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Inna Mystic Ally Monk Guide

Last Updated:July 19, 2024|Change Log

Introduction

Inna Mystic Ally Solo Push
View all variants

With Season 24, Inna's Mantra Set received a rework which removed the generic damage bonus from the (6) Bonus and instead made it into an entirely Mystic Ally focused set. As a result, all the old Inna builds ceased to exist.

While Wave of Light, Tempest Rush and Exploding Palm builds can still be played using other Monk sets, the hybrid Inna/Uliana Seven-Sided Strike build is gone forever because other sets cannot be combined with Uliana's Stratagem (4) Bonus.

It's not all bad news though. Empowered by the reworked Inna's Mantra and buffed The Crudest boots and Bindings of the Lesser Gods, the Inna Mystic Ally build enters the scene.

The build comes in two flavors: Water Ally with large AoE and steady DPS, which is used for speed content, and slow but extremely powerful Earth Ally, which is ideal for Greater Rift pushing. After the nerf in Season 26 patch, Fire Ally briefly fell out of favor, but it was buffed again in Season 27 and it's now roughly equal to Water in speedfarming and to Earth in pushing!

Unlike most other skills, Mystic Ally doesn't have any dedicated Weapons so some of the pushing builds use Shenlong's Spirit Set for its 350% global damage multiplier.

While the build works with Area Damage (AD), Mystic Ally unfortunately procs it at a reduced rate which makes it meaningless. However as they are Pets, Mystic Allies do utilize Attack Speed as a separate damage multiplier among other interactions (see Mechanics). All in all this is a fun and versatile build that excels at any kind of T16 content, although it loses to LoD Wave of Light when it comes to Greater Rifts.

Quite Tanky ✔
Strong Season Starter ✔
Amazing for Speed Content ✔
Endless Tide of Water Allies ✔

❌ Flying Dragon RNG
Dumb Mystic Ally AI
Cooldown Dependent
Area Damage Not Working

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items

  • Inna's Mantra provides a massive 9,000% Mystic Ally damage, 50% damage reduction and a bunch of passive effects from Mantras and Mystic Allies, most importantly +80% Life, +40% All Resistance and +56% additive damage.
  • The Crudest Boots double the number of your Mystic Allies and triple their damage on top of letting their active effects last longer.
  • Bindings of the Lesser Gods provide another 200% increased Mystic Ally damage (or 600% for Fire Ally).
  • Other than the set and two Mystic Ally items nothing is really core for the build. Echoing Fury and Flying Dragon are frequently used for extra Attack Speed. Lefebvre's Soliloquy is a popular defensive option. Either Bastions of Will or Endless Walk jewelry set is included for their damage buffs.

Season 32 Ethereals

Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them.

This build has unfortunate relationship with Ethereals. At the highest end, Shenlong's Spirit provides 4.5x damage multiplier and since we don't have any good multipliers in weapon slots, Ethereals simply cannot keep up. On the other hand, the fastest Speedfarming build must use Inna's Reach to equip all the sets, so we get no Ethereals again. And finally, there's only one niche where Ethereals can actually see play: Greater Rift Speedfarming. There we use Jade Talon for Fire builds and Bartuc's Cut-Throat for Water builds, that don't need Cooldown Reduction. In almost every situation we want Flying Dragon power on our Ethereal, although Echoing Fury or In-Geom can also be used.

Global Stat Priorities

In push builds only 33% Cooldown Reduction is necessary to cast Mystic Ally on every Convention of Elements cycle. You get that with just the Beacon of Ytar passive and a Flawless Royal Diamond in the helmet. Speed builds prefer to have more CDR (especially Fire Ally builds). Aim to get All Resistance on your Belt, Pants and Boots. Our offensive priorities are: Elemental Damage > Mystic Ally Damage > Critical Hit Chance > Critical Hit Damage ~ Damage Range > Attack Speed. We don't stack Area Damage because Mystic Ally procs it at a reduced rate.

Assembling the Build

Item Stat Priorities

Gems

Skills

Passives

Paragon Points

Altar of Rites

Follower

Gameplay

Hardcore

Variants

Nephalem Rifts
Bounties
GR Speeds
GR Solo Push
Group RGK
Echoing Nightmare
T16 Keys

Ethereals
If you don't have any Ethereal Item use In-Geom.

Concept
This is one of the best Nephalem Rift builds in the game. We drop Bindings of the Lesser Gods because Bastions of Will and Squirt's Necklace will be more than enough to satisfy all our damage needs. Instead we focus on Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed and Movement Speed to maximize our mobility. For that we use In-Geom, Messerschmidt's Reaver, Warzechian Armguards and Mantra of Conviction Annihilation. Finally, Goldwrap together with Boon of the Hoarder give us infinite toughness, which is not really needed for this build but it's always a nice thing to have.

Gameplay
In T16 you just have to fly forward using Dashing Strike and Epiphany teleports with Cyclone Strike and watch your tide of mystic allies destroy everything in your path. You can be less conservative with your Water Ally and use it whenever to get more Spirit since its cooldown is very short. Way of the Hundred Fists is only used to crack open elite Primordial Scavengers who can completely ignore Water Ally damage when their armor is up.

Setups
When playing in groups, you need to equip Nemesis Bracers and use Avarice Band and Ring of Royal Grandeur instead of Bastions of Will. This will free up your jewelry slot in Kanai's Cube letting you use both Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time.

At higher paragon when your damage gets too high you can replace Bane of the Trapped and Enforcer with Wreath of Lightning and Gogok of Swiftness.

If you're not afraid to drop Goldwrap, simply use Bounty varinat in Nephalem Rifts.

Inna/Raiment Bounties

Concept
The bounty variant combines the Inna's Mantra with the Raiment of a Thousand Storms (4) Bonus, which lets us spam Dashing Strike without cooldown as long as we have enough Spirit. Since mobility is very important in bounties we put some more rolls into Resource Cost Reduction and use The Guardian's Path passive. We also pick up as much Attack Speed as possible to make the Dashing Strike animation shorter.

Gameplay
Spam Dashing Strike to get to the objective. Try to go through mobs to proc Messerschmidt's Reaver. Activate Mystic Ally when your Spirit goes low. Take care to never run out of Dashing Strike charges otherwise you'll have to wait the entire cooldown even if you have plenty of Spirit.

You only need Bindings of the Lesser Gods damage bonus to kill the bosses; outside of that it's sometimes helpful to use Cyclone Strike to group up mobs, but most of the time you should conserve Spirit.

Setups
If you don't have enough damage you have to go back to Nephalem Rift build, it will be a bit slower due to In-Geom dependency but it's still better than almost every other build in the game!

Select Build Version

Water
2h Water Speeds

Ethereals
If you don't have any Ethereal Item, use Echoing Fury.

Concept
In this version we use Bartuc's Cut-Throat with its 100% bonus against single target and In-Geom to fly through the rift with Dashing Strike.

Gameplay
Spam Epiphany, Mystic Ally and Serenity, Dashing Strike forward, Cyclone Strike the enemies and watch your Mystic Allies destroy them. When you are not busy dashing or cycloning, use Way of the Hundred Fists to activate Bastions of Will buff.

With In-geom you want to focus mostly on elites, but since you have Cyclone Strike and excellent AoE damage it's also worth stopping for juicy packs of trash.

Setups
Depending on how you feel about your toughness you can swap some runes and passives around to get more damage or survivability. For offense, use Radiance, Relentless Assault or Unity. For defense - Blinding Speed, Harmony or Near Death Experience.

Select Build Version

Fire Ally
Solo Push

Concept
This is the basic version of the push build using Fire Ally together with Convention of Elements and Shenlong's Spirit to set up massive explosions.

Gameplay
This build follows a rotation tied to your Convention of Elements. At the start of Physical Cycle look at your Shenlong's Spirit buff. If it's active and your Spirit is low, stop using your generator and Cyclone Strike a few times to let your Spirit hit 0 and start generating it again. 3 seconds into Physical stop moving and use Inner Sanctuary. In the middle of Cold or when you start dying, activate Serenity. Use Cyclone Strike and Mystic Ally as soon as it switches to Fire. To further optimize your damage, open your inventory and look at DPS value to see if Flying Dragon is active. If it's not, delay the explosion by up to 2 seconds to try and proc it before that.

Setups
If you are lacking survivability, change Unity to a defensive passive such as Harmony, Sixth Sense or Near Death Experience. You can also add some more CDR rolls on your gear to let you cast defensive skills more often.

If you don't want to deal with Shenlong's Spirit minigame, you can drop Serenity or Inner Sanctuary for Crippling Wave Rising Tide which will allow you effortlessly proc the set at any moment and keep it up indefinitely.

At high Paragon (4,000+) levels you can drop Spirit Guards and Lefebvre's Soliloquy for Aughild's Authority set for more damage.

Inna RGK

Concept
This build is an excellent Rift Guardian Killer (RGK). Similar to solo push build we use Endless Walk, Shenlong's Spirit and Convention of Elements. On top of that we get Aughild's Authority for even more damage. Since supports give us a lot of toughness, we drop Inner Sanctuary to get Breath of Heaven Infused with Light. Finally we use Alacrity passive to stack Bane of the Stricken faster.

Gameplay
The damage rotation on the boss is very simple: you hold down the generator, use Cyclone Strike every 5 seconds and use all the other skills on cooldown. When your Physical Convention of Elements comes up your zBarb should stun the boss to activate Relentless Assault.

In the rift you mostly do nothing because activating Mystic Ally will make all the mobs CC-immune. You can sometimes do some damage to elites when nothing else is left in the pull and you're about to move forward.

Setups
Serenity is not super important for this build so if you're not in danger you can replace it with a skill that's useful for your party such as Mantra of Salvation Agility, Inner Sanctuary or even Mantra of Retribution Transgression. You can also drop Beacon of Ytar for Unity or Resolve if you want more damage or toughness and are willing to deal with long cooldowns.

Echoing Nightmares

Ethereals
If you don't have any Ethereal Item, use Inna's Reach + Frostburn.

Concept
This build is for clearing Echoing Nightmares, it can't go very high but it will get you your 125 augments no problem. We use Water Ally build very similar to Speed GR version. We just drop Relentless Assault for Near Death Experience and change Cyclone Strike rune to Eye of the Storm.

Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon as soon as the challenge starts and all the other Pylons at around wave 90. At wave 122 you can stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.

Spam Serenity as much as possible and dodge Green Meteors after wave 100.

Video Guide

Video Guide

Mechanics

Mystic Ally

Flying Dragon

Inna's Mantra

The Crudest Boots

Frostburn

Summary

  • Put together the core items and acquire the full Inna's Mantra set.
  • Stack a bunch of Attack Speed and never stop attacking to proc Flying Dragon.
  • With Water Ally only use the active to get rid of blue men.
  • With Fire Ally don't pull too many mobs!

Credits

Written by Northwar.
Reviewed by wudijo.

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