Help with Monk DPS in Act 3

[SynergyDarkstar]

So I think I've managed to scrounge up enough gear to start messing around in Act 3, at least defensively. But when I run into elite / rare packs, it takes an eternity to take them down. It takes me 3-4 resets (to clear "Out of Time") to kill each pack, and I'm barely able to beat the timer for the leader of rare packs.

Basically, I thought I'd toss my gear and build up here and see if anybody had recommendations for either a different skill build, or which pieces of gear / what stats to look for to improve my damage.

Finding a belt with Dex and a new weapon are on the top of my list, but everything's either mad expensive, or I feel like I lose too much Vit or don't gain enough to justify switching.

Gear Set: http://i.imgur.com/BWUto.jpg
Stat Page: http://i.imgur.com/SCoHV.jpg
Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...XTh!XYU!Zcabca

Any help would be appreciated

[Ovrlrd]

You need a LOT more dps to try act 3. I can farm act 3 relatively easily, but I have around 37,5k dps self buffed with 50k hp and 579 resists. Luckly for you, farming act 1 is pretty profitable now, at least until you can afford better gear.
Try investing on a better weapon, Life on Hit is a good stat but in the end it all comes up with you killing them before dieing; you should keep that one for soloing bosses or tanking with friends. Alone, you should get as much dps as you can while still being able to survive to a couple hits.

[Creotor]

Your stats are low overall. You're only able to survive because your skills and stat stacking are extremely defensive. There's nothing to advise you, but to get better gear.

As Ovrlrd said, you can farm A1. There are cheap blue one handers with at least 800 DPS that go for less than 300k, I believe. Or something like that. You should be able to get by without any LOH. Just farm the hell out of the champ/elite packs and include bosses as well.

[Funt Case]

Get a better shield but make sure it has +crit and try get a weapon with a socket and stick crit damage in it. should give you a nice boost

[Kenjji]

Half of your gear has no dex or crit/ats/critdamage and and a 600 dps weapon really isn't helping you either.

---------- Post added 2012-06-25 at 01:11 AM ----------

How you even bring up the patience killing champion packs with that dps in act 2 is beyond me, even with 20k dps I felt it was slow already :/

[SynergyDarkstar]

Thanks for all the responses, I'll look into picking some of that up

How you even bring up the patience killing champion packs with that dps in act 2 is beyond me, even with 20k dps I felt it was slow already :/

I stay the hell away from Act 2, none of the mobs there are enjoyable to fight :P

[Deleted]

i just completed act 3 with 26k dps self buffed, 6k armor, 56k hp and 750 all resists. some parts were annoying depending on affixes and everything took a relatively long time to kill.

i honestly couldn't imagine going through act 3 without at least 20k dps buffed. i'd rather just farm act 1 some more and get enough gear so that i can breeze through at a steady pace. it honestly doesn't take long to farm some gear. i've farmed act 1 for around 5 days, doing 3-4 runs per day, killing 15-20 elites per run and i think my gear is good enough to attempt act 4... but i guess if you don't mind skipping certain packs in act 3 and killing the ones you can REALLY slowly, then go ahead and keep trying to inch your way through.

[Cairhiin]

Your DPS is really way too low, I doubt for instance you can even kill Belial before enrage. I also would switch out SSS for Sweeping Wind - Blade Storm, and switch Transcendence with Resolve but that's just a personal preference.

[Deleted]

Helmet needs crit, Amulet needs crit, Gloves need crit atleast and possibly ias/crit dmg, Rings need atleast attack speed and possible crit/crit dmg, Shield needs crit and you could use a better weapon, also there seems to be many items with rather low dex.. :|

Skillwise once you get enuff crit go sweeping wind - cyclone, also you might wanna swap deadly reach for fists of thunder - thunderclap cuz its just way better..

[Cairhiin]

Helmet needs crit, Amulet needs crit, Gloves need crit atleast and possibly ias/crit dmg, Rings need atleast attack speed and possible crit/crit dmg, Shield needs crit and you could use a better weapon, also there seems to be many items with rather low dex.. :|

Skillwise once you get enuff crit go sweeping wind - cyclone, also you might wanna swap deadly reach for fists of thunder - thunderclap cuz its just way better..

Your advice is very good but that gear isn't cheap, and I'm fairly sure he can get cheaper upgrades short term to improve his DPS. However as said your advice is good.

[Joxer]

Your advice is very good but that gear isn't cheap, and I'm fairly sure he can get cheaper upgrades short term to improve his DPS. However as said your advice is good.

To be honest..
Its not as expensive as you make it sound.

My monk got 2k less health, 150 less all resist and maybe 2k less armor. But instead, i got 20% more crit, got around 200% Crit Hit Bonus and sitting at 14k dps unbuffed with a 710 dps weapon, and i dont have any LoH at all, so for my gear, i find myself doing pretty good, but i know i can do better.
And i rarely spend more than 100k per item, only weapon is what i spend most on, but never been over 200k on that, yet.

So my advice to the OP would be to stop going armor-horny on every item, and focus more on the stats you need, which was mentioned above.
You may survive some extra hits with the gear you got, but whats the use of it when you will start dying to enrage-timers because of low dps?

[Firecrest]

The problem is your Dex. Several pieces of your gear have none and many of the ones that do have Dex are 100+ shy of what they could be. You should be able to easily add ~500 Dex with just ~500k worth of upgrades and shouldn't be running Act III without at least 1900 Dex.

I don't know why several people in this thread have advised pushing Crit. Take it if you get it, but don't go looking for it. It's a terrible idea to choose Crit over a useful stat like Dex, Vit, Resist or Secondary Resist. If you find an item with those four things AND Crit, go ahead and get it. But trying to get all five will most likely just leave you broke or mad.

Crit's a pretty bad stat all around anyway since it takes TWO stat lines to make it useful. Just stacking Crit isn't going to do much. You also need to push +Crit Damage. But neither of those are better than our core Dex/Vit/Resist/Secondary Resist. So you'd have to find an item with those four stat lines, Crit AND +Crit Damage. That's just a waste (not to mention incredibly unlikely). You're better off with +Armor and the piece specific stats (like IAS on gloves).

Lastly, your shield is terrible. It's giving you a 13% chance to block 1960-2794 damage. If a mob swings at you 10 times, your shield will block it once. And (in Act III) will only block about half the damge of the swing. Basically, your shield is doing pretty much nothing. Do not ever put on a shield with less than ~18% chance to block and (I forget the exact numbers) 3000-4000 damage absorption. Crappy shields do more harm than good as you'd be better off with a high DPS 2-hander than a shitty shield. When you're looking for a new shield, these two stats are what you should be looking at first. If the shield doesn't have these minimum stats, it's not worth buying - no matter what other stats are on it.

[Deleted]

shouldn't be running Act III without at least 1900 Dex.

That's a tad bit over the top don't you think? When I started doing act 3 with 1350 dex I was doing just fine, no enrages and stuff.

[roberto429n]

You've pretty much set your char up to tank with your choices in gear/spec. A lot of your gear could be improved, as a previous poster mentioned, because the dex values on the gear you have skew really low. I'd even say the vit values on most of your gear is low as well.

Basically, you could maintain this setup fine, but it's a tanking setup, which would work better if you were running in a group with players who were dedicated damage dealers.

Otherwise, if you desire solo play, you'll need to improve your gear a bit and/or rework your skills to provide a better balance between survivability and damage output; rather than just maximizing your survivability as much as you are currently doing.

[Firecrest]

That's a tad bit over the top don't you think? When I started doing act 3 with 1350 dex I was doing just fine, no enrages and stuff.

It may be... But honestly, that's the game Blizzard has set up. The increased repair costs provide a serious block to attempting content you don't already outgear. I did Act III pre-patch with about 1500 Dex (other stats in the mid-range as well) and felt alright. Now, however, I have 2200+ Dex (as well as fairly high numbers in all the rest of my stats) but there's no way in hell I'm stepping foot back into Act III or IV anytime soon. Last time I cleared Act III, I lost something on the order of 50k/hour and had practically nothing to show for it.