Noob question - 55? Dropping your health? Why?

I've seen references to people who mark their character as a 55 "something", like a 55 Monk. I understand from looking around that this means they have used a series of "superior runes" (?) to drop their health to 55.

My question is - why exactly would one want to "drop" their health? Wouldn't you want to "raise" your health? As high as possible?

Or am I completely misunderstanding what is going on here?

It's because of the skill protective spirit. It makes it so you can't lose mroe than 10% of your max health from a single attack or spell which at 55 health caps out at 5. Add in some regen such as Healing Breeze which regens 5 health extremely fast, therefore you are almost invincible.

There are some skills like [skill]Protective Spirit[/skill] that prevent you from taking more damage than a certain % of your health. At 55 health that makes 5 health per hit. Skills like [skill]Mending[/skill] will help to counter the 5 health per hit lost. That makes you very hard to kill in PvE if the mobs don't carry some sort of enchantment removal or a few other types of skills.

Some 55 builds/guides are on this forum and you can find some at www.guildwiki.org too.

It's ok. I asked this question a LONG time ago and I will happily explain to anyone.
You have 55 hp be using 5 Sup. Runes to lower your health to 105 HP and then equip a necro offhand item that gives you -50 HP(you get this item as a reward from a quest). Then you use the enchantment Protective Spirit which says that you only lose 10% of your health to ANYTHING(except lifestealing skills) so the most life you can lose is 5.5(5 health rounded down) health. Now you can use health regeneration in the form of Mending and Healing Breeze to give yourself +10 health regeneration(max is +10) and since every pip of health regenaration = +2 health per second and you have +10(20 health per second) you gain back that 5 health you just lost .25 seconds after you are hit.
Now there are other ways of abusing the "55HP" build other than using health regeneration using Shield of Absorbtion or Stoneflesh Aura. If you use Shield of Absorbtion, every thing that hits you for the next X seconds is reduced by 5 + 5X(X= the number of hits you took since the enchantment was put on you) so since the max dmg you can take is 5, that means you take nothing( you still can regen to death bc you have no regeneration but that can easily be countered). Stoneflesh Aura works basically the same way.
I hope that this has answered your questions!

Thanks everyone, that helped!

OK, I understand all of that, but what skills do you use for offense? For soloing?

Solo'ing as a 55-monk is complicated because you need a fair few skills just to keep yourself alive.
Shield of Judgement (SoJ) is popular because anybody striking you with an attack is knocked down and takes XX damage. The knockdowns help the 55 monk manage his damage taken
Unfortunately SoJ triggers the AoE code and AI enemies will back off until they’ve regenerated to 50% HP.

Therefore, you need another party member. This is usually a Necro with Spiteful Spirit or Spoil Victor.


http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/55 for more info

Try reading the Comprehensive Guide to the Solo Monk we have on guru, it will help quite a bit in showing what skills to take, how it works, etc:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...onk-id1626.php