Curse

Artemis Elune · Dec 19, 2009, 04:13 PM // 16:13

For PvE I am running:
Healing: 12+1+1
Protection: 9+1
Divine Favor: 9+1

Word of Healing
Dwayna's Kiss
Dismiss Condition
Selfless Spirit
Seed of Life
Protective Spirit
Cure Hex
Rebirth

I was thinking of dropping Selfless Spirit or Seed of Life for something like SoA? I'm pretty new to monk so any help would be appreciated! thanks!

Gennadios · Dec 19, 2009, 05:07 PM // 17:07

When used properly SoL and selfless spirit are far more potent than the numbers on their descriptions would seem.

The only use I've found for SoA in general PvE is the kinslayer dungeon, where a single char will regularly be needed to trip 10+ lightning ele spikers. That kind of fast and heavy damage is hard to prot. otherwise. Besides that, given the low duration it's not worth taking unless you know before hand that your party will rely on tanking.

If you absolutely must, ditch Rebirth. I rarely carry rez when healing, same goes for most of the other healers in my guild. I'd leave it to the rest of the backline, or take a rez scroll or two instead if you can afford.

Xsiriss · Dec 19, 2009, 05:08 PM // 17:08

As a human (unless you're expecting near wipe outs?) you don't need res. You should put SoA instead of it. Also spotless mind is probably better if it's hex removal you want. Otherwise that's a fine base build.

AndroBubbles · Dec 19, 2009, 09:21 PM // 21:21

First off, I'd put patient spirit over dwayna's kiss if there's no dedicated prot on your team. It's a fast cast, and you can place it preemptively on a target that you know will take damage in the next two seconds. It's also more reliable in its healing amount, since some areas have lower enemy hex count and enchantments aren't as reliable without that prot on your team. It's also another skill that syncs with dismiss condition.

Seed of life is great if you use it properly, but if you slip up it's essentially a wasted slot on your bar. To get used to using skills preemptively, I would bring guardian instead of seed. It's another decent prot with modest investment in its attribute.

Keep selfless spirit. It's a great form of energy management.

Instead of the res, I'd bring sig of rejuvenation or shielding hands.

the_jos · Dec 21, 2009, 04:33 PM // 16:33

My suggestions:

I'm going to give some basic advice for monking while talking about the skills.

First you need to consider what your team needs.
When you play with someone holding aggro (kinda like tanking) you need a different build than when you play with a more random team where almost everyone can catch aggro.
Second, what kind of damage do foes exactly do? Do they tend to spike or send out small more pressure like damage?
Third, what is dangerous for the team and is it present in the area you are going to play.
When you know this you can make a choice for a certain build.

Dismiss condition and Cure Hex are nice skills, but do you really need to clean those hexes and conditions? There are only a few conditions in PvE that are important to remove and even fewer hexes. Most can be outhealed easily and hexes will be recast in seconds when removed. Or covered fast. I'd use Cure Hex more for the healing capacity than the actual removal.

Seed of Life looks like a great skill, but I would only use this skill in areas where someone is holding aggro while the rest of the team is getting some health pressure (like environmental degen or broken aggro with hexes). It's of far less use when only the person holding aggro gets healed or when foes are attacking several players at once.

D-Kiss is a nice skill which power increases when the person healed has more hexes/enchantments on him/her. In builds with few enchantments and areas with few hexes it's not that good. Remember that you cannot use this skill on self.

Selfless spirit, why would you use this? Energy management is mainly done by only healing and clearing what needs to be healed and cleared. When you need that extra energy just swap weaponset and tell the team to hold up to regain energy after the fight.

I am not sure about Protective spirit. I would bring it when there is serious damage that cannot easily be covered by other skills. When having someone holding aggro this skill might not be needed at all. And when this is not the case you want to be very sure on who to cast the spell. It's too expensive to spam.

Res on a monk? I don't bring. Scrolls will do. And if I need to res with scroll the team messed up a lot. Monks keep people alive and make sure they can do their job by keeping people cleaned of what stops them from harming foes efficient. Sure, since the monk is often at the far end of the battle they can easily run away and res. But other players can also bring a hard res and run away if things go wrong.

Now to some new skill suggestions.

When you play in area's with many physicals with a non-tank team you might want to bring Aegis. The 50% miss it generates will save a lot of trouble if used right. In easier to control areas you can bring guardian instead.

Patient Spirit is nice to heal up if you know someone could use healing in a few seconds but is not in danger.

You could use Ethereal Light if you know you will not be targeted often and therefore there is not much risk of interruption.

Signet of Rejuvenation can help you with energy management if you expect some problems.

When you know who gets hit and you know it's a big hit Reversal of Fortune will be a good skill to add on your bar. But it's a waste when the person it's used on is also wanded.

The main advice I want to give you is to really think why you bring a certain build to a certain area with a certain team.
Stop focussing on the skills and more on what a monk's task really is. That will tell you if a build is good or not.

AtomicMew · Dec 21, 2009, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gennadios

When used properly SoL and selfless spirit are far more potent than the numbers on their descriptions would seem.

The only use I've found for SoA in general PvE is the kinslayer dungeon, where a single char will regularly be needed to trip 10+ lightning ele spikers.

Yeah, except they all have enchantment removal. oops. SoA is great, but you'd be a fool to rely on it against incubus.

AndroBubbles · Dec 22, 2009, 03:01 AM // 03:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_jos

Selfless spirit, why would you use this? Energy management is mainly done by only healing and clearing what needs to be healed and cleared. When you need that extra energy just swap weaponset and tell the team to hold up to regain energy after the fight.

This is really the main problem I have with your suggestions. It's generally a good idea to take a bit of direct energy management, especially when PUG groups are too unorganized to listen to people when they say to back off. He wasn't asking for a build to use in a well-coordinated group. A lot of PvE players are rather clueless, and it's up to people who take the initiative to learn to balance out their teams.

Quote:

When you know who gets hit and you know it's a big hit Reversal of Fortune will be a good skill to add on your bar. But it's a waste when the person it's used on is also wanded.

To add to this, reversal is generally best used on a protection based build, where the higher attribute rank in Protection and Divine Favor will make up for the chance of only being wanded. Patient spirit can fulfill the role of reversal for the most part if you use it correctly, and its healing isn't reduced by something like a small damage packet. Even at 10 in protection, which is around the general level for a hybrid, reversal's max mitigation just makes par with patient spirit, and your Divine Favor is already reduced -because- you're a hybrid. Combine that with the chance of not getting the full benefit, which is a fairly common occurrence, and it really doesn't compare to patient spirit on a hybrid build. It's essentially just a slot to waste energy when you have other skills that are much more useful.

Another tip you should be suggesting is appropriate bar compression. To use one of your previous examples, let's use cure hex. Cure hex is an excellent example of a skill that helps with bar compression. It heals AND removes a hex, which achieves two purposes of a monk in one skill. On a hybrid, having patient and reversal together just isn't as efficient as it seems in the long run, so it isn't as good for bar compression.

Quote:

The main advice I want to give you is to really think why you bring a certain build to a certain area with a certain team.
Stop focussing on the skills and more on what a monk's task really is. That will tell you if a build is good or not.

At this point you're contradicting yourself. Careful consideration of your skills is an integral part of monking. Just take reversal of fortune as an example.

the_jos · Dec 22, 2009, 03:53 PM // 15:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndroBubbles

This is really the main problem I have with your suggestions. It's generally a good idea to take a bit of direct energy management, especially when PUG groups are too unorganized to listen to people when they say to back off. He wasn't asking for a build to use in a well-coordinated group. A lot of PvE players are rather clueless, and it's up to people who take the initiative to learn to balance out their teams.

I disagree with you here.
When I play monk I do my job, that is to keep people alive and kicking under reasonable situations. The moment people are wasting my energy by running around like headless chickens I don't consider it my task to keep them alive and kicking anymore after a couple of mild warnings.
Do teams fail because of this? Not much. Why? Because others can also see that I'm not the problem. If the team fails it's not because I'm a bad monk, it's because people think that I'm some kind of NPC heal-bot that follows them everywhere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndroBubbles

Another tip you should be suggesting is appropriate bar compression...

So you suggest to bring an e-mgt skill and at the same time you want to compress the bar? Drop e-mgt and take the skill you need.
This is not PvP where there is constant pressure and possible energy denial.
Only a few areas need additional energy management.

When you learn how to play monk you should use skills for energy management as little as possible. Learn when to heal and when to let someone die. Learn to swap to weapons with additional energy and swap back after the cast. Ask yourself what you did wrong when your energy goes down fast. Are you sure you did not overheal? Did you really need to cast the prot? Only when you know this and are sure you did nothing wrong and the team played decent you can decide to add energy management. But then you will only use it a couple of times when really needed. Don't learn to rely on it, it makes bad monks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndroBubbles

At this point you're contradicting yourself. Careful consideration of your skills is an integral part of monking. Just take reversal of fortune as an example.

Often there are various skills that can do the same task. Some are more efficient than others, sure. However, when I really need to remove a hex the actual skill does not matter. And if I don't need to remove, why should I bring a skill to clean? Using a skill like Cure Hex for healing is ok when you understand that you are healing and not cleaning.
The main reason you take the skill is what matters. Can be healing, can be cleaning, can be making sure the red bar does not go down. Some skills are more efficient for this than others. But if they do the main job they are good, the rest is additional benefit.

paranon · Dec 22, 2009, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Looks like a good build to me, personally i would swap Dismiss Condition for Patient Spirit and cure hex for Ebon Battle Standard of Courage, not many monks use it, but 35% damage reduction to most of your casters for 10 energy has saved my team's bacon when they have over-aggroed more times than i can remember. As others have said, when you become more adept at monk you will be able to swap out the energy management for something else.

Most of the time, i have found that Seed of life is better than SoA. Seed of life on a target taking a moderate amount of damage is usually enough to keep the whole party topped up with HP for 5 seconds, which can easily make all the difference.

With monk, build makes less of a difference than with other classes, yes, it matters, but there is alot of room for personal preferences. Choose a build by what YOU prefer, not what other people prefer. Also, try and get into the habit of using your keyboard for using skills and selecting allies, and switching between shield sets (when you're getting attacked), 40/40 healing set (for heals), Protection Staff (for prots) and high energy sets (for emergencies). This is what will make you stand out as a monk more than good builds.

AndroBubbles · Dec 23, 2009, 03:06 AM // 03:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_jos

So you suggest to bring an e-mgt skill and at the same time you want to compress the bar? Drop e-mgt and take the skill you need.
This is not PvP where there is constant pressure and possible energy denial.
Only a few areas need additional energy management.

Yes, I'm going to say that bar compression can include direct energy management, even in PvE. If you have skills that already do what you need them to do, and your team is not already coordinated, it's not a bad idea to have a reserve to fall back on. I don't personally use it on my own monk, but when you're starting out in the profession it's nice to have while you learn how to effectively use your skills. It saves time, rather than shoving a new person into the game with "advice" and a "solid bar" and having them die anyway. Bar compression and experience are not mutually inclusive.

Quote:

When you learn how to play monk you should use skills for energy management as little as possible.

Agreed.

Quote:

Only when you know this and are sure you did nothing wrong and the team played decent you can decide to add energy management. But then you will only use it a couple of times when really needed. Don't learn to rely on it, it makes bad monks.

And this is where we differ. I don't think it's necessary to jump with with a pure trial and error approach.

Quote:

Often there are various skills that can do the same task. Some are more efficient than others, sure. However, when I really need to remove a hex the actual skill does not matter. And if I don't need to remove, why should I bring a skill to clean? Using a skill like Cure Hex for healing is ok when you understand that you are healing and not cleaning.
The main reason you take the skill is what matters. Can be healing, can be cleaning, can be making sure the red bar does not go down. Some skills are more efficient for this than others. But if they do the main job they are good, the rest is additional benefit.

Those additional benefits are what make some builds better than others, so what's your point here?