Dual PvE Heal & Protect Monks

So I got thinking the other day...what would be better than a healing monk and a protection monk in a PvE mission...? Answer...a healing monk and a protection monk that have builds which work to each other's advantage. Not a new concept I guess but it's something I decided to get my brother involved in and try out since we both have monks. My monk is generally a healer while he (sometimes scarily) loves protection.

So the builds I devised were these:

Healing Monk:
[skill]Succor[/skill]<Insert General Heals Here>[skill]Healing Light[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Mend Ailment[/skill][skill]Resurrection Chant[/skill]

Protection Monk:
[skill]Life Barrier[/skill][skill]Blessed Signet[/skill][skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill]<Insert Protection Skills Here>[skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Ok, so the idea was to cast and maintain Succor on the Protection monk, that's generally about it. Now I don't know the community's general feelings towards this skill but personally I think it's a fantastic skill since it allows the healing monk (me) to essentially "pay for" the upkeep of one of the protection monk's Life Barriers...enabling him/her to cast more and lose less energy. How is this sounding so far?

I did wonder if Succor would be a bad skill for a healing monk to use because it does have the side effect of me losing 1 energy every time target casts a spell. So to test this my brother and I went to ThunderHead Keep. As well as maintaining Succor on the Protection Monk I also maintained it on an Elementalist. To be honest, only when we started to get heavy degen due to conjure phantasm/crippling anguish by the Stone Summit Heretics did I actually notice my energy getting too low (and so stopped maintaining Succor on the Ele)...the battle up to the Keep I could maintain Succor on both players no problem.

Now before you come right back at me and say "an ele should not need an extra energy regen"...no, I agree, the reason I used it on the ele was to see how badly Succor would affect my energy if it was cast on a player who chucks out spells fast. Since I was, on the whole, fine for energy with the exception of the battle at Dagnar Stoneplace I came to the conclusion Succor would be fine to keep maintained on just the Protection Monk, even in intense battles.

It's kind of a "two-way street"...I'm helping out the Protection monk with an extra pip of energy regen (since I can do without) and my skills are designed such that I gain benefits from his enchantments. For example...Dwayna's Kiss heals for more, Healing Light provides energy back.

I was considering taking the elite [wiki]Peace and Harmony[/wiki]. This way he could have an extra 2 energy regen and would have no issues in maintaining Life Barrier on everyone, problem being, I would lose out on a healing elite. I also considered taking [wiki]Healer's Boon[/wiki], as is in my usual healing build, but I just didn't know if this would hurt my energy too much as there is too much potential for wasting energy in over-heal and energy shouldn't be wasted when you have 2 pips of regen I feel.

Any (constructive) comments or suggestions welcome.

Does anyone else use Succor? I only just came across this the other day and I've never seen anyone else use it before...

I use succor on my hero MM , with soul reaping at 14 he doesnt seem to notice it. I used to use it on my adrenaline warrior also . but I dont use the warrior much in my teams now.
I like the skill but never risked it on a monk as a donor so to speak but to offset boon or bonds its good.
If it works well for you then its good to go.

Life Barrier is a waste of elite. you'd do much better doing life bond. you'd do even better with a non protection bonder. >_> and yes, i can top that as well! use 2 HYBRID prot monks! *omgshockwtfbbq*

ya..>_>

one divert hexes and one ZB, should work better than two healers, a prot and a healer and other crap in pve. >.> usually tons of hexes around, and zb is nice for pve too.

but back to your concept...

Succor, Healing Light, Dwaynas Kiss, Healing Touch, Holy Veil, Dismiss Condition, Rebirth (not that handy if your prot bonder would lose all energy, aye?)

Life Barrier, Divert Hexes/Restore Conditions (depending on area), Reversal of Fortune, Blessed Signet, Ressurection Chant, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Aegis

if it was for me, id kick one (if not both) rezzes and take additional hex or condition removal for them. ;o

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For me, holy veil is not for PvE, I normally just bring inspired hex for a little energy as im not too bothered about removing hexes unless theyr really bad like backfire or empathy or SS, hexes like that

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holy veil is kinda elaborate in the fact you have to apply it then remove to get the benefit, rather than just apply. .. still only 2 clicks tho'

You shouldn't need to run dedicated emgt unless you're facing an abnormal situation, like the Torment environmental effects. Even then, you are better off improving the efficiency of the rest of your skillbar and carrying some support on your other team members (ie. wards, shouts, etc.). Skills like Succor and P&H end up being wasted skill slots in nearly all cases.

What kind of build you run in PvE is going to depend heavily on how much you trust the other members of your team. If, for instance, you're running a trinity team with competent players, both monks should take essence bond for near-infinite energy, and lean towards bonder-based defense. Another example is Zealous Benediction - this is not a skill you want to run if you don't know the other monk, because if they're a shit-munching moron like 99% of the people who play this game, you just wasted your elite slot.

Barrier is actually a pretty good PvE option if you're content to play a dedicated bonder. Personally, I think hitting the Blessed Sig button every 8 seconds for the entire ****ing mission is mind-rottingly boring, but if you can stand that kind of brainless repetition then it's an easy and effective way to mitigate a lot of incoming damage.

Holy Veil is much more a PvP skill than a PvE one. PvE monster groups tend to carry multiple copies of any hex that matters, and they usually don't bother to cover the hexes (or, more often, every hex is equally (in)effective, so which one you remove doesn't really matter), so the advantages of Veil are mostly lost on PvE players.

Mhenlo and Lina do the job for me just fine in PvE.

In Nightfall, you're rarely stuck with debilitating hexes. I'm not sure if anything even carries a high-spec Diversion in lategame. Hence, the hench monks don't carry hex removal - the worst it gets is faintheartedness on an attacker, which is easily patched up by off-monk Expel Hexes or Empathic Removal.

I disagree about ZB monking if you don't know the other monk. If the other monk's a drooling moron, then they'll run out of energy really quick and then you can hit the 50% bonus quite repeatedly. At that point, though, you're recharge-limited, and people below 50% isn't a good thing at all, even in PvE. Far too many times have I waited for the sweet spot on the health bar, only to hear the fizzle on ZB because the monsters decided to send a couple Stonings toward my non-kiting ally.

I'll take the blame for that one... once.

I personally like LoD. For at least one monk.

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