Divine Favor vs. New Enemy AI

Okay... We all know by now that the enemy AI immediately goes for the monk. Kiting still works sometimes, but there have been times when the enemy will follow me until their last breath. I'll do the math for those of you who have never played as a monk: Aggressive Single-Minded AI + Monk = Pitiful Death Within Seconds.

So... I present an idea to help solve the poor, poor Monk's dilemma. Divine Favor should have an inherent effect: For every 1 rank in Divine Favor, Monk's have a 1% chance to "evade" incoming attacks.

If the enemy is going to only target the Monk, then give Monks a chance to survive longer than 10 seconds on the battlefield. I realize everyone is probably gonna flame this idea like it's a barbecue, but I decided to risk it anyways.

I used the search feature for this, but only got WTB and WTS threads, so meh.

I'm pretty sure that Monks are able to last a lot longer on the battlefield and do not need evasion. It would destroy everything about PvP.

/signed (but only for PvE, it would unbalance PvP)

I see plenty of monks surviving more than 10 seconds. I just don't know what you are talking about.

/notsigned

True. I made this idea from experience in PvE. I hate it that NerfNet decided to make PvE just like PvP. It's true that in PvP everyone always targets the Monk first, but in PvE it's just too much to have 8 enemies target you all at once. On the other hand, even if it was implemented into PvP, it wouldn't effect the game play that much. Everyone always targets Monks with Hexes and Conditions. Warriors and Assassins usually have skills that allow their attacks to not be "evaded" or "blocked". In the end, PvP would not be effected.

If it is too much, even 1% for every 2 ranks of Divine Favor would suffice.

I see that you play a monk... this might have something to do with your experience. I play a necro for the most part. We dont have much in the way of skills that reduce incoming damage, so we are pretty squishy too.

It has been my experience that the AI will target me over the monks (I typically play with Heroes and Hench. I gave up on PuG a while back). Taking what you've said, and what I've seen others say about the AI, i figure it's priority target is not necessarily the monk, but the human player.

Case in point, when going up against Shiro and the Lich, Shiro focused all attack on me, ignoring the warrior and monks as we all focused on the Lich. For well over three minutes I was constantly slashed at and hacked by shiro and his ridiculous blades. I even died once. Shiro found a new target. I was rez'd with full health. Shiro disregarded the new target and came back to me. (Just likes me i guess). The only time he stopped attacking me was when we finally killed the lich and started our long game of tag.

Case 2: I recently observed that all my Heroes had a moral bonus of 8, whilst I had a DP of 42. I am not a Horrid player. I have successfully completed all three campaigns with protector title. But for some reason, mobs like to target me, and protective AI support prefers to spend it's healing/protection not on me. I thought, maybe it's because I'm the one who initiates all the attacks, and because of that the mobs just focus on me. To test this i sent the flag in first, and followed well after aggro hd been established. Surprise surprise, the mob broke from the Hench Heros and came to attack me. No no, changing Divine favor to compensate for the New AI will not address the true problem. The only way this will be fixed is to fix the AI.

/not signed

PS, My AI monks seem to survive just fine. It's the warm fleshy things the Mobs are after, ie you and me: the players.

I absolutely loathe henchies and heroes and only play them when it is required. I suppose we all have our opinions on the matter.

Nonetheless, this idea is obviously not very much liked by many an individual. Like I said before, it was just an idea I had after playing PvE with PuGs and Guildies for so long. Just an idea.

If a monk gets beaten so bad that he dies in 10 seconds, I doubt even 20% chance to evade would save him.

Completly unreasonable, /notsigned.

No more pve/pvp only stuff. It will only make it harder to learn the other one.

Agreed.

They don't just go for the monk anyway. They go for low AL and low health. For this reason I see them nearly always target Eve before Alesia or Lina... Eve is always sacrificing with those Blood Rituals, which she insists on using on everyone in the party, including warriors, when their energy goes below 50%.

Monks have it easiest out of all the casters because they don't have to rely on someone else in the party to keep them alive.

ah ha ha ha ha

You're kidding right?

/not signed

Yes, it seems so.

/not signed

Practice your kiting skills and/or bring wards.
Be creative and stop coming here or to wiki for your builds.

/notsigned

Sorry, even if I as one who mostly plays a monk myself are rather annoyed by this 'feature' of the AI. But I can live with it. It's not a big thing.

What would help plenty is:

If your heroes are set as agressive, they should not break off from the fight unless flagged to withdraw or the AI for them to start kiting (if there is a run away to avoid damage feature in the hero AI) kicks in.

What's even worse than the AI foes zooming in on the monk (or other squishy human controlled character,) and you try and kite or reposition yourself to avoid them is how the stupid /(%#&"()% heroes break off from the fighting and start running around like headless chickens to try play catch up with the kiting non-AI character.

Drives me batty that does. If Koss is agressive and locked on a target, he should stick to that target even if I take a few side steps for any reason.

Ouch.

Okay, I kinda got the picture this was a extremely stupid, irritable, and unbalanced idea 12 posts ago. But that's all it was: An idea. Thanks for the "input"(?)

/notsigned

I'm not going to totally dismiss this idea, because it would be very useful for people learning how to play with monks for the first time. However, I have to say that in the end, I don't like this idea very much.

Monks do get picked on a lot in both PvE and PvP, simply because they are the most valuable member of the team. When the monks die, the rest of the team will follow fairly quickly. The AI also needs to be changed a bit, as monks tend to target allies far more often than enemies which can make controlling henchies and heros a bit problematic. Quite a few players' mindsets need to be changed a bit as well, as I've come across far too many players who act suicidally in combat and forget to make sure that the monk is adequately defended, only to complain that the monk isn't doing his/her job when the energy's been drained because of their reckless behaviour and the heals aren't coming as quickly anymore.

What monks do have though is an unparalleled ability to heal and reduce damage. My monks play selfishly and always make sure that they have enough energy for heals and protections on themselves before thinking about the suicidal wammo's needs. This is something that needs to be used to any monk's advantage - because if the rest of the party isn't helping to keep the monsters off the monk's back, why should the monk be expected to drop everything when the party is needing a few heals? Monks should also never be afraid to act as the target caller if they're under heavy fire, just to reinforce the point that they want cooperation from the rest of the team if the rest of the team wants the continued support (and the team always needs it whether they want to admit it or not).

It helps a lot to play with high health. 500 or so.

It also helps to play with real players, AI simply doesn't work well with backline classes.

When attacking a mob, don't charge in and start wanding. That's what gets Alesia and Orion killed. Stop outside of agro range, then ctrl-shift-space to tell your group to attack.

16% chance to *evade* will not save you. It won't do a thing. A single guardian or Aegis will give you 50% chance. You will still die from air spike, degen, stone dagger spam, obsidian flame, ...., well, just about anything. Warriors turn out to be the least of your concern and by far the easiest to counter.

If that happens to you, I guess you're not that good at monking....

/NOTsigned, simply because it's a horrible suggestion. Not at all needed, seeing as PvE isn't at all impossible for monks. Which you make it sound like.

/not signed

I play a monk both in pve and pvp and tbh, why do you even need that, you should be able to either outheal, or protect yourself against a mob focusing on you.

Terrible idea. I monk in both PVE and PVP. Now any protection monk can survive nicely against a warrior attack. Healing monks just heal and run. The only time I had trouble with monking was in Abaddon's lair with the constant dazed and interrupts every 10 seconds. Even then, we got through it fine. Monks don't need inherent evasion. They just need to make their own builds that benefit themselves and the party.

Time to learn that protection prayers are better than healing prayers IMO.

Not signed.

AI does not go directly for monks; AI goes for the player with the lowest AL/Health. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're using radiant insignias (same as Ascetic's)?

Monks have skills that give chances of blocking and evading attacks.

Use them.

Yep. Stupid idea. I just posted it last night as a "whatever" or a "nothing" (Take that, Ray Johnson). Anyhoo, I just watched an episode of Nadesico and I could care less for anything else in the world. Beat it like a dead horse, lock it, whatev. Just make sure you enjoy yourself.

KamikazeChicken pretty much hits it on the nail I believe.

Minor runes are generally all you'll need. They're sufficient for PvP, so they should be more than sufficient for PvE. Run survivor over Radiant. With good energy management and not overhealing, you should be able to get by with just around 48 or so energy.

My monk runs 635 life and 49 energy, and she has no trouble saving people's butts even in DoA ^^

This is a pathetic idea. Monks already have the most powerful single unit support ability in the game, and that includes themselves. It is perfectly and inexhorably balanced that the class with the most support, have less armor, and lack broken defensive additions like passive evasion, and yes it is most certainly BROKEN on any idea, when he already provides the best supportive and suvival skills in the game.

Monks have immense defensive capabilities, and to top it off, they can deal significant damage to foes crowding them as well, thus the simplest solo character in the game is the solo monk. They are so proficient that they can survive multiple attackers and kill them, on their own, vs much stronger creatures. And you think they need a broken defensive addition? Simply put, your idea is amature and broken, learn to play, and accept balance.

This idea is no better than asking that Warrior should be able to equip a healing weapon and attack allies to sustain them, your asking for a broken and misdirected addition to a class which isn't ment to provide that function.

History of Tyria.
http://www.guildwars.com/theworld/ty...storytyria.php

The specialization of different classes in different abilities is not only an intricate part of the storyline, but a intrigal part of the cooperative play in GW which is designed to foster teamwork. If you want a solo game, buy one.

If your monk can't handle staying alive, learn2play or get a new build.
/notsigned

How can I say this in a nice way...

You're retarded.

Divine Favor already has an inherent effect.

/notsigned

It's a good point, but the idea of the evasion is not needed as monks can protect themselve fairly well.

On another note though, Mobs in the game should not be as smart as Anet has made them. They SHOULD not have a main target, unless they are a Humannoid mob, humannoid mobs have some intelligence and would suggestively take out the healer only because the Mob starts to figure out that the thing is not dieing because of the healer. Aggression should be built up, not immediately directed at one spacific target already programmed into thier heads to kill first if they see it.

/notsigned.

No. We don't that is why we have a line called protection and it works really well.Try it and practice some more kiting.

You know, the OP has already retracted the suggestion, so people don't need to keep ridiculing him/her. Everyone who's arguing against it is arguing against nobody .

There are some good things to keep in mind here, though. With decent energy management, in my experience, monks don't need lots of energy - so instead of carrying +energy insignia and mods you can carry +health insignia and mods instead. That goes a long way to lowering your target priority in the eyes of the AI.

When you are being pestered, I generally have a short checklist. If I can survive what I'm being hit with with the occasional self-heal and still be able to support the rest of the party, I'll do that. If not, I'll try kiting - sometimes you can manage to stop and get heals off in between jogs, and you may even get the pest to switch targets (it does happen). Step 3, if I absolutely cannot do my job while a particular gribbly is on me, I call the target, and hope some nice Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist or Mesmer will do something about it for me (not necassarily kill - the right hex or condition can often deal with the problem long enough for the rest of the party to finish what they've been doing).

It is something for the rest of the party to keep in mind, though - if the monk or other support character (such as a non-channeling Ritualist) calls a target, it's probably because that target is stopping them from doing their job. Thus, it's often worth checking what their target is and what they're doing to see if you can help - especially if you have one of those nifty hexes or conditions that could shut the target down without too much difficult before you switch to a new target.

And it's also something worth checking regularly when you're using AI healers that can't call for help - sometimes, identifying and dealing with the pressure on your own monks can be more important than ganking theirs.

They seemed to be having fun, so it's chill. I'm actually kinda suprised that they kept beating it like Andy Goldsworthy and a pile of rocks on a cold day.

Also, I upped my health from 520 to 580 using a staff and I figured out a way to kinda glitch the opponent while kiting so they'll (usually) go after another target, which i can just cast a few healing spells on.

Thanks for the info, one and all, and especially you, draxynnic.

When i'm playing on my monk, the AI does pretend that i'm the only one on the battlefield most of the time. But I learned a trick.. rush INTO your teammates, preferable minions. The minions will come to your aid or at least body block, giving you time to get outta there. Or just become a Mo/A or Mo/W and bring stances that help you evade attacks if the aggro is still too much.

Having inherent evasion would completely destroy PvP, because a Spellbreaker monk with Healing Touch, plenty of hex+condition removal and the divine favor bonus can kite for a loooooong time.

/notsigned

/unsurely signed?

I don't know. Maybe we're playing the game wrong now? A monk tank would be ideal if they drag all the aggro to them like the former stance tank who holds the gear/book/bundle.

But then again, it seems like the monsters should be attacking the monk. Maybe if we try above method long enough Anet will nerf it's nerf >_<. Catch 22 and Paradox? Nah, it's more ironic than anything... ?

I just died of laughter. If I ever see you in game, I'll give you an item or something for the post made of win and god.