[Monk] Using a shield to boot the power of your Tempest Rush!

Ok, so by now most of us monks are familiar with how Tempest Rush works and that you need a good amount of spirit generation to keep it up. Some of us chose to gear swap to take advantage of the sweeping wind bonus by having one set of gear to maximize the SW snapshot and another set to maximize the other component: Crit Chance. It is that component that I want to discuss.

Before I get to deep into this I must credit reddit user, Calc. He was the one who first introduced me to using a shield with a TR build via using a sword and board setup. In fact I will credit most of this build to his insight. My addition is in the area of what a shield or more accurately, a specific affix found on a shield, can do for you.

Now conventional wisdom says you’d be crazy to use anything other than a 2H weapon due to spirit usage being tied to attack speed. However, it is possible and because of the shield portion of that equation, you can get some CRAZY damage. This won’t be seen on your stat sheet but you will definitely notice it when playing.

Shields offer the obvious ability of damage mitigation but they also are one of the best sources for crit chance, in that they roll up to 10% for that affix. Now for the good part – one of the recent patches, 1.05 I believe, introduced the ability for shields to roll affix’s specific to monks. In this case I am referring to + % crit chance for Tempest Rush. This affix can roll up to 8% so theoretically, a shield can give a TR monk (must be in a rush for it to work) a crit chance percentage of 18. That’s huge and results in even more options in the area of gear customization.

Shield examples: 

Now we all know that the most sought after of the spirit regen amulets is the Xeph. The problem is, these amulets with any type of crit chance included are wicked expensive. However, if you had a shield with the aforementioned affix’s then theoretically, you could get a Xeph ammy without crit and not suffer to much in the area of DPS while reaping the benefit of the spirit regen.

Speaking of spirit regen – as you can imagine running a sword and board setup results in a higher AS value. Through the use of various pieces of gear I have managed to get just shy of what I need for a continuous rush. If I gave up my Leorics it could be done but I rather like the increase exp I get so for now I am fine with it.

Spirit Breakdown: 

So in the end, I end up with 50.5% Crit chance. Add to that the +8% that I get from my shield while TR ing. Granted, I have an Xeph ammy with 6.5 % crit chance but even if I didn’t, I would still have 52% crit chance.

Stat sheet:

Anyway, that’s about it. Have fun and happy holidays! Oh and here is my current post snapshot profile for reference:

Posted in: monk, Monk builds