Curse

Mo/R9 · Jun 09, 2005, 03:47 AM // 03:47

I myself play a monk and I find that often, my party ignores me and I get attacked by hoardes of enemies and then I get abused because I didn't heal my party, mainly because I was too busy keeping myself upright.

A lot of people don't understand that monks get focused on by enemies. Anyway, monks are important.

Warriors can deal a heap of damage, Monks can't.
Necromancers can make undead minions, Monks can't.
Elementalists can set things on fire or give lasting affects to enemies, Monks can't.
Mesmers can inhibit enemies' abilities to deal damage, Monks can't.
Rangers can poison or debilitate enemies, Monks can't.
Monks can heal, other classes can't.

*note* When I say can't, I mean it is not easy, or is not the main use of the class *note*

Rhunex · Jun 09, 2005, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Umbra

I think the problem was not that the requirement of teamwork. The problem is that their is one single class that is required in every group. No other class is absolutly required. This is a discouragement to strategic planing not an encouragement.

I would have to disagree with that. Later in the game, it's very helpful to have a water elementalist on your side, casting buffs and dealing massive AoE damage to Titans and other such fire based monsters. And warriors are needed, because jades are very hard to damage with magic(Try getting decent damage with 14 attribute fire on a jade, it just doesn't happen). It's also helpful to have nuke elementalists to get to groups before they can get to you, more specifically, Abaddon's Mouth. It's not required, but it takes a load off of Monks and tanks. It also helps a lot to bring Necros and Mesmers along, because they can hex the enemy, raise their bodies into 2 summons, and a lot more(of course). Rangers, I can't say are too helpful yet, because their pets are just too weak not being able to infuse, but I hope that changes in some way in the future(like, all pets are infused, all the time. It's not like a group of 8 rangers can use their pets to smite anything worth it anyways). And Elementalists help once again(sorry, another reason to like them) because they get Maelstrom. It does little damage, but it prevents monk bosses from healing for 10 seconds, which is enoug to kill them if said elementalist(or other elementalists) cast fire storm or meteor shower first, because the monk will be severly damaged, can't heal, the nuke spells take them down a bit, and tanks kill the rest. So, it's not really possible to rule out any class. It is, of course, possible to go into a mission with 2 monks, 6 W/Mos and smite everything, but it's just not as fun...

Goonter · Jun 09, 2005, 05:48 AM // 05:48

I'll suggest again, that maybe a better solution wouldnt be more healing skills for each class, but more defencive skills for each class.

Some defencive skills that have a good recharge rate, that balances your offensive output to your defencive stance.

Ex: Warriors can have a block that recharges fast enough so that it can be used shortly after it runs out. But while active, they miss 90% of thier attacks. Maybe its costly to do, so they cant completely spam it. Yet still, they can turtle up so 1 monk can do the job that it may take 2 to do.

Every class can have a version of this.

If everyclass could do this then having 2 or more monks would help augment a teams defence - a definate plus. But they wouldnt be considered a neccesity for whatever 2 or more monks, or a band of secondary monks are considered a neccesity for.

Rieselle · Jun 10, 2005, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by eA-Zaku

You said it yourself, protection monks are sometimes the best option. That obviously leaves healing in the dust, since you emphasize the protection > healing.

So if protection is so great, why do you even want more healing for any character when protection is better. After they implement this, I'm sure somebody is going to ask for a good protection skill for each class as well.

You are not asking for a "viable" form of self reliance for non monks. Crap healing 1 + Crap healing 2 = twice the crap. You just want to take away another attribute that the monk specializes in. I don't know if it's me, but it seems that people who would rather not play the role of 100% healer want to make their tank/nuker/etc. into an invincible killing machine.

You claim monks are unbalanced and are overpowered. So you say add healing (even if it's just 1 skill) to all other classes. Now, if this were crap healing, then it wouldn't make a difference. If it were actually VIABLE healing then you would totally negate healing monks. Oh, sure, monks still have protection and blah blah blah. Ok, how about we completely obliterate any way to make a decent sword warrior? You still have hammer and axe so stop crying. I'm sorry, your motives may be in the right place, but making all classes have usable heal is not the right way to balance the game.

You seem to like putting words into peoples mouths and then shooting them down. Fine, forget my proposed solution, and let's argue about my proposed problem:

Out of all the "Looking for XXX class" calls you seen in both pve and pvp, Monk is the most common XXX, to the degree that they're almost the only XXX, with the occasional exception (warriors and elems also appear sometimes. Rangers, Necros and Mesmers almost never, although I would have thought Mesmers would be much sought after). There's clearly some sort of (imbalance? problem? phenomenon? thingy?) here.

What is it you suggest? Maybe the problem is that monks suck to play, and noone wants to play one - thus there's not enough monks to fill the normal proportion of players. Without statistics, I wouldn't know if that's true or not.
In such a case, monks need to be made more enticing. I dont play a monk in detail, so I wouldn't know how that is done. (making female monks less horrendously ugly would solve it for me

Maybe there's no decent substitute healing/support class - you can think of two or more almost equivalently good classes for the following roles: damage, interruption, hexing the enemy. But for the roles Healing, Protection, and condition removal - there's only the monk.
So maybe the solution is not to give everyone good healing, but to give another class (say necro) good healing. Necro already has a variety of wells for healing and protection/buffing - maybe making those spells more useful and less reliant on corpses is the solution. Then we'll see "LF Monk, but we'll take a necro in a pinch."

Or maybe the problem is that healing is over emphasised as a role and too concentrated in one class. In which case, spread healing around a bit more. Like I said in a later post, give everyone healing signets to help their teammates with, and give warriors a combat-based self heal. Give everyone a variant rez signet that can solve the "monk died and I used my signet already" dead end.

Or maybe there's no problem. Maybe monks should be loved and adored by all. Maybe everyone thinks they need lots of monks but they dont really.

So do you think there's a problem? What's YOUR solution? Dont just react negatively to anything and everything. It's quite easy to do that.

GsusWannabe · Jun 10, 2005, 08:12 PM // 20:12

The probles is, as I see it, that monks are not just useful, but essential. No other class is so. They have almost monopoly on the one of the two vital abilities in the game(the two being healing and doing damage). My experience is that once the healer goes down, the rest of the team follows within a few second. May if they gave the rest of the classes a few more different ways to heal themselves(and only thenselves), it would even out a bit.
Or prehaps, what I would like, is some emergency healing for everybody. I get royally annoyed when I die without anything to do about it, just because the healer(usually Alesia) is busy shooting at some random monster(I'm currently all PvE), ignoring my mortal wounds.

Rieselle · Jun 11, 2005, 07:07 PM // 19:07

Hmmm... can I quote from a different thread? Dunno how. Anyway, from this thread:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=20129

WeiPing:
I have three ascended characters, with my monk just ascending last night.

Frankly, I think it's a boring class to play...it's difficult, tedius, and just not enjoyable. Every battle is exactly the same. The warriors head into battle, I stay at the back and focus 90% of my attention on the red bars I need to keep full, and the remaining 10% on myself, checking energy and making sure nobody's headed my way.

Spending all my time healing everyone and running away from combat just isn't all that much fun.

Mimi Miyagi:
The biggest gripe I have while Playing a monk is just how unappreciated the class is. Every single group screams "group looking for monk", groups sit and wait in towns to get one for eternity sometimes. The group will not survive without one. Drops normally suck for Monks. When my monk joins a group, as soon as we enter the mission or quest area, I throw life bond/essence bond on one of the warriors, and a healing seed on the warrior that engages the enemy first. I constantly am throwing word of healing, healing breeze, and other spells to keep everyone alive, while dodging the hordes that make a beeline for me. If I'm the only monk I am doubly busy, and have to manage my energy use more than any other character. If, during an especially big or protracted battle, my energy starts to lag behind the amount of healing I can possibly do, then characters will die. It's especially bad if the warriors (or whoever) run off and engage another mob immediately after a fight, and not allowing my energy to replendish. And the healer gets slammed for it. It's especially bad when I am playing one of my other characters, and have to rely on a bad monk. One that has a poor rack of skills, manages his energy poorly, or doesn't pay enough attention to what's going on and gets everyone killed. It's hard enough to get a monk in a party, and a significant amount of them are nearly worthless.

You see a fair amount of these types of opinions floating around. I just think something should be done about a single class that causes so much controversy ^_^; It really sounds like the situation as it stands is annoying for both the monks and everyone else too.

There's already been numerous different suggestions made on this thread so I wont go over them again.