Broken or powerful skill combo's

[Mr Man]

Just taking a quick look over the skills calculator on the diablo community site and there seem to be some overly powerful combo's.

Take for instance Mantra of Conviction with a golden runestone. As well as the standard 20% extra damage you gain approx 1k health 75% you make an attack. This seems just as powerful as any of the healing spells if you were only using a standard attack most of the time, plus you dont expend spirit. Add in way of the hundred fists and you are gaining a massive amount of life. Put an indigo rune in WoHF and each time you use the second strike alone you will gain an avg 15k life while gaining spirit. This looks by far more powerful than any healing spell plus you are doing dmg.

These runestones seem like they will be very hard to balance. Broken? Thoughts?

[bluefly]

Few things to keep in mind:

- the runes are level 7, for all we know those might be super rare.
- we don't know how well the Monk will do in higher difficulties. Some beta footage suggests he can quite easily drop to 10-20% health in a few seconds. The healing might prove to be mandatory in Inferno.
- you are losing a lot of offense if you sacrifice your skills/rune slots for healing effects. Will probably be vital for hardcore, but might be less attractive otherwise.

[TheDragon]

Reading the possibilities of the runestone affects, The monk is very versitile in support and offensive. As bluefly stated, it all depends on what your preferance between offensive and defensive skills would be.

In my opinion, you would have many possibilities to balance out the two types. Then it becomes a choice on which skills you prefer to do what with.

[swart]

Monk can't attack if he's stunned.

[ElementEight]

Monk can't attack if he's stunned.

Nope, but he takes 75% reduced damage ;)

[Mafick]

Take for instance Mantra of Conviction with a golden runestone. As well as the standard 20% extra damage you gain approx 1k health 75% you make an attack. This seems just as powerful as any of the healing spells if you were only using a standard attack most of the time, plus you dont expend spirit. Add in way of the hundred fists and you are gaining a massive amount of life. Put an indigo rune in WoHF and each time you use the second strike alone you will gain an avg 15k life while gaining spirit. This looks by far more powerful than any healing spell plus you are doing dmg.

These runestones seem like they will be very hard to balance. Broken? Thoughts?

I would assume that each combo is a set of 3 "attacks" or "strikes" since the actual wording of the rune says "when striking", thus you wouldn't be able to get 15k health on the second attack of a Runed Way of the Hundred Fists, per your example for the exact reason you stated. I would think that "attacks" or "strikes" are made up of multiple individual "hits". So you'd have a 3/4 chance when using a combo to generate ~1000 health, which is still good healing, getting 2000-3000 per combo attack. Other classes might not benefit near as much obviously but that's the perk of being a Monk!

That would be virtually impossible to overcome in PvP or probably even in Inferno difficulty. Just spamming WotHF would give you 20+k health per what, 2-3 seconds? Yeah not likely.

However, we probably won't know until we get our hands on some game time :'(

[Peter]

Its per use of a skill I'm pretty sure or that would be insanely OP.

But in combination with other life restoring effects / leeching its going to be a big part of d3

[panikmeister]

life leech at its finest :)

[acroteras]

I find the WD Zombie Hounds/Sacrifice combo to be quite OP if not broken.. Since theres a rune that gives your dogs a 70% chance to ress when they die, coupled with the fact that Sacrifice doesn't seem to have a manacost or cooldown.. Imagine with a bit of luck, you could keep blowing up dogs for a long time till your luck runs out!

[Cable]

Keep in mind we don't know all the enemies we'll encounter or how they behave and what kind of damage they do.

For all we know, the Monk's incredible health gain may be laughable versus the damage received in Inferno. There might even be enemies that nullify healing effects. Food for thought.

[Leontes]

Mantra of Conviction + Alabaster Runestone = Intimidation; Enemies in the radius deal 45% less damage.

Crippling Wave + Obsidian Runestone = Concussion; Enemies hit by Crippling Wave deal 50% less damage for 9 seconds.

Resolve Passive = Damage you deal reduces enemy damage by 10% for 2.5 seconds.

Granted, these are both Rank 7 Runestones, but lol? There's no way it's additive because this would reduce all damage by 105%, so...

I imagine what happens is something like 50% x 55% x 90% = 24.75%? But daaaamn... Probably wouldn't need Resolve with the first two options stacking up so hard though.

[starrise]

Just beware, 20 yards (more like 20 feet, apparently) isn't very big, so ranged mobs will still deal 100% damage (less armor, defense, etc) to you a lot of the time. Consider taking obsidian lashing tail kick (hand of ytar) for ranged damage. With heart of ytar passive it's spammable for 38 spirit each. Or dashing strike to close the gap rapidly (and now root your target).