Raiment Shenlong Generator Monk BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete Raiment of a Thousand Storms set bonuses, taking five of the six available Raiment set pieces, and then adding two pieces of the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and one more of your choosing, according to your weakest Raiment set roll (either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders). This auxiliary set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build. You will attain the complete set bonuses of this two-set amalgamation via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

Rolls-wise, you will be striving to reach a good balance of Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed and Area Damage across gear, as well as maximizing Crippling Wave % bonuses on the pants and belt (Cpt. Crimson's pieces in our example in the table below). Area Damage is the fourth desirable primary on the Mantle of the Upside-Down Sinners (accompanying Cooldown and Resource Cost Reductions) and the Fists of Thunder (alongside double Crit rolls). Crit chance and high mainstats are desirable, as always, on the Mask of the Searing Sky. Lastly, Heart of the Crashing Wave and Eight-Demon Boots can remain pure Toughness slots.

Equipping the entire Raiment set allows you to balance between offense and defense in the jewelry slots. Reworked in Patch 2.4, the Endless Walk set — The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet — adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This balance mirrors the Shenlong's playstyle, which delivers punches rooted in one spot for extended periods of time, with periodic dashes of movement to the next big fight (see this build's skills page for more information).

The remaining ring slot will be taken by Unity, as it provides you with unparalleled damage reduction when paired with another on the follower, plus an immortality item for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor). Once you grow confident in handling the build's survivability (or you play in groups), swap Unity for the cyclical damage increase of Convention of Elements.

Introduced in Season 3, the Spirit Guards bracers will multiply your damage reduction for a short duration after using a Spirit Generator — functionally a permanent bonus for this primary-focused build. Stacking with your other sources of damage mitigation, these bracers will add sorely needed survivability to this melee setup. Note the significant range of the unique bonus and try to obtain the maximum without sacrificing Elemental damage, Dexterity, Vitality and Crit Chance.

The mandatory weapon set (and namesake) of the build is Shenlong's Spirit, Shenlong's Fist of Legend and Shenlong's Relentless Assault. These Fist Weapons have been reworked into multiplying 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 top tier viability of the build. The desired primary stats on both weapons are high Damage range, Dexterity, Area Damage and either Life per Hit or CDR; additional Spirit is required in the secondary stats, and a perfect roll would also include a hard crowd control proc (either Stun, Freeze or Blind).

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. Then max out Spirit, which is an important stat in Shenlong set build due to the set mechanics. After that, dump as much as you comfortably can into Dexterity, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed, Crit Chance and Crit Damage, in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem will be procced by its own level 25 property when in melee range, where the Shenlong Monk fights by default.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take for the build, as it was changed into a separate damage multiplication source to primary skills in Patch 2.4.1. Upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quickly becomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its buffed healing secondary effect is just icing on the cake.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken takes a firm spot in your jewelry sockets for Progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. The Shenlong Monk is not an exception, and Bane of the Stricken is considered a great addition to the setup.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Emeralds in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Emeralds as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Dexterity in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. The build can benefit from either Cooldown Reduction (cut down Breath of Heaven and Dashing Strike downtime) or Resource Cost Reduction (damage reduction scaling via Cpt. Crimson), so you can socket a Flawless Royal Diamond or Flawless Royal Topaz in your helm, respectively. In your weapons, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Cubing the Flying Dragon provides you with one of the strongest weapon procs in the game: a chance to double your attack speed with a separate multiplier, an incomparable bonus for a build that benefits so much from IAS.

Depth Diggers are a natural inclusion in this generator build, since by cubing them you gain the maximized 100% multiplicative damage increase to primary skills.

In the Raiment of a Thousand Storms / Captain Crimson mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, place the Crystal Fist to enjoy an even greater degree of survivability throughout the rift with its 50% damage reduction after using Dashing Strike.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build, such as this one.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potion for this build is Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered due the lack of permanent crowd control immunity in the build, and the massive threat hard CC affixes pose to the build.