Great 4v4 Monk Build. Good healer without Healing Prayers.

This build came a long way in the making. But save for Nature's Renewal spam (and it has to be spam, one or two nature's renewal doesn't stop this), this monk build has been unbeatable.
I am a mesmer secondary so I will put down what I use. I've found mesmer secondary is best for all primary healers in a party.

Points:
16 Divine Favor
12 Protection Prayers
3 Domination

Skills:
Reversal of Fortune
Protective Spirit / Shielding Hands
Aura of Faith (Elite)
Blessed Signet
Hex Breaker
Balthazars Spirit
Life Bond
Divine Boon

I use protective spirit, where as another monk in my guild uses Shielding Hands, its a matter of preference. Shielding Hands is anti-warrior / anti-ranger, and protective spirit is anti-spike.

Before you get into battle, you need to cast, Bathazars Spirit, Aura of Faith, and Divine Boon on yourself, then Life Bond on each member of your party.

This way, whenever anyone in your party gets hit, you get 1 energy, and they all take reduced (50%) damage.

If you become spiked by Ele, cast Protective Spirit on yourself.

With this much Divine Favor, Divine Boon heals an extra 73. Your Divine Favor itself heals another 33, then Reversal of Fortune heals another 71 (max).
With Aura of Faith, it is stacked last, so add up the 73+33= 106. With reversal that is as good as Word of Healing. Then you add Aura of Faith and it increases health gained by 52%. 106+53=159. 159+71 = 230. 230 Healing for 5 energy. Every reversal spam is 159 health, and also Protective Spirit.


You should spam Blessed Signet, whenever its up and your out of harms way, cast it to keep your energy at full.

If you or a member of your party gets backfired, cast Protective Spirit on them and backfire only does 45 damage, so they or you can cast through it. Make sure you keep your hex breaker up at all times. If it goes down, cast it. Then if they break it quickly, get out of range of the mesmer / necro and cast it when its up again (5 second cooldown).

I'm posting this for improvements or critiques that anyone may have.

I have tried using Guardian instead of Reversal of Fortune, and I found it isn't effective if you have to emergency heal someone who doesn't have Aura of Faith on them.

Thanks everyone.

~Mirhi
BnB

blessed signet spam... energy denial > you. That 2 second cast time really hurts it in my book.

I like the core which is AoF + protection spells, but I think you can do better, energy wise. For example right now i'm trying a blessed aura/divine spirit idea that i've been trying to get to work & now your post has given me some ideas. I'll post it when i'm done


ps I make all my builds in the QZ environment so you'll have to forgive me if they need editing.

Energy denial doesn't hurt much because as long as people don't deal damage, you don't need to cast. Interrupts hurt more, but if there are interrupts, then the monk gets energy.

Double mesmer energy drain is effective, but in 4v4 if you have two inspiration mesmers, you have near no damage.

Thanks for reply.

Last I checked, mesmers aren't supposed to deal damage.

If you wanted damage, wouldn't spike eles do the trick?

Hmm...

I'm definitely more afraid of the skilled mesmer who shuts down every enemy party member in 10s. flat.

As far as I can see, only inspiration mesmers can pull off this stunt. Gotta steal energy to shut down one for a bit, and then use energy to shut down non-casters...

One girl alone took out 3 of my teammates in a team vs. team setting and our monk had no energy for about 20s. Hell, 8s. of no energy can be DEMONIC in a heated fight.

This build is a lot more optimal than I thought. Still working on it though.

Ive used something similar, having to use blessed sig gets old fast. You are vulnerable as hell while casting it. And for a good energy build Id take Offering of blood anyday for a monk. Instant cast a nice sizeable enery return as well. As a ranger I love using distracting shot on a prot monk using blessed sig, it totally screws them.

Drain energy is much better than offering of blood. Especially since as monk, you will be most likely the primary target thus you wont be able to use offering of blood.

Offering of Blood = Necro, meaning you have no mesmer secondary and therefore no hex breaker. No hex breaker on a monk is the worst idea for a primary healer.

As for blessed signet leaving you vulnerable. Yes and no. Because of bathazars and life bond on everyone, you're constantly gaining energy through Bathazars Spirit. You can actually manage without it, especially versus rangers who are constantly pelting you. Against mesmers and elementalists it is much harder. Mesmers loaded with interruption and lots of enchantment removal give this build some trouble. distracting shot never does because reversal of fortune is 1/4th second cast time, Protective Spirit is also 1/4th second cast time.

As for inspiration mesmers, it is painful, but if you have an inspiration mesmer, you really don't need much energy anyway. With 0 energy you have on:
3 Life Bonds
1 Bathazars Spirit
And thus when you get hit you regain energy. Then it depends if the inspiration mesmer also has power spike or the like to stop blessed.

The choice between necro and mesmer secondary is tough, and basically is Energy Drain + Hex Breaker vs Offering of Blood + Contemplation of Purity.

Basically, offering > drain and HB > contemplation.

Drain is really substandard compared to offering cus it always ahs the potential to completely backfire if you drain someone who was at low energy. Even if if you get the full drain, you still dont get as much energy over time as offering gives. btw offerings sacrifice isnt so bad. It hits for ~40, not so bad when you compare to being hit routinely for 100 damge eviscerates.

Hex Breaker is my all time fav skill to use when Im a monk, it gives just about the closest thing to hex immunity there is besides spell breaker. Contemplation isnt bad either, it can heal+get rid of hexes and conditions, and its insta-cast and its a skill, not a spell.

As for the OP, its good but reliant on blessed sig. If it gets disabled/interupted, youre gone.

The thing is this is an arena build. You couldn't get away with blessed signet in gvg and likely not in tombs either. Too bad cuz I kinda liked that life bond mechanic.

So what's the next best energy machine? Lets figure a enchantment staff upgrade and 1 spell every 1.5 seconds. 14 duration/1.5 spell per sec = 9 spells *5 = 45 energy saved -10 energy to activate = 35 energy. 35 energy per 60 seconds = 1.75 pips of regen. With quickening zeph, it's almost twice that. Glyph of lesser energy is 2 pips. I'd personally go with divine spirit for a number of reasons.


I didn't figure blessed aura into the calculations because the only enchantments that benefit from it are divine spirit and... divine spirit. AoF has too long a duration. It'll probably get stripped long before BA goes into play. To get BA, you'd have to change your elite, maybe something like shield of regen. Maybe even pick up the glyph anyway. (btw DS = 5 pips with the staff upgrade + blessed aura + quickening zeph)

k hex removal. Personally I prefer to leave that to teammates. I'd go with vengeance or divine intervention on that slot but, seeing as it depends a lot on gametype, I'd say the choice is up to you. Try to fit in DI anyway. It's too good to pass up.

Without life bond, you don't need so many points into protection unless you pick life attunement. I'm actually really tempted to choose it or vital blessings anyway since it'd help our primary healer a lot & free up AoF for casting on the other guys. Can't see a better non-protection option. Generally a monk shouldn't have more than 1 maintained enchantment though, but I think I can handle it

Anyway I hope that helps. I design monks in 2s or 3s cuz that's generally how tombs/gvg goes. You can usually design much better monks if you know how the other monks work or you know you can rely on something like BiP or QZ

I run a very similar build in PvE and Arena fights, with MoNe, using the Offering of Blood some people like so much *and* Blessed Signet. That gives me more energy to actually go around healing people (such as myself), and makes the build less dependent on either skill (or losing energy entirely).

It's a tight build, there are many possible options.

Thanks for input. I actually thought of something that would beat it handily thanks to some input above.
3 Nature's Renewal casters
1 inspiration mesmer with Tap, Drain and Ether Lord.

Thanks for the input so far.
I think I found the solution, Spell Breaker as an elite would probably be better than AoF. But I'll have to try it. Once again, ranger disruption isn't a problem because the arrows give energy. Only mesmer interruption is a problem, but it isn't because if there is mesmer interruption, there isn't much damage in the group.

Thanks again.

Forgive me but Im not seeing how it takes 3 NR casters to shut this down. 1 hit the floor, all your enchants are gone. You have 3 life bonds anda a balth spirit to put back up. Combined cast time 8 seconds and 40 energy under NR. Thats HUGE. Your Aura of Faith was also hit and may not be able to come back for a while.... Am I missing something?

Quote: Forgive me but Im not seeing how it takes 3 NR casters to shut this down. 1 hit the floor, all your enchants are gone. You have 3 life bonds anda a balth spirit to put back up. Combined cast time 8 seconds and 40 energy under NR. Thats HUGE. Your Aura of Faith was also hit and may not be able to come back for a while.... Am I missing something? For a moment I thought I was missing a brain, but obviously I was wrong... wait, what?

Anyway, SUGGESTION:

Take out Life Bond, use something else. Life Bond isn't really that good, how many Warriors is the other team going to pack? Otherwise, great build! *_* I look forward to trying this when I get home from vacation.

I know you're using it also as energy gain BUT... once again, how many Warriors are the other team going to pack?

So that leaves you with 2 skill slots... what to take?! I don't know.

Quote: Originally Posted by Neo-LD Forgive me but Im not seeing how it takes 3 NR casters to shut this down. 1 hit the floor, all your enchants are gone. You have 3 life bonds anda a balth spirit to put back up. Combined cast time 8 seconds and 40 energy under NR. Thats HUGE. Your Aura of Faith was also hit and may not be able to come back for a while.... Am I missing something? yes. It's an arena build. Quote:

Originally Posted by UberRusty ... how many Warriors is the other team going to pack? .... once again, it's an arena build.

Quote: once again, it's an arena build. Once again, I thought you were open to suggestions. Not all arena teams have 50 W/Mos.

I know its an arena build. What difference does that make? You still have to recast everything, and you still cant do it. 8 seconds. 40 energy. at least 3 enemies beating you senseless.

Yes, this build is defeatable. No one said it wasn't.

I see very, very few NRs in Arena, though.

i see NR more and more often... as a counter to blessed signet monks in Arena.

NR goes up, all you have to do is cast bathazars on yourself and then divine boon and you can heal reasonably well. Once you kill NR you can put life bonds back up if need be.