Is Monarch just a worse Tempest with extra steps?
Today I run a comp around Monarch Leper in the final confession to try him out at max stacks. I run Instructrice to buff Leper, Wanderer Occultist to feed Leper with combo tokens, Monarch and Wanderer Flagellant for tanking/healing. Around the last region I reached the 66% threshold but the damage was inferior to Tempest. The whole run I played around feeding Leper to stack the passive and in many occasions I had to leave some enemies act one more turn for Leper to kill them, while with Tempest you only have to pop revenge and smack them with chop. Generally it felt like a chore setting all the kills for him to get the most out of the passive.
But to give it some props in the confession boss I was popping Revenge with Ruin and smacked both the boss and proclaimer with Hew, with crit and strength tokens I wooped a 64 crit on both targets. Perhaps I should utilize upgraded Ruin with one more damage dealer, like rank 3 HWM instead of Duelist.
The verdict of trying Monarch at full stacks for the first time gave me the impression that you have to build your whole team around him to make him work, while Tempest is pretty self sufficient and hits harder.