Curse

Link T-berry · May 30, 2006, 10:11 AM // 10:11

I find using revealed hex (inspired hexes copy) works really well. So you can have 2 hex removals that give you energy, and have the mantra. I barely ever use prot spirit but hate going against it on all my other characters. Heres what I use..

inspiration 10
Prot 10+1
divine 11+1

1. Mantra of Recall
2. Guardian
3. RoF
4. Mend condition
5. Inspired hex
6. Revealed hex
7. Cont of Purity
8. Divine boon

You don't always have to bring cont of purity, can exchange it for prot spirit.

sno · May 30, 2006, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

You don't always have to bring cont of purity, can exchange it for prot spirit.

In pvp you do need to bring CoP, it's absolutely essential. you can get away with not using it in pve though.

nohooiam · May 30, 2006, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Link T-berry

inspiration 10
Prot 9+1 - 10
divine 8+1 - 9

uh.....

Son of Urza · May 30, 2006, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Perhaps he hasn't gotten all his attribute points yet?

I personally prefer 12/10/8, the higher Divine Favor helps a lot, and the higher prot only helps a little. Also, if you're running E-Drain instead of MoR, you can put inspiration down to 9 without effecting it (although it will reduce your inspired/revealed hex by 1 energy), and put protection prayers up to 9+1.

Link T-berry · May 30, 2006, 11:02 PM // 23:02

Fixed, give me a break I posted that last night and was super tired. Besides what good is a post that just says "uh.....".

Aiiane · May 30, 2006, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Link T-berry

Fixed, give me a break I posted that last night and was super tired. Besides what good is a post that just says "uh.....".

Because Nothing more needs to be said?

Also, if running minor prot and divine runes, you can easily run 13/11/10 (div/prot/insp) at a full 200 att points, or if running with a PvE character, potentially 15/11/10 (swapping if needbe).

Divineshadows · May 30, 2006, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by master_of_puppets

But if you're using MoR ,which is an enchantment, u'll probably have it on u constantly since it lasts 20 seconds and has 20 second cooldown. And if u use CoP, u'll lose MoR resulting in wasted time and energy. I think CoP is good if ur using E Drain or OoB (why do ppl say OoB is a "killer"? its only 20% health.) but not if ur using MoR, u'd have to wait until MoR is done to use CoP unless u can afford to sacrifice it. Correct me if I'm horribly wrong

I see it the other way around -- that CoP synergizes better with MoR than it does with E Drain, because you get a larger self heal due to more enchantments when you are in dire need and have to CoP. The problem for players less experienced to boon prot is they have difficulty managing their energy, overheal too often, and the temptation is certainly there for them to CoP off MoR for the energy in situations that did not really require for a CoP.

My opinion was that before the recharge adjustment that CoP was so good it should be run even with E Drain and that "No TA boon prot build should go without CoP". With the skill update, I now have a different opinion when running E Drain.

pah01 · May 30, 2006, 11:56 PM // 23:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sacho

yeah, what pah01 said. Prot spirit is really a waste on your energy in RA/TA, since coordinated spikes are few and far inbetween, and only eles and the like do more than 50 damage consistently(and eles suck anyway

) I find that pre-protting with RoF or Guardian is fine.

I prefer energy drain to mantra, but you have to pick your edrain targets carefully. I also prefer to bring sig of devotion as extra energy management, as usually PuG TA teams and RA teams don't have enough anti-warrior/caster on them and you need the extra efficient healing.

Good teams will still spike you.

Its just that the number of players makes it that much easier to have a total battle overview and because of this you can do without prot spirit.

Sam

Liquidus · May 31, 2006, 06:42 AM // 06:42

I agree with Divineshadows that CoP works well with MoR. It shouldn't be used in every situation, but to remove deep wound, or dangerous stacked hexes, I think it can be valuable. With Boon and MoR on, using CoP removes 3 conditions, 3 hexes, and heals for a huge amount. Yes, you do have to wait a bit for MoR to recharge, but cuurently I'm not having big energy problems with this.

Using CoP will usually bring my energy back to full, which is usually enough to allow me to cast MoR again, and still cast spells. (This is when inspired hex helps out with more energy.)

jesh · Jun 01, 2006, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Call me crazy..

Mo/N
10 Blood
10+1 Protection
11+3+1 Divine Favor

Skills depend on the situation.. COP is nice as a self heal/self preservation thing, and when I bring that, this is what I use.

Divine Boon
Signet of Devotion
Rebirth
Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Offering of Blood {E}
Contemplation of Purity
Mend Condition

COP generally takes care of conditions on yourself and mend ailment can be used as a power heal.
Really, I find that if I play carefully, I don't *need* COP. If I don't take COP I'll take Shielding Hands, maybe switch out Mend Condition for Mend Ailment, or even throw in Aegis. For my monk, I use a 20/20 blood idol and a henge sword with a +20% enchant mod as my main weapon set, but I have a shield with 8 armor and a -5 energy weapon on a hotkey, as well as a +15 energy set on another.

Shielding Hands is another 5 energy skill that better yet, has a 1/4 second cast time. I can't say how many times this skill+Reversal of Fortune has saved a team mate of mine. Obviously without COP I'd have no condition removal for myself, so sometimes I'll bring Mend Ailment.. but really I find that I can just avoid the conditions being thrown around in most cases. A little bleeding doesn't hurt too much.

With both OoB and Signet of Devotion, I have so much energy that I literally never run out. (provided I don't lag)
Of course this is talking PvE, you can see Rebirth on there, right? I have used Mantra of Recall a ton in the past, I have nothing against it.. in fact I was one person using it when no one else would even touch it...

But OoB seems to just fit so much better with Boon+Protection, I mean really. Just use your signet to heal yourself. Big loss? No.

Can anyone tell me why the craze on OoB has faded into the distance, and MoR is now popular? I haven't really been playing till I just got factions a few days ago.

Liquidus · Jun 01, 2006, 01:13 AM // 01:13

OoB faded because the 20% sac is dangerous in pvp. Yes, you can heal yourself right after but if you are the focus of the enemy at the moment, using OoB might kill you.

NatalieD · Jun 01, 2006, 01:15 AM // 01:15

Why are you posting a PVE build in a PVP subforum?

Anyway, yeah, OoB is still strong in PVE where you can avoid getting attacked by standing in the back, but it suffers in PVP where the enemies are a bit smarter about who to target.

TheTerminator · Jun 01, 2006, 01:26 AM // 01:26

If you go anywhere in pvp without prot spirit, I doubt you're getting very far. It always comes down to guardian vs. prot spirit. I really don't know who would bother to make a ranger, ele, or warrior that doesn't do more than 50 dmg? Guardian:

1.) does not stop eles
2.) uses more energy
3.) is not guaranteed to stop anything
4.) if you are spamming guardian every 5 seconds, costing 7 energy and healing yourself for 120 health that you don't need, I CAN guarantee that I'll shock > eviscerate > executioners the moment you have to use another spell on someone else, run out of energy, start attempting to kite...

If you are doing proper kiting, you don't need guardian. You don't while you run: stop. cast guardian. cast your heal spell. start kiting again. There should be no need for a guardian in between. Prot spirit will take care of the crit hits you get in the back. Guardian is in general, too specific a defense. And if you're playing a more effective boon prot, you'll have 16 divine, 10 inspir, 9 prot. Guardian isn't worth much there. I would never recommend it.
Bring it on.

jesh · Jun 01, 2006, 04:09 AM // 04:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liquidus

OoB faded because the 20% sac is dangerous in pvp. Yes, you can heal yourself right after but if you are the focus of the enemy at the moment, using OoB might kill you.

Ah yes I kinda forgot about monky stomper builds. I guess it's energy out the door, but RoF is still a quarter second cast, isn't it? It's personal preferance on whether that disadvantage, (hp sac), or the conditions that MoR introduces are more suited to your build, and that's why I was suprised on the general change in opinion on the boards here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatalieD

Why are you posting a PVE build in a PVP subforum?

I said that from the start, I just wanted to give the poster a better idea on the ups and downs of different skills that seem somewhat viable for that build.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheTerminator

If you go anywhere in pvp without prot spirit, I doubt you're getting very far. It always comes down to guardian vs. prot spirit. I really don't know who would bother to make a ranger, ele, or warrior that doesn't do more than 50 dmg? Guardian:

1.) does not stop eles
2.) uses more energy
3.) is not guaranteed to stop anything
4.) if you are spamming guardian every 5 seconds, costing 7 energy and healing yourself for 120 health that you don't need, I CAN guarantee that I'll shock > eviscerate > executioners the moment you have to use another spell on someone else, run out of energy, start attempting to kite...

If you are doing proper kiting, you don't need guardian. You don't while you run: stop. cast guardian. cast your heal spell. start kiting again. There should be no need for a guardian in between. Prot spirit will take care of the crit hits you get in the back. Guardian is in general, too specific a defense. And if you're playing a more effective boon prot, you'll have 16 divine, 10 inspir, 9 prot. Guardian isn't worth much there. I would never recommend it.
Bring it on.

Guardian works against rangers and assassins, which in general are multiple packets of small damage delivered quickly. So does shielding hands; all that protective spirit will give you is an edge off crits at most, and your DF bonus, as you already stated. Of course there are disadvantages to each, but the one that makes my decision is energy cost in most cases. 10e is quite a chunk more than 5e.

Aug · Jun 01, 2006, 08:41 PM // 20:41

Why does no one mention Peace & Harmony {E}? My secondary is Mesmer, but I've still yet to find any good Mesmer skill that's worth trading Peace & Harmony for Mantra of Recall. I'd say stacked Hexes are less of a concern to me in RA/TA than spike damage. It's very rare that I've feld I needed to remove a hex on someone other than me. And Contemplation of Purity drops hexes off me wonderfully.

Your highest attrib for a B/P should be Divine Favor, so Peace & Harmony has great synergy. It also is harder for someone to use Energy Denial tactics, with a high regen rate. And if you're in a team running 2 Monks, you can maintain it on both of you very easily at 13+ DF. Or even on an Ele if they're low on Energy and want to take a few moments to recharge. Not to mention that P&H also provides a heal on yourself when recast if someone shatters you, or you lost it due to CoP. Mantra of Recall does not have that level of versatility or utility.

I generally run the following in RA/TA:

Reversal of Fortune
Contemplation of Purity
Protective Spirit
Shielding Hands (great with Protective Spirit)
Peace & Harmony {E}
Mend Condition
Divine Boon
Guardian

I believe I use 16 DF and 13 PP (12/12 base), but I'm not 100% sure.

As for those who don't think Protective Spirit is useful in RA/TA, I disagree. I run up against a LOT of Assassins, Elementalists, and even Rangers that spike me for more than 50 damage a hit. And I generally run at 450-ish HPs, so it's better yet.

Divineshadows · Jun 01, 2006, 09:04 PM // 21:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aug

Why does no one mention Peace & Harmony {E}? My secondary is Mesmer, but I've still yet to find any good Mesmer skill that's worth trading Peace & Harmony for Mantra of Recall. I'd say stacked Hexes are less of a concern to me in RA/TA than spike damage. It's very rare that I've feld I needed to remove a hex on someone other than me. And Contemplation of Purity drops hexes off me wonderfully.

Nobody mentions it, because it is a bad skill for energy management. Less than one pip of energy management (~ 0.9) just does not cut it on a boon build. In addition, any long lasting, high recharge enchantment is fragile (like ele attunements) in the face of enchantment removal. By the way, peace and harmony synergizes horribly with CoP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aug

As for those who don't think Protective Spirit is useful in RA/TA, I disagree. I run up against a LOT of Assassins, Elementalists, and even Rangers that spike me for more than 50 damage a hit. And I generally run at 450-ish HPs, so it's better yet.

Nobody is going to argue that prot spirit is not useful in RA/TA, because that would be ludicrous. People (including myself) will argue that it is not as useful in the face of other skills you could select to fill that spot. Opportunity cost is the name of the game.

Aug · Jun 01, 2006, 09:27 PM // 21:27

Quote:

Nobody mentions it, because it is a bad skill for energy management. Less than one pip of energy management (~ 0.9) just does not cut it on a boon build. In addition, any long lasting, high recharge enchantment is fragile (like ele attunements) in the face of enchantment removal. By the way, peace and harmony synergizes horribly with CoP.

What's the math behind it being less than one pip of energy regen? N/M, I see:

((Gross Energy Gain - Energy Cost) / Duration) * (1/3):

P&H: (31 - 5) * 3 / 94 = .83

MoR: (23 - 10) * 3 / 21 = 1.86

One pip is equivelent to 1 energy every 3 seconds for 94 seconds at 16 DF, or 31 energy, and the initial casting cost is zero, because you'll have cast it before you even started the match. I rarely find I need to cast P&H more than once in an RA fight. Almost never more than twice in a TA. And lets not forget if you are on a team with 2 healers, you're at 62 energy regenned. If for some reason you end up with 3 healers, it becomes absurd 93 energy (I've had this happen to me a few times in RAs... opposing teams generally travel out on us).

Mantra of Recall at 10 is 23 Energy every 21 seconds. But it takes 10 energy to cast. So you're only gaining 13 energy every 21 seconds. Rolling that out to 105 seconds, you've gained 65 energy. Sure, that's more than double what P&H provided, but you have to control your energy pool much more closely. If you exceed (MAX_ENERGY-23), you're not gaining the full benefit. Also, if you drop below 10 Energy you can't recast Mantra of Recall. And finally, you are spending 1 second every 20 seconds standing still and not healing.

And that's a pretty fine line to strike by calling P&H high recharge at 25s, while MoR is not at 20s.

I've run both P&H and MoR, and I find P&H to be a far superior skill. Perhaps I'm just not as keen a micro-manager, but I find I am not right on top of recasting MoR. Either because I don't realize it's up, or because I'm too busy keeping someone (like myself) alive to be troubled with casting a 1s spell every 20s. And as I mentioned above, a lot of times when MoR goes off, I'm not 23 energy down from my total.

I never claimed CoP had great synergy with P&H. I claimed that P&H had great synergy with 16 Divine Favor. And it does.

JYX · Jun 01, 2006, 09:29 PM // 21:29

The short answer is that it just doesn't give as much energy.

You could run 2 monks I suppose, and put PaH on one other but even so the usefulness is dubious. At most, it gives 1 person about 1 pip of energy, if I assume that you spend the energy to keep this spell up at all times, it gives you roughly 0.84 pips. Mantra of Recall has a recycle time of 21 seconds and at 10 inspiration gives you 1.86 pips of energy. This is better energy than if you had cast PaH on two different people. Although you sacrifice points from protection for inspiration: protective spirit, rof, and some would even say guardian works at 9-10 protection and you gain an overall 21% increase in casting compared to if you simply used PaH (on yourself only). PaH itself is also a risky skill, if the enchantment gets stripped consistently, it cuts down the energy return greatly, even more so than for MoR: Also if we were to achieve maximum efficiency by putting PaH onto two different people it severely limits mobility, but this is a GvG issue really.

This is the build I use. Its an old build, from when E denial was very popular across the board but it still works pretty well. Also fast Drain Enchant works on Aura of Displacement Assassins.

Divine Favor 16 (12+1+3)
Protection 10 (9+1)
Inspiration 9

Divine Boon
Reversal of Fortune
Mend Condition
*Guardian
Signet of Devotion
Contemplation of Purity
Drain Enchantment
Energy Drain [e]

* depends a lot on who is backing you up in arenas. If there is no "miss" action that your #2 is performing (blinding flash, spirit/price of failure) then you may wish to take guardian to break attack chains: at 40% chance it's more than enough to do so. Otherwise you may wish to take Prot Spirit. Some people choose to take both, and drop signet of devotion.

You will notice that there is no hex removal, I am one of those who believe that this is one of the things that must come from your utility caster, also that the healing effect you get from boon which we pay heavily for will most likely be wasted on multiple hex removals on a target which may or may not be damaged. That said if you are very uncomfortable with this, the most I could honestly recommend would be to switch to inspired hex and mantra of recall: put 10 points into inspiration and go 8+1 into protection.

Zui · Jun 02, 2006, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Aug, Divineshadows is 100% correct. You even did the math to prove it.

1. Protective Spirit is not needed for 4 vs 4. There are far more useful skills. In addition to this, you can easily have a full battle overview. You'll know where that damage is going, and when it's coming. Reversal of Fortune anyone? How about Guardian against Assassins?

2. By your own math, Peace and Harmony is under 1/2 the energy gain from Mantra of Recall. It synergizes horribly with your builds only hex removal - Contemplation of Purity.

3. If you can't effectively use MoR, try Edrain. If you can't mange to use either effectively, you need to work at it. MoR can be tricky, but it's really not that hard to use if you work at it, the pacing takes awhile to get used to, and it's nothing like the energy on-demand like Edrain is, or OOB was, or constant pips like Peace and Harmony. However it is still far superior to Peace and Harmony any way you look at it. Plus you can wand people when you're doing nothing, perhaps even screw over another monks RoF with a 3-10 damage wand hit.

4. You're right about Peace and Harmony having a great synergy with high Divine Favor - Hey that's its linked attribute! Say, I wonder if all skills work better when their linked attribute is raised... Too bad Peace and Harmony as a skill sucks compared to it's alternitives, and it doesn't even fit with the rest of your build.

Zhongchao · Jun 02, 2006, 06:33 AM // 06:33

My build is

15 df
11 prot
10 insp

20 prot recharge mainhand, +5 energy
20 insp recharge offhand, +30 health

20 prot recharge mainhand, +15 energy, -1 energy regen
20 insp recharge offhand, +15 energy, -1 energy regen

Rof
Guardian
Mend Ailment
Power Drain
Mantra of Recall
Inspired Hex
CoP
Divine Boon

Works nicely in RA.