PuG Monks driving me INSANE!

You dis say you used BiP:

Personally, I hate when monks heal me after I use BiP. I carry more than sufficient means to keep myself healed when I do battery work.

when monks learnt nrg mgmt but yet to learn how to move the eyes away from the red bar, they do that :S

well i used to do that...

I have been playing my monk more often in the last week and have come across a lot of monks who spam heal party and healing breeze and blow out their energy. They then get pissed at me for not healing the team. This seems to be a recent trend in the game. Guess a lot of people are making monks to get into groups easily without having the first idea about how to heal (heal party = lazy mans heal, healing breeze = loved by wammos who also think its right for their monk chars). I am not saying that healing breeze is nooby......it can be a counter to constant pressure degen but should not be used to "heal".

I use WoH, DK, RoF, Orison, Mend Ailment, Remove Hex and Heal Touch (all 5 energy spells which heal for quite a bit with max DF). The only 15 energy spell I have on my skill bar at times is usually aegis and I have never had energy problems.

Whats even worse is quite a few Mo/W actually turn out to be 55'ers and its hilarious seeing them bite the bullet in Abaddons etc.

But then again, this madness is not just limited to monks. I have seen wammos, with 12 points in healing plus equipped with healing hands, healing seed and healing breeze who do crap damage. Came across N/W carrying a sword and shield who charge a bunch of hands/fists of titans, die in a second and blame the monk (60 AL armor + ripotse idiots!).

Go figure!

Without saying much more, I have to say that I am endlessly amused by the counter to the "Healing Breeze is AWESUM!!!1" argument is to compare it to Orison.

As though comparing the two worst healing spells in the game to each other somehow accomplishes anything.

I am also amused to see all of these builds posted with 5-6 skills that do nothing other than make red bars go up. All of those skills are on short recharges, just what exactly do you think the 5th vanilla heal on your bar is actually doing?

Peace,
-CxE

So you advocate wasting energy casting Banish? ;]

O_O You know of a ritualist healing build that doesnt make you worry about energy?!?! Can you please tell me it? Or link me to it or something?

Just because the monk can watch his agro, doesn't mean the tanks know how to hold agro, and in pvp, there is no agro. That is where healing poke comes in..uh..healing touch....

Also, it is a monks job (at least when they are healing, which is 99% of the time) to heal everyone. If you are one of those monks who thinks people with certain classes, builds, or pets that need healing, don't need healing, then please don't play on your monk. When a monk has a healing build, it is so they can try to heal everyone, including pets, with as few deaths as possible. As long as you accually heal everyone, all of pve will be fun with a monk because, guess what? No one will yell at you for them dieing or anything like that, becuase they won't be dieing.

Hmm...orision of healing bad? Lets see...low energy cost, low recharge time, and low cast time, plus it heals pretty good. Seems to be a good skill to me. In fact, its is literally in every one of my healing monk builds, and accually probably one of the most used spells in all of those builds, and I often can heal better than the other monks I see in the parties I'm in...

And healing breeze can be a really good counter to degen, as long as you don't spam it...

Man, reading this really makes me wonder why we don't have a new one of those guides that end up on the Guru home page, exept this one is for how to be a good monk. Or is there already one of those and its just that no one reads it?

Well, we were talking about PvE. Even if the warriors can't hold their aggro (which is the fault of a ranger in most cases as explained in one of Healbot's comics) that doesn't mean you have to stand there and take hits. I mean, you're not bound to the ground (omg, it rhymes!) so that you can't take a couple of steps back. <yoda>When aggro lost, kiting essential is; MMMMM?</yoda>

Heal everyone, you say? That sounds like wasting the good ol' energy reserve. I mean, I don't heal pets because there are party members to heal. On top of that - rangers have some good skills for keeping their pets alive, provided they are beastmasters. If the pet is here just for the show, he won't get healed. He neither does any damage and he just gets in the warrior's way. He's of better use to the team eating dirt.

True. I just cycle orison and kiss. Seed the rambo assasin, heal party every now and then and it's all good for every PvE enviroment. Provided you don't spam heal party and have a means of energy management. Yesterday I went to Mineral Springs as mo/r and brought my pet along just for the fun of it. He's a white tiger and likes to play in the snow very much. What I want to say is: PvE is so smegging easy when people in your group are not random idiots.

nah the best monk has 0 healing 0 prot, and just grabs a hammer and attacks

I'm pretty sure Ensign does not advocate the use of "Healing" Monks in PvP taking somthing like Banish...

He's saying that instead of having 5-6 heals that all serve the same purpose and have very low recharge times, so low that you could cut out 1-3 of those skills and still be able to continously chain the remaining skills(No, that's usualy not a good idea, but just for arguements sake...). He's saying, ditch the junk you're not getting any real use out of, and bring somthing that's useful, like condition removal, or some protection, or some hex removal, or maybe somthing like Heal Party.

After all, I'd venture to guess that a monk that can not only heal, but remove conditions, hexes, and even mitigate damage with prot is better than one that mashes keys 1 through 6 all of which are set to skills that serve the same purpose, but by the time he hits key #3 the first skill is already recharged.


Hopefuly someone can understand that mess. It's 5 AM and I need sleep... Badly.

I'm finding lately that not only do monks spam healing breeze and heal party, many of these new monks don't bring any kind of condition or hex removal either. The reason why they don't bring mend ailment/condtion: I'm a healer, not a prot monk.

I don't trust a monk who doesn't bring condition removal. It's just wrong.

Don't bother, I was already suggested by someone to take Plague Touch or switch to /Mo to heal myself. Redundant healing ftw.

EDIT: And yeah, you don't remove hex, you breeze.

Quoted in agreement. When healing as my monk I always bring along mend condition, there is very little reason not to.

Mend condition is your friend, but draw conditions combined with purge is sometimes even better.

Extinguish can help wile crossing pits of lava, and Restore condition can sometimes hea lmore then WoH.

Yeah, i never leave home without one of those.

I don't bring a condition remover in favor of a hex remover and double res (rebirth and restore, just in case. usually for FoW, if we have a party wipe out)

However, if I'm doing something like THK, I'll drop rebirth for a condition removal.

I equip it in PVE myself, along with Healing Breeze, but I do try to use them sparingly, the main three heals I use are Orison of Healing, Ethereal Light, and Word of Healing, each only uses 5 energy and has short casting and recharge times.

Spamming skills with more than 5 energy cost just isn't smart for any class... Ele's can do it a little bit because of their large pool of energy, but I laugh at ele's in PVE that kill their energy by spaming exhaustion causing skills at the first battle then are near useless for the next two.

That's how I started out...... wait that's not something to be proud of.
*hopes no one sees the guild name*

Agreed, always take a condition remover. I bring it even with 0 in prot, and here are my 3 reasons to bring it: blinded warrior, dazed casters, and does the other pug monk and his tats have it?

at first i thought this was a complaint about how monks suck from someone who has never played a monk.

I play a monk form time to time. and i'm not completely worthless as that role. but a lot of the time your teammates make it really had to monk. splitting up in 4 different directions. attacking 7 groups of monsters at a time, and so on.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that the monk isn't always the cause of a groups demise

I frequently monk for PuGs. I run a WoH build with 5 heal skills, mend condition, remove hex, and rebirth. I do have some energy problems now and again, but usually not a problem. Energy problems usually stem from another party member doing something stupid. By no means am I the perfect monk and am still learning each time out, but would offer these observations.

PuGs are like a box of chocolates - you never know what kind you're gonna get. Sometimes decadence... sometimes nuts. Combining unknown players with unknown skills with unknown levels of mastery of those skills and trying to accomplish a goal. By very definition a challenge. Don't expect success every time. Manage your OWN expectations or don't PuG.

Worry about your own backyard first. Expect the worst. If you do get a 'bad monk' are you as prepared as you can be to deal with it? Or do you play your build expecting a 'good monk' every time?

It's not always the monks fault. A couple of examples from yesterday's adventures.

Farming greens in Eternal Grove with a tank, mm, ss, monk (me) team. First outing, we breeze through the bosses twice. Good team, good coordination, smart play. Everyone says 'great monking'. 'Stick with us for another round'. Second outing, different players, but also a tank, mm, ss and myself. Warrior doesn't know how to aggro/pull properly, MM can't keep a decent army of minions, and thus failure to which I receive a barrage of 'hey monk, your build is bad or you don't know how to play it'. Hmmm.... worked the first time.

Second example. Unwaking Waters Mission. Tank heavy group and an Elementalist who thinks she's a tank. Never had a chance from the get-go. Doomed from the word 'go'. Monks blasted for ineptitude.

Sure, I've had my share of screw-ups and failures and let my PuG down. 'Doh, I forgot to heal Danika'.

In summary, give your PuG monk a break. Try to educate them. If you can't, then they are probably a lost cause anyway. If the mission/quest fails, don't always blame the monk. Unfortunately, we don't carry 'Infuse Intelligence' or 'Remove Stupidity' on our bars.

Once, I was playing monk on a PUG and i asked the other monk what he was. He said he was prot and i asked him if he was using divine boon, otherwise the healing would be kinda weak. He then told me he was a bonder.

We started the mission and the monk whispers me saying that he had just found out that afterall he was not a bonder, only prot.
I kept an eye on him to see what he was using and he basically only had 2 skills: extinguish and protective spirit. I asked him why and all he tells me is that he should have gone healing instead of prot.

WTF????????

PUG monks are ok if you treat them well.

as mentioned above, be ready for the worst and never forget, that if the monk is NOT healing you it may be because he might have just got E-surged or got manta of recall shattered in a bad time. or somene like a tanking ee just drained all his energy to keep him alive...

and PLZ dont even expect Monks to rebirth anyone during the battle. he can see that you are dead, you know that he has been staring at the red bard more then anyone right?

In PvE a lot of people underestimate the power of signet of devotion and signet of rejuvenation. They are not spells, 0 energy heals for 90+ health, spam them... they are great for energy management.

I don't understand why orison of healing is even on skill bars anymore. Healing Wisper is a great spamable heal for the casters in the party (who should be much closer to you than to the warriors). Ethereal Light is an awesome PvE heal.

I use healing breeze and healing touch for self heals. Breeze is great for kiting. Breeze is also good because its a constant patch.

i'm blind <warrior>
i'm dead <warrior/ over extented ele>
My Energy is 30 of 80 <2nd ele>
hey your pretty hot <male war/ male ranger/ male assain>

are normally all calls that i ignore normally unless i have mend ailment/condition on my bar. Being blind dose not kill anyone in game if you had a hex that might. I'd love to cast empathy on some of the warriors i get part of the time.

I run a boon prot that dosen't have a sig so i'd leave em dead .

as for an elements mp unless they're healing only i've yet to give an ettin's hide about them. yes i still heal them but i wish that could be filttered out.

the last one, most of my chars are off gender since i'm staring at the screen of my char running alot. It's annoying to deal with a bunch of guys going "hey baby i got a flamming sword wnat to see?". believe it or not getting hit on by people is why i made a male monk just because i got so tired of kids saying lines simular to the one in quotes.

I leveled a monk just so I can irritate people.j/k I hate playing the profession...I use my monk for a mule.

click click move move RUN! click click click move move omg this is fun!

Oh, how I love monks who do that. He rebirths, gets his 0 energy for doing so, 2 more people die because I was healing the third one and then I get flamed and blamed for not healing, letting those two die or just simply being a bad monk. I love that. I really do. FAP FAP FAP!

I had a party once in fow which had a rebirth crazy monk and a res crazy necro. We were being ripped apart by over aggro and the monk just kept rebirthing everyone. I had no energy to heal these players that come back w/ <20% hp and 0 energy.. I was to busy keeping the rest of the party alive w/ no support from rebirth crazy monk. And the necro was going crazy rezing people who died on the front lines, who of course would die shortly after coming back to life in front of a pack of abyssmals.

And I wish I could get it thru the thick skulls of some warriors and rangers that constantly pinging their health is about as effective as repeatedly smashing the crosswalk button to make the light change faster, or continuously pushing a button to make an elevator come sooner

This is why I deleted my monk...

Those signets should be a last resort when completely out of energy and only used for that reason not spammed like the NPCs on Cantha.There is nothing wrong with Orisons it is great skill still and provides good healing and it very spammable.I would just use touch if I were you less then 10 erergy and heals for more.

As always, half the people are complaining about the other half...oh, I can't wait till the thread above this one reaches 4 pages!

Note: It is your job to remove blind from warriors (the henchies always do), because if they're blinded, they can't use 'Watch Yourself!', which causes the tank and everyone nearby to take 40% more damage. This doesn't usually kill people, but it certainly can. Bad eles who die or run out of energy are not your fault at all, and there's nothing you can do about that, although in pve it's not a big problem, so let them die.

Would you like to tell us what you have on your skill bar?

With WoH, ethereal light, dwaana's, seed, heal party, v. spirit, healing seed, mend cond. and resurrection chant, I can't find a space for those signets.

The three main healing skills can keep most groups alive without taxing your energy. Don't over heal. The biggest problem I've seen with monks that have similar builds is, they heal waaaaay before the heal would be maximumly effective.

I couldn't imagine a healing monk without 7/8 of those skills. Of course you can substitute e. light with orison and v. spirit with breeze, substitute v.spirit with a hex removal if you're in a hex heavy area.

If you are going to save them until you are out of energy there is no point in bringing them. They are great spot heals, not meant for use in times of real need. Why put a skill on the bar you don't intend to use... Plus I think I'm a little better at judging what heal to use than a henchman.

I would only bring one as a last resort if I bring one at all most of the time I don't except in one case in a mission I did.That was probably the last time I used SoD.I hardly have one on my skill bar and ofr the most part any decent pug Monk can do better than any Henchie Monk can.Monks can still out heal a Ritualist though and I am trying one out.

With Healing Light, it's rare that I ever run out of energy... unless a charge happy W/Mo decides to run away from me and he gets no healing.

My number one rule that I let PuGs know is: Monks don't have long distance healing. No classes have that ability, yet I experience so many players running out of healing range. You have to stay in range. I will NOT chase anyone. I will simply let them die and they will wait until the battle is over before I bring them back. If they complain, I try to explain that they need to work WITH the team instead of against it. Most younger players don't understand this. (They should really get their parents to buy them a WoW subscription)

There is nothing wrong with Heal Party, however like many other posters here, it is a situational heal... as ALL group heals are in every single RPG game are. Group heals are expensive but when used correctly, they can be very effient in terms of energy management. (IE use HP and regen for 5-10 seconds).

However, henchmen are much better than PuGs. Most of the bonus missions I've done in GWP have been with henchman while I bond. This includes THK, Divinity Coast, and several other bonus/missions. The Henchman, I can actually control. The warrior always gets first aggro dibs. I have taken a warrior on my henchmen runs because the guy begged me to... guess what? He messed up, pulled three groups and blamed the henchmen. I simply said he needed to work on his pulling skills and left him there to fend for himself.

I couldnt not agree more... amen,, even MORE irritating is that when monks are attacked by melee baddies.. they choose to try and tank thereselves through it with HB or HH hence using all their energy and half of yours as you struggle to keep them alive to aid with healing the rest of the team....

I can't stand being a healing monk. I always go for protection. Why heal damage when you can prevent it. And as for those stupid monks. What a waste of a skill bar.

1 heal 1 prot

if a normal monk is using HB, i know he sucks

Pretty much the build I have been using as a monk since Beta (of course without the Factions skills). Can't really go wrong with it. And Etheral Light is one of my favorite skills. I use it as my self healing too I've never been a big fan of Orison, probably cause I never found that I needed it in my builds. I still like to switch skills here and there for fun though.

That's pretty closed minded to say that most of the monks in the game have a bad build. In some cases in PVE missions, the spikes are high enough that the increased cast times of most healing spells makes boon prot better,but I've seen soooo many boon prot monks run out of energy due to bad energy management.

I've tried both boon prot and all heal, so far I prefer heal, but I agree with jana that it's best to have one prot and one healer.

i agree to your every word. heal party in itself isnt that great, but it can get the job done if you've got enough energy. still, i've found it way more effective to have orison and WoH (or if you dont have WoH, something similar to it) and signet of devotion. heal individuals by spamming orison and WoH and use SoD when you need to give your energy a second or two to recharge. i've never run out of energy using this system.

i've found myself taking up the slack of the groups second monk on more than one occasion. even though i can pretty much handle a group of 7 other people who have small self healing on my own, it still makes me sad to watch other monks fail so badly.

funny story, one monk/ele i saw was using Glyph of Renewal and divine favor for healing. it made me sad T_T

For pugs I generally go hybrid 16 heal/9 prot w/ prot spirit/rof/rebirth being my prot skills. 75% of the time you just can't rely on the other monk. Especially if they're a heal party spammer in UW, or one that doesn't know how to avoid aggro and ends up tanking 99% of the time. a second prot monk is more helpful w/ the skills I run than a second healer though.

actually just last night in uw I had a pug drive me insane. 2 trapping rangers who kept spamming qz. 1 monk, who I'll call mend condition monk as they spammed that constantly and an occasional prot spirit. Thank god for the other PS due to our leet tanks and their endure pain and pure strength builds. Then there was our confused mesmer who spammed chaos storm and energy surge on the aatxes. Led by our "elite" party former extraordinaire, flesh golem minion necro.

It's amazing we lasted as long as we did considering we didn't have enough damage output once the traps sprung, one of the warriors would repeatedly retreat half a circle behind the monks to use his healing sig, thereby pulling all sorts of nasties w/ him. Already useless minions would crumble around us while the rangers set traps.

One of the few groups where I finally left before the other monk did. Also got called a "noob monk" by the warrior after I tried to explain how he's supposed to hold the line, not retreat even if he thinks he might die. Thank dywana for prot spirit and dust trap...

There is more than one Protection line of Monks there is your Normal Active Protect Monk eg. Lina with Shield of Regen,Deflection or Restore Condition or now Life Sheath my new Favourite that is a normal Actice Protect with Reversal,PoS,Guardian and a few others.Then there is your Bonders with Life Bond and Barrier.Then there is your Boon Protects as well as Air Enchants.There is more than just the Boon Protects and who knows what the poster you quoted does.It is better to negate the damage before it starts unless you are dealing with mass of Hexes.