Uliana Seven-Sided Strike Monk BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete Uliana's Stratagem set bonuses, taking five of the six available Uliana set pieces, and then adding two pieces of the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and one more of your choosing, according to your weakest Uliana set roll (either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders). This auxiliary set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build. You will attain the complete set bonuses of this two-set amalgamation via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

Rolls-wise, this Exploding Palm-centric playstyle takes good advantage of Cooldown Reduction, Skill and Area Damage affixes. Cooldown Reduction is recommended as the fourth primary on Uliana's Fury, alongside Dexterity, Crit Chance and Crit Damage (as you approach 15,000 Dexterity due to high Paragons, it is recommended to even reroll the Dexterity on the glove to Area Damage). Life Regeneration or Elite Damage Reduction, plus high Dexterity and Vitality and secondary Physical Resistance are the desired stats on Uliana's Heart. High main stats, CDR and Area Damage rolls will be helpful on Uliana's Strength. Note that both Uliana's Heart and Uliana's Strength are able to roll Seven-Sided Strike %, but it is not advisable to seek these stats out, as the skill is mostly a tool to spread and detonate Exploding Palm, and the primary roll is best spent on something else. Captain Crimson's Thrust should be dedicated to Toughness, with high Dexterity, Vitality and Life Regeneration rolls ideally accompanied by Physical Resistance in the secondary stats. Both Uliana's Spirit and Uliana's Destiny should be rolled with Exploding Palm % bonus.

Having Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube to attain the full Uliana bonus allows you to split between offense and defense in the jewelry slots. One of the 2.4 reworks, the Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This dynamic fits the Uliana playstyle, which alternates dashing between fights with periods of stationary Seven-Sided Strike spam (the movement from the SSS animation does not lower the Endless Walk damage bonus). See this build's skills page for more information.

Your other ring slot will be taken by the pure damage boost of Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will need to learn and time to maximize the benefits of the short-lived Cold cycle. Its ideal stats are Crit Chance, Crit Damage, an open Socket and either CDR, Area Damage or a flat Damage increase, with both bringing about equal value to the build.

With the dependence on Exploding Palm to deliver the bulk of the damage, it is no wonder that Gungdo Gear is the suggested bracer for the build. With an effect both simple and devastating, this piece applies Exploding Palm to enemies caught within the radius of a detonated Exploding Palm, spreading like wildfire through the Uliana 6-piece bonus. Aim for the expected Cold elemental damage, Crit Chance, Dexterity and Vitality.

The Fist of Az'Turrasq is your first mandatory weapon; this legendary fist increases the on-death explosion damage of Exploding Palm by up to 500%; as a true multiplier to the base damage of the skill, it essentially doubles the output of your primary source of damage. Getting a roll with or close to the maximum 500% of the unique bonus is your foremost concern; other optimal stats include a good base damage roll, Cooldown Reduction and Area Damage.

Lion's Claw was introduced in Season 4 as an item tailored after this build. Turning Seven-Sided Strike into a fourteen-sided strike without extending casting time, this fist weapon serves as another true damage multiplier by allowing you twice as many Exploding Palm detonations from Uliana's 6-piece bonus. The preferred stats for Lion's Claw are similar to your other weapon — good base damage roll, Cooldown Reduction and Area Damage.

The build requires Exploding Palm skill damage on helm and boots (max 30%) and Cold elemental damage bonus on amulet and bracers (max 40%) Aside from that, it requires as much Area Damage as you can fit (ideally 130%+) while still maintaining a high investment in Cooldown Reduction, which is by far the hardest and most demanding utility roll; try to obtain 70%+ CDR, which will require a solid CDR roll on pretty much any gear piece that can get it aside from the amulet, Diamond in the helm, maxed out CDR in Paragons and an Enchantress follower. While not mandatory and just for reference, in order to achieve permanent Epiphany, you will need ~75% CDR after Gogok of Swiftness stacks. Dedicated Resource Cost Reduction Rolls should not be necessary, and you can leave the stat to the minor gains from Paragon and the Cpt. Crimson set.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 500-600k; 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. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Seven-Sided Strike Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Seven-Sided Strike Sanctification: The target of your Seven-Sided Strike is barraged with spiritual punches for 15 seconds. This can only affect one enemy at a time.

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). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapons, The Fist of Az'Turrasq and Lion's Claw.

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. Maximum Spirit is not necessary in this build.

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 Area Damage and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. When fighting in melee range, as a Uliana Monk naturally does, the gem will proc on its own through the level 25 property, bringing a self-sufficient increase to your DPS.

Gogok of Swiftness has great synergy with the build, indirectly providing you with more damage and survivability by increasing the essential Cooldown Reduction, as well as scaling Dodge chance. While less important, the Attack Speed aspect will assist with resource upkeep to enable care-free spam of Cyclone Strike.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket in GR progression. 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. The Uliana Monk is a prime example of such a build, and Bane of the Stricken is considered mandatory for pushing.

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 Flow of Eternity is essential for the build, as the unique power of this daibo cuts the base cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike by 60% and doubles its damage. No other weapon effect is remotely comparable, as better uptime of that skill directly translates into damage and survivability.

Created with Seven-Sided Strike in mind, Binding of the Lost is a damage reduction powerhouse that scales with the power of Lion's Claw, optimally providing you with 49% DR. With a generous 7-second uptime and the Cooldown Reduction focus of the build, you will easily overlap its effect. Note that the unique power of this belt ranges between 3-3.5 damage reduction, with a 7% loss between the minimum and maximum — so try to perfect your roll for optimal performance.

In the jewelry slot you will use the Ring of Royal Grandeur, a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties. Running the full 6-piece Uliana set bonus and Cpt. Crimson 3-piece bonus while dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power is a tremendous boost to the build.

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- and elemental damage bonuses, both of which contribute greatly to this build.

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.