Feedback: The big monk problem

Hmm, maybe its just me but everyone ive teamed with seems to die extremely fast unless there are monks in the team, ergo now every second character is either a monk primary or monk secondary. It seems to me that people die too fast, perhaps buffing up hitpoints would help a little? Because any team that has a monk profession for all their characters will win. I won at leat 35-40 games in a a row in Gladiator arena with a team of 2 W/Mo and Mo/E and R/Mo. They were first time players and no coordination was required. Its not fun when EVERYONE is a monk. Our only challenge was when we faced other monk teams.

The reason for this is because no one likes to die right off the bat, lets face it its not fun, so what happens, they pick a monk secondary with mending and some other stuff like that and voila.

Solution: Not up to me but, maybe decresing damage or raising hitpoints would help, even a bit.

yes...in fact I would like to see the speed of combat decreased by about 10-15% in general, it will encourage more creative use of combos which are right now not possible for the rather crappy reason of "it takes too many clicks and that might get messy".

Note that this dosen't include the speed of movement. Also note that the Gladiator arena is very different from an actual Guild War. If used in a co-ordinated and logical fashion, the little bit of healing goes a long way, and of course a dedicated healer (monk/mesmer or elementalist/monk) would go a lot further than a pretty much pure ranger with a few prayers for good measure.

So I don't think theres a fundamental problem with the healing system, simply that the speed of combat means that people don't have the time to respond. Slowing down the speed of combat means that the "response time" factor will be cut, furthering emphasis on strategy as opposed to mad clicking skillz.

Well, Arena is laughable. it has no teamwork and is random teams, so self-reliant players will rule it. Arena is so stupid in a game like this, where you need teamwork and a balanced team.

Go play Tombs and never look back.

As much as I see where you're coming from, I'll have to agree-to-disagree.

I play a monk main, and I love my job. In all the other online RPGs I've played, I never liked playing a healing main. Never. Part of that, was because battles were often too slow, and too 'easy' in a lot of ways. They were basically designed to be done without a monk so as to not limit people.

What this MEANT, was that I spent half of each battle sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to get hurt so I could heal them. It's not very fun just standing there. That's one of the things I love about this game, they made healing an active job.

As for the speed of combat...
Rather then encourage mad clicking, IMO it encourages fast decisions, which aren't always a bad thing.

For some battles, you need strategy either way if you hope to come out okay. All the pace does, is force you to react quickly to things that happen, and I like that. When several people get badly hurt, I don't get to sit there for a few seconds and mull over which heals to use on which people, I have to make a split second decision. And that decisions determines who's going to live and who's going to die; It's actually one of the most strategy filled decisions I have to make, I just have to make it quickly is all.

I definitely agree.

Having played almost entirely as a monk this BWE, I actually find it more fun to look at health bars, even if my eyes get a bit blurry and strained after a 20 minute battle..

Like Riale said.. you have to make those split second decisions that not only affect who you're healing at the moment, but also affects the next person that you will need to heal. For example, if I use Word of Healing on someone who has more than half life, another teammate who might be focused on drops suddenly way below half-health in the next two seconds won't have that bonus of the addition 15-85 health. The same goes for Dwayna's kiss, etc.

Plus, add the fact that mesmers are out for your skin, and everything gets so much more exciting. However.. it really doesn't take all that much to adjust to the speed of combat. The key for me is to have another (or even two other) monk(s) supporting me. Since teams usually focus fire one monk, the other two can back up the healer being targeted. Slowing down the speed of combat would just make the game.. well.. sluggish. The adrenaline and excitement would dwindle if you had time to sit back in your chair and consider the best alternatives to fight diversion.

And.. trust me, being a monk fighting against even a reasonably competent group isn't just speed clicking. If it were, I would've won so many times in the beginning. Random, frenzied clicking actually hurts you.. not helps.. for the same reasons as previously stated above.

I'd say that combat lasts too long sometimes

Definitely you need 2 monks in 8vs8. With 3, you are probably better off.

(Side note: We were MUTILATED by a 8 Monk team yesterday!! They cycled Signet of Judgement, on a sped up timer (Me skill, dont remember?), so they hit us with AOE knock + 50 damage every 2-3 seconds. NONSTOP! Sure there are counters, but we did of course not bring any of them . I was in the best team I played in that night, but we were killed rather quickly, hehe)

On a side note, I would say that monks are even harder to kill now than before, with some of the changes. For fun, I played with 8 tactics or whatever it was, and a good premade shield of 16 AL with my premade Mo/W.

Shield stance lasted me 14 seconds, and Bonettis, which now is on a 8 Adrenaline timer, is GOLD. I mean, as long as I waved my monk wand now and then, the skill would ALWAYS be ready to go. At no mana cost. For the hell of it I also used Watch Yourself, as my third defensive skill.

So many times, 1-2 Wa/x's tried to mob me, but with Bonettis first, then Shield stance, and then Bonettis more or less ready to go again, they didnt even put a dent in my paper armour.

Watch yourself takes away 30% of incoming damage additionally. I would often run over to the second monk being focused, and use it to help him, and it sure did. Lots of fun! :-)

Although bringing 3 W skills, I did have Res, Orison, WoH, VSpirit, Breeze. I did not bring HSeed, which probably would have been better, but I did not really feel the loss of it. Possibly on some of the prolonged fights on the daises.

Being a monk gives you a lot of control over how the battle goes. If you're the only monk in a party and you die, your team pretty much just lost the match. Soon I fear every second profession will have to be monk in to compete with other all second profession monk teams. I think each profession should have their own not so powerfull self healing skill. This would make it so a monk or 2 is still necessary but others will be able to have more fun and interesting second professions.

I agree that every class should get more healing skills. Monks were alot more difficult to find this BWE, I would say that %30 of all the chars I saw were warrior primaries.

Every class already has at least one skill to heal him/herself. Some better than others.

As for the comment that everyone needs to be a monk, just bring a mesmer or two with your group (not the Illusionary Weaponry type but the more traditional disruption type). Mesmers can make a monk cry like a baby.

Boy your not kidding...

A good Mesmer is the the answer/counter to heavey monk teams. You can tear through heavy monk teams with a just one or two decent Mesmer's. I would pull my hair out with frustration when I would be up against a team with good Mesmer's. (witch was VERY rare)

Sinfear~

You can say that again..

If you're being focused AND there's a mesmer happily stacking purple like some violet brick wall at the top left corner of your screen.. there's really very little you can do. At least, very little I can do (someone train me!) Even another healer backing you up won't be enough.. if I have enough spells such as diversion, backfire, migraine, etc on me all at the same time.. I won't be able to heal myself for a few seconds. Add the fact that everyone's focusing on you, and with only half the normal healing power (1 monk instead of 2).. well.. I go down like a stone.

So.. definitely.. if you have one or two good monk-hating mesmers, you really shouldn't have problems killing most monks. So, rather politely.. I would ask.. is your team build made to account for monks? A dash of mesmer does wonders.. (and for me, hell).

Don't forget monk hating rangers.

On a side note, we killed that all monk group in guild vs guild. We're HF, they were PvP. Anyway, when you stack so much of the same thing in the group like they did it makes them too weak. A little diversity is key. Without it you simply leave yourself far too open. For eight monks there wasn't much healing going on in that group.

A smiting monk can also made a healer monk's life miserable by using scourge healing. Our guild (LF) fought against IVEX on a gvg and we lost badly because our 3 monks all had scourge healing, backfire, and all the nasty hex stuff piled on them. We weren't able to remove those hexes fast enough and after our monks died they simply wiped us out.

Making "consequential" builds is generally inefficient, but an anti-monk build is far from consequential. If there is one thing you can always be 100% sure of, there will always be at least 1 monk on the enemy team (yeh yeh, you got those crazy all ele or war builds, but those are rare). Now not only do you know for a fact that they'll have a monk, but you can make a good guess as to what the monk carries on them. The bread and butter skills like resurrect, orison, healing breeze and WoH are likely to be in his skillbar. That only makes the job of making a build easier. Hopefully people will smarten up and start makig anti monk chars of their own and consider a mesmer as valuable as a monk when forming a party.


An unrelated sidenote, the warrior class is in bad need of a decent healing skill, healing signet is a joke now with the 2x during casting. If you're using your healing signet, there's a good chance someone is beating the crap out of you, the worst time to be taking double damage to heal a measly 70 hp (assuming you even put points into that joke they call tactics, hahahaha)

This weekend was my first time playing, and I played a monk more than any other career.

I got clobbered so many times I thought about changing my name to "Grease Stain". ^_^

Without a decent tank, a monk is in deep doo doo. They can lend some assistance (I noticed working with some henchmen that I could shoot a monster with my wand or a bow and heal a party member without losing focus on the monster. The healing happened in turn, but still VERY handy.) but for the most part were support players at best. The higher level I got, the more apparent this became, until I was unable to continue without some serious help, and finding a party (at least, my way of finding a party) wasn't very easy at all. (Sure, I could have sent out random invites to passersby like many people did, but I consider that poor netiqutte.)

I had fun with my monk/mesmer, and will probably rebuild him (Faster! Stronger! Better!), but if I ever meet another Mo/Me or a Me/Mo, we'd be locked at each other's throats for hours until one of us misses the next key in the drain/heal sequence. ^_^

Dave III

This is so totally "wrong"

The whole point of dual classing is that you CAN pick Mo as your secondary, if you want some good healing power. Why on earth should you add more healing power to all the other classes?

Hey Sinfear, you did some good healing this weekend!

BRGDS
Tara Tei, Tara Wei, and the third sister I forgot the name of!!

I have been a Tank for years. While my friends shoot arrows/ cast spells/ twiddle thier thumbs, I was the one fighting.

Guild Wars is the first game that is actually fun to be a Monk in. The monks are necessary for the first time and I love it. I just wish there were more good tanking warriors around there.

I would like to complain about two things though.

There are two enchantments that don't seem to work. Live Vicariously and Mend. Did anyone here get them to work. They advertise themselves as what sounds like really awsome enchantments, but they did nothing this weekend for me.

&

Warriors that stay behind the Monks in Battle. I saw this alot in PvE. Wow how stupid is this? Man I was really pissed after getting killed by ... only to see the arrow firing pansy warrior that I didn't need to heal cause they were out of range of the creatures. Monks we need to train tanks.

Mending is one of the worst skills in the game, and at the same time it's one of the most over-used.

It costs 10 energy to put up and costs 1 arrow of energy regen, or 10 energy every 30 seconds. It heals at MOST (with 12 healing prayers) 240 health over 30 seconds. (4 pips of regen=8 health/second, over 30s)

240 health and it costs 20 energy. Not to mention that it does you zero good while you're at full health, and is useless as an emergency heal.

Healing Breeze will heal 140-160 health over 10 seconds + your divine favor bonus, for between 170-200 health for only 10 energy. It's not great as an emergency heal, but it's much better as a fire-and-forget.

Do yourself and everyone you're responsible for keeping alive a favor and drop mending from your skillbar.

Mending and Flare get my votes as the most over-used and useless skills in the game.

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Now, I see one use for mending, and that is in Solo PvE exploration. As a pure healing/protection/divine favor monk, I was unable to kill anything in PvE, and there were times when no one was around to escort me places and kill monsters while I kept them alive. In those cases, running around with Mending and Balthazar's Spirit is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I still wouldn't waste a skillpoint on mending, since I'd much rather make a friend or bring a bunch of henchmen along as decoy meatshields, but if you're hellbent on running through areas as a healer monk solo, there are worse things you could do.