Penny for your thoughts??

[Infested Lester]

Hey Everyone,

So I've played all 5 classes to around level 40-50ish, but my monk has been my favourite (yes, I'm Canadian) so I just got him up to level 60 last night. I've read through several guides and searched the forum but I'm still left with some questions. I tend to ramble sometimes, so please bear with me... any help/insight would be appreciated.

1.) Most of the builds that I've checked out focus around FoT, some with Wothf etc... and generally speaking the majority have only one spirit generator in them. Passives are usually focused around OwE, Trans, Seize the Init etc... has anybody tested or played with using 2 generators, ie FoT, and Deadly Reach with Foresight combined with the Combination strike passive at high levels? I played around with it and had good success throughout nightmare and hell, but have hit a wall in A1 inferno. That being said I think it has more to do with my gear than anything. Just to me, having 2 generators on R/L click, and holding both so they each rotate would be 8%*2 = 16% + 18% (foresight) = +34% dps, on top of the fact that the two generators gives you extra spirit to dump into spamming ur mantra of choice and other skills? Is it just not worth the active and passive skill slot for the bonus?

2.) I breezed through norm, night, and hell but expected to and HAVE hit abit of a wall in A1 Inferno. I can party it no problem but have issues soloing which unless I'm playing with friends I prefer because it seems that I always end up in games with people with **** chars and it takes me longer to kill things while they dont contribute much... After reading all the guides and posts that I have on the forum, I understand that my gear is the issue I'm having. Problem is I don't have much gold to upgrade and am opposed to spending real money on a game other then the purchase price. Is my best bet to stay in A1 Inferno and party to get better gear to sell on AH, and more gold etc., or should I skip back to A3/A4 hell?

Thanks for your time, and sorry for rambling so much.

[Infested Lester]

Forget question #2... Inferno is definetely the way to earn the cash. I just upgraded items after a couple hours of playing, and now my monk is destroying A1 in 4 player games by myself. Still curious about the first question tho... I'll post my build tomorrow but I'm having good success now that I've upgraded abit.

Thanks again...

[Ohlmann]

1.) Most of the builds that I've checked out focus around FoT, some with Wothf etc... and generally speaking the majority have only one spirit generator in them. Passives are usually focused around OwE, Trans, Seize the Init etc... has anybody tested or played with using 2 generators, ie FoT, and Deadly Reach with Foresight combined with the Combination strike passive at high levels?

First, WotHF and FoT are more flavor of the month spirit generator than that superior. There is a lot of spirit generator worth it For Combination strike, some people use them to great effect. The main problem is that you usually don't have space for that much spirit generator. You already need at least 1 mantra, 2 defensives abilities (or 3 !), and Dashing strike in my opinion ; so the second spirit generator concur with very strong option like wall of steel, scorpion sting, earth ally, all for 8% dmg and a smallish defensive gain. And it take a passive slot, when Resolve, Heart of Itar, and Guardian path can also be mighty useful. Note that Combination strike work even with 1 spirit generator.

[Hwaygo]

1) I have tried out a build suggested on this forum that used 2 spirit gen. The build was designed for playing inferno with terrible gear. It used Deadly reach with the keen eye rune and crippling wave with the concussion rune.
The idea with the build was to reduce enemy damage and speed while having a long range attack that also increased your armor. This makes it much easier to kite and damage enemies while taking less damage.

It worked quite well. However its really up to you weather you think having 2 generators is worth the extra skill slot, where you could be using something like blind or sweeping wind.

2) I wouldn't bother with public games (although I've never bothered with them so I might not have the most un-biased opinion).

Keep grinding at act1 and you will find some upgrades and make gold to buy upgrades if you dont find them. You can buy some pretty decent gear on the AH relatively cheaply these days. You just need to know what to look for.

There are a few stats that people undervalue on the AH.

Try looking for +%health instead of Vit.
if you have 20k HP +5% health is worth 1000HP which is the same as 100 vit.

Also look for items with +armor. 200 armor gives you the same defensive boost as 20 resist all. However people tend to ignore the armor values on items.

Kripp did a really good video on finding cheap practical gear on the AH. It was aimed towards Barbs, so im planning to do one with some more practical advice for monks. However his tips can be transferred to a monk

[Buen]

1)

Try looking for +%health instead of Vit.
if you have 20k HP +5% health is worth 1000HP which is the same as 100 vit.

Not true, at level 60, 1 vit is 35hp.

Which means that 1%life is around 5-20 vit depending on your life

[Infested Lester]

Okay... back again...

So I've been dicking around playing in A1 Inferno over the weekend and I've just cleared it (I have a daughter and a girlfriend so I don't get to play as much as the nerd in my heart would like to).... anyways...

So first and foremost, this is the build I've been using:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...gXk!YgU!YZcaba

So with that build, I've basically rolled over everything in A1 Inferno. Playing through, I just died a couple of times to the ultra hard elite mobs. With that being said, again, other then the one person who said they had played a 2 generator build, is there anybody else who could share experience? Regardless, what do u guys think of the build I'm using? Any suggestions?

Also... as a side note... Exploding Palm. I used this skill through norm-hell. I dropped it for serentity in A4 hell (yes, I never used serenity prior to this).... has anybody played around with this skill in inferno? Anywhere past A1?? Again, I'm not the number crunching type... but to me it takes a boatload of attacks to kill monsters, let alone elites etc... isn't 30% of their TOTAL health a big damage hit? I dropped it in late hell prior to inferno, but before that it seemed to be a great AOE attack that I could spam for spirit considering I'm using a trans-type build. Thoughts?

Okie dokie... thanks in advance.

[Infested Lester]

Btw, I guess I should mention that I have 40% crit chance and 184% crit dmg with the gear I'm using. As mentioned in the first post... this is my first char to hit Inferno so I defeintely have **** gear. I'm honestly really excited to see what this monk can do once I earn enough gold to gear him properly.

I use WothF first in an engagement to build the IAS and Move speed quick, then FoT with quickening to build spirit asap so I can spam MoC for the 48% dmg and the obvious heal with trans passive (and I also have about 90 life per spirit spent. My FoT, WoThF, and SW all get casted crazy with 40% crit chance... again, I know I'm broke but could use suggestions in general, and specifically those suggsetions that can be utilized given the circumstances I've already mentioned (first char to hit inferno... BROKE).

[Mr Man]

You actually seem to have a pretty good build, you do know that sweeping wind at the moment counts as a combo generator for the purpose of combo strike so you should be able to get the 3 stacks. I would say all you would need to progress is better gear, whats your dps unbuffed? Is that LpSS including trancendence? If not then you seem to have quite a bit of healing capability and all i would work on is some more res and armor. Otherwise some more LpSS or life on hit. Your crit chance will be working wonders with cyclone and quickening.

edit: Also if you have the healing I would probably change your serenity to 4 secs rather than the 3+heal, makes dealing with elites you have to kite a lot better as you add 25% to the time you can output pure dps unrestricted.

[Infested Lester]

Thanks for your response Mr. Man...

No, I wasn't aware that sweeping wind counted towards the combo strike passive so thats actually really interesting to hear. My dps unbuffed at the time of that post was 9.9k. However, I just upgraded and am actually a little bit unsure of whether to keep the upgrade or switch back to what I was wearing when I posted this.

The LpSS was WITHOUT trans calculated. However, that is part of the dilemma I'm facing. At the time of posting my weapon was 662 dps fist with 97% crit dmg, 58.9 LpSS and a little dexterity. I've now found an upgrade at shoulder which is irrelevant to the quesiton but gives +500dps. On top of that I came across another first with 853 dps, with 60 dex and some other mods, but it only has 45% crit dmg due to sock and has NO LpSS... with that weapon it puts me up to 13k dps pre-buff.

I'm going to be farming A1 for quite a while before moving on up to A2, but should i stick with the high LpSS (59 seems ALOT to lose for 2k dmg)?? In the higher realms of inferno, is it better to have more survivability and less dps? I mean if I'm alive longer I'll ultimately be able to do more damage then the 2k boost from new weap, right?

[Hartside]

I dont know the answer lester but im actually crying with laughter about the nerd in your heart quote im married with a son im with you bro pmsl