Here’s the build I’ve been using since 1.04. I call it the Dodge Monk. It’s based off of my pre 1.03 build, and I adjusted it accordingly. Essentially, this build takes advantage of the Monk’s unique propensity to dodge attacks, both from the Dexterity main-stat, and the passive and active skills that make it such a viable focus for a build. With high enough dodge, you can avoid almost all forms of direct damage, and use skills to not receive damage from sources that dodge doesn’t help you avoid. Essentially, you use dodge, and a couple select skills to make yourself as invulnerable as possible.
Part 1: The Dodge Mechanic
Dodge is a trait that isn’t calculated intuitively. That is, +x% to dodge doesn’t mean that your dodge % goes up by x. Rather, the distance between your current dodge chance and 100 is lowered by x%. Reading it this way, you can understand a lot more about what the best sources of dodge are, and at what point skills like Sixth Sense become useful.
To calculate dodge, you first get a flat bonus from Dexterity (the calculation will be shown in a sec), then you get the passive bonus from The Guardian’s Path, then the passive bonus from Sixth Sense (if they’re both equipped at the same time). Then Mantra of Evasion’s effects take hold. By understanding how dodge is calculated, you can figure out which stats to stack, and which passives to use.
When calculating dodge, the flat bonus from dexterity works like this: First, from dex 1-500, you get 1% per 40 points of dexterity, or .04% dodge per dex. This lands you with a base of 20% dodge. Then, you get 1% of dodge per 50 points of dex, or .02% dodge per dex. This lands you with a base of 30% dodge. After that, you get about 1% of dodge per 100 points of dex, or .01% dodge per dex. After a while, stacking dex won’t yield as much dodge returns as the passives, or stacking armor. Essentially, once you stack to 1000 dex, it’s better to focus on other stats, but the bonuses to damage are still nice. We’re going to assume for the rest of the guide that you have at least 1100 dex, and we’ll calculate your dodge that way, this yields about 31% base dodge.
Part 2: Skills and justifications.
The Basic Build:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#a.gTh!WdU!a.Y.aThe build I use:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aSXThg!WdU!acbcaYThe basics of the build lie in the calculation of the dodge mechanic. Now that you have a 31% dodge chance, we can figure out which passives to use. With a dual-wielding monk and The Guardian’s Path, you yield about 41.5% chance to dodge. With Mantra of Evasion, that jumps to 59.05% chance to dodge for the first few seconds, and then 51.275% for the rest of the duration. At this point, you should decide whether or not you want straight DR from armor, via Seize the Initiative, or you want to increase your dodge via Sixth Sense. Right now, with about 34% chance to crit from my current gear setup, I’m moving more toward Sixth Sense. It seems to lend me more survivability, but it’s a “to each their own” scenario. I top out at about 61% (ish) dodge with the MoE full activation, and about 53% for the rest of the duration.
As for the active skills, I chose the ones I chose for a couple key reasons. I chose Sweeping Wind with Cyclone for just pure DPS, same as Breath of Heaven with Blazing Wrath. I think that if you find another skill that can fit your play style better than either of these, you should go with it. In keeping up with the evasiveness theme, Blinding Flash is a pretty great skill that also provides a DPS boost with the Faith in The Light rune. It’s a short boost, but it can probably help in battle. There’s also Inner Sanctuary, which can be used to provide DPS boosts or healing boosts, depending on the rune. These two slots are the “bitch” slots in my build, and are really interchangeable. It all depends on your playstyle, and which skills fit you. I highly suggest pairing Sweeping Wind with a Sixth Sense build. Lots of extra damage from those cyclones.
The other two skills are more required for this build. Dodge cannot avoid everything, and it’s important that you’re prepared for any situation. Serenity is an important skill to have because it makes you damage immune for 4 seconds (with the Ascension rune), and breaks CC. This is especially important when you can become frozen, or around desecrators.
Seven Sided Strike is also an important skill because you are completely invulnerable for the duration of the attack. There are three good runes to use with it, and it all depends on what you want. First off, there’s Fulminating Onslaught. This is the highest DPS version of the skill, and is devastating against crowds of mobs. Then, there’s Several Sided Strike and Sustained Attack. Both of these increase the percentage of time you are in the attack animation vs not, one by increasing the strikes, and therefore the time per attack, and the other by decreasing the cooldown. Now I fleshed out the math in Excel, and the difference in percentage of time you’re in the attack animation vs not is not that substantial. In 100 uses of SSS in a row, assuming you trigger it as soon as it finishes cooling down, you only get about 1 more second of attack animation with Sustained Attack vs Several Sided Strike. I think the two best runes for SSS are either Fulminating Onslaught or Several Sided Strike. Both of them have big boosts to damage, the only real difference is the time you spend in the animation vs the amount of damage you do. It’s up to you to choose which rune you want to use.
Part 3: Gear
Depending on which version of the build you’re going for, the stats you need to stack are going to change, but the basic stacks are pretty much the same. I’m going to put two priority lists, one for Sixth Sense, and one for Seize the Initiative.
Sixth Sense:
Dex/Vit should be about the same priority. Always err on the side of dex. I usually will be ok with up to a 20 point loss of vit if I gain a significant amount of dex (at least 40).
Crit Chance is next
Choice Resistance/Allres
LoH/%Damage to life (only if you use sweeping wind)
Critical Damage
Straight Damage
Straight Armor
Seize the Initiative:
Dex
Vit
Choice Resistance/Allres
LoH/%Damage to life (only if you use sweeping wind)
Crit Chance/Damage
Straight Damage
Straight Armor
With both of these builds, you want to try to build attack speed as much as you can, but other important stats to keep in mind are passive spirit regeneration, and life per spirit spent. None of these stats are ESSENTIAL to the dodge monk, but all of them, especially LPSS make things easier.
Part 4: Gameplay
Using my build as an example, I will walk you through how to run this build. When I get in game, I pop BoH as soon as I leave town. Once I find a mob I pop MoE. If the mob is big (more than 5 enemies), I pop SW and just start laying in. Whenever my health nears 50%, I either pop SSS or Serenity, depending on how many enemies are left in the mob. Usually after a fight I will wait for one of them to be off cooldown before moving on.
When in battle, I run a quick flow chart for my skills. Am I at more than half spirit? If no, keep fighting. If yes, is SW on? If no, turn it on. If yes, is BoH cooling down? If no, trigger it. If yes, use MoE. Essentially you should be spamming MoE and BoH, or whichever skill you assign to that slot, whenever you have the opportunity when you're in battle. This keeps you alive longer with either the increased dodge chance, the healing (from BoH) or whichever other effect you get from your spammable skills. The more often MoE gets used, the higher your maintained dodge and EHP.
Thank you for reading this, and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.