Curse

Cebe · Mar 19, 2008, 10:37 AM // 10:37

I've been working on a Smiting-Protect hybrid hero monk, because I can. I wondered if such a monk would be more useful in areas of the game where two "regular" monks are used. Just wondering what people think of such a hero build, and if there's anything that can be done to better it.

[skill]Zealous Benediction[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Reversal of Damage[/skill][skill]Smite Hex[/skill][skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Heaven's Delight[/skill]

Attributes:
Smiting Prayers: 10 + 1
Protection Prayers: 10 + 1
Divine Favor: 11 + 1 + 1

Now, there is one thing I don't know about heroes, and that is: If a hero is set to not attack will they seill use pbAoE skills when a foe comes within range of them? See, I had considered using something like [wiki]Kirin's Wrath[/wiki], for something to use when foes apparoach them, as a way of scattering them, but I am unsure if it would be used without the hero being ser to guard.

Other skills I'd considered using were:

[wiki]Judge's Intervention[/wiki] - Though it's got a quick recharge, and would trigger Smiter's Boon, it's overall usefulness is very limited, since a hero will not just cast it for the heal bonus.
[wiki]Castigation Signet[/wiki] - Would require the hero to be on Guard to use it.
[wiki]Life Sheath[/wiki] - Was considering using this instead of ZB, though I prefer knowing the hero has a straight up heal, and ZB seems like an ok choice now I hear heroes use it better.
[wiki]Balthazar's Pendulum[/wiki] - Another nice spammable smiting skill. Shame it's elite. Seems like such a waste of an elite slot really, and not worth it's salt.

So yea. Feedback time I guess. If anyone wants to go ahead and try it out next to a hybrid / hench monk feel free...any thoughts or comments are welcome. It may not be anything a Paragon hero can't already do...this is what concerns me.

distilledwill · Mar 19, 2008, 10:40 AM // 10:40

tried a similar build a while back and found that the hero didnt maintain smiter's boon. You might want to try getting rid of prot and investing totally in the other 2 attributes. Then you can take a Divine Favour elite such as [skill=text]Blessed Light[/skill] or something.

On Judges Intervention, i found that the hero spent most of their time casting this and therefore not really doing much healing.

Not sure if the AI on these skills has been altered since i tried it though. I think its worth another look.

Cebe · Mar 19, 2008, 10:44 AM // 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by distilledwill

tried a similar build a while back and found that the hero didnt maintain smiter's boon. You might want to try getting rid of prot and investing totally in the other 2 attributes. Then you can take a Divine Favour elite such as [skill=text]Blessed Light[/skill] or something.

When in battle, my monk heroes cast Smiter's Boon straight away, and if it gets stripped, they recast as soon as it recharges. Blessed Light is far too spammable (for a 10-energy skill) for heroes in my opinion...at least ZB has the potential to allow an energy gain, and apparently heroes are using it better now. I could do away with Protection Prayers, but PP seems to have too many good skills to simply do away with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by distilledwill

On Judges Intervention, i found that the hero spent most of their time casting this and therefore not really doing much healing.

Did they cast that even when a player wasn't close to death? Mine wouldn't do that.

_____________________

Edit: Considering further your suggestion to spec only into Divine Favor and Smiting Prayers. If a hero maintained Smiter's Boon and Zealot's Fire on himself, would he be able to use [wiki]Boon Signet[/wiki] correctly to help gain energy?

cellardweller · Mar 19, 2008, 11:51 AM // 11:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celestial Beaver

Edit: Considering further your suggestion to spec only into Divine Favor and Smiting Prayers. If a hero maintained Smiter's Boon and Zealot's Fire on himself, would he be able to use [wiki]Boon Signet[/wiki] correctly to help gain energy?

30 fire damage barely hits double figures against L28 monsters.

I run Shield of Judgment as the elite, JI in place of PS and Divine Boon in place of Heaven's delight- yes she is frequently out of energy but she has the team trounces through the undead areas fast enough that I don't have the motivation to improve on it

.

DarkSpirit · Mar 19, 2008, 03:36 PM // 15:36

I have used a similar before. Heroes dont wait for the 50% health to optimize ZB.

Heaven's delight has been nerfed so it doesn't provide that much healing anymore.

Cebe · Mar 19, 2008, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSpirit

Heaven's delight has been nerfed so it doesn't provide that much healing anymore.

I am using that being fully aware that it's been changed. Dunno if "nerfed" is quite the right word though

Cathode_Reborn · Mar 19, 2008, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Smiter heroes seem alot more useful with buffed Reversal of Damage. 3 smiters all with RoD/Smiter's Boon can prevent lots of damage while dealing it, and still have decent heals. One annoying thing is that they don't use Smiter's Boon untill they've taken a certain amount of damage though. You'll have to micro it before a fight.

Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight are kinda decent. Weak compared to other party heals but sometimes it's better than nothin.

MasterSasori · Mar 19, 2008, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkSpirit

I have used a similar before. Heroes dont wait for the 50% health to optimize ZB.

Heaven's delight has been nerfed so it doesn't provide that much healing anymore.

I agree that heroes are terrible with ZB. So whenever you use Zb on a hero, it should be disabled.

Heaven's delight also took 30 seconds to recharge and forever to cast. It sucks back then, it sucks now.

Antithesis · Mar 19, 2008, 10:54 PM // 22:54

[skill]Master of Magic[/skill][skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill][skill]Guardian[/skill][skill]Reversal of Damage[/skill][skill]Smite Hex[/skill][skill]Zealot's Fire[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill]

Energy Storage: 12 (8+1+3)
Smiting Prayers: 12
Protection Prayers: 10

It's an E/Mo, not a Mo/E. This hero is set to Guard. You can run it in with less than 12 in ES, but you may need Castigation Signet. With Survivor's Insignia and an Hourglass Staff, it still ends up with around 540 Health, so the Sup rune is no big deal.

Heroes won't spam RoF and Guardian (which triggers ZF) until the team is under pressure. You could swap them out for Spirit Bond (to make up for lower healing) and Castigation Signet. I'm not a fan of Hero controlled Protective Spirit, but it's an option for the Spirit Bond slot. Zealot's Fire is questionable in HM and doesn't really add much to the build, you could take a direct damage skill or Judge's Insight instead.

This is the bar i've been running in HM -

[skill]Master of Magic[/skill][skill]Spirit Bond[/skill][skill]Reversal of Damage[/skill][skill]Smite Hex[/skill][skill]Judge's Insight[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill]

Good energy management, good smiting, good anti-spike...it works well as a Smite / Prot supporter. Protective Spirit works equally well in place of Spirit Bond - it's there because Zealous Benediction is in the OP.

I haven't tried recently but when attempting to build a Smite support Monk, they didn't seem to use Smiter's Boon properly for me either (it was a primary Monk). Without Smiter's Boon working properly it kinda seemed pointless.

[update]

Tried the OP build - Smiter's Boon usage is variable...sometimes its up, most of the time its down. PS+ZB = tanked under pressure. Needs Castigation Signet for better e-management - given it didn't seem to use Heaven's Delight i swapped it out. Protective Spirit usage is good, but they still don't know how to use Zealous Benediction properly.

After a couple of hours testing a Mo/E in HM, i settled on this to keep as close as possible to Beaver's build -

[skill]Defender's Zeal[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Reversal of Damage[/skill][skill]Smite Hex[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill]

Smiting Prayers: 12 (10+1+1)
Protective Prayers: 11 (10+1)
Divine Prayers: 12 (11+1)

I used a 40/40 Smite set to take the best advantage of Smiter's Boon and the Smite skills. Smiter's Boon still sucks, it was down 90% of the time unless micro'd. Spirit Bond may replace Protective Spirit for spike healing. Defender's Zeal is a strong skill in HM that is used well by Heroes and gets better as melee pressure increases on the team. Performance of DZ varies depending on mob composition, take out casters first to keep the energy up. GoLE+CS+DZ works well for e-management, but is overkill vs normal mobs. I tried Divine Boon (energy tanked) and Boon Signet (hero too dumb to use as e-mgt), the bar above was the closest thing i could get to reliable.

I'd probably stick with the E/Mo because Smiter's Boon needs to be micro'd, Judge's Insight fits on the E/Mo bar and there are less energy management issues with MoM (unless enchant is stripped). I wouldn't take either of them often - the Smite stuff is average but it does provide a Prot / Smite option.

It's more like $0.05 than $0.02, hope the feedback helps.

Cebe · Mar 20, 2008, 01:52 PM // 13:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cathode_One

annoying thing is that they don't use Smiter's Boon untill they've taken a certain amount of damage though. You'll have to micro it before a fight.

I'm really not seeing that.

Everyone has said that heroes don't cast smiter's boon before a fight, but as soon as I call the first target, Ogden has it cast and is raring to go...

@ Antithesis. That last build with Defender's Zeal, I tried one like that a few months ago, while it's ok on a human, I don't feel heroes use it well enough. DZ gets cast on whoever you call, who dies so fast that the hero casting DZ on them doesn't really get a return off it.

I'm not looking to use an Elementalist MoM Smiter. I just got to thinking about Smiting hero builds a few days back, developped a build, and was after a bit of feedback.

I tried playing a very similar build to the one in my OP on my own Monk, but with Balthazar's Pendulum instead of ZB. I tried it in Kourna where I was guaranteed of some Knockdown. It was fun, and I got an 84HP heal off every smiting skill which was nice, but it's a shame heroes wouldn't spam some of the more spammable skills simply to gain the healing off them.

Antithesis · Mar 21, 2008, 12:25 AM // 00:25

You can lock a DF hero onto a melee foe instead of a called target, either way the energy management is usually ok. I can't see any real alternative to the elite without destroying the Monk's energy

Unfortunately it highlights the weakness of Smite / Prot when we can't get a decent Hero build reliably working without dipping into a different primary. The only spell to really benefit from Smiter's Boon is Reversal of Damage, so it's just not worth taking.

Yggdrasil · Mar 21, 2008, 03:09 AM // 03:09

What about the signet-based smiting bars? Because they rely on signets e-management is less of a problem. don't feel no pain had a thread about this a little bit ago, please see: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10239787

I haven't really run smiters, but plan on doing some more w/ them soon-ish.

DarkSpirit · Mar 21, 2008, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yggdrasil

What about the signet-based smiting bars? Because they rely on signets e-management is less of a problem. don't feel no pain had a thread about this a little bit ago, please see: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10239787

I haven't really run smiters, but plan on doing some more w/ them soon-ish.

That reminds me of my Artificer Me/Mo Signet build:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...10&postcount=3

7-Signet gives a total of +21 armor to a mesmer hero and since she doesn't need that much energy, she can use a shield with a -2 while in a stance and +30hp giving a total of 89 armor.

Gwen slices through HM with that build, but you just need to manually cast mantra of inscriptions once just before a battle (bind it to a key) and she would renew it.

Antithesis · Mar 21, 2008, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yggdrasil

What about the signet-based smiting bars? Because they rely on signets e-management is less of a problem. don't feel no pain had a thread about this a little bit ago, please see: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10239787

I haven't really run smiters, but plan on doing some more w/ them soon-ish.

Sorry, i should have clarified - i meant a spell-based build for Smite / Prot, which is what CB has posted.