Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
The build incorporates the complete Monkey
King's Garb (a.k.a. Sunwuko) set bonuses, taking five of the six available
SWK set pieces, and then adding two pieces of the craftable Captain Crimson's
Trimmings set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and
Captain Crimson's Thrust. The auxiliary set provides CDR as well as RCR
bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both
stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build. You will
attain the complete set bonuses of this two-set amalgamation via
Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.
Rolls-wise, this Wave of Light-centric setup makes good use of Cooldown
Reduction, skill and area damage bonuses. CDR is desired on
Sunwuko's Balance alongside RCR and Area Damage; double Crit stats plus
Area Damage are optimal on
Sunwuko's Paws.
Sunwuko's Soul,
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and
Captain Crimson's Thrust are pure
Toughness slots. The ideal roll of
Sunwuko's Shines includes double Crit
stats and Lightning or Fire elemental damage (depending on your chosen WoL rune),
alongside the guaranteed socket.
You have four legendary rings that bring tremendous value to the build.
Ring of Royal Grandeur reduces the number of required worn set items for
set bonus completion by one, allowing you to wear utility legendaries in
competing slots.
Convention of Elements brings a tremendous boost to your
damage during the cycle of your chosen element.
Unity halves incoming
damage when paired another on the follower, plus an immortality relic for them
(i.e.,
Enchanting Favor).
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac reduces cooldowns
whenever you hit enemies with a Spirit spender, allowing perfect overlap of
Epiphany. We suggest you wear
Unity and
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and slot
Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube
as a start. When you grow more comfortable with the build, you can rotate either
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac or
Unity for the cyclical damage
increase of
Convention of Elements.
The Crudest Boots are a crucial piece for the setup, albeit for a less
than obvious reason. You will not be taking advantage of the doubled
Mystic Ally summons, but the damage increase to Allies applies to the
Rabid Strike clone — turning this build into an impromptu summoner,
as the clone will deliver the bulk of your damage.
Added in Patch 2.4, Pinto's Pride is a
Wave of Light-specific
bracer that doubles as a damage amplifier and a tool for crowd control, slowing
enemies by the impressive 80% when struck with a pillar. Helping you keep foes at
bay,
Pinto's Pride also gives you a vital, effortless proc for
Bane of the Trapped.
Rabid Strike mimics your
Wave of Light casts by spawning an
Ally-like summon that mimics your Spirit spender; curiously, this Ally is
affected by several Ally-related buffs like
Bindings of the Lesser Gods and
The Crudest Boots, resulting in a tremendously hard-hitting "pet" build.
Your other weapon will vary according to content: in
Greater Rift progression, you will
do well to include
Vengeful Wind in order to expand the burst potential
coming from the Sunwuko set.
Bastions of Will set alteration
There is a notable alteration possible in the jewelry, the Bastions of Will
set — Focus and
Restraint. This will bring even more
damage to the build at the cost of toughness, and will alter the rotation
slightly as it requires the inclusion of a generator skill. This is generally done
by replacing
Cyclone Strike for
Way of the Hundred Fists
Assimilation,
and using
Spirit Guards instead of
Bindings of the Lesser Gods in the
Cube.
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
The build requires the standard investments in skill damage across the gear
pieces that can roll the stat, helm and boots (max 30%). Aside from that, it
requires as much Area Damage as you can fit (ideally 100%+) while still
maintaining a high investment in Cooldown Reduction, which is by far the hardest
and most demanding utility roll; for a setup using the Zodiac ring, try to obtain
at least 50%+, achievable with a single roll on gear (i.e. shoulder) plus the
Cpt. Crimson set, Diamond in helm, Paragons, Beacon of Ytar and using an
Enchantress for
Prophetic Harmony. In a non-Zodiac setup, you
can push hard into CDR and still get 90%+ uptime of
Epiphany by rolling
CDR on pretty much any gear piece that can get it (except the amulet, where it
will cost too valuable rolls) — shoulders, gloves, both rings, weapon and
off-hand, plus the auxiliary bonuses described above. The problem is that you
also have to balance it with Resource Cost Reduction, which should be present at
least on shoulders, weapon and off-hand (45%+ with Cpt. Crimson factored in).
For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 600-700k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer or weapon).
All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Dexterity.
Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
---|---|---|
Head |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon #1 |
|
|
Weapon #2 |
|
To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.
Paragon Points
In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Dexterity, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or Maximum Spirit if you want to play around with a bigger resource pool.
In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Attack Speed, in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Resource Cost Reduction and Area Damage first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its
own multiplier in your total damage calculation. This gem will be easily procced
by the slowing property of
Pinto's Pride bracers.
Enforcer brings a multiplicative damage increase to pets, which
curiously interacts with the
Rabid Strike Ally-like clone and makes this
gem highly desirable for the setup.
Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final
jewelry socket in GRs. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged
fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem
is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target,
high HP enemies. The Wave of Light Monk does better than most builds in single
target situations but still benefits decently from the gem — a testament
to its quality.
When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the
highest available level of Emeralds in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these
will all be Flawless Royal Emeralds as soon as possible. As you grow in
Paragon (bulking up Dexterity in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and
more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive
Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that;
the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of
toughness impede your progress. Since this is a fairly cooldown-dependent build,
slot a
Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapons, use a
Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Kanai's Cube
For Greater Rift progression, the weapon slot will be taken by the
Incense Torch of the Grand Temple, as its resource cost reduction
bonuses soften the restrictive price of
Wave of Light.
Bindings of the Lesser Gods increase the damage of
Mystic Ally
(including the Ally-like clone from the
Rabid Strike proc), against
enemies affected by
Cyclone Strike. As a result, you will have to
Cyclone Strike at least once every 5 seconds.
In the jewelry slot you will use the Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache
legendary ring from Act I bounties.
Running the full 6-piece Sunwuko set bonus, the Cpt. Crimson 3-piece bonus, and
The Crudest Boots while dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the
Grandeur by cubing its power is a tremendous boost to the build.
The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.
Follower
The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the
Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from
Prophetic Harmony, as well as the
Focused Mind attack speed buff.
For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.
Legendary Potion
The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
(allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede your
Wave of Light
damage) and
Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties
complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Monks (due to
Harmony) for optimal survivability.
Changelog
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 08 Dec. 2021: Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 21 Jul. 2021: Added Ethereal weapon recommendation for Season 24.
- 01 Apr. 2021: Added follower recommendation.
- 16 Nov. 2020: Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 01 Jul. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 21 Nov. 2019: Added Cpt. Crimson set as part of the itemization, significant changes to jewelry. Updated for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Reviewed for Season 18.
- 16 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 17 Jan. 2019: Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 12 Nov. 2017: Revised gem recommendations to reflect the proper playstyle of the build.
- 28 Oct. 2017: Changed rings, weapon #2, and waist for Patch 2.6.1.
More Monk Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
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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