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    If you play monk today is either a day of great joy or sorrow. Today DiabloWikiWyatt Cheng jumped on the forums to confirm that DiabloWikiExploding Palm is being looked and more than likely tuned down.

    I will echo the sentiments of others – this is why we have PTRs. A huge thank you to everybody who has been helping us test rifts thus far. Our internal testing team identified a number of skills and items to keep an eye on and Exploding Palm, Rimeheart and the Furnace were all on the list. The dedicated players on the PTR have shown what is possible when the game is stretched to the limits.

    We’re looking to make changes to Exploding Palm in the next PTR patch. Of the three (Exploding Palm, Rimeheart and the Furnace) we feel this is the biggest offender. It’s not clear if Rimeheart is as offensive if you’re not able to further transfer the resulting damage onto elite monsters via Exploding Palm.


    This all stemmed from a report of players completing a level 100 DiabloWikigreater rift. The popular (and t6 viable)build for monks relies heavily on exploding palm and support. The monk of the group will also have Rimeheart equipped apply EP to the target freeze, explode, rinse, repeat. As greater rifts scale Monster health does as well, skills like EP only grow in strength, this in tandem with items like the furnace have you dealing damage not attainable by normal skills. There was some clamor of about these items but seeing greater rifts trivialized already has spurned developers into action.

    tim howard saves

    Monks Exploding what?

    The biggest question is what comes next for the monk. The most popular (and viable) build for higher torments relies heavily on being a support character and applying EP while your team-mates drop the hammer. With this incoming change it will leave the Monk without an endgame build and the class that is already lagging well behind it’s peers will be handicapped even further. We can only hope that in evaluating Exploding Palm the devs may give the class the complete overhaul it needs.

    The image on the right was a random image Blizzard put up today in recognition of Tim Howard the US goalie playing in the World Cup.  It is NOT the new look Exploding Palm.

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