Help with PvM monk

You need to put divine prayers in your monk build. I'd ditch either the smiting line or the protection line, probably the protection line since you want to hurt some mobs. But frankly it's better to just rely on your secondary for damage, because the monk smiting line seriously SUCKS. :P I love well supported arguments.

Smiting doesn't suck; it has some of the best skills out there for what they do. Smite for example, on a ranger primary can be a 4 cost attack skill that deals pretty decent damage with no armour adjustment. Balthazar's spirit can fill you on energy and adrenaline really well. Zealot's Fire may sound weak, but doing a bit of extra fire damage with every heal is pretty nice. Judge's Insight boost damage versus Warriors by a lot. You can't simply say it sucks, it's a great line for what it does.

I love well supported arguments.

Smiting doesn't suck; it has some of the best skills out there for what they do. Smite for example, on a ranger primary can be a 4 cost attack skill that deals pretty decent damage with no armour adjustment. Balthazar's spirit can fill you on energy and adrenaline really well. Zealot's Fire may sound weak, but doing a bit of extra fire damage with every heal is pretty nice. Judge's Insight boost damage versus Warriors by a lot. You can't simply say it sucks, it's a great line for what it does. Smiting is a good line for monk secondaries, WHICH you name off here "ranger primary." But for primary monks (and believe me I've tried it), if it's not a monk/warrior it's useless. Now the original poster did not say that it would be a monk/warrior, AND did not put any points into swordsmanship etc. which are warrior skills, then I say this build is not very effective. PvE build monks generally shouldn't carry so many energy degenerating buffs.

Symbol of Wrath is good at the early stages combined with another aoe, but later on the monsters start to hit harder and harder, and soloing becomes pretty much impossible for a monk primary even a smiting/protection build. This is because of the fact that there are multiples of mesmer mobs that all shatter enchantment and point-blank aoe effects becoming less effective against monsters that use ranged attacks.

Unless you've played a monk primary for 20 levels you can't possibly tell me that smiting line is better than the nukes from elementalist secondary or damage/defense skills from a warrior secondary. So much of the smiting line is geared toward a monk secondary, because they require you to either be up close (tank role) or to use another class's skills (gaining adrenaline -- warrior only). The only time when smiting is worth it for monk primaries is on undead. But even then the warriors still expect the heals to be coming.

The other problem with this build is that the author is assuming that access to elite spells will be easy early in the game, which it is not. After Crystal Desert most primary monks will switch out of smiting/damage because there are so few of us left by then. Why do you think most monk primaries have NO damage skill or skills that target another? It's just harder and longer to take down mobs using ONLY monk primary skills. MOST smiting line spells either have a huge cooldown time (direct damage spells) OR have -energy associated with it. A smiting/protection monk primary that uses nothing from the subclass will not deal a lot of damage, and will die quite a lot trying to solo. Exceptions to this are highly situational (kill mirror mission).

Next time when you make an argument that so-and-so doesn't suck, tailor it to the situation at hand. Monk primaries don't make good smiters. Mesmer/monks, necro/monks, warrior/monks and ranger/monks DO.