Introduction
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Welcome to the Uliana's Stratagem Exploding Palm Monk! Released in Season 4, Uliana's Stratagem has been buffed in Season 22 and can still be effective nowadays, boasting a unique and exciting playstyle. If bringing monsters to a catastrophic demise with teleporting Exploding Palm sounds fun to you, you're in the right place.
While Exploding Palm will be your main source of damage, the skill you'll be using the most is Seven-Sided Strike. Unfortunately, it's not a very strong skill but it's certainly way up there when it comes to the cool factor. With all the Cooldown Reduction this build is stacking you will be able to veritably spam Seven-Sided Strike, filling your heart with joy.
The strongest pushing variant of the build uses Shenlong's Spirit set, because there's not enough Exploding Palm multipliers. While you have other weapon options that buff your Seven-Sided Strike, they do nothing for natural explosions you get by killing monsters.
In terms of power however, this build somewhat lacking. Thanks to the power of Dashing Strike + In-Geom you can farm Nephalem Rifts decently well with it, but it won't carry you very far when it comes to pushing or GR farming. Although, of course, this build will be on the top of Uliana's Stratagem leaderboards (by the virtue of being the only Uliana build).
Highly Mobile ✔
Massive Explosions ✔
Great for Speed Content ✔
The Coolest Build in the Game ✔
❌ Struggles in High GR's
❌ Very Cooldown Dependent
❌ Poor Single Target Damage
❌ Requires Strategic Play for Pushing
Core Setup
Items
- Uliana's Stratagem grants our Exploding Palm 12,500% damage as well as making our Way of the Hundred Fists apply Exploding Palm and our Seven-Sided Strike will detonate it on hit. The new (4) Bonus added during Season 22 gives us 77% damage reduction for 7 seconds after applying Exploding Palm.
- Captain Crimson's Trimmings gives us Cooldown Reduction as well as a massive damage increase.
- The Fist of Az'Turrasq increases our Exploding Palm damage by 500%.
- Lion's Claw allows Seven-Sided Strike to attack seven more times, effectively doubling our damage output.
- Gungdo Gear causes Exploding Palm to spread it's effect to surrounding enemies during it's explosion and increases its damage by 100%.
- The Flow of Eternity increases our Seven-Sided Strike damage by 100% and its cooldown is reduced by 60%.
- Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to utilize both Uliana's Stratagem and Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
Global Stat Priorities
Our offensive priorities are: Cooldown Reduction > Cold Damage > Critical Hit Chance > Critical Hit Damage ~ Damage Range > Area Damage > Exploding Palm damage. Cooldown Reduction is extremely important here because it basically serves as our Attack Speed letting us use more Seven-Sided Strikes and also gives more damage via Captain Crimson's Trimmings (3) Bonus and also gives you higher uptime on Epiphany.
Assembling the Build
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Follower
Gameplay
Hardcore
Variants
Concept
In Nephalem Rifts we use Madstone which applies Exploding Palms for us, letting us just spam Seven Sided Strike to kill everything. We replace Lion's Claw with In-Geom because 7 hits is more than enough in Torment 16. Finally we use Squirt's Necklace + Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard combo for damage and the usual T16 Gold items: Avarice Band, Boon of the Hoarder and Goldwrap.
Gameplay
In Nephalem Rifts the gameplay is very simple: dash forward and cast Seven-Sided Strike to oneshot everything. If mobs are too spread out, use Cyclone Strike first. Hunt for elite packs to keep your In-Geom buff active.
Setups
If you play in groups, cube Nemesis Bracers instead of Leoric's Crown and replace Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with Avarice Band.
If you're willing to press one button every 3 seconds during the entire rift, you can use Mantra of Healing Circular Breathing and get a different gem instead of Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard - Bane of the Powerful or Gogok of Swiftness.
Select Build Version
Concept
In solo push we use Endless Walk and Convention of Elements for maximum damage and Binding of the Lost for 70% damage reduction. We stack 75% Cooldown Reduction to get 100% Epiphany uptime and to be able to cast two Seven Sided Strikes during our Cold cycle.
Gameplay
This is the basic version of the build which uses the rotation described in the gameplay section above.
To further optimize your damage you need to play around your Scoundrel's Night's Veil ability. Open the Greater Rift at the start of Physical Convention of Elements rotation. By the time you enter the rift and encounter first monsters you will be at the start of Cold. The Scoundrel will use Night's Veil when he enters combat and then will keep using it every 30 seconds. Since your Convention of Elements cycle lasts 20 seconds, the two will overlap on every 3rd rotation. You need to make sure that the Scoundrel is trapped inside the pull before this rotation so that he places the cloud in the center of it.
Setups
You can choose your between Binding of the Lost and Spirit Guards as your defensive item. The latter is a bit weaker but it's easier to refresh the buff and it also lets you cube Gungdo Gear to get easy 100% on the affix.
If feel like you have too much toughness, replace one of your defensive passives with Determination. At higher Paragon (5,000+) you can outright drop your defensive item in the cube and use Frostburn instead.
Concept
This is the stronger but more difficult to play version of the build. Here instead of two Fourteen-Sided Strikes we can only use one Seven Sided Strike during out Cold cycle, but each individual explosion hits 4.5x as hard. And that includes 10-20 bonus explosions that come from killing monsters rather than from Uliana's Stratagem (6) Bonus.
Gameplay
Here we have two big changes: first we have to manage the Shenlong's Spirit buff and second we have a lot longer cooldown on Seven Sided Strike.
You are able to use Seven Sided Strike 3 times during your Convention of Elements rotation. One of them must happen during Cold and is your main nuke. The second one should come 7-8 seconds later just to refresh your current Exploding Palms, and, finally, the third one comes 3 seconds into lightning to try and proc an Oculus Ring for your Cold.
It's impossible to get Shenlong's Spirit buff on all 3 Seven Sided Strike casts. Just focus on having it active during your main nuke on Cold. During the Rift Guardian fight you should have the buff on two Seven Sided Strikes out of three.
Setups
You can give up Cyclone Strike to get Crippling Wave Rising Tide or Breath of Heaven Infused with Light. This will make it much easier to manage your Spirit letting you have the buff on every Seven Sided Strike.
If feel like you have too much toughness, replace one of your defensive passives with Determination. At higher Paragon (5,000+) you can outright drop your defensive item in the cube and use Frostburn instead.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Madstone
Mythic Rhythm + Uliana's Stratagem + Gungdo Gear
Summary
- Set up your Mythic Rhythm passive.
- Use Way of the Hundred Fists to refresh Exploding Palm on enemies, then use Seven-Sided Strike to detonate the explosions and spread them around with Gungdo Gear.
- Cast Cyclone Strike to group up the enemies onto elites to hit them with maximum area damage right before the Cold Convention of Elements cycle.
- Stay mobile, drag elite packs to more density, and detonate them back to hell!
Town Is Lava!
Credits
Written by Northwar & Raxxanterax.
Updated by Northwar & wudijo.