IntroCompletely elated right now, for the past few weeks I was bashing my head against a wall with my monk, stuck at the beginning of act III. Starting this morning and lasting all day, I decided to achieve a goal I didn't think would be possible for me and I soldiered on through late Act III and all of Act IV.
Just wanted to let fellow frustrated monks know that it is possible to achieve this, you just have to reach a certain breakpoint with your stats and have a very defensive build if you are reaching new territory, now I did this by spending around 50 million gold which I only had because of some lucky legendary rolls, and 3 days ago my monk was actually completely naked because I sold all of his gear out of frustration (and leveled a DH in the process, turns out kiting and being randomly one-shot is worse then playing a monk).
Well today I was inspired by Kripparian who is currently making a push for HC Inferno clear with his friend Krippi and while watching his stream I decided to just say screw it and regeared my monk by blowing loads of gold and some real money (unfortunately the state of the game at the moment), and while it was still extremely difficult I managed to chug through the last two acts. One major realization I had was that it is absolutely necessary to skip badly rolled elites, it is just not worth the time to fight them, so always be kiting them into corners or restarting the dungeon until you roll a lucky room.
Another realization I had is that for progression, you MUST solo the content unless you are playing with a group of your close friends, pubs have proven to always be dead weight and will just complicate things, for example I was on Act IV quest 1 and decided to try out a public game for some fresh air and I kept getting paired with ranged classes who would die in the first few seconds while I would kite the boss around the circle for a long time, almost killing him in a party of 4, then getting surrounded and trapped, after a few attempts with different groups I decided to just go back to solo, and I killed the guy in under 20 seconds. I one shot every boss except for Izual (I realized its pretty much impossible to melee him for more then a second with my gear, and the kill took forever because of kiting).
Below I will first list my build, and explain every single choice, then stats, then I will list my gear with my explanation of why I picked some pieces up. Finally I will give a brief explanation of how I did some select boss fights to hopefully help some people out who might be stuck along the way. To reiterate, Clearing Inferno is possible, but if you plan on doing it any time soon you must purchase your gear one way or another, the drop rates are just abysmal (I didn't even get a single Level 60+ rare the entire clear of late Act III and all of Act IV today). Also I use the enchantress because she provides not only some extra armor, but also some added attack speed.
Build
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#bjghYX!UZX!Zcaacb
Guide continued after the page break..
- 1.) I chose deadly reach with hard target because the extra armor is pretty valuable, and deadly reach is amazing for kiting mobs around and hitting bosses while kiting them around objects. I can't image not having the melee range utility that this ability provides.
- 2.) Mystic Ally is another optional ability I can't live without. Not only does this beautiful bastard give you some extra hp, but he will also distract elites and bosses while you do whatever it is you need to do, couple that with no summon cooldown (hilarious the best summon in the game isn't from a witch doctor Blizzard) and you have an amazing life line at your disposal, plus this guy will actually kill mobs for you!
- 3.) Serenity is not optional, it is the cornerstone of playing monk because it is the only thing keeping you from being one shot in every nook and cranny of Inferno. Some people opt for the 4 seconds, I prefer the heal because it will top me off and keep me alive just that much longer.
- 4.) I don't really know if there are any other good options for mantra, but I can not live without dodge mantra with the extra armor. It is invaluable to be able to luck out and completely dodge one-shots and the armor is the first line of defense between you and death.
- 5.) Blinding Flash with with faith of the light is my favorite cc ability in the entire game, not only will it give you a second or two of no incoming mob damage, but it will also boost your dps an insane amount to allow you to nuke anything down before it has a chance to retaliate. For example, right now my base dps is ~26k, with my breath of heaven blazing wrath I will always have ~30k, but pop blinding flash and now I have a whopping ~50k for 3 seconds to completely annihilate the pack of mobs that is troubling me.
- 6.) Breath of Heaven is a nice ability for me because it allows me to heal in between healing orbs or serenities, so it can come quite in handy when you accidentally get hit by that pesky mob. However, the rune blazing wrath you also get a 45 second buff to your damage, which basically means you have a permanent 15% extra damage, and in this game damage scales insanely well for every extra 1000 you get because everything dies just that much faster.
- 7.) One with everything is a must, pick a resistance, and stack it with all resist, and you have an advantage in gear choices that no other class has.
- 8.) I consider resolve to be optional because it might not be possible to always keep it up on the enemy, but it provides some nice extra bump to your damage mitigation, you can also consider swapping it with near death experience to survive some bullshit one shit damage every now and again.
- 9.) Seize the Initiative is another mandatory passive, the boost in armor you get makes the difference between one shot and two shot in some cases against bosses.
Stats
http://i.imgur.com/qQoSB.jpg
I used to have a lot more resistances but I decided to drop some to improve my dex and vit (increasing dps and health makes all of the difference). Life on Hit and attack speed are must have stats at this point as most of you know, so it will be interesting to see how attack speed will be starting tommorow.
Gear
http://i.imgur.com/bWWu5.jpg
Basically I just wanted to stack as much dex and vit as possible while also having some resistances on a few pieces. My gear isn't the best out there because I had to operate within my budget and within my capabilities of acquiring gold, which the majority I only had because I got extremely lucky on a legendary drop.
I also opted to aim towards 1000 life on hit so that's why I have that ammy and rings, the rest of course comes from my weapon which I got extremely lucky with in the RMAH ($30). I find it a bit silly to be spending real money on gear, but luckily I only spent profit on the RMAH due to some wild first day sales on gear I couldn't even sell in the gold auction house (in the hundreds).
Choice Boss Strats
- Azmodan - Complete pushover, keep your earth ally up and melee azmodan down, whenever the fireball starts chasing you, run in broad circles around azmo then go back to melee him. WHen the large dark pools start spreading start running around and stay away from azmo, if you get caught off gaurd and end up in a pool, pop your serinity or heals/pots to stay alive. Also keep an eye on the portals spawning around the room, and kill them off to prevent pesky adds.
- Rakanoth - Always keep your earth ally up, and kite this sucker around one of the large poles spread across the room, always keep Rakanoth on the opposite side of the pole, and you can melee him using deadly reach. When the adds come out stay on the opposite side of Rakanoth and quickly kill them, then rinse and repeat. Make sure to keep an eye on your health and pop serenity when necessary.
- Izual - Izzy is a pain in the ass, and is completely broken for melee as far as I am concerned. Basically the only strat I could figure out was to nonstop kite this bastard around the bottom left circle on the platform. Don't get hit by ice, and don't get in vision of Izual, keep your earth ally up at all times because he, Tyreal, and the enchantress will be doing the majority of damage on this broken asshole. Keep kiting him around, maybe sprinkling in some deadly reaches around the corners when you feel comfortable. The tricky parts are when the adds spawn, you need to get as much distance as possible around the circle between you and Izual, and pop your blinding light and breath of heaven for maximum damage and nuke these suckers down, then rinse and repeat.
- Diablo - I one shot this baddy, but it took a relatively long time and I had a blast while doing it (sprinkled in by oh shit moments of course, there was a point where I was at about 100 hp with no heals up, earth ally saved my ass by tanking for a few seconds). Basically, just get the strat down for Diablo on hell mode, and execute it perfectly in Inferno. There is no real trick you can abuse against this guy except when he does his laser, move behind one of those giant stones in the center of the room.
- Also a tip I can give is save your serenity for the fireballs, and just do not get hit by the cages, soon as you see his animation for cages start, start running away and change your direction every few seconds to trick the AI which will sometimes spawn one on a few yards in front of your vector. If you are low with no way to heal, just get the hell away from Diablo and wait for cooldowns, your earth ally will tank him for a few seconds so he won't teleport to you right away. For killing your clone, just keep an eye on your health and pop your abilities when necessary.
Anyway I am definitely pumped right now because I achieved a goal in a day I did not see myself complete in a few months, I was demoralized by the state of the game, but I decided to bite the bullet and purchase some gear, and I reached some magical breakpoint where the game was still difficult, but absolutely do-able. I'm glad to say I cleared before 1.0.3, and I can't wait to start farming once it's patched tommorow. Hopefully this helped some of you struggling monks out either by inspiring you or actually helping you to realize you were missing something. I will answer some questions but I will be heading off to pass out in an hour or two.
