Curse

Shwitz · Oct 10, 2005, 11:07 PM // 23:07

I've been trying to set up my maintained enchantment protection monk with a somewhat stable PvE skill set, but am having trouble. Please keep in mind that this is for PvE. My aim is to reduce the damage to my party so that the healing monk doesn't have to work as hard. Right now, I'm using Life Bond on 3-5 party members and then using Mend Ailment/Smite Hex to control the condition/hex situation and using Mark of Protection as my elite and a panic button - when someone starts taking damage and the healer monk is tapped out or very occupied, I can slap MoP on an ally and not worry about him for 10 seconds. However, it leaves me sort of helpless as well, only being able to use Smite Hex and my signets (Blessed Signet and Signet of Devotion) for 10 seconds.

My question is, how well does Life Barrier do its job? I haven't captured the skill so I have no experience with it... Life Bond is very good at what it does, and I find myself not taking too much damage when damage gets redirected to me... but Life Barrier would reduce the damage without redirecting any to me at all, leaving me untouched.

Also, how well does Shield of Deflection work now that it has been updated? 10 energy, 1 second cast, 5 second recharge seems good at first glance, but only a 6 second duration I would think would make it draining on your energy, having to recast it often to keep a heavily attacked ally healthy and upright.

I guess my general question is... what elite functions well in a damage-reducing, maitained enchantment protection build for PvE?

Jczech · Oct 10, 2005, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Life Barrier is nice. At 15 protection (iirc) it reduces all damage (Life Bond only reduces from attacks) by 50%. More protection means more reduction, and less with less protection. The downside is that if you're under fire as well and your HP gets too low, enchants will start falling off. Also, since you don't take damage, you can't go the energy management route that is Balthazar's Spirit and Life Bond.

Basically, the advantages are that you don't take damage and you reduce spell damage as well as attacks, and the disadvantages are that you must not dip below 50% hp, and that the protection scales with your protection attribute. If you can manage it, you can put both on a few people to reduce attack damage by 75% and spells by 50%, but then you're left spamming Blessed Signet most of the time.

Earendil · Oct 11, 2005, 01:47 AM // 01:47

Life Barrier is one of the most powerful PVE protection skills a monk has. Basically, its all you need for many, many missions.

15 prot, life barrier, blessed sig, Aegis. You put life barrier on all 7 companions (be they henchies or people). If there is no (or little) enchantment removal - it will be a breeze. Just remember to stay back from the actual fight (do Aegis from time to time) and run if the monsters attack you - should not happen too often.
Mineral springs skill caping with henchies, ring of fire back door route....no problems at all.

Too bad it does not work as well in PvP

enchant removal is too heavy at higher levels.

Shwitz · Oct 11, 2005, 01:55 PM // 13:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Earendil

Life Barrier is one of the most powerful PVE protection skills a monk has. Basically, its all you need for many, many missions.

15 prot, life barrier, blessed sig, Aegis. You put life barrier on all 7 companions (be they henchies or people). If there is no (or little) enchantment removal - it will be a breeze. Just remember to stay back from the actual fight (do Aegis from time to time) and run if the monsters attack you - should not happen too often.
Mineral springs skill caping with henchies, ring of fire back door route....no problems at all.

Too bad it does not work as well in PvP

enchant removal is too heavy at higher levels.

Capped it, used it, love it

Thanks for the input guys. Only thing that hurts my party now is Chilblains and lots of mesmers/necromancers with Strip/Rend/Drain/Shatter Enchantments

Texas Flood · Oct 21, 2005, 09:50 PM // 21:50

if u only have 4 regen how do u have on 7 enchantments and not run out of energy?

rii · Oct 21, 2005, 10:08 PM // 22:08

blessed signet

entropy · Oct 22, 2005, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Personally I dislike Life barrier more. Its only reduces attacks but if an ele only starts spiking for half damage its gonna start getting stripped quick. The 15 enregy is also more than life bond and its got a 5 second recharge. Life bond also directs damage back to you and with balthazars spirit on its basically unlimited energy because with life bond 0's still count as dmg. Enchantment stripping is a pain but its not That bad. It also frees up an elite for you to use. Personally I use shield of deflection because shield of regen is basically just like healing breeze and amity is removed to easily. Mark of protection locks your skills so basically its to help against distracting rangers. Btw holy veil works wonders. Cast it on yourself always to get the 2x casting for hexes which makes it a damn pain for hexes and its already better than remove hex. Its better than remove hex and smite with recharge and casting time. Mantra of inscriptions can be subbed in as well for more energy. Also the main problem I have always had with life barrier is that the enchants drop off at under 50% which is pretty easily done with a decent spike. Then you must wast around 20+ seconds recasting it with 60 energy wasted due to the cost and recharge.

Trance Addict · Oct 24, 2005, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Quote:

ring of fire back door route

Really? Then care to tell me where you got your haX? Mursaat towers remove all enchantments as soon as you get in range. So unless you were along with monks and Longbow rangers, at least ONE got stripped off.

Racthoh · Oct 24, 2005, 09:23 PM // 21:23

I found the only way I could get it to work effectively was as a mo/me because of the inspiration skills. Mantra of Inscriptions enabled me to use Blessed Signet almost twice as often so I could still use my other protection spells as normal.

Also, the only use I had for the spells was on the soft targets in the party because any warrior should be able to take damage better than anyone else in the party. There aren't many areas where enemies are constantly spamming attack spells so Life Bond works better in most cases since regardless of level of protection prayers it reduces damage by 50%. As mentioned it also triggers Balthazar's Spirit for extra energy should you opt that skill as one of your energy management tools.

Life Barrier is also an elite, and you lose out on Offering of Blood should you choose to have necromancer as your secondary. It's one of the best energy management skills in the game and doesn't run the risk of being interrupted with a 1/4 second cast time. I know this is PvE, but still in times when a battle goes wrong a 2 second Blessed Signet being hit by a distracting shot means trouble.

The energy cost and recharge comes into question during midbattle against enemies with removal, or if you drop below 50% health when they're hit. Since you've been trying to protect/heal like mad, you're probably low on energy and reapplying a 15 energy skill on multiple party members can spell the end of a group. Life Bond will continue to work until you die or the target the spell is under dies.

Personally I find Blessed Aura combined with Shielding Hands and Healing Seed/Shield of Regeneration can keep a target alive under Life Bond for any amount of time. Not to mention an extended Aegis and Protective Spirit. Find a 20% enchanting staff and you're enchantments become a lot more effective.

smurfhunter · Oct 24, 2005, 09:42 PM // 21:42

funniest thing is haveing two monks on the party - one with life bonds and the other with life barriers. ohhh its part of my super gay mesmer build v3

Reve2uk · Oct 24, 2005, 10:02 PM // 22:02

i got a question:

If someone casts Life Barrier and Life Bond on some one and that person is using Protective Spirit, then will life barrier half the dmg from Protective Spirit ( so 10% of the dmg ) instead of the full wack. Then will that dmg be halfed and delt to the person who is maintaining life bond.

So would that work, i mean the way i have read it, it should and it will leave the person maintaining it getting no dmg at all and the other one getting hardly any.

..... or am i missing something, just want to check if it works b4 i go ahead with it lol

ange1 · Oct 25, 2005, 06:15 AM // 06:15

protective spirit isn't 10% of the damage, it's 10% of max health

so during pve usually tank gets hit, so the protective spirit pretty much means nothing to a tank when usually they take less than 50 damage anyway

Reve2uk · Oct 25, 2005, 10:10 AM // 10:10

thats not the point i know the way protective spirt works and i am not useing it for a tank :P.... well i am but a different type of tank

.. just would it work

Maiyn · Oct 25, 2005, 10:12 AM // 10:12

The good thing about life bond, is the fact that if you run the bonds with balthazars spirit, you gain energy when your bonds are activated.

Enchants + spirit or essence and blessed signet make it possible to run 8 enchants with no trouble, and in times when people are taking lots of damage you can run like 12 or more, I am serious.

It is spectacular. I love being a prot monk these days

Any size team, so much fun! Pvp or pve!

Yay monks!

LordMahal · Oct 25, 2005, 10:31 AM // 10:31

Somebody wrote that when using life bond even if you receive 0's for dmg its still dmg... Not so. I was using life bond today, and balths spirit. My tank was taking hits, I was getting 0's for dmg and my energy was not going up. Either its been changed since this thread started, or 0 dmg is really what it is......ZERO. You have to take dmg to get energy.. right?

Zenoi X · Oct 26, 2005, 10:19 PM // 22:19

If you're going to be a protection monk, it's best to mix it with a smite monk. There are several smiting skills that would also protect your party members, such as Shield of Judgement. Protective Spirit isn't the best of the monk's elites, however it isn't the worst either. Some good alternatives to that elite you should think about if you plan on staying protection are Shield of Regeneration (fairly good for its recharge time), Mark of Protection (the best protection elite in my opinion), and Shield of Deflection (not that great but has a real good recharge time, making up for its short duration). If you do plan on becoming protection and smiting, do get Shield of Judgement. It has always worked the best for me, that and Mark of Protection (Shield of Judgement works better though).

Shwitz · Oct 26, 2005, 10:57 PM // 22:57

I plan on capping Shield of Judgment at some point, but I'm not sure I agree with you on Mark of Protection. It is a wonderful skill, no doubt, but disabling my other protection skills for 10 seconds is a hefty cost, and the recharge time is a bit lengthy. I used it for a time, but I much prefer Life Barrier in PvE. And I do mix in some smiting, great minds must think alike

What were you referring to when you said that Protective Spirit isn't the best elite? Protective Spirit is a protection prayer, but I'm pretty sure it isn't elite. What skill were you thinking of?

MisterB · Oct 27, 2005, 12:22 AM // 00:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordMahal

Somebody wrote that when using life bond even if you receive 0's for dmg its still dmg... Not so. I was using life bond today, and balths spirit. My tank was taking hits, I was getting 0's for dmg and my energy was not going up. Either its been changed since this thread started, or 0 dmg is really what it is......ZERO. You have to take dmg to get energy.. right?

Wrong. Taking 0 damage triggers Balthazar's Spirit each time; it's why it works so well with Life Bond on your party, since Life Bond cuts damage in half, before being further reduced by your attribute points in Protection. Just tested Balthazar's Spirit on my W/Mo; 0 damage feeds me energy each time, same as always.

Shwitz · Oct 27, 2005, 01:07 AM // 01:07

Linguistically it seems like damage reduced to zero should still trigger Balthazar's Spirit. Take the phrase "Target takes 10 damage." That would trigger Balth's. Replace 10 with 0. Now the phrase is "Target takes 0 damage." Only thing that changed is the amount of damage taken, not the situation itself. Zero damage seems like it's still "damage", even if it isn't very damaging to your health. I don't have physical proof to back this up, but I could run 3 Life Bonds & Balth's Spirit on my Mo/Me and see what happens. With 4 enchants, I should have zero energy regen, so if I see my energy changes at all without me casting, Balth's has kicked in. I'm going to go test this right now. I'll edit my post here with my findings.

Gwenhywar · Dec 05, 2005, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordMahal

Somebody wrote that when using life bond even if you receive 0's for dmg its still dmg... Not so. I was using life bond today, and balths spirit. My tank was taking hits, I was getting 0's for dmg and my energy was not going up. Either its been changed since this thread started, or 0 dmg is really what it is......ZERO. You have to take dmg to get energy.. right?

Wrong. 0 damage received through Life Bond still counts as "damage" for the purposes of triggering Balth's spirit or essence bond.

Maybe you was using Life Barrier not Life Bond?