Costume Brawl 2008

Yes WS is nice but I perfer, to have Armor of Sanctity along side it. Earth is better then wind imo.

Calling the Warrior and Dervish builds bad is dumb. Shutting down certain skills will equate to a death 90% of the time for a Warrior (WoW, RoD, Faint, Immo / Steam) providing you land Bull's Strikes. For Dervs, you have both a snare, a skill to heal both yourself and allies and one of the most horribly imbalanced skills in terms of frontlining at your disposal.

At the above post, speedboost > that extra damage mitigation. Isn't what the Dervish already has enough?

They always seem to screw the paragons over. Lame build they gave them....No self heal? Wth. Brainless people working on GW, as always. Though expecting much out of them is a laugh. They made other professions crappy as well, like the Necro.

"I soloed an ele therefore the ele can't kill the monk" is not an argument.

Congratulations, you found a bad ele. He probably didn't use glyph of resto. Monks have a hard time outdamaging that (lol?) unless you KD my glyph... in which case enjoy your freezing gust and I'll just run. Ele with half a brain may not always kill the monk (it does take a while unless you catch them at half HP with shatterstone/gust spike) but he would never lose to a monk.

I can solo the entire team if they're afk, however you don't see me using that as an argument.

mesmer's bar is completely awesome this year, specially with all the pvp noobs in costume brawl... 90% of kiters die to wastrels worry...
and really if u know what your doing its not too hard to solo a sin or war as a mes... and eles = dead... really only annoyances are the rits and the rangers, and those dont pose too much of a threat, they are just tough to take down...

From what I've played so far, the Warrior build is head-and-shoulders above the rest.

Unless, of course, you go one-on-one with a mesmer. But everyone else falls quickly.

ritualists are strong! by far my favorite CB bar.

went on a 37 consec streak last night with 2 monks, 2 rangers, and myself on rit. good stuff. we probably could have kept going if we weren't all exhausted.

It was a combination of sarcasm and satire in its finest. But no, the elly builds cannot kill the monks on a 1 on 1 encounter. Take it from someone who has been playing both an Elly and a Monk for the last three years in GW. If I was playing both the Elly and Monk builds against each other, it would be an endless stalemate.

'The monk build sux' is not an argument either, because it is working perfectly fine for the game it is being used in.

Arguments for why the monk build sux are moot, every skill on the bar is usefull unlike that crap where someone is posting melee skills on a monk in RA.

If the monks were pure healers, then getting a 3 monk team would be plain bad. With the current builds, getting a 3 monk team can still net you 20+ consecs as long as your team mates know what they are doing.

I hardly see how you consider the players that are posting here with 22 / 25 wins with 2 / 3 monks did it by luck or because the bar is crap. Nothing on the monk bar is 'uselees', all the skills have a purpose and are very effective in the game.

Like I said, the skills on the brawl smite monk are nowhere nnear as useless as the ones you have on the last 4 slots there. They are usefull and serve a purpose for the whole party unlike your griefer bar here. I initially confused it for a Riptose monk, which is actually a useful and fun bar to play. However, Riptose monks in RA are actually usefull, half of your build here is not.

And you've ignored the fact that the monk is actually far harder to kill the ritualist is. Surely the build must be better if it offers more healing and protection. You also go ahead and ignore all the other people that enjoy the monk build and have great sucess with several monks, I dont know what your problem is with the build, but you are just talking BS when badmouthing it and comparing it to your 4 useless skills in RA.

And, P.S, I really dont care what Izzy says about the build, no one listens to him anymore since he has made so many terrible attempts at his so called skill balancing over the last few years. It makes the game type work, therefore it is serving its purpose.

Again, what would you do if the monk bar was a pure healer build, and you got a team with 3+ monks? You would actually have a far more useless team with 3 WoH healers then 3 of these smite monks.

What bhav has been saying is true. I just got done with a 23 game streak (our team broke down, we were tired of winning). 2 monks (1 being me), 1 ele, and 2 sins. We faced couple 1-3 rit teams and we blew them away. Our sins ganked like crazy, and we took off hexes / blind.

Just because it's not a pure hybrid healer doesn't mean the monk is one of the worst. I ranked it up in the top 3 for sure....

I would go over how all the monk skills are useful...but no one would care and I'd rather not type it out.

Or what? You know, this is a team game. As such, any 1v1 arguments are bad because you're not suppossed to be soloing here and there.

Lol.

Anyways, I personally like a lot the rangers bar. But I find it quite boring after 10-15 matches, just like in RA.

Really? I think you will find that teams in costume brawl tend to split to cap shrines, and when you kill them they are teleported back to base. There are plenty of situaltions where people will have to run around solo, picking them off is the best thing to do. This isnt a team game in the sense that everyone is meant to stay together, that is just the first recipe for failure. You need to cap shrines, and 1v1, even 1v2 encounters happen far too often because of this

I have been capping shrines on my own plenty of times. I find that an enemy group of two players have never actually been able to kill my monk yet in this situation. I actually like to, if I can, draw of two members of the enemy team and hold them for as long as I can so that the rest of my team only have to deal with 3 people.

It is sneaky, but monks make for a great decoy tactic in this respect. It is even more fun if you can get a warrior to 'tank' for you (lol @ tanking), and bounce your smites of him. You can stay up for a good long time and deal damage as well.

As I already said though, the monk build fails against 3 or more opponents, but on maps where you are supposed to be splitting, it is a very advantegous build in the costume brawl.

A balanced team of Rangers, Eles, and Monks will beat anything else you throw at it.

Warriors, Paragons, Assassins, and Dervishes get snared, blinded, and conditions from them get removed. Necros aren't strong enough to kill them. Ritualists can't remove conditions or hexes. Mesmers are the only straight solution strong enough to kill them, but will either be outrun or outhealed.

Past that, it's like a game of RPS: Ranger beats Ele, Ele beats Monk, Monk beats Ranger.

gg.

I see no arguments presented in your post elaborating why his points were moot in this post. I don't feel the need to argue because all that needs to be said is in his post, except for Castigation Signet which can be useful for energy.


He's not saying that it's not useless. He's showing that RA is easy to beat. CB is comparable to RA in terms of skill levels; the bars are just set and it's based around HB objectives without organisation unless you sync.

Oh damn, I guess I'm seeing things or something. All those dead monks must be a hallucination. I'm gonna go see a psychiatrist tomorrow.

So what you're saying is you're an OK monk and a bad ele?

I'm also impressed by your three years of experience in costume brawl.

What's your definition of useful? Every skill does something? Yes. Could it be done better? Yes.

Please don't start mixing player skill with the bars. We're discussing the bars here. "If your teammates know what they're doing" it pretty much doesn't matter what they play. Get 5 of the best players in GW and I'm sure they would go 20 consec with 2 necros, 2 mesmers and a paragon.

You also seem to conveniently ignore the point that the rit bar is also a healing/damage hybrid and does both much better than the monk... which is kinda the main reason people are saying "monks suck" - because there's a similar bar that is much better.

Meh, just had an 8 consec streak with 3 monks and 2 warriors, we only lost to a team with two monks because they killed us faster QQ

The build is useless for HA and GVG, no doubt about it. But this is not HA or GVG, it is Costume Brawl. Just as there are negatives to every skill in the game, there are also positives when they are used correctly:

first of all, Smite hex + Smite condition ARE worth the 5e cost, because they arent just damage skills, they also remove a condition / hex. You are spending 5e to remove a condition / hex, the damage is just a bonus. Compared to Shatter Hex and Hex Eater Vortex, they have the same effect, do a little less damage but only cost 5e and recharge faster.

Reversal of damage actually places a constant barrage of damage on your foes, while negating it on you. It is the same effectiveness as RoF, but isnstead of healing an ally, it damages a foe. The damage may be small, but so is the enemies healing, wheras damage is easilly covered with H Breeze and Vig Spirit in smaller battles. Specifically in these arenas, I can reduce a foes health to below 50% while mine remains full just using RoD, and then finish them off with my signets. It takes a while, but you have that time when, very occasionally, one person from each team goes for the same shrine.

Cry all you like that this isnt 1v1, but if you actually are playing it right you should be encountering 1v1 gankfests plenty often. The monk build can hold out against any of the other characters in this respect - Capping shrines is easiest for the monk then it is for the other classes as they can actually defend themselves really well against most encounters with up to 2 enemies while dishing out enough damage to send them running away (I have made rangers run away from my monk when they end up <25% health and I am still on 100% and get a free shrine cap).

Healing breeze isnt very good when facing spike teams, but there are no spikes in costume brawl. No one is on vent counting down 3..2...1 spike, damage is usually insignificant enough for healing breeze to last for its full 15 seconds. It also helps immensely when you are running around to cap shrines while stacked with degen and cant remove them all due to the cooldown on the smites. Also, combined with Vigorous Spirit it is a great way to push red bars up. Energy isnt a problem in these battles if you cap the energy shrine. There is also a lot of degen in the game - Poison, bleeding and sufferring. Spamming H breeze across your party effectively counters this (Note again - this isnt expensive if you have capped the energy shrine and use your Castagion Signet). Healing Breeze is only a bad skill when you are facing too muck damage for it to last for its full duration. In Costume Brawl, it WILL be lasting for its full 15 seconds in most cases, that is a significant amount of health recovered, I just cant remember the exact numbers for health regen per second.

Bane Signet / SoD - Two free KD's against Rangers, Dervs, Warriors, Assasins, Rangers with a moderate amount of damage. This moderate damage works in the brawl because the enemy team doesnt have big heals like WoH. Castagion signet is also extra damage and free energy.

The Monk build is terribad if if it was being used in HA or GVG, I am not disagreeing with that. But this is not high end 8v8 PVP against 3..2...1 spike teams using vent, it is a random costume brawl.

3 monks and 2 warriors in this game is just imba, untill you face a team with 2 or 3 monks that is as you are facing the same thing as you have. Then it is a case of whoever can cap and kill the fastest. It has the highest survivability, and you can still kill the enemy team fast enough before they can do the same to you. If you want to win easilly, multiply up the monks and add in some warriors to act as melee meatshields to bounce your smite skills off onto the opponents.

Obviously, the elitist PVP community still cant grasp how the concept of smiters and tanks can work well in this game, even I didnt believe it untill I played it.

Also, it cant be copared to RA because in RA, people can have good builds and kill any monk regardelss of how good their skill bar is. Here however, everyone has the same skill bar. There is balance, and that balance calls for a monk bar which isnt as effective as one which you would use in high end PVP. If you had woh monks here, your team would be invincible.

It is more comarable to Hero battles - you need to split, you need to gank, and you will occasionally be fighting 1v1 as your party should be spread out iver the map.

Last night I joined a pug group which managed to get 100consecutive wins. I have to thank all 7 players who played in the group, who all played in my opinion , perfectly.

Build:
2Warriors (huge dmg)
1Ranger (shutdown/dmg)
1Ritualist (preprot/spike assist)
1Monk (My extra bullstrike/heals)

Strategy: Cap all shrines and Kill all enemies. We always had atleast 1 person off, if there was a shrine to cap. We contained enemies into a group where we completely owned them. Blinds got removed somehow, and Empathys/Insidious's were neglected by a few nightmare weapons and Healing Breeze. If the enemy tried to 5v5 at the start (while capping 1 shrine then moving to us), we would completely go around them and cap over their shrines. Usually they would get pissed , cap another shrine and 5v5 us. And we seriously had all but 1 shrine capped by the time the 5v5 was intitiated (With everyone there).
After a few kills, someone would run back to get the last shrine while we waited for the enemies to res. We would 4v5 them while they got pissed and started resigning.

If they didnt 5v5 at the start, we would just pick them off in their groups of 2 or 3. Our 2/3split depended completely on the map.

The jungle map with the bridge: we would send a War/Ranger/Monk off to the side where there was only 1 cap shrine. While the Rit and Warrior would cap the shrines all bunched up. If there was nothing on the 3person side, after the cap, The ranger would take center (and start helping out the other 2 soonafter), and the War/Monk would head to the 1st capshrine on the enemies side (and then close the enemy in). making it a 5v5 with the possibility of a solo.

On the nicelooking ascalon map: War/Monk on riverside, 2nd war takes middle shrine, Ranger/rit take that battleshrine with the cool animation when you arrive. We would have the 2nd warrior from the middle shrine go to whosever side needed him the most. (completely decided by checking who and how many were on the other side). Once again, if they tried to 5v5, we could have all shrines -1 capped when we initiate the 5v5 by avoiding/capping

Single cappers were dealt with by 1 person going back only. Solo games were shared with between the players ,as games got boring and we all wanted a piece of the action. Warriors could take out all builds with no problem (except for the ele/ranger class). Rangers were easy when you had walls to heal with, or a good dodge on their melandru shot. Elementalists suprizingly would cast in this order: Glyth of Immolation,Shatterstone,Steam which makes me think 90% of the people were just mashing buttons in order (I say 90% because some eles would steam me before I got close up(the correct thing to do)). It helped me time dchops on the steam since I would usually be adjacent to them by the time they got to shatterstone. Then it was gg.
Any melee class was owned with timeing my shieldbash. If I was fighting another warrior, I would tigerstance and attack them. IF they shieldbashed, i simply would count to 10 before I used my attackskills.

I cant speak for my ranger,monk or rit when talking about what builds they had trouble solo'ing since I was the warrior.

My build had huge advantages over the average groups simply because of how offensive it was.

After 50 wins, one of our warriors Sword M A S T E R left the game because his life was calling. We got a replacement Lena Appeasing who was also a very nice player. I have to thank God for this event not being as nubish as RA can be (american districts lol).

Lena was a monk, so we lost some attackpower and had to compensate by containing them in 1 spot, while capping more.

After 98 wins, our ranger Xx Kiki Teh Pwnd Xx left because his life called also. Sadly he couldnt wait a few more minutes for 100, but he deserves 98% of the credit for reaching it

Ayra Teh Spartan took Kiki spot(Kiwi, as I Called him xD) . Ayra was a good listener and made up for some lost dmg while still being a good solo build.(at the expense of some interrupts) Ayra helped us get to 100. And since it was 6am by that time, I decided it was time for bed.


I just want to say a big THANKS to my whole team for playing. It really was like a dream. To play with players who were very smart and could apply their knowledge of the game instantly.


I made a total of 145k from the runs. 100k from selling 2 full stacks of trickortreat bags. And 45k from maxing my blathazar faction. I went up 2 ranks in Skillz from 2-4. I liked numbchuck skills, but only got to keep it for a few hours xD.

heres the screenies
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/imag...00d8876748.jpg <[email protected]
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/imag...c8473d7a86.jpg <[email protected]


Once again.. Thx. and Discuss
btw: I was suprized by the amount of raging/resigning that went on. We only had 2 games that were hard to win. 1 of them we were losing by a score of 12-3 and somehow pulled it together and managed to barely pull off a win with a score of 19-20.

There's no positive to Wastrels' Collapse.

The damage is only really worth it if your enemies are bunched up. Otherwise, even Mend Ailment is better. Think about it, you have an incredible amount of condition pressure, unless you can somehow block it out with Healing Breeze and Vigorous Spirit and Divine Favour. Smite Condition will do next to nothing against the Dervish, his heals are stronger and removing bleeding will have a minimalist effect. Elementalists have an already spammable snare, Necromancers can just as easily cover, Mesmers aren't necessarily hurt on energy at all through it.

Snares also render the damage to nothingness; that includes both Mel Shot and water snares. That makes Smite Condition only a small pressure relief skill which does next to nothing as an additional effect. Not to mention Apply Poison covers cripple on Melshot.

As long as your target doesn't eat Bane Signets, and hits your RoD with DChop or something, heck, even ignoring it for that scenario could be better, but even then every single bar outpressures the Monk.

If a Ranger can't D-Shot that RoD, he'll probably have you snared and making you take longer to move from shrine to shrine, cutting mobility.

15 seconds is a lot of time. Also, how the frig do you uphold yourself with HB / RoD / Vig against a WS Dervish...?

Again, Bane Signet is incredibly easy to avoid. SoD is 20 seconds recharge; not really very often.

Looking back, we can say that that Healing bar is good for the same reason you're talking about. Just because it works doesn't mean it's good.

Meatshields? You mean that tactic called "bodyblocking" which is basic tactical works?

I lol'd. Tanks don't work well at all. Warriors, Dervs and (to a lesser extent) Assassins deals damage, they don't tank.

Aww costume brawling is fun... Until you face a war machine sync.

Seriously what is Anet's position on syncing? Keep in mind that in CB there is no 10 win cap that will send you to an organized arena (RA->TA).

Thread was tl;dr, but the monk bar compared to the others is completely underpowered.

Honestly, last year the brawls were fun because all of the bars were basically equally bad. This year, having anything but a monk is a good thing.

And to the guy posting about getting 10 wins with 4 skills... you had 3 big red bar go up skills. The brawl monks have... healing breeze! Bad argument.

Can we all agree that the whole "stick together noobs" people are annoying?
I mean, I've never seen so many dumb players who think they know what they are talking about bossing people around. Staying together is NOT the smartest thing to do in Costume Brawl, and I attribute everybody's bad tactics to wiki notes saying to stay together.

4 people cap a shrine at the same speed as 5. It's smarter at the start to split into groups of 2 and 3 people, cap, run from the enemy mobs when outnumbered, and then reform up into a group to bottle up the enemy at their base once you've gotten the majority of the shrines.

Please PLEASE stop going "OMG noob, stay together" and bossing people around/insulting them in the first 30 seconds of the match because some people are smart enough to ignore your map pings.

Healing Breeze is good if used properly with other skills. If u can kd with your sigs, then u can prevent alot of upfront dmg.

no, it isn't

in regards to monk vs rit...

monks keep eles in check better
and if u recognize that eles r a high tier, then this is important

u can argue that weapon of warding keeps rangers in check better
but rangers switch targets often, and not single target dps
so its more useful only against war/sin/derv/para

but wait...thats 4 classes vs 1???
well... considerin that there is already so much dam melee-hate already
it may not always be totally necessary

and while healing breeze is a meh skill
its still a 269hp heal
making it the best red-bar-go-up skill

wielders boon can stop a group spike better
but group spikes arent quite as common in a random costume brawl
(especially wit so much split)

and smite hex and smite condition should not be underestimated
it wont necessarily stop a teamate from dying due to conditions/hexes
but it will keep ur frontline fairly free from melee-hate hexes & blind


the rit definatelly has a better all-around bar in terms of 1vs1 and matchups (and utilizing imba skills)
but i think for overall team support (and better synergy wit the other skill bars)...i'd have to give that to the monk

edit: this isnt bout which one is better
jus their advantages/disadvantages
as, if u read my earlier post, i class them in the same tier

While I agree with everything you said about people being insulting, I hardly believe Wiki alone is the reason people stick together. To be honest I believe its because most people don't have a clue what they are doing and sticking together is the easy option

Whats all the monk hate for?

There build is good-damage and enough healing to outheal most any thing the brawl builds can do,soo i cant see how it's"bad".

No, he isn't.

Weapon of Warding (the aforementioned single most broken unstrippable protective spell in the game) makes sure of that.

You just said it fails versus 3 people, the Ritualist absolutely needs 3+ beating down on it at all times just to try to kill (if he's good and kiting vs melee right, etc), and that's assuming one of them is an ele.

The Ritualist is better in every way, Healing Breeze is inefficient (Wielder's Boon is better, for the people who keep going ZOMG BUT IN COSTUME BRAWL...I was talking about CB.), your removal lacks purpose if you're staying mobile and splitting like both teams should be doing, and your one prot (Reversal of Damage) is inefficient and serves no real purpose w/o DB or SB. Vig Spirit is also bad in general, the only reason people have ever used it is because of the Healer's Covenant build, and that's because of what HC does.

Saying another group of people are dumb and can't figure it out because they are elitist is the very definition of elitism fyi. I've never called you stupid or bad, but you're just plain wrong. It is a bad build, the Ritualist is better at everything except removing stuff that 99% of the stuff in the CB doesn't really matter if its removed because it's a mobile game type. It's worse than the Ritualist in every way, that makes it a bad build. Unfortunately I gave you a bunch of stuff between 2 teams of skilled players, and you've given me nothing in return except I beat X/Y/Z or that your team won X times.

Agreed so bad.

The worst is when they don't send ANYONE to the Battle Cry shrines at the start.

Ritualist does better damage and heals for more and has a better prot. Removal skills aren't needed for 99% of the stuff in the game type if you're mobile. The only thing the Monk has is Disruption, and if you have a War/Sin/Ranger who know what they are doing, you have enough of it already.

Agreed on your first 2 paragraphs a lot, except for the 2nd paragraph, *monk and paragon* because the Paragon is also epic fail.

Also it isn't a bad argument, a bad build is a bad build, and 3 big red bar go up skills (and that is it) is bad, even in RA. Either bad builds can win, or that build is good (which it isn't.). So obviously bad builds can win, which was the crux of my argument.

EDIT:
I've given you all the data and everything that needs to be said Bhavv, if you can't see that the Monk bar is bad because the Ritualist is better in every way, than you're blind and nothing I can say is gonna change that, so I'm not going to even bother.. PvPers have nothing against Smite, it's been viable a ton of times in PvP, Smiteway, RaOway, etc. Just because you're short-sighted to see outside the box and analyze it with the other builds in a team setting doesn't mean everyone else is. I never said the Monk build couldn't win, I said it was a bad build because in this vacuum (Costume Brawl), the Ritualist is more effective in every single way possible. Maybe Tyla'll get bored or something, who knows.

anyone else noticed something "odd" about the name of the new map?

Yes, it's a reference to Piplup from Pokemon because people on the Wiki would put Piplup on the Anet discussion pages.

You'd think removing snares would count for mobility. Guess not eh?

That's why I said 99%, the only things even deserving of being truly removed are the snares. Everything else hex/condition wise can be outhealed by a Rit/waited out/ignored. But none of the snares last that long, two of the five can be avoided completely (one by being smart, both thanks to Rit as well), another two of the five are on one class that might not even show up (but if it does they are very short), and the last one is indeed the most annoying one because it's effectively a 19 second snare (the longest lasting one in the game mode) and is on probably the 3rd most common class in the game type, but it's not crippling enough to make your entire team lose if you're split, you have other guys taking shrines etc. This is assuming you have a Monk actually with you to remove it (if you have only 1 and are split) and that none of it gets covered before he can remove it, obviously. (which won't happen on 3 of the 4 classes, and if your Monk isn't fast enough (faster than a 1.17 second reaction time), that's 4 out of 4 classes that'll cover it before you can do anything.)

The reason why they took the HB-style maps out of RA was because people in RA were too stupid to handle something like that. Apparently Anet didn't get the lesson and decided to do it in costume brawl again.

I dunno man, towards the end of the event (last couple days) last year everyone sorta figured it out, got the bars, got the meta, and I had some good games (infinitely better than anything I've had in HB/RA/AB at least). People were splitting and playing good etc. I think it's just people haven't done it for a year so they kinda forgot and/or they haven't figured out these bars and how they interact in a team setting of 32 skills since admittedly a lot of these skills don't see use in PvE at all (because of more broken stuff).

Also to add on to hawks list of annoying things:
-People who zerg (kinda like he said) but ignore the shrines.
-People who don't go for the Battle Cry shrine and think it sucks even though it's the best shrine right next to the Energy shrine.

i had both of these in a single game just now.

I even give my team the plan before every match and say what needs to be done, and they still manage to screw up in the first five seconds sometimes.

It's great fun with a team that knows what to do and does it without prompting, but having to deal with everyone else that doesn't know how to play on a tactical level or on a micro character level just gets annoying. Ah well, it's a fun little arena that's noob-friendly PvP.

<3 playing ele. Only problems I ever have are mesmers but everyone tends to think they suck so I don't see many Rangers tend to be pretty easy as well. Team with 3 or more rangers>everything.

SO this is why i don't like guru they delete posts because they don't like what they say like i said before fail more. also the Paragon bar needs to be fixed they need to remove 1 of the attack skills and replace it with there on fire or just remove anthem of flame because it makes no scene to be on that bar.

Removal skills are needed throughout the game even if you are mobile - Poison and Cripple, Deep wound / Bleeding, necro + elly hexes.

Smite Condition on teh Cripple lololol!!!

But you are right, Monks are so fail at costume brawl:



We only then lost to a 2 monk team who out DPS'ed us and also knew what they were doing. (I was doing most of the shrine capping BTW).

(Hint - We had 3 smite conditions and hexes, and warriors in the front line covered with Insidious Parasite / Suffering, Poioson, Deep Wound, Bleeding, Blind. Smite, smite, smite, and enemies just go boom =D)

By hitting them with KD signets and kiting, spamming RoD to negate most of their damage while you heal up with Healing Breeze. You also obviously arent playing the build, nor understand how it works in this specific situation. This isnt high end PVP, it is costume brawl. Forget any logic that applies to HA / GVG / PVE, because it doesnt apply here. I am managing to use it to hold against all of the other builds. Health + Energy Shrines also help. By the time you are out of energy however, your attacker will normally be fleeing.

But let me just be cool then like all the other build QQ'ers and agree that the monk build is terrible. I'll just keep on playing it and winning over and over again because it sucks so much.

Healing Breeze + Vigorous Spirit is the best 'Red Bar Up' method if you arent going to die in 15 seconds, but just take moderate amounts of damage. You are only going to die fast if you get attacked by all 5 of the enemy team at once, and that actually happens much more rarely then you have to use condition + hex removals on your front line warriors.

After playing both Rit and Monk, I have to say that Rit is much more balanced and playable. The advantage to Monk, however, is allowing faster kills. In my opinion, being able to hit any of the big anti-melee hexes (even if just one while leaving another) and cleaning up DW to allow a big d0mage dealer to stay in the middle of a fight longer and kill someone is a notable ability. Also, used strategically, the KD signets are quite effective though sporadic because of recharge.

The damage from Rit is clearly superior and the protective abilities (all of the heals are... pretty apt actually) are much more generally useful. Still, in niche situations (though fairly common ones), the Monk is playable.

I'm really enjoying the brawl this year. However, don't plan on seeing me play anything but Rit, Sin, and *maybe* Ele or trying out Ranger.

Poison and Bleeding are easily out healed by a Rit, Necro and Mes hexes are a non-issue you can wait out, Ele hexes are troublesome yes, but as I said before, not game lose causing, and Deep Wound is a non-issue in this game type if you know how to kite and are mobile and know how to run away (but is a problem if you're being dumb and running into situations where you're guaranteed to die, yes.).

I already said Cripple's the only thing to watch out for but it's not common enough in the most played classes and with a Cripple reduction shield, it's not that bad at all.

You can post all the screenshots you want, but I've already shown you bad builds can win, and they mean nothing. In a random arena with random players, anything can win, but that doesn't make it good.

Again, you miss the entire point.

You get a three monk team and go smiting all those conditions and hexes off your front line and watching the enemy team die. It isnt a bad build, it is highly effective when there are two or three monks and 3 monks 2 warriors is just the best thing going in this game for the best defense and damage output (Yes my team messed up because we lost shrines to a better team then got killed). Conditions and hexes are always there to be smited. The more monks you get, the more damage you dish out.

I didnt realise that the Rit had any AoE skills like smite Condition and Hex. They actually do far more damage and pressure in 2 / 3 monk teams then a 2 / 3 rit team could do.

And you still carry on comparing brawl to RA, and your monk with actually useless melee skills which is just daft. Nothing on the brawl monks skill bar is a bad skill, you have 8 highly useful and good skills to use in every situation you will encounter in Costume Brawls.

You also ignored my question to you of what you would be doing in the Brawl if the monks were pure WoH healers and you got three of them. You wouldnt be able to kill anything or get any points to win, but you can do that easilly with several smite monks.

The benefits about the monk build far outweigh your negatives which honestly only apply to HA and GVG, not to Costume Brawls.

This game is fun... when you have a good team, which happens almost never.
Every team I get in is filled with noobs that can't follow the simplest orders, or don't know jack about tacts. Example; A 3-2 split at the beginning would be great, but instead they chose to rush with 5, (capping a shrine is capped at +4 btw), and that's just one of the reasons why random GW PVP fails. loads.
It's just annoying to get teamed up with such retards...