Rage healer

I came up with this build after becoming so bored to tears with my monk that I actually cried. True story. I call this build the "rage healer" or "stealth smiter" which I made to be as fun as functional. Basically, recognizing that it's a big pain in the ass to switch back and forth from enemies to allies, this build capatalized on the smiting ability to cause damage while healing/protecting. I've tested a couple variants of this build in SF and FoW with a high degree of success. And here it is:

Attributes:
Healing Prayers: 10+3 (Healing headpiece+major rune, I'm poor, sue me)
Smiting Prayers: 12+1 (Minor rune)
Divine Favor: 8+1 (Minor rune)
Protection Prayers: 3 (Remaining points+minor rune)

The skill setup for the "typical build" (ie. not SF 5 man farming) is:
Orison of Healing
Heal Other
Healing Breeze
Heal Party
Shield of Judgement (elite)
Smite Hex
Zealot's Fire
Rebirth (or res of your choice)

For SF farming I use:
Dwayna's Kiss (duh)
Healing breeze
Heal Area (for minions - no excuse not to bring it)
Shield of Judgement (elite)
Smite Hex
Zealot's Fire
Essence Bond (again, duh)
Res Sig (I prefer it, but others might choose restore life)

Playing the build is easy enough. Make sure you keep Zealot's Fire on yourself (always lasts 1 minute, recharge 30 seconds and does 31 fire damage to all adjacent enemies surrounding your target at lvl 13) and heal away with your primary healing skills. I use Orison often in "normal" mode because the AoE nature of Zealot's Fire keeps the enemies away from the ally you're trying to heal (good for that ele that thinks he's a tank) but I find the scatter isn't bad. That is to say, the AoE range of Zealot's Fire is small enough that the enemies typically won't run away into your casters. Shield of Judgement is a very defensive skill. If you ensure that you keep a designated aggroer (new word) than you can keep SoJ on that target (lasts 18 secs, damage 44 holy + knockdown at lvl 13) and cause a ton of damage while protecting your tank by slowing enemy attack speed. Second, SoJ doesn't register as an AoE spell, which makes it VERY effective I find. Cap it all off with a nice Smite Hex any time you can. The recharge is twice as long as Remove Hex (and if you think Zealot's Fire is enough, than by all means bring it) but potentially causing 200+ damage at a cost of 5 energy while removing a hex is too tantalyzing a possibility for me. Defense through offense I always say. The only con I find to the "normal" build is that the skill set tends to exhaust your energy quickly if you don't wait to get the maximum power out of your healing spells. Other than that, I've done quite well with this build.

Well, post your comments.

-Jessyi

smart idea, however you have to get close to use zealots fire and personaly the worst thing a monkcan do is get close to an enemy

Ah, oops. I forgot to mention - Zealot's Fire is an enchant you keep on yourself that does fire damage to all enemies surrounding your target, not yourself (unless of course you're healing yourself). I'll edit into my original post.

-Jessyi

Zealots is also a good cover enchant.

In all my days doing SF runs with my warrior, I've never seen a monk bring SoJ. I ALWAYS bring it on my stance/smite tank. SoJ and Smite Hex. I wish monks would bring more condition removal dammit. That's the REAL killer for me. I get bled, conjure phant, etc. Degen is what gets me. Not attacks.

Its funny but I got bored of omy monk too and tried a build very similar to this. It was fun. archane echo/SoJ, Smite hex, and Zealots fire Orison Kiss and Rez... then I just spammed heals. Its nice to see yellow numbers pop up every once in a while. Heal heal heal... that gets boring. Let alesia and Lina handle that!

Zealots Fire doesnt require close range... I think you might be confusing the skill with something else. Zealots fire is an enchant you cast on yourslef which makes every heal you cast cause fire damage to enemies adjacent to your target. Chances are the person your healing has monsters nearby.

SoJ is great. The AI "improvement" didnt mess with its effectiveness. A mob might run like heck if he gets hit with an ignited arrow, but they will keep wacking away at the targets care free even if they are getting destroyed by SoJ.