For making monk not suck with your current spec on Shakespears!!
Hats off to you for the most enjoyable monk spec I've tried, finally something with enough spirit gen to use bells like they should be used, and enough dps to get solo elites, trash mobs and goblins down without issue, bonus for being a spec that should work great in the xpac with the buff coming to dashing strike and bells not pushing things all over the place.
The major bonus, HATE HATE HATE HATE screenshake with thundercap, glad to not be using that.
I've tried nearly everything on monk in past, and every time I am severly dissapointed or the spec / gearing is lacking in some regards to it being fun, like, at all.
I always went back to barb and recently P100'd a WW barb with rend becuase it was the ONLY fun spec to play, but always I go back to monk trying to make it fun or work in some fashion.
Nirvana spec was sort of fun but:
- lacked any damage outside of nirvana
- SW drop off was devastating when moving into a new pack
- goblins or elites by themselves or not around enough mobs, forget it
- leaves too many good exp trash unkilled because of the need for packs
- forced to drop a good passive for lowered cooldowns on ONE button that actually has a cooldown
Tempest rush
- forget trying to kill keywardens or elites without freinds around.
- goblins were downright impossible without trash around.
- Required a dumnbing down of gear for spirit regen or less attack speed
- out of spirit, go die in a corner, it's all thats left for you, it takes less time to res with spirit than it does to generate more
- even EP tempest rush, same issues as before when not in groups of mobs
Standard TC SW Overawe
- Screenshake, un-effing-bearable
- slow chasing down mobs
- spirit gen was crap
- if you wanted to use EP or Bells even with spirit regen EP or lowered cost bells, you only got to cast these things once in a while
- spec was almost useable with EP spirit regen, but there is the whole screenshake issue, bleh.
On a side note, I've always disliked blind in general, so it's great to be playing a spec that doesn't need it.
The only issue even remotely worth mentioning is a lack of tornados in this spec, but that will most likely be fixed with being able to spec paragon points into offensive stats and perhaps when I get a little better gear with mor IAS.
It's also great to see only 3% LS needed at a certain dps level, with being able to drop more bells even at my crap DPS I can already see a reduced need for as much LS as I have.
For making monk not suck with your current spec on Shakespears!!
Hats off to you for the most enjoyable monk spec I've tried, finally something with enough spirit gen to use bells like they should be used, and enough dps to get solo elites, trash mobs and goblins down without issue, bonus for being a spec that should work great in the xpac with the buff coming to dashing strike and bells not pushing things all over the place.
I've tried a lot of different monk builds and variations but my favorite has to be Invis's exploding palm build. It's not only good for taking our elites but I found that its actually good for farming as well.
This is what I am using now, still gives you an option or two on passives, but I need the resists atm, so I take OWE.
Ideally I would like to use pillar once my APS is higher, and I generate a little more spirit.
I actually stumbled upon that build recently while trying farming specs. I preferred pillars though for the drastically lessened knockback. I was testing invis version of nirvana farming spec (with dashing strike) but I just didnt' like irregularity of having to rely on nirvana window. So tried quickening with bells, had blind originally but found that since pillars attacks two second after the initial bell, it wasn't really that great with blind, so went to blazing wrath.
I went back to the EP build though and I still prefer it but glad you found something you like.
I'm a pretty new monk, having played only back before MP, Paragon, etc. and having just recently come back. I have to say just the ability to use Bell regularly makes this so much more fun to play than cookie cutter, and without any gear/gold, I can't afford to try any of the fancy builds. But with just entry-level gear this makes MP3-5 super fun.
Any tips on play with it? I do find that I can end up being squishy, since I'm essentially replacing serenity with Bell, and Near Death Experience with Combo-strike, but damn it's fun to just one-shot an entire group of mobs instead of waiting around for cyclone to kick in, etc.
Any tips on play with it? I do find that I can end up being squishy, since I'm essentially replacing serenity with Bell, and Near Death Experience with Combo-strike, but damn it's fun to just one-shot an entire group of mobs instead of waiting around for cyclone to kick in, etc.
Well it's really straightforward, and requires more activity than say, WW barb.
What I find is that you benefit greatly from medium to large sized packs, small packs of 2-3 or even solo mobs are fine too, but you get the extra 15 spirit per mob crit when you can clobber a couple of mobs together.
It doesn't require a lot of set up, like an EP build would, small grouping, dashing strike around to get your best position where you can strike a few at a time and I end up doing the following most often on MP9:
Fists of thunder to full spirit (couple of attacks)
MoC Overawe
Fists of thunder once more
3-5 Bells (anything other than big guys many times are dead here)
--- still more mobs or groups falling in behind?---
Fists of thunder
2-3 Bells again before overawe ends
Typically the spirit regen is so quick with 3+ mobs that you can just attack once or twice between full bell dropping fun before overawe ends or perhaps you miss overawe on the last couple of bells, but they're usually just for clean up anyway.
Even if there is just a group of 2-3, the spirit regen is still good enough to attack once or twice and drop a bell or two to knock out small mobs.
May I ask which build you are talking about? I've tried 3 builds with my monk (TR, Cookie Cutter and Nirvana) with subpar gear (not billionaire) and I really liked to spam Bells all around (with Nirvana). Didn't like TR for the low MP and was kinda tired fom cookie cutter (spamming Overawe and stuff).
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Hats off to you for the most enjoyable monk spec I've tried, finally something with enough spirit gen to use bells like they should be used, and enough dps to get solo elites, trash mobs and goblins down without issue, bonus for being a spec that should work great in the xpac with the buff coming to dashing strike and bells not pushing things all over the place.
The major bonus, HATE HATE HATE HATE screenshake with thundercap, glad to not be using that.
I've tried nearly everything on monk in past, and every time I am severly dissapointed or the spec / gearing is lacking in some regards to it being fun, like, at all.
I always went back to barb and recently P100'd a WW barb with rend becuase it was the ONLY fun spec to play, but always I go back to monk trying to make it fun or work in some fashion.
Nirvana spec was sort of fun but:
- lacked any damage outside of nirvana
- SW drop off was devastating when moving into a new pack
- goblins or elites by themselves or not around enough mobs, forget it
- leaves too many good exp trash unkilled because of the need for packs
- forced to drop a good passive for lowered cooldowns on ONE button that actually has a cooldown
Tempest rush
- forget trying to kill keywardens or elites without freinds around.
- goblins were downright impossible without trash around.
- Required a dumnbing down of gear for spirit regen or less attack speed
- out of spirit, go die in a corner, it's all thats left for you, it takes less time to res with spirit than it does to generate more
- even EP tempest rush, same issues as before when not in groups of mobs
Standard TC SW Overawe
- Screenshake, un-effing-bearable
- slow chasing down mobs
- spirit gen was crap
- if you wanted to use EP or Bells even with spirit regen EP or lowered cost bells, you only got to cast these things once in a while
- spec was almost useable with EP spirit regen, but there is the whole screenshake issue, bleh.
On a side note, I've always disliked blind in general, so it's great to be playing a spec that doesn't need it.
The only issue even remotely worth mentioning is a lack of tornados in this spec, but that will most likely be fixed with being able to spec paragon points into offensive stats and perhaps when I get a little better gear with mor IAS.
Thanks again,
Monks +1
I'm glad you enjoyed the awesome build(s)
1) CMWIZ PL91, [EU]PL62 Crit NatsHelm; 2) 0-CD Dogs since MID-FEB 2013 PL44;
3) "Stunball Barrage" (Tball+F@W) Vengeance DH PL43 (1slot for H.Globe + PUR slot);
4) Lazy-Dbl-LS Monk PL48
5) Fundamental Barb (least played)
This is what I am using now, still gives you an option or two on passives, but I need the resists atm, so I take OWE.
Ideally I would like to use pillar once my APS is higher, and I generate a little more spirit.
I actually stumbled upon that build recently while trying farming specs. I preferred pillars though for the drastically lessened knockback. I was testing invis version of nirvana farming spec (with dashing strike) but I just didnt' like irregularity of having to rely on nirvana window. So tried quickening with bells, had blind originally but found that since pillars attacks two second after the initial bell, it wasn't really that great with blind, so went to blazing wrath.
I went back to the EP build though and I still prefer it but glad you found something you like.
Any tips on play with it? I do find that I can end up being squishy, since I'm essentially replacing serenity with Bell, and Near Death Experience with Combo-strike, but damn it's fun to just one-shot an entire group of mobs instead of waiting around for cyclone to kick in, etc.
Well it's really straightforward, and requires more activity than say, WW barb.
What I find is that you benefit greatly from medium to large sized packs, small packs of 2-3 or even solo mobs are fine too, but you get the extra 15 spirit per mob crit when you can clobber a couple of mobs together.
It doesn't require a lot of set up, like an EP build would, small grouping, dashing strike around to get your best position where you can strike a few at a time and I end up doing the following most often on MP9:
Fists of thunder to full spirit (couple of attacks)
MoC Overawe
Fists of thunder once more
3-5 Bells (anything other than big guys many times are dead here)
--- still more mobs or groups falling in behind?---
Fists of thunder
2-3 Bells again before overawe ends
Typically the spirit regen is so quick with 3+ mobs that you can just attack once or twice between full bell dropping fun before overawe ends or perhaps you miss overawe on the last couple of bells, but they're usually just for clean up anyway.
Even if there is just a group of 2-3, the spirit regen is still good enough to attack once or twice and drop a bell or two to knock out small mobs.