Curse

Lambentviper · Jan 13, 2006, 12:54 AM // 00:54

A good, CA & TA Build:

You need:

R/W or W/R
-Her/His job is to distract the attention of monks and pick fights with other warriors.

R/x
-His/Her job is to quickly kill or interupt all spellcasters do to their low armor and sometimes long casting times.

Mo/x
-Her/His job is to just keep the team alive with heals and condition removals. Aegis is also helpful

Mo/W
-His/Her job is to cast holy wrath and life bond on everyone. The monk should have no other energy spells and have warrior skills like bonetti's defense, healing signet, and various damage+condition spreading attacks.

This build worked great. We started out in CA and made it to 18 wins, and about 13-14 were flawless.

Common builds we were able to flawless against:
-3 TF Axe Warriors with 1 heal monk
-3 Air Spikers and 1 Heal/Protect monk
-2 Fragility-Virulence Mesmer/Necros and 2 Death Necros
-Trapper Ranger teams

Enchant Strip could be a small problem, but if dealt with swiftly, are easily moved away.

Neo-LD · Jan 13, 2006, 05:07 AM // 05:07

your CA team was blessed with 2 monks which is why you were able to roll many CA victories

if you were to face a team that knew what they were doing, your main problem would be damage.... that entire team has less combined firepower than a single shock/gale axe warrior.

munkieix · Jan 13, 2006, 05:38 AM // 05:38

holy wrath ftw :P

audioaxes · Jan 13, 2006, 07:34 AM // 07:34

lol 2 monk teams in 4v4 are meh
4v4 is so poluted with horrible players and teams even so-so groups can do 10-20+ like nothing

JR · Jan 13, 2006, 10:02 AM // 10:02

I must agree with audioaxes here.

Running two monks in TA, would be like running 4 monks in GvG or Tombs. Pointless, and it kills your DPS. Holy Wrath is a great way to kill a monks energy, and is only really there to be shattered or drained by a good team. Life Bonds in arena... also something I have never liked, it just seems a bit over the top.

One good Boon Prot is all you should need in arena. With a decent build you should have enough shutdown and damage between the three other characters to mitigate damage and drop offensive characters fairly quickly. Interrupt rangers like in this build, are definately a decent choice, if someone good is playing that character. A Mesmer with hex stacking (backfire, shame/guilt, diversion, conjure phantasm...) is a slightly more user friendly way to shutdown casters though.

Warskull · Jan 13, 2006, 10:24 AM // 10:24

There are some major flaws in the build. First of all you cannot sustain holy wraith and lifebond on everyone. When you take holy wraith you are limited to 4 enchantments. Holy Wraith with absolutely obliterate your energy if it is triggered forcing you to 0 energy rapidly. At this point anything other than your first 4 enchantments will be lost. In addition holy wraith tends to be a bad skill. Thus your fourth monk has become a glorified bonds monk with a lot of wasted skill points. That last monk is an abosolute mess and should be dumped.

You cannot expect any decent warrior to duel you in arenas. Any intelligent warrior will go for what they believe to be the crux of your build. Thus the concept of distracting warriors or rangers is non-existant. You can shut them down and make their job difficult, but you can't bait a good player into ignoring more important members of your team.

I somewhat disagree with JR on two monk builds in TA. I think there is some room for two monk builds in TA. However you exist primarily to outlast your opponent. Due to weak damage output you will probably stalemate any other two monk build. However you can also have an edge on one monk teams due to increased survivability. The TA metagame is unusual and somewhat unstable. As a result it is difficult to call for specific build styles to work. However unless your two offensive characters are extremely well thought out and executed you run the risk of being unable to kill anything.

Schorny · Jan 13, 2006, 11:11 AM // 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Running two monks in TA, would be like running 4 monks in GvG or Tombs. Pointless, and it kills your DPS.

2 Monks are a pretty good setup for 4on4 PvP.

The problem with 1 monk is: knock him down, shatter his prot spirit, knock down again and bye bye.

2 Monks are more reliable, because with only 4 players you can't effectively shutdown 2 monks and do damage.

Of course you don't need 2 monks to be successfull, but then you'll need something else for the defense, for example a crippling shot ranger with apply poison.

4on4 may seem like GvG with split teams, but it is quite different.

JR · Jan 13, 2006, 11:23 AM // 11:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

2 Monks are a pretty good setup for 4on4 PvP.

The problem with 1 monk is: knock him down, shatter his prot spirit, knock down again and bye bye.

If I have a warrior hammering on me, someone isn't doing their job. Either that warrior should be blind, crippled, or hexed out of usefullness. Not to mention I would probably keep my Prot Spirit covered with guardian. OR I just run my amazing Charge monk and out-kite them

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

2 Monks are more reliable, because with only 4 players you can't effectively shutdown 2 monks and do damage.

I don't think I have ever lost to a two monk team in CA. If you have two monks, that means you have two characters capable of shutdown or damage. That simply is not enough against a good monk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

Of course you don't need 2 monks to be successfull, but then you'll need something else for the defense, for example a crippling shot ranger with apply poison.

Exactly. Negating damage through shutdown is FAR more effective than simply adding more monks. That way you can make your monks life easier whilst adding damage, not detracting from it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schorny

4on4 may seem like GvG with split teams, but it is quite different.

Oh really?

audioaxes · Jan 13, 2006, 05:31 PM // 17:31

2 monk teams is the cheap way out to beat the weak teams in TA instead of making a solid, interconnected 1 monk team where each player's role fits in seamlessly
the inferiority of 2 monk teams will be seen when faced by an actually "really good" TA group which is kinda rare so you can get away with weak builds in 4v4 without consequence
heck even my guild's "fool around" builds roll right through 2 monk teams

crimsonfilms · Jan 13, 2006, 06:02 PM // 18:02

2 monk is a wussie build. If you need 2 monks to get 16 wins in CA->TA - I would reconsider your build.
A decent boon monk can pass through CA straight to TA quite often.

Hell I bring my boon monk in TA with random team (just enter no team). 3 out 5 we will go in a winning streak during peak hours.

Seriously, 2 Mo is overkill. And if you run in to a self healing 4 offense build (say axe and hammer warrior with signets, or ele with wards and armor), your build would be eaten alive.

Lambentviper · Jan 14, 2006, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I must agree with audioaxes here.

Running two monks in TA, would be like running 4 monks in GvG or Tombs. Pointless, and it kills your DPS. Holy Wrath is a great way to kill a monks energy, and is only really there to be shattered or drained by a good team. Life Bonds in arena... also something I have never liked, it just seems a bit over the top.

One good Boon Prot is all you should need in arena. With a decent build you should have enough shutdown and damage between the three other characters to mitigate damage and drop offensive characters fairly quickly. Interrupt rangers like in this build, are definately a decent choice, if someone good is playing that character. A Mesmer with hex stacking (backfire, shame/guilt, diversion, conjure phantasm...) is a slightly more user friendly way to shutdown casters though.

But you see, this was a randomly formed team.

Our damage was very good once we worked out a strategy. The Mo/W had retribution and holy wrath on so whomever attacked him and had the weakest armor was our first choice. That Mo/W used dismember and Axe Rake to give them a deep wound and keep them from running. This made it ALOT easier to do focused damage to a single target.

And alot of you have been saying "well 2 monks in CA, no wonder you get so many wins"
^^You need to realized only 1 monk actually works on healing the team. The other monk acted as a fighter like anyone else.

Not many teams with 1 monk in CA get that many wins so easily.

Tellani Artini · Jan 14, 2006, 11:21 AM // 11:21

2 monks in CA is great, as long as one of them isn't healing/protting :P

SaintGreg · Jan 14, 2006, 06:20 PM // 18:20

I like having two monks in team arenas. When we play TA we usually bring a battle rage warrior, shutdown mesmer, life bonder, prot/smite.

Considering that we very rarely lose, the one match we lost that I remember alot (well it was really twice to the same guild) was against this team running 2 very effective knockdown warriors. Guess what - they had two monks also. Teams run two monks because it wins, simple as that. Just one monk will get owned and a half with a good shutdown strategy and enough damage.

immolatus · Jan 14, 2006, 07:01 PM // 19:01

I tried a monk build in CA for the first time in 4 months since I've never been good at it. I got paired up with another monk, a warrior and a ranger. The ranger was interrupt and I cant remember what the warrior was. The other monk had some smite skills but not many. We won 15 matches and 13 of those were flaweless and only reason was because ranger left and a Warrior took his place, the first warrior died and soon I followed, and the second warrior refused to res or say anything. Just an experiance I thought I should share.

JR · Jan 14, 2006, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

I like having two monks in team arenas. When we play TA we usually bring a battle rage warrior, shutdown mesmer, life bonder, prot/smite.

Considering that we very rarely lose, the one match we lost that I remember alot (well it was really twice to the same guild) was against this team running 2 very effective knockdown warriors. Guess what - they had two monks also. Teams run two monks because it wins, simple as that. Just one monk will get owned and a half with a good shutdown strategy and enough damage.

Two monk teams are good at rolling scrubs, simply. I have over the past two months done TA a LOT. At one point it was maybe 40-50 matches a night to farm faction with a few other guys. And we have *never* lost to a two monk build. You might have a dom mesmer who can shutdown our monk, but we will have a hammer warrior smashing that mes into the ground, while your two monks are shutdown. You simply do not have the amount of damage or shutdown from two characters to challenge a decent monk. Even if you can shutdown the monk with one, that only leaves you one other offensive character to kill people before the monk gets back up and going.

High Ryder · Jan 16, 2006, 01:32 PM // 13:32

Lol some of you people really have no idea what you are talking about while others are right on the money. Anyways, two monks is not needed and 20 wins is not proof of a good build.

Enosh · Jan 17, 2006, 11:45 AM // 11:45

got us to 20 wins then i had to leave. and wow we had only one monk

p.s. enchatmen remove ftw

edit: sorry for being in german