Hmm, didn’t thought about this, but i would reroll the resource cost. With WKL you want to play a lightning monk with LTK which costs 30 Spirit. Assuming you kick once every second 3 Spirit from the reduction will be equal to the 2.8 Spirit/sec. Same for CS. So in terms of spirit management it would be the same. The advantage of spirit-reg would be the out-of-fight regeneration, so you won’t start your fights with an empty pool.
Don’t count on my thoughts, thats just some brainstorming in the morning
What monk do you know (using a WKL) that attacks once per second? That WKL has a speed of 1.4, if you assume another 1.4 speed weapon that will be 1.61 attacks per second if NO OTHER ATTACK SPEED is added. 4.83 spirit per second is what that 10% actually gives you if you're spamming LTK. You'd have to have like 50% cost reduction before those two stats would be equal in value, and even if you did that have much cost reduction I'd still reroll the spirit regen and ditch cost reduction somewhere else.
5 points for innovation. This build may work really good for T3 or T4. But on T5 and T6 things change much. Also a lot of things depend on mobs setup on rift. You need solid hp pool because very often you wont be able to kill pack within epiphany and mobs hit really hard e.g. charging angels hit 400k+. I also wonder why you didnt mention % damage to elites which is currenly best stat. I run t5/6 with soj, unity and 2p blackthorne. Usually other people in group use them too to melt crazy hp elites down fast. If i had 300 or 400 k life i would be dead in no time. Recommended hp pool for t5+ is 700k.
% damage to elites is great, but I decided to only list what was necessary to make the build actually function. I'm using Aughild's instead of Blackthornes, eventually it will be better. There's absolutely no way a Monk needs 700k hp for anything on SC.
Mind taking a look at my Monk and giving me some pointers?
I've been trying to run a fire based version of your build. I can solo TII easily but in TIII I tend to die a lot.
I gave up dashing strike to be able to run serenity/inner sanctuary rotation, while still having mantra of healing.
I'm working on getting top level dex gems for my chest and legs so I will get a boost when I do. I plan on turning the life per hit on my neck into crit hit damage when I get the $. I'm still running a level 60 chest, but I need it for the fire cost reduction.
I have some rings in the bank that would boost my damage but lower toughness by 15% to 20%. I find I die a lot more often when trying to run those.
Between the Cindercloak and The Minds Eye you probably don't need Air Ally, if that works I'd replace it with dashing strike (or maybe that Fire Ally, looks neat, have no idea if its worth it). Since you don't have Crit on your helm its important you have it everywhere else you can. You're rings, neck, and gloves should be devoted to damage. Crit, Crit Dmg, % Fire, % Elites, CDR, CR. Avoid attack speed if possible unless you think your spirit can support it. I've been using Mantra of Healing and Unity over Serenity and Transcendence lately, with just you and your follower its 10% damage.
Hi Nicdanger, thanks for sharing this type of build. I am currently using this type and it works for me. Having of tota 33.4% CDR (still working on to make it more) i am also lucky of gearing items on my monk that helps CDR and LTK damage. Even DPS and Toughness where sacrificed its still good to fin Mobs or Elite packs as compared to my previous build. Any suggestion from you on my gearing. Thanks
First of all, nice Inna's Reach! You really need to get crit on your neck, even tho you're short on CDR I'd reroll that since it didn't roll well. Try to get CDR on your shoulders, life regen into crit on your puzzle ring, vit into crit damage on your leo ring, holy dmg into lightning dmg or AR on your bracers, % life into vit on your chest, and since you got that awesome diabo with enough CDR and CR you might be able to ditch Air Ally for something else!
Nicdanger, nice build. One suggestion - for those of us spirit-starved, like me, how about incorporating EP/Strong Spirit? Helps to reduce spirit use in fights and at the same time replenish it.
edit: 5 mins after the post, a Laws of Seph dropped for me!
Its probably worth trying, generally tho when things die I get full spirit thanks to health globes and reapers wraps (get those if you dont have them already)! Gratz on the helm, I had thoughts about using blinding flash over air ally with that helm but decided that proc on Gyana is just too amazing to give up, but it should provide more spirit with its shorter cooldown. My suggestion would be to try dumping cost reduction for more damage and see how your spirit holds up, try to keep that balance where you get all the damage you can while almost running out of spirit, but not.
I have tried it but I guess it needs a lot better gear.. With mine I was constantly out of spirit, and without a spirit generator, I was just running like headless chicken waiting for regen..The speed was OK, tho.. But the rest was not working out for me yet..
Assuming you've got the CDR and CR in check it sounds like you might have too much attack speed or you're using fast weapons. If you want to link your profile I'd be happy to take a look and make suggestions.
The question still remains whether it's worth it to sacrifice that much damage so you don't need a spirit generator. You also lose your Sweeping Wind damage which with % lightning is a lot as well as Unity/Combination Strike (which still gives 10% when you only use 1 generator).
You are giving up a lot of damage AND toughness for CDR and spirit regen just so you can spam LTK, his toughness and life are awefully low and barely even hold up in T3 with easy mobs (no stuns/charges), any higher probably won't be possible Personally I don't think it can beat a traditional build, it's also very restrictive gearing and skill wise.
Points for innovation, but none for functionality.
I talked about some of this before but I'm glad you brought it up so I can clarify some things. This build is definitely a work in progress, I made adjustments to it for group play the day after I made the original post. I'm also going to work in One With Everything soon, and that Ring of Royal Grandeur is still eluding me, which I'll just say is going to be huge. Vitality is grossly overrated right now, my HP is just fine for T3/4.
There are some pretty specific items you need for the lightning build you mentioned to really take off and rolling for one trifecta isn't any harder than rolling for a different trifecta, so gear wise its not any harder. Sure its a bit more difficult to play, but you'll get used to it . . or die a lot . . or both
Thanks to everyone for the feedback, I gotta give some credit to a friend of mine I play with regularly who's always coming up with crazy idea's that turn into stuff like this after we work out details. I won't name him here, but he knows who he is!
Our damage is calculated by some % of weapon damage. This means the damage range on your weapons. ThisDOES NOTmean the damage on your character sheet or your weapons DPS. Because of this, and the fact that we have a finite amount of spirit to spend, slower weapons are usually preferably to fast ones. Hitting harder > hitting faster!
It might be as long as you can manage your spirit with that weapon speed. I've been hoping to get a solid roll on one to try it out, the only WKL that dropped for me was utter garbage. I was in a 4 person group last night and dropped serenity and exalted soul for mantra of healing and unity, losing the max spirit and regen made me really want 2 slower weapons. But if you've got a good WKL, by all means try to make it work!
Yeah I had my eye on that helm (no pun intended) before I got myGyana Na Kashu, it definitely had me thinking about how to abuse it. With the current setup and that helm you could probably change Mystic Ally to something else. Or, keep it and add some attack speed. Either way I think some spirits going to go to waste when Epiphany is up but there are worse problems to have. There are a number of great spirit stones that do amazing things,
Wouldn't a 2-hander be pretty sweet for this aswell? Slow-attackspeed and high dmg-range?
It would, the problem is the loss of stats and the difficulty in getting one to roll right. I'm just estimating quick but 130% crit damage, 500ish dexterity, and either 10% CDR or CR assuming it rolled one of the two. The good news is you may not need that CR with the slower weapon, nor would you need the Air Ally rune (Earth Ally is pretty fun with lots of CDR and high weapon damage). More bad news, idealy you want a diabo and they can roll every skill affix monks have on all other gear. Take one to the mystic and laugh at how long the list is! Not that it needs to be a diabo, but it would open up several more options as far as gear, passives, ect.
Interesting build. I like builds that focus around LTK:SS for obvious reason. Previous builds I made focused on using epiphany as a nuke while keeping the build functioning without epiphany, but this sounds like it will work.
My only concern is that LTK is your main dps output yet you havn't mentioned gearing to boost the dmg of LTK. I'm sure the stunlock potential makes up for this, but how much damage are you sacrifcing for that stunlock?
That was just an oversight on my part. I'll add it in either the stats or gear sections soon. At present I have LTK damage on my boots and I'll probably replace the spirit regen on my helm with it, but I'd like my spirit to be just a little more stable first (really I'm just afraid of committing to rerolling that stat right now). Also anywhere you can put lightning damage is going to be great as long as you still maintain the CDR and CR requirements to not run out of spirit and stay alive. It should also be noted that Epiphany: Inner Fire does fire damage, and Magefists roll an extra primary stat in the form of fire damage so thats just free damage if you get some to roll good.
But even if I had none, I still feel it would be worth it simply because I never have to stop using that 624% weapon damage stunlock to regen spirit with a primary. And even if you need to lose some to get the build working, you can add it back as you improve your gear.
Nice work. I assume the 10% CDR from paragon help a lot towards the 50% goal?
It's pretty cool that you worked out a Monk build without spirit generator, without Mantra and without Sweeping Wind. Someday I might go and try this myself
Thanks! I realized I forgot to do a paragon section after I posted it, I'll probably add it in tomorrow.
Ever since RoS was released we've heard about how terrible the Monks damage is compared to other classes, that our spirit generation is pathetic, and we're only there to buff the team and make neat little piles of monsters for others to melt away.
What if I told you I solved the damage problem by sacrificing sheet dps? What if I told you I solved the spirit problem by dropping spirit generating attacks? Finally, what if I told you I did both those things while buffing my groups damage, reducing the damage they take, and locking elites in place? Before I go into detailed information about the build, I'd like to share some links, stats, and concepts that are important to this setup.
Our damage is calculated by some % of weapon damage. This means the damage range on your weapons. This DOES NOT mean the damage on your character sheet or your weapons DPS. Because of this, and the fact that we have a finite amount of spirit to spend, slower weapons are usually preferably to fast ones. Hitting harder > hitting faster!
Since damage is calculated by % of weapon damage, we want to use high % weapon damage skills as much as possible. We never want to resort to using a primary to regen spirit.
Getting the proper stats in the right places is important, sheet damage is not.
Maximum health is overrated by almost everyone. I'm running T4 with less than 200k, and soon I'll be doing T5 with the same amount.
Key Stats to aim for
We need 50-55% cooldown reduction (CDR). I don't recommend trying this build with less than 50%.
25-35% cost reduction (CR). Depending on your weapon speed and any attack speed increases from buffs/ gear.
Critical hit chance (CHC). You want this everywhere you can get it. I'm at just over 50% with a few paragon points left to add.
Critical hit damage (CHD). Gloves, Neck, Rings, and green gems in weapons should give you plenty!
+ % Lashing Tail Kick damage can be found on Boots and Helm. Getting it on boots is easy. Helm is a little more complicated since we need a socket and many helms have effects that are very good, but obviously get it if you can.
Toughness varies widely based on what torment you're doing and where it comes from. Generally speaking, armor and all resist are good, vitality and %life are not. More toughness will allow you to stand in more AoE, less toughness will teach you to move!
Healing also varies, but here we want a good variety. Life per kill and bonus to healing globes are both solid and come from secondary stats on gear. Life per spirit spent we can get from a passive (scaling with globe). Life per second from paragon is a great value after all resist, but not so much on gear. Life per hit is probably the least desirable healing stat for our build considering its a primary stat and its in the same paragon tree as cost reduction and area damage.
The Build
Lashing Tail Kick: Scorpion Sting- 624% weapon damage for 30 spirit and an 85% chance to stun. The range is small but since we never stop using it all you need to do is hit those elites once and chances are they simply don't get to move. The stun also works on bosses and rift guardians, stopping them from doing bad things to you.
Epiphany: Inner Fire- 20 spirit per second and the ability to make LTK move us to whatever we want to hit. Add in the inner fire rune for 353% weapon damage to various things around the screen and the reason for getting all that CDR becomes very clear.
Inner Sanctuary: Forbidden Palace- 55% damage reduction for you're team, 30% damage buff for your team, and if somehow stop stunning the enemies inside of it, they'll be walking away 80% slower than normal. 55% CDR means you get to keep this up 2/3 of the time.
Dashing Strike:Quicksilver- One of, if not the best mobility spell in the game. Will allow you to engage elites before they can scatter, jump over walls, skip area's void of enemies, and avoid all sorts of life threatening situations. I prefer the extra charge from Quicksilver, but the movement speed from Way of the Falling Star is nice as well.
Mystic Ally: AirAlly- Again, CDR makes another ability amazing. Giving this a 15 second cooldown makes this 8.7 spirit per second and a dude thats sometimes kind of annoying. Use it whenever you're down 100 spirit or more!
Serenity: Any Rune- This makes you completely immune to damage and crowd control for 3 seconds. Its usable while you're stunned, frozen, ect. Once more CDR makes this a 9-10 second cooldown. At 55% CDR we can alternate Serenity and Inner Sanctuary with 100% uptime, making us extremely tough without relying on toughness. I use the Tranquility rune in groups, and either Peaceful Repose or Unwelcome Disturbance solo.
Passives
Seize the Initiative: We want lots of Dexterity for damage, this turns some of that into armor. Its super effective!
Exalted Soul: 100 Maximum spirit and 2 spirit per second. This lets us kick longer in between cooldowns, and makes Reaper's Wraps insanely good.
Beacon of Ytar:20% cooldown reduction. An absolute must for our build.
Transcendance:Life per spirit spent is going to be a key part of our healing on high torment levels. Note that it scales with bonus to health globe!
I can't stress enough the importance of trying out different things in this game. This is the build I use for solo/duo play, I'm sure the build would change a little depending on what kind of group you're in. There are lots of good passives, maybe you want to add a mantra and the Unity passive, maybe you've got your secondaries to all roll cold resist and you want to use One with Everything. Perhaps you've got an amazing Inna's Diabo which will definitely change your build. Don't be afraid to experiment and ask questions!
Paragon
Core:Movement Speed (up to 25%) > Maximum Spirit > Dex/Vit
Defense:All Resist > Armor/Life Per Second > % Life
Utility:Resource Cost Reduction > Area Damage > Life Per Hit > Gold Find
Don't be afraid to deviate from this if you find yourself having an abundance of certain things from gear or other abilities. Movement speed from Paragon is a much better value than it is on gear and you should reroll it if possible once you're over level 200, Max Spirit is very good for us tho, and depending on your individual spirit needs you may want to balance the two at lower paragon levels. Some people who do a lot of math will tell you that a 10:1 ratio of Crit Damage to Crit is good, and they're probably right! It goes without saying that Cost Reduction and Cooldown Reduction are what we're getting first. Lastly, I have yet to mention Area Damage. Our build makes putting it on gear kinda tricky, but its an amazing stat and you shouldn't dismiss it. Thankfully we get 50% from paragon by level 400!
A few gear suggestions
Since the AH is no more, rather than give you specific gear requirements I'll just toss some random thoughts here. If I have time I might do a proper section on this later.
Reaper's Wraps and the Captian Crimson's set are extremely good for us and are both crafted, I suggest getting these asap.
Gyana Na Kashu is a spirit stone, the proc shoots a projectile that does ~325% weapon damage whenever you use Lashing Tail Kick. Since we're using LTK all the time, its extremely powerful.
Weapons can roll 10% CDR and 10% CR making them a great place to put those stats if you're lucky enough to be able to roll or reroll into them. Slower weapon are generally better, but if you've got a Thunderfury or Shard of Hate I'd fine a way to make those work.
Last but not least
This build take practice and patience to become comfortable with. You will need to watch 4 different cooldowns, your spirit, your health and try to position yourself to do maximum damage and stun everything all at the same time. You will probably have to sacrifice your damage stat in order to make it work (mine went from 750k to 450k at first), yet you will do more damage than before.
I hold the point of view that monks are not just buff machines, we are not meant to spam primaries while piling up monsters for our buddy's to kill.This build is designed for high torment play, where everyone should be bringing some kind of buff or utility to the group while still doing massive damage, so far this is the best build I've found to do that. There are a number of small details and idea's that I don't have time to put here right now, so any questions or comments you have regarding this build would be most welcome. I look forward to the discussion!
This mindset always troubles me about Diablo players, and while I could spend some time writing up a few paragraphs on the subject if the quotes below don't make you understand what you're missing then my logic won't either. Happy demon slaying!
SPOCK: Greetings, Captain.
KIRK: Spock! ...What are you doing in this neck of the woods?
SPOCK: I have been monitoring your progress.
KIRK: I'm flattered. Twelve hundred points of interest in Yosemite, you pick me.
SPOCK: I regret to inform you that the record time for free-climbing El Capitan is in no danger of being broken.
KIRK: I'm not trying to break any records. I'm doing this because I enjoy it. Not to mention the most important reason for climbing a mountain.
SPOCK: And that is?
KIRK: Because it's there.
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TLDR: Reroll the spirit regen if you still can.
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Between the Cindercloak and The Minds Eye you probably don't need Air Ally, if that works I'd replace it with dashing strike (or maybe that Fire Ally, looks neat, have no idea if its worth it). Since you don't have Crit on your helm its important you have it everywhere else you can. You're rings, neck, and gloves should be devoted to damage. Crit, Crit Dmg, % Fire, % Elites, CDR, CR. Avoid attack speed if possible unless you think your spirit can support it. I've been using Mantra of Healing and Unity over Serenity and Transcendence lately, with just you and your follower its 10% damage.
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Its probably worth trying, generally tho when things die I get full spirit thanks to health globes and reapers wraps (get those if you dont have them already)! Gratz on the helm, I had thoughts about using blinding flash over air ally with that helm but decided that proc on Gyana is just too amazing to give up, but it should provide more spirit with its shorter cooldown. My suggestion would be to try dumping cost reduction for more damage and see how your spirit holds up, try to keep that balance where you get all the damage you can while almost running out of spirit, but not.
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There are some pretty specific items you need for the lightning build you mentioned to really take off and rolling for one trifecta isn't any harder than rolling for a different trifecta, so gear wise its not any harder. Sure its a bit more difficult to play, but you'll get used to it . . or die a lot . . or both
Thanks to everyone for the feedback, I gotta give some credit to a friend of mine I play with regularly who's always coming up with crazy idea's that turn into stuff like this after we work out details. I won't name him here, but he knows who he is!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f3020lE2KM&feature=youtu.be
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Yeah I had my eye on that helm (no pun intended) before I got myGyana Na Kashu, it definitely had me thinking about how to abuse it. With the current setup and that helm you could probably change Mystic Ally to something else. Or, keep it and add some attack speed. Either way I think some spirits going to go to waste when Epiphany is up but there are worse problems to have. There are a number of great spirit stones that do amazing things,
It would, the problem is the loss of stats and the difficulty in getting one to roll right. I'm just estimating quick but 130% crit damage, 500ish dexterity, and either 10% CDR or CR assuming it rolled one of the two. The good news is you may not need that CR with the slower weapon, nor would you need the Air Ally rune (Earth Ally is pretty fun with lots of CDR and high weapon damage). More bad news, idealy you want a diabo and they can roll every skill affix monks have on all other gear. Take one to the mystic and laugh at how long the list is! Not that it needs to be a diabo, but it would open up several more options as far as gear, passives, ect.
That was just an oversight on my part. I'll add it in either the stats or gear sections soon. At present I have LTK damage on my boots and I'll probably replace the spirit regen on my helm with it, but I'd like my spirit to be just a little more stable first (really I'm just afraid of committing to rerolling that stat right now). Also anywhere you can put lightning damage is going to be great as long as you still maintain the CDR and CR requirements to not run out of spirit and stay alive. It should also be noted that Epiphany: Inner Fire does fire damage, and Magefists roll an extra primary stat in the form of fire damage so thats just free damage if you get some to roll good.
But even if I had none, I still feel it would be worth it simply because I never have to stop using that 624% weapon damage stunlock to regen spirit with a primary. And even if you need to lose some to get the build working, you can add it back as you improve your gear.
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What if I told you I solved the damage problem by sacrificing sheet dps? What if I told you I solved the spirit problem by dropping spirit generating attacks? Finally, what if I told you I did both those things while buffing my groups damage, reducing the damage they take, and locking elites in place? Before I go into detailed information about the build, I'd like to share some links, stats, and concepts that are important to this setup.
The build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#ZPRdjg!XbVY!Yccbbb
Profile (stat totals are incorrect, but the gear is fine):http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Nicdanger-1955/hero/21224091
Soloing a Torment 3 Rift:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f3020lE2KM&feature=youtu.be
Concepts
Key Stats to aim for
The Build
Passives
- Seize the Initiative: We want lots of Dexterity for damage, this turns some of that into armor. Its super effective!
- Exalted Soul: 100 Maximum spirit and 2 spirit per second. This lets us kick longer in between cooldowns, and makes Reaper's Wraps insanely good.
- Beacon of Ytar:20% cooldown reduction. An absolute must for our build.
- Transcendance:Life per spirit spent is going to be a key part of our healing on high torment levels. Note that it scales with bonus to health globe!
I can't stress enough the importance of trying out different things in this game. This is the build I use for solo/duo play, I'm sure the build would change a little depending on what kind of group you're in. There are lots of good passives, maybe you want to add a mantra and the Unity passive, maybe you've got your secondaries to all roll cold resist and you want to use One with Everything. Perhaps you've got an amazing Inna's Diabo which will definitely change your build. Don't be afraid to experiment and ask questions!Paragon
- Core:Movement Speed (up to 25%) > Maximum Spirit > Dex/Vit
- Offense:Cooldown Reduction > Crit/Crit Damage > Attack Speed
- Defense:All Resist > Armor/Life Per Second > % Life
- Utility:Resource Cost Reduction > Area Damage > Life Per Hit > Gold Find
Don't be afraid to deviate from this if you find yourself having an abundance of certain things from gear or other abilities. Movement speed from Paragon is a much better value than it is on gear and you should reroll it if possible once you're over level 200, Max Spirit is very good for us tho, and depending on your individual spirit needs you may want to balance the two at lower paragon levels. Some people who do a lot of math will tell you that a 10:1 ratio of Crit Damage to Crit is good, and they're probably right! It goes without saying that Cost Reduction and Cooldown Reduction are what we're getting first. Lastly, I have yet to mention Area Damage. Our build makes putting it on gear kinda tricky, but its an amazing stat and you shouldn't dismiss it. Thankfully we get 50% from paragon by level 400!A few gear suggestions
Since the AH is no more, rather than give you specific gear requirements I'll just toss some random thoughts here. If I have time I might do a proper section on this later.
Reaper's Wraps and the Captian Crimson's set are extremely good for us and are both crafted, I suggest getting these asap.
Gyana Na Kashu is a spirit stone, the proc shoots a projectile that does ~325% weapon damage whenever you use Lashing Tail Kick. Since we're using LTK all the time, its extremely powerful.
Weapons can roll 10% CDR and 10% CR making them a great place to put those stats if you're lucky enough to be able to roll or reroll into them. Slower weapon are generally better, but if you've got a Thunderfury or Shard of Hate I'd fine a way to make those work.
Last but not least
This build take practice and patience to become comfortable with. You will need to watch 4 different cooldowns, your spirit, your health and try to position yourself to do maximum damage and stun everything all at the same time. You will probably have to sacrifice your damage stat in order to make it work (mine went from 750k to 450k at first), yet you will do more damage than before.I hold the point of view that monks are not just buff machines, we are not meant to spam primaries while piling up monsters for our buddy's to kill.This build is designed for high torment play, where everyone should be bringing some kind of buff or utility to the group while still doing massive damage, so far this is the best build I've found to do that.
There are a number of small details and idea's that I don't have time to put here right now, so any questions or comments you have regarding this build would be most welcome. I look forward to the discussion!
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SPOCK: Greetings, Captain.
KIRK: Spock! ...What are you doing in this neck of the woods?
SPOCK: I have been monitoring your progress.
KIRK: I'm flattered. Twelve hundred points of interest in Yosemite, you pick me.
SPOCK: I regret to inform you that the record time for free-climbing El Capitan is in no danger of being broken.
KIRK: I'm not trying to break any records. I'm doing this because I enjoy it. Not to mention the most important reason for climbing a mountain.
SPOCK: And that is?
KIRK: Because it's there.