Introduction
Disclaimer: Right now this build is outclassed by the Patterns of Justice Tempest Rush Monk.
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 ✔
The Most Furious Fists in the Game ✔
❌ Underwhelming
❌ Hard to Play Well
❌ Needs High Attack Speed
❌ Requires Strategic Play for Pushing
Core Setup
Items
- Raiment of a Thousand Storms (2) Piece Bonus attack 25% faster with Spirit Generators as well as granting them 400% increased damage.
- Raiment of a Thousand Storms (4) Piece Bonus makes Dashing Strike cost 75 Spirit but refunds a charge on use.
- Raiment of a Thousand Storms (6) Piece 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 6,000% 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.
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.
Item Stat Priorities
| SLOT | ITEM | STAT PRIORITY |
| Main-Hand | Shenlong's Fist of Legend Flying Dragon (Cubed) | 1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Attack Speed 4. Area Damage 5. Life Per Hit 6. Maximum Spirit (Secondary) |
| Off-Hand | Shenlong's Relentless Assault | 1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Attack Speed 4. Area Damage 5. Life Per Hit 6. Maximum Spirit (Secondary) |
| Helm | Mask of the Searing Sky | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Socket Flawless Royal Amethyst 3. Dexterity 4. All Resistance |
| Gloves | Fists of Thunder | 1. Attack Speed 2. Area Damage 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Critical Hit Damage |
| Shoulders | Mantle of the Upside-Down Sinners Lefebvre's Soliloquy | 1. Area Damage 2. Dexterity 3. All Resistance 4. Vitality |
| Chest | Heart of the Crashing Wave | 1. Dexterity 2. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 3. All Resistance 4. Reduced Elite Damage |
| Pants | Scales of the Dancing Serpent Depth Diggers (Cubed) | 1. Crippling Wave Damage 2. All Resistance 3. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 4. Vitality |
| Boots | Eight-Demon Boots | 1. Dexterity 2. All Resistance 3. Vitality 4. Armor |
| Ring 1 | The Compass Rose Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties) (Cubed) Unity (Cubed) | 1. Socket 2. Attack Speed 3. Area Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance |
| Ring 2 | Convention of Elements | 1. Socket 2. Attack Speed 3. Area Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance |
| Bracers | Spirit Guards | 1. Fire Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Dexterity 4. All Resistance 5. Vitality |
| Amulet | The Traveler's Pledge | 1. Socket 2. Fire Damage 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance |
| Belt | The Witching Hour | 1. Crippling Wave Damage 2. Attack Speed % 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Dexterity |
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 buff up longer.
- Blinding Flash Replenishing Light restores 10 Spirit per blinded enemy.
- Mantra of Conviction Annihilation can be taken for mobility in T16 and speed group farming in place of Cyclone Strike Implosion.
Passives
- Exalted Soul grants us 50 additional Spirit
- Alacrity Multiplicatively increases Attack Speed of Spirit Generators by 15%.
- Seize the Initiative Additively gives 30% Attack Speed for 4s 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 single resistances'.
- Combination Strike gives us 10% damage for each generator used, which is helpful for the RGK set up where we take 3 generators.
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. Vitality (to 750k health) | 3. Critical Hit Damage | 3. Armor | 3. Resource Cost Reduction |
| 4. Dexterity | 4. Cooldown Reduction | 4. Life Regeneration | 4. Pickup Radius |
Follower
We need The Enchantress to reach the 5.0 Attack Speed breakpoint. She is ranged and likes to run away from mobs periodically, the only way to make her stand still is to completely surround her with mobs.
For the Skills pick Missile Ward, Erosion and Focused Mind. DO NOT pick any skill at level 15, because both skills have hard CC, and when used randomly, it does more harm than good.
Follower's damage is completely irrelevant, so we stack Attack Speed for more on-hit procs. The items are:
- SMOKING THURIBLE to make the Follower immortal
- Oculus Ring for 85% multiplicative damage boost
- Unity for 50% damage reduction
- Hellfire Ring for 0.9% XP boost
- The Ess of Johan to pull mobs together
- Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker for the Attack Speed slow
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:
1. Pull enemies together and try to form a good pack, utilize your Cyclone Strike to group enemies up on a Oculus Ring if available. Cast Mantra of Salvation as needed while you're grouping enemies up, once we have a decent pack it's time to get them together and go through our cycle to do damage.
2. Cast Breath of Heaven Infused With Light, Dashing Strike Radiance, Mantra of Salvation and Cyclone Strike to get all of our buffs and bring everything in.
3. We use Crippling Wave all the time, and do 3 hits of Way of the Hundred Fists every 5 seconds to keep the buff up. 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.
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
Do not play this in Hardcore.
Variants
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. Cyclone Strike is here to help stack enemies together before we start a Shenlong cycle. 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
If you're struggling to survive you can drop The Witching Hour for String of Ears or drop Convention of Elements for Unity.
Concept
While this build is currently too weak to be an RGK, 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. In the start of the fight use each of your generators once to get Combination Strike stacks. Use Fists of Thunder on Lightning, Deadly Reach on Fire and Way of the Hundred Fists on all other elements of Convention of Elements.
Setups
You can switch your rolls to Lightning and use Fists of Thunder as your main damage dealer. 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
A video guide will be released for this build once it gets buffed.
Mechanics
Raiment of a Thousand Storms
- Dashing strikes looks tempting from the 60,000% multiplier, but it does no damage compared to our Generators and is only used to buff their damage.
Shenlong's Spirit
- Gives a 200% 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
- 4% chance to double your Attack Speed for 7 seconds.
- 5 second internal cooldown.
- 2 second window to re-proc with ANY action, including talking to an NPC.
Summary
- Obtain the Raiment of a Thousand Storms and Shenlong's Spirit sets 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.
- Or if you're looking for something more powerful put together Patterns of Justice Tempest Rush or Sunwuko Wave of Light and dominate everything!
Town Is Lava... and so is this build!
-Raxxanterax
