Protection Monk Equivalencies in other Fantasy RPGs

I haven't played GW in a while, but it seems like whenever I migrate to a new game I always want to roll that game's equivalent to a Protection Monk - seeing as they were one of my favorite builds to play in GW.

So far:

WoW - Priests were a ...disappointment... to say the least. Heal Heal and Heal some more. (It's funny reading forums where someone brings up this suggestion every so often: "Hey it'd be cool if priests could throw out a variety of short-term defensive buffs to make the class more interesting")

D&D - A healer in plate always kind of bugged me, and the defensive spells there seem to be too situational and not very powerful. Not something you could really build a character around.

I'm pretty much burnt out on GW and don't think I'll be coming back soon, but I really do miss playing a protection monk. I'm curious if anyone else has successfully ported a protection monk type character into another RPG?

I think some of the elder scrolls games that let you customize your spells give you that option.

...so now all we have to do is to wait for Bethseda to finish their Elder Scrolls MMO...by that time, GW2 will be out.

Dungeon Siege 2 - you can develop a nature mage specialising in Embrace-type spells. A lot of incredibly powerful protective buffs ranging from handy to stupidly overpowered - the challenge in using them is that you can only have two of these buffs stacked at any one time and they last for a very long time, so you need to be able to plan ahead on the fly and stack the right buffs at the right times on the way across the map. Embrace specialists also gain access to the ultimate in protective magic; the Invulnerability power (which turns your whole party invulnerable for up to 12 seconds at power level 3).

On top of that, in mercenary (easy) mode you'll also find yourself with enough points to specialise into a second field; the nature mage also offers ice magic, summoning magic, wrath magic (offensive buffs, which also count towards the 2 buff limit) and healing magic. Healing/embrace hybrids are very common setups in mercenary mode, with most players starting to push into wrath and ice when veteran and elite mode come along (haven't met a nature mage who specced into summoning yet despite it having the most damaging power in the game).

I've played a fair few RPGs, and... well... of all of them - Guild Wars is the game where Protection is the most prevalent - indeed, up to the point where pure healing = utter fail in GW.

By comparison, most other games have smaller protection abilities that are an addition to a healer's ability, rather than the main focus (as with good GW monks)

I'd probably use it as an excuse to pick up FFVII again. Master Barrier on Cloud makes him a prot monk... right?

But Elder scrolls games are single player so that stuff would be mostly selfheals - not really something that would make person enjoying healing others happy.

I think that OP is out of luck, pretty much every healer class does straight red bars go up thing with some condition removal. Best you can do are minor but longterm defensive buffs.

Btw: DnD Monks work morelike Paragons - party wide buffs (which you can stack a lot) while dealing (meele) damage.

Huh?
I thought Monks in DnD were essentially invincible godmode characters that tore things to pieces barehanded?

... you meant Cleric, right?

I was gonna say something similar; Final Fantasy spells like Barrier/Veil, Shell... ... and some more I'm totally forgetting right now.

I need to play FF5 now, haha.

Ups, yeah i did. :-/ Too ... Much .... GW

[skill]Protective Spirit[/skill]
Just that skill alone makes Protection Prayers worth it.

This has to be the most veiled anti-other game I have ever seen.

You can't compare GW to other MMOs, since they were not the basis for GW's skill system.

You can, however, compare GW's skill system to Magic: the Gathering, which ArenaNet admitted was the inspiration. When you do, the 10% damage cap of Protective Spirit seems kinda lame, as MtG in recent years is a far superior balanced game.

(Also, I despise Protective Spirit because it doesn't encourage intelligent play in an active game. It's 100% passive.

You just keep pressing buttons. Not much different from a healer in any game...)

Reflect/Wall were always big defensive spells. In the original, white mages also had spells that improved your defense agaisnt one element.

To be fair, I don't think A.net realized the potency of Protective Spirit/Bond when the game was first released. The skill combos that people have created today (hybrid monks, 55s, etc) were probablly unthinkable to A.net back in the beta days. 3 million people can come up with a lot of wierd, unforseen stuff.

How the heck do you not see a spell which can reduce a 100-200+ damage attack to only 40-50 damage without any serious investment?

Farming potential, maybe, but the fact that Prot Spirit is a requirement for Hard Mode is bad game design.

And with a little DP the remaining damage can be reduced to zero with just one more skill.

Yeah Final Fantasy has had Barrier/Protect and Shell/MBarrier. Blink to raise evasion (like Guardian). Ensuna to cure conditions.

You don't need an excuse to pick up FFVII again.

It's always as good as when you first played it.

Disregarding dumb stat-pumping bosses in hard mode, prot spirit is one of the more active big prots a monk has. It's too expensive to keep up on everyone all the time, so you have to be smart-like with it.

Also, I liked FF6 more than 7. Morph + double ultima is pro.

MtG is fairly skewed in terms of balance right now.

Starting with Mirrodin and the Ravager debacle. It hasn't gotten any better.

Vanish the other one I was looking for (raises evasion).

Heck even Pokemon *puts up flame shield* has prot-like skills... can't remember much of the names, but Double Team is one of them (raises evasion).