Support zMonk Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. This is a support build, meaning we deal zero damage and need to farm the pieces/materials with a different build/character. We'll use BloodShards and Crafting Materials to acquire the remaining pieces outlined in the steps below.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. Gather 3 pieces of the Inna's Mantra set and 2 pieces of the Uliana's Stratagem set. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
2. Nemesis Bracers, Spirit Guards and Strongarm Bracers
3. Lefebvre's Soliloquy
4. Stone Gauntlets
5. Leoric's Crown
6. Stormshield
7. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Oculus Ring

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade 1-Handed Swords to get In-Geom
2. Daibos to get Flying Dragon
3. 2-Handed Axes to get The Executioner
4. Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Oculus Ring
5. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.

5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:

• Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Born's Command
  

6. There is one final required piece that is difficult to acquire, The Flavor of Time. With amulets being so expensive to gamble or craft, we'll have to search for it to drop in Nephalem and Greater Rifts. The biggest hint is to party up with other players and kindly ask them to drop any duplicates they find.

7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are items with important multipliers or possible Health Globe Bonus rolls. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Oculus Ring
• The Flavor of Time
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac

• Iceblink makes enemies 10% more likely to be critically hit. Only 1 Iceblink should be used in groups as they do not stack. Both zNec and zDH apply chill better than zMonk, so if your group has one of those, they should be the one to run this gem.
• Gem of Efficacious Toxin poisons enemies hit for 10% additive damage (stacks) and 10% damage reduction (does not stack). Other supports can also wear this gem because the damage buff stacks.
• Gogok of Swiftness gives 15% Attack Speed, 15% Cooldown Reduction and up to 30% Dodge based on the amount of stacks you have. You gain a stack with each hit up to a maximum of 15, and all stacks are refreshed if you attack every 4 seconds.
• Esoteric Alteration gives 60% non-Physical damage reduction, and can be taken instead of Gem of Efficacious Toxin if you cannot survive.

• Crippling Wave is our spirit generator and also heals the party with Epiphany Soothing Mist. Different runes can be used here: Breaking Wave for damage, Concussion for damage reduction, or Tsunami to proc Iceblink.
• Epiphany Soothing Mist lets us teleport to monsters, spam our abilities, and heals our party members when we use any skill.
• Mantra of Healing provides massive shields and life regeneration to our party, allowing them to wear Squirt's Necklace. The shielded amount is increased by 15% of our Health Globe Bonus, which is why we take that roll on all of our items. Time of Need is the most commonly used rune, providing damage mitigation when things go haywire. One exception to that is Wizard DPS with their Max HP scaling shields, in that case Heavenly Body is used instead.
• Inner Sanctuary Temple of Protection provides a safe place for our party to stand, giving them 55% damage reduction and immunity to crowd control effects. Crowd Control Immunity will also negate the slowing effect from Stone Gauntlets.
• The last two skills slot often change depending on the team composition. Popular options are: Serenity Tranquility for extra shields, Breath of Heaven Zephyr to give movement speed to the party, Blinding Flash Crippling Light for extra damage reduction, Deadly Reach Piercing Trident to proc Strongarm Bracers and Exploding Palm the Flesh is Weak for increased damage. In speedruns, Dashing Strike Blinding Speed and Cyclone Strike Implosion are often used to move through the rift quickly and group up the mobs.

• Beacon of Ytar gives 20% Cooldown Reduction.
• Near Death Experience allows us to cheat death.
• Resolve reduces enemy damage by 20%.
• Seize the Initiative gives us 30% Attack Speed.
• Chant of Resonance can be taken if you do not have enough Resource Cost Reduction (RCR) to spam Mantra of Healing to grant shield to your allies.
• Unity gives 5% additive damage to all party members affected by our Mantras.

¹ Put all points into Vitality until you reach 3 million HP, then put the rest into Dexterity for Armor.
² Do not take Area Damage as we deal no damage and it will lag the game.

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

First of all, note that any knockback attempt from Deadly Reach will trigger the damage buff from Strongarm Bracers, even if the target is not displaced, including on Rift Guardians and Juggernaut Rares. But remember this is not the case for Cyclone Strike! If several players use Strongarm Bracers, their effect will stack additively. Check out our Crowd Control guide by Chewingnom for more details!

High Greater Rifts
Here your job is to provide buffs and debuffs. Follow your trash killer and spam Crippling Wave, Epiphany, Mantra of Healing, Breath of Heaven and Serenity all the time.

Place Inner Sanctuary where your group is setting up. This will usually be where the monster density is, or at an intersection where monsters can be pulled from multiple sides. If your damage dealers are moving to an Oculus Ring then move with them to drop a new Inner Sanctuary there (use Exploding Palm to reset its cooldown with Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac).

Generally you want to move around your damage dealer (the Trash Killer), while staying inside Inner Sanctuary range. This will help you spread your debuffs (Iceblink, Resolve, Exploding Palm) and will also prevent dangerous ground effects from stacking in one spot making both you and your damage dealer take less damage. Don't stand directly on top of your damage dealer as it makes the above problem twice as bad and also doubles the chances of stuff like Wormhole spawning under them!

On the Rift Guardian switch your attention to Rift Guardian Killer and follow them with your Inner Sanctuary. If you are using Crippling Wave Tsunami don't use it's 3rd strike! Attack twice then wait a couple of seconds. Otherwise you will freeze the boss making it resistant to other Crowd Control effects.

Greater Rift Speedfarming
Similar to high GRs, you need to spam Epiphany, Serenity and Mantra of Healing all the time, but this is where the similarities end. Unlike high GRs, where zMonk is a glorified stat stick, in speedruns you are the main support leading the group.

Get slightly ahead of the group with Dashing Strike and look for Elites or large packs of trash to kill. When you find them, use Cyclone Strike to group everything together, put Exploding Palm on a low HP enemy, and when the DPS arrives place Inner Sanctuary under them. Stay there, providing mantras and shields until everything is dead, then Dashing Strike ahead again and look for more enemies.

Consider the following changes to become tankier when playing in Hardcore:

1. Drop Gem of Efficacious Toxin for Esoteric Alteration for 60% non-Physical damage reduction.
2. Change Seize the Initiative to Sixth Sense for 25% reduced non-Physical damage.
3. Try Dashing Strike + Crystal Fist and drop Flying Dragon.
4. Replace Illusory Boots with Stone Gauntlets.

Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Allows you to teleport to monsters when you punch them from at least 7 yards away with any melee attack. If you want to avoid the teleport there's two ways to do it. Hover a monster that is within 7 yards of you or hover nothing and hold down the Force Stand Still button.
• Can teleport through walls, but you need a vision of a monster behind the wall (either from a teammate or if the wall in question has a window).
• Maximum teleport range is 100 yards, although it can be extended if either the monk or the mob is moved during the animation (Wormhole, Rage Flip).

• Casting any ability heals yourself and your allies within 30 yards.
• Healing effect has an ICD equal to 1/APS.
• This ICD uses sheet APS instead of skill APS so using skills with Attack Speed coefficient greater than one results in desync (the ICD of Soothing Mist will not be ready when you hit with your generator).
• When attacking with any generator, you proc heal every 2 out of 3 attacks, but adding either Alacrity or Raiment of a Thousand Storms (2) Bonus changes that to every other attack, resulting in less healing per second despite higher Attack Speed!
• The visual effect has a static 0.5 second cooldown, but it has no effect on your actual healing output.
• The value of the healing is a base of 16,093 HP in addition to 4% of your Health Globe Bonus. You can get up to 270,375 Health Globe Bonus (7 * 38,625), which means that you can buff the base healing of Soothing Mist by up to 10,815 HP, for a grand total of 26,908 HP per heal. In other words, the difference between having no globe bonus and having perfect globe bonus results in ~67% more healing. Missing Health Globe Bonus in one slot loses ~6% healing.

• These days, zMonks are mostly valued for their ability to shield their allies rather than their ability to heal, the main reason being to protect Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier. This explains why Health Globe Bonus is now more important than Attack Speed, as direct healing is not essential anymore and all Monk shielding abilities scales with your Health Globe Bonus.
• The main shielding mechanic of the zMonk is the Mantra of Healing active effect spam. Mantra's active effect has a cooldown of 0.5 seconds. Mantra of Healing shield has a 3 second duration but only one shield per monk can be active at a time.
• Mantra of Healing gives a shield to any party member within 30 yards that can absorb up to 62 064 damage, increased by 15% of your Health Globe Bonus. With perfect Health Globe Bonus (38 625 on 7 pieces for a maximum total of 270 375), we're looking at a shield absorbing up to 62 064 + (270 375 * 0.15) = 102 620 damage, that can be refreshed every 0.5 seconds.
• Mantra of Healing Time of Need is the most commonly used rune, providing damage mitigation when things go haywire. One exception to that is Wizard DPS with their Max HP scaling shields, in which case Heavenly Body is used instead to scale their shields even further.
• Serenity Tranquility is another powerful shielding tool of the zMonk. It grants to other party members within 45 yards a 3 second shield that can absorb up to 120 158 damage, increased by 40% of your Health Globe Bonus, for a maximum of 120 158 + (270 375 * 0.4) = 228 308 damage.
• Inner Sanctuary Intervene grants a shield of 3 seconds capable of absorbing up to 107 284 + (270 375 * 0.28) = 182 989 damage to all party members within 11 yards. This skill is generally avoided in high GRs because Intervene will dash onto your cursor location and place the Sanctuary there, which is hard to control overall, and Temple of Protection is considered a must-have to offer some peace of mind to the zBarb regarding Ignore Pain uptime.

• Has 4% chance to double your Attack Speed for 7 seconds.
• Has a 5 second internal cooldown (ICD).
• Can proc from any action, including talking to a NPC.
• This means you have a 2 second window to re-proc it while still having the double Attack Speed.