Curse

dansamy · Jun 28, 2005, 07:42 PM // 19:42

I was playing UW/Fissure last night, and we had a El/Mo join us in the role of protection monk/warder. So, I was wondering if, as an ele with energy storage and not needing Divine Favor, an el/mo would make a better protector than a monk primary? Focus on Earth, Protection and Energy. You would almost be able to keep wards up continuously even in prolonged fights. And since you will not have to repeatedly cast high energy spells, your energy storage can simply get the leftover points after Earth and Protection.

Red Locust · Jun 28, 2005, 08:40 PM // 20:40

If you're an exclusive warder/protection, with Aegis, WaM, WaF, WaE and stuff like that, divine healing is useless to you so you might as well go ele primary for energy storage.

Neo-LD · Jun 28, 2005, 08:46 PM // 20:46

protectors usually use boon to make them able to heal and protect at the same time. boon needs divine favor.

Red Locust · Jun 28, 2005, 08:52 PM // 20:52

If he's running wards, mass enchantments and upkeep enchantments, divine healing is pretty much useless.

Zeru · Jun 28, 2005, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Frankly I can't imagine most protection monks running around pve doing life bond/barrier stacks.

Mo/E is clearly better than E/Mo for protection.

Any protective monk should have RoF and Prot. Spirit. RoF is really only good with decent DF and is even better with DB too. Then you'll probably want a mend and remove hex, which is also boosted by DF and boon if you run it. I personally love Sig Devo for downtimes in combat where I don't have to waste energy.

Ward against elements really isn't that good imo. The extra armor is achieved at the cost of bunching up, which is not good vs any aoe type spell and 22 armor is nothing vs spike damage if you compare it to wam's effect vs warriors. Ward against melee is great and be kept up by either setup nearly indefinitely. Ward against foes is good too but not really needed in pve. If you're running a mass enchant monk, you need DF too for blessed signet to keep energy up.

funkenstein · Jun 29, 2005, 06:47 AM // 06:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

Frankly I can't imagine most protection monks running around pve doing life bond/barrier stacks.

Mo/E is clearly better than E/Mo for protection.

Any protective monk should have RoF and Prot. Spirit. RoF is really only good with decent DF and is even better with DB too. Then you'll probably want a mend and remove hex, which is also boosted by DF and boon if you run it. I personally love Sig Devo for downtimes in combat where I don't have to waste energy.

Ward against elements really isn't that good imo. The extra armor is achieved at the cost of bunching up, which is not good vs any aoe type spell and 22 armor is nothing vs spike damage if you compare it to wam's effect vs warriors. Ward against melee is great and be kept up by either setup nearly indefinitely. Ward against foes is good too but not really needed in pve. If you're running a mass enchant monk, you need DF too for blessed signet to keep energy up.

First off, there is no clearly better ANYTHING. This game comes down to planning what to use and how effectively you use it.

Secondly, I've played with MANY E/Mo protection players who were insanely good. On the flip side, I've played with Mo/X who were good. There is no better class. Every fight is different, and each build has their own specialty.

Zeru · Jun 29, 2005, 08:22 AM // 08:22

Sigh

There is a large difference between optimal and suboptimal. Everything in the game is definitely not balanced, there is clear things that are better and ones that are worse. Want examples of things that are very good? Wards. AoE loses to them because of cost/recharge and there really is no other viable counter to them. For bad stuff? Look at mind wrack/wastrels worry.

Sure, there's probably some amazing user of a mindwrack/wastrels worry build out there who'd do better than a newb mesmer with an excellent build, but the fact remains his build still sucks in nearly all situations and would be better using a stronger mesmer build. The reasoning behind 'this person uses a build x and plays it amazingly well, therefore the build must be great too' is just so absurdly flawed. Player skill helps tremendously but it is not the end all.

Obviously you can make some quirky situation where some ordinarily bad setup would be useful but why not specifically say that situation? In general certain things are better than others. In general, some skills suck; that's simply the truth.

Red Locust · Jun 29, 2005, 06:08 PM // 18:08

If we're still taking about the protector E/Mo, divine healing is only useful if you're gonna be using spammable 5-energy spells like guardian, RoF, etc. It's great for a mo/me with channeling who goes into the fray and starts spamming all he's got.
If you're gonna be warding, using Aegis, prot. spirit, life bonding, etc. you really have no use for divine healing.

Zeru · Jun 29, 2005, 07:51 PM // 19:51

Completely correct.

But frankly if you're protection I can't imagine why you wouldn't spam RoF, cause that is a really good spell with DF and DB but pretty crappy without it.

An el/mo is a better pure ward spammer with ele attune or someething, but personally I think someone who only spams wards is not very flexible. WAF is nice but not all teams will really be hurt much by WAM. Protective spirit, guardian, and rof are must-haves in most protection builds imo which brings DF to the top.