Welcome to my monk guide for Diablo 3. This will likely be a series of posts documenting my progression through the game. I’m currently in Act 2 of Hell difficulty.
The Early Levels
You can get away with almost any setup during the first two acts on Normal difficulty. As a melee class capable of healing, gameplay during the early stages is simple: you punch till your enemies are dead, heal when your health gets low and port back to town to sell or salvage loot. I suggest you take this time to play around with skills and runes to find out how they work.
Early level tips:
- Turn on elective mode and advanced tooltips. The former allows full customization of mouse and action bar skills while the latter keeps you on top of what you need to know gear-wise.
- Stack dexterity. Vitality isn’t important yet.
- Buy the plus damage rings from the town vendor (+2-3 damage, for example). They can boost your DPS higher than +DEX rings would.
- You can trust item tooltips to show you which items are beneficial and which ones are not.
- I prefer to dual wielding instead of using a 2-hand weapon because I get the benefits of 2 weapons instead of 1.
The final boss of Act 2 is usually the point where things get serious. If that doesn’t happen then you’ll feel it when you venture out of the keep in Act 3. Regardless of when it occurs, here’s a suggested build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aigYXh!Yd!a.aaZa