Monk @ Blizzcon

[:1]The Monk was only available in the PvM demo; no Monk or DH in the PvP. And no skillrunes were usable on those chars either. Alas.

As for what the Monk could do in PvM... I had disappoint! There were only 3 skills enabled at the start. A weak combo called Lightning Fists, a wildly overpowered nova nuke healing thing, and a 3rd skill that was so forgettable that I've forgotten it.

I'll write some more details about playing the monk when i have a chance. In the meantime, there's some detailed commentary on the monk skills in Blascid's hands-on from Blizzcon, just posted today.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...nd-on-blascid/


Quote:




Play styles were quite different from class to class. As Jay noted above, the Monk’s resource was by far the best: The Monk starts off with zero Spirit, and builds up three Spirit resource per hit with the lightning fist ability he started off with (Each 1-2-3 combo ability, like Exploding Palm, gives the Monk three Spirit resource per hit as well). I had to hit monsters about nine times before I built up enough Spirit resource, from zero, to use a different skill. Keep in mind though, that unlike the D2 Assassin, who has to build up charges with three normal hits, THEN release on the third, or second, or first charge to get any benefit from that skill (save AR), the Monk would hit, relating to the Assassin, with each charges ability rather than building it up.

So, taking the Assassin’s Claws of Thunder skill for example, with how it would work with the Monk’s system, it would play out as follows: Hit one with the Monk (related) would grant lightning damage, hit two would grant Nova damage, and hit three would grant charged bolt damage—no charging up, NO MANA(/spirit). In the Monks case, with her actual lightning fist skill (I do not remember the name), the first hit would be a claw sweep with lightning damage, the second one granted more lightning damage with more lightning graphics, and the third hit was a lightning blast that created a nice AOE arc. (The third move’s animation {Monk’s move and spell effect} reminded me of how Ryu and Ken’s Hadouken looked in Street Fighter 2 {Sorry, I have not played any more recent than that) if your opponent was right in front of you.)

Remember, this three set lightning fist skill ADDS to the Monk’s Spirit resource, genius. When I dealt out about three of these cycles I had enough Spirit resource to use an AOE skill (I do not remember the name), that dealt 13-31-ish (?) damage to all enemies within a Nova sized radius, and healed the Monk for 12-21-ish points. I also noticed the Monk had at least one more additional healing type skill, as an extra FYI for ya’ll.

Oh, and speaking of the skill directly above, the heal and damage one, when I added a point to it, to make it level 2, the animation of the spell was upgraded to incorporate the monks runes seen in other skills and his promo video, not unlike leveling up spells in Secret of Mana.|||Im just saying, but unless you can generate Spirit otherwise than using melee range combo attack in order to do any other move. It sounds horrible and completely unviable for PvP.|||Monk is still being designed. There will probably be an analogue skill to the Barbarian's "press button and get free rage" skill.