Healing Monk

I have a question for the other healers out there.

I notice that alot of people, run 4, sometimes 5 healing spells in their skillbar for PvE. I want to know why...

I normally only run 2 ally healing skills, and 1 selfheal. The rest of my slots go to condition/hex removal and of course energy management.

To date I have not had any problem with only 2 healing skills. Obviously I have trouble outhealing a spike, but then spiking rarely happens in PvE anyway...

Would love to hear someone elses thoughts.

Be careful comparing yourself to others in PvE. It's not entirely uncommon to have a monk in your group spamming 4 different 10 energy heal spells before spamming that he's out of energy. The number of heal spells you have equipped should really be determined by what heal spells you are using. Sometimes it's nice to put a passive enchant heal spell on somone while you spike heal another player. Also some people use heal spells that only heal others and need a self heal (like healing touch). Some people also like to bring a signet heal like Sig of Rejuvination or Sig of Devotion for energy management. Heal party also generally takes up a slot since it does some of the most healing for it's energy cost and can be helpful in large party battles where the whole party is under pressure.

It's not necessarily bad to have more than 2-3 heals in your skill bar as long as you still have the flexibility to remove conditions and hexes as well as rez when all else fails. Before I fell in love with Zealous Benediction, I ran this heal build:

Orison of Healing (general heal)
Word of Healing (big heal)
Sig of Devotion (energy management heal)
Healing Touch (emergency self heal)
Dismiss Conditions (condition remover)
Inspired Hex or Holy Veil (hex remover)
Heal Party (large scale pressure heal)
Rebirth (rez)

There are plenty of good healing builds that very greatly in variety (especially in PvE), so go with what you enjoy.

How far are you in game, or do you rely on the second monk?

I usually pick spells that I can 'almost' constant spam - I most likely won't, but better be save than sorry..

I set-up with 3 main heals / Orison - Kiss - Ethereal Light /
1 Emergency Heal / Heal Other /
and Party Heal, for heavy degen, and or spikes that go against more than 2 party members..

im on 4 5e heals ( one si for me) orsiron, Kiss Glimer and healign tuch ( thya do it for me fine) then i have mend aliment, inspire hex heal party ( for desperat mesurs) and rebirth

Quote:

/agrees with ensign, because I'm a charles fanboy.

There are really only a few good spells in healing, one is healing seed because it's an incredibly passive spell (slap it on a warrior and he's probably going to be fine for 10 seconds) and more efficient than the rest of the line. touch is a fairly nice self heal, infuse is a great spike heal, and orison and dwayna's kiss are both efficient in terms of the amount they heal for compared to energy cost. However, if you look at reversal of fortune and realize what it actually does, you realize the whole healing line kind of sucks.

I would disagree that running 4 heal skills is always bad, but not by much. I will agree that often when people bring 4 or more heal skills they are doing so pretty inefficiently, but when you run something like a WoH build you will need WoH, another heal skill to use when that is recharging and likely a self heal like Healing Touch. If you start getting into PvP, healing really does fall far behind in efficiency. Running anywhere without someone in the party bringing prot skills is asking for trouble, whether it be PvP or PvE, but as long as you have someone bringing some prot in PvE, you should be fine.