1. Higher LoH is not 100% required, but it is recommended... Usually in part to make up for other stats... in relation to question #3... i would boost LoH if you cannot readily boost your armor. But more base armor would yield more effective HP benefits.

2. No going to 1k resists is not necessary. Frankly most endgame monks can get by with only 600-700+ resists. But in turn, they have higher LoH, higher base armor and higher DPS.

3. Upgrading base armor from gear pieces is a good path to take. boosting the base total armor will greatly benefit the returns of +armor boosts from skills, and you should see anywhere from 5%-10% mitigation gains if you add a few hundred here and there.

4. Not necessary. Attack Speeds above 2.00 all work great. In conjunction with LoH, 2x attacks a second minimum is enough, while 0.4 to 0.6 faster attack seems nice, it isnt as huge a difference as you'd think. Most would simply recommend 2.00 at minimum and you are fine.

Overall, i think you could benefit mainly from more DPS (15-16k is a bit low for where you are) and more armor. More LoH would be a great help to you too, but isnt as necessary. Dropping 100 or even 200 resists for more armor or DPS would be a very fair trade off.
Good Luck!

hmm double post to answer this guy too

Hmm not sure why you took a screenshot of your stats without the shield and not showing your Attack speed stat section...
But based on what you say your stats are, i am assuming it is after the shield is equipped... I would say your only lacking stat at that point is HP. No HP from shield, and you are only 26k ? That is quite low for Act3.
You SHOULD be around 40k+ unless you had some sort of insane LoH or Regen setup... which you dont :P.

your DPS/Res/Armor are at reasonable levels, but get your HP up enough to match... (EDIT: Omitted something i remembered incorrectly :P)
Even monks with shields and better stats struggle with the champ packs, but as long as you kite out of bad stuff often, maintain good positioning so you dont get trapped, and maintain constant hits on target you should be fine after boosting the stats mentioned.
Good Luck man!

This post was edited by Batou079 on Jun 15 2012 11:24am

I've been getting PMs asking me about my gear setup and my skill build. I'll post it here and try to lay out the skill progression I used to clear Inferno.

Here's my current gear -- the only pieces I've changed since killing Diablo are my pants (upgraded from 700k/pair to 1m/pair) and as a result, replacing the gems in my rings from Amethysts to Emeralds to make up for the dex loss (and the vit gain).

http://i.imgur.com/HLCdI.jpg

Here are my current stats (completely unbuffed -- I dismissed my Enchantress when taking this SS) -- not very different from when I killed Diablo, except I had 800 resists and ~200 less armor then, but slightly more vitality:

http://i.imgur.com/qT8JG.jpg
Not shown but important: 19% Move Speed

Here's the cost sheet for my pieces, in order from left to right, top to bottom:

Helm: Found
Amulet: 4.1m (won a last-minute auction on this -- worth noting that I did most of my A3 farm without this amulet)
Ring Left: Found
Ring Right: 777k
Belt: 1.25m
Chest: 500k
Shoulders: 550k
Gloves: 2.5m
Axe: 8000fg (my first D3 trade actually, when I hit the A2 wall several weeks ago)
Shield: 100k
Boots: 980k
Bracers: found
Legs: 1m (oops forgot to ss; here: http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=63152538 )

Ignoring the axe for the moment, that comes out to a total cost of 11.76m gold for my monk. 8000fg was trading at a ratio of 1350fg:1m at the time, so the axe was worth ~6m, bringing us to a total of roughly 18m.

Skill builds---

A1 (faceroll): was still using my Crippling Wave/Sweeping Wind/Dashing Strike/BoH/Serenity/Mantra of Healing build; passive: OwE, Transcendance, Chant of Resonance -- obviously would do it differently if I were to do it all over again

From here on out, my passives changed to: Seize the Initiative, Resolve, One With Everything -- and remain the same to date
A2: FoT+Thunderclap/Sweeping Wind (Bladestorm)/Blinding Flash (4s)/Breath of Heaven (+damage)/Serenity (Ascension)/Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)

A3 progression: Deadly Reach + Foresight / Sweeping Wind (Bladestorm) / Blinding Flash (4s) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)
A3 Siegebreaker farm: Deadly Reach + Foresight / Sweeping Wind (Firestorm) / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)
A3 Cydaea/Azmo farm (i.e. current): FoT+Thunderclap / Fire Ally / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Conviction (Overawe)

A4 progression (same as A3 Azmo farm): FoT+Thunderclap / Fire Ally / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Conviction (Overawe)
A4 Istaku (kite strat): Deadly Reach + Foresight / Sweeping Wind (Firestorm) / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Conviction (Submission)
A4 Rakanoth (tank strat): Deadly Reach + Keen Eye / Sweeping Wind (Bladestorm) / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)
A4 Izual (pillar hump strat): Deadly Reach + Keen Eye / Earth Ally / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Ascension) / Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)
A4 Diablo: FoT+Thunderclap / Earth Ally / Blinding Flash (+attack) / Breath of Heaven (+damage) / Serenity (Heal) / Mantra of Evasion (Hard Target)

------------

Final notes: This is by no means the best way to do it. It's a way of doing it - it's what I ended up doing because it's what worked for me.

If I had to do it all over again, I would probably have not spent the 8k fg on a 1.3 attack speed axe, but instead have invested in a possibly lower DPS but faster weapon, preferably one with a respectable amount of LoH on it (my mentality when buying the axe: "oh it has a socket, I can get up to 600 LoH on that thing" -- FOR 20 MILLION ... oops.). The lack of IAS on my weapon slowed down my gearing process significantly because of how expensive items with IAS were. Hitting 2.0 APS was a *huge* difference - so much that when I experimented with a 600LoH amulet that didn't have IAS on it, I wasn't able to do much (good thing I was able to sell it back for exactly the same amount I bought it for, which was 1m gold). So in terms of gearing progression, here's how mine went:
Mitigation (focused mostly on armor and hitting 30k HP) -> DPS (damage/dex) -> DPS (IAS) -> DPS (more dex) -> DPS (IAS) -> Mitigation (Resists and HP - upgrading pieces that had low resists on them, and hitting ~38-40k hp) -> LoH

The LoH amulet I bought makes a huge difference when soloing Diablo, and it speeds up A3 farming by a factor of 2-3. I die less often as a result because LoH also gives you more slack/margin for error and taking hits, but as I said before -- I tried getting LoH before hitting the baseline for all the other stuff and got wrecked.

My monk is by no means facerolll still - it's rather low on IAS and LoH to do that, but it's reasonably geared enough that I can do tower runs with relative ease. Certain elites/affixes still hurt a lot, but I'm finally able to not have to skip most of the packs I come across. That definitely wasn't the case when I was farming up for A4 though. Also worth nothing that if you have enough gear to reliably farm Cydaea and Azmodan (i.e. enough gear to survive/do well in the Tower and Core of Arreat), you're more or less geared enough to clear, if not farm, A4.

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 15 2012 12:51pm

Currently I have 2 stormshield, not sure which is more better? http://i45.tinypic.com/nq2052.png

Dex SS -> bit more armor (50-75), more damage (850 ish).
Fire resist SS -> 872 resist to 920

My LOH on the other hand is 800 ish, is this good enough for inferno?

To Vansonbee: 800 LoH should be more then sufficient. The dex SS is better. 850 resist is plenty.

what about building a tank monk?

50%block+the dodge (dunno what ammount 1200dex is)
im pretty new with monk, i just heard that monk are pretty much better tanks than barbs xD
and cuz im wan the best possible tank im going for monk since i herd monk are nice tanks!

could someone help me out with a tank monk build and maybe some inferno act3/4 goals to reach? (stats on the monk like hp?res?dps?block? etcetc)
yapp

Pretty standard to what most people use.
Breath of heaven with the dps rune
Blinding flash with the dps rune
Serenity with the duration rune
Dodge mantra with the armor rune
Thunderclap and Sweeping wind with cyclone

I think what made the difference was swapping out transendance with resolve. So the passives are: resolve, one with everything and improved initiative

if you read a few pages back, there are many posts of people asking this quest and others posting good stat numbers for each act.

Ouch 10% block. Gotta get on upgrading that!

I actually found a perfect 29% sacred last night running azmodan, with 160 dex and around 50 vit. I shat myself a little bit.

GIEB TO MEH PLOX?