Curse

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 04, 2010, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Disclaimer: I'm tired and not editing this. Sorry for typos and grammar.

Here comes another list of stuff that people in the know already know. Once again, unfortunately, this is a list of stuff that people even toward the middle do not know, and is relatively hard to find. Not to mention there are several posts that want to cover this same material that just leave out the important parts. You can even look at obsmode, and if you pick non-smurf, non-top-30ish matches, you can see that many people obviously don't understand this stuff.

So if you are better than me at monk or otherwise, more power to you; this is not for you. Content incoming.

The single biggest thing that separates the monks I enjoy playing with from the guys I tolerate is not actually ability; it's a philosophy difference. The best monks understand that their job is not just to keep the team alive. This is so important and widely misunderstood that I'm going to say it again: The best monks understand that their job is not just to keep the team alive. Your job, as a monk, is to supplement your offense. Defense alone, outside of a few HA corner-cases, can no longer win you the game with the removal of VoD. At some point you will either have to kill some players, some NPC's, or put a large quantity of damage on the opposing guild lord. If you, as a monk, are not helping in this endeavor beyond keeping people alive, you're going to lose every match to the monks that do.

So what can you do? The most direct and most obvious thing is you can make sure your offense is functioning. They absolutely need to be alive to be functioning, and I'm not denying that, but there are many offensive templates that exist in not-dead states and still can't do anything.

-Remove shutdown hexes
Anything that decreases attack speed, damage output, casting speed, or hit rate needs to go. Your team also needs to know when it's okay to swing through Empathy or cast through Backfire. Sometimes you have plenty of energy to heal it back up (or Spirit Bond) but not enough hex removal to pull it off.

-Remove shutdown conditions
Remove pretty much all of the ones that don't cause degen.

-Prevent linebacking
This is probably the biggest one that separates the boys from the men. It's the least obvious. Most people intuit that hex and condition removal are on the standard bars to...you know, remove hexes and conditions. Give your warriors some Guardian so they can Frenzy. They will do more damage, I promise. Aura of Stability is not just for your other monk. Use it proactively, anywhere it's needed. Not only does this increase your team's DPS; it also decreases the damage you take.

-Bodyblock
This doesn't come up as often as everything else on the list, but if you've got their team in full retreat or wipe mode, you can literally push up as far as you want and they're not going to do anything to you. If your warrior gets a Bull's, bodyblock the target. Even a few extra steps required to get out can mean the difference between a kill and nothing, or a time kill and a bounce.

-Die
This is semi-facetious, but it does work against some teams if the metagame continues to allow any sort of pressure build. As long as you die on a low energy set, you will be resurrected with near full energy, allowing you to blow all of that energy you just spent on hex and condition removal for your frontline again. Matches have been won and lost on monk death and resurrection for energy.

Holy Veil
This skill is so good it deserves its own section. I honestly have no idea why people are running Cure Hex. Holy Veil is just better. Restore, Word, Patient, and a runner have more than enough healing capacity for a full team. You do not need the bar push. Veil is about a thousand times better for actually fighting hexes. Spotless is a bad substitute if you really can't micro your Veils (or a good third removal if you need one and can fit it on a monk). But you should really just learn to micro veils. Once again, your warriors will do more damage.

The key to a strong Veil, in case I've one of those who attempts to use it like Remove Hex in the audience, is getting it there before the hex starts casting. This an incredible number of positive things for your team. First, the hex takes longer to land, allowing your guys to spend more time not-hexed. It also takes longer to cast, so your midline has a much easier time disrupting it. This is pretty much the only way, for example, to get reliable interrupts on a fast-cast water mesmer. Third, it makes any cover hexes take longer to land, giving you more time to remove exactly the hex you wanted to, as well as the disruption a chance to just take the cover out of the equation for awhile (IE, Power Block). And lastly, having someone pre-veiled actually allows you to remove hexes faster than any other hex removal. If your timing is good, you can pull Empathies mid-swing, before your guy even takes damage. Nothing is faster.

Basically, Holy Veil is just amazing. Go learn to use it. Seriously.

For everything else that makes a good monk (as well as improving what I've listed above), you will need the oh-so-elusive field awareness. The number of people I've played with that actually have this on a decent level compared to the number of people that claim they do is ludicrously imbalanced. Chances are if you're getting anything out of this guide, you don't have enough of it. And we could all use more.

The real problem here is that there is no definitive test for anyone else to tell you if you have it or not. Over the course of several games and maybe some observer mode, I can tell you if you don't have it, but there are false positives. At any rate, basically you need to man up and be honest with yourself about whether or not you can watch the field. If you can't, you need to take time to learn or banish all hope of ever becoming a decent (non-HA) monk.

There is no real methodology for learning; just make a conscious effort to not stare at red bars, or whatever else it is you stare at during a match. Disabling the red bars on your GUI can help with this if you're really dependent on them, but you're going to take hella losses while you get used to this.

Once you've got that down to a degree, you can do other things:

-Pre-prot
Prots really are that much more effective if they land before the damage.

-Position yourself
Kite; pre-kite; make spikes on you obvious; push to help overextended warriors or splits; bodyblock fleeing targets. The number of things you can do with good positioning is phenomenal. Not to mention you will just take less damage. And your team will take less damage, just by virtue of your good positioning. Any time a melee character pushes for you, if you're positioned well, he's wasting damage.

-Kite
Though this was a sub-point of the last bullet, it needs attention. Correct kiting has a ton of factors. The most commonly misunderstood factors are timing and directionality. Optimum kiting takes you away from the guy chasing you (obviously) as well as away from allies, but still keeps you in casting range of anyone that has a kill threat on them. This is pretty hard to balance, and there are often trade-offs involved. It's a judgment call. But definitely do not kite toward allies (unless you need a Mending Touch or something). The timing aspect is also either widely misunderstood, or--and I suspect this is more likely--people simply do not watch the field anymore. Look up my pre-kiting thread if you want detail here. Basically, start moving long before they get to you. Either they give up or lose massive damage. It's win/win.

-Follow damage
If three of their damage characters leave the stand fight, odds are at least one of your monks also needs to leave. This is really just common sense, but people don't do it. Your runner is not equipped to handle a five-man offensive split by himself. Don't make him do it. He will die. By the same token, even if they have three of four or five "damage" characters at the stand and some token split in your base, if your other monk can handle it and whoever is on the other end can't, leave. We picked up a ton of free wins this way. People would let us kill their whole base with one or two people while they left something like a monk and a runner to deal with the rest of our offense that didn't really know how to do damage.

-Talk
If you have good information that no one else has, say something. This can include anything from your personal energy levels (or projected energy levels) to who the other team is splitting to your flagger is running a Kaolai to the stand. Don't just assume other people know everything.

-Push up
I'd say the majority of the time, complaints about overextended warriors should actually be about underextended monks. Just push up. If their damage is all (or mostly) focused on your guy frenzying in their backline, they aren't going to spike you. You can drop back when their damage follows you.

Additionally, I've played with several mid-low ranked guilds, and they have this bizarre tendency to slowly fall back over time as a team. This is horrible. Don't do it. Don't let your midline do it. Every time you kite backwards--and train your midline not to kite backwards--you NEED to push back up when you're done. Otherwise you either leave your warriors stranded or your entire team just gives up the flagstand for free, and eventually winds up turtled when they have not taken significant pressure. This can also lead to wipes if you get pushed up against ice, lava, or spore territory. Just don't do it. Sometimes you need to fall back, and that needs to be coordinated as a team effort, not an unconscious drifting.

This was not intended to be comprehensive. There are a ton of issues I've not addressed here. This is just a bunch of basic-level stuff that I see hordes of people doing wrong on a daily basis, at nearly all levels of play. And for some reason, none of it is ever addressed anymore. Now that people have discovered weapon swapping and are trying to figure out optimum stance usage, for some reason all of the fundamentals get left out in the cold. Learning how to Veil correctly will take you further against hexway than any number of half-recharge Cure Hexes will. Mostly just use common sense, but you have to learn to watch the match and what makes it go to apply logic to it.

Yuna Matsumarui · Mar 04, 2010, 06:36 PM // 18:36

thanks, that's a good guide right there. keep up the good work (and keep us newbies out of the dark by enlightening us with your knowledge)

btw, I'd like to add a warning

HA only!

-Die
This is semi-facetious, but it does work against some teams if the metagame continues to allow any sort of pressure build. As long as you die on a low energy set, you will be resurrected with near full energy, allowing you to blow all of that energy you just spent on hex and condition removal for your frontline again. Matches have been won and lost on monk death and resurrection for energy.

if you die in RA 3/4th of all players will be too busy to watch your health bar and see it lose it's colour.

Trinity Fire Angel · Mar 04, 2010, 06:59 PM // 18:59

just a few questions with holy veil that i have never got around to checking.

1. does a pre-veil remove the covered hex or does it only remove the first hex in the stack?

2. if someone is pre-veiled and they get a covered hex. if i cast veil on them before removing it and then remove it. does that essentially remove two hexes? ie. is veil removed before it is applied again? i am thinking this works the same way that items work with rit skills. if you have PwK in your hands and it recharges and the team needs extra extra healing, i can cast PwK again and then drop it. which is what i essentially call a double drop. i use this with DwG for 200dmg spikes. tl;dr. by casting veil on a preveiled target and then removing it, does it remove two hexes?

Divine Ashes · Mar 04, 2010, 07:09 PM // 19:09

1. Holy veil is a maintained enchantment, so when you double click it away, whichever is the last hex on top of the hex stack will get removed, regardless of when you cast it during the hex stack.

2. I'm actually not very sure, since I don't recall ever playing with two players that had Veil.

urania · Mar 04, 2010, 08:35 PM // 20:35

good preveiling can easily be called art and is one of my favourite aspects of monking.

as far as your first question is concerned, a maintained veil will remove the first hex, given youve dropped it before the cover lands - else you'll remove the cover, that is, it will remove the last hex in a stack if you will not drop it in time (you can watch [at least in smaller arenas] the opponent hexers cast hexes [often they "fake" a dangerous hex with pbond/defile etc which sometimes makes non observant monks drop veils] and drop your veil as soon as you see animations for insidious, empathy, vor, faint and such, for example).

as for for second question, it is possible it requires fast mouse work (and works a bit differently as you suggested) - if a veil is maintained on your ally or yourself and youve dropped it too late or more than one dangerous hex has landed, you can, if fast enough, cast a veil again on the same target and STRAIGHT AFTER drop the maintained veil BEFORE the new one lands - then it will work. otherwise you'll just waste it on the one already maintained, because it wont automaticaly remove a hex when reapplied if it wasnt dropped before that.

IrishX · Mar 04, 2010, 10:56 PM // 22:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divine Ashes

2. I'm actually not very sure, since I don't recall ever playing with two players that had Veil.

You can have a target double veiled if they are from more than one person. When I actually get to monk (I'm horrible), I always run veil, since it is almost always better than anything else. We will often double veil both our frontliners against hex builds, as killing them is the best way to deal with that build.

Short answer: 2 people may maintain veil on the same person. Hex cast time only doubled, not quadrupled.

kedde · Mar 04, 2010, 10:59 PM // 22:59

I actually find myself not looking enough at my party bar at times.
This means someone sometimes will die because people pop up everywhere from splits without me really knowing they have like 50 health left when collapsing or fleeing which is actually kind of an annoying little sideeffect from never watching red bars.

awry · Mar 04, 2010, 11:10 PM // 23:10

I used to run veil, but I noticed all the good players already had a veil counter ready for me. IE mesmers w/ drain enchanment/wastrel's worry. Or they would immediately cancel cast when they notice the time increase and cast on someone unveiled. I was never very good w/ veil management and i guess that's why i prefer cure hex.

AndroBubbles · Mar 04, 2010, 11:58 PM // 23:58

So many monks do not apply these basic concepts. Kudos to you.

X Ghoul · Mar 05, 2010, 12:15 AM // 00:15

Not really necessary with veiling, but when your playing relics it is better for you to remove veil WHEN your veil has recharged instead of waiting like a monkey for it to recharge while someone keeps yelling "SNARED SNARED SNARED".

Jarge · Mar 05, 2010, 12:42 AM // 00:42

Watching the field is made easier by making the compass (default topright of your display) much larger, it allows you to watch the dots from the corner of your eye easier.
Also, this may sound ridiculous - but zooming out as much as possible helps. It may sound stupid, but I know a few monks who effectively play in first-person-mode.

House Silvermoon · Mar 05, 2010, 02:53 AM // 02:53

very good post actually. im pretty tired atm i'll look for more things to help expand this tommorow.

I Am Not Ok · Mar 05, 2010, 08:25 AM // 08:25

very nice post

dont redbar-watch field-position yourself

Corporeal Ghost · Mar 05, 2010, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by kedde

I actually find myself not looking enough at my party bar at times.
This means someone sometimes will die because people pop up everywhere from splits without me really knowing they have like 50 health left when collapsing or fleeing which is actually kind of an annoying little sideeffect from never watching red bars.

The best monk I've ever played with had this problem also. It was worth the occasional degen death (not sure what the guy with Patient was doing, honestly).

Quote:

Originally Posted by awry

I used to run veil, but I noticed all the good players already had a veil counter ready for me. IE mesmers w/ drain enchanment/wastrel's worry. Or they would immediately cancel cast when they notice the time increase and cast on someone unveiled. I was never very good w/ veil management and i guess that's why i prefer cure hex.

Cover your Veils if you have to. At very least you should have Patient.

Wastrel's isn't so bad if you're watching the Mesmer. You can still beat it unless your ping is atrocious. If you do miss your window, Wastrel's is going away fast one way or another, so you can remove the real hex when it does. If it's something more time-sensitive, that typically means it's on you and you're going to have to make a choice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Ghoul

Not really necessary with veiling, but when your playing relics it is better for you to remove veil WHEN your veil has recharged instead of waiting like a monkey for it to recharge while someone keeps yelling "SNARED SNARED SNARED".

If you're dealing with chain snares on one important person and for whatever reason you can't get actual interrupts on their doubled casting time, you want to be timing your Veils in accordance with their spells, not your recharge. It doesn't do any good to drop a Veil 4 seconds into a Freezing Gust. If you want to be really awesome, you can consider recharge in there as well, but this pretty much means you're pulling Gust and your (no-longer) snared guy is probably going to have to dodge a Shard Storm. But you really need interrupts to fight this kind of tactic, which is yet another reason Veil is the best way to do so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndroBubbles

So many monks do not apply these basic concepts. Kudos to you.

To be fair, I'm a pretty mediocre monk. I most often play Warrior, which is probably why I play monk so offensively when I get conned into doing it. Typically if we're running TA or codex or whatever, we'll wipe in maybe one to three minutes (assuming the other team has actual threatening offense), but anyone who has a weapon will be clean up until we die.

As for other people not applying them, I'm hoping that's largely due to ignorance and that this post will alleviate some of it.

distilledwill · Mar 08, 2010, 08:56 AM // 08:56

Excellent guide, lots of really useful stuff in there.

I will not even claim to be a good monk, the only place I ever had any success was in HB and, well, thats not really much to shout about!

But, as a more offensive player, I really, truly appreciate a good monk. When I have a good monk I know I can play aggressively, I can push right up into the belly of a group and wail on the players that really matter, rather than half heartedly going for kills on people I can afford to reach.

kedde · Mar 08, 2010, 12:10 PM // 12:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporeal Ghost

The best monk I've ever played with had this problem also. It was worth the occasional degen death (not sure what the guy with Patient was doing, honestly).

Lets hope that's no coincidence.
No, but really my problem is somewhat enlarged by the fact that I often have to switch between monitors with a huge difference in sizes so my partybar will suddenly be way further away than it usually is, and the fact that 95% of my matches are byob.
People will be coming from all sides qq'ing about low health which I might and might not notice in time when they weren't in my proximity when they took the damage.
It also means I don't have a partner to blame it on or who will take care of it.
Makes it that tad more annoying.

JR · Mar 08, 2010, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Good guide, definitely agree on the importance of using skills proactively and in possibly unconventional manners.