(Rant warning) F the bandwagon monks.

You are assuming his views of fun are the same as yours. That is wrong, and shame on you. His idea of fun may not be to farm and be god to melee, his idea of fun could be an honest challenge. You can't take someones words and spin them to make that person look bad, especially if you are not in that person's mind. Which I doubt you are. Therefore if you have your opinion that Farming and Being god is fun, then post it in that manner, do not post in some subliminal liable manner.

Again, I'm a Monk by trade. Its not a matter of jealousy that others can solo. I can solo, and I have, as I stated before, without the 105 build, granted it was alot easier and more effective with the 105 build. So No, no jealousy here. Actually, I find soloing boring, I dont see how anyone can do it all day long, as many do. I had ALOT more fun when I was part of a crew of 5 that would do smite runs, because they were good players, funny and unselfish. Yea, I had to share loot, but I had alot more laughs with that group than I ever did by myself in UW.

Yes, other players can be frustrating, but thats a fact that every other class has to deal with, and monks should be no different. The thing you seem to be missing is that other players can also be the best thing this game has to offer if you dont approach playing with them with an attitude of superiority and are willing to teach "the incompetents" what to do and not to do.

blaming other players as a reason to exploit is a pretty poor excuse in my opinion.

Actually, I'll disagree with this. Protective Bond is broken. There's a serious problem with any enchantment where the *only* answer is removal. There should always be the option to play around or power through the enchantment, or to effectively ignore it under the right circumstances. Protective Spirit shuts down damage spikes but you can still whittle your target down quickly - Shielding Hands works in reverse to prevent nicks, but you're still vulnerable to big spikes of damage. Guardian works against focused physical attacks, but you'll chew through energy with target switching. Aegis can shut down a physical offense wholesale for 10 seconds, but a team can simply wait it out. In other words those skills are powerful tools against the right offense, but some offenses avoid them entirely while the ones they do hit can adjust to still win the game.

Protective Bond is one of the few enchantments that cannot be played around. Either you remove it to take the skill down, or you have a target that simply cannot be killed and you'll lose to it. This creates PvP situations where all you have to do to win is fight to keep a particular enchantment up - if you can recast it enough and bury it under chaff or otherwise win the battle over that enchantment, you win the game. Of course you don't see this problem right now in PvP, but I assure you that if NR disappeared you'd be seeing the enchantments that fall into this category back out in force - the aformentioned Protective Bond, and the once ubiquitous Healing Seed.

Just looking at PvE concerns, though, it's problematic that the only way to prevent Protective Bond farming is to put monsters with enchantment removal in *every single pack*. How is that supposed to be interesting? That a pack of level 28 mobs can be shut down by a single enchantment doesn't set off any alarm bells? To me it says that the skill is simply overpowered, and needs to be changed so that monsters, and players, have options other than 'bombard the Monk with enchantment removal' if they want to be successful. Otherwise we have degenerate buff stacking strategies that aren't good for the game, in any aspect.

Peace,
-CxE

There are plenty of places in UW that render that build useless. Forget dealing with the worms or Mesmer mobs in that place as a 105. If UW is a snooze its because the smite run groups have done it so many times they can do it in thier sleep, or trappers exploiting spirits, have done it so many times...

UW is tough enough if you're doing more than the average smite runs. Prot bond is broken, I cannot belive that Anet intended it to have an energy cost of 1pt per reduction of damage.

I can solo UW without the 1 energy, I can do it just as easy with 2 energy per hit.

I dont mind if they make it 2 energy at 17 prot...

Well stated, /signed, Thank you.

Sure, it can still be done with 2 energy, but its better with 1, with 1 /ebond/balthspirit you are not only invulnerable to phyisical damage but it also charges you up at the same time... with bless sig/bonnetti's it would be fine if you just broke even, i know. Ensign hit upon why its broken better than I did.

While you people bitch about something as trivial as a skill, consider the big picture. Ok, you stick enchant removal in every mob, guess what, that pretty much screws EVERYONE over.

Consider that UW and other places have some ways of screwing over 55 monks.

Ataxe can interupt you, especially when they are in mobs.
Squids can drain you to 0 Energy and then remove Prot Bond
Squid can also interupt you till you die.
Coldfire own you, unless you take alot of time to kill them using Glyph of Con.

If you are bitching about this, then there are 2 explainations.

You either cant afford to make a 55/105 monk, or you made enough money and now are trying to screw others over.

The farming monk influence on the economy is minute at best, mainly because of the Market reset. Also, Monks arent the only class that can farm. I farmed on my E/Mo and Wamo, and made roguhly 50k in less than a few days of slow farming, and that was NOT in UW.

Just changing Protective Bond to 2 energy per hit at level 17 won't fix it - I've gotten used to running the build without Essence Bond so that I could run Watchful Spirit instead - it makes the gameplay that much more brainless. Putting Essence Bond back in wouldn't be a problem, and you could manage energy around the few hits that don't trigger both. So much emphesis is put upon the level 17 Protective Bond, for the one energy per hit, that it's easy to lose sight of the obvious - the skill is abusive because while it's up you only take two damage per hit. As long as it has that effect people will find a way to work around the other drawbacks.

Peace,
-CxE

Why not just leave the whole monk thing alot and worry about fixing the more important things, like PvP or the Linear PvE >.>

/signed

treat us right and learn to play.

The coded it that way did they not?

Coldfire are easy, even without Glyph, just move around a little bit.

Your explainations are wrong.
1.)I could afford to make a 105 build because I had nearly everything for it before everyone jumped on the bandwagon thus I didnt have to spend 200k on the runes. 2.)I don't care how much money people make, notice that hasnt been a part of my argument yet?? Its not about how much money I make or how much money others make, its about the fact that its unbalanced and its an exploit, and needs to be fixed.

Ensign said it first, and I concur whole heartedly, disenchants everywhere is not the answer. You say doing so would screw everyone, and I say EXACTLY my point, if the skill is so powerful that the only way to moderate it is to screw everyone else over, doesnt that set off alarm gongs???

I disagree about the economy, the influx of gold into the game simply devalues gold, which is rotten for the causal player/non botter because the smaller amount of gold hes going to be able to acrue is going to be drastically reduced in value.

Your point about farming in places other than UW also makes my point for me. Yes you soloed in those places that were not UW and made money, And I'd wager I could make a monk build to solo those same places you did with another class, but I'd LOVE to see you try to solo with those classes in UW where any monk who can read or have someone explain the build to him can solo with the greatest of ease.... More proof its broken and unbalanced.

Well, it cant be aruged that indeed they did code something, wether or not the exploitation of protbond was intentional or an oversight is debatable.

To the OP- You are the reason I don't go with PuG's anymore.

Lose a mission- our fault.
You die- our fault.
We give a suggestion- "Shut up monk, just heal."

Your one of the people who beg "NEEDZ MONKS FOR GROUPSS!1;11" and then treat us like crap when we join. You wonder why we don't want to join groups anymore.

Irrelevant - the only spells you cast are offensive in nature, and even those spells can be forced through with Bonetti's Defense. Aatxes do nothing to remove Protective Bond, and are thus rendered helpless. The most dangerous thing they can do is apply bleeding, which is why you carry Mending / Watchful Spirit / Healing Breeze to counter the pips. Generally Aatxes are ignorable though and my biggest complaint is their terrible pathing - I'd rather kill them six at a time, instead of watching them body block each other and come in two at a time with a long train of stupid bulls that won't move around behind them.


Reducing your energy to 0 does not remove Protective Bond. You need to lose energy from a hit while Protective Bond is up and you're at or below 0 energy. With Balthazar's Spirit and/or Essence Bond, this never happens. Fear Me does not beat Protective Bond. As before, interrupts do not remove Protective Bond so these enemies are safely ignored. For the XP farmer, Darknesses are ideal because they do not body block each other and don't have a ton of HP - I've done ~20 Darknesses at once before without any real fear of dying.


Coldfire are fairly straightforward to kill, if you've developed advanced enough tactics to not stand in their Maelstroms. Well, at least when you're casting. Walk out of it, cast, walk back in. With Essence Bond and Balthazar's Spirit up Maelstrom actually recharges your energy. Sure it can take a while to kill a pack of Coldfires, but they can't exactly kill you either. Usually I avoid them altogether because their drops are terrible and they don't die fast enough, but when I do kill them I try to train a pack of Smite Crawlers along as well - to recharge my energy for me.


Or maybe, just maybe, we see a serious imbalance in the game that we'd like to see closed.

While I'm mentioning serious imbalances, there's a bigger game design problem at work here - the most effective way to accumulate wealth is to play solo, usually against degenerate packs of easily countered mobs, which just so happens to be the most boring way to play the game. If the reward scale was skewed so that the best way to get rich and powerful was to run missions with your friends, then you'd see a lot more people doing that, but as is you make as much if not more money and XP in a single solo underworld run as you'd make in several hours running missions with friends. I can spend 15 minutes wiping out a pack of smite crawlers and come away with a full inventory, a glob or two, and stacks of crafting materials that I salvaged to free up inventory space - or I can go and help a group through the ostensibly difficult Thirsty River mission and come away with a few Forgotton Seals, white weapons, and a hundred gold in cash. I don't even get the 1000XP reward for completing the mission again? What's up with that?

That imbalance doesn't exactly get talked about a lot, but it's a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Peace,
-CxE

So now its Prot bond that is an exploit? Please. From the stance of game designer, prot bond is not the problem. The "problem" is that they made two skills that do the exact same thing: Essence Bond and Balthazar's Spirit. It was stupid of Anet to make two identical skills, but that isn't Prot Bond's fault.

Did you actually read this thread? I'd suggest actually reading what I wrote before going off on some kind of offended personal attack next time. I am a monk, I've been a monk forever. I started as a monk, I've never once been the person you describe. Your post just goes to prove my point that the monk class is going to hell in a handbasket because of this build. Used to be that warrior was the class of choice for the majority of the asshat players (not that every class didnt have some) but now people like you are shifting that balance towards monks, and I don't like it.

Yep, Prot Bond is broken. Ebond/Balthspirit do not do the exact same thing. Thus they are not identical. Ebond I belive only applies to physical damage, where Balthspirit applies to "damage", and provides a boost to adrenaline. Seeing as how Ebond is garnered earlier in the game and has somewhat "lesser" effects that seems about logical to me. Besides, the energy cost of Prot Bond is only part of the problem. Even if I had to do without either Ebond or BalthSpirit, I could more than deal with the energy loss with blessed sig/bonetti's. The other problem is that it can be exploited to the point were ALL damage of any sort is reduced to 2pts, which is easily overcome with some basic regen's.

The 105 build makes me sick, i just shows how far people will go to be "invincible" (sounds a little villain-ish to me) personaly i like being a healer and i would feel useless with out my healing

I think there are more than a few people who disapprove of this 105 build, about 70% (random guess, no actualy math was done) of the groups i join ask the same question before they let me in and that is "please tell me your not a stupid 105 monk"

However i guess people can play the way they like so there is not much we can do.. its all up to Anet

Protective bond doesn't stop life stealing I found out :P 63 or so Vampiric Gaze = byebye 55 hp Monk. D:

prot bond does stop life stealing, maybe you messed up testing it.

so, the Suffering/Feast of Corruption from Maw The Mountain Heart, and the Shadow Strikes from the Darkflame Dryders was a glitch, eh? If it's not life stealing it doesn't stop, it's shadow damage. Go try it yourself on the Dryders on Perdition.