by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

One of the most epic parts of being a nephalem in Sanctuary is that there are so many of us! On a daily basis, players are wracking their brains, stashes, and forums for new ideas on how to build a better demon slaying machine. The Hellforge is an iconic location steeped in lore and visited briefly in Diablo II – it is a place for getting dangerous deeds done. We wanted to bottle that same ethos and create a compendium of possible builds for players new and old to research, test, and iterate upon. We will scour the community’s offerings to bring you some of the more intriguing entries in celebration of innovation and inspiration for new creations.

Hello everyone! Welcome to this weeks Hellforge where we will take a look at The Full Support Monk, something that looks like a very unusual build. It is one that doesn’t focus on dealing damage via big crits like most other builds love, instead the FS Monk helps to keep the rest of the party alive so they can easily unleash their combined wrath upon the hordes of hell. That’s not the only thing this build is good for though, this type of Monk will excels at amplifing the damage your friends do.

The FS Monk also takes full advantage of Exploding Palm to make sure all the party needs to do is kill one monster, this will get a chain reaction going that is pretty capable of clearing large areas of the screen on a fraction of a second.

Many have complained about the Monk being underpowered, saying that it isn’t even worth playing a Monk in the higher difficulties. But this is not the time or place to delve deep on that particular subject, instead we’ll show you a way that you can undust your old Monk and put him/her to good use.

The Monk is IMO one of the strongest classes to bring to a 4-man party as its support capabilities are almost unmatched. The Monk has acess to crowd control, healing and shields, evasion and damage reduction, party-wide damage increases, among many other valuable tools. This makes a smart Monk a huge asset for just about any party.

There is no one true way of Playing a Full Support Monk (FS Monk), but here’s a version I’ve use before to great effect in Torment VI.

Skill Build:

Actives:

Crippling Wave – Breaking Wave: Increase your party’s damage and decrease the mobs attack speed at the same time.

Exploding Palm – The Flesh is Weak: 20% Increased Damage is great, but the explosion is even better.

Epiphany – Soothing Mist: What makes this build work, you will be putting up some serious party healing with this and you will also have enough spirit to put the palms you need.

Inner Sanctuary – Forbidden Palace: 30% Increased Damage for your party and 50% less damage recieved by your melee friends? Sign us up.

Mantra of Choice*: You likely want a Mantra to boost your party, it will depend on party composition and difficulty level.

Serenity/Cyclone Strike/Seven Sided Strike**: This final skill gives you a lot of options and flexibility, I highlighted 3 of my favorite choices but you can definately try Blinding Light, Breath of Heaven or any other Monk Skill you find interesting and fitting.

Passives:

Beacon of Ytar: Cooldown Reduction is the cornerstone of this build, this is a must have.

Resolve: 20% less damage recieved will make a big difference in the higher difficulties.

One with Everything: Super helpful passive to help you stay alive.

Chant of Resonance: For higher Torment levels you might want Mantra of Healing with Time of Need. This will help you keep the shields up for your entire party. Drop Unity on Softcore and either One With Everything or Resolve on Hardcore.

Other Options for Passives:

Mystic Rhythm: A very helpful skill if you want to try the solo variation of the build. The solo version of the build is better suited for lower Torment levels so you can drop something.

Unity: Extra Damage for your party members is never a bad thing.

Mantra Selection*:

Mantra of Conviction – Annihilation: Speed boost for the Party after each kill. A must have for T1 Rift Farming. Unity won’t work with this so change it up to something else.

Mantra of Retribution – Transgression: If you are farming low torment levels and someone already has Annihilation on, this is a good second choice granting the party a 10% IAS bonus.

Mantra of Healing – Time of Need: Increase everyone’s resistances, life regeneration and add a Shield on top of it. A must have for higher Torment levels and/or Hardcore mode.

Mantra of Evasion – Divine Protection: If someone already has Mantra of Healing duties you can add this or the Increased Armor Rune.

Your Final Skill **:

Serenity – Tranquility: Serenity will help you and your party stay alive when your Epiphany is on cooldown. It’s also good as a desperation button.

Cyclone Strike: If your party doesn’t have another means of getting the enemies together you might be forced into this, Soothing Breeze, Implosion and Eye of the Storm are all runes you have to considering depending on your actual needs.

Seven Sided Strike – Fulminating Onslaught: Your only way of doing somewhat reliable damage in solo situations. Paired with some +Holy% , +Skill% and Mystic Rhythm you can actually handle some things by yourself. It is not the strength of the build but if your buddies aren’t showing up and you don’t feel like dialing up a public game then you can atleast kill some stuff.

Gearing up your FS Monk:

Dual Wield, Two Hander or a Shield?

You’ll likely want to start Sword and Boarding for the extra survability, once you hit 60%+ CDR then you can switch to dual wielding fast weapons to take better advantage of your Epiphany heals. You won’t really need sockets on your weapons which is a super plus. You likely want Dex, CDR and Area Damage on both your Weapons, with Resource Cost Reduction and Spirit Regen becoming less desirable fourth options.

Stats:

Cooldown Reduction: CDR is everything for us, we want the biggest possible uptime for Epiphany. Ideally you should always be either on Epiphany or Serenity. That’s a steep goal of 70% Cooldown Reduction.

Area Damage: Area Damage might be the most efficient way of increasing your damage output with this build, it works wonders with both Exploding Palm and Seven Sided Strike. Never sleep on Area Damage when using Exploding Palm.

Health Globe Bonus: Another underrated stat that shines with this particular build. Stacking this up will greatly help your party’s survability by increasing your Heals and Shields.

Surivability Stats: Stay away from Vitality and +Life% in favor of All Resists and Armor. You will easily be healing 50k per second, you want to make that count. You’ll also come to realize that once you hit your CDR and Health Globe goals you’ll  barely need other forms of healing like Life per Hit and Life per Second, but they are a welcome addition while you try to gear up.

Other stats to consider: Attack Speed will help your Healing on Epiphany, once you hit your CDR Goal you could trade in your Life per Hit and Second for Attack Speed. Resource Cost Reduction and Passive Spirit Regen might be the most helpful of the stats that haven’t been mentioned yet, even then I wouldn’t actively search for them.

Beefing up Seven Sided Strike: Critical Chance and Damage, +Holy% and +Seven Sided Strike% are what you want to add up if you want to deal damage by yourself or in smaller parties. To be honest, this build works so much better when you rely on your party members damage instead.

Specific Items and Sets:

Ring of Royal Grandeur: Optimizing this build requires a lot of set bonuses, this item is a 100% must have.

Captain Crimson’s Trimmings: The 2 set is also a must, the 10% Resource cost reduction you would get out of a Ring of Royal Grandeur is a very welcome addition.

Born’s Command: You desperately want the 3 set here, a Ring of Royal Grandeur again would be super helpful to free up a piece for another set.

Aughild’s and Blackthorne’s: Those are two defensive sets that you should definately consider after you complete the first two sets on the list.

Kekegi’s Unbreakable Spirit: The only helmet with CDR on it, you want this for sure.

Gloves of Worship: You absolutely love all of the Shrine effects, especially the CDR one.

The Fist of Az’Turrasq: This is what you want to wield along with your Born’s Furious Wrath. The bonus to the Palm’s explosion is too good to pass on.

Sledge Fist, Wizardspike, The Butcher’s Sickle, Genzaniku: All options if you don’t have Az’Turrasq or if you are getting the Born’s set with Chest, Shoulders and Royal Grandeur.

Hallowed Breach and Hold:  You can dual wield this set if you don’t have anything better.

Skycutter and Hallowed Barricade: They have +Holy%, consider them for the Seven Sided Solo variant.

Final Thoughts:

The Full Support Monk might not deliver in tasty yellow numbers, but it is worth its weight in gold when you have the right partners. The FS Monk will not only greatly increase the damage your teammates do, but Exploding Palm will wreck havok on Elite packs. The ample healing provided by Soothing Mist will make sure your friends stay alive to pump up that DPS.

With all the increased Damage your party will do, you might even end up contributing more damage than a full on DPS Monk would. So loads of Damage and loads of Survavility packed on one single bald guy (or short haired girl)?  Whoever said Monk’s were super useless clearly never used a FS Monk.

Let us know if this version of the Monk worked for you. Also, if you have any builds that you would want to see highlighted in a future edition of Hellforge, shoot an email over to Westmarchworkshop@blizzpro.com.