by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Hello, everyone! My Name is Dannie “Introduction” Ray, and I’ll be here every Saturday explaining all things theorycrafting in an effort to allow everyone to better understand the finer aspects of Diablo 3. Lets hope you haven’t forgotten all the math you learned in school because we will finally have a chance to put it to good use.

Like Neinball put it on Thursday, Vaeus’ “Demon Queller” Monk is more about flavor that it is about effectiveness. But this doesn’t mean that his holy warrior is useless for serious play, with just a few adjustments we can completely revitalize this build and give it a stronger competitive edge. So lets take an in-depth look at the “Demon Queller” so we can see what are its strengths and weaknesses.

Why is this build interesting?

Besides the heavy lore and flavor component, this build does quite a few things right. First of all, it has a matching element. All of its main damage skills do Fire Damage, which makes the build easy to boost. This build also highlights the Monk’s strength as a trash cleaning master with godlike AoE capabilities. Knowing that will be vital as we try to fine tune our deadly warrior.

Where is this build strong?

The “Demon Queller” excels at dealing damage in an area, it has 360 degree coverage so enemies will have a hard time escaping his torrents of fire. This fire build should have no problem absolutely decimating trash packs.

Where is this build weak?

Almost all of our skills have extended range. As you might realize, skills that have large areas of effect tend to have either higher costs or less damage than their single target counterparts. The “Demon Queller” suffers for this, presenting problems on longer fights;  champion packs, elites, and bosses can all prove problematic for us with this setup.

Quick Skill Analysis

Crippling Wave – Mangle: This is a strong choice, it deals a decent amount of base damage and it has nice range. Since this is the skill that you will mostly be using, it’s fire element is vital to make sure that even our most basic of hits put the hurting on our opponents.

Wave of Light – Explosive Light: Fire based builds have two main options for a spender, Wave of Light and Lashing Tail Kick. Both options are very strong on their own right, but they are vastly different from each other. Lashing Tail Kick offers more spirit efficiency, while Explosive Light offers a little more damage per hit and a much bigger range.

Cyclone Strike –  Sunburst: The build states that his will help repositioning your enemies so you can make the most out of your area abilities, but IMO here’s where the overkill starts. CS has a 24 yard range, which is smaller than Wave of Light. WoL is our main source of damage, so we are basically spending 50 Spirit so our lesser damaging skills can do a bit of extra damage. The Spirit spent on CS would be much better served fueling our explosive lights, CS might also consume our Mystic Rhythm buff, which would be counter-productive.

Dashing Strike – Barrage: You can’t go wrong with Dashing Strike, ever. It is a fantastic skill in terms of mobility, and will save you pretty often. But within this build, barrage seems to be here to compensate for poor single target damage. It puts us in a bit of a tough predicament as we will constantly have to decide whether we should be getting extra damage out of DS or if we should be saving it to move away in case of danger.

Sweeping Wind – Firestorm: Sweeping Wind is a pretty nice skill, and dashing strike helps a lot at keeping it up. This is a nice source of Area Damage, but we are already strong in that department. Sweeping Wind is probably effective in a build like this, especially if we have Inna’s to cut the Spirit Cost.

Mantra of Evasion – Backlash: This is an interesting choice, it provides us with a bit of (unreliable) survability, while it also deals more AoE damage. The thing is, the damage amount is minimal and it only starts stacking up when you are facing multiple enemies. With our strong AoE capabilities, those lesser monsters aren’t really going to last long enough to make this ability effective.

Keeping Balance

As we saw above, Vaeus went just too heavy on the AoE department. While it might have been for flavor purposes, it does make his character just too vulnerable against single strong enemies.  When one makes a build, it is always good to have a cohesive theme. But going to far on the theme is a common ocurrence, we often give up too much in order to have stuff that fits thematically and we lose track of character balance. Stacking some mechanic to the max might be interesting, but it often becomes inefficient. This is important to note, because it is long been a common mistake of build making and one that I personally keep tripping on all the time.

The Adjustment Factor

Mantra of Evasion -> Mantra of Retribution – Retaliation: The effect is similar, damage return. The thing is, Retaliation offers much more single target damage. Since we are still an AoE centric build, we could use the higher single target damage to compensate.

Cyclone Strike -> Mystic Ally – Fire Ally: The Fire Ally’s active ability is a really powerful attack for single target situations, it’s passive effects are also strong across the board and the 10% increased damage will really show on your Mystic Rhythm boosted Explosive Lights.

Sweeping Wind ->  Epiphany – Inner Fire:  Without Cyclone Strike to ensure the opponents stay at melee range, Sweeping Wind loses a bit of it’s effectiveness. It is still a good skill, especially if you have Inna’s, but Epiphany will synergize better with our new abilities.

Another Option:

Dashing Strike -> Another Form of Survability: While Dashing Strike is an excellent skill, it doesn’t benefit from Cooldown Reduction. With both Epiphany and Mystic Ally now in our toolbox, CDR starts looking like a more interesting stat. Serenity, Blinding Flash, Breath of Heaven, and Inner Sanctuary all start looking tasty.

Weapon Selection

There a lot of misinformation across the community about Two-Handed Weapons, while they almost useless for caster classes. They can be a good alternative to dual wielding for Monks and Barbarians. We’ve already seen that the biggest selling point for Two-Handers is their huge Damage per Hit (DPH) and their resource efficiency. Mantra of Retribution and Fire Ally are two abilities that seem to be very reliant on DPH, rather than DPS. The passive regen from Epiphany will also be much more effective with a slower weapon. If you decide to roll with Dashing Strike – Barrage, that will also benefit greatly from a higher DPH. Other CD-Based skills like Serenity – Unwelcome Distrurbance and Seven Sided Strike are also superpowered by a Two-Handed weapon.

Maximus seems like the front runner here; but if you just can’t get one, you could also give the Cinder Switch a try.

Stat Priorities

Without getting too much into the math of it, I guess you would be looking at something like this for the DPS side of things.

Dex > Crit > Fire Damage > Wave of Light Damage > Cooldown Reduction > Resource Cost Reduction.

Must Have Items

[d3item name=”Cindercoat”]: Must have for almost all fire damage builds.

[d3item name =”Stone of Jordan”]: The Damage to Elites will go a long way towards dispelling your weakness to bosses.

Ring of Royal Grandeur: Captain Crimson and Aughild’s give us a lot of bonuses for just 4 slots. The new Sunwuko’s also make a pretty compelling argument for a Daibo as your weapon of choice. You could also do well with Asheara’s and the 4-set of Inna’s is still of use to us.

Reaper’s Wraps: Also a must for any build that uses slow weapons and heavy spenders.

Passive Skills

Passive skills will be shaken up in patch 2.1, still Guadian’s Path and Chant of Resonance could both end up being very attractive for this type of build. Mystic Rhythm will likely remain a must, but for the rest of the slots I’d take a wait and see approach. Right now, I’d go with One With Everything, Seize the Initiative, Guardian’s Path, and Mystic Rhythm

The Modified Build

Closing Thoughts

Vaeus has provided us with a great character to work on. Once we smooth out the details and dial back a bit in the excess of flavor, the “Demon Queller” becomes a fierce and versatily warrior that will be able to excel in most situations. The Monk might currently be regarded as one of Diablo’s weakest classes, but even then it has many interesting options and this is one that could end up having a lot of success on the next patch.

Nevalistis has once again done a tremendous job going through all the submissions and picking up a super interesting, even if slightly raw, diamond to highlight. But don’t worry because with just a little bit of polish, his build will cut deep into the hordes of hell. This “Demon Queller” will inequivocally prove that holy fire always burns brighter.