Revamp Smiting Prayers

This is why I cant take this thread seriously anymore.

Tbh it's more about multiple foes. Given enough foes in a ball 100b or VoS can easily spike w/o MoP. MoP is the icing on the mutiple foe cake if u will.

Balancing professions relative to each other is how this whole mess started after NF to begin with OP. It's never worked because of the mindset of having one best option for every role and not enough slots to go around. As soon as a group feels left out they lobby and whine intensely for buffs starting the whole process over again...it's very circular. The best one can hope for is that a given profession can bring something desirable to the team which has always been the case with monks.

Why do you seem to disagree on the main function of the monk? The reason SP can't, without help, carry the load of damage-dealer is because you're playing a support class. Your allies always come before your ability to bring enemy red bars down.

You've little ability to communicate and don't appear to understand/care about professions other than your own. Instead of promoting positive changes to help bring some excitement and life into SP, it's sounded like one, long rant that you can't run a strong damage build and have full support rolled into one like the rit. As the obvious was already pointed out, the rit is stupidly OP.

I know a thing about bitterness, I play a ranger which spends five seconds to plant a mostly useless, double-edged spirit and can't move it.

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Smiting Prayers needs to be put in line with Protection Prayers in functionality, and not made a simple-minded nuking line. I believe Smiting prayers should be about punishing enemies that punish your allies. Reversal of Damage is a skill that best illustrates how I think the smiting line should work. Enchantments and spells that target allies, and punish enemies for dealing damage (with a few targeting enemies directly), A la: Reversal of Damage, Smite Hex, Smite Condition

I want to see more skills like this:

Banish 5en 1ct 7rc Spell

Deals 20...49..56 Holy damage. If a summoned creature is within earshot, deals double damage.

Punishes those who focus on spirits and minions

Balthazar's Pendulum ELITE 5en 1/4ct 3rc Enchantment Spell

For 8 seconds, the next time target ally would take damage or life steal, the foe dealing the damage takes that damage, and target ally gains the amount in Health instead (maximum 15...67...80)

Reversal of Damage combined with Reversal of Fortune as an elite skill. Functionality aptly matches it's title.

Judge's Intervention 5en 1/4ct 10rc
(10 seconds) The next time Target Ally's health falls below 50%, that damage is negated. Negation effect: Deals 10...120...150 Holy Damage to one nearby foe

55 monks can no longer exploit the skill, which sucks, but it's usefulness is increased and damage lowered/recharge raised slightly to compensate.

Symbol of Wrath/Kirin's Wrath 5en 1ct 8-10rc

For 8 seconds, The next time target ally takes more than 60 damage from the next 10 attacks or spells, That foe takes that damage instead, and Symbol of Wrath/Kirin's Wrath ends.

Reversal of Damage that ensures some degree of usefulness at the cost of a longer recharge, while working somewhat like Spirit Bond at the same time. Potentially raise the recharge to 15 seconds and have damage do AoE

Judge's Insight, Scourge Healing /Scourge Enchantment: Same functionality, lower CT to 1 second.

Scourge Sacrifice 5 en 1ct 10rc Enchantment spell
For 10 seconds seconds, The next time target ally sacrifice's health, one nearby foe takes 20..80..95% of that damage instead (Maximum 100 damage)

An odd functioning skill that aids necros/rits that are so frequent on teams. A cap insures that players don't exploit increasing health exponentially to deal insane amounts of damage

Smite 5en 1ct 6rc. Bonus damage now applies to enemies casting spells as well.

Spear of Light 5en 1ct 6rc. Bonus damage now triggers on enemies NOT attacking or casting a spell(A La "Waste Not, Want Not"), while interrupting spellcasting (thus, it interupts spellcasting, but does not deal extra damage making it a bit multi-use. Keep in mind that it's a projectile.)

Defender's Zeal Elite Enchantment Spell 5en 1/4 ct 12rc
for 5...19...23 seconds, whenever target ally would lose more than 10% max health due to damage from a single attack or spell, you and target ally gain 2 energy

Not sure how OP or UP this could be off hand, but the base idea remains the same. Works like prot spirit without actually reducing any damage (works when combined with prot spirit as well), and provides the monk energy as an ally is attacked

Word of Censure 5en 1ct 5rc Elite Hex Spell
Target foe takes 15...63...75 holy damage. For (5 seconds) the next time Target foe attacks an ally, that ally is healed for 20...60...70 instead.

A damaging spell with a unique twist. Effective regardless of what class enemy you are damaging, and useful as shutdown vs high damaging targets. because of this, it might be necessary to raise the energy cost to 10 energy

Theres other skills that need a touch up, TBH. If more skills of the smiting line follow the enchantment/ally target spell suit, Smiter's Boon becomes more useful in PvE, as does Selfless Spirit become better for energy management (though I do think they could utilize other crappy signets for energy management, like signet of mystic wrath/rage.)

Lemme remind of another interesting point of view - it'd be better to nerf the current meta builds/skills, both in terms of a profession (eg. spirits), as well as their combinations (eg. MoP + 100b) than ridiculously overpower more skills/builds just in order to catch up with the already oped ones. The ultimate balance is a non-achievable utopia for GW1, mainly because of a big amount of skills and secondary professions - but that's also what makes this game unique.
Still, there are two ways to keep this game entertaining, balance-wise: either balance everything up, but scale the mobs as well (this means more hp/armor, better builds and, first of all, better AI), or leave the mobs as they are (maybe save some tweaking in builds or certain skills) and scale the players to them. The former sounds more appealing to the playerbase, mainly because it involves bigger numbers floating around tougher opponents, but it also requires A LOT of work from the devs; the latter is a huge undertaking as well, requiring them to smitersboon a lot of skills, but it's still only a small percent of what the first option requires.

I doubt to see any of those coming for GW1, though. So sure, smiting prayers ain't as hot as spirits or armor-ignoring mesmers right now, the monk can still do his main job AND nuke decent enough to be a viable damage dealer in any party. What has an elementalist to say when it comes to Hard Mode, though?

In simple, extemely generalized terms, I think that Necromancers, rits, and mesmers are overpowered, paragons, rangers, and elementalists are underpowered, and monks, warriors, dervs (in PvE), and assassins (with a few exceptions - namely SY! and DB) are in the middle tier in terms of relative power.

Once again, this is extremely generalized, but yea... I think that if necros, rits, and mesmers are slightly nerfed, and if paragons, rangers, and eles are slightly buffed, the game will be better for it.

Its too bad that anet doesn't attempt balance properly. It can only be obtained if professions are buffed/nerfed in small steps. Buff or nerf a profession too much at a time, and you end up with the spirit buff, or the mesmer update, which completely throws off balance (and makes the game worse as a result).

It would work, if done correctly. The problem is that anet takes too big of leaps when "buffing" professions.

Not sure which came first the gw chicken or the gw egg.
Once players started farming and titles came about there was a reason not to play the game as originally intended but to work on the most efficient solo build to get rich get gwamm and later fill the hom.

To that end it wasn't enough to just roll up a new character type that just happened to be the best for the role, it became necessary to make all classes equally good.

Since GW isn't really a team game any more and hasn't been for some years it doesn't matter too much.
Those who wish to preserve the old style GW are in direct opposition to those who want to storm through the game with the character class they enjoy playing most.

If your favourite class is Monk and you really do not want to play any other class then you have as much right as anyone else to expect that class to be the equal of any other class in the game.

The power creep progression is likely to continue.

If someone doesn't want to play the Monk how it was intended to be then one could argue that it isn't actually their favorite class but rather they just refuse to try anything else.

Siver what you and fenshuidove suggested is almost pure buff (aoe kd and an 8 second kd punishment anyone) its not revamping its power creeping. Its exactly the reason why dervish and ritualist are god tier characters(ritualist in pve/dervish in pvp).

Smiting as it is ok but could use a change in skill functionality. they certainly dont need a damage boost. it would be much better if as axel suggested (a mix of prot and damage)

@Gremlin: I've heard the solo play argument before and it's fine, I guess. There needs to come a point where people just deal with profession limitations and stop expecting giant clouds of yellow numbers, SC/group desirability, and OP support options all rolled into one out of everything. I have a very hard time feeling sorry for those who main monks given the exceptionally good treatment the profession has received over the course of this games life. More so than anything else for years it was the one thing you had to have and this was ruthlessly capitalized upon.

Yeah, I'd favor nerfing right now. Don't get me wrong, I love my rit, but SoS and Painful Bond need to get the nerf bat badly. I stopped playing my derv after the update because they feel really gimmicky, but it sound like they may need it too (though my experience with other dervs has been mixed). We'll see, but part of the reason the PvP/PvE split is so rediculous right now is how the power creep worked, hell it might be worth it to nerf everything down, but that would be a massive undertaking for a handful of devs.

I'm in the same boat. My rit is my second most played character, but at the same time, I realize that it would be better for the game as a whole if SoS were nerfed. Same goes for paragon (my first most played character) and SY.

The LT certainly isn't going to listen to someone who complains about the monk needing to run a secondary for spamming AoE. High-output smiting, which ignores armor, is OP. Quite a few skills need attention, particularly ones that have no good purpose, and this is largely a result of the brainless meta we're conditioned to accept.

Your introduction proposed to make the monk a part of this (selective) face-palming movement. This is a bastardization. Changes should invest more synergy within its own attribute lines and with allies and what they're doing.

What's with the focus on knockdowns? Why are there a single remove hex/condition skills with no synergy, not even anything else in the line that takes hexes/conditions into account? The signets are on long recharge and offer very little, again focusing on enemies and not channeling through allies like Zealot's Fire and Strength of Honor. These are sensible concerns, DPS is not.

Ranger is my favourite class anywhere but GW I don't like playing Rangers the way this game says they should be played.

Someone could come into GW and play a Monk as intended within the game then suddenly the game changes and some classes are way better at gaining money xp achieving titles filling the HOM or whatever.
Just because some classes lag behind in power creep all those people should roll a character class they may dislike lose all they have achieved on their current characters because power creep is bad.
I think not one class gets boosted to silly levels then nerf it or boost all the others.

Standard pve play is finished it ended probably with titles, and with fixed builds from forums telling everyone how to play.

To play the game these days you really need to go solo or run your own party of heroes.
Standing around in towns waiting ages for someone to come along and party up with you on a mission is frustrating.
You spend more time waiting than playing, and the end result could be some idiots who ruin your game experience.

Old style team play had a place for most if not all classes, today people have very specific party needs and if you do not fit in then its get lost.
This is ok for those who run the classes and builds that are wanted and those players have an advantage over the classes not yet given a boost.

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@Gremlin: Unlike Rangers who excel at nothing Monks are still the best healers barring ER-Infuse which remains so obscure especially to PuGs it's not worth debating. OP doesn't want to do the things they do well though, they want to nuke/midline and so this thread was made. It would be the rough equivalent of asking for Deadly Arts to be buffed more in line with Curses because you don't like playing melee.

True enough but even assuming monks are the best healers bar none except for a couple of situations that is no reason not to boost Smiting.

The point is this game is all but over, I still enjoy playing it but its dead in the water apart from what we can take through to GW2.

It is only fair and reasonable to just let every player play the class they prefer and make their way towards all the game achievements as well as any other class.

Anet brought this on themselves Ursan was ok because though totally silly anyone could use it.

Then shadowform assassins started rampaging everywhere and those who didn't like assassin or melee got left behind.
Since then Ritualists and now dervishes have been able to become very efficient gaming tools.

A nerf to a stupid skill boost is only useful if its done quickly sadly they make a gross mistake and then do not do the obvious and revert the skill to its previous state while they have a rethink.
Instead they let some players loose on the game with overpowered skills for months if not years.

I know people like myself and other still play the game for fun but I suspect we are a very small minority.
For my part I have already achieved everything I need for GW2 and though I do have 2 monk characters I have never really run them as pure healers as I prefer the smiting protecting side.

I thought your OP was quite clear that you wanted a damage role:

Your suggestions for the most part did not lend themselves to playing a support role, which makes sense, because you wanted a damage role. Maybe you should edit the OP to reflect what you really think, but I thought you gave up?