The Monk is a totally new character to the Diablo series. Deemed the exact opposite of the Barbarian class, Monks are proficient in the martial arts and fast, nimble attacks. Think of the Monk as a “religious warrior,“ or “Holy Warrior of the light.”
As I just mentioned, the attack style of Monks are fast martial arts, and the class indulges in frequent meditation. They channel divine power and utilize healing waves, holy might attacks, and protection mantras. The Monk fights equally well with weapons or unarmed, focusing on the use of melee attacks.
The Diablo 3 Monk class can move quickly between and around enemies to attack them at their weakest points, and can easily maneuver away from enemy attacks, perhaps the best ability to dodge of all five Diablo III classes. Many melee attacks used in succession will build up the Monk’s necessary vital resource, Spirit.
Spirit regenerates very slowly. By making use of specific attacks and a variety of skills, or completing combo attacks, Spirit can be generated much, much faster. So, you can actually perform a sort of “chain-attack” using your Monk! Skills which use up a lot of Spirit include defensive moves like dodging, empowered strikes and finishing blows.
Other skills the Monk uses are enhanced punches, kicks and blows, blinding and knockback throws, dashes, sweeping attacks, multi-hits and waves of protective shields and healing spells. Think of protection mantras and waves! Passive Monk skills include increase of Spirit and movement speed, dodging attacks more easily, damage and resistance increase.
In Diablo 3, the Monk’s equipment, weapons and gear remind us of the Diablo II Assassin equipment, but with some new touches. We see the use of fist weapons, knuckles, talons and spikes. A new weapon, the Daibo, are banded lengths of wood used to attack and defend alike. Think of it as our familiar “bo staff.”
The Monk starts out with plain, cobbled simple armor to allow for fast movement. As the character grows stronger, we see more ornaments and fancy armor. Even later on, the armor gets really pretty, almost genie or wizard-like, offering the best defense possible.
The Diablo III Monk class relies on Dexterity and Vitality to progress in the best way, but as we’ve mentioned before, skill points are evened out automatically in a linear fashion in this game, contrary to the other two games of the Diablo series, so there’s no need to examine the stat point delegation further, other than getting items that enhance and add to these skills.
Choose the Monk in Diablo 3 if you:
- Want to try out something new that you haven’t seen before in the Diablo series
- You are into melee attacks, but prefer the martial arts to brute force
- You find the mix of religious power, mantra chants and martial arts interesting!
Tips on playing Monk
The Monk is an amazing class to play and they’re a Jack of all trades! You can easily play solo, with a party, heal, off-tank and even main tank on most of the cases with great success.
The Monk relies on AOE (area of effect) skills to get great damage output, and that will cause a lot of monsters to hit him. You NEED to add a lot of points to Vitality too if you want to be able to survive on the Hell difficulty and up. Don’t overdo it and lose all your DPS, but get items that also have some Vitality as well. To get a better understanding of the ratio, my Monk currently has 669 Dexterity and 1083 Vitality. While my damage is still good (4100 DPS), I have to have 39,000 Hit Points in order to be able to withstand huge attacks without dying.
When it comes to Passive Skills, two are very important: Seize the Initiative (which increases your armor by 100% of your Dexterity) and Transcendence (which heals you for every point of Spirit spent). You need both of these; Seize to have a good damage reduction and be able to take less damage, and Transcendence in order to have 4 skills to heal yourself rather than only 1. Especially Transcendence is what made my character become much, much better because my survivability went up a lot.
For the last passive skill, things are more complicated. I now have the skill Near Death Experience (when receiving a fatal damage, you get your life restored to 35% instead of dying). This can take place every 90 seconds, and it’s an amazing way to stay alive even in very difficult situations, because it gives you one more chance. Before changing to that skill, I used the skill The Guardian’s Path, that gave me while dual wielding +15% of dodge chance. That’s great too.
For the active skills I have:
- Way of the Hundred Fists with the Fists of Fury rune.
- Lashing Tail Kick with the Scorpion Sting rune.
- Breath of Heaven with the Penitent Flame rune.
- Sweeping Wind with the Cyclone rune.
- Mystic Ally with the Air Ally rune.
- Mantra of Healing with the Boon of Protection rune.
Your Mystic Ally is very important on higher difficulties, because you can easily help the ranged classes get far by your ally getting agro from monsters and helping them nuke from a distance. There might be a better choice for Mystic Ally, but for my kind of gameplay, I think it’s the best.
Do you have any other tips for Monks that can help our fellow Monks? Shoot it in the comments below!