Pharalon

Protection monks look good no matter what thype of game you're playing. No matter how good a healer is, he can't keep up with a heavy focus fire. Protection monks can do that with relative ease, and they're a lot more energy efficient going about it.

Ensign

Blackace beat me to it (bastard). Protection Monks with Divine Favor are excellent. Protection skills are solid and with Divine Favor they heal, too - ultimately preventing a whole lot more damage than a Healing skill will restore. Mend Condition heals only 10 less than an Orison and knocks off a condition - Reversal of Fortune can hand out even bigger life swings and it casts absurdly fast (.25 seconds). Shielding Hands is a Healing Hands that can't return life but triggers on every type of damage, and you have Shield of Imbalance just sitting there waiting to be abused.

It isn't as straightforward as the Word/Orison/Breeze Monk, but it's solid.

Divine Favor is an incredibly boring attribute, typecasting all Monks as healers - if you don't want to be healing or protecting or otherwise playing defense, use the other primary.

I'm still in favor of giving the Monk a watered down version of Expertise (progression like Fast Casting) and changing Expertise into something that reduces cooldowns, but it might be a bit late for that at this point.

Peace,
-CxE

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Blackace

You should troll message boards like I do, young padawan(thats the only time I will EVER make a Star Wars reference).

Keramon

Agreed ... any build I try and make for a healer has usually 1 maintainable enhancement, 1-2 timed damage mitigating enhancements and healing ...

Can't imagine why anyone would want to make a pure healing prayers monk

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Keramon :cool:

Ensign

What maintainable enchantment do you run on a healer? I don't think any of them are worth the pip.

The pure healing prayers Monks are holdovers from the end of last year, when the Divine/Healing Monk, and the ElMo healer were in vogue. Straight Monks took advantage of deep Healing and Divine Favor attributes to flesh out their skill lines quickly and efficiently, without need to dip into other attributes. The ElMo was powered by new, abusive energy gain enchantments, Ether Prodigy and Ether Renewal, which effectively gave them infinite energy. Combined with 10 energy Heal Others and Infuse Health, they didn't miss Divine Favor too much.

Things have changed a lot since then. Divine Boon and Divine Intervention, old staples of the primary Monk, got nerfed into oblivion. Healing Hands, your one stop solution to focus fire, got hit with the elite tag and has been relegated to the trash heap. For the Elmo, the loss of Ether Prodigy and Ether Renewal as powerful, long term energy solutions forced them to try to make up for inefficiency with energy capacity, a battle they eventually lost.

Simply put, while a Healing Monk during the WPE could take Word of Healing, Orison of Healing, Healing Breeze, Healing Hands, Divine Intervention, and Divine Boon - 6 skills - before even having to think about where else to go. Now, nothing is obvious beyond the Word / Orison / Breeze trio, which earned their spot via synergy with Divine Favor, not raw power. Divine Favor is a shell with only one unimpressive skill worth considering: Signet of Devotion. New Monks have to spread out to keep their power up, and that's why you see the three attribute builds creeping their way in - Shielding Hands, Mend Condition, and the like are now important pieces of the Monk puzzle. Monk players are generally the slowest to react to change - I know many who brag about their immunity to changes and flavor of the month fads - but they come around eventually. Time and competition fix everything.

Peace,
-CxE

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Sausaletus Rex

Opposing players have also started to learn how to effectively deal with a healer. The sorts of traps and counters to prevent raw healing or overwhelm it are by now well known (For example, that pure Healing Monk is going down in flames if they get Power Blocked) forcing Monks to branch out a bit. It's a Red Queen race, just like a good metagame should be.

That said, Protection's long been overlooked by most (And I'll cop to playing a Prodigy/Renewal Elmo way back when but that's because I'm a sucker for the FOtM. I'm not interested in innovation but in refinement. I want to make something that works *better* rather than try to start from scratch. Wouldn't be caught dead in an Elmo now.) so it's nice to see that it's starting to get some attention. But my question is in why it's been overlooked. Is it that people just haven't clued into it or that there's some sort of bias due to existing notions about how the game works? That there's something structurally wrong with it, some problem with its skills? Or that DF nudges most people into Healing?

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FrogDevourer

I'm starting to realize how much I haved missed in the Protection attribute. The skills you mentioned were on top my protection list but I just hadn't seen why they would be as good as healing. Timing, recent skill updates, meta game, anti focus. You got me into thinking quite a lot.

I really am the padawan here.

2/3 beta days a month. I'm not going to improve much. Oh well...

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Ensign

The reason I didn't turn on to protection earlier is that I didn't really understand the interactions between Protection and Divine Favor. It felt, for whatever reason, like Divine Favor supercharged Healing, but Protection just got a little bonus. The reality of the situation is that the difference between Orison of Healing and Reversal of Fortune is just the difference between those two skills - Divine Favor affects both equally. I know, it's obvious when I say it like that - hand me my duh award - but understanding that really frees you up to look at other skills. Orison of Healing is your standard for the Healing line, and really it isn't all that good - decent, neccessary, sure, but not particularly outstanding. Reversal of Fortune will generally heal just a little bit less than an Orison, and it can potentially stop even more - in addition to casting faster. Mends have a great amount of healing attached to them and knock out a condition. Shielding Hands is solid.

What do you have to give up to get these? Very little, actually. Compare your standard, 12/12 Divine/Healing (13/14 with minor runes and a hat) monk to an 11/10/10 (12/12/11 with runes and hat) three liner, when casting an Orison:

2 Line Monk: 75.73 (14 Orison) + 41.6 (13 Divine Favor) = 117 Healing per Orison
3 Line Monk: 67.2 (12 Orison) + 38.4 (12 Divine Favor) = 106 Healing per Orison

So by giving yourself access to solid protection spells like RoF, Mend, and Shielding Hands, you cost yourself just 9.4% of your raw healing effectiveness from Orison. Is that a good trade? I certainly think so, as the higher quality skills you get access to more than make up the difference.

Peace,
-CxE

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Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience.

Blackace

Well just so no one is confused, I dont want to advocate Protection as being better than the healing line. They both have their places on a team and can work in different models. One thing I would like to add though is that healing is pretty much a 2 attribute build. It gets better as you spec higher in Divine Favor and Healing Prayers.Protection? A one attribute pony that doesnt need to be really high in attribute points. Sure you can take protection all the way to the 10+ areas and not look back, but it's still pretty good at the 6~8 levels. It's the monks version of the Blood or Curses attributes. It's just the nature of proactive healing and enchantments. With skills like Reversal of Fortune and Guardian doubling as enchantment buffers and sending single target enchantment removals to the grave(as if they werent screwed already) it makes you wonder where all the protection monks are hiding.

Scaphism

I wasn't hiding Blackace, I was just wondering when you were all going to catch up to me.

I'm happy to see protection getting its props in some manner. There really isn't any reason to sleep on it, and Shielding Hands is solid. Anyone who fought a Dolyak Rider should have realized that. With Healing Hands essentially out of the picture, it should be a no brainer. And if HH wasn't elite, you'd just bring 'em both, because they're both great spells.

That's a solid core of six skills I've been running the last 2 BWEs, with just enough flexibility for whatever situation you're going to face. Lots of Mesmers? Bring Remove Hex. Have good energy management? Bring Healing Seed (if you can find it.) Or find an attributeless skill from your secondary profession to throw in as well.

That's going to be the real trick, finding a secondary profession that adds something to the monk.

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Uthar

I myself discovered last BWE that my maturing MonkMes needed some attributes in Protection, despite my tendency to go more for the Healing Line. (I obviously have not had the time or the will to devote as much thought to the subject as some have, but I had still noticed the need) I must say this conversation has persuaded me to try something a little different with him, and I'll be at least bumping up the Protection somewhat, and taking a couple more of those skills with me.

Keramon

I think the maintainable enh that work are very situational as a healer but some of them can work very well ....

But ... for Maintainable enh... this is what I think works.

Life Bond (This worked better on an El/Mo that was often not targeted in the same way as most pure monks - biggest issue is that it only reduces physical damage)
Essence Bond I think will work for any Monk and is an effective skill
Others:
Life Barrier (this is used by support chars not the primary monks)
Vital blessing (again better not used by the primary healers though)

Personally, I still think an El/Mo may work ... but the skills used are not those that I would consider for a primary monk, but the tactics of the El/Mo differ from those of the Mo Primary. I tested one of these out and I found the biggest strength was being ignored as a "caster" that wasn't doing damage. I often used infuse health to distribute large chunks of health to team mates and would follow this up with heal area if I needed health quickly or needed to infuse someone else. I think if you can be ignored (positioned well) then things like life Bond can be used very effectively.

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Keramon :cool:

Blackace

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scaphism I wasn't hiding Blackace, I was just wondering when you were all going to catch up to me.

I was looking at protection monks for a while, I just didnt have the attention span or the time to stay focused on them

Quote:

That's going to be the real trick, finding a secondary profession that adds something to the monk.

Charles is fond of necro/monks being a pure support bot. It actually works out well with the way blood and curse magic just so happens to have a nice flow with protection magic.

Ensign

I like Mesmer/Monk and Necro/Monk support characters, certainly. Your attributes are amicible to being spread around, so you just play like a pure Necro or Mesmer support/hate character but you can toss up Reversal of Fortune or Shielding Hands - maybe even Shield of Imbalance - in a pinch. Protection is well suited for emergency duty, and a ~10 attribute is more than you need to make use of Protection skills.

It's a bit trickier on a pure Monk when you're trying to heal, though. Healing and Divine Favor are entirely about working together to make your healing absurdly energy and time efficient, and dividing up your attributes starts to seriously cut into that. Dropping down to 12/12 even feels like I'm pushing it at times. You want to add in a bit of Protection so you have to get that up to a reasonable level, say, 9-10. That leaves you, at best, with a level 6 attribute to play with on your secondary.

In addition Healing builds are incredibly demanding of skill bar space. You're starting with Word, Orison, Breeze, for core heals, and probably grabbing Reversal of Fortune and Shielding Hands as well. Then you have all the situationsals, like Signet of Devotion for siege battles, Mend Condition, Healing Seed, Guardian, Remove Hex. Plus we aren't even running a Res yet. Even when you start whittling it down to just the core stuff that you need you're hard pressed to find room for more than 1-2 skills from a secondary profession.

Piling on top of that, Monks are a class that are incredibly energy hungry without any good management options - hence the popularity of Blood is Power. Good teams are throwing damage at you fast enough that you're just trying to keep up with 5 energy heals and preventative measures, and even though you're a lot more efficient you're trying to counter the output of 2-3 enemies on your own and that breaks you eventually.

*Plus* your opponents usually gun for you from the start, meaning that you get to be doing all of this while being a consistent focus fire target.


So what you have to work with for your secondary is no more than a level 6 attribute, 1-2 skill slots, very little energy, and even less time. What do you put there?

A few options:

Warrior: Sprint, Deflect Arrows
Ranger: Serpent's Quickness, Storm Chaser, Charm Animal
Mesmer: Power Drain, Inspired Hex
Elementalist: Glyph of Lesser Energy, Armor of Earth, Wards

I'm really unimpressed with the Mesmer options right now. Inspiration is nice and all but I just don't want to devote the attribute points to it. Elementalist skills devour energy and have long casting times, which keep them from being too effective - and you have very little to Glyph.

Storm Chaser is potentially nice still as a speed buff you can pump, but at 10 energy I'm hesitant to take it. Serpent's Quickness is also tempting but the 50% health drawback is pretty harsh when you're a character who's getting focused frequently.

I think that right now Monk/Warrior is the best for the pure healer. Sprint is still good for 8 seconds to create some separation from any Warriors on you, and Deflect Arrows is excellent in the current, Ranger-dominated metagame. You also get access to a shield, which is outstanding when you're getting focused - remember that equipping a focus doesn't matter in the slightest until you need the energy it provides, until then you're better off with a shield.

In the long run, none of these seem too appealing. You're really just after a narrow subset of skills to fill in your bar, and there aren't any secondary attributes that just jump out as lines that are going to give you the kinds of effects that you want - the two front runners right now are Tactics and Survival, two of the least coherent attributes in the game. Any thoughts about what works best as a healer's secondary? For such a straightforward problem it sure is hard to answer.

Peace,
-CxE

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cpukilla

I really want to try out melandru's resilience, looks like a good defensive/energy regen option.

Blackace

I'd only agree with Monk/Warrior because of the position the game is in right now. Sure its not an energy management issue, but after seeing what Rangers did to people in the last BWE, thats not really your biggest concern at the moment.

However on a "normal" day, I'd still give into the mesmer secondary as one of the best options. Channeling+Power Drain are still viable options for a pure healer monk. Yes you're cramped for space, but having the ability to continue healing is much better than loading up with too many heals that you wont be able to ever pull off.

Earth Elementalists still get my vote as to being a viable secondary for monks. This combination just requires an incredible amount of crafty skill usage and is pretty much sink or swim depnding on what defense you picked. With the way things happened, Kinetic Armor is one of those things I'm starting to look at and I should probably play around with soon.

Freyas

My favorite secondary for a monk is definately Mesmer for the Inspiration line. While you don't have as many options for defense, you do gain the great energy-management skills from the inspiration line which allow you to output a far larger amount of healing. Unfortunately, especially for inexperienced players, the more powerful of these skills, notably power drain and leech signet can be rather difficult to use effectively.

I do give a vote for elementalist secondary for the defensive capabilities of the Earth line. While you could use Warrior or Ranger secondary's for the stances, the problem with stances is that they give a short-term boost, and after it wears off, you have a long recharge time before you can use the stance again. Probably the most effective defensive skill that you could choose is Armor of Earth. This will prevent running away from the damage, but with a decent amount in the attribute, you can easily get nearly a 40 AL boost, which will halve the damage that you take from every attack. Those warriors doing 40 damage per hit will instead be doing 20, which is far more manageable- Healing Breeze will be able to neutralize one warrior at this point, and your orisons will be able to cancel out the damage dealt to you much more easily. Kinetic armor can be nice, as you'll generally be casting spells often enough to keep it active, but the downside is that it only helps against physical damage, meaning that any conjures or elemental weapons will still be hitting you for normal damage.

Necromancer can be an okay secondary, but more for odd builds than standard healing/protection setups. Using the blood line, you can choose skills to help out your self-healing, and if you're willing to use your elite slot on it, Offering of Blood can give you a nice boost of energy. However, I'd definately think twice about choosing a Necromancer as your secondary for a healer.

As for maintained enchantments, they are not very attractive for healers, as you'll generally be the focus of attacks instead of other members of your party, and the decreased energy regeneration really cuts into the healing you can do. Divine Boon can be useful in situations, but I find that it's too energy-hungry to be used most of the time. It's mostly a way to give you more bang-for-your-buck at the cost of extra energy- if you're in a setup where you need to give huge heals, and don't expect to have to maintain it for long, it might have it's uses. Most of the protective enchantments that are maintained are more useful for secondary monks- a warrior using adrenal skills and maintaining one or two Life Barriers can be very helpful to the team, as warriors don't tend to be picked on much, meaning the drawback of ending when you're under 1/2 life isn't much of an issue, and reducing the damage on your healers by 1/2 can help significantly. In general, Life Barrier is probably about the best elite skill I could think of for a W/Mo, and it can be used with no investment in Protection Prayers, leaving more attribute points for your damage attributes. Others, such as Life Bond, Life Attunement, or even Vital Blessing get honoralbe mention as very nice things you can throw on your healers to help keep them alive. If you're wanting to boost your healers effectiveness, you could always choose Balthazar's Spirit as well- getting one energy whenever they take damage(2 per attack if the enemy is using conjures) can basically give your healers infinite mana when they are being focused, letting them keep up a steady stream of healing without worrying about conserving energy.

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Freyas- Spirits of War
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cpukilla

Whats the first thing teams do when they focus fire a monk? They remove your enchantments and pile on hexes and conditions, followed by lots of damage. Warriors and rangers especially put on conditions, dazed, bleed, ect.

Melandru's Resilience ELITE (Stance) For 8..18 seconds, you gain +2 Health regeneration and +1 Energy regeneration for each Condition and Hex you are suffering. Updated: 1/25/05 5 None 15 sec.

Its a stance that cannot be removed, instant cast, cheap, and it makes up its energy cost with just one hex or condition. As a monk your likely to have multiples on you most of the match! Couple this with draw conditions and you can now have a constant, huge energy regen during the match and clear out any and all conditions. It just seems like the perfect synergy with a monk character both to assist in defense and reducing negative health regen, and in boosting energy reserves.

Reaper2k3

Actually I like divine favour, it makes primary monks able to hold their own versus the pure power elementalist/monk combos who use their more massive energy reserves to spam heals. though most of its skills arnt that good, the attribute itself doesnt hurt