Diablo Immortal monk players dominate the meta as whales change class

Diablo Immortal monk players are dominating the PvP meta right now, causing the game’s highest-spending whales to change class in the Blizzard RPG game as they strive to get every advantage possible over other players. While every class can be viable for general play and even in competitive matchmaking, the game’s community seems in agreement that the best Diablo Immortal builds running roughshod over Battlegrounds multiplayer come from monks.

Diablo Immortal whales are the game’s biggest spenders, with many dropping tens or thousands of dollars on real-money transactions to gear out their characters with the best Diablo Immortal legendary gems. In doing so, they also build up a stat called ‘resonance’ that acts as a multiplier to your character’s damage and life. This is generally one of the defining differences between builds in player vs player modes such as Battlegrounds.

If resonance is king, then, what makes the monk stand out? The answer lies in a skill called Shield of Zen, which is more commonly referred to as just ‘Zen shield’ by the player base. This protective bubble absorbs damage, but more crucially “also prevents all effects which cause loss of control of a character.” You can use it on yourself, or target an allied player to jump to them and apply the shield to both of you.

One of the most famous whale players, jtisallbusiness (who notably was temporarily unable to play PvP after spending over $100,000 on the game), is one of the people who’s made the leap to monk. Previously playing as a barbarian, he was certainly one of the game’s strongest forces to be reckoned with, but he would still routinely get chain stunned and killed by coordinated opponents. Thanks to Zen shield, he can now dash out of trouble to a teammate while also gaining a protective shield that prevents any impending effects.

The effects of this are plain to see, with jtisallbusiness finishing top of the leaderboards with 30 kills and just three deaths in one of the first matches he posted from his first day in Battlegrounds on monk this year. Thanks to the high resonance, the cooldown on Zen shield is largely non-existent, allowing him to take on other high-resonance players with minimal risk.

In a post late last year, where the first sets of whales began to change class in Diablo Immortal to monk, one commenter simply remarks, “If you’re above 4,000 resonance, drop what you’re doing and switch to monk.” A more recent post notes that “three of the top ten whales on our server just changed to monk a few weeks ago and they are now unkillable. When they were wizards or demon hunters they could have at least been CCed, but now being monks they are almost invincible. They have been doing 1v4 in vaults killing everything like they don’t matter.”

Players note that because of the all-encompassing immunity offered by Zen shield, it only continues to feel stronger as more crowd control effects are introduced to the game by virtue of being able to ignore all of them for its duration or until the shield breaks, rather than only blocking a certain number of instances. Time will tell whether Blizzard looks to nerf monk, or whether additions to other classes will even out the balance in future.

The latest Diablo Immortal patch adds a new limited-time event following the arrival of the game’s second major Diablo Immortal update Terror’s Tide. If you’re not looking to dive into the world of high-end PvP, our Diablo Immortal tier list offers a look at the best classes for general play. Meanwhile, the Diablo 4 release date creeps ever closer – we’ll bring you all the news as it comes.