Hasty Healer Build Trial

Quote: Originally Posted by deluxe

Rebirth is a perfectly good skill for those of us that play in PUGs. With a weapon swap, it can even be used mid-battle. Provided your other monk isn't a total doofus, or the dead one. Think about it like this. With my monk, I usually hover around 20-25 energy for the duration of a battle. If the battle slows down and somebody is dead, I can swap to my -5 energy set, rebirth, swap back, and have 22 energy right away.

Saying a monk sucks if they need a res is just ignorant. It's entirely possible that their team has sucky players and, trying to avoid being an elitist jackass, the monk doesn't harass them for playing how they want to play.

As far as the OP's build, spammy builds are good for heroes and beginners. Try experimenting with something that requires more than redbar tunnel vision. GoLE is completely wasted on that bar, as is Holy Haste. IMO, with the recent WoH buff, 2-7 are wasted slots. If you're going for a spammy build, make your elite something that will let you spam more. Healer's Covenant or Healer's Boon would be more suited to that bar than WOH.

My version of that bar:

[skill]Word of Healing[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Orison of Healing[/skill][skill]Dismiss Condition[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Words of Comfort[/skill][skill]Divine Spirit[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

In a build like this, Divine Spirit can make you a spam monster for the duration. All of your effect skills are 5e. Cast Divine Spirit when you hit 10 energy and you're still gaining energy while spamming your brains out.

Alright, latest revision:


[skill]Word of Healing[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Signet Of Devotion[/skill][skill]Reversal Of Fortune[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Dismiss Condition[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Unless you're having problems with your energy, I'd switch out Signet of Devotion to Guardian or Aegis. Block is infinitely more useful than a small and slow heal.

Quote: Originally Posted by TEB Elite

The problem with the pro-Rebirth argument is that you guys talk as if bringing Rebirth is free. News flash: it's not. Instead of taking a res to recover from near-wipes, you need that last skill slot to prevent wipes from even happening. If it helps at all, think about it this way: you are bringing a skill that you should never need, at the opportunity cost of bringing a skill you could be using all of the time.

Monks do not bring res; they bring 8 real skills that keep people alive rather than resing people after the fact.

the problem with you anti-rebirthers (oh yeh, you have a faction now)

is that you assume your ability to keep everyone alive will never fail. News flash: It does. Lag, noobs, cast order messups, energy problems, all happen. You cant prevent it, and saying so makes you look like an idiot. Regardless of how good your party is, 1 skill is not going to make the difference between a party wipe, and keeping every member in your party alive. Absolutely especially in places like doa and fow when patrols, mobs, and bosses move about randomly.

Im not saying rebirth is even useful in mid-combat or pvp, just that I cant imagine how many times Ive used rebirth has kept my party going when a short range quicker res could not.

Quote: Originally Posted by TEB Elite

Quote: Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

Quote: Originally Posted by Age

Quote: Originally Posted by Ensign It is true in every circumstance that poses a real threat of killing members of your party.
...
Most of normal mode PvE can be completed with Glimmer of Light and seven empty skill slots. It can also be done with Word of Healing and 7 empty slots, or Orison of Healing and 7 slots. The argument that you shouldn't run prot on your bar because it's not good against content that you can complete with one skill is asinine. 1. I never said TEB shouldn't run prot skills. In fact, I did suggest possibly adding "Protective Spirit, Aegis, or some 'small prot.'"

2. Considering that you "get it" with regards to rez, it's really surprising to me that you don't "get it" with regards to "heal vs prot."

You never seem to disagree with me that straight healing is the optimal response to most of the NM PvE monster set; rather, you seem to vehemently deny the need to go optimizing one's build for fighting the bulk of the NM PvE monster set in the first place. I am going to try to justify to you build optimization viz-a-viz NM PvE, at least for the purposes of giving advice to people struggling with NM PvE.

Look, you may be able to handle most of NM with glimmer and 7 empty slots, but the people asking for advice here (and, I daresay, most of the people giving advice here too) most certainly cannot. Their overall performance is just not getting the job done reliably. Not even in NM PvE. And they're seeking to improve it. (Why else would they be here?)

Very roughly, there's two major components to one's overall performance: one's build and one's level of skill using that build. Improving either to a great enough degree can be enough to get one's overall performance up to the level needed to get the job done. For example, you apparently have enough skill to compensate for a very poor build (7 empty slots) and still keep a team alive; while pre-nerf LoD bordered on being so good that a cat sleeping on a keyboard could keep parties alive in many cases if it depressed the LoD key. On the other hand, some folks are starting from points low enough in both the skill department and the build department that they aren't keeping parties alive. These folks who are struggling to keep parties alive in NM PvE need to optimize their builds, or improve their skills, or both.

I say it's easiest to optimize their builds. Optimizing a build for a particular monster set can almost be reduced to a mathematical exercise, especially for the easier monsters. It's something than can be done remotely via the forums with relative ease.

Conversely, these forums do a downright crappy job of helping people improve their "nuts and bolts" skill level. About all the advice one ever hears is: "you need to learn to use a good build <posts LoD hybrid>" or "you need to pre-prot." And yet, I have never seen a meaningful elaboration on how to use that particular build (beyond the cliched "prot and use LoD to clean up what you don't prevent") or how to pre-prot. I've never seen any useful elaboration on how to determine who needs to be pre-proted, and with what. I've never seen any posts on how to kite effectively, or how to use terrain effectively, or how to properly position oneself in the backline, or etc. And I've only seen one really useful post on how to properly conserve one's energy, and that was a long time ago. Simply put, we (the people doling out advice on these forums) do a really good job of telling people "you suck; you need to improve your skills," but we don't do jack to actually help them do that.

Moreover, even if we did offer a library of useful advice on how to improve one's skills, I'm not sure that's the sort of thing that it's really possible to learn through simply reading it. (Though I'd LOVE to have that library of useful posts around so we could try that out.)

So, when someone is struggling with an area: Telling them "if you had adequate skill (like me), you could do that area with glimmer + 7 empty skillslots" does not help them be able to do it. We can't (or won't) teach them the level of skill to be able to do it via forum posts. So optimizing their builds for the tasks they want to accomplish seems to me like the only way left to help them do what they want to do. If helping people succeed where they are not succeeding right now is the point of giving advice via the forums, then this option should win by default.

Does helping someone optimize their build for NM PvE help prepare them to be a great PvP monk, or even for HM PvE? No. Or at least not very much. But it does help them with NM PvE, which is what they could use a hand with right now. One step at a time. Help them beat NM PvE right now, and worry about the rest later. Besides, telling them "prot >>>> heal stoopid noob QQQQ go uninstall" or "you should be able to do that area with glimmer and 7 empty skillslots" doesn't help with anything at all.

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Back on topic:

Quote: Originally Posted by TEB Elite the problem with you anti-rebirthers (oh yeh, you have a faction now)

is that you assume your ability to keep everyone alive will never fail. News flash: It does. Lag, noobs, cast order messups, energy problems, all happen. You cant prevent it, and saying so makes you look like an idiot. Regardless of how good your party is, 1 skill is not going to make the difference between a party wipe, and keeping every member in your party alive. Absolutely especially in places like doa and fow when patrols, mobs, and bosses move about randomly.

Im not saying rebirth is even useful in mid-combat or pvp, just that I cant imagine how many times Ive used rebirth has kept my party going when a short range quicker res could not. Your argument is entirely without merit. First, you are using two straw man arguments. Monks not taking res doesn't mean the party has no resses at all, and failing to keep someone alive is not a (near) party wipe, which is the only situation where Rebirth is warranted. If you do fail to keep someone alive due to any of the reasons you gave (some of which are spurious, but I'll address that below), there are potentially 6~7 other members on the team that can res - members that are in a far better position to do so than you, the monk.

Second, ressing must be done immediately to be effective. Any res (not just Rebirth) that takes 6s to cast mid-battle is totally irrelevant, because any near-wipe situation will turn into a total wipe if you can't res quickly. One of the sure indicators of a newbie group is one where nobody hits a res the moment an ally hits the dirt. That also means skills like Death Pact Signet, FC Reschant, and Res Sigs are your absolute best res skills. None of those are ever carried on monks.

Third, monks have no free skill slots. Your assertion that one skill will not make a difference between wiping and not wiping is simply not credible, because any number of skills on a typical monk bar can and do make that difference on a regular basis (e.g., Aegis, PS/SB, SoA, Guardian, Dwayna's, LoD/WoH, Cure Hex, RoF). As such, the opportunity cost of taking a res skill on a monk bar is enormous; taking a res skill makes it significantly more likely that you will actually need to use it.

Fourth, (near) party wipes absolutely should not happen. It is possible - likely, even - that your party takes deaths. But if you are ever in a situation where you burn through 6 res sigs and still have to run away with monsters standing on your corpses, there is something else wrong with your team that has absolutely nothing to do with whether you brought a res.

Furthermore, several of the reasons you gave for taking deaths are spurious. I'm not even entirely sure what you mean by "cast-order messups", because that implies that you are casting spells in some sort of set 'combo', which is entirely at odds with what I do as a monk. But execution errors in general (e.g., activating the wrong skills, swapping to the wrong sets, healing the wrong party member) happen so infrequently at high levels of play that such situations are irrelevant, especially in PvE. Even if we assume that such errors occur at critical moments, hitting RoF instead of WoH potentially costs you a single death - it takes quite a string of screw-ups to go from single deaths to party wipes. If execution errors are occurring often enough that it's significantly affecting your ability to keep your team up, you need to practice, not bring a res.

You shouldn't be playing with "noobs" in any situation where their noobishness could actually matter. As Ensign said above, such people are entirely at odds with any area that possesses even a modicum of difficulty, and playing with such people is begging for failure. If you're willing to put yourself in that kind of situation and try to "carry the team", that's your prerogative; all bets are off. In such instances, I've gone so far as to take Unyielding Aura (see: Whammo Leash); clearly, such a situation simply isn't within the realm of serious play, and bringing Rebirth is the least of your worries.

Energy problems are within your ability to control. If you go into an area and you can't keep people up on 72 energy, either you are doing something wrong, or the build needs to incorporate more midline defense. Taking Rebirth isn't a solution in this case, because after you res everyone and keep going, you are even more likely to wipe due to most of your party having DP. The point is, fundamental issues like simply not being able to handle incoming damage due to build or player skill aren't solved by Rebirth. By definition, things get harder, not easier, after near-wiping - unless you're spamming T3h Itamz (TM) to remove DP.

Lag is the only factor on your list that is not within your direct control. Aside from simply not playing when you're lagging badly, which is merely a Hobson's Choice, there isn't a good way to account for lag spikes unless they're predictably periodic. However, this is not a persuasive reason for bringing Rebirth unless you experience severe lag on a regular basis. It's far more usual for people to experience the occasional lag spike; so to waste an entire skill slot to account for freak occurrences is an overreaction. Furthermore, lag might cause a death, but to cause a party wipe requires severe, prolonged lag, which is even less common. If you're experiencing debilitating lag on a regular basis, playing GW is essentially an exercise in futility anyway and this entire thread is irrelevant in such a case.

The topic of monks bringing res, and specifically Rebirth, is one that has been argued up and down since the game was first released. None of the arguments being presented in this thread (including mine) are anything new. As such, it's instructive to consider why prevailing wisdom is what it is; specifically, there have not, to date, been any persuasive arguments to the contrary.

Edit: I removed my reply, you have your opinion, I have mine. Arguing about it is stupid. Especially since the concept of monks, res, and rebirth is one of the oldest around.

I would like to keep the thread on the build in my OP

I'm seeing a lot of long walls of fail.

Rebirth sucks, but bad teams call for bad skills. End of argument, m'kay?
And Hybrid monking > PvE, both NM and HM.

Back on topic, people.

Edit: given that the post I'm replying to was removed, leaving this reply here is improper.

And yes, I agree that this was all off-topic; sorry.

Quote: I'm seeing a lot of long walls of fail.

Rebirth sucks, but bad teams call for bad skills. End of argument, m'kay?
And Hybrid monking > PvE, both NM and HM.

Back on topic, people. Thank god you were here to put everyone back in their place.

Edit 3: Latest revision:

[skill]Word of Healing[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Heal Party[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Glyph Of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Dismiss Condition[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

yeah....no more talk about monks bringing a rez. This thread is about the OP's build. If the OP wants a rez in there, respect that decision. Everyone has a different playstyle.

Nice build now, TEB.

What's ur attribute point spread?

Unless your team is running a bunch of enchantments, Dismiss is probably worse than Mend Cond on that bar because you yourself aren't running many enchantments. The main issue with running MC is that someone else needs a condition removal, but if the team has a standard 2-monk backline, extra condition removal is pretty much a given.

I'm still not sure what to think about Heal Party on monks, even with GoLE (and I won't get into whether even taking GoLE in the first place is actually worth that skill slot in most cases). I've been running LoD and WoH interchangeably in PvE, and I find that, despite the huge nerf, LoD is often better suited. I think this is more of a testament to how powerful LoD used to be rather than WoH being weak or not.

I prefer Cure Hex to Remove, especially without LoD, since many of the stronger hexes you see in PvE involve some kind of degen or damage component rather than simply disruption (see: Migraine, Spiteful, etc.). Cure is on a longer recharge, but it allows you to mop up some of that damage while removing the hex - less of an issue in the LoD days, but more of an issue now with mostly single-target healing.

Finally, you need to remove Rebirth and put in- oh wait, nvm. In all seriousness though, consider some extra prots like Aegis, SoA, or Guardian - they make a big difference in many areas.

Agreed, except about rebirth (I crack me up)

I have been using the heal party + gole since last night. I have found heal party and gole to be almost completely ineffective in high pressure situations. Heal party costs to much, has to long a cast time, and you need to cast gole before to get the full potential.

Im going back to revision 2 and switching out reversal for aegis.

btw, as said above I dont own eotn/factions, so cure hex is not an option.

Edit 4: Latest Revision

Notes: Removed heal party and gole

- Word of healing
- Dwaynas kiss
- Reversal of fortune
- Shielding hands
- Protective spirit
- Remove Hex
- Dismiss condition
- Rebirth

[skill]Word of Healing[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Reversal Of Fortune[/skill][skill]Shielding Hands[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Dismiss Condition[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

I didn't see the part about you not having access to Cure Hex, although I suspected that would be the case (Cure Hex is Eye of the North, BTW). As you can see, I jumped on the Rebirth issue without reading most of the thread.

I absolutely would not run Sig of Devo. Once you have Sig of Rejuv, you can run that, but in the interim I'd consider replacing Sig of Devo with RoF and running Aegis. Sig of Devo is essentially a non-skill - it is significantly worse in every way than any other healing skill you could name, with the only redeeming attribute being the 0 energy cost. You could slot GoLE or even Divine Spirit and do much better.

A final note about Rebirth (and similar hard-resses): if you can find space for it on a midliner, absolutely put it there. You get your "Oh **** we're all dead" res - but on somebody who has the bar space to run it. If you get EoTN, another option is to bring Res Scrolls on hard areas, although this is only feasible if you're relatively well-off.