Hello everyone. I wanted to share my build with everyone, see what you guys/girls think.
First I would like to point out, the main damage dealing portion of this build comes from Lightning damage (at least for me). This might not be the case for everyone. This build might even suck for some people.
One thing to point out is that I have a pre-patch Won Khim Lau that adds 5% to Lightning Damage andLightning skills do 23% more damage (aren't these the same things?.) On top of that I also found an Eye of the Storm that dropped off Skeleton King, which gives my Lightning skills 21% more damage. So that's at least 44% increased damage from Lightning skills (possibly 49% increased damage since I don't know how the +5% works.) So, here's my build...
Left Click Deadly Reach - Scattering Blow I chose this one not only because it's Lightning damage, but also the AOE knock up. You're capable of interrupting enemies behind you that are getting ready to land an attack because of it.
Right Click Sweeping Wind - Cyclone Not much needs to be said about this. It's Lightning Damage, with a good amount of crit you'll have a ton of these things up all doing damage.
Button 1 Mantra of Conviction - Overawe 16% damage passive, 20% damage on activation. Great spell that'll let your abilities hit harder
Button 2 Mystic Ally - Fire Ally This is the ability that I consider not required with the build. The passive 10% increased damage is nice, and stacks with the damage increase from MoC.
Button 3 Exploding Palm - Essence Burn A very very nice ability that'll chain burn damage to all other enemies in the area. This ticking on a ton of enemies and having your cyclones flying around electrocuting enemies will cause a good amount of DOT damage.
Button4 Lashing Tail Kick - Scorpion Sting This is probably the bread winner of this spec. Since the 2.0 buff to this ability, it hits like a truck. Also having an 85% chance to stun the enemy is very nice. Along with the knock up on Deadly Reach - Scattered Blows, you almost effectively "stun-lock" an enemy pretty easily.
Passives One with Everything
Seize the Initiative
Resolve
I don't have any pieces of gear yet that give me +Fire Damage. I'm hoping to find some soon. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Here's my character,http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/CrisuK0M13-1479/hero/12464
EDIT AGAIN: I'd like to mention I can easily farm Torment III with this setup and my current gear. I can do four, although it gets a little rough at times, five is possible if I skip a lot of the elite mobs, and haven't even tried six with this.
5%lightning dmg is added to your dps unlike 23% lightning dmg to skills that only affect skills thats the different
a perosnal thought instead of deadly reach take fist of thunder thunderclap and here is why:
deadly reach aoe is big which is great against a single target elites,rares,bosses which are the main deal now its totally useless and even against massive packs the knockback of this skills is horrible because it selects a single random target and knocksback only him every third hit now fot thunderclap does every hit a 6 yard explosion of 95% wep dmg and every third hit a knockback to all enemies within 6 yards which is just way more affective vs elites and rares and the basic attack does more dmg so yeah
The only reason you aren't getting spanked hard by the elites is because you have 5% lifesteal, even if you would only do 100.000 damage that's already 5000 health and that's on a single enemy. As far as I have seen lifesteal has been removed on the new items.
I've got a full lightning build of my own going (barring my WotHF rune) that is substantially different from others, but also relies on one particular item, if you've got it: Strongarm Bracers.
The key is that Cyclone Strike counts as a knockback for the purposes of Strongarm Bracers. A 1.3 million lashing tail crit ends up critting for nearly 2 million instead. The breakdown:
Way of the Hundred Fists: Fists of Fury
Purely because my bracers rolled holy damage. This rune could easily be switched to others. I'm fond of the movement/attack speed rune, Blazing Fists, as well. WotHF also helps generate the extreme spirit needs for the build.
Lashing Tail Kick: Scorpion Sting
As all others have mentioned, this hits hard, and it stuns. It's a winner.
Cyclone Strike: Eye of the Storm
Not just because it's lightning damage, but the spirit reduction is KEY. This build is about yanking mobs in, and then lashing them in the face two or so times, then yanking them again, keeping the fat bonus from Strongarms in play. Between each Lashing Tail Kick, it's easy to get in two hits from WotHF, which leads to the next skill...
Sweeping Wind: Cyclone
Not only is it lightning, but WotHF is hitting so many times a second that this spawns tornadoes like a pre-patch Sweeping Wind.
Mantra of Healing: Time of Need
This keeps you alive even in the worst of packs. When elites throw down lots of ground crap (including Orbiter, Frozen Orb, even Thunderstorm below Torment IV or V depending on your resists), spamming this instead of Cyclone Strike will keep you alive through anything. Anything, I promise. Anything but chilling in arcane lasers, anyways. To make it even stronger, getting a 2-set Innas or some other large source of life-per-spirit is great, as popping it then becomes not only a shield, but a strong heal as well. With the 2-set, I feel like I could confidently drop my lifesteal weapon for one of dem tasty-looking Odyn Sons, if I could just find one.
Serenity: Unwelcome Disturbance
Feel free to pop another rune in here. I like the extra damage it does personally, but a 4 second serenity is just as viable.
The passives----
Exalted Soul Chant of Resonance Sieze the Initiative (replace with Resolve, or Guiding Light if you feel secure)
Chant of Resonance you say? What the hell is wrong with me? Well, Chant of Resonance is what lets me pop Mantra of Healing forever. Stand in poison, take a dozen reflect damage mobs to the face, stand in desecrate, stand in molten, when I'm up against an elite with a ground effect, this allows me to effectively pop Mantra of Healing twice or more a second, keeping me shielded forever. If my spirit ever does fall, that's when I pop Serenity as well and regen it back up. Since only about half of elite packs are susceptible to Cyclone Strike, you're not losing out much by spamming it anyways. That it shields your allies as well is even better, as you'll be saving the butts of your ranged friends when you run into a reflect damage pack, who take 0 damage, as opposed to rapidly killing themselves.
This build has no problems whatsoever in Torment IV without a party, but in a party it really, really, really shines. Yank enemies in, Lash and stun them once, and the whole pack is abruptly dead. I call it the Making Friends spec, because Cyclone Strike makes so many undead and demonic friends. They keep dying for some reason though.
First I would like to point out, the main damage dealing portion of this build comes from Lightning damage (at least for me). This might not be the case for everyone. This build might even suck for some people.
One thing to point out is that I have a pre-patch Won Khim Lau that adds 5% to Lightning Damage andLightning skills do 23% more damage (aren't these the same things?.) On top of that I also found an Eye of the Storm that dropped off Skeleton King, which gives my Lightning skills 21% more damage. So that's at least 44% increased damage from Lightning skills (possibly 49% increased damage since I don't know how the +5% works.) So, here's my build...
Left Click
Deadly Reach - Scattering Blow
I chose this one not only because it's Lightning damage, but also the AOE knock up. You're capable of interrupting enemies behind you that are getting ready to land an attack because of it.
Right Click
Sweeping Wind - Cyclone
Not much needs to be said about this. It's Lightning Damage, with a good amount of crit you'll have a ton of these things up all doing damage.
Button 1
Mantra of Conviction - Overawe
16% damage passive, 20% damage on activation. Great spell that'll let your abilities hit harder
Button 2
Mystic Ally - Fire Ally
This is the ability that I consider not required with the build. The passive 10% increased damage is nice, and stacks with the damage increase from MoC.
Button 3
Exploding Palm - Essence Burn
A very very nice ability that'll chain burn damage to all other enemies in the area. This ticking on a ton of enemies and having your cyclones flying around electrocuting enemies will cause a good amount of DOT damage.
Button4
Lashing Tail Kick - Scorpion Sting
This is probably the bread winner of this spec. Since the 2.0 buff to this ability, it hits like a truck. Also having an 85% chance to stun the enemy is very nice. Along with the knock up on Deadly Reach - Scattered Blows, you almost effectively "stun-lock" an enemy pretty easily.
Passives
One with Everything
Seize the Initiative
Resolve
I don't have any pieces of gear yet that give me +Fire Damage. I'm hoping to find some soon. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Here's my character,http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/CrisuK0M13-1479/hero/12464
EDIT AGAIN: I'd like to mention I can easily farm Torment III with this setup and my current gear. I can do four, although it gets a little rough at times, five is possible if I skip a lot of the elite mobs, and haven't even tried six with this.
a perosnal thought instead of deadly reach take fist of thunder thunderclap and here is why:
deadly reach aoe is big which is great against a single target elites,rares,bosses which are the main deal now its totally useless and even against massive packs the knockback of this skills is horrible because it selects a single random target and knocksback only him every third hit now fot thunderclap does every hit a 6 yard explosion of 95% wep dmg and every third hit a knockback to all enemies within 6 yards which is just way more affective vs elites and rares and the basic attack does more dmg so yeah
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Hersheys-1791/hero/4742287
The key is that Cyclone Strike counts as a knockback for the purposes of Strongarm Bracers. A 1.3 million lashing tail crit ends up critting for nearly 2 million instead. The breakdown:
Way of the Hundred Fists: Fists of Fury
Purely because my bracers rolled holy damage. This rune could easily be switched to others. I'm fond of the movement/attack speed rune, Blazing Fists, as well. WotHF also helps generate the extreme spirit needs for the build.
Lashing Tail Kick: Scorpion Sting
As all others have mentioned, this hits hard, and it stuns. It's a winner.
Cyclone Strike: Eye of the Storm
Not just because it's lightning damage, but the spirit reduction is KEY. This build is about yanking mobs in, and then lashing them in the face two or so times, then yanking them again, keeping the fat bonus from Strongarms in play. Between each Lashing Tail Kick, it's easy to get in two hits from WotHF, which leads to the next skill...
Sweeping Wind: Cyclone
Not only is it lightning, but WotHF is hitting so many times a second that this spawns tornadoes like a pre-patch Sweeping Wind.
Mantra of Healing: Time of Need
This keeps you alive even in the worst of packs. When elites throw down lots of ground crap (including Orbiter, Frozen Orb, even Thunderstorm below Torment IV or V depending on your resists), spamming this instead of Cyclone Strike will keep you alive through anything. Anything, I promise. Anything but chilling in arcane lasers, anyways. To make it even stronger, getting a 2-set Innas or some other large source of life-per-spirit is great, as popping it then becomes not only a shield, but a strong heal as well. With the 2-set, I feel like I could confidently drop my lifesteal weapon for one of dem tasty-looking Odyn Sons, if I could just find one.
Serenity: Unwelcome Disturbance
Feel free to pop another rune in here. I like the extra damage it does personally, but a 4 second serenity is just as viable.
The passives----
Exalted Soul
Chant of Resonance
Sieze the Initiative (replace with Resolve, or Guiding Light if you feel secure)
Chant of Resonance you say? What the hell is wrong with me? Well, Chant of Resonance is what lets me pop Mantra of Healing forever. Stand in poison, take a dozen reflect damage mobs to the face, stand in desecrate, stand in molten, when I'm up against an elite with a ground effect, this allows me to effectively pop Mantra of Healing twice or more a second, keeping me shielded forever. If my spirit ever does fall, that's when I pop Serenity as well and regen it back up. Since only about half of elite packs are susceptible to Cyclone Strike, you're not losing out much by spamming it anyways. That it shields your allies as well is even better, as you'll be saving the butts of your ranged friends when you run into a reflect damage pack, who take 0 damage, as opposed to rapidly killing themselves.
This build has no problems whatsoever in Torment IV without a party, but in a party it really, really, really shines. Yank enemies in, Lash and stun them once, and the whole pack is abruptly dead. I call it the Making Friends spec, because Cyclone Strike makes so many undead and demonic friends. They keep dying for some reason though.