All the way back to Season 4, Shenlong's Spirit got reworked to massively buff the damage output of Generators, which allowed "Gen Monks" to become a strong META build. Meanwhile first iterations of Gen Monk were playing Mangle, some players eventually found out during the Season that Static Charge in combination with Fists of Fury was way stronger.
In groups, it turns out that any player in the party could proc Static Charges applied by the Gen Monk, as any damaging hit with a proc coefficient on a monster affected was able to proc a Lightning tick to all other monsters affected by Static Charge, this chance being affected by the proc coefficient (which is why Fists of Fury was used in solo). Say no more, with that crazy damage scaling, Static Monk dominated all the Season 4 leaderboards before getting hit hard by the nerf hammer in Season 5 to never be seen again.
Since then, Gen Monk has been used as a Rift Guardian Killer for a few Seasons, while being the top dog for solo Monk leaderboards. But it eventually fell out of relevance as other builds got buffed. Anyway, welcome to the Raiment of a Thousand Storms Generator Monk, a build that uses Dashing Strike to give our Spirit Generators a massive DPS boost. Simply put, this build is far behind every other Monk build and I would not recommend using it unless you're feeling frisky. But if competitive play and toughness aren't your thing, then let's find out how we can bring back its glory!
Very Fast ✔ Fun to Play ✔ Not Cooldown Dependent ✔ Most Furious Fists in the Game ✔
❌ Squishy ❌ Hard to Play Well ❌ Needs High Attack Speed ❌ Requires Strategic Play for Pushing
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Raiment of a Thousand Storms (2) Bonus attack 25% faster with Spirit Generators as well as granting them 400% increased damage.
Raiment of a Thousand Storms (4)Bonus makes Dashing Strike cost 25 Spirit but refunds a charge on use.
Raiment of a Thousand Storms (6)Bonus gives our Dashing Strike 60,000% damage for 6 seconds after using a Spirit Generator, and every time we use Dashing Strike our Spirit Generators will do 14,000% more damage for 6 seconds as well.
Shenlong's Spirit makes our Spirit Generators do 2% more damage per point of Spirit we have. It also drains our Spirit once it gets full and gives us a 350% damage increase until we run out completely.
Flying Dragon doubles our Attack Speed most of the time.
Depth Diggers gives 100% increased damage to our Spirit Generators.
Spirit Guards reduce our damage taken by 60% after using a Spirit Generator.
Convention of Elements for 200% damage during our Fire cycle.
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 put Unity which lets us use Captain Crimson's Trimmings even at without extremely high Paragon.
Global Stat Priorities
Our offensive priorities are: Attack Speed > Area Damage > Fire Damage > Critical Hit Chance/Critical Hit Damage, along with as much Crippling Wave damage as possible. The vast majority of our damage comes from our Crippling Wave, our Dashing Strike is just used to get a further buff for it and mobility. With Attack Speed taken on every piece of gear in combination with our Attack Speed boosting skills and Flying Dragon, we should almost always be at the 5.0 Attack Speed breakpoint.
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.Gather the full Raiment of a Thousand Storms set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. 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.
Rings to get Convention of Elements, Unity and The Compass Rose
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
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings set
6. This build is extremely bad at farming so you will have to farm on another build/character and spend materials building this monk until it's ready to push. The one remaining piece not listed in this section The Traveler's Pledge is too expensive to either Gamble or Upgrade so you'll just have to find it.
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:
Shenlong's Relentless Assault or Shenlong's Fist of Legend
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Simplicity's Strength is the strongest gem for us with it's massive 100% damage increase and 4% Life on Hit.
Bane of the Trapped gives us 60% increased damage and is in most DPS builds in Diablo 3.
Bane of the Stricken will be taken for solo pushing and in groups to kill the Rift Guardian.
Boon of the Hoarder is used for the T16/Speed build as it grants us a 30% Movement Speed bonus.
Skills
Crippling Wave Mangle is our main source of damage and hardest hitting Spirit Generator.
Way of the Hundred Fists Assimilation 5% increased damage for every enemy hit by the 3rd swing. This is used as a buff not for DPS.
Dashing Strike Radiance is used for mobility and 15% increased Attack Speed buff.
Cyclone Strike Implosion helps us to group all the enemies tightly around us to maximize our Area Damage.
Mantra of Salvation Agility gives a massive defensive boost.
Breath of Heaven Infused With Light 14 additional Spirit generated per hit for 5 seconds to keep our Shenlong's Spirit buff up longer.
Passives
Combination Strike gives us 100% multiplicative damage for each extra generator used.
Exalted Soul grants us 50 additional Maximum Spirit.
Alacrity multiplicatively increases Attack Speed of Spirit Generators by 15%.
Seize the Initiative gives 30% additive Attack Speed for 4 seconds after hitting an enemy with >75% health.
Near Death Experience allows us to cheat death.
Harmony gives us a bonus to our All Resistance based of 40% of our Secondary Resistances.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Attack Speed
1. All Resistance
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Spirit
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Life per Hit
3. Dexterity
3. Critical Hit Damage
3. Armor
3. Resource Cost Reduction
4. Vitality1
4. Cooldown Reduction
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended).
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
Follower
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:
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.
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.
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.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendations for this build.
GR Pushing Scoundrel
GR Pushing Scoundrel
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Scoundrel setup for the Critical Hit Chance from Anatomy, 10% increased damage from Piercing Shot, and the insane Critical Hit Chance cloud from Night’s Veil. Don't choose either of the first skill options as they apply crowd controls that we want to avoid. If you accidentally select one, you'll either have to live with it or make a new character to fix it as there is no way to de-select a follower skill :(
Stat Priorities:
Since we have the immortality token, we do not need to stack survivability on our Scoundrel.
Dexterity > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
Gameplay
The most important thing to mention with this build is that the vast majority of our damage comes from Crippling Wave and not Dashing Strike. However we need to use Dashing Strike as well as our other skills and mechanics to really cause devastating damage with out Spirit Generator, let's see how we can accomplish this:
Pull enemies together and try to form a good pack, utilize your Cyclone Strike to group enemies up on a Oculus Ring if available. Once we have a decent pack it's time to get them together and go through our cycle to do damage.
Cast Dashing Strike and Cyclone Strike every 6 and 5 seconds respectively to keep the buffs up.
Use Mantra of Salvation when you start losing health.
We use Crippling Wave all the time, and do 3 hits of Way of the Hundred Fists every 10 seconds to keep up Combination Strike and Assimilation buffs. The only time this changes is when our Convention of Elements cycle turns to Physical where we will spam Way of the Hundred Fists the whole time.
Your Convention of Elements goes Physical - Cold - Fire and you deal most of your damage on Fire and a bit on Physical. After the Fire you have 8 seconds of downtime - the perfect opportunity to move your pull forward.
Once the lesser enemies are thinning out and we're left with just elites it's important to drag the elite along with you as you continue to gather more enemies. The bigger the pack you have the more damage you are going to do to all of them. Try to spend as little time as possible attacking singled out elites and always focus on gathering as much as you can.
Hardcore
This build is very squishy and not very well suited for Hardcore play. Replace Exalted Soul with Near Death Experience and use String of Ears for extra toughness. You can also switch the last skill of your Scoundrel to Vanish. Unity instead of Convention of Elements is a solid option to trade some damage for double the toughness. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
GR Solo Push
GR Group RGK
Solo Push
Concept In solo we have to pull everything, stay alive, and kill everything by ourselves but the style of play is the same as covered in the main gameplay section of this guide.
Gameplay Make sure to use your Way of the Hundred Fists often to get that buff up on as many enemies as possible and use Dashing Strike at least every 6 seconds. Fists of Thunder is here to give us an extra stack of Combination Strike you can also use it during Cold Convention of Elements cycle to squeeze out a bit more damage. Make sure that you commit to gathering large packs of enemies before attacking, otherwise you will lose the opportunity to deal significant Area Damage. If any elites survive after the trash is dead, drag them forward to another giant pack before DPSing. When the Rift Guardian spawns just continuously attack to build Bane of the Stricken quickly.
Setups At 6,000+ Paragon you can drop Mantra of Salvation to get our last Combination Strike stack from Deadly Reach.
Group RGK
Concept Rift Guardian Killer's (RGK) job is to kill the Rift Guardian at the end of the rift. While this build is currently too weak to compete with top tier RGKs, its insane Attack Speed combined with Bane of the Stricken give it hope for the future.
Gameplay Similar to the solo version, except we don't have to worry about grouping enemies together on our own. The rotation is similar to solo push in that we're just blasting the guardian as hard as we can. At the start of the fight use each of your generators once to get Combination Strike stacks. After that optimal damage rotation goes like this:
Cold
hold Way of the Hundred Fists
Fire
tap Fists of Thunder
hold Crippling Wave
Holy
tap Deadly Reach
hold Way of the Hundred Fists
Lightning
hold Fists of Thunder
Physical
tap Crippling Wave
tap Deadly Reach
hold Way of the Hundred Fists
Setups You can switch your rolls to Lightning and use Fists of Thunder during Holy and Physical. This will give you about 2.5% more damage, but it will cost you around 25% damage if the boss has adds. For that reason, we usually go for the more consistent Cold setup.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Raiment of a Thousand Storms
Dashing strikes looks tempting from the 60,000% damage, but it does no damage compared to our Generators and is only used to buff their damage.
Shenlong's Spirit
Gives a 350% damage buff and drains 65 spirit per second once you reach max spirit. This buff and debuff stop once your spirit reaches 0. The idea is to activate this buff once we've created large packs of density, and then to generate spirit against the 65/sec drain to keep it up as long as possible.
There is a bug where sometimes Shenlong's won't activate even at max spirit.
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.
Combination Strike
The generator damage bonus is a separate multiplier.
The bonuses from different generators stack additively with each other for a maximum of 300% damage bonus if you have all 4 generators equipped.
Each stack of the buff has a separate 10s timer.
Summary
Obtain the Raiment of a Thousand Storms and Shenlong's Spiritsets in full before trying this build out.
Group up enemies by running around and then using Dashing Strike and Cyclone Strike before unleashing with your Spirit Generators. Use your other cooldowns to maintain your Spirit as much as possible and to keep your toughness up, try to time things so that you spend as much time at full Spirit as you can!
This build is quite squishy compared to a lot of others and can be difficult to play. It has quite a unique style but can be satisfying and fun with some practice.
