Welcome to the amazing all-around Patterns of JusticeTempest Rush Monk. If you enjoy dragging monsters forward and erasing them with beautiful icy bombs of death, you're in the right place.
With the introduction of the Patterns of Justice Set and Won Khim Lau in Season 19, Tempest Rush has come into the spotlight once more, this time as a main damaging ability instead of being used as a trigger for Exploding Palms builds.
Meanwhile Patterns of Justice is the set designed around Tempest Rush, Monkey King's Garb (Sunwuko) is unfortunately performing better overall in push. However, whenever a season theme offers more Kanai's Cube flexibility such as Season 20 or Season 22, Patterns of Justice claims its throne due to its ability to equip Shenlong's Spirit for a massive damage boost. In Season 24, PoJ asserts its leadership due to being able to utilize a One-Handed Ethereal Weapon with Flying Dragon legendary power.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Tempest Rush can proc it. This is further enhanced by the Flurry stack system allowing for great burst damage. A combination of smooth gameplay and devastating damage make this build a very fun and competitive one to go with. Let's dive in and learn what makes it so great!
Spin to Win ✔ Unique Playstyle ✔ Incredible All-Around Build ✔ Gigantic Icy Bombs of Damage ✔
❌ Gear Dependent ❌ Difficult Execution ❌ Struggles in Low Density ❌ Trees & Wormholes Make You Cry
Core Setup
Items
Patterns of Justice (2) Bonus gives every rune for Sweeping Wind and 15% movement speed.
Patterns of Justice (4) Bonus gives 50% damage reduction and a tremendous 50 Spirit Regeneration.
Patterns of Justice (6) Bonus increases all damage by 20,000% when you hit enemies with Tempest Rush while Sweeping Wind is active.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus increases our damage by our Cooldown Reduction percentage and decreases our damage taken by our Resource Cost Reduction percentage.
Won Khim Lau gives 600% damage and causes Tempest Rush to cast Cyclone Strike.
Cesar's Memento increases damage to enemies that are blinded, stunned or frozen by 800%.
Balance gives 600% damage to Tempest Rush and 100% Critical Hit Chance if it hits 3 or less enemies (awesome for killing the Rift Guardian).
Ring of Royal Grandeur completes our Patterns of Justice and Captain Crimson's TrimmingsSet Bonuses.
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac lets us reset all our cooldowns.
Squirt's Necklace provides between 20% and 100% increased damage thanks to Serenity.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, we can include Shenlong's Spirit set without losing any major multiplier. This makes the build a lot stronger but also more tricky to play because we can't generate Spirit while channeling Tempest Rush so Shenlong buff is only active for a short moment before we run out. We need to carefully manage our Spirit to enshure all buffs are up during Convention of Elements Cold cycle.
Global Stat Priorities
Stack about 55% Cooldown Reduction to keep up Epiphany. Get one or two Life per Hit rolls (Weapons, Bracer) for recovery. Aim to get All Resistance on your Belt, Pants and Boots and Secondary Resistances for Harmony passive on all other pieces. Your offensive priorities are: Cold Damage > Critical Hit Chance > Area Damage > Critical Hit Damage ~ Damage Range > Tempest Rush Damage.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2.Gather the full Patterns of Justice set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
Fist Weapons to get Won Khim Lau and Vengeful Wind
Daibos to get Balance
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Convention of Elements
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
Act 3: Avarice Band
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Cain's Destiny and Sage's Journey
6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.
7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
1. Dexterity 2. All Resistance 3. Vitality 4. Life %
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Bane of the Trapped provides 60% increased damage to slowed enemies.
Taeguk provides up to 80% additive damage and 20% armor as long as we continuously channel Tempest Rush.
Gogok of Swiftness provides 15% Attack Speed, 15% Cooldown Reduction, and 30% chance to dodge, which helps keep Epiphany up.
Boon of the Hoarder makes monsters spray gold everywhere for our Goldwrap and 30% increased movement speed for T16 content.
Bane of the Stricken gives up to 2.3% increased damage on successive attacks against the same target. We'll need this gem if we want to solo push to kill the Rift Guardian.
Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard gives us shield which protects our Squirt's Necklace stacks.
Skills
Tempest Rush Flurry is our damage dealer that blows up everything around us when we choose to release it. We will channel this skill until we have 100 stacks of Flurry to unleash an icy explosion of death.
Sweeping Wind Inner Storm gives us increased spirit regeneration, but we get all runes from our Patterns of Justice (2) Bonus.
Epiphany Desert Shroud gives 50% damage reduction, crowd control immunity and allows us to teleport to monsters with our melee attacks.
Blinding Flash Faith in the Light gives us 29% additive damage and activates our Cesar's Memento.
Dashing Strike Way of the Falling Star allows us to teleport around faster in speed content.
Mantra of Conviction Annihilation gives 16% additive damage and 30% movement speed.
Mantra of Salvation Agility gives 40% all resistance and 35% dodge.
Cyclone Strike Wall of Wind can be used in speed content to active Cesar's Memento and is automatically cast from Won Khim Lau.
Serenity Ascension makes you immune to damage and crowd controlling effects for 4 seconds, letting us build a couple of Squirt's Necklace stacks.
Passives
Beacon of Ytar gives 20% Cooldown Reduction to keep Epiphany up.
Seize the Initiative gives 30% Attack Speed when hitting enemies above 75% health.
Harmony gives 40% of Secondary Resistances on items to All Resistance.
The Guardian's Path gives us 35% dodge.
Near Death Experience is used in Nephalem Rifts to prevent accidental oneshots.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. All Resistance
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Spirit
2. Attack Speed
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Dexterity
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. Armor
3. Life per Hit
4. Vitality1
4. Critical Hit Damage
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).
Paragon Points
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Follower
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy(3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
Speed GR Enchantress
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence> Attack Speed. Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
When you enter the rift activate Sweeping Wind once. The rest of the gameplay revolves your Convention of Elements. Generally you should follow this rotation:
Cast Epiphany every 15 seconds. If you can't reset its cooldown in time, use Serenity to cover the gap.
Cast Mantra of Salvation every 3 seconds. You generate more Spirit than you can use so it's just free 20% All Resistance.
Hold down Tempest Rush.
At the end of Physical use Serenity and Blinding Flash and try to kill a low HP monster to spawn an Oculus Ring.
Move into Oculus if it spawned, and just before Serenity expires use Blinding Flash again and release Tempest Rush.
Start channeling Tempest Rush again.
Wormhole and root attack from Tree Elites will interrupt your Tempest Rusheven if you are CC immune! One or two Wormholes on an open map you can usually dodge, but Trees must always be skipped.
Hardcore
Use Near Death Experience instead of Seize the Initiative or Harmony. If you want more toughness drop Mantle of Channeling for Lefebvre's Soliloquy. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
Bounties
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Concept This is a Tempest Rush monk build and simply throwing in In-Geom and Dashing Strike is enough to turn it into a top tier Nephalem Rift build. Cyclone Strike Wall of Wind on the bar automatically procs Cesar's Memento for us. We change the Tempest Rush rune to Electric Field for extra AoE. Finally we finish off the build with a bunch of movement speed and the standard T16 Gold package: Goldwrap, Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band.
Gameplay You don't have to worry about building a million Flurry stacks or being on a specific Convention of Elements cycle. Just Tempest Rush forward and use Dashing Strike when there are no elites or minimal density.
Setups If you're playing in groups, drop Captain Crimson's Trimmings for Goldwrap and Leoric's Crown, cube Nemesis Bracers and replace Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band. The exact same setup can be also used in bounties if you're willing to deal with gold-dependent toughness.
Concept Bounty build is very similar to Nephalem Rifts variant, except we ditch all the gold-related stuff and go for more toughness to be able to ignore mobs during Exploration Bounties. Aquila Cuirass and The Guardian's Path take care of that problem.
Gameplay Nothing really changes in Bounties compared to Nephalem Rifts. The only big difference is the lack of Nemesis Bracers. You need to carry a pair of them in your bag and do the swap when you want to get an In-Geom proc from a shrine.
Setups If you're struggling with damage or toughness replacing Wreath of Lightning with Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard will both boost your toughness via shields and Life Regeneration, and also help you with damage by protecting your Squirt's Necklace buff.
You can also use the Group Nephalem Rifts setup with no changes to do bounties. There you have Nemesis Bracers all the time so no swapping is required. As a downside your toughness will depend on how much gold you pick up.
Concept For Solo XP farming on monk Tempest Rush is always a solid option. It provides high damage with a good amount of speed to farm GR100+ in under 3 minutes on any map. Here we use Echoing Fury for extra damage and Movement Speed. We drop some Area Damage to get Resource Cost Reduction for more toughness.
Gameplay Spam Serenity as hard as you can. Each time you use it, your shield from Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard will refresh keeping your Squirt's Necklace buff safe. Use Epiphany every 15 seconds. Keep channeling Tempest Rush at all times and interrupt it briefly to release small explosions. Even 5-10 stack explosion should be strong enough to kill stuff in speeds. Use Dashing Strike when you need to cover a lot of empty space or jump over a wall.
Setups If you can't keep your Squirt's Necklace buff, switch Dashing Strike rune to Blinding Speed or replace Mantle of Channeling with Lefebvre's Soliloquy or St. Archew's Gage.
If you want to farm for gear instead of XP and do 1-1.5 minute runs in GR 90 range, you need to use a Lightning setup with Electric Field and drop most of toughness and some damage in favor of Movement Speed. Replace Echoing Fury with Vengeful Wind, Unity with Stone of Jordan, Serenity with Mantra of Conviction Annihilation. Warzechian Armguards take place of Mantle of Channeling in the cube. Take Near Death Experience instead of The Guardian's Path to prevent accidents.
Concept Solo Push variant goes for maximum damage using Azurewrath as a weapon, Convention of Elements and Blinding Flash Faith in the Light.
Gameplay Your damage rotation is described in detail in the section above. Look for an open map, create a big pack of monsters and slowly drag it through the rift by teleporting your follower forward after every rotation.
With Shenlong's Spirit you need to pay attention to your Spirit globe. After you release the explosion, keep channeling Tempest Rush until your Spirit hits 0 and Shenlong buff disappears. After that you start building up a new explosion and you mustn't let your Spirit get full before time. Use Mantra of Salvation and Sweeping Wind to keep it around half. In Physical part of the cycle, stop using these skills and let it fill up. This way the buff will be active during Cold and you can use Blinding Flash and release the explosion.
Setups At high Paragon levels (4,000+) you can drop The Guardian's Path for Relentless Assault for more damage.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Tempest Rush Flurry
Gains 5 stacks per second, with a cap of 100 stacks. This takes 20 seconds which is a full Convention of Elements rotation, which is why you must start channeling immediately after you detonate.
If you stop channeling Tempest Rush for any reason, your Flurry stacks reset to 0. This includes being: knocked back, frozen, stunned, wormholed, jailed, or even unwanted teleports from Epiphany, which are usually caused when you approach monsters with a very large hitbox.
The explosion scales with Attack Speed as a separate multiplier.
Mythic Rhythm buffs the channeling damage and the final explosion regardless of how long you choose to channel.
You lose all stacks if you try to Tempest Rush in place by moving your cursor close to the screen's center. The radius of the "dead zone" in the middle of your screen is proportional to your Movement Speed times your latency. If you have just 25% from Paragon and less than 100ms ping, then this zone will be just a few pixels wide and it's nearly impossible to hit it without specifically trying. But if you stack some Movement Speed (e.g. Warzechian Armguards, Speed Pylon) and/or play not in your home region, the "dead zone" can become quite large and force you to consciously avoid it.
The Flurry's explosion is currently bugged in combination with Patterns of Justice set and only receives a x151 damage multiplier from the (6) Bonus.
Blinding Flash
The blind lasts for 3 seconds if the monsters are not under diminishing returns. You can use it at the start of the ColdConvention of Elements cycle and wait until the very end to release your Tempest Rush because Cesar's Memento lasts for 5 seconds. In other words, the blind doesn't have to happen the instant you release your Flurry stacks, there is a window of time there you can sometimes use to your advantage, for example to spawn an Oculus Ring.
The damage bonus from Faith in the Light rune is applied after a short delay, meaning that after you cast Blinding Flash you need to wait about 1s before releasing Tempest Rush. For this reason you shouldn't put Blinding Flash on your left mouse button as that will cause you to release Tempest Rush before you get the damage bonus.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Patterns of Justice set.
Practice building and detonating your Flurry stacks on your Cold cycle of Convention of Elements.
Climb the solo leaderboards by gathering monsters together and burning them down with Area Damage.
Enjoy this beautiful Spin-to-Win build!
Town Is Lava!
Credits
Written by Northwar & Raxxanterax. Introduction by Chewingnom. Shoutout to Nevetser the Brutal for helping optimize the build.