State of the Monk - Patch 14

[Creatinebrah]

Having played both classes to 13 in the beta, the Monk seems to severely lack in both gameplay and damage. Especially with the constant Monk nerfs, I cannot see how one will enjoy the Monk more than the Barbarian. Barbarian does what the Monk does, but better!

The spirit generators for Monk have been nerfed and it just seems that you are struggling to build up spirit; whereas the Barbarian seems to have excess rage almost all the time.

Also, WTF is up with Wave of Light. I know bells 'monk-y' but the design, animation, damage, and 100 spirit use is just unbelievably bad.

Now I know we haven't seen how spirit passives, gear will play into mid-late game, but it's not looking so good imo.

There are MULTIPLE threads on various D3 fansites (including battlenet), but I think at this point, it's too late to give Monks any significant changes.

Not to mention the animations on the Monk skills are very mediocre. I'd expect a lot more from a game that's been in development for so long.

Thoughts?

Some interesting threads: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/3661...n/page__st__20
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/3700...ser-generator/
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/3664...it-generation/
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4139869239
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4175829926

[LordRayken]

I love the Monk, however, I do notice some frustration when using a few of his moves due to lack of damage and his stupid bell thing taking like my ENTIRE pool of focus.

---------- Post added 2012-03-15 at 07:58 PM ----------

Also, WTF is up with Wave of Light. I know bells 'monk-y' but the design, animation, damage, and 100 spirit use is just unbelievably bad.

Omg lol seriously man

[Creatinebrah]

I love the Monk, however, I do notice some frustration when using a few of his moves due to lack of damage and his stupid bell thing taking like my ENTIRE pool of focus.

---------- Post added 2012-03-15 at 07:58 PM ----------



Omg lol seriously man

I agree with you, Monk will be my first character regardless. They had the Monk well designed, but with the recent nerfs, removal of skills, etc, they have made the class subpar.

Wave of Light, the bell skill, has very low damage for 100 spirit!

With the recent changes, they make Monks look more like healers/supports than damage dealers. Inb4 "why is this monk DPSing and not healing"

[Herecius]

WTF is up with Wave of Light?

THIS is up with Wave of Light. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jik!ZYd!YZYabb

Unless the Skill Calculator isn't updated, which I've a sinking feeling it isn't. ):

EDIT: Nope, it's not updated. However, I checked out the Patch 14 changes, and this build should still work perfectly fine. I'm hoping it's as fun as it looks...

Somewhat related, does anybody have any idea how fast Air Ally attacks?

[Creatinebrah]

http://www.diabloiiiblog.com/beta/di...ch-15-incoming

Let's hope for some changes =D

[booradlly]

WTF is up with Wave of Light?

THIS is up with Wave of Light. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jik!ZYd!YZYabb

Unless the Skill Calculator isn't updated, which I've a sinking feeling it isn't. ):

EDIT: Nope, it's not updated. However, I checked out the Patch 14 changes, and this build should still work perfectly fine. I'm hoping it's as fun as it looks...

Somewhat related, does anybody have any idea how fast Air Ally attacks?

Can you give more detail ? I mean, I don't even . .. You seem to know something about wave of light that we do not ?

tl;dr; wayyy too many double negatives, Im lost

[Herecius]

Can you give more detail ? I mean, I don't even . .. You seem to know something about wave of light that we do not ?

tl;dr; wayyy too many double negatives, Im lost

It's a heavy spirit generation build. It should generate a steady 100 spirit every 5 seconds at full speed, and crits or lucky hits from Air Ally could get that down to much less. So that's a very strong Wave of Light every 3-5 seconds (notice the mantra that'll also be buffing its damage, plus Wave's rune), and every single time I spend that 100 spirit, I'll be healing myself for over 11k as well.

It's an experiment, but I wanted to see how to make Wave of Light work, and this looks fun.

That said, I AM pretty sad that Exploding Palm was made a Spirit spender instead of generator. Really sad, actually. Exploding Palm was one of my favorite techniques to use at the Blizzcon demo.

[Creatinebrah]

It's a heavy spirit generation build. It should generate a steady 100 spirit every 5 seconds at full speed, and crits or lucky hits from Air Ally could get that down to much less. So that's a very strong Wave of Light every 3-5 seconds (notice the mantra that'll also be buffing its damage, plus Wave's rune), and every single time I spend that 100 spirit, I'll be healing myself for over 11k as well.

It's an experiment, but I wanted to see how to make Wave of Light work, and this looks fun.

That said, I AM pretty sad that Exploding Palm was made a Spirit spender instead of generator. Really sad, actually. Exploding Palm was one of my favorite techniques to use at the Blizzcon demo.

You have a very interesting idea and build. But like you said, it's an experiment. While it looks sexy on paper, it could not work out.

I agree with you on Exploding Palm! Skill was just such an amazing asset to the Monk as a generator. Was indeed very upset that it was changed to a spender. I still don't understand why they made that change.

[Usagi Senshi]

Eh, I'm still going to stick with the monk as my main character as I believe they have the most interesting attacks out of all of the classes.

Might roll a wizard or with doctor later on.

[Creatinebrah]

http://www.diablofans.com/news/1122-.../page__st__20/

looks like more 'support' type changes for our Monk :[

[Herecius]

http://www.diablofans.com/news/1122-.../page__st__20/

looks like more 'support' type changes for our Monk :[

God dammit. Now Sweeping Wind is a spirit spender too? Are they just removing all of the spirit generation techniques one by one? Well that ruins my build, ugh.

And worse, it only builds stacks on critical hits now, making the spirit generation when at max stacks (which is an ability made partially useless since it costs a WHOPPING 75 spirit to use) even more useless, which has already been made more useless by nerfing the spirit-per-second to 3 from 5. :l

EDIT: Modified it a bit, I suppose.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jYk!ZYd!YZYaYb
The change will be that the monk's gearing will have to be full crit to take complete advantage of the Fists of Thunder rune. Pretty unhappy still overall because I really liked the idea of using multiple spirit generators.

[Creatinebrah]

God dammit. Now Sweeping Wind is a spirit spender too? Are they just removing all of the spirit generation techniques one by one? Well that ruins my build, ugh.

And worse, it only builds stacks on critical hits now, making the spirit generation when at max stacks (which is an ability made partially useless since it costs a WHOPPING 75 spirit to use) even more useless, which has already been made more useless by nerfing the spirit-per-second to 3 from 5. :l

EDIT: Modified it a bit, I suppose.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jYk!ZYd!YZYaYb
The change will be that the monk's gearing will have to be full crit to take complete advantage of the Fists of Thunder rune. Pretty unhappy still overall because I really liked the idea of using multiple spirit generators.

The only reasoning I see with all these supposed bad changes is that somewhere mid-late game, we get some passive spirit regen. Someone on official summed it up nicely:

"Explain how the monk keeps getting damage nerfs every single patch, yet the cost of the moves remains high. Unless there's a lot of passive spirit regen later, I don't understand the changes they keep making. With each patch, the Wizard and Barbarian are becoming more appealing.

The Wizard for instance is stacked with moves that do 200%+ with much lower costs in comparison to the Monk which barely has any moves above 200% AND they cost a ridiculous amount. If they keep the Wizard as is and continue nerfing the Monk, I think I'll end up either playing a Wizard like everyone else or avoiding Wizards all together.

Imagine playing 2 player game with a Wizard just spamming huge AoE moves each fight which also do 200%+ damage. They can do it easily. Well, you might say that the Wizard can only cast so many until they have to wait for Arcane power to regen. The regen is very fast anyways, and rarely does it take more than two abilities for the Wizard to kill something in the beta.

Now, I'm all for waiting till release so we can get past Act 1 and Normal difficulty to see how things play out, but I know I won't be having any fun in Normal if any of my friends are playing the Wizard just blowing up monsters left and right while I'm constantly trying to build Spirit just to throw out one halfway decent move."

[Strah]

The only reasoning I see with all these supposed bad changes is that somewhere mid-late game, we get some passive spirit regen. Someone on official summed it up nicely:

"Explain how the monk keeps getting damage nerfs every single patch, yet the cost of the moves remains high. Unless there's a lot of passive spirit regen later, I don't understand the changes they keep making. With each patch, the Wizard and Barbarian are becoming more appealing.

The Wizard for instance is stacked with moves that do 200%+ with much lower costs in comparison to the Monk which barely has any moves above 200% AND they cost a ridiculous amount. If they keep the Wizard as is and continue nerfing the Monk, I think I'll end up either playing a Wizard like everyone else or avoiding Wizards all together.

Imagine playing 2 player game with a Wizard just spamming huge AoE moves each fight which also do 200%+ damage. They can do it easily. Well, you might say that the Wizard can only cast so many until they have to wait for Arcane power to regen. The regen is very fast anyways, and rarely does it take more than two abilities for the Wizard to kill something in the beta.

Now, I'm all for waiting till release so we can get past Act 1 and Normal difficulty to see how things play out, but I know I won't be having any fun in Normal if any of my friends are playing the Wizard just blowing up monsters left and right while I'm constantly trying to build Spirit just to throw out one halfway decent move."

Meh, are you comparing a "glass cannon" wizard, the "pure" dps class, whose only purpose is to deal damage to a monk, who can be tanky, deal damage and heal as well, being a jack-of-all-trades?

[Gallahadd]

Meh, are you comparing a "glass cannon" wizard, the "pure" dps class, whose only purpose is to deal damage to a monk, who can be tanky, deal damage and heal as well, being a jack-of-all-trades?

except that they've been continually lowering the tankyness, damage AND healing of monks in pretty much every patch. So we started out as being able to be unhittable OR offer very good healing OR do decent damage. Now we can't do any of these, but can kinda do them all... I know which setup I prefer.

if the changes in patch 15 are real... Yeah I think I'll just not bother with the monk, maybe level a Tank Warrior, or a Arcane Mage. (why does it not surprise me that in a Blizz game, Tank Warriors and Arcane Mages are very good )

[Strah]

except that they've been continually lowering the tankyness, damage AND healing of monks in pretty much every patch. So we started out as being able to be unhittable OR offer very good healing OR do decent damage. Now we can't do any of these, but can kinda do them all... I know which setup I prefer.

if the changes in patch 15 are real... Yeah I think I'll just not bother with the monk, maybe level a Tank Warrior, or a Arcane Mage. (why does it not surprise me that in a Blizz game, Tank Warriors and Arcane Mages are very good )

Both Wizard and Barb had nerfs in patch 14 as well.

"Monks now have innate 30% passive damage reduction versus all sources."

I wouldn't call that a big nerf to tankiness to be honest.
And as i said, i believe blizz are trying to make monk a jack-of-all-trades class, as in you can not be a designated healer/tank/dps, but you can do all 3 at the same time, which makes the class very versatile and useful in co-op play.

[Gallahadd]

Both Wizard and Barb had nerfs in patch 14 as well.

"Monks now have innate 30% passive damage reduction versus all sources."

I wouldn't call that a big nerf to tankiness to be honest.
And as i said, i believe blizz are trying to make monk a jack-of-all-trades class, as in you can not be a designated healer/tank/dps, but you can do all 3 at the same time, which makes the class very versatile and useful in co-op play.

Yes they had nerfs in patch 14, but they're still in a very good place compared to the monk, Tank Warriors look very solid, as to Dps warriors and all specs of mage. Of course not being in the beta this is all based from patch notes and a few whispers I've heard, so I may be wrong.

Where did you see the Bolded part? I must have missed that one, does make up for the constant dodge nerfs, tbh it actually works better, spikiness being a bad bad thing and all... so maybe Tank Monk still isn't totally dead...

and I really hope Blizz decide NOT to make the monk a 'Jack of all trades' as that NEVER works, especially in a single player game... If this was an MMO then sure, it just might work, but for a game with a large single player componant, it seems a bit silly to make a class that only really shines in co-op play, and can't spec into a dedicated single player spec.

[Creatinebrah]

Yes they had nerfs in patch 14, but they're still in a very good place compared to the monk, Tank Warriors look very solid, as to Dps warriors and all specs of mage. Of course not being in the beta this is all based from patch notes and a few whispers I've heard, so I may be wrong.

Where did you see the Bolded part? I must have missed that one, does make up for the constant dodge nerfs, tbh it actually works better, spikiness being a bad bad thing and all... so maybe Tank Monk still isn't totally dead...

and I really hope Blizz decide NOT to make the monk a 'Jack of all trades' as that NEVER works, especially in a single player game... If this was an MMO then sure, it just might work, but for a game with a large single player componant, it seems a bit silly to make a class that only really shines in co-op play, and can't spec into a dedicated single player spec.

bolded=100% agreed.

and about the 30% passive dmg reduction was because melee (yes, both barbs and monks got this) were getting rocked

I remember in patch 14, I leveled monk and barb to 13 and I must say, Monk just seems like a right-clicker, the lack of skill usage is just horrid. While the Barb is always full on rage and just dishing out skills left n right.

I don't see why anyone would pick a Monk over a Barb besides the genuine attractiveness of Monks...