Setting up a new hero monk

alright, i'm a noob to the game in general and a little overwhelmed. just got my monk hero on my dervish, but he seems to die way easier than monk henchmen i've had before. the enemies go right to focusing on him once he starts casting. all the builds and guides i see are meant for people at max level and everything unlocked it seems. i don't know what to do with what i have at the moment at level 8.

i gave him kalwameh's focus, but everything else is the way it came. should i leave the armor he has and enchant or enhance it for +health or...? i got some donations from nice people so i have like 10 platinum at the moment and can afford to trick him out a little.

skills in his bar at the moment:
reversal of fortune
healing breeze
healing touch
words of comfort
remove hex
resurrect
vital blessing
guardian


sorry if it's awful. thanks for the help.

I'm going to assume because your playing your Dervish you just got Dunkoro and he's pretty low level so your dealing with Corsairs and on your way to getting Melonni.

I believe in this point in time I would not concern yourself over upgrading his armor unless you see that he will always be in your 7 Hero lineup whenever you begin to do end-game missions and HM.

As for the skills, I would recommend you to remove Reversal of Fortune seeing that Hero's spam that skill and waste energy and removing the resurrection skill. The monk should be healing and the few seconds of activating resurrect your party could be wiped.

Vital Blessing ... That seems a bit out of place and I would suggest you not have Dunkoro using this skill because a -1 energy degeneration will hurt your healer even though the HP boost is nice. Guardian is really iffy as well seeing that even though it does help, it's not exactly useful, that is unless you have most/all aggro from mobs to use this skill to the fullest potential.

Healing breeze is a pretty big energy investment for a regeneration but Dunkoro is only starting out so you could use all the heals you could get ... but I would recommend removing that one as well. Healing touch is nice with the Divine Favor counted in (though at his level it probably won't do much) but the fact that your a Dervish means he'll be running up to the front lines to heal you as well as Koss ... which is bad.

Words of Comfort is a good heal for now seeing that your starting out but I would suggest changing it later on and Remove Hex is good for now since it can be annoying with those Iboga's running around.

I didn't mean to tear your build apart but I think it would help Dunkoro to have minimal non-healing skills as possible so that he can use more healing skills (Sounds weird, but blocking and +HP is a bit too much to ask from Dunkoro at his current level). He's pretty awkward to deal with when starting Nightfall but the more levels he gains the easier it is to deal with his placement in your group.

[This is all my opinion though, it differs from person to person, and I'm sure someone disagrees with some of the statements I have made.]

nah, you did exactly what i was looking for. break it all down. i pretty much have less than a week worth of experience, so i'm still figuring out how this game and the spells even work. my main problem with all my characters and heroes is making a good well rounded skill bar. there seem to be so many redundant and situational skills that i have no idea how to use or know what makes them effective or more desirable than the others.

As the above reply says and you wil find that for a while - its hard to have a real decent monk setup untill dunkoros a lot higher level.A tip to making sure heros gain levels a bt easier - every quest that gives xp reward in an outpost make sure you have all your low lvl heros in the team as this will allow them to gain xp and lvl up without them actually having to fight.
Starting afresh can be very hard due to lack of skills - ive played for around 4 yrs and my alt account was hardly skilled and going from a comfort zone ( all skills ) to using one with little skills actually shocked me as you are limited in what builds can be used so dont worry as your not alone.
Henchmen may seem bad even at low lvls compared to heros but often they can perform just as gd.

Setting up a skill bar is nothing simple; I've been playing for a while now and I can't say I'm very good at it, but there are ways to learn!

First is asking questions, which you did, so that's good!

Second is the Wiki. In this case, I suggest taking a look at how henchmen are set up in the area that you are in now. Kihm, for example, or Mhenlo. This gives you an idea of what you could bring (and it also applies to other professions as well!)

An important part of GW is energy management, or getting the best out of your energy and not run out of juice in critical moments. A rule of thumb that served me well with my monks in the early stages is trying to bring skills that only cost 5 energy, maybe one that costs 10. Roughly put, it seems easier for the AI to manage it's energy that way, especially at low levels, and so you get more healing out of your monk.

Something to eventually consider is the difference between healing monks and protection monks. Both have a place in your party, should you let them join you. The former heals you, the latter helps reduce incoming damage so there are less serious wounds to be healed. Both are there to keep you alive in the end! But for now I'd say focus on healing and eventually get some light protection in there.

Last thing I'd like to mention real quick are resurrection skills. It might not matter a lot right now, but it's something to keep in mind: if someone in your party died, it probably means you're in a hot situation. Being in a hot situation probably means you need all the healing you can get, so it's probably not the best time for your monk to stop healing and spend a few seconds resurrecting a party member. I guess what I'm trying to say is try to have res skills on other members as well and maybe let them try to resurrect first while your monk keeps them alive. I make it sound terrible I know and actually it's not that bad - I went through pretty much all Normal and Hard Mode areas just fine without thinking about that, but it starts to matter when you get into the real hard stuff, so might as well get used to it from the start and save you a few headaches!

Quote: Originally Posted by lag kills

skills in his bar at the moment:
reversal of fortune
healing breeze
healing touch
words of comfort
remove hex
resurrect
vital blessing
guardian Remove Vital Blessing, Healing Touch and Resurrect. Set him as Mo/E and give him Glyph of Lesser Energy. Do some Zaishen pvp thingies in order to unlock skills with Balthazar Faction. Word of Healing (E) should be your priority and costs 3000 Balth.Faction to unlock.

I like my monk heroes as WoH/prot hybrids: WoH, Dwayna's Kiss, Dismiss Condition, Protective Spirit, GoLE, Aegis, Cure Hex, [something]. The 8th skill depends on what you're going to face in the area or mission you're starting - add aditional hex or condition removal or even RoF/Guardian. You can micro PS and Aegis before aggroing and that's it. They basically play that bar well enough for HM.

Quote: Originally Posted by cataphract

Remove Vital Blessing, Healing Touch and Resurrect. Set him as Mo/E and give him Glyph of Lesser Energy. Do some Zaishen pvp thingies in order to unlock skills with Balthazar Faction. Word of Healing (E) should be your priority and costs 3000 Balth.Faction to unlock.

I like my monk heroes as WoH/prot hybrids: WoH, Dwayna's Kiss, Dismiss Condition, Protective Spirit, GoLE, Aegis, Cure Hex, [something]. The 8th skill depends on what you're going to face in the area or mission you're starting - add aditional hex or condition removal or even RoF/Guardian. You can micro PS and Aegis before aggroing and that's it. They basically play that bar well enough for HM. Sometimes I don't even micro Aegis they seem to do it well enough... seeing as how both my monks run it.

Basically everything you just said but definitely micro Protective Spirit or don't have your hero use it at all.

In case you don't know what I mean by micro, go to your settings and put your hero's (whatever number skill is prot spirit) and set it as a certain key on your keyboard so you can cast it on yourself, or whom ever is taking/going to take massive damage. You can do this with any skill if you realize your hero
casts it too much during stupid/bad times/when out of energy. Cancel the skill
on your hero's bar so he can't cast it at all by himself.

Since you are most likely just playing through the game on normal mode
I wouldn't even bother with micro.

Keep in mind that the most important aspect for any hero monk is energy management. If, at the end of battles, your monk's energy reserve is constantly dry, then your monk isn't going to do very well. However, if you give a monk good energy management skills, then he will serve you well throughout the game, into hard mode, and beyond.

I highly recommend choosing mesmer as dunkoro's secondary profession. Heroes dont use glyph of lesser energy well, so even though this would be a solid choice on a human monk, it isn't a good choice on a hero monk. The best option would be to give him two inspiration skills that help him recover energy. Power Drain is always really good due to the high energy return. For the second skill, I would give him either leech signet if you do not have many other interupts in your team, drain enchantment if enemies you are facing use many enchantments, or ether signet. My Dunkoro uses power drain and ether signet, and he has gotten me through all of my hard mode activities very well.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that energy management is the most important part of a hero monk's skill bar - its the difference between your monk sucking and your monk doing really, really well.

For this reason, I recommend not running hybrid builds on your hero. This is because an attribute split between 4 attributes is too thin for your skills to be of much use. Instead, run either divine favor, healing, and inspiration, or divine favor, protection, and inspiration. Remember that this is only for heroes - human monks are far more effective as hybrids because they don't have to put attribute points into inspiration to get energy management.

Oh, and I highly recommend never bringing ressurection skills on your monk. I would put them on other characters instead. You don't want monks using ressurection skills mid-battle when they should be healing, and if you're just going to disable the skill and manually use it outside of battle... well then you may as well just take it on another character instead and free of space on the monk's skill bar. Typically, it is recommended that ressurection skills go on "midline characters" (aka, any character that isnt a healer and that isn't a melee fighter).

thanks for all the help everyone. the guild wars community seems really cool and helpful. switched skills around for the monk and he hasn't been dying, plus i think i'm getting better at protecting him, so it's been a big improvement.

Give him the two best 5 energy healing skills you have unlocked and/or Signet of Rejuvenation (if you have it).
Give him Guardian/Aegis and/or Shield of Absorption as soon as you're able to obtain them.
Unlock Word of Healing as soon as you can.
Any other skills should either be Mesmer energy skills or cleaning skills.

If you think you are unable to do that for a while, stick with the Monk henchmen until you've progressed far enough.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lanier

I'm not exaggerating when I say that energy management is the most important part of a hero monk's skill bar - its the difference between your monk sucking and your monk doing really, really well.

For this reason, I recommend not running hybrid builds on your hero. This is because an attribute split between 4 attributes is too thin for your skills to be of much use. Instead, run either divine favor, healing, and inspiration, or divine favor, protection, and inspiration. Remember that this is only for heroes - human monks are far more effective as hybrids because they don't have to put attribute points into inspiration to get energy management. That's the main reason I suggested Mo/E on a hybrid. You don't split between four attributes but use three of primary class. A hero with template [OwYT023CxRjsR201DkRAZ6f3AA] can use 11+1+1 prot, 11+1 heal and 8+1 df. GoLE is highly useful even with 0 attribute basically giving PS+Aegis or 2x PS for only 5 energy. 16 in prot or heal is not needed and will only make the hero even more squishier.

Quote: Originally Posted by cataphract

That's the main reason I suggested Mo/E on a hybrid. You don't split between four attributes but use three of primary class. A hero with template [OwYT023CxRjsR201DkRAZ6f3AA] can use 11+1+1 prot, 11+1 heal and 8+1 df. GoLE is highly useful even with 0 attribute basically giving PS+Aegis or 2x PS for only 5 energy. 16 in prot or heal is not needed and will only make the hero even more squishier. you're right that 16 isn't needed in heal or prot. I typically have 12-14 depending on the attribute split. Heroes use GoLe really poorly though, and they happen to use powerdrain + the other inspiration spells i mentioned really well. While it does mean you have to invest attribute points into inspiration, and it does mean that you have to specialize your monks into 1 heal + 1 prot rather than 2 hybrids (which isn't really a bad thing, even though I do prefer running a hybrid on my player monk), i have found it to be well worth the investment.