After yelling at my computer and playing with other people's builds, I have been bound and determined to build a solo monk build that destroys anything it comes across in a solo game. I am able to solo torment 3 efficiently and torment 4 effectively.
My monk
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironsolid-1288/hero/29682466Build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WSTfiV!bUX!ccZZZa (for reference, as I change builds in parties)
Primary Stats:Attack Speed
Life On Hit
Life After Kill
Lightning Resist (will explain further, later)
Critical Hit Chance
Area Damage
Specific Skill Damages
Lightning and Physical damage skill %s
Minimum Goals:70,000 HP
4,500 Armor
750 All Resistances
40% Critical Hit Chance
1200 Life on Hit
2000 Life After Kill
?? APS, this depends on weapons!
Sheet DPS is no longer an accurate description of your actual DPS, so I will not list a goal.
Skill Overview:Exploding Palm: Heads up guys, this does physical damage, not fire. While using The Flesh is Weak, it increases damage dealt to target by
20% and when the mob dies, it deals
50% of it's life in damage to surrounding mobs.
Crippling Wave: Physical Damage. Cleave attack hitting all mobs in front of you blessing them with a 10% extra damage taken debuff. Every third hit snares by 30% and slows attack speed by 20%.
Deadly Reach w/ Foresight Rune: Alternative builder. Every third hit increases your damage by 15% and has a 50% chance to knock enemies into the air. Attacks in a straight line towards the front.
Seven-Sided Strike: This skill does absolutely outrageous amounts of damage. This skill will, 90% of the time kill a goblin before it can consider moving. This skill is invaluable as while active you're immune to all damage and can completely avoid being frozen by elites. While this skill is on a large cool-down, if used properly, it will output some of the best single target DPS in a monk's aresenal.
Mantra: Mostly used for the attack speed buff, but the thorns damage will help clearing speeds.
Sweeping Wind: Lightning damage. While this damage isn't dramatic, it's still extra damage that can be multiplied with area damage causing extra life on hit procs (while not large due to it's dramatically decreased on AoE, it's better than nothing)
Cyclone Strike: While this skill yields decent amounts of damage, it also procs Sweeping Swind at a very high rate. Implosion makes the range on extend to 34 yards, pulling almost to the edge of your screen!
Gear Goals:I will not be listing any stats on items that come automatically, such as sockets dex etc.
As a monk you are blessed! Your resistances are secondary stats! All resistances are a primary, and single resistances are secondary, no wasted secondary slots!
Weapons:
Three most ideal weapons: Fulminator, Thunderfury and Won Khim Lau. Fulminator and Thunderfury spawn with massive damage procs. The addition of fulminator increased my monk's DPS by 40,000 on sheet, and nearly tripled my effective DPS. Won Khim Lau (as os 2.0.3) can now spawn with + max spirit, which is a great way to help pool your invaluable resource.
Non ideal weapons that work. Any fast weapon with dexterity socket and vitality. Odyn Son is also a great choice, however slow it is, the chain lightning proc does a tremendous amount of damage.
Shoulders: Sweeping Wind, Area Damage, Lightning or all Resist dex/vita
Helm: Inna's Helm with Vita CC Lightning Or all resist with crippling wave damage or secondary sweeping wind damage
Chest: Inna's With Seven-Sided Strike damage, vita, lightning or all res and; any beneficial spawn such as armor life regen, etc.
Gloves: Anything with Dex/Vita/Crit/AS - something cool!
Necklace: any Necklace with CC/AS Dex Vita. Lightning / All Res and CD are great as well!
Belt: Currently there is not a single belt for solo play that will, in any way, out do Thundergod's Vigor. EVERYTIME you're attacked, even if you dodge or block, you return 100-130% of weapon damage as as lightning damage not just to the attacker but ALL surrounding enemies. This belt also gives a 10-15% increase to lightning skill damage 150-200 lightning resistances (this is why your primary resist is always lightning for this build) ALWAYS spawns main stat and vitality. Add your Crippling Wave (or deadly reach) damage, this belt spawns like a bad ass almost every time. This belt is the belt.
Rings: A. Hellfire ring. If you don't want EXP, find a nice CC/Dex/vita/ AS ring. B. One of your rings should have life on hit. I'll be honest while my Krede's Flame gives me dex/vita/as/loh - the unique ability on it really sucks and is not worth using just for that.
Bracers: Ideal best pair of bracers you can get: high dex/vita CC with lightning resistance and % physical skill. You're getting lightning everywhere else, get physical here.
Pants: Pox Faulds 240-320% weapon damage shit pit that you can stand in all day long. You want to see Dex/Vita/Sockets/ and resistance or crippling wave damage.
Secondary: Inna's with 2 sockets, vitality and crippling wave damage (or deadly reach). These pants spawn with dex/movement and all resistance, you just have to hope for the rest!
Boots: Ice Climbers. These boots were amazing before, but now they provide
immunity the freeze and Immobilization effects. They spawn with all resistances, main stat, always 12% movement. Ideally you want these to spawn with vitality and either armor, lightning resist or exploding palm damage.
How does this build work?This build utilizes your builder to debuff enemies for increased damage from you and the party. Utilizing Sweeping Wind - Cyclone for small amounts of damage and cyclone strike to ensure mobs are consistently grouped up to take the sweeping wind damage and chaining return damage from Thundergod's Vigor and Pox Faulds. Seven-Sided Strike is your big nuke, causing massive amounts of damage (30+ million damage on a decently geared monk). Mantra of retribution adds additional thorns damage as well as giving you a 10% attack speed boost.
For Elites: You simply debuff all of the white adds with exploding palms, once you kill one, the remainder chain explode, kill each other and ultimately killing the yellow named.
For Rare Mobs: Debuff all with exploding palms, hit seven-sided strike and once one dies, the remainder follow.
For Bosses: Monk's single target DPS is now incredibly terrible. Area damage doesn't take effect here. You simply use what skills you can to kill as fast as you can.
Extras, what is it? How does it work? Why is it good?
Area Damage:
Area damage is a percent based damage proc that does your area damage based on the damage done.
Example:
Area damage has X% chance to proc, and you have accumulated a total of 60% area damage. You also have 350% critical hit damage.
You hit a single mob in a group for 1,000,000 damage.
Your area damage procs.
Your area damage will hit everything within range for 600,000.
IF your area damage CRITS (yes, it can crit INDEPENDENTLY from the attack prior) it will crit for 2,100,000.
Area damage is intense, it is now one of the best ways to cause additional damage in the game.
Thundergod's Vigor. That belt we talked about earlier.
Again, to reiterate, the belt will return 100-130% of your weapon damage to ALL surrounding mobs EVERYTIME you dodge, block or get hit. In other words, it's a free riposte everytime you're attacked.
Fulminator.
This weapon will, VERY frequently when you damage them with ANY lightning damage - so the sword it'self sweeping wind, thundergod's riposte return, etc put a debuff on the mob that pulses 167-222% weapon damage to surrounding enemies as lightning. Wait, so it procs lightning damage? Doesn't this mean that it procs it'self off of it'self? Yeah, that's exactly what it means. if you run into the middle of a pack of mobs with a shield and this sword equipped, and all of your other gear is dex/vita/armor/resist no thorns or thundergod's, all you have to do is proc this weapon ONCE and you can AFK to let the mobs die.
Thunderfury
This weapon procs a 279-372% weapon damage proc that hits one enemie and jumps to five additional. Absolute LOADS of proc damage that also snares movement and attack speed by 30%.
This post was edited by Ironsolid on Mar 11 2014 09:44am