LoD LTK Monk Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Lashing Tail Kick Vulture Claw Kick Mystic Ally Air Ally 1 Cyclone Strike Implosion 2 Dashing Strike Radiance 3 Epiphany Desert Shroud 4 Mantra of Salvation Agility
Passive Skills
Determination Harmony Seize the Initiative Beacon of Ytar

The LoD Lashing Tail Kick (LTK) Monk revels in close combat, seeking fights constantly with Dashing Strike; once you are in an engagement, group enemies up with Cyclone Strike (also proccing Bindings of the Lesser Gods) and begin your Lashing Tail Kick assault, mimicked by your Rabid Strike clone for incredible damage output. Your protection will come from a combination of the Lefebvre's Soliloquy damage reduction (triggered by Cyclone Strike every 5 seconds), the massive bulwark of Epiphany Desert Shroud, and popping the active of Mantra of Salvation Agility whenever you anticipate a burst of damage. When your Spirit runs low, you will use Mystic Ally Air Ally for an instant refill.

The primary damage dealer of the build is Lashing Tail Kick, amplified by the Legacy of Nightmares bonuses, Rivera Dancers and the Patch 2.4.2 rework Scarbringer. Due to its highest damage potential with the 3-second DoT factored in, Vulture Claw Kick is the recommended rune.

With its medium Spirit cost and scarcity of legendary-based resource cost reduction, you will have to devote a significant amount of your skills to the maintenance of Lashing Tail Kick spam.

To clump up enemies for the convenience of your Wave of Light destruction, as well as to trigger the bonuses of Bindings of the Lesser Gods (whose bonus applies to the Rabid Strike-spawned Ally), you will be using Cyclone Strike with one of the longest range pulls in the game — the 34-yard Implosion rune.

With both a passive and active component, Mystic Ally will also aid your thirst for Spirit through the Air Ally rune. Doubling the number of summons with The Crudest Boots, you increase the passive regeneration bonus to 8 per second, and the active bonus to 200 per use. Unlike their Rabid Strike sibling, these summons will serve as a distraction at best in battle, but their Spirit utility is invaluable.

Epiphany rounds out the list of threefold value skills in this utility-packed build. It bolsters your mobility by allowing you to stick to your target, securing the kill. It increases your Spirit regeneration by 20 per second, ensuring your Lashing Tail Kick spam remains uninterrupted. Last but not least, it strengthens your defenses with powerful 50% damage reduction from the Desert Shroud rune while active. It will benefit immensely from Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, which allows for zero downtime of this crucial self-buff.

Uncommon among the protective skills because of its spender nature, Mantra of Salvation passively increases all resistances by 20%, and adds 35% dodge chance through the Agility rune. Its active component further increases resistances for a brief duration, but should be used sparingly due to the already high resource costs of the build.

To solidify their mobility options, Monks have the most responsive and fluid movement tool in the game, Dashing Strike. A charge-based skill on a low cooldown, it will take you to cursor location without fail, as long as there is no closed door between the starting point and the destination. With two charges stored by default you can skip unfavorable fights, seek out the next pack, or simply boost your survivability through the Blinding Speed rune.

Beacon of Ytar is a solid foundation for high skill uptime, providing a 20% chunk to your Cooldown Reduction. The sizable 60-second cooldown of Epiphany alone is important enough to demand a high CDR goal.

A mainstay in the Monk arsenal of passives, Harmony fuels your All Resistance with 40% of the single elemental resistance per piece of gear (e.g. 100 Fire Resistance roll on the boots will add 100 to your sheet Fire Resistance and add 40 to your other resists). A well geared Monk will usually sport secondary resistances in all the gear slots that are able to roll them, adding significantly to his overall Toughness (see this build's gear page for more information).

Seize the Initiative is one of the best damage-oriented passives at the disposal of Monks, providing you with a temporary attack speed increase when engaging enemies over 75% health, translating into faster Lashing Tail Kick output for the LoD LTK Monk. As you get more comfortable with the build, you will learn to kite into and pull additional enemies or freshly spawned boss adds to effectively extend the benefits from Seize the Initiative.

Your last passive slot is a little more flexible. A general recommendation to improve your damage output is Determination, which takes advantage of the monster-drawing powers of the build to provide up to 20% additive damage increase. Alternatively, you could slot the Monk's cheat death passive — Near Death Experience — as failsafe. On the standard 60-second cooldown, it will prevent a lethal situation and restore you to 35% Life and Spirit instead. The 2-second immunity to damage and crowd control impairing effects is another bonus on top.