Curse

JR · Jun 13, 2006, 12:38 PM // 12:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy

So likely is best to take one of of both if you can (2 energy sets (negative and plus), normal hale/fort staff and def/def staff) ?

There does seem to be an awfull lot of fast cast spikers and balanceds that rely on warrior adren + orb + shatter to kill their targets out there atm, enough to justify running a def/def staff secondary imho.

The +damage from Warrior attack skills is armor ignoring, Shatter Dellusion/Enchantment are also armor ignoring.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy

I'd have to do the math on what works better against smite (can't do the numbers now, at work) but from the top of my head holy damage of balths wouldn't be affected by def/def but zealots damage would drop from 37 to about the 25 - 27 range wich is still a reduction of at least 10 per zealots hit.

I haven't done the math either, but a drop of 10~ points on something that was only 37 to begin with seems mighty strong for 10 armor. You are right on the Holy damage.

Happy · Jun 13, 2006, 01:00 PM // 13:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I haven't done the math either, but a drop of 10~ points on something that was only 37 to begin with seems mighty strong for 10 armor. You are right on the Holy damage.

I was going from the premises of acolytes chest (+10 while enchanted) and def/def making for +20AL since unless i'm mistaken on this smite always hits the chest piece so the acolyte's should help you out a bit on a boon. Sorry for no making that clear in my original post.

Chunky · Jun 17, 2006, 10:38 PM // 22:38

for necro its best you use 1 sup rune depends on what you doing....

Byron · Jun 18, 2006, 06:35 AM // 06:35

Seeing as though the metagame is heavy on the physical damage right now, I have been running boon/prots with a major rune in substitution of a sup rune in DF - and also running distortion on the bar. I gotta say, it's a lot easier to stay alive, especially with CoP being as great as it is.

12+1+2 Divine Favor
7+1 Protection prayers
10 inspiration magic
4 illusion magic

Reversal of fortune
Mend condition
Protective Spirit
Inspired Hex
Mantra of Recall [e]
Contemplation of purity
Divine boon
Distortion

Health, with two health pieces, comes out to 540 or so. That's a big difference compared a monk with a sup rune running an enchanting piece, who would stand at 485 health. Using that health bonus in cooperation with distortion makes a monk much harder to kill.

So there's my answer to "Sup Rune?"

Clinically Proven · Jun 19, 2006, 12:40 AM // 00:40

I'm using one or two majors as well.

Definately a major DF (for DF = 15) and I'm getting rather partial to taking the major prot as well.

Lando Griffen · Jun 20, 2006, 01:11 AM // 01:11

for a monk, don't look at it in terms of effectiveness per attribute level after 13, consider that even with a small gain, you use less energy to heal your team over time. May not amount to much on paper, but in a long, drawn-out match between to evenly matched teams, it just might make the difference. I just wish that armor wasn't automatically customized so you could use a pve switch on a pvp character, or better yet, I wish pvp chars had more weapon switches and armor switches. I know that anet tries to make everything fair, but in that respect, pve chars > pvp chars. It's nice for instance, seeing a fc air spike team, and having your team switch to their armor vs elemental set. But anyway, IMO, if you can't have both, go with the superior, and do your best to kite

Then again, I never play a gvg monk, so go with whatever suits you best.

dopper · Oct 10, 2006, 07:37 AM // 07:37

i would like to rewake this thread

the metagame has changed a lot since the last post. Do u guys have any new opinions?

We had a big debate whether to run superior on our monks, and we are as yet undecided.

Thought i'd come and have a listen

rii · Oct 10, 2006, 08:05 AM // 08:05

I still avoid as many superiors as I can and run +health items with +health weapons, but that is mainly due to the fact I use PVP only characters, and can't armour swap. When I bother to get a PVE character ready, I will be armour swapping like anyone else to the specific situation. I will also carry every sup. I would need, and it's minor and major counterpart, although in general I would probably run minors still, only subbing in sups. when playing boonprot.

Minus Sign · Oct 10, 2006, 08:06 AM // 08:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by dopper

i would like to rewake this thread

the metagame has changed a lot since the last post. Do u guys have any new opinions?

We had a big debate whether to run superior on our monks, and we are as yet undecided.

Thought i'd come and have a listen

I may be stuborn and set in my ways (after only a year...) but I still prefer the belief that minor=gg. Heal over time with minor runes may not be as effective as with superiors, but I know I'll be the prime target when it comes to ganks, spikes, degen, you name it. Endangering my HP for a superior rune to "help my team" doesn't. It makes them waste time rezzing me when I could have squeaked by with less heal or survived that broken adrenal spike.

One thing that will always ring true in any metagame: dead healers don't heal much. More HP is better because of this, and a loss of 75 from a sup (or 35 from a major) is one less hit you can take when the enemy KDs you and Gale/Blackouts your duo.

I have a superior headset for whatever spell I need--from DF to smite--or whatever enchant I may need to boost. But during combat, I'm spamming with a minor rune. I believe I keep sups on at my and my team's peril.

Thom Bangalter · Oct 10, 2006, 08:24 AM // 08:24

I haven't run a superior in gvg for a very, very long time, and to be honest I'm tempted to switch over in ha since the 3 monk backline is gone.

Oscar aka 'Hanz' · Oct 10, 2006, 11:48 AM // 11:48

i swap between sup and minor pretty frequently

Minus Sign · Oct 10, 2006, 12:08 PM // 12:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

I haven't run a superior in gvg for a very, very long time, and to be honest I'm tempted to switch over in ha since the 3 monk backline is gone.

Make the switch. You'll prefer it.

Blame the Monks · Oct 10, 2006, 02:32 PM // 14:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Did you really need 590 life instead of 515?

Or in reverse, is that 6 extra heal really going to save your team, especially relative to the risk of a monk wipe?

Efficiency is important, but is still secondary to survivability. Think of your experience in actual play -- how often do people die simply because the monks can't heal efficiently enough to keep up vs. how often do monks die in monk pushes? And if someone dies, which is more dangerous to the team -- DP on a random person or a monk death?

It is very, very rare for a person to die where another 6 heal would save them. Efficiency would only matter over time, if at all. Yet if a monk is running out of energy, you can almost always make up for it tactically (withdrawing temporarily, intelligently shutdown by your team's offense, etc). Even over time, the problem can largely be taken care of by your emo's HP. Between overhealing, healing the same target by mistake, and the simple need to spend most of your time and attention preprotting, efficiency simply isn't a monks biggest focus.

As for the top players, I think they are getting tired of saying it over and over. Here are two recent posts in this forum that specifically address not running sups. Tommy is one of the best monks in america (imo) and ensign is arguably THE most knowledgeable person about the strategy of GW in the game. I'll add my limited experience to theirs -- in cow we run minor runes on all monks all the time.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...2&postcount=14
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...5&postcount=23

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Except for the fact that any decent monk player will also know that they will repeatedly get their enchantments stripped in most GvGs, making casting early with a sup and then changing largely pointless.

Not really. Worst case, it has no effect. Best case, they never strip it at all and you get a free boost. This happens more than you may think because removing boon doesn't really hamper a boon much and lasts such a short time, there aren't that many enchant removals to spare, and other enchants (ZF, etc) are more valuable to strip. Finally, even if stripped its not that hard to micro it back up. It is no more difficult than boosting your prodigy or preps.

moriz · Oct 10, 2006, 03:22 PM // 15:22

basically the final verdict is: run superior with minor swap if you use a pve char, run minor if you use a pvp char.

Oscar aka 'Hanz' · Oct 10, 2006, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

Or in reverse, is that 6 extra heal really going to save your team, especially relative to the risk of a monk wipe?

not arguing against your points, but those 2 divine favour points on a blessed light monk (13-15) will give an increase in healing from blessed light of 20 and on a boon prot (14-16) will give an increase per spell of 12 (and in 90% of fights your boon will be stripped, whether its by Mo/Me blessed light monks or mesmers or whatever else)

dopper · Oct 11, 2006, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Thanx for the responses guys

much appreciated

just rude · Oct 11, 2006, 03:04 AM // 03:04

I have heard alot about this lately.

This is question about you and prot spirit. If have armor that is plus health and do not have any superior runes will you be more susceptible to spikes? You really need to take it on a character by charater baisis. Don't think my health vs my attribs think my healths vs a spike with prot on me. If you come up against a bspike, then if you have more that 500 health shelter will do you no good if your health is above 500.

I had a whole thing but nip/tuck is on. Later.

EDIT by Tommy: removed random numbers and fixed grammar to make this post readable.

moriz · Oct 11, 2006, 01:52 PM // 13:52

monks need as much HP as they can get. you should never rely on having Protective Spirit and Shelter on you at all times.

Oscar aka 'Hanz' · Oct 11, 2006, 04:57 PM // 16:57

the only monk i run a sup on most of the time is RC prot in HA, because with channelling you can pretty much keep prot spirit on all the monks all the time

romO · Oct 11, 2006, 07:18 PM // 19:18

The only times superiors are used, generally, is to make up for an attribute spread which requires high specs in many different attributes (usually to hit a break point). On a monk, I really don't see the need for that.

~Many of the inspiration breakpoints hit at 9, the most prevalent being edrain for boon prots. You can get an extra 1 energy out of ihex, drain enchant, or mantra of resolve if you want to use a higher rune, but with that skill usage coming every 20 seconds or so, that seems laughable for the health sacrifice.

~Once prot is at a medium spec, the effects are situational and are, for the most part, only a precaution. For instance, rof only gains an additional 4 damage negated and healed maximum per level, which will net 8 damage negation. That's nice, and it's idealistic to think that you will be getting that max every time, but realistically, you'll never get maximum efficiency out of it over the course of a game because of the nature of the skill. Lower specs will probably have the same effect. The duration of prot spirit is what scales with the attribute level, and it is a very long duration anyway, usually much longer than it is needed. If it does end prematurely, it is usually due to a shatter or drain. Once again, for the great majority of the time will have zero effect. Spirit bond and guardian are the only popular prot spells that will always have a gain from a higher spec, assuming that their conditions are met, and those differences are only an additional 4 heal on spirit bond (per attribute level) and 2% block chance on guardian (per level). Neither of those seems to be hardly worth the sac. 9 prot should generally be all you'll ever need (54 max negation/heal rof, 38% block guardian, 76 heal spirit bond, 16 second prot spirit).

~Healing prayers: if you're running a healer in a two-monk backline in GvG, come talk to me. There are problems. There are, however, several useful spells in the healing line. Well, at least one useful spell and a couple mediocre ones. Healing spec on a boon prot or a BL monk will never be too high because gift of health is incredibly efficient as it stands without requiring an enormous spec. Gift is a 96 heal at 9 healing on a BL monk, and although it would be nice to get it higher, it's still not worth thinning out your other attribute lines or running the rune for one skill (9 extra heal per level). On a boon prot, a booned gift will do you fine at whatever reasonable spec you have, and you should never be in a situation where you wish you had more than 9 healing. I mean, I suppose if you had vital bond, vital weapon, and fertile season, then maybe you could use a larger heal on a booned gift, but other than that, it's never necessary, as it just leads to overhealing.

~Divine favor is generally what people say that they run a superior rune for. It's an extra heal of 12 per cast with boon, an additional heal of 6 with an unbooned monk spell, an additional 11 or 12 heal on sig of devo (11 base spec or 12 base spec, respectively), and an additional heal of 20 on blessed light. It's a bunch of small additions that people assume will add up. Honestly, they will, but the amount of good that will really come from it will be surprisingly small. A lot of the time, monks are prone to overhealing. Everyone does it, and although it's inefficient, sometimes it needs to be done (critical condition/hex removal, healing through a spike, both monks heal sametarget). In these cases, the additional heal will get you nothing. It is the same scenario as with a highly specced rof or ps. However, the extra healing does yield a benefit a large part of the time, so in order to analyze that, we can examine the amount of energy saved through running a superior rune (assuming that energy correlates to direct healing, which isn't always the case, but is the best objective measure that we have). I would give you the numbers on energy efficiency for BL, but the skill itself has utility (hex/condition removal) which is held constant, so it's effect cannot be analyzed as a pure heal, another reason why it's effect is diminishing at higher attribute levels. For that reason, we need to look at some efficient, manageable, and usable heal such as gift of health (it's the most common straight heal in the game today, and although the numbers will come out as more efficient than other spells, deserves to be looked at because all other spells also consider utility, which is never directly measureable). At a 13 divine 9 heal spec, gift of health will result in a maximum direct heal of 132 (96+42), which means that for each of the 5 energy points you are using, you are getting a heal of 26.4 in return. Applying that number to the extra heal that you will receive from BL when using a superior rune means that with each cast of BL, you are saving .76 energy. Using other spells on a BL monk saves .23 energy per cast. Using any spell on a boon prot will conserve .45 energy. Once you consider how often you are casting BL and other spells, you are not going to be saving any more than 10 energy per minute, which seems like a rather large amount, but that is only assuming that at no point in the game does your energy ever hit full, an assumption that makes this statistic invalid in most cases. Once you factor in overhealing of spells and lack of usage of the energy pool, the energy saved may be there, but the actual amount will be negligible. Even when assuming maximum efficiency from all skills at all times and constant usage (which is once again purely theoretical and will likely never happen), the amount of extra healing that you will get from these skills over a period of 20-30 seconds can be mopped up by one additional heal party from a spamming emo. I have largely held the belief that monks need to focus on direct damage negation, while other characters can have a skill or two for passive damage negation (aegis, wards, heal party, etc), allowing monks to work at maximum efficiency. Basically, running a superior rune on a monk is taking one heal party away from an emo every 20-30 seconds, which is counterproductive, as heal party was moved over to emos in order to lessen the load on monks in the first place so that direct damage negation can be their focus.

Judging by all of the options to boost attributes, I really don't see any spell line that could benefit sufficiently from a superior rune. There are also other drawbacks from losing additional health, most of which are obvious, but one which I would like to go over. Monks without superiors and a lot of health are generally thought of as more self-sufficient and defensive, but when you consider their abilities compared to monks with less health and greater healing potential, I see monks with more life as far more offensive. Monks running superior runes are forced to constantly worry about their positioning, and cannot make any kind of sacrifices for their teams, as it will most likely result in their own death, whereas monks with more health are able to play more offensively without worrying about taking a death. Of course, one's health is always something to keep in mind, but with more life, one can be more secure that what they are doing is going to benefit their teammates without a great risk of incurring a death. An example of this is when warriors, for one reason or another, need to greatly overextend to do something like train a flag runner or push opponent monks. Monks with less health will be more hesistant to push up, because often, when that happens, they are going to be target number one, and with less hit points, they are far more fragible and susceptible to death. Monks with more hit points can push up safely, and although they incur the same damage, they have less risk because their backline has far more time to negate the damage. Monks with more health can play all over the field whereas monks using superior runes can either stay far in the back (and risk their extended teammates dieing) or be forced to push up for them (and leave themselves in a very comprimising situation, risking death themselves).

Finally, the most important thing to consider when chosing runes, skills, or attributes, is will this help me to win the game? In the case of using a superior rune on monks, incurring a death and taking an early 15 DP to make you a low target for the rest of the game will most certainly lose you far more games than having a minimal increase in healing efficiency will win you. On the other side, having more health, and thus, more mobility on the field to assist teammates will result in far more favorable situations and victories than having to force your team to be restrained in a safe area, unable to push up in fear of fatalities in the front line or back.