Preview by: Toni Schwartz

Last June at the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris, Blizzard set the gaming world ablaze by announcing that Diablo III was in the works. Since then the always stingy with the details developer has occasionally fed the starving masses drips and drabs of information about the game. Most recently was the unveiling of a fourth class, the monk, at this year’s BlizzCon.

According to a FAQ released by Blizzard, “We wanted to add another melee character that was still hard-hitting, but lightning fast, to complement the raw strength and brutality of the barbarian. When we set out to design the monk, we wanted him to feel elegant and fluid, like something out of a fighting game. What we came up with is a holy warrior and martial artist who uses a unique arsenal of weaponry, hand-to-hand combat techniques, and a distinctive combo-based attack system.”

I recently got a chance to briefly test drive Diablo III and the monk class.. The setting was in a desolate desert region called the Howling Plateau, which I ran through and used its inhabitants as target practice. It was a very small, limited map but it was enough to showcase what this newly revealed class can do.

Compared with the other classes, the monk is relatively squishy. It obviously isn’t as beefy as the barbarian, but it can’t safely do ranged magical damage like the equally squishy wizard, either. As a monk, you need to plan out your attacks carefully, and know when to run if you find yourself in over your head. I watched another player die multiple times as he kept trying to blindly rush his monk into a large group of enemies. Don’t get me wrong—the monk is a lean, mean, demon-shredding machine, with an array of skills that allow it to survive in many situations.