LoD LTK Monk BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

As this is a Legacy of Dreams-based spec, the rest of your gear slots will be comprised entirely of legendary items. As a rule of thumb, focus on synergistic stats like Crit Chance and Damage, Area Damage, and lashing Tail Kick skill %, and remember the rings' requirements for ancient items, as well as their restriction on other set bonuses. You can temporarily run individual set pieces with beneficial stats, as long as they do not form any set bonus.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Unity, and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is crucial to the build due to its cooldown reducing mechanics, which tirelessly chip away at your Epiphany downtime. Unity will cut incoming damage in half when paired with another on the follower, along with an immortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor). Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Fire cycle of its rotation.

The recommended amulet for the build is Squirt's Necklace for its massive damage multiplier. The former favorite The Flavor of Time should now be slotted on your follower, and its power will be transferred to your character via the Emanate mechanics.

The mandatory head piece for the build is Gyana Na Kashu — the Spirit Stone that releases a fireball projectile when Lashing Tail Kicking, notably scaling with the skill and providing significant single target damage as a consequence. To further solidify its presence in the build, Gyana Na Kashu rolls with up to 100% additional Lashing Tail Kick damage as a free fifth affix.

Your ideal shoulder is the protective Lefebvre's Soliloquy, which greatly reduces damage taken for 5 seconds after casting Cyclone Strike. The length of this buff matches the one from Bindings of the Lesser Gods, so you will do well to make a habit of applying Cyclone Strike at regular intervals.

A trio of Fire elemental damage boosting items take up the bulk of your armor pieces. Cindercoat, Magefist and Blackthorne's Jousting Mail are able to bring up to 20% Fire elemental damage each, greatly amplifying your main damage dealer. While Magefist is a straightforward elemental DPS item, Cindercoat also brings Resource Cost Reduction value to the build, which eases the strain on your Spirit spending from the gluttonous Lashing Tail Kick. Blackthorne's Jousting Mail provide an elemental damage increase, which is fairly unique for the slot — as long as it does not form its set bonus with another Blackthorne item, thus breaking the LoD bonus, this will be your best-in-slot item.

You have two important bracers in the LoN WoL build; simply wear the one you rolled better and cube the other. Spirit Guards are a great fit for the slot, since it is easy (and quite necessary) to fit a generator jab in between your Lashing Tail Kicks, and it adds massive damage reduction value to the build. Bindings of the Lesser Gods greatly amplify your Mystic Ally damage against enemies affected by Cyclone Strike, which curiously interacts with your Rabid Strike-spawned mimic for a sizable boost to your overall DPS.

The best-in-slot belt for the build when pushing Greater Rifts is the glass cannon favorite, The Witching Hour. What this belt lacks in unique properties, it makes up in unique rolls: it is the only item in the slot that can roll Attack Speed and Critical Damage. Both stats are immensely beneficial to your damage output, so seek as close to the maximum 7 IAS and 50 Crit Damage as you can.

Rivera Dancers have been added in Patch 2.4 as an item tailored after Lashing Tail Kick builds. Rolling up to 300% multiplicative damage increase to LTK and speeding the skill up with a guaranteed 50%, these boots are quite valuable to the build. The same applies to The Crudest Boots, albeit for a less than obvious reason. You be taking advantage of the doubled Mystic Ally summons for Spirit restoration, but the damage increase to Allies also applies to the Rabid Strike clone — turning this build into an impromptu summoner, as the clone will deliver the bulk of your damage. Wear your stronger rolled item between these two, and cube the other.

Reworked in Patch 2.4.2 and buffed further in 2.6.1, Scarbringer is a straightforward addition to any LTK build with its 600% multiplicative damage increase to Lashing Tail Kick on the first 7 enemies hit. Your other weapon will be Rabid Strike, and with your high Epiphany uptime plus the buffs available to the "clone" from the weapon ( Bindings of the Lesser Gods amplifies its damage) you will greatly increase your overall output.

The build requires the standard investments in skill damage across the gear pieces that can roll the stat (helm and boots in this case, with the added benefit of Gyana Na Kashu rolling with Lashing Tail Kick damage as an innate roll). Aside from that, it requires as much Area Damage as you can fit (ideally 100%+), and you will roughly be aiming to hit around the ~35% Cooldown Reduction point and the ~40% Resource Cost Reduction point for optimal split between skill and Spirit availability.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 600-700k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer or weapon).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Dexterity.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random.

Unfortunately, Lashing Tail Kick-based builds don't have a great way of utilizing the three Sanctification powers. Thus, you should simply use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). The Sanctification power outcome does not matter. In the case of this build, a good candidate for Sanctification are your two weapons, Rabid Strike and Scarbringer.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Dexterity, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or Maximum Spirit if you want to play around with a bigger resource pool.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Attack Speed, in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Resource Cost Reduction and Area Damage first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Enforcer brings a multiplicative damage increase to pets, which curiously interacts with the Rabid Strike Ally-like clone and makes this gem highly desirable for the setup.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Aided by the Gyana Na Kashu Fireball, Lashing Tail Kick finds great advantage in picking up this gem. In lower Greater Rifts or during farming, you can easily swap this gem out for the well-rounded damage and toughness increase of Bane of the Powerful.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Bane of the Trapped.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Emeralds in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Emeralds as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Dexterity in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this is a fairly cooldown-dependent build, slot a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapons, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Cubing the Flying Dragon provides you with one of the strongest weapon procs in the game: a chance to double your attack speed with a separate multiplier, an incomparable bonus for a build that benefits so much from IAS.

As previously mentioned, you should wear your stronger rolled item between Rivera Dancers and The Crudest Boots, and extract the weaker one in this slot.

Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac is an important piece of the setup, as its cooldown reduction power is the only reliable way to bring Epiphany's cooldown to permanent uptime.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress due to her cooldown reduction buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Monks (due to Harmony) for optimal survivability.