Monk Wave of Light Build with Sunwuko Set
Introduction
Previously stuck in the group-only support DPS role, the Sunwuko set received a revision in Patch 2.4 to a viable soloing state. With this rework and the aid of several revised items, the Season 2 champion Wave of Light re-emerges in a new form. This ranged, sustained damage build is geared towards Greater Rift solo progression. We also have a speed farming variation, accessible using the link just below.
Quick Reference
Skill Setup
The basic skill setup of the Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Gear Setup
The required gear setup for the Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.
- Helm:
Sunwuko's Crown
- Shoulders:
Sunwuko's Balance
- Gloves:
Sunwuko's Paws
- Chest:
Sunwuko's Soul
- Belt:
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle
- Pants:
Captain Crimson's Thrust
- Boots:
The Crudest Boots
- Bracers:
Pinto's Pride
- Amulet:
Sunwuko's Shines
- Ring 1:
Unity
- Ring 2:
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
- Weapon 1:
Rabid Strike
- Weapon 2:
Vengeful Wind
Season 29: Paragon Cap
Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.
On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.
With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:
- Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
- Offense: Cooldown Reduction: 200 points.
- Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Monks, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and All Resistance (to complement the naturally high Armor stat of Dexterity-based characters).
- Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:
- Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe
for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a
decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the
3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from
equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season.
If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other
craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its
implementation. The available pieces are
Guardian's Aversion (Wrists),
Guardian's Case (Waist), and
Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a
Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
- Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of
The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and
The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set (
Focus and
Restraint) and
Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another
Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e.,
Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%.
Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.
Legendary Gems
- Legendary Gem 1:
Bane of the Trapped
- Legendary Gem 2:
Enforcer
- Legendary Gem 3:
Bane of the Stricken
Kanai's Cube
- Weapon Slot:
Incense Torch of the Grand Temple
- Armor Slot:
Bindings of the Lesser Gods
- Jewelry Slot:
Ring of Royal Grandeur
How to get this build going?
In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.
If the Sunwuko set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.
From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift.
When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million
Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350
Arcane Dust, 125
Veiled Crystals, 35
Death's Breaths, and
15 of each Bounty cache material:
Khanduran Rune,
Caldeum Nightshade,
Arreat War Tapestry,
Corrupted Angel Flesh, and
Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow
you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube,
speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.
Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the
Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of
your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur
recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x
Death's Breaths, 1x Set
item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never
salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.
In order to assemble a Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk, you should do the following.
- Gather the full 6-piece Sunwuko set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Pants, Gloves, Chest, Helm, and Amulet. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
- Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Daibos to get
Incense Torch of the Grand Temple, which you might have lucked into with your level 1 crafts as per our Seasonal Starter Guide. This weapon provides the basis of your resource management and damage dealing in a
Wave of Light-based build.
- Gamble Bracers for
Pinto's Pride, which also might have been your lucky find from the level 1 gambling. These bracers bolster damage and provide indirect safety with their Slowing effect. Bracers gambling can also net you
Nemesis Bracers, which are a cornerstone farming item.
- Upgrade rare Fist Weapons to get
Vengeful Wind and/or
Kyoshiro's Blade. Both these weapons will skyrocket the performance of a Sunwuko WoL build, as the former ties into your set mechanic and can be adapted to any SWK build, while the latter simply provides upfront burst that can carry you through the difficulty levels.
- Gamble Belts for
Kyoshiro's Soul; this is a convenience item that will mostly carry you through early farming with the Sunwuko set and will allow you to focus on damage rather than monitoring
Sweeping Wind stacks. While gambling Belts, you can also stumble into
Goldwrap, which is a cornerstone standard rift farming item that makes you nearly invulnerable as you pick up gold.
- Upgrade rare Spirit Stones for
Tzo Krin's Gaze for a skill damage boost and additional farming convenience — it turnes
Wave of Light into a ranged skill.
- Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get
In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords.
- Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific
Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Aughilds) as described in the Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you
Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
- While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare
Jewelry is also possible;
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac,
Unity and
Convention of Elements will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of
Stone of Jordan,
Squirt's Necklace, or
Oculus Ring and
The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
Changelog
- 13 Sep. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 13 Sep. 2023 (this page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 22 Feb. 2023 (this page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (gear page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
- 26 Aug. 2022 (this page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (gear page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (skills page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 14 Apr. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (skills page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 08 Dec. 2021 (this page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (gear page): Added Ethereal weapon recommendation for Season 24.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added Ethereal weapon recommendation for Season 24.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (gear page): Added follower recommendation.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 23.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (this page): Added follower recommendation.
- 16 Nov. 2020 (gear page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 16 Nov. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 22.
- 16 Nov. 2020 (this page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 01 Jul. 2020 (gear page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 01 Jul. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 01 Jul. 2020 (this page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (gear page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (this page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 21 Nov. 2019 (gear page): Added Cpt. Crimson set as part of the itemization, significant changes to jewelry. Updated for Season 19.
- 21 Nov. 2019 (skills page): Skill setup moved to a non-generator setup, Epiphany added back. Updated for Season 19.
- 21 Nov. 2019 (this page): Build moved to a non-generator setup, with skill and item changes to reflect that. Updated for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 16 May 2019 (gear page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 16 May 2019 (skills page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 16 May 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 05 Feb. 2019 (this page): Added the Inna Wave of Light variation.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (gear page): Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (skills page): Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (this page): Guide was revised with additional recommendations for Season 16.
- 20 Sep. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 15.
- 14 Jun. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 14.
- 12 Nov. 2017 (gear page): Revised gem recommendations to reflect the proper playstyle of the build.
- 12 Nov. 2017 (skills page): Updated the passive skill recommendations.
- 28 Oct. 2017 (gear page): Changed rings, weapon #2, and waist for Patch 2.6.1.
- 28 Oct. 2017 (skills page): Replaced Epiphany with Crippling Wave for Patch 2.6.1.
- 28 Oct. 2017 (this page): Revised the guide to reflect its buffs in Patch 2.6.1.
- 30 Jun. 2017 (this page): Updated for Patch 2.6 and moved to new guide format.
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This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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