Curse

Txib · Dec 29, 2005, 10:10 AM // 10:10

This build, heavily tested and honed, has proven quite successful in the competition and (less so in the) team arenas. I would not trust it in the Hall of Heroes for reasons which will become obvious, but the random arenas have three interesting traits:

1. Roughly 80% of people there play warriors for some reason.
2. An additional 19.4% play rangers.
2. Nobody brings enchantment removal.

To take advantage of this I have created:

The SCABMOD! Mo/W

16 Protection
15 Divine Favor
3 Tactics

Life Bond
Balthazar's Aura
Divine Boon
(E) Aura of Faith
Draw Conditions
Reversal of Fortune
Blessed Signet
Life Attunement [The utility slot, replace as necessary. Suggestions below.]

20% divine favor recharge wand, focus of your choice.
I use the armor/hitpoints one.

Balthazar's yourself, bond your teammates, hit signet. When signet recharges Life Attune and Boon yourself. Signet again. As the gate opens you should have about 25 energy.

All healing will be done via draw and reversal. They're hard to interrupt. If your opponents pick a target, Aura of Faith them. Signet as necessary. Warriors should keep your energy high from Balthazar's. If you Aura and Attune yourself your boon+favor will heal you for about 300 BEFORE reversal goes off on the following blow.

Hammer warriors and elementalists getting you down? Swap out attunement for Balanced Stance. Elementalist damage and backfire causing you pain? Swap out attunement for Spirit of Protection. Reversal and Draw are so fast that they rarely get interrupted, but keep your eyes open for mesmers with Diversion.

Are you immortal? No. Are there a lot of sword and axe warriors in the Competition Arenas? HECK YEAH! I'd like to see this build take off if for no other reason than to stir up a little tactical change out there.

Remember! Even though a double bond's effect doesn't stack, if you run into another bond monk you can still double-up to get energy from Balthazar's!

GOOD LUCK, and GOOD BONDING!

Warskull · Dec 29, 2005, 11:55 AM // 11:55

Some throughts:
-16 prot is way too high for this guy, plus running two superiors is going to reduce your HP severly leaving you vulnerable to spike. Two superiors on a monk is really a bad idea in PvP. Lifebonds chops damage in half no matter what level it is at. You should be able to run this with around 12 prot fine. That reduces the damage done to you by 25, mean they have to do over 50 damage for you to feel anything. In addition an 84 RoF is very unlikely to happen, especially with your allies bonded. RoF should be fine around 50. In fact you could probably push protection down to around 10 with this and still not feel it too much. You can bring your divine to 16 with these points or spec into a third line.

-You may not want draw conditions. While it gets conditions off your allies quite nicely if you manage to draw cripple you could be in a lot of trouble. Plus it leaves you no mechanism to get conditions off yourself.

-No way to deal with hexes either, that could get you into trouble. Plus it seems you could work in some form of at least self-hex removal in pretty easily.

-Life attunement+Aura of Faith is probably overkill.

Sofonisba · Dec 29, 2005, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Do you mean Balthazar's Spirit vs Balth Aura?

And, no matter how good a monk you are, if you have 3-4 of the other team unloading on one person, whether you or another teammate, you won't be able to save the world every time. I know I'll get flamed probably but even as a monk I ALWAYS bring res signet.

I'm seeing more and more Shatter/Inspired/Strip/Desecrate Enchantments. I don't know about most people, but if I have the capability, I'll bring it.

Warskull · Dec 30, 2005, 12:47 PM // 12:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sofonisba

Do you mean Balthazar's Spirit vs Balth Aura?

And, no matter how good a monk you are, if you have 3-4 of the other team unloading on one person, whether you or another teammate, you won't be able to save the world every time. I know I'll get flamed probably but even as a monk I ALWAYS bring res signet.

I'm seeing more and more Shatter/Inspired/Strip/Desecrate Enchantments. I don't know about most people, but if I have the capability, I'll bring it.

In 4v4 it is usually worth it for a monk bringing rez sig (Especially in CA where you can't rely on your allies being smart enough to bring one.) There is a fair chance it will get used (monk dies, someone else dies, monk comes back up and chain rezes.) In 8v8 you usually don't need the extra rez sigs on the monks and would prefer them to use their full skill bar.

taxed · Dec 30, 2005, 06:22 PM // 18:22

The biggest problem with your build that I see is ranger interrupt spammers. One miss on the blessed signet and you are in big trouble. When playing a bonder, I prefer to go /mes and bring mantra of resolve at an attribute level of 9

Jura · Jan 03, 2006, 02:40 AM // 02:40

Why an attribute level of 9 if the breakpoint is 8 ?

Rajamic · Jan 07, 2006, 10:49 AM // 10:49

I've been doing something similar to this recently in CA. I call it the Bond/Boon personally, and in the < week I've been running it had 3 separate 15+ win streaks with almost all of them flawless.

14 DF
13 Prot
(No -75 Sup runes)

Bond
Boon
Balth Spirit
Blessed Sig

Of course that's the core of any Bonder. then I add:

Reversal
Shielding Hands
Prot Spirit
Amity

Prot Spirit is a little bit overkill with Bond, but it can help. The 10e cost hurts though. Shielding serves a dual purpose of helping reduce damage (particularly on Warriors), or being an emergency Boon trigger if you need an extra cast while RoF is recharging.

Amity is the real evil one, though. As you say, 4v4 arenas tend to be loaded with Warriors and Rangers, and things like Condition/Enchant/Hex removal are fairly rare. This means your Amity (which lasts about 18 seconds and recharges in 45) can pretty easily shut down 1 Ranger and any number of Warriors attacking you. That requently is half the oother team! It's duration is about 1/3 of it's recharge, but with a fast recharge offhand you can make it last almost as long as the recharge. More evil!

Get 2 damagers that can kill over a monk (or maybe 2 with luck) and a heal or heal/prot monk with you, and you have an almost unstoppable team.

Incidentally, if you face an IWAY team in TA, just start laughing to yourself. The pets give you huge energy for dealing almost no damage ever, and Amity works just fine on pets too!

But there are 2 fairly big flaws to be aware of:
1) You suffer from the same lack of Hex/Condition removal, and your heals aren't going to overpower it.
2) You have little to protect yourself. While the other 3 members of your team are tanks with all your protection spells, you have only Shielding and Prot Spirit to cover your own butt. And if you fall, the energy Res Sig gives is not going to let you get set back up quickly at all. Most of the time, your team will have to hold out with minimal support from you for about a minute for you to get back on your feet.

Sister Spice · Jan 08, 2006, 02:28 PM // 14:28

I'll start by saying I dont PVP - so my suggestions may only be slightly useful
but I do play Bond monk consistently and 2 spells that you may want to look into are

holy veil - cheap 5 cost - MAINTAINED enchantment
3 points -
1 it benefits blessed signet if Balths isnt up and kicking
2 it covers more important enchants
3 it removes a hex if you remove it - and so you CAN cast it then knock it off
So it's not the most effective hex removal (ie not remove hex) but it works more in synchronisation with a bond monk type of build

Watchful Spirit
This is handy as a panic button and as an adjunct to a healing monk
again - maintained
dearer (15 to cast) so best used when Balthz is flying
again a cover enchantment - which if they shatter gains the wearer 160-180 health
or while wearing gives the wearer +2 regen (like a weak healing breeze)

It's handy when you see someones life is getting low and you have surplus energy, or are about to blessed, to throw it on them either for the regen - or as a magnet for enchantment removal, or to quickly shoot it off to boost someone

and in both cases- they can be used on you - which as a bond monk is important since you're the only unbonded one

Like I say -there may be glaring problems with them that I dont know because I dont PVP - but they do seem to answer some of the problems with the opening build

Spice

Stormblazer · Jan 09, 2006, 05:21 AM // 05:21

I'm also experiementing with a bond/boon build, but with the idea of powerful heals as well. I've got 2 minor runes and a superior rune running, and my offhand is +45hp while enchanted, so health is still ok.

11 DF
15 HP
10 prot

skills:
Divine Boon
Life Bond
Blessed Signet
Balthazar's Spirit
Healing Touch
Orison of Healing
Word of Healing (E)
Res Signet (thinking about switching with Heal Area, not sure)

I'm almost always the primary target (usually play in CA), so I chose to use large heals to cover my party, multiple heals so that something is almost always available in case either a) one gets disabled, and b) if i need the heals faster than the cooldowns provide, and then word of healing gives a massive heal for pretty low cost to use on others.

With this build, I can actually usually surive even with 4 opponents on me if none of them has an interupt (unlikely but it did happen once...).
My biggest weakness is probably the hex removal. I may replace res signet with that, but again, res signet is pretty useful in CA.

E Power · Jan 09, 2006, 10:01 PM // 22:01

I don't have much experience with monks, but hopefully my help is appreciated

.

Divine Boon
Life Bond
Blessed Signet
Balthz Spirit
Watchful Spirit
Veil
Mantra of Inscriptions
Rez Sig

Former Ruling · Jan 10, 2006, 01:06 AM // 01:06

I went CAing with a boon/prot monk:
Bond
Boon
Balt's Spirit
Blessed Signet
OoB
RoF
Heal Touch
And Rez Sig (tryed in Holy Viel in some cases).

DId good with a competent team. Most teams dont know how bond Monk works though.

Funniest thing is this monk can turn into invini-monk fast with the right opponents.

My Team:
Doesn't matter, they die

Their Team:
2 normal warriors (no Hammer KD warriors, just swords)
A Trapper
A Hex mesmer (/nec, he spammed conjure and SS).

My Team dies, so its them vs me, I have just Boon and Balt's up at this point.

So they jump on me, and for 10 minutes all I do is hit RoF as it recharges, HIt Healing Touch anytime I hit under half health, and hit Offerings of Blood anytime my energy goes under 20.

I sit there for 10 minutes with almost constant -10 degen (from conjure, bleeding, poison, etc), and all 4 on me and didn't even ever drop below 1/3 health. I dont know if anyone brought Interupts, if they did they never hit (1/4 sec cast times can do that

)

I got bored and just died after awhile though.