Originally Posted by Chthon

I do. In fact, I think you've seen me do it, although you didn't know at the time. (And remember, I'm pretty far the the world's greatest monk. So any not-dying you did was not thanks to my mad skills.)

When it works, it's pretty darned awesome: Almost unlimited energy via selfless spirit; Almost unlimited energy means you can **spam** PS; Almost perma aegis (make sure to cast aegis before self-less spirit. I say "almost perma" since the cast time is too unwieldy to literally keep it up 100% by yourself); Seed of life on a quick recharge; Throw patient spirit on anywho who looks like they might maybe take damage since it's free.

The downside is that it doesn't always work. If you can't rely on your team to keep scoring kills, half your bar is nearly worthless without a recharge. I wouldn't PUG with it....

Originally Posted by Carinae Dragonblood

(on a tangent: does anyone run AP on a player-monk bar? You could pull off a perma Aegis and any other long recharge monk skills.)

Originally Posted by Chthon

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If monks are to remain viable for PvE, they're going to need some new and better builds.

This starts with making up ground on PS spamming, since that's the location of the quantum leap from hybrid monk to E.Renewal ele.

In order to do that, monks need a massive energy source. Five options come to mind: (1) Selfless Spirit + AP, (2) Divine Spirit + AP, (3) Selfless Spirit + Air of Superiority, (4) Divine Spirit + Air of Superiority, and (5) Lyssa's Aura + Asuran Scan. Regarding these options: First, I'm not sure if that's an exclusive list. I just asked myself "how could a monk possibly afford to spam PS," and that's what I came up with. Maybe there's more; chime in if you can think of one. Second, these options are not created equal. To answer FoxBat's question, I find that Air of Superiority comes through reasonably well except when you need it most, so that's out. I didn't even bother trying Lyssa's Aura, since it effectively reduces energy costs by 1/2, while Selfless Spirit and Divine Spirit both reduce costs by more than 1/2 if you've got a few 5e spells on the bar. As between Selfless Spirit and Divine Spirit, that's a closer call. Right now, I find myself heading towards the opinion that the duration on Selfless Spirit, plus the fact that it takes 5e spells all the way to 0e (there's a huge difference between 1e and 0e) more than makes up for the weird end conditions.

So, that leaves me with [Assassin's Promise][Selfless Spirit][Protective Spirit]. Is that enough? Maybe. It certainly doesn't catch up with the ele for raw PS spam. But it does seem to have enough energy to put up PS where it needs to be, as long as you're not totally profligate about it. Of course, a PS spammer that needs to be smart isn't as good as one that can mindlessly pound the PS button, so the monk is going to need to do something more, something that the ele can't do.

So what can a monk do with the remaining 5 skills that the ele can't? Well, you've got the DF line and you've got Assassin's Promise. The best I can pull out from that is perma-Aegis thanks to Assassin's Promise and frequent Seed of Life, thanks to DF and Assassin's Promise. Arguably, those can make up for the weaker PS spamming and the weaker spot healing. Arguably.

OK, so that makes [Assassin's Promise][Selfless Spirit][Protective Spirit][Aegis][Seed of Life]. The remaining 3 slots need to cover spot healing, and whatever else you can cram in there.

So far, [Assassin's Promise][Selfless Spirit][Protective Spirit][Aegis][Seed of Life][Patient Spirit][Dwayna's Kiss][Cure Hex] (+ rez scroll) is the best I've come up with along that line. I need to put it through a lot more testing before I decide if it's really comparable with a E.Renewal healer or not.

(Yes, I've tried Racthoh's [Assassin's Promise][Divine Spirit][Aegis][Seed of Life][Divine Boon][RoF][Shield of Absorption][Deny Hexes] build. I don't much care for it. First, no PS. Admittedly, the build was designed for teams with 2+ copies of SY!, but even still, I want PS to cover the initial aggro and the gaps in SY! coverage when things don't go as planned. Second, the energy is uncomfortably tight with Divine Spirit's short duration and Divine Boon's extra energy pressure. Third, if things go badly and you can't get an AP trigger when you need it, you're basically reduced a RoF-Boon spammer, since everything else is on recharge or too expensive or both until AP recharges stuff and DS comes back online. All criticism aside though, the build does represent a much-needed break from the "WoH hybrid, WoH hybrid, WoH hybrid" mentality that's never going to produce anything to rival the E.Renewal healer.)

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3. The TL-DR summary: E.Renewal eles are far better than the WoH hybrid PvE monks in common usage now. If it's possible for monks to catch up (and it may not be), the builds to do it will probably start with [Assassin's Promise][Selfless Spirit][Protective Spirit][Aegis][Seed of Life].