Comments on: Jeremy’s Blizzcon Day 1 Recap

By: Tim O'Connell

Tim O'Connell — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:52:29 +0000

Yeah. The best way to describe the monk is the same way that the dev panel did. He is a cross between the Diablo 2 assassin and the WoW rogue. So if you can lay down the pain on the mobs before they can get some hits on you then you will walk away pretty unscathed. The debuff, exploding palm, is incredibly valuable because it turns whoever the Monk hit into an exploding corpse along the lines of the Diablo 2 Necromancer. The Monk is more for the twitch gamer because, while he has way more life than the witchdoctor and the wizard, if you allow him to get overwhelmed by surrounding enemies he can drop pretty damn fast.

By: Balcloth

Balcloth — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:17:47 +0000

Basically what Ryan said, but to expand slightly on that…

I understand your concern about the Monk become completely irrelevant at higher levels…to a degree. It does seem that many of the Monk abilities are more AE (area effect) as opposed to direct damage, and that might hinder him at the higher levels solo. However, those same abilities make him almost invaluable to a group. The Monk is capable of placing several Exploding Palm debuffs on mobs that will go off in a chain reaction that is both devasting and more viscerally appealing than any of the other class I saw. So the Monk definitely has a place, in my opinion, in groups at higher levels.

Now whether the Monk can completely hold his own solo at higher levels to the degree that some other class can, well that remains to be seen.

By: Ryan Yockey

Ryan Yockey — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:21:18 +0000

We played it paired with a few different combination's of other characters during Blizzcon. We found the Monk to be pretty useful with the Barbarian and the Wizard.

In the demo we played the Monk and every other class was set at a certain level and skill-set. It's pretty hard to judge how well he will fit in later on in the game, at least at this point in time.

Overall though, the Monk is pretty badass to play ass. Very fun new class.

By: Dom

Dom — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:39:01 +0000

So is this going to be one of those classes that becomes totally irrelevant in the higher difficulties (perhaps unless you have a certain build)? The video where he's wrecking shop on pretty much everything is sweet, but that might be because he's overpowered for those enemies. Basically, if he's doing a little bit of damage to a lot of enemies, will he be able to actually kill anything in the higher levels?

The thought of a Paladin-like damage increasing aura on a monk class is pretty exciting tho.