Serenity

Serenity (formerly named Impenetrable Defense) is a Spirit Spending Monk skill unlocked at Level 18. The Monk summons a holy shield to protect himself from damage.

Contents

Background

Serenity in action

The Monk expends spirit energy to summon a holy shield which protects the caster from incoming damage.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Serenity 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

Serenity Spirit Spender (Level 18)

[e] Cost: 35 Spirit Cooldown: 60 seconds You are enveloped in a protective shield that intercepts all incoming damage for 3 seconds and grants immunity to all control impairing effects.

	Peaceful Repose	Heal yourself for 6387-8409 Life when Serenity is activated.
	Instant Kharma	While Serenity is active, 100% of all projectiles and melee attacks are reflected back at the attacker.
	Ascension	Increases the duration of Serenity to 6.5 seconds.
	Tranquility	Extends the protective shield and immunity to control impairing effects to allies within 45 yards for 3 seconds.
	Reap What is Sown	90% of the damage absorbed by Serenity is unleashed as an explosion when Serenity expires, dealing up to 146 Holy damage to enemies within 20 yards.

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

Skill Design

Swinging along...

Serenity (when it was Impenetrable Defense) was not needed in the BlizzCon 2009 demo, since the Monk was quite overpowered in combat. I didn't experiment with his "dodge" ability, which is mentioned as a by product of several skills, since it was so much more fun just to blast everything with his offense. Plus, testing time is always limited, even in the press room. I would have made sure to try the other element of this skill, the "rebounds enemy ranged attacks," but there were zero monster archers and virtually no projectile spell casters in the BlizzCon build.

Fallen Shaman were fairly common in the surface desert areas, but they seldom hurled Fireballs (they were quite quick to resurrect dead Imps,though). There were lots of Dark Cultists, but only the foot soldiers and the "transform into a demon" types. None of the spell castinging mage types. And while there were some weird insect-like mages in the dungeons below the desert, they were infrequently encountered and were always behind a mob of melee enemies, so I never had time to stop beating down the foot soldiers just to try to reflect the (easily avoided) projectiles.

Synergies

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

Development

Serenity was first shown (as Impenetrable Defense) at BlizzCon 2009 as one of the originals when the Monk was unveiled. It was slightly modified and renamed to Serenity in the game demo that was presented at BlizzCon 2010 as a Tier 2 skill.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Serenity became a level 18 skill.

Previous Versions

See Impenetrable Defense for the original version of this skill.

Media

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

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Serenity specific gallery contents

References

• 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

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Template:Skill navbox Necromancer reanimation

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