Curse

Tab · Oct 29, 2007, 07:40 PM // 19:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amalek

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it and take a smiter's boon monk yeyeyeyeyeyeyeye

Best post of the thread so far.

arcady · Oct 30, 2007, 08:21 PM // 20:21

At this point I do have access to LoD, ZB, and Life Sheath on both of my monks. At the time of the mission, I think I didn't have ZB on the monk I was using, but I did have LoD. LoD is one of the easiest elites to cap.

But it never seemed efficient - being a fairly small heal unless I put a lot of points into heal. It seemed I could get almost as much out of the Divine Bonus boost on any other spell. Plus it only works if they go below 80%, and at that point in the game, they rarely went below 80% unless they were on a direct path to 0% from some goof that was leading us into a wipe.

Whiskeyjack · Oct 30, 2007, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Tbh Lod's is really only there to mop up any dmg that gets through your prot and overall party defences, which if the party is any good will not be a great deal of dmg. If your party is taking so little dmg that the rarley get below 80% health I probably wouldn't bother with targeted heals either, your just wasting energy on someone who does not really need the heal, whereas LoD will at least give a heal to everyone below 80% for only 5e spent.

Without knowing how your attributes are set though its difficult to say how efficient LoD is on your bar.

Chthon · Oct 31, 2007, 12:50 AM // 00:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcady

At this point I do have access to LoD, ZB, and Life Sheath on both of my monks. At the time of the mission, I think I didn't have ZB on the monk I was using, but I did have LoD. LoD is one of the easiest elites to cap.

But it never seemed efficient - being a fairly small heal unless I put a lot of points into heal. It seemed I could get almost as much out of the Divine Bonus boost on any other spell. Plus it only works if they go below 80%, and at that point in the game, they rarely went below 80% unless they were on a direct path to 0% from some goof that was leading us into a wipe.

I agree that in some ways LoD isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. It has the potential for energy efficiency several times better than any other heal in the game (except maybe vampiric horror in a contrived situation), but that potential isn't always lived up to. For best results, you need an 8-person area, and you need them to each be taking slow, steady damage. Really, the ideal situation is a party of 8 standing in a pool of lava. (Cue Great Lava Turkey.) Even when you're pretty far off the ideal situation (damaged focused on one or two party members for example) LoD can still give pretty darned good bang for your buck.

I think the bigger problem is that LoD is not the spell you want it to be. You want it to be Heal Party -- a skill that you can pull out when your party got nailed with a nasty AoE while bunched up and with most people un-prot-ed, and now you have a bunch of people in the "oh shit" health range, and you want to get them all back out of the "oh shit" range in a hurry. Perhaps you'd even like it to be D'Kiss/Etheral Light/Healing Whisper/Heal Other/etc -- a skill you can pull out when one un-prot-ed party member gets hit hard and pull their health back out the the "oh shit" range in a hurry. LoD isn't either of these spells. Its healing per party member per time is just too low to ever pull anyone's health back from the "oh shit" range quickly.

So what is LoD then? In this, if maybe in little else, I think Whiskeyjack is perfectly correct -- It's a bar-topper. It's best for healing people in no immediate danger up to (near) full hp so that they have a bigger hp buffer for when they do take damage -- and doing so cheaply. In a lot of ways it's closer to signet of devotion/rejuv than to heal party or the single-target straight heals.

So, what do you do with this? The "conventional wisdom" is that you stick it on a hybrid bar with a whole bunch of prot and try to prot so effectively that no one's health ever goes into the "oh shit" range to start with. Then when you fail, you stick more prot on them to try to keep them alive while LoD cycles 5 or 6 times. You also get one shot of D's Kiss every 4 sec, which can boost bars out of the "oh shit" range nice and quickly, provided that you don't get more than one bar down there in 4 sec.

You can probably tell from my prior posts that I find the "conventional wisdom" to be wise only in certain circumstances. But going into that again is only going to get me flamed more, so I'm not going to.

Snow Bunny · Oct 31, 2007, 04:44 AM // 04:44

The point remains:

It's better to prevent damage then heal through it.

LoD just works very nicely at coping with the bits that get let out.

So...

yeah.

And........heal party and heal other suck.

Quite badly.

Grammar · Oct 31, 2007, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

So, what do you do with this? The "conventional wisdom" is that you stick it on a hybrid bar with a whole bunch of prot and try to prot so effectively that no one's health ever goes into the "oh shit" range to start with. Then when you fail, you stick more prot on them to try to keep them alive while LoD cycles 5 or 6 times. You also get one shot of D's Kiss every 4 sec, which can boost bars out of the "oh shit" range nice and quickly, provided that you don't get more than one bar down there in 4 sec.

It isn't as if LoD has to do all the mop-up work. Most hybrids also carry RoF and Kiss (as you mentioned) in addition to LoD.
LoD, Kiss, and RoF should be all the healing you will ever need, especially if you have a second LoD hybrid in your party with those same 3 skills as well. There's plenty of healing there to pull your whole team out of the "oh shit" range if needed. I find that any healing skills beyond those 3 are just overkill/wasted slots (even the signets).
And that leaves 5 slots for prot stuff; 10 if you have a second LoD hybrid monk in your party.

Ensign · Nov 01, 2007, 12:08 AM // 00:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Then when you fail, you stick more prot on them to try to keep them alive while LoD cycles 5 or 6 times. You also get one shot of D's Kiss every 4 sec, which can boost bars out of the "oh shit" range nice and quickly, provided that you don't get more than one bar down there in 4 sec.

When someone's health drops to a critical level you stabilize them with RoF, Spirit Bond, or some other large Prot, which buys you enough time to land a Dwayna's Kiss (which heals for a decent amount since they're protted up), which should get them somewhere stable enough that LoD can clean up the rest. If more than one person is getting blown up you mash on RoF until SoA and your big Prots stabilize so that Kiss and LoD can clean everything up.

The only really functional alternative I've seen is Healer's Boon, which tends to burn itself out in 20 seconds under the same circumstances without BiP support. If you take that BiP though it's a fine character. Without BiP though you really need to ride the highest efficiency stuff you can get, the strong prots, LoD, and Kiss on a stacked target, otherwise you're going to blow yourself out. Without Healer's Boon, it isn't like anything other than Heal Other / Heal Party is going to move bars up faster anyway, regardless of energy costs.

yum · Nov 01, 2007, 01:52 AM // 01:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

I think the bigger problem is that LoD is not the spell you want it to be. You want it to be Heal Party -- a skill that you can pull out when your party got nailed with a nasty AoE while bunched up and with most people un-prot-ed, and now you have a bunch of people in the "oh shit" health range, and you want to get them all back out of the "oh shit" range in a hurry. Perhaps you'd even like it to be D'Kiss/Etheral Light/Healing Whisper/Heal Other/etc -- a skill you can pull out when one un-prot-ed party member gets hit hard and pull their health back out the the "oh shit" range in a hurry. LoD isn't either of these spells. Its healing per party member per time is just too low to ever pull anyone's health back from the "oh shit" range quickly.

If those "oh shit" teamates keep standing in AOE, then they all deserve to die.

Monk is not god. He must coordinate well with his teamates to be effective. Preventing the damages is always better than healing them. But if your teamates are a bunch of idiots, then there is little you can do. I hope you get it.

Chthon · Nov 01, 2007, 02:17 AM // 02:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

When someone's health drops to a critical level you stabilize them with RoF..

Errr, Ensign, but your hybrid builds don't have RoF...

Quote:

The only really functional alternative I've seen is Healer's Boon, which tends to burn itself out in 20 seconds under the same circumstances without BiP support. If you take that BiP though it's a fine character. Without BiP though you really need to ride the highest efficiency stuff you can get, the strong prots, LoD, and Kiss on a stacked target, otherwise you're going to blow yourself out.

1. I run HBoon quite frequently, and I find it usually outlasts hybrid, even without the GoLE that hybrid uses. I just keep in mind that HBoon moves the point where overhealing starts to happen on you, and fall back to playing it like the old, old, old WoH builds if energy gets really tight. Perhaps I'm just better at playing one build than the other...

2. When you've got 1 person running HBoon, there's an incentive to largely unhybridize your monks by trading most of the healing onto that person since they can get better mileage out of the heals skills. Of course this costs you the "two simultaneous prots" benefit of running two hybrids.

3. You meant "Heal Party" there, not "LoD," right? Last time I checked, not even you get two elites on your bar.

Quote:

Without Healer's Boon, it isn't like anything other than Heal Other / Heal Party is going to move bars up faster anyway, regardless of energy costs.

Well, not much faster at any rate. Point taken.

-----

To be fair, if you've got two LoD hybrids, the wait time for LoD to bring someone back up is halved, so they may only have to wait 12 or 18 seconds to get moved back out of the red zone if they don't get priority for Kiss, or Signet, or get lucky with a big RoF.

Ensign · Nov 01, 2007, 02:34 AM // 02:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Errr, Ensign, but your hybrid builds don't have RoF...

Of course not, heroes don't know how to use RoF. Players on the other hand do, which is what we're discussing here right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

1. I run HBoon quite frequently, and I find it usually outlasts hybrid, even without the GoLE that hybrid uses.

Then you're either playing it wrong, or playing in a situation so easy that what you're doing doesn't matter at all. Nothing in the game competes with Spirit Bond, Protective Spirit, and Shield of Absorption.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. When you've got 1 person running HBoon, there's an incentive to largely unhybridize your monks by trading most of the healing onto that person since they can get better mileage out of the heals skills.

If you have a HBoon / Heal Party then you typically don't want the LoD, and SoD / RC / Divert are much more attractive. You should still have Gift on your bar though, there really isn't a good reason not to take that if you're not rocking the big LoD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

3. You meant "Heal Party" there, not "LoD," right? Last time I checked, not even you get two elites on your bar.

No, I mean that without BiP you don't touch a Healer's Boon guy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

To be fair, if you've got two LoD hybrids, the wait time for LoD to bring someone back up is halved, so they may only have to wait 12 or 18 seconds to get moved back out of the red zone if they don't get priority for Kiss, or Signet, or get lucky with a big RoF.

Er what now? Are you desperately worried about people sitting at half health or something? A Kiss and a couple LoDs should take someone from 1 HP to well over half, with the prot that stabilized them still up.

LightningHell · Nov 01, 2007, 04:38 AM // 04:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. When you've got 1 person running HBoon, there's an incentive to largely unhybridize your monks by trading most of the healing onto that person since they can get better mileage out of the heals skills. Of course this costs you the "two simultaneous prots" benefit of running two hybrids.

Generally, Prot spells don't require a huge Prot investment for them to work properly. As such, bringing Gift as a bar-upper is better than going full prot.

Grammar · Nov 01, 2007, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by LightningHell

Generally, Prot spells don't require a huge Prot investment for them to work properly. As such, bringing Gift as a bar-upper is better than going full prot.

Agreed. When I run a "full" prot monk, I still have RoF and Gift; that's as "full prot" as I ever get.

The law of diminishing returns is definitely in play for protection prayers, much more so than healing prayers I'd argue.
Most of the time, 10 or 11 in prot prayers will do. The only reason to go to 12 is to get the breakpoint on Aegis.

Age · Nov 01, 2007, 09:41 PM // 21:41

I thought this was on Sanctum Cay mission and when I first did it I was the only sole monk in the group.I used healing as that is what all wanted in party.A warrior can run this and you don't need an elite for it.

FC_DriFteR · Nov 03, 2007, 03:31 PM // 15:31

The problem with a healing prayer only bars is that 90% of the skills do the same thing with small health bonuses if certain criteria are met. Thank goodness that cure hex was added as it means that die hard HP players may actually do something more useful with one of their skill slots.

Lets face the music people......Guild wars is designed to be "balanced" when players are level 20. Once your character reaches max level and is fighting appropriately leveled monsters protection really shines over healing.

The other thing I have noticed is that not one of the pro prot posts have said that healing prayers are useless.....almost all posters have mentioned 1 or 2 healing skills that they put on prot bars whereas pro heal posts have more or less say that prot is useless.

When I began playing I could not see the benefit of protection prayers. This was put down to not having finished the game (proph was the only game at the time) so prot was never really needed. The first time I had a prot skill added to my heal bar was back when 5 man SF farming was popular. I realized that if the bonder had a few enemies targeting them I couldn't out heal the damage. I added prot spirit to my bar, had no problem helaing the bonder anymore and have played hybrid ever since. These days when monking I feel "naked" if there is only one prot skill on my bar.

MarcinAJ · Nov 05, 2007, 01:06 AM // 01:06

Had to reply in this one... You guys have killed my lurking spree!

Largely, I agree with Chthon; That what you get out of protection is a function of how much damage is being taken. AS such, there is definitely a sweet spot to hit before protection performs really good. I've played pure protection, hybrids and pure healing (I'm currently enjoying Healers Boon immensely). All of them can be good if you play them right, but for this post I'm going to argue on the side of pure healing and my take on Healers Boon.

IMO The biggest problem with healing is the overall slower casting speed on healing prayers, it makes going pure healing a bit cumbersome. There only a few skills with fast cast times and they are either elites or expensive, whereas in protection its almost all fast casts and quite a few of them are cheap... Going pure healing is a setup thats purely reactive, you wait for damage to happen and then heal and slower cast times make that more difficult. Skills like WoH reward you for working on that very principle, which is why its a good and popular elite for pure healing builds.

Thats pretty simple, but people always seem to mess it up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FC_DriFteR

The problem with a healing prayer only bars is that 90% of the skills do the same thing with small health bonuses if certain criteria are met.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The only really functional alternative I've seen is Healer's Boon, which tends to burn itself out in 20 seconds under the same circumstances without BiP support.

These two quotes highlight very well, how people mess it up (even without Healers Boon) and that is through energy management, or rather a lack of it. If your pure healing then about 75%-90% of what your doing is energy management or you fail.

1) This means you cant over-heal.
It is ok to leave people with less than full health.

2) This means know which skill to use.
As FC_DriFteR said 90% of the skills do the same thing with small health bonuses if certain criteria are met. Some see that as a problem but I see it as one of the key ways to manage energy. I regularly see Dwaynas Kiss heal for more than Heal Other or WoH... Orison might be cheaper than Heal Other, but if a person is taking damage You might have to use Orison three times to get them to the same health Heal Other gets them to in one cast, in such cases Heal Other is the cheaper choice... Etc...

3) This means knowing who to heal and when to heal them.
Its very common that the people with lower health aren't always the ones who need a healing the most.

4) This means knowing when to let people die.
Some people are just energy sinks, Healing them burns up so much energy you have nothing left for the rest of the party. Some people are so far away you cant heal them without it hurting the rest of the party, or causing yourself to die. Your not prot, you cant slap PS/SoR/SoD/Etc on them and leave them alone for 20 sec. IMO these people are lowest priority to heal, I'll even let them die if it means I can use that same amount of energy on 3-4 other people who stay alive. I think a lot of monks have a problem drawing that line.

I think these are basic things no matter what monk build you are playing but on a pure healing monk any one of them will cause you to run out of energy. I've done it before, I've seen a lot of other monks, especially pure healing monks do it. Once that happens you are no longer useful.

As far as pure healing builds go, Healers Boon is good, really good. The 50% increase in healing is nice but its the combo of half casting speed that makes it great. If it was just one or the other, it would be a mediocre skill not even worthy of elite status.... Why do I think this? because as I said before, pure healing is all reactive. Healers Boon lowers the time it takes for your reaction to go into effect and enhances that effect. Points 1, 2 and 3 above suddenly have some leeway. For a good healing monk this translates into casting less and more efficient skill usage. But the skill can come back to bite you in the rear if you mess up your energy management at all. Fail at any of the four points above (especially number 4) and your energy is gone fast. No to mention that you will surely need helper skill on your bar for energy, maybe even 2. This can cut down your function range a bit as you might have to lose a hex of condition removal.

As For LoD, I hadn't ever thought of using it in a hybrid with protection; it could be interesting. But for a pure healing build, LoD is one of two things, a counter for heavy party-wide degen, or a party wide Band-Aid to buy time between bigger heals on specific people.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FC_DriFteR

The other thing I have noticed is that not one of the pro prot posts have said that healing prayers are useless.....almost all posters have mentioned 1 or 2 healing skills that they put on prot bars whereas pro heal posts have more or less say that prot is useless.

Very true. Though it may have something to do with how the two attribute lines scale in general. A lot of protection skills can work well with 8 to 10 ranks in protection. For healing skills I find its best to have 15 (some people like 16), then 9-10 divine favor and at that point I'm looking for something to help with energy management, be it divine spirit (dump rest of points into favor), something from inspiration, gole, etc. At that point just don't find anything real nice in protection or your skill bar is full.

EDIT: for Healers Boom, if you have a high Kurzick or luxon title rank, be sure to pick up the skill Selfless Spirit. It reduces cost of casting on other allies by 5 (minimum cost of 0). rank 6 = 15 sec, rank 12 = 20 sec. It works amazingly well with Healers Boon.

arcady · Nov 26, 2007, 05:51 PM // 17:51

I did this mission again last night, this time on my Earth Elementalist.

This time I went solo - it was late and I wanted the bonus in one quick no hassle run, so I just hero / henched it.

I brought Tahlkora with me, using my monk's build:

Prot 12 + 2
Divine 12
[skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Guardian[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Zealous Benediction[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Draw Conditions[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Also with me was Acolyte Jin using [skill]Burning Arrow[/skill] elite and a level 14 Polar Bear. And Gwen on an interrupt build (and I forget her elite).

Finished out with Stephan and the henchie mage.

My Elementalist:
12+1 Earth, 12+1 Energy
[skill]Sandstorm[/skill][skill]Churning Earth[/skill][skill]Obsidian Flame[/skill][skill]Ebon Hawk[/skill][skill]Ward Against Melee[/skill][skill]Dragon's Stomp[/skill][skill]Earth Attunement[/skill][skill]Stone Daggers[/skill]
(My normal build doesn't use Churning Earth, but in this mission you have mobs that can't run - they're locked in a tower - so it was perfect, usually I have [skill=text]Magnetic Aura[/skill] instead).

Easiest mission ever - I stand by my perception that Protection line is perfect here.

Tahlkora kept up great. Good aggro control also helps. With no Wa/Mo's, I was able to limit most mobs to a size of 3-5. Steamrolled through the thing with little problem with my whole group at near full health all the way through. Only the bear died, once - when he ran off of my radar to chase white mantle running to their tower, as if he'd been under the control of a Wa/Mo player...

arcady · Nov 26, 2007, 06:04 PM // 18:04

I'd also like to add that recently I tried to do Dunes of Despair on a healing build rather than a prot build - twice - and the party wiped both times.

Healing Prayers just could not keep up with the red bars going down, whereas when I've done that mission on my prot build, the red bars never go down to begin with. [skill=text]Zealous Benediction[/skill] is my least used spell, it just isn't needed half of the time.