Crippling Wave

Crippling Wave is a Spirit Generating Monk skill unlocked at Level 8. The Monk debuffs his enemies by reducing their damage and speed.

This is one of the Monk's Combo skills. Combo skills generate Spirit.

Background

Crippling Wave in action

As Monks are relatively frail without heavy armour or shields, they have developed techniques to hit enemies where it hurts the most, slowing them down, and making their attacks less successful.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Crippling Wave rune effects page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Icon	Skill	Description

Crippling Wave Spirit Generator Combo (Level 8)

[e] Generate: 6 Spirit per attack A series of large sweeping attacks that causes 135% weapon damage to all enemies in front of you. Every third hit damages all enemies around you and dazes them, slowing movement by 50% for 4.5 seconds.

	Mangle	Increase damage to 220% of weapon damage.
	Tsunami	Crippling Wave's third attack range increases to 17 yards.
	Concussion	Enemies hit by Crippling Wave inflict 50% less damage for 9 seconds.
	Rising Tide	Critical hits with this skill generate 7 Spirit.
	Breaking Wave	Affected targets take 80% additional damage from all attacks for 9 seconds.

Note: Information is based on a level 60 character and rank 7 runestones.

Crippling Wave Video

A video of Crippling Wave can be seen below, courtesy of the Diablo.IncGamers.com You Tube channel.

Skill Design

Crippling wave in action.

An interesting sort of combo attack, since it's about defensive bonuses. The damage is lower than any other Monk attacks, lower even than just plain attack (which I never used once during my BlizzCon play time). Like Inner Sanctuary, this one was never needed at BlizzCon. There's no big end boss anywhere, and the only dangers came from large mobs. This skill could be useful against those, but they were generally easier to just destroy with many fast hits than to weaken first.

This one seems like it would be very useful against big bosses, since it makes them susceptible to damage, while making them deal less to you. Throwing in stage 2 or 3 of this in the midst of other more useful combo attacks could be helpful, now and then, since the curse-like debuff can hit multiple enemies in close proximity.

Combo skills are essential for Monks. Combos do bonus damage, grant special properties (i.e. lightning damage and interrupt attacks on Hands of Lightning), and build up the Spirit needed to cast other skills. All combos have three stages, each progressively more powerful and flashier.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Development

Crippling Wave was first shown at BlizzCon 2009 as one of the originals when the Monk was unveiled. Flux was able to try it out:[1]

This one seems like it would be very useful against big bosses, since it makes them susceptible to damage, while making them deal less to you. Throwing in stage 2 or 3 of this in the midst of other more useful combo attacks could be helpful, now and then, since the curse-like debuff can hit multiple enemies in close proximity.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Crippling Wave became a level 8 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Monk skill archive for more details on previous versions of Crippling Wave and other Monk skills.

Media

Crippling Wave can be seen in action on video here:

• Gameplay: Blizzcon 2009
• Video: August 2011 Monk Skill Animations

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Crippling Wave specific gallery contents

• 

  Crippling Wave in use.

References

• BlizzCon 2009 Full Monk Skill Tree stats and discussion
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011
• Silva's Monk Runestone Effects -- IncGamers 6th Sep 2011
• Monk Active Skills -- Diablo III 12th Sep 2011

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer primary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer secondary

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer corpses

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer bloodandbone

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer reanimation

Template:Skill navbox Necromancer curses