Theory crafting - Exploding Palm Meta

Monk
1

Turns out, EP never worked with BotLG. After this update, it doesn’t work with Crudest Boots OR Rabid Strike. It’s like they blacklisted this skill for some reason. This entire idea is moot so long as they don’t fix that.

Disclaimer: Feel absolutely free to recheck my math. I usually don’t trust it myself, I tend to get ahead of myself and on most occasion with D3, if it sounds good on paper, it likely sucks.

I was wondering how strong Exploding Palm can be now that Rabid Strike and Crudest Boots got a massive buff. I actually didn’t even know Rabid Strike had any build in the first place until this PTR. The idea of the build is to have them as a strictly trash killing machine while having the RGK pop the EP’s:

LoD WoL: https://maxroll.gg/d3planner/469523539
LoD EP: https://maxroll.gg/d3planner/860332877

Both of these use the same conditions, save a few items. Any blank spots don’t really matter what goes there, which is why I leave it blank. Flavor of Time is likely the best for the jewelry slot though. I’ve never done meta runs, rat runs etc, so I am just using my best guesses based on what I know about the meta. Obviously LoD WoL isn’t set up exactly how it’d be used, but it isn’t far off. Here are the damage rolls respectively:

12.750 Quadrillion per Bell
48.508 Quadrillion per EP

For reference, a 100 stack flurry in a solo push PoJ build is around 29 quadrillion damage. Same conditions makes it around 233 Quadrillion damage. I actually triple checked this because I felt like that’s quite low considering how many modifiers there are. So a singular Exploding Palm is going to do roughly 21 stacks of flurry under the same conditions. Compared to solo play, it’s closer to 150 stacks per EP.

I went to Youtube to see if I could see a 100 stack flurry burst. This was 15 months ago, but the first one I seen had 98 stacks hit for 4.5 quadrillion. This was when Shenlong’s did 200% more damage and the cube had 3 wildcards. Coincidentally, I actually did this calculation with Bartuc’s, so the math actually came out to be the same. He also had 3,000 paragon. So this damage should be 1.5 quadrillion now without that bonus.

The damage of an EP should be 6.75 quadrillion if I am correct. This is also assuming 2k less paragon and significantly lesser gear. Chances are, with the links I provided, the EP is more likely to do around 10 quadrillion or more. With that in mind, here is the amount of health if I’ve done all my math correctly:

250-325~~ Quadrillion Life per champion at tier 150
600-750~~ Quadrillion Life per elite at tier 150

The way I calculated this was I went into a tier 100 rift, checked their health then multiplied by 1.17 ^ 50 and multiplied by 2.5 for the health modifier. So, in theory, if maybe 10 trash minions die, everything within that area is going to evaporate.

EDIT: I did forget to mention, PoJ EP is about 50% stronger then LoD EP, it’s just super squishy.

2

The biggest problem I can see on any LoD EP build is getting a cold EP to detonate. Uliana builds get around that by the 6 piece of the set detonating EP. The explosion of
EP is impressive, but it is an on-death explosion. WoL just keeps dropping Bells (or Pillars) while you are waiting for someone in your party to trigger an explosion (gives the RGK something to do besides twiddle their thumbs in a run, lol).

3

Best to try it and see what happens. Gotta be satisfying to see a giant explosion again lol Added something to the end of my post that I forgot to mention.

4

What might be interesting is not LoD EP, but Uliana EP with Rabid Strike replacing Lion’s Claw. This assumes EP counts as a “spirit spender that teleports you while Epiphany is active”.

5

It does, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. Problem with Uliana’s is the 2p when it comes to this. Pretty sure it would overwrite the manual ones.

6

Nothing wrong with overwriting the manual ones, if by that you mean the snapshotting trick with Mythic Rhythm. That only gets you 40% extra DPS, Rabid Strike gets you 550%.

7

40% damage is around 2 tiers. Technically, you could do without it, but you do need a way to restore spirit.

8

Uliana 2 piece does NOT overwrite manually applied EP’s. That is the whole idea behind snapshotting Mythic Rhythm to get Area Damage (not on Uliana 2 piece EP’s) and MR onto mobs and carrying those buffs through the rift.

9

Wudijo claims it wouldn’t do much for Uliana’s, but with that snapshotting and how I feel about it, it’s possible to be really good. Here’s a question though, are EP’s that are placed with the Madstone considered for the RS buff?

10

I would say no, but that is just a well informed guess.

11

I feel the same, but here’s to hoping. lol

12

What? Dude, it’s not a question of whether you can get every possible multiplier. It’s about whether the new result is better than the old.

Eg if you look at Maxroll’s Sunwuko WoL guide, they switched out Kyoshiro’s Blade and Tzo Krin for Rabid Strike and Crudest Boots. You’re losing some big multipliers there, but the new build is still stronger than the old.

The REAL problem is ensuring that Gungdo will spread the buffed palms from the clone, and not your own ones. I’m not sure how you’d do this.

13

Just gotta smack them with EP and cyclone. Basically all there is too it.

14

Quoted for the truth.

15

Well, here’s the thing. Odds are, your clone ones will be the ones spreading, not the unbuffed ones. Let’s say we are using Uliana’s, these EP’s are going to do about 50x more damage then the original. The chances of your good EP being spread only gets higher the further into grift tiers you go.

Also just did the math, this boost is about 25 tiers. Assuming loss of damage from manual casts and less then optimal targets for SSS, I’d say it bumps this at least 15-20 tiers. This is without the ethereals mind you. It would be closer to 20-25 tiers with ethereals and not using bartucs.

16

Not exactly. The Uliana set detonates any EP when the target is hit by SSS, regardless of where the EP came from. Gundgo Gear will spread that EP to any targets in the explosion range (no idea which will be applied if a target is in the radius of your EP and a RS Clone’s EP). So every EP is just as likely to be spread since the 6 piece will detonate it. Granted, the RS Clone EP’s will be doing the lion’s share if your damage, but there is no way to know which type of EP is on any given target, RS clone or your character.

17

Well, I actually tossed my uliana’s before it came to my attention on this thread. So it’s going to be a while before I can test it. lol I also barely have mats, so that’s a thing.

Unfortunately, in my testing, all of the mystic boosts don’t seem to affect EP. I could be wrong, but they don’t seem to do anything. It means my testing ends until they fix this.