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Seven Sided Strike (Inna's/Uliana) - Detailed Guide

by last updated Nov 2, 2017 ( Patch 2.6.1 )
Seasonal
Solo
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Skills

  • Way of the Hundred Fists Assimilation
  • Seven-Sided Strike Fulminating Onslaught
  • Blinding Flash Faith in the Light
  • Cyclone Strike Implosion
  • Dashing Strike Blinding Speed
  • Serenity Ascension
  • Harmony
  • Beacon of Ytar
  • Near Death Experience
  • Mythic Rhythm

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Bane of the Stricken
    • Bane of the Trapped
    • Esoteric Alteration

Kanai's Cube

  • Lion's Claw
  • The Crudest Boots
  • Ring of Royal Grandeur

Patch 2.6.1 BUFFS!!

With the release of 2.6.1 this build has also gotten a few buffs.

  • The six piece on Inna's has been buffed to 150% for each ally for a total of 1500%.
  • And the four piece of Uliana has been buffed to now do 777% of total damage for each kick.
  • Spirit guards now goes up to 60% damage reduction.

The Tl:Dr

This build is based around gathering up mobs and hitting your SSS button. Short and simple. Although the tl;dr is very short it can be somewhat complex and difficult to pull off. The build is pretty powerful and can easily do 90+. I completed an 90 with only half my gear being ancient and only 5 pieces of augments.

If you wish to use this build for speed running something you can swap Lion's Claw out for Flow of Eternity but it is still not a good build for anything speed. This is a GR pushing only build. Section at the bottom dedicated for this.

Introduction

The build takes advantage of the recently buffed Inna's six piece and uses the four piece of Uliana's combined with Lion's Claw to buff the damage of SSS to new heights. You will need AT LEAST three pieces of Uliana's (shoulders is mandatory) and five pieces of Inna's (weapon/belt is mandatory) any make up of the two sets is fine as long as you have the mandatory pieces.

Inna's six piece is for every Mystic ally you have out you gain 150% damage and gives you one of each ally. With Crudest boots it doubles the amount of allies to a total of 10 which means you gain 1500% damage.

Uliana's four piece is Seven Sided Strike deals 777% the amount of total damage with each hit. So each of your kicks (seven baseline) deals the total damage of all seven of those kicks and then doubles . When you add in Lion's claw which doubles the number of kicks to 14 this again doubles that.

The build revolves around the holy Convention of the Elements cycle to deal maximum damage. Below will be where I will talk more about the complete rotation.

All gear primary stats that do not have all resist should have physical or lighting as your secondary you will need everything to at least roll a secondary that doesn't already or that does not have all resist on it.

Belt, legs and boots have a spot open because IMHO it is optional. I have gone with LPS on boots/pants while my belt does not because of how it rolled.

D3planner of my Gear/Simming

So D3planner has a simulator on it, which is ok and shouldn't be taken at face value without testing. In my updated profile I have included the dps rotation in the sim so if you wish sim your own gear the setup is there.

https://d3planner.com/775078338

Legendary Gems/Regular Gems

  • Trapped is for the large damage boost it provides
  • Stricken is for helping to kill the boss
  • Esoteric is the ONLY gem that can be swapped out with that gem being Bane of the Powerful.
  • Diamonds in Everything

Cube

  • Crudest Boots and Royal Grandeur can not be swapped and are mandatory
  • Lion's Claw is mandatory for pushing

Flow of Eternity vs Lion's Claw

Lion's claw is superior by far. Even if you perfectly time (which you probably won't) the extra Flow of Eternity you get it still would not be worth it. Lion's claw effectively double dips because of the four piece by first increasing the number of kicks for the first part and then that is then again buffed by the 777% damage increase. Flow of Eternity is a tiny damage boost and not really worth looking into.

Follower

A Follower is not required but can make life better and it can make it worse take it as you will.

Templar

  • Weapon/Shield Thunderfury/Freeze of Deflection
  • Neck- Any as long as it has CDR/attack speed. Ess of Johan will mess up your density sometimes so I recommend not using.
  • Wyward- ring for the stun from thunderfury
  • Occulus- you may not use the proc a lot but from time to time it helps and there isn't really much else to go with.

Skills are just all left side with last tier being the guardian skill unless you find the knockback annoying. I used inspire because I don't want to deal with it.Have attack speed/cooldown reduction on all the Templar's gear for lower cooldown of skills and faster attack to proc Wyward more.

Enchantress would be the same setup you can also use the dagger Eun-jang-do and roll the damage range to lightning to proc Wyward.

I have not tried out the scoundrel so I cannot comment on him but I'd imagine it'd just be same setup and any bow but Windforce.

End of Season Thoughts - Season 10

So this season I pushed up to 92 under 1k paragon (960) with this build. This is the highest that I have ever gotten and I almost got up to a 93 but messed up on what should have been the clear. Tried for a bit didn't really level my paragon that much more, didn't get it so I decided that was good enough for me for now. This build is something when I first saw it I threw my hands up said "what is this" and just said to myself I've gotta play it. This build, although similar Inna explosive Palm, it's quite the wild ride getting past 90 with it.

So with this build I believe you can push up to 100 with it. Capped at 100 but it'd require some good rifts, high paragon and a lot of time. It was a fun time and sometimes a frustrating time but it was time well spent playing a build that only a few people in North America pushed past 90 in season 10. It's definitely a build that people should know of, it won't be getting rank one solo anytime soon but It's for sure crazy to be seeing Seven-Sided-Strike outside of full Uliana's build. The next season I probably won't be pushing with it but i recommend this build to anyone who doesn't want to play a meta build or want to use the Seven-Sided-Strike skill.

The pros of this build, for me at least, has been that it's new, lots of choices with passives, you can get away with only using two legendary gems (which I think is cool by itself), and that it uses a lesser/dead skill. The damage that it outputs at lower greater rifts solo is pretty cool, it's great not having augments or lots of ancients and hitting greater rift 88. When done correctly it felt extremely rewarding, it combined the feel of EP and it brought out a skill that I have enjoyed since vanilla.

The cons of this build? It's not fast, it requires a bit of timing to get used to and that it can be very punishing. It's not a fast build and should not be used for speed anything just get another class or spec to run speeds of anything. The timing is very important because if you mess up the timing it can mess up for 25 or more seconds. If that happens twice you could waste almost a minute of just recovering. The first/second death can punish yourself a lot because it'll mess up the timing for sure.

Overall I feel that this build is good for medium or higher skilled players. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners simply because of the timing and that it doesn't have a lot of sustain and that it isn't the tankiest build and can require technical knowledge to do well with.

I can 100% recommend this for medium to intermediate skilled people. I say it's not really for beginners to the game because it can require mechanical knowledge of mobs and understanding the timing of skills to at least a competent level.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Vitality
Maximum Resource

Offense

Cooldown Reduction
Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Armor
Life
Life Regeneration

Utility

Area Damage
Life on Hit
Resource Cost Reduction
Gold Find

For stats the most important thing is to hit the 42% mark of cooldown reduction. This can be accomplished by having a flawless royal diamond in your helm, Beacon of Y'tar passive, 8% cooldown reduction on your gloves and 10% cooldown reduction from your paragon points. This will make your seven sided strike line up with your holy cycle every use.

Movement speed should be capped at 25% from paragon preferably or a combination of either move speed on your compass rose (not recommended), or boots (not recommended).

Critical hit chance/damage should be on every piece you can get it on. Neck, bracers (crit only), gloves, neck.

Area damage should be on every piece you can get it on even taking over Dex on your Convention and gloves. Gloves, rings, neck, Weapon

Holy Damage should be gained whenever possible. Bracers and Neck (even to take over Dex)

Skill Damage Chest and Shoulders can roll Seven Sided Strike Damage and are thus mandatory

Life per Second

Life per second is a stat, at least in my mind, that can be contested to have it on gear. You gain it passively from your mystic ally and from your mantra of healing which you gain passively from your Inna's four piece and six piece. The effect of the mantra/mythic ally is increased by 100% as well by your two piece Inna's. With set bonuses/paragon/skills I have 88k Life per Second naturally and with 2 pieces of ancient gear with it I have 108k. Your mystic ally and mantra also gain bonus Life per Second for all the Life per Second you have this includes on your gear.

Now with all that said I think that at least having two pieces with Life Per Second is good because a lot of time you spend is time spent running around and with the extra Life per Second it can help your sustain. The build can be tanky and can tank a lot of hits, with some exceptions, but it lacks Life on Hit, only gained from paragon, and even that skill is weaker because you do not attack a lot. So to help with sustain life per second is a nice bonus.

Life After Kill

For helping with more sustain having it on your weapon and other pieces of gear (as long as it does NOT replace a secondary resist)

Build Guide

Rotation

The build is built around your Convention of the Elements rotation and each element has a different purpose. Phyiscal/Lightning rotation are meant for scouting and building density if you are already at your spot. Cold rotation is for your last decision of what spot you want to stack up mobs for your Holy rotation. Fire rotation is for Grouping everything with a couple of Cyclone strikes and attack 3 times with Way of the Hundred Fists. Holy is for doing all your damage with Mythic Rhythm up hit Blinding Flash and then hit Seven Sided Strike and do all the damage. It is OK to let your rotation go into the first 2 seconds of holy cycle. Just make sure you do it a little earlier next time to make sure it helps keep your holy cycle in line.

  • Lightning: Scout/kite
  • Physical: Scout/Kite
  • Cold: Decide final spot for grouping/kiting
  • Fire: Setup (Cyclone Strike/Mythic Rhythm)
  • Holy: Damage (Blinding Flash/Seven Sided Strike)

Skills

Cyclone Strike

Cyclone strike is your primary ability to build density for your Seven Sided Strike. With Cyclone strike you will need to watch that it does not consume your Mythic Rhythm, Mythic Rhythm does not show on your bars but it's there don't worry! Mobs will DR after two uses of this so be careful when you are using it and use it during fire rotation preferably. Mobs can be hit by it even if they're clipping edges and will put them on DR. If you play support your lessons from playing that will come in handy.

Way of the Hundred Fists

The only rune acceptable is assimilation because of the damage it can provide. Every rotation you should aim to get at least 20 stacks or more of this.

Seven Sided Strike

With Seven sided Strike the only time you will be using it is during Holy rotation. This is because with the 42% cooldown reduction it will be up everytime the holy rotation comes up. The rune's Fulminating Onslaught AOE is not very big and as such having mobs grouped up as tight as possible is needed. This can mean even skipping elites because they are too big (with the exception of last mob of avenger affix).

Blinding Flash

Explanation for this is simple. You use it to buff the damage of your Seven sided Strike. Although you CAN use it for defensive purposes if you will have it up again in time for your Holy cycle.

Dashing Strike

Your mobility spell/avoidance ability. You will use the blinding speed rune to give yourself increased dodge. Dodge completely negates the damage. You will always want to keep at least one stack of this for emergencies. DOES NOT consume Mythic Rhythm stack.

Serenity

You will use this during your fire rotation to keep you alive while you are building your density for your upcoming holy rotation.


Passives

  • Beacon of Ytar
  • Mythic Rhythm
  • Near Death Experience
  • Harmony
  • Relentless Assault

Beacon of Ytar and Mythic Rhythm are mandatory as Beacon provides the cooldown reduction needed for the build and Mythic Rhythm is 40% multiplicative damage. These are mandatory and cannot be swapped for anything else.

Near Death Experience and Harmony provide defensive passives and are safe picks. I would pick both of these if you are lacking paragon and augments or feel you still take too much damage. I feel of the two Near Death Experience is the best option.

Relentless Assault provides 20% multiplicative damage, this is half of Mythic Rhythm.

The best combo for low gear and paragon would be Harmony and Near Death Experience while Relentless Assault and Near Death experience for when you are almost all augmented and over 1,000 paragon.

Rares/Elites

For rares and elites most affixes are safe for this build because of how much time you will spend being invulnerable. The only real bad affix is Orbiter because of the large amounts of damage and the worst being wormhole. Wormhole is the worst affix because it can totally ruin your rotation by putting you out of position during your holy cycle. This affix can be worth a skip unless you think the density of the mobs around it are worth the chance.

At higher greater rifts you will end up skipping a lot of rares because there is not a lot of density around them. It is preferred to kite rares to white packs if you have already damaged them. You will never stop to kill a rare if it is above a certain amount of health. The only time you should stick around to kill rares is if you can kill them in a single holy rotation. Eg. So if you are near the exit and a rare won't die in a single rotation it is probably best to just go to the next floor.

Maps

The positioning of the maps in their tier do not reflect any position within the tier. You will always want a battlefield of eternity/Sand Map with Eternal woods can be close to these tiers it is not considered Excellent tier due to the fact that it has a ton of things that can cause LoS for your Cyclone Strike.

Excellent tier

  • A5 Battlefield of Eternity
  • A2 Sand Map
  • A3 Festering Woods (Green Woods Map)

Good tier

  • Eternal Woods Map
  • A2 Vault
  • A2 Archives
  • A4 Spire
  • A2 Spider Cave

Medicore Tier

  • A5 Malth map (Only if you get a lot of platforms)
  • A1 Halls of Agony (Only if you get lots of open areas)

Bad tier

  • A5 town
  • A3 Barracks (This is generally bad but can even go up to good tier if you have a short with lots of open parts)

Garbage Tier, just leave

  • Sewars
  • ALL CAVE MAPS THAT AREN'T SPIDER CAVE.

Mob Types (wip)

Excellent Tier

  • Coven (cultist, summoners, Zealot, Conjurors. thrall)
  • Accursed/ghouls
  • Lacuni Slash (although dangerous they can stack very well)
  • Armoured destroyers
  • plague carriers

Good Tier

  • bugs
  • undead (unburried, zombie, mothers, aboms)

Bad tier

  • Large melee mob (Armaddons, Executioners, sand dwellers,oppresor)
  • Morlu (all of them suck and they can heal)
  • Bogon
  • Fallen

Garbage Tier

  • Mallot Lords
  • Ranged mobs (Goatmen spearmen, Guardians, hell witch, Goatmen shamans, Seraph, Guardians)
  • Lashers
  • Golgors
  • Hellhide Tremors
  • Horned Charger

For progression the website below shows sets monsters appear in and what their percentage is worth. Set 41 is probably the best set as you can stack the mobs very tightly for Area Damage.
http://warpath.eu/ms.html
Bosses

To be honest all bosses are fine with the exception of Ember, Blighter and Bloodmaw. Blighter just does a ton of single target damage and you have to move away so you can't stack stricken up on him fast. Blighter because of the single target damage and he can can do his normal tentacle attacks which can help prevent you from attacking. And Bloodmaw. He does a frontal cleave which can 1 shot you and jump around.

Although not all bosses but some bosses you will just be sitting around or running away waiting for Holy Cycle. This is what I have found to be the best because it will help avoid being 1 shot by some of the rift guardians. You will do your typical fire/holy rotation Serenity > Mythic Rhythm setup > Blinding Flash > Seven Sided Strike rotation.

Some of them do not hit hard but will spawn adds you will need to keep these mobs close to the boss so you can get them with your Way of the Hundred Fists and build more stacks.

Try and hit bosses as much as possible to help build your stricken stacks. The boss damage is pretty good and much higher than expected.

Also try and let your mystic allies tank everything. This is very key in helping build stricken stacks because you can then safely melee bosses from behind.

Ideally you'll want a power pylon on the boss depending on your timing in the rift best time to use it would be after a couple rotations so you can get stricken stacked. Assuming 2-3 minutes of on the boss I will pop the power with 1 minute left, although this can be risky as it makes it so you will have to play cautiously because missing a power pylon cycle with some bosses with adds can be really devastating.

The best bosses are Erethon, Raiziel. These two bosses you can face tank (even up to 90+) and just sit there stacking Stricken.

Pylon

Speed

Speed Pylons are very good for helping to kite or to be used to help skip floors. When taking a speed pylon you gain a knockback which helps make it very easy to help skip mobs. I found this to be very helpful to get more mobs because you'll be able to run between your main group of mobs and more you're gathering. This pylon excels when you are already ahead or the rift is dense allowing for more density to be kited.

Channeling

Channeling for this build is not very strong but it can have added survivablity. It can also fill the roll of a speed pylon in helping kite and for skipping floors.

Power

Not very strong for killing trash, as you should be able to easily kill whites, and not the best for killing elites this is best used for the boss where you can stack stricken very easy. In the boss section I talk more about the Pylon but it is very good for the boss and should be saved unless you are confident you need it to get to the boss in time.

Conduit

Very strong for killing trash and elites. About 2-3 ticks will most small/medium sized white trash and does massive damage to elites. I find it is best to kite three or more elites to a conduit damage them a bit and then pop the conduit to finish them off. This pylon is easily the best pylon for clearing trash and should be used only when you can get multiple elite kills or a very large amount of whites.

Shield

Shield pylon is an ok pylon as it allows you to build density for 3 rotations in one spot. I find it is very good when facing lots of elite packs, although you may not kill them all within the shield being able to dps them down is still very good for progression if you can kill them latter.

The Ideal rift will contain a Power at the boss spawn, a conduit for multiple elite kills and large amount of white trash and a third that is up to your liking.

Speed Clear and Theorycraft NOT TESTED.

If you want to play this build but for speed clears I would suggest playing Uliana's with Madstone speed build variant. A few pieces of your gear will already be augmented from your normal build so it'll be easier to play. I do not know how fast Uliana's can speed clear but t11 should be no problem.

If you must play the Inna's/Uliana's for speed normal rifts my suggestion would be to replace your rings with Focus And Restraint and use a Hellfire Neck with a damage passive. You would also use Flow of Eternity or an In-geom in your cube. You would also replace esoteric for Bane of the Powerful. Swap Mythic Rhythm out as well. Below will be a list of acceptable passives. THIS WILL NOT BE AS FAST AS OTHER BUILDS AND WILL BE SLOW COMPARED TO THEM. I HAVE NOT TESTED THIS. Stat priority would be CDR(On as much as possible, replaced AD on gear for CDR) > CHC > CHD without Convention you will be spamming Seven Sided Strike more Often. If you wish to keep Endless Walk Set you can use Stone of Jordan over Convention.

Passives These are tiered

  • Beacon of Ytar
  • *Harmony (can be replaced for more damage)
  • Unity
  • Determination
  • Momentum
  • Relentless Assault (if you swap cyclone strike to wall of wind)

Skills

  • Blinding Flash - Faith in the Light (Can swap this out for Exploding Palm - Impending Doom
  • Cyclone Strike - Implosion/Wall of Wind (only use if using Relentless Assault on neck/passive)
  • Dashing strike - Way of the falling Star
  • Serenity - Ascension/Instant Karma/Peaceful Repose/ If in a group Tranquility can be nice
  • Way of the Hundred Fist - Assimilation
  • Seven Sided Strike - Fulminating Onslaught