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Kind of just glossed over the responses, but my main criticism is that in order to guarantee a crit on Blizzard you probably don't even need the Frost Nova proc. Just on the beta alone, on my Barbarian with 5% crit from passives I had 11-12% crit, so seeing as thats level 13 I'm sure you'll get more than 10% more crit by level 13. Either way, its interesting to see that crits can be essentially guaranteed from runes and skills alone.

The % damage from wands would still make them plenty viable, and they could simply make it so that wands have high damage values, if they are even going to make this kind of change to Wizards anyways.

A bit off topic, but I just kinda realized that the quote from Rob Pardo doesn't actually confirm that Diablo is the end boss. It confirms that Diablo's in the game, but it doesn't say it ends with him. All it says is that you can go all the way through, and that involves killing Diablo. Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into his language, but he doesn't actually say 'You can play through to the end where you kill Diablo' he instead says 'You can play through to the end and kill Diablo.' Just sayin.

Or here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/29961-mantra-changes/

Awesome stuff. But why soooo much auto attack and why are you using only 3 skills at level 13? JEEEZ!

Quote from HabeasPorpoise

Aww man, only 32 minutes? I was hoping for some MGS4 cutscenes.

I lol'd

Anyways, looking forward to 32 minutes of pure win.

I think people might be misunderstanding a bit here. The only time the drops you get degrade is after the first kill of a boss. At least in the beta, the Skele King automatically drops a rare (sometimes even 2) when you kill him for the first time, and after that he drops magic items. It doesn't keep degrading every time you kill him, just the first time. After that, you can still even get rares from him, but its pretty, well, rare. I've killed him many times on certain characters, and he continues to drop the same quality magic items, its not as though if you do it enough he'll only be dropping common and trash items.

Yea, the only time you get a guaranteed rare is with a first kill. After that, the Skele King becomes just as good for loot as a champion/rare mob. Maybe a bit better, but not noticeably in my experience. I like it though. It makes it so that even though boss/dungeon/event runs are still the way to go, you have a reason to stop and kill mobs other than just the necessary ones.

You don't just skip to a boss. You might skip some regular monsters, but its worthwhile to kill champion or rare mobs when you see them. I hope its not just for beta, and it certainly fits in with the mentality the D3 team has expressed before in regards to boss runs.

With the release of the item page on the Diablo III official site, questions were raised about how the rune system will work once the game is released. The presence of unattuned runes on the item page seemed to suggest that the team was going ahead with the implementation of the system Jay Wilson explained at the late July press event (be sure to check out Force's video of the explanation, along with many questions on the system from our own Sixen here). However, in response to a thread on the Diablo III forums, Bashiok was sure to point out that the system is not fully implemented yet, and is still very much up in the air.
So fingers crossed for a full on explanation at the upcoming BlizzCon. If there are any updates on the runestone system at Blizzard's annual convention you can be sure we'll let you know.

In the same post, Bashiok went on to explain a potential change to the skill swapping system currently in place that would prevent people from swapping skills in the middle of combat.
Obviously this town-only restriction, if implemented, would still allow people to switch skills before a boss fight, which has been a point of much contention. However, it would still force players to be bound to a certain build during their time in a dungeon, unless they wanted to go back and forth from town in order to switch skills.

The second half of Bashiok's post caused a shift in the discussion occurring in the topic towards Diablo III's skill swapping system. Many people asked why the team simply would make it impossible to switch skills in combat, which led to this response from Bashiok:
As a result, it seems as though restricting skill swapping to town may be the simplest option. However, this obviously leads to some problems with experimentation seeing as in order to test out a skill after leveling you'd have to go back to town, and if you don't like the skill you'd have to switch it back in town once more. However, some people may see this restriction on the current ease of skill swapping as a good thing, and I think we can all agree that there needs to be a solution to swapping skills while in combat.

There is usually a rune that makes it so that its the same skill just with a damage boost/cost reduction. So if you like how the skill functions, just use one of those runes. Obviously that won't always be a choice, but it will be a decent amount of the time.

Alongside recent changes about the Demon Hunter's Hatred regeneration and how damage is calculated across all classes, Bashiok recently responded to a question about the Monk's Mantras, specifically why they need to be refreshed instead of simply toggled.

In order to give players an incentive to refresh their Mantras (which, if you didn't know, currently function almost identically to Auras), there has been talk of implementing short term bonuses to Mantras when the player first activates them.
As with the reworking of the Demon Hunter's Hatred regeneration, the Mantra changes are up on the Monk's official skill page, but the change has not been implemented in the current build of the beta. If they were implemented, the skill descriptions would be changed to match the current ones on the Diablo III site:

Mantra of Evasion - Recite a Mantra that grants you and all allies within 40 yards a 30% chance to dodge attacks. Lasts 120 seconds. Dodge chance is doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Mantra of Healing - Recite a Mantra that causes you and all allies within 40 yards to gain increased Life regeneration by 106.4 Life per second. Lasts 120 seconds. Life regeneration is doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Mantra of Conviction - Recite a Mantra that causes all enemies within 20 yards of you to take 20% additional damage. Lasts 120 seconds. Additional damage is doubled in the first 3 seconds.

Previously the sections about the first three seconds weren't included in the skill description, and the change to the other mantra, Mantra of Retribution, is currently unknown. Each skill currently has a cooldown of 30 seconds, so this change would most likely make it advantageous to simply use the Mantra every thirty seconds.

These changes have also raised questions about the Wizard's Armors and the Barbarian's Shouts. Although the Barbarian gains fury from some of his shouts, the Wizard currently gains no bonus from refreshing her armors, and it seems as though a similar incentive could be used for both classes. If that happens, and when the Mantra change is implemented, you can be sure we'll let you know.

So what do you think about the Monk's Mantras? Should they just be passive skills? Should you just toggle them on and off? Or do these changes provide enough of an incentive to refresh the Mantra every 30 seconds? Be sure to discuss your opinion in the topic below.

I'm sure it won't be the exact same animation, and I wouldn't be surprised if he spent a bit more time during the second stage of the attack, but they probably won't make it so that you're all that more vulnerable than you are during the normal attack. The idea of the rune system is only to enhance attacks, and if it just made you a sitting duck people would easily pass up the Indigo rune in favor of a different effect.

Right. The rune still definitely boosts the damage of the attack by adding those 14 extra attacks, but you won't gain extra spirit because you only gain that spirit for each stage.

Monk combos generate 6 spirit for each stage of the attack. So every time you hit the button and it corresponds to an attack, you get 6 spirit. So as awesome as it would be, you don't get 132 spirit with the Indigo rune of Way of the Hundred Fists.

This is actually something that I'll be very interested to see whether or not it works. When the Monk was first announced, the fact that you could mix and match combos was one of the most exciting things about him IMO, but with only 6 active skills I don't know if it'll be viable to rely on more than one or two combos. I'd definitely like to see it work, as thats probably the way I'd build my Monk as well.