Introduction
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Welcome to the amazing all-around Patterns of Justice Tempest 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 (2) Bonus gives 20% Cooldown Reduction and Resource Cost Reduction.
- 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 Trimmings Set 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.
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
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Follower
Gameplay
Hardcore
Variants
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.
At high Paragon (5,000+) you can drop Unity to get Stone of Jordan. Switch all your Elemental Damage rolls to Lightning and change the follower's token to Hand of the Prophet.
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.
Select Build Version
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.
You need to be extra careful when taking a Speed Pylon. With lots of Movement Speed you can lose your Flurry stacks if you move your mouse cursor too close to your character. Keep it at least 10 yards away at all times! If you are not confident in your ability to pull this off, skip the Pylon. It only gives about 18% DPS, so failing just one rotation out of 6 will end up being a net loss.
Setups
If you are lacking survivability, you can use The Burning Axe of Sankis as your second weapon for 35% damage reduction. For even more toughness you can change Mantle of Channeling to Lefebvre's Soliloquy or Stone Gauntlets.
At high Paragon levels (4,000+) you can drop The Guardian's Path for Relentless Assault for more damage.
Concept
In this version we drop Obisdian Ring of the Zodiac and instead stack 68.5% Cooldown Reduction. This lets us get Stone of Jordan and stack Lightning damage making use of 25% roll on the Won Khim Lau.
Gameplay
Since we no longer have permanent Epiphany our rotation changes. Activate your Epiphany at the start of Fire. This way it will expire one second before Cold and at that point you can use Serenity to retain the CC-immunity and go in to drop your nuke. After that you have to make a judgement call. If you are safe, delay the Epiphany for one second and then cast it again at the start of Fire. If you are in danger (or there's Vortex and Jailer elites around) you have to cast Epiphany immediately. If you do that, your next nuke will have to happen 1 second earlier, and if you keep doing these safe rotation s, eventually you won't have Serenity up during your Cold cycle and that means no Squirt's Necklace buff. To get back on schedule you need to wait until start of Fire before activating Epiphany.
This version is a lot squishier with Epiphany downtimes and no on-demand Serenity but it deals more damage (especially to elites). For this reason it's better to focus on utilizing your Squirt's Necklace better and fighting smaller pulls. Instead of spending 5-6 seconds to move forward and aggro more mobs, you can run somewhere safe and dodge attacks before activating your Serenity and going in for the boom. If you do that successfully you will have 5-7 Squirt's Necklace stacks instead of usual 2!
Setups
If you are lacking survivability, you can use The Burning Axe of Sankis as your second weapon for 35% damage reduction. For even more toughness you can change Mantle of Channeling to Lefebvre's Soliloquy or Stone Gauntlets. You also have an option of using Unity.
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
Blinding Flash
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.