Welcome to the Monkey King's Garb Sunwuko Tempest Rush Monk, a brother to the Patterns of Justice Tempest Rush Monk that can devastate enemies in an equal if not more impressive fashion. With the introduction of the Patterns of Justice Set and Won Khim Lau in Season 19, Monkey King's Garb have been buffed with Vengeful Wind now granting 10 additional Sweeping Wind stacks instead of 7.
Meanwhile Patterns of Justice is the set designed around Tempest Rush, Monkey King's Garb (Sunwuko) is performing better overall in push due to a stronger (6) Bonus damage multiplier. However, whenever a season theme offers more Kanai's Cube flexibility such as Season 20 or Season 22, Sunwuko falls behind due to its need for Vengeful Wind and its incapacity to equip Shenlong's Spirit for a massive damage boost.
Anyways a combination of smooth gameplay and devastating damage make this build a very fun and competitive one to go with. Let's go over this monster and push it into the top of the Sunwuko leaderboard!
Spin To Win ✔ Powerful Solo Push ✔ Strong All-Around Build ✔ Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master ✔
❌ Needs Optimized Gear ❌ Weaker In Low Density ❌ Can Be Tough To Survive ❌ Trees and Wormholes Make You Cry
Core Setup
Items
Sunwuko (2) Bonus gives us 50% damage reduction while Sweeping Wind is active.
Sunwuko (6) Bonus increases the damage of Tempest Rush by 1,500% per stack of Sweeping Wind that you have.
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.
Vengeful Wind lets our Sweeping Wind stack up to 13 times giving us a tremendous damage boost from the Sunwuko (6) Bonus.
Won Khim Lau gives 600% damage and causes Tempest Rush to cast Cyclone Strike.
Cesar's Memento increases Tempest Rush 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).
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac lets us reset all our cooldowns.
Mantle of Channeling provides 25% damage and damage reduction.
Ring of Royal Grandeur completes our Sunwuko and Captain Crimson Set Bonuses.
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 add Stone of Jordan which not only gives us some elemental and Elite damage, but aslo lets us make use of Lightning Damage roll on Won Khim Lau.
Global Stat Priorities
You need to stack approximately 50% Resource Cost Reduction and at least 55% Cooldown Reduction (CDR). Resource Cost Reduction is necessary to keep channeling Tempest Rush all the time, while Cooldown Reduction is needed for permanent Epiphany. Get one or two Life per Hit rolls (Weapons and Bracers) 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 > Critical Hit Damage ~ Damage Range > Area Damage > 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 Monkey King's Garb 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 your last missing set piece is Sunwuko's Shines - don't gamble for it! Instead gamble for a cheap and easy item, like Sunwuko's Balance, and once again convert it with Recipe 4. 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, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
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.
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 is great for speed GR farming as it will protect our Squirt's Necklace which gives us 100% more damage.
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, and up to 19,500% damage from our Sunwuko set.
Epiphany Desert Shroud gives 50% damage reduction, crowd control immunity, 20 Spirit per second 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.
Way of the Hundred Fists Blazing Fists is used to proc Mythic Rhythm.
Dashing Strike allows us to teleport around faster in speed content.
Mantra of Salvation Agility gives 20% 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 is used in another setup to make us 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.
Momentum gives us 20% additive damage for 6 seconds after moving 20 yards.
Harmony converts 40% of Secondary Resistances on items to All Resistance.
Mythic Rhythm gives us 40% extra damage on our next Tempest Rush after hitting 3 times with a Generator.
Some passives can be swapped around to get a bit of offense (Relentless Assault giving 20% damage against Blinded enemies) or defense (The Guardian's Path giving us 35% dodge).
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. All Resistance
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Spirit
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Dexterity
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. Armor
3. Life per Hit
4. Vitality1
4. Attack Speed
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).
Altar of Rites
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.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: 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.
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Scoundrel setup for the Critical Hit Chance from Anatomy, 10% increased damage from Piercing Shot, and the insane Critical Hit Chance cloud from Night’s Veil.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality token, we do not need to stack survivability on our Scoundrel.
Dexterity > 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.
Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and 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.
Hold down Tempest Rush.
At the end of Physical use Blinding Flash and try to kill a low HP monster to spawn an Oculus Ring.
Move into Oculus if it spawned, and at around 3 seconds into Cold use Blinding Flash again and release Tempest Rush.
Hit something 3 times with Way of the Hundred Fists to activate Mythic Rhythm.
Start channeling Tempest Rush again.
Wormhole and root attack from Tree-type 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
This build can be extremely tanky if you drop Way of the Hundred Fists for Serenity. This also opens up a passive slot previously occupied by Mythic Rhythm so you can fit in Near Death Experience. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Concept When it comes to Nephalem Rifts, Sunwuko is inferior in both speed and damage to PoJ Tempest Rush Monk. But it has an advantage of being able to use Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny sets even while playing in groups.
Gameplay In T16 we just fly from Elite to Elite using In-Geom powered Dashing Strike. Activate Sweeping Wind when you enter the rift, keep Epiphany active and tap Mantra of Healing every 2.5 seconds to protect your Squirt's Necklace buff with a shield.
Setups If you're playing in groups, drop Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Leoric's Crown for Goldwrap and Sage's Journey, cube Nemesis Bracers and replace Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band. On the Rift Guardian swap Sage's Journey to Cain's Destiny for 25% extra Greater Rift Keystones.
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. It should be mentioned that the Patterns of Justice Tempest Rush Monk is a slightly stronger version of this, if you're willing to put that together. Here we'll pick up Stone of Jordan which allows us to stack Lightning Damage while playing Flurry.
Gameplay Use Epiphany every 15 seconds. Keep channeling Tempest Rush at all times and interrupt it briefly to release small explosions on high-HP trash and elites. 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 the wall.
Setups At high paragon (5,000+) you can also include Squirt's Necklace by equipping Sunwuko's Balance and dropping either Lefebvre's Soliloquy or Mantle of Channeling. You also need to replace Bane of the Powerful with Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard and use Serenity Ascension instead of Mantra of Salvation to keep the damage buff up.
Select Build Version
Mythic Rhythm version
Concept This variant uses Way of the Hundred Fists to proc Mythic Rhythm passive for 40% extra damage. You need 52% RCR to keep your Spirit from draininig when not hitting any enemies. But since we have Vigor giving us Spirit on crit, we can get away with 1-2 fewer rolls.
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.
Do not click Speed Pylons unless you want to skip a map or you need to spawn a pack for nearby Conduit Pylon. With extra Attack Speed you spend too much Spirit.
Setups If you're looking for more toughness go with Relentless Assault or The Guardian's Path instead of Mythic Rhythm and use Serenity instead of Way of the Hundred Fists. Keep in mind that you also need a bit more RCR and CDR if you do this switch.
If you're lacking the necessary RCR, Blinding Flash Replenishing Light can be used to resolve your Spirit issues.
At very high Paragon levels (5,000+) you can drop The Guardian's Path or Harmony for Relentless Assault for more damage.
Concept This variant loses Mythic Rhythm and Stone Gauntlets to get Squirt's Necklace and Serenity. Compared to the other version it has half as much raw toughness but can use Serenity frequently. Damage-wise this version is about 5% weaker but it gets a huge boost from Shield Pylon. You need 57% RCR to keep your Spirit from draininig when not hitting any enemies. But since we have Vigor giving us Spirit on crit, we can get away with 1-2 fewer rolls.
Gameplay Here you need to do Squirt's Necklace setup instead of Mythic Rhythm. Simply activate Serenity at the end of Physical and release Tempest Rush right before it expires. This will guarantee you at least 2 stacks of Squirt's Necklace.
Setups If you're lacking the necessary RCR, Blinding Flash Replenishing Light can be used to resolve your Spirit issues.
At very high Paragon levels (5,000+) you can drop The Guardian's Path or Harmony 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.
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 Sunwuko and Captain Crimson's Trimmingssets.
Practice building and detonating your Flurry stacks on your Cold cycle of Convention of Elements.
Climb the solo leaderboards by gathering monsters together and blasting them away with Area Damage.
Enjoy this beautiful Spin-to-Win build!
Town Is Lava!
Credits
Written by Northwar & Raxxanterax. Introduction by Chewingnom.