Curse

Dragou Du Porzan · Aug 24, 2005, 09:02 PM // 21:02

Let me get one thing out of the way up front: like it or not, the 105/55 nerf is coming. Though this thread does deal with the subject, it isn't intended to debate this nerf; there are several threads going strong on that topic already. I should also mention up front that I play primarily as a monk. Hopefully that won't invalidate my observations and opinions expressed here.

It seems to me there is a growing tension between the monk and non-monk populace of GW, something that has been building for some time now. Complaints of excessive arrogance from monks or a lack of gratitude from those being healed began surfacing on GW forums soon after launch. That discord has blossomed since. Irritation has been expressed on the difficulty of finding monks for groups, and some monks have fired back that they want more robust roles than strictly healing. Of course lately monks have become associated with farming via the solo builds, and a great deal of hostility has sprung up over this. A casual browse through this forum will turn up numerous posts abusing monk soloers with derogatory names, and many more with monks railing against the perceived jealousy of their detractors. We're almost 4 months into the retail launch of GW, and these examples of "monk hate" - animosity towards/from monks - seem to be increasing in frequency and vehemence.

There are three questions I'm posing here. One, do you think monk hate is truly an issue in the game today? As I said up front, I play a monk and therefore my natural bias has to be taken into account. Although I don't believe so, I may be projecting my personal experiences on the macro scale. Assuming you do believe monk hate is real, do you admit to feeling monk hate now or at any time (and if so, why)? Finally, what would be your suggestion for dealing with the problem? Since I'm asking the questions, I guess it's fair that I go first. Obviously I do see monk hate as a problem, and I admit to feeling a level of resentment towards non-monks at times. I think the main reason for this is an attitude I sense at times that because I picked to play a monk it is my responsibility to spend all my in-game time staring at health bars. I certainly accept that is part of my role, but I believe to reduce me to just this aspect is insulting in the same way as me saying that a ranger's role is solely to shoot his bow or a necro's role is solely to serve as my energy battery. On the flip side, I have at times expressed monk hate by threatening to withhold healing/rezzing services to party members that were irritating me. Certainly this isn't the best choice on my part.

As for possible solutions to the monk hate epidemic, I'll suggest three. Note that these aren't my original ideas, just positive suggestions I've seen mentioned here in the forums. These ideas address the two core issues that I believe drive monk hate: a perceived advantage in resource acquisition for monks and a perception that monks are a uniquely critical component to any party build. I also recognize that these solutions are much easier to suggest than implement. Still, forums are a place for dreaming, so here then are my wishes:

One, instead of limiting options for monks soloing I would love to see an avenue made available for each class to solo different areas in their own unique way. I think there's a real sense amongst those who play monks regularly that their class is being singled out, picked on, persecuted, what have you. Further limitations to monk playing options without corresponding changes to other classes are likely to add to that sense and fuel greater monk hate. A better (albeit complicated) solution would be to make it such that each class has their own high-level area(s) where they are well suited to solo, and make the tactics required to solo reasonably different to promote diversity of play. With that in place, rotate the value of the drop rates between these areas so different classes are getting choice drops at different times. Remove the monk's singular advantage in resource acquisition without removing the monk's ability to play solo and/or farm effectively and I think a good number of complaints over monks would disappear.

Two, increase the resource acquisition rate for those who play in groups. It seems a lot of people solo because they feel (correctly) that it's far and away the best way to acquire wealth. Since, as mentioned earlier, monks are perceived as having an advantage soloing, many people feel compelled to create monk farmers (reinforcing the "greedy monk" perception). It seems like a fundamental flaw for a game designed at least in part to be played cooperatively to punish people playing in groups with far fewer drops than those playing solo. As someone who enjoys playing GW on my own, I'm not asking for solo players to have all their drops nerfed. But it would make sense to do something to bring the rate of acquisition rates for solo and group players in line, either by lowering the solo drop rate or increasing rewards for groups (my preferred choice). Give people incentive to group together and the number of monk "farming toons" would drastically diminish in all likelihood. One major cause of monk hate would be eliminated.

Three, and this should be obvious, there needs to be a global attitude adjustment towards/from monks. Every time a monk charges to enter a party or threatens to withhold healing/rezzing (I'm guilty there), they're feeding monk hate. Every time a non-monk belittles a monk's healing efforts or hurls derogatory terms at them (like "monkroach"), they're feeding monk hate. A lot of this disrespect stems from a common belief (once again, correctly or incorrectly) that monks are essential to successful party formation. This seems to bring out the worst in some people, with some monks developing a superiority complex and some non-monks looking for ways to exert dominance over monks. To monks, my suggestion is to refrain from responding to disrespect. If someone is giving you attitude outside of a mission, leave the party and ignore them. In mission, finish up your task silently, then leave the party immediately afterwards and blacklist the troublemaker. And please don't bring down the rest of us with silly things like charging for services. To non-monks, recognize that those monks you depend on are played by humans who are, like you, just trying to unwind and enjoy themselves. If they want to do that by staring at your health bar, bully for you. Cut them some slack if they aren't able to keep you up 100% of the time. And if sometimes they want to get away from it all and go off on their own, let it be. Hopefully after some alone time they'll be refreshed and ready to help you out again.

I'm not much of a forum poster (evident from my low posts/day ratio), so this is practically a month's worth of writing for me. I'll check back in periodically to see what anyone who cares to respond has to say, but hopefully this will be a launching point for more active posters to have a say on the (non?) issue of monk hate. I'll leave it off with the hope that we can keep the hostility in this thread to a minimum; there's enough of that out there as it is.

Mhydrian · Aug 24, 2005, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Monks are overpowered in alot of ways. They are one of the hardest targets to kill, and the deadliest class to leave alive. The fact that they can solo UW is just a offshoot of a much larger problem. Teams w/o a monk almost always die to those with. No class impacts a group more, and yet a smiter monk can do extremely good damage.

If there was a jesus class in GW it would be a monk. Ive got a monk, and it was fun to level up with and to PVP with for awhile, but there is no denying the monk overpowered, especially in PVE and 4 on 4 arenas. In 8 vs 8 monks are still mandatory but decent counters are more easily available on a more flexible 8 vs 8 team. In PVE and 4 on 4 arenas nothing rivals a monk in terms of power.

A monk can run around and essentially take 2 warriors out of combat, and stop in a split second and erase all the hard work of all damage done to targets. In 8 on 8 its a little better but a huge portion of people dont play 8 vs 8 arenas.

Hence the monk hate.

Algren Cole · Aug 24, 2005, 09:22 PM // 21:22

alot of the superiority complex that you have witnessed stems, atleast in part, to the fact that the majority of monks around now are playing a second character. My monk is my second character. I witnessed first hand the monk role, what monks were capable of, switched my secondary to monk on my first character to check out the skills available, and in the end decided that I wanted to play a monk based on several key factors. The monk can be a heavy dmg dealer...built properly the monk can be an amazing tank(this was later turned into the solo build) and ofcourse there is a lot of fun in weighing the benefits of healing vs protection for every mission. This is why I chose to play a monk and I would assume that others did for similar, if not the same, reasons...because of this I have a lot of experience with the areas post ascension...more aptly post thunderhead. I know what it takes to make a good team and it gets to me when party members continually make the same boneheaded decisions after I've informed them what they are doing wrong. I don't feel superior to any other class or player....but I DO know how to beat the missions and how to work as a team and people that don't listen to sound advice (even when multiple party members are saying the same thing) are an annoyance.

as far as monk hate goes...there are a lot of players out there that think it's unfair that the monk can solo....I assure you other character class combinations can solo as well...it's not just the monk. The "invinci-monk" term was almost assuredly coined by someone who never played the build(or a similar build)...because the "invinci-monk" is in no way invincible and I often find myself having to rework the build for different areas of the map.

as far as how to change what's going on....I think nerfing protective bond will pretty much wipe out this problem...do I think it's right, no...but atleast it will shut people up for a few days until they find something else to bitch about.

Plague · Aug 24, 2005, 09:39 PM // 21:39

My monk is my fourth character. I don't really care for being a monk because no one can see your energy being drained, only their HP going up, so they assume they're immortal. Aside from that, it's very difficult for me, personally, to balance between damage and healing. I'd love to Smite as well as Heal, but I can tell that later in the game, it just will not be possible.

So, at the moment I'm at the same conclusion I was at when I wasn't a monk: the healer archetype is too heavily relied upon in GW. There's no reason at all why a single class should ever be a necessity in a game of strategy. I think a monk's "real" potential as part of a balanced game lies in its protection abilities.

I'm not one to say, "This is how it should be," but if it were up to me, the damage flow of skills and attacks in GW would be much slower, and health recovery in mid combat would be difficult, so that you're both essentially starting at the same level and trying to wear another down from that point using a damage-focused strategy, not a healing-focused strategy, which is what GW's PvP and much of PvE is to me - trying to counter healing practices, not trying to outweigh the damage being done to YOU. Just look at the bosses - even the ones not gifted with being a monk, having troll unguent or life siphon or healing signet have natural health regeneration. Rather than facing a boss you're basically just trying to cut down a big tree.

Of course, as far as how everything works in GW, it's unfixable, as far as how I'd like it to go. The classes are so laughably archetypical, aside from possibly the mesmer, that it's hard to grow beyond that, the monk class, or more accurately, the "healing syndrome," being the greater problem that's caused the most damage to the game.

Grigori Sokolov · Aug 24, 2005, 09:40 PM // 21:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dragou Du Porzan

Let me get one thing out of... ...there's enough of that out there as it is.

Quoted and /signed for truth. All of the suggestions in this post were great and a step in the right direction, not only for monks, but for the entire gw community, seeing how its gotten quite negative lately.

Elistan Theocrat · Aug 24, 2005, 09:42 PM // 21:42

I personally dont think monk hate is that bad. The only times I ever really had a problem with hate being directed at me because I'm a monk in the game is when I've had some teamate who I couldnt keep from killing themselves with stupidity, or if I came across some other monk who wanted to charge my party for services, or demand payment of trip fees to FoW or anything like that. I have very little patience with monks who think they they can charge for services, when in most cases they'd be just as boned if the warrior or mesmer or whatever weren't also there.

I think something that exascerbates the "monk hate" is how bad the bad monks are. Poorly played warrior, with the exception of a poor puller, is not unmanagable. A poor nuker usually just slows things down a bit. Nobody ever seems to notice the contributions of mesmers so a poor one usually goes unnoticed. But a poorly played monk.... Hate Magnet.

I know what some of you are thinking, how can I say monk hate isnt that bad, after posting the rant about bandwagon monks. I can say this because while I dislike the current situation, I dont hate monks in general. Spare me any flames and lets keep this on the OP's topic, which was not focused on the 105.

Yamat · Aug 24, 2005, 10:08 PM // 22:08

This is a great topic, thanks for starting it.

My monk was my second character, and the main reason I started her was because of the shortage of healers. Now though I play her as a protection monk.

I think one of the main issues here is that people see the role of the monk as being to keep you alive, so if you die, it was the monks fault. We can debate all day long on good primary/secondary combos to ensure survival, but at the end of the day, people like to create highly specialized builds that are often only good in a small focused way. Therefore, a dedicated healer becomes an absolute necessity because they are set up as a caster killer, damage dealer, crowd controller, whatever... I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this, but it makes the role of the monk healer that much harder, as he has to keep a team of damage takers alive. Now these other party members have to rely on someone to keep them alive, and if one of the team members is not there as an energy battery, you either go through slowly and allow for recharging, or someone dies.

As for how to deal with it, once I refused to heal two party members because they weren't giving me a chance to recharge my energy, so I saved it for the other 5. I know there are people who hate the "no heals for you" approach, but sometimes you have to deal with these people like the little kids they are... no cookies for you.

Regarding solo-ing monks, nerfing is so not the right approach to this. I think the idea of having drops proportional to the number of party members is an awesome approach. It can't be a linear scale, because a team is benefiting by having greater numbers, but something in this area should be seriously considered by ANet.

Morganas · Aug 24, 2005, 10:08 PM // 22:08

There is no "monk and non-monk" populace in guild wars. Virtually anyone who's played the game for more than a month has a monk.

Part of the monk hate comes from the fact that most people are intimately familiar with the monk class, and it's brutally easy to spot a bad one, and with the recent surge in people making monk alts for unlocking purposes only, there are ALOT of bad monks out there. It's frustrating to play a monk yourself, well enough to make a bad team good, and have to put up with the terrible healers out there when you want to hop onto the game with your mesmer or ranger. It's doubly bad in pvp, where alot of people just throw together monks in order to get onto a team more easily.

There are plenty of monks out there, but the lack of good ones has forced me to play nothing but my monk for quite some time if I want to be assured success, and it's very frustrating, as I really don't like playing the class (health goes up healt goes down health goes up ...etc).

As for more monk roles, monks already perform a comparable number of roles compared to other classes. They have healing, damage mitigation, and a unique sort of nuking. Compare that to the warrior for instance, who only has damage and damage mitigation, with a token energy denial skill. If you need more roles, use your secondary!

Charcoal Ann · Aug 24, 2005, 10:15 PM // 22:15

once again i'm with Elistan. i have rescently ascended a new Mo/Me and i have never heard anything but good things from my groups... and they are always PUG's. from my experience part of the problem is that some monks act as if they should get their own temple and this is the problem with 'monk hate'. some monks are very very self absorbed.

my monk was given a superior Favor rune after being the only monk in our party i which no-one died (on thirsty... see a good thing just happened). if someone does die because you have no energy then ping your energy. they can't blame you then. some will try but most will spring to your defence if they do.

monks integral? yes... but then again a team without any warriors will have a hard time (no-one say spikers), a team without ele's will have a hard time they may not have enough dmg output to kill their foes.

monk hate is brought on by the monks (in the most part)

c h a v e z · Aug 24, 2005, 10:22 PM // 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mhydrian

Monks are overpowered in alot of ways. They are one of the hardest targets to kill,

well yes a class that meant can heal itself would take a longer time to kill than a class that was not

anyways i dont see whats so bad about putting a rend enchantments on a few monsters in UW, all this fuss would be gone.

SJG · Aug 24, 2005, 10:27 PM // 22:27

I've not really noticed any monk hate at all when I play. My monk gets invited into parties alot more often than any of my other character and when I play my non-monks (especially my warrior) I certainly do appreciate a monk healing me.

Sure, there are uppity warriors who believe they deserve to be kept alive at all costs (even if they're ran off to aggro everything they can see), there are uppity monks who are full of self-importance because of everyone's dependence on them and there is the odd necro who thinks he's a tank and gets upset that you can't keep him alive. But in most cases any tension within groups I've played in is usually personal, although when it's not personal it more often than not is a monk-warrior thing.

Maybe I've been lucky but I don't really think any of the PUGs (I almost exclusively use PUGs) I've been in have had more than a couple of idiots in them.

Finally, I think the 105 build is a cheesy exploit but I don't hate monks because of it.

Age · Aug 24, 2005, 10:28 PM // 22:28

How do you or others assume this 105.55 build is going to get nerfed?What evidence do you have or proof of it?I have seen no proof of this so as far as I am concerned it is all mere speculation or gossip.I do play Monk as well and it is my main char. I do prefer to do other thing than heal but like Warriors we are along the same lines.

Morganas · Aug 24, 2005, 10:33 PM // 22:33

the 105 build isn't necessarily gonna get nerfed in the normal sense, because it's actually underpowered in pvp, but anet should definitely add enchant removal to UW. It's stupidly easy to solo in the hardest place in the game with a monk.

KamikazeChicken · Aug 24, 2005, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Monks are hated and harassed because the majority of people have never played a monk (exclude the solo build that everyone is now creating; that's not a "real" monk for cooperative play). A large portion of hostility also stems from the Smiters who parade around mission areas claiming to be healers. Healing Breeze and Heal Party DO NOT make you a healing monk, sorry to burst your bubble. If people bothered recognizing which armor sets specific character types use, things would go smoother. I may be old fashioned, but I refuse to accompany "healing" smiter monks anymore. I got screwed into healing everyone solo too many times, and it's not the most fun to do in Hell's and Thunderhead. >.> It does say something that we completed the missions on first try, so my healing owns you silly smiter hybrids. :P

To keep the hostility in perspective on the "invinci-monk", elementalists can solo UW just as easily! Nerfing a build or skill does not solve an issue. Kill the invinci-monks and you'll just see a new wave of solo farmers built for UW/FoW. You'll also have to realize that monks are limited to smites/spirit town ONLY. If those behemoths didn't have NR, I'd like to sink my holyness into those flesh golems. ^.^

Sainte · Aug 24, 2005, 11:09 PM // 23:09

People just dont understand how difficult to manage energy while healing 2-3 people and getting ganked by the opposite team. I occasionally get a stupid warrior who charges the ebermy team before anyone is ready, dies, and starts flaming me for bad healing.

Also, if you play Smite, you get flamed for not healing, even though you told people you are smite.

People just dont understand that monks dont have 129002341082 energy and cant heal YOU all the time, thus you need to have some way of self preservation.

lg5000 · Aug 24, 2005, 11:40 PM // 23:40

Hmm... my first char is a monk... and while I'm not that good at it.. (somehow, if we're with henchies, at least one of them manages to die).. I do enjoy it. Yes, I have a healer.. got her before I realised all the drama associated with that.

For the most though, I've avoided being hated for what I do, and people generally respect my pinging low energy.

Hmm... the person who wrote the thing claiming that everyone was persecuted a while ago was right though, no one class is better or worse than any others
On the positive side though, I've learned to never rely 100% on a monk with my other chars.

Age · Aug 24, 2005, 11:42 PM // 23:42

They are forgetting that Monks are also protectors and isn't that what prot. bond is for.This was the first role I played as a Monk and then into smiting after most groups wanted healers I then went into healing.I never got a chance to practice with real group.When I left pre searing and into post I wa a multi purpose Monk which I used everything.When I am healing and low on energy I always wait for it to charge up and heal those below 50% first then the rest or myself.

Pelias · Aug 25, 2005, 12:24 AM // 00:24

Most of people I know have only one monk on their accounts.
They would be pretty shizopremic if thet had "monk hate"

Seriously, 105/55 is a game bug and will be nerfed. As long as they forget about boon, I'm ok with the changes

zehly · Aug 25, 2005, 12:42 AM // 00:42

My new automated remark:

NADMT: Not Another Damn Monk Thread

Roupe · Aug 25, 2005, 01:19 AM // 01:19

Areanet, could For example make drops be worse when doing solo, and drops increase if several classes are present in the party, making a need for a diverse team. Or some other positive factors that would make it beneficial of having more diversity in a team.

That would diminish frustrations of certain classes from feeling out of the loop in teamplay, as well as the frustrations & envy of L33T solo builds.