2 monks in a party: how do you divide up duties, if at all?

I'm guessing this has been discussed before, but the stickied threads seem more build and single monking oriented and my search didn't really bring up much of anything useful.

So you have 2 monks in your party (you being one of them) and say you both go Healing because that's what you're both comfortable with. Do you divide up the healing of the party members? "You take the top 3, I'll take the bottom 3." Or discuss builds? "I have Healing Touch, don't bother healing me unless I get below 50%." "Let's both take Mend Condition for the faster recharge and we'll remove conditions from each other."

Also, I haven't done much prot. yet, so I'd also be curious if a team with a healing monk and a protection monk need to work out anything ahead of time either. Say you take ZB, do you tell the heal monk to let you heal if someone's health hits 40% so you don't lose the free energy heal?

So far, I've just healed/removed conditions as the circumstances seemed to require when there were 2 monks, but I'm thinking this is a waste of healing/energy.

Curious about PVP too. I haven't tried PVPing yet with a monk (haven't done it much at all yet really), but wonder the same things. Or are monk roles in PVP so specific that there wouldn't be overlap?

Appreciate any insight. Still learning a lot and enjoy reading what you all post in these forums. Planning on trying to do more Protection in the future, based on what I've read here.

Thanks.

In PvE:

The other monk usually takes trash like healing breeze and heal other and runs out of energy in 5 seconds. You end up healing the whole team solo, and get half the credit. If you suggest the other monk toss that crappy healing stuff, he whines about how he has to do all the healing because he's healing and you're prot. You can't win.

In PvP, you divide up all the utility box things in your party. It happens that monks tend to be the best at most of them, so you pretty much go down the list

Mass hex removal?
Infuse health/Spike healing?
Condition removal? (Both monks should have it, nice if someone else has draw)
Spike protection - vs. melee and high packet size damage
Pressure defense? - reversal of fortune, ZB, heal party, etc.

If you have all those in your party, good times will abound.

LOL that's kinda cynical. What always works pretty nice for me is one straight healer and one active prot (If the environment doesn't dictate otherwise). That way the prot. guy can mitigate the biggest chunks of damage and the healer can fill up the gaps. Overhealing is also reduced to a minimum, so both monks have maximum mileage out of their build.

In randon PUG's (PvE) there is often very little time for monks to discuss builds, as they are usually the last members to be found and everyone is very keen to get started! So when that happens, I watch the other monk, and see what they target as priority, be it healing, condition removal, hex removal, or prot and I will then do something else! So If they are generally casting heal's such as WoH, I will concentrate on condition removal, and/or hex removal, so we don't waste energy over-healing the same person.

I usually go prot, because there are so few prot monks, and those that are prot have no idea how to play it in PvE... This results in even the crappy healer being able to "heal" the party fairly easily.

The simple answer is both healers cast healing on team.

You may get overlap, but as long as each one knows how to heal (don't overheal with 1 spell), then no one should be out of energy (althoug I'm in a group where 1 monk seems to heal lots and then spams their energy is low).

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Hmm. I like the idea to just go protection given the rarity in pve. Still I would think it would simply be more efficient (and easier) to just divide up the team if you had 2 healing monks. Then again, since not all team members are going to get hit the same way maybe it's better to divide up duties like hex removal/condition removal like Dr. Strangelove mentioned they do in PVP.

Thanks for the replies so far.

And found some stuff on PVP team communitcation in one of the sticky threads.

i find in PVE theres no time to dicuss. half the time im not ready, im lucky i always set my attrabuts to 0 so i can reset if were rushed in :P. but anyway i find one acive prot and one laousy heal ( im normaly the prot) works really well, even if u screw up most of ur prot he can fill in the gaps. but cos ur normaly reducing a fair amonth of dam theres not that much need for him.

in PVP i find that i normaly run RC, to i portect them best i can remove condtions asap and the other heal heals as best he can but atlast in PVP u can dicuss ur build

I find that in most PvE situations dual healing is effective. However, I do enjoy having a protection monk in the group when I play healing. If both monks know what they are doing the team runs very easily for both.

I also agree with olly123, a lot of groups don't like giving the monks(or any members of the team for that matter) to discuss before entering, if people would just wait 2 more minutes I think it would fix the majority of team wipes players run into in PUGs.

As far a groups not giving time to discuss, that's a pretty good indicator that the players are not very good. I just leave groups if they try to start before making sure everyone is ready.

You can eliminate most overlap by just briefly discussing the division of responsibilities at the start.

I at least make sure 1 monk is Prot, the other is Heal and the between them they have Hex and Condition Removal covered... beyond that i'm not too fussy.

I usually don't discuss duties.
I do look at the other monks skillset.
I run some kind of prot most of the time and just fill the skill gaps of the other monk if that's necessairy.
Or just ask: "Since we will encounter XYZ, should I take build AAA or BBB?"
That's also the moment I know the other monk will do a great job or I should prepare for some extra work.

I also have seen it the other way, where the other monk just kept healing and I was on (almost) full energy most of the time.
They were great monks, but could have left some heals for me

In PvP, the situations where you will run 2 monks are HA and GvG. You have plenty of time to discuss who has what responsibilities, since those areas require more communication.
We are on voice chat most of the time when playing HA/GvG and I am familiar with the playing style of most guild monks.

I am a healing monk, and I can typically solo monk a team. But if another monk were to come along, I always prefer to have a prot monk than another healing monk. It's too hard to coordinate with another healing monk, but a prot monk compliments really well.

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if they're both heal, one monk takes the top half, the other takes the bottom half and each other, or something equally simple. Also helps if each of the monks only has to deal with one melee character. If one monk has to cover the warrior, the assassin and the mm, vs the other one covering the mesmer, the ele and the ranger, well that's kinda unbalanced.

If it's one heal and one prot (non-ZB), well, don't bother dividing up the duties. If the prot is ZB, well, then you might as well divvy up because they've got a strong heal that can cover the spikes.

And generally I used to carry Healing Breeze, but generally only for MM's as we're wondering around. They start sac'ing health for BotM, you just toss Healing Breeze on them and let that cover them. I'd rarely use it in combat. Now, I generally go with Mo/E giving up Breeze for Glyph of Lesser Energy.

If the other monk is good, they'll know who needs healing/protect and when so as to conserve energy--for both of you. Of course, a healer and protect monk complement each other well. Two healers will work as well (though maybe not as efficiently in some cases). Maybe it's just me but I dislike the "50-50" plan.

whenever i get too be the "2nd" monk we decide who goes what, i usually go boon healer and the other one(or me) either takes his healing build or takes a prot build and concentrate on the mele-characters(warriors, dervs etc.)

It turns out ok about 7/10 times, gr8 2/10 times and to hell about 1/10 ^^