Implications for 1.0.4 on monk builds video

[Thehealthygamer]

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1.0.4 Changes and Implications for the Monk

• The primary focus of 1.0.4 will be to make improvements to damage-focused Spirit Spenders
  
  • This should open up a whole new world for monks and spirit per second items. Effectively spirit per second items have gotten an indirect buff, because spending spirit on skills like exploding palm/SSS/wave of light is much more effective.
  
  
• Exploding Palm will have improved visuals to make it easier to tell who is affected by the bleed and who is being damaged
  
  • The bleed effect and damage is being increased from 220% over 3 seconds to 745% over 9 seconds
  • I can see some awesome builds using really powerful 2handers with a lot of spirit per second and stacking exploding palm dots on mobs and kiting them to their deaths.
  
  
• Seven-Sideded Strike will be receiving a straight damage buff to make it more appealing
  
  • Maybe it will actually be worth it to have on your skillbar now? Maybe…
  
  
• Wave of Light is being increased from 215% weapon damage and +45% AoE Holy damage to 390% weapon damage and +45 AoE Holy damage
  
  • 390% That’s MASSIVE. Especially if Pillar still does double damage. Imagine 390% on the first hit, and then another 390%…
  
  
• They won’t be touching “mandatory” passives such as One with Everything for now
  
  • Meh, kinda wish they would make passives more interesting, but guess its good that they’re at least not nerfing us this patch.
  
  
• The Spirit generation bonus from Guardian’s Path is being increased from 25% to 35%
  
  • Depending on how well they fix two handed weapons I can see some really interesting builds coming out of this increase. A 2hander with massive DPS and high spirit per second could be great alternative to all these DW LoH builds.

Positives:

Looks like there’s a good chance that spirit spenders will actually be useful. I know pretty much all through Inferno, 90% of my spirit has been spent just keeping Mantra of Evasion up. This really opens up the door to more builds and more interesting builds, especially those focused more towards offensive DPS. And ACTIVE offensive DPS. What I mean by active is that so far most DPS builds have focused around our passive abilities(sweeping wind and tornado procs) so that we were still spending spirit mostly to keep one of our Mantras up and just letting our passive procs and primary attack generate most of our damage. Now we can focus more on using big cool attacks like Wave of Light to do some 300k+ hits to mobs. That should be quite fun.
If they fix two handers in an intelligent way this literally doubles our choice of available weapons. This should in theory lead to a lower cost for good weapons across the board both one hand and two hand and give us a much greater variety of weapons and thus builds to choose from.
Negatives:

They still didn’t touch Mantra of Healing or Mantra of Retribution! What the hell. These skills are fairly useless in the state they are. Mantra of Healing right now grants us a 960hp damage shield when you hit it. FIFTY spirit to absorb not even ONE THOUSAND damage? Even mobs in Act 1 do way more than 1k a hit.
My biggest concern for Diablo 3 still stands, the lack of an incentive to really play after you’ve hit 60 and killed Diablo in Inferno. Yes, 1.0.4 is going to improve the loot and make it more interesting, but I foresee people getting bored again very quickly once the “newness” of the legendaries and builds fade away.
If I were a cynic, I would say this is just a way Activision devised to pump some more money out of players via the RMAH by introducing a bunch of cool legendaries but not really addressing the underlying fundamental fact that the game isn’t fun to play longterm… If I were a cynic

[windstriker]

I believe that the most important changes for me are the ones that actually make multiplayer a valid option while farming. Together with these changes to legendaries and skills, I will have fun playing for quite some more time.
But ofc, as you say there are many more improvements to be made and Im really curious of what Wyatt plan to add for a long lasting end game!

[TheWanderer]

Always thought the 960 damage absorbed by MoH was AFTER all other damage reduction? Much like how sheilds' block values work, so you don't need huge amounts of damage absorption.

I could be wrong though... :P

[Karth]

That's how all of that kind of effect works. 960 damage before mitigation would be difficult to notice even in A1. By A3 many monsters are doing a hundred times (or much more) that much damage per hit before mitigation.

Even after mitigation, though, 960 damage absorbtion... well. The weakest Inferno shield absorbs more than twice that at a minimum any time it blocks.

[Valkemen]

The problem with the Wave of Light is a gap hole between the Monk and attacked monster.

Right now we know only a preview of changes, but I hope Blizzard will give more synergy between Mystic Ally and Mantra of Retribution, Inner Sanctuary and affix "Globe/Gold pick up radius", Way of the Guardian and passive regeneration with 2h.

[Thehealthygamer]

The problem with the Wave of Light is a gap hole between the Monk and attacked monster.

Right now we know only a preview of changes, but I hope Blizzard will give more synergy between Mystic Ally and Mantra of Retribution, Inner Sanctuary and affix "Globe/Gold pick up radius", Way of the Guardian and passive regeneration with 2h.

That's a really interesting idea, like how gold pickup effects the radius of the WD's zombie dog passive.

I think the only way to make inner sanctuary useful is to yeah definitely increase the ground effect radius and then make it cleanse the ground. So if you're surrounded by plauge or molten or ice orbs or laser beams, anything the inner sanctuary touches it cleanses, maybe even turning it AGAINST the enemy.

Now THAT would be a useful skill. Drop it when you get surrounded to instantly turn all that fire and plague around you against the enemy. Of course it couldn't be permanent or that'd be way OP, but for like four seconds you're not getting hit by the poison and instead the mobs are.

Just a thought. Cause right now, really really useless.

[Such Violent Storms]

What do you think of the new datamined patch notes?? And the Paragon system?

The Monk has some interesting build possibilites now. Legendaries look awesome too. Hell I've been trying to find a build that focuses around Flying Dragon legendary as much as possible.

And I heard you were going to roll a WD as a second char? I did too! Now's the time, there's a TON of new WD builds. Rain of Toads LoH tank is ridiculous now, with big stinker and burning dogs, proc effects.

My mind is still chewing through everything now.

[windstriker]

Anyone really knows what the paragon system is and how it works? Is that the thing about 500 elites = 1 legendary, or is it something else entirely?
I know it's hard to be 100% sure of anything when it's just datamined info, but maybe someone has a good explanation of how it will likely work? If it's just about killing a lot of elites fast I guess there will be some Vault farming for me in the future :o

[Karth]

Levels string1: You are now earning Paragon XP!
Each Paragon Level you gain grants a Gold and Magic Find bonus.

I think that's the biggest chunk of real information we have about it. There wasn't anything in the datamined info about guaranteed legendary drops, so for now I'm going to assume you can gain a small amount (5%? 10%?) of mf and gf every time you gain one of these paragon levels.

[Thehealthygamer]

What do you think of the new datamined patch notes?? And the Paragon system?

The Monk has some interesting build possibilites now. Legendaries look awesome too. Hell I've been trying to find a build that focuses around Flying Dragon legendary as much as possible.

And I heard you were going to roll a WD as a second char? I did too! Now's the time, there's a TON of new WD builds. Rain of Toads LoH tank is ridiculous now, with big stinker and burning dogs, proc effects.

My mind is still chewing through everything now.

Wow, chance to DOUBLE attack speed! Seems like that would go best just with a straight LoH/High crit torando proc build.