I'm still chugging through Act II Inferno (been taking a lot of time to farm) and helping my friends who are still catching up, but I'd like to share some of the nuances I've learned that I believe separates an okay monk from an above average monk that should help those out there who are leveling one up.
- From my personal experience, no other primary skill/rune offers better mobility, damage potential, and ease of use than the Thunderclap rune for Fists of Thunder. Every strike deals AOE damage, with the first strike being a mid-range teleport. What this means is it's also a built-in chasing tool AND escape mechanism
- The key is to use your environment around you, infact I actively avoid destroying objects such as barrels in areas I know I'll be fighting because I can use them during the fight. If I'm facing a pack of rares that use arcane, plague, molten, desecration, frozen, etc, I can quickly teleport out of the harmful area by targeting a destructible. I can't tell you how many times that's saved my bacon.
- One of the most overlooked aspects of the skill however is that it easily interrupts enemies mid-skill/attack animation. Infact if they're in a group infront of you, it can interrupt ALL of them. And since it's naturally faster (due to hidden built-in mechanics) than all of the other primary skills, it can often times completely shut down a mob or group of mobs from even attacking you.
- In the end, dodge will be king. Right now everyone is having issues gearing up to be able to handle inferno, and are having to really stack armor/resistances. Because of this people are using shields instead of dual wielding or 2H, but I believe that once higher end inferno gear becomes more common, you'll start seeing a LOT of dual wielders using the passive, "The Guardian's Path". 15% dodge is huge, and combine that with Mantra of Evasion and you get 30% before you activate MoE for another 15%. Stat-weight-wise, 15% dodge is worth approximately 1500 dex (I'm bad at math but looking at how my gear effects my dodge, this is what I came up with). I don't know any other passive that essentially adds 1500 worth of any stat.
- Never underestimate Sweeping Wind. It essentially does 45% (at 3 stacks, before runes) every 2 seconds to anyone in your range (and you're melee, so that's often). It's equivalent of being able to attack everything surrounding you with 135% weapon damage every 6 seconds. It's initial cost is offset by the fact that you can keep Sweeping Wind up through several encounters. The buff itself only lasts about 4 seconds (10 seconds with Master of Wind, but I don't really recommend using that over other runes), but combine it with the aforementioned Thunderclap rune and you can jump to destrucibles along your path. Because you strike it before Sweeping Wind can destroy it, it refreshes SWs duration. I've gone through entire floors only having to cast SW once.
- While most of your skills are fun and interesting to use, at this time your defensive skills far outweigh them in terms of importance in hell/inferno. You deal a considerable amount of damage just using FoT while keeping SW up, after that what you really need is survivability. It's up to you what you originally become comfortable using, although I really prefer Serenity (with Peaceful Repose for healing) to get out of any immobiles or bad situations, Breath of Heaven (with Blazing Wrath, boosting my damage), and Blinding Flash (with Faith in the Light, which allows me to, in conjuncture with Blazing Wrath, literally MELT enemy packs with FoT/SW).
