**DISCLAIMER**If you don’t like walls of text, you should probably leave now. This “guide” is not meant to be a prediction of the way things will be. Lately, (like many of us I am sure) I find myself imagining Diablo 3 quite a bit. What better way to do that than to just pretend the game is out already? This guide is written from the perspective of well after the release of Diablo 3. I make some pretty wild assumptions about Skills, Traits, Rune effects and some general game play mechanics like skill caps. The only reason I am posting this on here is because I thought some people on here might have as much fun reading it as I had making it. Enjoy it or tear it apart, it’s up to you.
Notable Assumptions
Some things to keep in mind as far as “general” assumptions that I make: You can max a skill at 5/5, 10/10 or 15/15 and are able to increase any skill to the next “cap” but it takes a quite a bit of time/resources to do this. You can only advance a skill to the next “cap” after you complete a difficulty. So to go from 5/5 to 6/10 you need to have completed Normal. Obviously you don’t have enough skill points to max all skills so there is no need to do this for every skill. I also “assume” that because of the nature of raising the “cap” mechanic for each skill the next point after the cap (6 and 11) makes a fairly large difference. In general these next levels can hit a wider range of monsters (bosses, uniques) or just do more damage / have increased effect more than a standard point does. I also assume that as a reward for starting the next difficulty (nightmare and hell) you start the new play through with 1 skill point and 1 trait point to spend. This brings the total Skill points possible to 61 and Traits to 21. Also, specifically for this guide as the Monk only has 20 skills released, I made up 1 skill out of thin air; Will of the Order.
The Sponge Monk Build
This guide will show you how to make your monk be able to stand toe to toe with just about any monster in the game without fear of dying. The name brings the correct picture to mind as you will often be trying to take damage, and the damage you take will be “held” and used to buff your main attack skill. This build excels at taking damage and as a result of taking damage you can up the damage you can do to VERY respectable levels. Obviously, a build with this much survivability will have some drawbacks. You won’t be flying through a solo play through at the same speed of a Classic Lightening Monk, but you won’t be looking over your shoulder nearly as much either. With some time, you will learn how to properly use all of your cool downs to maximum effect. This Monk will really shine in a group environment as you will often be reducing the damage your allies are taking and you can keep the Minions of Hell busy while your friends stay back and kill from safety. There are times (with the right Rune / Trait choices) that you can put out some really huge and satisfying damage numbers. NOTE Due to the “oddball” nature of this build, it will require A LOT of high level Alabaster runes to really start taking off. Rich players will have no problems here; newer players may want to build a stockpile of level 5-8 Alabasters first.
Lashing Tail Kick * 15/15 * Alabaster
Right off the bat this is your core damage dealing ability for the build. The standard Lashing Tail Kick is less than compelling. As a melee class (and especially with the Sponge build) you want to be close to the action, so knocking-back enemies is often not desired. Fortunately, two of the runes remove this effect, and the Alabaster rune is one of those and it is the reason this build goes from “interesting” to “viable”. The lashing Tail kick still deals a % of weapon damage and it scales pretty well with your weapons. At 15/15 it does A LOT of damage in its initial hit (especially with the trait “Foot Speed”) to a single target. The Alabaster Rune (bread and butter of the build) basically plants a bomb in the target of your kick. The effect is very similar to exploding palm, but with a smaller and more potent radius around your first target. The bomb has a 2 second delay and deals fire damage based on a % of the damage absorbed within the last X seconds. Higher level runes increase both the % and give you a longer period of time to build up absorbs. The most important thing to note about this effect (not worded very well by Blizzard, thanks!) is that when you use Lashing Tail Kick, the damage you have absorbed in the last X seconds IS NOT spent. Basically, you want to take as much damage as possible (while you’re absorbs are up. See below) and you will be planting little explosions with each and every LTK! Due to the low cost of Lashing Tail Kick, you will be able to spam the heck out of this skill. With a level 8 Alabaster rune in LTK you will have 12 seconds to build up absorbs (everything you have absorbed in the last 12 seconds adds to the bombs damage) and the damage is very nice! Do not expect your explosions (at least not till you are well geared) to be clearing screens, but being able to spam LTK makes it faster than you might think and once you get your full arsenal of Absorb abilities rolling, the damage can really take off.
Circle of Wrath * Alabaster * 6/10
Again, the Alabaster rune comes into play in a fun way for Circle of Wrath. The standard effect deals damage to enemies and heals allies. With the Alabaster rune, CoR loses the damage component, but still heals your allies. It also gets slapped with a 10 second cool down and causes you to gain Holy Power over the next 10 seconds. This makes the 10 second cool down act like more of a built in reminder that you can recast CoR than a penalty. With a level 8 Rune you will be practically full after 10 seconds. This allows spamming of LTK without needing to use more standard combo abilities. Of course, this effect comes with a price. Over the 10 seconds that you are gaining Holy Power, you will be taking 50% more damage (this is a good thing, see below for more info).
Blinding Flash * Crimson * 6/10
This is your primary CC ability. Even with this build there will be times you are in trouble. And if you screw up your Absorb Cool downs you will want BF at the ready so you can buy some time for your absorbs to come back up. Early in the game, you will get a lot of use out of this skill as the “Spongy” aspect of your build won’t really start working well until midway through nightmare at the earliest. We are using the Crimson Rune mostly to help with damage early in the game, and late game, with a high level crimson rune the damage becomes semi respectable. The Crimson rune causes a blast of lightening damage (front loaded) when the Flash hits.
Serenity * Golden * 15/15
This is the main ability that makes your build work. You will want to take Serenity all the way to 15/15. That extra 11th point will increase the amount of damage you absorb over 100%. This is very confusing to most players and because of this no one ever levels Serenity over 10/10, but I have to believe that Blizzard did this specifically to make this build more fun / viable. At level 15 your serenity will absorb 125% of all incoming damage. What does this mean? If a monster hits you for 100 damage, the game computes you as having absorbed 125 damage. This of course combines beautifully with Alabaster LTK! The effect lasts for 10 seconds (never goes up) and unfortunately (even with the trait quickening) you can’t bring the cool down lower than 20 seconds. But that means that HALF of the time you will be absorbing ALL damage you are taking and buffing up you LTK at the same time. We have other ways to minimize the pain of the other 10 seconds that Serenity isn’t up. The Golden Rune is used here to reduce the Holy Power Cost to practically nothing (with a high rune). All of the other runes change the effect too much to stay useful for your sponge.
Holy Aura * Alabaster * 7/10
Holy Aura with an Alabaster Rune provides you with a way to ALWAYS be absorbing some damage. The Base effect of the Aura allows you to regenerate Health, when you first activate HA it GREATLY regenerates health. With the Alabaster rune you will no longer regenerate health, but instead (you guessed it) absorb incoming damage. For the first .5 – 3.00 seconds (depending on rune level) you and your party will absorb 100% of incoming damage. For the rest of the time the aura is active, which is about 60 seconds at level 6/10, you and your party will be absorbing 20% of the damage received. The Cool down (with quickening) is about 55 seconds, so you can have endless up time on the 20% absorbs and use the 100% absorb time when you first activate the Aura as a “once every 55 seconds” aid to your serenity cool downs. So with these two abilities, Serenity (Golden) and Holy Aura (Alabaster) along with the trait Quickening You can absorb 100% or more damage for up to 13 seconds at a time (with good runes). You will settle into a play style that plays safely when you don’t have a New Holy Aura CD and Serenity is down. KEEP IN MIND that you should save your HA and SERENITY CDs (along with your other CDs, see below) to be used together when going up against specifically tough monsters as the 100% absorb from the HA cast stacks with the 125% absorbs from Serenity. Lashing Tail Kick (REMEMBER) will get a massive buff to its explosion for any damage you can take during that time (over the last 12 seconds). When you pull this off just right, even the toughest monster packs will die fast. You will find yourself using your HA and Serenity and then seeking out that Heavy Hitter in the middle of the pack, take as many hits as you can and then light the room up with LTK explosions. Remember, if you screw up your Absorb CDs at a bad time (easy to have happen until you master the play style) use your Blinding Flash!
Breath of Heaven * Alabaster * 6/10
This underwhelming Tier 6 skill fits perfectly into this build with ANOTHER Alabaster Rune. The standard skill lets you remove any harmful effects from yourself and your party. It is boring, but useful. However, with an Alabaster rune the Skill totally changes and gets slapped with a 2 min cool down. This is an “oh-sh!t” button that resets the cool downs of all your abilities. If you just used serenity and Holy Aura, but that pesky pack in hell isn’t quite dead and you don’t feel like using Blanding Flash and running away, use this with about 1 second left on your Serenity and then just recast it and Holy Aura. Then Continue your LTK explosion parade. To make the 2 min Cool down more explainable the Alabaster BoH also increases all damage you deal by 25-75% (based on Rune level) for the next 10 seconds giving it dual use as a way to reset your Absorbs and a way to do HUGE damage with a good Rune.
Will of the Order * Alabaster * 6/10
The standard effect of WotO will cause Monsters in the area of effect to fight for the Monk for a short period of time. There are some awesome builds with this standard functionality, but we are going with the Alabaster version. The Alabaster rune changes the effect to cause all monsters in the Area of Effect to Take more Damage and Deal more damage for 12 seconds. It is VERY important that you put only a level 1 Alabaster rune in Will of the Order. A level 1 alabaster rune causes monsters to take 80% more damage and deal 80% more damage. If you put better a better Alabaster rune in WotO the amount of damage the monsters takes goes up (to a maximum of 120% at level 8), but the amount of extra damage the monsters deal will drop to only 5% at a level 8 rune. We (for the sake of the Sponge build) want the monsters to do more damage. This way the monsters will be hurting themselves twice, by taking 80% damage and giving you 80% more damage to absorb. The cool down on this tier 7 ability is pretty big (2 min, even with quickening), but it is the final piece of the puzzle in terms of maxing your LTK damage. When you have 6/10 the radius is pretty big. Use this with your other CDs to take your LTK damage to HUGE levels for Boss fights.
Traits
Quickening * 3/3 * Lowers the cool downs on your abilities by 10 % per point
Even though the effectiveness is less than for the Wizard and Witch Doctor (by 5% per level) 30% Is still huge! This trait makes the cool downs on Serenity and Holy Aura work really well in tandem as well as bringing the rest of your cool downs to a more “speed” friendly level. This build demands this trait, so take it.
True Spirit * 5/5 * Increases the Monk’s Spirit regeneration
As always with the 5/5 traits, it hurts to invest so much in one ability. But with this trait maxed (and the effect you get from Alabaster Circle of Wrath) you will almost always be able to spam Lashing Tail Kick. This trait is a must for the Spongy Monk.
Spiritual Attunement * 3/3 * Increases the amount absorbed by the monks absorb skills by 8% per point
This is the most obvious choice for our Build of all the traits. The build is built around using absorbs to boost your damage, take this! As with the 11th point in Serenity, this extra 8% adds up when you are already absorbing 100% or more damage from all of your other absorbs.
Intimidation * 3/3 * Increases the damage you deal and reduces vendor costs
This trait is free damage with no penalty and adds the Vendor cost reduction (which of course works on Crafting and Leveling Artisans). I almost always take this trait. If it was just the reduced vendor costs it would feel like an un-necessary comfort, but with the value of gold, this is always hard to pass up. The damage makes you feel less dirty for taking it.
Foot Speed * 1/1 * Increases the Monk’s movement speed by 20% and increases the initial damage of Lashing Tail Kick by 20%
This is another no brainer trait to take. Our build focuses on spamming Lashing Tail Kick. While the majority of our damage comes from the explosions (which is not affected by this trait) with a level 15/15 LTK the initial damage is pretty huge. Take this, of course!
This leaves you with 6 Points to spend
The rest of your trait points are pretty much optional. You should probably take your weapon of choice specialization. The only real WRONG choice that you SHOULD NOT take is Sixth Sense. Six Sense will cause you to Dodge more attacks which you will never want to do with this build. You will be avoiding dodge at all costs, even on your gear.
Hey Periculum,
You are probably right about this kind of thing not being everyone’s cup of tea. I can see how reading something that is making A LOT of things up, but presents itself as fact could be a bit disconcerting. This is why I put the disclaimer part at the start of each of these.
Anyway, as far as putting a lot of time into imagining the game before it’s even out, I am guilty of that for sure. I have gone through so many pretend play-throughs in my head that actually putting these down on paper is fast and easy. Basically, after I decide to stick to a few assumptions like: the skill caps being raised from 5/5 to 10/10 to 15/15, 61 total skill points, 21 total traits, it’s pretty easy to just make it up as you go along.
The main thing I’ve been doing with these (For Fun) guides is thinking of a concept for the build, and then trying to think of ways Blizzard might make rune effects / traits that compliment that concept.
For the Wizard, I had seen someone else (no clue who, it’s been too long) give the idea that the Crimson rune in Slow Time would make things take more damage while they stayed in the bubble. I loved that concept and then just built / made up a lot of things that would compliment that idea.
For the Witch Doctor, I took the idea of diseases and damage over time abilities in general and tried to think how Blizzard might let us amplify that aspect of the Witch Doctor. Even though I made up the trait “the sick get sicker” out of thin air, this concept of taking traits that really define what kind of character you are is something we know Blizzard wants to do. So even though it is made up, I really think this kind of thing may be close to what really ends up in the game.
For this Guide, the Monk, I had to do the most “imagining” of the three guides so far (which was a blast). I made up a skill out of thin air (if someone can think of a better name than Will of the Order, let me know), but even this one I took one concept, Absorbs, and tried to make every other choice compliment that idea. The idea of trying to take damage so you can buff your own seemed like a cool idea, and I could see Blizzard putting these kinds of odd-ball builds, that might not be immediately obvious, in the game. I can imagine (if this was actually real) seeing the trait “Spiritual Attunement” when you first get the game and thinking “I thought traits were supposed to make a BIG difference, this trait costs 3 points and only makes me absorb 24% more damage” but not having any idea about what the Alabaster Rune effect does to Lashing Tail Kick.
So I’ve written too much here, but the point is, with all the extended development time I really hope that these kind of strange builds are possible. Find the right rune effect for a skill or Trait (Crimson Slow Time, the Trait Sick Get Sicker, Alabaster Lashing Tail Kick) and then build around it. The possibilities could be huge.
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Notable Assumptions
Some things to keep in mind as far as “general” assumptions that I make: You can max a skill at 5/5, 10/10 or 15/15 and are able to increase any skill to the next “cap” but it takes a quite a bit of time/resources to do this. You can only advance a skill to the next “cap” after you complete a difficulty. So to go from 5/5 to 6/10 you need to have completed Normal. Obviously you don’t have enough skill points to max all skills so there is no need to do this for every skill. I also “assume” that because of the nature of raising the “cap” mechanic for each skill the next point after the cap (6 and 11) makes a fairly large difference. In general these next levels can hit a wider range of monsters (bosses, uniques) or just do more damage / have increased effect more than a standard point does. I also assume that as a reward for starting the next difficulty (nightmare and hell) you start the new play through with 1 skill point and 1 trait point to spend. This brings the total Skill points possible to 61 and Traits to 21. Also, specifically for this guide as the Monk only has 20 skills released, I made up 1 skill out of thin air; Will of the Order.
Links to Other (For Fun) Guides
Wizard Guide: The Controller
Witch Doctor Guide: The DoT Destroyer
Barbarian Guide: The Bloodletter
The Sponge Monk Build
This guide will show you how to make your monk be able to stand toe to toe with just about any monster in the game without fear of dying. The name brings the correct picture to mind as you will often be trying to take damage, and the damage you take will be “held” and used to buff your main attack skill. This build excels at taking damage and as a result of taking damage you can up the damage you can do to VERY respectable levels. Obviously, a build with this much survivability will have some drawbacks. You won’t be flying through a solo play through at the same speed of a Classic Lightening Monk, but you won’t be looking over your shoulder nearly as much either. With some time, you will learn how to properly use all of your cool downs to maximum effect. This Monk will really shine in a group environment as you will often be reducing the damage your allies are taking and you can keep the Minions of Hell busy while your friends stay back and kill from safety. There are times (with the right Rune / Trait choices) that you can put out some really huge and satisfying damage numbers.
NOTE Due to the “oddball” nature of this build, it will require A LOT of high level Alabaster runes to really start taking off. Rich players will have no problems here; newer players may want to build a stockpile of level 5-8 Alabasters first.
Lashing Tail Kick * 15/15 * Alabaster
Right off the bat this is your core damage dealing ability for the build. The standard Lashing Tail Kick is less than compelling. As a melee class (and especially with the Sponge build) you want to be close to the action, so knocking-back enemies is often not desired. Fortunately, two of the runes remove this effect, and the Alabaster rune is one of those and it is the reason this build goes from “interesting” to “viable”. The lashing Tail kick still deals a % of weapon damage and it scales pretty well with your weapons. At 15/15 it does A LOT of damage in its initial hit (especially with the trait “Foot Speed”) to a single target. The Alabaster Rune (bread and butter of the build) basically plants a bomb in the target of your kick. The effect is very similar to exploding palm, but with a smaller and more potent radius around your first target. The bomb has a 2 second delay and deals fire damage based on a % of the damage absorbed within the last X seconds. Higher level runes increase both the % and give you a longer period of time to build up absorbs. The most important thing to note about this effect (not worded very well by Blizzard, thanks!) is that when you use Lashing Tail Kick, the damage you have absorbed in the last X seconds IS NOT spent. Basically, you want to take as much damage as possible (while you’re absorbs are up. See below) and you will be planting little explosions with each and every LTK! Due to the low cost of Lashing Tail Kick, you will be able to spam the heck out of this skill. With a level 8 Alabaster rune in LTK you will have 12 seconds to build up absorbs (everything you have absorbed in the last 12 seconds adds to the bombs damage) and the damage is very nice! Do not expect your explosions (at least not till you are well geared) to be clearing screens, but being able to spam LTK makes it faster than you might think and once you get your full arsenal of Absorb abilities rolling, the damage can really take off.
Circle of Wrath * Alabaster * 6/10
Again, the Alabaster rune comes into play in a fun way for Circle of Wrath. The standard effect deals damage to enemies and heals allies. With the Alabaster rune, CoR loses the damage component, but still heals your allies. It also gets slapped with a 10 second cool down and causes you to gain Holy Power over the next 10 seconds. This makes the 10 second cool down act like more of a built in reminder that you can recast CoR than a penalty. With a level 8 Rune you will be practically full after 10 seconds. This allows spamming of LTK without needing to use more standard combo abilities. Of course, this effect comes with a price. Over the 10 seconds that you are gaining Holy Power, you will be taking 50% more damage (this is a good thing, see below for more info).
Blinding Flash * Crimson * 6/10
This is your primary CC ability. Even with this build there will be times you are in trouble. And if you screw up your Absorb Cool downs you will want BF at the ready so you can buy some time for your absorbs to come back up. Early in the game, you will get a lot of use out of this skill as the “Spongy” aspect of your build won’t really start working well until midway through nightmare at the earliest. We are using the Crimson Rune mostly to help with damage early in the game, and late game, with a high level crimson rune the damage becomes semi respectable. The Crimson rune causes a blast of lightening damage (front loaded) when the Flash hits.
Serenity * Golden * 15/15
This is the main ability that makes your build work. You will want to take Serenity all the way to 15/15. That extra 11th point will increase the amount of damage you absorb over 100%. This is very confusing to most players and because of this no one ever levels Serenity over 10/10, but I have to believe that Blizzard did this specifically to make this build more fun / viable. At level 15 your serenity will absorb 125% of all incoming damage. What does this mean? If a monster hits you for 100 damage, the game computes you as having absorbed 125 damage. This of course combines beautifully with Alabaster LTK! The effect lasts for 10 seconds (never goes up) and unfortunately (even with the trait quickening) you can’t bring the cool down lower than 20 seconds. But that means that HALF of the time you will be absorbing ALL damage you are taking and buffing up you LTK at the same time. We have other ways to minimize the pain of the other 10 seconds that Serenity isn’t up. The Golden Rune is used here to reduce the Holy Power Cost to practically nothing (with a high rune). All of the other runes change the effect too much to stay useful for your sponge.
Holy Aura * Alabaster * 7/10
Holy Aura with an Alabaster Rune provides you with a way to ALWAYS be absorbing some damage. The Base effect of the Aura allows you to regenerate Health, when you first activate HA it GREATLY regenerates health. With the Alabaster rune you will no longer regenerate health, but instead (you guessed it) absorb incoming damage. For the first .5 – 3.00 seconds (depending on rune level) you and your party will absorb 100% of incoming damage. For the rest of the time the aura is active, which is about 60 seconds at level 6/10, you and your party will be absorbing 20% of the damage received. The Cool down (with quickening) is about 55 seconds, so you can have endless up time on the 20% absorbs and use the 100% absorb time when you first activate the Aura as a “once every 55 seconds” aid to your serenity cool downs. So with these two abilities, Serenity (Golden) and Holy Aura (Alabaster) along with the trait Quickening You can absorb 100% or more damage for up to 13 seconds at a time (with good runes). You will settle into a play style that plays safely when you don’t have a New Holy Aura CD and Serenity is down. KEEP IN MIND that you should save your HA and SERENITY CDs (along with your other CDs, see below) to be used together when going up against specifically tough monsters as the 100% absorb from the HA cast stacks with the 125% absorbs from Serenity. Lashing Tail Kick (REMEMBER) will get a massive buff to its explosion for any damage you can take during that time (over the last 12 seconds). When you pull this off just right, even the toughest monster packs will die fast. You will find yourself using your HA and Serenity and then seeking out that Heavy Hitter in the middle of the pack, take as many hits as you can and then light the room up with LTK explosions. Remember, if you screw up your Absorb CDs at a bad time (easy to have happen until you master the play style) use your Blinding Flash!
Breath of Heaven * Alabaster * 6/10
This underwhelming Tier 6 skill fits perfectly into this build with ANOTHER Alabaster Rune. The standard skill lets you remove any harmful effects from yourself and your party. It is boring, but useful. However, with an Alabaster rune the Skill totally changes and gets slapped with a 2 min cool down. This is an “oh-sh!t” button that resets the cool downs of all your abilities. If you just used serenity and Holy Aura, but that pesky pack in hell isn’t quite dead and you don’t feel like using Blanding Flash and running away, use this with about 1 second left on your Serenity and then just recast it and Holy Aura. Then Continue your LTK explosion parade. To make the 2 min Cool down more explainable the Alabaster BoH also increases all damage you deal by 25-75% (based on Rune level) for the next 10 seconds giving it dual use as a way to reset your Absorbs and a way to do HUGE damage with a good Rune.
Will of the Order * Alabaster * 6/10
The standard effect of WotO will cause Monsters in the area of effect to fight for the Monk for a short period of time. There are some awesome builds with this standard functionality, but we are going with the Alabaster version. The Alabaster rune changes the effect to cause all monsters in the Area of Effect to Take more Damage and Deal more damage for 12 seconds. It is VERY important that you put only a level 1 Alabaster rune in Will of the Order. A level 1 alabaster rune causes monsters to take 80% more damage and deal 80% more damage. If you put better a better Alabaster rune in WotO the amount of damage the monsters takes goes up (to a maximum of 120% at level 8), but the amount of extra damage the monsters deal will drop to only 5% at a level 8 rune. We (for the sake of the Sponge build) want the monsters to do more damage. This way the monsters will be hurting themselves twice, by taking 80% damage and giving you 80% more damage to absorb. The cool down on this tier 7 ability is pretty big (2 min, even with quickening), but it is the final piece of the puzzle in terms of maxing your LTK damage. When you have 6/10 the radius is pretty big. Use this with your other CDs to take your LTK damage to HUGE levels for Boss fights.
Traits
Quickening * 3/3 * Lowers the cool downs on your abilities by 10 % per point
Even though the effectiveness is less than for the Wizard and Witch Doctor (by 5% per level) 30% Is still huge! This trait makes the cool downs on Serenity and Holy Aura work really well in tandem as well as bringing the rest of your cool downs to a more “speed” friendly level. This build demands this trait, so take it.
True Spirit * 5/5 * Increases the Monk’s Spirit regeneration
As always with the 5/5 traits, it hurts to invest so much in one ability. But with this trait maxed (and the effect you get from Alabaster Circle of Wrath) you will almost always be able to spam Lashing Tail Kick. This trait is a must for the Spongy Monk.
Spiritual Attunement * 3/3 * Increases the amount absorbed by the monks absorb skills by 8% per point
This is the most obvious choice for our Build of all the traits. The build is built around using absorbs to boost your damage, take this! As with the 11th point in Serenity, this extra 8% adds up when you are already absorbing 100% or more damage from all of your other absorbs.
Intimidation * 3/3 * Increases the damage you deal and reduces vendor costs
This trait is free damage with no penalty and adds the Vendor cost reduction (which of course works on Crafting and Leveling Artisans). I almost always take this trait. If it was just the reduced vendor costs it would feel like an un-necessary comfort, but with the value of gold, this is always hard to pass up. The damage makes you feel less dirty for taking it.
Foot Speed * 1/1 * Increases the Monk’s movement speed by 20% and increases the initial damage of Lashing Tail Kick by 20%
This is another no brainer trait to take. Our build focuses on spamming Lashing Tail Kick. While the majority of our damage comes from the explosions (which is not affected by this trait) with a level 15/15 LTK the initial damage is pretty huge. Take this, of course!
This leaves you with 6 Points to spend
The rest of your trait points are pretty much optional. You should probably take your weapon of choice specialization. The only real WRONG choice that you SHOULD NOT take is Sixth Sense. Six Sense will cause you to Dodge more attacks which you will never want to do with this build. You will be avoiding dodge at all costs, even on your gear.
You are probably right about this kind of thing not being everyone’s cup of tea. I can see how reading something that is making A LOT of things up, but presents itself as fact could be a bit disconcerting. This is why I put the disclaimer part at the start of each of these.
Anyway, as far as putting a lot of time into imagining the game before it’s even out, I am guilty of that for sure. I have gone through so many pretend play-throughs in my head that actually putting these down on paper is fast and easy. Basically, after I decide to stick to a few assumptions like: the skill caps being raised from 5/5 to 10/10 to 15/15, 61 total skill points, 21 total traits, it’s pretty easy to just make it up as you go along.
The main thing I’ve been doing with these (For Fun) guides is thinking of a concept for the build, and then trying to think of ways Blizzard might make rune effects / traits that compliment that concept.
For the Wizard, I had seen someone else (no clue who, it’s been too long) give the idea that the Crimson rune in Slow Time would make things take more damage while they stayed in the bubble. I loved that concept and then just built / made up a lot of things that would compliment that idea.
For the Witch Doctor, I took the idea of diseases and damage over time abilities in general and tried to think how Blizzard might let us amplify that aspect of the Witch Doctor. Even though I made up the trait “the sick get sicker” out of thin air, this concept of taking traits that really define what kind of character you are is something we know Blizzard wants to do. So even though it is made up, I really think this kind of thing may be close to what really ends up in the game.
For this Guide, the Monk, I had to do the most “imagining” of the three guides so far (which was a blast). I made up a skill out of thin air (if someone can think of a better name than Will of the Order, let me know), but even this one I took one concept, Absorbs, and tried to make every other choice compliment that idea. The idea of trying to take damage so you can buff your own seemed like a cool idea, and I could see Blizzard putting these kinds of odd-ball builds, that might not be immediately obvious, in the game. I can imagine (if this was actually real) seeing the trait “Spiritual Attunement” when you first get the game and thinking “I thought traits were supposed to make a BIG difference, this trait costs 3 points and only makes me absorb 24% more damage” but not having any idea about what the Alabaster Rune effect does to Lashing Tail Kick.
So I’ve written too much here, but the point is, with all the extended development time I really hope that these kind of strange builds are possible. Find the right rune effect for a skill or Trait (Crimson Slow Time, the Trait Sick Get Sicker, Alabaster Lashing Tail Kick) and then build around it. The possibilities could be huge.