So I started S19 on my monk, picked up a Balance daibo, and started playing with the Tempest Rush skill just to hit cap. Then I picked up the new (new to me?) Legacy of Dreams legendary gem and decided I would see how far I could push. My goal was to hit GR100 with no more than 800 paragon levels, and I (barely) succeeded: GR100 in 14:45.883. Anyways, I thought I’d share the build so everyone can crap all over how bad it is, and maybe someone can use it as inspiration for something fun. My GR100 completion was done with all ancient items (2 primal), exactly PL800, L99 Legacy of Dreams, L84 Stricken and L85 Gogok gems. I died once to lag and once to stupidity.
This is my current build:
https://www.d3planner.com/486696965
Skills:
- Tempest Rush with Electric Field rune (20 yard AoE with lightning element).
- Dashing Strike with Blinding Speed rune (+40% dodge for 4 seconds after using the skill).
- Blinding Flash with Replenishing Light rune (blinds enemies within 20 yards for 3 seconds and restores 10 spirit per enemy hit).
- Mantra of Salvation with Perseverence rune (+40% resist all, +20% more for 3 seconds on activation)
- Serenity with Ascension rune (invincible for 4 seconds).
- Mystic Ally with Air Ally rune (+4 spirit regen passively and +100 spirit on activation)
Passives:
- Sixth Sense – 25% damage reduction for non-physical.
- Beacon of Ytar – 20% cooldown reduction.
- Resolve – Reduce enemy damage by 20% for 4 seconds on hit.
- The Guardian’s Path – +35% to dodge while dual-wielding.
- Relentless Assault (from amulet) – +20% damage to enemies blind, frozen, or stunned.
Follower:
- Enchantress
- Charm (charm enemy to fight for you for 8 seconds).
- Powered Armor (+3% armor, slows melee attackers 60% for 1 second).
- Disorient (disorientation in an area for 2 seconds).
- Mass Control (turns enemies into chickens for 5 seconds, and makes me laugh).
Core items:
- Cubed Balance daibo – +600% (of 600%) to Tempest Rush, and 100% crit chance if Tempest Rush hits 3 or fewer enemies.
- Equipped Won Khim Lau fist weapon – hitting with Tempest Rush activates Cyclone Strike, and both skills deal 582% (of 600%) increased damage.
- Equipped Cesar’s Memento bracers – Enemies take +680% (of 800%) from Tempest Rush for 5 seconds after hitting them with a blind, freeze, or stun.
- Equipped The Laws of Seph headgear – using Blinding Flash restores 162 (of 165) spirit.
- Cubed Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac – reduces the remaining cooldown on one skill by 1 second with each hit.
The first three provide a huge damage increase to the core skill, Tempest Rush. Blinding Flash is used to trigger the bracers, and the headgear restores a bunch of spirit at the same time. The +10 spirit per enemy hit rune further increases the spirit gained. The cubed ring makes an enormous difference in keeping enough spirit and proccing the bracers.
Defensive items:
- Equipped Crystal Fist weapon – Dashing Strike reduces damage by 41% (of 50%) for 6 seconds.
- Lefebvre’s Soliloquy shoulders – Cyclone Strike reduces damage by 46% (of 50%) for 5 seconds.
- Equipped Unity ring, paired with follower-equipped Unity ring and immortality relic – All damage taken is split between wearers.
The fist weapon turns Dashing Strike into a defensive cooldown, amplifying the already defensive rune (+40% dodge for 4 seconds). The shoulders are a powerful defensive tool since it’s pretty much never more than 5 seconds since Won Khim Lau cast a free Cyclone Strike. The unity rings give another 50% damage reduction.
Offensive items:
- Equipped Convention of Elements ring – +199% (of 200%) increased damage to lightning for 4 seconds out of 20.
- Equipped Hellfire Amulet – Gain the Relentless Assault passive, also has a nice 40% reduction to control-impairing effects.
- Equipped Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan – Resource generation and damage are increased by 25% while moving and decreased by 20% (of 20%) while standing still.
- Follower-equipped Oculus Ring – Creates circle of power that increases damage by 85% (of 85%) while standing in it.
- Follower-equipped Executioner 2H-axe – Attacks slay enemies with less than 10% (of 10%) health remaining.
The pants are a good damage boost and just require not stopping. The ring is obviously a very potent damage boosts, but hard to use properly; in practice I just ignore it and get about +20% damage on average. Unfortunately for monks, there are 5 elements to cycle through, compared to only 4 for other classes, so the bonus isn’t quite as good (20% vs 25%). The Oculus circle works really well on enemies I can suck in with cyclone, but some elites refuse to move for me, and some rift guardians don’t have minions to proc the circle; it still does a lot of good. I’m pretty sure Executioner either doesn’t work on followers, or doesn’t work on rift guardians, so it’s probably just shiny rather than useful.
Utility items:
- Cubed Leoric’s Crown – increases the gem in my helm by 100% (of 100%) effectiveness.
- Equipped Illusory Boots – Can move unhindered through enemies.
- Follower-equipped Ess of Johan amulet – Occasionally pulls all enemies to a point and slows them by 80% (of 80%).
- Equipped Cord of the Sherma belt – Chance on hit to blind and slow nearby enemies for 3 (of 4) seconds.
I have a 12.5% cooldown reduction gem, which gets doubled by the cubed Crown and makes a big difference in not running out of spirit constantly. The boots are nice for any melee build, but especially with the pants that only buff damage while moving. Not sure if the follower amulet helps a lot, but it’s at least a decent CC. The belt gives more procs for the bracer, although I haven’t really tested it to see how much it’s actually doing.
Other items:
- Equipped Frostburn gloves – cold skills deal +20% (of 20%) damage and have a 50% chance to freeze enemies.
- Shi Mizu’s Haori chest armor – 100% crit chance when below 25% (of 25%) health.
I’m using the lightning rune on Tempest Rush, so the gloves don’t do any good here. The armor adds a little damage, but I try to avoid being low on health so it’s not really great. It’s about the only chest armor that does anything useful for the build though, and it was primal so I equipped it.
Legendary Gems:
- Legacy of Dreams, 99 (max) – +375% damage and +2% damage reduction for each equipped legendary, both bonuses doubled for ancient items.
- Bane of the Stricken, 84 – +1.6% damage per hit, +25% damage to rift guardians.
- Gogok of Swiftness, 89 – +1% attack speed and cooldown reduction per stack, +1.39% (of 2% I think) dodge per stack. At 15 stacks it’s +15% AS and CDR, +20.85% dodge chance.
Legacy of Dreams is obviously central to the build, and is at max level. All equipped items are ancient, so I’m getting the full bonus. Bane of the Stricken is instrumental in high-level GRs where I’m hitting each enemy numerous times before it dies. Gogok of Swiftness makes a huge difference with it’s cooldown reduction, and the dodge chance and attack speed are nice too.
Playstyle:
I run through to find an elite pack or two, then gather up a bunch of whites and kill whites while I whittle down the elites. If I run out of whites, I try to find more so I’m keeping the Oculus circle up, adding extra rift progression, and proccing the seasonal buff.
Before Gogok stacks get up, I channel Tempest Rush until about half spirit, hit Mystic Ally to get spirit back up, then hit Blinding Flash to start doing bracer-buffed damage. Serenity makes me invulnerable, so I just run in little circles to keep the pants buff running, inside the Oculus buff when it’s up. As Serenity wears off, I tap Mantra of Salvation and Dashing Strike for the defensive effects. I can mostly keep either Serenity or the defensive pair up at all times. When Serenity is off cooldown, not standing in bad is required, but the build is fairly tanky. Blinding Flash is used on cooldown to keep the bracer procced and to keep my spirit up. Mystic Ally is occasionally needed if I run low on spirit (like if I was channeling but not hitting anything to proc Zodiac ring).
Problems:
The build is constantly starved for spirit, but enough cooldown reduction and the Zodiac ring make it work.
The build is not latency-friendly. My internet is bad and I’m constantly “not hitting” buttons because one side or the other thinks the cooldown isn’t finished yet. This is especially frustrating when Tempest Rush doesn’t start channeling after using Blinding Strike to regain spirit, as it means I’m getting no Zodiac procs and no life per hit. It also means I’m often standing in one spot instead of moving away from bad like I should be.
Obviously, GR100 isn’t breaking any records. But I’ve easily done everything needed for Guardian except that I naturally can’t master a set dungeon with this build. My speed run variant works fine in T13, but can’t really handle T16 (I survive fine, but it takes a while to actually kill things, especially doing split bounties or something where I have to solo with 4 players).
I’m not seeing any gloves or chest armor that’re particularly useful to the build beyond just being ancient and having stats. St Archew’s Gauge looks cool, but doesn’t mean much in a 30-second to 2-minute fight against elites and bosses. Stone Gauntlets would be cool if not for that attack speed debuff. The Illusory Boots may negate it, but I’m not sure how well that works, and haven’t seen a pair of the gloves yet (they may not drop for monks 
).
Any Legacy of Dreams build will obviously benefit greatly from having all Ancient items. It took me quite a bit of farming to get where I’m at. I spent a good 2000 forgotten souls and I’ve no idea how many blood shards just to get an ancient Unity. My Gloves of Worship, Goldwrap and Avarice Band on my speed farm build are still not ancient. But I’ve still only got 53 hours in the season right now, so it’s not terrible if you play a lot.
Thoughts / stuff that didn’t work:
I initially had a pretty hard time staying alive, so I had to switch to defensive passives and items.
I was using the cheat death passive (Near Death Experience), but I chose to use a defensive passive and try to avoid death by being tankier and it seems to work better. Diamonds in the armor would help with survivability, but I kept overshooting the rift timer by a few seconds (one was 0.316 seconds over 
) so I switched to emeralds.
I originally leveled up a Bane of the Trapped gem for the +36% (at level 71) damage, but Gogok did tremendously better. I tried Taeguk with its 43% (at level 57) damage bonus and +20% armor, and it worked well, but Bane of the Stricken outperformed it on rift guardians and elites. Maybe if I got it up to 90 or so it would stay on par with Stricken on hard stuff and do enough better on trash to be worth it.
I initially had a Thundergod’s Vigor belt with +11% lightning damage. Then I… salvaged it like a moron because I was reading general chat and not paying attention. I used a Vigilante Belt for a while for the cooldown reduction, then settled on Cord of the Sherma for the extra blinds, but I’m not sure it’s actually better.
I started the build with a primal Squirt’s Necklace I picked up, but it was pretty much impossible to keep the buff up without a shield pylon. I got lucky with a primal Hellfire Amulet that had a useful passive, so I took it.
Realistically though, it’s not that hard to spam key wardens then uber bosses to get enough mats to just farm for an ancient Hellfire with one of the 5 passives (out of 18). Due to the playstyle, Momentum would give the same +20% damage, so that’s 6 of 18, or 1 in 3, of the passives that are useful to the build. So 1 in 30 amulets should be ancient with a useful passive. If you get unlucky and it takes 100 tries, that’s still only like 25 ubers resets and 5 or 6 key runs (although the 1000 forgotten souls are a little harder to come by).
I tried the cold rune for Tempest Rush (Flurry), but the tight spirit budget made it too hard for me to keep up with. The element doesn’t really matter, since Won Khim Lau gives lightning damage and Frostburn gives cold and the bracers can go either way; though lightning edges out since it’s higher on the fist weapon and Thundergod’s Vigor can give another +15%. But I think the Flurry explosion is more powerful than the lightning damage if I could make it work.
I have a pair of Illusory Boots with +15% Tempest Rush damage, but I went with a pair that had +health globe healing for the final run. Not sure how much difference it made. Ideally, I’d have both on one pair of boots.
Speed Variant:
For gold farming, I made a few changes.
- Leoric’s Crown in the cube for Broken Crown to get doubled gem drops.
- Bane of the Stricken gem to Boon of the Hoarder for the gold drops.
- Gogok of Swiftness gem to Bane of the Trapped for a constant damage bonus, though Taeguk might be better.
- Belt to Goldwrap though I’m not really suffering from lack of tankiness.
- Unity ring to Stone of Jordon for the elite damage bonus and because I use the build in multiplayer.
- Convention of Elements ring to Avarice Band for the gold-farming convenience.
- Sixth Sense passive for Momentum.
- Mantra skill to Mantra of Conviction with Annihilation rune (movement speed buff on kill).
- Dashing Strike rune to Way of the Falling Star (movement speed buff instead of dodge buff).
- Amulet to Kymbo’s Gold (heals on gold pickup), though it’s probably not needed with Goldwrap.
- Gloves to Gloves of Worship (10 minute shrine effects are quite useful).
- Paragon priority shifts to +Gold Find.
I can swap to Nemesis bracers on T13, but T16 is a bit much and I haven’t tried T13 in a group yet. Alternately, swapping the cubed Broken Crown to Nemesis would work fine if you’re not worried about gems. Because of the reliance on the Cesar’s Memento procs to empower damage on a per-enemy-hit basis, T16 is hard to speed run, especially in a group.
Obviously, the Sage’s set is off limits for additional Death’s Breath drops.