Fists of Thunder and Sweeping Wind Monk Guide

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Skills
3. Passive Skills
4. Class Overview
5. Gear



Introduction:


Out of all monk builds the Fists of Thunder (Fot) and Sweeping Wind + Cyclone (Swc) is by far the most common. It’s easy to see why when you get to test how strong and versatility it can be as well. While being rather generic in principle there is still plenty of room for customisation to make your monk unique. I will outline the basics for this build as well as the good options available

The monk is a very versatile class with many different builds and playstyles. I like to think of the different builds in two groups, those that use spirit draining skills to do damage and those that use spirit generators as their main attack. This build is the latter and uses a spirit generator (primary attack) as its main damage source, augmented by other skills/abilities. The other skill based monks are more specialised and often require more specific skills and gearing for spirit regain etc




Skills:


Required
1. Fists of Thunder + Thunderclap
This is your main attack and overall one of the most versatile skills in the game. The thunderclap rune adds a teleport to the first strike giving you great manoeuvrability and adds a load of aoe lightning damage to each hit. The third strike also has an aoe effect which will interrupt enemies and knock them back slightly. This skill has a great attack speed making it ideal for regaining spirit and other interrupting/regaining effects

2. Sweeping Wind + Cyclone
This skill+rune is practically a must for any monk that plans to stand and fight enemies rather than running through them. Once you have enough crit chance this skill makes up a massive portion of your damage. This should always be cast upon entering combat but after that it will look after itself as long as you keep attacking. This is the perfect complement to your fists of thunder and you will create many tornadoes that do great damage by simply attacking

3. Conviction Aura + Overawe
This is the best aura for the vast majority of monks. Any enemy that gets near you will receive 24% extra damage from everyone in your party. As this build mainly uses Fot+Swc for damage you only need spirit to cast sw, then you will end up gaining loads. This gives you excess spirit and this skill is a great place to dump it, for 3 seconds after casting the damage gained will increase to 48%. Casting it regularly or even keeping the 3s buff up is not hard with a good attack speed and you really can't beat the dps increase


Recommended
4. Breath of Heaven + Blazing Wrath
This is a great little skill to have, while the healing is a little underwhelming at max level it’s still useful to have in a pinch. The main bonus however is the 15% damage from the rune which lasts for 45 seconds while the skill has a 15 second cool down. It's also needed for the guiding light passive


Optional
This leaves you with two-three free slots which is one of the reasons this build is so versatile. You should have good damage/survivability/spirit regain from your gear and skills upto this point, leaving you fairly free to pick these last 2-3 skills. If you are having trouble surviving go for a defensive one, otherwise damage is always nice or utility for even more varied playstyles.

Defensive
Serenity + Ascension
This is the best skill if you are having trouble surviving, it allows you to becomes completely immune for 4 seconds. This might not sound like long but it allows you to survive some pretty hairy situations and you will regain all your life in this time meaning you should not be in danger when it wears off.

Defense/Damage
Blinding Flash + Faith in the Light
This is another good all round skill, the blinding effect will stop enemies attacking you for a short period giving an important moment of rest in a dangerous situation (similar but not as good as serenity) but you also gain 30% dmg increase for 3s, it is a little underwhelming compared to its 15s cooldown which is why it’s often taken with the beacon of ytar passive. Having that extra damage when you need it is great though as it will also increase survivability from life steal

Damage
Deadly Reach + Foresight
Way of the Hundred Fists + Blazing Fists
Both these skills add a huge amount of damage, especially when used with the combination strike passive. They both have the same purpose, to buff you at the start of a fight increasing the damage of your normal skills. You can use either or even both, foresight gives 18% dmg for 30sec on 3rd hit, blazing first gives 15% dmg for 15s after 3 crits. Foresight is a lot easier to proc taking a max of 3 hits with deadly reach rather than 3 crits with way of the hundred firsts. However blazing fists has the massive advantage of also increasing movement speed by 15% so it’s really upto you. You can’t go wrong with either, especially when using combination strike when each primary attack will add 8% dmg so either so these + Fof will be an extra 16% dmg

Utility
Cyclone Strike + Eye of the Strom/Wall of Wind
This is a great skill for monks doing some aoe damage but mostly because it groups all the enemies up into a nice little pack. Just make sure you have the survivability to handle everything being close to you or another skills at the ready to stun/knock back (lashing/wall). Use eye of the storm for repeated casting or wall of wind for a nice spirit dump in tight situations

Wave of Light + Empowered Wave
Another very useful skill, the only downside is the massive spirit cost which is why I would recommend this rune for normal use. This build doesn't have loads of spirit after casting overawe repeatedly. When you use this however it does great damage to a lot of enemies and will knock them back a fair bit which can help with hard packs. This skill becomes more viable with a fast attack speed

Dashing Strike + Flying Side Kick:
This skill adds a great amount of movement speed, allowing you to zip across the screen to anything you can attack. It's even better in combat as it allows you to instantly reposition and stops enemies being able to body block you. The 60% stun chance is also good for bosses and harder mobs, it puts you behind the enemy you're attacking which is great for dodging lots of stuff.

Lashing Kick + Scorpion Sting
The rune stops this skill knocking back enemies which I find annoying and instead stuns them in their place. This is a great all round skills doing good damage and stuns in aoe. Especially useful for elites packs as you can stop their attacks/movement or if used in combination with cyclone strike



Passive Skills:


Required
Seize the initiative:
When dex is relatively high this passive adds a huge amount of armor and it's very useful for the vast majority of monks

Reccomended
One with everything:
While not required I would highly recommend this passive, it allows you to give your resistances a great boost, choose a cheap type of res (not physical) then you can get it on a lot of gear for a great price (shoulders/bracers). The only time I would suggest not taking this is if you are rich enough to buy jewellery with all res and really good damage stats, otherwise you will be able to get better stats and the type of res you chose for a cheaper price on rings+ammy

Optional
Now you are free to choose the last passive, here are some of the good options

Pacifism: Possibly the ultimate skill if you are having trouble surviving, ever been doing fine until you were suddenly frozen, shortly before being killed? This skill turns those nasty situations into nice ones where you seem to regain your life most of the time

The Guardians Path/Sixth Sense: Increases dodge change by 15% or 30% of crit (Sixth Sense becomes better when crit>50) mitigation is always nice but dodge can be unpredictable and lead to random deaths

Beacon of Ytar: Great passive if using Serenity or Blinding Flash, reduces all cooldowns by 20%

Guiding Light: Now one of the best passive skills if playing with others, gives 20% dmg to you and a friend when using Breath of Heaven

Combination Strike: Very useful if you’re also taking Foresight or Blazing Fists. It gives 16% dmg as long as you use both attacks then keep attacking with either. Not worth it so much if you are only taking Fists of Thunder


Recommended: Combination Strike for solo, Guiding Light for multi, Pacifism for survivability/progress runs


Here is an example of what the skills should look like http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#abXZSk!XUf!acbYca



Class overview


Before discussing gear options I will now explain a little bit about monks and this build in particular

To start with the monk class has the great ability to increase its damage far beyond the base value, if you take breath of heaven + comb strike/guiding light + foresight/blazing fists you’re looking at a sustainable 50% increase, then 48% on top of this from overawe, then cyclones can upto 75% dps with a high crit change! This means that your initial dps doesn’t need to be as high as other classes to do great damage, obviously more is always better but if you start loosing too much survivability you also loose the ability to tank and thus your dps will start to decrease

This brings me to my next point which is that survivability is the same as dps for a monk in many situations, especially higher mp levels. Ultimately you want to be able to stand still fighting all the enemies together, this allows you to multiply your dps as you end up hitting more enemies with each attack (especially stuff like the 3rd hit of Fot) this also generates more cyclones etc. Whenever you have to run away because you are fighting too many or standing in too many pools you loose a lot dps (dying as well ofc)

My last point is that monk is a regain build, although you can reduce incoming damage a lot it still gets through at a reasonably rate and you rely on your life regain to keep you alive. At high dps almost all of your life regain comes from life steal which is proportional to all the damage you do. This has a few implications, one of them is that your survivability becomes proportional to your damage (ie 2x damage = 2x survivability), the other is that max health becomes fairly meaningless at times. When the incoming damage gets larger than your health regain your life goes down and then you tend to die, health just changes when it happens.
The reason that you need survivability as well as damage and health as well as mitigation is damage spikes and stun situations. Damage spikes can come from dodge randomness or from just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here your life regain doesn’t matter as all the damage comes at once and you need survivability. Also when you are stunned you don’t attack and only effective health is important. Life/vit will generally increase effectively health more but mitigation is more useful in all other situations on a regain build

With these things in mind we know what gear to select, we want to get as high dps as possible without loosing too much survivability, and with survivability we want to get mitigation as high as possible without hp getting too low
Be aware that gear with higher survivability is generally cheaper than similar but with higher dps and as most people need to worry about how much gear costs you will generally choose closer to survivability than ideal



Gear:


You will want to prioritise these stats if you have any choice crit/dex/all res/ias/crit damage/specific res if you have one with everything. The best stat by far is crit chance, cyclones get a massive double buff from this as they depend on it for their creation. Attack speed is also very useful as you will regain spirit faster and you will interrupt/teleport more when attacking. Armor, life on hit and life regain are all useful but not as much as the others most of the time


Main Hand/Offhand:
1h + Shield or Duel Wield are both very good options, ultimately duel wield will be better for more damage (the survivability from shield becomes overkill)
Must have life steal on both weapons, the higher the better

Rare: dex, crit damage, life steal, socket
Wan Khim Lau: life steal, socket
Shield: dex,vit,all res,res/block,crit chance

You can use 2x rare or swap one for Wan Khim, either wepon and a shield works too for massive survivability for not as much dps loss as you would expect. On the rares you can replace dex with vit for survivability or extra crit damage but its not preferred


If you can't survive higher mp levels Echoing Fury becomes a viable option to keep enemies feared (or if doing low enough mp that everything dies very quickly) but at high mp you loose the ability to tank enemies together and ultimately dps so this weapon is no longer a good option

2h weapons are generally too slow for this build

Helm:
Mempo: dex, crit
Inna’s Radiance: all res, life per spirit spent

Chest Armor:
Inna’s Vast Expanse: dex-vit or all res
Rare/Crafted: dex, vit, all res, socket, res/dmg reduce/life%

Pants:
Inna’s Temperance: dex-vit/vit/all res
Rare: dex, vit, all res, res, arm, socket,

You need the 2 piece Inna’s bonus, if you go with Inna’s helm you can swap chest or legs for a rare. Might be some expensive rare chests that are better, legs will increase survivability at the cost of dps if you are struggling to survive, 3x Inna’s is fine too.

Shoulders:
Vile Ward: dex-vit, res/life%
Rare/Crafted: dex, vit, all res, res, life%, arm

Gloves:
Rare/Crafted: dex, vit, all res, res, crit, Ias, crit damage

Belt:
The Witching Hour: dex, 2x all res/dex-vit/res/arm

Bracers:
Rare/Crafted: dex, vit, all res, res, arm, crit
I would not recommend Lacuni Prowlers for the amount of survivability they loose

Boots:
Natalya’s Bloody Footprints: dex-vit or res

Rings:
1x Natalya’s Reflection: crit, 2x avg dmg/dex-vit/all res/crit damage/res
lots of options for next ring including unity/rare/hellfire
here are the stats you want in rough priority, at least 1 life or res stat is recommended res>life (unless life is too low!)
crit/avg dmg/ias/dex/all res/crit damage/res/life%/vit

Amulet:
Rare/Crafted: crit/avg dmg/ias/dex/all res/crit damage/res/life%/vit



Thanks that should be all you need to know to make a good Fists of Thunder monk. The playstyle will vary a lot depending on your choices for gear/skills but overall this character will be extremely balaced and easily able to clear the whole game with the right setup

This post was edited by dakariii on May 13 2013 07:05am

thx, never saw this build before

I've seen so many of this, though not on this site as far I remember.
Bring something new.

Monks have arguably the most flexibility of any class with their passives.

OWE shouldn't be a recommended passive, it should be used to buff your resistances until you have the gear to not use it any longer, in no way should it be your end goal.

yeah I'm sure its been done before and its very common as stated but people still seem to be struggling with it

and the stickied 1.04 dodge monk was looking a bit dated


I said 'I would highly recommend it', this at least is true, I explained my reasoning pretty clearly and you would be surprised how much you have to spend on gear for it to no longer be effective, for the majority or people it will be very helpful. If you can afford jewellery worth billions with top damage stats and all res then you can probably drop this but then you probably already know that. For everyone else you should be able to pick up jewellery with top damage and a second res type that isn't worth billions, then the increased mitigation you can gain on shoulders and bracers will be extremely useful.

This post was edited by dakariii on May 13 2013 03:04pm

Very nice write up.
Thanks for the guide.

If you can manage to get about 500 res ... you can drop OWE.
As long as your mitigation is good.
It just frees up a passive slot.
All res gears are not that pricey now.

I agree with this. When I geared up my Monk, I found it relatively cheap and easy to get 500+ resistance without OWE.

what are the recommended base stats to rape mid mp levels?

i can throw most of my DH gear on my monk and get roughly 130K dps, 500 res, 35K life and 2.6 ls but i'm not sure if 2.6 ls is enough, since i just can't facetank or maybe i just need to learn how play a monk.

Thanks this is a good build!
4

these stats should be fine, just focus on getting two weapons with ls or a good shield works too
also make sure crit is as high as possible, can't stress how important this stat is



The resistance question is a tough one but its such an important stat for monks. The more you can have the better, I current have close to 800 (too much i know), at 500 you only need 80 to increase mitigation by 10%. I would argue that this would be more useful than the equivalent 15% dodge passives, with around 50% dodge you will always end up with a series of missed every so often, at which point it becomes completely irrelevant and you rely on other stats to survive, since you're relying on mitigation on a regain build resistances becomes by far the best stat. (dodge is still very important for those extreme circumstances)

I explained how life wasn't as important past a certain point, then your next best option on shoulders/bracers is armor, if your using vile ward it has armor anyway, then your swapping a possible 120 resistances for like 300 armor (around 30-35 res)

Idealy I would say this monk should have 50-55k life and very good mitigation (not all in dodge)/damage/life steal

OWE will then give you more freedom when crafting and allow for cheaper jewellery, for example any jewellery you can buy with all resistance I can generally buy a cheaper one with better stats and a specific res type

This post was edited by dakariii on May 14 2013 10:35am