Curse

Chthon · Nov 29, 2010, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

I was honestly, and seriously floored.

I mean, I've done a good bit of DoA lately... 4x armbraces worth. I understand the value and the reason to bring a UA monk on that team. Death happens IMMEDIATELY sometimes when those glaive-spammers rush into a giant pack of demons. UA in an elite mission = sensible.

Death only happens immediately because the entire team only has a couple of mitigation skills, and a lapse on the paragon's part means casters standing on the front line start taking full damage. If glaiveway had been designed better, instead of dedicating 2 builds almost entirely to pure redbarup, that wouldn't happen so much.

FoxBat · Nov 30, 2010, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

What the heck, people? Why would you need to recruit a monk designed for instant rezzing to do an easy peasy small potatoes storyline mission?

Have you seen how "easy" non-elite missions are for pugs?

NerfHerder · Nov 30, 2010, 01:55 AM // 01:55

I prefer UA over HB in most situations. The cast time was never a big deal for me and UA heals for more. If your in an Elite area your most likely to have cons, so again UA is superior. Alot of it comes down to personal preference in the end.

And yeah, a monk might let someone die vs wasting time/energy. But, a monk would have to make that decision regardless of what elite they use. If your teams health is going down so fast it comes down to fractions of a second, its time to rethink your strategy anyway. In which case, UA is still better because you can rez faster and keep your team moving.

JDRyder · Dec 08, 2010, 06:54 AM // 06:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I haven't touched my monk in ages but I see UA is all the rage these days. What is so great about it? You need to spec 12 in divine Favor for it to outperform Healer's boon and it saps 1 pip of energy regen. I can see for the teleporting res (which is also bar compression) ...but the healing bonus seems overrated given that I'd rather have 1/2 cast time to catch spikes easier.

Maybe in the Deep... but everywhere in HM too?

If protection prayers had more heals, then I could see the reasoning. (I saw someone running stuff like Spirit Bond with it, but I don't know how well it works.)

As it is now, a 14 Healing prayers WoH heals for 94 even if >50% HP. That means you need 63base heal to compete with it, never mind 3 recharge. Healer's boon can compete at >50% HP since it has half cast time and orison is 67, but when <50% WoH also gives 109.

UA isn't any good really, I cant stand it. The reason people use it is because they're bad and cant keep their party up and need a spamable rez to be "competitive". I see 0 reason to use UA if you're a decent monk, the skills philosophy is bad, the skills you use with it are bad, and the pugs that beg for it in groups are bad as well.. If you're using UA you're doing something wrong

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Have you seen how "easy" non-elite missions are for pugs?

Yea, I've mostly been running pugs this year, and the reason they suck so bad is because they use UA and HB builds on monks, and total defensive DPS builds

BLOODGOAT · Dec 08, 2010, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDRyder

UA isn't any good really, I cant stand it. The reason people use it is because they're bad and cant keep their party up and need a spamable rez to be "competitive". I see 0 reason to use UA if you're a decent monk, the skills philosophy is bad, the skills you use with it are bad, and the pugs that beg for it in groups are bad as well.. If you're using UA you're doing something wrong

Disregarding prot and looking at raw healing, UA is good. It can push Heal Party to 150, Patient Spirit and Cure Hex to 300 (including DF), and makes DKiss godly on anything with even minimal enchants or hexes. I don't have to rez with UA unless people are getting so heavily DPSed that even a Seed of Life healing for 38 per hit can't sustain them, in conjuction with a DKiss.

But this is all speed clear oriented and offers no marginal benefit over protting in other environments.

Fierce · Dec 08, 2010, 03:21 PM // 15:21

UA is good because its instant res and a bit boost. Not as much as HB but still.

Sethellington · Dec 08, 2010, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Res with Full energy and health and teleport to safe (a better version of Rebirth)
HUGE health boost that affects indirect skills like Patient Spirit
Bar compression (no need for Rebirth)
Can res through FS if pre-cast
Heroes use it surprisingly well :S

Yeah... It's pretty great

JDRyder · Dec 08, 2010, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLOODGOAT

Disregarding prot and looking at raw healing, UA is good. It can push Heal Party to 150, Patient Spirit and Cure Hex to 300 (including DF), and makes DKiss godly on anything with even minimal enchants or hexes. I don't have to rez with UA unless people are getting so heavily DPSed that even a Seed of Life healing for 38 per hit can't sustain them, in conjuction with a DKiss.

But this is all speed clear oriented and offers no marginal benefit over protting in other environments.

WoH and Dkiss (usually) brings people back to full HP, thats enough, theres no point of over healing, its as bad as over proting.

If a seed of life cant sustain a party then you're builds or your tactics
are most likely need to be re-worked.

And yea out side of speed clears the builds get even worse. Sure UA and HB offer "better" party heals, but a seed of life is all I ever need in terms of party healing no matter where I am. Even when I use to do speed clears I rarely needed heal party. Hell for Fow my guild use to use one WoH monk and we did fine, think we were the 2nd fastest guild to do it actually.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fierce

UA is good because its instant res and a bit boost. Not as much as HB but still.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sethellington

Res with Full energy and health and teleport to safe (a better version of Rebirth)
Bar compression (no need for Rebirth)
Can res through FS if pre-cast

Yeah... It's pretty great

You fail to realize people shouldn't be dieing in the 1st place, so you shouldn't need a instant rez

Lanier · Dec 08, 2010, 05:29 PM // 17:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDRyder

You fail to realize people shouldn't be dieing in the 1st place, so you shouldn't need a instant rez

This right here is the reason why UA is not nearly as good as the other alternatives. It rewards bad gameplay, which you shouldn't be striving for in the first place. If you monk efficiently, you shouldn't need the rez, and even for those rare emergencies when people do die, rezzes should be placed on the midliners, not taking up the elite spot on a monk. Taking the rez out of consideration, UA really isn't all that good at all.

I also used to be in a guild that did FoW HM runs with a single WoH monk. It worked just fine, so long as you were smart in placing your seed of lifes.

Kim Sythe Weilder · Dec 08, 2010, 09:19 PM // 21:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eragon Selene

UA+arcane mimicry+HB > WoH

You get a huge healing increase by copying HB from another monk + instant res. Orison with this set up can heal for as much or more then WoH.

Its the other way around, You have HB on your bar and copy UA, cause UA last forever.

The Drunkard · Dec 08, 2010, 09:26 PM // 21:26

Everyone seems to completly overlook the fact that UA brings you up at full health and energy, which is essentially a combat res. If you are in an area with a lot of party pressure, it is more benificial to let two players die and bring them back up quickly, not only because it saves you energy to invest with other players, but it allows the person who died to restart their spikes with full energy. Sure, you can't push bars up very well, but you should be investing in Prot with UA anyway.

Wenspire · Dec 08, 2010, 09:53 PM // 21:53

IMO, UA just helps covers bad gameplay. It does not better gameplay. I use the term "gameplay" and not "monking" because groups that demand a UA usually do not play as carefully. Reminds me of the Ursan days sometimes.

For pure redbarring, UA may push them higher but the slow cast times of their skills, in many times, results in death. A 2 second Heal Party won't be saving everyone in a critical situation.

Just my $0.02...

*EDIT* And I never understood why almost every group I see is looking for a UA/HB combo and I never see the HB using Arcane Mimicry...

Ghost Dog · Dec 08, 2010, 10:08 PM // 22:08

I do fine with woh hell even the newer ZB.

It's another easy mode skill that got latched onto, now I can't blame a good monk taking it because the team is incompetent but anything other than that is easy mode.

Bandwagon · Dec 09, 2010, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wenspire

IMO, UA just helps covers bad gameplay. It does not better gameplay. I use the term "gameplay" and not "monking" because groups that demand a UA usually do not play as carefully. Reminds me of the Ursan days sometimes.

For pure redbarring, UA may push them higher but the slow cast times of their skills, in many times, results in death. A 2 second Heal Party won't be saving everyone in a critical situation.

Just my $0.02...

*EDIT* And I never understood why almost every group I see is looking for a UA/HB combo and I never see the HB using Arcane Mimicry...

Agreed 1000000x

UA is great for carrying pugs through ZMs and ZBs.

It's also decent for SCs, since you don't want the death of a key member to jeopardize the run and waste the whole teams' time (sometimes the safety net is worth using an elite that is, on pen and paper worse the HB).

I think groups demand the UA/HB combo because:
1. its decentish,
2. You don't have to be good at the game (in other words, buildwarz the area or simply know when to cast ZB/WoH/w.e other prot/heal that requires a resemblance of skill on the player's side)
3. People are used to playing games where redbar = win, and protting for whatever reason is considered undesirable by comparison.

In the hands of a good monk, or in small areas (4-6 people vanqs and missions), WoH is SOOOO much better imo pound for pound.

And if I truly wanted party heals, I would bring a Rit lord Ritualist.

LifeInfusion · Dec 09, 2010, 02:36 AM // 02:36

Looking back, I would say UA is good for party healing. HB makes you lose WoH for the ability to party heal every 30 seconds (unless you dump about half your 35 energy while on shield set).

However, UA requires gift of health to be better than HB. HB doesn't require you to pump divine favor that high, whereas UA needs DF to be high so that your divine healing/heaven's delight can heal for more than 80.

With UA you can run gift of health, Divine healing, Heaven's Delight, seed of life which means 5 slots for that. With the 3 remaining slots you can do shield of absorption, prot spirit, deny hexes/dismiss condition/aegis (if you have none in the party), with the problem being energy for 10 energy skills which basically turn into 13 energy skills. I'm not a fan of dismiss condition and condition removals in general on the monk since with mend body and soul on a sos or ST rit you can outdo every condition removal except RC. When I go full heal, I use cure hex, d-kiss, patient spirit. However, patient doesn't get much mileage when you have 2 sources of spot heals.

With HB you can fit prot spirit more easily without using gift of health.
12+1+1=14 Healing, 11+1=12 DF, 6+1 Prot
HB, D-Kiss, ethereal light, cure hex, prot spirit, seed/res, glyph of lesser energy, heal party

Seed of life doesn't get as strong here. Also, heroes can't run this.

WoH:
12+1+1 heal, 8+1 prot, 10+1 DF
WoH, patient, cure hex, d-kiss, prot spirit, aegis, seed/Shield of absorption, dismiss condition/mend ailment/etc.

With WoH your only options are seed of life, Breath of the Great dwarf, or Divine healing/Heaven's delight with only ~40-50ish heal.

Heroes can run a variant of this.

JDRyder · Dec 09, 2010, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Drunkard

Everyone seems to completly overlook the fact that UA brings you up at full health and energy, which is essentially a combat res.

No we didn't miss that, you missed the point that you're a monk, not a rez bot.

Quote:

If you are in an area with a lot of party pressure, it is more benificial to let two players die and bring them back up quickly, not only because it saves you energy to invest with other players, but it allows the person who died to restart their spikes with full energy.

No because those players get DP, and you wouldn't get in those situations if you were actually using a good hybrid build because you would have more energy stamina as well as options in a fight. Ofc theres always player error that can cause deaths but that gets even worse with UA and HB

Heres a video I made showing how much you're doing per energy spent between UA, HB, and hybrids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pv-WXBp298

BLOODGOAT · Dec 09, 2010, 04:36 AM // 04:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDRyder

WoH and Dkiss (usually) brings people back to full HP, thats enough, theres no point of over healing, its as bad as over proting.

If a seed of life cant sustain a party then you're builds or your tactics
are most likely need to be re-worked.

It reminds me of a day way back when Tahnnakai Temple was the ZMission and it was the last I needed for my Guardian of Cantha. I took it up and joined a PuG. I had this one Dervish that thought he was a Wammo. He ran into everything disregarding any instruction otherwise despite the fact he was getting raped.

Keep in mind, when I say getting raped, I mean it as in... spamming Seed of Life (38s) on immediate recharge and 800+ DKisses+Patient Spirit combos were barely sustaining him. For obvious reasons, of course Protting would have been better in these situations, but I strongly believe I wouldn't have been able to keep up with that fool if I had been using HB (because the healing buff is only 50%, versus the 72% of UA I was achieving) or WoH (WoH would've healed for less than DKiss at the with the only benefit of being cast 1/4 second faster considering both maintain a similar recharge).

Suffice to say that everyone in that mission was frustrated with him and I got a few PMs afterwards from other party members thanking me for my contribution. Thank god I'm done Legendary Guardian.

I have my reasons for rocking UA when I monk. I've grown to love it because of things like this. But as always, everything is situational. Speaking for PvE redbarring, though, UA is my staple. The only time I'll WoH is if there's another monk with UA so I can mimic.

Premium Unleaded · Dec 09, 2010, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

snip

Your WoH bar there is flawed imo - take either dkiss or patient, not both (redundant); if taking SoA, then getting the breakpoint is a must (10 prot in this case); I personally wouldn't run aegis over SoA in a pug-type situation because aegis is so often wasted when used; and SoL should never be an optional on a monk bar in pve unless you have a very good reason for not speccing into DF, but especially here where it can serve as party heal. Picking another dedicated party heal skill is a waste here though, because they're either too weak or too expensive to justify themselves over something universally useful like SS.
I hold that a WoH hybrid bar is to make sure you can at least cover most of your important duties (which ressing should almost never be contrary to believe) without having to depend too much on your team, who more often than not are going to be somewhat incompetent.

JDRyder · Dec 09, 2010, 05:19 AM // 05:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLOODGOAT

It reminds me of a day way back when Tahnnakai Temple was the ZMission and it was the last I needed for my Guardian of Cantha. I took it up and joined a PuG. I had this one Dervish that thought he was a Wammo. He ran into everything disregarding any instruction otherwise despite the fact he was getting raped.

Keep in mind, when I say getting raped, I mean it as in... spamming Seed of Life (38s) on immediate recharge and 800+ DKisses+Patient Spirit combos were barely sustaining him. For obvious reasons, of course Protting would have been better in these situations, but I strongly believe I wouldn't have been able to keep up with that fool if I had been using HB (because the healing buff is only 50%, versus the 72% of UA I was achieving) or WoH (WoH would've healed for less than DKiss at the with the only benefit of being cast 1/4 second faster considering both maintain a similar recharge).

Suffice to say that everyone in that mission was frustrated with him and I got a few PMs afterwards from other party members thanking me for my contribution. Thank god I'm done Legendary Guardian.

I have my reasons for rocking UA when I monk. I've grown to love it because of things like this. But as always, everything is situational. Speaking for PvE redbarring, though, UA is my staple. The only time I'll WoH is if there's another monk with UA so I can mimic.

72% with UA? umm? Have i missed something here?

Anyway what area were you in? I rarely find a place SoA won't stop some pug from dieing due to over agro. That said thats actually one of the few times I'll allow a player to die because they're more of a danger than anything

The Drunkard · Dec 09, 2010, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDRyder

No we didn't miss that, you missed the point that you're a monk, not a rez bot.

You seemed to also miss the point that monks have 7 other skill slots at their disposal.

In any decent team setup with UA, non-monks should NEVER bring reses with the advent of scolls unless they want to gimp the party's overall effectiveness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JDRyder

No because those players get DP, and you wouldn't get in those situations if you were actually using a good hybrid build because you would have more energy stamina as well as options in a fight. Ofc theres always player error that can cause deaths but that gets even worse with UA and HB

Because those players wouldn't die in the first place had they been running decent builds. If you have a searing flames team composition, and you haven't been able to spike down a mob, redbar pushing doesn't help the fact that the team cannot spike down a mob. The instant refil on health and energy allows for the team to finish their shitty spike. WoH and HB both push bars up, but if you are having to carefully manage energy, your team composition is garbage.

DP isn't a problem so long as people aren't dying every group which means one thing: the team isn't killing fast enough

The only two healing skills you should ever have on a UA bar are Kiss and seed (with the exception of a party heal in areas of heavy party-wide degen). This allows UA monks to bring a LOT more utility to suit the team's needs (IE edge for spike teams) than WoH monks because the healing %boost from UA allows for monks to drop points from healing prayers.

UA adds utility to the team while punishing bad team compositions. It cannot out-last WoH, but if you need WoH to carry you through an area your team is utter garbage.

I do agree with you about the UA+HB team builds and that they are quite inefficient, but since I usually have an E/mo when I monk, I find that UA is much more effective than HB or WoH.