Best Diablo Immortal Monk build: Best attributes, skills, gear, and gems for the Monk
Pummel the hoards with the best Diablo Immortal Monk build
Want to know the best Diablo Immortal Monk builds? Monk may not quite top our Diablo Immortal classes tier list, but it is still the best utility class in Diablo Immortal. The class has fantastic mobility and crowd control along with a number of shields and party buffs that help you and your allies tear through dungeons.
Monk needs a little bit of gear to really shine, but once you get going it is a delight to play. Learn everything you need to do just that with this guide to the gear, skills, attributes, and gems needed for the best Diablo Immortal Monk builds for PvE and PvP. We'll also explain how to spend your Paragon points for those playing through endgame activities.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk builds
In this guide, we'll cover two Diablo Immortal Monk builds. Our first is the best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build, the Mystifying Martial Monk build, which you can learn more about in our section below. The second is the best Diablo Immortal PvP build, the Surging Strikes Monk build, which you can also learn more about later in this guide.
However, since they follow the same general structure, we'll quickly outline the parts that they both have in common below. If you already know what a Diablo Immortal build entails, simply use the links above to skip down to either the PvE or PvP Monk build for Diablo Immortal.
Attributes
There are 5 attributes in Diablo Immortal: Intelligence, Strength, Willpower, Vitality, and Fortitude. Each attribute point raises your Combat Rating by 1. Combat Rating is a background stat you can view in the “more attributes” section of your inventory, and increases or decreases your damage based on how it compares to the Combat Rating of monsters you hit. This becomes critical as you raise the difficulty after level 60.
Skills
Each class in Diablo Immortal has a variety of skills and can equip four skills plus one primary skill at a time. Your primary skill functions as both an auto-attack and an ultimate ability, and will help you maintain DPS while your other skills are on cooldown.
Since many of the skills mentioned take a while to unlock, make sure you know how to level up quickly in Diablo Immortal.
Gear
Legendary gear in Diablo Immortal can alter skills in powerful ways. You will eventually equip a full set of Legendary items in your main slots, and should always look for gear that impacts the skills you use.
Gems
All of your primary gear will have one socket for Legendary Gems, which are a further layer of customization. These Gems provide powerful bonuses but can take some serious time to acquire. Gems are divided into 1, 2, and 5-star rarities, with 5-star gems being extremely difficult to acquire, especially for free players. With that in mind, in each of the builds below we’ll list off the best Legendary Gems for the Monk, with several 1 and 2-star options you can substitute for any missing 5-stars. Players should not expect to have more than one 5-star gem available to them (if any) for at least the first several months.
If you want to know how to farm Legendary Gems, check out our guide on Diablo Immortal's Elder Rifts and Legendary Crests. However, be warned that the fastest route will usually involve spending money on microtransactions. If you want to know how much some Legendary Gems could set you back, Rebecca has created an in-depth rundown on how much it costs to play Diablo Immortal.
Paragon Points
Paragon points are an endgame progression system that are vital to unlocking any Diablo Immortal build's full potential. You can start earning them after reaching level 60, and you can spend them on various upgrades across six Paragon skill trees.
Permanent upgrades provide boosts to various stats, but each tree also offers specialisation upgrades that will significantly boost your character's capabilities in a specific area. The caveat here is that specialisation skills will only take effect if you activate their respective Paragon tree, and you can only have Paragon tree active at a time. That means you'll need to know the best Paragon tree to activate as a Monk in Diablo Immortal for both PvE and PvP.
Below, you can find the six Paragon trees in Diablo Immortal and when they unlock:
- Survivor: Unlocked at Paragon level 1
- Vanquisher: Unlocked at Paragon level 1
- Treasure Hunter: Unlocked at Paragon level 50
- Gladiator: Unlocked at Paragon level 100
- Soldier: Unlocked at Paragon level 150
- Mastermind: Unlocked at Paragon level 150
Now that we've covered the key components of a Diablo Immortal build, we'll break down the best Monk PvE and PvP builds.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build
The best build for the Monk in Diablo Immortal is the Mystifying Martial Monk build.
The Monk’s two greatest strengths are mobility and crowd control. With the right setup, the class can zip around the battlefield and lock down groups of monsters, making them easy targets for allied Demon Hunters and Barbarians. Monk also has excellent group utility skills, but you may want to swap some of those out to boost your otherwise poor single target damage when flying solo. The class requires some situational adaptability, and this guide will help you learn what to swap and when.
Below, you will find the best attributes, skills, gear, gems, and how to spend your Paragon points for the best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE attributes
Below, we'll rank these attributes from most important to least important for a Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build:
- Strength
- Fortitude
- Vitality
- Willpower
- Intelligence
Fortitude will add armor and armor penetration, both of which Monk makes excellent use of. Vitality increases your maximum life, which is key to survival on melee characters especially. Willpower increases your Potency and Resistance stats, which will increase the duration of debuffs you inflict and reduce the duration of debuffs you suffer. Intelligence has no additional effect for Monk beyond the inherent +1 Combat Rating, so you can ignore it.
Try to equip the gear with the highest attribute totals to gain as much Combat Rating as possible, while prioritizing attributes in this order. If you find a Legendary item of a type you don’t need but with better stat rolls, use Essence Transfer to combine the two for a better item.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE skills
The best skills for our Monk build are:
- Primary skill: Fists of Thunder (unlocked at level 1)
- Mystic Strike (Unlocked at level 15)
- Cyclone Strike (unlocked at level 3)
- Inner Sanctuary (unlocked at level 38)
- Mystic Allies (unlocked at level 50)
Fists of Thunder
Fists of Thunder is conveniently one of the coolest primary skills in the game and teleports you to targets to unleash a flurry of blows. You can teleport again every third attack, keeping you incredibly mobile in crowded fights. The ultimate version of Fists of Thunder is Lightning Flux, which allows you to teleport on every hit and generate a thunderstorm that deals AoE damage on kill. Lightning Flux also grants you a shield equal to 20% of your max life for three seconds.
Mystic Strike
Mystic Strike is one of the best movement skills in Diablo Immortal, in addition to being an excellent crowd control skill. Cast to dash forward and leave behind a spirit that will dash to you after a short delay, damaging all enemies in its path and pulling them to you.
Cyclone Strike
Follow Mystic Strike with Cyclone Strike for an unmatched crowd control combo. Cyclone Strike deals damage in a circle around you and pulls enemies in. You can also charge it to gain range and damage. These two skills help you group mobs up for your teammates to finish off.
Inner Sanctuary
Inner Sanctuary lays down a circular area that reduces all damage you and your allies take. Use this to help you and your fellow melee players survive boss fights in close quarters. This skill is less useful in solo play, so if you’re solo farming swap it for either Exploding Palm or Seven-Sided Strike to pick up more AoE or single-target damage, respectively.
Mystic Allies
Finally, Mystic Allies is your biggest source of single target damage. The skill summons Spirit Allies that have maximum life equal to yours and will target enemies with melee attacks. These spirits won’t do much against large groups of monsters, but they excel when they have a single target they can focus on.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE gear
Below, you can find the best gear for our Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build:
- Helmet: The Open Mind
- Chest: Disciplined Respite
- Shoulders: Discipline’s Weight
- Legs: Companion’s Melody
- Main Hand: Rod of Echoes
- Off Hand: Eye of the Storm
Three of these pieces buff up Mystic Allies to make up for Monk’s middling single-target damage. The Open Mind increases Mystic Allies’ damage, Companion’s Melody increases its duration, and Rod of Echoes lowers the cooldown. This will massively increase Mystic Allies’ uptime, resulting in a big boost to your total damage over the course of a boss fight.
For your chest armor, go with Disciplined Respite to lower Inner Sanctuary’s cooldown, helping your team survive boss fights. You can also use Storm Spirit, which removes the crowd control element of Cyclone Strike and transforms it into a tornado that deals tons of damage over time. That pairs well with the Eye of the Storm off-hand weapon, which increases Cyclone Strike’s radius. That extra range works beautifully with both Storm Spirit’s tornado and the base version of Cyclone Strike.
The shoulders are the odd slot out, as none of the Monk’s current Legendary shoulder pieces impact our core skills. So, we recommend using Discipline’s Weight, which increases the damage of Seven-Sided Strike. This will help you take down bosses faster in solo play, where you won’t typically use Inner Sanctuary.
Best Monk gear set
For Monk, we recommend using four pieces from the Issatar Imbued Set combined with two pieces from the Windloft Perfection Set. That will grant you the following bonuses:
- Issatar Imbued 2/6: Each time you defeat an enemy, gain 30% increased movement speed for 2 seconds.
- Issatar Imbued 4/6: Gain 2.5% increased damage for every 5% increased movement speed, up to a maximum of 25% increased damage.
- Windloft Perfection 2/6: Gain Thousand Winds when you take damage, increasing your movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds.
Combining these two Sets pushes Monk’s mobility to the max, and will make you the fastest entity on the battlefield. The damage bonuses from 4-piece Issatar Imbued also synergize perfectly with Thousand Winds. If you’re using the Storm Spirit chest, you can also try out the Grace of the Flaggelant set, which synergizes with persistent damage effects like the Storm Spirit tornado.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvE gems
Below, we’ll list the best Legendary Gems for this Diablo Immortal Monk PvE build and what they do:
- Blood-Soaked Jade (5-star): Increases all damage you deal by up to 8% and your movement speed by 10%. The damage bonus scales with your Life stat.
- Seeping Bile (5-star): Your attacks have a 4% chance to poison enemies, inflicting 25% base damage + 263 every second for 6 seconds. This poison spreads to nearby enemies if the victim dies.
- Everlasting Torment (1-star): Your critical hits inflict Agony, dealing damage over time.
- Power and Command (2-star): Grants alternating Power and Command buffs. Power increases the damage of primary skills, while Command increases the damage of all other skills.
- Fervent Fang (2-star): Increases the damage enemies take from you each time you hit them, stacking up to ten times.
- Unity Crystal (2-star): All party members within 6 yards deal more damage and take less damage.
- Berserker’s Eyes (1-star): You have increased crit chance and damage, but also take more damage.
- Ca’arsen’s Invigoration (1-star): Increases primary attack damage and speed.
- Lo’s Focused Gaze (1-star): Charge skills charge faster and deal increased damage.
Your secondary equipment will have sockets for normal gems, which grant flat stat bonuses and drop from most activities. Each socket has a color that dictates what type of gems it can take. We recommend using a mix of both Ruby and Tourmaline in red slots for increased maximum life and damage, respectively. Go with Sapphire in blue slots for increased armor penetration, and Topaz in yellow slots for improved resistances.
How to spend Paragon points for the Diablo Immortal PvE Monk
The best Paragon tree to activate as a Monk is either the Vanquisher or Mastermind tree, depending on if you are playing solo or with a group. Solo players will benefit greatly from the damage boosts offered by the Vanquisher tree against monsters, while those playing in a group can buff their allies to gain damage increases for all players in the party. That means you'll want to unlock every node in these trees and likely switch between them based on your current activity.
However, the other Paragon trees aren't completely useless. You should avoid investing in their specialisation skills, but the permanent upgrade nodes will still affect your character and offer huge boosts to crucial stats such as life, damage, armor, armor penetration, and Strength. Players who have invested in these permanent upgrade Paragon nodes will find that their characters become much stronger, so they are crucial if you want to make the best Monk build.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build
The best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build is the Surging Strikes Monk build.
Our Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build focuses on dealing damage to enemies, while also using skills to defend allies from fatal hits and to control the battlefield and gain an advantage. That makes this Monk PvP build a particularly strong ally in a co-ordinated group that's jumping into modes such as Battlegrounds together.
Below, you will find the best attributes, skills, gear, gems, and how to spend your Paragon points for the best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP attributes
Below, we'll rank every attribute from most important to least important for a Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build:
- Strength
- Vitality
- Fortitude
- Willpower
- Intelligence
As with any melee class in Diablo Immortal, Strength is the most important attribute for the Monk. This will boost damage for all of your skills, so it's an important focus if you want to climb the PvP leaderboards. Vitality and Fortitude come in next and are also crucial attributes to focus on, as they will increase your survivability by boosting the life and armor stats.
Willpower and Intelligence are the least important attributes for a Monk PvP build in Diablo Immortal, as they have a negligible effect on your power in combat. Willpower increases your potency and resistance, but they rarely come into play in PvP, and Intelligence is only necessary for spellcasters such as the Wizard and Necromancer.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP skills
Below, you can find the best skills for a Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build:
- Primary skill: Fists of Thunder (unlocked at level 1)
- Seven-Sided Strike (unlocked at level 8)
- Shield of Zen (unlocked at level 18)
- Exploding Palm (unlocked at level 24)
- Imprisoned Fist (unlocked at level 41)
Fists of Thunder
PvP is all about speed, and Monks can deliver a blisteringly fast surge of strikes with the Fists of Thunder primary skill. It allows you to teleport between enemies while delivering a flurry of punches that deal easy damage to enemies. There's no gear to alter this skill, so Fists of Thunder is simple,, effective, and the best primary skill for any Monk build.
Seven-Sided Strike
Seven-Sided Strike is another skill that unleashes a barrage of punches, but this makes you jump between targets with each hit. It's an excellent skill for confusing a group of opponent's during PvP battles and weakening them all in a flash. The Dragon's Indignation Main-Hand weapon makes this even stronger by making Seven-Sided Strike inflict the burning effect on enemies, dealing extra fire damage over time.
Shield of Zen
While the two skills above are focused on dealing damage, Shield of Zen changes tact slightly by granting the user or an ally of their choice a shield. This shield will absorb damage from enemy strikes, protecting them from a few hits and giving them chance to recover. This shield usually lasts 5 seconds, but the Legendary Pensive Crown extends its duration by 30%.
Exploding Palm
Exploding Palm is one of the best Monk PvP skills, as it can cause a chaotic barrage of damage It starts by damage enemies in a particular direction and inflicting the bleed effect for 5 seconds. However, it also causes any enemy that dies from bleeding to explode and deal damage to other opponents that are nearby. With the Breath of Incense, Seven-Sided Strike can also cause the explosion effect when used to kill bleeding enemies, meaning you can use that to follow Exploding Palm and easily turn the battlefield into a mess of exploding enemies.
With the Reaching Rebuke Off-Hand weapon equipped, you can leap into a group of enemies when you use Exploding Palm, making it a much more mobile skill that delivers on that promise of a speedy PvP build.
Imprisoned Fist
If you're eager to jump into the fight and need to cover some ground, Imprisoned Fist should deliver. This skill damages enemies in a particular direction and makes them immobile for 5 seconds. However, the Authority of Patience shoulders allow you to also dash in that same direction, making it the perfect skill to use when entering combat. If you also need to use it to get out of a fight, the Legendary Isolation's Path legs will grant you one extra charge of Imprisoned Fist.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP gear
Below, you can find the best gear for our Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build:
- Helmet: Pensive Crown
- Chest: Breath of Incense
- Shoulders: Authority of Patience
- Legs: Isolation's Path
- Main Hand: Dragon's Indignation
- Off Hand: Reaching Rebuke
- Set: War Rags of Shal'Baas
The Legendary Gear in our Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build has crucial effects on the skills and abilities that you will use. If you want to see the effects of this gear, take a look at the skills section above, as we've explained their effects there.
Best Monk PvP gear set
For our Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build, we recommend using the War Rags of Shal'Baas gear set. You can find the effects of the War Rags of Shal'Baas below:
- 2 set items equipped: Primary Attack Damage increased by 15%.
- 4 set items equipped: Your Primary Attacks gradually increase your Attack Speed, up to a maximum of 25%.
- 6 set items equipped: Your Primary Attacks have a 5% chance to increase your Attack Speed for 12 seconds. This cannot occur more than once every 40 seconds.
Best Diablo Immortal Monk PvP gems
Below, we’ll list the best Legendary Gems for this Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build and what they do:
- Everlasting Torment: Your critical hits inflict Agony, dealing damage over time.
- Ca'arsen's Invigoration: Increases primary attack damage and speed.
- Fervent Fang: Increases the damage enemies take from you each time you hit them, stacking up to ten times.
- Pain of Subjugation: You deal 5.50% increased damage to enemies suffering loss of control.
- Blood-Soaked Jade: Increases all damage you deal by up to 8% and your movement speed by 10%. The damage bonus scales with your Life stat.
- Seeping Bile: Your attacks have a 4% chance to poison enemies, inflicting 25% base damage + 263 every second for 6 seconds. This poison spreads to nearby enemies if the victim dies.
The items in the War Rags of Shal'Baas gear set also have gem slots, but they can't take Legendary Gems. Instead, you can insert standard gems that will boost some of your core stats. These gem slots each have a colour, which shows the kind of gems that you can insert. We recommend using Tourmaline in red slots for increased damage, Aquamarine in blue slots for increased armor, and Topaz in yellow slots to boost your resistance.
How to spend Paragon points for the Diablo Immortal PvP Monk
As you can see in the first section of this guide, there are six Paragon trees in Diablo Immortal. Each tree has a series of upgrade nodes that you can buy with Paragon points, but you shouldn't buy them all. Permanent nodes are worth buying, but specialisation skills will only take effect when you activate their Paragon tree, and you can only have one tree activated. As you gain Paragon levels, purchase all of the permanent upgrades, but avoid wasting points on every specialisation skill.
For our Diablo Immortal Monk PvP build, we recommend activating the Gladiator Paragon tree. That means you should buy every node in this tree, which will grant powerful effects such as Cheat Death and Uncontrollable. Cheat Death will allow you to survive one fatal hit every two minutes, which might prove vital in a tough battle. Uncontrollable makes you immune to hits that inflict control status effects, such as immobilisation, once every 30 seconds.
That wraps up our guide on the best Diablo Immortal Monk builds for PvE and PvP If you want to team up with others for some online battles, take a look at our guides on how to play with friends and how to join a clan in Diablo Immortal. For another powerful melee class, take a look at our guide on the best Crusader build in Diablo Immortal.