Curse

farmermanu · Jun 14, 2012, 01:54 AM // 01:54

Hi,

I didn t play gw for a long time, and now i am surprised. Everyone have a shield , ele , monk ... before it was warrior who got it ?

Why are they using it now ?

And another question... before we used to kill monk first, now it s mesmer or ele.. why ?

It s very stupid i know...
thank you for your answers

Jet · Jun 14, 2012, 03:13 AM // 03:13

its called a defense set. It lowers your energy pool but raises your health and armor. People use it because if they were on their casting sets they would be taking 100% of the damage if your a caster. As a monk, I don't really care too much if my party members have it or not in Pve, though it would be helpful.

There's really no set priority on who to attack. Its based on your team build and which class might pose the greatest danger to your team. That will be your main target. Anyone who always goes straight for a monk at this late point in the game should uninstall and quit playing.

Olle · Jun 14, 2012, 05:39 AM // 05:39

Its also purely cosmetic, it looks good.
But jet covers the rest

ruk1a · Jun 14, 2012, 07:07 AM // 07:07

Yep.. everyone should have a shield set. It's for the extra armor, +armor vs X element and such.

superraptors · Jun 14, 2012, 09:52 AM // 09:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by farmermanu

Hi,

I didn t play gw for a long time, and now i am surprised. Everyone have a shield , ele , monk ... before it was warrior who got it ?

Why are they using it now ?

And another question... before we used to kill monk first, now it s mesmer or ele.. why ?

It s very stupid i know...
thank you for your answers

it gives a guaranteed +8armor regardless of meeting the requirement and an additional to +10 armor depending on your mod and vsing who.

i won't go into the maths but it reduces a tremedous amount of damage especially if you are getting targeted.

before people use to aim monks because they are dumb and simply people have evolved and learn't that as long as your opponents can't deal damage they can't beat you.

also the fact that monks cannot outheal constant damage over time especially when that target is not on a shield set.

KotCR · Jun 14, 2012, 03:21 PM // 15:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by farmermanu

And another question... before we used to kill monk first, now it s mesmer or ele.. why ?

Several reasons, some of which have already been covered.

The Monk isn't always the biggest threat. If you have a team where all your damage dealers are physical fighters, and there is an Ele blinding all of them constantly, then until that Ele is down they won't be able to do any damage whatsoever (and certainly won't be putting out the damage required to take down a Monk). Among sensible players, the Ele becomes the primary target.

The same goes for Mesmer; If your team is focused around caster damage dealers, and that Mesmer keeps shutting you all down, until that Mesmer is down your team isn't going to be able to do anything. Also, often an enemy Mesmer (or a particularly good Ranger) shuts down your Monk, in which case to ensure your survivability, you need to stop him from doing that before thinking about taking their Monk out, else they'll win via the battle of attrition.

Those are two of the most common examples, but there is such examples for all classes - while these are far rarer examples, it can happen:
- A Warrior or Assassin when your team has no melee shutdown or effective defense will quickly destroy everything and can become a priority target.
- Your team's damage focuses entirely around hexes or conditions and there's a Paragon under adrenaline boosters with Hexbreaker Aria and Song of Purification constantly keeping their entire team clean of both.
-There's a Ritualist spamming weapon skills on their team making them highly resistant to any damage. The Monk can be hard enough to kill already, under these he can be untouchable.
-A Minion Master Necro whose somehow managed to create a full army of minions and you have no AoE damage is on the rampage (meaning the only way to prevent yourself from being swarmed is to kill the Necro).
-Etc, etc.

Then it comes to the Monks themselves. The current Monk meta-build, that has been around for a long while now, is incredibly well-defended against physical damage dealers, which typically are the main way to kill a Monk. When your attack sequence keeps on being broken up by Shield Bash, effectively taking your ability to kill away for a full 20+ seconds, or your knockdowns aren't working due to Balanced Stance or Dolyak Signet preventing your chaining, or Bonnitti's goes up at a key point while attacking him (protecting him and meaning you feed him energy to cast even more healing spells if you continue attacking him), you start doing your opponent's team favours by actually attacking the Monk instead of somebody else.

Finally, it's alot harder for a Monk to keep up with healing his entire team than it is for him to keep up with damage on a single-target. Pressure has been the primary way to get kills in Guild Wars for a while now. Spreading out the damage a bit, only converging to a single-target for a kill-spike when he's under 50% or whatever and their Monk is feeling stretched thin, is what will score you kills. Focusing on one target from the start of the match to the end can often just makes the Monks job easier, as he doesn't have to worry about the wellbeing of anyone else and they are free to wreak havoc on your team (and if you're mostly melee you suddenly become a very appetising target for AoE damage too).