Right now, the top end monks for Season 5 use the revamped Innes set. The new Innes set is all about the Monk’s allies. This post talks about the basic build and a variant I’m running.
The two things you receive from the set are boosts to your Mantras and your allies. The two set bonus provides 100% increased base to your passive ally effect. The four set gives you all of the basic mantra effects. And finally the six set bonus gives both all allies and increases your damage per ally. Two complimentary new items that you can use with the set are Lefebvre’s Soliloquy (shoulders) and Bindings of the Lesser Gods (bracers). Lefebvre’s Solioquy provides damage reduction via Cyclone Strike while Bindings buffs your allies’ damage after hitting Cyclone Strike. On top of these two items, the other pretty obvious item to use is The Crudest Boots, which doubles the number of allies out. So as you can see on top of dealing with Allies, you also will be using Cyclone Strike to compliment the build.
The high end build adds Gungdo Gear and The Fist of Az’Turrasq for massive AoE Exploding Palm damage along with the Endless Walk amulet/ring set. Lastly, in your ring and cube spots, you use a Unity and Convention of Elements. While the main skills center around Mystic Ally and Cyclone Strike, the gimmick of the popular build really is all about the Convention of Elements due to the burst damage from the Cold element.
The way the popular build works is that you gather up enemies via Cyclone Strike, dump Exploding Palms on them all and then nuke them when the Cold element shows up from your Convention of Elements by activating your Mystic Ally ability, which the Water Ally active ability to do a massive wave attack. That combined with Exploding Palms practically destroys huge groups of mobs. Now, this build is tricky in that you need good timing in getting the Convention of Elements to line up at the right moment along with getting Exploding Palm to trigger.
For myself, I’m lacking The Fist of Az’Turrasq for my cube slot and am doing a slight variation. Since I’m not pushing Greater Rifts, I have a little more flexibility when it comes to slots like bracers, rings and the cubed weapon. So the variation I use replaces The Fist of Az’Turrasq with The Furnace and swaps Convention of Elements with the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. Also, for one of my legendary gems, I use Gogok of Swiftness.
Why this combo you ask? While the build basics is fun, I find the real problem with the overall speed. It’s a slow build and you’re often waiting for Dashing Strike to come off of cooldown. Depending on the area, you might lack a lot of density and have a great amount of distance between mobs (like the sucky caves). So one way to compensate a bit is to use Gogok and the Obsidian Ring to bring down your cooldown a bit. In fact, I’m debating about replacing The Furnace with an In-geom for more cooldown reduction.
Part of your build will probably involve Epiphany at some point for defense. And you might occasionally find yourself resource starved if you often spam Cyclone Strike or Exploding Palm. Because of that, you also want to have your Mystic Ally up to refill your Spirit instantly.
I will say that overall this has been my favorite monk build I’ve ever played. There’s something really satisfying about gathering up tons of mobs then blowing them up with Exploding Palm. But at the same time having allies to conduct a good portion of your damage makes things a lot easier too. The Innes set is just a lot of fun and has the ability to be useful in hybrid builds just because of all the utility it provides.