Curse

LifeInfusion · Nov 08, 2010, 04:34 AM // 04:34

I wouldn't bring Spirit Bond simply because it works better on an ER ele. I also use Prot Spirit sparingly (mainly when there's no SY! warrior, ST rit, or imbagon ).

As a monk I want to do things that capitalize on DF and allow me to use spells as cheap as possible to have as much benefit from DF as possible per energy:
* UA, Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight , Patient Spirit
* HB+Heal Party , Ethereal Light/Healing whisper
* Seed of Life
* Smiter's Boon
* Selfless spirit (to an extent)

I usually run SoA, prot spirit on HB monk, not UA. UA needs a high DF spec to work well. You can get away with 8+1 or 9+1 prot on a HB, lowering DF to 10+1 or 9+1.

Lourens · Nov 08, 2010, 08:06 AM // 08:06

I like shielding hands better then SoA now that its bin buffed

Ensign · Nov 08, 2010, 08:46 AM // 08:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

At what spec do have Protection?

10 usually, for SoA. I'll drop it to 7 if I'm not running SoA or a Mend/Dismiss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

Dismiss and Mend only start beating the other heals at 12+ Protection (I hit 13 on my RC Prot bar) and you're only going to get that by cutting Divine Favour almost completely.

Well if all you're using them for is a heal, and the condition removal is completely irrelevant, then it's going to be very very difficult for Mend or Dismiss to outperform Kiss or Patient. But sometimes you do use them to remove a condition, or the incidental removal has some value, and you have to compare that with the slightly larger heal.

Now if you were using this skill slot as a go-to heal, the amount it heals will be a big deal. But this is not a skill slot that should ever be used all that much for the healing. It gets used for healing in 'oh shit several guys just got blasted and Word has a 3s recharge' situations; and even then Prot has a priority unless it's all on cooldown too. So it's something you fill space with on a protted target while you wait for Word to recharge.

Not exactly something that gets spammed. Cleaning out the WiK bounties on my Monk today, I think I used the Dismiss on that slot about half a dozen times over the course of half an hour. Most of my time and energy went into Aegis, SoA, Prot Spirit, Seed of Life, Word, and Cure Hex. Casting more Dismiss/Orisonclone necessarily means less of those skills, and if I'm having to make that trade it means I've done something wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I feel SoA is good because of the cooldown (~60% of the time it can be up) but it is fairly hard to use in Hard mode without an element of tanking involved (like Seed of Life).

SoA is perfectly fine to throw on spec on anyone taking damage; there are usually some physical attackers you can follow around. Seed I try to place a little better but it ends up just being another small prot.

Both are a whole lot easier to use when you have melee to initiate, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

So it pretty much hinges on how good you are at hitting people still below <50%HP after the DF heal, without them dying.

I don't think it matters. If they're at 70% and dropping I'll throw the Word; if it was really needed it'll trigger and they'll get a big heal; if it wasn't and they don't drop below 50%, it'll still heal for ~130 and put them back up into the range where I'm not overly concerned with healing them again.

When I 'miss' with Word like that I'm a lot more annoyed by the 3s recharge on Word and the opportunity costs that imposes than the lower heal. The target is in a safe range of health after it resolves, and that's really what I cared about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

If you're playing with another monk, it is likely they will be topping off bars even when you have Patient Spirit on people

Patient is really bad if you have anyone else with single target heals on the team. I think it's one of the main factors driving the "Heal Monk and Prot Monk" backline metagame; any spot heal on the second Monk will wreck Patient.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

For all intents and purposes, the UA bar might as well just be UA+ Divine Healing. A lot of monks in PUGs seem to think that UA is for orison spam / patient spirit/ Ethereal light, which bothers me.

Welcome to pug Monks, who think Orison spam is where it's at. I personally think that if you're using anything other than Gift of Health on a UA bar, you're doing it wrong. If all you want to do is boost Orison and friends, just run Word.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I was playing in Thirsty River HM and a monk had a UA bar with Divine Healing + Heaven's Delight and no spot heal, just Dismiss Condition. At the least there ought to be Dwayna's Kiss.

Gift of Health as main heal, Dismiss as backup. Gift is a 210 heal at 14/10/10 spec, Dismiss is your backup at 131, this without hat swapping, and you have two beefy party heals as well. If you need more heals than that, you're doing it wrong and really need more prot.

LifeInfusion · Nov 08, 2010, 03:51 PM // 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Gift of Health as main heal, Dismiss as backup. Gift is a 210 heal at 14/10/10 spec, Dismiss is your backup at 131, this without hat swapping, and you have two beefy party heals as well. If you need more heals than that, you're doing it wrong and really need more prot.

I should have been more specific.
This was their build: OwAS8YITbaBE5ggefPdRXEME

Dismiss doesn't work on the Ghostly hero since it doesn't get enchanted unless you drop Seed on him.

I think I'll take your suggestion and stop running patient. I find it makes topping off someone from 50% much easier, and with UA you don't have many options for a quick self heal (Ethereal light is 1 second, healing touch doesn't heal all that much) when things go bad.

As far as WoH hybrid: My biggest problem when running WoH is if I'm the only monk, since there will be no party heals unless there's another monk or an imbagon.

Ensign · Nov 08, 2010, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I think I'll take your suggestion and stop running patient. I find it makes topping off someone from 50% much easier, and with UA you don't have many options for a quick self heal (Ethereal light is 1 second, healing touch doesn't heal all that much) when things go bad.

HD/DH give you Divine Favor bonus so they heal yourself for ~135. Plus you'll be enchanted with UA so Dismiss is a guaranteed self heal as well (remember you don't need a condition to get the heal). You do have prot for yourself, right?

The UA bar I like is UA, HD, DH, Gift, Dismiss, Deny Hexes (unless not relevant), then two (three) prots of choice (Prot Spirit & SoA or Seed typically, Aegis is rough on 3 pips). 14/10/10. It's a bit of a slow bar, but you don't have a ton of choice to get the good party healing.

Quote:

As far as WoH hybrid: My biggest problem when running WoH is if I'm the only monk, since there will be no party heals unless there's another monk or an imbagon.

I guess there isn't a whole lot you can do about that if you are playing with players; it's hard to get people to stash a random party heal on their bar when it would interfere with hheir LEET DEEPS. But a SoS can stash a pot, Eles or Necros can sandbag a heal, and every Gon should have some...but that's what heroes are for I suppose.

If you have all players you should have enough passive mitigation and shutdown that you can run the UA bar anyway.

Xenomortis · Nov 08, 2010, 11:26 PM // 23:26

So I joined a PUG for Catacombs of Kathandrax (Zaishen Bounty) and I tried taking Dismiss over a second spot heal in my standard WoH bar:
OwYT04XCTaTTjY67uqeIgIHEZAA
Dismiss, WoH, Cure Hex, SoA, Prot Spirit, Aegis, Seed of Life, GoLE
12+1+2 Healing, 9+1 DF, 9+1 Prot

I'm really not sure how valuable Dismiss was compared to a regular heal (DKiss or Patient or even Signet of Rejuvenation). It was nice to pull Burning before SF landed from one of the Eles, or to lighten the pressure someone was taking by both healing and pulling a condition.
But really, it lacked the raw power I wanted when shit hit the fan and the conditional nature of the heal sucked when I was the only one spreading enchantments. However I think that was something I expected the second monk to make up for - he did after all, have Healer's Boon, 3 single target heals (DKiss, Patient and Jamei's Gaze), Heal Party and BotGD.

If I'd built the team with Dismiss in mind, it could work reasonably well. I'm just not totally convinced it's worth it over something more direct.
And when I H/H, I always have an SoS Rit hero and that hero always has MBAS, so I really don't have any reason to take Dismiss or Mend then either.

Ensign · Nov 09, 2010, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

So I joined a PUG for Catacombs

From what you described there I would have run RoF in the throwaway slot.

Kiss sucks whenever Dismiss sucks; Patient is awful in panic situations and doubly so when you have another Monk with you; Signet is again not much of a panic button but at least you can push the button a lot. RoF stomps on all of them in emergency / panic situations.

Agree entirely on MBAS outperforming Dismiss in every way; I wouldn't even bother with a second spot heal with the Rit around. Spam more Prot? I really wish Healing Prayers wasn't so godawful.

Xenomortis · Nov 09, 2010, 12:36 AM // 00:36

On reflection, I agree.
Generally though, I dislike RoF and almost always run a direct heal over it. That doesn't stem from any rational thought though. I ran Dismiss just to see what it was like.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Spam more Prot?

One thing I did notice when running that bar was that I did have more energy to cast the prots (until the Mesmers spiked it with 3 copies of Energy Burn), but that I simply couldn't use them fast enough. The recharge on SoA and Prot Spirit became the biggest annoyances. So in response to "Spam more Prot" - I really can't, unless I take something much more trivial like Shielding Hands.

LifeInfusion · Nov 10, 2010, 03:37 PM // 15:37

I think the problem with RoF (in PVE) is more or less it is conditional on whether the person gets hit for at least half the heal from Dismiss/D-Kiss/Patient. That's awfully easy to do when you don't have HB/UA powering heals (58 cap on 10 prot RoF = 116 heal), but at the same time the target may be hit for something around 20-30 damage and waste RoF (not entirely, but 40-60 health saved is pretty lame).

10 Prot RoF = 116 potential heal
14 Heal Patient = 114
14 Heal Cure Hex = 114 (absolutely conditional)
14 Heal Words of comfort = 57+43=100 (conditional)
14 Heal ethereal light = 95 (not really an option without HB)
14 Heal D-Kiss = 57+33= 90+ (doesn't self target)

Otherwise it will be hard, since you need higher prot to match the healing power gained from the heal boosting skills.

Lanier · Nov 10, 2010, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I think the problem with RoF (in PVE) is more or less it is conditional on whether the person gets hit for at least half the heal from Dismiss/D-Kiss/Patient. That's awfully easy to do when you don't have HB/UA powering heals (58 cap on 10 prot RoF = 116 heal), but at the same time the target may be hit for something around 20-30 damage and waste RoF (not entirely, but 40-60 health saved is pretty lame).

10 Prot RoF = 116 potential heal
14 Heal Patient = 114
14 Heal Cure Hex = 114 (absolutely conditional)
14 Heal Words of comfort = 57+43=100 (conditional)
14 Heal ethereal light = 95 (not really an option without HB)
14 Heal D-Kiss = 57+33= 90+ (doesn't self target)

Otherwise it will be hard, since you need higher prot to match the healing power gained from the heal boosting skills.

In HM though, hitting the high end of RoF happens pretty often. Sure it is kind of risky, but I have found that most of the time, RoF gives a high enough heal bonus that, when combined with the damage prevented, makes it worth the skill slot and more efficient than other options. You also have to remember that RoF can self target, which is the biggest weakness of my favorite healing non-elite spells, Dwayna's Kiss and Gift of Health. The 1/4 second casting time is also immensely helpful for those "oh shit" occasions when you have mispredicted and an ally has been spiked. casting a RoF before your spike heal gives you a little bit more of a safety cushion to insure that your spike heal is casted before the ally dies.

I should probably mention that I run 12 heal/11 prot on my WoH hybrid and 12 prot/11 heal on my ZB/gift of health hybrid rather than the 14/10 split that you have in your example. This makes RoF slightly more useful due to the higher healing cap, and could partially account for why I like it.

Ensign · Nov 10, 2010, 07:48 PM // 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I think the problem with RoF (in PVE) is more or less it is...

I don't think about RoF as a heal, and don't use it as a heal. RoF is something like 'target player doesn't die in the next second while your cooldowns finish and you're casting your good spell to solve the problem.' RoF is a delaying tool because your goodies don't recharge fast enough.

The 'heals' it's being compared against do a weaker job in this role because they are slower, and don't scale with lethality. Remember that you really just want to Word the guy and you're stalling until you can.

Small differences in healing power don't really concern me; this is rarely a game where you just keep pumping heals into a tank and heal-per-second really matters. Skills do jobs, and the amount healed influences what jobs a skill can do, but small differences only matter on the margin.

Nekodesu · Nov 11, 2010, 10:18 AM // 10:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

No, you generally don't. However a spot removal is still useful.
This doesn't change the fact those two bars are still pathetic.

I notice the WoH bar added after my initial post. Much better, but could do with the res being cut for something more useful.

Your build was pretty 'pathetic' aswell. I mean, it was just like my WoH build anyways. A little "I'm so much better than you" here or what

WoH Is shit for PvE Unless you got one more dude on the side. Well, that means for high-end areas if you've ever been there 8D

Xenomortis · Nov 11, 2010, 11:46 AM // 11:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

Your build was pretty 'pathetic' aswell. I mean, it was just like my WoH build anyways. A little "I'm so much better than you" here or what

I posted my bar before you edited your post. I even mentioned it in my following post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

WoH Is shit for PvE Unless you got one more dude on the side. Well, that means for high-end areas if you've ever been there 8D

I'm not entirely certain what you're saying here, but I'm pretty sure you've just scuttled any point you may have had.

Lanier · Nov 11, 2010, 07:50 PM // 19:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nekodesu

WoH Is shit for PvE

Wrong...

12 chars

Iron Monkey · Nov 21, 2010, 03:38 PM // 15:38

Think I found my bar, maybe needs some tweaking

OwAT003C1JMO930Ck6RARmwQAA

Gift Of Health
Cure Hex
Dismiss Condition
Guardian
Protective Spirit
Aegis
Unyielding Aura

Prot spirit maybe a bit OTT in NM.

diavy · Nov 21, 2010, 03:40 PM // 15:40

2 rezzes? why? and btw it'll be a channlenge to come around with your energy.

Iron Monkey · Nov 21, 2010, 03:55 PM // 15:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by diavy

2 rezzes? why? and btw it'll be a channlenge to come around with your energy.

That's a mistake. Replaced with Heaven's Delight

diavy · Nov 21, 2010, 04:43 PM // 16:43

anyway, i can't understand why you wanna play a defensive monk in PvE without Life Sead.

kick the healing stuff in the first bar, go prot 12 ; divine 12 (for life sead) and focus on prot stuff like shield of absorbation or shielding hands.

the 2nd bar is imo just not good, it doesnt make a sense to use it, because you can play a lot of a lot better builds.

Iron Monkey · Nov 21, 2010, 05:06 PM // 17:06

I don't like running seed of life with aegis. If I'm not taking aegis, I usually take SoF and SoA. I am speaking of mixed heal / prot, not just prot. If I run with a healer, I would take full prots instead.

[EDIT] Messed up my image link. Second build was ZB + divine boon.