Basically this build involves a basic use-at-all-times strategy of:
1. Make sure Mantra of Healing is activated
2. Rush into pack and use Serenity. Cop it for 3 seconds, then watch Reap What Is Sown damage everything around you*
3. Activate Sweeping Wind.
4. Use Cyclone strike to pull the rest in (and damage).
5. Use Crippling Wave to stun all mobs around you and generate spirit.
6. Lashing Tail Kick (with Vulture Claw Kick rune to increase damage and make the attack 360 degrees) knocks everything away.
7. Repeat Cyclone strike to drag them back in, and rinse and repeat (maybe use a few more CWs between if Spirit is low).
*Serenity here is used before Cyclone Strike and Sweeping Wind, so that Resolve doesn't come into effect prematurely (reducing enemy damage by 25%, thus reducing RWIS damage).
General notes:
- Chant of Resonance rune makes MoH last 10 minutes - reducing recast burden on spirit
- Mantra of Healing can be swapped out for Mantra of Conviction if health isn't a concern.
- Bladestorm rune for Sweeping Wind increases constant AoE damage.
- Eye of the storm rune on cyclone strike reduces spirit burden so that not as many CWs are required before another LTK
- Exhalted Soul to increase spirit, again to keep the chains moving/allows for repeated casting of Sweeping Wind/Serenity.
- Resolve in order to reduce damage of everything around you (as you damage basically everything)
So while you're constantly being healed and replenishing spirit at 2 per second, you are also dealing damage to everything within 20 yards, you can reflect damage back at mobs from the outset (a premium is on +vitality gear in order to increase max life, as RWIS is capped at 100% of your life), you then damage and drag everything in, hit and stun them all while generating spirit, then send them flying (still stunned) with LTK. All the while, every enemy on screen is basically doing 25% less damage to you as of RWIS (further to this, Time of need rune on MoH reduces damage again by 20%). Once things start getting harder, Serenity can be held off on as an 'escape' skill.
This is very similar to the build I had in mind (mostly the Cyclone Strike + Sweeping Wind + Mantra of Healing bit), except I'm not sure that you'll be able to generate enough Spirit for all those spenders with just Crippling Wave and 2 spirit/s. The combo you've described costs 10 + 30 + 30 + 30 + ... spirit, and that's excluding the cost to activate Sweeping Wind. That's over 11 Crippling Wave attacks. And the passive 2 spirit/s will take over 2 minutes to fill your Spirit bulb by itself.
I'm going to use Circular Breathing (3 spirit/s from Mantra of Healing), Inner Storm (3 spirit/s from Sweeping Wind) and the Guardian's Path passive (25% spirit gen boost when using a 1h weapon) together with Way of the Hundred Fists as my generator (plus each attack can crit separately for faster Sweeping Wind stacks).
Of course, in the end this is largely dependent on how much spirit/s we can find on gear.
Looking at that Serenity rune has led me to ponder how much damage 100% of your life really is, and how big we can expect that to be in proportion to your average DPS.
Let's say you have 10k life when reasonably well geared in level 60 (HardRock estimates this amount after looking at base Vitality at 60 plus expected amounts of Vitality from items). Let's further assume that you have 1,000 Dexterity - base is 187, but gems and items should provide quite a bit.
You're wielding a top end Diabo, which has base weapon DPS of 530.8. The videos have shown us mods that increase damage by like 110-220 poison damage on weapons, and we know +damage mods will appear on jewelry and other items as well. So let's assume we've got +250 average weapon damage from bonuses (probably conservative), times the 1.1 APS, gives us 805. Ignoring any attack speed bonuses, and also ignoring crit chance, crit amount, and any bonuses to skill damage...we then take that 805 and multiply it by 11 (aka, increasing it by 1000%, because we're assuming 1k Dex). So that gives us 8855 DPS, without taking all of those large increases into consideration, most notably how much % damage you're gaining from whatever skill you are using. Base levels of crit alone would push that DPS well above 11k.
Forgive me if I made any mistakes there, but since I used the combat formula in an uber simplistic way, I don't think I did. And that would mean that the very maximum damage that this rune could do - 10k (or whatever your current HP is, and if we get more stats on items than we expect, then those stats would push Dex even higher most likely), is less than your basic DPS without skill damage taken into consideration. I can't speculate on how useful the defensive side of Serenity will be, but the rune effect of doing damage equal to your max life seems extremely small, even if you stack HP like crazy. I suspect it is capped so low for PVP reasons.
Ive thought about going a simular route, however id take 7 sided strike with the fulminating onslaught rune, 7 hits, each hit does 111% damage as holy in a 7 yard radius around the target.... decimation.
I also toyed with the idea of the submission rune(12% weapon damage per second) for mantra of conviction and stacking it with the air ally rune(10% weapon damage per second to "nearby enimies) for mystic ally.
I like the build, though my only issue with it is what would happen if you got in trouble? You have no "ace up your sleeve". By using Serenity right away, you're immediately without it for 20 seconds. You've made a build that gives you health regen, but what happens in those rare battles where it isn't enough? This build is keyed off of being surrounded, which could be dangerous in hell/inferno. I guess what bothers me is the lack of mobility. Trying to surround yourself, no Dashing Strike, no teleporting skills like FoT-Thunderclap or 7SS-Sudden Assault to allow you to reposition yourself outside the enemies, no +dodge skills to help you survive in there. I think the build will be good... except when it isn't.
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