Monk Raiment of a Thousand Storms Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

Active Skills
Crippling Wave Mangle Dashing Strike Radiance 1 Epiphany Desert Shroud 2 Cyclone Strike Implosion 3 Exploding Palm Shocking Grasp 4 Mantra of Retribution Transgression
Passive Skills
Alacrity Seize the Initiative Harmony Momentum

Due to the focus of the Raiment set on generator skills for damage, you will modify the beginner build to drop spenders and resource regeneration skills, and focus on attack speed and utility instead.

Raiment builds fight with no-nonsense martial prowess, pummeling demons down with fists alone; the chosen primary for the purpose will be Crippling Wave. You will retain Exploding Palm from the leveling build, applying it on lower health enemies and punching them into living AoE detonations. Your battle opener will be to Dashing Strike into a fight, triggering damage bonuses from Momentum, Radiance and, when attained, the 6-piece bonuses of Raiment. Draw enemies in with a Cyclone Strike, then mow them down with Crippling Wave and Exploding Palm. Due to its long cooldown in beginner builds, only pop Epiphany Desert Shroud when you engage in prolonged, dangerous fights.

• The preferred primary skill (which you can take all the way into the endgame) is Crippling Wave, and you will best match the skill's base debuffing utility and excellent AoE with the additional damage of the Mangle rune.
• Early in character progression, you should keep Exploding Palm Shocking Grasp for some additional AoE damage, as you will have plenty of Spirit to work with in a generator-focused build. Later on, when you transition into a Shenlong set generator build, you will swap this slot for the bursty Spirit regeneration of Breath of Heaven Infused with Light.
• Naturally, you will keep the Monk signature mobility skill, Dashing Strike — not only for farming efficiency, but also taking the Raiment 6-piece bonus (primary skill damage increases for 6 seconds after Dashing Strike) into account. You will feed into the focus of Raiment builds by picking the Radiance rune, whose Attack Speed bonuses will add nicely to your damage.
• You will be using the Monk's strongest pull ability, Cyclone Strike Implosion, to draw enemies right into your Mangle radius. Notably, Cyclone Strike will also trigger Lefebvre's Soliloquy once you acquire the item, which is an important endgame factor. Epiphany Desert Shroud offers powerful damage mitigation and utility bonuses, but its long cooldown (even longer for beginner builds) needs to be accounted for; only trigger the skill when fighting enemies that are either significant in number (large packs) or difficulty (elites with hard affixes and Rift Guardians).
• You have decent flexibility in your Mantra choice early on; you can bolster your damage with the attack speed bonuses of Mantra of Retribution Transgression, your survivability with Mantra of Salvation Agility, or your mobility with Mantra of Conviction Annihilation. Adjust according to your needs and preferences.
• Seize the Initiative and Alacrity are Raiment set passive staples, as they both feed multiplicatively into the all-important Attack Speed of the build. You will retain Harmony and Momentum from the leveling build, which add significant survivability and a minor damage increase respectively. Note that you will swap out Momentum as soon as you get a decently geared character and try to push into the endgame; Beacon of Ytar (for Epiphany uptime) and Exalted Soul (for more Shenlong set damage) are far more important than Momentum's additive damage increase.

The build above is specifically created not to require any additional sets or legendary items. In order to transition to a late game-oriented spec using the same set, we have listed the top three priority items to obtain when starting out with this set.

• Shenlong's Relentless Assault and Shenlong's Fist of Legend — this pair of fist weapons multiplies your damage for each point of Spirit you have, and upon reaching your maximum reserve will irreversibly deplete it, forcing you to rebuild the damage bonuses as quickly as possible. This necessary weakness is offset by another massive damage multiplier, ensuring the viability of a generator build.
• Depth Diggers — these legendary pants are a natural inclusion in generator builds, usually in the armor slot of the Cube. They provide a multiplicative damage increase to resource generating attacks.
• Flying Dragon — provides one of the strongest weapon procs in the game: a chance to double your attack speed with a separate multiplier, a powerful bonus for IAS-reliant builds like Raiment.

The mini-guide above is simply meant to acquaint you with the set and how a build with just the Haedrig's Gift (or a newly found set), and no supporting legendaries would play out. We have the following endgame-oriented builds that use the set, and encourage you to explore these much stronger playstyles!

• Raiment Shenlong Generator Monk Build