Right now, the Innes Monk is possibly my favorite build next to the Marauder Demon Hunter build. I’ve seen a few variants of the build, including one that uses Exploding Palm and the hardcore one that Quin69 uses that goes for more defensive stats. But oddly enough, I haven’t really seen anyone use Tasker and Theo gloves and wanted to talk a little about this alternative build.
Originally, I was utilizing the Exploding Palm build that incorporates the Gungdo Gear bracers. Because I was missing the The Fist of Az’Turrasq, I couldn’t fully exploit Exploding Palm to its extent. Instead, I went with some other weapon initially but ended up with In-geom because of how slow the build moves. The thing is that I just didn’t feel Exploding Palm really sync’d up all that well with this build. It’s not like Uliana’s where there is more synergy with the gear.
Then I started watching Quin69 move towards hardcore and noticed that he no longer was utilizing Exploding Palm. Instead, he opted for more defense by using the Spirit Guards and swapped out The Fist of Az’Turrasq with The Flying Dragon. In addition, he replaced the Exploding Palm skill entirely with Mantra of Retribution: Trangression. This build made far more sense in a hardcore setting because Quin69 is going for more defense and survivability.
That got me thinking to an early version of my build where I used a cubed Tasker and Theo in place of Bindings of the Lesser Gods. I lose out on some damage from Mystic Allies because my version of Bindings of the Lesser Gods is down compared to a cubed version. On the other hand, I gain 50% attack speed for my Mystic Allies. In my older version, I had tried Tasker and Theo and noticed just how fast my Allies would rip apart enemies. The Mantra of Retribution with Transgression further increases their attack speed giving you quite a bit of consistent damage and occasional burst.
Thus far, I’ve been playing with a more cooldown friendly build, using In-geom in the cube along with an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. The idea here is to do as much as possible to reduce the cooldown of Mystic Ally. You’ll see that you’ll be more resource starved in this build but your burst will come up far more frequently. Also, the nice thing about this build is that you can use abilities like Dashing Strike and Epiphany more frequently. I found this build to be really good for Torment X farming and lower Greater Rifts (say around low 50s).
Some alternative ideas that I’m thinking about are replacing the In-geom for a Flying Dragon for higher greater rifts. In-geom is great for bouncing around via Dashing Strike, but you need to be able to destroy elites fast to make this weapon effective. On the other hand, Flying Dragon seems to be a better choice that goes along the theme of boosting your Mystic Allies’ attack speed.
For the last idea, which is something I need to experiment with, you could use a Gogok of Swiftness in one of your jewelry slots. The build pretty much will get you to use Bane of the Trapped and Enforcer. But the third slot can vary. I use Esoteric Alteration for an overall defense boost. So you could swap that gem for Gogok and continue to use the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to try and keep your cooldowns low. Your defense will be sacrificed but the hope is to keep Epiphany up more frequently. The other thing is that this build just tries to stack a ton of attack speed and completely relies on your Mystic Allies to destroy things. Perhaps, an alternative would be to switch Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and try double Unity for more defense. At any rate, you have some wiggle room here
I still would like to experiment with this build a bit. I think there’s a few items that haven’t been pushed that I’ve seen and it would be nice just to get a better feeling how they’ll play out.