Diablo III- Skills Article LXXIV: The Monk, Defensive Skills- Breath of Heaven

Breath of Heaven (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 6.2-7.4k Life).

Breath of Heaven is a highly usable skill, and one of the reasons the Monk is so loved in party play.  While 12 yards is a bit on the short side, the Monk will usually be in melee alongside other melee artists- namely other Monks and Barbarians, who will all love the heal to death.  If you want to use it on ranged allies, remember that you need to get closer to them for it to work.  The sad problem with Breath of Heaven is that it’s based entirely on level, so your gear is not going to improve the healing.  While this isn’t so bad when you reach level 60, as your gear improves and your level stays the same, you’re going to see some loss in effectiveness.  Whether or not this is enough to drop the skill is up to you- most don’t, because a heal is a heal and even at the diminished amount, it’s still better than nothing, particularly with a number of the riders the runes give to the healing effect.  Tread carefully with this skill, and don’t discard it easily.

Circle of Scorn (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 6.2-7.4k Life).  Enemies within 12 yards take 80% weapon damage as Holy damage.

Circle of Scorn adds an impressive damage effect onto Breath of Heaven, making it even more fun your you and your melee allies to have this skill around.  That damage will easily help you wipe out minions and can do some decent damage to anything else you happen to be applying your pugilistic talents to.  A very useful rune.

Circle of Life (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 8.1-9.7k Life).

Circle of Life makes the healing effect of Breath of Heaven more viable, increasing it by about 30% of its base value.  While this won’t let it keep up with the higher end gear increases, it can keep the skill going without a different use than healing for a decent ways past level 60.  Just don’t expect it to continue healing a large portion of your Life total.

Blazing Wrath (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 6.2-7.4k Life).  Your attack damage is increased by 15% for 45 seconds (this increase does not stack).

Blazing Wrath is one of the most commonly used runes for Breath of Heaven, and with good reason- a buff that lasts most of a minute and increases all your damage dealt is a very nice rider to have on a four-times-a-minute heal, ensuring that you can always have that buff, and thus your improved damage numbers, available.

Infused with Light (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 6.2-7.4k Life).  For the next 5 seconds, your Spirit-generating attacks generate 6 additional Spirit.

Not the most useful rider to Breath of Heaven, Infused with Light will at least ensure you recoup your Spirit expenditure on the skill, though that’s usually not going to be a concern to begin with, particularly as gear continues to increase past 60 and the heal becomes less important and more generally okay to have.

Penitent Flame (25 Spirit, 15 second Cooldown): Heal yourself and all allies within 12 yards for an amount of Life based on your level (at level 60, this heal is roughly 6.2-7.4k Life).  Enemies in this area suffer a Fear effect and run away for 1.5 seconds.

While the idea is nice, it’s unlikely that many Monks will want to make their enemies flee every time they heal themselves (what’s scary about that anyways?).  This is probably not a rune you’re ever going to use- if you do find you like it though, make sure you have a way to chase down the things that run away so they don’t wind up taking advantage of the opportunity to rain ranged attacks on you while you try to catch up.