Official Blizzard Quote:
The monk skill trees are being fleshed out in high level design concepts and nitty-gritty skill specifics.
http://diablofans.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=88&pictureid=718&thumb=1
The Monk's skills are a combination of hand-to-hand combos, runic spells, and holy powers. Skills like Crippling Wave, Way of a Hundred Fists, and Exploding Palm have shown us the combo system that is planned for the Monk. Inner Sanctuary and Seven Sided Strike show us the unique runic abilities that the Monk has, although is important to note that Monk's rune abilities are a separate system from the skill runes that have been added to Diablo III. Finally, Radiant Visage shows us the Monk's Holy abilities. He is also a melee-oriented character, with skills like Impenetrable Defense and Force Without Thought.Another important detail to note from this Twitter post are the key words "nitty-gritty". The fact that they are already on to the nitty-gritty speaks volumes of where the development team is with their work. It is usually not until near-completion that the development team will worry about the details. This is not to say that they don't have loads more work to do with the Monk, such as balancing, play testing, and reiteration of his skills; however, progress is always a good sign.
Going along with info on the Monk there was another Twitter post about the Female version of the Monk.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I think we already sort of promised we would. You'll see her before too long.
With the rest of his skills being worked on, one could only imagine what other skills the Monk will have. What type of skills should the Monk have?
I am also really interested to see how the combo system plays and what else they do to make him different from the Barb.
And i've seen somewhere they were planning to give some auras to the monk. Well, we know auras will surely works different from D2 (because the skill display changed)... I think it's going to be a active buff that you can toogle on/off. And i think he will have just a small amount of auras - like one for HP/DEF, one for damage and for general energy.
Other then that i think the monk will have some kind of ranged magic attack. Maybe even holy bolt !
There should also be healthy cooldowns on those, preventing them from being spammed. ARPG's are so suseptible to spamming, and it ruins them.
I think the monk will just be the dude who fights with his hands with passive skills on the side.
And in that update, I think Blizzard was just fucking with us. Wasn't it Bashiok who said it?
lol