So yeah, I'm a monk, in act 3 hell. Both my weapons have almost 500 DPS, and I have 45k HP. I'm getting facerolled quite badly... any tips? :ohdear:
Get armour and resists. My monk did fine with 23-26k hp all the way till Act 2 Inferno where I had to seriously shop for gear. His first ever death was in Act 1 Inferno to some BS combination of affixes on an elite mob, so Hell is perfectly doable solo. I only started partying up in Inferno. You'll quickly find that the monk has a few skills that are vital to his survival. Without the absolute best possible gear that will allow you to tank mobs without losing any health (if that even exists), off the top of my head you'll need Serenity, Blinding Flash, Fists of Thunder with the Lightning rune (the one that gives improved dodge chance), and either Mantra of Evasion with Hard Target rune or Mantra of Healing with Boon of Inspiration for the life leech. I primarily use Fists of Thunder because of the attack speed, the stutter/stun on the 3rd hit (it's AoE) and it doesn't lock you in place like Way of the Hundred Fists. You NEED to be mobile as a monk. You don't have the raw hp/armour of barbarians and dodge is a RNG game that I don't particularly care to rely too much on. Note that Blinding Flash interrupts enemy attacks. You can use it to stop Diablo from casting that bone prison skill for example. Something else about dodge - monks are supposed to rely on it (meh) because our heals do not scale with hp. This means that for your heals to be effective, you'll want high dodge and low hp. But as I mentioned, this leaves your survival in the hands of the RNG... Ideally you should have just enough health to not get one-shot killed and a very high dodge rate.
Currently my monk uses Blinding Flash with the rune that confuses enemies, Breath of Heaven with the rune that scares away mobs, Serenity with the rune that heals (sometimes I swap it with the increased duration rune), and either 1. Lashing Tail Kick with Sweeping Armada for more crowd control, or 2. Sweeping Wind with the increased spirit regen rune for general fights, or 3. that skill that makes an area impassable for monsters with the rune that gives a massive health regen when partied up in certain boss fights, or 4. Seven-Sided Strike with the stun rune again in parties. It's usually on Sweeping Wind, and I don't like to switch them around because I'd lose the Nephalem Valor buff. My left mouse button is bound to Fists of Thunder with the Lightning rune and right mouse button to Mantra of Evasion with the Hard Target rune. Passives are Transcendence for the healing factor when spamming mantras, Seize the Initiative for the increased armour and One with Everything for resists all.
Playstyle matters. You can tank better than barbarians by cycling through your heals and Serenity appropriately, but you need to avoid eating attacks whenever possible. This means dodging ranged attacks, getting into positions that will minimize the amount of such ranged attacks from getting through, circling around mobs such as dark berserkers, demonic tremors, mallet lords, etc anything with a heavy pulverizing frontal attack and attacking them from the rear. Try not to get surrounded - if that happens, either Lashing Tail Kick or Breath of Heaven (with the fear rune) will help. 500 dps weapons are decent enough for Hell Act 4. You'll want something closer to 800+ dps for Inferno though.
Elite mobs - they're still manageable in Hell. Use Serenity only when needed, i.e. don't press it every time you get hit by a crowd control skill. I usually pre-heal with Breath of Heaven before the frost orbs burst, or try to stay alive with mantra spam while jailed, activating Serenity only when I'm absolutely sure I won't survive through being disabled otherwise. Don't tank arcane sentries unless all your healing skills are available. Your "footwork" is very important when facing molten mobs - don't run behind them and try to corner them so that they can't kite you. You can use shift-attack near them and still hit them with Fists of Thunder while staying out of the molten patch under them. Fire chains though, sorry you're out of luck. Try to separate one of them from the rest of the pack and deal with him far far away so that the chains can't activate. With huge resists, you can still tank the chains in Hell, but they'll drop even 60k hp within 2 seconds or less in Inferno.
Oh, stack attack speed if possible. It's crucial for monks - you only gain spirit when you attack. Without spirit, you're good as dead.
Sadly I've already re-rolled a Wizard sometime ago and she's at level 47 currently. Way more effective than the monk, at least until Blizzard does something about the abysmal survivability of melee classes in Inferno. -.-;;
