Diablo 3: Season 24 Monk Uliana Exploding Palm Build for Patch 2.7.1

Although the Uliana set is one of my less favorite sets around, it will be one of the starting Haedrig Gift sets for Season 24. Since the Monk is getting a huge upgrade through the revised Inna’s set and Mystic Ally, most likely people will be starting off with this set.

Legendary Items

• Uliana’s Strategem –
  • (2) Every third hit of your Spirit Generators applies Exploding Palm. While you can manually apply Exploding Palm, you will be mostly be using your Spirit Generators.
    
  • (4) Your Seven-Sided Strike deals 777% its total damage with each hit. All damage taken is reduced by 77% for 7 seconds after applying Exploding Palm to an enemy. Applying Exploding Palm with your generators is how you will get your defenses up initially
    (6) Increase the damage of your Exploding Palm by 9000% and your Seven-Sided Strike detonates your Exploding Palm. The big part is the trigger aspect from Seven-Sided Strike and why you will want to get The Flow of Eternity as soon as possible and in the cube.
    
• Gungdo Gear (bracers) – Exploding Palm’s on-death explosion applies Exploding Palm. Exploding Palm’s damage is increased by 85%. (Monk Only) [75 – 100]%. Must have item that expands your Exploding Palm
  
• The Fist of Az’Turrasq (1-handed weapon) – Exploding Palm’s on-death explosion damage is increased by 428%. (Monk Only) [400 – 500]% – Boost your Exploding Palm damage
• Lion’s Claw (1-handed weapon) – Seven-Sided Strike performs an additional 7 strikes. Changes your Seven-Sided Strike into a 14 sided strike
• Binding of the Lost (belt) – Each hit with Seven-Sided Strike grants 4.0% damage reduction for 7 seconds. (Monk Only) [4.0 – 5.0]%. Massive damage reduction. Synergizes with Lion’s Claw to bump your damage reduction.
  
• The Flow of Eternity (cube) – Increase the damage of Seven-Sided Strike by 100% and reduce the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike by 57%. (Monk Only) [45 – 60]% The important aspect here is the cooldown reduction. Pretty much a must-have and probably one of the first items you will want to either craft but definitely cube.
• Madstone (Helmet/cube) – Your Seven-Sided Strike applies Exploding Palm. Not a must-have item but it is a quality of life item. I will add a few other items for a variant of this build. This becomes useful in hitting out of reach foes.
• Endless Walk (Amulet/Ring) – You will be standing still while applying Exploding Palm through your generators while moving around in gathering up opponents. So you will need damage reduction during your down moments.
• Unity or Convention of Elements – Unity is good for the damage reduction while Convention of Elements is good for more damage and group situations.
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac – Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you hit with a resource-spending attack. You want as much cooldown reduction as possible because you will be wanting to trigger Seven-Sided Strike often.

There is some wiggle room with gearing here. The Ethereal won’t alter the build too much outside of allowing you to swap out the 2-handed daibo for one of the two fist weapons. But a few other gear considerations are as follows:

• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings – Two piece being used here with belt and pants. You will want both high cooldown and some resource reduction for this build so these two items’ bonuses will provide that as well as an increase in damage reduction and damage itself. If you go this route, then you can use Binding of the Lost in the cube instead of the Madstone.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur – You probably will sacrifice an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac for this ring.
• Spirit Guards – These reduce your damage through your generators. So alternatively to the Madstone, you could use this as well but you will lose out on some area.

All three Ethereal weapons are fist weapons so you won’t have to worry about choosing a daibo. And as long as you can get one of the three weapon powers from above, you will be able to select one of the other two powers. I think for your Ethereal of choice, it will end up being the Jade Talon because it can come with the ability “Consecutive hits to enemies increases attack speed by 3%, up to 30% for 3 seconds” which will be huge in using a generator for this build.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – Your enemies will be hit by the slowness from this gem as you will generally be in melee attack range.
• Bane of the Stricken – Single target damage is this build’s chief weakness, which is why this is a good choice.
• Gogok of Swiftness – While Attack Speed and Dodge help quite a bit with this build, the main thing of using this gem is the cooldown reduction property to keep up Seven-Sided Strike.

Active Skills

• Way of the Hundred Fists: Assimilation – This is how you will be applying Exploding Palm from your 2 set bonus. The third hit is going to be a common theme with this build and synergizes well with both the set and passive.
• Cyclone Strike: Implosion – You will want to use this to gather up as many enemies as possible to apply Exploding Palm and detonating through Seven-Sided Strike.
• Dashing Strike: Blinding Speed – Damage reduction. So with new floors, you will dash into your first large pack to benefit from the damage reduction, apply Exploding Palm from Way of the Hundred Fists and then detonating them through Seven-Sided Strike to also get as much damage reduction up as possible.
• Exploding Palm: Impending Doom – You don’t need to directly use this because of the 2 set bonus but you do want to keep this on the Active Skill bar to use the Impending Doom rune.
• Epiphany: Desert Shroud – Damage reduction and allows your attacks to dash into your opponents. Try to keep this up as much as you can. Your Cyclone Strike will be taking up a fair amount of resources so this will help get your Spirit back.
• Seven-Sided Strike: Sustained attack – Cooldown reduction

Passive Skills

• Mythic Rhythm – Synergizes with your generator and your third hit combo to increase damage
• The Guardian’s Path – Damage reduction since you will be dual wielding
• Beacon of Ytar – Cooldown reduction
• Near Death Experience – Cheat death
• Determination – Damage increase because you are melee
• Fleet Footed – You will be slow. So this does help improve your speed greatly while your Dashing Strike is on cooldown

Followers

The only one I think is useful is the Enchantress. Again, you will want as much cooldown reduction as possible, which aligns perfectly with the Enchantress. Also, some extra armor and another cheat death.

Final Thoughts

The Uliana’s Exploding Palm build is both satisfying but only for lower difficulties. It suffers in my experience from lack of single target damage, timing and slowness. As a starter build though, gathering up the various items to make this work will be a bit rough.

The real key especially when you reach the 6 set bonus is to get Seven-Sided Strike’s cooldown as low as possible. Without that the damage will feel gimped at higher GRs. So finding that Ethereal or legendary of The Flow of Eternity is imperative early on.

Nonetheless, this build does have decent-ish starting capabilities. But you should try to transition away from it either to the revised Innas or Patterns of Justice as soon as possible.

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