Is monk just severely underpowered or what? I am leveling a WD now, using mostly just Haunt + minions and it's so much easier & faster that it's not even funny. Even before I started using hand-me-down gear found while leveling the monk I was able to just cruise on expert while the monk had occasional tough fights on hard.
Granted, it's a completely different style of play, not quite as fun, but sheesh I have only had one case in 48 levels where my health dipped to the point where my screen flickered red. That is usually a several-times-per-session occurrence with my monk.
I like grouping with a good monk, in torment rifts.
In my experience so far, there's a massive gap between classes towards the end game. I watch Diablo 3 Shinobi's channel on Youtube and seeing the ease/speed with which his Witch Doctor makes it to Greater Rift 30ish is alarming. It looks like his many minions can crit, each hit, for 10 million, and the larger one can crit for upwards of 60 million a shot.
I'm at nearly 100% lightning damage, 9000 int, 65% crit chance, nearly 400% crit damage (on a wizard) and my meteors crit for around 13m. Yeah, the meteor is area effect, but when it comes to clearing elites/rift bosses, those minions just clear high hp single targets so quickly.
But what I say above is more about solo play. On group play, my ideal group is a Monk, Crusader, me, and either a witch doctor or a demon hunter. Crusader could be swapped for a barbarian but I tend to find many more crusaders that are really super geared than barbarians. And in fact, even a T4 rift is pretty easily cleared if you're playing with 4 active players, even if their paragon levels are low and their gear isn't the greatest. But I wonder how many people would say that a good wizard fits into their ideal group of 4. My lightning build is essentially stun/damage/control, with the stun allowing for easy grouping of monsters, and then meteors (whose ground damage can stun as well).
I'm hoping to find some good teams (thanks for the add, Cappuccino!) prior to 2.1.