Orka - Fists of fury (Softcore Monk)

[Mo]

Legendary martial arts master Orka makes his way to Sanctuary to test his skills against the never ending hordes of the Prime Evils.

Orka will apply the teachings of Master Wughan, so far mastering 3 of the "Six Techniques". Fists of Thunder, Way of the Hundred Fists and Crippling Wave.  By weaving these 3 techniques together, Orka achieves 24% extra damage, via Combination Strike.

Orka is built around speed and the fast paced game play is refreshing after playing Valsu and Minsc which provide a much slower play style.  Orka runs into battle and unleashes combinations of furious attacks.  His current attack speed bonus from gear is +57%, with skill bonuses he approaches 3 attacks per second.

Defense: Survivability mainly comes from Life on Hit and dodge.  LoH is currently at 2530 life per hit.  Taking 2.5 hits per second, it takes 7 seconds to regenerate all his 43.5k hp.  To supplement this, Orka also heals from Transcendence, gaining Life per Spirit spent, currently 87 life (with gear bonus as well).  This healing is very efficient, as Orka gains spirit very fast, due to extremely fast attacks speed.  He is able to spam Mantra of Retribution, which will heal for 4350 hp with no cooldown.  Spamming MoR also has the dual effect of 80% melee damage reflection back to foes.  Rounding out defensive abilities are Serenity - Ascension (flexible on rune), and Seize the Initiative.

Offense:  As mentioned this build centers around Combination Strike.  Chaining 3 attacks, which are all mapped to my 3 button mouse, for +24% dmg.  My feelings around this passive is that it is very nice and fun but comparing it to Barb skills it is still underpowered.  All a Barb needs is one skill, Battle Rage - Marauder's Rage, for +30% dmg, while Monks need 1 passive plus 3 active skills to only get 24%, common Blizzard, balance! Anyway I like this idea so this is the build I'm going with here.

Fists of Thunder - Lightning Flash: Used for nice 16% temp dodge boost while in the thick of battle.
Crippling Wave - Concussion: Enemies hit by any strike here will deal 20% less dmg, the 3rd strike will also slow their move and attack speed. (This attack could be very nicely complemented with the passive Resolve, but I would need to swap out Seize the Initiative.)
Way of the Hundred Fists - Blazing Fists: Woah this is a cool rune. Critical hits give Orka bonus 5% attack and movement speed for 5 seconds and it stacks 3 times for a total of 15% bonus for each!  Orka's critical chance is around 17%, even so his super high attack speed plus the fact that WotHF hits a zillion times during it's second phase, means Orka gains max bonus from Blazing Fists after 2 attack rounds i.e. 1 or 2 seconds.
Dashing Strike - Blinding Speed: This is a nice skill to keep the action going! Orka can bounce around from enemy to enemy.  Using this skill in the Bastion's Keep dungeon I was able to get a very nice 100 odd enemy massacre!  Blinding Speed gives a very nice 20% dodge chance bonus.  This plus, Lightning fists bring my dodge up to over 60% for a few seconds.

Mantra of Retribution - Transgression.  This skill is used for the bonus 8% attack speed.  All party benefit from it as well.  Also it has great synergy with Transcendence as mentioned above.

Deficiencies:  Currently Orka's crit chance is ok because he attacks very fast so it makes up for it being relatively low.  Crit dmg could increase, this would be make biggest change in DPS in my opinion.  Of course resistances are still relatively low.  Increasing those will result in biggest gain in survivability.  Life on Hit could always see increases, ditto with attack speed!


Orka

[Mo]

Made it to level 60! Page is now updated.

[420]

I considered making a Combination Strike based monk but I just couldn't make it work on paper.

For instance, your spirit generating attacks are all 3 stage attack, all of which have a special bonus effect on the 3rd attack (WotHF doesn't say, but it does damage to all adjacent targets on the third strike). But Combination Strike requires you to continuously cycle through your attacks if you want to maintain maximum damage boost, which means you'll have to choose which 3rd stage attack(s) that you won't be using. (Unless you have 3+ attacks per second which I'm not sure is even possible.)

How do you cycle your spirit generating attacks during combat?

-420

[Mo]

My attack speed is so fast that I can keep it up while cycling through all the 3rd stage attacks.  Effect lasts for 3 seconds..that is pretty long with these speeds in mind.

[Mo]

Max attacks per second currently is 2.8

[420]

Max attacks per second currently is 2.8

I had some tedious jobs to do at work yesterday so I decided to do a bit of math in my head for fun. I calculated how long each attack would take, based on a consistent 2.8 Attacks Per Second (aps), and then calculated different attack combinations using 3 different attacks.

Here are the results I came up with, strangely enough I think it may actually be detrimental if you got your aps up to 3 or higher. The ideal sweet spot seems to be as close to 3 aps as possible without going over.

For simplicity sake I call the three different attacks, A, B, and C, and color coded them for ease of reading. Each attack has 3 stages, so attacks will have a number indicating which attack in the sequence it is. For example, attacking 3 times in a row with attack A would look like, A1, A2, and A3.

The chart is show in seconds. Assuming a constant attack at 2.8 aps:
2.8 aps -> 1 attack = 0.36 seconds (the length of time between each attack)

The first chart shows a potential attack sequence based on trying to max out the damage bonus from Combination Strike first. That is, begin by attacking once with each different attack.

Option 1: Max Damage Bonus First

Seconds - Attack - Total Bonus/Seconds Left (Individual Bonus Times)

0.0 - A1 - 8%/3s (8%/3s)
0.36 - B1 - 16%/2.64s (8%/2.64s, 8%/3s)
0.72 - C1 - 24%/2.28s (8%/2.28s, 8%/2.64s, 8%/3s)
1.08 - C2 - 24%/1.92s (8%/1.92s, 8%/2.28s, 8%/2.64s)
1.44 - C3 - 24%/1.56s (8%/1.56s, 8%/1.92s, 8%/2.28s)
1.80 - A1 - 24%/1.20s (8%/1.20s, 8%/1.56s, 8%/1.92s)

*At this point 420 decides to actually do some in-game testing and finds out all these calculations and charts are completely useless since the damage bonus from Combination Strike lasts as long as you are attacking, regardless of what attack you use.*

Oh well, at least it was something fun to do in my head.

-420

[Mo]

Don't forget that to get "max" effect from Combination Strike, you need to add in attack D.

[420]

Don't forget that to get "max" effect from Combination Strike, you need to add in attack D.

Well, I was calculating "max" for your specific build. Hence the number of attacks per second and the number of different attacks. (This is your build's thread after all.)

Anyway, now that I know how the mechanics work, I may try Combination Strike out on my second monk. I bet +32% damage from 4 attacks works well with Sweeping Wind.

-420