New to monking; comments and advice wanted

Hello fellow monks.

I'm fairly new to Guild Wars (about 1 month), and I play the Prophecies campaign. My play style in RPG is usually to be a caster or ranged character, as I don't like meleeing much at all.

I've attemped both a Ranger and Elementalist in Guild Wars and I was not pleased; I found the Ranger to be slow with the bow attacks (to my taste, anyway), and the Elementalist was boring as well due to the annoyingly slow spells. Then I tried a Monk and I have to say I had a very pleasant surprise! I love how fast his spells are, and how I am always busy trying to heal or protect party members. It forces on me the fast gameplay pace that I prefer.

I managed to survive and help the team to have a comeback quite a few times already and it is also a great feeling that as a Monk you did yor job. However, I noticed also that when the party fails, often the Monk takes the blame even though he tried his very best. It's not an issue to me, as I learnt I can't save all situations no matter how fast I react to enemy damages.

I have a few questions I'd like to ask to you experienced Monks, though:

1. In situations of near wipe, when you are the lone survivor and has 1 or 2 more party members left, what's the best approach? Attempt to protect the remaining ones or resurrect the rest as quick as I can? I find the resurrect skills pretty slow and they put even myself on danger.

2. Choosing a resurrect skill. I am very afraid of taking out Rebirth of my bar, as the teleporting ability is so good, however other skills such as a simple Resurrect allow me to use it in middle of a battle, while Rebirth doesn't due to it quickly sucking all my Energy dry. Do any of you take more than 1 resurrection skill in your bar, or is that not optimal at all?

3. About keeping myself alive. A few times I got myself killed because I was too worried about others and didn't protect myself properly, and most times we didn't had another Monk around the results were more deaths afterwards. So I'm slowly learning that keeping myself safe is very important even though it sounds a little selfish. Any special hints on how to protect myself better? I try to always keep out of aggro ranges and I'm getting good at kiting, but I could use some advice on equipment specially; I usually struggle to decide on Energy x Life/defensive modifiers, as well as the attribute Runes, so far I'm using only +1 Runes because the Life penalties look awful on the other ones.

Opinions welcome please, note I play PvE only.

I am going to assume you are playing PvE.

1) If it is just you or maybe 1-2 people alive, run away. You're going to get smeared if you stand there and fight. You can come back and res your teammates later when the mobs have gone.

2) rebirth, don't use it in a fight. You shouldn't res in a fight at all, it just takes too much time that you can spend healing other people. Only situation is after a fight or if your party got wiped and you need to come and res them. In both situations rebirth is the best. Do not carry 2 reses, this cramps your bar too much.

3) PvE isn't as precise as PvP in equipment. Most of the time if you got wiped, its because something seriously wrong happened. Not because you chose +energy over + hp or used a major instead of a minor. I would avoid using superiors, try to keep mid-high 500s in hp and you'll be fine. More armor is also something to considering in PvE, just normal hits get very strong later on.

Agree with JYX on 1 and 2.
That is, in a few missions I run both Res-sig /Sunspear Rebirth and a hard res, but that's only in missions with timed bonus/masters and several bosses.

I do use superior runes in PvE, but I do know how to kite and avoid damage.
For example, a couple of days ago I dodged a high level Mesmer when playing 180hp Order necro in a B/P team. Got one spell hit and one weapon (putting me far below 100hp), but kited behind building and got mesmer's focus to a full health ranger. Got compliments from our monk for that

When things go really wrong, it's your own safety first.
Always take a decent spell that allows self healing.
So no 7 skills with '.... other ally' in description and res.

Furtermore, you have 4 weapon sets, you could put one very defensive set in one of them. Or even two, depending on types of damage.
Consider a low energy set if you plan to use rebirth (use default set, before you res you switch to low energy set, when you have finished res and energy is 0 you switch back to default set).

Never res during combat, that's up to other members of the team (you said it yourself, long casts, that means no healing /protecting during cast, energy drain with rebirth).

Also, as monk you should watch and know your environment closely.
Where can you dodge / hide when things go wrong.
Where do you get stuck when you run there.
Watch where the others are and their aggro.
When you see that a large group is pulled, determine healing priority.
When a enemy gets past the first lines, decide heal or run?

After a while you know where the various enemies spawn.
You know their attacks, conditions and hexes.
You know how to counter them.
You know the safest positions.
In the end, that's key to success in PvE.

When I monk, I look on party window and compass most of the time.
You could position those close together so you can watch them both at the same time.
Also have energy visible, it's very annoying if you try to heal someone with a 10 energy heal only to find out you have 7 left. That could make the difference between life and death.

That's about it for now, it's getting late

res chant, and 20/20 focus and wand (you will love them )

Nah, just go with Rebirth. Even if HCT triggers on Res Chant, it's still going to take 4 seconds to cast and require you to run into half cast range from the guy that died. Not only does that put you in danger of dying to the same thing that killed him, but it means you're not healing or protting for 4 seconds. If the battle is easy enough that you can afford to stop casting for 4 seconds, then you can afford to wait and res the guy after the fight. Otherwise, someone else should res him.

Personaly i take res chant on my monk. i find it much more efficient to have warriors and others without access to a reusable res to take signet and to use it in battle. monks and those with reusable res to take it for use after combat.

I never take rebirth because if your party do so bad they are about to wipe, its likely to happen again, preventing it is much more effective than recovering from it.

Allowances for in combar res are signet of return, flesh of my flash (sometimes) and res chant if its used by a mesmer, other than that its res signet only for combat res and never used by monks.

i cant really reply to ur post as i belive the most importan facts have alrdy been said, so, i woudl mearly bee repeating what ever oen else has said, but i find that when monking, u shoudl have 1 protect and 1 heal, the prot monk shoudl take rebirth, and the healign shoudl take res chant, and unless the healign monk is down , the ehalign monk does all the reurecting ( for energy reason only). tho if om fighting with a lot of bosses, say the misson in the temple ( where u free the spirts that shiro traps), and the misson b4 last, in factions i take a res sig also, theres always i move i can replace/ ask my other monk to take so its a quick free res, witch quickly is recharged.

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When I take res (which I rarely do) its always standard resurrect... I just spam it around when people die... And when 2 people are alive I rarely run lol I just go back a lil bit and heal 2 guys from a distance which is fun to do

Couple of days ago I ran from droknars to the next mission (its really a short run) and when we got at 5 imps the nublet henches aggroed the 8 or 6 Ice Elementals... they ended up dieing when I only ad Orion left and Little Thom and myself with my ZB bar... I just healed those 2 (you will find it much more easier healing 3 people then an entire party) We had like all 6 Ices alive and 3 imps... and we ended up winning How amazing SoA is in these situations... I just SoA Thom cause he got good selfheal and ZB Orion and uhm... RoF myself

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I am not sure about the rest of you but I have mostly used restorelife as a hard res and there is no problem with haveing 2 resses I have at time put a res signet.It is not like you are going to need all of the 7 skills on your bar if you think about how many skills do Henchies Monks use only 4.I mostly just the 1 to 4 on my bar.I have never lost a team for the most part and have never been given a hard time or called something.

I even used restorelife on my Warrior but now it is rebirth and will do the ressing and tell the Monks to stay back in any mission.If you don't think I am that good then why do i get guild leader or officers trying to recriut me when I only play my Monk no other class.I will keep bars topped up it doesn't cost me much.To the OP i wouldn't worry about any negative feed back just yourself you did a great jop and keep on doing it.It seems like you are even kiting which I don't a lot of Monk do in PvE I now do it.Keep up the good work to OP btw I now use res chant which I would say is the best or you could use renew life at 15 energy.

I do however use rebirth depending on the mission but what questing restorelife is fine.

1. Depends on 2 things: your energy pool and the teammates that remain alive. If proper tanking is done, you as a monk, an elementalist and a warrior should have no problem finishing the enemy off. If the remaining people are 2 monks and a mesmer...well...

2. Rebirth. Don't res mid-combat.

3. Depends on your skillbar and way of playing. I know monks that stand near the front backline (if that makes sense) in case a wammo runs off to "pwnz deir healar lolz!1", I tend to stay as far as possible. Example of the difference between a friend monk and me: Someone rushes off: he follows and tries to keep him alive, I let him die and don't risk an aggro break coming towards me. An enemy starts clobbering us: my friend throws up protective spirit and tanks it out (he even uses 2 sups, seeing how as he always packs prot spirit), I kite around a teammate. A good way to draw aggro to someone else in the backlines (preferrably a ranger, earth elementalist, etc) is to run a circle around them, most enemies will break aggro off of you and start bashing that teammate. As for hp or energy equipment? Like I said before, a friend of mine uses prot spirit a lot, thus grabs energy armor and 2 sups. Me? +elemental armor and a hale weapon


Feel free to ask more questions or tell me if something wasn't clear.