Curse

Xx_Sorin_xX · Nov 10, 2007, 08:22 PM // 20:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

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?

since when did the new update of glimmer = infuse? glimmer heals for like a ~1/3 of infuse, unless your an idiot running around w/ 400 life on a monk. even then its still not the same. dwanya's kiss >>>> glimmer still.

Mark Nevermiss · Nov 10, 2007, 08:23 PM // 20:23

The reason I quoted Abaddon's Gate mission, Burst Cancel, wasnt because its a challenging mission. I H/H it 11 times for master reward.
I mentioned it as a situation where you cannot prot all party members and where LoD fails to keep up.
I mentioned that I rarely used LoD and then only with Arcane Echo so that I can cast it more often.
I have been testing in Slaver's Exile in PUG's where balling up the enemies and taking them out all at once doesnt always happen according to plan. Since there are one prot/bond monk and one healer monk in these groups LoD didnt work well for me, even before the nerf.
Btw having your casters spread out when they start to nuke rarely works.
The stacking of HB with HP, on the other hand is quite the life saver. Combined with GoLE, you heal 8x140+ for 5 energy with 1 second cast time[thx to HB] and 2 sec recharge= perfect anti party wipe. HB + Kiss one the heavily enchanted/hexed tank can heal for over 1k HP.
The bond prot monk will not be gaining energy once the tank loses the aggro, so he/she cannot be effectively protting people unless he releases enchants and then you can only prot one/two people fast enough.

Burst Cancel · Nov 10, 2007, 08:54 PM // 20:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr_stealth

66*8 is a lot of healing if you look at it that way, but 66HP isn't going to save any of the players/heroes standing in that AoE if they don't get out very quickly. More powerfull heals on a couple is better than a weak heal to all that ends up doing no good when they all still die.

Prot a few + LoD has the same or better net effect than "more powerful heals on a couple".

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SoA could help reduce the damage on ONE person(10s recharge), but would take several additional hits before it builds up enough reduction. Spirit Bond is pretty much the only prot skill that is of any use in that situation. Its great for someone standing in AoEs that are powerfull enough to trigger it. And its recharge is short enough that you can use it to save at least a couple people.

The reason I mention both is because Spirit Bond is used against boss AoE, and SoA is used for normal AoE. Sandstorm does 29 per hit at 14, for instance. SoA is plenty enough for that.

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That is, of course, assuming that you are keeping PS on the entire midline. Keeping PS on 4 players would take 16 seconds and 40 energy to get everyone enchanted, and the 1st PS would be wearing off shortly after the 4th cast. I do this myself in some cases, but I have to choose who to keep protected because keeping PS on everyone is just too costly. IMO, dealing with that type of area is more suited for a bonder and a full heal monk.

(emphasis added)

When you consider a hybrid monk and a healing monk, neither one is going to be able to save everyone in a heavy AoE situation. The healer has to pick a few people and brute-force heal. The hybrid has to prot a few and use LoD to move bars up. Both are non-optimal, and my answer to that is: you should never be in a situation where you're taking this kind of damage.

If you're going to include a bonder, we're not really arguing the same thing anymore, are we? Who is really doing most of the work in that situation? Similarly, I could argue that if I took a paragon with Save Yourself! and TNTF I'd only need an LoD monk.

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All the prot in the world isn't going to do anything for the damage that has already been taken. Its a great way to stop additional damage from killing them, but you still need to get them back to full health. A hybrid can get that done, but a healer can do it a lot faster.

Of course prot doesn't do anything for damage that's already been taken - the entire point of prot is to prevent damage. That's similar to saying that heal doesn't do anything for people if they're dead - the entire point of healing people is to prevent them from becoming dead in the first place.

You still haven't given a concrete instance of how heal is getting it done "a lot faster". The fact is, single-target heals aren't any better than single-target prots in an AoE situation. If you're going to talk about heals that can actually power through big AoE, you're going to be looking at highly situational stuff like Heal Area, or multi-skill replacements for LoD (HB+HP+GoLE), neither of which actually precludes running prot on the same bar.

Burst Cancel · Nov 10, 2007, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Nevermiss

The reason I quoted Abaddon's Gate mission, Burst Cancel, wasnt because its a challenging mission. I H/H it 11 times for master reward.
I mentioned it as a situation where you cannot prot all party members and where LoD fails to keep up.
I mentioned that I rarely used LoD and then only with Arcane Echo so that I can cast it more often.
I have been testing in Slaver's Exile in PUG's where balling up the enemies and taking them out all at once doesnt always happen according to plan. Since there are one prot/bond monk and one healer monk in these groups LoD didnt work well for me, even before the nerf.
Btw having your casters spread out when they start to nuke rarely works.
The stacking of HB with HP, on the other hand is quite the life saver. Combined with GoLE, you heal 8x140+ for 5 energy with 1 second cast time[thx to HB] and 2 sec recharge= perfect anti party wipe. HB + Kiss one the heavily enchanted/hexed tank can heal for over 1k HP.
The bond prot monk will not be gaining energy once the tank loses the aggro, so he/she cannot be effectively protting people unless he releases enchants and then you can only prot one/two people fast enough.

LoD didn't 'fail to keep up' in Abaddon's Gate. The only real source of damage in that mission was Words of Madness. Two-monk backline can handle that easily. And again, that's a really specialized situation that most people won't care about for more than 20 minutes in their entire Guild Wars life. If you need those kinds of examples to make a point, it's important to ask yourself how relevant your point really is.

HB+HP+GoLE isn't 5e, since the Glyph itself costs 5e. You'll also notice that you're using 3 skill slots to beat LoD, after LoD has been nerfed, when your original argument was:

Quote:

I never really liked LoD in PVE

How does that fit in? You're using 3 skills to mimic LoD after 2 of those skills have been buffed and LoD has been nerfed, and then you talk about LoD like it was never useful pre-nerf?

You also state, "having your casters spread out when they start to nuke rarely works". How about you have your casters spread out before the nukes come down? If you know the enemy is using AoE, why are you balled up in the first place? (to Antheus: if you're using H/H, bring a tank or party-wide damage mitigation ala Paragons).

And please don't talk about bonders like they're the prime example of prot monks. Bonders have a very specific and limited use.

mr_stealth · Nov 10, 2007, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

My argument is that there are no (or very few) situations where a pure healing bar would save a team where a hybrid bar could not.

The original argument that mr_stealth was presenting was that healing monks are likely superior to hybrids in many situations.

For a lot of players, after beating the campaigns, repeating the elite missions/areas is a fairly common thing to do. And these areas are good examples of areas where prot skills would be ineffective or even completely useless. AoE damage on a scale far beyond what normal prot skills are able to keep up with(you just can't get enought people protted;good situations for bonder+healer combo). Mass degen that can't be removed or is reapplied faster than you can remove it. Area effects or monster skills(normal or monster only) making enchants unusable or causing more harm than good. For most of the elite areas, the only prot taken, if any, is usually in the form of a bonder because its a constant reduction of damage to everyone.

A perfect example of prot being completely useless is vs the vamp touching necros in Slaver's Exile. A hybrid's LoD and Dwayna's Kiss would do little against these creature's ability to steal nearly 90 HP per second. You need several strong heals to keep up.

As for the bulk of PvE, you can probably slip through a lot of it using hybrids. But since you probably already know what you will up against in a given area, why not take a minute to build your monks for the area vs simply taking a pair of "mediocre, but should still work" monks. A lot of times you can benefit from having a stronger healing ability.

Chthon · Nov 10, 2007, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

The comparison of LoD to regen skills is spurious. First... [t]aking a +5 regen skill on each member of the party consumes 7 more skill slots, requires 8 people to be casting spells, and for much more than 5e. Second of all, LoD is not an enchantment.

I'm not comparing LoD as a whole to the entire team bringing a particular regen spell, like team healing breeze or team mending or whatever. I'm comparing one specific aspect of LoD -- the healing per person per time -- to that same aspect on the regen skills. There's a lot of folks bashing healing breeze (and perhaps more importantly spirit light weapon) saying that healing over time is just too weak to ever use, even at max regen (or beyond with SLW). (And yet, these same folks can't get enough of LoD.)

If you wanted to conceive of a comparison between LoD and a regen skill, then imagine it as: "5e, 2cast, 5recharge; For 7 sec all party members gain an unstrippable 0...5 regen."

All of the arguments that heal-over-time is too weak and too slow and therefore just crap should remain just as valid when the heal-over-time is cheap and unstrippable because they're arguments about heal/person/time, not arguments about heal/energy or strippability. So, I really cannot see how one can consistently assert that heal-over-time is bad, but LoD is good.

Now, I personally happen to think that constant passive regen is pretty damned nice, and seriously underappreciated. And LoD isn't bad in my book, just seriously overrated.

Quote:

If only 2 or 3 bars are dipping, a hybrid monk is categorically stronger. Against a 400-damage Channeled strike,...

Ah! You've gone and conflated two totally independent variables. How do you get from "only 2 or 3 bars are dipping" to "they must be getting hit with a 400-damage Channeled strike"? For all we know, only 1 or 2 bars are dipping, but they're being hit by pre-searing skale.
The comparison between LoD and single-target heals varies along with the number of people in need of healing at the same moment. The comparison between straight healing and prot varies along with the number and/or size of incoming damage packets. These two variables are not, however, strongly correlated with each other. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people; you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team; you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people; you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team. Single-target heals outperform LoD in the first and third cases; LoD outperforms single-target heals in the second and fourth. Straight healing outperforms prot in the first and second cases; prot outperforms straight healing in the third and fourth. (Though prot (alone) tends to be inadequate in the fourth due to the lack of partywide prot skills besides aegis.)

mr_stealth · Nov 10, 2007, 10:21 PM // 22:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

Prot a few + LoD has the same or better net effect than "more powerful heals on a couple"

LoD might be powerfull enough to negate one hit. The only prots that are going to be of use against the AoE are Spirit Bond and RoF. A healer will almost certainly have more skills available that are able to help deal with it, while the prot/hybrid might have Spirit Bond. I do agree that SB is extremely effective for someone standing in AoE. No matter what the build, that isn't a good situation for any type of monk to be in, but it does happen.

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Sandstorm does 29 per hit at 14, for instance. SoA is plenty enough for that.

I don't believe there is any PvE monster that has a Sandstorm that weak. HM monsters would be nearly double of that, and double it again it for bosses.

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You still haven't given a concrete instance of how heal is getting it done "a lot faster". The fact is, single-target heals aren't any better than single-target prots in an AoE situation.

Against AoE damage on multiple targets, most of them will take 1-2 full damage hits before any prot is on them, and even then how many prot skills on that bar are actually going to be effective(RoF,SB, and SoA/SH to a much less degree). For getting the bars to actually go back up the hybrid is going to have to rely on a very limited number of heal skills vs a healers bar that has several more powerfull heals. I'm not saying that having only healers is the way to go, but having at least one of your monks focused on healing isn't a bad idea

Burst Cancel · Nov 10, 2007, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

All of the arguments that heal-over-time is too weak and too slow and therefore just crap should remain just as valid when the heal-over-time is cheap and unstrippable because they're arguments about heal/person/time, not arguments about heal/energy or strippability. So, I really cannot see how one can consistently assert that heal-over-time is bad, but LoD is good.

You're considering arguments in a vacuum. You can bring up a hypothetical "unstrippable regen on everyone for 5e", but monks don't have such a skill. Actual heal-over-time spells in this game do have the failings that you are brushing aside (i.e., can be stripped, actual healed amount is difficult to control, not party-wide, etc.).

Furthermore, in the context of a hybrid monk, LoD is used as mop-up for damage that penetrates the web of prots and midline damage mitigation (see: paragons, warders, etc.). As such, its effect of cheap, moderate, party-wide healing is exactly what's required.

In addressing the second half of your post:

Quote:

1. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people;
2. you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team;
3. you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people;
4. you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team.

(reformatted for clarity)

Your assertions are then:

Quote:

A. Single-target heals outperform LoD in the first and third cases;
B. LoD outperforms single-target heals in the second and fourth.
C. Straight healing outperforms prot in the first and second cases;
D. prot outperforms straight healing in the third and fourth.

Situation 1 is not worth consideration because nobody is in danger of dying; I frankly don't care to discuss fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon, which is essentially what this situation describes.

The reason I'm considering two variables simultaneously is because we're not considering heals, prots, party-wide, and single-target in a vacuum. We're specifically talking about healing monks vs. hybrid monks. Hybrid monks have access to: single-target prots, party-wide prot (Aegis), single-target heal (Kiss) and party-wide heal (LoD). If you're going to discuss in that context, the variables cannot be considered alone.

Burst Cancel · Nov 10, 2007, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr_stealth

LoD might be powerfull enough to negate one hit. The only prots that are going to be of use against the AoE are Spirit Bond and RoF. A healer will almost certainly have more skills available that are able to help deal with it, while the prot/hybrid might have Spirit Bond. I do agree that SB is extremely effective for someone standing in AoE. No matter what the build, that isn't a good situation for any type of monk to be in, but it does happen.

Again, you're not just using LoD alone, or just prots alone. You are using prots in conjunction with LoD. Neither the healer nor the hybrid is going to be able to save everyone, because their strongest "keep people alive" abilities are all single-target.

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I don't believe there is any PvE monster that has a Sandstorm that weak. HM monsters would be nearly double of that, and double it again it for bosses.

At which point Spirit Bond kicks in. And again, I need someone to explain to me why everyone is hanging out in Sandstorms.

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Against AoE damage on multiple targets, most of them will take 1-2 full damage hits before any prot is on them, and even then how many prot skills on that bar are actually going to be effective(RoF,SB, and SoA/SH to a much less degree). For getting the bars to actually go back up the hybrid is going to have to rely on a very limited number of heal skills vs a healers bar that has several more powerfull heals. I'm not saying that having only healers is the way to go, but having at least one of your monks focused on healing isn't a bad idea

Your argument presents a moving target, just like the other guy. What else is on the team here? Do we have a bonder? Do we have a paragon? Is there a DSlash warrior mashing on SY? Do we have wards? Do we have blinds? Optimal builds change once you start considering tertiary factors.

The outcome of this discussion is also going to change based on the area context. If all of the enemies are using vampiric skills, of course prot isn't going to help you. But such enemies are a small minority of the encounters you face in GW; how is that a general case? And the condition you're setting above (your team standing around in stacked pulse AoE) should never be happening in the first place.

mr_stealth · Nov 10, 2007, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

And again, I need someone to explain to me why everyone is hanging out in Sandstorms.

While standing in a Sandstorm is a very stupid thing to do, there are many players in this game that will happily do it. I know to move, so do my guildies that I play with most of the time, but pugs and heroes have a tendency to move too late or not at all. And even when everyone does move quickly, there is still a decent amount of damage to recover from before it happens again.

Ensign · Nov 11, 2007, 12:27 AM // 00:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

No, where we're feeling the pain is in the heal per person per second. Lower heal and a 17% longer cycle make it push bars much more slowly than before. That forces you to lean into Kiss and your other heal that much harder and makes failing to prot someone in time that much more punishing.

The slower cast and recharge matters when your team is getting rocked and everyone is low. Most of the time, the 9 health is roughly compensated by the skill topping everyone off now. Kiss is still used in the same situations as before and isn't really affected by the LoD change, I still throw it aggressively on low protted targets and don't really care if they top back off a little bit slower now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

I think the entire point of this nerf was to render us unable to condense all of healing down into 2, or even 3, skills on a hybrid bar.

The entire point of the nerf was to remove LoD from GvG play. The effects on PvE play are 100% collateral.

I don't know how you gather that it's to put more heals on a character's bar. I'm playing around with Word of Healing a bit now and I want another direct heal on my bar even less that I did when I had LoD. Ever since I learned how to use RoF a couple of years ago I've felt that a second direct heal has been a luxury. Right now I'm experimenting with Vigorous Spirit in place of a party heal, but in general Word + Heal Party, with RoF and Mend support, is all you need.

Quote:

1. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people;
2. you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team;
3. you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people;
4. you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team.

To restate what's been said; in situation 1 you wand because there's nothing demanding any other response. Situation 2, you wand and LoD or Party when there's enough to clean up. Situation 3 you prot the targets up and babysit them with Kiss. Situation 4 you put up Aegis, mash on your skills, and hope that your offense kills mobs before you all blow up.

I get the feeling that people here think that you try to fight people standing in ticking AoEs with LoD. Of course you don't, that's stupid; you put up Protspirit or SoA as appropriate, spam RoF, and Kiss until things are sane enough to LoD. If you assume that the Monks with the good bars are playing like utter retards, it's pretty easy to tear them down eh?

Div · Nov 11, 2007, 01:16 AM // 01:16

Too much quote wars. Bad players will never learn, and will continue to argue while being blinded by their beliefs.

horseradish · Nov 11, 2007, 04:20 AM // 04:20

ROFL quote wars.

Grammar · Nov 11, 2007, 04:31 AM // 04:31

Everyone here who is arguing with Burst seems to be forgetting two things:

1. Hybrids have significantly less damage to heal than pure heal monks, because skills like Prot Spirit, SoA, Aegis, etc. are preventing a crap-ton of damage.

2. Even if things start going to hell in a hurry and your party starts taking large amounts of damage, LoD isn't the only skill you have to deal with it. RoF and Kiss are there for you too. LoD + RoF + Kiss will handle "oh crap!" situations just as well if not better than whatever an LoD-less pure heal monk can muster.

So you have the best of all three worlds. Prot stuff to prevent as much damage as possible, LoD to mop up the damage that make it through, and LoD + RoF + Kiss for when the sh** hits the fan.
Pretty basic stuff here folks.

mr_stealth · Nov 11, 2007, 11:36 AM // 11:36

The problem with prot vs DoT/AoE is that a large portion of the skills are rendered useless, and even the ones that do work are conditional. Like I've mention before Spirit Bond can be great powerfull AoEs, but tone that damage down just a bit, or maybe the person standing in a standstorm is wearing geomancer armor, and SB wont trigger making it a waste of energy. RoF is about the same effectiveness as an average heal in this case, except that there is a good chance it will get "wasted" on a weak wand hit instead of the damage it was supposed to prevent(I can't count how many times I've seen this happen, even during AoEs). Prot Spirit is about the same as Spirit Bond here, near the line where it becomes less ineffective due to lower damage hits. SoA's usefullness in a single AoE is on par with RoF/several low cost heal skills if it has time to build up to its full potential, but it does become much more powerfull in stacked AoEs.

LoD, especially after the recent nerf, is the last thing I would want to be casting while several people are quickly losing health. Its a long cast (several more hits are going to happen while your casting it), and it doesn't heal much compared to the damage coming in. If you're using LoD to mop up the little damage on people that is getting through prots its fine, but this is a sitation (a VERY common situation in PvE) where most of those prots aren't able to help much leaving you to rely on some extremely limited healing ability. It looks like LoD may be falling out of use anyway, so I don't know why its even part of this discussion.

Now down to Dwayna's Kiss, the only real healing skill in this case. Like the prots, it is conditional, but the conditions (hexes/enchants) aren't as restricting. DK creates a situation where some of those wasted prots can provide some help, buy increasing the amount of healing. But DK is just one skill, that you can use once every 4 seconds(1s cast, 3s recharge). In the current situation, this is great for the one person you healed, but the rest are still in need of healing while DK is recharging. The only skill you're likely to have available to help at this time is RoF, and to be honest, that might as well be Orison/Whisper/Ethereal/. RoF would be better if it gets triggered to its max potential, but the heals have the advantage of simply working as advertised.

In PvP, you don't know what you are going to be up against, so you have to build yourself in a mid-ground (aka hybrid) to be able to reasonably cover all the possibilites. You wouldn't want to be a full healer vs a team of people doing large spike damage, or a protter vs a pack of life stealers. However, in PvE, you most likely know what you will up against, allowing you to build to be most effective for the task at hand. It should be fairly obvious that 2 monks built for the job at hand(whether it be 2 healers, healer + protter, healer + bonder) will be more effective than 2 generic "I don't know what I'm facing, so I have to prepare for anything" monks.

A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure. Don't allow yourself to be blinded by what's currently popular in a certain aspect of the game, but don't ignore it either. Think for yourself using both sides of the game as guidance and maybe you'll come up with something better for the current situation.

Kale Ironfist · Nov 11, 2007, 01:28 PM // 13:28

Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE. I ask you this, WHY is your party still standing in it for longer than three seconds? Even if you are H/Hing, you still have flags, and if you can't flag, then learn to flag!

Quote:

A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure.

I can't remember who said it, but they said this:

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The best builds for PvE are modified PvP builds

Mark Nevermiss · Nov 11, 2007, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kale Ironfist

Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE. I ask you this, WHY is your party still standing in it for longer than three seconds? Even if you are H/Hing, you still have flags, and if you can't flag, then learn to flag!

Several reasons come to mind: knockdown's, slow reactions, high latency, mid-casting, multiple concurrent AOE's + hexes...etc.

mr_stealth · Nov 11, 2007, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kale Ironfist

Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE.

That type of AoE is a prime example, but the same can apply to any scenario where multiple people are taking damage. One person could be the target of an ele's AoE, while another is taking degen and damage from a necro or mesmer, and a third is being beat on by a warrior. This is where the healer's so called "redundant" skills become more valuable. The biggest advantage that heal has over prot is that prot skills have a potential to work, but heals just work. In a situation where several people need to gain health, and quickly, I'd rather have more skills that I can rely on to do that vs skills that just have potential. It could still be a hybrid build, but leaning more heavily on the heal side instead of prot.

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can't remember who said it, but they said this:

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The best builds for PvE are modified PvP builds

The key word there is modified. Exactly what I was referring to here.

Quote:

A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure. Don't allow yourself to be blinded by what's currently popular in a certain aspect of the game, but don't ignore it either. Think for yourself using both sides of the game as guidance and maybe you'll come up with something better for the current situation.

Chthon · Nov 11, 2007, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

Situation 1 is not worth consideration because nobody is in danger of dying; I frankly don't care to discuss fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon, which is essentially what this situation describes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

in situation 1 you wand because there's nothing demanding any other response.

I think I must have chosen my terminology poorly, since I managed to get myself misunderstood by at least two people.

By "infrequent/small packets hitting a few people," I did not mean infrequent and/or small in the absolute sense, like fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon. Rather, I meant it in the relative sense in terms of prot's energy efficiency as a function of packet size and/or frequency. As in: "not frequent and/or big enough to get prot's energy efficiency up above heal's (but still frequent and/or big enough to kill someone if you don't do anything about it)". I thought it could be safely assumed that everyone would know I wasn't talking about damage that could just be ignored.

If you assume that other posters are thinking like utter retards, it's pretty easy to tear them down.

Burst Cancel · Nov 11, 2007, 07:01 PM // 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr_stealth

While standing in a Sandstorm is a very stupid thing to do, there are many players in this game that will happily do it. I know to move, so do my guildies that I play with most of the time, but pugs and heroes have a tendency to move too late or not at all. And even when everyone does move quickly, there is still a decent amount of damage to recover from before it happens again.

In other words, your argument is predicated on people playing badly? I'd also like to point out that in situations like pulse AoE, where the pulses are small enough that prots don't trigger, the best skills in the game to deal with the damage aren't even in the monk lines - they're warrior/paragon shouts. A single WY! can reduce pulse AoE damage to the point where SoA/Shielding Hands nullifies it completely, and LoD is enough to mop up.

Another issue in this case is that you keep talking about how prot wouldn't be able to do anything in X specific situation, or Y other situation, but you haven't shown how healing would be any better. If your entire team is standing in 40-point pulsed AoE, what healing bar are you going to be using? WoH pretty much means that there's no point in bringing many other heals because their efficiency is terrible in comparison, and you're going to be mashing on WoH as much as you can. In a pulsed AoE situation, Seed of Life/Healing Seed are probably the best single-skill counters, but there's nothing precluding you from running those skills on a hybrid bar.

Your example of one person taking ele damage, one person being degened, and one person with a warrior train on them is actually the hybrid's forte. The person tanking the ele gets a prot spirit or spirit bond to reduce most of the incoming damage, the person with the warrior train gets Guardian/SoA and RoFs, and LoD cleans up all three at once.

Prot also 'just works', if its being used correctly. If your target isn't taking heavy damage, you're not going to use Prot Spirit. If your target isn't taking lots of hits, you're not going to use SoA. Prots are all conditional, but they have very strong effects when their conditions are met, and hybrid bars are constructed so that you can cover as many common situations as you can. A single Guardian on an ally that's being trained on can reduce hundreds of points of damage for just 5e. Spirit Bond on someone being spiked heals for more than Infuse Health.

In order to make a hybrid bar 'useless', you have to tailor the situation pretty carefully - which is exactly what you're doing. Examples like lifestealing, Words of Madness, pulsed AoE that isn't strong enough to trigger Spirit Bond, but not weak enough to be nullified by SoA/Shielding Hands, etc. You can't really include any kind of melee pressure, because Guardian and Aegis are plainly superior to healing through the damage. You can't really include any massive damage spike, because prot spirit and spirit bond are plainly better. You can't include lots of weak hits, because shielding hands and SoA are amazing there.

Nobody is advocating that you take a bar you see in GvG and run it in places where you know it isn't going to work. And as I said above, your build is going to depend on a lot of external factors: what other damage mitigation you have on the team and the types of monsters you're fighting. If you're bringing a bonder, or you have paragons in the midline giving everyone +124AL and reducing damage by 35% globally on top of that, you can get away with just WoH, a condition removal, and a hex removal.