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I know how damage works. I've tried my best (as far as I have found items so far) to maximize my damage but it looks like some people just kill like crazy, while I have to pause a moment or two for every white enemy.

For reference, this is the character I'm talking about, but I would appreciate a more general response. Furthermore, here's some info reported by the game:

Cropped screenshot of extended character screen

Here's what I've done and I know they are kind of obligatory:

  • Get a good weapon and insert a critical hit gem in it.
  • Get a decent critical hit chance and damage and given a choice, increase the smaller one (CHD vs 10x CHC) (I know the math, but let's not get into that).
  • All this is done with a decent toughness and given a chance, increase the smaller of resistance and armor (Armor vs 10x Resistance) (again, I know the math).
  • (At least with monk), increase cooldown reduction (I know I can get 10 percent more with my helm, but that wouldn't make wonders suddenly).
  • (At least with monk), use passive skills that increase my attack speed.

Here's what I've done with my own wits:

  • Get a high lightning damage bonus (that kind of happened by chance and the set just worked in its favor)
  • Use mostly lightning effect on my selected skills
  • Have the damage bonus on the weapon be of lightning type (side question: does lightning bonus affect that?)
  • Get bonus damage to skills I use (FoT and WoL in this case)

Here are a bit of details of what I know I can do better:

  • Get that ring that makes every set look as if they had one more of it (set-bonus-wise)
  • Get 2 Sunwuko's pieces to increase damage by 20%

Now here's where I'm stumped. If I go to Torment 4, I progress slowly through the enemies but more than a handful of the people I see just walk and every white enemy seem to just drop dead. I know I could do better damage-wise, but I cannot imagine anything about 50% more.

Furthermore, with for example Wreath of Lightning gem (currently rank 15), the lightning seems to barely have any effect on even whites and upgrading it further doesn't significantly raise its damage either. It seems strange for the gem to be that underpowered.

All that said, what I suspect is there is some important factor I'm not taking care of. My question is therefore, what is that important factor? In other words, how can people kill like crazy while a build like mine is considerably inferior?

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Shahbaz
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  • Get that Ring of Royal Grandeur. If you're going lightning, you want the Eye of the Storm helmet, preferably with crit chance. Barring that, keep rerolling that stat until you get crit chance. You want as close to ~50% crit as you can get. Sunwuko's build requires you to spam a mantra every three seconds, so it tends to be a super microed build. I'd recommend finding two one-handers, and giving them both emeralds. That will help you a whole ton more at this point than a Daibo. – Frank Jan 03 '15 at 22:03
  • @Frank, I thought about it, but the most damage I found on one-handed's were 2.4k and I'm not sure if the extra 120% CHD is worth the almost 1k lower damage than a daibo. I wasn't going to go for sunwuko either, just the 2-item bonus which is a raw +20% damage. I am still looking for that ring (which means I just need one sunwuko item anyway) but no luck so far (that's also why I have a topaz in my head). Eye of the storm looks interesting, but I haven't found it yet. – Shahbaz Jan 04 '15 at 01:36
  • What is unbelievable to me though is that it looks like some people really have multiple magnitudes of damage higher than me. Like just now, I was playing with a barb that would often cast "Wrath of the Berserker" I think and just kill torment 4 elites in 2 seconds by himself. Killing them for me would have taken at best 30-60 seconds. Looking at his profile, his reported DPS was also around 800K. I already have +40% lightning damage and various other bonuses. I could at best double that bonus. Is crit the deciding factor at this point then? – Shahbaz Jan 04 '15 at 01:41
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    Crit and crit damage scale almost exponentially for your damage. I have roughly 45%-50% crit, and 500% crit damage. I can comfortably solo T6 without any issues. It's that important. – Frank Jan 04 '15 at 01:45
  • @frank, I see! If you wouldn't mind sharing your build, I would be happy to take a look at it! – Shahbaz Jan 04 '15 at 01:52
  • Too much defense, not enough elemental damage, not enough specific skill damage, not any bonus damage to elites. – Travis J Jan 05 '15 at 03:37
  • @TravisJ, I do die sometimes with elites. Perhaps I need to ease on defense and get elite damage reduction? Anyway, just last night I learned how to get RoRG, got it and now my set has a considerably higher power (3000% electrical damage on dashing strike to everyone nearby), but I haven't tested it yet. Thanks though, I'll try to look out for and increase those stats. – Shahbaz Jan 05 '15 at 09:49
  • As @Frank said, get a higher crit chance and crit damage, that will really make a difference compared to the rest. Try to get as near as 50% crit chance first, getting crits, even lower ones, will make all the difference in the time taken to down mobs. – Jonathan Drapeau Jan 05 '15 at 12:53
  • @JonathanDrapeau, while I agree that higher CHC and CHD is good, but I have a doubt regarding whether that's the important factor I'm missing. My doubt is because the Damage calculated by the game already takes CHC and CHD into account to give you an average "damage per second" or something like that. If I looked at your profile and saw a similar number for Damage as mine, doesn't that mean "on average" we do the same damage? For example you could have less damage from weapon but more from crits and the average would be the same, no? – Shahbaz Jan 05 '15 at 13:11
  • That's what makes me doubt there is something else that is not taken into account when calculating Damage, but is important and I'm missing. – Shahbaz Jan 05 '15 at 13:12
  • What are the legend gems you are using? I see the Teardrop but if you aren't using gogok and/or pain enhancer, you're missing out ton of damage there. I use the Tear, Gogok and Pain enhancer, haven't played since the latest patch but T5 wasn't that hard for me, could handle T6 but wasn't worth the risk (in hardcore mode). – Jonathan Drapeau Jan 05 '15 at 13:27
  • @Shahbaz - If you are dying, then wear a unity and put one on your follower with the invincibility token. There is no reason for your character to have any defense whatsoever, it should all be damage. You need to swap all of your all resist, +armor, +life % to skill based increases. If you are interested in looking at good monk builds, simply open up the leaderboard for the greater rifts, and inspect some of the top players there. – Travis J Jan 05 '15 at 18:32
  • @travisj, hahaha, nice hack, but I'm sure blizzard would soon fix it. Out of curiosity though, does it work when you are in a party (so your follower is in town)? – Shahbaz Jan 06 '15 at 09:17
  • @TravisJ You can still die, Unity only split the damage, if the half you get is enough to kill you... well yes. – Jonathan Drapeau Jan 06 '15 at 13:25
  • @JonathanDrapeau - Yup, death is still possible :) However, Unity is a must if you are solo. And while T6 may be the topic here, that is only grift 25. Once you get to 40 (T10) damage is essential, and toughness is but a memory. – Travis J Jan 06 '15 at 18:46
  • @TravisJ, Oh by the way, I did look at the top of the leaderboard, but they usually have striped their hero and put the items on other heros. It's quite hard to see what they wore at the time they won the rift. – Shahbaz Jan 06 '15 at 19:18
  • @Shahbaz - Yeah, that unfortunately happens. Sometimes it requires going down to the 10th or 20th spot to find someone with the same gear on. Look for shared gear and spec to make a determination :) Also, sometimes there is nuance based on user style so keep that in mind. – Travis J Jan 06 '15 at 19:20
  • @Shahbaz - Re: Unity hack. It isn't a hack though, it just increases your toughness (although not visible in your profile) by quite a lot. Almost every person on the leaderboard for singles in grift uses it and I don't think it will be nerfed. After all, it does require the use a highly valuable ring slot. – Travis J Jan 06 '15 at 19:24
  • @TravisJ, I agree the 50% reduction is very attractive! But I guess I'd stick with multiplayer. – Shahbaz Jan 06 '15 at 22:13
  • FYI, I've made quite big changes and I'm very close to getting a good necklace too for the final gem (If the mystic would please finally give a decent crit damage). I'll write an answer that sums up everything you guys have been saying mixed with my finding. I think the key thing I had been missing was the RoRG, with which now I have a lot of extra bonuses. Though I still can't say I kill like crazy, I've definitely improved (and partly at the cost of dying more often). – Shahbaz Jan 06 '15 at 22:17
  • @Shahbaz - Yes, the Unity will not help with multiplayer. Luckily in multiplayer there are generally more people around to help mitigate the damage. Also, your role should probably be different as a monk in multiplayer - as in you may want to consider going full toughness, no damage, and focus on group damage buffs and pulling mobs into nice little aoe groups. Food for thought. If you aren't in the monk community in game, you may want to join also, those channels have a wealth of knowledge. – Travis J Jan 06 '15 at 22:34
  • @travisj, good points. I should probably keep two set of items for the two different play styles. – Shahbaz Jan 07 '15 at 09:42

2 Answers2

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I think what will help you the most will be to switch Wreath of lightning to either pain enhancer or gogok of switftness.

Best would be to use all 3, Tear, Gogok and PE. Attack speed is one of the very few things in D3 without a cap hit. Hitting faster will get you more crits, crits will activate PE and more hits will activate the tear more often. It's a win-win-win situation. I would suggest using Gogok till you get a slot for PE in your necklace.

I had Wreath of lightning before switching to the Tear on my necklace and I saw the difference even if my tear is rank 1 while my Wreath of lightning was like 10. It wasn't night and day but I didn't want to go back at all.

My sheet damage goes over 1.1 million (even higher but since I'm working on my memory after the holidays, I rather say something I'm sure of... but it did go over 1.1M) when at 15 stacks of Gogok, which, once you hit 6-7 stacks, shouldn't be hard to get.

After that, getting a higher Crit chance and crit damage will always help. I would have to be at home to see my crit chance and damage since it doesn't show in the profile.

Don't put too much importance on the sheet damage, there's a ton of things that will make you melt mobs that don't show there.

Jonathan Drapeau
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While I cannot say I can kill like crazy yet, I've certainly improved a lot, so I'm sharing what I gathered as the essentials (both from my experience and the comments/answers here).

The first and most important one:

  • Ring of Royal Grandeur. This makes it possible to get many set bonuses at the same time that would otherwise be impossible. You may be interested in knowing that it only drops from bounty caches of Act 1.

With that in mind, here are my current stats:

crop of items and stats

While I've inevitably lost some minor elemental damage and attack speed, I've improved on the following (I'll try to keep it as generic as possible):

  • Critical Hit Chance: This is particularly important since many effects trigger on critical hit
  • Critical Hit Damage: Of course
  • Higher skill damages
  • From set bonuses:
    • Damage against elites
    • Damage reduction from elites
  • Use Tear, Gogok and Pain Enhancer: See this other answer
  • Get high life per hit: This is important for survival. Note that this effect (and life per second and others as well) scale if you trade life for armor/resistance (as you can see, my toughness is somewhat lower than before, and I have less health, but very quickly heal whatever damage I take).

Some monk-specific improvements:

  • From set bonuses:
    • Cheap Sweeping Wind cast: It has basically become free, so I switched my Seven Sided Strike with this one.
    • Get effect of all mantras: +10% higher damage, more healing, damage when getting hit etc
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