Impenetrable Defense

Impenetrable Defense is a Tier 1 skill from the Monk's Skill Tree C, walling off ranged attacks, and enabling the Monk to dodge very efficiently.

Archived Article [e]
Impenetrable Defense is an archived article about material previously included in Diablo 3. However, it has been removed or the article contains outdated facts. The information is stored in Diablo Wiki for posterity. Please note: Links in this article lead to both updated and archived material.

This article was last up to date:

BlizzCon 2009

Updated version of this article is:

Serenity

Current information can be found at:

Monk skills

Monk skill archive

Background

Diablo III Skill [e]

Impenetrable Defense Active, 1 ranks
Used by:	Monk
Skill Description:
Momentarily turn your weapons into an impenetrable wall that rebounds enemy ranged attacks and grants 100% dodge against weapon attacks.
Skill Details:
Type:	Self Buff
Quantity:	None
Effect:	Self
School:	Physical
Mana cost:	5
Cast time:	Instant
Duration:	Unknown
Cooldown:	1.5 sec
Synergies:	None
Requires:	N/A
Prereq of:	N/A

The Monk swings his staff so fast and with such precision he is able to deflect any incoming missiles, and dodge incoming attacks.

Skill Design

Swinging along...

This one 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.

The spell does have a cool animation, at least. The Monk stands still and does a simple staff twirl, while a large rune appears below his feet.