Monks

[skitzor]

DH and barbs have their own threads, thought I would start one for the monks.

I have really been enjoying playing monk as I like the play style. being in the thick of everything, doing big heals and big recoveries. damage is typically lacking, but it doesn't bother me that much. that's what the other players are for.

am up to inferno act 3 and have hit a wall as they put out so much damage. act 1 was pretty breezy. I did act 2 with a barb friend that has decent gear and went okay through most of that. had to skip a few elite mobs, but went well otherwise. smashed through kulle and belial first try which I'm proud of.

I have used http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... ZYU!aaYYYc for most of inferno.

my item build is based around a mix of most of the important things; IAS, dex, vit, LoH and resistances. I have about 500 LoH (but saving up for a better weapon with more LoH), and IAS on gloves and rings. I can post details and items if anyone's interested.

the main idea of the item and skill build is to have high mitigation (damage reduction) and high IAS. the IAS helps with healing, both from LoH and spirit regeneration that turns into heals when using skills. the high mitigation increases my effective HP such that any heals are worth much more. conviction and cyclone are my spirit sinks.

cyclone is a bit non-standard in inferno, but I like it as I prefer playing with other people, and it really helps with tanking as it takes the heat off the damage dealers. it also interrupts channeling abilities and is a good spirit sink. I'm considering swapping it out for something else to see if it helps with act 3, but I don't know what. anyone having success with act 3 as a monk?

conviction is also another skilled aimed at helping my team mates. with the overawe rune and enough spirit generation, the monsters are taking 50% extra damage, which is massive.

through normal, nm and hell I was able to use a more offensive style, with the main differences being crippling wave instead of FoT and lashing tail kick as a spirit sink and pretty awesome stun. in these stages monk is really fun to play.

[tranquil]

My Monk is still in Hell Act 3 at the moment, using this for now: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... XYU!ZcbYca has a good mix of offense and defense. I've gone solo so far though, might need to gear up & party up for Inferno. Still having fun with the Monk anyway, good to see you've gotten to act 3 Inferno at least, some people on the Diablo forums make it sound impossible.

[revengous]

WIZARD ALSO HAS A THREAD.

monks are really good in team play, I like that you use cyclone attack, today I was playing some hell belial, and a monk and I worked flawlessly up to the boss while the other 2 players stayed in town. He would use cyclone and pull everyone while I unleashed 4 cyclones for mass damage.

how have all you monks found holy damage? as a wizard, arcane dmg seems to crit more, and do more dmg, is that the same with holy?

[skitzor]

He would use cyclone and pull everyone while I unleashed 4 cyclones for mass damage.

yeah that's awesome about cyclone. if you get to a point where you can tank (and it should be easier with the removal of damage scaling in MP), you can let the damage dealers unleash. typically they would be kiting all around the place, probably only attacking a small % of the time. not only does cyclone keep them attacking majority of the time, it keeps them in a small area so AOE spells can do their damage.

how have all you monks found holy damage? as a wizard, arcane dmg seems to crit more, and do more dmg, is that the same with holy?

AFAIK only cold has anything different, all the others are just cosmetic. I think in beta there were some differences (holy healed I think), but apparently they removed them. I believe I remember reading a response by one of blizzards employees (maybe in recent reddit AMAA) that they removed the unique effects from the types of damage because during testing they found everyone just flocked to the highest DPS and ignored the types.

[phewcha]

I am fairly new to these styles of games. My DPS is sitting around 10k, HP around 32k, all resistence at about 200 I think, cant remember of the top the other stats, but I for the life of me cant get anywhere sole in act 2 inferno. I have around 600k gold and cant seem to better my gear either.

I have been using this atm http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... ZYU!ZbZcca and I am getting nowhere.

in the most humble I am clueless way, tips?

[RaTTuS007]

farm farm farm, my bro aimed for monk type gear that had a specific resistance for the one with everything talent(he chose lightning) + res all, you wont get anywhere in act 2 with only 200 resistance

[Auld]

There is a huge increase in damage between ACT1 and 2 (300% iirc) in Inferno. You also have the leaping Lacuni which are immune in the air and those bloody wasps, which all spell pain for melee.

I am using increased attack speed on gloves, both weapons and my amulet along with life on hit (at about 450). Resists all over 200 with OWE, 13k DPS and 30khp. Its okish but I definitely could do with more resist gear and more LoH. Attacks per second is up around 2.35, so about 1000hp/second for punching stuff.

Using Mantra of conviction with holy dmg and the passive that reduces incoming dmg by 25% if you are damaging them so everything had 25% dmg reduction straight away.

Would get screenies but I'm at work.

At this stage it is much easier in ACT2 if I attempt to tank **** while some ranged guys go full glass canon, remember this is much more fun MP.

[skitzor]

in the most humble I am clueless way, tips?

few things to do with skills.

change the rune on serenity. either the heal or extended time.
I'm not sure about the sweeping wind rune. most of the time i see inner storm or blade storm. but if the range works with deadly reach then fair enough.

one thing you could try is changing to heal with time of need for the resistance boost.

your passives are good.

the main thing is definitely the gear. you should be aiming for 600res, 25-30khp and 10k DPS.

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

in the most humble I am clueless way, tips?

It's a bit tricky to recommend items at this stage, because the changes coming in patch 1.03 later this month (making Act 2 easier, nerfing increased attack speed items, etc) things will be very different. However I can offer what I used to beat Act 2 Inferno.

WARNING: WORDS

Your skill build is almost the same as mine, but differs in a few key areas. My build is built around kiting packs and using Deadly Reach to bring them down without having to stand amongst 4 champion mobs. A vital part of that kiting build is Lashing Tail Kick with the Hand of Ytar rune (slow by 80%). Kick, run backwards and shift+punch stuff. Repeat until dead. Use the geometry of the zone, mob summoned walls, pretty much anything you can find to keep the mobs away from you while you slowly DPS them down.

Rather than the dodge mantra+armour rune, I use the healing mantra with +20% resistances rune. I guess they're fairly similar, but I prefer the consistent mitigation of extra resistances rather than the surprise damage spikes that can come from missing a dodge at an inopportune time. It's far easier to deal with your health going down at a consistent speed than dodging 5 attacks in a row, but then suddenly losing half your health to a big hit and having to panic-mash the keyboard.

Earth Ally is a no brainer. 10% health is sweet, and the dude can put out some decent damage from time to time. Not to mention he'll tank for you and give you high fives when you beat packs of bad **** dudes.

I use Breath of Heaven and Serenity too, just with different runes.

The extra healing rune for BoH is a bit of a waste IMO - a mere 2k extra health when you'll often have 30k-40k max health isn't going to make much of a difference. However, dealing an extra 15% damage for 45 seconds is a huge bonus.

Serenity runes are kind of a personal choice thing. I could see how an extra second of invulnerability is pretty good, but personally I prefer having another big 7k heal. Since Serenity is a panic button anyway, coming out of the invulnerability with extra health is usually a good thing.

For Passives I use Trancendence, One With Everything and Seize the Initiative. I'd prefer to have an extra 1k of armour from Seize the Initiative, because a lot of stuff in Act 2 is going to be hitting you before you get a chance to hit them and get the 25% less damage from Resolve. Again, it's all about consistency.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you not only have to think about your raw stats from items and skills, but how you play in Act 2. There's a whole bunch of mobs or rare/elite packs that simply you cannot take on the chin - you have to kite them or you will die. A lot. You might even have to avoid them entirely (lead them to a corner of the map, die, then respawn and don't re-engage them).

However if you manage your spirit/healing well, keep mobs slowed and DPS them down slowly, Act 2 is entirely beatable in it's current state.

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

Right, now for items.

Items are harder because you pretty much have to rely on the auction house by:

- Farming forever to vendor/salvage/auction junk to get gold
- Getting lucky with a decent drop that you can sell for a few million
- Using real money to buy imaginary items in a video game

None of which are great plans.

That aside, you want to aim for a good mix of armour, health, resistances and damage. I think around 30-40k health, 400+ resistances and 15-20k damage is a good estimate for Act 2.

Some tricks I found along the way were:

- If playing solo, use the Enchantress follower to get her 15% Armour buff. It persists even if she's out of action, so it's a nice armour boost. Her other spells aren't bad too (I recommend Charm, the AoE damage spell and +3% attack speed)

- Attack speed right now is overpowered as hell. +70 Dex +15% attack speed rings are only 20k on the auction house. If you can get your attack speed up to around 2.5, you'll be doing crazy amounts of damage. If you have life-on-hit on your weapon, you'll be healing at a good pace too.

- Dual wield vs 1-hand+shield comes down to a couple of things - stats on the items, and whether you have two sweet 1 handers or just 1 good weapon and a junky weapon you found lying around. If there's a gap between the DPS on the weapons (say 200+ dps), don't bother dual wielding and grab a shield instead. Unless your second weapon has some mental stats on it, like +100 Dex and 500+ life on hit, you'll find your DPS might actually go up from wearing a nice shield.

- On the topic of shields, sure having a shield to block stuff is nice - but look at what it actually does. Usually 10-20% chance of blocking for 1k-3k damage. Not exactly a huge amount. It's more about whether the shield is giving you an extra 1k armour, +100 resists and +100 stats. Then it might be worth using, but the blocking thing is just a nice bonus.

- Don't do what I did and pick Fire resist as the one you want to stack for One with Everything. Pick something less-popular like cold resist or poison. Fire and physical resist gear seem to be more expensive in general.

- Certain item slots have bonuses that you can't get in other slots (short of some Legendary or Set items). For example; boots can have some rad movement speed bonuses, rings/amulet/gloves can have +attack speed, socketing helms with a nice amethyst for a huge +%Life bonus. Unfortunately, this is pretty common knowledge so these items will usually fetch a premium price on the AH.

Okay, I've probably written enough for now. Happy to answer specific questions if there are any.

[skitzor]

That aside, you want to aim for a good mix of armour, health, resistances and damage. I think around 30-40k health, 400+ resistances and 15-20k damage is a good estimate for Act 2.

I would probably suggest more resistances, even if that impacts on DPS. another thing to remember is to try and keep armour at a decent level. from what I understand, damage reduce from armour effects all incoming damage, and then the individual resistances get applied from the left over damage (in some way).

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

Woops, I forgot to include armour. I think mine was around 5k during Act 2, although that probably includes the Enchantress buff.

[revengous]

would this reflect into other classes?

my sorcs at 28k dps, with 6k armour, only just finished act 1 inferno

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

I haven't played the DPS classes much, other than a Witch Doctor up to Act 3 Hell, so I can't really comment.

However from what I've heard from mates who play Demonhunters and Wizards, the current state of Inferno lends the DPS classes towards building for pure damage and hoping you can kill everything before it touches you (normally referred to as a Glass Cannon build). In that sense, your HP/resistances/armour aren't as important as aiming for pure DPS and using Diamond Armour, Teleport and the various Wizard abilities that let you avoid damage.

Of course, whether the whole Glass Cannon thing will be as effective after patch 1.03 when repair costs for level 60s go up (rumoured to be as much as 600% of the current repair costs) remains to be seen.

[revengous]

I've noticed that I dont die, and Im running a glass cannon. I've heard act 2 is a pain, so ive just been running butcher

I think Ill try and double my dps before I move into act 2, whats the best way to increase it? more primary stat?