Monk Guide: Inferno with bad gear.

[Atselmya]

Hello all. I just beat Inferno and now I'd like to share my setup/process. I solo'd every quest except for Rakinoth, whom I beat with a random demon hunter who was also stuck on the quest.

This Guide is divided into 3 sections. A) Build, B) Gear, C) Tips.

I used under 8 million gold worth of gear. Here are my stats:
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15,165 Damage
1.95 Attacks per Second (extremely important)
5% Crit
111.4 Life per Spirit (extremely important)

27,540 Life
4,847 Armor
914 All Resists
30.9% Dodge

1,360 Life Regen
1,680 Thorns (Not Important)
0 Life per Hit
10% Movement Speed
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A) Build.

Obviously, you want to switch out abilities based on the situation, which I will cover.

The bread and butter, high survivability setup is:

1. Deadly Reach + Keen Eye rune

This is a ranged ability, which is nice, but with the rune it increases your armor by 50% for 4 seconds. There is absolutely no way I could have survived without this. The 3rd strike has a much longer range than the first two.

2. Crippling Wave + Concussion rune

When using my survivability setup, these are my only damaging moves. Yes, two spirit builders. This works as short ranged AoE, it slows enemy attack speed by 20% AND it decreases the damage they deal by another 20%, all for 3 seconds. Again, no way I could have survived without this.

NOTE: I alternate between these two moves so that I constantly have both effects active. Using only spirit builders for damage allows me to use all spirit on defensive abilities (with my survivability setup). If a mob isn't in melee range I simply take Crippling Wave out of the rotation.

3. Mantra of Healing + Time of Need rune

Life regeneration is an absolutely essential part of the build. I purposefully kept my HPs low, focusing on mitigation so that my healing abilities and potions would remain effective. More important is Time of Need. It increases all of my resistances by 20%, increasing mine to 1,096. If you're just starting out and your resistances are lower than 300 or so (rough estimate), I recommend using the Sustenance rune instead since 20% of 300 is only 60, and you will likely be low on health regeneration. I pop this move all the time as it is my only heal that has no cooldown. I try to preserve Serenity and Breath of Heaven for when I need it. Don't use if low on spirit.

4. Blinding Flash + Faith in the Light rune

When a pack of 15 mobs that 2 shot you is coming after you and you have no space to kite, you have to roll cooldowns to avoid all damage. Faith in the Light increases your damage by 30% for 3 seconds (the duration of blind). If you are facing a pack of mobs as previously described, you have to kill them while your cooldowns are up. This 30% damage increase is essential. Also, if you're trying to kill a succubus or other ranged mob that likes to run, if you pop this it will give you the chance to burn it down without difficulty.

5. Serenity + Peaceful Repose rune

A cheap, 3 second invulnerability with a massive heal. This is basically your best ability. I hardly need to explain it, as it is so blatantly awesome. Use it as part of your cooldown rotation for hard hitting mobs, pop it when a vortex mob sucks you into an arcane enchantment, etc. When kiting difficult elite packs, this, blind, and fear are the only times where you can get any damage in. Kite, wait on cooldowns, get in 5-6 seconds of damage, kite, repeat.

6. Breath of Heaven + Penitent Flame rune

A massive heal + a 1.5 second fear. This is such a great ability because of how versatile it is. The fear is worthless against bosses, so you can either use the Circle of Life rune for more healing or Blazing Wrath for 15% more damage (I used this to kill Diablo, as the shadow clone had too much health when Diablo reappeared - still a 20 minute fight). If you keep your max HPs low, it will still be a very strong heal with the fear or damage rune. Again, if a large pack of hard hitting mobs is up in your grill, pop blind, fear when it ends, then serenity (situational order).

Passive Skills

1. Transcendence

Your most consistant and reliable heal. Must be augmented with life per spirit gear.

2. Seize the Initiative

Armor good. This is better than resolve for numerous reasons, party because resolve only works on targets that you have damaged within the last 2.5 seconds. I'm not sure how mitigation is calculated (I've looked around), but I will explain below.

3. One With Everything

Makes it so one type of resist is counted towards all your resists. This means you choose one type of resist (lightning, physical, etc) and you look for gear with that resist and resist all. This way you can pretty much get 100+ all resists on every item but your weapon.

Situational Abilities/Runes

1. Mantra of Conviction + Overawe rune

This is amazing for increasing your damage. Throw up Sweeping Winds and pop this whenever you have the spirit and you will blow stuff up (relative to your normal pathetic damage, lol). I use this when I farm A1 or A2. I also had to use it for The Butcher my first time through. With a lot of Life per Spirit, this move will heal you for quite a bit, as it is expensive to use. I use it as a heal as well as damage increase.

2. Way of the Hundred Fists + Hands of Lightning rune

Great for single target damage. One annoyance is that it knocks back enemies, so it's actually a damage loss on enemies that can be knocked back. This knockback can be EXTREMELY useful, particularly in A1 Inferno on slower mobs. You can prevent 100% of all damage if you hold down shift and use this ability. Mobs will walk towards you and will be knocked back every time they approach you. It's slow damage but will, again, make you immune to damage from small packs of mobs with no ranged and horrible AI (act 1).

Almost forgot. The way to get the most damage out of this move, without knocking back enemies, is to do the first two attacks of this then finish with Crippling Wave or another spirit builder. I will explain what I mean in Tips (2. Using Abilities).

3. Sweeping Wind + Blade Storm rune

This is just a great source of damage. If you kill mobs too quickly it's of no use. I recommend it against bosses like Belial or The Butcher, or on large packs of mobs that die slowly but don't deal too much damage. You'll want to swap out Blinding Flash for this move.

4. Mystic Ally + Whatever rune

Situational. It does a fair amount of damage and draws a lot of fire. It scales with your gear, but dies too easily if you're doing difficult content. I never use this anymore.

5. Lashing Tail Kick + Vulture Claw Kick rune

Not particularly useful, but it actually knocks back elites/named so it can be used. I'm sure somebody could make the Hand of Ytar rune, which makes it a ranged attack, useful. I didn't really use it much.

6. Breath of Heaven + Circle of Life or Blazing Wrath rune

You should definitely use these along with the fear rune. If you're fighting a boss who's damage output is too high, use Circle of Life. If you want to do extra damage, use Blazing Wrath. This is why Breath of Heaven should always be on your ability list.
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B) Gear.

I'll simply be covering the stats here. I will say, WEAR A SHIELD! You won't survive Inferno without a shield unless you have amaaaaazing gear (we'll see).

1. Weapon Damage

This is one of your top priorities. A weapon with 1,100 dps is far better than a weapon with 800 dps and 100 dexterity.

2. Attack Speed

Never buy a weapon fewer than 1.4 attacks per second. Attack speed is so important because 1. It will increase your spirit generation and therefore your healing through life per spirit and 2. Your damaging moves also act as mitigation moves, and if you attack too slowly you won't be able to keep up your 50% armor and 20% damage reduction/attack speed reduction. I have attack speed on both rings and my helm. 1.95 attacks per second, which I have, is as low as you should go.

3. Life per Spirit Spent

Used in conjunction with attack speed, this is what keeps you alive. You cannot do inferno without tons of healing power. You can get over 60 life per spirit on a weapon alone (that would make you a god). Your helm MUST have this stat (at the very least, 20 life per spirit) as well as your weapon, unless you find an extraordinary weapon without it.

4. Vitality/Health

I can't give you a set number, but you should have just enough vitality so that you don't die too quickly in conjunction with your mitigation. I gem dexterity. Damage is more important after a point because ideally, you want to be able to kill packs of mobs within your cooldown rotation.

5. Resists and Armor

I can't say which stat is most important. It's like asking which organ is more important, the heart or the lungs. You can't survive unless you have both. To continue the anatomy metaphor, this is your skeleton. This is your base. These FAR outweigh vitality. Diminishing returns is a myth. Going from 98% damage reduction to 99% damage reduction, while only a 1% reduction, will reduce all damage intake by 50%. Your heals/potions do not scale with vitality, but they DO scale with resists and armor.

6. Life Regeneration

Another essential stat. I rarely use potions. Because of my regen, armor and resists, I can stand in anything in A1. Desecration, pools of poison, reflect damage, etc. When fighting The Butcher, even with Mantra of Conviction, I can easily stand in the fire and take any move he sends my way.

The reason this is so much petter than 'life per hit' is that you have to kite so f'ing much. I can't count how many times I barely escaped a vortex while screaming, 'oh sh*t, oh sh*t!' with 5% of my health and no spirit, as I run away and watch my health regen to full (ROUND 2 B*TCHES!). The most notable case for this would be Iskatu, or any other boss you have to kite.

7. Dodge

Yet another reason why dexterity is so good. At first dodge wasn't impressive, but as I got more dexterity it became an essential stat. I absolutely could not survive without a lot of dodge. All of your dodge comes from dexterity, so just focus on that. If you have enough vitality to survive and enough life regen to survive, go dexterity (resists need to be on every item, but not any of the other stats).

8. Movement Speed

With a few exceptions, this only comes from your boots. You need this. Unless you can tank everything in the face, you need this. Did I mention you need this? You have to sacrifice 1 measly stat, and if you find a good pair of boots, you can get everything you need.

9. Crit

Worry about this later. It is the one source of damage, besides weapon DPS, that doesn't have any other benefit besides damage. I have 70% crit damage. An item with 5% crit will increase my damage by 5% of 70%, or 3.5%. That's nothing.
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C) Tips.

1. Mercenary

Use the Enchantress. 15% armor is amazing. 3% attack speed is awesome as well. She is super annoying when she knocks back enemies in the worst of ways, and the charm is even worse. The nicest thing about her is that you still keep her buffs even if she's dead!

2. Using Abilities

As earlier stated, I use Deadly reach, Crippling Wave, Deadly Reach, Crippling Wave, etc. The idea is to have 50% armor, 20% damage reduction and 20% attack speed reduction at all times. One thing to note is that the buff/debuff is applied on the 3rd strike. All the Monk spirit builders are 3 strike moves. The interesting thing is that you can swap between moves within these 3 strikes. That is, you can do two swings of Crippling Wave and then a final swing with Deadly Reach and you will get the 50% armor benefit from Deadly Reach. A nice way to do damage is to do the first two strikes in Way of the Hundred Fists then finish with Crippling Wave, so it doesn't knock back enemies.

Another thing to note is that a certain amount of time is allowed for you to finish your combo. That is, you can use the first two strikes of Deadly Reach, wait 1-2 seconds while you reposition yourself, then finish the combo (thus gaining 50% armor).

3. Mitigation Calculations and Resolve vs. Sieze the Initiative (complicated and speculative)

The reason Resolve isn't that great is this. Again, I'm not sure how mitigation is calculated (and I've looked around), but if it's how I think it is, it is best to get your mitigation from as few sources as possible. That is, having 85% mitigation from resists (1 source) is much better than having 70% mitigation from resists and 15% from armor (2 sources). 70+15 is 85, but consider this. 85% mitigation means you will take 15% of all damage. 70% from resists and 15% from armor means you will take 25.5% of incoming damage. You will take 30% of all damage from resists, and the armor will reduce THAT amount of damage by 15% (4.5% damage reduction). 30-4.5 = 25.5%.

If you have (theoretically) 85% mitigation from resists, 85% mitigation from armor, 20% mitigation from crippling wave's rune, and 20% damage reduction from Crippling wave's attack speed reduction, you will only take 1.44% of damage (0.15 x 0.15 x 0.8 x 0.8 = 0.0144). You can throw dodge in there too, but it's not 100% reliable. The secret to trivializing Inferno will be getting as close to 0% as possible. Diminishing returns? Try exponentially better.

4. How to Kill

Let's say you're facing mobs that do insane amounts of damage (as in all of inferno). The only time you should be in range to do damage is when you have cooldowns (if the monsters are slow enough, you can use Deadly Reach while inching away from them). Suppose a swarm of enemies is coming towards you. Use Deadly Reach and let them come to you. Use Crippling Wave as soon as you can. If you're going to die, use Serenity. If possible, it is better to open with Blinding Flash, wait for it to end, use Breath of Heaven with the fear rune, then use Serenity right before you're about to get owned (use Mantra of Healing as needed). The reason for this is that the cooldown on Blinding Flash and Breath of Heaven is shorter than Serenity. This means that Blinding Flash and Breath of Heaven will be up shortly after you use Serenity, so you can kite for a couple seconds and start the process over again.

Blind can also be used to interrupt mechanics. When facing Diablo, I used blind as soon as he started raising the bone cages out of the ground so he only got two out of the ground, which I would avoid. I would also used it if I had no spirit/healing cooldowns and he was about to lay down his circle of fire. Cooldown management, keeping up your 50% armor and 20% damage reduction, and keeping distance/avoiding damage when necessary is basically how to play a monk well.

5. Get Creative and Take things Slow

If you want to tank everything in the face, have fun spending 200 million+ on gear. If you're impatient you'll have to rely entirely on outgearing every act. Every act had several bosses that took creative solutions to defeat, not to mention the dozens of elite packs. If you can get to a boss, you can beat that boss (the only exclusion for me was Rakanoth, though I could have beaten him with the proper RNG). It just takes some ingenuity.

6. Kiting Away Elite Packs

Always clear areas away from the path so that if you are unable to defeat an elite pack, you can kite them there and die. Rez up and continue along the path, problem solved. Even in fairly narrow zones there are ways to do this. If you enter a zone and there's an elite pack right away, just make a new game.

7. Movement Key (incredibly useful)

If you look at keybindings in options, there is a 'Move' key. It is in the 'Gameplay' category. It is unbound. Set it to something comfortable (for me it was D). Instead of clicking to move, this will move you wherever your cursor is without clicking. This will absolutely increase your ability to move how you want. Take Belial. He is huge and takes up half the screen. You have to dodge his attacks and you have no time to delay. If you go to click, you will get hung up on him and not be able to move in time. If you bind movement, you will never get hung up. If you want to tightly run a circle around an enemy, like when The Butcher slams his cleaver into the ground, you can easily do so with the movement key. This will help with kiting as well. It does take some getting used to, but use it for a day or two and you will be pleasantly surprised.

8. Keybinds

For the love of god, don't use your 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys. How awkward and clumsy are those? I use D to move, right and left click for my spirit generators, and V, C, R and T for my other moves. I use F to see items on the ground and G to use town portal. It will take time to develop the muscle memory, but find a setup that is comfortable and efficient for you.

Anyways, I hope this was helpful. Good luck and have fun!

[Atselmya]

Any questions please let me know.

[xXK1ll3rXx]

Why do you prefer Life per Spirit over LoH?