[Theorycrafting] Making more runes for Exploding Palm viable + mechanical changes to EP

Monk
1

I am not a Monk main, so I can’t say if what I suggest here is actually a good idea or not, so I would be interested in what players say that play Monks more frequently about the following:

imo the main problem with Exploding Palm is that there is only one viable rune that vastly outshines all others: Impending Doom.

Impending Doom removes the damage over times effect of EP but more than doubles the damage of the explosion, which makes it by far the most effective rune in combination with the Uliana’s set, since it causes Seven Sided Strike to immediately explode EP on an enemy.

So maybe to make the other runes more viable, Impending Doom could be removed or redesigned to no longer work the way it currently does, and in return the damage bonus on the Uliana set for EP could be increased to make up for that (or another EP related legendary).

This would leave more room for the other runes to shine.

My idea for a replacement for Impending Doom would be a rune that applies Exploding Palm on up to X enemies that were hit by the EP on daeth explosion, or it simply could increase the area of effect of the detonation. But maybe someone else comes up with something better.

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Then there is this other issue that I personally have with EP, but I don’t think it i the main issue with it, but here is how I would improve the skill further.

It is sometimes difficult for me to apply EP on the correct target when there are many enemies around and I think I often apply it on the same enemy, which is why I think that Shocking Grasp is my personal favorite EP rune, since it applies another EP to a random nearby enemy as well.

So if I could improve something about how EP works, I would like that the base unruned version (and therefore all runes of Exploding Palm) apply the DoT to 2 or 3 targets within 15 yards, not just the Socking Grasp rune.

Shocking Grasp then could increase the amount of targets that the EP DoT gets applied to by an additional +X eventually.

Alternatively or additionally whenever you use Exploding Palm on an enemy that already has EP applied on them, the DoT would then be instead appled to another enemy within 15 yards that currently does not already have the DoT effect applied on them.

I hope that made sense.

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What do you think?

Are this good improvements / changes?

How would you make the other runes of Exploding Palm more viable?

Please share your thoughts. Thanks.

2

The game is handled by classics team. Conserve your energy of brainstorm to D4.

No matter how good we theorycraft, its NOT going to make it in future patches.

3

I posted in the old forums about fixing Uliana’s set and the problems of that set. In the post I suggested that they recode EP to consume all remaing DoT on an EP when it detonates. If they did that and tweak the DoT values a bit then Impending Doom could remain the same as it is and the other runes would have a chance to compete with it. They should also have Fist of Az’Turasq affect the DoT damage of EP, not just the detonation.

4

I personally don’t like the idea too much of this effect applying to all runes of the skill, but I would be perfectly fine if that would be an effect on a single rune. If you could remove one rune and replace it with this effect, what rune would it be? And what would your preferred element for that rune be?