current classes
Blizzard Entertainment revealed a new Monk character class for upcoming action-RPG Diablo III on Friday.
“I’m proud to introduce the new Diablo III playable class, with all of its open-handed Tiger Strike fury,” said Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s vice president of development. He introduced the first trailer and gameplay footage for the character class at BlizzCon, the company’s annual fan convention held at the Anaheim Convention Center.
“That definitely gets the old juices going,” said Metzen of the trailer, which showed a Monk in an epic battle with a demon. In the gameplay footage, the Monk used high-speed melee attacks to shatter his enemies and splatter blood.
The new Monk class joins the already-known character classes of Barbarian, Witch Doctor and Wizard, and is now playable at BlizzCon.
source: wired.com
Though the Diablo III kiosks in the BlizzCon pressroom were swamped all weekend, I did manage to squeeze in a little time with the game’s newest class – the Monk.
To give you folks a little background information, the BlizzCon press room is a place of joy and wonder. They line two walls with kiosks playing the games available on the show floor, so the press can play without having to be complete jerks, butting into the front of hundreds of patiently waiting fans. They also have excellent Italian dinners, which I stopped eating the moment a Diablo III kiosk went free, leaping over rows to furiously-typing journalists for my chance to play the Monk.
The Monk demo started out in the Sundered Pass, an area of shifting desert sands. An NPC sporting the signature yellow exclamation point quest marker tasked me with travelling out into the wastes to find something or some such. Honestly? I wasn’t paying all that much attention to what she was saying. I wanted to get out into the sands and kick some ass, Street Fighter style.
Yes, the Monk has been designed with Street Fighter in mind. As lead designer Jay Wilson told me during our interview, there are a lot of fighting game fans on the Diablo III team, and they wanted a character that added a bit of that feel to the game. Have they succeeded?
It was hard to tell at first. The initial enemies you encounter are wasps, which pretty much go down in 1-2 hits, so the massive destructive power isn’t nearly as evident. If I was lucky I’d pull off the full Exploding Palm, a combo move that leaves the enemy with a damage-dealing dot, making them explode in an extremely satisfying manner if it drains their heath completely.
As mentioned previously, many of the Monk’s moves are combination moves – moves with multiple stages. The Exploding Palm, for instance, delivers a couple of weak hits before the third step, which applies the explosive damage effect.
As I progressed through the desert, strong enemies began to appear, including members of the demonic Fallen, who took more than a few mouse clicks to dispatch. The Monk’s damage was fine against these larger creatures, but the differences between the Monk and the more powerful Barbarian became readily apparent the first time I took a heavy hit. The Monk isn’t all that good at going toe-to-toe with enemies. The best tactic seemed to be to jump in, hit the enemy with a quick barrage of strikes, and then move before you get hit.
This became even more clear once I started running into large groups of enemies. Running in, feet and staff swinging wildly, did not work. I was quaffing healing potions like they were going out of style, and I actually managed to die. The key to large groups is the Monk’s Seven-Sided Strike ability. A semi-ranged attack, the Seven-Sided Strike has you tearing through groups of enemies in a flashing display of holy power, leaving song dead, and some weakened. Combine it with the explosive effect of the Palm, and you’ve got a very effective way of taking out large groups without dying in the process.
The key to playing the Monk would seem to be in combining his combination powers to create your own play style. I didn’t get to explore this much, with the limited skills at my disposal and the limited time I had to play, but one can easily see how a skilled player can turn the Monk into a devastating engine of destruction. It’s a character class that will take a little work to master, but the results should be quite satisfying.
source: kotaku
- I don’t know how many of you have played Baldur’s Gate 2, but the Monk class in that game was actually pretty sweet. He/she didn’t wear any armor, and they didn’t use any weapons (Well, you could, but they were best without them). Instead, they used their fists and feet, and had a bunch of talents related to Martial combat – Iron fist/skin kind of things. They’d run faster as they leveled, and had a lot of Natural resistances to Magic, Poison, that kind of stuff.
- Or, if you’ve played Ragnarok by any chance (No flames please. xD), the Monk, or Champion class in that game was probably my favorite class of almost ANY game i’ve ever played. They used fist/claw type weapons like the Assassin in D2, and used Fist/punch-combos to kill things. They also had a few Holy ability’s (they are a MONK, after all), which could sort of combine the Paladin and Assassin together. The Monks in Ragnarok also had these spirit spheres they could summon which they used to power their Fist skills, and most of their Fist skills used up one or more of the 5 spheres you could have at one time – which kind of reminds me of the charge-up ability’s that the assassin had(Remember the 3 orbs that charged up when you used certain skills?), and could release to do one HUGE attack.
- Just THINK about that one for a second. Close your eyes and try to imagine it in Diablo 3.
Blindingly fast, bone crunching, skull fracturing Fists. Cracking a fissure open and dropping zombies inside, blowing a huge gust of icy wind from his lungs to knock back and freeze a few Goatmen. Maybe pushing a huge wall of water out from his palms, or summoning a giant Fire Typhoon from the sky.
- Also, he would be a neutral character, just like the rest of the heros of Sanctuary. He doesn’t have to be holy, or good-natured like the Paladin, or shady and ill-natured like the Assassin. (Though I do Imagine Monks to be more on the Good-natured side, but it doesn’t HAVE to be that way.)
What do you guys think?
Also, sorry for the wall of text. :p
Edit: Thought i’d try my hand at a Skill tree. Haha. Maybe you guys can think of one as well? Or spells I can add? :p
Martial Arts Talents (Another name? XD)
- Level 1
- Iron Fist
- Rank 0/10
- Increses damage done with Fists, and Fist/claw type weapons by 3% each level
- Passive
- Triple Attack
- Rank 0/10
- There is a 29% chance that when you attack with a Fist/Claw type weapon, you will hit three times in the amount of time it took to hit once. Higher skill level decreases chance of this happening, but increases damage output.
- Passive
- Dodge
- Rank 0/15
- Increases dodge/block rate by 1.5% per Skill level
- Passive
- Lightning Speed
- Rank 0/15
- Increases run speed and attack speed by 2% per Skill level
- Passive
- Iron Fist
- Level 2 (5 Martial Arts Points Required)
- Iron Skin
- Rank 0/1
- Mana Cost: 30
- Turns your skin to the hardness of Steel. Increases defense by 150%.
- Fists of Lightning
- Rank 0/10
- Mana Cost: 25
- Hitting an enemy with this skill gives the Monk one Lightning orb which floats around him. Can charge up to 5 times. Releasing this Combo skill with a Finishing move releases a devastating explosion of lightning that pushes out from the Monk, stunning and knocking back all foes within a 10 foot radius.
- Tiger Strike
- Rank 0/5
- Mana Cost: None
- Finishing move that does 200% of Fist/Claw damage, and unleashes all Combo skill orbs.
- Soft Winds
- Rank 0/15
- Converts 5% of all damage taken into mana.
- Passive
- Iron Skin
- Level 3 (10 Martial Art Points Required)
- Raging Quadruple Blow
- Rank 1/10
- Mana Cost: 8
- Useable only after a Triple Attack. The Monk hits the enemy rapidly 4 times, breaking bones and ripping tendons, leaving the enemy stunned and unable to attack for a short period of time, opening the target up for a finishing move.
- Mental Wall
- Rank 0/1
- Mana Cost: 15
- Pushes all targets away from the Monk, knocking them down or stunning them.
- Fury
- Rank 0/5
- Mana Cost: 5 every 2 seconds
- The Monk concentrates for a brief period of time, pulling out his inner-strength, increasing his Attack Speed by 10% and increasing his base damage by 15%. All Mana regeneration is halted while the Monk is in his Fury state
- Spiritual Cadence
- Rank 0/10
- Mana Cost: None
- The Monk’s base Health and Mana regen are incresed by 25% every level. If sitting or standing still, the Regen increases by an additional 50%. This skill is useable in the Fury state, but is cut by 200%.
source: diablofans
- Raging Quadruple Blow
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