Kaylon

You can just make a priest instead and use Salvation of Time to prolong the buffs on the entire party, not just yourself. With the coil you can always have brilliant (and give it to you party too with the robes of the Weyc). With Weyc's Wand and death godlike you can also have always +6PL because of Barring Death's Door. While the bellower can have 6 more PL, the troubadour can cast more often which might be better overall (not sure how many jumps you can gain with Eld Nary)... The troubadour can gain in fact 5 phrases every 6s because Brisk Recitation + Muse of Mistery + Brilliant they all stack, while the bellower gains 3 phrases every 6s but his invocations cost less.

If you want to play a streetfighter I recommend you to have a SC priest in your party who can cast on you Barring Death's Door+Salvation of Time as early as possible or else it will be painful. You can pick SC streetfighter and spam Gambit at high level or streetfighter/soul blade and spam Soul Annihilation from start to the end or streetfighter/helwalker who has a chance to attack again on crits. The SC rogue and the monk perform poorly against enemies with high defenses or crit to hit conversion. The streetfighter/soul blade has the highest melee dps (is not dependent on crits) and is effective from the start (at the beginning you can also build him more tanky and play like a regular rogue while still doing good dps); at high level you can have also fun with Disintegration and cast Brilliant on your priest...

Those should be multiclasses of course. The paladin adds tanking/healing, the chanter adds great support for the party (passive healing, buffs, summons), the cipher offers also some great buffs (Pain Block, Ancestor's Memory, Tactical Meld) and CCs, while the priest adds Barring Death's Door and Salvation of Time besides other buffs/heals. With them in your party you can deal smoothly with any encounter in the game. After that, you can have up to 6 other classes in your party which can be whatever you want.

WotW has 2.5s base casting time which means there's always a big enough window of vulnerability, blade cascade or not. You can face lots of enemies or ranged attackers or enemies with resistance/immunity to might afflictions or who simply resist your stun, which means there can be monsters left unstunned who might hit you. Probably most of the time nothing happens, but why take risk if you can stay invisible all the time? Those 3s of invisibility can also help you escape by going out of enemies' sight and prepare if you need it. Also I think the build works very well with Fire in the Hole because it can benefit from the reflex debuff of the flail, can also add distraction (which debuffs armor+deflection+reflex) and adds more AoE damage and resonance charges. I don't think the nature godlike is the best option because there are many good helmets you can use - Acina's Tricorn adds +5acc to your AoEs, Cap of the Laughing Stock lowers enemies' deflection by 10, etc... No, only when you cast it.

Each religion point adds 0.44 burn dmg and with max might and 20+ religion you can do around 20 AoE burn dmg. Also the burn dmg isn't affected by grazes or crits, just by penetration. This build is great for solo, but in a party you will damage your companions adding stacks of Resonant Touch to them too... Also the build requires Ooblit or else you risk being hit during the casting phase of WotW by the enemies left unstunned, which will end your immunity. Another thing to keep in mind - using Dance of Death counts as a hit taken (probably Mortification of the Soul too).

Crazy combo with Saint's War Armor.

Less funny this one... Maybe replace it with: Shook'em all night long - 20% chance to give fatigue

I don't feel the other summons will become suddenly comparable to summoned weapons if all of them scale normally. For me the reason to choose a summon should be based on their different roles - melee/ranged, crush/slash/pierce/fire/shock damage, CC/DPS/tanking. Wurms/Skeletons will never be comparable to summoned weapons because they're not as tanky and you'll have to summon them twice as much, which justifies the cheaper cost.

That's not how it works. That's not correct, the healing bonus should be added to the other bonuses... You should also keep in mind that Sacred Immolation has a base duration of only 12s and it costs 4 zeal. That means you want to squeeze as much int, mig and fire power levels in your build in order to make it worth the cost. With Otto, Sun and Moon/Magran's Favor, Shark Soup/Hot Razor Skewers and maybe even a Potion of Ascension you can reach up to 8 fire PL - which makes a huge difference. However the self damage will increase too and it can reach over 60 raw dmg with Voidward equiped. You want to use also the Ring of Focused Flame or else your accuracy will be rather poor.

Well, a soul blade/rogue can already do more dps without any help from the party...

Old Siec won't drain from more than 2 targets per attack. In fact it will drain from the damage you do to yourself (with no enemies around you will heal for 4-5dmg) and from another target. With high might you will take around 50+ raw dmg/tick with Voidward equiped. Exalted Endurance + Ancient Memory + Old Siec will heal at best for 30 endurance every 3s and you're still left with 20+dmg to cover. You might squeeze more regen from items/drugs, but it's not enough to out heal the damage taken. To counter the damage taken you need Pain Block from a cipher or use Lay on Hands on yourself. The Herald is still a nice option because he can add the shock lash from Sasha's Singing Scimitar to Sacred Immolation and also buff himself with Energized. However the most suitable combo for Sacred Immolation is the paladin/monk who can suppress the self damage using Clarity of Agony (without mentioning access to Energized, superior intellect and might).

If you want to keep your party complete until the end and also choose a faction, then you don't have many choices... In general Serafen is considered the weakest overall but he is also required if you go with the Principi... My advice is to always try to have in your party a paladin, a chanter, a cipher and a priest and choose the MC accordingly, in order to have a strong and balanced party.

What I meant by hand damage is that you have the same base damage and speed as the fists.

If it uses monk's hand damage it's ok, but I'm not sure his weapon works that way.

Yes, but if it's a weapon you don't benefit from Transcendent Suffering. Maybe if you don't want to make a specific monk armor, you can make another piece of equipment for them. Maybe a helmet with the Pearlescent Rhomboid Helstone skin.

If you want less micro you could do berserker/devoted instead. Frostseeker with high accuracy does tremendous single and AoE damage by itself and as a monk you can spam Stunning Surge to stun enemies with it (like in PoE1 but without the pet ). Monk's Thunderous Blows can also be upgraded to Energized and that will also add interrupting ability to your crits. The AoE also benefits greatly from the high MIG/INT of the helwalker. You can also use mortars instead for AoE stun, but for less damage overall. Since it triggers up to 6 AoE, if you add also Avenging Storm/Combusting Wounds you can clear entire packs of mobs with just a few shots.

It would be nice to see a monk armor using the male dancer's outfit (with leather pants, naked torso and covered arms) - maybe borrow some attributes from other specific monk items (like monk resources on kill, add pierce damage to unarmed attacks, etc)

Here's an example of a very powerful party involving some of the strongest builds in their category: tank (caster) - paladin/blood mage melee AoE DPS - berserker/tactician melee DPS - soul blade/rogue ranged AoE DPS/CC - ghost heart/helwalker ranged + support - priest of skaen/troubadour

There are two build categories - for solo and for parties. For solo they're almost non-existent in the list but you can see most of them in action in the videos of the people who did the ultimate or soloed the megabosses (like priest/streetfighter, priest/blood mage, tactician/blood mage, SC monk, paladin/troubadour, assassin/tactician, blood mage/paladin, etc). The builds used in parties are more specialised and are built around items offering great synergies. You have Frostseeker builds (ghost heart/ascendant, gost heart/helwalker), Lord Darryn's Voulge builds (berserker/tactician, berserker/monk), Rust's Poignard builds (SC rogue or SC assassin), Sun and Moon builds (soulblade/trickster, soul blade/paladin), Sasha's Singing Scimitar (SC bellower, priest/troubadour, bloodmage/troubadour), Red Hand builds (rogue/ghost heart) and I'm sure I still forgot...

Using two fast weapons allows doing more attacks but for less damage and in the end the dps will be the same. If you want to optimize your character you should use a fast weapon in your left hand with a normal one in your main hand, while spamming full attacks (Gambit). A great combo is Magran's Favor with modal activated in your MH and Rust's Poignard in the OH.

Draining Touch with Zandethus Draconic Fury does lots of melee damage and heals too, but as a mage you're not limited to melee.

All builds still work, it's just some of them feel less powerful. But if you look for the strongest builds in 5.0, most of them were never posted...

Firebrand could become a very nice option for many melee classes if, for scrolls, it would be possible to make count the Arcana lvls above yours.

For weapons I recommend Tarn's Respite + St. Drogga's Skull and for armor Magnera's Chain. Aldris Blade becomes strong only with high crit chance. Grave Calling is over rated because people always consider max stacks when in fact you'll spend most of the fights with less than half. (also Grave Calling works better with a shield because you attack more often with it than if you dual wield). However keep in mind that sabers do only slash damage and vs enemies with high armor resistance/immunity you'll be in trouble. Modwyr + Watcher's Blade is another great combo which doesn't suffer from that issue.

Chanter and monk summons are ok, but druid/priest summons aren't affected if I remember well. For the summons/weapons scaling with level/PL the model should be Monastic Unarmed Training.