LoD Wave of Light “WoL” Monk 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 Legacy of Dreams build whose success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and get this gem as high as possible. Above Rank 25 ancient pieces of gear will give you even greater power.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. Pinto's Pride
2. Tzo-Krin's Gaze
3. Goldwrap
4. Nemesis Bracers
5. Cindercoat
6. The Crudest Boots
7. Magefist
8. Blackthorne's Jousting Mail
9. Lefebvre's Soliloquy
10. Stone Gauntlets
11. The Witching Hour

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

1. Daibos to get Incense Torch of the Grand Temple
2. Fist Weapons to get Kyoshiro's Blade
3. Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Swords to get In-Geom
4. Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Convention of Elements, Unity and Stone of Jordan
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: Pauldrons of the Skeleton King and Ring of Royal Grandeur
• Act 2: Gloves of Worship (for your follower)
• Act 3: Avarice Band and Pride's Fall
• Act 4: can drop Bounty items from any Act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)

6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. Spend your materials getting items with better rolls and/or ancient quality.

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 Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:

• Rabid Strike
• Kyoshiro's Blade
• Squirt's Necklace

• Legacy of Dreams is what this entire build is based around and it what gives us most of our damage and toughness. You cannot have any set bonuses equipped for this gem to work.
• Bane of the Trapped provides 60% increased damage to slowed enemies. Pinto's Pride applies the slow before the damage is calculated so we can take advantage of this gem.
• Enforcer provides 60% damage for the Rabid Strike clone, which is responsible for 98% of your total damage.
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance provides up to 80% increased damage based on how far away we are from enemies (50 yards is the maximum which is about half a screen away).
• Boon of the Hoarder makes monsters spray gold everywhere for our Goldwrap and 30% increased movement speed for T16 content.
• Bane of the Stricken gives up to 2.3% increased damage on successive attack against the same target. We'll need this gem if we want to solo push to kill the Rift Guardian.

• Wave of Light Explosive Light is our damage dealer that blows up the entire screen with a fiery bell. This skill is cast at our enemies when we wear Tzo Krin's Gaze so we can kill enemies across the screen.
• Mystic Ally Air Ally is utilized to grant us more spirit when we need it.
• Epiphany Desert Shroud gives 50% damage reduction and allows us to teleport to monsters with our melee attacks.
• Cyclone Strike Implosion gathers up monsters in solo pushing and activates our Lefebvre's Soliloquy and Bindings of the Lesser Gods.
• Mantra of Salvation Agility gives 20% all resistance and 35% dodge.
• Blinding Flash Faith in the Light gives 29% additive damage and procs The Laws of Seph.

• Beacon of Ytar provides us with 20% Cooldown Reduction to keep Epiphany up at all times.
• Seize the Initiative gives 30% Attack Speed when hitting enemies above 75% HP.
• The Guardian's Path grants us 35% Dodge Chance.
• Near Death Experience allows us to cheat death.
• Harmony boosts our resistances to give us extra toughness.
• Other useful passives are:
  • Momentum
  • Resolve
  • Sixth Sense

¹ Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).

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

Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:

1. The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
2. Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25.000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10.000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
3. Guardian's Jeopardy (3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

Solo Push

Solo is where the LoD version of WOL Monk really shines and brings a lot more damage to the table for pushing higher content. The style of play and focus of the player should remain the same though.

1. Cast Epiphany and reactivate it when it's about to run out.
2. Use Mystic Ally when you are missing 200+ Spirit so you don't waste Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs.
3. Use Cyclone Strike once every 5 seconds to gather up the monsters and to activate your Lefebvre's Soliloquy to stay alive.
4. When the monsters are grouped, attack with Wave of Light 3 times to spawn all 5 Bells (your Rabid Strike clone will spawn 3 more). Then spam Cyclone Stirke to destroy these Bells. Repeat this sequence as many times as possible during your Holy Convention of Elements cycle. Despite stacking Fire damage, you deal most damage during Holy CoE due to weird interactions with Sanctified Wave of Light and Rabid Strike.
5. Your Serenity has two main uses: to protect you and to protect your Squirt's Necklace stacks. The first use is very intuitive and obvious: if you start dying you hit the button. If you aren't in any danger, you can save Serenity to optimize your DPS: use it somewhere in the middle of Fire Convention of Elements rotation, this way you will get 1-2 Squirt's Necklace stacks in the first 2 seconds of Holy when your main nuke happens.

T16

The idea here is to fly as fast as possible from elite to elite, dropping a Wave of Light in between each Dashing Strike. If we consistently kill elites and keep our In-geom up, we'll be able to spam our abilities permanently. The best way I know to play this is to hold force stand still and Wave of Light all the time, and tap Dashing Strike. This play style will cause your dash to "interrupt" your constant attacking, which will guarantee you fire a bell the second you land from your dash. The rotation is:

1. Spam Epiphany and Blinding Flash constantly.
2. Activate Mantra of Healing once every 3 seconds to maintain the shield which protects your Squirt's Necklace buff.
3. Hold down Wave of Light and force stand still while tapping Dashing Strike to continuously attack and teleport throughout the rift.

In speed content this build is already immortal as long as you pick up gold from Goldwrap + Boon of the Hoarder + Avarice Band. For solo if the current setup isn't tanky enough you can switch Way of the Hundred Fists to Mantra of Salvation Agility. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Sometimes this skill doesn't seem to do any damage. This can happen if a monster is directly in the center of the hit, or if there are wallers blocking the bell's path to the monster. If this happens, re-position yourself and/or break the walls with Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid.

• Applies the slow before the damage is calculated, so we can get value out of Bane of the Trapped.

• Changes your Wave of Light to be cast at your mouse cursor instead of on top of you.
• Disables teleports from Epiphany.

• Epiphany needs to be active to get the clone.
• The clone is considered a Mystic Ally. It gets buffed by Enforcer, The Crudest Boots and Bindings of the Lesser Gods, but not Mystic Ally damage.
• Instead of picking a random value between minimum and maximum damage on your weapon the clone always uses average of the two.
• When dual wielding, the clone alternates between your main hand and off-hand weapons to calculate its damage.

• Wave of Light now casts Bells that deal damage when any player attack them. Up to 5 Bells can be active at a time.
• Bells have collision boxes with players and enemies.
• Bells can deal damage 4 times before they "die". When you place a 6th Bell, the oldest one "dies".
• Bells disappear after 10 seconds or if you move 50 yards away (approximately 1 screen).
• Cyclone Strike detonates Bells when attempting to pull them even if it deals no damage.
• Skills without Proc Coefficient (Sweeping Wind) can damage Bells but do not trigger them. Exploding Palm do not trigger them even on application.
• Rabid Strike works with this power. Bells from Mimics do not benefit from any damage multiplier if there is no Mimic active.
• Pillar of the Ancients only deals base damage when detonated but the DoT effect ticks from the Bell continuously.
• Shattering Light produces the Cold Wave in the direction of the attack triggering the Bell. Both the Bell Explosion and the Wave can damage the same enemy.
• Explosive Light procs Fire Sparks in all directions when triggered. Both the Bell Explosion and the Fire Sparks can damage the same enemy.