Fitz#1329: My name is Fitz. I am happily married. I have been a teacher for over a decade and I am in the process of switching careers, starting a wrap-around service center for at-risk youth. It keeps me super busy lately going to college full time again while also working full time.

Fitz#1329: My current hobby is home remodeling. I never repaired, built, or even decorated anything for the most part as a bachelor, but I learned I have a bit of a knack for it. I designed and built a pretty fancy deck and now am onto bathrooms and whatnot.

Here’s a pic of part of it: http://i.imgur.com/xLPewoi.jpg

Still have to finish staining it!

Fitz#1329: I am a bit of an oddity around here in that I have never played any other Diablo games but this one. I didn’t do much computer gaming as a kid (being too poor to have a computer!) and oddly I got into gaming later on in life. I found D3 after picking up StarCraft 2 and being blown away by how great it was.

Fitz#1329: While I am waiting for 2.1.2 to drop I’ve been playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. As you can see I got a thing for fantasy rpg type games. That and unicorns.

Fitz#1329: Never! Monk for life! My path ends here. I dabble occasionally though, just don’t tell my friends.

Fitz#1329: Only the best community ever! Many of the OGs from the monk forums here became pretty good friends beyond just the game. That lead me to create a free template-based site where we could chat about other stuff and eventually through a rather large team effort we created the Banned of Gamers.

So many people have been involved in doing really neat things on our site and we’ve been able to crowd source the funds to keep it up and keep it ad free. I daresay our clan is pretty awesome as well. I’ll be passing the reins onto someone else soon though as my time has become much more limited with school/work.

I am currently taking applications for this: Email ktobytedis@gmail.com if you’re interested. Repeatedly. I tend to forget to check my email.

Fitz#1329: I have met some great people playing D3, many of which I consider friends so I do play in groups, but oddly despite that I prefer to play solo most of the time. Weird for a CL I guess too huh?

Fitz#1329: I think many people know this story but for those who don’t here it goes:

I messed around HC a bit after Jco310 (Mr. Auction House Tycoon himself) harassed me into it. He let me wear a set of pretty much GG gear which at the time translated into a decent amount of cash. Some guys I knew playing HC were running EP in HC mode back when it was mob hp based damage, which was basically suicidal if an elite with RD blew up. So for reason I was checking Elite mob HPs by MP level to show them the math. I did not realize I was doing this on my HC toon. Don’t ask me how I did not die on lower MPs as I would check mob hp, then alt-tab to a spreadsheet but I got all the way to MP10. Well, in CotA I alt-tabbed and came back to being dead. It didn’t even register at first and I was confused why I couldn’t respawn…

Very embarrassing. Sucked more for Jco though. :D

Fitz#1329: There have been many but I would have to say the time LordRaahl showed me the skill interaction between Infused with Light and the DoT of Fists of Fury. Raahl wasn’t big on playing “efficiently” or “competitively” but I immediately went to work on figuring out how to abuse the heck out of it. I even remember at the time Druin telling me it was crap! (<3 you Dru) Well, that lead to the build that became known as Nirvana. I still think that was the most fun build to play. It was messy, required some skill, bursty and felt super monk-like.

Here is a vid for some nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUoEqzi3cpc

Fitz#1329: Like most people I think Kung Fu movies as a kid. I love the idea of a warrior without armor or weapons using the power of spirit to kick butt.

Fitz#1329: I would have to say all of the spirit generators. It just feels like the backbone of what a monk should play like, punching stuff in the face before launching some mystical attack. I guess I am partial to the gen > gen > gen > spend play model.

Fitz#1329: Seven Sided Strike! That poor skill has been super lonely since the game launched. It looks super cool and feels very monk-like, but the right balance of cost/cooldown/damage still doesn’t seem to have been found by the dev team to make it worthwhile for people to add to their skill bars. It has a ton of potential as well, being an immunity spell on top of looking good and doing damage.

Fitz#1329: The obvious answer here is Genwuko like everyone else. I also mess around with a DW ranged LTK build using GNK + Shen’s with Spinning Flame Kick for fun. It is a semi-ranged build that is very engaging in its playstyle.

Here is that toon: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Fitz-1329/hero/36113349

On the PTR I have being messing around with a Stun Bell build and threw in a Madstone with SSS (in place of Inner Sanctuary) to help clear the trash in GRs and make it more fun. Seems like Gungdo is going to be the way to play though!

Fitz#1329: I haven’t had nearly as much time to play as I had in the past, but lately when I log in to do a run I have been getting the pieces I have been missing. Recently I picked up a pretty nice WH (which had never dropped for me in 2.0) and a really nice Rue Chamber. I still need trifecta SWK gloves and I have never found IC boots in 2.0 either, but neither would change my build up at this point. I have high hopes for more build diversity in 2.1.2 though!

Fitz#1329: Definitely boots that look like this: http://i.imgur.com/72L9ce8.jpg

In fact, I would LOVE to see a full Samurai looking set for monk. I know; it doesn’t make sense. Oh and a ninja set too. Ninjas are cool.

Fitz#1329: Play the class because it is fun for you. If you want to be top ranked versus all classes at the moment it simply can’t be done. If this frustrates you wait until some changes come and give it another go. Like I said before, I think games are supposed to be fun. (Piffle loses his mind in 3, 2, 1…)

Fitz#1329: I enjoy both the more serious game-centric conversations as well as the items people get silly and just have casual fun on the forums. Games are things I do for fun, so I try not to be too serious about them. Some of the best forum discussions have been around builds, but also others have been great and been about nothing at all.

Fitz#1329: I’ll have to go with “I am ready,” and “We must go,” which I pretty much just hammer repeatedly when waiting for people in group games. I think that sorta shows why I tend to play solo, which is I annoy people.

Fitz#1329: I know so much about a lot of the monk players around that I think I will pick someone I don’t know too much about. Lightdemon #1672 has been posting some good things and seems like a genuinely nice person, so please give him/her a shot!

Fitz#1329: Maybe, “If you could change a single rune on a monk skill, what would it be?” Or something like, “What are 3 words you could use to describe how awesome Fitz is?” Either of those could work.