Game: Diablo III

[Assertn]

18 hours played, act 3 on normal, level 27 monk. Not sure how many hours you guys are playing to be on higher difficulties with such high level characters.

Blizzard has its shit down, releasing at the start of summer vacation.

So I'm in act 1 on nightmare with a level 33 monk.

This is my grind setup:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...ifQ!cbX!aZZZZa

This is my power setup:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...djQ!cbX!ZZaZZa

One thing I especially love to do with the grind setup is combine cyclone with lashing tail or wave of light to alternate drawing enemies into me and knocking them away.

I also have some heavy vitality buffs on my gear, too. I think my monk has like 3600 hitpoints right now.

[Animeniax]

So I'm in act 1 on nightmare with a level 33 monk.

I also have some heavy vitality buffs on my gear, too. I think my monk has like 3600 hitpoints right now.

I went the other direction, sacrificing hp for damage. My level 27 monk has 1250hp, 705 armor, and 205 dps. He annihilates swarms of mobs and bosses quickly, but is susceptible to high damage attacks (I've died 4 times total, twice to Belial and twice to getting swarmed).

If I do play the higher difficulties, I'll probably switch to demon hunter or use the monk but beef up his hp and defense.

[Animeniax]

Holy shit, saw some of my buddies' characters (level 59 and 60) and they have ~15000 dps. WTF?? Makes my 205 seem puny now.

[Assertn]

The high vitality stats make my healing spells more useful. As far as damage, I'm currently going through nightmare act I and still feel like I'm killing stuff pretty fast. If you're overkilling, then you're not gaining anything from the buffs.

Oh I was wrong about my monk's health, btw. It's actually closer to 10000.

[shinta|hikari]

I completed normal at around 15 hours on pure solo. It took less to complete nightmare because I had a party. Hell is taking a lot more time.

[Animeniax]

The high vitality stats make my healing spells more useful. As far as damage, I'm currently going through nightmare act I and still feel like I'm killing stuff pretty fast. If you're overkilling, then you're not gaining anything from the buffs.

Oh I was wrong about my monk's health, btw. It's actually closer to 10000.

Not sure why my stats seem so puny at level 27. Maybe everything scales up when you move to nightmare mode? I've surviving everything the game throws at me on normal difficulty, so I guess I'm where I should be stats wise.

[oyabun]

I think Monk has the most puny DPs out there. With mg lvl 54 monk, I can't even pass 1k DPS. Although I don't really have any good equips to be proud of but it is decent. We are pretty much farming rare equipment right now for latter levels of hell. And don't bother thinking up combos for monks in the late game, there is pretty much 1 build you can use to survive hell alone or be useful in a party .

[Animeniax]

That's weird, I'm hearing that monks are essential in groups to succeed in the tougher difficulty levels, particularly as a tank.

I wonder if our puny dps is made up for by the number of attacks per second we're able to make. When I throw the fists of fury combos, I hit the mobs several times in a row in succession.

I completed normal at around 15 hours on pure solo. It took less to complete nightmare because I had a party. Hell is taking a lot more time.

Are you exploring/scouring every corner of every area? I'm at hour ~20 and still on act 3, level 29.

[Dark Dragon]

@Oyabun
At 53 Monk i'm doing around 2k DPS with 30k hp and 150~ resistance to everything using 1hand + shield.

If you're talking about the MoH spam build, that really only works on hell or below. I have 3 friends who are all Monks in inferno right now and they're using very different builds. I think tank monk is the only viable build for inferno though, since i haven't seen anyone post a DPS monk build for it.

In my opinion the best way to go is Vit > Resist > Dex in term of stat allocation.

This is the skill set i'm using. I have lifesteal on my main weapon, and with this set i'm able to tank through some really dumb elite packs (arcane/invulnerable minion/freezing).

[oyabun]

But your DPS rating is still low in comparison to the other classes. Animeniax is right, Monk are really essential to a party with its defensive and healing abilities.

Yea that what I said for the latter part of the game, the tank build seems to be the best option to survive hell to inferno. Don't bother being alone though, I read in the forums that the melee types is doomed in inferno. What skill build are you using now Dark Dragon?

I am also using a shield atm for farming and tank purposes and yea my 1 hand weapon sucks, hence the 900 DPS. I pretty much hope to change that after this "farming" period.

[vejita613]

Level 43 Monk doing 780 dps and 8000 total life. Just started act 3 Nightmare and I do OK at the moment. My skill set.

I do OK for the most part, but I do die alot. Waiting to see if I can get some good drops or if I can get some good items from the blacksmith.

[KrayZ33]

got hacked today hnnggg.

and I just found out that blizzard will only reset d3 characters 2 times a year.
its not like I've already used it up, but it still sucks to know that someone in China knows your password and the next time this is going to happen will be the last time you can ask for support.

authenticator takes weeks to deliver too (bought it at the same time as the game)... I don't get why they didn't sell it with the game itself.

[Animeniax]

got hacked today hnnggg.

and I just found out that blizzard will only reset d3 characters 2 times a year.
its not like I've already used it up, but it still sucks to know that someone in China knows your password and the next time this is going to happen will be the last time you can ask for support.

authenticator takes weeks to deliver too (bought it at the same time as the game)... I don't get why they didn't sell it with the game itself.

Did someone just guess your pword? Was it a simple pword?

[KrayZ33]

nope, most likely china men doing their gold selling business

[Dark Dragon]

@Oyabun

Blizzard pretty much designed Monk and WD to be more utility oriented rather than damage. I can probably get close to DH or Mage damage-wise if i do dual-wield and a full dex build. The problem has to do more with damage melee builds being gimp in Inferno like you said.

On the upside, Barbarian and Monk are the only ones who can solo Inferno up to act 2.

I have a skill build in my last post. What i'm was using up till now was the Mantra of Healing + Shield Rune combine with high spirit generation attack to abuse the constant 15% shield for the party that it generate. Combine that with Blade Storm and Air Ally to generate high constant damage. This build is really broken for anything below hell because it will guaranteed that you will never die.

Now that i'm seeing harder content, it's not really cutting it anymore. I'm switching to a more debuff oriented tank build that focuses on reducing enemies damage while maximizing resistance/health.

I can't stress how dumb the Moh shield build is. I can walk into any elite packs in nightmare and stay alive just by holding down left click and constantly spam the aura button. I think this is definitely going to get nerf sometime soon.

[KrayZ33]

On the upside, Barbarian and Monk are the only ones who can solo Inferno up to act 2.

what makes you think that, every class can do it, and I believe the first one to solo inferno completely has been a mage.

[Assertn]

I'm mostly curious what's going to happen with the auction house. Things are getting a bit nuts over there the past few days, and in a bad way. Two days ago a perfect square gem would go for about 300,000g, and now it's closer to 85,000g. The market's getting over saturated it seems. It's not even profitable to combine gems up to flawless square anymore.

[oyabun]

Wail till the real money system comes online. All the goodiess will go there and the gold auction items will look like crap.

[Penner]

Yeah the auction house is abit worrying, since theres almost no use what-so-ever for items you find, because you can easily gear up with vastly superior items for ridiculously low amounts of gold, and blacksmithing seems completely useless.

[KrayZ33]

I'm mostly curious what's going to happen with the auction house. Things are getting a bit nuts over there the past few days, and in a bad way. Two days ago a perfect square gem would go for about 300,000g, and now it's closer to 85,000g. The market's getting over saturated it seems. It's not even profitable to combine gems up to flawless square anymore.

I'm sure you know pretty well why gems sell for less than x days ago, you can always remove them... thats something you couldn't do in D2 and thats why you can't trade with them in D3.