One of the top monk builds going into Season 24 will be the Patterns of Justice build. Based on Tempest Rush as the primary damage output, the Patterns of Justice build is a channeling one with a play style similar to Whirlwind Barbarians and Strafe Demon Hunters. It can be built for speed and high GR pushing and will remain competitive along side the revised Inna’s Mystic Ally build.

Legendary Items

• Patterns of Justice (6 piece set) –
  • (2) Sweeping Wind gains the effect of every rune, and movement speed is increased by 5% for each stack of Sweeping Wind. – Sweeping Wind will not be your primary damaging ability but you will want to ensure that it stays up 100% for both resource replenishment and increasing your movement as well as the added effect of freezing your enemies from the Master of Wind rune.
    
  • (4) Attacking with Tempest Rush reduces your damage taken by 50% and increases Spirit Regeneration by 50. – This is what will keep your ability to channel Tempest Rush 100% of the time as well as decreasing your damage taken
    
  • (6) Hitting with Tempest Rush while Sweeping Wind is active increases the size of Sweeping Wind and also increases all damage dealt by 15,000%. – Again, keeping Sweeping Wind up is the critical element here to improve your Tempest Rush damage.
    
• Won Khim Lau (Weapon/main hand) – Hitting with Tempest Rush will activate Cyclone Strike, and both skills deal 558% increased damage. [500 – 600]% – Absolute critical item here as this will auto-cast your Cyclone Strike and pull things in together as well as boost your Tempest Rush damage.
• Cesar’s Momento (Bracers) – Enemies take 667% increased damage from your Tempest Rush for 5 seconds after you hit them with a Blind, Freeze, or Stun. (Monk Only) [600 – 800]% – Another major item. Your Cyclone Strike with Wall of Wind and Sweeping Wind will help freeze enemies to allow you to do the bonus damage from Tempest Rush. Also, Bane of the Trapped since you will be in melee range.
• Balance (2-handed weapon/cube) – The damage of Tempest Rush is increased by 546% and when your Tempest Rush hits 3 or fewer enemies, it gains 100% Critical Hit Chance. (Monk Only) [450 – 600]% – The first item you should cube as this will boost your Tempest Rush damage, especially single target target, up.
• Mantle of Channeling (shoulders/cube) – While channeling Siphon Blood, Whirlwind, Rapid Fire, Strafe, Tempest Rush, Firebats, Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, you deal 24% increased damage and take 25% reduced damage. [20 – 25]% – Since you are channeling, you will want to use this for the combination effect of reducing incoming and increasing outgoing damage.
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (ring/cube) – Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you hit with a resource-spending attack. – This is to help keep up your Epiphany and Serenity. Also, your Dashing Strike will be available more often to get out of hairy situations. Use this in the cube since the base stats aren’t good. And if you prefer wearing one because no other rings are available, roll off the attack speed into a socket for a legendary gem.
• Convention of Elements (ring) – Gain 179% increased damage to a single element for 4 seconds. This non-static effect rotates through the elements available to your class in the following order: Arcane, Cold, Fire, Holy, Lightning, Physical, Poison. [150 – 200]% – Big damage boost.
• Unity (ring) – All damage taken is split between wearers of this item. – Because you are wearing Squirt’s Necklace, you will want to avoid being too squishy. This helps tremendously. Only use when solo’ing as long as your follower has the undying relic and another unity.
• Vengeful Wind (offhand weapon) – Increases the maximum stack count of Sweeping Wind by 10 and increases the damage by 674%. (Monk Only) [600 – 800]% – An optional weapon but it helps with farming because it increases your Sweeping Wind stacks up to 13, which will boost your speed greatly.
• Kyoshiro’s Soul (belt) – Sweeping Wind gains 2 stacks every second it does not deal damage to any enemies. (Monk Only) – A quality of life item as well as helping to boost your Sweeping Wind damage. Not necessary but recommended if you find your maintaining Sweeping Wind a pain.
• Squirt’s Necklace (amulet) – While not taking damage, damage dealt is increased by up to 100% and damage taken is increased by up to 50%. – Big time damage improvement. However, the increased damage input can be very sketchy at times and you will see your health drop periodically during heavy incoming damage. Sometimes, I’ll see myself dropping stacks or taking heavy damage on an odd turn and suddenly my health is halved. So be careful on this.

This makes up a basic setup but as I mentioned, certain items are optional. Here are a few additional changes that can be made:

• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings (2 piece, belt/legs) – This is for pushing higher greater rifts and helps with both improving your Tempest Rush damage and reducing incoming damage. Also, you gain bonus cooldown reduction.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur (ring/cube) – If you opt to go the Captain’s Crimson’s Trimmings route, this item is a must have. You can replace one of the rings at your choosing, but I would select between Convention of Elements or Unity, depending on where you see your issues (not killing things fast enough vs too much incoming damage). I prefer keeping up Serenity and Epiphany as much as possible so the Obsidian Ring is non-negotiable for me.
• Azurewrath – The freeze is what you’re looking for from this weapon to help activate the bonus damage from Cesar’s Momento.
• Pig Sticker – More bonus damage
• The Furnace – An option that becomes available due to the Ethereal availability. More on that in a moment. Mostly, this weapon will be great for higher GR pushing.
• Messerschmidt’s Reaver – Another option that becomes available due to the Ethereal availability. Good for helping with farming and would allow you to replace the Obsidian Ring with the Ring of Royal Grandeur.

With regards to Ethereals, I believe the Shadow Killer will end up becoming the BiS weapon of choice here. For your legendary power of choice, the highest priority in my opinion will be from the Balance daibo because of how it will allow for other options such as The Furnace. Also, you will be tankier and this weapon has a chance to freeze, albeit not as good as Azurewrath. But the combined effect will still allow for more damage in the cube or additional flexibility. Otherwise, your next power of choice will be a Won Khim Lau. However, it should be considered secondary only because the Balance daibo gives you a slightly expanded weapons cube list.

Legendary Gems

• Taeguk – You will be channeling almost all the time so use this to provide more damage and armor.
• Bane of the Powerful – You will be proc’ing the damage from your freezing abilities and slowing things down by default.
• Gogok of Swiftness – Helps with dodge and attack speed. More importantly, this helps provide even more CDR to help keep up Epiphany and Serenity.
• Bane of the Stricken – Your single target damage is still pretty good but you might want to alter this and Gogok for higher GRs.

Active Skills

• Cyclone Strike: Wall of Wind – You will be automatically casting Cyclone Strike from your Won Khim Lau. The Wall of Wind rune will help freeze enemies and proc your increaseed Tempest Rush damage from your bracers.
• Tempest Rush: Flurry – You will be doing Cold damage. So make sure you roll cold% on your bracers and amulet if possible.
• Dashing Strike: Way of the Falling Star – Improves your movement after casting this as well as damage. Can substitute for Blinding Speed to help improve your dodge chance if you’re finding that you are taking too much damage.
• Serenity: Ascension – You will be immune to CC and helps absorb damage. Ascension increases the duration. But this is necessary to prevent Squirt’s Necklace from sending your health into half.
• Epiphany: Desert Shroud – Damage reduction and spirit regeneration. But you will want to keep this up as much as possible.
• Sweeping Wind – The rune will not matter because of the 2 set bonus. But you will want to activate this at the start of the rift and maintain it either through Kyoshiro’s Soul or manually restarting it. Be very mindful of the stacks as they can drop rapidly when there are no enemies around.

Passive Skills

• Near Death Experience – Squirt’s Necklace makes this build sketchy at times so you want at least one cheat death to prevent an influx of damage that suddenly nails you.
• The Guardian’s Path – Improves your dodge, which, again, helps mitigate the damage penalties from Squirt’s Necklace.
• Harmony – Increases your resistances.
• Beacon of Ytar – Improves your CDR which you will want for Epiphany and Desert Shroud.
• Relentless Assault – Improves your damage similar to how Cesar’s Momento works. A good choice for a passive on your Ethereal.
• Resolve – Doing damage to enemies reduces your damage. Another ability to help mitigate the risk with Squirt’s Necklace.

Followers

The only follower I truly found useful here is the Enchantress. For me again the extra cooldown reduction, cheat death and armor help tremendously. You could use a Templar for life regeneration and the cheat death but the issue I’ve found with this build is taking too much damage at once with Squirt’s Necklace. So avoiding damage as much as possible is what I want and CDR becomes imperative for Serenity and Epiphany’s uptime. Also, if you use the Enchantress for the cheat death, you can swap out Near Death Experience for a different passive.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, after trying out the revised Inna’s Mystic Ally build on PTR, I found myself coming back to Patterns of Justice. Inna’s felt too slow for my taste and constantly had issues generating resources for Cyclone Strike. It might be slightly better for pushing but with Patterns of Justice the raw speed and damage make it feel like the better build, especially since you do not have to deal with the wonky AI from depending on your minions for damage.

On the other hand, Patterns of Justice does encounter some shiftiness from damage spikes because of Squirt’s Necklace. I can’t tell if it’s a bug or not and I have seen others report bugs of Tempest Rush dropping stacks from 90 degree angle shifts in movement. I cannot tell if these two issues are related but the only way I’ve found a way around this problem is through using Cheat Death.

Nonetheless, because of the speed of this build, I think it still will remain competitive, especially with the introduction of Ethereals. Moving the daibo Balance into the Ethereal slot opens up a few new possibilities that the current set up does not through more 2-handers in the weapon Kanai’s Cube slot. It might seem minor at first but I feel that change will be enough to make this build even better for monks and I am excited to fully utilizing this build.

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