Is that all I really need to survive? Is my resis ok? And I saw some people using Zuni boots, why is that?

You should get used to the play style then you should be alright.

Zuni boots is cheap and good.

MONK: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ryan-11391/hero/25078025

I'm trying to play the described build in the original post (A tempest rush/wave of light 2h monk) and I followed gearing and strategy advice best I could with my budget. I've watched the videos and read this entire thread. My goal was to be able to demonic essence farm on MP5 with ease, I'm having difficulty farming on MP3.

I'm having trouble getting used to the play style. I've had the same problem with WD and Barb, I'm not used to not having a type of crowd control, I come from playing a trap DH and it's difficult to adjust to the melee combat in which I'm constantly being attacked from all sides, specifically Waller and Jailer affixes are giving me tremendous difficulty. I'm also having trouble moving out of things like desecration, poison ground, fire ground. Like I'll try and click away from it, but, it seems unresponsive, I always seem to finish an attack before moving out of the fire and I die. Obviously my low HP and resists and low armor are a big hindrance.

I've tried using overawe instead of mantra of healing and the loss of spirit regen really seemed to make it tougher to play. I find myself at about a good balance of spirit now. Maybe slightly more would be nice. I've played around with using serenity as well in place of Sweeping Wind and I've found that too tough to keep spirit up vs. elites. I've played around with an SOJ with wave of light crit, high elite dmg, and cold dmg -- and I've found it very tough to play. I lose a lot of survivability and on paper dps. I couldn't maintain farming MP3 with the SOJ on instead of my rare ring. I'm stumped.

For gearing progression I'm trying to craft Bracers and Shoulders, currently out of essences though. It seems too expensive to try and jump from 50AR to 70AR on most of my gear, 50-100M per piece to upgrade like that. But I'm always on the lookout for upgrades on AH to boost my Vitality and All Resist, trying to upgrade to a better temp amulet and better nats pieces could be good. I'm clueless on what to do with my other ring slot. And could someone explain to me the argument for Blackthornes vs. Innas?

Overall any tips for getting used to the play style? I feel this is my main hindrance. Including gems I sunk 120M into this monk and I'm not happy with results. Advice on playstyle is most welcome.

Thanks.

This post was edited by Billywilder on Apr 8 2013 07:32pm

Took some time to try to think about this. Might've made some mistakes since a lot of it is intuitive, and I'm pretty new to monks. Let me know if it helped, or if you have any questions.

About Playstyle:

I mained barb then DH then WD then monk. My monk atm has gear that I sniped for around 10-20m (not counting my radiant star emerald), and I currently farm MP5. Not really an expert but I'm at least roughly in the same position as you. I use serenity (duration rune) over sweeping wind.

First, let's compare and contrast DH and monk for the big ideas. From my experience with DH and monk in particular, I think you need to get used to the fact that DH's play very reactively compared to other classes. A DH has the skills to spam until they get into a bad situation and then reactively escape. On a monk that isn't tanky enough to stand in the fire and attacks slow to boot, you probably want to avoid these situations entirely. A lot of the time, you want to stop attacking just to reposition. Sometimes, you want to not drop a bell because the commitment to the attack will get you killed. On my DH, my usual repositions were for the purpose of getting more targets into the hitbox and gaining distance. For monks, it's usually to move my own hitbox to get monsters to move themselves into my hitbox, or to be just out of damage.

Remember to get a sense of the damage from packs. For me at least, packs can sometimes do almost no damage up to instagibbing me. FoT is usually safe while bells are usually unsafe. Usually you will gain a sense of how fast you can kill and how long you can take damage if you use FoT, all the while not being too commited. I sometimes die if I use bell instead. I get the sense that you use a LOT of bells since you play on MP3 with almost all the spirit generators and some spirit-related items to boot. Good use of FoT and bell together can sometimes even be faster. This should help with desecration, plagued, arcane, etc.

I personally thought wallers were more difficult on other classes. Remember that tempest rush gives the side benefit of being able to essentially go through mobs, allowing you to get out of the walled area. Bells also essentially ignore walls, giving you a huge benefit in some cases.

Also remember to sometimes stay (i.e. keep if you get it but not seek out) in a position where you have one of the elite pack on you but the other two off to the side. I used to reposition for this when I was playing a DH but not for monk. I saw huntersghost do this in his keeps video too. It trades some speed for a lot of safety. Also, air ally is extremely tanky and can be used to thin crowds by separating the mobs.

About Gear:

My general advice for gear is that you shouldn't just try to look for straight upgrades. Sometimes the best upgrades are just regearing. For example, getting resist where it wasn't before yields a lot more than improving resists, especially for the gold.

I strongly recommend SoJ for the other ring slot because of its ability to free up skill slots. Serenity would pretty much fix your problem with jailers.

Inna's set bonuses are pretty bad after the first one, and Blackthorne's gives more EHP (usually), especially for the price. Your inna's chest piece doesn't sseem to be a problem. This gear choice is more for lower end gear.

This post was edited by Nightmare34 on Apr 8 2013 10:11pm

Thanks for the insightful reply. I just did a few more runs and used my bells as kind of a ranged attack and I noticed a bit more survivability.

Very well put. Thanks for the write up man.

Finally we got someone who can actually write on jsp. Lol

Ok so I played around with it a little more and I'm getting the hang of how to use bells more properly. The advice about not spamming bells and sometimes just using FoT to fight elites was sort of eye opening. I'm able to do MP3 now without much trouble. Mp4 is still a significant challenge as I seem to die super fast when I stand in poison or fire, since a lot of the monsters in VOTA shoot that damn fire stuff, I'm still having trouble on my runs. I'll keep working at it and keep trying to craft ugrades for shoulders/bracers then move onto crafting gloves/ammys. Seems like its going to be a long road ha.

Another question though -- What type of follower should I be using? Right now I got a Scoundrel for the Crit Chance boost, and I've outfitted him with 10% total blind, some knockback, and high attack speed, also a cold soj (Never once seen him freeze something though, this not work on followers?). Should I throw a hell-fire on him instead of the SOJ? My follower was in my BT profile link a few posts up. Some advice on that would be great too.

I'm enjoying the monk, although, I guess I jumped the gun on being able to play like the videos in the original post ha ha! Going to be a long climb up from MP3/4. Need to keep practicing.

This post was edited by Billywilder on Apr 9 2013 10:12am

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ryan-11391/hero/25078025

Made a few changes to my monk. Saved up 50M and sold back some current gear and did some small upgrades. Gained 3k DPS and 47k EHP. The extra 500 armor and 11.5k health make a huge difference. I've been able to start doing MP7 Warriors Rest runs to farm essences and I can do mp5 VOTA runs with ease too now. I'm happy with this monk and I've had a lot of fun playing him so far. Dropping bells is fun.

Overall cost 170M including gems. (I was able to sell back earlier gear I bought when upgrading. So while total cost was 170M, actual gold spent was 360M.) I'm happy with that price for a very fun and FAST character who can farm essences efficiently. This character is basically an investment so I can craft better upgrades for all my characters. Over the past week I've grown to enjoy playing the monk class very much.

I still do have some questions about what follower to use...

This post was edited by Billywilder on Apr 11 2013 12:47pm

Scoudrel with cc effects are great

or enchant with maximus

How do you build the scoundrel? Skills/gear? I thought cold SoJ didn't work that well.