Monks are Special

Premise: Among all the available professions, Monks seem to have a privileged position: they are very difficult to do without in any group (whether PvE or PvP), and common wisdom even dictates that you have more than one. One guide on PUGs here at Guild Wars Guru goes so far as to mention that it is not true that every group needs three monks, and that sometimes it's better to use only two. Compare your reaction to this statement to your reaction if you read someone explaining that sometimes it's better to have only two mesmers in a group, or only two necros in a group, and you don't really need to have three all the time.

Someone will no doubt wish to claim that it is really healers who are special in this way, and people are just used to thinking of Monks as healers, but Monks are not necessarily healers and vice versa. This is true to some extent, but I submit that Monks gravitate naturally toward this role, and no other professions do. 3/4 monk attributes are clearly dedicated to healing/protection, including their primary attribute, and they have a wide array of skills for doing it (even some smiting prayers, like Zealot's Fire, appear designed to compliment this role). Ritualists have one attribute which emphasizes healing, a much narrower selection of healing/protection spells, and their primary attribute has no significant impact on their healing ability. Most other professions don't have the skills available to be dedicated healers at all. But if you wish, you can read "divine favor/healing/protection/restoration-spec'ed character" everywhere I write "monk."

So, common wisdom says that a group of 8 should have about 2-3 monks; 1/8 of the classes are wanted to fill 1/4 or 3/8 of the group slots in pretty much any group. It doesn't seem to be uncommon in mission districts to find multiple groups who are ready or almost ready to start, except that they need 2 monks to join first.

Response:

One possibility, clearly, would be to make some adjustment to the game to put the classes on more equal footing. However, in my estimate this would require numerous, broad, and sweeping changes to the game, and probably has not been practical since before the beta test started.

Therefore, I think the correct response is just for the dev team to acknowledge that monks have this privileged position and conduct their level design and balancing accordingly. For example, I think that every outpost in the game which allows groups of size 8 should have at least two monk henchmen (or similar), and most should probably have 3 (and if players don't feel that henchmen healers are good enough to rely on, that should be addressed). Monster groups containing monks should generally be regarded as more powerful than ones of equivalent size and level without them; monk bosses should be dealt with very carefully, etc.

I have been playing a Monk for about a year now. 1,500,000 xp. I hate to say it but a good Ritualist can totally supplement a monk’s role evenly. Ids even go so far to say that 2 Restoration Ritualist can be better then 2 monks.

Players get into a mindset that only certain builds can work. Healer, Protector, Bonder, etc. A Restoration Ritualist can do both and more. If you are lack for Healer Protector look into the Ritualist. It will surprise you.

A tough aim to achieve because:

Group with primary healer = Group without primary healer ----> Primary Healer class extinction

Even if that's true, it's somewhat beside the point. There are a lot of reasonable Monk builds, but almost all of them are dedicated to keeping the party alive (if you're not going to do that, you rely entirely on one secondary attribute, whose skills do mostly the same things as the Elementalist already does); there are a lot of reasonable Ritualist builds, and most of them aren't.

If some Ritualists are effective at the same things as Monks, that's great. But it doesn't change the general fact that a party function has been so balanced as to be vital, and is simultaneously markedly under-represented (compared to its necessity) in the general pool of character builds.

What aim, exactly, are you referring to? I said that devs should be aware that this healer's role was special.

And I completely disagree that primary healers won't get played just because they're not absolutely vital. Most character types aren't absolutely vital, and they still get played.

You may be working on the premise that people would rather play offensive characters than support ones, and while that's a broad overgeneralization, perhaps it's true for some people. But if that's the case, why not let them play offensive characters? It strikes me as sadistic to deliberately arrange the game so that more people need to play a particular character type than actually want to play that character type.

This is so true, i am so sick of getting in a group and then have to wait for 2 monks to join. Almost every mission out there ppl will not do unless they have 2 monks. Ritualists in restoration do work well but the gw community have not realized their power yet. Balancing the professions so they have more self heal would be a great idea. To name a few,(primary professions) mesmers have ether feast to heal, warriors(the guy who takes a huge majority of the dmg in groups) has only 1 heal skill they can use, Healing Signet. Rangers have 2, troll ungent(kinda slow) and healing spring(easily interupted). All these statements are made assuming they only use 1 profession and they are not relying/being affected by any other foe/conditions/ect. The only thing i disagree on is that groups need 3 monks, that is major over healing and is unneeded. Most gvg only use 2 monk, and in missions with 3 monks you may not have enough dmg output.

~shote

Then a N/Mo or a Mes/Mo can do the same thing then and one did mention E/Mo.

On a related note, where are all the monks in this game, anyway? There are hardly any in mission outposts most of the time...

Well, as the article said, 3 monks isn't always a good idea. Although I play a Mo/E, and when I go questing with henchmen, I find that bringing an additional 2 monk henchmen with me often (though not always) works better than bringing just one.

Which isn't to say that I haven't completed many quests and missions on my non-monk characters with only one monk henchman, when that was all that was available, but monks still clearly have privileged status.

It would be interesting to see statistics on the composition of groups that successfully complete missions, count the number that successfully complete with zero primary monks, and compare that to the number that successfully complete with zero of any other primary class...

Yes, anyone can choose to play like a weakened version of their secondary class instead of focusing on their primary class. A */Mo can play a healing build, but then they're doing that instead of a build focused on their primary class, and they're still not as good as a pure Monk. Similarly, a Mo/* can focus on his or her secondary class instead of doing the Monk's regular job, so it more or less balances out.

The more relevant fact is that a */Mo can bring along one or two healing spells to support the primary healers in an emergency, which reduces the number of primary healers you need, but I suspect this is already worked into the "2-3 monks per group" mentality (to whatever extent it's actually practiced).

The limiting reagent in a reaction has near-zero concentration at equilibrium. Just because people want 25-38% of their group members to be monks doesn't mean that 25-38% of players are playing monks.

They are farming in Elona ^^

Actually, I think the few that are dedicated monks have been diluted over the many diffrent challenging areas. Others are trying ouit their new proffesions and hoping someone else could monk them.

I agree that the monks have an almost monpolising position as a required core member in succesfull & pug teams, even if there are some exceptions

Ritualists with Shelter has also gotten that position due to the mobs heavy spiking in faction pve.

Yawn.. I take a restoration/communing rit over a monk any chance I get. Just so I don't have to hear how 'great' and 'needed' and 'special' the monk is.

Is this really another thread about the 'wonderful' monk? Do we really need another monk thread?

Thats why I love playing monk =P. Never have to wait for a group

lol ya, but then the problem is you can only be a healing monk or you will get kicked from the group... I would like to maybe try a smite monk sometime, but players just won't accept it (at least not that I've seen). It seems like all classes have at least two things to do except monk, which really has just protect team with heal and/or prot skills.

I also have played a monk for over a year, and yeah the ritualist can match them for healing very well. They are also better at mass-group protection than the monk, who tends to be better at protecting a small number of targets really well. People aren't very open minded, which is annoying.

Actually, if your monk is good, I'd even say a good group only needs 1 monk on a lot of the missions (I've solo-healed THK successfully before, in no small part due to the excellent group I was with). Thinking about the ritualist skills, I'd say that's also possible with the ritualist as well, again, provided the group is good.

Anyway, the thing is, the OP is right; they need proper healing support from the henchies. And smart henchie AI to do it too. Not only are there not enough people playing monks to fill the demand, but those that are progress through the game very quickly because of that demand, meaning they will more likely "finish" playing their monks and move on to other characters more quickly than any other class.

All the other classes are optional on any given mission. You don't need a warrior, mesmer, ele, necro, etc.; though certain classes can make it a bit easier. But you are very unlikely to succeed at all if you don't have a healer or protector or both.