Diablo III- Skills Article LXXVI: The Monk, Defensive Skills- Inner Sanctuary

Inner Sanctuary (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 5 seconds.

If you’re a monk and you travel with a party of ranged attackers, they will adore you for this skill.  Providing a ranged character a safe place to attack from will let them pull all sorts of tricks and damage that they don’t normally have time to pull together- at least, not without risking their necks pretty severely.  Even melee characters will need this occasionally for a breather- but remember that it doesn’t keep enemy projectiles out, just the enemies themselves.  So don’t feel -too- secure.

Safe Haven (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 5 seconds.  You and your allies will regenerate Life over time in this area based on your level.  (At level 60, this is 1550 Life per second.)

Safe Haven is more useful for melee artists, though with Inner Sanctuary’s inability to affect ranged attacks, ranged characters will still find the healing useful most of the time.  The regeneration is entirely dependent on staying in the area, so if you need the healing badly, wait for the zone to fade rather than rushing out.

Sanctified Ground (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 5 seconds.  For 6 seconds afterwards, enemy movement in the area is slowed by 60%.

Sanctified Ground can turn Inner Sanctuary into a self-baited trap for melee combatants to ambush incoming melee monsters- but perhaps more importantly, it increases the ‘safe time’ that ranged attackers can get by sheltering in the protected zone.  While the slow isn’t perfect protection, it lasts a good long time, and can even be used to ensure things stay clumped up for area attack disposal.

Consecration (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 7 seconds.

While a more direct extension of the effect than Sanctified Ground, Consecrate may not be as good- two seconds can be a good deal of time, but a six-second slow zone may turn out more useful.  Decide for yourself which one you like, and discuss it with people who party with you on a regular basis.  Try both forms and compare them, and make your decision based on that.

Circle of Protection (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 5 seconds.  You and your allies within the Circle of Protection take 35% less damage.

This form of Inner Sanctuary goes a long way to mitigate the incoming ranged attacks- whether it’s better than Safe Haven probably depends on level and gearing- level 60 characters with really high-Life or high-Health gear will probably find this more useful than the regeneration effect, but it can be a tossup.  Again, try both, compare them, discuss with anyone who regularly groups with you, and then make your decision.

Forbidden Palace (30 Spirit, 20 second Cooldown): Create a circle of protection on the ground that enemies cannot enter or move in for 5 seconds.  You and allies standing within Forbidden Palace deal 10% extra damage.

The damage rider on this protected zone is very nice for ranged attackers- but it takes a particular setup for you to really get anything out of it without some very very careful positioning that you probably don’t have time to do while/after dropping Forbidden Palace.  Mostly you should use this if your party has a lot of ranged attackers in it and the regeneration or damage reduction effects either aren’t needed or aren’t proving worthwhile.