The support Monk (usually called the zMonk because they do "zero" damage) is one of the strongest supports in the game since Season 4 and the addition of Crowd Control Resistance. Keeping people alive is their specialty, but they also can provide some offensive buffs and a lot of utility your team might need!
For the longest time zMonk was included in every high GR META team, thanks to their unparalleled ability to keep the DPS alive. Between Inner Sanctuary, all the Mantras granted by Inna's Mantra Set, shield spam from Mantra of Healing as well as heals from Epiphany Soothing Mist, zMonk offers by far the most powerful toughness and recovery buffs out of every support in the game. On top of that zMonk's shields allow damage dealers to utilize "never take damage"-style items, such as Squirt's Necklace and Pride's Fall.
Unfortunately, zMonk is sorely lacking when it comes to damage buffs. The only thing they have to offer is some small additive damage bonuses: Mantra of Conviction, Exploding Palm The Flesh is Weak, Crippling Wave Breaking Wave and Unity. Comparing that to the recently buffed Odyssey's End from Season 21, it should come at no surprise that zMonk's spot in group is more often than not occupied by a zDH. In Season 27, Sanctified Powers with Sanctified Wave of Light revived him as a viable metagame support build (see Mechanics).
Still zMonk can find a place in triple support teams, both in high Greater Rift pushing and in speedfarming. Also some damage dealers (such as Mundunugu Witch Doctor) are just too squishy to survive without a zMonk, and while zDH's damage buffs are great, you need to be alive to make use of them.
Tanky ✔ Versatile ✔ Very Strong Toughness Buffs ✔ Provides Lots of Shields and Healing ✔
❌ Requires Spamming ❌ Weak Damage Buffs ❌ Positioning is Very Important ❌ Tough to Play at Low Paragon
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Inna's Mantra (2) Bonus doubles the base passive effect of our mantras, which gives us 40% All Resistance, 16% additive damage, and increased life regeneration.
Inna's Mantra (4) Bonus gives us all 4 mantras at all times: Mantra of Healing, Mantra of Salvation, Mantra of Conviction, and Mantra of Retribution.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings (2) Bonus gives 20% cooldown reduction and 20% resource Cost Reduction, which are both critical stats we need for this build.
Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus gives damage reduction equal to our Resource Cost Reduction, which will help us survive as we heal our party.
Ring of Royal Grandeur completes both our Inna's Mantra and Captain Crimson's Trimmingssets so we can have their (4) and (3) Bonuses respectively.
Oculus Ring provides 85% increased damage to our teammates who stand in the ring.
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac helps us reduce the Inner Sanctuary cooldown to ease its repositioning.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, we can add some marginally useful items such as Messerschmidt's Reaver or Nemesis Bracers.
Global Stat Priorities
Since we are a support class, we don't need any offensive stats like Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Area Damage, or Elemental Damage. Instead we will gather as much Cooldown Reduction, Health Globe Bonus, Resource Cost Reduction and Attack Speed as possible. Cooldown Reduction is needed to keep Epiphany and Inner Sanctuary up all the time. Attack Speed lets you Crippling Wave faster, giving you more spirit and healing from Soothing Mist. Acquire as much Attack Speed as possible.
Resource Cost Reduction will allow you to spam Mantra of Healing for constant shields to protect Squirt's Necklace on our damage dealers. Health Globe Bonus secondary rolls will make our shields and heals even stronger and will be a key stat we're looking for. Try to aim for at least +150,000 Health Globes Bonus before attempting to zMonk. For defense, prioritize All Resistance > Life % > Vitality > Armor. Since Intelligence gives us more All Resistance, craft any pieces on a Necromancer, Wizard or Witch Doctor.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary 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.
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.
Nemesis Bracers, Spirit Guards and Strongarm Bracers
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade 1-Handed Swords to get In-Geom
Daibos to get Flying Dragon
2-Handed Axes to get The Executioner
Rings to get Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Oculus Ring
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:
1. All Resistance 2. Life % 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
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.
Skills
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.
Passives
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.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
1. All Resistance
1. Resource Cost Reduction
2. Vitality1
2. Attack Speed
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Dexterity
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. Armor
3. Pickup Radius
4. Maximum Spirit
4. Critical Hit Damage
4. Life Regeneration
4. Area Damage2
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.
Altar of Rites
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!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Gameplay
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.
Hardcore
Consider the following changes to become tankier when playing in Hardcore:
Drop Gem of Efficacious Toxin for Esoteric Alteration for 60% non-Physical damage reduction.
Change Seize the Initiative to Sixth Sense for 25% reduced non-Physical damage.
Try Dashing Strike + Crystal Fist and drop Flying Dragon.
Replace Illusory Boots with Stone Gauntlets.
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
High GR Push
GR Speeds
Dash Monk
Select Build Version
Bazooka Wizard
High GR push Wizard TK
Concept For LoD Meteor Wizard the zMonk is the optimal support as it gives you a lot of toughness, shields and CC-immunity. While zDH's offensive buffs are great, it's much more important to be able to perform your rotation correctly and keep Squirt's Necklace buff.
Gameplay Fairly standard zMonk gameplay: you sit next to the Wizard and keep up Inner Sanctuary while spamming Crippling Wave and Mantra of Healing.
You need to pay extra attention to the moment when the Wizard comes out of Archon and have your Inner Sanctuary ready for them. If you make a mistake and place it in a different spot, spam Exploding Palm to reset the cooldown.
Setups If you're struggling to stay alive, use Desert Shroud instead of Soothing Mist. Your Wizard should have 100% health of the time so the loss of healing is not super important. Another toughness option is dropping Illusory Boots for Spirit Guards but then you will have to move around the pull with Epiphany teleports which can be very difficult with some large hitbox monsters present.
If you're just starting out and don't have enough Resource Cost Reduction to sustain Mantra of Healing spam, replace Seize the Initiative with Chant of Resonance.
If your toughness is good and you're feeling brave, use Unity instead of Near Death Experience for 5% additive damage.
High GR push WD TK
Concept Currently zMonk is not included in any 4-man push META teams, but it can be used instead of zDH if you want more toughness rather than damage. Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor can often struggle to stay alive without extremely high Paragon so they choose to play with a zMonk.
Gameplay Fairly standard zMonk gameplay: you sit next to the DPS and keep up Inner Sanctuary while spamming Crippling Wave and Mantra of Healing. Tap Tempest Rush every 3s to apply Iceblink.
When playing with a squishy damage dealer, the most important thing for us is too keep Inner Sanctuary under them at all times. Tempest Rush is very good for that because each time our DPS moves (for example to take an Oculus Ring) we can follow them with Tempest Rush and reset the cooldown of Inner Sanctuary at the same time.
When you need to click a pylon, first make sure to drop a fresh Inner Sanctuary and then use Epiphany teleports to get to the pylon and return back before it expires!
Setups At very high Paragon (5000+), you can drop Born's Command and Spirit Guards for 2 pieces of Uliana's Stratagem. Use Pig Sticker as your weapon and cube Illusory Boots. Finally, replace Tempest Rush with Exploding Palm The Flesh is Weak and change Crippling Wave rune to Tsunami to proc Iceblink and apply palms to more mobs. This setup costs you a lot of toughness but gives 15% more additive damage to your TK and RGK.
Another high Paragon damage option is dropping Serenity for Deadly Reach Piercing Trident and replacing Spirit Guards with Strongarm Bracers for 30% additive damage. This combo is more powerful but it needs to be used very carefully, because you don't want to actually send the mobs flying, you only want the debuff. Make sure to only use Piercing Tridentafter zBarb's Ground Stomp to not mess up Crowd Control Resistance!
If you're just starting out and don't have enough Resource Cost Reduction to sustain Mantra of Healing spam, replace Seize the Initiative with Chant of Resonance.
If your toughness is good and you're feeling brave, use Unity instead of Near Death Experience for 5% additive damage.
GoD Speeds zMonk
Concept Once again zMonk is not currently included in any XP meta, but it can replace some other support or secondary DPS. The main advantage of zMonk in speeds is their... well... speed. They can outrun any other class and they can group up enemies very fast (if not very well).
It's important that your amulet is NOTThe Flavor of Time. Your teammates deal way more damage than Conduit Pylon in these runs so extra 30s of that doesn't help that much, while extra minute of Speed Pylon is incredibly annoying. Hellfire Amulet is the best choice here, although you can use Rondal's Locket or The Star of Azkaranth if you don't want to farm uber mats.
Gameplay The gameplay is pretty standard speed zMonk as described above. It can be tricky for your DPS to stay inside one Inner Sanctuary, so if you have In-Geom proc active, spam them all over the place!
Try not being too trigger-happy with your Cyclone Strike; it's best to use it once and then let the zBarb use Ground Stomp to pixel the mobs tighter.
Setups If you are struggling to survive your best option is switching Stormshield to Crystal Fist. If that's still not enough, you can replace Gungdo Gear and Exploding Palm with Stone Gauntlets and Serenity Tranquility.
At higher Paragon, you can replace Near Death Experience with Unity for 5% additive damage.
Infinite Dash Monk
Concept This build is very different from all the others and can be hardly called a support monk. Still it can be used to help your party and it deals "zero" damage so it has a place in this guide.
The idea here is to use Raiment of a Thousand Storms(4) Bonus together with loads of Resource Cost Reduction and Spirit generation to use Dashing Strike indefinitely and without any delays. You need to stack all the RCR and CDR you can get, all other stats don't really matter. Attack Speed makes Dashing Strike animation shorter, but you will be limited by your own ability to avoid walls rather than by how fast you can dash.
Both your Weapons, Amulet, Bracers and right ring are not important and you can use any items with good rolls in these slots.
Gameplay The gameplay is very simple: keep up Epiphany and Sweeping Wind, spam Blinding Flash and hold down Dashing Strike. That's it, congratulations on becoming the fastest being in the entire Sanctuary. Cops would give you a ticket, but they can never even see, let alone catch you.
This mobility can be used for a number of things:
Finding Pools of Reflection. A skilled monk can usually find 10 pools in under 5 minutes by checking all the zones with a lot of shrine/pool spots. It can come in handy when your group takes a small break for one reason or another.
Hunting for Rainbow Goblins. Since Cosmic Wings have the same drop chance regardless of difficulty, you can play this build on Normal where you still deal enough damage to kill stuff. Superior mobility of infinite dash monk will let you find more goblins per hour than any other build.
Doing Sprinter conquest. With this build you can beat the entire campaign in under one hour even if you play solo, and you will usually even have 5+ minutes to spare. To kill stuff faster switch Sweeping Wind to Wave of Light Explosive Light and replace Burst of Wrath with Incense Torch of the Grand Temple.
Hunting for some achievements. Similar to rainbow goblin farming, many achievements don't have a difficulty requirements so you can do them on Normal using this build.
Video Guide
Guide Video
Mechanics
Epiphany Teleport
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).
Epiphany Soothing Mist
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.
Monk Shields
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.
Flying Dragon
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.
Summary
Put together the normal build and focus on perfect Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, at least 150,000 Health Globes Bonus, and as much Resource Cost Reduction as you can.
Spam your abilities and keep Inner Sanctuary down where your Trash Killer and Rift Guardian Killer go.
