Uliana Seven-Sided Strike Monk Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Way of the Hundred Fists Assimilation Exploding Palm Impending Doom 1 Epiphany Desert Shroud 2 Dashing Strike Blinding Speed 3 Seven-Sided Strike Sustained Attack 4 Cyclone Strike Implosion
Passive Skills
Harmony Beacon of Ytar Mythic Rhythm Near Death Experience

The strategy of this build involves engaging large groups of enemies, attracting as many straggler packs as you can with a hit-and-run tactic enabled by the mobility of Dashing Strike. When the monsters gather, apply an Exploding Palm and your Assimilation buff with a triple attack of Way of the Hundred Fists. Then unleash a devastating Seven-Sided Strike, automatically spreading and detonating Impending Doom on the bunched up enemies with a little help from Gungdo Gear. While Seven-Sided Strike will be your primary source of damage and should be cast on cooldown, do not neglect to apply the EPs with a triple hit from Way of the Hundred Fists first, and maximize the bonus from Annihilation by getting yourself in as big of a fight as you can. Repeat this rotation until the trash or elite pack is dead, but always keep the AoE focus of the build in mind and round up monster packs as you go, never committing to small packs. Defense-wise, strive to maintain Epiphany Desert Shroud and the Blinding Speed dodge buff as much as you can. While the above is a serviceable general rotation, to maximize the potential of the build you will need to internalize several obscure Diablo mechanics — please consult our Mythic Rhythm section below.

Seven-Sided Strike is the harbinger of devastation in the build: while not providing an essential part of your overall DPS, it will trigger the chain of Exploding Palm detonations through the Uliana 6-piece bonus. Despite the lack of elemental synergy, picking the Physical rune Sustained Attack is crucial, as it cuts down the base 30-second cooldown of the skill in half.

The true powerhouse of the build lies in the signature Monk ability Exploding Palm. The rune of choice is the Cold damage Impending Doom, towering over its peers with 6305% weapon damage per detonation, activated through the Uliana 6-piece bonus and spreading like the plague with the Gungdo Gear unique property. While present on your skill bar, you will not need to manually use Exploding Palm (most of the time) and pay the Spirit cost, as it will be applied with the Gungdo Gear detonation chain, as well as through your generator via the Uliana 2-piece bonus.

Way of the Hundred Fists is the generator of choice that serves multiple purposes in the build:

• Keeping up a damage buff from the Assimilation) rune;
• Set synergy with the Uliana 2-piece bonus for the initial application of Exploding Palm;
• Last but not least, resource generation with a standard 12 Spirit per hit.

Epiphany is the centerpiece defensive cooldown in the build. It bolsters your mobility by allowing you to stick to your target, securing the kill. It increases your Spirit regeneration by 20 per second, ensuring you always have enough to use Seven-Sided Strike and Cyclone Strike. And perhaps most important of all, the Desert Shroud rune strengthens your defenses with 50% damage reduction while active.

To clump up enemies for the convenience of your Seven-Sided Strike and to maximize Assimilation stacks, you will be using Cyclone Strike with one of the longest range pulls in the game — the 34-yard Implosion rune.

Dashing Strike is the smoothest movement tool in the game, and one of the best assets in the Monk arsenal; the Uliana build adopts it mostly for survival needs in GRs. A charge-based skill on a low cooldown, it will allow you to skip low populated areas and unfavorable fights. With two charges stored by default you can cover good distances, or simply maintain the 40% Dodge buff of the Blinding Speed rune.

Beacon of Ytar is a solid foundation for high skill uptime, providing a 20% chunk to your Cooldown Reduction. Further reducing the Seven-Sided Strike downtime is only half the reason to take this passive, as it also cuts down the sizable 60-second cooldown of Epiphany and directly improves your defenses.

A mainstay in the Monk arsenal of passives, Harmony fuels your All Resistance with 40% of the single elemental resistance per piece of gear (g.g. 100 Fire Resistance roll on the boots will add 100 to your sheet Fire Resistance and add 40 to your other resists). A well geared Monk will usually sport secondary resistances in all the gear slots that are able to roll them, adding significantly to his overall Toughness (see this build's gear page for more information).

To counteract some of the damage spikes the build is exposed to, we will be taking Near Death Experience — the cheat death passive available to Monks. On the standard 60-second cooldown, it will prevent a lethal situation and restore you to 35% Life and Spirit instead. The 2-second immunity to damage and crowd control impairing effects is a nice bonus on top. If you are confident about handling spike damage, the best alternative for this passive slot is The Guardian's Path — a top tier defensive passive when dual-wielding, offering a substantial 35% dodge chance increase. Working alongside the dodge bonuses from Blinding Speed and Agility, it will be the optimal passive choice for physical attacks protection in high density maps.

Mythic Rhythm remains one of the strongest damage passives you can take as a Uliana Monk, as it offers a 40% multiplicative damage bonus for your next damaging Spirit spender after a triple attack from a generator, mirroring the mechanics of the set.

High end GR clears with Uliana's set are using a snapshot of the passive Mythic Rhythm. In Diablo terms, snapshotting is taking a certain buff dependent value and using it for an extended period of time, well beyond the intended buff duration. In this particular build, Uliana monks are snapshotting temporary buffed damage values from Mythic Rhythm ( Assimilation and Power pylons have been changed into dynamic buffs and can no longer be snapshotted) into a damage increase for the entire rift. This is how it is done:

• Find a big pack of enemies and attack 3 times with your generator, Way of the Hundred Fists, getting as many Assimilation stacks as you can. This will also apply the Mythic Rhythm buff, as the Exploding Palm created by the Uliana 2-piece bonus counts as a spender for the purposes of the passive. Unfortunately this will create numerous Exploding Palms, and you will have no way of telling which particular target has Mythic Rhythm on it.
• Attack 3 times again on the same targets. This will once again create the Mythic Rhythm buff, but since Exploding Palm has already been spread from the first round and there are no new targets, the Mythic Rhythm buff is retained on yourself.
• Move away from the current pack of Exploding Palmed monsters you used to create a buff for yourself. Their Exploding Palms cannot be overwritten. Find a new large pack of monsters and apply a supercharged Exploding Palm on a new, single monster. Do not do this by a 3-generator attack, but manually using the Exploding Palm skill on your bar.
• Use Seven-Sided Strike to detonate and spread the supercharged Exploding Palm. Destroy most of the monster pack, leaving a few living targets with the supercharged Exploding Palms and drag them to the next big group of monsters, strictly using Seven-Sided Strike to detonate and generate Exploding Palms, and not using the Uliana 2-piece method (3 successive generator attacks) until the end of the rift.