Diablo 3 – First impressions Monk

Diablo 3. It’s finally out and, yes, I have played and I’ll be playing some more. The first draft of this post is actually from last year, 17th of september. I was really looking forward to taking part in the beta, but that never happened. So that’s why I’m filling up this post now. I think it’ll be series of posts to save you from reading about five thousand words in one go ;)

I’ll save you all the complaining about error 37, error 75 and online DRM. There are many other places where you and other people can complain. I was one of the people who sat at their computer looking at a log in screen of Diablo 3, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t have my awesome copy of the Collector’s Edition yet, so I couldn’t play unless I also bought a digital edition. I’m not that rich, sorry.

I decided to watch a live stream of other people trying to log in and fail. It was hilarious to watch other people rage about something so obvious. It was only to be expected that more than half of the people trying to log in would get the now famous Error 37. Even during the ‘open beta’ stress test most people saw this error. I decided not to care. Yes, it’s annoying when you can’t play. I did hate on Blizzard for a bit when I couldn’t log in May 15th after dinner. But when I could play, I loved it. (If Blizzard didn’t have these ‘time outs’ I’d probably have RSI by now.)

My monk, the hirelings and a second enchantress

Monk has been my favorite since it was revealed. I leveled her to 37 now and finish Normal with her. Her equipment is reasonable, but I’m still hoping for a better weapon. 245 DPS just isn’t enough. When I play, I can’t help but to fall back on my experiences with Diablo 2. Comparisons will be made, consciously and subconsciously. The monk has skills I recognize from the assassin and paladin in D2. The martial arts style and ally from the assassin and the auras and divine powers from the paladin.

As you fight your way through hell and back again, you unlock different skills and runes for the active skills. Each runes gives a skill different properties. It’s nice that you can pick and ‘customize’ skills to your liking, but I miss seeing the actual stats of what that skill does. How much damage does my ally do in their water or fire form? Is it based on my stats or level? As a game that screams DPS in your face (weapons actually show a big fat DPS number when you examine them), I want to know these things.

It’s possible to choose six active skills and three passive skills. I don’t really like dying so I chose active and passive skills that keep me alive, either by healing or life regeneration.  But there are also enough skills to make the monk a powerful fighting machine, damage enhancing mantras, multi targeting, damaging aura, you name it.

So far I’ve played wizard (level 15), demon hunter (level 9) and witch doctor (level 6) and I still prefer the monk. She’s the least squishy of all three and she did the most damage early on. Her CC is good (kicking away enemies, stunning them, what not) and she can save others from dying (there’s actually an achievement for that).