Because Life on Hit is so hard to get without dumping millions of gold, this is a build I came up with that seems to work quite well. I used it in Inferno Act 2 tonight and full cleared a large zone + its dungeons, killing about 12 variations of elites.
I was able to beat every elite variation I came across, some quite hard, and died maybe 1-2 times on each pack (excluding nightmare electrocution extra health enchanted wasps, which were bloody horrible with the insta-gib damage; but I did kill them).
Based on what I've read, the average player farming A2 Inferno has spent about 5-10 million golds on their gearset. I spent somewhere in the area of 1.5 million for mine, so I consider that a substantial difference.
Skills
Breath of Heaven - Blazing Wrath
Serenity - Ascension
Mantra of Evasion - Divine Protection
Blinding Flash - Searing Light
Fists of Thunder - Quickening
Lashing Tail Kick - Scorpion Sting
One With Everything
Transcendence
Near Death Experience
I stacked up to 20% crit (shield 8% + gloves 7.5%%). I also just bought two Attack Speed rings (60 Dex, 15% AS) for the low cost of 15k gold each. It's amazing how much impact these rings have on my baseline dps. Blew me away. Anyway, I think these will improve this build greatly and are also cost effective.
The essence of the build is that I run in, blow a utility CD, fill my spirit pool, unload it with LTKs, run out. Repeat.
Now, these LTKs are a big dps jump from my FoT attacks (200% instead of 110%), and also stunlock most mob combinations, as well as healing whatever damage I happen to take between maneuvers through Transcendence. The high attack speed + crit chance + FoT Quickening ensures I get that max spirit very fast, in the 3-4 second window I have for the two utility skills I use.
Something like this:
Serenity + beat them down + blow spirit pool on stunkicks, run out.
Blinding Flash + beat them down + blow spirit pool on stunkicks, run out.
Kite until Serenity's back up, won't take long.
Repeat.
I use my Breath of Heaven heal if things get ugly, which happens often enough to keep my damage buff up. If there's an emergency I also blow any remaining spirit on MoE for a quick heal, and/or potion.
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Of note: I use Near Death Experience and MoE's Divine Protection because imo the extra armor I was getting from Hard Target and Seize the Initiative was doing diddly squat. My impression is that the point of every elite encounter (excluding Invulnerable Minions) is to kill one of the minions asap, so I'm designing this build as a cost effective way to get a minion down asap without dying.
The 10% mitigation from extra armor (which I assume is contextual and doesn't help against a lot of stuff) never really made the difference in my ability to take down mobs. But given that many of the harder elite packs are somewhat long fights, having two emergency saves actually prevented countless deaths. Basically, "!@#$ happens" was more common than dying from a lack of 10% armor mitigation.
As far as gear, I did this full clear of 12 elite packs with 16k dps, 30k health, 5k armor, 400 resist all, 20% crit, 1300 dex (43% dodge with MoE up), 200 life on hit, and 1.4 attack speed (terrible, I didn't have the rings at the time). The one other thing I've invested into, and I'm not sure how necessary it is for this tactic, is Life per Second. I have 1200 LPS, most pieces of gear have +100-200.
This in particular was my cheap alternative to Life on Hit, which is very hard to get without spending a stupid amount of gold. I think I've paid maybe 1.5 million gold for my entire suit, if that. And I would say that the perpetual regeneration did help during my run away/run back in moments. It prevented the spamming of spirit on unnecessary abilities to get Transcendence heal, and allowed me to be a bit more exact/efficient.
Hope this helps, because frankly, I was getting frustrated with A2 Inferno and the limitations of my former build. I really dislike having to just "bypass" mobs because I'm not good enough, and come back later when my gear is good enough that I can gain numerical victory.
