How can I ensure my monk is in range for her attacks?

Question

I very recently (finally) killed The Butcher in Diablo 3. However, I ran into a slight problem during our battle.

About halfway into the fight, I noticed that a lot of my attacks weren't making contact. After paying a little bit more attention, I noticed that my fists simply were not reaching this massive demonic spawn. I was not holding shift, I was simply doing my best to get in close and land a few punches before fleeing from his devastating attacks.

How can I ensure this doesn't happen again? Growing longer arms seems out of the question.

Answer 1

Actually clicking on the enemy, instead of shift-clicking, should be enough to ensure that the attack will hit, unless you retreat too quickly; your problem seems to be that you have indeed retreated too quickly. You have to wait until the attack actually makes contact before retreating :)

How to make sure the attack lands

I think a good option will be to enable damage numbers on enemies (via the gameplay options menu). That way when you land a hit you will see the damage number floating over your enemy, and when you don't - you won't.

If you prefer to avoid that, I think the best way will be to watch for the small things that accompany damage-dealing:

• Your character's animation reaches a certain phase
• You hear an attack-landing sound
• You see the monster turn white for an instant

I'm sure that with a little practice you'll get good in spotting these.

Increasing your range

Other than that, you can work on switching to skills that will help you land hits from further away. These include:

• Deadly Reach, obviously, with any rune option
• Fists of Thunder with Thunderclap
• Crippling Wave, especially with Tsunami
• Way of the Hundred Fists with Fists of Fury
• And you can also start fights with Dashing Strike, which will instantly get you in melee range.

Answer 2

Certain attack abilities on the monk have increased range, you could try using Deadly Reach, it has a longer melee distance than his other abilities.

Answer 3

The easiest way I found on my monk to make sure my attacks landed was to use the teleporting punch rune (can't remember name off the top of my head). Every time I attack it sends me right to my target, making sure that I'm close enough to hit the enemy. (This was also great for chasing down those damn treasure goblins...)