Shield of Deflection needs a hit from the buff stick.

I'm mainly starting this debate because one of surprisingly effective build, Ranger Spike.

Unless everyone in your team is a Warrior, the damage taken from 4 Rangers attacking at the same time (well within 1/2 second) is massive, thus the Healing Hands and Infuse Health most counter-spike monks carry. Both have a 1/4 second cast, which is very nice since, if used correctly, can negate one spike. Both of those skills are healing monk skills, but that leaves out my greatest profession/setup in the game out in the dust.

Let's analyze:

Say you're running a Pure Prot (16prot/13 divine) and you have unlimited energy (no need for /Me~/E subs), what will you do?
RoF will negate around 42 damage with Divine, and another ~ 30 depending on what triggers (may be Kindle, Orders or the actual shot itself), to actually get a decent result, you have to time it (which is nearly impossible unless you're Jesus) so that it Reverses a Punishing shot (if people still use them).
Another option is Guardian. 52% chance to evade or block (don't recall) attacks, but the 1 second cast time makes it so you'll most likely cast it at the end or near the end of the spike (unless the 20% faster casting from the bonus is triggered).
Shielding Hands is also a very decent skill, taking off ~19 damage off every hit. Then again, 25 second recharge and 1 second cast time means you need to get lucky to REALLY stop a spike.
Protective Spirit is not so really useful. Most casters have ~450 health. With 60AL, they'll be taking around ~30 damage a hit (on average), perhaps more with RtW. It would only really be useful for Punishing shot along with RtW.

Now, the counter to all of this? A buffed up Shield of Deflection. The lesser energy cost was decent. But what it is now, it's just a better Guardian with some added Armor. Don't get me wrong, it's useful, but the 1 second cast is too much. That's right. It should be used as a primary counter to Ranger spiking. Having 2 Mo/Ws with Shields Up! is nice, but I wish to see less Prot Monks just running Martyr/Restore.
All it needs is a 1/4 second cast time. Hell, even remove the Armor bonus, as long as prot monks can be used to counter ranger spiking. All a Prot monk can do now is cast RoF during a spike. Keep everything else the same way, 10 energy, 5 second recharge, etc, but as I stated for Guardian/Shielding Hands, a 1 second cast (meaning your target is going to get it on him after about 1.25seconds) is way to much do actually be that effective.

Feel free to agree or disagree and please explain why.

PS: I'm also pretty sure the animation is wrong. When you cast it, the caster gets the "Shield" animation on him, whereas it'll make much more sense that the one who got SoD casted on him, gets the shield animation.

IMO all the Protection elites need looking at...

Amity: rediculous recharge
Life Barrier: remove the "<50% health ends" part
MoP: disable all prot skills for 10 secs? Are you crazy?
Restore Condition: Should be target ally, not target other ally.
SoD: casting time too long (as you say)
SoR: too expensive (15 energy)

The fact I can always find a better/more useful elite than one from my main attribute skill selection is just plain wrong. I don't even have to um-and-ahhh about it. No brainer.

Yes if there's a Martyr monk in the party then Martyr/Restore Conditions combo is powerful, but the fact that I would never even take Restore unless there's a Martyr monk is wrong. Elites should stand out on their own, they should be skills you can build a good skillbar from, not have to rely on other team members.

Sorry for hijacking...

/rant mode off

i cant really put in much input because you both summed it up. Good post overall.

Unbelievable, I was thinking of the exact same thing yesterday. 1/4 casting time would be good indeed, because Infuse and Divine Intervention are the only decent reactive counters to a ranger spike.

You guys forget about Aegis. (50% block(evade i forget) but a good protect monk can usually tell when a spike is going to occur. Whenever i am playing a protect monk and facing a ranger spike i cast aegis just after the poeple start fighting giving me an extra sec to respond to a ranger spike, then as you said can cast guardian, or watever you want to help out (i like to use shielding hands). And bout the elite skills (MoP in particular) you have to disbale the protect skills. Cause think about it protect sprit plus MoP that person cannot be killed for 10 secs. Restore condition has to stay target other since (draw conditions= major heals from drawn conditions) But other than them i agree.

I totally agree. Amity is basically a PvE skill more than a PvP as with Life barrier. Shield of Regen is bad in the current metagame but is still pretty useful in PvE. Mark of Prot I use on my R/Mo because I only carry 2 prot skills. And at 8-9 prot its 38 dmg So the person I casted it on can take 76 dmg and yet it evens out to none. But btw thereal use for Mark of Prot in PvP for EoE bombs.

at the moment SoD has a very niche role in protecting the Ghostly Hero from attack interrupts as he captures. it would be worth bringing if it wasn't elite, but right now that it's an elilte it needs some utility use as well. 1/4 second cast time on it would be good - it's such a short duration protection anyway.

Shields up doesn't work. I was spiking in a team against another team that had shields up, guardian, rof, infuse, healing hands, we flawlessed them. ( and they had just won HoH, so they were a good team )

You just need... to nerf ranger spike. And run around behind shit alot. Yeah.

Quote: IMO all the Protection elites need looking at...

Amity: rediculous recharge
Life Barrier: remove the "<50% health ends" part
MoP: disable all prot skills for 10 secs? Are you crazy?
Restore Condition: Should be target ally, not target other ally.
SoD: casting time too long (as you say)
SoR: too expensive (15 energy)

The fact I can always find a better/more useful elite than one from my main attribute skill selection is just plain wrong. I don't even have to um-and-ahhh about it. No brainer.

Yes if there's a Martyr monk in the party then Martyr/Restore Conditions combo is powerful, but the fact that I would never even take Restore unless there's a Martyr monk is wrong. Elites should stand out on their own, they should be skills you can build a good skillbar from, not have to rely on other team members.

Sorry for hijacking...

/rant mode off Amity is just worthless. The best use I've seen with it was someone aggro the Minos/Griffons in Prophets, used Amity and took an SS of him waving with all the monsters around him.
Life Barrier needs something too but I haven't really thought about it.
Mark of Protection is fine. Renders you invincible against non-DoT damage for 10 seconds.
Restore is fine. For 5 energy, you heal your ally for 200+ which is something only Word of Healing can do (unless you use Dwayna's with like 10 enchants)
Shield of Regen is fine. At 16 protection, it heals 10 arrows (most of any positive or negative DoT skill) for 11 seconds with a decent cool down.

Quote: You guys forget about Aegis. (50% block(evade i forget) but a good protect monk can usually tell when a spike is going to occur. Yes, anyone can see rangers using random prep/Dual Shot, but you can't be certain of who the target is. And Aegis has a huge energy req and massive recharge. Most Ranger Spike groups don't run with many hexes so Insp. hex won't help at all (if you're running Mo/Me), so casting 1 Aegis is pretty much 1/3 of your energy bar gone (Unless you're Mo/E glyphing it). Not to mention that if you cast it, the target will probably get Rended, or they will just wait until it's over and attack in the ~20 seconds that Aegis isn't on.

Quote:

at the moment SoD has a very niche role in protecting the Ghostly Hero from attack interrupts as he captures. it would be worth bringing if it wasn't elite, but right now that it's an elilte it needs some utility use as well. 1/4 second cast time on it would be good - it's such a short duration protection anyway. That too. 6 seconds is just 1 more than Guardian. At 16 prot, pre-nerf/buff, it lasted 11 seconds and had the same block %/armor bonus. Would be great if like... someone from ANet saw this. Quote: Shields up doesn't work. I was spiking in a team against another team that had shields up, guardian, rof, infuse, healing hands, we flawlessed them. ( and they had just won HoH, so they were a good team ) You just need... to nerf ranger spike. And run around behind shit alot. Yeah. I disagree. I ran with some guild with 2 Ws with Shields Up! and we pretty much ripped through any ranger spike we faced. I've beaten many Spiker Groups, even some of the better ones, but I shouldn't have to really a single 1/4 cast spell to survive it. Ranger spike is fine.

Quote: Originally Posted by Trance Addict Mark of Protection is fine. Renders you invincible against non-DoT damage for 10 seconds. Useless for a Prot Monk... the other team switches target and you can't do anything...

Quote: Originally Posted by Trance Addict Restore is fine. For 5 energy, you heal your ally for 200+ which is something only Word of Healing can do (unless you use Dwayna's with like 10 enchants) Huh? At 12 Prot it will heal for 58 per condition, plus DF. No better than Mend Condition. Of course, if they are stacked then it's nice... still not worth the elite slot.

prot monks do NOT need any form of beefing up. They already have some of the most effective skills in the game.

Quote: prot monks do NOT need any form of beefing up. They already have some of the most effective skills in the game. That's quite the argument.

Shield of deflection was great before it was changed.

It now falls into the category of the many elites that i no longer use at all.

Its good for sof builds... merely due to the fact that it stacks with guardian and last longer. Boy can i tank ca.

I like to use Shield of Judgment.

Shield of Deflection {Elite} - Enchantment Spell
For 6 seconds, target ally has a 50-70% chance to "Evade" attacks and gains 12-22 Armor.

How about drop the + armor, lower the energy, and quicken up the recharge time. Then, take the chance to Evade attacks, and change it to chance to evade projectiles.

Just for fun, include the catapult in projectiles. Then you could bait the other team with SoD.

This would make the skill geared directly against Ranger Spike. Not that I have anything against Ranger Spike, it is fun to teach nOObs how to win with a minimal amount of coordination.

Actually ranger spike needs to be coordinated its IWAY that does not. I like the armor part. The recharge is 5 secs.. I mean cmon thats not that bad is it? Attacks include projectiles. Why make it less useful if it didn't evade melee attacks.

Restore Conditions clears all conditions and heals that amount for each condition removed, it doesn't need a buff..

Shield of Deflection on the other hand.. a little longer would be nice :P

I agree , faster casttime, maybe less armor in exchange. A protter should be able to prevent damage until the healers can react. Hell, even axewarriors can interrupt me.

Devine intervention works against any spike, but hey ? 30 seconds recharge ? makes it work only one out of 2-3 times.
Shields up + Aegis works very well too. Shields up doesnt work for the first encounter, because one needs adrenaline and aegis gets interrupted often since they nerfed it. Problem with ranger spike is : the target gets rend, lingered or at least rigored (most dangerous imho).

6 seconds Duration is fair with +20% staff its 7, not bad.


Therefore i suggest to make SoD not the target escape, but make any attacker miss :


New skill description (1/4 sec):

For 6 seconds, anyone attacking target ally has a 50%-70% chance to miss with attacks and target gains 0-15 armor. This is an elite skill.

I don't really care about anything with the skill. I just want it to have a decent % to block/evade attacks for at least 5 seconds and a 1/4 second cast.