Build Guide
Overview
This build is aimed at 4man farming / pushing, playing as a semi-support throughout the rift and killing the RG very fast. It's a little better than Gen Monk on lower tiers and roughly the same on high tiers (115+) while bringing better buffs and more utility in general. The reworked Holy Point Shot (Impale now throws two additional knives) makes this build good in patch 2.5.0.
Itemization
Full Shadow's set, Karlei's Point, Holy Point are required, ideally you want to supplement that with Witching Hour, Lacuni Prowlers, Stone of Jordan and the Endless Walk combo. Roll CDR on your shoulders, attack speed on gloves and perhaps Compass Rose, stack elemental damage + chc + chd where possible. Try to get Impale damage on boots, helm and quiver. If you can't get a good amulet / SoJ / HPS with lightning, going with another element is also a possibility, but a little suboptimal for the rift.
D3planner link with optimal rolls: http://www.d3planner.com/705178239
Playstyle
Depending on the tier you are running, you either want to play as a hybrid support during the rift, meaning you will buff with Marked for Death - Contagion (try to aim at low hp targets with it) and your Wolf Companion, and try to help the Barbarian out on the pulls. At very high tiers your damage will become pretty marginal, but up to 105 or so you will be able to finish off some low hp elites. On the RG, make sure you stay at least 10 yards away (for Steady Aim), use your Wolf Companion so that you get it on every Convention cycle, and try to position yourself so that you always hit with all three knives. If the RG spawns adds, you have to be very careful about where you are standing, in most cases you should probably just give up Steady Aim and stand right on top of it.
Variations
Instead of Stone of Jordan, you can go with Elusive Ring for a big toughness boost (for farming or hardcore), and instead of Leoric's Crown you can go with Aquila Cuirass (same reasoning). Bane of the Powerful can be used instead of Gogok on lower tiers where the RG dies in 1-2 min. Shadow's can also be used for solo pushing or farming lower tiers / torments, I will cover that in separate guides.
Feel free to watch the video for more in-depth explanations and the reasoning behind some of the item / skill choices etc.
You run Single out as a passive can you explain why grievous wounds is not good? as with single out, crit on gear, iceblink that is 90-95% CC? If you add in the caltrops that is a potential 100%? Thanks for the time you spend researching these on ptr.
Grievous wounds does not work (at all - completely disabled) with the S6 bonus. This was tested and reported as a bug when the shadow set was reworked and got the following blue post:
Posted by Nevalistis
Grievous Wounds not affecting the 6-piece bonus of Shadow's Mantle is not a bug. In fact, none of the damage bonuses from runes for Impale affect the 6-piece bonus. This is to preserve diversity rather than leave one rune as the obvious, mathematically correct choice. Players shouldn't feel punished because of their set bonus if they'd rather use another rune or element.
So now instead of the "obvious, mathematically correct choice" there is the very much unobvious, hidden mathematically correct choice - being usually ricochet but sometimes overpenetration. Grievous wounds is functionally identical to not selecting a rune at all unfortunately.
So is it specifically the Holy Point Shot buff that makes this viable again? DPS on the current RG killer optimized out at over 15 trillion last time I parsed it in 2.4.2. I'll have to run them both again for 2.5.
Have someone compared Thundergod's Vigor with TWH? Assuming we got up to 80% lightning from neck/bracer/ring/quiver already, wouldn't those potential +15% outperform chd/as? Done some test runs: considering all the awareness this build already requires to simply stay alive, buffs you got to time for wd packs, all the(actually BOTH at the time I'm writing this with the gear I got) resource management since not running CoS and my +11 only Karlei's(hopefully you don't run into such issues wity +14-15 one), I have foud it ridiculously hard to also time convention during fire/eleP as well. Currently running with Dawn, Aquila, Elusive in cube. Maybe with more practice I'll be able to do this, but until like 100-105+ honestly wouldn't even bother. Besides, crazy RG dmg, even in low gear and mediocre para. They simply blow up, wiz/gen nowhere near, another level. Possibly indeed equalizes past 110-115 as Wudijo said, couldn't test/confirm myself until s10 starts.
Ok, nvm me. Checked closely in d3planner and apparently TV idea was a very poor one.
I still don't really get couple things from your d3planner, such as why you "include in stats" BreakingWave, ExplodingPalm TFiW and MantraOfConviction. Is your zmonk running some really weird build and yet you all manage to live? Also maybe someone could explain why changes to elemental multiplier do not affect "effective dps". Even then sort of figured that witching hour, having no ele buff contrary to TV, still provides as much elemental damage(literally with that gear its nearly 100% equal) through ele affixes from other pieces and its own chd/as stats, making it superior for instance. Yet weird why couldn't we see that in the overall effective live.