Diablo 3 nerfs Monk with 'drastic' rune change
Blizzard has issued what it calls a "drastic" hotfix to Diablo 3, nerfing one of the Monk's runes because it was "ten times over its budget on the benefits it provided."
Diablo III is getting hit with a major change to the Monk class, after Blizzard determined that letting a overpowered rune exist in its current state was a "mistake." This comes among other hotfixes that apparently weakened the Wizard class as well.
The change comes to the Mantra of Healing rune, called Boon of Protection. It now caps damage absorption at the amount of healing provided by the Mantra of Healing in the first three seconds after activation. Blizzard recommends discontinuing its use until the rune is replaced in a future patch.
"The Boon of Protection rune was approximately ten times over its budget on the benefits it provided, and it was quite simply a mistake on our part to let the rune ship as it was," read a post from community manager Bashiok. "We don't intend to take these quick and drastic measures often, but considering the severity of the issue, we felt it important to correct it swiftly."
The post notes that other fixes are coming, and forum users seem to have spotted at least one of them. Many players are noting that the Wizard has had his Force Armor weakened without a notice yet.
So how is Blizzard just now catching such large problems after the game spent two years in "polish mode"? A follow-up post from Bashiok says that the game is adapting to player data. "The game is still young, there were some skills that threw things out of whack, and we expect the landscape to settle out a bit more evenly. Or at least change again so we can continue to monitor the impact," the post read. "Maybe we're wrong, maybe there's no current chance for monk or barbarian to compete with ranged, but our current suspicion is that's incorrect and until we know for sure we're not going to turn any dials."
And to assuage some fears that the Monk would be underpowered now, Bashiok points out that "general class balance is an ongoing investigation" and claims that "the monk and barbarian are not as bad off as they seem."
If you want some tips on surviving Nightmare Mode, check out our latest Diablo III Diary. John Keefer is playing as a Monk, and "use overpowered rune" wasn't even one of his tips.
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Shacknews
replySteve Watts posted a new article, Diablo 3 nerfs Monk with 'drastic' rune change.
Blizzard has issued what it calls a "drastic" hotfix to Diablo 3, nerfing one of the Monk's runes because it was "ten times over its budget on the benefits it provided."-
Hopefully they are as concerned about Error 3007 (joining Gen chat does NOT always fix it).
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Mantra of healing was so goddamn strong. I basically watch my health climb back to the top before the next hit can land. Monk has so many invulnerability skills and solid self healing skills. Unless you are one shotted, it is practically impossible to die.
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I'm sure. I'm just saying, where it is, the monk does have a very strong self replenishment. I haven't played all classes yet, but it seems like they are self sustaining more than the other classes.
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They are, they can self heal quite a bit, but our damage blows by comparison to a lot of other class's.
Honestly, I'm upset primarily because I haven't been able to use a fist weapon in ages w/o sacrificing substantial bonus's. I find swords with mods that make fists look like complete trash. It's just...monks would be fun if fist weapons were useful, filled some role that mattered, and if the heal/shield skills had better range. To get a nerf with stuff preventing enjoying the class to it's fullest is like a slap in the face.-
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Why? I mean, it's really second nature. Smack talk often consists of 'get slapped'. Or we're like, "Hey let's go slap some kids in public". I mean, when a gamer says a company is basically slapping them in the face the context can go so far as to infer the degree of emotional distress was comparable to similar events, events such as being unable to win no matter what you do, spawned camped, teabagged, and then in the lobby afterwards being asked, bro, bro, bro.....Umad? Thereafter sending HateMail and only receiving replies of, Y so Seriouz, and Cool Story.
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Yeah, they fucked up the scaling pretty bad.
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Not in higher difficulties.
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why is character balance important in this game? There's no pvp.....
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PvP later this year..... gotta make sure the characters are prepped for it....
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Yeah, and that it would have a different setup--it's not going to be standalone when it comes to gear etc?
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Indeed! "Balance" is impossible when there are millions of stat combinations to crunch...maintenance and tweaks could potentially last forever (see any MMO)
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So it's okay if the class you want to play just happens to suck at the game compared to all the other ones?
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Why you gotta go to the extreme with it?
As long as every class can complete the game, and can play at an acceptable level, I think it's perfectly fine if any class (yes, even the one I want to play) is less powerful than some other. Especially because the judges of that are normally the Powergaming 1% who play on an entirely different level (and I'd argue and entirely different game) than I do.
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Because if one class was significantly stronger than the others, players will simply play the class that is clearly the strongest. The game's overall enjoyment suffers as a result because you will have parties of the 4 same characters time and time again. If the classes were both balanced and distinct, you will have more diverse games.
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Why is character balance important in any game?
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All the hyperlinks appear bolded on my screen, so I don't think Alice intentionally drew eyes to "two years."
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How much more intentional can you get than hyperlinking "two years"?
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Steve wrote this article so no, I most certainly did not!
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Oops! I'd just read another Diablo article you'd written. ;)
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Two years. TWO YEARS.
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...two years in Polish mode, had quite a bit of work experience
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lol. As if monks aren't underpowered enough. Our fist weapons suck compared to the swords/maces we can find. Even the one's on the market are lacking in comparison. To further compound things the range one our defensive lines, the one's which offer benefits to our team members, have such piss poor range they're almost pointless. You have to almost literally be standing on top of someone for the heal/serenity shield to hit them. This means only melee class's in the fight are close enough for immediate healing and ranged class's have to hope I can chase them down fast enough to heal them.
That means those tools are useless for boss fights where damage can come so fast and so hard that a panic button defense skill will only be useful for myself, which completely negates my team role. The role that comes at the expense of damage dealing, and tank. I mean, ffs, I haven't found a single fist weapon worth using so far. Not a single one. I'm running around with swords and punching people with swords in my hand....just, seriously. The rune was hardly even over-powered. My friends and I are all 42-48 and we're getting slaughter in Nightmare Act 3 by specials while I'm running this perk...Over-powered my ass.-
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no...? why should a fast and slow weapon play exactly the same?
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WoW does
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that's a pretty poor answer
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Maybe I'd like to have some spirit regen w/o sacrificing hundreds of dps/armor and evades? Is it really too much to ask to have 1 spirit per sec regen w/o giving all that up? You seen how silly it looks to 'punch' someone with a sword? It's a sword, a blade, it's rather long, and I'm going to punch someone with my fists bc my class specific weapons are incapable of offering something of value greater than a random sword?
It's not even that it's something that nerfs the specific class even. It's that it's completely against what Diablo's been about. The class specific items in D2 all offered something which gave an advantage to the class. Paladin shields gave resistis, sorc items gave +skills, all the while maintaining bonus's that made using them far better than general weapons.
2% spirit regen is hardly worth giving up 100 dex, 80 vit, 120 str, life steal, AND higher damage. I haven't even see fist weapons in the AH that are better than the random swords my friends and I have found so far. What part of that isn't broken?-
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Seen plenty of other people care on the forums as well as other game sites.
I find it rather entertaining that your response to such a fundamental flaw in class specific weaponry and simple animation flaws can be acceptable in a game that's had 10years of time to be developed and a claimed 2 year polish period. In 2 years they didn't fix the weapon animations or make fist weapons better than random swords and that's supposed to be acceptable?
You're right to some degree about this situation though. A lot of us will stop caring about games from Blizzard after this experience.-
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How so? My first two sentences were about balance, and the 3rd one detailed gripes about animations. How did I 'switch' from one to the other? If anything I included both of them within the same post. You act as if I changed stance on something as the forefront of my complaint when that's not what happened.
So, what exactly did you get?-
If we ignore the animations thing, your complaint is that weapons that have +spirit regen have lower other stats than items that DON'T have +spirit regen. If this is your complaint, you have a fundamental lack of understanding of how item budgeting works.
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you are bad at the game, sorry, I soloed NM without touching the AH and it was trivial except for like 4-5 champion packs throughout the entire game
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What was your build?
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I was mixing it up a fair bit. I alternated between FoT and quickening and crippling wave with concussion as my primary generator. I think I used the AoE wave of light early on but found the spirit cost prohibitive and once I had the stun rune for lashing tail kick that was all I used on right click. Serenity with the heal is an obvious choice. I think I was still using mantra of evasion early on, tried conviction, and settled on healing (with circular breathing) as the end of act 4 had some rough champions. I used to use FoT and thunderclap for mobility but ended up using dashing strike a lot more which I mostly had ignored. Then sweeping winds with bladestorm (I liked the spirit regen rune but by act 4 I wasn't get criticals enough to get 3 stacks quickly). Now I'm in act 1 hell and had to hit up the AH to fox my awful DPS (I had like 1400) and augment my survivability somehow
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lol, solo'd. Who cares about solo? GG on doing it solo. You do realize it becomes increasingly difficult as more players are in a game? Apparently it's more difficult based upon the leader of the party too. Maybe you should play with other people and get a feel for class balance outside easy modeing it with solo play? lol
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Yes I've played Diablo before thanks.
Solo is easy mode according to you. But the hardest difficulty requires grouping according to the people who are good at the game. And Blizzard puts followers in the game to give you help solo when you don't have a group. How do I reconcile these statements?
Further, everyone else playing monk (and plenty of people who group with them) have recognized their absurdity. They've already had 3 skills nerfed (serenity group rune, MoH shield and quickening) which tells you how Blizzard is feeling about their power level too.
The only place people have complained about monks being underpowered is in late hell and inferno and that's nothing to do with the monk specifically but rather the general imbalance between ranged and melee classes where barbs are equally underpowered. So yeah, complaining that monks were already underpowered enough prior to nerfing a few even more ridiculous skills is pretty dumb.-
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you are really making me question why I started replying... No, having imbalance in the skill system is not an intrinsic part of Diablo. If broken skills are required to beat the game then the game is broken, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard's goal, and the consumers goal, is to not play a broken game. Of course this has nothing to do with your argument for why monk's are underpowered, since now you're railing against these nerfs of ridiculously powerful skills despite simultaneously calling the class very underpowered, contrary to what the majority of players are finding.
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My problem here is that my experience so far hasn't pointed to the monk as being overpowered. Some players, like yourself, are claiming that it is overpowered without providing any context or reason.
I find it confusing that one could claim anything to be overpowered without first having been in situations that fully test that thing to it's limits. The extent of a toolsets limitations, it's true power, can't be found in easy to manage conflicts. You're basing your opinion on soloing NIghtmare right? That's not the hardest difficult, not the second hardest difficulty. In fact you played at the bottom tier of the difficulty in which you were playing. You can't test something without fully stressing it, and until you do I don't see how anyone could claim to know jack shit about how it plays out in regards to balance without first having experienced situations which are actually truly difficult.
I'm still in Nightmare, admittedly, but I've been playing Nightmare with friends, and I'm telling you that the monk isn't overpowered in that situation. What it is is extremely useful, nearly to the point of necessity, for damage reduction, and healing, which in concert with barbarians and other class's allows the monks skills to truly shine.
Yet I haven't gotten to Hell yet, let alone Inferno, but from what I hear both Monks and Barbs have issues there, so, personally, I don't see what it matters if Monks were OMGWTFBBQ OP in Norm/NM seeing as after we all get one of each class past NM, hell, get them to 60, we'll NEVER go anywhere else as we'll never have to have any more characters due to how the skillsets function. In d1 it would've mattered, in d2 it would've mattered, but in D3 anyone giving two shits about balance in Norm/NM doesn't really give a shit about balance that matters.
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I enjoy being wrong, that then means I can learn to be right. Unfortunately for you what you've said in no way contests my opinion on the matter.
If you'd care to show how my experience with a Monk is more limited than your own, or anyone you know, within situations which highlight clearly OP skills, then go ahead. If all you have is lame quips typical of crying carebears populating MMO forums vying for the status of teh nerfest class, perhaps you should reroll IRL, and get back to me.
So far, I've been called bad by someone who brag'd about soloing NM, and your pathetic quip that's essentially an imitation of weaksauce trolling which would get laughed out of 4chan.
But, like I said, I enjoy being wrong. So if anyone can offer something which isn't complete fail please, do so.-
You managed to touch on so many things that are bad about the Internet in this post.
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The explanation is at a minimum in the builds and skills that were nerfed here. With quickening and sweeping wind active you can refill your spirit from 0 to 150 in seconds mid fight, which allows you to spam Mantra of Healing (with or without the nerfed rune for additional protection) with transcedence as a passive for constant healing. And in the case that isn't sufficient, serenity with a heal, breath of heaven (giving you all +15% damage) and potions give you 3 additional heals including 3 seconds of outright invulnerability (which lets you get your spirit back up to spam MoH again).
My DPS may not have melted faces like some other classes but I didn't need to because the skills like that meant i could just grind away at their health perpetually almost never getting in serious danger. I often wouldn't need to pop a potion to kill a boss throughout NM.-
So? I don't have to pop potions to solo NM boss's either. That was 4 levels ago. I go a different route, I go with evades, and dps, and then healing. You went all out healing, so what, a different style of play. What part of your experience involved stressing that setup. Better yet, what part of it even matters in long-term balancing? You tell me people are soloing Hell in equipment which isn't uber then I'll pay attention, if not, why does it matter? NM has never been about being hard, more so while solo, so calling anything OP based upon that context just fails, hard, and has no bearing. This is all further compounded by the fact that Diablo has been and always will be about co-op and the difficulty and rewards found in that experience. Any balance concerns outside of that context is honestly inconsequential to the majority of the Diablo playerbase and as such has no application in regards to balance.
This is really all Balancing 101 for anyone who cared to go in-depth with an MMO. I guess that might not be true for WoW players though.
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wtf is this post... you complained monks are underpowered then in response to being shown explicitly how they're not and why it was nerfed, you say, well I don't want to use that build. Great, feel to use whatever build you want, but don't complain if your suboptimal build makes you feel underpowered. This has literally nothing to do with singleplayer vs multiplayer. Tons of us have done both and know how to play. And you're still basing this all on mid level NM play when we have plenty of people who have done that and then much harder content.
Keep throwing out WoW quips to make yourself feel better though, as if we all even play it.-
lol. Shown how they're not underpowered...by describing soloing NM by using what was claimed to be over-powered...haha, good one. Next you're going to tell me my build is suboptimal when it does exactly you said made monks OP. To top it off you make fun of a WoW quip which was aimed at making fun of players which show a lack of understanding for game mechanics...which you so thoroughly seemed to have done.
I honestly don't get it. You're making fun of my experience as only mid level NM play while trying to vindicate your own opinion from soloing NM, essentially the easiest playthrough of NM possible.
This is really all too rich to be trolling, but it's almost too preposterous to be serious.
So, tell me, please. R U SRS?
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I love how it's always the classes fault or the skills fault when people can't roll through a game. Have you ever considered that maybe your gear isn't good enough? Or that you're not using the skills properly? Or hell, that you're not even using a good combination of skills?
There are a lot of monks who don't have this problem. Maybe the problem isn't with the class, but with you and how you're playing. -
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it's not life steal so much as +spirit regen that makes the faster attack speed so useful. But still it seems it's not enough to offset the loss of a shield once you get to the higher difficulties.
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No, you can't.
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STOP SPREADING LIES.
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Attack speed bonus
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You must have negative magic find or something because I've found plenty of fist weapons that are better for me than anything else.
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You find swords with 76 dps, 62 dex 72 int 69 vit 23hp per kill and a chance to blind? or how about 55dps, 123 str, 72 dex 60 int 41 vit chance to blind. I even found one with 105 dex 50 vit 40 int. Do you find fist weapons like those? From what AH browsing I've done I've never seen fist weapons like that, maybe I don't watch it enough, and they sell too fast.
But if you find fists like that please tell me bc then I'll have some hope that I'll eventually find something worth using.-
No, but I haven't found ANYTHING that does all that so it's not really a fair comparison is it? You claimed you haven't found a single fist weapon worth using and from my experience that's fucking lunacy because I've found about as many fist weapons worth using as I've found other weapons worth using.
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Basically I have a real hard time believing that in the entire time you've played, not a single decent fist weapon has dropped for you unless you have ultra shitty MF.
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Then that explains why you're having trouble finding exactly what you want. Just like I said in my first damn post in this subthread.
If you really have never found one, I'll have to assume you've always had shitty MF, not just in nightmare with 4 players.
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using a half dozen random drops you've seen to prove anything about the itemization in D3 is utterly worthless. It should take you literally 5 seconds to find fist weapons that are better than that on the AH, especially since adding int and str aren't worthwhile modifiers, and a trivial amount of hp per kill and chance to blind are entirely forgettable affixes as well (you have better skills for doing both of those things regularly)
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I have a pretty hard time believing you can't find a fist with better than 55 dps and some dex and vitality on it. I really question whether you know what to look for when you list great weapons with their int and str bonus rather than mentioning actually important things like sockets
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They both have sockets, I didn't bother to mention this as the damage is already added, at least it is IG. It seems that the character viewer from login doesn't add the damage, and I was too busy to remember the stats aren't what I had IG. Needless to say with a perfect Ruby the damage goes to 90 and 70, respectably.
As to mocking Int and Str I find that laughable. Int gives me resists, which matter, str is just pure armor, which I'd ofc drop for more vit or dex, but, that's not something I've yet found. There are nice fists on AH, but none with such a good balance of stats. I could gain some boosts in dps, but that'd require spending gold on items that I'd no doubt replace later on...with better swords. I don't plan to start buying equipment through the auction house until I'm in Hell, with the rest of my friends. Part of the fun in Diablo is finding better equipment and I intend to enjoy that to it's fullest until Hell where it will become far more beneficial to engage in trade.
Even then, I might not bother too much. Sharing drops with my friends and basically fitting each other out has an appeal and experience that greed and trade can't compare with.-
You are just all over the place. Int and Str are completely ignorable stats in NM. Even in hell if you need more resists and armor you do it via +resist gear and higher armor pieces (and passives like 100% dex as armor) not by getting "well rounded" gear with int and str, the bonus is negligible (especially since with One With Everything you don't need int for all resists, just gear stacking one). Yes you absolutely should ignore those stats for something with better dps/dex/vit.
If you don't want to use the AH that's fine, but upgrades are there and they're cheap. That you haven't found sufficient rare fists all by yourself proves nothing. I haven't found a good rare monk specific helm yet, so what? I'm not whining about helms being poorly itemized, that's how random and rarity works.
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You act as if I've found better weapons. I haven't. I'm using the best armor and weapons I've found. I haven't found any fists with high dex&vit stats. You keep going off about the best equipment that someone should ideally use. I'm using what I've found and I haven't found any weapons with higher damage/dex/vit stats than what I'm using.
I'm playing with friends and we're sharing loot so everyone get's fitted as best as they can, with what we find. This'll become a habit, a system of behavior even, where we become accustomed to immediately sharing resources that'll benefit us as a group in ways no lonewolf with randoms on their friend list can compare to.
Even those of us who fall behind find themselves suddenly upgraded with hand-me downs from those who have continued to play and, as a group, we're more successful because of it and each of us benefits even further from that success. That's something you can't buy at the Auction House.
Whatever, things have gone so far off-topic I'm not sure which issues should even be discussed anymore, or what point can now be made by discussing them further.
The better question right now is why the hell are we arguing over D3 instead of playing it.....
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No, I'm saying it's simply the nature of the game that a small sample (like you and your friends) might not find exactly what you want/need and that's why trading was always a part of Diablo. That you haven't found fists as your best weapon option is just the nature of the system. If every few levels you checked the AH and fists there were never a viable option next to the best swords/axes/whatever then there'd maybe be something to complain about on that front. Sometimes a fist will be your best weapon for a bit, then an axe, then a mace, then a... etc.
In any case, the only super important reason to use fists is for the class specific affixes. If it doesn't have +spirit regen or whatever then it's just a matter of flavor. It's like wizards complaining that wizard hats aren't always their best gear instead of other types of helms. It happens. If you want a badass fist it can be had, at least you're not a total slave to random drops. You could also try crafting them eventually.-
Basically yes, but crafting...It was fun for awhile but it's inherently flawed. The weapons you get from crafting are rather crappy, and the cost involved means it's cheaper just to save gold and buy items from the AH. Crafting in D3 sucks and it's a wonder they didn't just keep crafting as it was in D2 given how terrible and pointless it is in D3....w/e more off-topic discussion. I'm done, tired, going to just chill out...too much conflict today.
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Noticed on my monk at the seigebreaker if I hit MoH with the boon rune I took no damage from the attack where he grabs and slams you. Took not one ounce of damage from that fight today.
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I'm kicking ass in early hell using the signature lightning spell, the lighting passive, glass cannon, lightning hydra, blizzard, diamond skin and mirror image. Maybe you need to buy a new weapon on the AH.
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I thought wizzy was the nuke class?
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Changelog : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5825330/
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Everyone is saying that the melee classes suck in inferno, myself included. Monks had some tricks, but they're all being fixed, so that leaves melee useless.
And I play 95% of my Diablo 3 time with a barbarian. He's now got over 6k armor and 37k hp. All of his resists (including physical) are around 60% or a little above. He regularly gets killed in 1 or 2 hits by normal white mobs in Act 1 Inferno. So yeah, barbarians aren't really viable in Inferno imo.
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I'm not even sure what they're saying in regard to the Force Armor change. Sounds like it's not doing anything.
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What's the cheapest way to get the game currently? Are there any retailers who have it on sale?
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Works both ways...people complain something is OP, Blizz habitually nerfs it...
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So I take it you got as far as Inferno withour using said ability?
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Indeed! The game has only been out for a week and I have a job:)
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Oops, my mistake...how do I edit posts on here? Lol
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I'll be there tonight after work, and I'll hold you to it. And no, Draingored, I use it situationally, and I laughed at my friends who were using it constantly and couldn't survive without it, and then I laughed at them when they got mad at the nerf, meanwhile I didn't slow down at all in my build because I never relied on an ability I judged overpowered all the way back in Normal.
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Fair enough. And I just proved how much of a noob I am by mis-posting on what I thought was directed at me. :) I'll be more careful from now on. Also, thanks for the tips...I am far from figuring this game out!
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Thx, it is a bit confusing. Did they just add the FB login option?
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Classic Blizzard balance and polish.
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"it was quite simply a mistake on our part to let the rune ship as it was"
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Sarcasm
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Here's another for you. "Players can no longer dual-wield two-handed weapons" Ba ha ha ha ha ha http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5825330
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The monk thing is a balance issue, but the dual-wield issue makes me wonder if they did any qa testing at all.
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does it? does it REALLY make you wonder if they had zero QA testers on the game?
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I'm disappointed it even had 8 bugs to begin with. That's amateur hour right there.
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How many man hours do you think were wasted compiling? I bet they could have released two years earlier if they'd just programmed it right the first time.
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so because most devs don't admit this it isn't the case in tons of other games too?
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WoW balance. That's funny.
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And with the difficulty of Inferno mode, you have to min max and use the OP build.
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isn't min maxing the entire point of the game though?
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Not necessarily, no.
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I liked when they nerfed monks while that one group was trying to be the first to complete inferno. Talk about a knee-jerk reaction (it probably should have been done, but it was hilariously done to stop the one group for succeeding).
I'm guessing they would have hotfixed corpse chaining if they could have done it in time, but it is probably more complicated than changing a value in a database.
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Be careful about non-weapon items with "attack speed modifiers". Some items are not working correctly at the moment.
https://www.google.com/search?q="Increases+attack+speed"+"attack+speed+increased"
(working hotlink to above search http://tinyurl.com/c3u67vt )-
why are you linking to a search query instead of an actual source for how exactly it isn't working?
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I hope this patch gets released soon - Blizzard just made the mantra of healing and boon of protection completely useless.
First the Paladins of D2, then the Paladins of WoW, and now D3's monk. I gotta stop playing holy characters in Blizzard games - they're total nerf-bait.
Oh well, I was playing too much anyway - good excuse for a break
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