I'm having trouble with this - the skills listed in the guide aren't available options when I'm in the game.
Options for key '2' are Dashing Strike, Exploding Palm and Sweeping Wind - the guide says to use Breath of Heaven for this key. What do I need to do to make that an option for that key?
Options for key '1' are Blinding Flash, Breath of Heaven, Serenity and Inner Sanctuary.
I can't figure out how to map those skills to different keys since they're only listed as skills for the '1' key. Any help?
A small update after a long silence: I haven't played the game for a long while, but I will play again come 1.0.4 and update the guide for all the balance changes in that patch.
I can also say that I was a bit lazy to update. Just before I quit I figured that DW is actually superior to 1h/Shield, but I never got around to updating on that here. So for all of you struggling in A3, try that. The attack speed/LoH might make all the difference for you. Half the reason some of you struggle in A3 even though you're doing everything right is because of attack speed. Spears are usually cheaper (or at least when I played), so you end up with 1.4-1.5 AS and simply don't get enough from LoH.
Blizzard changed something in the talent calculator - Mantra of Retribution showed up instead of Sweeping Wind in all the links. I don't know for how long this has been the case and how many people it confused, but I've fixed the links now.
What stats should I aim for in different acts? Like a barb needs 500+allres for act 1, 700 for act 2 and 1k allres for acts 3 and 4, and 35k hp for act 1 and 50+ for acts 3 and 4 etc. What are the targets I should aim for with a monk?
They don't understand that we have only 1 slot for a spirit spender DPS ability. We are not going to drop using 3 defensive skills, and nobody will want to skip Mantra. Serenity is just too good on its own - it provides a much needed DPS window vs certain packs; Breath of Heaven provides a passive 15% damage buff via rune; and Faith in the Light buff scaling with AS ends up being ridiculous burst. That's on top of the fact that you sort of need to use all 3 of them to survive unless your gear is amazing and you kill things before it matters. All of them provide amazing offenses, better than most of our spirit spender abilities, THAT is the issue.
Wave of Light is still gonna be crap because 75 spirit is just too much. Even if it's going to hit like a truck, it just takes too long to get 75 spirit for the ability to be fun, even if it works out to be a DPS increase in numbers. A simple damage increase to SSS isn't going to be sufficient. Nobody in their right mind will enjoy having a 30 seconds cooldown in the only slot we can put a random ability into. We simply don't have a bar slot for a "pop every once in a while for fun" ability.
Exploding Palm numbers must be a joke. It went from dealing 73% weapon damage per second to 83%. Well thanks. Sure, the skill is about the corpse explosion yada yada, but that doesn't help much at all versus elites - the hard part is when they're all alive. If you ever used EP you'd try to time it close to the mobs death to actually get the explosion off, otherwise you just spam Overawe because that's just better. That won't change with these numbers.
They don't understand that we have only 1 slot for a spirit spender DPS ability. We are not going to drop using 3 defensive skills, and nobody will want to skip Mantra. Serenity is just too good on its own - it provides a much needed DPS window vs certain packs; Breath of Heaven provides a passive 15% damage buff via rune; and Faith in the Light buff scaling with AS ends up being ridiculous burst. That's on top of the fact that you sort of need to use all 3 of them to survive unless your gear is amazing and you kill things before it matters. All of them provide amazing offenses, better than most of our spirit spender abilities, THAT is the issue.
Wave of Light is still gonna be crap because 75 spirit is just too much. Even if it's going to hit like a truck, it just takes too long to get 75 spirit for the ability to be fun, even if it works out to be a DPS increase in numbers. A simple damage increase to SSS isn't going to be sufficient. Nobody in their right mind will enjoy having a 30 seconds cooldown in the only slot we can put a random ability into. We simply don't have a bar slot for a "pop every once in a while for fun" ability.
Exploding Palm numbers must be a joke. It went from dealing 73% weapon damage per second to 83%. Well thanks. Sure, the skill is about the corpse explosion yada yada, but that doesn't help much at all versus elites - the hard part is when they're all alive. If you ever used EP you'd try to time it close to the mobs death to actually get the explosion off, otherwise you just spam Overawe because that's just better. That won't change with these numbers.
Underwhelming.
I'd argue that deadly reach- foresight > BoH or Blinding flash ,especially when coupled with combination strike. Whether you agree or not you should try it and maybe see if it's worth bringing up in your guide.
I also feel that SSS-FO might be better than BoH. it's definitely the build I'm going to try.
As for your comment on XP, I completely agree for 1 hand or dw, because spirit isn't a big deal. However it's dmg per spirit is increased by over 300%. This makes it very very good for a 2 hander set up. Not only because of the damage per spirit, but DoTs are based on a 2.0aps. I'm definitely going to try this with SSS-FO. Maybe sweeping winds if I get 4pc innas.
I'd argue that deadly reach- foresight > BoH or Blinding flash ,especially when coupled with combination strike. Whether you agree or not you should try it and maybe see if it's worth bringing up in your guide.
There are a bunch of problems related with 2 spirit regen abilities and using combo strike as a passive..
First we need to understand that the majority of players running on a kinda small budget and their gear is far from being amazing.. They simply cant afford missing the heal from BoH nor the defense from one passive.
Im not sure if its realy that much fun to alternate between spirit regen 1 and spirit regen 2 just for keeping the damage buff up and have a 3sec timeframe to unload my spirit with what ever. Im kinda sure many people havin a hardtime to achieve this.
Dont get me wrong. For some experienced monks its sure be fun and some what challenging to play a build like that. But most people will lack either the experience or the gear for playing a build like this.
Deadly reach can very well be more effective health than the heal, though I suppose that's where the experience comes in. But you don't have to keep alternating foresight lasts 30 seconds and combination strike will always be at least be 8% dmg and I find myself having the option to attack from range, without the teleport, results in me using both frequently. But yeah, I guess it's fun for me because it's a bit more to keep track of.
Then again I plan to drop OWE which is something most people wouldn't do but it's viable. But I'd argue that deadly reach even without combination strike > BoH.
Yeah I see where you're coming from, but I think that's more of a personal preference thing. After all we're talking about a difference of 3%, and you can't directly compare a heal vs a ranged ability.
Not only because of the damage per spirit, but DoTs are based on a 2.0aps.
What does this mean exactly?
Anyhow, Paragon levels sparkled my interest to Diablo 3 again, which means I'll be playing which means I'll expanding this guide rather than just updating it. My thoughts so far:
I'm most likely going to be rewriting the guide from scratch because the whole point of the game is changing with this patch. What's going to matter now is speed of clearing. Having read the entire patch note, I'm pretty sure that progressing through Inferno is no longer going to be an issue pretty much regardless of which exact build you're using, as long as it makes sense and you have the appropriate gear. Hence there's no point in "forcing" a certain build anymore like in this guide.
Instead I'm going to write about which abilities are the most efficient and where, certain obvious or not very obvious combinations that just work well, add a bit more theory and numbers (f.ex. Sweeping Wind mechanics).
Gear section will probably become the main focus of the guide as well, seeing as legendaries actually have a weight now and will be sought after. It'll still be just a listing of stuff with a few comments, but I'll put more effort here as there's actually a reason to min/max now.
However, I'm not going to play the game (at least not a lot) until next week, so this might be slightly delayed.
Not only because of the damage per spirit, but DoTs are based on a 2.0aps.
What does this mean exactly?
They did some changes and all damage over time effects are calculated as if you have 2.0 aps. If you have more it doesn't effect the Damage over time and if you less it's set to 2.0 for calculation purposes. I believe it was to buff the slower 2 handers.
At least that was my understanding. I'll find you a link in a minute.
On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills. Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways. It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns. We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”. Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear. As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed. So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher. A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds. The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.
Btw, Shinna Combination strike stays stacked long as you stay "in combat" you can continue to to use either generator and it will remain 16% once you've used both at least 1 time.
Regarding that blue post: it's indeed not going into any calculation any more. He's just described how they converted "for 5 seconds" to "over 5 seconds". So, for example, this is why Fists of Fury effect went up from 10% for 5 seconds to 100% over 5 seconds. Assuming an APS of 2.0, FoF would tick 10 times, so that's 100% weapon damage. Pretty simple.
Why it's a buff for 2handers - because all DoTs now deal a constant amount of total weapon damage over a period of time, so APS doesn't improve DoTs, and the APS is pretty much the best thing about 1handers.
Now that the patch is out, there's no need to worry about that anymore.
I most likely won't update this anymore as I've lost interest to D3 and gaming in general.
Here's what I had a few weeks earlier when 1.0.4 just came out:
My focus with this new article is to collect useful information about the Monk class. I'm assuming the reader at least leveled a Monk to 60 and is familiar with all the tooltips, spells and runes, I won't be covering any basics.
Spirit generators
Spirit generators have different attack speeds. I've attempted to test them as good as I can here. Knowing these values allows us to actually compare spirit generators accurately. Lets look at weapon damage per second and spirit generation per second, assuming a 1.0 attacks per second character.
Fists of Thunder: 45% faster. This converts into 159.5% weapon damage per second and 8.7 spirit per second.
Deadly Reach: 16% faster. This converts into 127.6% weapon damage per second and 6.96 spirit per second.
Crippling Wave: 11.5% faster. This converts into 122.65% weapon damage per second and 7.805 spirit per second.
Way of the Hundred Fists: 8.75% faster. This converts into 152.25% weapon damage per second and 8.7 spirit per second.
Let's consider direct weapon damage increasing runes. Runes that increase the damage of only a part of the combo I will simply average out.
Fists of Thunder with Thunderclap: applies only to non-finisher strikes, averages out to 133.33% weapon damage per strike. Converts into 193.33% weapon damage per second.
Deadly Reach with Scattered Blows: averages out to 130% weapon damage per strike. Converts into 150.8% weapon damage per second.
Crippling Wave with Mangle: converts into 159.44% weapon damage per second.
Way of the Hundred Fists with Hands of Lightning: averages out to 160% weapon damage per strike. Converts into 174% weapon damage per second.
Way of the Hundred Fists with Windforce Flurry: averages out to 176.66% weapon damage per strike. Converts into 192.12% weapon damage per second.
Other weapon damage runes.
Fists of Thunder with Bounding Light: doesn't proc on the main target. If you attack a single target, it just does nothing. If you're up against two targets, the lightning does proc, but it only hits the secondary target, and doesn't chain back to the main target (chain lightnings don't get reduced between jumps, they always hit for 73%). It's useless in single target, although it's fairly close to Thunderclap for AoE.
Fists of Thunder with Static Charge: puts a debuff on the target you're clicking on when you attack with FoT. When you click on another target, it strikes the debuffed target for 37% weapon damage (and debuffs the new target - you can have multiple debuffs up). This is the only way it works - the AoE finisher of FoT doesn't proc it nor applies the debuff, other sources of damage don't proc it. Single target wise, this has no benefit at all, and it's not exactly a comfortable way to AoE things either.
Way of the Hundred Fists with Fists of Fury: applies a DoT on all targets hit by WotHF. The DoT doesn't stack, attacking again only refreshes it. This is basically a flat 20% weapon damage per second, so this skill/rune converts into 172.25% weapon damage per second.
I'm not going to compare runes that give buffs such as crit, attack speed or run speed, because that's gear and build dependant. It's well possible that 15% attack speed or 18% damage are worth more than the differences between primary skills, but we can only know that with a spreadsheet that accounts for all sources of damage and your gear.
Thunderclap hits, which are separate from the main strike, proc on-hit effects for 75% each. This includes the hit on the main target. So, if you're fighting a bunch of mobs, you get 140% of your life on hit every time you strike the main target, and then 75% for every offtarget Thunderclap hits. This all applies to Bleed effects as well which further gives FoT/Thunderclap a damage advantage. WotHF/Fists of Fury has this effect too, as the DoT application procs on-hit effects.
Spirit Spenders
The tooltip for Sweeping Wind is very vague - it doesn't even mention in which time frame it does its damage. Tests show that it does 20% of your tooltip DPS per second, so it scales with everything - attack speed, crit, crit damage (note that these tests were done with a single weapon, dual wielding mechanics are described below). Sweeping Wind snapshots your stats when you cast it and keeps them until it fades or is recasted, Cyclones inherit that snapshot.
This has a very interesting interaction with the dual wield mechanics: with DW you strike with your main and off hand in turns, i.e. your character actually switches between the weapons and your stats update, namely your attack speed and weapon damage range. This is easily observed: look at your attacks per second and at your weapon damage range at the tooltip for "Attack" ability, which is available if you drag a mouse ability off the bar; the DPS tooltip doesn't update on this because it simply counts the average of the two. When you cast Sweeping Wind (or pretty much any spell), it takes a snapshot of all of your stats, with the weapon that is currently active. Ergo casting Sweeping Wind while your stronger, higher DPS weapon is active is profitable.
There's a misconception that weapon attack speed somehow matters here and that you should "use a slow mainhand and a fast offhand". It doesn't, because Sweeping Wind scales with attacks per second. If you use two weapons with the exact same DPS but different speeds, it doesn't matter which hand is active when you use Sweeping Wind. Similarly, there's a misconception that off-hand DPS is less important than main-hand DPS, and that's very far from the truth.
Another interesting thing about Sweeping Wind is that if you cast the spell again while the aura is already up, it will simply extend your current buff without scanning the stats again, as well as keep your stacks. It doesn't matter which weapon or buffs you have when refreshing, only when you cast it first time. This is fairly useful when moving between packs.
Blinding Flash/Faith in the Light scales with attacks per second. So, if you have 2.0 attacks per second, the buff will increase your damage by 60%. Whether this is intended or not is still unknown, but it makes the rune much more effective than it looks like on the tooltip.
Regarding the pure damage dealers, Lashing Tail Kick and Wave of Light. The problem with these two spells is that you will have to choose between casting them or casting Mantra - under most circumstances you simply won't have the spirit for both. Now, it's easy to compare them (just look at damage per spirit), but it's not easy to calculate how much exactly Mantra of Conviction/Overawe is doing. Based on my very abstract calculations for a single target, it's never worth casting either of them regardless of which runes you run, but to prove that for sure we will need to model it properly, i.e. we need a spreadsheet or a simulation. Also, take into account that you need to cast them instead of a primary strike, unlike Mantra which has no cast time and doesn't disrupt your left click DPS. LTK's knockback can and will affect your DPS as well, mostly in negative ways.
I didn't include Seven-Sided Strike in the paragraph above because of the cooldown. It's a good skill and it does a lot of damage for its cost, there's just no scientific way to compare it to the other skills as you're probably not going to use it by cooldown and definitely not on every pack. I'll pull the "depends on playstyle" card here. (Using it with Fulminating Onslaught rune and Cyclone Strike can be fun.)
Exploding Palm has a very nice damage per spirit ratio assuming all of the damage lands, but is a skill that's only useful on elite packs - non-elites generally have very low hp so the debuff won't tick for 9 seconds and the explosion won't do much damage. Essence Burn looks like a rune that could make the skill useful on non-elite packs, but 60% weapon damage is just too little; it also makes the skill worse against elites as it takes away the 30% of max hp explosion component.
From my limited testing of Mystic Ally I've figured out the following: their attack speed is constant 1.5 attacks per second, however attack damage is scaled by the characters attack speed; they dynamically scale with buffs and weapon switches when dual wielding, i.e. each attack scans your stats and weapon and it doesn't matter when you spawn them; they can crit. They're still not that great for our damage because 40% isn't much and they lack any reliable, decent AoE.
Damage reflect effects become worse the more damage you mitigate (Mantra of Retribution and Serenity/Reap What Is Sown).
Damage is absorbed after it is mitigated, so Mantra of Healing absorb does scale with gear.
All the other skills do exactly as their tooltips say and are fairly obvious. If you know anything interesting - things that aren't obvious from the tooltips or things that can be used as a reference for calculations later on - please post them.
Passives
Resolve only procs from actual attacks, not "all" sources of damage as the tooltip implies. Sweeping Wind doesn't proc it, Mantra of Conviction/Submission aura doesn't proc it, Thorns damage doesn't proc it.
Combination Strike works like most other stacking buffs. If you attack with spirit generator A, then once with spirit generator B, and then just continue attacking with spirit generator A, you will still have 2 stacks of it until you stop attacking. The only downside is that the buff isn't displayed on the UI so it can be problematic to track it.
A common question I used to see on the forums is about One With Everything. If you have 500 all resistance, 500 lightning resistance, you will have 1000 all resistance with One With Everything. This is why this skill is so good and is used by almost every Monk in Inferno.
Dodge, reduction, and damage stacking
Common builds
You can do whatever you want with this or the original article.
Options for key '2' are Dashing Strike, Exploding Palm and Sweeping Wind - the guide says to use Breath of Heaven for this key. What do I need to do to make that an option for that key?
Options for key '1' are Blinding Flash, Breath of Heaven, Serenity and Inner Sanctuary.
I can't figure out how to map those skills to different keys since they're only listed as skills for the '1' key. Any help?
In case anyone else needs it - Options / Gameplay / Interface / check Elective Mode
I can also say that I was a bit lazy to update. Just before I quit I figured that DW is actually superior to 1h/Shield, but I never got around to updating on that here. So for all of you struggling in A3, try that. The attack speed/LoH might make all the difference for you. Half the reason some of you struggle in A3 even though you're doing everything right is because of attack speed. Spears are usually cheaper (or at least when I played), so you end up with 1.4-1.5 AS and simply don't get enough from LoH.
They don't understand that we have only 1 slot for a spirit spender DPS ability. We are not going to drop using 3 defensive skills, and nobody will want to skip Mantra. Serenity is just too good on its own - it provides a much needed DPS window vs certain packs; Breath of Heaven provides a passive 15% damage buff via rune; and Faith in the Light buff scaling with AS ends up being ridiculous burst. That's on top of the fact that you sort of need to use all 3 of them to survive unless your gear is amazing and you kill things before it matters. All of them provide amazing offenses, better than most of our spirit spender abilities, THAT is the issue.
Wave of Light is still gonna be crap because 75 spirit is just too much. Even if it's going to hit like a truck, it just takes too long to get 75 spirit for the ability to be fun, even if it works out to be a DPS increase in numbers. A simple damage increase to SSS isn't going to be sufficient. Nobody in their right mind will enjoy having a 30 seconds cooldown in the only slot we can put a random ability into. We simply don't have a bar slot for a "pop every once in a while for fun" ability.
Exploding Palm numbers must be a joke. It went from dealing 73% weapon damage per second to 83%. Well thanks. Sure, the skill is about the corpse explosion yada yada, but that doesn't help much at all versus elites - the hard part is when they're all alive. If you ever used EP you'd try to time it close to the mobs death to actually get the explosion off, otherwise you just spam Overawe because that's just better. That won't change with these numbers.
Underwhelming.
I'd argue that deadly reach- foresight > BoH or Blinding flash ,especially when coupled with combination strike. Whether you agree or not you should try it and maybe see if it's worth bringing up in your guide.
I also feel that SSS-FO might be better than BoH. it's definitely the build I'm going to try.
As for your comment on XP, I completely agree for 1 hand or dw, because spirit isn't a big deal. However it's dmg per spirit is increased by over 300%. This makes it very very good for a 2 hander set up. Not only because of the damage per spirit, but DoTs are based on a 2.0aps. I'm definitely going to try this with SSS-FO. Maybe sweeping winds if I get 4pc innas.
Deadly reach can very well be more effective health than the heal, though I suppose that's where the experience comes in. But you don't have to keep alternating foresight lasts 30 seconds and combination strike will always be at least be 8% dmg and I find myself having the option to attack from range, without the teleport, results in me using both frequently. But yeah, I guess it's fun for me because it's a bit more to keep track of.
Then again I plan to drop OWE which is something most people wouldn't do but it's viable. But I'd argue that deadly reach even without combination strike > BoH.
What does this mean exactly?
Anyhow, Paragon levels sparkled my interest to Diablo 3 again, which means I'll be playing which means I'll expanding this guide rather than just updating it. My thoughts so far:
I'm most likely going to be rewriting the guide from scratch because the whole point of the game is changing with this patch. What's going to matter now is speed of clearing. Having read the entire patch note, I'm pretty sure that progressing through Inferno is no longer going to be an issue pretty much regardless of which exact build you're using, as long as it makes sense and you have the appropriate gear. Hence there's no point in "forcing" a certain build anymore like in this guide.
Instead I'm going to write about which abilities are the most efficient and where, certain obvious or not very obvious combinations that just work well, add a bit more theory and numbers (f.ex. Sweeping Wind mechanics).
Gear section will probably become the main focus of the guide as well, seeing as legendaries actually have a weight now and will be sought after. It'll still be just a listing of stuff with a few comments, but I'll put more effort here as there's actually a reason to min/max now.
However, I'm not going to play the game (at least not a lot) until next week, so this might be slightly delayed.
They did some changes and all damage over time effects are calculated as if you have 2.0 aps. If you have more it doesn't effect the Damage over time and if you less it's set to 2.0 for calculation purposes. I believe it was to buff the slower 2 handers.
At least that was my understanding. I'll find you a link in a minute.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
http://www.diablofan...ystems-preview/
Btw, Shinna Combination strike stays stacked long as you stay "in combat" you can continue to to use either generator and it will remain 16% once you've used both at least 1 time.
Why it's a buff for 2handers - because all DoTs now deal a constant amount of total weapon damage over a period of time, so APS doesn't improve DoTs, and the APS is pretty much the best thing about 1handers.
Now that the patch is out, there's no need to worry about that anymore.
Here's what I had a few weeks earlier when 1.0.4 just came out:
You can do whatever you want with this or the original article.
-Disc