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Build Guide

The Definitive Speed Zmonk Setup

Ok so during season 19 it has come to my attention that there are so many people playing zmonk who do not understand what is required to make the character actually powerful and effective. This has lead to groups not even gaining the amazing benefit of playing with a zmonk which is by far the most powerful character in the game currently if geared and played properly. It would be disingenuous of me to claim that all of the information here is my thoughts or insight because this character has been discussed and min/maxed by so many amazing people in the D3 community. The point of this guide is not to give you a list of gear that is “bis” with “bis” rolls, the point is to give you a baseline then let you work from that. That being said let’s get right into this character.

OVERVIEW

To start, I think the first thing we need to do is go over what makes the zmonk the most powerful character in the game so that people understand what the primary functions of the class really are.

1. Shields from Mantra of Healing/Serenity/Inner Sanctuary - This is the PRIMARY function of a zmonk and it is what really makes the character the strongest character in the game. If you have amazing shields up 100% of the time and your barb and sader never lose the squirts buff then you are worth the damage they do COMBINED. So just think about that if your barb does “x” damage and your sader does “y” damage you are effectively worth “x+y” which means you are doing 2x more dps than either of your damage dealers. So effectively every choice we make is to increase the frequency and strength of our shields to keep this buff up.

• Grouping of Mobs with Cyclone Strike - One of the huge mistakes I see monks doing is running from elite to elite and then stacking up mobs there. While that is part of the job we also have to remember that we brought the rBarb to kill large packs of white trash quickly for massive GR progress. What you should be doing is to consistently grouping up small/medium packs that your rBarb can clear out very quickly. This is why you brought the rBarb and when he gets to spin on groups of 10-30 mobs that you group for him he can be so deadly.
• It is EXTREMELY important to understand the DR function of your Cyclone Strike. You have to understand that every time you cyclone strike a mob and are are successful in pulling the mob towards you you apply a 40% DR to hard CC. This is so important to understand because of the way the sader will actually do damage. Remember that the sader only does good damage when his bracer is procced and this can only happen during a Blind/Stun/Immobilize. All of these are hard CC. So lets say the sader is using Shield Glare Divine Verdict. This is a 4 second Blind so if you Cyclone strike the mob 1 time and then the sader blinds he will only get 60% of that blind duration as the mob has a 40% DR to the blind So now that blind is 2.4 seconds and we lose 1.6 seconds. So if you think about how this functions in a speed setup. Lets just say your sader does 1 dps as soon as he blinds he does 5 dps from the bracer then he has a 2.4 second window to kill the mob before he goes back down to 1 dps again. The entire point of the group is to play with this 400% increase because if you manage it correctly the sader can have 100% use out of this but we have to be very careful in how we DR things because we could essentially make our sader do 1/5th of his dps if we cyclone strike on Elites too much. If you were to hit 2 cyclone strikes then you would have the mob at 75-80% DR(dr wears off at 5% per second) So you would hit the pull DR cap and not be able to Cyclone strike the mob anymore. Now as soon as the mob gets to 65% DR to hard CC you would be able to Cyclone strike again which would put the mob at 100% DR to hard CC. This is a death sentence for the saders dps as he can now no longer Blind/Stun/Immobilize and he damage is cut to 1/5th of his potential. The optimal thing to do is have your sader run either the 10 or 6 second judgement(I would suggest the 10 second until you get comfortable) and only every cyclone strike elites 1 time per 8 seconds this will ensure the sader will have 3.6-6.0 seconds to kill the elite before losing his damage buff depending on which judgement he is going with. You also have to remember how this interacts with your barbarian in a group. If your barbarian rage flips a mob to you then you cyclone strike it. Bam 80% dr to hard cc and you group doing no dps and going ultra slow. Barbs should never be rage flipping or charging until the RG if they are you need to explain this concept to them because I was oblivious to this myself until recently and it was really slowing down our paragon grind.

• Group Buffs/Debuffs - You will have several skills and items that will buff your groups toughness and damage it is important to understand them and how to use them effectively.

1. Strongarms - Cyclone Strike will proc them
2. Iceblink - Dash will proc this
3. Efficacious Toxin - Dash/Cyclone Strike will proc this
4. Unity - Passive

The most important thing here is to remember your objective in doing speed GRs is not to see how fast you can get from elite to elite or how fast you can move through the rift. Your objective is to fill up the progress bar the fastest. I have seen groups and monks skip over massive quantities of white progress in the pursuit of killing more elites. If you think about this logically you will realize that elite hunting is in many scenarios is slowing down how fast you complete rifts if you are skipping large amounts of white mobs that your rBarb could kill very quickly and efficiently. There is this really nice balance in understanding what level of GR you can do where your rBarb can clear out packs in a couple seconds and your sader can do the same to elites.

TALENTS

1. Inner Sanctuary - Intervene

This talent serves two fold. It will drop a 55% damage reduction zone for you and others to stand in, it will also throw up a shield for between 107284-182841. This ability functions much like Dashing Strike so I just dash to my barb or sader depending on what kind of pull we are doing on CD. VERY IMPORTANT - spam this ability on CD nonstop for the whole rift remember back to our first objective we want as many shields as we can possibly put up during a rift. With our CDR/In Geom/Messer we should be using this constantly.

• Serenity - Tranquility

This talent also serves two fold. It will make you immune to damage and it will give your group members a shield for 120158-220096. This should be put on auto cast and should be hit on CD 100% of the time to give you immunity and spam your group with shields.

Now Important note here. This slot can be changed out for Blinding Flash at lower GRs to help with speed. This will end up being tougher to use as you go higher however it is very nice for your sader if you have everything blinded all the time for him and he just has to pound. This will also let him play Steed Charge which is great. This is a tough swap to make at first because you will be used to the immunity/shield this provides but once you find your way into this talent choice it will speed up your runs. I have used this up to 112 with no problems with survival or keeping the shields up on my Sader/Barb.

• Mantra of Healing - Sustenance

This talent is essentially used for spamming the shield on your group. This shield can be from 62064-102541. You need to put this on auto cast so that it will spam nonstop on your group. To be fair you could probably use a different rune on this one like the 20% life if you wanted the rune does not matter much.

• Dashing Strike - Blinding Speed

This talent is used for 3 different reasons. Movement/Toughness/Iceblink. With In Geom up you will be able to have the historic monk perma movement with dash. It will also give you 40% dodge and put iceblink on enemies.

• Cyclone Strike - Implosion

This is just used for grouping up mobs you can also use this as a movement ability with epiphany up but not really needed or necessary.

• Epiphany - Insight

This is used for Spirit regen so that you are able to spam shields nonstop. Again this should be put on auto cast so that it is cast immediately when it is up. It is possible you “may” be able to swap this for Desert Shroud at the right amount of RCR but more gear/testing is required to verify that is possible. For now just consider Insight as the standard choice.

PASSIVES

1. Beacon of Ytar - More CDR
2. Chant of Resonance - Enables you to Spam Mantra of Healing
3. Unity - More dps for your group
4. Resolve - 20% DR on everything you hit which should be everything

So when we look at our overall talent/passive setup there are a couple of things that maybe could be swapped around but I would consider this pretty standard. The big takeaway here should be to look at our total potential shielding

1. 182841 From Inner Sanctuary
2. 220096 From Serenity
3. 102541 From Mantra of Healing

Grand total shielding potential - 505478 this is just about the max you can have on a player and you can just about spam this on your group. This is what makes monk so powerful. Let's talk about our gearing strategy and how we are going to accomplish this.

LEGENDARY GEMS

For legendary Gems there are 2 that are standard and 1 that you could swap out if you wanted to but I think it has the most value for us.

1. Iceblink - Standard Gem 10% crit for your dps
2. Gem of Efficacious Toxin - Standard Gem 10% damage for your dps
3. Gogok of Swiftness - CDR/Dodge/Attack Speed

You could potentially make a case for swapping out Gogok for something else if you felt that your CDR was fine other options would be Esoteric/Mutilation/Molten WIldebeest/Moratorium I just feel like there is too much value in Gogok to swap it out.

KANAI’S CUBE

Now for the Cube I think there are 2 options which are standard and 1 that you have some flexibility with.

Weapon - Messerschmidt's Reaver/Crystal Fist/Echoing Fury

Armor - Strongarms or Nemesis whichever one you are not wearing

Jewelry - Ring of Royal Grandeur

The armor and jewelry spot are pretty standard but I feel like you have a world of options in the weapon slot. I think most people will go with Messrs Reaver because it will really help out your CDR gaps but I think there is some value in the DR of Crystal Fist and the move/cast speed of Echoing Fury.

GEARING

Ok so let’s get into the gearing portion of this guide. First we need to go over our general strategy when it comes to gearing out our character. We have a few stats which we are going to really be going after and then a batch of stats which we can pick from on pieces to fill out the rolls. Honestly, getting the perfect rolls on a piece of zdps gear is very difficult in most cases and also quite subjective but I will get into that as we go.

The one thing that I will mention that will usually be beneficial to your character is do not focus so much on your “toughness” stat. You should be looking at how a stat will impact your character. So for instance if you have a choice between say Vitality and Armor I would almost always take armor. You will continue to get more and more Vitality into your paragon and so adding stats that actually reduce the damage you take like Dex/Armor/All Res/Elite Damage Reduction will usually have more value as we should already have a really large health pool from our Paragon. There will actually come a point where adding more Vit paragon will add nothing and adding dex paragon will add armor thus making you even more “tanky”.

Priority Stats - These are stats we are going to want in essentially every slot they are available.

1. Health Globe Bonus - THE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STAT you have to have this in every single available slot. This will directly increase the value of your shields and thus it is imperative to have.
2. Cooldown Reduction - Very important for our buff uptimes
3. Resource Cost Reduction - Very important for our spamming and a source of mitigation via the Captain’s set

Those are the 3 primary stats we are going after and we can start to flesh out a build based upon those stats and we can add in what is needed/available Here is a baseline D3planner and we will go over piece by piece and talk about what we are looking for. You will notice that there are many slots with incomplete rolls because just the important stuff is on there. Many stats will work in the other open slots and we will go over them right now.

https://www.d3planner.com/456904959

Ok so we are going to go over all 13 pieces of gear one by one and talk about why we chose that piece and what alternatives are if you wanted to try something different.

Something to keep in mind is that % chance to CC passives are actually very bad here. We do not want to over DR mobs with CCs like Stun/Fear/Immobilize etc so that our Sader can do his thing with bracers. If we mess that up he loses a 400% modifier when he is trying to snipe elites and that will be very bad for our speeds.

• Main Hand Weapon - In Geom

I personally think this is the only option in this slot as it is just way to strong. This item unfortunately only has 1 acceptable roll on it as it is a very static item and not much flexibility.

Holy Damage Range

Dexterity

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource

Gem of Ease in Ramalandi Socket

10 Second Legendary Affix Secondary

Life after Kill Secondary

This however is not that hard of an item to roll. All you need is a 10 Second In-Geom with a 10% CDR roll on it then you can roll the stat that is not dex to 10%RCR so this should be pretty easy to pick up a solid one. Try to get the life after kill secondary but as long as you stay away from the CC secondaries you are set.

• Off Hand Weapon - Stormshield

So I went with this option for a couple of reasons. It is by far the best survival piece for the slot and it will also let you roll another Health Globe Bonus roll which is great for our shields. This item is brutally hard to roll correctly as we are looking for all of our stats on this one. The perfect one would look like this

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource

Open Slot(Elite Damage Reduction)

Open Slot

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

30% Melee Reduction Secondary

You will notice we have a couple of open slots for stats after we get our Big3. I would almost say that Elite Damage Reduction is a mandatory roll but good luck ever seeing that shield roll. Honestly any of the zdps stats will work in those slots Armor/Dex/Elite Damage Reduction/All Res/Vit/%Life.

• Boots - Captains Crimson/Innas

What you use in this piece is a bit dynamic depending on if you get lucky with a really great set of Inna Boots to drop with a high Health Globe roll. I just think it is probably easier to farm some bounties then make the Crimson Boots until you get a great roll rather than see if you get lucky on an Inna drop. This piece however is quite easy to get a good roll as the stats on this one are quite static.

Dexterity

Vitality

All Resistance

Armor

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

Health Globe PIckup Radius Secondary

This is probably one of the easier pieces to farm and obtain the perfect roll on. If you just spend some time in bounties you should be able to roll an almost perfect one. Remember the most important stat on these is the Health Globe bonus.

• Pants - Captains Crimson/Innas

In this slot you will wear the opposite piece that you wore for boots. If you have Captains Boots you wear Inna's Legs conversely if you have Inna's Boots you wear Captains Legs. This is by far the easiest piece to roll. Since legs have notoriously been a toughness piece and you have no CDR/RCR/Globe bonus available on this slot you have 3 open slots for whatever stats you can get

Open Slot

Open Slot

Open Slot

3 Sockets

Life after Kill Secondary

Health Globe PIckup Radius Secondary or Resistance if you do not have an all res roll

You essentially have four stats to choose from Dex/Vit/All Res/Armor in the “perfect” world you would not have vit since you will get that from paragon but any of the 3 will work just fine.

• Belt - Captains Crimson

This is another super easy slot to get the right rolls on as you can farm bounties and get the right stats. The perfect one will look like this.

Dexterity

%Life

Armor

All Res

Life after Kill Secondary

Health Globe Pickup Radius Secondary

Just farm a bunch of bounties and you can make a really great piece here as well

• Ring 1 - Oculus Ring

This is a really tough item to roll correctly as well as you have the “big3” stats all available here and you need to have a good % on your Damage ring. The perfect ring would be

Open Slot

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource Cost
Socket

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

85% Damage Ring Roll

This item really is a nightmare to get the correct one. You have 1 open slot I would suggest Dex/Armor/All Res however, if you got an 85% ring with the Health globe bonus and CDR/RCR who cares what the last stat is as long as it is not Area Damage you are fine.

• Ring 2 - Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac

Ok, so this one is not so bad. It always has the same four rolls on it so you are just looking for one with the Health Globe Bonus on it as a Secondary then you roll off the crit for a socket. This one is pretty easy to get just keep your eyes out for one that drops with the Health Globe bonus. Perfect one would be

Attack Speed

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource Cost

Socket

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

The attack speed roll is meaningless just make sure you get max CDR/RCR and you are golden.

• Gloves - Innas

So for the glove slot we have to go with Inna gloves which are a moderately difficult piece to roll properly as they have to have Dex and Crit on them Baseline so you will always have to roll off the Crit. The perfect set would be

Dexterity

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource

Open Slot

Secondary Resist if no All Resistance Roll

Health Globe Pickup Radius Secondary

Again we have an open slot here for another stat your choices are Armor/All Res/Vit If you get Armor/Vit try for a secondary resist. Just make sure you do not have “% Chance to Stun on Hit”

• Chestplate - Innas

Rolling a great Inna chest is going to be hard because the only required roll on it is Elite Damage Reduction. This is impossibly rare to see on a chest along with the fact that it has Health Globe Bonus and a Secondary Damage reduction. This is a VERY difficult item to find. The Perfect one will look like this

Elite Damage Reduction

Open Slot

Open Slot

Sockets

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

Reduce Damage from Melee or Ranged Attacks by 7%

You will have a couple of open slots if you manage to find “the dream” with all of these stats. Again with this piece if you manage to find one with the 3 stats we are looking for with 3 sockets I would just go with it regardless of what the other two stats were. Again Dex/Vit/Life/Armor/All Res they all work if you can get them.

• Bracer - Nemesis or Strongarms

You will be wearing one of these and cubing the other. It is most likely easier to find a great Nemesis because you will not have to worry about getting the full 30% roll on the Strongarm. The stats on this one are fairly easy to get and I would say this is a moderately easy piece to find a solid one. Perfect one would look like

Dexterity

Vitality

All Resistance

Armor

Reduce Damage from Melee or Ranged Attacks by 7%

30% Damage Increase (If wearing Strongs)

The secondary role is just icing on the cake if you can find it but I would not worry about trying to get it until you have most of the other gear done as the survival stats are pretty easy to get.

• Shoulders - Lefebvre’s Soliloquy

The shoulders will be a bit of a tough piece to roll because again we have the “big3” stats we are going to be going for. We would also like a high % on the DR legendary affix but that is not our primary concern. The perfect rolls

Reduced Cooldown

Reduced Resource Cost

Open Slot

Open Slot

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

50% DR from Cyclone Strike

We will have a couple of open slots here for stats you know the drill by now any of the survival stats will work for us Dex/Vit/Life/Armor/All Res but again we are focused on the “big3” CDR/RCR/Health Globe Bonus.

• Helm - Pride’s Fall

This is an interesting slot and after looking at the numbers I feel like this is the best choice to make. You could go with Leorics in this slot however with the CDR that we have it only adds about 3% CDR if we go with the Prides we actually get 11.8% RCR which also turns into DR from our Captains Set. If we have great shields we really should not be taking damage very often in these 110-120 speeds with all of our DR.

The nice thing about Pride’s Fall is that it is very easy to roll as it will come with 2 out of 3 stats all the time. Main Stat/Vitality/Crit so a perfect one would roll like this

Dexterity

VItality

Open Slot

Socket

Secondary Resistance(if you do not have All Resistance)

So this one should be pretty easy to get again just bounty farming to find one that will work for you. Just make sure again you do not have % chance to fear on hit as a secondary. We do not want random CCs messing with our Sader Bracers

• Amulet - Flavor of Time

Ok I saved the worst for last. The reality of this item is that while in a dream world it will be the best neck we can have the odds of you ever seeing one that rolls correctly is so small if you happen to find one you should go buy a lottery ticket. This slot is a hard slot already because it can roll our “big3” stats on it that I would suggest that the first neck you find that has what we are looking for go for it and if you happen to find “the dream” then amazing. There is no real item here that you can target or go for without farming tons of bounties and rerolling stuff so really just go with what you find that works. What we are essentially looking for is something like this

Reduced Cooldown
Reduced Resource

Open Slot

Socket

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

Reduce Damage from Melee or Ranged Attacks by 7%

If you were looking at the best Flavor of Time

Reduced Cooldown
Reduced Resource

Open Slot

Open Slot

Socket

Health Globes and Potions Grant “#” Life (Higher the better) Secondary

Pylons Last Twice as Long

If you can find an immunity neck with the good stats on it that would be pretty great but again Good Luck with that.

MODIFICATIONS AND ALTERNATE GEARING STRATEGIES

So obviously this is just my take on the setup I have seen many setups with different options chosen and there is some merit to many of them.

Borns Set

Gloves of Worship/Ahavarion Spear combo with Inna Helm

Wearing RoRG and dropping Obsidian Ring for Immunity Neck in Cube

Ultimately what I chose was for 110-120 speeds because I felt that with this setup you could maintain your shield around 100% of the time on you and your dps while not giving up much speed or efficiency. If you have ideas that could improve the setup and make it more effective I would love to hear them.