Curse

Daian Namgnik · May 05, 2009, 03:07 AM // 03:07

A lot of GREAT advice has already been given.

Having played the same PvE healer for just about 4 years, I have developed my own way of keeping my party alive (assuming my party does not commit suicide, which often happens with inexperienced parties). I would summarize it this way:

1. EARN the right skills, runes and weapons....during which you will level up without added effort and learn how to heal. This will take a while, especially if you're a solo or casual player....but it's fun and this IS a game.

2. I personally don't assign keys to party members. I place my Party Window in the lower right corner of my screen and my Skill Bar in the middle-bottom. This way, moving and clicking the mouse from member to skill is only a matter of an inch or two in the mouse pad and takes no time at all.

3. I like to keep my Elite Enchantment (usually HB) in the furthermost right slot, and my other healing prayers/enchantments spread out right to left according to how often I use them (based on the healing strength, energy and skill regen time of each). I then put Resurrect in the far left slot (I used to also use Rebirth, but no longer do as it is so seldom needed).

4. When I go with only Hero/Hench, I list/invite them according to how much healing/enchantments I think they will need....this is just based on my experience and my ability to Flag and Pull. When in a PUG, it is only a dream to have the party so well organized, lol.

5. Then all I do is continuously focus on four things:
- the environment/situation
- my relative location to my party members and the enemy
- my partys' health bars
- my energy and health

6. When not doing that above four things, I attack. Yes, I am a healer that attacks when feasible to do so. I never understand why so many maxed-out monks with unique weapons do not ALSO cause damage to the enemy.

6. I don't worry about anything else. I don't remove hexes (sorry). I don't care about drops (unless I'm farming). I don't pay any attention to the non-mission related chatter. I heal. Heal and fight. Heal, fight and win. Heal, fight, win and get rich. Heal, fight, win, get rich and fill my Hall of Monuments in the hopes that at least some of my fun and effort will carry over to GW2.

paranon · May 05, 2009, 06:18 PM // 18:18

well, agreed that clicking the player name (i even met a monk who clicked on the actual player on his screen O.o) and then clicking your skill bar is a vastly inefficient way to monk.

there are many different key combos that you can use, some people like to click the party window and use 1-8 to use skills, some people like the numpad.

I use a very pvp-orientated key-combo, using:

12345tgb - target party members 12345678
qwer - skills 1-4
asdf - skills 5-8
zxcv - weapon sets 1-4

I like this combo for a few reasons:

1. i have quite small hands, so everything is on one side in easy reach
2. i can do all my monking with my left hand, leaving my mouse free to move and move the camera
3. it is a very efficient way to monk - with practice it takes a minimal amount of time to move one of your fingers to select a party member and click a skill.

naturally using this combo my fingers rest on the qwer keys.

note, any key-combo that uses a keyboard to select party members AND use skills takes a good week or two of practice to nail. don't give up.

dansamy · May 05, 2009, 06:28 PM // 18:28

For me, I tried different key binds, keypads and gamepads. My left hand is just simply too retarded to function efficiently and quickly enough. So, while clicking may be less efficient for most players, there are players for whom it is the best method. Like I said previously, set up your GUI in a way that makes it faster and easier and you won't feel like clicking is handicapping you.

JoeKnowMo · May 06, 2009, 12:17 AM // 00:17

OK. I give you teh sekret 2 pley munk in pve. But no tell enywun els, pl0x.

[[healer's boon], [[air of superiority], [[gole], [[aegis], [[heal party], [[protective spirit], [[seed of life], and [[draw conditions] or [[rebirth] if nubs in pug think munk shud carry rez.

1. Press 1, 2, 3, and 4.
2. Press 5 as needed.
3. Press 6 + 7 if party member is taking big dommage.
4. Repeat from step 1.

ur welcome.

glacialphoenix · May 06, 2009, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Quote:

(i even met a monk who clicked on the actual player on his screen O.o)

Nothing wrong with that - I do that in AB, really, since my visible team consists of all of four people and I still fire off heals at those not in my party.

_Nihilist_ · May 06, 2009, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by glacialphoenix

Nothing wrong with that - I do that in AB, really, since my visible team consists of all of four people and I still fire off heals at those not in my party.

THIS.

I use my Monk mostly to farm, but one day, I got a bug and decided to actually Monk. Since I wanted to give myself a decent challenge, I went into AB, where only my group would be on my Party Menu, and I attempted to effectively use a WoH Heal/Prot Hybrid build on my 4-man team and the other 8 people on our side of the battle.

To further limit myself, I restricted use of the Party Menu. I didn't use it to click on my team, and I tried to not use it to check condi/hex status, rather, I used it to check if they were outside of my radar range.

I clicked my targets on the battlefield, and I can tell you right now, it gives you a freaking workout processing all of the information that you have to see, hear, interpret and then turn into action. Add to that the fact that 8 of the players on my team were not in my Party Menu, so I couldn't cheat by using the Party Menu to select/status check them...

I know that most PvP'er's don't take AB seriously, but to someone who is wanting to PvE Monk, go in there, close your Party Menu, and watch the battlefield to toss your Heals and Prots. It might you help out more than you'd think.

Other than that, a few of these key-binds that users have posted are pretty sweet. Brownie points to the players that mouse-move and have key-binds for selection, skill, and weapon sets... that takes work!

glacialphoenix · May 06, 2009, 01:59 AM // 01:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrael Eveningsong

I know that most PvP'er's don't take AB seriously, but to someone who is wanting to PvE Monk, go in there, close your Party Menu, and watch the battlefield to toss your Heals and Prots. It might you help out more than you'd think.

I fully support this. Yeah, I know there's the usual cry of 'but most people in AB are noobs!' - guess what, good players are good for feedback, but I swear the thing that really, really pushed me to my limit was trying to keep a suicidal Dervish alive in DoA, which involved frantic manualling of Tahlky as well as healing him. I now manual Tahlky if I pack her with me in PvE. IDK, I think bad players are good for two things: realising what you shouldn't do, and pushing you to your limits. That, and in AB, there's always working out whether or not you should bother in the first place :P

Go in, watch the battlefield, learn to kite, weaponswap, call targets even. Try to hold up your team in a 4v8 or even a 4v12 scenario as long as possible - then bring it back into PvE with you. It's true you can get through PvE without doing all these things, but - why sacrifice efficiency just because 'I can do PvE without it?'

Empress Amarox · May 06, 2009, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by paranon

well, agreed that clicking the player name (i even met a monk who clicked on the actual player on his screen O.o). . . inefficient way to monk.

Actually, I tend to do this a lot when protting. For me, sometimes it's easier if I see Warriors running to someone to just click the person and prot than looking, trying to register in my brain what number they are, clicking the number on numpad (or party window), then protting. By that time, sometimes, they're either already dead or the spike already happened.

So yeah, clicking the actual people can be pretty good. I find it pretty fast, myself. It's just two steps. 1 mouse click, 1 skill click. The other is: see it happening, oh shi- who's that?!, select them somehow, then use skill. 4 steps.

So yeah, it is actually twice as efficient (at least) if you can get it down properly. If your screen is zoomed out enough, you should only have to move it only an inch or 2 at the most anyways, and you'll kinda learn to follow damage. That's actually one of the big things in gvg as a monk.. following damage.

For example, if you're playing on the defensive split of your team and the other team sends something back and you have to go back to your base to defend against it, a lot of noobs will just sit in their base twiddling their thumbs until the person either comes back or someone on their team tells them to come back. But, what you're supposed to do is actually follow the damage, because if you went back to your base because people were there and then there are no longer there, the condition that caused you to be in your base in the first place is now removed, and you're a player down while they're not (or more players than just 1, maybe 2 or 3, even possibly 4), giving your own team a big disadvantage. If you follow them, there's a low probability of dying anyhow as long as your team is fighting their team because in order to kill you they will have to join up with their team, but if they join up with their team and you have good communication you will be joining yours too.

As for keymaps and stuff... I have small hands too and I have an ergonomic keyboard, so the keyboard is split anyway and I couldn't hit 7 and 8 if my life depended on it, so I have g and v mapped to those keys. I have q set to target nearest item (good for picking up flags in pvp and loot in pve) and e to go right a weapon set. The way I play, generally I just have to go right with my weapon sets most the time. It goes higher health and higher energy as it progresses until the very end is 15/-1's. I did have b to target nearest item, but something happened where I can't call targets with my space bar now, so I have to use b for space instead. Which rea

kay.. I left this unposted for like 3 hours and forgot anything else I would have possibly said, so I'm just hitting submit now.

Avatar of Healing · May 06, 2009, 07:34 PM // 19:34

i like moving with WADS and im quite adapt at using the mouse to click on players names. I just bound skills 5-8 on keys r, f, v, c respectively. its weird but makes me feel better that my Oh Shi- healing skill is on f. after i get used to this change i might add in more binds to make weapon swapping easier and whatnot. but if you are new to key binding, like me, this seems like a good way to start.

_Nihilist_ · May 08, 2009, 07:53 AM // 07:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by glacialphoenix

I think bad players are good for two things: realising what you shouldn't do, and pushing you to your limits.

Yup! One of my favorite quotes right now is:

Quote:

I'm not entirely useless. I can be used as a bad example!

Holds true for so many things in relation to GW!