Monk Inner Sanctuary Build Guide for Dungeons and Group Farming

This build is designed to tackle the vast majority of PvE content done by a Monk in a group, allowing you to maintain considerable mobility and a smattering of damage — while adding valuable pulling utility with Cyclone Strike and massively buffing your group with Inner Sanctuary. The spec is very versatile and flexible according to your group's needs, and you can easily scale up your damage output or your group protector/buff machine capabilities as necessary.

If you are interested in approaching a different type of content, please see our other Monk builds below.

You will move along with the glass cannons of your group, easily keeping up over slower paced classes with the superb mobility offered by Mystic Strike. Once you pull the attention of enough enemies, use Cyclone Strike to draw them in with a powerful pull. Once inside your reach, drop Inner Sanctuary underneath the fight (or apply Exploding Palm on the weakest nearby enemies, depending on your build variation of choice). Right around this point, your entire team should drop their hardest-hitting cooldowns and decimate the entire pack. Assist them by popping your Mystic Allies cooldown, as the twin Spirit Ally summons are excellent at finishing off more durable singular targets or nearby stragglers. In between your powerful cooldowns, punch away at your enemies with Fists of Thunder, ideally sticking to the priority target of the fight with the built-in teleportation of this Primary Attack.

Primary Skill: Fists of Thunder is the Primary Attack dedicated to dishing out single-target damage, as it comboes down a chosen enemy and, more importantly, has built-in dashing mechanics that allow you to stick to that particular target. When facing down singular, highly mobile targets (the vast majority of PvE situations, and especially in PvP), this should be your Primary Attack of choice.

Main Damage Dealer: Mystic Allies excel at pummeling down a priority target, making them ideal for content featuring protracted single-target fights — particularly Challenge Rifts and Raids, where time spent fighting the Boss can no longer be ignored as a factor. Note that you have to contend with pet AI when you plan the fight with your summons, and try to eliminate as many distractions (elite minions, boss adds, etc.) before popping the Allies' cooldown — this will help them beeline towards the correct enemy.

• Alternative: If the party requires more spread out damage than single target, you can consider swapping Mystic Allies out for the staple AoE abilities of the class: Seven-Sided Strike or Wave Of Light. Either can work well, and will mostly depend on your currently available supporting legendaries. Dragon's Indignation and Discipline's Weight are great for Seven-Sided Strike, while Radiant Sun and Chastising Radiance enhance Wave Of Light.

Support: Inner Sanctuary is one of the most adaptable, utility-laden skills in the Monk repertoire — but has a humongous cooldown to counter-balance its positives. This ability is best used defensively and when doing progression content (i.e. Challenge Rifts) — where increasingly harder-hitting enemies turn survival into a decisive factor for your success just as much, if not more, as your actual damage dealt. It can be excellently adapted to farming content however, by flipping its default defensive properties to an AoE damage enhancement with Empathy's Blessing.

• Alternative: If the group needs the Monk's own damage contribution (rather than using them as an enhancement of their own), you can replace this skill slot with the powerful DoT Exploding Palm. Exploding Palm is one of the hardest hitting abilities in the Monk's arsenal, synergizing with the strong crowd control and monster pulling options available for the class for powerful, screen-clearing detonations of trash enemies. In order to trigger its detonation effect more quickly and reliably, Exploding Palm greatly benefits from focusing down the affected enemy — either with co-ordinated team communication, or the inclusion of a hard-hitting ability like Mystic Allies.

Control: Cyclone Strike is one of the best additions to a Monk's skill lineup; a versatile, long-range crowd control tool that pulls enemies within range of the Monk's melee devastation. It pairs wonderfully with density-reliant damage cooldowns like Seven-Sided Strike and Exploding Palm, easily multiplying their effectiveness by piling a screenful of enemies on top of the Monk.

Mobility: Mystic Strike is one of the strongest mobility tools in the game, and certainly the best at the Monk's disposal. Its excellent range, reasonable cooldown and triple charges available by default allow you to maneuver around a fight at will to the best possible position. It can serve as an opener in combat, closing the gap to your enemy and pulling them together; it can be used as an emergency dodge from incoming attacks, blinking you well away from danger; and it can be popped to avoid or skip combat altogether, leaving your foes hopelessly behind. Needless to say, it should be included in all builds where mobility is a consideration (so pretty much any build, really).

Equipment is split into Primary (right side of character screen) and Secondary (left side).

Primary equipment includes the Main-hand, Off-hand, Head, Shoulders, Chest, and Legs slots of your character sheet. These slots can — and should — be filled by Legendary items, since their legendary powers and ability to be socketed with Legendary gems vastly overpowers lower tier gear. Of course, these slots will be temporarily filled with Common (Grey), then Magic (Blue), and then Rare (Yellow) gear, before graduating into Legendaries (Golden).

The suggested Legendaries for group-oriented Inner Sanctuary Monks are:

• Main-hand: Rod of Echoes — This legendary main-hand weapon decreases the cooldown of Mystic Allies by 15%, and can be further Awakened to bolster their Health by 10%. Shortening the considerable Mystic Allies cooldown and making their single-target prowess more readily available is a welcome addition to the build.
• Off-hand: Eye of the Storm — This legendary off-hand can be easily acquired from the Battle Pass. It enhances the radius of effect of Cyclone Strike, and can be further Awakened to reduce its cooldown as well. A very viable alternative for this slot, but one that you can't acquire with certainty, is Scolding Storm for the additional Chilling effect upon use of Exploding Palm.
• Head: Empathy's Blessing — This legendary helm is one of the stronger options for support Monks, as it flips the basic protective properties of Inner Sanctuary into a damage buff for all affected allies within its circle — an excellent addition to group farming. If you lack this helm, or will contribute more to the group with your own DPS, alter this slot to Crippling Insight for the additional charge of Exploding Palm.
• Shoulders: Any Good Roll — This group-centric Monk build has no specific legendary shoulder to strive for, so simply use your best rolled item in this slot. Of course, if you opted for a Seven-Sided Strike version of this build, aim for Discipline's Weight; and if you went for a Wave Of Light variant, slot Radiant Sun here.
• Chest: Disciplined Respite — This legendary chest reduces Inner Sanctuary's cooldown by 15%, with the option to further Awaken it for 10% more CDR. This is mostly useful in a Empathy's Blessing-wearing spec; in case you altered into Seven-Sided Strike, simply use Breath of Incense here.
• Legs: Path of the Storm — These legendary pants add a protective aspect to the quality-of-life powerhouse Cyclone Strike, reducing incoming damage temporarily after you use the skill. This is quite useful, since the ability piles your surrounding enemies right on top of you. If you opt for a Mystic Allies alteration of this build, use Companion's Melody in this slot.

Secondary equipment includes the Amulet, Rings, Hands, Waist, and Feet slots of your character sheet. These slots can — and should — be filled with Set items, since the bonuses they form once completed vastly overpowers lower tier gear. Of course, these slots will be temporarily filled with Common (Grey), then Magic (Blue), and then Rare (Yellow) gear, before graduating into Sets (Green). Secondary equipment can only be socketed with Normal gems.

The recommended sets for group-oriented Inner Sanctuary Monks are the combination of 2-piece Vithu's Urges and 4-piece Feasting Baron's Pack. The combination of these sets increases the duration of crowd control on enemies and increases damage dealt to them, while also enhancing the duration of beneficial effects on allies. You can use any combination of set pieces from these sets to attain the necessary bonuses; an example (but not mandatory) setup would be:

• Exemplar's Urge (Waist) — Farmed at Cavern of Echoes in difficulty Hell I and above.
• Beacon's Urge (Feet) — Farmed at Pit of Anguish in difficulty Hell I and above.
• The Mailed Fist (Hands) — Farmed at Kikuras Rapids in difficulty Hell II and above.
• The Subjugator (Neck) — Farmed at Destruction's End in difficulty Hell II and above.
• The Turnkey (Ring 1) — Farmed at Tomb of Fahir in difficulty Hell IV and above.
• The Prisoner (Ring 2) — Farmed at Forgotten Tower in difficulty Hell IV and above.

The 2-piece set bonus of Vithu's Urges is as follows:

• 2-piece Set Bonus: Increases the duration of all beneficial effects on you or your party members by 30%.

The 4-piece set bonus of Feasting Baron's Pack is as follows:

• 2-piece Set Bonus: Increases the duration of your abilities that cause loss of control by 30%.
• 4-piece Set Bonus: Increases damage done from all sources by 15% to enemies suffering under your loss of control effects.

Improving your attributes in Diablo Immortal generally revolves around increasing the total amount of Combat Rating, or CR. Every primary attribute point (Strength, Fortitude, Vitality, Willpower, and Intelligence) grants you 1 point of CR.

The priority attribute for Monks is Strength, which gives +0.3 Damage per point; given otherwise identical options, use the one with higher Strength to increase your DPS. Second in the priority order is Fortitude, which adds to your Armor Penetration — indirectly increasing damage dealt by also improving your crit chance. This attribute suffers from diminishing returns due to crit caps, but is still quite valuable. Third in the priority order is Vitality, which simply increases your Life total; the longer you can stave off death, the better.

Stat priority order and stat benefits for Monks are as follows:

• 1. Strength — Grants +0.3 Damage to Monks, and +1 to your total CR.
• 2. Fortitude — Grants +0.1 Armor Penetration, which affects your crit chance. It also grants +0.1 Armor; Armor increases your Block chance, and blocking attacks mitigates 20% of the damage dealt. More mitigation is never amiss, and even more so when dealing with riskier content like the Helliquary. It also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 3. Vitality — Grants +3 Life; the more you can add to your total health pool, the better. This is especially true for melee classes like the Monk, as they are frequently in the thick of the fight and endure hits head on. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 4. Willpower — Grants +0.1 Potency and 0.1 Resistance. Potency increases the duration of harmful effects that you inflict on your foes. Resistance lowers the duration of harmful effects inflicted by your enemies on you. This attribute also adds +1 to your total CR.
• 5. Intelligence — Grants +1 CR. This attribute does nothing else for Monks, and should be avoided as much as possible.

You should not put an emphasis on Special Attributes when considering between gear pieces. This is due to the overpowering importance of Primary Attributes and your CR total. That being said, the better Special Attributes are the two Crit Stats (Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage), Cooldown Reduction, Beneficiary Effect Duration, and Movement Speed. You can also consider Increased Damage to Players for PvP gear.

Pieces of Primary Gear that you upgrade at the Blacksmith attain up to three additional Bonus Attributes for Reforging at Ranks 6, 11, and 16. These Bonus Attributes belong to "families" (outlined and ranked below); a Family Bonus can be unlocked if all three Bonus Attributes are from the same family. Multiple Primary Gear pieces can have the same Family Bonus to improve your proc chance. The process of Reforging is done with the Reforge Stone consumable. Note that only Primary Gear pieces can be reforged; Secondary Gear pieces cannot. For Monks, priority Bonus Attributes are:

• 1. Tremor Stone is the most valuable bonus for general content, as its Family Bonus adds a crowd control proc and extra damage to your Primary Attacks.
• 2. Vengeance Stone brings a single target-oriented Family Bonus that becomes increasingly important as you push the difficulty of the content you are doing, i.e. Challenge Rifts. Pair it with high Attack Speed choices like Fists of Thunder to have a chance at finishing off Boss fights within the timer.
• 3. Wildfire Stone is mostly valuable due to its innate attributes, as it brings valuable Critical Hit Chance to the table. The Hydra summon from the Family Bonus is mostly an extra minion to soak up damage.
• 4. Barrier Stone has a Family Bonus that brings some much needed mitigation to Monks, a class that face-tanks all of its damage. The absorption shield is paired with some excellent innate attributes like Damage Taken Decreased and Block Chance, which further reduce incoming hurt.
• 5. Jolt Stone offers situationally valuable bonuses; it has Beneficial Effect Duration Increased as an innate attribute, which is decent for groups, and a Cheat Death proc which is never amiss when soloing content. Its Family Bonus brings soft CC to attackers, which is decent mostly for PvP.
• 6. Ravager Stone offers summoner-oriented innate attributes that are all but useless to Monks (unless you hyper-specialize in the Mystic Allies summons). Its Family Bonus requires enemies to be slain to proc, significantly diminishing its usefulness when doing progression content like Challenge Rift bosses and Helliquary.

As per tradition for Diablo games, socketed gear allows you to insert beneficial gems according to your needs. In Diablo Immortal, gems are divided between Normal Gems (socketable in Secondary Gear) and Legendary Gems (socketable in Primary Gear).

Normal Gems can only be socketed in Secondary Gear. Normal gems are divided into Red, Blue and Yellow sockets, and their priority is listed below. Priority-wise, gems are decent power increases to your character, but should never come at the cost of Primary Attributes and your CR score. Go for Red and Blue gems over Yellow if possible, as they provide a stronger bonus overall.

• Red Sockets: Prioritize Tourmaline as it provides a straight Damage increase. Ruby is also decent for the Life increase, but only if you lack Tourmalines.
• Blue Sockets: Prioritize Sapphire, which increases your Armor Penetration, and your Critical Hit Chance stat as a result. Note that Crit Chance provided from Sapphires has diminishing returns, capping out at 33%; when benefits from ArPen get too insignificant, swap to Aquamarine. Aquamarine provides Armor, which is a decent source of damage mitigation.
• Yellow Sockets: Prioritize Citrine for the Potency gains, increasing the duration of harmful effects you inflict on enemies; however small its benefits, they trump the Resistance effects provided from Topaz.

Legendary Gems can only be socketed in Primary Gear. They provide unique and very powerful bonuses on top of a robust stack of stat increases. Legendary Gems are found in Elder Rifts enhanced by the Crest consumables, as well as through crafting at the Jeweler in Westmarch.

Early on in Monk character progression, you should use common, 1- and 2-Star Legendary Gems like:

• Fervent Fang — Can be obtained from the Battle Pass, saving you some Crests. Provides a stacking damage increase against a target with successive attacks; great for single target damage.
• Everlasting Torment — For the mere cost of a critical hit, this gem inflicts a considerable DoT and an Attack Speed increase to boot. Even at a low quality, this gem starts off with incredible stats and fits nicely from the get-go.
• Chained Death — This is a great early game gem, especially during farming where you usually pull hordes of enemies to maximize your AoE skills. It amplifies your damage the more enemies you fight, encouraging chaining fights together.
• Lightning Core — Despite its low proc chance, this damage-dealing gem can wipe out entire packs when activated, or focus down a larger foe, making it a decent addition to you legendary gem lineup.
• Power & Command— Since you will frequently interweave Primary Attacks in between popping Ability cooldowns, you will always have some part of the alternating bonuses of this gem going.
• Berserker's Eye — This gem increases damage dealt at the cost of an increase in damage taken. For most of the farming PvE content, this is a reasonable trade-off that you can feasibly mitigate with the Monk's strong sources of shielding.

When perfecting your character for endgame content, the 5-Star Best-in-Slot Legendary Gems for Monks include:

• Blood-Soaked Jade — With its Damage and Movement Speed increases, it is largely considered to be the best legendary gem in the game for pretty much all forms of content.
• Seeping Bile — The value of this gem scales with the number of attacks you inflict, fitting nicely with the screen-wide pulling capabilities of Monks. With a considerable damage proc and a spreading effect, it is one of the best additions to your legendary gem lineup.
• Frozen Hearth — With percentage-based mitigation against ranged damage, this is one of the strongest defensive legendary gems you can support your character with.
• Howler's Call — Triggered off Primary Attacks, this legendary gem supplements the lacking ranged attack arsenal of Monks with a hard-hitting ranged proc.
• Blessing of the Worthy — Monks thrive at melee ranges and sustain a lot of attacks, making the retaliation proc of this gem quite valuable. Note its scaling off maximum Life, which turns the Monk's considerable health pool into a makeshift nuke.
• Chip of Stone Flesh — This is a PvP powerhouse of a gem, inflicting hard CC and increasing damage dealt on affected targets. It also provides decent value for progression content.

Paragon Points are character-specific progression system that allows you to advance in power after you reach maximum level. Each level gives you a Paragon point to spend into currently available nodes on the five Paragon Trees. While Paragon Trees are specialized for certain tasks, you should always keep in mind the tenets of character building — increasing damage and mitigation as much as you can. With that in mind, focus down the Vanquisher tree first, pick up the experience bonus from the Treasure Hunter tree, pick up whatever is useful from the Gladiator tree, and finish off with the group powerhouse of the Soldier tree. Always keep in mind that the (circular) Persistent Attributes are always active once leveled, but the (square) Specialization Skills are only applied when their respective Paragon Tree is active.

• Survivor Tree: The defensive bonuses of this tree function in PvP, which cannot be said for the other default tree (Vanquisher) — making Survivor the preferable tree for PvP-focused players. Pick up the first five Life nodes at the top, then a point in Unyielding. Then, go down and max out Armor, and pick up the one-point Escape Artist. Go back to the upper row to max out the second, 20-point Armor node, and finish the row with one point in Stalwart. Return to the middle row, max out the 15-point Life node and finish the row with a single point in Precognition. From Precognition, go straight down and max out the Damage node. This puts you at Paragon 79.
• Vanquisher Tree: Move over to that offense-oriented tree for a short while, allocating 5 points in the Damage nodde in the middle, picking up Zeal on the way, and spending another 14 points in the Damage node directly below. This puts you right at Paragon 99.
• Gladiator Tree: This tree unlocks at Paragon level 100, and is entirely dedicated to PvP bonuses. It makes the most sense to respec your Paragon points completely and delve directly into this tree. Max out the middle and top rows of the Gladiator tree (granting you Life, Damage, Resistances and Armor Penetration, alongside unique bonuses like Quick Witted, Cheat Death and Uncontrollable), costing you exactly 63 Paragon points. Spend the remaining points on the Vanquisher tree (the lower left corner of 5-point Damage node, Zeal and 25-point Damage node), and Treasure Hunter tree (5-point Armor node).
• Treasure Hunter Tree: Pick up Swift Learner, then the 15-point Damage node. Go over to the Soldier Tree and take Hold Formation, head down to the 15-point Resistance node, and then further down to the 15-point Damage node.
• Life and Utility pickups: In the Vanquisher tree, pick up the 25-point Life node straight across Zeal, and get the 1-point Judgment to finish off the middle row. Get the 5-point Life node right at the start of the Survivor tree, then the 15-point Life node in the first column of the Soldier tree. Continue in the Soldier tree — right across the Life is the 1-point First Aid, just below is the 1-point Combat Veteran, and then — the 1-point Battle Morale. Pick all these 1-point wonders up for a nice increase of overall utility.

It is important to reiterate that your utmost priority is picking up all the damage nodes you can, deviating into one tree or another only to further that goal. Secondary valuable pickups are found in Armor Penetration and Life nodes. Once you are done with leveling all the Damage nodes, you are free to fill out Paragon trees as you see fit, as well as to activate specific Trees for the needs of the content you are doing.

When you turn in Bestiary pages, you will receive a class-specific consumable. For Monks, this item is the Incense Candle, which increases Magic Find for you and your allies by 5% for 20 minutes. There's no reason to be stingy with its use, especially when you engage in party activities and/or content with potentially valuable rewards, such as dungeons with highly-sought set pieces.