Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk Skills and Runes

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Quick Reference
    • 2.1. Skill Setup
  • 3. Builds
    • 3.1. Gear Setup
    • 3.2. Legendary Gems
    • 3.3. Kanai's Cube
  • 4. Role in the Current Meta
  • 5. Reading Further
  • 6. Changelog
• ×Skills and Runes
  • 1. Rotation
  • 2. Skills, Runes and Passives
  • 3. Changelog
• +Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
  • 1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
  • 2. Paragon Points
  • 3. Gems
  • 4. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Follower
  • 6. Changelog
• +Speed Farming Variation
  • 1. Speed Farming
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube
  • 6. Changelog

General Information

Below, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.1 and Season 15.

The other pages of our Sunwuko Wave of Light Monk guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

Active Skills
Crippling Wave Tsunami Wave of Light Explosive Light 1 Dashing Strike Blinding Speed 2 Sweeping Wind Inner Storm 3 Mystic Ally Air Ally 4 Mantra of Salvation Agility
Passive Skills
Seize the Initiative Sixth Sense Harmony The Guardian's Path

1. Rotation

The build begins runs with an activation of Sweeping Wind, whose stacking mechanic dictates the Sunwuko damage and protection bonuses. Use Dashing Strike to seek out and draw the attention of massive groups of enemies, then begin the alternating Crippling Wave and Wave of Light assault. While you will be keeping less threatening enemies in your melee range to keep up generator attacks, make your Wave of Light placements further away to maximize the bonuses of Zei's Stone of Vengeance. When faced with damage spikes, pop your Mantra of Salvation Agility active for additional Toughness. To satiate this Spirit-hungry setup you will use the passive benefit of Inner Storm plus regular Crippling Wave attacks, but once resources drop lower you should trigger Air Ally for an instant refill.

2. Skills, Runes and Passives

The primary damage dealer of the build is the Spirit-intensive Wave of Light. This hard-hitting spender is among the skills benefiting the most from the 2.6.1 reworks, receiving damage multipliers from the revamped Sunwuko set, Tzo Krin's Gaze, Pinto's Pride, Kyoshiro's Blade and the buffed Incense Torch of the Grand Temple. The preferred rune is the fire Explosive Light; while mathematically weaker than other runes, it covers a wider area and translates into the most DPS per point of Spirit spent.

Even with the Incense Torch of the Grand Temple resource cost reduction, Wave of Light spam will still take a toll on your Spirit reserves. A substantial part of your build and gearing choices will be focused on mitigating or recovering the Spirit expenditure in this setup.

The recommended generator skill for the build is Crippling Wave, coupled with the protective Tsunami rune. This rune will reduce incoming damage by stunning enemies for a second in a generous, 17-yard radius. It will also serve as a valuable proc for the generator half of the Focus and Restraint set bonus. Last but not least, it provides the solid, basic 12 Spirit per attack.

Sweeping Wind is an integral part of Sunwuko setups, as it reduces damage taken while active and its stacks determine the damage increase of your spender. While crucial to have on your bar, the damage value of the particular rune is irrelevant; with utility in mind, take Inner Storm for the 8 Spirit per second.

With both a passive and active component, Mystic Ally will also aid your thirst for Spirit through the Air Ally rune. Doubling the number of summons with The Crudest Boots, you increase the passive regeneration bonus to 8 per second, and the active bonus to 200 per use. While the summons themselves will serve as a distraction at best, their Spirit utility is invaluable.

Uncommon among the protective skills because of its spender nature, Mantra of Salvation passively increases all resistances by 20%, and adds 35% dodge chance through the Agility rune. Its active component further increases resistances for a brief duration, but should be used sparingly due to the already high resource costs of the build.

To solidify their mobility options, Monks have the most responsive and fluid movement tool in the game, Dashing Strike. A charge-based skill on a low cooldown, it will take you to cursor location without fail, as long as there is no closed door between the starting point and the destination. With two charges stored by default you can skip unfavorable fights, seek out the next pack, or simply boost your survivability through the Blinding Speed rune.

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

Two passives support the bulk of this build's defenses. A mainstay in the Monk arsenal of passives, Harmony fuels your All Resistance with 40% of the single elemental resistance per piece of gear (e.g. 100 Fire Resistance roll on the boots will add 100 to your sheet Fire Resistance and add 40 to your other resists). A well geared Monk will usually sport secondary resistances in all the gear slots that are able to roll them, adding significantly to his overall Toughness. While an even spread of the various resistances across gear will result in the highest sheet All Resistance, try to properly harmonize with the second defensive passive, Sixth Sense. Stacking Physical resistance whenever possible in an attempt to catch up with the 25% elemental mitigation provided by Sixth Sense will yield the best protective setup.

Seize the Initiative is one of the best damage-oriented passives at the disposal of Monks, providing you with a temporary attack speed increase when engaging enemies over 75% health, translating into faster Wave of Light output for the Sunwuko Monk. As you get more comfortable with the build, you will learn to kite into and pull additional enemies or freshly spawned boss adds to effectively extend the benefits from Seize the Initiative.

When pushing Greater Rifts in early seasonal progression, take Near Death Experience in your final slot — the cheat death passive available to Monks. On the standard 60-second cooldown, it will prevent a lethal situation and restore you to 35% Life and Spirit instead. The 2-second immunity to damage and crowd control impairing effects is a nice bonus on top. As you perfect your character and grow comfortable with losing this passive, you should alternate this slot to the valuable dodge increase of The Guardian's Path.

About the Author

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.

3. Changelog

• 12 Nov. 2017: Updated the passive skill recommendations.
• 28 Oct. 2017: Replaced Epiphany with Crippling Wave for Patch 2.6.1.

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries