Curse

bungusmaximus · Nov 09, 2007, 09:46 AM // 09:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Morningstar

Not all us heal monks would run LoD. From what I could glimse while grinding sunspear points a few hours ago, LoD was the only one treated like a pinata.

There was much cheering on alliance chat. What was nerfed worse, was Splinter Weapon. RIP.

I have it, just because I have all monk skills, but I don't think I've ever used it. It got pounded into the most unimaginable boring spam-builds I have ever seen in 3 campaigns + expansion of playing guild wars.

The fact that it was boring doesn't make it less powerful, hell, just have Dunkoro run it. What I mean is that usually when skills get balaced:

-PvP crowd rejoices and PvE crowd cringes
-PvE crowd rejoices and PvP crowd cringes

With the LoD nerf both PvE and PvP crowd cringes. PvP crown is mad because they get blown to bits in GvG matches and PvE crowd is mad because they had such a nice efficient power heal.

Cebe · Nov 09, 2007, 09:55 AM // 09:55

Light of Deliverance = D-Shot fodder.

It'll be interesting to see if the unconditional party heal is worth the change.

Erocdrah · Nov 09, 2007, 10:40 AM // 10:40

I will take my old WoH build with this update

Bankai · Nov 09, 2007, 12:02 PM // 12:02

To those who don't understand the power of Glimmer:

The power of Glimmer lies in its ability to change depending on what you need. Need an infuse? Use glimmer. Need an orison? Use glimmer. Need a heal other? Use glimmer twice. Its 1/4 cast time and 1 recharge make it very versatile. However, the 1 recharge also adds some interesting possibilites: what if you and your opponent's team are both on the verge of breaking? With a heal that recharges slow, you're forced to take deaths. With Glimmer, you can just switch to a high energy-set, and go mental with glimmer for 5 seconds. Sure, you'll lose a lot of energy, but your team won't die- and what's more important, a partywhipe or energy?

Lhim · Nov 09, 2007, 12:13 PM // 12:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by bungusmaximus

smashing a skill into the ground with a sledgehammer isn't the way to go imho.

Make that a Sundering Sledgehammer of 'Lifebane'

Man, I still have my monk in pre-searing, but I got a hold on an elite monk tome. I guess getting LoD for my monk after searing isn't the best way to go now.

Abedeus · Nov 09, 2007, 01:56 PM // 13:56

WoH IS imba. I got trough 6 games, got killed by a 3-knockdown sin + war spike on RA, changed build so it's invulnerable to KD's, got to 8th game (kill count) and we lost only because one of my teammates went too far from me and I couldn't use WoH.

My point is - WoH is absolutely IMBA!!! And I like it! Restful Breeze is super-nice too, 18 x 10 x 2 heal = 360 hp for 5 ene? Cast it on a kiting ally and give another prot skill like Spirit Bond or Shielding Hands and your ally is almost impossible to kill. I hope they won't nerf it...

Wish Swiftdeath · Nov 09, 2007, 02:08 PM // 14:08

meh 8 wins in a row isnt too much tbh

, although i do agree it looks pretty sweet now.

Lets see how it all pans out over the coming few days rather than jumping to conclusions.

ender6 · Nov 09, 2007, 02:35 PM // 14:35

anything with a 2 sec cast time doesn't make it onto my bar -- gg ANet mission accomplished.

as for HB/HP/GoLE = LoD --- 3 skills to replace 1? sorry my bar is too crowded as is.

as for glimmer light it was and still is a garbage elite. Maybe good for hero monks that liks to spam heal.

I was doing Glint's challenge yesterday, with a PUG so it offered some form of testing. LoD became a nuissance. So I read the updates and tried to do a HB hybrid build. That was inefficent. Not to mention that HB kept getting stripped. So then I went with an old reliable ZB prot build. It was the best out of the 3 builds, but I still miss LoD.

Turbobusa · Nov 09, 2007, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Gole was there before, HP replaces LoD, WoH replaces the other heal you had.
Add in RoF, PS/SB, SoA, some condition removal, guardian/aegis...

Deftones_Korn_Unloco · Nov 09, 2007, 04:50 PM // 16:50

All I have to say to this new update is that I am very satisfied and pleased. A few very minor disappointments at some, but overall I'm just really excited about Monking even more now. =]

Chthon · Nov 09, 2007, 04:57 PM // 16:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Windf0rce

Was LoD's change aimed to hit hybrid monk backlines?

I think the answer to this is, "duh." Of course they were trying to hit the hybrid, and they did. The LoD-based hybrid is totally dead. And I think that people are soon going to find that, without LoD, there's no way to get all the healing you need from only 2 or maybe 3 healing prayers skills. To get enough healing, a hybrid is going to have to be split down the middle, or even mostly heal splashed with prot. Ultimately, I would not be surprised if hybrid became simply inviable.

More than an assault on hybrids, I think this was an attempt to shake the dominance of prot, esp in PvP. I think a-net is trying to force us back to the 1-healer-and-1-protector model (or at least 2 half-and-half hybrids, if we insist on hybridizing). All and all, I think that's a good thing.

I do have some gripes though:

I really wish this could have been done without totally destroying LoD. There's a couple end-game bosses in PvE I'm really going to miss having it for.
As long as people remain in this "prot >>>> heal" mindset, it doesn't matter how much more efficient than prot they make the heals, people are going to insist on playing prot-heavy hybrids and complaining that they can't heal well enough with only 2 or 3 skills.
A-net totally failed to address the offensive side of the equation. Spike is the dominant offensive paradigm. Spike is a tactic that's aimed at defeating the healer, even at the expense of giving the proter a perfect opportunity. (It's something of a mystery to me how people can blindly insist "prot >>>> heal," yet themselves run an offense that totally ignores the risk of prot for the sake of defeating heal.) I think, so long as damn near every offense you encounter continues to run some variant on spike, the sensible defensive response is going to remain to running more and more prot.
And I do think that we are going to continue to see "spike vs prot" as the main paradigm, because (1) aside from Glimmer, healing is still too slow to combat spike well, (2) there is no anti-prot strategy that hoses prot nearly as well as spike hoses heal, and (3) people are unthinkingly caught up on "prot >>>> heal" and "spike is THE way to get kills" and so they are unlikely to change strategies, even if a-net changes the skills so that they are no longer optimal.
If they really wanted to shake up the dominance of prot, I think a-net should have focused the healing buffs more around being able to deal with spikes, and should have made some offensive buffs to prot-hosing skills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grammar

How is Glimmer appealing now?

What does it do that RoF and Dwayna's Kiss don't already do for you?

In the battle of the pointless redundant healing elites, WoH beats Glimmer.

1. RoF is not a guaranteed heal, it can get wasted on a wand shot or fail to trigger altogether if the opponents change targets. Kiss is a 1 sec cast.

2. You seem to have the belief that healing skills are needlessly redundant simply because they all do the same thing. I disagree. The fact that your great, great heal goes into recharge once you use it, makes a second healing skill useful for addressing damage done while the first is recharging, and a third useful for when the first and second are recharging,... and so on, up until you are able to cast heals back to back when needed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeKnowMo

Big heals, solid prot, and e-mgmt all in one. I get the feeling that HBoon will be overpowered in PvE.

Lots of folks are saying this. The funny thing is, HBoon has barely changed. The -1 regen is gone. But that was never an issue before with decent e-management, so it's not big change. And the scale finally prevents secondary abuse, which it should have done all along. But that isn't a change for monk primaries either. So, IMO, HBoon has barely changed; it's just that people are finally taking a look at it.

Mark Nevermiss · Nov 09, 2007, 08:43 PM // 20:43

I was doing Duncan hard mode today using mostly HB+GoLE+HP with essence of celerity. That was almost all I needed to keep my party alive.

Burst Cancel · Nov 09, 2007, 08:57 PM // 20:57

The problem with Glimmer is that it's not actually strong enough to replace a plurality of your other skills. If you take a look at current hybrid bars and consider what you gain by taking Glimmer, the answer is basically, "nothing". At it's current stats I'd say it's strictly better than RoF, but replacing RoF with Glimmer isn't worth your elite slot. You didn't actually get much strength or functionality out of that change, and you didn't save any slots - you just exchanged one skill for another.

It's also not Infuse - one of the big strengths of infuse was that it put your target at nearly full health so they didn't die to 'afterspike' damage. With the current strength of offensive power available, a 100-point heal landing in the middle of the spike isn't going to save anyone.

Similarly, WoH is a much stronger, and less- (or differently-) conditional Dwayna's. It doesn't replace multiple skills because it isn't fast enough and its recharge isn't short enough - you can swap out Dwayna's, but you still have to keep RoF. In this case you get more out of it than with Glimmer, because to be fair, WoH is a very strong heal, but you didn't gain any additional functionality.

In both Glimmer and WoH cases, the function of LoD remains absent. That absence is going to hurt a lot with prot bars, because diffuse damage has always been prot's major weakness. Prot is really good at stopping concentrated damage, but lots of leftover and "auto" damage, or stuff like degen, gets through. Big single-target heals simply aren't the right tool for those situations.

Gregslot · Nov 09, 2007, 09:22 PM // 21:22

The update mainly balanced the difference of Heal Party and Light Of Deliverance. If you had a skill bar that would require party heal that these skill provide, your elite skill would be influencied by Light of Diferense overwhelming difference of speed or its massive conditional heal.
Now we have 2 skills that have the same function and power, the only difference between them its the energy cost, giving the title of elite to the cheapest.

Light of Deliverance is as good as it is. This skill is supposed to be fast, and there is no problem with it.

Now about Splinter Weapon, this was an obviously overpowered skill because it causes armor ignoring damage. It was overpowered at PvE and PvP

«Ripskin · Nov 09, 2007, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by bungusmaximus

LoD has been nerfed in the most awful way imaginable, really. I wish aNet could nerf stuff a bit more elegantly, smashing a skill into the ground with a sledgehammer isn't the way to go imho. Guess they just wanted to shake up the GvG meta'. Healers boon, however, is totally haxx now.

PvE monks got the shaft though, that's what I mean with 'elegant nerfs'.

When I pve, I leave LoD out. I always ZB or Mantra of recall +heal (Healing prayers doesn't need an elite when I use it)

I think I'm going to use boon more often now, seeing how it'll make healing cost less energy. I don't think pve monks got shafted, just look at healing breeze ffs.

edit:
No saying I use breeze, it's just a huge buff on a not so good skill.

horseradish · Nov 09, 2007, 09:58 PM // 21:58

I would prefer Glimmer over Word of Healing simply because of the utility.

Although WoH has a bigger heal, Glimmer has a 1 second recharge.

The only big heal on my bar is Infuse Health.

Glimmer is so convenient now. I love it.

Hell it may not be an LoD replacement, but an Ele with Heal Party works fairly well. There are other options. People just need to find them.

Blessed Light got a buff too, and it's in the Divine Favor line. A proto monk could replace Zealous Benection with this spell. Doesn't heal for a ridiculously high amount but also has utility.

Spazzer · Nov 09, 2007, 09:58 PM // 21:58

No primary monk worth his salt uses Healing Breeze, and this update won't change that one bit. 15s duration is nothing to scoff at, but it's still 10 energy, doesn't benefit at all from Healer's Covenant, takes 1s to cast, and only functions as a Heal-Over-Time.

That's why nobody's excited over the HBreeze buff.

BLight still won't see much use because it's just not convenient enough. It's 10 energy with no returns, and there are better elites available to the Prot monk who wants utility. Believe me, I used to love the skill when it was introduced and I hate to see it shamed like it is. I -want- to make BLight work in a build, but it basically functions as an elite Heal Other with "benefits".

Grammar · Nov 09, 2007, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. You seem to have the belief that healing skills are needlessly redundant simply because they all do the same thing. I disagree. The fact that your great, great heal goes into recharge once you use it, makes a second healing skill useful for addressing damage done while the first is recharging, and a third useful for when the first and second are recharging,... and so on, up until you are able to cast heals back to back when needed.

Yup, that's called chain casting my friend, and it's still just as inefficient and ineffective as it was pre-Nightfall. But sadly, it's what we're reduced to once again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

The problem with Glimmer is that it's not actually strong enough to replace a plurality of your other skills. If you take a look at current hybrid bars and consider what you gain by taking Glimmer, the answer is basically, "nothing". At it's current stats I'd say it's strictly better than RoF, but replacing RoF with Glimmer isn't worth your elite slot. You didn't actually get much strength or functionality out of that change, and you didn't save any slots - you just exchanged one skill for another.

It's also not Infuse - one of the big strengths of infuse was that it put your target at nearly full health so they didn't die to 'afterspike' damage. With the current strength of offensive power available, a 100-point heal landing in the middle of the spike isn't going to save anyone.

Similarly, WoH is a much stronger, and less- (or differently-) conditional Dwayna's. It doesn't replace multiple skills because it isn't fast enough and its recharge isn't short enough - you can swap out Dwayna's, but you still have to keep RoF. In this case you get more out of it than with Glimmer, because to be fair, WoH is a very strong heal, but you didn't gain any additional functionality.

In both Glimmer and WoH cases, the function of LoD remains absent. That absence is going to hurt a lot with prot bars, because diffuse damage has always been prot's major weakness. Prot is really good at stopping concentrated damage, but lots of leftover and "auto" damage, or stuff like degen, gets through. Big single-target heals simply aren't the right tool for those situations.

That entire post is QFT.
Perfectly sums up the pointlessness of WoH and Glimmer, as well as the gaping hole left by LoD's absence. Very well said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by horseradish

I would prefer Glimmer over Word of Healing simply because of the utility.

Although WoH has a bigger heal, Glimmer has a 1 second recharge.

What utility? You mean the 1 second recharge?
The only way that could be seen as utility is if it cleared a space on your bar for an additional prot spell.
In other words, if you ran this: Glimmer, RoF/Kiss, 6 prot spells.
Glimmer is simply not powerful enough or fast enough (even with the 1 second recharge, which is still to slow to chain it) to allow you to carry only 2 heals on your bar. A third heal is still needed, which means Glimmer fails to condense your bar.

As it stands, you're better off taking WoH + RoF + Kiss, since you need 3 heals anyway. Might as well make WoH the third heal instead of Glimmer.
But even that combo is grossly inefficient and ineffective. As Burst said in the above quotation, big single-target heals simply aren't the tool we need. We now lack the tool we need and have absolutely nothing to replace it with.

Who cares that we now have shiny new hammers in our toolbox?
Sure, they're bigger and shiny than our old hammers, but we already had a toolbox full of hammers before. What we really need is a damn wrench! ANet stole our only wrench from our toolbox last night.

Holz · Nov 09, 2007, 11:02 PM // 23:02

I was using Healer's Boon before the nerf in PvE, and now it gets even better. Just go Mo/E with nice heals like Ethereal Light (that's like Heal Other under HB), Dwayna's Kiss (in DoA it can heal a tank for 800 HP) etc.. Healing Seed also becomes very sexy with a mere 1 second cast. Use Heal Party ONLY while you have Glyph of Lesser Energy on you, don't spam it that much. You'll probably playing with a sup. rune in PvE, a 120+++ party wide heal is enough every now and then

. WoH has always sucked imo, reasons not to use it are it's very ugly skill-picture and the 3/4 cast.
Also Glimmer of Light owns now. Try bringing in Divine Spirit with high Divine Favor, you can spam free Glimmers for 13 seconds long (which is a lot of fun)

.

Grammar · Nov 09, 2007, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Healers Boon is only viable for pure healing prayers monks with maybe a tiny bit of prot tossed in. It just takes up so many damn slots it's ridiculous, and prot gets squeezed out.

-Healers Boon
-Heal 1 (Kiss)
-Heal 2 (RoF/Ethereal Light/Orison)
-Heal Party
-Glyph of Lesser Energy
-Condition remover
-Hex remover
-Prot Spirit

Yeah! We had room to squeeze 1 prot enchantment on there. Killer build! /sarcasm

Oh, and Heal Party in this build is still worse than LoD (in PvE), even though it takes up an astounding 3 slots to run whereas LoD uses 1.
1. GoLE + HP = ~2.5seconds to cast (1 sec + after cast + 1 sec). The first cast of HP actually takes slightly longer than the nerfed LoD.
2. Then there's the problem of what to do next. In order to maximize GoLE, you need to sit and wait to cast HP again before you can cast anything else.
3. Then there's the long recast on GoLE. After you fire off your 2 Heal Parties in a row (even if you didn't want to), you're left with two options: don't use HP again until GoLE recharges, or burn 15e casting HP when you really need it even though GoLE wasn't ready yet. Either way, you lose.

Sadly, if you still want to party-wide heal in PvE, LoD is still the way to go.
If you want a party-wide heal in PvP, you have no choice but to sell out your bar to run the craptacular HB+HP combo, because LoD's 2 second cast time gives if exactly zero chance for viability in PvP.