The High-end Monk Discussion - Topic

Look for items with same or similar +stats but with 55-60 physical resistance on instead. Aim to pay just a lil' bit more than what you'll sell your old piece for and it can be almost unnoticable cheap. It's boring(-ish) and will take a week or two, but it's so so much worth it in the long run. You currently have 30-40 on most pieces, and that adds up to alot of resistance. Had you 60 on everything you'd need +phys on fewer pieces for more preferable stats - like not having it at all on rings (boots as well).

Aim for resistance - Hat, Belt, Chest, Shoulders, Bracers and Gloves(!). Put time and effort into this, be patient and buy only good resist items. Spend alot of time in front of the AH, and remember bids is your best friend!

You do not want resist on amulet and gloves on any class!. Amulet + Gloves are powerful, they contribute to around ~1/5th of our total dps. The trade-off buying a piece with less dps to gain all resistance is many thousands of dps missed out on, if you wanna pay the same amount of gold per item that is.

Otherwise expect to add hundreds of millions, very likely bills.

However the glove slot are easy enough to utilize for us monks since we have OWE, and for rarely any added cost either, while being pretty common with single resist. For all resist monks, it's a bonus getting resist on gloves with high damage. I think 99% monks can forget an amulet with trifi/quadri/dex/vita + all resist whether they pay in DE's or billions, the odds of rolling it all while rolling high enough to keep it is bad odds.

A 150 dex / 90 vita / 60 physical chest don't (iirc) cost much and it's only 35-40 vita, an amount you easily can add up to - or surpass, when you cycle through your gear for new items.
Since you have 2 piece with legs + hat, you can (and should tbh) craft BoA chests. They can score ultra sick stats.

Hopefuly you'll find your gosu +resi items as soon as possible. You want 500+ resist at least, so when you can, lose the natalya ring for one with critical chance, 4.5%+ or higher.

Already covered some about gloves but worth to mention. I bet your gloves + nata ring are strong +dps benefactors, but don't be afraid losing some of that CD%, with that i mean a reasonable amount of dps loss, to gain critical chance %. I'm absolutely certain that you will not notice any speed difference even if you lose -10-15k "inventory" dps if you trade it for 5-8% crit chance. Remember that a critical strike hit many hundred percent harder, it should even out. Not to forget the increased Sweeping Wind/Cyclone spawn rate. And if you ever wanna go FoT/Quickening over Thunderclap it'll make a huge difference.

Your HP/Armor can be worked on just a few percents increase would be splendid. I'm more picky about survival than majoirty, d2 style, 48k/4.6k armor almost require a barbarian for mp10. It seems i'm typing out every thought into words right now, guess i got in the mode. You don't need me to tell you this, sorry and let's move on!
Oh yeah, i forgot why i even brought it up, it wasn't to state the obvious (yay!), it was to point out that the "close to max" philosophy with any resistance also applies to armor, 30-50 per piece suddenly matters when it adds up to 300 armor.

Summarized ideals:

Cover your +resistances (all resi and physical) needs with 6 pieces of gear

Acquire at least 8% extra crit chance
Priorities. Importance is ranked on what i'd personally do and is neither right or wrong. -

Before, and while, doing anything, cycle through gear to upgrade resistance is a constant process and i'd prioritize AH browsing at least every 5-10 minutes until it's covered (less in-game - more AH play too), since going from that steady base makes all other choices simpler, faster and maybe even cheaper.

"0)". Farm Demonic Essences from elites in Act 2 for paragon rather than farming trash. With no +% exp items, it's still really fast and you need alot of Essences.

1). The nataly ring needs 4.5%+ cc + a socket or something along the lines, naow!
2). Craft bracers. There's an opportunity for +200 extra dex within reach here, it's too much to ignore even if you never roll the extra +phys resi. Craft until you have something godly, which in my experience with bracers doesn't take many crafts at all.
3). Without the possible extra physical resist from changing the two above pieces, i'm not sure on where resist currently is. I am though under the impression that shoulders are semi-easy similar to bracers to craft a dps/ehp upgrade. If you can stand to go as low as 4.3k armor (plus a possible resi loss).
4). Let's say resist was alright and shoulder it is. If the dex/vitality/resist on them are good i'd check the loss vs gain and decide in favor of the highest heroscore provider. (Naturally ofc imho tbh).
5). Higher vitality pants for profit via bid, activity and some luck, this point is entangled with the next -
6). At some point here it's not impossible your EHP have moved tops 50k gain or loss. The pants should make up for, or surpass it. If resistance is good then it's time to start bidding on natalya boots with vitality i think.

While you're browsing items keep a eye out for swords with about similar stats on bid. I've had some wicked luck with bidding rare weaps, getting same stats as your axe (one even had 155 dex, woot) for some 55-89m each. If not to use can always resell for profits.

It's 3.40 AM and i blame the hour for anything wrong, false, forgotten and overlooked. Edit, it's 11.06 am and i guess wasn't tired after all. Added alot of things i could've spoken in smaller size, but i figure i'ma post it in the spec thread as well so i went all out.

Tiny thing, maybe a tip holding value if we're so lucky, try Dashing Strike/Quicksilver rune instead of Serenity with FoT/Thunderclap to Quickening rune. It's not a flat immunity, but Dashing Strike is just as good as Serenity for staying alive, only it comes with utility, damage dealing and a great deal of fun. Any crap on the ground, freeze, jailer, arcane triple slap of doom inc? No such thing with Dashing Strike, and it comes without a cooldown. The mouse pointers range is Dashing Strike's range limit. Aye, the whole screen. You can scout caves and dungeons faster than even barbs if there's monsters along the way to Dash to and past.

DStrike can also be used to short dash around 10 yards per dash, similar to thunderclap only DS need nothing targeted to dash those 10. I find it especially handy moving from plague/frozen ground with since it's never blocked and is faster than run speed.

Using the Quickening, or "Spirit Overload" rune instead of Thunderclap it's possible to keep overawe on 48% all the time, i really do mean 100% uptime, and still spam Cyclone Strike around 2-4 times per ~5 seconds depending on crit rng. Cyclone Strike with the "Soothing Breeze" rune and the Guiding Light passive is what you use unless there's another monk using the same exact spec. The 24 yards healing range without any cooldown is unprecedented to keeping Guiding Light's 20% dps boost up. Gonna be so bold and say it requires no effort keeping 4 party members buffed with Guiding Light for 100% of the time you spend in combat, from game start til its end.

CS doesn't need to deal damage to heal and grant the buff, if any reader was curious.

That DH/Archon who keeps his distance from mobs + sadly also melee? Maybe that friend i'm sure everyone have at least one of - who can never learn to move with the group, even with rules like 'if we can move up, we move up! always move clockwise no matter where we are or start, he always manage to split from the other 3 by running south. He'll never learn. Maybe he's a rebel. Idk. Anyways just 2 things impossible for BoH to handle, now requiring 3 seconds of fun rapid movements. Dashing Strike. :wub:

Dashing strike also roots the mob it hits for 1.5 seconds, extra nice if there's a EF user in the party, he can use EF and spam Bells with Quickening for all i care, with the added ridic damage with him just having quickening in a bell spec. Whites, elites, everything just bend over so fast it's hard to even notice the knockbacked few who escaped my Cyclone Strike air raid bombings! Almost no monster runs fast enough to escape out of range before you've got spirit to cast it again - that's true solo and any size party, if mobs take 20 or 3 sec, they're not getting away - pmuch all rely on ones speed plus crit chance.

There's also no more chasing after goblins, no more run path's blocked by mobs, no more anything! It is straight up amazing the survivability this spec provides. The huge leech from so many cyclone strikes with overawe always on 3 sec of hurt extra, on top of a CStrike that already leech incredible good, plus a barbs EHP shout means i pretty much don't move for anything other the ever joyful crap on the ground named "Field's Tree's ground poison" and "Desecrate on 3 stacks", best served insta jumping to 3 while you stand in some other crap on the ground like plague/molten, could've been arcane too now that i think of it. 1-2 Elementals + Desecrate, still.. Possibly instant death, still. But if there are enough mobs (a few, like 7+, maybe ~15?) around for CS and Sweeping Wind to work their magic on the Tree poison becomes relatively harmless. 3 stacks Desecrate hurts more, but i suspect having some elites beating me up adds alot to the incoming damage total, hehe.

Compared with the Speed Palm build the survivability is like night and day, i've tried everything, it's the Cyclone Strike that's god mode for surv. I can't barely play the palm build nowdays, it's just.... Less.. In every way except for killing elites, where Thunderclap/Weak flesh's single target dps stomps the teeth out of CS/DS spec. Everyone becomes a DJ with this spec, DJnevermove.

CS every other sec, so everything comes to me where i play a meta-game of "can i do it or should i move?". Elites who are immune to Cyclone Strikes pull gets to become permanently rooted with DS spam. Nothing (ideally) moves. :thumbsup:

If it wasn't obvious to everyone, this is purely a support spec for party playing with 2-4 players. The AoE from all CS dropping is quite the decent, CS use MH damage only and i use a measly 916 top dmg weapon (dagger), so it should be even better for many most others. I'm on 208k dps solo and 330k buffed up.

Here's the best support monk spec in the game, and one of the most fun specs of any other! (subjectively of course, but i'm not wrong ;P). I've considered all other skills as well as runes, what i link here is was i firmly belive is the best setup

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aSfkUd!Xgf!YccaZb

OWE monks replace Combo Strike with OWE keeping Guiding Light for apparently not obvious reasons. I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence explaining this, i've seen (real) people do it the other way around. It's 4% personal dps than combo strike using 2x for 16% damage + 80% total dps to the whole party.Blazing Fists is to be used even without combo strike btw, you want the dps but mostly the attack speed.

I think 2 monks supplement each other just perfect with one playing Bells/Quickening/Transgression/Exalted Soul and one being Quickening/Cyclone Strike/Overawe/Guiding Light. I'm unfamiliar with bells in general and won't speculate further on whether BoH/Infused or 40 spirit bells is most optimal. Things die in seconds, but i guess things can never die too fast.. I any case bell spec is my best team mate. It's the other spells prefered in the different bell specs i haven't looked into, not once, not for party specs.

My ideal party would likely be this same combo (2 monk, barb, WD) regardless of anyone's spec, but the ias buffs vs elites is beyond good for us Quickening/heavy spirit droppers. One barb, someone really fast who're good at bringinging a few screens worth of monsters close together. Me, support spec with CS. Bellmonk dropping carnage and last but definitely not least, one Mr. WD with firebats/totem of red ground... 20% attack speed is it? Come and think of it as i recall that speed buff for most elites the bell monk might as well run max damage over empowerered wave, having ~3.65 APS with 52%CC or higher using Quickening rune sounds straight up naughty.

I will look into all this party some more, played this party a few runs and thing, elites too, just died like we were on mp7. I think all 4 of us were around dps normal for someone around ~15k heroscore on dprogress.

Damn i can type, on occasion. I mentioned the spec but i guess adding dashing strike into a somewhat common and known combination of skills didn't look very interesting. I've never had more fun than i've had since i changed to this spec and solo is never more, because i'm not changing. Publics' been great though, meeting many new friends every day, almost every run. It's the 70% thanks to the spec btw. People think i can play but honestly i'm totally carried by CS/DS..

Jk, but goddamn go try it out some runs, chill, kill, win like the champion you now are then go bang some 10's - Life of a CS/DS monk.