Curse

MachineKing · Apr 23, 2005, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Well hello everyone I decided my First Official Character for the Guild Wars would be the greatly sought after Monk Primary Profession. I managed to get to play this profession a little during the April Beta World Event (BWE) and on top of playing my previous character an N/W. I completely fell in love with my little monk. Well getting back on topic I would like to get feed back on my (hopefully completely successful) Monk build. The skills I have chosen are from what I have learned from my fellow guild mate’s monks and some of the various Public Monks and Henchmen. Without further ado my little Monk pride and Joy Ill be using in the release. All feed back (negative and Positive) are warmly welcome.

Characters Name: Alexandra Angelwing
Professions: Monk | Elementalist
Primary Job: Healing
Current Level: 1

Before I get to posting my Attribute placement I am wondering if it is worth using a Rune Higher than Minor if the life loss was made up by a Vigor Rune of some sorts. Anyways my Attributes are as if I only used a Minor Rune.

Class: Monk / Elementalist

Assumed items:
+1 to Divine Favor
+2 to Healing Prayers
+1 to Protection Prayers

Attributes: (cost)
Divine Favor: 10+1 (61)
Healing Prayers: 10+2 (61)
Protection Prayers: 8+1 (37)
Earth Magic: 8 (37)

Total attribute points used: 196/200

Skills:
1) Word of Healing (availability) (elite) - (5,34,4) Heal target other ally for 67 points. Heal for an additional 83 points if that ally is below 50% health. This is an elite skill.
2) Healing Breeze (availability) - (10,1,2) For 10 seconds, target ally gains health regeneration of 8.
3) Orison of Healing (availability) - (5,1,2) Heal target ally for 60 health.
4) Heal Other (availability) - (10,34,3) Heal target other ally for 151 health.
5) Divine Intervention (availability) - (10,14,30) For 10 seconds, if target ally receives damage that would be fatal, the damage is negated and that ally is healed for 183 health.
6) Life Bond (availability) - (10+,2,0) While you maintain this enchantment, whenever target other ally takes damage from an attack, half the damage is redirected to you. The damage you receive this way is reduced by 19 points.
7) Ward Against Melee (availability) - (10,1,20) You create a ward against melee at your current location. For 15 seconds, allies in this area have a 50% chance to evade melee attacks.
8) Resurrect (availability) - (10,8,0) Resurrect target party member.

For now I am going to use regular Resurrect until I experiment with the others more or if I get some good word on them.

Same strategy as any other healer monk “Keep your team alive as Efficiently as Possible”. Also I have noticed even if a monk is under fire they can stand their ground and last quite a while. Life bond is in there for me to slap onto the tank to lower the damage thy take and what ever I get will be greatly reduced assuming it isn’t Damage over Time (DoT) of course.

Well anyways as stated as above any suggestions would be appreciated and welcomed. See you all in the release or at least I hope so.

-=MachineKing=-

Raumoheru · Apr 23, 2005, 10:31 PM // 22:31

well you dont need earth magic AND protection, since both do pretty much the same thing.

to be a really really good healer take

12 divine favor
12 healing
3 protection

but this will leave you with really nothing to do BUT heal

Kha · Apr 23, 2005, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raumoheru

well you dont need earth magic AND protection, since both do pretty much the same thing.

to be a really really good healer take

12 divine favor
12 healing
3 protection

but this will leave you with really nothing to do BUT heal

I agree with Rau. You are spread too thin as a monk. This build may work out for PvE (at least for the easier levels) but it won't be successful for PvP. As a monk, you should really pick to be a healer or a protection caster. Doing both leaves you very weak in either aspect. Since you want to be a healer, focus on just healing skills. And I would personally replace Heal Other with Healing Touch. You don't need that big of a heal if you have Word of Healing, and you need a nice heal for yourself. Signet of Devotion is also a great skill.

Ensign · Apr 24, 2005, 03:49 AM // 03:49

I certainly see no problem with going with three or even four attribute lines for PvE. The skill quality you gain more than makes up for the attribute level or two you give up. Now, in PvP, you're going to want to specialize more - not just for the extra attribute level or two, but to avoid stepping on the other Monk's toes. Just imagine that you're designing 3 Monks at once - they don't all want to run the same enchantments, you want to break those up so that each can use their skills without risking interferance with the other Monks. So you break them down by line and divide.

Regarding the usage of superior runes on a Monk - well, if anyone wants to stick to minors only, it's the Monk, where every shred of defense can help. Don't look at a vigor rune as 'offsetting' the hit point loss - you're going to be running a superior vigor anyway, so you should consider your base HP to be 530, not 480.

That said, I'm much more on the fence about this than I used to be, particularly now that superior runes are only -75 max health. If you're being hit hard in a focused fire situation, you're likely to go through thousands of hit points before going down, making 75 seem rather trivial - at the same time, the extra two attribute levels are likely only going to result in an additional 6-7 health per heal. My gut reaction is to play it safe on the healers and save the health - the extra buffer could be significant against some of the scary focus bursts out there - but this one is still definitely up in the air.

Regarding skills - you should be running Signet of Devotion unless you have a very good reason not to. I give it a dirty look when I see it on my bar, and it certainly isn't an all star, but it's a critical guy who comes off the bench when energy is tight or you have a couple seconds and pulls its weight. Monks chew through energy extremely fast during difficult battles, and every little bit helps.

I also would not be running Resurrect under any circumstances. If you're in PvE, run Rebirth - if you're between mobs or otherwise not under aggro the penalties are meaningless, and it'll let you dig yourself out of all sorts of nasty situations. If you're on a PvP team, I'd leave the resurrecting to other team members - you're going to be one of the first ones targeted 99% of the time and res is useless if you're the first one down. If you do want to run a PvP res, I'd run Glyph of Sacrifice + Restore Life - it'll let you get someone back up and into action quickly, and you can actually cast it instead of just feeding someone's interrupts.

Since you're in Earth Magic, you might want to give Armor of Earth a good look - you can't run, but you won't have to.

If you're going to run Life Bonds to slap on focused / key targets, definitely run Balthazar's Spirit. Smoke 'em while you've got 'em.

Word of Healing and Heal Other are basically the same skill - Word just is conditional and costs 5 less to cast. I don't think you'll need both, especially with Orison and Breeze there. Cooldowns are short enough that you should be able to chain cast with just a couple of relevant heals.

Peace,
-CxE