Feedback: The big monk problem

Hmm, maybe its just me but everyone ive teamed with seems to die extremely fast unless there are monks in the team, ergo now every second character is either a monk primary or monk secondary. It seems to me that people die too fast, perhaps buffing up hitpoints would help a little? Because any team that has a monk profession for all their characters will win. I won at leat 35-40 games in a a row in Gladiator arena with a team of 2 W/Mo and Mo/E and R/Mo. They were first time players and no coordination was required. Its not fun when EVERYONE is a monk. Our only challenge was when we faced other monk teams.

The reason for this is because no one likes to die right off the bat, lets face it its not fun, so what happens, they pick a monk secondary with mending and some other stuff like that and voila.

Solution: Not up to me but, maybe decresing damage or raising hitpoints would help, even a bit.

yes...in fact I would like to see the speed of combat decreased by about 10-15% in general, it will encourage more creative use of combos which are right now not possible for the rather crappy reason of "it takes too many clicks and that might get messy".

Note that this dosen't include the speed of movement. Also note that the Gladiator arena is very different from an actual Guild War. If used in a co-ordinated and logical fashion, the little bit of healing goes a long way, and of course a dedicated healer (monk/mesmer or elementalist/monk) would go a lot further than a pretty much pure ranger with a few prayers for good measure.

So I don't think theres a fundamental problem with the healing system, simply that the speed of combat means that people don't have the time to respond. Slowing down the speed of combat means that the "response time" factor will be cut, furthering emphasis on strategy as opposed to mad clicking skillz.

Well, Arena is laughable. it has no teamwork and is random teams, so self-reliant players will rule it. Arena is so stupid in a game like this, where you need teamwork and a balanced team.

Go play Tombs and never look back.

As much as I see where you're coming from, I'll have to agree-to-disagree.

I play a monk main, and I love my job. In all the other online RPGs I've played, I never liked playing a healing main. Never. Part of that, was because battles were often too slow, and too 'easy' in a lot of ways. They were basically designed to be done without a monk so as to not limit people.

What this MEANT, was that I spent half of each battle sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to get hurt so I could heal them. It's not very fun just standing there. That's one of the things I love about this game, they made healing an active job.

As for the speed of combat...
Rather then encourage mad clicking, IMO it encourages fast decisions, which aren't always a bad thing.

For some battles, you need strategy either way if you hope to come out okay. All the pace does, is force you to react quickly to things that happen, and I like that. When several people get badly hurt, I don't get to sit there for a few seconds and mull over which heals to use on which people, I have to make a split second decision. And that decisions determines who's going to live and who's going to die; It's actually one of the most strategy filled decisions I have to make, I just have to make it quickly is all.

I definitely agree.

Having played almost entirely as a monk this BWE, I actually find it more fun to look at health bars, even if my eyes get a bit blurry and strained after a 20 minute battle..

Like Riale said.. you have to make those split second decisions that not only affect who you're healing at the moment, but also affects the next person that you will need to heal. For example, if I use Word of Healing on someone who has more than half life, another teammate who might be focused on drops suddenly way below half-health in the next two seconds won't have that bonus of the addition 15-85 health. The same goes for Dwayna's kiss, etc.

Plus, add the fact that mesmers are out for your skin, and everything gets so much more exciting. However.. it really doesn't take all that much to adjust to the speed of combat. The key for me is to have another (or even two other) monk(s) supporting me. Since teams usually focus fire one monk, the other two can back up the healer being targeted. Slowing down the speed of combat would just make the game.. well.. sluggish. The adrenaline and excitement would dwindle if you had time to sit back in your chair and consider the best alternatives to fight diversion.

And.. trust me, being a monk fighting against even a reasonably competent group isn't just speed clicking. If it were, I would've won so many times in the beginning. Random, frenzied clicking actually hurts you.. not helps.. for the same reasons as previously stated above.

I'd say that combat lasts too long sometimes

Definitely you need 2 monks in 8vs8. With 3, you are probably better off.

(Side note: We were MUTILATED by a 8 Monk team yesterday!! They cycled Signet of Judgement, on a sped up timer (Me skill, dont remember?), so they hit us with AOE knock + 50 damage every 2-3 seconds. NONSTOP! Sure there are counters, but we did of course not bring any of them . I was in the best team I played in that night, but we were killed rather quickly, hehe)

On a side note, I would say that monks are even harder to kill now than before, with some of the changes. For fun, I played with 8 tactics or whatever it was, and a good premade shield of 16 AL with my premade Mo/W.

Shield stance lasted me 14 seconds, and Bonettis, which now is on a 8 Adrenaline timer, is GOLD. I mean, as long as I waved my monk wand now and then, the skill would ALWAYS be ready to go. At no mana cost. For the hell of it I also used Watch Yourself, as my third defensive skill.

So many times, 1-2 Wa/x's tried to mob me, but with Bonettis first, then Shield stance, and then Bonettis more or less ready to go again, they didnt even put a dent in my paper armour.

Watch yourself takes away 30% of incoming damage additionally. I would often run over to the second monk being focused, and use it to help him, and it sure did. Lots of fun! :-)

Although bringing 3 W skills, I did have Res, Orison, WoH, VSpirit, Breeze. I did not bring HSeed, which probably would have been better, but I did not really feel the loss of it. Possibly on some of the prolonged fights on the daises.

Being a monk gives you a lot of control over how the battle goes. If you're the only monk in a party and you die, your team pretty much just lost the match. Soon I fear every second profession will have to be monk in to compete with other all second profession monk teams. I think each profession should have their own not so powerfull self healing skill. This would make it so a monk or 2 is still necessary but others will be able to have more fun and interesting second professions.

I agree that every class should get more healing skills. Monks were alot more difficult to find this BWE, I would say that %30 of all the chars I saw were warrior primaries.

Every class already has at least one skill to heal him/herself. Some better than others.

As for the comment that everyone needs to be a monk, just bring a mesmer or two with your group (not the Illusionary Weaponry type but the more traditional disruption type). Mesmers can make a monk cry like a baby.

Boy your not kidding...

A good Mesmer is the the answer/counter to heavey monk teams. You can tear through heavy monk teams with a just one or two decent Mesmer's. I would pull my hair out with frustration when I would be up against a team with good Mesmer's. (witch was VERY rare)

Sinfear~

You can say that again..

If you're being focused AND there's a mesmer happily stacking purple like some violet brick wall at the top left corner of your screen.. there's really very little you can do. At least, very little I can do (someone train me!) Even another healer backing you up won't be enough.. if I have enough spells such as diversion, backfire, migraine, etc on me all at the same time.. I won't be able to heal myself for a few seconds. Add the fact that everyone's focusing on you, and with only half the normal healing power (1 monk instead of 2).. well.. I go down like a stone.

So.. definitely.. if you have one or two good monk-hating mesmers, you really shouldn't have problems killing most monks. So, rather politely.. I would ask.. is your team build made to account for monks? A dash of mesmer does wonders.. (and for me, hell).

Don't forget monk hating rangers.

On a side note, we killed that all monk group in guild vs guild. We're HF, they were PvP. Anyway, when you stack so much of the same thing in the group like they did it makes them too weak. A little diversity is key. Without it you simply leave yourself far too open. For eight monks there wasn't much healing going on in that group.

A smiting monk can also made a healer monk's life miserable by using scourge healing. Our guild (LF) fought against IVEX on a gvg and we lost badly because our 3 monks all had scourge healing, backfire, and all the nasty hex stuff piled on them. We weren't able to remove those hexes fast enough and after our monks died they simply wiped us out.

Making "consequential" builds is generally inefficient, but an anti-monk build is far from consequential. If there is one thing you can always be 100% sure of, there will always be at least 1 monk on the enemy team (yeh yeh, you got those crazy all ele or war builds, but those are rare). Now not only do you know for a fact that they'll have a monk, but you can make a good guess as to what the monk carries on them. The bread and butter skills like resurrect, orison, healing breeze and WoH are likely to be in his skillbar. That only makes the job of making a build easier. Hopefully people will smarten up and start makig anti monk chars of their own and consider a mesmer as valuable as a monk when forming a party.


An unrelated sidenote, the warrior class is in bad need of a decent healing skill, healing signet is a joke now with the 2x during casting. If you're using your healing signet, there's a good chance someone is beating the crap out of you, the worst time to be taking double damage to heal a measly 70 hp (assuming you even put points into that joke they call tactics, hahahaha)

This weekend was my first time playing, and I played a monk more than any other career.

I got clobbered so many times I thought about changing my name to "Grease Stain". ^_^

Without a decent tank, a monk is in deep doo doo. They can lend some assistance (I noticed working with some henchmen that I could shoot a monster with my wand or a bow and heal a party member without losing focus on the monster. The healing happened in turn, but still VERY handy.) but for the most part were support players at best. The higher level I got, the more apparent this became, until I was unable to continue without some serious help, and finding a party (at least, my way of finding a party) wasn't very easy at all. (Sure, I could have sent out random invites to passersby like many people did, but I consider that poor netiqutte.)

I had fun with my monk/mesmer, and will probably rebuild him (Faster! Stronger! Better!), but if I ever meet another Mo/Me or a Me/Mo, we'd be locked at each other's throats for hours until one of us misses the next key in the drain/heal sequence. ^_^

Dave III

This is so totally "wrong"

The whole point of dual classing is that you CAN pick Mo as your secondary, if you want some good healing power. Why on earth should you add more healing power to all the other classes?

Hey Sinfear, you did some good healing this weekend!

BRGDS
Tara Tei, Tara Wei, and the third sister I forgot the name of!!

I have been a Tank for years. While my friends shoot arrows/ cast spells/ twiddle thier thumbs, I was the one fighting.

Guild Wars is the first game that is actually fun to be a Monk in. The monks are necessary for the first time and I love it. I just wish there were more good tanking warriors around there.

I would like to complain about two things though.

There are two enchantments that don't seem to work. Live Vicariously and Mend. Did anyone here get them to work. They advertise themselves as what sounds like really awsome enchantments, but they did nothing this weekend for me.

&

Warriors that stay behind the Monks in Battle. I saw this alot in PvE. Wow how stupid is this? Man I was really pissed after getting killed by ... only to see the arrow firing pansy warrior that I didn't need to heal cause they were out of range of the creatures. Monks we need to train tanks.

Mending is one of the worst skills in the game, and at the same time it's one of the most over-used.

It costs 10 energy to put up and costs 1 arrow of energy regen, or 10 energy every 30 seconds. It heals at MOST (with 12 healing prayers) 240 health over 30 seconds. (4 pips of regen=8 health/second, over 30s)

240 health and it costs 20 energy. Not to mention that it does you zero good while you're at full health, and is useless as an emergency heal.

Healing Breeze will heal 140-160 health over 10 seconds + your divine favor bonus, for between 170-200 health for only 10 energy. It's not great as an emergency heal, but it's much better as a fire-and-forget.

Do yourself and everyone you're responsible for keeping alive a favor and drop mending from your skillbar.

Mending and Flare get my votes as the most over-used and useless skills in the game.

-----------
Now, I see one use for mending, and that is in Solo PvE exploration. As a pure healing/protection/divine favor monk, I was unable to kill anything in PvE, and there were times when no one was around to escort me places and kill monsters while I kept them alive. In those cases, running around with Mending and Balthazar's Spirit is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I still wouldn't waste a skillpoint on mending, since I'd much rather make a friend or bring a bunch of henchmen along as decoy meatshields, but if you're hellbent on running through areas as a healer monk solo, there are worse things you could do.

Costs? I am confused. My charm animal enchantment worked as long as I had it equiped. I cannot go look at it now, but as I remember it, Mend is the same. Or, that is the impression I got when I purchased this skill. If this is not the case, this needs to be much more clear.

Does this mean that Live Vicariously is the same?

I agree, if I have to cast mend and/or Live Vicariously then these are worthless spells, not enchantments. I would rather cast heal other, or orison of healing and get all that health at once.

I chalenge that these be made into what they claim they are, enchantments. When you target an ally you give them healing powers. Maybe what they are set up to be is to strong to run continiously, but I only wanted something to take care of the little pains so I could cast the occasional smiting spell.

Both Mending and Live Vicariously hang around until dispelled.

OK so, I am dumb, but here is the way I see the way this works.

I cast these "enchantments" in PvE and they stay active untill it is dispelled/ I die/ (we go into a town)????

Or do I have to casts these "enchantments" every battle? I would like to use Live Vicarioulsy, if it works to take care of those nasty arrows that come out of nowhere while I heal.

I am ok with casting these "enchantments" once a battle even, but they hardly seem worth casting every XX secconds.

I may just see some open slots in my skill bar if these "enchantments" don't work like they should.

I love being a Tank I just wish they had auto stike. I hate killing the fist bad guy and just standing thier taking hits while my char. gets pounded on until I target the next one.

I find that monks in general are quite hard to kill, unless you have a mesmer to assist you. Even with focus fire, they take some time to go down, especially if backed by other monks. A lot of people like to target monks first, but in general our highest priority on the kill list is always the enemy's mesmer. Once you get rid of the pesky mesmers, your casters (including monks) are safe and you can concentrate on the battle.

You can also ask someone to bring ward against melee if you are having problem with being ganked by melee characters (the exception is IW mesmers; ward against melee does nothing to stop them).

Unless you go into mana degeneration (unlikely, or otherwise you've got too many enchantments active for a warrior IMO), someone hits you with an enchantment destruction spell and dispels your enchantment, you leave the combat area, you die, or you cancel the enchantment yourself, Mending or Live Vicariously will stay on you (assuming you cast it on yourself) forever. Thus, in general, you'd only have to cast it when the mission begins and after each time you die.

This is the information I needed when I purchased these skills.

IMOHO these are not enchantments, these are spells that have no durration limit and should be labeled as such.

Thanks everyone for straightening me out.

Obviously you havent tested it out that much, on paper you can say that there are more cost effective skills than mending, but on a W/M it takes him to the next level. He becomes a much better tank and combined with Healing Hands makes him impossible to kill unless there is both a mesmer and warrior focusing on him 100%. Thats what noticed after playing many games. Mending is by far not a useless skill. With mending and Healing Hands a warrior could easily tank 2 people, which is what I normally do (in arena). Unfortunately at the moment for secondary professions, Monk is the most obvious and benificial choice, unless u have a very specific build useful only in certain situations. (Note that does not mean every GvG battle you play)

W/M is better than any other W/combo out there. Not sure about other primarys but from what ive seen the team with the most monk secondarys wins.

Mesmers are effective against monks if they prepare properly but with higher numbers you ebtter hope to have 2 good mesmer players with you (a rarity)

Both Mending and Live Vicariously are maintained enchantments.
If you look at the description of the skill, you will see they cost 10 energy to cast, and then have another -1 next to them.
The -1 means it's a maintained enchantment, and while the enchantment is still going, you will recover energy more slowly. Your energy regeneration is commonly referred to as "pips of regen" or "arrows of regen."

Monks, Necromancers, Elementalists, and Mesmers all have 4 pips of regen.
Rangers have 3 pips of regen.
Warriors have 2 pips of regen.

Each pip of energy gives you 1 energy every 3 seconds. Losing a pip to a maintained enchantment means that a caster goes from 4 to 3 pips, a ranger from 3 to 2, and a warrior from 2 to 1.

To simplify the math a little, one pip of energy will give you 10 energy over the course of 30 seconds. Energy is the lifeblood of a monk, and if you try to maintain too many enchantments you wont be regaining enough energy to use effectively to do your job.

Mending is bad because it heals only 240 health max over 30 seconds, yet continues to cost you energy even when it's not healing you at all. That means you'll have less energy when you're in a crisis situation- and as a monk your job is to deal with crises and make sure they don't result in your team dying.

*Edit*
Playing a Warrior Monk is nothing like playing a Monk primary. Additonally, as Nash pointed out, playing in the Arena is nothing like the rest of the game.

That's exactly what I said and what I will continue to say. The healing prayers line has a bunch of skills that are more effective than mending, and as a monk, every last drop of my energy matters. If I only have to spend 5 energy to keep someone alive with 1 word of healing, instead of spending 20 to have mending on them for 30 seconds, that means I've saved 15 energy that I can spend to save someone else's butt.

If I have more energy, I can heal more damage.
If I can heal more damage, my team has a better chance of winning.

Let me put it this way:
If a target comes under focus fire, you want a spell that will heal a lot of damage, FAST. Mending works slowly.

If I can keep a target that's under fire alive using mending, then he was never in any danger to begin with, and I don't worry about those situations. In the real crunch, when someone is taking hundreds of points of damage over the course of a few seconds, 240 health spread out over thirty seconds does zip. That's when I want to bust out a skill that's actually valuable and save someone's ass. But you can continue to run Mending on a healing monk if you like. Just realize that you're going to be less effective, in your own words.

Which is why you should have mending on a sacrificing necro
OoV/OoP

W/M is overrated, W/E and W/Me (maybe W/N too) are highly underrated. I could swear the arena only gave me a really good match-up for smart opponents and balanced teams 1 out of every 6-10 games. The chance of finding a player with the perfect W/N build in beta arena, for example, is probably rather rare.

I definately have to disagree with you- the only time I'd take Mending into PvP is if I'm running a W/Mo that's intended to stay at 0 energy, and I can't find something better to maintain on somebody. Sure, it'll give you 6 health per second, but almost any other healing spell in the game is better. As for mending making your W/Mo take both a warrior and mesmer focusing on him 100 percent, they aren't skilled warriors or mesmers- while I was playing arena this last weekend, I'd kill W/Mo's using mending and healing hands with my mesmer in about 10-15 seconds, solo, without them able to kill me- and that was with a character based more on shutting down casters... Yeah, the two skills will make you strong against all the other people running around with W/Mo's in the arena, but when you play against people who know what they're doing, your mending and healing hands won't help much.

I do agree that W/Mo is a good combination, though- and most of my team builds run them- they're perfect for maintaining Life Barrier on the monks on the team as well as bringing Purge Signet to remove all those hexes that get stuck on the healers. However, outside of the arena, when you can count on having someone else keeping you alive, almost any other secondary will help you out more than W/Mo- elementalists have conjures to boost your damage, and hammer knockdowns with aftershock is pretty sick too. Necromancers, you can use hexes to deal damage while healing yourself, and use nifty skills like Mark of Pain to do some AoE damage. Mesmers, you can throw on some life degeneration, slow down casting speed to help with skills like Disrupting chop, distracting blow, savage slash, etc, Rangers can give you preparations and some nice stances, and a good self-heal via Troll Unguent. I'd recommend W/Mo if you want to help out your team more while dealing damage, but if you're looking for a solid character rather than a team character, I'd recommend something other than W/Mo.

If you just leveled up to lv 3 and joined the academy right away. HUGE MISTAKE!!!

Couple of things to do. MUST really...

Get 2nd profession...

Get additional skills with 2nd profession

Get Belt

Get healing signet

Get resurrection signet

If ranger get pet EARLY so it levels up with you. Stalker, Warthog, Moa bird, Snow Wolf. (Regular Wolf , or Bear MAYBE SOMEDAY!!!!)

Level up in the northlands (Two Player Party Required)

There are level 8 charr in there. so I use the logic once you can do this level with little problems. your ready to go to the academy. I was level 8 before I went and was very happy post searing with my performance and ability to finish quests / missions... And I often got questions like How you get such a good pet already? and what do you mean I cant get a belt or 2nd profession now? you mean I have to start all over again? D'oh!! sorry try exploring a little first next time...

Ingram of Haz

Oh PS: In the previous beta weekends if you go into the academy and played a Pvp battle then logout and you could continue to be in pre searing. Not this time. you are REQUIRED to go to post searing and it will not let you back. so just don't do it till your ready. I kinda wish we could have a practice arena without going to the academy. I want to keep one character in the past for training my buddies when they come to the game. and for general recruiting purposes. I also wish I could go to my guild hall from pre searing, but that is VERY unlikly!!! One could only wish... Hey maybe a small tavern or something could be used in ascalon for guilds?

Hehe unlikly but keep wishing...Pre Searing isnt really even the actual game. Its just kinda one big newb tutorial. I strongly advise moving on after you have visited everyone that can give you a skill...witch BTW there are secret people out there that give skills...for instance I stumbled upon a ranger way back at the southern end of the map who gives...I think ignite arrows is one of the skills, and mabey dual shot as well I dont know. But he wants you to go kill the little aloe seeds.

Anyone else find one of these "hidden" trainers

I've found the Necro's hidden (curse) trainer this BWE. I found him when I was lost inside the catacombs. I think you'll have to take a left turn once inside the catacombs, keep going pass the hordes of spiders and you'll eventually find him in a place flooded with undead. He taught Soul Barbs and another skill I'm not 100% sure on (Faintheartedness?)

For every class there is a counter. This is why healers are primary targets (or should be for the opposing team). I.e. your team has two healers... if the other team has an anti-caster mesmer (like myself). Your team is screwed healing wise... unless you take me out.. hence I become a primary target. Personally I think it is a well balanced system that makes people develop strategies on the spot and coordinate.

Lansing Kai Don

Remember even the best battle plans sound great till the battle begins

And that was my tactic in Arena (and sometimes during PvE): building a nice purple wall around a healer. Sometimes I would cast a Conjure Phantasm or a Phantom Pain on someone passing by, but most of the time I focused on the main Monk. Monks can be stopped...

(too bad some W/R saw that too often and decided to take me out the minute he saw me )

Well.. DOTs don't really bother me too much either.. just disruptions.

I would LOVE it if all mesmers used DOTs only. In my little dream world, they do. To all mesmers, care to make my dream come true?

Tell you what, if all the monks promise to only use orison to heal, then us mesmers will consider using DOTs only

Back to what Bunny Master was saying, a great way I found to take out monks with an e/me strat if you're full on energy is to first cast firestorm, then cast phantom pain. Then since your energy rebuilds while youre "charging" phantom pain you have enough left for a conjure phantasm. That should wipe out a monk in that order if you're a decently leveled e/me with stacked attributes in proper e/me areas.