Diablo III- Skills Article XC: The Monk, Passive Skills (4 of 5)

Sixth Sense: Your Dodge chance is increased by 30% of your Critical Hit chance.

This is... a strange passive for a Monk.  While the increase to Dodge is a given, since that’s the Monk’s primary way of not keeling over from excessive damage, deriving it from the Critical Hit chance is odd, particularly given that Monks aren’t usually running around with a lot of ways to boost their Critical Hit rates.  High Dexterity alleviates this some, but it’s still a strange (and usually small) number to be drawing from- then again, too large of an increase in Dodge rating can do really destabilizing things to the game as a whole.  Generally speaking, take a close look at your Critical Hit chance before choosing this skill.  If you’ve really got incoming damage problems, you may want to look into Seize the Initiative or Transcendence instead, just so that you’ve got something more reliable or controllable, respectively, backing you up for those times when you’re taking excessive damage.  Not to say that this is a bad skill, but it’s hard to rely on because Dodge itself is a percentage chance, and the less you can lean on your Dodge chance the more effective that chance actually winds up becoming.

Pacifism: When you are Stunned, Feared, or Charmed, you take 75% less damage.

This skill is also a bit odd- it doesn’t really become of much use until very high level play, where champion and rare monsters become far more commonplace.  Even then its use is limited- while it’s nice to take very little damage while you’re being controlled, it would be far nicer to avoid being controlled in the first place, or make the control last a shorter period of time.  Not a prime pick, really.

Beacon of Ytar: Reduce your cooldowns by 15%.

This is pretty much here for people who need their Defensive Skill very badly, or who want to make Seven-Sided Strike a more frequent option.  You’re generally going to be better off finding a different way to improve your defenses with a passive skill- the only Monks who will really get a lot out of this are those who party with friends that like it when they use Inner Sanctuary, Blinding Flash, or Breath of Heaven a lot.  Even then, there are other ways to fix the incoming damage issues.

Guiding Light: Whenever you use a skill that directly heals another player, you and that player deal 16% more damage for 15 seconds.  This increase does not stack with itself.

This, on the other hand, makes party-friendly monks very strong- if they’re using Breath of Light.  Since it only boosts off of direct heals, Mantra of Healing doesn’t do a thing with it, nor do the various other skills available to you that grant regeneration of Life or a chance to regain Life on hitting an enemy.  Breath of Light users want this a lot, everyone else can (and should) ignore it.