF >>> all monk normal attacks isn't it :P)
- RoRG and multi set bonus stacking. Right now I'm using Aughild's (obvious reasons) and Cain's. Cain's because I needed Mantra of Conviction to bring the damage up to where T5 was a bit more doable. I normally play with MoR Transgression for the attack speed. (I just can't stand attacking slow... never eww!) Cain's set fixed that problem I can attack at nearly the same speed and bring in MoC ftw! That being said, you could also do 2pc Asheara's, or if you really wanted to 2pc Rainment for the 500 dex, or 3pc Inna's, they work ok as well, just not as well for what I was working with.
- Andariel's Visage, obvious choice here, without Andariels you couldn't get enough + Holy damage to make the proc really work for you. I believe 80% + Holy dmg is max without Andariels? Plus the attack speed /slurp
- Watching your spirit spending, the build works best when it's : normal attack > EP > CS. The proc bonus in this spec always goes off on the second spirit spender, You may notice a few times in the video where I accidentally hit EP twice on small packs and blew up my mobs I would have normally used to kill other mobs, the more the merrier, and you don't want to be blowing them up on their own when you can clump them together. That being said, for really huge packs and elites it sometimes works better to spam MoC and EP and skip CC until the you're sure it's not going to kill you to bring in some more. Or just spam those in group play when you know people are compensating for your lack of pull.
- Lucky drop on Sunwuko's amulet with Holy DMG and poison resist to match Andariel's, most of the rest is crafted gear you can easily get your favorite OWE resist on.
- You can easily swap in a different chest and Strongarm Bracers for the extra damage (which is very nice) but I like the bonus from Aughild's too much so I will roll with them until my survivability is a bit better.
- Resource cost reduction with paragon points (it doesn't work with Sunwuko's btw, it's based on how much spirit you actually spent, it does for some reason work with that special rift conduit thing), it allows you to cast more EPs and more CSs when they're really needed. You already max out AOE dmg with your current spec, might as well make it happen more often!
- Switching two abilities for Rift Guardians or Bosses, EP - The Flesh is Weak (+20 bonus dmg taken) and MoC - Overawe for more bonus dmg.
Things that did not work for me:
- Any kind of two handed weapon, tried an excellent Flying Dragon, Flow of Eternity (and spec built around SSS), and even the Staff of Kyro with different rings like Band of Rue Chambers. Sunwuko's set bonus of 20% dmg isn't nearly enough to bring the two handers up to par with one handed weapons, it just flat out didn't work. Things like Thunderfury procs, extra stats, extra life after kill, etc, is so much better to double up on than one weapon with less procs / stats, should I even mention the -130% crit hit dmg loss? Devastating. While the Flying Dragon proc is super fun, I've discovered that in order for it to go off enough, you need max attack speed on every piece of gear, and to use WotHF Blazing Fists, it doesn't appear to have an internal CD and the only way to proc it more, is to attack even faster, so you double up on - CHD from a loss of a gem, and - CHC & CHD on gear peices to accommodate IAS. ;(
- Fist of Az, while it did make a few more mobs explode when used with Skycutter (again, necessary as there are only a few things with +holy dmg on them) it didn't come close to balancing out the build the way that Thunderfury did, the procs and the - movement & attack speed are really amazing and much needed to keep the flow going, not to mention survivability up. The proc from Sunwuko's & TF usually gets all mobs down to explode-able ranges by themselves.
- Any kind of passives or sweeping wind with bonuses to spirit regen. It's just not enough, they're extremely weak. EP Strong Spirit is it, the best. Yes I am using exalted soul, but only for the bonus spirit amount, when you EP mobs and return spirit with Strong Spirit, sometimes you can cap out 220+ spirit in one explosion, which puts you way ahead for the next pack(s). As far as I'm concerned the +2 spirit regen doesn't make any difference whatsoever.
- Inna's set, while I love this set, (the survivability it adds is amazing btw) I was able to obtain the two most important things to me with Cain's set, attack speed, and MoC. Perhaps if I had some better Inna's gear with OWE resists like the poison I am using now, I could work around it.
- Band of the Rue Chambers, I really tried creating a way to use this (love this class specific ring that you basically can't use as a holy Monk) but you sacrifice so much, since SoJ never comes off of anyone's character at any time, that leaves you tossing RoRG, and then you kill the ability to use BOTH Aughild's set and Andariel's Visage. If blizzard would add one more item (non gloves, shoulders, helm, ammy because those are taken by Sunwuko's!) then it's possible, you could go with strongarms, Rue and some other chest. Loosing the holy dmg on Andariel's just isn't worth it right now.
- Builds based off of cooldowns like SSS, Blind, or Inner Sanctuary. I think this is mostly just my playstyle, someone who didn't like Dashing Strike the way I do, could certainly pump out more dmg in certain windowns, and or reduce damage taken. This worked best for me bombing from mob pack to mob pack over and over again with a sort of a certain flow and having the ability to Dash your way out of the heap of &^$% I just CS'd yourself into!
Advantages:
- Groups, AOE, elites with packs of mobs surrounding them, nothing short of a fully armored Witch Doctor is going to kill anything faster than you can, and they won't beat you on a pack of Horde mobs if you have enough spirit to nuke just a couple down fast.
- Solo and group play, I basically only change out Combination strike to Unity and go to town with the same gear and build, works excellent for me either way. You still bring a lot of great group buffs with this spec as well, because people love you when you CS EP things anyway.
Disadvantages:
- Boss mobs and high hp elites, it's just not extremely strong vs something like an elite pack of hammer arm dudes, but it's not totally lacking either. I can still kill these mobs and rift guardians as fast in T5 as holy, as I could in T4 with my lightening monk. All that being said, you need something to die, just one thing to start the chain, sometimes it can be a little painful with HP sharing elites.
Ideas going foward
- I would really like to see blizzard add a chest or belt or something with + holy damage (or add it to Rue chambers :D:D), as it stands we're limited and stuck with RoRG, Andariel's, getting lucky with a Sunwuko's amulet (this will be what holds most monks back I think), and using Skycutter, it would just be nice to have some options.
- Using this build as part of a fire spec, and just using Sunwuko's proc as an extra source of non pertinent damage with a EP / CS Fire build?
- Fixing 2handers would help!
- I love my monk now, needs just a little tuneup to be amazing.
Spec: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#UfdPVk!XUbg!bZaaZY
Torment V rift: http://youtu.be/WE9jW7oBuGs
- sorry if it's choppy, not sure if it's overwolf or my computer
This primary focus of this build is to be in the mix and pounding away at mobs constantly, I really dislike the new Rainment 6pc and how you have to play. I like ground and pound, facing up mobs and decimating groups (if I wanted to run in and out I would have chosen a caster), so I had to find a way to make Sunwuko's 4pc work, and I think I did!
Things that did work for me:
- Attack speed combined with a worthy weapon proc (Thunderfury for me) and WotHF FoF for more weapon procs. It's really necessary to keep pumping spirit in, and doing a semi-decent amount of dmg to enable you to blow up a few mobs outside of your big hitters, in order to move seamlessly from pack to pack with sufficient spirit reserves. Since our normal attacks do little to no dmg by themselves and aren't reliable enough to kill anything but 10khp mobs, that's where the weapon proc comes in! (kinda sad that TF >>> all monk normal attacks isn't it :P)
- RoRG and multi set bonus stacking. Right now I'm using Aughild's (obvious reasons) and Cain's. Cain's because I needed Mantra of Conviction to bring the damage up to where T5 was a bit more doable. I normally play with MoR Transgression for the attack speed. (I just can't stand attacking slow... never eww!) Cain's set fixed that problem I can attack at nearly the same speed and bring in MoC ftw! That being said, you could also do 2pc Asheara's, or if you really wanted to 2pc Rainment for the 500 dex, or 3pc Inna's, they work ok as well, just not as well for what I was working with.
- Andariel's Visage, obvious choice here, without Andariels you couldn't get enough + Holy damage to make the proc really work for you. I believe 80% + Holy dmg is max without Andariels? Plus the attack speed /slurp
- Watching your spirit spending, the build works best when it's : normal attack > EP > CS. The proc bonus in this spec always goes off on the second spirit spender, You may notice a few times in the video where I accidentally hit EP twice on small packs and blew up my mobs I would have normally used to kill other mobs, the more the merrier, and you don't want to be blowing them up on their own when you can clump them together. That being said, for really huge packs and elites it sometimes works better to spam MoC and EP and skip CC until the you're sure it's not going to kill you to bring in some more. Or just spam those in group play when you know people are compensating for your lack of pull.
- Lucky drop on Sunwuko's amulet with Holy DMG and poison resist to match Andariel's, most of the rest is crafted gear you can easily get your favorite OWE resist on.
- You can easily swap in a different chest and Strongarm Bracers for the extra damage (which is very nice) but I like the bonus from Aughild's too much so I will roll with them until my survivability is a bit better.
- Resource cost reduction with paragon points (it doesn't work with Sunwuko's btw, it's based on how much spirit you actually spent, it does for some reason work with that special rift conduit thing), it allows you to cast more EPs and more CSs when they're really needed. You already max out AOE dmg with your current spec, might as well make it happen more often!
- Switching two abilities for Rift Guardians or Bosses, EP - The Flesh is Weak (+20 bonus dmg taken) and MoC - Overawe for more bonus dmg.
Things that did not work for me:
- Any kind of two handed weapon, tried an excellent Flying Dragon, Flow of Eternity (and spec built around SSS), and even the Staff of Kyro with different rings like Band of Rue Chambers. Sunwuko's set bonus of 20% dmg isn't nearly enough to bring the two handers up to par with one handed weapons, it just flat out didn't work. Things like Thunderfury procs, extra stats, extra life after kill, etc, is so much better to double up on than one weapon with less procs / stats, should I even mention the -130% crit hit dmg loss? Devastating. While the Flying Dragon proc is super fun, I've discovered that in order for it to go off enough, you need max attack speed on every piece of gear, and to use WotHF Blazing Fists, it doesn't appear to have an internal CD and the only way to proc it more, is to attack even faster, so you double up on - CHD from a loss of a gem, and - CHC & CHD on gear peices to accommodate IAS. ;(
- Fist of Az, while it did make a few more mobs explode when used with Skycutter (again, necessary as there are only a few things with +holy dmg on them) it didn't come close to balancing out the build the way that Thunderfury did, the procs and the - movement & attack speed are really amazing and much needed to keep the flow going, not to mention survivability up. The proc from Sunwuko's & TF usually gets all mobs down to explode-able ranges by themselves.
- Any kind of passives or sweeping wind with bonuses to spirit regen. It's just not enough, they're extremely weak. EP Strong Spirit is it, the best. Yes I am using exalted soul, but only for the bonus spirit amount, when you EP mobs and return spirit with Strong Spirit, sometimes you can cap out 220+ spirit in one explosion, which puts you way ahead for the next pack(s). As far as I'm concerned the +2 spirit regen doesn't make any difference whatsoever.
- Inna's set, while I love this set, (the survivability it adds is amazing btw) I was able to obtain the two most important things to me with Cain's set, attack speed, and MoC. Perhaps if I had some better Inna's gear with OWE resists like the poison I am using now, I could work around it.
- Band of the Rue Chambers, I really tried creating a way to use this (love this class specific ring that you basically can't use as a holy Monk) but you sacrifice so much, since SoJ never comes off of anyone's character at any time, that leaves you tossing RoRG, and then you kill the ability to use BOTH Aughild's set and Andariel's Visage. If blizzard would add one more item (non gloves, shoulders, helm, ammy because those are taken by Sunwuko's!) then it's possible, you could go with strongarms, Rue and some other chest. Loosing the holy dmg on Andariel's just isn't worth it right now.
- Builds based off of cooldowns like SSS, Blind, or Inner Sanctuary. I think this is mostly just my playstyle, someone who didn't like Dashing Strike the way I do, could certainly pump out more dmg in certain windowns, and or reduce damage taken. This worked best for me bombing from mob pack to mob pack over and over again with a sort of a certain flow and having the ability to Dash your way out of the heap of &^$% I just CS'd yourself into!
Advantages:
- Groups, AOE, elites with packs of mobs surrounding them, nothing short of a fully armored Witch Doctor is going to kill anything faster than you can, and they won't beat you on a pack of Horde mobs if you have enough spirit to nuke just a couple down fast.
- Solo and group play, I basically only change out Combination strike to Unity and go to town with the same gear and build, works excellent for me either way. You still bring a lot of great group buffs with this spec as well, because people love you when you CS EP things anyway.
Disadvantages:
- Boss mobs and high hp elites, it's just not extremely strong vs something like an elite pack of hammer arm dudes, but it's not totally lacking either. I can still kill these mobs and rift guardians as fast in T5 as holy, as I could in T4 with my lightening monk. All that being said, you need something to die, just one thing to start the chain, sometimes it can be a little painful with HP sharing elites.
Ideas going foward
- I would really like to see blizzard add a chest or belt or something with + holy damage (or add it to Rue chambers :D:D), as it stands we're limited and stuck with RoRG, Andariel's, getting lucky with a Sunwuko's amulet (this will be what holds most monks back I think), and using Skycutter, it would just be nice to have some options.
- Using this build as part of a fire spec, and just using Sunwuko's proc as an extra source of non pertinent damage with a EP / CS Fire build?
- Fixing 2handers would help!
- I love my monk now, needs just a little tuneup to be amazing.
- Would love to hear more