D3 S28 Monk Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.5

Here we are again! If you’re a Fresh L70 Monk and wondering where to go – look no further. Seriously. Here, we teach you what to do step by step until you reach your free seasonal 6 piece set. Get your Haedrigs Gifts, complete your seasonal journey, and get your Monk to endgame with our Fresh Level 70 Monk Guide! (Not 70 yet? Check out D3 Monk Leveling Guide)

In Season 27, the Monk free set is: Raiment of a Thousand Storms.

For this guide we have a few couple overarching steps that dictate our plan.
– Gear up our LoD Fist of Heavens for the early~ game.
– Complete the seasonal journey if you like, but the free set won’t be relevant to speedfarming, which is gonna be your goal for now.
– optionally transition into and build other builds. LUCKILY Legacy of Dreams Wave of Light can scale up dramatically, so we don’t really need to.

Early game Monk Sanctified powers – a heads up

Every time you get an angelic crucible to sanctify an item, you’re gonna want to use it ASAP to boost your power levels.

What item do I sanctify? If you can, use it on a main-hand weapon. Ideally, in your case, a Kyoshiro’s Soul, or any useful utility one-hander. Sanctifying makes into a primal ancient tier weapon.

While the sanctified power you want is Wave of Light, you can potentially use the others during your “way up”, depending on how mature your build is. Just adjust your build to add either 100 fists or 7 sided strike. They aren’t amazing as universal powers, so ideally you’ll get your WoL sanctification sooner rather than later.

Step 1) Initial Build & Getting Legacy of Dreams

Don’t get stressed out, yes, LoD builds might seem a little daunting but let me tell you that it’s a fun and exciting process. Ultimately you need two things right now: The actual LoD gem, and a basic build to get you going.

Generic Starter build (slightly related to our ‘final build’)

The above build is meant to be in the middle of two things: Easy to edit – that hopefully game-changing legendaries can fit in no matter what. Related to our ‘final build’ – it’s a rough basic version of our “goal”, so it feels more natural as you transition towards it. Have a look down there for the final build preview to see what we’re going for.

Getting Legacy of Dreams ASAP

The first three gems will always be Bane of the Powerful, Legacy of Dreams, and one random one. So thankfully, there’s no RNG there.

Get 3 rift keys → Run 3 rifts → Wear three gemstones on your gear. That’s about as simple as it gets. DO NOT try to “tryhard” the nephs and GR’s. SPEED is the key here. Get your keys on Easy if you must!

Step 2) Easy power-ups. Huge gains for little effort.

You can go all of these things “simultaneously”, basically small tasks here and there that you should keep in mind right now that will greatly increase your power for little to no effort.

Make a Reaper’s Wraps: Speaking of no effort to big returns… Make this ASAP. Plans drop from any Torment Malthael. WoL is one of those resource hungry builds so this can definitely help you early on.

Topaz on helmet: this is one of those resource hungry builds that can benefit from RCR early on. Remove it when you can manage to.

What three Legendary gems?

Your next goal should be getting at least L25 on your three most important gems. Just get rift keys and spam GR’s until you get them, and do the absolute minimum level you need to level them up. Get them and level them quickly – do not feel pressured to “maximize” your rift keys by inflating the difficulty.

Legacy of Dreams is mandatory, as mentioned in the basics segment! Level this up as much as you can.

You want double defensive gems since toughness will be a little rough… Esoteric Alteration OR Moratorium / and Molten Wildebeests Gizzard. They both should help beef you up quite a bit. If you feel like you can drop them, check out Powerful, Trapped, or Stricken.

Bane of the Powerful is an honorable mention if you don’t want double defensive gems. It’s a cheap 25 level investment for very powerful offensive and defensive effects.

Can’t ever go wrong with leveling up a Boon of the Hoarder for speedfarming. (Need a refresher? Basic offensive: Powerful, Trapped. Basic Defensive: Esoteric Alteration, Molten Wildebeests Gizzard)

Legendary Items in ALL SLOTS

LoD gets stronger with each legendary item you have equipped – so get to it! You should aim to get this done “passively” by natural item drops, but you can also craft items if you’re desperate.

Spending Blood Shards is “OK”, but only use Death’s Breath to fill up the slots if you’re absolutely desperate. You’ll get an item for each slot in no time (you can even craft them). Save your resources for finding SPECIFIC items that will greatly boost your power. We talk more about this in the next segment, refinement.

Ancients DOUBLE this bonus, and they’re a welcome boost to consider.

Defense Type & Gems

Monks / Demon Hunters are DEXTERITY classes (they get free Armor from DEX). So, in the face of all this free armor, your prime defensive stats are ALL RESISTS > VIT. So try to reroll ALLRES on your gear if you need defense – it’s your best defensive stat by FAR.

So your gemming strategy (body and legs) should be slotting your best Diamonds, as they give ALLRES.

Basic Rerolls

Since legendaries are a little expensive to reroll EARLY ON, try to make the most by REMOVING GARBAGE STATS, and getting anything “remotely usable”.

DEX and VIT are your primary stats and are welcome everywhere, also, as mentioned above, ALL RESISTS are also very welcome.

Life per Hit is pretty good early game, and try to get a roll of it somewhere.

Wave of Light % is found in Helm and Boots.

The Element% you want is Fire (some like lightning), found typically in Bracers and Amulet.

Remove useless stats

• Life Regeneration – garbage for any build.
• Attack Speed – it usually an endgame tune-up stat.
• Excess Resource Cost Reduction – Is a crutch, and only niche builds need it.
• Excess Cooldown Reduction – Only useful for an endgame “need”.
• Unused skill% – literally USELESS.
• Armor – Useless for us, take ALLRES instead.

Take better stats

• DEX VIT– can’t go wrong with these. Your core stats!
• ALLRES Life% Great defensive stats.
• Sockets are essentially MANDATORY.
• Life per Hit – Great early game sustainability.
• CRIT Stats (CHC / CHD) – More for endgame, but I’d take this over garbage stats.
• Skill and Elemental% – that you use.

FOLLOWER GEAR!

Do not forget to fully equip your follower for farming. You can start by crafting Sage or Cain’s NOW and worry about the rest later.

Step 3) Refining, Using Resources -> ‘Full Build’

Full Build Preview: LoD Wave of Light

So you can easily see what items you’ll need, and you can get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.

As you can see this build has a lot of parts, and some options. It’s an incredibly powerful build with many options that I can’t really go into fine detail as it isn’t in the scope of this guide. Getting anywhere close to the above build template will have your character be godlike already anyway.

S27 ONLY: A note on Monk SANCTIFIED POWERS

Again, the only serious one worth considering is obviously the Wave of Light one. Furthermore, you really really want to sanctify a main-hand weapon since you’re it upgrades into a primal ancient tier item. As you may know, a max statted weapon is an indescribably powerful boost to your character.

As for the other powers, like I mentioned before, they’re just fillers for when your build still isn’t up. Pretty much irrelevant after you get your first WoL based item.

Get CORE ITEMS asap. The heart of your build

The absolute core of your build is: Incense Torch of the Grand Temple – use Death’s Breath. Honestly that single item is a build activator in a can. You’ll feel extremely powerful with just that, your crafted Reapers and a Topaz in helmet.

From here the next most important upgrades are Pintos Pride (Bracer), Kyoshiro’s Blade (Fist), and Tzo Kirn’s Gaze (Spirit Stone).

The next chunk of upgrades are found in the trio of Rabid Strike + Binding of Lesser Gods + Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, which can only be felt if you have all three.

Spending Blood Shards and Death’s Breath

Keep in mind that this is a pretty involved build. It doesn’t need to be “full” to be powerful, its damage can easily toned down as well for more defense, removing Rabid strike and Binding of the Lesser Gods for a tougher build with things like Crystal Fist, and utility bracers like Reaper’s Wraps or using a generator for Spirit Guards.

Follower Gear odds and ends

More of a reminder than anything, once you start farming you will be running into those little bonuses for your follower farming build. Keep an eye out!

Summary & Outro

Welp, that’s about it. I’m liking these seasonal bonuses that remove the augmentation grind – makes the game a lot more humane. From here, you can easily do the Seasonal Journey if that’s your thing, or transition into literally any other build you like – the it’s exactly what the S27 fresh 70 LoD builds for each class are made for.

GL out there and check out our D3 Guide Directory if you need anything else!