Monk Leveling and Fresh 70 Guide (Patch 2.7.8 / Season 35)

Choose the Monk if you want to gain mastery over the dexterous, hand-to-hand melee combat, and channel the built up powers of your melee pummeling into crushing blows of sacred energy. The Monk is the master of engagement, dashing through the battlefield and exerting utmost control through pulls, pushes, and mantras. Your crippling blows overpower the adversaries like the sweeping tides, as you finish them off with flurries of spiritual power. The Monk embodies the duality of natural evasion and sacred destruction in Diablo 3.

Your progression on a given character always start with leveling to 70. To help you with that, we have a beginner leveling build that you can access using the link below.

After reaching Level 70, the easiest way to start gearing up and progressing towards the end-game is by using the set given by the Haedrig's Gifts. Haedrig's Gifts are cache-like rewards that drop 2 pieces of a fixed class-specific set after completing chapters II, III, and IV of the Seasonal Journey. Having a full 6-piece set bonus available to you will skyrocket your character's power well in the mid-to-high Torments. This makes the early portion of the Seasonal Journey your first priority upon reaching Level 70.

This Season, Monks will find the Raiment of a Thousand Storms set in their Haedrig's Gifts. We have an early progression build for this set, which you can find by clicking the link below.

While you get a fixed free set at the start of every Season, it is not unreasonable to assume you will attain other sets in quick succession. If you are interested in switching around your playstyle, take a look at the beginner points for other sets below, and note to which endgame builds they point you after.

To learn how to gear up quickly and approach a character's progression in general, check out our Beginner Seasonal Guide. It includes advice and tactics related to gambling Blood Shards, doing Bounties, Regular, Greater and Challenge Rifts, and using Kanai's Cube for easy upgrades.

Certain items can be targeted through the completion of bounties or boss kills. The following is a list of such items, in order of importance for the class.

• Ring of Royal Grandeur is a legendary from Act I caches that reduces the number of set items required for set bonuses by one. While it might not be immediately useful, obtaining powerful bonuses (such as the 4- and 6-piece set bonuses of any set) as early as possible for a huge spike in character power is an opportunity you should not pass up. Doing bounties will be inevitable for crafting materials anyway, so optimize your farming time and get this ring as soon as possible.
• Avarice Band is an Act III cache legendary ring that extends your pickup radius by up to 30 yards as you pick up gold. This unassuming bonus has the potential to turn in the strongest source of defense during normal rifts due to its synergy with Boon of the Hoarder and Goldwrap. Their powers combined, they can render your character practically invulnerable even in the highest of Torment difficulties.
• Illusory Boots are an Act II cache legendary item that removes enemy collision — a staple of support builds in Greater Rifts, as their precise positioning for party-wide buffs and enemy disables dictates the course of Greater Rift progress. Monks have been staple supports for many patches now, with several party-wide damage buffs and plenty of damage reduction to add to the group, making Illusory Boots reasonably attractive to the class.
• Reaper's Wraps are meant to assist classes and builds with resource management problems. These bracers restore up to 30% of your Spirit reserves when you get healed by a health globe, capped at once every 2 seconds. This is an easy trigger if you keep an eye on the battlefield. Note that these bracers are craftable, and the plan for their creation drops when you kill the Act V boss Malthael on any difficulty. Reaper's Wraps are reasonably attractive to Monks, as they frequently suffer from resource issues in the early game, before they acquire Spirit management legendaries like Incense Torch of the Grand Temple or transition into light-spending specs like Raiment set and Uliana set builds.
• Gloves of Worship are an Act II cache legendary that extends the duration of Shrines to 10 minutes, a very decent farming effect that is usually stored in Kanai's Cube. The combined power of Empowered Shrines (doubled resource gain, halved cooldowns), Frenzied Shrines (25% Attack Speed) and Fleeting Shrines (25% increase to Movement Speed and 20-yard pickup radius), often refreshing before their 10-minute duration, is a huge buff during normal rifts. Monks are among the classes that can benefit from Gloves of Worship, as the armor Cube slots of their most common farming specs are often flexible enough to fit the item in.
• Envious Blade is an Act II cache dagger with one of the most powerful speedfarming bonuses in the game — a guaranteed Critical Hit against enemies at full health. A well equipped character using this dagger can oneshot entire screens of enemies in a suitable farming difficulty. While class-specific legendaries are generally considered more important to Monk builds, Envious Blade is a decent option for a speedfarming Cube effect in the weapon slot.
• Pride's Fall is a helm obtained through Act III cache bounties, whose legendary effect reduces resource costs by 30% after not taking damage for 5 seconds. Almost never fighting at a range that can abuse this power, Monks do not consider farming Pride's Fall a priority.

The majority of the gear will be found by random chance as you farm normally, by killing monsters, opening chests, gambling at Kadala and upgrading rare items at the Cube. While the list below is not exhaustive, these are some of the pieces to seek, spend blood shards on, or upgrade yellows for — in order of priority:

• Sets: While the seasonal journey will reward you with a complete set through Haedrig's Gifts, gambling for armor set pieces still makes sense — to improve lackluster pieces, or complete class sets other than the gifted one. The Monk sets are:
  • Raiment of a Thousand Storms: Mask of the Searing Sky, Mantle of the Upside-Down Sinners, Fists of Thunder, Heart of the Crashing Wave, Scales of the Dancing Serpent and Eight-Demon Boots;
  • Inna's Mantra: Inna's Radiance, Inna's Hold, Inna's Vast Expanse, Inna's Favor, Inna's Temperance, Inna's Sandals and Inna's Reach;
  • Uliana's Strategem: Uliana's Spirit, Uliana's Strength, Uliana's Fury, Uliana's Heart, Uliana's Burden and Uliana's Destiny;
  • Monkey King's Garb: Sunwuko's Crown, Sunwuko's Balance, Sunwuko's Paws, Sunwuko's Soul, Sunwuko's Leggings and Sunwuko's Shines;
  • Patterns of Justice: Decree of Justice, Mirrors of Justice, Lamellars of Justice, Bazubands of Justice, Mountains of Justice and Weaves of Justice;
  • Shenlong's Spirit>: Shenlong's Fist of Legend and Shenlong's Relentless Assault.
• The weapon is by far the most impactful item on your damage output, putting a priority on the weapon slot as the first to obtain an ancient item for. Due to its higher bloodshard cost (75 for weapons vs. 25 for armor pieces and offhands), you should delay weapon gambling — avoiding it at the start of character progression and only considering it when you start perfecting your gear. If you simply need a specific weapon, you will get a much better deal with the Upgrade Rare recipe in Kanai's Cube. The Hope of Cain recipe (1 rare item, 25 Death's Breaths, 50 of white, blue and yellow crafting materials) will only produce the type of item you put in (i.e. fist weapons), cutting out all other weapons from the RNG pool that you would have to deal with through regular gambling at Kadala. Fist Weapons and Daibos are the Monk-specific weapons you can easily target through upgrading rares, with valuable and build-defining pieces such as the Shenlong's Spirit set ( Shenlong's Fist of Legend and Shenlong's Relentless Assault), Rabid Strike, Won Khim Lau, Vengeful Wind, Crystal Fist, Scarbringer, The Fist of Az'Turrasq, Kyoshiro's Blade, Lion's Claw, The Flow of Eternity, Balance, Incense Torch of the Grand Temple and Flying Dragon. Other weapons valuable to the Monk include In-geom, Echoing Fury, Azurewrath, and The Furnace.
• Jewelry has a huge influence on your DPS, but similarly to weapons it is expensive to gamble (50 shards for rings, 100 for amulets). When searching for specific jewelry rolls, you should consider upgrading rares instead. The three jewelry sets in Diablo 3, in order of importance for the Monk, are: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge; the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint; and the Legacy of Nightmares set, Litany of the Undaunted and The Wailing Host. Complementary jewelry for those sets are often Unity, Convention of Elements or Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac.
• The head slot for Monks can be occupied by both regular Helms and the class-specific Spirit Stones, with several important and build-defining legendaries for the slot: Tzo Krin's Gaze, Gyana Na Kashu, Madstone, Leoric's Crown. The cheap gambling price for the slot makes it worth to spend Blood Shards on.
• As previously mentioned in the gearing section, the Monk has only two important pairs of boots, but they both feed into powerful Monk playstyles: The Crudest Boots for Ally-reliant builds and Rivera Dancers for Lashing Tail Kick-based builds. If you are attracted to any of these playstyles, consider investing Blood Shards into the slot even after the early game gambling strat, in order to obtain endgame versions of these two items.
• Bracers have surprisingly many pieces valuable for Monks; aside from those mentioned in the gambling early game strat ( Gungdo Gear, Pinto's Pride and Cesar's Memento), you have other attractive items like Spirit Guards, Bindings of the Lesser Gods and Nemesis Bracers. Cheap to gamble like any other armor slot, bracers are a great slot to go for when spending Blood Shards.
• While the slot lacks a quantity of valuable legendaries, belts make up with quality: Kyoshiro's Soul is a convenience item for Sunwuko builds, Binding of the Lost is a vital part of the Uliana playstyle, and the cross-class The Witching Hour and Goldwrap are a centerpieces for certain Progression and Torment builds respectively.
• Most remaining armor slots only have one or two desirable items for Monks. In the long run, you will want to find Cindercoat (chest piece); Lefebvre's Soliloquy (shoulders) and Depth Diggers (pants).

The table below is meant to point you in a general correct direction and is by no means indicative of the exact rolls you want to go for. They can vary greatly from build to build and it is always preferable to refer to our exact guide page. If you simply use the rolls below however, and roll for skill damage on the applicable pieces:

• Exploding Palm, Wave of Light, Tempest Rush, Lashing Tail Kick on helms and boots;
• Sweeping Wind, Cyclone Strike, Mystic Ally, Dashing Strike, Seven-Sided Strike on shoulders and chest;
• Deadly Reach, Way of the Hundred Fists, Fists of Thunder, Crippling Wave on belt and pants.

Wherever it says 'Elemental damage', match it to the rune of your damaging skill of choice. You will come out with a functional spec, and probably not too far off from what we would recommend in a dedicated build!

Your armor and weapon sockets should be taken up by the highest tier Emerald gems you can afford at the time, while the helm is best filled by a Diamond gem for a boost to Cooldown Reduction. When you stumble upon jewelry with good primary stats and a socket, you should start dabbling into Legendary Gems. The Legendary Gems to consider for Monks are, in order of importance:

• Bane of the Trapped — staple multiplicative damage increase. The gem will proc itself with its level 25 property in melee range (where most Monk builds fight), or through item effects like the slow from Pinto's Pride.
• Bane of the Stricken — almost mandatory gem for Greater Rift progression, as it is designed to whittle down the scaling health numbers of monsters with a percentage-based increase on successive attacks.
• Boon of the Hoarder — synergizing with other farming mainstays like Avarice Band and Goldwrap, this gem will not only keep you rich, but also sped up and safe during normal rift farming.
• Bane of the Powerful — the speedfarm counterpart to Bane of the Stricken, Bane of the Powerful offers a solid overall damage and survivability increase as long as your killing speed does not fall behind the timer of the gem.
• Situational gems — Simplicity's Strength is crucial to any primary-skill dominant build, like Shenlong/Raiment specs. Enforcer is a priority gem for Ally-centric builds. Gogok of Swiftness is part of cooldown-centric setups like Uliana's Seven-Sided Strike. Zei's Stone of Vengeance is included in the ranged Wave of Light Sunwuko builds.

Kanai's Cube choices are highly build- and content-specific, making them hard to summarize. Generally speaking, Monks should store the powers of the following items in the Cube as soon as they have the materials available: Flying Dragon, Balance, Incense Torch of the Grand Temple, The Flow of Eternity, Crystal Fist, Kyoshiro's Blade, Lion's Claw, Rabid Strike, Scarbringer, The Fist of Az'Turrasq, Vengeful Wind, Won Khim Lau, In-geom, The Furnace, Envious Blade, Cindercoat, Depth Diggers, Lefebvre's Soliloquy, Bindings of the Lesser Gods, Cesar's Memento, Spirit Guards, Gungdo Gear, Nemesis Bracers, Goldwrap, Convention of Elements, Unity, Avarice Band and Ring of Royal Grandeur.

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.

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.