Curse

dansamy · Dec 13, 2005, 04:22 PM // 16:22

Heehee, I bet I know who that top guild was. I ran with a guild group last night that used that tactic. They still used 2 heal and one prot though. It looks likes it time for me to brush up on my boon prot though, since most 2 monk backlines are a boon prot and an infuse healer.

crimsonfilms · Dec 13, 2005, 04:32 PM // 16:32

The Boon/OoB + infuse healer backline does not work in GvG - especially against degen or pressure builds. The boon runs out of energy too fast and not enough condition removal for the team. Since carrying infuse means one less spammable skill, you are handicapped for certain builds.

You need to think outside the box for 2 monk backlines. The approach is quite different compared to 3 monk backlines. You may want a 2 monks that is 50/50 heal-prot. With one 15/11 or 16/10 attribute setup.

Remember 2 monk backline only works if your offensive power can take down the 1 or 2 of their teams down and keep em down. If not, even your frontline can be taken down quite easily because of energy management.

Yichi · Dec 13, 2005, 05:09 PM // 17:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by A R I A N

Healer

Spell Breaker (Elite)
Dwaynas Kiss
Heal Other
Orison
Inpired Hex
Channeling
Heal Party
Holy Veil....

This is very bad build.... look closer..and only you have orison and heal party to heal yourselg Spell B. has very large cool down and most of time you r easy target...

Nirvana Of Love my pvp heal monk has:

infuse health - against spikers
divine intervention
word of healing E
orison
channaling
healing breeze
heal party

if u have good bip necro, then channaling is not mandatory, you can have healing touch, or divine healing...

problem with dwaynas kiss, is that that you cannot see how much conditions party member have... and if you spam that a lot, you will lost energy, and get your party killed...

most of new monks, heal when party memebers have 98% health, its a BIG mistake, I heal when theyrs health reach middle, and if I dont wory about mesmer, no one will die, exept spliters

please tell me this isnt real.....

one: any decent team will have someone monitor your monks, as soon as they see infuse health go off, youre toast.

two: a energy denail mesmer totalyl ruins almsot ANY monks day.

three: healing breeze in pvp...... enough said

four: with dwaynas kiss, you gain an extra 20 health for each hex,condition,enchantment target ally has. by far one of your best heals for 5 energy.

five: drop infuse health all together. A good monk running Word of Healing {E} will be able to spike heal with almost as much as infuse does without the health loss. if its physical dmg, then bring healing seed. them attacking your target will help you heal and you can heal other targets without haveing to focus healing

six: you have no hex removal at all. with so many hex/degen builds inspired hex would be a more viable option for energy management than channeling.

someone else take over where i left off....... my brain hurts

Billiard · Dec 13, 2005, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Many top guilds run an infuser to mitigate spikes. You need the 1/4 sec cast time to break a spike - Word won't do it. RoF on a Prot Booner can as well. The infuser needs to be mindful of the other teams positioning, and the other monk(s) need to be watching the infuser's health really closely. Basically your infuser focuses mostly on spike prevention and your other healer does the regular spam healing. Only infuse to save a target for dying, and not if it will cost you your life.

Patrograd · Dec 14, 2005, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by MistressYichi

one: any decent team will have someone monitor your monks, as soon as they see infuse health go off, youre toast.

A couple of months ago I'd have agreed with you, but since then we've been playing an infuse monk very often and it ("You're toast") just isnt true.

while it is true that an infuse monk is a priority target for the enemy, it isnt because they hope they can catch him low on health, because the wont, or at least shouldnt, its because a good infuse monk is worth his weight in gold. The heal is typically something approaching 300 points with a cast time of 1/4 a second. Now thats an awesome skill, and when used well is incredibly frustrating to play against.

As has been said, its an emergency skill only, used to prevent imminent death, usually in a failed spike, and requires fantastic reactions from the monk. But dont write it off, it isnt used by all the top teams for nothing.

Sephir Demange · Dec 14, 2005, 03:22 AM // 03:22

All of this goes back to have a solid 3 monk backline. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the 3 monk backline should function as a single entity. An infuser should be hit with heal other as soon as infuse goes off. A prot should guardian a monk calling a seed casting while the other monk keeps the target of the seed alive. It is, has, and always will be, about team cohession. Don't assume the backline is broken, assume it's the players that are broken. Although, keeping that in mind, variation is appreciated and encouraged. : P If you can show me that a 2 monk backline is more effective I'll attempt it.

Zeru · Dec 14, 2005, 03:43 AM // 03:43

It's all metagame dependant. 2 monk setups are far better than 3 monks against spike. 1 monk builds are even stronger if you have a really good monk. But when your opponent runs attrition 1 monk simply can't handle it even with a lot of offensive shutdown and you need to break back to two. 3 monks are generally rarely needed in gvg because you can work around it with a stronger offense and just strong teamwork/positioning play. A perfect example of that is the korean teams who pretty much never run 3 monks because they are such good players and have the best teamwork out of anyone which make up for their often quirky builds.

3 monk builds in gvg in other metagames are fine for mediocre teams who need to work on player skill and teamwork a lot since it provides a decent safety net. But if your team is skilled enough to work around it there are few situations where a 3rd monk is worth it compared to an extra offensive character.

In tombs running 3 monks is fine since of the hall of heros.

Running a bonder is hardly new and while it certainly works in some metagames you have to really focus on keeping that bonder alive since if he drops it takes a lengthy time to reapply bonds without bip and your team is in a big hole till he is back in action. Especially in tombs where you can't use positioning effectively to protect him it's rather risky.

Infuse health is a must-have skill for a healing monk in a spike meta. If you think you're going to stop spikes with heal other or word your opponents will have a field day dropping your team. It's not very strong against 2 warrior teams since you can't always be assured of your safety and it's rather energy inefficient but versus caster/ranger spike teams if you have a healing monk you want infuse health and there are still quite a few of those teams in gvg.

Quote:

The Boon/OoB + infuse healer backline does not work in GvG - especially against degen or pressure builds. The boon runs out of energy too fast and not enough condition removal for the team. Since carrying infuse means one less spammable skill, you are handicapped for certain builds.

Not true at all.

SaintGreg · Dec 14, 2005, 07:10 AM // 07:10

You have to assume that pretty much one of your monks is mostly useless due to a good shutdown strategy from the other team. Can one monk, no matter what he is doing, keep your team alive? Even if you drop them quicker initially, you will go down in a hurry after both monks are out of energy and your teams health starts to slide. True that 2 monks does open some other offenseive opportunities though.

Billiard · Dec 14, 2005, 07:37 AM // 07:37

Many very good teams run 2 monk backlines in GvGs. These teams can drop 3-4 damage dealers in a minute or less. Not much healing for monks to do once all the damage dealers are killed . . .

Zeru · Dec 14, 2005, 08:59 PM // 20:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintGreg

You have to assume that pretty much one of your monks is mostly useless due to a good shutdown strategy from the other team. Can one monk, no matter what he is doing, keep your team alive? Even if you drop them quicker initially, you will go down in a hurry after both monks are out of energy and your teams health starts to slide. True that 2 monks does open some other offenseive opportunities though.

Uh no.

Although it is build and map/position dependant, fully shutting down monks in gvg is really almost impossible unless you can neutralize their offense first thus securing victory anyway. Ex. Trying to shutdown korean monks is a really pointless task. They have lots of movement control and high dps that will punish anyone who runs up too far.

In all my gvgs against pretty much every top team I've never been shutdown past maybe 50% efficiency and that was because we had a build very vulnerable to that type of play and we were engaging on a bad spot for us but it wasn't for very long anyway. Shutdown strategies are fairly common but they target offense since hitting a monk is generally impractical with most builds.

Ensign · Dec 14, 2005, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by MistressYichi

one: any decent team will have someone monitor your monks, as soon as they see infuse health go off, youre toast.

Nice theory, but there is not a single guild in the game good enough to punish Infuse right now, at least not with any consistency. Union could at their peak but they'd fallen off the last time I played them. I wouldn't put it past TE to punish an infuse but they've never done it to us. We've managed to do it a couple of times but it's hard against a better team, I wouldn't say that we can 'punish' an infuse.

Combine that with a 'spike' metagame and Infuse is really low risk. How exactly is a spike team going to punish an infuse? They can't spike a second target two seconds later.

Maybe tombs is a whole lot better than GvG and there are teams there that can spot an infuse and smash that guy before he can clean himself back up with touch a second and a half later. But in my experience these 'decent' teams just don't exist. The best teams at any given point in time are usually in one of two categories:

1) Top heavy teams with firm leadership and a couple very good players, but rosters rounded out by 'some guys'. Most of the teams on the ladder that you recognize fall into this category. They can organize simple strategies frighteningly well at times, but they really can't execute 'advanced' plays like punishing an infuser simply because that requires more time and attention than a couple good players can spare.

2) Teams with lots experienced / good players but little organization. These are the guilds that keep breaking up and reforming, so while they may have the playskill they don't have the cohesion to pull off something like this.

Again there are a few teams like TE or Uni that look like they're going to break the rule at times but generally the above holds true.

I've said way too much on this subject but the point is that you shouldn't assume that the 'best' play is going to happen with any consistency. Teams just aren't that good. The simple, powerful plays will be made, but you can get away with a lot of shit that wouldn't work in theory simply because perfect play never happens.

Peace,
-CxE

DarkAynjil · Dec 17, 2005, 07:16 AM // 07:16

I think the reason you'll see a kind of shift towards 2 or "2 & 1/2" monk backlines right now is because of ranger spike and IWAY's adaptability - before ranger spike and evolved IWAY, we all were used to the "2 heal and one prot" strategy.
We didn't see this shift during the prevalence of Air Spike due IMO, to protective spirit being an effective counter, and the fact that the spikers were squishies, and easier to take down. Rangers and warriors, however are a little harder to take down, and most of their damage will not be reduced by Protective Spirit. Often, an Infuse Health or RoF can be fired off to "save" a "failed" ranger or IWAY spike, though. Hence the shift to 2 boon-prots and one infuser (at least in tombs anyway.) IMO, the 3-monk backline is going to be at the heart of most builds that aren't anti-spike. The reason groups can get away with a boon-prot and infuser in tombs is that quite often a "spike" group has just enough damage in a spike to kill someone, therefore making the obvious counter to spike-deaths the disabling or killing one of the spikers. If you kill one of the 4 or 5 rangers in a ranger spike group, you (usually) just countered their spike. Similarly, one could also e-drain a ranger spiker, rendering him useless for all intents and purposes. If you know the enemy can not kill you without all 4 or 5 of his spikers, you can then devise a strategy that requires less or different methods of healing.

Elrodien · Dec 19, 2005, 12:28 PM // 12:28

My guild tried a 2 monk back line with a warder in GvG last night. We only played two matches but won both of them AND it was opposition of similar rank to us. I think the 2 monk 1 warder combo makes for a very strong backbone to any balanced team.

Tombs may be different however..............

Patrograd · Dec 19, 2005, 01:37 PM // 13:37

We have tried running two monks in tombs but have found that the heavy prevalence of energy denial and hex heavy builds in tombs makes it very difficult to succeed with.

Ensign · Dec 19, 2005, 10:46 PM // 22:46

In Tombs you run 3 Monks outside of gimmick builds. Dais maps put a lot of emphesis on defense and there's plenty of room in an 8 man team.

GvG is a bit different since you're realistically looking at 7 man teams with occasional flagger support. When the choice is between 5/2 and 4/3, 5/2 is often preferable in order to maintain enough pressure / spike to punch through defenses. Also remember that monks, at least reactive types, are particularly poor against the strong spikes that are so prevalent in the current meta. 3 true monks simply take up too much space to be viable.

In practice you have two choices - the first is to run two monks with some other defense on your five offensive characters - offensive disruption, wards, block stances, whatever. You just need some tools to diffuse pressure builds so that your monks aren't overrun. The second is to run three monk primaries, but put some offensive capacity onto them to make up for the lost offensive guy - Obsidian Flame and Vampiric Gaze are popular, and you could probably spec smiting as well. Overall that'll give you ~2.5 monks worth of defense, with the flexibility to shift focus, and that's what you ultimately want to give you a good chance to win against the different matchups you'll see.

Peace,
-CxE

icemonkey · Dec 20, 2005, 05:57 AM // 05:57

With two monks you can run into a huge hex problem. If the other team is dropping 12 hexes on your team, yer probably shut down or drained to the limit. With two monks yer talking 4 hex removal maybe more, if they arent being interrupted. Panic hexed out my guild in gvg and we had standard 2 heal 1 prot. We had like 4 insp hex 2 veil and 1 convert and they still maintained many hexes on us.

Ensign is right you pretty much have to have 3 monks in HoH or youll never hold an altar.

JR · Dec 20, 2005, 12:49 PM // 12:49

Just because you only have monks, doesn't mean you only have two characters to put hex removal on. But I concur, 3 monks is sensible in Tombs.