SWK LTK 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 Kanai's Cube

General Information

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

The other pages of our SWK LTK Monk guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

Active Skills
Way of the Hundred Fists Assimilation Lashing Tail Kick Vulture Claw Kick 1 Epiphany Desert Shroud 2 Sweeping Wind Inner Storm 3 Dashing Strike Blinding Speed 4 Mantra of Salvation Agility
Passive Skills
Seize the Initiative Beacon of Ytar Harmony Near Death Experience

1. Rotation

The build begins runs with an activation of Sweeping Wind, whose stacking mechanic will be maxed out by the build's melee range in combat. While it will take significant carelessness to waste them completely, always keep your Sweeping Wind stacks in mind and your dependence on them to reduce and deal damage from the Sunwuko set. Use Dashing Strike to find, begin or evade combat altogether; once you are in an engagement, begin your Lashing Tail Kick assault. To protect yourself in Greater Rifts, apply Epiphany Desert Shroud on cooldown, and take advantage of the Blinding Speed dodge buff. When faced with damage spikes, pop your Mantra of Salvation Agility active for additional Toughness. Similarly to its Wave of Light counterpart, the Lashing Tail Kick build is resource intensive and will demand the passive regeneration of Inner Storm and Epiphany — but do not hesitate to use your generator attack, Way of the Hundred Fists Assimilation, either.

2. Skills, Runes and Passives

The focal point of the build is Lashing Tail Kick, the main source of damage in the setup. Aided by the Sunwuko set bonuses, Rivera Dancers and the Patch 2.4.2 rework Scarbringer, this flashy melee spender is finally elevated to endgame potential. Due to its highest damage potential with the 3-second DoT factored in, Vulture Claw Kick is the recommended rune.

With its medium Spirit cost and scarcity of legendary-based resource cost reduction, you will have to devote a significant amount of your skills to the maintenance of Lashing Tail Kick spam.

Way of the Hundred Fists is the primary attack of choice, and it serves multiple purposes in the build: keeping up a damage buff from the Assimilation) rune; keeping up the damage reduction of the worn Spirit Guards; and last but not least, resource generation with a standard 12 Spirit per hit.

Sweeping Wind is an integral part of Sunwuko setups, as it reduces damage taken while active and its stacks scale your spender damage astronomically. While Sweeping Wind is central to the mechanics of the playstyle, the build does not focus on it as a source of damage — with that in mind, take Inner Storm for the 8 Spirit per second.

Epiphany rounds out the list of threefold value skills in this utility-packed build. It bolsters your mobility by allowing you to stick to your target, securing the kill. It increases your Spirit regeneration by 20 per second, ensuring your Lashing Tail Kick spam remains uninterrupted. Last but not least, it strengthens your defenses with powerful 50% damage reduction from the Desert Shroud rune while active. It will benefit immensely from Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, which allows for zero downtime of this crucial self-buff.

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.

Beacon of Ytar is a solid foundation for high skill uptime, providing a 20% chunk to your Cooldown Reduction. The sizable 60- and 15-second timers for Epiphany and Blinding Flash respectively, are important enough to demand a high CDR goal.

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.

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 Lashing Tail Kick 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.

Round out the passive selection with the Monk's cheat death passive — Near Death Experience — as failsafe. 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 another bonus on top.

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

• 28 Oct. 2017: Updated skills to reflect the build switching to Sunwuko in Patch 2.6.1.

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