when i observe pvp i just dont get it

it just seems there is no real strategy or plan, this watching high ranked guilds go at it

i come from dark age of camelot (5 years) and WoW (2 years) why is nobody assist training the monks? in those games we are all on vent and have our dps train on healers and other soft targets...but it just appears everyone is attacking whoever.

why not have 3 high dps classes designated to focus on 1 person, kill and move on? on a game i just watched a warrior was on a monk, he was hitting him hard, but when monk was healed he pulled off the target, why not have 3 guys working together to spike dps on a guy, destroy him and move onto the next monk

this games pvp just baffles me...i dont have the time anymore due to a new baby to be hardcore anymore, but looking at this it seems if any hardcore guild that came to gw from daoc or wow they would run this place

maybe there is something i'm not seeing, res signets etc but i am just puzzled...there just doesnt seem to be enough people dying in 20 minutes of pvp combat...to me it looks like its because everyone is off doing his own thing...this was watching good guilds fight each other...no more than 1 player seemed to be on a single target at 1 time

Well I think the monks in this game are very powerful healers and are the only primary healer class in the game so even 3 man spike can't kill him if there's other monk healing him too.

wouldnt the 2 or 3 monks run out of mana fast trying to heal the target monk with a dedicated dps team on him? then with that monk dead the dps team rolls on to the next oop monk?

like i said there is maybe something i'm just not getting, as i am new to gw and just observing, but what i'v seen is contrary to everything i'v learned about mmrpg pvp strategy

or does every class having a res signet/subclass monks create a conundrum that makes the strategy i speak of ineffectual?

Because of protection monks. 1 spell and your entire train is useless for the length of the spell, or untill it gets removed.

You also need to build adrenaline on your warriors. It's best done on seperate targets, so they get protted less.


You can die very fast in GW, due to spikes ( I don't know about DaoC ). That's why most people prefer spikes. Spikes don't require trains. They try to bypass healing/prot.

There's very few healing monks in pvp. Protection is where it's at.

So you have 8 of your team ganking a single monk. The 2/3 monks on opposing team put up: Prot spirit, Shield of Absorption, Aegis, Guardian, Spirit bond, and a few more, while the rest of the team keeps your attackers dazed, blinded, blurred, crippled, and more.

So you have 8 of your team doing 0 damage to single target, and no damage to 7 other targets, which meanwhile decimate your team.

Pvp in GW is about strategy and organization. Gank fests don't work. Spiking for most part is only viable method of somewhat reliably kill a single target, and in many cases it takes at least some practice to pull off.

Granted, you can bring heavy enchant removal as many do. There's gimmick builds that can roll some teams. There's build combinations which are inferior in given match.

But what you're regarding as pvp strategy is mindless ganking that is devoid of any strategy or tactics. Another reason you cannot gank in GW is due to balance - there are no high/low level problems, no item/grind factors, no superior/inferior class issues - it all comes down to 1) choice of build 2) strategy employed. Ganking healers is usually not one of those - although spiking one team member is frequently viable, especially squishy targets such as mesmers.

Monk Stomp sucks.
Evaluate what target you can take out the easiest, and which target is the greatest threat to your party. (making sure you don't die is more important than making sure they do) Based on that, pick your priority target. Because the 'healer' will never be the greatest threat to your party, he is rarely the number one priority target.
You can say 'but the healer makes sure the biggest threat to your party doesn't die', but frankly, most of the time it doesn't work that way.
Look at it this way: all casters have 60 armor (not counting in bonuses, which will most likely be equal over all casters anyway, so it doesn't matter). If you target a monk, you spend an amount of energy on it, and eventually the monk may even die, but your party still faces the same threats. However, if you put that energy in killing an offensive caster, or even a warrior, he might die as well, and your party takes a reduced amount of pressure for a moment (till your target gets a res)
Also, Guild Wars is built so that trains don't really work. Protection Prayers, which are present in practically every build, such as Guardian, Shield of Absorption, Spirit Bond, Protective Sprit, Shielding Hands etc. take care of that, so targeting one person won't work to begin with. It did for a while with Avatar of Grenth, which basically lets your team ignore the prots, but that was just broken and it got nerfed.
The best way to apply pressure is to constantly switch targets to stay ahead of the protection spells, and tempt their 'healers' waste their energy on needless protting and overhealing.
Target selection is (one of the) most complicated aspect(s) of Guild Wars, and I can't really capture it in one post, but please assume there is a great deal of strategy involved, but Guild Wars is not WoW or Starcraft or any other game. Monk Stomp doesn't work.

very easy to heal one person, but not easy to heal 5 at a time, assumning they are all getting a good amount of damage. which one do you think will make the healer run out of energy faster?

Well remember, while u have targets on your monks, they can have targets on yours. Monks arent always the primary target. While being the obvious choice to attack, its more involved in that as the other team is going to collapse on hatevers hurting your monks. Aka. if a Mesmer is energy denying your monks, then something should be done to force that Mesmer out of the picture to give your monks some breathing room. If an Ele is constantly snaring your team, hindering your movement, find a way to shut down that Ele. Your targets will always depend on 2 things. What will hurt their team and collapse their defense, and what is hurting your team and your defense.

Suprisingly, there are many builds and guilds out there that run that punch in the face style build. [cow] is a very good example of this. They run very little defensive builds, and just basically run in to break you as fast as possible. Its high dps, highly offensive and in the right situation with the right players will work very effectively.

Training a Monk does not always mean they will be out of energy. There is always another monk for support, and many other classes and factors can contribute to saving your Monk. The Monk can kite away from the warriors, thus forcing them into your backline and overextending from their monks, making them volunerable. Ele's can blind, or snare melee targets that are training your monks and allow them to miss or have a very slowed mobility. Necro's and Mesmers can curse and hex targets to slow the attack rate on melee targets and can effectively shut them down to where they are attacking far less than your monks can effectively heal.

And lastly, there have been a few guilds that have come from DAoC that have done very well. Mostly Harmless [MH] is probably the best example of this that comes to mind. Many players that are in other top guilds have also played DAoC. But pvp in GW, is far different from the battlegrounds or RvR in the frontier, although GW2 seems to be going in the RvR direction with the limited info we have about it and seeing how much I liked RvR in DAoC, it looks promising

Theirs a wide variety of reasons. As everyone said you can't train some guy due to prot. They can prot him up to take minimal damage then the monks have a easy time. They can't exactly prot up many targets at once as well. Not to mention the prot is less effective when targets are split (in terms of how much damage the prot reduces). Thus, the offense is usually spike, pressure, or both.

Splitting and attacking other targets also reduces the pressure on your monks.

ok like i said i just dont get it from perspective of games i'v played

daoc for example, its 8 man groups, 4 of them at least are dps heavy classes...those toons all assist on healers/dps spellcasters

in a matter of 30 seconds the assist train has all the healers dead and its just a matter of mop up for the victor

i'm not hating on gw pvp, but i just dont understand why at least 2 guys arent working together on the same target...seems even in this game 2 on 1 is better than 1 on 1

i'm not even just saying the monks, but train somebody

because the dps skills, targets, buffs, etc. in DAoC are stronger and the targets are different. Its like asking an apple why its not an orange. Both games have a tremendously different pvp playstyle to where certian tactics that may work in one, will not work when playing the other.

Coming from WoW, I had some of the same confusion as you... until I played a Warrior in RA for a while.

Make a PvP only Warrior and try to focus down a monk in RA. It might take a few matches to find a monk using a good combo of protection skills, but when you do it'll be a real shock - at least it was to me.

Many builds can basically use one spell and become immune (through either dodging or blocking) to physical DPS, meaning as a warrior you can't hit him, can't build adrenalin, can't interrupt him, it's just a waste of your time. I'm not as familiar with the spells that GvG monks run to protect themselves from magic damage, but I'm sure there are plenty of options.

Basically, there are just skills and skill combos available in Guild Wars that offer defense beyond anything possible in WoW or DaOC. This means there is more emphasis on pressuring multiple targets, and assist trains are only really effective situationally - when someone is overextended or their Monks are low on energy.

I found after playing RA for a couple evenings with an Elementalist or Warrior, I just had to let go of everything I had gotten used to in WoW, and rethink my ideas about playing a damage class completely.

Suffice to say I was quite happy to do this, as I was getting pretty sick of the only real strategy being 'everyone kill the healer!!' and fights lasting 20 seconds...

Because focussing prots on the trained target owns that hard. Thrust me.

As a monk, I know how easy it is to prot a trained target. Since Protection is far better than Healing (currently, I hope to see this changed), it is in many builds. Relieving pressure from your Monks (or other soft targets) is far more advantageous than killing their Monks. If your whole team trains a target, the monks only need to concentrate on that single target, instead of widespread pressure. There is no rush, if you watch some GvGs you can see how some people get a few kills, rush into the enemies base, and get rolled.

It's incredible; the amount of people who think monk stomping is the way to win. I've seen it, many times: the Wa/Mo spams to attack the monk, maybe even gets a kill, but because the other team's pressure is untouched, the Wa/Mo's team loses.

I pvp very little, however I have played GW long enough to see why. It is easy to keep the following up on one person:

[skill]protective spirit[/skill][skill]Shield of Absorption[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Guardian[/skill][skill]Spirit bond[/skill]

You will note that it doesn't take much to stop an attack train - if you can not do much damage, can not hit the target, and what little damage you do is both negated and healed then your gone (not to mention the other classes have AoE conditions). Those aren't that high a cost and can *easily* be kept up on one, maybe even two people. Because of this a 55monk (drop your max health down to 55hp so that prot spirit limits each attacks max damage to 5) can absorb damage for pretty much forever unless you remove enchants or use health stealing skills that bypass prot-spirit (of course, with those two things they die instantly, but they should get the point across of what is occurring here).

There are places in PvE where the same thing occurs - a prot monk or two (especially a boss) means you can not train or spike a single enemy. You have to spread your damage out so they can not focus enough skills on one - though you still usually kill with a spike, spreading out means they do not know who will be the target. If the computer AI is generally able to stop something from happening then you can be sure that humans can.

The guy is asking a legit question about PvP. Let's leave the PvE farm builds out of it.
People are right. The protection skills are very powerful, and enchant removal is not. As a damage dealer, you constantly have to switch targets to unprotted enemies. That's pretty much the only way to get kills exept for spike.

Man you have some serious PvE angst lol. A 55 build is a flawless example of the entire point of almost every single post on this thread. The fact it is used in PvE to farm has no relavance to counter the example. Its simple, in GW damage reduction/negation skills make targeting one target much less effective than spreading the damage around and keeping up pressure and eventually breaking the monks energy reserves to stop it.

As a side note:
I've watced more than one PvP video where someone ran a 55 build and could not be killed because they decided not to bring enchantment removal lol. And not just in RA.

Pfft wow Ted. Somebody ran a 55 in PvP. Umm okay so he couldn't be killed. Could he do damage? No. Could he run relics? No more effectively then a ele or ranger since he can still be snared and knockdowned. Did the other team have interupts of any kind if they didn't have enchant removal?

Anyway, trust me Sabutai, there is a lot of stuff going on in Observer Mode you don't see. Its tough to follow who the casters are targetting for example. Also, most high end (niegh, ALL high end) guilds use some form of voice chat program. You really lose out not being able to hear what is going on. It really helps getting inside people's heads.

There is a logic to it. Now, as for comparing it to other games, I'll just say they each have their own mechanics. What works in one, does not work well in another. For example, in hockey, its a great tactic to check somebody into the wall to keep them from the puck. Do that in basketball and its a technical.
Different games, different rules, different gameplay, different tactics.

if your train is dealing no dmg, why would you keep it up? thats why. train one enemy, he gets all the protection, negating all of your dmg.

short answer, no. it doesnt take the entire monks mana pool, just 2 or 3 spells and he is set. in gw, you cant just train a target and steamroll him, grenth derv aside. you just wont be able to kill your target that way.

There's a reason every decent monk in PVP has at least some points in protection prayers...

It's to ensure that DPS trains go absolutely nowhere.

Why is everyone doing their own thing? Because they are trying to stay ahead of the protection, moving target to target before they get heavily protted. Then they come together for spikes and split again.

For example if you just trained a character, you'll end up trying to kill it through the following.

[skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Spirit Bond[/skill][skill]Shield of Absorption[/skill][skill]Weapon Of Warding[/skill]

That's just half of it as well, not to mention that any damage that does amange to leak through can get healed.

If you try to take out a monk firs thing, it wont work most of the time. Warriors need adren to even start their chain of attacks first off. Usually at the beginningm of battle monks have no dp and full energy. Plus it takes a good amount of damage to take down a monk with its self healing, healing from another monk, and sometimes some support. Protection prayrs can negate alot of the damage also, making it hard to kill a monk unless under constant pressure. This pressure has to usually come from a large portion of your team, while the other team goes and murders your monks. The key to gvg is keeping pressure spread out evenly among the apposing party, and finnaly come in for the kill when the monks are weakend, with less energy and usually trying to heal a teammate.

The GW observer mode is a good tool to watch how others use their builds and stuff, but it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on. you can only see what one person is casting and there is no way to hear what is going on communication wise. I've listened to GvG battles on my guild's vent but had to wait to watch the match and try to remember what was said. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with observer mode the way it is, only that it doesn't give the whole picture at once. I've found that I like to follow one player to see what skills are being used, when and how they use them. In a long battle you can get a feel for both teams this way

yeah, i dont think i'm really learning anything about gw pvp in all these matches i'm observing...just seems like total chaos to me due to my ignorance of all the classes abilities, play styles and the general mechanics of the game

i am leery of playing an auto twenty toon, as it might just compound my confusion and lead to me developing bad habits

guess i'll just keep leveling my mesmer and warrior and wait till i get them some skills unlocked and learn to use them

anyways, thanks for the replies

Ok so he could not be killed. Did that win him the match? didn't think so.

Thats not the point? An example was given and for some reason blasted when, IMO, it was a good example of function on the discussion. The point is the power of survival skills. You can be made hard to kill, much more so than other games. Never did I state a 55 build should be used in PvP or that it has any ability to win a match or accomplish anything. Yes a 55 in PvP is worthless beyond making a match never end if the team isnt prepared with enchantment removal and interupts. BUT, it is in fact is an over-exagerated example of what the skill set in GW can do, which is why the OP is here posting.

sabutai, I have a crazy little monk build which I use in random arenas that is near indestructible since hardly anybody brings interrupts or enchantment removals to that arena. So here's what happens: all the offense on the other team decides that they're gonna "get the monk", so they all wail away on me with everything they have and get absolutely nowhere since I am well protted up. Meanwhile, because they have all focused on me and not tried to shut down, hinder or damage anybody else, my team mates were basically free to do what they wanted which usually ends up as a victory for my team. The last thing you want to happen is for your team to expend all their efforts and energy on one target and get nowhere, this is usually FTL.

When you observe some high end pvp action and all you see is "everybody doing their own thing", they are not. What they are doing is seeing who is gonna crack first, its called pressure and is a big part of the GW pvp experience. Pressure forces you to learn to run your build efficiently and choose the best skills to occupy those meager 8 spaces on your skillbar. This is what makes GW one of the best games if not the best when it comes to pvp content.

And as for Ted and his comments on 55 monking;

Don't you think Ted, that since sabutai is new, and that he is never going to see a 55 monk when he watches pvp matches on observe mode, that you should refrain from adding to his confusion by even mentioning this farming build on this thread? In order for him to get your point he would have to learn all about the 55 monk build, and considering he is new that is a little much dont you think? Thomas is an experienced pvper as well as a regular poster on these threads and is simply trying to keep this particular thread free from any extraneous ideas that clutter up the central idea on this thread.

i understood your meaning, in its essence

at this point i have no interest in builds, as that is a concern for later, i wont begrudge his help in stating simply "monk is hard to kill" however he presents it

any talk of builds, pvp or pve is just jibber jabber to me at this point, i am too ignorant of the game to get meaning from any of it

The 55 monk example was perfect. He is not interested in builds anyway, nothing wrong with mentioning a build that uses protection to be able to dance around when the enemy is trained on him. It doesn't matter if it is PvP or PvE, it doesn't matter if you have 55hp or 500-600hp. What does matters is that, in GW, it is extremely easy to stop a train in it's tracks with a very small amount of effort.

sorry to drag this off topic, but what is this 55 build? and secondly should i have my monk heroes bar mostly laden with prot spells?

now that i know monks arent seconds away from being gangbanged in pvp i might try one...i was usually healers and shaman in daoc...i like that type of play

ok, back on topic and you guys arguing amongst yourselves

Having played 3 years of DAoC and 2 years of WoW, I can understand the OP's line of questioning. I haven't done any serious PvPing in Guild Wars but I do run Observer mode quite frequently.

DAoC PvP was the king of trained assists, you would assign a main assist in your group and he would focus all the DPS down on the poor target, often Healers, at least at first, generally if you had a good MA your team would be good.

WoW had some of this approach but was often far less organized because trained attacks were usually unnecessary when all you needed to do was zerg first in order to win.

Sweep all that off the table for Guild Wars.

The skills are very refined and you can't kill or incapacitate whole groups of players at one time. The whole combat experience is balanced on a system of moves and counter moves causing a battle to see-saw back and forth, very much like Volley Ball when played well.

When I bring up PvP to friends who I played DAoC or WoW with, I always mention that "you don't really get bulldozed in Guild Wars."

What I mean, I explain, is that no matter how powerful the enemy, they generally can't mow through you as easily as in other games. Sure, you can get owned but you'll see it coming. In other games, you could literally be dead before you realized it. Or incapacitated by so many crowd control spells that you couldn't do anything while they killed you...

Guild Wars has a very refined combat system.

So, for me, I had to throw everything I ever thought I knew about PvP out the window, and I'm so shaken up about I still haven't PvPed <non-arena> in Guild Wars yet!

The 55 builds is a monk that uses 5 superior runes (dropping health by 75 per rune) and a special quest reward -50hp offhand, which brings your health to 55. Then using Protective Spirit to reduce all damage to 5 (protective spirit makes it so you can't lose more than 10% of your total health from a single attack/spell <however this doesn't apply to life stealing>) among various other enchants (like Healing Breeze or Mystic Regeneration; with such low health, you regenerate health very fast with these). This build is used to solo farm in PvE, but is NOT recommended for PvP play.

{IN PVE}I usually bring no monk heroes when I play monk; 1 when I play another profession. If you do take 2 monk heroes, 1 prot+1 heal is still very good, however, 2 prots is very effective (If I take 2 monks, both are prot; 1 being ZB/GoH and the other using an elite that is good for the area {IN PVE}). So, no, I would not suggest having both monk heroes full prot.

Depends on what type of PvP you will be playing. Just because people should not monk stomp doesn't mean they do not. I wouldn't suggest jumping into GvG/HA if you are new to monking (in GW).

Clearly you have not become acquainted with our friends Searing Flameway and Hexway, and their siblings, Burning Isle and Jade Isle. Unless you mean even more than that, in which case... ouch.

A farming build that uses the synergy between low health (55hp) and skills that cap damage based on a % of your health, to essentially take no damage while retaining the full power of health regen - making you indestructible. It is used in PvE.

Overall - protection is typically the larger focus. As far as PvP builds go, the most common are either heavier prot using one of the various protection elite skills and myriad nonelites, as well as small, efficient heals. Fairly often these are paired with a hybrid heal/prot which can use mass heals to remove the small bits of damage that get past reduction, or deal out large, quick heals that are not protted against, while having synergizing protections skills of their own. Occasionally, in larger arenas, dual prot monks are run with off-monk mass heals, but this has become less common.

As far as heroes are concerned, a decent protection bar is a good idea, with a small few heals (Gift of Health is incredibly efficient, and designed to go on a prot bar). I personally (as far as PvE) run a near-pure healer hero and a protection henchman, as heroes can not make good use of protection, in its use or its application. Damage mitigation is the job of three things - the monk to spot the target and shield it, the target itself to avoid as much damage by kiting, and the rest of the team by disrupting damage - and heroes tend to fail at this.

Another note to your earlier question of why the healers are not often the primary target is the concept of the role of the class. The monk's job is to reduce and eliminate as much of the effect of damage as possible. By running away from you, you deal no damage, and thus he completely achieves his objective at the cost of no energy. On the other hand, focusing on offensive casters forces them to kite around, where they can reduce damage to nothing but cannot do their job of providing offence. Also the fact that monks are often the furthest back makes them difficult to attack - for a few reasons. Extending deep into another teams puts your own monks at higher risk, generally places more pressure on your team, and also makes it quite clear who your targets are - who can freely run away. There are exceptions, but in general.

Obs is a great resource, but you're right about that. You need a pretty decent grounding in the game to be able to understand fully what is going on, not just in how characters are played but how tactics are applied. You'll learn those eventually - the learning curve is quite steep for this game.

lol hellraiser, i'm not even in a guild, but i am too nervous to do any pvp, let alone gvg etc

being a good daoc player i could easily transition to WoW and pwn faces, as they were fairly similar...just less macro use

as kuldebar mentioned, this is so weirdly different to me, i am loathe to look horribly newbish and embarrass myself

Just think of eating dirt, and eating it fast and more frequently, but as a rule not an exception, lol. And it often came down to who got the first jump on the other. After all, Crowd Control is a very effective method of shooting fish in a barrel.

You can get one-shotted far more easily in other games than in Guild Wars.

Getting one-shotted gets old real fast, especially if the person doing the one-shotting is getting all or most of their "killing power" from high-end gear, gear that you may not have. If that's the case, it means you need to walk off the field of battle and try to get better gear and that could take some grind/raid time.

And this is where Guild Wars has clear distinction from WoW or DAoC.

lol yeah i usually played my shaman most recently in daoc, i died pretty much every single fight always within the first 10 to 15 seconds if we got jumped...even if we won the team armsman or whatever was fotm always managed to floor me...resulting in the tedious rebuffing of everyone

kiting, shearing, rooting, interrupting and death...the joy

also, but sorry to ask here...where can i learn new skills for my heroes? and i keep getting off hand items that add energy etc...but i can only find 2 handed weapos, thus making all these off hands i find useless///where is the 1 handed weapons for mages/priest etc?

any skills that you have unlocked on your account whether from buying them from skill trader, earning them from a quest, or unlocking them using balthasar faction will be available to your hero's.

Sabutai if you're nervous about PvPing, but still want to try it out, we should set up a time to do some Team Arenas - since we're both new to the game we can both look newbish.

A buddy of mine just started playing too, we used to play WoW together. There are a few people on my friend's list I've done some TA with who expressed interest in doing so again, as well, so I'm sure we could get together a low pressure team to try stuff out with - and I've won enough games in TA with groups that moved up from RA that I'm pretty confident we could do decent.

Send me a PM if you're interested some time - not necessarily now, but whenever.

It's not always a simple answer of the target got prot covered either, in many cases you'll need to switch targets dozens of times before there has been enough *pressure* applied to begin taking down targets easily.
Pressure is the key. Sometimes its just more effective to keep pouring it on until the entire defensive capacity of the opposing team is overwhelmed. This usually causes a chain reaction with the entire enemy team lying dead in a line from where the battle began to the near dead Guild lord.

I have to ask- If your healers in DAOC or WoW or dying in 15 seconds, why bother even bringing them? Wouldn't you be better off just bringing more damage and beating the crap out of them before they beat you down?

Try some RA matches, and, if you have factions, try AB and all the competetive missions. They're a great starter to PvP. Unfortunately, it can be very hard to get started in GvG and HA, as it generally requires all 3 campaigns and has a lot of elitism going around.

As far as you're concerned, staves are just as good as wands with foci. I'd just stick with the staves to make things easier.