Curse

urania · May 01, 2007, 01:26 PM // 13:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick Smit

With this bar u really dont need defense, u have spiritbond, RoF and kiteskills in the fingers

defense vs diversion, migraine, shame etc etc

vs daze, shroud of silence...

going in with that is same as commiting suicide imo :S

Quote:

Originally Posted by sir lockt

like a flashbot with heal party)

i hope you are kidding.

Div · May 01, 2007, 02:01 PM // 14:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

Please tell me why SoD shines when diversion is on you?

Because getting random skills diverted is leet.

pah01 · May 01, 2007, 02:21 PM // 14:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

defense vs diversion, migraine, shame etc etc

vs daze, shroud of silence...

going in with that is same as commiting suicide imo :S

Mokones Bar is quite a good bar for RA. It copes with most of the stuff you want to as well as allowing you to easily keep your own offense clean against those dudes that like to come in and hex up warriors.

It is not the most self survivable bar but then again while a ZB guy with holy veil is surviving - his offense isnt doing anything leading to defeat.

As long as you are trying to spec your monk bar to survive rather than make sure your offense is able to do its job you will lose to a team that has a monk who cleans his or her offense.

When I ran zb + veil on my RA bar - I pre veiled my offense since that was the smart thing to do.

Offense wins matches - not monks with strong self survival bars. Worrying about getting disabled is not the most important thing.

Joe

Patrick Smit · May 01, 2007, 02:34 PM // 14:34

This one I was wondering as well, as it has nothing to bypass a normal recharge like unnatural signet. But lets wait for the explanation

LifesRestorer · May 01, 2007, 02:48 PM // 14:48

its RA/TA... my diversion spammer is where?

if you do have one, fine, you can cast through it to stop the warrior's 8 adrenaline charged spike with a spirit bond (you probably wont need it for another 30 seconds anyway)

Patrick Smit · May 01, 2007, 02:56 PM // 14:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

defense vs diversion, migraine, shame etc etc

vs daze, shroud of silence...

going in with that is same as commiting suicide imo :S

i hope you are kidding.

I agree to be on guard against these hexes, but even without veil or hexbreaker u are not defeated so soon, a speed boost can help kiting, a stance can help blocking. These skills by themselves are not gonna kill you. But they are (i guess like you) not high on my wishlist. I prefer to take something against these then against regular attacks. well daze i dont like, but there are very few effective skills against it.

Sabe · May 01, 2007, 03:58 PM // 15:58

I actually like that blight bar too - also prefer to see a SoA or shielding hands in most monk builds i play but then thats a matter of choice. I more for negating the dmg before it actually happens i.e prevailing, pre protting, and using SoA for thumpers etc.

Making red bars go up is not my idea of monking and everyone knows that is not the best way to play.

However, removing 4 hexes with blight, SoD and deny hexes is pretty leet considering it would only be two hexes without blight on your bar.
With blight you also get a good heal too, much prefer it to running a divert in arena now as it does put your elite in one basket, with the synergy with deny it works nearly as well as divert.

Problems still are - emanagement
- no SoA, shielding hands etc.
- no defence stance of somekind

Though as this is TA we're talking about - draw / mend touch should be somewhere along the build and a character in your team i.e migraine mes / ranger interrupter / warrior should be able to prevent the diversions landing on you.

erk · May 02, 2007, 04:57 AM // 04:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

...
Problems still are - emanagement
- no SoA, shielding hands etc.
- no defence stance of somekind

Though as this is TA we're talking about - draw / mend touch should be somewhere along the build and a character in your team i.e migraine mes / ranger interrupter / warrior should be able to prevent the diversions landing on you.

I am running this bar at the moment

[skill]Blessed Light[/skill][skill]Deny Hexes[/skill][skill]Signet of Devotion[/skill][skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill][skill]Dismiss Condition[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Shielding Hands[/skill][skill]Shield Bash[/skill]

Energy Management is not addressed yet other than a high/low weapon set, and using BL only when needed. I went with PS rather than Spirit Bond because of it's longer duration helping Dismiss to heal, less recasting helped my nerves, once I get the hang of keeping up protections I will swap to Spirit Bond. I chose Shielding hands over SoA because of duration as well, plus it takes a few hits in succession for SoA to build up it's damage reduction, I was thinking about slow hammers. I tried Holy Veil but it got stripped too often causing me to panic a little and make mistakes, no doubt it's just a practice make perfect thing. One thing I noticed when facing melee teams, was that I mostly used RoF -> Dismiss for the heals regardless of the target having a condition or not, BL sat idle.

When the hex teams came things changed a lot and BL came into it's own, but I still got pwned by a dual Mes team that drained all my energy before I knew it :-(

Thanks for all the tips, this is one of the best monking threads I have ever seen.

Genova · May 02, 2007, 01:51 PM // 13:51

That's funny because I tried a lot of builds around BL today in RA, and I have to admit that it has a lot of potential for bar compression. The conditional part is that you rely on your teammates to survive, which is non-sense in RA. I think that if you were to run team build, just take expel hexes on your ritu or convert hexes on your b-surge ele and you will be fine. Mending touch is mendatory for crippling slash and dazed today, so taking draw with it and putting all hex-removal (or interruption) on your team is usually better.

I run this in RA, when I want to use deny hexes : ZB, PS, Guardian, RoF, Deny, Dismiss, SoD, Return. I take protective spirit instead of spirit bond because of dismiss, 100+ heals for 5energy is really good in the long run. The duration of PS make up for its initial cost afterwards. I think that PS works best for me in RA because you can't be everywhere and there is a lot of bad positionning in RA, when the enchantment last longer you have more room to recover your allies' mistakes.

And in TA, I usually run : ZB, SB, Guardian, RoF, Holy veil, Draw, Mending touch, Return. SB because there are real spikes and I don't use dismiss.
_______________

I have a question for you here in guru. How do you counter this build (with 16 death arts):
Augury of death
Dancing daggers
Entangling asp
Lift enchantment
Signet of toxic choc
+
Backfire
Wastrel's demise

I can't think of a single monk bar able to survive this combo. You're knocked down, enchantments are removed (maybe the other mesmer in the team have some other enchantment removal). Dancing daggers recharge fast for huge pressure (111 damage) every 5s, and spirit bond/protective spirit don't trigger. Shielding hands may be the only solution but it doesn't recharge fast enough to have it up all the time. Reversal don't do much, you don't have enough time to remove both poison, deepwound and backfire. What do you suggest ? I can't survive more than 20s with my RA/TA team, whenever I face this team.

PS : What's the code to show skills ?

erk · May 02, 2007, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Genova

PS : What's the code to show skills ?

There are skill tags on this forum, just put the skill name between a pair of skill tags in square brackets similar (skill)Protective Spirit(/skill) but replace the round brackets with square brackets as you would for the other forum tags, and you should see [skill]Protective Spirit[/skill] instead.

There is probably a howto somewhere, I just worked it out by looking at what other people had done.

I do agree that using Dismiss as a 100+ heal on someone with a longish enchant like PS is very handy.

moko · May 03, 2007, 06:41 AM // 06:41

but PS itself is an awfulskill in TA to use, same with RA. SB is a lot better, if you are lucky/smart you can just spam SB the whole game and get mass amount of health gained. :P just watch your party, see who is getting attacked by who (squishies by hammers), general nuking, don't use it against assassins, if there's a rit channeler (or a spike in TA), etc etc.

Dismiss is also a horrible skill to use, but for Blight, you don't have the space to go with Draw and MTouch. if anything, i'd sac Gift for it.

Quote:

And in TA, I usually run : ZB, SB, Guardian, RoF, Holy veil, Draw, Mending touch, Return. SB because there are real spikes and I don't use dismiss.

kick Deny in favor for Veil, and Devotion for Purge sig. SB for PS, but if you like PS that much..

Quote:

And in TA, I usually run : ZB, SB, Guardian, RoF, Holy veil, Draw, Mending touch, Return. SB because there are real spikes and I don't use dismiss.

Guardian is too long of a cast to be THAT reliable anymore imo. again, a Purge Sig would be better.

Quote:

I have a question for you here in guru. How do you counter this build (with 16 death arts):
Augury of death
Dancing daggers
Entangling asp
Lift enchantment
Signet of toxic choc
+
Backfire
Wastrel's demise

cripple them and kite. Dancing Daggers is half range, so very annoying if they gotta chase you with crippled up to half range. you could always bring Balanced Stance with Divert Hexes, or a simple veil against augury, they won't get their deepwound, etc.

Genova · May 03, 2007, 09:37 AM // 09:37

Thanks Mokone, i'll try to use purge signet. I never bothered before because of the recharge, but against rit + necro teams (nerf soul reaping again please) that may be the best solution.

Back to my problem. Anyway you look at it, you can't kite easily in TA. There are other foes that may slow me down with other hexes, so veil isn't enough (don't forget shatter enchant, drain, etc...). I also need to heal my team members when they get pressured, then, while casting, they have enough time to get into half spell range, and maybe use siphon speed to prevent me from kitting. I feel that deadly arts hexes recharge so fast with only 5 energy cost, that you would need a mending touch for hexes, and I'm not jocking.

So when I have all this on me at the same time, I don't know what to do. I'm not asking for tips on how to avoid it, because it happens. The sin may even be using echo and shadow form, he doesn't die easily. I faced another team (or maybe the same) with 4 sin using shadow form and these spells, it's nearly impossible to snare and kill them all without a good amount of luck.

The monk has to survive the attacks, but I don't know how do it without desperate solutions like spellbreaker. Our mesmer could maybe powerblock death arts spells, but I think this combo is much too overpowered or we don't have enough ways to deal with small packets damage pressure like this. Shielding hands, shield of absorption, protective spirit, spirit bond, all are useless (and most likely shattered/drained). It's like if somebody is using discord on you... it hurts, 111 damage every 5s. Did I mention half-range is not conditional when immune to spells and attacks ?

Sabe · May 03, 2007, 03:13 PM // 15:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Genova

Thanks Mokone, i'll try to use purge signet. I never bothered before because of the recharge, but against rit + necro teams (nerf soul reaping again please) that may be the best solution.

Back to my problem. Anyway you look at it, you can't kite easily in TA. There are other foes that may slow me down with other hexes, so veil isn't enough (don't forget shatter enchant, drain, etc...). I also need to heal my team members when they get pressured, then, while casting, they have enough time to get into half spell range, and maybe use siphon speed to prevent me from kitting. I feel that deadly arts hexes recharge so fast with only 5 energy cost, that you would need a mending touch for hexes, and I'm not jocking.

So when I have all this on me at the same time, I don't know what to do. I'm not asking for tips on how to avoid it, because it happens. The sin may even be using echo and shadow form, he doesn't die easily. I faced another team (or maybe the same) with 4 sin using silhouette and these spells, it's nearly impossible to snare and kill them all without a good amount of luck.

The monk has to survive the attacks, but I don't know how do it without desperate solutions like spellbreaker. Our mesmer could maybe powerblock death arts spells, but I think this combo is much too overpowered or we don't have enough ways to deal with small packets damage pressure like this. Shielding hands, shield of absorption, protective spirit, spirit bond, all are useless (and most likely shattered/drained). It's like if somebody is using discord on you... it hurts, 111 damage every 5s. Did I mention half-range is not conditional when immune to spells and attacks ?

Once again whoever tells you prot spirit is that bad don't listen to them...it wasn't used for so long when spirit bond wasn't around for no reason!

My tip is if you see one of those try a tripple enchant cover veil prot spirit and rof....they can shatter rof and you have prot they can drain that you have veil...remove augary - u wont go under 50% health remove augary.
Backfire prob does 60 dmg - protspirit urself again....veil again.

I sometimes use this technique if I know my enchants could possibly be removed and the good thing about prot spirit is you can pre cast when the battle starts and it will last a good duration. Therefore you regain energy spent. Its a nice way to start a battle specially in RA when Warrior runs in with Frenzy.

Spirit bond imo is better skill but dont tell me you can keep spirit bond up every time a rit spikes. They spike way too often and you will exhaust your energy in a short while - well thats saying that your team can't kill that fast! - which sometime in RA you have to deal with!

Thomas.knbk · May 03, 2007, 03:39 PM // 15:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

Once again whoever tells you prot spirit is that bad don't listen to them...it wasn't used for so long when spirit bond wasn't around for no reason!

Right. It was used for two reasons:
a) people had 480 health and 60 armor back then
b) it was pretty much the only 10e prot around

People tend to run around with 600 health and 75-80 armor now, and Anet introduced another big prot skill, that's frankly just better.

Sabe · May 03, 2007, 03:49 PM // 15:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Right. It was used for two reasons:
a) people had 480 health and 60 armor back then
b) it was pretty much the only 10e prot around

People tend to run around with 600 health and 75-80 armor now, and Anet introduced another big prot skill, that's frankly just better.

Which applies to most RA nubs you play with...

How much armor does memsers / elems / necros have - generally they will be 60 armor toons in my experience unless there signet mesmers running some crazy new armor shit.

I agree before superiors were much more common - but not to say they are not used still!!!

In TA - most bars I'd say spirt bond!
in RA - Prot Spirit!

Prot Spirit is still a good still nevertheless specially can be used on DP'd allies and weaker armored allies. Yes dismiss is nice with it coz using dismiss without a prot is sometimes FTL.

Divineshadows · May 03, 2007, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

Which applies to most RA nubs you play with...

Note that this is the Team Arena forum. There is no RA forum with good reason. Please stop discussing RA when evaluating skills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

How much armor does memsers / elems / necros have - generally they will be 60 armor toons in my experience unless there signet mesmers running some crazy new armor shit.

If they are a caster and they suck and don't know how to use a weapon set with a shield, then yes they will only have 60 armor. Again, there is no point in discussing sub-optimal play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

Yes dismiss is nice with it coz using dismiss without a prot is sometimes FTL.

Dismiss still works fine with spirit bond, particularly if you have swapped to your weapon set with an enchanting mod to make the spirit bond last 10 seconds.

suiraCLAW · May 03, 2007, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

In TA - most bars I'd say spirt bond!
in RA - Shielding hands!

Corrected that one

Since most damage in RA seems to be in rather small (read: less than 60), fast packages shielding hands seems to prevent a lot more damage than protective spirit...

+ SH can save quite a lot of health (for a 5 e spell) against assassins, ritualists turrets, aoe elementalists (savannah heat anyone?), conjure X, etc. All of these are actually quite common in the current RA meta.

Genova · May 03, 2007, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

Dismiss still works fine with spirit bond, particularly if you have swapped to your weapon set with an enchanting mod to make the spirit bond last 10 seconds.

I do swap to my enchanting weapon but I wonder about your number. I always thought that Guild Wars rounds all numbers down, so 8 x 1.2 = 9.6, rounded 9, not 10. Can someone confirm this ? That's the same thing with shield of absorption (I'm playing Mo/W now, works nicely with a lot of + armor), you only get one second bonus of your mod, but that is worth, since SoA mitigates so much damage.

urania · May 03, 2007, 08:02 PM // 20:02

as far as dancing dagger assas are concerned...learn how the combo works and use mend touch on yourself right after getting poisoned so u remove the condition before they manage to use their sig.

another way is to own them with balanced stance.

another way is, as ppl already mentioned, sh+preveil (works wonders) - having 40 % chance for halfed skill recharge on prot spells comes in handy here

ask teammates to baby sit assa and hope they'll do it.

at the end, hope u have a good team who can kill fast enough :]

Thomas.knbk · May 03, 2007, 08:11 PM // 20:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sabe

How much armor does memsers / elems / necros have - generally they will be 60 armor toons in my experience unless there signet mesmers running some crazy new armor shit.

If they use a shield this is 68. If they know how to swap shields this will be 78 most of the time. If they have a +10 armor insignia that they meet the condition for, which happens quite a lot, that is 88 armor.
As for superior runes, I'm a fan of them because the chance to really get spiked in TA is low enough to justify the health loss for me, but most people aren't. The large majority uses minors, and consequently runs around with ~600 health.