Originally Posted by Wolala Wagaga

can the expert monks share their experience on how to monk well, keep the eyes on the field while kiting under pressure?

Originally Posted by Hott Bill

A good way to practice monking in TA is with bonding. Bonding will lower the dmg taken to your party members (easier to heal) and is a good training guide, afterwards you can stop bonding and go straight up heal, or prot.

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Go in RA.

Turn off your party bars.

Monk.

One of the best ways that you can practice forcing yourself to watch the field. If you don't kite, you'll die. If you don't watch the field, others will die.

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Go in RA.

Turn off your party bars.

Monk.

One of the best ways that you can practice forcing yourself to watch the field. If you don't kite, you'll die. If you don't watch the field, others will die.

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Go in RA.

Turn off your party bars.

Monk.

One of the best ways that you can practice forcing yourself to watch the field. If you don't kite, you'll die. If you don't watch the field, others will die.

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Go in RA.

Turn off your party bars.

Monk.

One of the best ways that you can practice forcing yourself to watch the field. If you don't kite, you'll die. If you don't watch the field, others will die.

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

Another red bars up skill. Gift of Health on a ZB bar is probably the most common example that comes to mind.

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

(snip solid advice)

Originally Posted by tonyh

when you don't have your party window, how exactly do you see your allies' health? I havent tried it many times, probably for about 1 minute total, but i can never see the red thing unless I press 'alt' (my show allies button), which isn't great since i have to keep a finger there

Originally Posted by Wolala Wagaga

hi all, i hav been practicing monking in TA, i usually do alright when not a lot of pressure is on me, able to read the field, observe whats going on, pre-prot etc... however, once i start kiting, its very hard to look around to see whats everyone is doing, and i revert back to healing red bars, removing conditions/hexes than proactive...

can the expert monks share their experience on how to monk well, keep the eyes on the field while kiting under pressure?

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

Monking without a party window should help improve field perception, but it should also make you aware of the party window's importance. Quite frankly, in order to be a solid monk, you need both; field perception is more critical, but your party window is the only way to monitor everyone's health at once, and that can give you a lot of information that you may not be actively deciphering from the field. And to be frank, the very simple truth is that you can't simultaneously monitor everyone; your brain is unable to do that. Monking is like driving, though; as you do it more often, functions that required explicit focus become almost automatic.

In my view, the quickest ways to crap energy (edited for consistency):

1) Suck at prot. Place Guardian before people get smashed in the face, and if they aren't being adrenal spiked, place Guardian during the face-smashing. Depending on the kind of spike, don't be afraid to cover and maintain everyone with reversal before-hand. Preveil to give your ranger an opening advantage versus anti-melee curses. Use Guardian to help defend your necromancer from a packhunter under Warmonger's Weapon. You must get every bit of work out of your prot, and not just in the damage points that you stop.
2) Stop using prot. One of the great problems monks have is that if everyone's bars are under great strain, they stop using prot. The reason is they fear imminent collapse -- which is not an entirely unjustified fear -- but prot always mitigates more damage than healing, even if the situation seems unstable; that is, multiple bars under fifty percent and under degen, one decent spike to kill anyone. You have to use strong judgment in a situation like this, but rarely is the situation so dire to preclude prot, and if it is, your team has to react in order to stabilize or face that collapse.
3) Spam reversal improperly. A lot of monks get into a habit of using prot - reversal or reversal - prot; while this clearly is a safe response, you can very quickly crap a great deal of energy on that reversal if you don't have to use it. Another way to crap energy is if you don't use spam reversal properly when you don't have a more specialized prot solution on your bar, and it gets eaten by something that makes it inefficient.
4) Kiting in snares. A great many monks run if they're snared, which is entirely the wrong course of action. This increases damage on you by a huge order; melee attacks do critical hits on a running target. Instead, you should back up very carefully.
5) Kiting close to another target. As a rule, this is a huge mistake, unless a skill on another player makes it a viable tactical decision. You should kite in a way that maintains a reasonable distance to every other person on your team but also gives your prot distance to work. Guardian is no use if the warrior can just switch to another target without having to run any distance.
6) Not kiting. Don't ever stand in place for any period of time; your team should always be in motion and you should be constantly acquiring a stronger position. If nothing else, move for the sake of moving.
7) Not using weapon switches. Mitigate damage on a defensive set using multiple shields, hide your energy from e-denial on a low energy set and try to die on it, use your efficiency set for casting as often as you can, switch to high energy if you must and try to not die on it. Get every bit of mileage that you can.
8) Playing with music and other distractions. You should play with minimal sound interference. Many skills have distinct sound effects; learn to recognize them, and play with only those sound effects and the user interface volume.
9) Not watching the other team. Prot requires that you watch the other team, but reaction is also critical; there's a great value to knowing that certain skills are incoming or have already been used.
10) Not being aware of geometry. Don't let yourself die in AoE, use rocks and other obstacles to obstruct projectiles, and stand close to the edges of a bridge if there's a ranger on the field.
11) Using multiple skills at once in front of a good ranger. This invites a d-shot.
12) Using a skill the instant you stand up in front of a good ranger. This invites a d-shot.
13) Using a skill every time that you stop in front of a good ranger. This invites a d-shot.
14) Standing close to a good ranger if you can help it. This invites a d-shot.
15) ADDED: Using skills on recharge in front of a good ranger. This invites a d-shot.

Check your bar. No monk bar can fit every solution: at some point, you have to decide on the kind of solution that you take or the solution that you exclude, but if you take strong and nonredundant solutions, and use them to maximum effect, you should be okay.

As a rule of thumb, your bar should have:

- A huge red bars up skill. Only two skills readily fit: Zealous Benediction or Word of Healing.
- A readily available stopgap. Reversal of Fortune is the only skill that really fits this criterion; it doesn't really excel at any one task, but can be used to great effect for multiple purposes, is almost always useful, and is always available.
- A readily available general prot. Guardian is the only skill that really fits this criterion; the vast majority of damage comes from your face getting smashed in, stabbed or sliced up, and Guardian is akin to Reversal in availability, function and usefulness.
- Condition removal. Spot removal for conditions won't dent a stack, but spot removal is enough to deal with critical conditions if you respond quickly.
- Hex removal. Spot removal for hexes won't dent a stack, but spot removal is enough to deal with critical hexes if you respond quickly.
- A self-defense option. In general, you get a handful of options that excel: Disciplined Stance, Return, Shield Bash, Dark Escape, Natural Stride, Mantra of Concentration.

This leaves you two open slots, for which you get a couple of options:

- Specialized options. Spirit Bond and Spotless Mind are probably the most obvious options that come to mind.
- Energy management. It's harder these days to get away with things like Divine Spirit or Glyph of Lesser Energy, but you can try. Remember that energy management doesn't have an effect in and of itself; rather, it enables you to use another skill that has an effect.
- Another self-defense option. Remember that you give up another option for something that only helps you.
- Another red bars up skill. Gift of Health on a ZB bar is probably the most common example that comes to mind.

Remember that some things are not so clear: for example, Signet of Devotion masquerades as a secondary red bars up giving you energy management, but really doesn't excel in either task. Dismiss Condition is a spot condition removal that can almost always double for a secondary red bars up. Draw Conditions / Mending Touch is a setup that gives you heavy condition removal for other people, plus heavy self-condition removal and healing.

In RA, it's entirely possible that you can't save your team. They may just bring options that you can't deal with, your team probably won't bother to help you, and you'll die in the monkstomp. RA also does nothing in teaching you to prot multiple targets quickly; most people simply train a target until it dies. It also does nothing to teach you to prot or catch team spikes. At some point, you're going to have to move from RA to TA, and that's a completely different game.