Sorry, found out you posted gear picture on youtube when i was done seeing the movie ^^
Btw: What do you achieve with DW? As i understand how the mechanic works in diablo is, you hit with main hand, then wait for the speed of offhand and then it hit and then back to main hand, not sure how it is with monks though... oO but lets say you have a shield with better stats than offhand and a 1k+ main hand, then it should in theory be alot better to use shield right? guess the offhand is just for the extra life on hit right?
When you dual wield you get a 15% IAS bonus as well as all the stats on both weapons ofc.
I actually have like 20% higher dps when I dual wield due to the ias and stats on the weapon. I lose like 100 res, 10% rdma and the blocking from my shield but i get 500 loh, 120 dex and a slightly higher dps 2nd weapon (I use the 1k+ loh with the shield).
For some packs (electro/mortar mostly) i still switch to the shield, but usually I am fine DWing - plus its more fun!!
Aside from a good helm of command (Dex, socket, res) and Seven sins for arcane monks, there are not many legendary/set craftables that stand out for monks. If you talk about legendaries/sets in general - there are a few but going with solid rares is just as good.
First decide on a resist to use. Each has his up and downsides (poison for andariels, arcane for seven sins, physical/fire to save a passive on some bosses, etc.)
Most important is the weapon. Aim for 1k+ dps, 1k+ loh (socket counts as ~400-500) and at least 1.4 attacks per second. Dex/vit are desirable adds. +% as is NOT required unless the weapon is below 1.4. Dont be afraid to spend 15-20 mil for a good one. A pretty perfect one looks like this: http://img713.images...2865/monk1h.jpg (but with a better gem)
String of ears with your res and 18%+ damage reduction is the most important after the weapon and is required. 2-3 mil? maybe a bit more for a good one.
Stormshield is by far the best shield for under 10 mil. Get one with your resist, 5% elite dmg reduction and 28%+ block. This should cost somewhere between 6 and 9 mil. Alternatively you can go DW, but you need excellent gear to make it work and for some mobs you still need a shield. I strongly suggest to start with 1h/shield.
Helm of command with dex, socket and your resist is cheap and probably the best defensive helm. ~2-3 mil.
I don't suggest justice lantern as a ring, unless you can find one with ias (and those are 15+ mil).
Get 2 rings with 150-200 dex/vit (combined), 15%+ ias and 30+ of your resist. E.g. 80 dex, 50 vit, 40 res, 15% ias and socket. These are 2-3 mil each. IAS is key on rings, since we cant get it on many other slots.
Gloves MUST have 15%+ ias. Get as much dex/vit/res to go with it as you can.
Amulet can either be blackthorne's with dex and your resist if you feel rich, or ouroboros with 100+ dex, 100+ vit, 400+ loh and your resist which is around 3 mil i think (thats what i paid for a 150 dex 100 vit 423 loh). If you get a rare amulet either go for high Loh or for IAS combined with dex/vit/res. Dont spend more than 3-4 mil tho.
The rest of the gear is basic vit, dex, @res, yourres. Dont spend more than 2-3 mil per piece and take your time to find them.
Stats to aim for with shield:
- 750-850 @res
- 35-45k hp (when above 40k, swap all gems to dex)
- 1500+ loh
- 5k+ armor with seize the initiative (and no other buffs)
- 2+ attacks per second
- ~30% damage reduction from melee or elite (20 SoE, 9 storm, optional from bracer/chest).
- 35%+ block (28% storm, 8% helm)
- life per second helps if your life on hit is low
- Your dps should definitely be above 10k unbuffed
I think it's doable to get these stats with 50 mil if you look for the good deals on the AH. Once you got these stats you should be able to fully complete inferno and farm any boss you want with 5 stacks.
A daibo will get you higher raw dps, but it generates a LOT less spirit and therefore you can't use your abilities as often. In single target fights a daibo will do slightly more damage but for group play more spirit means more group support.
2x Fist weapon: Most spirit, only good damage if BOTH weapons are good.
1x Daibo: Least spirit (by far), highest damage, least utility.
1x Fist + 1x Shield: Good spirit, good damage and a lot of defense. This is the middle way a lot of people prefer.
Your stats look pretty decent.
What your really need is life on hit.
Try getting a 700+ dps weapon with socket and maybe 300-400 loh as well as a neck with around 400 loh (not very expensive).
Once you are at 1k+ life on hit with your current stats you should be able to do act 2.
If you play on EU i can maybe hook you up with some items for cheap, let me know.
The idea is to have 1 AoE nuke and 1 Single target nuke that are mana intensive.
Combined with 1 ability with medium cooldown and 3 abilities with high cooldown to keep Vision Quest active. The passives also build on vision quest to increase damage and provide even more mana.
A primary skill is not needed since you will always have enough mana to spam at least spirit barrage. Bats are for AoE and healing. Soul Harvest on cooldown to substantialy increase the damage done by your primary spells as well as boosts mana and regen.
Zombie Dogs can be replaced by Mass Confusion.
This build is intended for lvl 40+ while leveling.. as you go you can exchange the runes for more powerful ones when they become available.
General Idea:
- All the classes have very effective AoE damage abilities that are best used on tightly grouped monster clusters to maximize killing speed and ressources. Monsters are usually found in muplitple small groups or even completely spread out.
- On higher difficulty in group play it is likely not very effective for everyone to go for high survival with decent damage. Instead one player should focus on debuffing, gathering and binding (a.k.a. "tanking") the mobs while the rest is killing them with their specialized AoE spells.
"Tanking" in a Group:
- Gathering the monsters and bunching them up with AoE pulls and gap closers
- "Crowd Control": Keeping the monsters near you and off your team with taunts, slows, pulls, stuns, fears, blinds, etc.
- Debuffing damage dealt, attackspeed and/or movement speed of the monsters
- Staying alive by wearing equipment with defense oriented stats and cycling defensive buffs/spells
Barbarians and Monks are the two obvious classes to fill the tanking role in a group. (I'm sure there are Wizard tank builds or Witch Doctor Zoo Tank builds as well). So why should you bring a tank monk to your party and what are possible builds for tanking monks?
I'll explain for each of the 4 tanking duties how the monk handles it and where his strength and flexibilities are.
Gathering:
Cyclone Strike pulls in all enemies in a 24 yards radius and deals some initial damage at the cost of 50 Spirit. The fact that this is all we need even without a rune means the monk has a lot of flexibility in his most important spell to adapt depending on the situation. He can increase the range for outdoor levels, tack on a 3 second defensive selfbuff or simply reduce the cost to make it more spammable. Compared to the Barbarian who has to glyph his Ground Stomp to reach a comparable effect which leaves him without flexibility.
Dashing Strike is our only real gap closer and it is a pretty ineffective one that does little more than allowing you to run faster. It's usually a skill slot saved for something more relevant.
Crowd Control:
Cyclone Strike has no Cooldown and is only limited by Spirit Cost. So it can be repedately cast as a form of CC, especially with the rune to reduce the cost. Furthermore the Monk will use Crippling Wave as his primary to snare the monsters (30% AoE slow every 3 attacks), Blinding Flash for a cheap 3 second CC every 15 seconds and the damage from Sweeping Wind/Backlash to constantly damage enemies and generate some threat.The important thing is, that all of this CC is 360° AoE and not only in the direction you are facing like many of the Barbarian's abilities. Also all of the spells except Cyclone Strike are very cheap or even passive. This maximizes on the uses of your Pull.
Debuffing:
Crippling Wave: -20% attack speed
Concussion Rune: -20% all damage
Resolve Passive: -25% all damage
These debuffs can be kept up 100% of the time by auto attacking and keeping Sweeping Wind going.
It's possible to get another -10% all damage via mantra but there are better options, imo.
Staying Alive:
While Barbarins will surely have more armor and hitpoints than monks, the latter will make up for that through higher dodge and elemental resistances.
When deciding between armor and dodge (both are mainly to reduce melee damage), it is usually better to go for dodge since you have a pretty high base dodge value and every point of armor will make sucessive points of dodge less effective (they work against eachother in a sense). The exact numbers will also depend heavily on the diminishing returns, etc. But basically you are working off dodge and resistances instead of HP and Amor.
Two passive skills are crucial here:
- One with Everything sets all you resistances to the value of your highest resistance. This means you only have to max out one resistance to be at the maximum magic resistance for all elements. Pretty insane and leaves a lot of room to focus on other stats on your gear.
- Pacifism: Reduces damage taken while stunned, feared or charmed by 75%. Basically when you can't dodge or block you will drop from 100 to 0 in seconds. I'm pretty sure there is no way around this passive on higher difficulties when going for the resi/dodge approach.
More skills to help staying alive include:
- Serenity [Peaceful Repose] is a basic tanking ability and your only innate source of healing other than Potions.
- Mantra of Evasion and Wall of Wind allow for some more passive and on demand dodge%.
1. Crippling Wave [Concussion]: The only defensive Spirit Generator. Some nice AoE debuffs and cone damage. The Rune provides additional debuffs.
NOTE: We do not need a "secondary" ability as all they do is waste our Spirit and Kick the enemies away from us which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to do. If you must take one for the damage, i suggest Lashing Tail Kick [Scorpion Sting].
2. Blinding Flash [Searing Light]: Very low cost, low cooldown CC ability. Use it whenever it is up and hits a decent amount of enemies. (If you use Wall of Wind, you might wanna wait a couple secs before using it after a Cyclone Strike). Searing Light is by far the most useful Runestone for obvious reason (trash mobs are trash).
3. Serenity [Peaceful Repose]: Baseline tanking ability. Use it for damage spikes and emergency heals.
4. Cyclone Strike [flexible]: Your bread and butter spirit dump. Runestone is up to preference/group/level/etc. Eye of the Storm is the default.
5. Sweeping Wind [Master of Wind]: This is the easiest way to constantly keep the Resolve debuff on your enemies (at least before you get Backlash at lvl 58) and have some form of damage. The Master of Wind runestone is gonna be very handy to prevent you from recasting it too often as it is very expensive. Sweeping Winds can also be replaced altogether with Exploding Palm, Dashing Strike or Breath of Heaven. But keep in mind that they all cost Spirit and will cut into your usage of Cyclone Strike.
6. Mantra of Evasion [Backlash/Hard Target]: The best pure defensive Mantra. Hard Target sure is good but you will not have a very impressive base armor value to begin with so a percentage based bonus does not look too attractive while the damage from Backlash will be significant in a dodge-focused build like this. Of course before you are level 58, use Hard Target.
Passives as explained above: Resolve, Pacifism, One with Everything.
Playstyle:
One of the goals of this build is to use a majority of the generated spirit on Cyclone Strike to bind the enemies to you. With the cost reduction glyph you should be able to spam it quite a lot.
You don't have a "secondary" ability to dump spirit and both our other spirit consuming abilities are cheap and with a medium length cooldown. Mantra and Sweeping Wind should be considered as passives that require occasional refreshes or as a last resort defensive boost against heavy melee damage.
You will have very high EHP (effective hitpoints) due to the focus on doge and elemental resistance but will be more subject to damage spikes than the armor/hp approach. The negative side is that you can die more quickly if you dont pay attention, but on the positive side healing will be much more effective on you in the long run. Therefore you might not rely on as much external healing as a barbarian tank (?)
Anyways, is realize that a lot of this is still speculation. But still, thanks for reading if you made it this far
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When you dual wield you get a 15% IAS bonus as well as all the stats on both weapons ofc.
I actually have like 20% higher dps when I dual wield due to the ias and stats on the weapon. I lose like 100 res, 10% rdma and the blocking from my shield but i get 500 loh, 120 dex and a slightly higher dps 2nd weapon (I use the 1k+ loh with the shield).
For some packs (electro/mortar mostly) i still switch to the shield, but usually I am fine DWing - plus its more fun!!
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Are those craftable? Didn't know...
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Here are a couple screens of the stats btw.
Fully unbuffed: http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6500/statsgyc.jpg
Blazing Wrath + Foresight up: http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/1056/statsbuffed.jpg
With blind thats 82k dps.
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Full Siegebreaker run on monk with commentary.
Spec/Gear is in the video description.
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4
Most important is the weapon. Aim for 1k+ dps, 1k+ loh (socket counts as ~400-500) and at least 1.4 attacks per second. Dex/vit are desirable adds. +% as is NOT required unless the weapon is below 1.4. Dont be afraid to spend 15-20 mil for a good one. A pretty perfect one looks like this: http://img713.images...2865/monk1h.jpg (but with a better gem)
String of ears with your res and 18%+ damage reduction is the most important after the weapon and is required. 2-3 mil? maybe a bit more for a good one.
Stormshield is by far the best shield for under 10 mil. Get one with your resist, 5% elite dmg reduction and 28%+ block. This should cost somewhere between 6 and 9 mil. Alternatively you can go DW, but you need excellent gear to make it work and for some mobs you still need a shield. I strongly suggest to start with 1h/shield.
Helm of command with dex, socket and your resist is cheap and probably the best defensive helm. ~2-3 mil.
I don't suggest justice lantern as a ring, unless you can find one with ias (and those are 15+ mil).
Get 2 rings with 150-200 dex/vit (combined), 15%+ ias and 30+ of your resist. E.g. 80 dex, 50 vit, 40 res, 15% ias and socket. These are 2-3 mil each. IAS is key on rings, since we cant get it on many other slots.
Gloves MUST have 15%+ ias. Get as much dex/vit/res to go with it as you can.
Amulet can either be blackthorne's with dex and your resist if you feel rich, or ouroboros with 100+ dex, 100+ vit, 400+ loh and your resist which is around 3 mil i think (thats what i paid for a 150 dex 100 vit 423 loh). If you get a rare amulet either go for high Loh or for IAS combined with dex/vit/res. Dont spend more than 3-4 mil tho.
The rest of the gear is basic vit, dex, @res, yourres. Dont spend more than 2-3 mil per piece and take your time to find them.
Stats to aim for with shield:
- 750-850 @res
- 35-45k hp (when above 40k, swap all gems to dex)
- 1500+ loh
- 5k+ armor with seize the initiative (and no other buffs)
- 2+ attacks per second
- ~30% damage reduction from melee or elite (20 SoE, 9 storm, optional from bracer/chest).
- 35%+ block (28% storm, 8% helm)
- life per second helps if your life on hit is low
- Your dps should definitely be above 10k unbuffed
I think it's doable to get these stats with 50 mil if you look for the good deals on the AH. Once you got these stats you should be able to fully complete inferno and farm any boss you want with 5 stacks.
0
2x Fist weapon: Most spirit, only good damage if BOTH weapons are good.
1x Daibo: Least spirit (by far), highest damage, least utility.
1x Fist + 1x Shield: Good spirit, good damage and a lot of defense. This is the middle way a lot of people prefer.
0
What your really need is life on hit.
Try getting a 700+ dps weapon with socket and maybe 300-400 loh as well as a neck with around 400 loh (not very expensive).
Once you are at 1k+ life on hit with your current stats you should be able to do act 2.
If you play on EU i can maybe hook you up with some items for cheap, let me know.
0
The idea is to have 1 AoE nuke and 1 Single target nuke that are mana intensive.
Combined with 1 ability with medium cooldown and 3 abilities with high cooldown to keep Vision Quest active. The passives also build on vision quest to increase damage and provide even more mana.
A primary skill is not needed since you will always have enough mana to spam at least spirit barrage. Bats are for AoE and healing. Soul Harvest on cooldown to substantialy increase the damage done by your primary spells as well as boosts mana and regen.
Zombie Dogs can be replaced by Mass Confusion.
This build is intended for lvl 40+ while leveling.. as you go you can exchange the runes for more powerful ones when they become available.
0
General Idea:
- All the classes have very effective AoE damage abilities that are best used on tightly grouped monster clusters to maximize killing speed and ressources. Monsters are usually found in muplitple small groups or even completely spread out.
- On higher difficulty in group play it is likely not very effective for everyone to go for high survival with decent damage. Instead one player should focus on debuffing, gathering and binding (a.k.a. "tanking") the mobs while the rest is killing them with their specialized AoE spells.
"Tanking" in a Group:
- Gathering the monsters and bunching them up with AoE pulls and gap closers
- "Crowd Control": Keeping the monsters near you and off your team with taunts, slows, pulls, stuns, fears, blinds, etc.
- Debuffing damage dealt, attackspeed and/or movement speed of the monsters
- Staying alive by wearing equipment with defense oriented stats and cycling defensive buffs/spells
Barbarians and Monks are the two obvious classes to fill the tanking role in a group. (I'm sure there are Wizard tank builds or Witch Doctor Zoo Tank builds as well). So why should you bring a tank monk to your party and what are possible builds for tanking monks?
I'll explain for each of the 4 tanking duties how the monk handles it and where his strength and flexibilities are.
Gathering:
Cyclone Strike pulls in all enemies in a 24 yards radius and deals some initial damage at the cost of 50 Spirit. The fact that this is all we need even without a rune means the monk has a lot of flexibility in his most important spell to adapt depending on the situation. He can increase the range for outdoor levels, tack on a 3 second defensive selfbuff or simply reduce the cost to make it more spammable. Compared to the Barbarian who has to glyph his Ground Stomp to reach a comparable effect which leaves him without flexibility.
Dashing Strike is our only real gap closer and it is a pretty ineffective one that does little more than allowing you to run faster. It's usually a skill slot saved for something more relevant.
Crowd Control:
Cyclone Strike has no Cooldown and is only limited by Spirit Cost. So it can be repedately cast as a form of CC, especially with the rune to reduce the cost. Furthermore the Monk will use Crippling Wave as his primary to snare the monsters (30% AoE slow every 3 attacks), Blinding Flash for a cheap 3 second CC every 15 seconds and the damage from Sweeping Wind/Backlash to constantly damage enemies and generate some threat.The important thing is, that all of this CC is 360° AoE and not only in the direction you are facing like many of the Barbarian's abilities. Also all of the spells except Cyclone Strike are very cheap or even passive. This maximizes on the uses of your Pull.
Debuffing:
Crippling Wave: -20% attack speed
Concussion Rune: -20% all damage
Resolve Passive: -25% all damage
These debuffs can be kept up 100% of the time by auto attacking and keeping Sweeping Wind going.
It's possible to get another -10% all damage via mantra but there are better options, imo.
Staying Alive:
While Barbarins will surely have more armor and hitpoints than monks, the latter will make up for that through higher dodge and elemental resistances.
When deciding between armor and dodge (both are mainly to reduce melee damage), it is usually better to go for dodge since you have a pretty high base dodge value and every point of armor will make sucessive points of dodge less effective (they work against eachother in a sense). The exact numbers will also depend heavily on the diminishing returns, etc. But basically you are working off dodge and resistances instead of HP and Amor.
Two passive skills are crucial here:
- One with Everything sets all you resistances to the value of your highest resistance. This means you only have to max out one resistance to be at the maximum magic resistance for all elements. Pretty insane and leaves a lot of room to focus on other stats on your gear.
- Pacifism: Reduces damage taken while stunned, feared or charmed by 75%. Basically when you can't dodge or block you will drop from 100 to 0 in seconds. I'm pretty sure there is no way around this passive on higher difficulties when going for the resi/dodge approach.
More skills to help staying alive include:
- Serenity [Peaceful Repose] is a basic tanking ability and your only innate source of healing other than Potions.
- Mantra of Evasion and Wall of Wind allow for some more passive and on demand dodge%.
Here is a basic build suggestion:
http://eu.battle.net...gifh!ZeU!ZYaaYc
1. Crippling Wave [Concussion]: The only defensive Spirit Generator. Some nice AoE debuffs and cone damage. The Rune provides additional debuffs.
NOTE: We do not need a "secondary" ability as all they do is waste our Spirit and Kick the enemies away from us which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to do. If you must take one for the damage, i suggest Lashing Tail Kick [Scorpion Sting].
2. Blinding Flash [Searing Light]: Very low cost, low cooldown CC ability. Use it whenever it is up and hits a decent amount of enemies. (If you use Wall of Wind, you might wanna wait a couple secs before using it after a Cyclone Strike). Searing Light is by far the most useful Runestone for obvious reason (trash mobs are trash).
3. Serenity [Peaceful Repose]: Baseline tanking ability. Use it for damage spikes and emergency heals.
4. Cyclone Strike [flexible]: Your bread and butter spirit dump. Runestone is up to preference/group/level/etc. Eye of the Storm is the default.
5. Sweeping Wind [Master of Wind]: This is the easiest way to constantly keep the Resolve debuff on your enemies (at least before you get Backlash at lvl 58) and have some form of damage. The Master of Wind runestone is gonna be very handy to prevent you from recasting it too often as it is very expensive. Sweeping Winds can also be replaced altogether with Exploding Palm, Dashing Strike or Breath of Heaven. But keep in mind that they all cost Spirit and will cut into your usage of Cyclone Strike.
6. Mantra of Evasion [Backlash/Hard Target]: The best pure defensive Mantra. Hard Target sure is good but you will not have a very impressive base armor value to begin with so a percentage based bonus does not look too attractive while the damage from Backlash will be significant in a dodge-focused build like this. Of course before you are level 58, use Hard Target.
Passives as explained above: Resolve, Pacifism, One with Everything.
Playstyle:
One of the goals of this build is to use a majority of the generated spirit on Cyclone Strike to bind the enemies to you. With the cost reduction glyph you should be able to spam it quite a lot.
You don't have a "secondary" ability to dump spirit and both our other spirit consuming abilities are cheap and with a medium length cooldown. Mantra and Sweeping Wind should be considered as passives that require occasional refreshes or as a last resort defensive boost against heavy melee damage.
You will have very high EHP (effective hitpoints) due to the focus on doge and elemental resistance but will be more subject to damage spikes than the armor/hp approach. The negative side is that you can die more quickly if you dont pay attention, but on the positive side healing will be much more effective on you in the long run. Therefore you might not rely on as much external healing as a barbarian tank (?)
Anyways, is realize that a lot of this is still speculation. But still, thanks for reading if you made it this far