That is, of course, assuming that you are keeping PS on the entire midline. Keeping PS on 4 players would take 16 seconds and 40 energy to get everyone enchanted, and the 1st PS would be wearing off shortly after the 4th cast. I do this myself in some cases, but I have to choose who to keep protected because keeping PS on everyone is just too costly. IMO, dealing with that type of area is more suited for a bonder and a full heal monk.
(emphasis added)
When you consider a hybrid monk and a healing monk, neither one is going to be able to save everyone in a heavy AoE situation. The healer has to pick a few people and brute-force heal. The hybrid has to prot a few and use LoD to move bars up. Both are non-optimal, and my answer to that is: you should never be in a situation where you're taking this kind of damage.
If you're going to include a bonder, we're not really arguing the same thing anymore, are we? Who is really doing most of the work in that situation? Similarly, I could argue that if I took a paragon with Save Yourself! and TNTF I'd only need an LoD monk.
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All the prot in the world isn't going to do anything for the damage that has already been taken. Its a great way to stop additional damage from killing them, but you still need to get them back to full health. A hybrid can get that done, but a healer can do it a lot faster.
Of course prot doesn't do anything for damage that's already been taken - the entire point of prot is to prevent damage. That's similar to saying that heal doesn't do anything for people if they're dead - the entire point of healing people is to prevent them from becoming dead in the first place.
You still haven't given a concrete instance of how heal is getting it done "a lot faster". The fact is, single-target heals aren't any better than single-target prots in an AoE situation. If you're going to talk about heals that can actually power through big AoE, you're going to be looking at highly situational stuff like Heal Area, or multi-skill replacements for LoD (HB+HP+GoLE), neither of which actually precludes running prot on the same bar.
10 Nov 2007 at 21:10 - 84
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Originally Posted by Mark Nevermiss
The reason I quoted Abaddon's Gate mission, Burst Cancel, wasnt because its a challenging mission. I H/H it 11 times for master reward.
I mentioned it as a situation where you cannot prot all party members and where LoD fails to keep up.
I mentioned that I rarely used LoD and then only with Arcane Echo so that I can cast it more often.
I have been testing in Slaver's Exile in PUG's where balling up the enemies and taking them out all at once doesnt always happen according to plan. Since there are one prot/bond monk and one healer monk in these groups LoD didnt work well for me, even before the nerf.
Btw having your casters spread out when they start to nuke rarely works.
The stacking of HB with HP, on the other hand is quite the life saver. Combined with GoLE, you heal 8x140+ for 5 energy with 1 second cast time[thx to HB] and 2 sec recharge= perfect anti party wipe. HB + Kiss one the heavily enchanted/hexed tank can heal for over 1k HP.
The bond prot monk will not be gaining energy once the tank loses the aggro, so he/she cannot be effectively protting people unless he releases enchants and then you can only prot one/two people fast enough.
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LoD didn't 'fail to keep up' in Abaddon's Gate. The only real source of damage in that mission was Words of Madness. Two-monk backline can handle that easily. And again, that's a really specialized situation that most people won't care about for more than 20 minutes in their entire Guild Wars life. If you need those kinds of examples to make a point, it's important to ask yourself how relevant your point really is.
HB+HP+GoLE isn't 5e, since the Glyph itself costs 5e. You'll also notice that you're using 3 skill slots to beat LoD, after LoD has been nerfed, when your original argument was:
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I never really liked LoD in PVE
How does that fit in? You're using 3 skills to mimic LoD after 2 of those skills have been buffed and LoD has been nerfed, and then you talk about LoD like it was never useful pre-nerf?
You also state, "having your casters spread out when they start to nuke rarely works". How about you have your casters spread out before the nukes come down? If you know the enemy is using AoE, why are you balled up in the first place? (to Antheus: if you're using H/H, bring a tank or party-wide damage mitigation ala Paragons).
And please don't talk about bonders like they're the prime example of prot monks. Bonders have a very specific and limited use.
10 Nov 2007 at 21:31 - 85
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
My argument is that there are no (or very few) situations where a pure healing bar would save a team where a hybrid bar could not.
The original argument that mr_stealth was presenting was that healing monks are likely superior to hybrids in many situations.
For a lot of players, after beating the campaigns, repeating the elite missions/areas is a fairly common thing to do. And these areas are good examples of areas where prot skills would be ineffective or even completely useless. AoE damage on a scale far beyond what normal prot skills are able to keep up with(you just can't get enought people protted;good situations for bonder+healer combo). Mass degen that can't be removed or is reapplied faster than you can remove it. Area effects or monster skills(normal or monster only) making enchants unusable or causing more harm than good. For most of the elite areas, the only prot taken, if any, is usually in the form of a bonder because its a constant reduction of damage to everyone.
A perfect example of prot being completely useless is vs the vamp touching necros in Slaver's Exile. A hybrid's LoD and Dwayna's Kiss would do little against these creature's ability to steal nearly 90 HP per second. You need several strong heals to keep up.
As for the bulk of PvE, you can probably slip through a lot of it using hybrids. But since you probably already know what you will up against in a given area, why not take a minute to build your monks for the area vs simply taking a pair of "mediocre, but should still work" monks. A lot of times you can benefit from having a stronger healing ability.
10 Nov 2007 at 21:59 - 86
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Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
The comparison of LoD to regen skills is spurious. First... [t]aking a +5 regen skill on each member of the party consumes 7 more skill slots, requires 8 people to be casting spells, and for much more than 5e. Second of all, LoD is not an enchantment.
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I'm not comparing LoD as a whole to the entire team bringing a particular regen spell, like team healing breeze or team mending or whatever. I'm comparing one specific aspect of LoD -- the healing per person per time -- to that same aspect on the regen skills. There's a lot of folks bashing healing breeze (and perhaps more importantly spirit light weapon) saying that healing over time is just too weak to ever use, even at max regen (or beyond with SLW). (And yet, these same folks can't get enough of LoD.)
If you wanted to conceive of a comparison between LoD and a regen skill, then imagine it as: "5e, 2cast, 5recharge; For 7 sec all party members gain an unstrippable 0...5 regen."
All of the arguments that heal-over-time is too weak and too slow and therefore just crap should remain just as valid when the heal-over-time is cheap and unstrippable because they're arguments about heal/person/time, not arguments about heal/energy or strippability. So, I really cannot see how one can consistently assert that heal-over-time is bad, but LoD is good.
Now, I personally happen to think that constant passive regen is pretty damned nice, and seriously underappreciated. And LoD isn't bad in my book, just seriously overrated.
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If only 2 or 3 bars are dipping, a hybrid monk is categorically stronger. Against a 400-damage Channeled strike,...
Ah! You've gone and conflated two totally independent variables. How do you get from "only 2 or 3 bars are dipping" to "they must be getting hit with a 400-damage Channeled strike"? For all we know, only 1 or 2 bars are dipping, but they're being hit by pre-searing skale.
The comparison between LoD and single-target heals varies along with the number of people in need of healing at the same moment. The comparison between straight healing and prot varies along with the number and/or size of incoming damage packets. These two variables are not, however, strongly correlated with each other. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people; you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team; you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people; you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team. Single-target heals outperform LoD in the first and third cases; LoD outperforms single-target heals in the second and fourth. Straight healing outperforms prot in the first and second cases; prot outperforms straight healing in the third and fourth. (Though prot (alone) tends to be inadequate in the fourth due to the lack of partywide prot skills besides aegis.)
10 Nov 2007 at 22:21 - 87
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
Prot a few + LoD has the same or better net effect than "more powerful heals on a couple"
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LoD might be powerfull enough to negate one hit. The only prots that are going to be of use against the AoE are Spirit Bond and RoF. A healer will almost certainly have more skills available that are able to help deal with it, while the prot/hybrid might have Spirit Bond. I do agree that SB is extremely effective for someone standing in AoE. No matter what the build, that isn't a good situation for any type of monk to be in, but it does happen.
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Sandstorm does 29 per hit at 14, for instance. SoA is plenty enough for that.
I don't believe there is any PvE monster that has a Sandstorm that weak. HM monsters would be nearly double of that, and double it again it for bosses.
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You still haven't given a concrete instance of how heal is getting it done "a lot faster". The fact is, single-target heals aren't any better than single-target prots in an AoE situation.
Against AoE damage on multiple targets, most of them will take 1-2 full damage hits before any prot is on them, and even then how many prot skills on that bar are actually going to be effective(RoF,SB, and SoA/SH to a much less degree). For getting the bars to actually go back up the hybrid is going to have to rely on a very limited number of heal skills vs a healers bar that has several more powerfull heals. I'm not saying that having only healers is the way to go, but having at least one of your monks focused on healing isn't a bad idea
10 Nov 2007 at 22:48 - 88
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chthon
All of the arguments that heal-over-time is too weak and too slow and therefore just crap should remain just as valid when the heal-over-time is cheap and unstrippable because they're arguments about heal/person/time, not arguments about heal/energy or strippability. So, I really cannot see how one can consistently assert that heal-over-time is bad, but LoD is good.
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You're considering arguments in a vacuum. You can bring up a hypothetical "unstrippable regen on everyone for 5e", but monks don't have such a skill. Actual heal-over-time spells in this game do have the failings that you are brushing aside (i.e., can be stripped, actual healed amount is difficult to control, not party-wide, etc.).
Furthermore, in the context of a hybrid monk, LoD is used as mop-up for damage that penetrates the web of prots and midline damage mitigation (see: paragons, warders, etc.). As such, its effect of cheap, moderate, party-wide healing is exactly what's required.
In addressing the second half of your post:
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1. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people;
2. you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team;
3. you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people;
4. you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team.
(reformatted for clarity)
Your assertions are then:
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A. Single-target heals outperform LoD in the first and third cases;
B. LoD outperforms single-target heals in the second and fourth.
C. Straight healing outperforms prot in the first and second cases;
D. prot outperforms straight healing in the third and fourth.
Situation 1 is not worth consideration because nobody is in danger of dying; I frankly don't care to discuss fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon, which is essentially what this situation describes.
The reason I'm considering two variables simultaneously is because we're not considering heals, prots, party-wide, and single-target in a vacuum. We're specifically talking about healing monks vs. hybrid monks. Hybrid monks have access to: single-target prots, party-wide prot (Aegis), single-target heal (Kiss) and party-wide heal (LoD). If you're going to discuss in that context, the variables cannot be considered alone.
10 Nov 2007 at 23:03 - 89
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
LoD might be powerfull enough to negate one hit. The only prots that are going to be of use against the AoE are Spirit Bond and RoF. A healer will almost certainly have more skills available that are able to help deal with it, while the prot/hybrid might have Spirit Bond. I do agree that SB is extremely effective for someone standing in AoE. No matter what the build, that isn't a good situation for any type of monk to be in, but it does happen.
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Again, you're not just using LoD alone, or just prots alone. You are using prots in conjunction with LoD. Neither the healer nor the hybrid is going to be able to save everyone, because their strongest "keep people alive" abilities are all single-target.
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I don't believe there is any PvE monster that has a Sandstorm that weak. HM monsters would be nearly double of that, and double it again it for bosses.
At which point Spirit Bond kicks in. And again, I need someone to explain to me why everyone is hanging out in Sandstorms.
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Against AoE damage on multiple targets, most of them will take 1-2 full damage hits before any prot is on them, and even then how many prot skills on that bar are actually going to be effective(RoF,SB, and SoA/SH to a much less degree). For getting the bars to actually go back up the hybrid is going to have to rely on a very limited number of heal skills vs a healers bar that has several more powerfull heals. I'm not saying that having only healers is the way to go, but having at least one of your monks focused on healing isn't a bad idea
Your argument presents a moving target, just like the other guy. What else is on the team here? Do we have a bonder? Do we have a paragon? Is there a DSlash warrior mashing on SY? Do we have wards? Do we have blinds? Optimal builds change once you start considering tertiary factors.
The outcome of this discussion is also going to change based on the area context. If all of the enemies are using vampiric skills, of course prot isn't going to help you. But such enemies are a small minority of the encounters you face in GW; how is that a general case? And the condition you're setting above (your team standing around in stacked pulse AoE) should never be happening in the first place.
10 Nov 2007 at 23:23 - 90
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
And again, I need someone to explain to me why everyone is hanging out in Sandstorms.
While standing in a Sandstorm is a very stupid thing to do, there are many players in this game that will happily do it. I know to move, so do my guildies that I play with most of the time, but pugs and heroes have a tendency to move too late or not at all. And even when everyone does move quickly, there is still a decent amount of damage to recover from before it happens again.
11 Nov 2007 at 00:27 - 91
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chthon
No, where we're feeling the pain is in the heal per person per second. Lower heal and a 17% longer cycle make it push bars much more slowly than before. That forces you to lean into Kiss and your other heal that much harder and makes failing to prot someone in time that much more punishing.
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The slower cast and recharge matters when your team is getting rocked and everyone is low. Most of the time, the 9 health is roughly compensated by the skill topping everyone off now. Kiss is still used in the same situations as before and isn't really affected by the LoD change, I still throw it aggressively on low protted targets and don't really care if they top back off a little bit slower now.
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Originally Posted by Chthon
I think the entire point of this nerf was to render us unable to condense all of healing down into 2, or even 3, skills on a hybrid bar.
The entire point of the nerf was to remove LoD from GvG play. The effects on PvE play are 100% collateral.
I don't know how you gather that it's to put more heals on a character's bar. I'm playing around with Word of Healing a bit now and I want another direct heal on my bar even less that I did when I had LoD. Ever since I learned how to use RoF a couple of years ago I've felt that a second direct heal has been a luxury. Right now I'm experimenting with Vigorous Spirit in place of a party heal, but in general Word + Heal Party, with RoF and Mend support, is all you need.
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1. You can have infrequent/small packets hitting few people;
2. you can have infrequent/small packets hitting the whole team;
3. you can have frequent/large packets hitting a few people;
4. you can have frequent/large packets hitting the whole team.
To restate what's been said; in situation 1 you wand because there's nothing demanding any other response. Situation 2, you wand and LoD or Party when there's enough to clean up. Situation 3 you prot the targets up and babysit them with Kiss. Situation 4 you put up Aegis, mash on your skills, and hope that your offense kills mobs before you all blow up.
I get the feeling that people here think that you try to fight people standing in ticking AoEs with LoD. Of course you don't, that's stupid; you put up Protspirit or SoA as appropriate, spam RoF, and Kiss until things are sane enough to LoD. If you assume that the Monks with the good bars are playing like utter retards, it's pretty easy to tear them down eh?
11 Nov 2007 at 01:16 - 92
Too much quote wars. Bad players will never learn, and will continue to argue while being blinded by their beliefs.
11 Nov 2007 at 04:20 - 93
ROFL quote wars.
11 Nov 2007 at 04:31 - 94
Everyone here who is arguing with Burst seems to be forgetting two things:
1. Hybrids have significantly less damage to heal than pure heal monks, because skills like Prot Spirit, SoA, Aegis, etc. are preventing a crap-ton of damage.
2. Even if things start going to hell in a hurry and your party starts taking large amounts of damage, LoD isn't the only skill you have to deal with it. RoF and Kiss are there for you too. LoD + RoF + Kiss will handle "oh crap!" situations just as well if not better than whatever an LoD-less pure heal monk can muster.
So you have the best of all three worlds. Prot stuff to prevent as much damage as possible, LoD to mop up the damage that make it through, and LoD + RoF + Kiss for when the sh** hits the fan.
Pretty basic stuff here folks.
11 Nov 2007 at 11:36 - 95
The problem with prot vs DoT/AoE is that a large portion of the skills are rendered useless, and even the ones that do work are conditional. Like I've mention before Spirit Bond can be great powerfull AoEs, but tone that damage down just a bit, or maybe the person standing in a standstorm is wearing geomancer armor, and SB wont trigger making it a waste of energy. RoF is about the same effectiveness as an average heal in this case, except that there is a good chance it will get "wasted" on a weak wand hit instead of the damage it was supposed to prevent(I can't count how many times I've seen this happen, even during AoEs). Prot Spirit is about the same as Spirit Bond here, near the line where it becomes less ineffective due to lower damage hits. SoA's usefullness in a single AoE is on par with RoF/several low cost heal skills if it has time to build up to its full potential, but it does become much more powerfull in stacked AoEs.
LoD, especially after the recent nerf, is the last thing I would want to be casting while several people are quickly losing health. Its a long cast (several more hits are going to happen while your casting it), and it doesn't heal much compared to the damage coming in. If you're using LoD to mop up the little damage on people that is getting through prots its fine, but this is a sitation (a VERY common situation in PvE) where most of those prots aren't able to help much leaving you to rely on some extremely limited healing ability. It looks like LoD may be falling out of use anyway, so I don't know why its even part of this discussion.
Now down to Dwayna's Kiss, the only real healing skill in this case. Like the prots, it is conditional, but the conditions (hexes/enchants) aren't as restricting. DK creates a situation where some of those wasted prots can provide some help, buy increasing the amount of healing. But DK is just one skill, that you can use once every 4 seconds(1s cast, 3s recharge). In the current situation, this is great for the one person you healed, but the rest are still in need of healing while DK is recharging. The only skill you're likely to have available to help at this time is RoF, and to be honest, that might as well be Orison/Whisper/Ethereal/. RoF would be better if it gets triggered to its max potential, but the heals have the advantage of simply working as advertised.
In PvP, you don't know what you are going to be up against, so you have to build yourself in a mid-ground (aka hybrid) to be able to reasonably cover all the possibilites. You wouldn't want to be a full healer vs a team of people doing large spike damage, or a protter vs a pack of life stealers. However, in PvE, you most likely know what you will up against, allowing you to build to be most effective for the task at hand. It should be fairly obvious that 2 monks built for the job at hand(whether it be 2 healers, healer + protter, healer + bonder) will be more effective than 2 generic "I don't know what I'm facing, so I have to prepare for anything" monks.
A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure. Don't allow yourself to be blinded by what's currently popular in a certain aspect of the game, but don't ignore it either. Think for yourself using both sides of the game as guidance and maybe you'll come up with something better for the current situation.
11 Nov 2007 at 13:28 - 96
Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE. I ask you this, WHY is your party still standing in it for longer than three seconds? Even if you are H/Hing, you still have flags, and if you can't flag, then learn to flag!
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A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure.
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I can't remember who said it, but they said this:
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The best builds for PvE are modified PvP builds
11 Nov 2007 at 13:48 - 97
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kale Ironfist
Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE. I ask you this, WHY is your party still standing in it for longer than three seconds? Even if you are H/Hing, you still have flags, and if you can't flag, then learn to flag!
Several reasons come to mind: knockdown's, slow reactions, high latency, mid-casting, multiple concurrent AOE's + hexes...etc.
11 Nov 2007 at 14:47 - 98
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kale Ironfist
Your only argument so far is that prot is useless vs pulse AoE.
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That type of AoE is a prime example, but the same can apply to any scenario where multiple people are taking damage. One person could be the target of an ele's AoE, while another is taking degen and damage from a necro or mesmer, and a third is being beat on by a warrior. This is where the healer's so called "redundant" skills become more valuable. The biggest advantage that heal has over prot is that prot skills have a potential to work, but heals just work. In a situation where several people need to gain health, and quickly, I'd rather have more skills that I can rely on to do that vs skills that just have potential. It could still be a hybrid build, but leaning more heavily on the heal side instead of prot.
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can't remember who said it, but they said this:
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The best builds for PvE are modified PvP builds
The key word there is modified. Exactly what I was referring to here.
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A lot of people get stuck on thinking that whatever is currently popular for PvP is automatically the right thing to do everywhere (PvP and PvE). PvP and PvE are very different, and blindly applying tactics from one to the other is a recipe for failure. Don't allow yourself to be blinded by what's currently popular in a certain aspect of the game, but don't ignore it either. Think for yourself using both sides of the game as guidance and maybe you'll come up with something better for the current situation.
11 Nov 2007 at 18:17 - 99
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
Situation 1 is not worth consideration because nobody is in danger of dying; I frankly don't care to discuss fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon, which is essentially what this situation describes.
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Originally Posted by Ensign
in situation 1 you wand because there's nothing demanding any other response.
I think I must have chosen my terminology poorly, since I managed to get myself misunderstood by at least two people.
By "infrequent/small packets hitting a few people," I did not mean infrequent and/or small in the absolute sense, like fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon. Rather, I meant it in the relative sense in terms of prot's energy efficiency as a function of packet size and/or frequency. As in: "not frequent and/or big enough to get prot's energy efficiency up above heal's (but still frequent and/or big enough to kill someone if you don't do anything about it)". I thought it could be safely assumed that everyone would know I wasn't talking about damage that could just be ignored.
If you assume that other posters are thinking like utter retards, it's pretty easy to tear them down.
11 Nov 2007 at 19:01 - 100
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
While standing in a Sandstorm is a very stupid thing to do, there are many players in this game that will happily do it. I know to move, so do my guildies that I play with most of the time, but pugs and heroes have a tendency to move too late or not at all. And even when everyone does move quickly, there is still a decent amount of damage to recover from before it happens again.
In other words, your argument is predicated on people playing badly? I'd also like to point out that in situations like pulse AoE, where the pulses are small enough that prots don't trigger, the best skills in the game to deal with the damage aren't even in the monk lines - they're warrior/paragon shouts. A single WY! can reduce pulse AoE damage to the point where SoA/Shielding Hands nullifies it completely, and LoD is enough to mop up.
Another issue in this case is that you keep talking about how prot wouldn't be able to do anything in X specific situation, or Y other situation, but you haven't shown how healing would be any better. If your entire team is standing in 40-point pulsed AoE, what healing bar are you going to be using? WoH pretty much means that there's no point in bringing many other heals because their efficiency is terrible in comparison, and you're going to be mashing on WoH as much as you can. In a pulsed AoE situation, Seed of Life/Healing Seed are probably the best single-skill counters, but there's nothing precluding you from running those skills on a hybrid bar.
Your example of one person taking ele damage, one person being degened, and one person with a warrior train on them is actually the hybrid's forte. The person tanking the ele gets a prot spirit or spirit bond to reduce most of the incoming damage, the person with the warrior train gets Guardian/SoA and RoFs, and LoD cleans up all three at once.
Prot also 'just works', if its being used correctly. If your target isn't taking heavy damage, you're not going to use Prot Spirit. If your target isn't taking lots of hits, you're not going to use SoA. Prots are all conditional, but they have very strong effects when their conditions are met, and hybrid bars are constructed so that you can cover as many common situations as you can. A single Guardian on an ally that's being trained on can reduce hundreds of points of damage for just 5e. Spirit Bond on someone being spiked heals for more than Infuse Health.
In order to make a hybrid bar 'useless', you have to tailor the situation pretty carefully - which is exactly what you're doing. Examples like lifestealing, Words of Madness, pulsed AoE that isn't strong enough to trigger Spirit Bond, but not weak enough to be nullified by SoA/Shielding Hands, etc. You can't really include any kind of melee pressure, because Guardian and Aegis are plainly superior to healing through the damage. You can't really include any massive damage spike, because prot spirit and spirit bond are plainly better. You can't include lots of weak hits, because shielding hands and SoA are amazing there.
Nobody is advocating that you take a bar you see in GvG and run it in places where you know it isn't going to work. And as I said above, your build is going to depend on a lot of external factors: what other damage mitigation you have on the team and the types of monsters you're fighting. If you're bringing a bonder, or you have paragons in the midline giving everyone +124AL and reducing damage by 35% globally on top of that, you can get away with just WoH, a condition removal, and a hex removal.
11 Nov 2007 at 19:08 - 101
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymasamune
Too much quote wars. Bad players will never learn, and will continue to argue while being blinded by their beliefs.
what divine said.
11 Nov 2007 at 21:13 - 102
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chthon
By "infrequent/small packets hitting a few people," I did not mean infrequent and/or small in the absolute sense, like fighting level 3 devourers in Old Ascalon. Rather, I meant it in the relative sense in terms of prot's energy efficiency as a function of packet size and/or frequency. As in: "not frequent and/or big enough to get prot's energy efficiency up above heal's (but still frequent and/or big enough to kill someone if you don't do anything about it)".
In short, nobody is in danger of dying?
11 Nov 2007 at 21:59 - 103
He means places where damage comes in 40-50 packets at a time, which makes PS/SB pointless, while quite easily handled by healing. For instance, I was doing HM ascalon, and the grawl warrior dudes were hitting for about 40-50 damage, not enough so trigger SB, but enough to make me need to majorly spam ZB. Of course, I also used guardian, which was nice, but still not enough to take away the threat. Basically, he's just trying to say that hybrid isn't always the way to go.
Also, I think that having a full healer and a fuller protter is more effective than two hybrids. First, the attributes have to be spread out more (either a 12-9-9 or a 11-10-10 setup), which makes the skills at least slightly less effective. Second, if you have two hybrids, most likely you're going to overlap enchantments at some point or another (you both put a Guardian on someone, wasting one of them), while you'd never have such a problem with a healer and a protter. Third, similar to the second reason, is that you can overlap heals. If both hybrids use LoD when only one was needed, that's wasted time, energy, and recharge. The same with DK, ELight, HWhisper, etc. With a healer and a protter, there is no overlap at all. One focuses and getting the bars up, one focuses on stopping the bars from going down. It's as simple as that.
11 Nov 2007 at 22:08 - 104
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chthon
I think I must have chosen my terminology poorly, since I managed to get myself misunderstood by at least two people...I thought it could be safely assumed that everyone would know I wasn't talking about damage that could just be ignored.
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No, you're just overestimating the necessary response to what really is non-pressing damage. If that's really the type of damage coming in, then you're not describing anything that can't be adequately addressed by Dwayna's Kiss between wands; certainly nothing that requires you to do anything other than spot heal duty during an otherwise meaningless encounter.
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Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
In order to make a hybrid bar 'useless', you have to tailor the situation pretty carefully
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One of the funny things about tailoring a situation to get around Aegis / SoA / Prot Spirit is that you virtually always end up making Reversal of Fortune a phenomenal skill. One of the main reasons you won't catch me running a second spot heal is that whenever your one spot heal isn't good enough, RoF outperforms any other spot heal you could put on your bar by leaps and bounds. The only exception to this I know of is against the rare toucher mobs. Regardless of whether or not a given Protection skill is good in a given situation, there isn't anything in the game that a 3rd spot heal helps against.
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Originally Posted by Jaigoda
He means places where damage comes in 40-50 packets at a time
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RoF is king. Cycle it with your spot heal and any applicable Prot. Win.
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Originally Posted by Jaigoda
Basically, he's just trying to say that hybrid isn't always the way to go.
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If that's his point he's wrong.
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Originally Posted by Jaigoda
Second, if you have two hybrids, most likely you're going to overlap enchantments at some point or another (you both put a Guardian on someone, wasting one of them)
Only if you don't bother to coordinate bars at all, which you're certainly doing if you're talking about any pair of Monks. You double up Aegis, otherwise your guys have different small prots, different large prots, with some spot heals and removals. Done.
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Originally Posted by Jaigoda
while you'd never have such a problem with a healer and a protter. Third, similar to the second reason, is that you can overlap heals.
That's only ever really a problem if your Monks are bad. With two real Monks on a team there's enough prot flying around that spot heals are only used on really low targets anyway, who can take more than one heal. What you end up doubling up on is removal for the most part; usually in a given pair of Monks one of them will be Mend happy, so you have to feel that out a little bit in the first couple minutes.
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Originally Posted by Jaigoda
With a healer and a protter, there is no overlap at all.
That's a huge liability. When the team's bars are in a state where there's not a lot of need for healing, the healer is dead weight; when the bars do need the healing coming in, the protector can't help. Inefficiencies from overlap are minuscule compared to the power lost by running weaker, rigid bars that cannot adapt to a situation.
11 Nov 2007 at 23:06 - 105
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ensign
That's a huge liability. When the team's bars are in a state where there's not a lot of need for healing, the healer is dead weight; when the bars do need the healing coming in, the protector can't help. Inefficiencies from overlap are minuscule compared to the power lost by running weaker, rigid bars that cannot adapt to a situation.
Probably the most important point in the argument against running one heal monk and one prot monk. You never want to get in a situation where a heal monk is sitting there not doing much outside of using WoH on a target with > 80% health, or in a situation where health bars are so low the prot monk is spamming prots to bring up red bars with the divine favor bonus (aka playing like dunkoro).
I don't see how people are bad enough to keep arguing after reading Burst and Ensign's responses. I thought it was obvious enough, and even if it wasn't, it would be after reading their posts.
For the record, stealth, we beat HM Slaver's with two hybrid LoD bars with dwaynas against those touchers. Maybe your monks were bad, but I personally never had any trouble running hybrid bars against those guys, and hybrid bars are much stronger in any other scenario in there. And that's with a crazy warrior that likes to aggro about 20 things at a time too.
11 Nov 2007 at 23:11 - 106
If you knew anything about Under Used Monk Skills, you would welcome the change to LoD with open arms, and give it to at least one of your monks.
~Taken From Wiki:
Holy Haste:
For 1...48 seconds, your Healing Prayers Spells cast 50% faster. This Enchantment ends if you cast another Enchantment.
Light of Deliverence
All party members are healed for 5...57 Health
Heal Party:
All party members are healed for 5...57 Health
Glyph of Lesser Energy
For 15 seconds, your next two spells cost 10...16 less Energy to cast.
These four spells will keep a party alive easily against 90% of mobs. You don't even have to sit within the agro range. Monks can now literally stand back and do massive party healing for the cost of 5 energy and a 1 second cast time, never having to come within agro range, target a certain player, or worry about the high energy cost or high casting time.
This also chains well with:
~High Casting Time Healing Prayers Ressurection Skills
~Low Casting Time healing Prayers Spells, now gives you about 1/4 cast time, making you a very hard inturupt target.
You can keep Holy Haste up indefinetly, and the need for enchantments for healing is totally debatable. I welcome all changes to monk skills.
11 Nov 2007 at 23:13 - 107
Holy Haste is bad cause you can't use enchants. read the topic as to why hybrid is better, bye.
only time i'd use it is as a third monk..and three monks mean you're bad.
12 Nov 2007 at 00:22 - 108
Under the old LoD, I found it rarely useful.
If the fight was going well, my prots kept more than one or two people from ever going below 80%. If it was going bad enough for several to be below 80%, LoD just didn't heal enough to stop the incoming wipe.
While I kept it on Dunkoro, I noticed he almost never used it. When I made a hybrid and put it on myself, I found the scenario above. I switched my own monks back to full Prot builds with ZB, or Life Sheath, or even (while leveling) Divine Boon and no elite - all of which I got more out of than LoD.
As for the new LoD, on Dunkoro I've swapped in Word of Healing and Heal Party. I'm working under the assumption that I will not need a party wide heal often but I will need a good 'spike removal' for when my Prots on my own toon or Tahlkora fail to cover.
Perhaps the real impact of this nerf is that there will no longer be 'one build to rule them all' for Healing and Hybrid monks - but rather a variety of solutions.
12 Nov 2007 at 00:59 - 109
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
In other words, your argument is predicated on people playing badly? I'd also like to point out that in situations like pulse AoE, where the pulses are small enough that prots don't trigger, the best skills in the game to deal with the damage aren't even in the monk lines - they're warrior/paragon shouts. A single WY! can reduce pulse AoE damage to the point where SoA/Shielding Hands nullifies it completely, and LoD is enough to mop up.
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Armor increasing shouts and wards are nice for reducing damage like that, but that SoA is still only helping one person while the others are still taking damage that LoD isn't nearly enough to "mop up". And those wards/shouts are also helping to make your other prots less effective.
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Another issue in this case is that you keep talking about how prot wouldn't be able to do anything in X specific situation, or Y other situation, but you haven't shown how healing would be any better. If your entire team is standing in 40-point pulsed AoE, what healing bar are you going to be using?
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The point is that any heal, even a whimpy little Orison, is better than a Spirit Bond that won't do anything at all. The healer (or a more heal heavy hybrid with few prots) will have more tools to deal with the situation.
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WoH pretty much means that there's no point in bringing many other heals because their efficiency is terrible in comparison, and you're going to be mashing on WoH as much as you can.
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Your example of one person taking ele damage, one person being degened, and one person with a warrior train on them is actually the hybrid's forte. The person tanking the ele gets a prot spirit or spirit bond to reduce most of the incoming damage, the person with the warrior train gets Guardian/SoA and RoFs, and LoD cleans up all three at once.
I actually said one person standing in AoE, and another taking degen and damage. That person standing in AoE is dead because PS/SB did nothing, LoD might have covered player two's degen, but he needs something for that damage. Player three with a warrior beating on him will probably survive with Guardian and some RoFs(assuming the they arent wasted on a wand hit from something else), but wouldn't it be better to save him with a WoH and still have a couple other heals powerfull enough to save the other 2 as well. With your current setup, all you have is a RoF that might work, a Dwayna's Kiss that will work(at least "as advertised", and likely more due to hexes/enchans), and an LoD that I'm wondering why you're still using. You need more skills like Kiss here, which means more healing skills.
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Prot also 'just works', if its being used correctly.
Prots are all conditional, but they have very strong effects when their conditions are met, and hybrid bars are constructed so that you can cover as many common situations as you can.
Those two statements contradict each other, and the latter points out exactly what is making a hybrid bar less effective in a situation where you already know what you are going to be up against. You are still stuck on the idea that prot>heal always, and that the elite must be LoD because its the current PvP build. PvE isn't PvP, you know what you are going to be up against and its best to build accordingly. Being setup optimally for the current situation is better than being ready to hand anything in an adequate fashion. Healing and prot both have their place, but don't be blinded by the preconception that prot must be the dominant side of the monking strategy.
12 Nov 2007 at 01:02 - 110
So I just tried a glimmer/WoH backline in gvg.
Glimmer is still bad, I don't have time to read through all these pages and find out everyone has already said that, but... it's bad.
So we're now running RC/WoH Woh being the infuser.
12 Nov 2007 at 01:26 - 111
This is my last round of quote wars; I'm done with this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
Armor increasing shouts and wards are nice for reducing damage like that, but that SoA is still only helping one person while the others are still taking damage that LoD isn't nearly enough to "mop up". And those wards/shouts are also helping to make your other prots less effective.
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First, if the damage is already so low that you're not triggering prots like Spirit Bond, armor shouts and wards definitely decrease the damage to the point where LoD is enough. I know we're having a theory wars argument, but you still can't have it both ways. Is it a lot of damage, or is it a little? Pick one.
Second, there aren't any healing skills that a hybrid couldn't run here that would do better. Healing Seed? Okay, I can slot that. I'm not sure whether I actually would in an actual run, considering everyone should be moving out of AoE, but for the sake of argument, there's no reason I couldn't run that skill.
Third, the point of the hybrid bar is to cover different situations with different spells. Situations that make prot spirit and spirit bond less useful are making RoF and SoA more useful. Are you going to argue that a healer uses his whole bar all the time? No, that's silly - you use the best skills for the situation. Watch Yourself! isn't going to help that much against boss Channeled Strike, which is what PS is for.
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The point is that any heal, even a whimpy little Orison, is better than a Spirit Bond that won't do anything at all. The healer (or a more heal heavy hybrid with few prots) will have more tools to deal with the situation.
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Read above. If Spirit Bond isn't triggering, RoF and SoA suddenly become really good.
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Just because another heal isn't as efficient doesn't mean its bad to bring it. Sometimes being the most efficent (cost per hp gained) takes a back seat to getting the job done and actually saving people. That point would be valid if WoH recharged instantly, but that's not the case.
With WoH on the bar, how many other skills could you bring? You are going to use WoH every time it comes up if you're not bad. Given that spells have 0.75s aftercasts, and most heals are in the 0.75~1s cast time range, how many other spells could you cast before you can hit the WoH win button again? How many of them are better than Kiss and RoF?
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I actually said one person standing in AoE, and another taking degen and damage. That person standing in AoE is dead because PS/SB did nothing, LoD might have covered player two's degen, but he needs something for that damage. Player three with a warrior beating on him will probably survive with Guardian and some RoFs(assuming the they arent wasted on a wand hit from something else), but wouldn't it be better to save him with a WoH and still have a couple other heals powerfull enough to save the other 2 as well. With your current setup, all you have is a RoF that might work, a Dwayna's Kiss that will work(at least "as advertised", and likely more due to hexes/enchans), and an LoD that I'm wondering why you're still using. You need more skills like Kiss here, which means more healing skills.
Let's give you the situation I actually see: the person standing in AoE isn't dead because he moved out of it, the guy taking degen and damage is alive because prots handle the damage and LoD cleans up the rest, and the guy with warriors on him survives because Guardian and RoF are incredible against melee.
Furthermore, nothing stops me from running WoH on a hybrid bar (have you seen GvG recently?) If I run WoH, RoF, and Kiss, then what? You want more heals?
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Those two statements contradict each other, and the latter points out exactly what is making a hybrid bar less effective in a situation where you already know what you are going to be up against. You are still stuck on the idea that prot>heal always, and that the elite must be LoD because its the current PvP build. PvE isn't PvP, you know what you are going to be up against and its best to build accordingly. Being setup optimally for the current situation is better than being ready to hand anything in an adequate fashion. Healing and prot both have their place, but don't be blinded by the preconception that prot must be the dominant side of the monking strategy.
The statements are not contradictory, because of the part you failed to bold, specifically, "if used correctly". Again, I'm not going to use PS unless it's going to work. People who PS when the target isn't going to take big damage are just bad at GW. It has nothing to do with the skill.
A hybrid bar is put together so that the prots cover all of the reasonable situations, and you have a few heals to actually move bars up. That's it. Read my post again - nobody is advocating taking a GvG bar into situations where you know it isn't going to work. My point about prots is that they're far more effective than heals in the situations they were designed to address. Therefore, by taking a spectrum of heals and prots, you can make sure you're always using skills that have the highest effectiveness possible.
Okay, I'm done here. Good luck, have fun, and all that jazz.
12 Nov 2007 at 01:32 - 112
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymasamune
For the record, stealth, we beat HM Slaver's with two hybrid LoD bars with dwaynas against those touchers.
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In fairness I'm pretty sure Yichi had Whisper over RoF on that level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by holymasamune
And that's with a crazy warrior that likes to aggro about 20 things at a time too.
Eh, crazy Warrior = SoA and grab a coke.
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Originally Posted by mr_stealth
The point is that any heal, even a whimpy little Orison, is better than a Spirit Bond that won't do anything at all.
Those of us who are not flaming retards have eight skills on our bars. We are also able to use them appropriately.
The questions that we're waiting for you to answer are, what targeted heal do you want to have on your bar *in addition* to RoF and Kiss? (substitute Kiss for Zealous Benediction, Word of Healing, Gift of Health, or any other targeted heal if you prefer). What is that skill going to let you do that the aformentioned pair do not?
12 Nov 2007 at 01:35 - 113
Quote:
Originally Posted by arcady
Under the old LoD, I found it rarely useful.
If the fight was going well, my prots kept more than one or two people from ever going below 80%. If it was going bad enough for several to be below 80%, LoD just didn't heal enough to stop the incoming wipe.
While I kept it on Dunkoro, I noticed he almost never used it. When I made a hybrid and put it on myself, I found the scenario above. I switched my own monks back to full Prot builds with ZB, or Life Sheath, or even (while leveling) Divine Boon and no elite - all of which I got more out of than LoD.
As for the new LoD, on Dunkoro I've swapped in Word of Healing and Heal Party. I'm working under the assumption that I will not need a party wide heal often but I will need a good 'spike removal' for when my Prots on my own toon or Tahlkora fail to cover.
Perhaps the real impact of this nerf is that there will no longer be 'one build to rule them all' for Healing and Hybrid monks - but rather a variety of solutions.
LoD was maintenance for the party. It worked nicely because you just spammed it when you could really. In the 5 seconds between LoDs, you'd throw around guardian, place an RoF, and maybe PS something if you were going against bosses or heavy focus firing.
LoD wasn't made to power through damage through healing, which Glimmer at a 1sec recharge and WoH at ungodly amounts of healing are obviously meant to do. It was meant as a very nice umbrella to shield the party, to provide a bit of relief when it was needed, and generally keep the party up and running.
12 Nov 2007 at 02:33 - 114
Quote:
Originally Posted by Burst Cancel
First, if the damage is already so low that you're not triggering prots like Spirit Bond, armor shouts and wards definitely decrease the damage to the point where LoD is enough. I know we're having a theory wars argument, but you still can't have it both ways. Is it a lot of damage, or is it a little? Pick one.
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LoD being enough against a reduced damage AoE is an arugable point, but it will at least be of good use in that situation. But its not always enough, because you can, and often do, have both types of damage to deal with. The ele thats dishing out Sandstorms will likely have other similar AoEs and skills like Earthquake or Stoning that do heavier damage. This just further confuses the situation because you have to determine who is taking damage from what source. The person standing in that AoE may or may not be taking 60 or more damage, you don't have a way to to know for sure. And who knows which player(s) that ele is going to decide to use his other skills on. Yes, situations like this are absolutely horrible for a monk no matter what the build, but they do happen(and a lot more than anyone would ever want). I would rather have a wider selection of skills that I know will work as advertised instead of skills that might work even better, but have a chance to fail and do nothing to help.
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People who PS when the target isn't going to take big damage are just bad at GW. It has nothing to do with the skill.
This falls into what I said above. You don't know who is going to be the target(s) untill the damage has already happened. Monsters have a nasty habit of throwing damage around on different targets, or even running in closer and going after someone that was previously out of range(your healing and enchants make them aware of you even when you are out of range). The only way to ensure the target of that hit is protted is to prot all of the possible targets, which just isn't practical.
12 Nov 2007 at 02:56 - 115
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ensign
The questions that we're waiting for you to answer are, what targeted heal do you want to have on your bar *in addition* to RoF and Kiss? (substitute Kiss for Zealous Benediction, Word of Healing, Gift of Health, or any other targeted heal if you prefer). What is that skill going to let you do that the aformentioned pair do not?
The fact that you blindly assume that RoF is even on the bar is what I'm getting at here. And why is WoH only considered as a substitute to Kiss instead of in addition to it? Quite frankly, I would prefer to replace that RoF with Whipser or Orison. I do have RoF when I'm using a prot build, and all too often I see it absolutely wasted when it triggers on some nothing little wand hit instead of the 50+ dmg impact 1/4th of a second later. I see that happen enough that I'm amazed that so many people consider RoF a replacement for another skill, that while may have less potential, will do what it says.
I guess it doesn't really matter since I'm a flaming retard, but at least I'm not blind.
12 Nov 2007 at 03:16 - 116
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
The person standing in that AoE may or may not be taking 60 or more damage, you don't have a way to to know for sure.
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We have a very good method for knowing if they're taking 60 or more damage from a single hit - their health bar. Big chunks = big damage numbers. Small chunks = small damage numbers. Not only that, but from seeing health bars take hits from certain enemies you can anticipate how much damage that same enemy, or similar enemies, will do in the future. What, that enemy that used Sandstorm is an Ele? Don't those usually have other big damage skills? It just used Sandstorm on that Necro on our team? Hmmm, I wonder what is going to happen next. This is really hard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
And who knows which player(s) that ele is going to decide to use his other skills on.
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They stick to their target until they aggro onto something significantly softer or at lower health. If you put a Warrior in first to aggro you know exactly where the initial aggro is going to be. It's obvious when they break aggro if you watch the screen. When they break aggro they're going to consistently go after low health soft targets, preferably ones in balls. You'll find out pretty early on who is going to take hits; if you're playing with henchies it's almost invariably going to be the hench Monk, failing that one of the other caster henchies. With a full hero or player team the same rules apply, and you can figure out who is getting targeted first pretty quickly. Look at where people are standing and remember who is most squishy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_stealth
This falls into what I said above. You don't know who is going to be the target(s) untill the damage has already happened.
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Gee, if only there was a way to tell who the monsters were attacking before the red bars started to move. If only there was an interface element where you could see where the monsters were and what they were doing...
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Originally Posted by mr_stealth
or even running in closer and going after someone that was previously out of range
If only there was some way to see that happen as it was happening! Then you might be able to tell who they are chasing before they get there!
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Originally Posted by mr_stealth
The only way to ensure the target of that hit is protted is to prot all of the possible targets, which just isn't practical.
You're right, there's no way to tell what is going on before the red bars start to move. I don't understand how people can use protection skills with this grossly insufficient red bars interface. All you see is bars moving, you don't know which one is going to move next or by how much! The only sane answer is to run Glimmer of Light. Then you can Glimmer all the bars and keep them full.
12 Nov 2007 at 04:02 - 117
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I guess it doesn't really matter since I'm a flaming retard, but at least I'm not blind.
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I think Ensign nailed it.
12 Nov 2007 at 04:02 - 118
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ensign
We have a very good method for knowing if they're taking 60 or more damage from a single hit - their health bar. Big chunks = big damage numbers. Small chunks = small damage numbers.
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The damage that was being discussed was in the range near that 60hp break point, already making it a tough call whether its really about or below it. And with players having HP that can vary by a large amount, that bar is a rough guide at best.
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When they break aggro they're going to consistently go after low health soft targets, preferably ones in balls.
Look at where people are standing and remember who is most squishy.
While they do often go after the person with lowest HP (they even seem to know who has the lowest max HP, something that you likely do not know), they may only use one skill before strangely deciding to change targets to someone with full HP and knock out 1/3-1/2 of it in a single hit. If it was truely consisten they would continue in their attempt to kill the player(s) they have already weakened instead of picking a new target will higher, or even full HP.
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Gee, if only there was a way to tell who the monsters were attacking before the red bars started to move. If only there was an interface element where you could see where the monsters were and what they were doing...
This is completely true for melee, because they have to get to someone before they can do any damage, giving you time to react. But casters and other ranged attackers can hit anyone that happens to be in there range, which is likely the entire party. And even melees have a tendency to change targets frequently, only hiting each once or twice.
12 Nov 2007 at 04:03 - 119
Damn Ensign, that post was made of pure, 100% natural LOL sauce. 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ensign
The questions that we're waiting for you to answer are, what targeted heal do you want to have on your bar *in addition* to RoF and Kiss? (substitute Kiss for Zealous Benediction, Word of Healing, Gift of Health, or any other targeted heal if you prefer). What is that skill going to let you do that the aformentioned pair do not?
Yup, discussion over. Can we end this thread now please?
12 Nov 2007 at 04:07 - 120
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The only way to ensure the target of that hit is protted is to prot all of the possible targets, which just isn't practical.
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There's this thing called a front line and a very good reason why it is called a front line. Ideally in PvE that makes a grand total of one potential target in the beginning. In PvP it's a little more nuanced, but learning those little nuances is a part of learning to monk in PvP. Make your best guesses as to who's going to be attacked, and if you mess up you can still make a difference.
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And why is WoH only considered as a substitute to Kiss instead of in addition to it?
Kiss has lower healing on average, but in theory can do more and it doesn't burn an elite. WoH can usually do more healing if your target is under 50% health, but only then and it takes up an elite. And you have a limit to the number of skills on your bar so you can't exactly waste them with redundant skills.
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