Curse

lynnokonomi · Jun 10, 2010, 03:01 PM // 15:01

When I play Random Arenas, everyone calls me a noob almost immediately because I am a Mo/E (I was told Mo/Me is vastly superior). I think my build is ok -- some teams I have been able to carry up to 10 consecutive wins... others, not really. So when I can't keep the team alive they all yell at me because I am apparently "god awful" and should "uninstall the game". They tell me to "get good".

The thing is, I feel hindered because I don't have any campaign but Prophecies. I feel like my options are very limited because of this and, honestly, I'm not sure I like the game enough to buy the expansions based on how rude people are!

My build is this:

Word of Healing
Draw Conditions
Mend Ailment
Purge Conditions
Protective Spirit
Remove Hex
Glyph of Lesser Energy
Reversal of Fortune

Attributes: 16 in Healing, 10 in Protection, 8 in Divine
405 HP, 59 Energy with 4 Regen Arrows

I basically just try very hard to counter all the hexes/conditions on people and my only true heal is Word of Healing. It works sometimes but fails most other times. As a Monk, what is a good build I can have for RA with Prophecies-only skills? I am A-OK with changing my secondary class to something else if it means I will perform much better.

I should add: My main weaknesses as monk are (1) when I am being attacked by too many people at once, I seem to die too easily, (2) I use up my energy relatively quickly, and (3) I have a hard time handling a bunch of players' health at once.

Leigh The Legendary · Jun 10, 2010, 03:33 PM // 15:33

read over some tactics of playing monk in RA in the forums. I can tell first off your attributes are not in line with how this is typically played and I'm sure along with this you should read up on tactics on how to play monk effectively.

also 405hp is bad on a monk as well as constant high mana weapon set. read on what weapon sets and armor you should use. here is a link to the forums here where this may be found:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/g...arena-f30.html

current meta RA monk (pay attention to weapon sets and armor info):
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Mo/W_RA_WoH

Xenomortis · Jun 10, 2010, 04:10 PM // 16:10

Trying to play PvP when you only own one campaign is going to be problematic - you are restricted.
Fortunately, useful skills do exist in Prophecies.

First thing; get more health.
16 in Healing means you have a Superior Rune - I strongly recommend you get rid of that. As a monk you need to be in the high 500s pushing 600 in health.

You have a high Protection Rank yet only one of your prot skills depends heavily on it. You also have three condition removal skills when you only really need one good skill.
Prot skills you might find useful are things like Guardian (although with the amount of physical shutdown in RA, you don't need that too much).

It's common for monks to be Mo/W so they can take some defensive skills to prevent crits, Knockdowns and provide some blocking.

I'm guessing you're on a PvE character in which case you need to make sure you do the attribute point quests: Forgotten Wisdom and The Hero's Challenge. For PvP it's recommended you create a PvP character. The advantage with these is you can quickly unlock items and skills for you to use on any PvP character and you'll start at level 20 with the maximum number of attribute points. You can also freely change your secondary without doing a quest or paying beforehand. Neither is there a downside to deleting your PvP character and creating a different one with to play with a different profession.

Playing a monk takes practice and is often a thankless task.

Eragon Zarroc · Jun 10, 2010, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by lynnokonomi

some teams I have been able to carry up to 10 consecutive wins

this what matters most. if you only have prophecies, you are always gonna be limited in pvp against those that have other campaigns.

Swahnee · Jun 10, 2010, 05:08 PM // 17:08

First of all, you have to read a lot, and practice more.

You can read the guides you find in this forums, starting from the sticky on the Monk's subforum, but there are also other interesting places on the web, for example the QQ's forum

http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/

and the rawr's one

http://www.rebelrising.net/

You have to learn basic techniques such as positioning, kiting, weapon swapping, pre-protting, how not to waste energy (don't remove rangers' poison, ask for your teammates to ping hexes/conditions and remove only the dangerous ones, use WoH only on people under 50%, not try to keep the redbars always at 100% but start worring only under 75%, learn to watch the field and not only the party window, try to understand when and where the damage is going to come, and prevent it, etc..).

Choose a simple build and understand what does it do, what are its functions (big heals, small heals, cleaning, big prots, small prots, self defence, ..) and try to learn how to use each function, try to avoid using skills randomly but be aware of what your build can do. The first times will be very difficult and frustrating, but with practice you'll eventually become better. If you find RA too intimidating (and i can understand it), try AB instead.

Weapon sets:
1-Ench set: Staff with HCT 20% Prot (inscription), HCT 20% Prot (head), length enchantments 20% (wrapping)
2-Hi set: Wand with +15 en /-1 regen, Focus with +15 en /-1 regen, the other mods could be more health or 10% bonus on recharge and casting times
3-Spam set: Wand with HCT 20% healing, HSR 20% healing, Focus with HCT 20% healing, HSR 20% healing
4-Defensive set: Spear with AR+5, En -5/dmg+15%, collection of shields with HP +30 and various inscriptions +10 vs damage. The most common is +10 vs slashing damage.

You will probably need to create a PvP-only character to be able to build these weapon sets without going mad finding/buying the mods in PvE.

Here's my suggestion for the build:

Mo/W
Healing Prayer 12+1+1
Divine Favor 12+1
Tactics 3

1.Signet of Devotion/Divine Spirit
2.Mend Ailment/Purge Conditions
3.Holy Veil
4.Dwayna's Kiss/Remove Hex
5.WoH
6.Vigorous Spirit
7.Shield Bash
8.Balanced Stance

1.:Energy management, the signet is good as a small heal because it has a quick recharge and costs no energy, but it's easily interrupted. Learn to fake-cast, which means start casting it and then cancel it pressing the ESC button, to make rangers waste their interruptions. Divine Spirit allows you to spam your heals when it's active, but it has a long recharge and it can be stripped.
2.:Mend Ailment removes only one condition but has also a small heal, Purge Conditions hasn't any heal (except the DF bonus) but it removes alla conditions.
3.:Holy veil, it's a bit tricky to use, but it's really powerful
4.

wayna's when you need more heals (don't work on yourself!, use it on hexed/enchanted people), Remove Hex if you need more hex removals
5.:WoH, main heal, use it only on people under 50%
6.:Vigorous Spirit, maintain it on everyone, use it to cover your Divine Spirit and veils, and other important enchantments, like elementalists' attunements
7.8.:Shield Bash and Balanced Stance are your self defense tools.

Sorry if i've wrote this on a rush, i hope it helped.

Masmar · Jun 10, 2010, 05:35 PM // 17:35

Quote:

405 HP

I've found your problem

emuking · Jun 10, 2010, 08:03 PM // 20:03

protection magic - 2
healing magic - 12 (+1 helmet and +1 minor healing rune) = 14
divine favor - 10 ( +1 minor divine favor) = 11
tactics - 8

The Skills -

1 ) Vigorous Spirit
2 ) Holy Veil
3 ) Contemplation of Purity
4 ) Bonettis Defense
5 ) Orison of Healing
6 ) Word of Healing
7 ) Draw Conditions
8 ) Balanced Stance or Shield Bash

^^ This is the best i can think of right now given the circumstances you are in

Things to buy: a spear with 10% furious and +30 hp or +5 armor and buy ONE Tactics shield with requirement 8 with 16 armor +30 and +10 armor vs something that always kicks your butt (fire eles FIRE , axe warriors SLASHING, etc...)

Things to consider: People are throwing a lot of information at you right now, so just get a spear and shieldset for when u take damg and a 4040 healing set (20% faster casting 20% faster recharge; wand and focus)
and practice switching between those 2 weapons for when you are taking damg/not casting and the 4040 set for when you are casting.

Once you get better you can buy more shields with different armor bonuses and can switch midmatch, a 402020 staff, a high set, and some other stuff..

prophecies only sucks but ive been there before and no one is gonna like you... except maybe one person; guild wars is full of dicks... and i mean majority in regards to PvP players... PvE i really have no idea.

A few pointers:
1) try to use woh only on people who are under 50% HP for max gain
2) draw conditions on warriors, keep vigorous spirit on yourself
3) if you pick shield bash its pretty fun to make assasins and warriors eat shit.. get good at predicting (comes with experience) or if you got a good computer, reflex stuff.
4) before match starts put holy veil on yourself and 1 other guy on your team; then hit tab once match starts to see what you are fighting and if you KNOW you arent gonna face hexes you can pull them off.
5) realize what you can do better and try again... its not always your fault you lose a match and once you recognize when you are being bad and your teammates are bad, you will be ready for phase 2. Goodluck

FoxBat · Jun 10, 2010, 08:31 PM // 20:31

It's like people forgot RoF existed on WoH bars before patient spirit. If you want to pretend you're cool like TA and imagine most of your teammates don't need guardian then fine, otherwise when speccing prot, this is a much better small heal skills than orison or even kiss.

Corporeal Ghost · Jun 10, 2010, 09:50 PM // 21:50

RoF is not as impressive as it used to be. Higher armor levels all around and a much lower Divine Favor (and prot, for that matter) make it much less effective for general maintenance unless you're much, much better than the average RA monk.

On the original topic:

Running out of energy is probably related to using your skills too much. Not every condition needs to be pulled. Not every hex needs to be removed. Your teammates do not need to be at full health. Basically, if it's not going to stop your team from killing them, you can probably leave it on. There are cases where it's more efficient to be containing conditions, but if you aren't sure, you should probably just hold your energy for when you are.

Getting blown up when everyone focuses on you is pretty commonplace. There are several things you can do to correct it:

-stances
-higher armor level
-good movement
-prots

Movement will prevent easily the most damage of any of those. On a fundamental level, it's pretty simple. Melee guys need to be in melee range to hit you. Most of the better ones will give up and pick a new target if you simply turn around and run before they get to maybe half an aggro bubble away from you. There are some that are more persistent; if they keep pushing in, you typically just want to swap to a shield set, possibly Guardian up, and make sure you're in reasonable range of the rest of your party.

Stances are a pretty good crutch for when something goes wrong, and a fairly decent tool for someone beginning. If you really want to improve, take note of when you use a stance, and try to figure out how you could have survived without it (sometimes the answer is that you couldn't).

Managing four players' health at once is not too difficult. What you really want, rather than worrying about their health directly, is to worry about where it's going to be a few seconds into the future. Where is the other team going to put its damage? If you can determine the cause of damage both as it is happening and in the near future, you will be much more effective. It is not always the case that whoever is taking the largest amount of damage now is in the most danger. Watch for classes and builds with high burst DPS and when they are about to use it.

As for your build, for someone just starting with Prophecies, I'd probably recommend:

Word of Healing
Draw Conditions
Dwayna's Kiss
Contemplation of Purity
Vigorous Spirit
Guardian
Holy Veil
Shield Bash

The attributes are a little open. I'd probably spec a Tactics shield, bump Healing all the way up to 14 (avoid superiors), run Protection at 8 for Guardian, and dump the rest into Divine Favor.

It's not the easiest bar in the world to run, but it has enough tools to beat most teams, and it's got a high density of skills and a structure that will teach you how to play monk, rather than hide behind two or three stances and push bars up. You'll almost certainly see more short-term success playing a stance- and redbar-heavy bar, but you'll also learn some bad habits, and very few good ones.

Hyozanryu Sanada · Jun 11, 2010, 10:29 PM // 22:29

Another thing everyone is forgetting is running Disciple's Insignias. It should be on every monk's bar in every single arena for the fact that you would make a really hard target to be spiked down from having Deep Wound, Burning, etc...

lynnokonomi · Jun 12, 2010, 04:12 AM // 04:12

Wow! Thank you all for the wonderful, extremely in-depth feedback. I appreciate it to a full extent and now I'm thinking the Guild Wars community (or at least the heart of it) is awesome. These posts have left me with a lot to consider and take in, and I'm excited to try out the suggested strats. Time to get back in the game.