Hi guys,

I'm posting this for my friend, Druin.

He's a very well respected monk in the monk community and has just finished this guide. I'm just sharing this guide with you guys.

Shatter-Palm
Hello everyone!

This is it. This is the spec I have been waiting for!

First off, credit where credit is due ... this Chinese monk is the first place I saw this build used --
http://bbs.d.163.com/thread-172914500-1-1.html

My video guide --
http://youtu.be/UistepJdBhc

My T6 7m 30s rift clear --
http://youtu.be/RkfoAuq1PZU

Intro
This build revolves around using the sword Rimeheart to shatter trash mobs who have Exploding Palm on them to blow up large groups of monsters and elites.

Because the build relies entirely on Rime's proc to kill things, you can build for zero-DPS and extremely high utility and eHP.
On the other hand, relying on Rime's proc (which doesn't work on non-trash) means placement of palms is extremely key and some situations are simply impossible.

Concept
Shatter-palm is really split into three separate mechanics ...



Shatter

This is really the core of the build. When you hit a monster that has been frozen, you have a 10% * Proc C of skill chance to instantly kill it.
Some notes --
1. It can't activate on any "special" monsters. These are bosses, champions, elites, elite adds and a wide variety of monsters that are spawned BY bosses (this one will get you no matter how prepared you are!).
2. The monster must be frozen BEFORE the attack deals damage. Skills that freeze can not proc Rimeheart on the same hit that they activate the freeze effect.
3. Monster HP does not matter. You have the exact same %chance to shatter a giant fat-man as you do an imp.
4. The %chance to shatter is multiplied by the Proc Coefficient of the attack used. This means that attacks with a Proc C of 0 (like Sweeping Winds) can not shatter.

This effect is how you will be killing monsters. Because it can not activate on anything but "trash" monsters, this build relies heavily on grouping mobs together and placing Exploding Palm intelligently.

Because Rimeheart's 10% chance is multiplied by your attack's Proc Coefficient, it is very important to use an attack that is both AoE AND has a high Proc C. These skills are few and far between but thankfully Monks have access to one of the best in the entire game.



Way of the Hundred Fists - Fists of Fury has both very high Proc C and moderately large AoE ... it is also 100% free!
The reason FoF has such a high Proc C is that both the hit AND the DoT application have individual chances to proc things.

The DoT application mirror's the hit's Proc C so the skill ends up with a Proc C structure of --
1.50 (0.75 + 0.75)
1.26 (0.09*7 + 0.63)
1.00 (0.5 + 0.5)

Additionally, because each hit of FoF has two components, it is capable of both activating a Freeze AND shattering the monster in the same attack. It is one of the only skills in the game that can do this.

Freeze
So Rimeheart kills things that are frozen ... how are you supposed to freeze them in the first place?

There are two options.



These gloves are, as of 2.0.5, completely overpowered due to a fairly major bug.
You would expect to have to use a skill that has a "chill" effect in order to activate the freeze-chance on Frosties and, as is the case with most item-procs, you would expect the %chance to use the Proc Coefficient of your attack .... neither of these are the case.

Frosties will proc as long as the attack you use is performed by a weapon with cold-damage on it.
Rimeheart, of course, has auto-rolled cold-damage making it a match made in heaven.
Additionally, there is no Proc C scalar meaning the Frosties freeze can proc on DoT ticks. (not SW for some reason)

This post was edited by KimSulki84 on Jun 6 2014 03:23pm

Let's give some examples --
You have a Rimeheart in your mainhand and a holy-damage weapon in your offhand.
If you stand there auto-attacking (no skill) every other hit will have a 34-45% chance to freeze the target.
Specifically, the attacks made with your mainhand will have a chance to freeze while the attacks made with your holy-damage weapon will not.

If you have the same weapon setup and use Exploding Palm which is a "mainhand-only" skill, the initial application of EVERY EP will have a 34-45% chance to freeze. Additionally, each tick (every 0.5 seconds) for 9 seconds (12 with impending) will have another 34-45% chance to freeze. Because the freeze is ~1s long and EP ticks twice per second, you have pretty close to 100% freeze uptime on trash mobs with EP.

So these sort-of make sense because they are physical attacks and you are using a cold weapon ... where it completely breaks down is when you use an elemental skill and it STILL procs Frosties.

For example, if you have a Rimeheart equipped and attack with Way of the Hundred Fists - Fists of Fury which is a purely holy damage skill, each hit will actually have TWO chances to freeze (the main hit and the DoT application both have separate chances to activate Frosties). Additionally, the Holy-damage DoT from FoF will continue to have a 34-45% chance every 0.5 seconds to freeze despite being quite clearly Holy and not frost.

So ... if you have Frosties, simply casting Exploding Palm (your main damage source) and auto-attacking with Way of the Hundred Fists - Fist of Fury (your main Rimeheart proc skill) will do all the freezing you need.



In the case of not having Frostburns, the bug being fixed or being anti-bugs, Monks happen to have access to the best Rimeheart synergy skill in the game.

Numbing Light's freeze lasts FOREVER and, because WoL naturally hits three times each cast, it has an EXTREMELY high chance to activate on each cast.
Example --
At 50% CHC, the bell portion of WoL-NL has a 50% chance to freeze on the first hit, 50% on the second and 50% on the third. This means it has a 1-(0.5*0.5*0.5) = 87.5% or 7/8ths chance to Freeze every cast.

Additionally, woL has a massive AoE radius and a Proc C of 0.11 per hit (0.33 for the whole cast) which means it can actually shatter the monsters that it freezes (though it is much much much less likely than WotHF-FoF).

The two MAJOR downsides to WoL-NL are --
1. It costs a ton of spirit. Using WotHF-FoF / EP as your freeze with Frosties is essentially "free" ... WoL costs 75 spirit per cast which means you are going to be starved for spirit a lot of the time and RRC on gear might be mandatory.
2. It takes up both a passive and a skill slot. To cast bells efficiently, you basically NEED to have Exalted Soul so you lose both an active skill slot which means no Dashing Strike (or no Inner Sanc if you are super confident in your tanking) and the loss of your 4th passive (almost certainly Fleet Footed).

Explosion
So you can freeze things then shatter them. This isn't very good on its own because you can only kill trash mobs which means zero elite kills and killing a full pack of trash takes AGES with this method.

That's where Exploding Palm comes into play.



When a mob with the EP DoT on it dies, it deals damage to all surrounding monsters that has nothing at all to do with your DPS. This is vital to the build because it allows the Monk to translate the shatter mechanic on Rimeheart into AoE damage that can actually kill things like packs of trash, champions, elites and even rift guardians.

So, the plan is pretty simple ... place Exploding Palm on things, Freeze those things (already taken care of BY EP if you have frosties) then shatter those things and they will blow up and kill everything else.

Because it takes spirit and time to place Exploding Palm and because the DoT has a set duration, placing an infinite amount of EP's isn't really reasonable. This means you want your EP's to hit as hard as possible. Thankfully there are a bunch of stats in the game that make EP do MORE than the flat 50% monster-health.

1. The Fist of Az'Turrasqu



This is BY FAR the best offhand weapon available for Shatter-palm. The spec works without it but nothing comes remotely close to doubling your EP damage.

This post was edited by KimSulki84 on Jun 6 2014 03:22pm

2. Physical Skills Deal X% more Damage



The EP explosion scales with the Physical element stat. This means if you can't find a Fist of Az, Doombringer is a fairly good offhand option.

Other good sources for this stat are Bracers (20%) Ammy (20%) Andarial's Visage (20%) Stone of Jordan (20%).

3. Monsters Take X% More Damage



The stat that makes monsters take X% more damage will increase the damage they take from Exploding Palm explosions. Strongarm is easily the best source of this as you will always be using Cyclone Strike to group monsters and CS activates Strongarm.

Additional good sources of this stat are Mantra of Conviction (10%/20%) Inner Sanc - Forbidden Palace (30%) EP-Flesh is Weak (20%) Crippling Wave - Breaking Wave (10%)

4. X% Bonus Damage to Elites



This stat only scales EP's damage when the explosion hits Elites but it is a very important stat none-the-less because trash monsters have such low HP relative to elites that you NEED this bonus to make trash-based-EP's actually kill elites and their adds.

The main source of this stat is 2x Diamonds in weapons (20% each) and SoJ (30%) or Unity for 2x Unity eHP (15%) Aughild's 2x +RORG (15%) Blackthorn's 2x + RORG (10%)

5. Area Damage
The explosion from EP can proc Area Damage which means it scales VERY well with AD.
For example, if you have just the 50% AD from the paragon utility tree and you are fighting 6 monsters, when the first shatter-EP explodes, it hits the other 5 monsters, each one has a 20% chance to proc AD which means that EP procs, on average, one AD.

The AD hits 4 of the remaining 5 mobs for 50% of the damage of the EP explosion. This means it deals 50% damage to 4 of the 5 targets for a total damage multiplier of 0.5*0.8 = 0.4 or 40% more damage.

The more monsters you are fighting at once, the stronger AD becomes.

Given ideal circumstances, AD might be able to hit 10 monsters. This will cause it to proc twice hitting 8 of the 10 monsters twice and the other two once each for a total of two hits on 9 of 10 monsters. Given 50% AD, you just increased your total damage by 0.5 * 2 * 0.9 = 90%!

So....
In the end, your EP which starts at 50% monster health gets multiplied by each of these stats and can end up at pretty high levels.

My monk, for example, has a 97% FoA, 40% phys, 59% monsters take more, 75% elite, 68% AD.
This results in 0.97 (FoA) * 1.4 (phys) * 1.59 (MTM) * 1.75 = 3.78.
My EP's hit for 378% of the monster's health vs elites and 216% of the monster's health vs all other targets.

Assuming I am fighting 5 monsters, AD takes that up to 3.78*1.54 = 5.82 or 582%

Elites have less than 582% of the HP of their adds (usually) which means a single EP on an elite add will likely kill all the other adds AND the elite.

Conclusion

Cyclone Strike monsters together, Place Exploding Palm on a couple of them, freeze them with Frosties/WoL-NL, shatter them with Rimeheart+WotHF-FoF, BOOM.

Using this spec, I am able to clear T6 "efficiently" IE: faster than other monk specs, slower than some of the other class' specs.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this!

As always, if you have any questions, leave them here and I will do my very best to answer.

shit man.... don't spread this build around! we gotta keep it a secret before it gets nerfed for being so OP

e- great guide btw, reminds me of the essay style guides written for d2 back in the day. love it!

This post was edited by et3rnal on Jun 6 2014 03:35pm

Thanks for the guide Kim and Driun.
I found 2 x Rimeheart and one frostburn a few days ago.
Souled them all due to super crappy stats.
When I read the special effects on the Rimeheart "10% chance to shatter frozen enemies", I didn't think much of it.
RNG will probably punish me for souling those items.
I will keep all special effect items from now on.
Blizz ... we need more storage space.

Hello!

Druin here.

If anyone has any questions, I will do my best to answer them!

@et3rnal I think we are pretty safe. The build works but is still worse than things like Jade WD and shotgun DH so not really nerf territory.

Haha i was tempted to do a write up for this build before but i also didnt want it to get "popular" like et3rnal stated cause "fun things" get nerf hammered by blizznerf all the time.

But yes these shatter monks are fricken awesome fun to play.
I been runnin wit my friend and we both use zdps shatter monk t6 rape games broskiii style. So funny to beable to be zdps and do this. BUT i will say its not for the retarded noob who just think they can click wit one hand and hold a sammmwich in the other like a pet doctor or trapsin DH.
You actually gotta play wit strategy and save whites for elites or drag whites n stuff to them. Runnin from packs at times too in RETARDED low density spawn map where even furnace cant take them out cause you need to have at least 1 white trash for a killing blow (unless we both keep dps gear and swap it on lol)

But ya make sure you have a furnace for RG boss :). FOF + palm rape him wit furnace. The. Swap back to az fist and rimeheart and drag a few whites n finish him off wit an explosion.

sadly rimeheart is the rarest sword in the game, frosties (coupled with taskers) are the rarest gloves in the game and az'turrasq is pretty rare too.
this build won't be for everyone i guess

wow what an amazing guide.
thanks for taking the time both of you for sharing it
got some pieces might give it a try

Thumbs up!

Exactly, I've been looking forward to looting the gloves and sword but 0 has dropped, also 0 Unity rings