Curse

GrendelScout1 · Sep 13, 2007, 10:00 PM // 22:00

To the OP, while there is generally some pretty decent advice being given, remember that not all of it is gospel. As you become more familiar with the skills available to you, you'll learn how to make things work for YOUR playstyle.

As far as monks carrying a hard res, I say, run one if you want to. Should you or shouldn't you is immaterial. After several thousand hours of playing a monk, I'm personally comfortable with performing mid battle rebirths without complication. Granted, I won't do that recklessly, with hundreds of lv28 red dots surrounding me, but there will be plenty of times where you can pull it off without endangering the group. And as far as the res'd guy now having no energy, meh, s/he can wand things until they regen, at least they're being somewhat productive.

With prophecies only skills, its a bit trickier to pull it off, although I used to do this in a similar fashion while using the old Mantra of Recall boon prot build. How I currently do a mid battle rebirth is as follows:
1. Pre-prot the people who'll most likely need it, you are about to consume all your energy, so go ahead and prot away.
2. Glyph of Lesser Energy, swap to neg/lower energy set, Rebirth, Zealous Benediction on res'd ally, swap back to normal/higher energy weaponset.

This generally leaves me with around 20ish energy, which is plenty for me in most cases. I tend to run around with Judge's armor and what I call my protection flatbow (+5 energy, 20% enchant), so I'm normally running around with 38 energy anyways.

My point is not to encourage you to run around with a bad skillbar and start rebirthing everything as soon as the opportunity arises. I would encourage you to learn the skills and learn how and when to use them, even if it goes against the general convention of how to “properly” monk. I think most people would agree that good players with bad skillbars will always outperform bad players with great skillbars. The idea is to learn how to use the skills, develop bars that work for your playstyle, and ultimately become one of those good players.

Kern Wolf · Sep 14, 2007, 12:36 AM // 00:36

To the OP:
Hope you've been enjoying your time in Guild Wars. As you can see, there are a good amount of posts here, and a lot of good advice (a lot of which I plan to use the next time I get my monk out!) Just wanted to add one thing, which has been talked about, regarding PUGs.
I think a lot of players here, that occassionally join PUGs, may have gone through this on more than one occassion:
--join a PUG;
--start mission;
--watch one teammate pull some of the most bone-headed moves, constantly die; and bitch the entire time (most likely complaining about eveything in general, and wanting to complain about healing in particular);
--bad player (or maybe two) quit;
(now here comes the important part)
--rest of the group goes on to finish mission/quest/farming---and have more fun doing it.

The one part we all deal with in PUGs is, you're never going to please everyone all the time, and there's always someone that's going to be a problem. Ignore him/her/them, especially if you see other teammates doing the same. Chances are, when that person leaves, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief, make mention of what a crappy player that person was---and finish the mission/quest with flying colors.

Keep up the monking, and enjoy the game...

nardhelain · Sep 14, 2007, 02:17 AM // 02:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

lolok. Cos on a Necro I definately want to stop casting stuff to kill quicker and go spend 3s casting Blood Rit because a Monk doesn't know how to manage energy / weapon swap. Yeah!

This is an example of how not to be a team player. As a primary Necro, the only time I don't bring blood ritual is when I play minion master. It takes a back seat to self heals then since nobody causes more trouble by dying than a mm. If you are in a group where nobody is bringing self heals, defensive skills, or support skills like blood ritual, you are in for a bumpy ride.

There's a bunch of good advice in this thread. I monk fairly often, and here's the points I'd stress for someone new to the job:

1. Don't over heal/prot. Don't heal someone for 100hp if he's only lost 10hp. Don't slap prot spirit on someone who isn't taking any damage.
2. Bring cheap spells. I usually bring 1 or 2 expensive, super effective spells. The majority of the rest are all 5e utility heals/prot enchants.
3. Bring energy management. I like Glyph of Lesser Energy (from the ele line). With my usual bars (see #2), this works really well. As Vanquisher's response indicates, you can't count on random group members to be mindful of a monk's limitations. Your energy bar won't last forever, but decent management can make it go a long way.
4. Communicate with your party. If your energy is 2 of 46, hold down control and click your energy bar so that your party knows you're running on fumes. There's no guarantee that they will do anything to improve the situation, but at least they will know. If you don't say anything, you can't expect them to know when to let a monk regen.
5. Never monk alone. Personally, I do not go anywhere with an 8-person party as the only healer. That's just asking for trouble. Either take another real monk/ritualist or take one of your own heroes. If you must have an AI sidekick, then I recommend you insist it be YOUR sidekick and not some random wammo's hero who's never played a monk and doesn't know how to make a decent monk build.

You'll hear a lot of things about runes and high energy sets and low energy sets and hybrid builds and so on. That's all great stuff for when you have more experience and are more used to monking. For right now, concentrate on putting together effective energy- and attribute point-efficient builds with the skills you have and practice using them. Take 7 heroes/henches out and kill a bunch of monsters while keeping everyone alive. Get to know your enemies and the kinds of damage they do. Knowing what you're facing goes a long way toward effectively healing your allies.

Unfortunately, if you play with random groups, you'll probably have your share of trouble. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you learn how to stick it out through an aggrobrained wammo or an offensive ele who thinks she's a tank, then you will be a superstar in a group that's actually intelligent.

Chicken Ftw · Sep 14, 2007, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by nardhelain

This is an example of how not to be a team player. As a primary Necro, the only time I don't bring blood ritual is when I play minion master. It takes a back seat to self heals then since nobody causes more trouble by dying than a mm. If you are in a group where nobody is bringing self heals, defensive skills, or support skills like blood ritual, you are in for a bumpy ride.

lolwut. Nobody needs to bring self heals, they just need to play smart. Teamwork isn't bringing self heals and other shit so your monk can be lazy, teamwork is each person doing their individual job properly and effectively, working as a unit to plow through the retarded mobs. When I'm monking, I don't want people stopping to heal themselves, I want them killing shit and letting me do my job.

Malice Black · Sep 14, 2007, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chicken Ftw

lolwut. Nobody needs to bring self heals, they just need to play smart. Teamwork isn't bringing self heals and other shit so your monk can be lazy, teamwork is each person doing their individual job properly and effectively, working as a unit to plow through the retarded mobs. When I'm monking, I don't want people stopping to heal themselves, I want them killing shit and letting me do my job.

I agree with this 100%..self-heal is a waste of time. Offense is the best defense, the quicker you kill, the less dmg you should take.

nardhelain · Sep 14, 2007, 11:40 AM // 11:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malice Black

I agree with this 100%..self-heal is a waste of time. Offense is the best defense, the quicker you kill, the less dmg you should take.

This is true to a certain extent. Sorry, I should've qualified my answer. Perhaps my point is best illustrated with an example. I monked a mission once upon a time with a PUG that included an earth ele. Her main damage spell was Shockwave, so she insisted on running into clumps of enemies right at the beginning of the battle so Shockwave would hit as many foes as possible. It was a late-game mission, so the bad guys were hitting very hard. Stacks of prot enchants cast at max protection prayers were not enough to keep her alive. Turns out, she wanted to go running into a mob of enemies like a tank (and then stay there), but she brought no Earth Magic enchants that would give her the resilience to tank out some damage. That's the kind of idiocy I'm talking about.

I don't think everyone needs to fill up their bar with self-heals and defensive spells, but if you expect to be taking a lot of damage, then you'd better have an emergency self-heal. If your build has an empty slot that can be filled by a defensive skill, then it's stupid not to include it. It's not about the monk being lazy, it's about smart party balance.

Vanquisher · Sep 14, 2007, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Prot Spirit, Spirit Bond, Shield of Absorb would all stop that Ele from getting killed. I don't know if you were just spamming RoF or something, but the others all do a fine job of keeping people up.

Yichi · Sep 14, 2007, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Spirit Bond should have owned pretty much whatever was hitting that Ele.

nardhelain · Sep 15, 2007, 02:37 AM // 02:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

Prot Spirit, Spirit Bond, Shield of Absorb would all stop that Ele from getting killed. I don't know if you were just spamming RoF or something, but the others all do a fine job of keeping people up.

It's been awhile, but I think I had Prot Spirit, RoF, SoA, and Aegis on her. I'm not terribly familiar with the Prophecies armor sets, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was wearing non-max collector armor. She took way too much damage, even considering the 60 AL and trying to tank. And of course, eventually I had to stop spamming enchants on her and keep the rest of the party alive, so the DP didn't help either. I finally just let her charge in and get 1-hit-killed, then left her dead till the end of the battle.

Yichi · Sep 15, 2007, 07:21 AM // 07:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by nardhelain

It's been awhile, but I think I had Prot Spirit, RoF, SoA, and Aegis on her. I'm not terribly familiar with the Prophecies armor sets, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was wearing non-max collector armor. She took way too much damage, even considering the 60 AL and trying to tank. And of course, eventually I had to stop spamming enchants on her and keep the rest of the party alive, so the DP didn't help either. I finally just let her charge in and get 1-hit-killed, then left her dead till the end of the battle.

They could have had no armor on, and prot spirit would have degated enough damage to keep that ele alive.

YunSooJin · Sep 15, 2007, 09:30 AM // 09:30

OP I would definitely listen to what Yichi and Vanq have to say. The rest of these people have no clue what they're talking about.

The best bars for general pve monking/warrior that have come out for GW has always been as a result of pvp. There's a reason for this, and even if people disagree, there are always a couple people out there a few noodles short of spaghetti.

Watch the PvP'ers.