Rune Effects on Sweeping Wind

[Flux]

From the very cool new videos about runestones, here's the Monk's.


Sweeping Wind is a combo skill that lashes out against all enemies surrounding the monk, creating a vortex of damaging wind that increases in damage and radius across three stages.

• Crimson - A flurry of blades increases Sweeping Wind’s damage.
• Indigo - Expands the area of effect and strikes enemies with additional fire-based attacks.
• Obsidian - A persistent whirlwind surrounds the monk, dealing damage to any foes that come into contact.
• Golden - Increases Spirit regeneration.
• Alabaster - A powerful sandstorm billows with the monk’s attacks, damaging enemies and knocking them back.

What's your favorite by looks? Which do you think will be most useful in various circumstances?

[Neinball]

The obsidian rune looks really nice to me. If the higher runes increase it's duration it'll be a nice setup to pop that up early and switch to other AoE attacks or start sniping people off with single target strikes.

[Autti]

nice skill.

I actually think the increased spirit regerenation will really benefit this type of skill, compared to reduced resource cost of others.

Great skill to use when surrounded to build up spirit to then SSS

[Neinball]

nice skill.

I actually think the increased spirit regeneration will really benefit this type of skill, compared to reduced resource cost of others.

Great skill to use when surrounded to build up spirit to then SSS

That could be an awesome setup, all your combo skills runed to increase spirit regen and then rune circle of wrath to reduce its' cost. Just turn into an AoE pulse engine.

[Scorch Hellfire]

I love the obsidian version of it... and just imagine having that persistent aoe combined with cc and movement abilites... first hit dashing strike + second hit crippling wave + third hit obsidian sweeping wind = sudden, inescapable, swirling wall of death in your face...

[Neinball]

It does make me wonder though, will runes only effect the the third strike for combo skills? Some of them I can see working on all attacks (the fire damage and spirit generation for instance) but otherwise it looked like only the finally attack was modified in anyway, other then visual effect of course.

[Flux]

Most of the combo skills we were able to use in the last 2 blizzcon demos did something, plus their damage, at level 1 and 2, with the bigger effect at level 3. (IIRC the exception was exploding palm, which did nothing but damage until the final effect.)

So it might just be that Sweeping Wind here doesn't deal any effect other than dmg until the final level, and the rune effects are just continuing that. Where as a combo skill that did add some effects (buffs or debuffs) with each level up would have those emphasized by the rune effects as well.

Or it might be that we can't see it since there are not enemies there. Maybe level 1 hits 2 enemies, level 2 hits 4 enemies and stuns, and level 3 hits up to 10, etc. We can't tell without the full skill tool tip to read.

It'll be interesting to see as we learn more.