Curse

Neo-LD · Oct 11, 2005, 12:08 AM // 00:08

my fav type of monk to play is definately the boon prot, which owns in team arenas. However, in 8v8 situations everyone seems to want to divide everything into black and white "healer" and "protector" so when i play monk then, i use a healer. Compared to the 1/4s spells like rof and prot spirit, heal spells like kiss, orison, etc just seem so sloooow.

When playing in hoh pugs, lots of times the person i want to heal is dead before the spell hits... even though when i started the spell he was at >50% hp. This is partly my fault but mostly the fault of the nub prot monk who didnt pack prot spirit or just doesnt know when to cast it.

Anyways using the logic that a boon-prot can heal roughly the same amount and sometimes more than a non-boon-healer, i was thinking of subbing at least one of the healers on my team for a boon prot, since their spells arrive sooner, are harder to shut down, and can still heal about as well. He would basically just mend and rof everything. The dedicated prot monk would watch to refrain from needlessly stacing same enchantents.

Is this a good idea? Cant think of anything wrong with it except energy mangement.. but its nothing inspiredH/drainE/energyD cant solve

knives · Oct 11, 2005, 12:20 AM // 00:20

WHen I heal I keep the person at >50% most of the match. When they get below 50% you know you are in for trouble. The prot monks prot spirit wont work against small increments of damage applied at a fast rate. And if you keep people alive at >50%, when the people switch targets/multiple targets are getting hit, you don't have to worry about someone else.

Boon prot is hard to do, you will run out of energy more than not, esp. in the fast paced world of tombs.

smurfhunter · Oct 11, 2005, 12:20 AM // 00:20

it sounds like a good idea, but you need to consider several important points, like can you (in 1 second) heal for about 200 hp? (this is what something like heal other or woh does)

i mean its great to be able to heal for around 50 in a split second, the question is over time do you actually heal faster?

as you mentioned energy is another big issue. im sure some devoted energy management can solve that but you would detract from your 'instant healing' idea that way.

and you would miss out on something like healing seed/healing hands. big ouch right there.

overall... i honestly dont know if it will work well. maybe. =/

Neo-LD · Oct 11, 2005, 12:28 AM // 00:28

actually boon prot can heal for 118 in 1/4s, only taking into account DF and Boon. THen you have the reversal effect of rof for a total turnaround of somewhere between 120 and ~200.

Rey Lentless · Oct 11, 2005, 12:52 AM // 00:52

yah, it's not a bad strat, just very energy dependent and you'd probably have to use offering of blood or something to sustain it.

smurfhunter · Oct 11, 2005, 01:09 AM // 01:09

heh how would this strat work with the glyph of renewal/divine spirit thing.... hmmMMMm

Neo-LD · Oct 11, 2005, 01:10 AM // 01:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

heh how would this strat work with the glyph of renewal/divine spirit thing.... hmmMMMm

id rather have inspiration magic

smurfhunter · Oct 11, 2005, 01:14 AM // 01:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

id rather have inspiration magic

that wont keep up with some serious spam healing. like if you plan on healing for 100 in 1/4 of a second... you need to spam that. especially with no healing seed.

Rey Lentless · Oct 11, 2005, 01:43 AM // 01:43

That would be the best way to do it, then you wouldn't have to spend points in a 3rd attribute too, could max out prot and divine.

I could see diversion screwing you over very easily with that build though considering how quick reversal is cast and how important it would be to the build. You'd be stuck spamming mend ailment and guardian for just the divine boost.

White Designs · Oct 11, 2005, 01:48 AM // 01:48

psst...blood line owns all.

Neo-LD · Oct 11, 2005, 03:07 AM // 03:07

switching lanes a bit, how does a normal healer monk ensure that his allies are still alive before their spells hit? Mad anticipation? Rely on the prot? Also, heal spells are sooo easy to interupt esp. with migraine/conundrum, how does one deal with that... i miss being a prot :P

Red Locust · Oct 11, 2005, 03:37 AM // 03:37

Divine Boon makes heals less efficient (in terms of health/energy) than normal healing. It also tends to overheal at higher levels of divine favor, which is where you naturally want to have your divine favor at to get the most efficiency out of it.

So pretty much the only reason to be a boon healer is for the quicker response time to damage spikes. I feel that with a bit of practice, monks should be able to keep up with most damage, and those few occasions where a perfectly coordinated spike kills an ally don't occur often enough to merit the loss of energy from divine boon. Keep boon on your prot monks and keep your healers as efficient as possible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

switching lanes a bit, how does a normal healer monk ensure that his allies are still alive before their spells hit? Mad anticipation? Rely on the prot? Also, heal spells are sooo easy to interupt esp. with migraine/conundrum, how does one deal with that... i miss being a prot :P

There are several ways. Sometimes you'll see wanding or light attacks right before a spike hits, so just get on that target and have your fingers on the hotkeys. A lot of times you can recognize, just by looking at your surroundings, if enemies are heading towards a particular target. Warriors are particularly easy to predict in this way, which is good since their damage spikes are usually the most dangerous. Most people should also be able to tell whether a big attack is coming their way, so try to keep constant communication on vent/TS.

In general, you want to have your eyes on the battlefield. Don't just glue them to the health bars and never look up; that's a mistake that most amateur monks make, and end up getting smacked by a warrior train unloading adrenaline. Learn to recognize things taking effect and take action accordingly.

Zeru · Oct 11, 2005, 06:23 AM // 06:23

When you compare healing to boon prot you see how scrubby it is to run more than 1 healer monk in almost all scenarios in the current metagame.

Healing monks cannot react to damage spikes whatsoever. Heal Other at 3/4s cast time is nothing compared to prot spirit or rof at 1/4s with their added effect. The latter two can be spammed. After you cast your heal other, what else will you use? Orison? Pfft. Word? Better have multiple open slots for mediocre energy management and hope they get under 1/2 health when you actually cast it.

And don't even think about running glyph renewal divine spirit monks to counter spikes. That combo should be used for spamming lots of bad heals.

Healers can run energy efficient healing though to clean up smaller, more spread amounts of healing. That's really all they're good for. Heal area is nice, seed is good in tombs solely for the hero (scrub otherwise), heal other is pretty decent. Word works if you are in tombs and can use channeling well. The rest of the healing line is total garbage.

Current gvg metagame is all about 1-2 warrior+caster spikes. With very little proactive defense as a booner prot I can save people a great majority of the time. As a healer my success rate for stopping spikes would drop dramatically, partially due to cast times and partially due to effects of spells.

Booner prot basically gives you superb damage mitigation along with decent healing and the best anti-spike capability. You better have good energy management though because it is very taxing.

As locust said, to stop spikes, you need to watch the battlefield. Most teams will telegraph it pretty well but some teams will have good positioning control and make it very difficult for you to tell. I can't tell you how many times having the 1/4s cast has saved the day because versus the best you need both extremely fast reflexes and good awareness of what's going on. You need to find the key characters in their spike and be constantly aware of what he's doing. If you see him doing his spike skills, that's your cue.

Ollj · Oct 11, 2005, 11:08 AM // 11:08

yes. protection skills definitely work with divine boon!

wheel · Oct 11, 2005, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

Divine Boon makes heals less efficient (in terms of health/energy) than normal healing. It also tends to overheal at higher levels of divine favor, which is where you naturally want to have your divine favor at to get the most efficiency out of it.

The Divine Boon bonus is more energy efficient than some staple healing spells. Orison, Heal Other. And that's running 16 heal 13 Divine. Its efficiency only goes up with higher divine favor.

smurfhunter · Oct 11, 2005, 04:57 PM // 16:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

The Divine Boon bonus is more energy efficient than some staple healing spells. Orison, Heal Other. And that's running 16 heal 13 Divine. Its efficiency only goes up with higher divine favor.

i made a calculation a while back... where i compared the amount healed if you spammed orison until you had no energy left with the same if divine boon was up. the divine boon version healed for _alot_ less, but much faster. i think the non divine boon thing was something like twice more efficient.. it was a really high number.

the way you predict attacks? well... if its a warrior (which is the most common)... talk on ts ftw. it really isnt hard to know if *you* are being targeted, so just cry on ts a bit. as long as you dont revert to a HEAL ME FFS kind of stage its not that annoying. spikes which are done perfectly are basically impossible to stop, especially if they have a good debuffer. your only hope there is to pray you have a prot with decent reflexes.

Zeru · Oct 11, 2005, 08:26 PM // 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by smurfhunter

i made a calculation a while back... where i compared the amount healed if you spammed orison until you had no energy left with the same if divine boon was up. the divine boon version healed for _alot_ less, but much faster. i think the non divine boon thing was something like twice more efficient.. it was a really high number.

the way you predict attacks? well... if its a warrior (which is the most common)... talk on ts ftw. it really isnt hard to know if *you* are being targeted, so just cry on ts a bit. as long as you dont revert to a HEAL ME FFS kind of stage its not that annoying. spikes which are done perfectly are basically impossible to stop, especially if they have a good debuffer. your only hope there is to pray you have a prot with decent reflexes.

Divine Boon with prot spells makes them insanely energy efficient because they provide good damage mitigation and healing. Boon with healing is not good because you'll be overhealing like crazy and still not able to stop spikes while not doing the job of healing (cleaning up smaller amounts of spread damage).

It is extremely hard to know if you are going to be the target of a well-coordinated spike. Good teams manage to drop people in less than a second with very little warning especially if your team is bunched up or running around near each other. I mean if you see 2 warriors running to a backline monk whos alone yeah it's obvious he's a target. That's why most teams don't bother targeting backline monks and go for offense instead: it's too easy to predict. Other teams have a longer spike but with more enchant removal in between and more overall damage. That spike you can help save...sometimes.

Yamat · Oct 11, 2005, 08:50 PM // 20:50

I run prot almost exclusively and every so often I sub boon in because I want to heal more. Then I remember why I'm not using it and dont bother recasting it.

You arent there to heal, you're there to protect. Energy management is tough as a prot booner. If you're doing your job properly, the healers only need to cast 5-pt heals, but you'll be spamming RoF and Guardian on the current target, especially when spike volleys are coming in.

Prot booners in 4v4 maybe (and this is still energy tough), but not in Tombs.

smurfhunter · Oct 11, 2005, 08:53 PM // 20:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeru

Divine Boon with prot spells makes them insanely energy efficient because they provide good damage mitigation and healing.

but how do you calculate the efficiency of something like rof (as a simple example)? so to compare say rof to orison, they would both heal the same amount just from the divine boon stuff, but since orison heals you for like 80 hp in addition to all that, rof would have to protect you from an attack of 40 damage *at least* to be as efficient as orison.

note that i said simple here because i dont even know how to calculate the efficieny of something like shielding hands... not to mention prot spirit, aegis, guardian... its just too situational to know really how much hp you are either healing/protecting (same thing really)...

so im not entirely sure what you mean when you said prot skills are insanely energy efficient.

oh and yamat the idea was to have a prot booner *instead* of a healer, not together with 2 healers.

Neo-LD · Oct 11, 2005, 09:11 PM // 21:11

orison actually only gives like ~65, not 80. the boon bonus alone heals for slightly more than an orison for 2 extra energy. Lets not forget we are comparing boon prot to normal heal, not to boon heal, cus boon heal sux due to massive overhealing issues.

RoF under Boon Heals for at least 120, up to ~200, in 1/4s. Sounds good to me when the alternative is healing for ~110 in 3/4s.

For some prot spells you have to factor in their protective effects in order to truly calculate effeciency, but whatver effect they have can only imprive upon the solid 118 in 1/4s that all booned prot spells have passively.

Also, there are the abstract (but definately real) benifits like being about to virtually ignore interupt and cast through migraine/conundrum, like being able to catch allies from a well executed spike, etc.