[PC] NOBDYH GVIE S A SHIT ABOUT DIABLO IIII

+100% legendary drops and double rift fragments going on right now everyone!

Was talking about this last night with Term, Monk general gearing advice:

-First for any Monk build check this fantastic guide for gearing and what stats you want to prioritize in what slots over on Reddit. It's spot-on, I actually know the guy who wrote it (he's super active over there and on GAF). Maybe surprisingly the reddit board for Diablo 3 and the class-specific reddits are actually pretty useful usually.

tl;dr version here of what specific items you probably want in what slots as a Lightning Monk, I go into way more detail below as to why.

Ring 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Amulet: No clear standout, ideally probably a well-rolled Haunt of Vaxo?
Helm: Andariel's Visage or Eye of the Storm
Shoulders: Aughilds (crafted set)
Chest: Aughilds (crafted set)
Belt: Thundergod's Vigor, Witching Hour, Hellcat Waistguard, Harrington's
Pants: Ashearas (crafted set)
Boots: Ashearas (crafted set)
Bracers: Aughilds (only if you don't have 2 Aughild pieces elsewhere), otherwise Reaper's Wraps, Ancient Parthan Defenders, Strongarm Bracers
Gloves: Ashearas if you want the 4-set bonus or don't have Ashearas in one of the other 2 slots, otherwise really any gloves work here for Lightning.
Weapons: In rough/debatable order, the best 1h weapons for lightning monks are Shard of Hate, Odyn Son, Thunderfury, Won Khim Lau


WALL OF TEXT

Rings: For virtually every single class and build with a couple of very very specific exceptions (WD Big Dog build only thing coming to mind actually) you always want a Ring of Royal Grandeur + a Stone of Jordan with the element % that you're stacking. The Ring of Royal Grandeur ONLY drops from Act 1 bounty bags, and is super unique in that it reduces the number of items required for set bonuses by 1. You have to have at least 2 items in the set equipped (ex. you can't get a 2-set bonus by equipping only 1 item) but this makes it BiS for everyone because that is incredibly useful/broken since everyone will have sets going of some kind, and this lets you either complete 2 set bonuses altogether or complete 1 set and gives you more gear freedom in the other slots. The ring will also always drop with your primary stat as well as 5-7% IAS with 2 random primary affixes and 1 secondary affix. Absolute worse case even if you can a shit roll you can roll CC or CHD on it to make it at least usable, and because of how good the bonus is it's worth it. That said

For the second slot you pretty much want a Stone of Jordan with your element %. They come with up to 20% elemental damage, your primary stat, 25-30% more elite damage, one random primary and one random secondary roll. The elemental % is big, but combined with the elite % it's ridiculous; you will lose sheet DPS, but given that elites are the only thing in the game that are actually relevant that will actually kill you/take more than 2 seconds to kill you can't beat this. Even better if for the one random primary roll if you can get CC or CHD on there.


Amulet: As long as you've got the right stats on the amulet there's no clear standout winner here. The closest is probably the Haunt of Vaxo, which summons clones when you stun enemies, and the clones are surprisingly useful. Good runner-ups are the Moonlight Ward (which has a crazy good proc), or any of the amulets that make you immune to arcane, fire, cold etc.


Helm: Ideally either an Andariel's Visage or Eye of the Storm. Overall Andariel's is slightly better since a good roll will be lightning %, IAS %, CC% and Dex. This is one of the few helms that can roll IAS%, and additionally the poison nova proc on it is actually really good and goes off all the time. Eye of the Storm is a very close second, it doesn't roll the IAS% but always rolls Lightning % and can roll up to 30% which is one of the very few items that breaks the usual 20% cap, then you can roll either Vit/socket/AR for your "free" slot, or ideally go all dps and roll Lashing Tail Kick % there.

Armor: Lumping most of these together. To be quite frank one of the reasons why Monks don't compete dps-wise at highest difficulties right now is their 2 new sets are fucking awful, to the point that Blizzard has specifically said in 2.1 Monks are getting a complete overhaul, and both of their sets (along with a few others in the game) are getting buffs/overhauls that will be made retroactive. So if you get any of those pieces hold onto them, but for right now they're garbage. So while most classes/builds will go for specific sets, Monks don't do that here, which opens up an interesting if not boring alternative for crafted sets combined with the Ring of Royal Grandeur. Specifically there are two sets that almost all Monks will craft to get the full set bonuses from that are extremely good:

-Ashearas Vestments. 2-set bonus is +100 AR / 3-set bonus +20% Life / 4-set bonus is your followers will come to your aid.
-Aughild's Power. 2-set bonus is 7% reduced damage from both melee and ranged attacks / 3-set bonus is both 15% reduced damage from elites and you do 15% more damage to elites

The set bonuses are very very good. Also by crafting Monks get the additional benefit of specifically aiming to get their OWE resist as a secondary property. Unlike vanilla you can't get both All Resist AND an individual resist (arcane, lightning, etc) on the same item with a couple of specific legendary exceptions. However while All Resist can only roll up to 100 on any item, secondary individual resists can usually roll up to 160. In theory this means you want to aim for OWE resist since you'll ultimately get more, but can make it a nightmare to craft specific items and replace items.

With the slots that can be crafted with the above plans, most folks will craft Aughild Shoulders and Chest, and Ashearas pants and boots. You can additionally craft Asheara gloves and Aughild bracers if needed, or if you want the 4-set bonus on the Ahearas which is nice, but I don't consider necessary. There's not a whole lot in the way of specific gloves for lightning monks so that's a free ashearas slot usually if needed, but there are specific bracers that are good so usually you want to try to avoid needing to put Aughilds in that slot unless you really need to.

It's also worth noting that the legendary materials you need to craft the Ashearas items are pretty easy to get, and the ones for the Aughilds are a pain in the goddamn ass. I still don't have Aughilds crafted on my Monk yet because of that, but Ashearas should be a relatively easy go.

Bracers: If you're not running an Aughild's bracer, BiS bracers for lightning Monk are probably either Reaper's Wraps (crafted), Ancient Parthan Defenders (you take 10% less damage for each enemy stunned, which you do a lot), Strongarm Bracers (for the knockup damage, mostly if you're using Deadly Reach Scattered Blows or something similar)

Belt: There's multiple good options here; probably the easiest one and maybe overall the best is the Thundergod's Vigor. It's a unique belt in that it will always roll lightning damage, 160-200 Lightning resist, and also has proc where you emit lightning that damages enemies when you get hit or dodge. It's also unique in that it's one of the very few (maybe only?) items that can roll both All Resist and a secondary resist since the secondary lightning resist is guaranteed. They also seem to drop pretty often. So you can get up to 15% Lightning Damage, 500 Dex, 500 Vit, 100 AR AND 200 Lightning Resist + the proc. Assuming you're running OWE with lightning Resist, that's up to 300 AR in one slot.

Alternatively you also have the Witching Hour which I believe is actually the rarest item in the game, but also is a total bitch. It's guaranteed to roll both Attack Speed and Crit Damage so for pure sheet DPS nothing comes close to this belt. That said it can roll shit on both of those, then the 2 other rolls are completely random. In theory if you got one with dex, Vit/AR and good IAS/CHD rolls it's best in slot unless you need the OWE lightning resist on the Thundergod's, but this belt is so rare AND it needs solid rolls, so that may not be realistic. Other solid runner-up belts are the Hellcat Waistguard (which rolls attack speed and Elite damage) and the Harrington's Waistguard; Harrington's is unique in that it rolls pretty standard rolls but the proc on it where you do 100-110% more damage after opening a chest counts as ANYthing in the game you interact with; corpses, etc. So in levels with interactables anything counts, and it basically straight doubles your DPS, with the caveat that's somewhat inconsistent.


Weapons: Multiple options. Roughly in order of the best first:
-Shard of Hate; the proc ability on it is crazy good, it's BiS for multiple classes/builds.
-Odyn Son: the lightning proc on it is really really good, and the weapon also rolls + lightning % damage.
-Thunderfury: Very good proc, just not quite as good as the Odyn Son.
-Won Khim Lau: No special proc, but rolls up to 25% lightning damage which is great.

Other than that, just take the highest dps 1-handed weapons you can get. Remember that weapons always HAVE to have a socket; the 130% crit damage you get from a Flawless Royal Emerald in your weapon literally makes weapons. The best Shard of Hate in the world without a socket wouldn't compare to a decent yellow weapon with a socket.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Fluffykitten McGrundlepuss

So it's not so much a game as a spreadsheet simulator then?

At endgame it can be, kinda how these games go.

The console version comes out in August, we should play!

FELIPE NO

PSA: Base game and RoS are both $20 each this week at Best Buy. Also the huge new content/balance patch 2.1 which also includes Ladders (aka Seasons) is 99% going to hit on Tuesday.

The game is enormously different it was in vanilla, and even from RoS launch to now it's been vastly improved. Easily the best loot game out at this point, and even people who rightly shit on vanilla D3 admit at this point the game has finally surpassed D2 and it's the best game of it's kind out there. Highly recommend folks who have any interest in these kind of games to grab it! I plan on going in pretty hard on the game when ladders hit until Destiny comes out, and I can help anyone out if you need guidance or someone to play with or whatever.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?