14 DAY TRIAL // After unveiling how the upcoming patch 1.0.4 for Diablo 3 affects character classes like the Barbarian or Wizard, Blizzard has now revealed the changes included in the update for the Monk class.
Diablo 3 received plenty of updates since its launch in May, but the upcoming patch 1.0.4 will bring a wide array of balance changes.
Blizzard has already detailed some of these modifications throughout the week and now it has revealed how the upcoming update affects the Monk class.
“The most important changes for the monk in 1.0.4 are aimed at improving damage-focused Spirit Spenders. We're happy with where Spirit Generators are right now, but unfortunately once you have Spirit, there aren’t very many appealing ways to use it. In many cases, the most effective use of Spirit has been to recast a Mantra repeatedly for the three-second bonus. While this is certainly one possibility, it doesn’t seem as exciting as using one of the more offensively-focused Spirit Spenders (or at least having that option available),” said Blizzard’s Wyatt Cheng.
Among the Spirit Spenders that will be modified there are the Exploding Palm, Seven Sided Strike, or the Wave of Light.
Check out the actual changes to all these abilities below.
Exploding Palm: From a strict usability standpoint, we think the visuals for Exploding Palm can be a little difficult to interpret. It’s hard to tell who's affected by the Bleed and who’s being damaged by the resulting explosion. Our Visual Effects team has made some improvements in 1.0.4 which will make it easier for players to see to tell who’s bleeding and who's getting damaged.
From a mechanics standpoint, the three-second Bleed can make the explosion hard to pull off, and the damage just doesn't seem enough to be worth the Spirit cost. To help with both of these issues, we’re increasing the duration of the Bleed to nine seconds as well as its damage per second, which should make it more likely that monsters you’ve touched with Exploding Palm will go boom when they die.
Current: 220% weapon damage over 3 seconds 1.0.4: 745% weapon damage over 9 seconds
Seven Sided Strike
The original intent for Seven-Sided Strike was for it to be a solid damage dealer that you could use for a quick burst. Where Serenity granted you an amazing period of invulnerability, and your other combat skills could put out some damage, Seven-Sided Strike would ideally exist somewhere in the middle by offering some invulnerability and some damage. Unfortunately, the way it currently plays out, Seven-Sided Strike feels more like a bad version of Serenity, and the damage just doesn’t seem worth it. To address this, we’ll be doing a straight damage increase to Seven-Sided Strike to make it an attractive option for those who are looking for a skill that really packs a punch. The damage buff to Seven Sided Strike is significant.
Wave of Light: Wave of Light is the kind of skill that just needs to do way more damage. It has a big Spirit cost, but it doesn’t seem to pay off based on the amount of Spirit invested into it. In general, we’d like Lashing Tail Kick to be a skill that’s good against a small number of targets and feels relatively "spammable," and for Wave of Light to be a skill that’s more of an investment — something that you don’t use as frequently, but pays out with bigger damage numbers when you actually do hit the button.
Current: 215% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE 1.0.4: 390% weapon damage as Holy + 45% damage as AoE As of yet, patch 1.0.4 for Diablo 3 still doesn’t have a release date but Blizzard hopes to launch it in the following weeks.