The fact that all those skill bonuses are additive is horribly shortsighted on the part of the blizzard devs. Any other damage increases in that category (which is the vast majority of damage increases) are going to be totally useless. Power Pylons are going to be barely noticeable, for example.
I mean, I can see why they're doing this. They can't afford the QA overhead to rebalance the core skills until the next expansion, I suspect because they don't want to mess with the leveling experience. Adding items lets them buff the skills without having to worry about the pre-70 experience. I hope they figure out a better way to buff skills that need it.
0
The proc alternates between your main hand and off-hand, depending on which weapon was active for the attack that procced the gem. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13466126509
It does benefit from crit chance and crit damage, as well as +lightning skill damage. It can crit and proc Pain Enhancer.
0
0
Every time you punch something, it applies the DoT. So the first part of the combo applies 1 stack. The second part applies seven stacks. The third part applies one stack. The screenshot proved the dot stacks at least 7 times. Yes, it is just as crazy as it sounds.
The conflagrate rune says that "burn damage" refreshes the dot. I read that to mean that other skills that deal burn damage ALSO refresh the dot. The only one of those I've noticed is Blazing Hydra (which replaced Venom Hydra), which also states in the description that burn damage can stack. I would guess that Blazing Hydra can maintain a conflag stack, if they don't just combine into a crazy sustained burn effect.
Gonna go test this, actually, but my advance prediction is that every hit of FoF refreshes all existing stacks, just like conflag apparently works.
0
0
0
0
I think it's very interesting that Frozen Orb says it does 'up to X% weapon damage' for both the pierce and the burst. Does that mean it spews ice bolts everywhere, but an enemy can only be hit by so many of the bolts? It also does much less damage, presumably in exchange for hitting way more enemies.
Ray of Frost getting an AOE is sooooo delicious. I love the Black Ice build already, this'll just make it better. Tiny radius, but I suspect it'll still be noticeable vs packs.
This also makes me suspect that Life Steal is going to be entirely eliminated in favor of things that are easier to balance like LoH.
Looks like they haven't figured out what to do with Crit Mass yet... or they're planning on nerfing crit chance and proc rates until it isn't overpowered.
0
So, no removing Fear procs from Echoing Fury (though you might be able to reduce the proc rate).
I predict the cost will scale with the number of affixes you've already rerolled.
0
0
This has minimal gear requirements but mostly can't perma-freeze. Has enough range that permafreeze often isn't necessary. Living Lightning gives enough AP through Prodigy that you can alternate LL/meteor vs even one enemy. Strong group build; probably has the least gear reqs of any CM build. I really enjoy this build, and if you run 1-2 sources of APoC, against large packs or fat bosses you can toss one LL and then just hold the meteor shower button to rain death.
Rune variants:
Meteor: Meteor Shower roflstomps big packs and very large enemies, but is terrible vs small, fast elites. Good for farming high density areas in act 1. Molten Impact is much more effective vs single targets, and a cyclone strike monk can gather enemies up for nuking. Liquify is vastly better for procs, so if you're playing high MP or ubers and you desperately need to keep things frozen, that's the rune to use.
Frost Nova: 9s cooldown for high MP/ubers, 15% crit for farming packs, 15% damage for groups.
Diamond Skin: LL gives so much AP that you don't need to run Prism, really, but it is an option, as is Diamond Shards. Crystal Shell for low gear/not dying.
Magic Weapon: More leech. Sub whatever you want if you don't need leech (slow time is pretty sweet for meteor builds).
Energy Armor: 5% crit, or 25% resists.
Arcane Dynamo is very annoyingly consumed by Frost Nova, so sub Evocation if you're spamming Frost Nova really aggressively, or Conflagration if your group does way more damage than you.
Raining Meteors build, aka just spams meteors only (requires an offhand source with -AP to meteors, preferably also a SoJ to reduce it further) is similar, but no LL, no prodigy, no arcane dynamo, and tries to run Slow Time and/or Teleport, plus Diamond Skin: Prism, possibly Power of the Storm. Very dependent on APoC since that's how you fuel your meteors. Not recommended unless you have crazysauce gear and mostly play in groups, as it can struggle on single targets. Favors Star Pact or Liquefy, for either cheaper meteors or more APoC procs. I think it generally drops Frost Nova.
Totally silly meteor build: You run a standard WW/CM build, but you swap out something for meteor, use WW and APoC to build crazy AP, then spend it on meteor.
0
0
0
I really want Spirit Barrage/Haunt/Rush of Essence to be a good build. It cries out for a dedicated legendary or three! Haunt multiple targets per cast, +x% Haunt duration, gain crit chance whenever you gain Rush of Essence, lots more Spirit Barrage damage, Spirit Barrage triggers Vision Quest, etc. Adding AOE damage would be ideal, as the build is really hampered by the lack of AOE.
I'm not sure how to fix the fact that it really favors using a 2H and that's inherently unfun because the slow cast animations make it really hard to dodge. This is another general reason why I don't like Witch Doctors; their resource system strongly favors slow weapons. In fact, the ONLY abilities they have that encourage fast weapons that I can find are Poison Dart: Snake to the Face and Fetish Sycophants! I don't understand why their class-specific weapon is a fast dagger and an offhand; everything about the class suggests that their class specific weapon should be slow and/or 2H. In fact, I request the addition of Totem Staves, which are the witch doctor equivalent of Daibos.
Other than Witch Doctors, most of the problems I've noticed are not skills that are nonviable, they're skills that are so good that no alternatives can keep up.
Fists of Thunder: Thunderclap, for example. Because Sweeping Wind: Cyclone is such a powerful damage multiplier, monks end up using the primary which is best at proccing it. That has always been FoT:TC because both the main hit and the cleave have a 75% proc coefficient, resulting in a 150% coefficient for a single target. The only other monk primary that double hits is the WotHF rune that applies a DoT, and WotHF is slower so it produces less procs. On top of that, FoT:TC has a teleport! I would make the main hit have a 90% coefficient and the cleave have 0-5% coefficient, and remove the coefficient from the DoT on WotHF. At that point, FoT:TC would be good mostly because of the teleport, and other primaries could actually be useful.
Would it kill you to give the second hit of WotHF a good proc coefficient? If I hit someone nine times, I really would expect to a few procs to go off. It has the major disadvantage of locking you into place, it could use a crazy advantage to make up for it. WotHF is also slow, so this would bring the proc rate up toward parity with FoT's high attack speed.
Mantra of Conviction: Overawe is another skill that is so OP that it pushes out other skills. The damage bonus from spamming it is so good that other means of spending spirit really cannot compete. I really, truly want to use Wave of Light on my monk, but giving up 15% increased damage from Breath of Heaven: Blazing Wrath and then spending spirit on Bells instead of MoC is not better. This is in part because time spent using WoL is time NOT spent generating cyclones via FoT:TC, because FoT:TC has a fantastic coefficient and WoL has a terrible coefficient.
Spamming mantras in general is boring. I should always want to hit WoL over MoC, unless I have so much spirit I can hit both. Defensive mantras can be a bit better, because defensive abilities usually have cooldowns and are awesome; you naturally pop the skill and then spam the mantra only while it's on cooldown.
Solution: Runes should increase the effect of mantra by 50%, not 100%; spamming mantra should also be 50%. Adjust by upping the base bonuses. Drop Breath of Heaven's wrath rune to 10% increased damage. Then buff the proc coefficient on WoL. SSS might also need a proc coefficient buff, if hitting SSS is not at least as good at proccing as just using a primary (per second). SSS's proc rate might need to scale with attack speed somehow, actually, since I don't think the animation speed scales with gear.
Combination Strike would be more viable with a buff indicator (possibly same for Foresight rune of Deadly Reach, which incidentally needs a duration nerf). It promotes a fun style, but is hard to use. It would be nice if the tooltip made clear that using any spirit generator maintains the entire stack, but a buff indicator would also help.
OWE should read '50% of your resistances to specific elements are added to your other resistances'. It stops being OP, doesn't break anyone's gear setups, and makes it possible to gear a monk without using the AH.
Mystic Ally: Fire Ally needs to offer 10% increased damage. Then I would run it over Breath of Life! That would be fun. Water Ally should offer increased dodge, and Air Ally should generate 25 spirit 8% of the time and/or grant attack speed. I really want Eternal Ally to sacrifice itself to prevent you or an ally from dying, but I'm not sure how to make that not overpowered.
Breath of Life should hit allies a screen and a half away. The heal from Cyclone Strike should not have twice as much range as the heal from the skill that heals people. Guiding Light needs to have twice the duration so that Breath of Life can easily be used to maintain it, and a buff icon.
Energy Twister should probably not tick faster with attack speed. You can already cast them faster, and they stack; DoTs need to tick faster only if they don't stack.
What's the logic behind Ray of Frost not having a 100% proc coefficient? It's a single target spell! Is it because its channeled or because its a spender?
I really, really hate the range and collision detection on Telport. Jumping through the air should not give you three times the range of bending space to your will. I mean, maybe I'm just horribly spoiled by D2's teleport (anywhere on the screen with no cooldown), but the number of times I've tried to blink through or past terrain and gone nowhere is infuriating. Either make it smarter or add a UI option to show the exact range whenever teleport is off cooldown. Better yet, just give it the same 'anywhere on screen' range of Leap. Best yet, add that to the Reversal rune! That way, you can use it to teleport long distances, but not more often than every 8s, because if you use it more often it'll return you to your previous location, so it isn't OP.
Ball Lightning feels like it costs too little hatred, and does slightly too much damage for how easy it is to hit with.
0
Here is my advice:
You'll want Fists of Thunder (either Thunderclap or Quickening) as your primary. Other spirit generators cannot compete.
Wave of Light as your secondary. If you're using Thunderclap, go with Empowered Wave, if Quickening, use any of the other runes, they're all pretty good.
Serenity: Ascension because invicibility.
Sweeping Wind: Cyclone because damage.
Blinding Flash: Faith in the Light because crowd control and burst damage (pop this before spamming bells).
Mantra of Conviction: Overawe (or a defensive passive if your gear sucks or you're playing on overly high MP).
Passives:
OWE
Seize the Initiative (probably)
The last slot is pretty customizable:
Resolve if you want more defense
Exalted Soul if you want to be able to spam more bells in a row (gives you massive burst with MoC and Blinding Flash)
Combination Strike and replace one of the kills above with Deadly Reach: Foresight or WotHF: Blazing Fists).
The build with FoT:TC and MoC doesn't really have all that much spirit to burn on bells if you're spamming MoC every 3s on normal mobs, but it can easily save up enough spirit to drop some Empowered Waves on elite packs.
The build with Quickening will have a LOT of spirit regen, and benefits from Exalted Soul since your spirit goes up and down super fast. It will generate less cyclones, though, which are a lot of your sustained damage.
Gear:
This build gears pretty much identically to other monks in that you want gobs and gobs of crit for Sweeping Wind: Cyclone.
The only difference is that you get less benefit from a Wan Khim Lau since some of your damage is from bells and not lightning based, which makes Skorn a more attractive option by comparison. Using a 2H will make your bells hit like trucks, but you'll get to use them slightly less often, and this also makes spirit per second slightly more attractive.
0
So, just don't bother upgrading your gems to high levels until the rest of your gear is perfect. The marquise is 8x as expensive and is only 10% better.