What am I missing for Survivability on the LoD-WoL build?

Monk
1

I’m using a Unity, and I dumped all my Paragon points into Vitality… but I feel incredibly squishy. I keep getting destroyed by elite mobs like Grotesques and AoE affixes like Molten, Plagued, Poison Enchanted, etc

Things aren’t too bad until the first death, then it kind of snowballs and I get chained into 3~4 deaths while I’m trying to get set up again. Epiphany being on cooldown leaves me dead in the water.

I’ve been pretty lucky with my gear drops, so my stuff is comparable to people clearing 150s, but I’m hard stuck on GR130. My Squirt’s Necklace is basically the only thing truly awful out of my gear, but I plan to upgrade it once I get enough primordial ashes.

My DPS is good enough, I’m doing 45ish trillion damage on a normal hit, then when I hit with ideal circumstances (Holy CoE cycle + Crit) I’m hitting 750+ trillion damage. However it’s still taking me close to 5~6 minutes per GR clear + 2~3 minutes on death respawns.

For GR130 I’m hardstuck since I end up dying too many times that my equipment breaks making me unable to complete the run.

I’m currently rank 152 for Solo Monk on the season if you want to take a look at my Gear
(I’d post an imgur picture, but the forums aren’t letting me post links)

2

It’s not only about points in VIT, it’s also about rotating your skills.

On my first GR150 (sub P2000) Monk clear this season I had 500 points in VIT, the rest in DEX.

At like Cold CoE cycle, you should press Serenity Ascension, to have immunity during Fire CoE. Epiphany is a given and you should have it up 100% of the time - it gives both damage reduction and you deal damage more or less only while it’s up.
Also, dash every 4 seconds to keep the Dodge buff up.

I hope you have Unity on both you and the follower.

Here my clear as reference:

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3

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@Mareykan,

Make sure your Follower also has the “cannot die” Amulet. (Which your Enchantress currently does have). Otherwise, you won’t get the 50% Damage Reduction. If fact, it might get you killed.

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4
  1. Dex provides armor. You’re missing 10/13 Caldesaan’s Despair augments on your monk. Putting all your points into vitality isn’t actually helping you as much as you think. With proper damage mitigation, you shouldn’t need more than 1M hit points.
  2. Missing a couple of All Res rolls on your gear (pants, boots, maybe chest, shoulders). And use diamonds for All resistance in your armor over emeralds. You don’t need Mystic Ally or Exploding Palm!) %Damage for this build. Missing secondary resistance values on gear where it’s possible. That will help a little.
  3. Your shoulders have an almost minimum value for the damage reduction value (41% - range is 40% to 50%). Try for better shoulders for that extra damage reduction.
  4. More cooldown reduction required. Looks like even with ORotZ, you’re going to have Epiphany downtime.
  5. Your amulet, Unity, Stone Gauntlets, boots and bracers are basically trash. I’m sure you can find better rolled ancients. Primals aren’t the be-all and end-all. The helm’s pretty good, but a shame about the Spirit Regen. I think Vit would’ve been far more beneficial.
4 Likes
5

What zurtle said. Your gear is quite bad overall. It’s all ancients, but the rolls are off on almost every piece. Which is normal at low paragon, but adjust your expectations on how high you can clear.

Also you have have the wrong runes on cyclone strike and serenity.

And you shouldn’t be tanking grotesque and molten explosion, and not stay long in desecrator in particular. Maybe you’re too stationary? I think even with your gear you should be able to clear much more than 130 with clean execution.

1 Like
6

Thanks for all the advice!
The main swap I did was add a Spaulders of Zakara to my companion
Removing the equipment breaking aspects of deaths allows me to play a lot more aggressively and adds some inevitability for me

While my clear times are still being bogged down by the deaths, I’m slowly getting the rotation down and it feels a lot more doable to push

For my accessories, I’m trying to roll an Ancient Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to replace my poorly rolled Convention of Elements; then for my Unity, I’m trying to get an Ancient Stone of Jordan with good rolls

My offhand weapon seemed like it rolled well enough as an Ancient, so I Primal-Crafted the main hand weapon, and move the Sanctified to Squirt’s (rolled with fire Damage, Crit chance, and Crit damage)

7

https://maxroll.gg/d3/guides/lod-wave-of-light-monk-guide

8

Honestly, I think it’s just mainly a Paragon issue (aside from the skill issue on my part)
I was super sick with the Flu and missed the first week of launch, so I’m still in the early 1000s paragon.
Having a good 5k less dex than most people doing 150s does take its toll on the damage reduction (it’s been a while since I played D3, so I forgot about that major aspect until I saw Zurtle’s post)

I’m slowly getting the rotation down, and I can clear like a GR 125 without any threat of dying in about 4 minutes… So I have enough Paragon levels to grind that for a while.

However, clearing the upper 130s depend entirely on whether or not I find a Channeling or Shield Pylon. As those let me hard focus on hitting the Holy cycle of CoE instead of needing to also focus on lining up the Blinding Speed’s dodge% and Serenity’s invulnerability on top of the CoE cycles.
So I still need to do a fair bit of grinding before I keep pushing.

EDIT:
Yeah it was mostly a paragon issue
I went from 1,200 paragon to 1,700 paragon this past week and I was able to get the boss to spawn in a 142 rift with a little under half the time left (https://i.imgur.com/MPus9iF.png)
So another 300 paragon levels to hit 2k paragon should be enough to get a GR 150 clear if I fish for an Orek’s Dream

I am a little miffed though… I made a LoD HotA Barbarian and was using that to grind rifts. That character rolled 3 Primals on the shoulder, legs, and boots for the LoD HotA build.

I know RNG doesn’t really work this way, but I can’t help to think if I just stuck to the Monk that I would’ve gotten primal shoulder, legs, and boots for my LoD Monk (which would give me near all primals for my equipment including the crafted and sanctified)