Ok, so I have several builds I have ready to try but I want to start with this one, as we all know, the build combinations are endless and are meant to suit a players style of play. Personally i'm going for the turn my Monk into a Spartan approach, building him primarily as a "Outlast my opponent" rather than an "out damage my opponent" type.
First thing to consider, I've decided to go with Spear and Shield, as my Spartan reference would indicate, gaining the extra armor and block rate to help my survivabilty. Having the Spear and its high DPS numbers for a one handed weapon to keep all my weapon% damage skills doing healthy enough damage. I've tried this approach as far as I could during Beta, and the results were awesome, but without being able to dive further in I have no way of knowing how well it will work later.
So as you can see, both my generators give me a major increase to Survivabilty and will be fairly easy to keep up the passives on, 3 DR strikes followed by 1 Crippling wave strike would be the main order and often repeated.
My passive skills are all driven to give me even more Survivabilty as long as I am attacking things, which can keep me as the tip of the spear role in every fight, being the only one of my party if necessary to stay in the fray the entire time. That is the goal of this build ultimately, get in the fray and stay in the fray without entirely worrying about dying.
I will mainly focus my other skills on Sustainability to go along with the Survivability I have set up, with one major damage dealer to not render me totally useless as far as dealing damage goes. Between my Mantra giving me 600 health per sec, My main Heal and the "oh shit" button also giving me healing coupled with the major damage reduction, I should be able to survive most situations.
Also I would be using Transcendence until One with everything became available for increased Sustain at earlier levels. I made sure to have a gap closer available if needed with 7 sided strike's teleport as well, you never know when a blink will come in handy or be needed.
First, I changed your mantra to Dodge/20% armor, Life regen is nice, but i think that these passive bonuses will reduce far more damage than the Healing per second provided by the other one in later difficulties.
Also, I changed your Seven-Sided strike rune to the stun chance, might as well add more CC in, it couldn't hurt, especially since you're using a 1-hander and shield, the added damage from your rune doesn't help that much.
Finally, I changed Near Death Experience to the resistance passive. Your build is based around not even coming close to death in the first place. A Passive skill dedicated to preventing your death is almost worthless unless your build doesn't work in the first place. If you don't want resistance, I would recommend Pacifism in case you fight enemies with lots of CC. From what I understand about Inferno, regular mobs are going to have more abilities, including lots of CC to use against you.
i would change near-death to one-with-everything or sixth-sense depending on how gear looks (i.e. will you be able to stack one resist or is it better to get defense from your crit chance)
other than that, MAYBE change seven-sided rune to fulminating to catch more mobs with resolve?
A good point about near death, I was thinking about using it in terms of if all else failed I had that to fall back on, but you guys are right that the object of the build is ultimately to survive through anything. So I will end up grabbing One with everything instead, and the dodge build is my second choice, I have a build centered around some damage reduction and lots of dodge waiting in the wings, But I will fall back on it if I notice later that this build begins failing.
Also the reason behind my rune choice for 7 sided strike is so that I have at least 1 offensive nuke, while having a blink, or else I would be possibly stuck sacrificing a skill for Dashing strike. I can't be easy to escape from because the build does rely on me being in the fray to keep my passives up for survivability, thus the need, in my opinion, for a blink or gap closer in the build.
Thanks for the input guys, feel free to keep em comin, I will update my build in the OP with the change.
First thing to consider, I've decided to go with Spear and Shield, as my Spartan reference would indicate, gaining the extra armor and block rate to help my survivabilty. Having the Spear and its high DPS numbers for a one handed weapon to keep all my weapon% damage skills doing healthy enough damage. I've tried this approach as far as I could during Beta, and the results were awesome, but without being able to dive further in I have no way of knowing how well it will work later.
http://us.battle.net...XgTQ!XUZ!ZZZaaa
So as you can see, both my generators give me a major increase to Survivabilty and will be fairly easy to keep up the passives on, 3 DR strikes followed by 1 Crippling wave strike would be the main order and often repeated.
My passive skills are all driven to give me even more Survivabilty as long as I am attacking things, which can keep me as the tip of the spear role in every fight, being the only one of my party if necessary to stay in the fray the entire time. That is the goal of this build ultimately, get in the fray and stay in the fray without entirely worrying about dying.
I will mainly focus my other skills on Sustainability to go along with the Survivability I have set up, with one major damage dealer to not render me totally useless as far as dealing damage goes. Between my Mantra giving me 600 health per sec, My main Heal and the "oh shit" button also giving me healing coupled with the major damage reduction, I should be able to survive most situations.
Also I would be using Transcendence until One with everything became available for increased Sustain at earlier levels. I made sure to have a gap closer available if needed with 7 sided strike's teleport as well, you never know when a blink will come in handy or be needed.
Let me know what you guys think ^.^
http://us.battle.net...YgTh!XUZ!ZZaaba
First, I changed your mantra to Dodge/20% armor, Life regen is nice, but i think that these passive bonuses will reduce far more damage than the Healing per second provided by the other one in later difficulties.
Also, I changed your Seven-Sided strike rune to the stun chance, might as well add more CC in, it couldn't hurt, especially since you're using a 1-hander and shield, the added damage from your rune doesn't help that much.
Finally, I changed Near Death Experience to the resistance passive. Your build is based around not even coming close to death in the first place. A Passive skill dedicated to preventing your death is almost worthless unless your build doesn't work in the first place. If you don't want resistance, I would recommend Pacifism in case you fight enemies with lots of CC. From what I understand about Inferno, regular mobs are going to have more abilities, including lots of CC to use against you.
other than that, MAYBE change seven-sided rune to fulminating to catch more mobs with resolve?
Also the reason behind my rune choice for 7 sided strike is so that I have at least 1 offensive nuke, while having a blink, or else I would be possibly stuck sacrificing a skill for Dashing strike. I can't be easy to escape from because the build does rely on me being in the fray to keep my passives up for survivability, thus the need, in my opinion, for a blink or gap closer in the build.
Thanks for the input guys, feel free to keep em comin, I will update my build in the OP with the change.