Monk Inna's Mantra Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.5 / Season 28)

The Inna starting build leans onto the Mystic Ally powers provided by the set as early as possible, but can only rely on them for damage dealing once certain legendaries in place. Keep your leveling build intact for as long as necessary before you move over your rotation to reliance on Mystic Ally.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

Active Skills
Fists of Thunder Quickening Lashing Tail Kick Vulture Claw Kick 1 Mystic Ally Air Ally 2 Dashing Strike Way of the Falling Star 3 Exploding Palm Shocking Grasp 4 Mantra of Healing Circular Breathing
Passive Skills
Chant of Resonance Seize the Initiative Beacon of Ytar Unity

At the 2-piece Inna set bonus, you will almost match the leveling setup. The Inna set is quite powerful, but it does not show until later set bonuses, and ideally — with some supporting legendaries thrown in the mix. The one notable change from the leveling setup is the inclusion of Mystic Ally, whose passive effect is doubled (along with the effect of your equipped Mantra). At this point you will likely still rely on a Spirit spender attack to deal the bulk of your damage, so you should stick with the resource regeneration properties of Air Ally.

The remainder of your rotation is pretty self-explanatory. Mantra of Healing Circular Breathing plus Chant of Resonance and Air Ally will passively regenerate you Spirit, and you can supplement that with Fists of Thunder Quickening attacks. Nuke enemies down with LTK, or whichever spender you end up finding legendaries for in your leveling journey.

At this point, no additional helpful legendary items are assumed. You might have lucked out during the leveling journey (especially if you followed the gambling and crafting advice in our Seasonal Guide), or in your first couple of farming sessions with items such as:

• If you gambled The Crudest Boots at level 1, you gain a massive shortcut to the full Inna playstyle, and can reply on the Allies as a nuke over any spenders and Exploding Palm. If you got a complementary Bindings of the Lesser Gods at level 17, you should also get Cyclone Strike in the build over the Mantra. This is by far your best case scenario.
• Wave of Light combo items — if you lucked into crafting an Incense Torch of the Grand Temple and gambled a complementary Pinto's Pride at level 1, you likely leveled with Wave of Light and should use it over LTK.
• Tempest Rush combo items — if you lucked into crafting a Balance and gambled a complementary Cesar's Memento at level 1, use Tempest Rush as your Spirit spender, and use Blinding Flash Replenishing Light over Exploding Palm to trigger the bracer's effect.
• If you gambled Gungdo Gear at level 1, stick with Exploding Palm until you gather the full 6-piece Inna and supporting legendary pieces for Mystic Ally damage.
• If you gambled Rivera Dancers at level 1, stay on Lashing Tail Kick like suggested in the setup above.

Active Skills
Fists of Thunder Quickening Sweeping Wind Blade Storm 1 Mystic Ally Water Ally 2 Dashing Strike Way of the Falling Star 3 Exploding Palm Shocking Grasp 4 Mantra of Healing Circular Breathing
Passive Skills
Chant of Resonance Seize the Initiative Beacon of Ytar Unity

At the 4-piece Inna set bonus, you get the basic effects of all four Mantras without needing to slot them on your bar (though in our suggestion, you still do — it assumes a "worst case" scenario where you do not have any legendary pieces to support the Inna playstyle). You also gain a damage reduction property that is typical for 4-piece bonuses, which will alleviate some of your toughness concerns as you increase the in-game difficulties.

In the "worst case" scenario build we suggest above, it is assumed you still need supplementary damage. A decent source of passive AoE can come in the form of Sweeping Wind Blade Storm. Depending on your luck, you might not need it at all, and can start using more Inna-appropriate skills like Cyclone Strike.

At this point, it is not unreasonable to assume you have lucked into at least one synergistic item for the Mystic Ally Inna build. This can really smooth out the journey as you work towards the 6-piece bonus. Cornerstone items for the Inna build include:

• The Crudest Boots are one of your easy level 1 gambles, and a rather common legendary item overall. These boots double the number of Mystic Ally clones that are summoned by the skill, triples their damage dealt, and prolongs their active form attack — especially useful for Water Ally. Put a huge priority on obtaining this legendary.
• Bindings of the Lesser Gods form a very satisfying synergy between Cyclone Strike and Mystic Ally. If you happen upon them, put Cyclone Strike Implosion in the build and never look back. The damage boost and convenience of a massive pull will speed up your runs tremendously.

Active Skills
Way of the Hundred Fists Blazing Fists Cyclone Strike Implosion 1 Mystic Ally Water Ally 2 Dashing Strike Quicksilver 3 Epiphany Desert Shroud 4 Mantra of Conviction Annihilation
Passive Skills
Near Death Experience Seize the Initiative Beacon of Ytar Unity

At the 6-piece Inna set bonus, you finally get the signature Mystic Ally army of followers, as well as the necessary damage multiplication to push you through pretty much any farming difficulties in the game. You can find additional tips on kickstarting an Inna-based build in the section just below.

At this point, your build should be solid enough that you do not need a secondary damage dealer from Exploding Palm and/or Sweeping Wind. In their stead, use Cyclone Strike Implosion and Epiphany Desert Shroud. Cyclone Strike gathers enemies in convenient clumps for your AoE destruction, while Epiphany keeps you safe and fluid around the battlefield with its teleportation property.

Please refer to our endgame Inna Mystic Ally Monk guide to get an in-depth explanation of the necessary rotation, skills, passives, gear and gems, as well as details like stat priorities and breakpoints that will get this beginner Inna Mystic Ally build into endgame Greater Rift pushing.

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Inna set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble an Inna Mystic Ally Monk, you should do the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece Inna set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Pants, Boots, Gloves, Chest, Belt, and Helm. Do not gamble for the Daibo, since Weapon gamble costs are prohibitively expensive. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Pants) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Gamble Boots for The Crudest Boots, which also might have been your lucky find from the level 1 gambling. These boots double the number of Mystic Ally clones that are summoned by the skill, triples their damage dealt, and prolongs their active form attack — especially useful for Water Ally. This is your legendary item target No1.
• Gamble Bracers for Bindings of the Lesser Gods; this item further enhances the damage dealt by your Mystic Ally summmons, and forms a very satisfying synergy with the monstrous pull of Cyclone Strike. Bracers gambling can also net you Nemesis Bracers, which are a cornerstone farming item.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Swords to get In-geom; doing this on a level 1 Demon Hunter alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary swords.
• Upgrade rare One-handed Maces to get Echoing Fury; doing this on a level 1 Witch Doctor alt will improve your chances due to their lowest loot pool of legendary maces.
• Upgrade rare Two-handed Axes to get Messerschmidt's Reaver; along with In-geom, these two legendary powers will practically nullify your Mystic Ally cooldown and mmake you an unstoppable force in farming sessions.
• Gambling Belts can net you Goldwrap — a cornerstone standard rift farming item that makes you nearly invulnerable as you pick up gold.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Aughilds) as described in the Inna Mystic Ally Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint), the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose), and Convention of Elements , Unity and will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Stone of Jordan, Squirt's Necklace, or Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.

• Inna Exploding Palm Monk Build
• Inna Support Monk Build