Offering Of Blood 20 percent health penalty now(from 10)

Then you're using 10 energy and your elite slot for ~5 energy gain. Is it worth it?

for the amount of hexes available in this game don't you think the lack of a quality hex removal is starting to get a bit absurd?

All 3 changes hurt a typical boonprot. I don't think that any of the 3 changes is going to make people stop running them though. The reason? You don't have a lot of choice in the matter. As long as splitting and self-survival are concerns boonprot is the only choice. Offering is still the best e-management option available, and you're going to run it because you sure don't want to run Mantra of Recall (especially with all the Domination guys that are even more important now). Mend Ailment and Holy Veil are still the best options and have great utility even if it took a bit of a hit.

What is going to change on a booner is the rest of his skillbar. Before he got such good utility from Mend Ailment and Holy Veil that he could fill in his bar with niche stuff to shore up weaknesses. Now with the Offering health hit and lower utility from those two, the rest of his bar is going to need higher utility and he's going to need to shore up some different weaknesses. You'll see a couple of skills change as a result.

But booners are still the way to go, because healers are godawful. Until there are alternatives to the status quo we're going to have to keep tweaking the established templates to work within the changes.


Yes and no. You're not able to fight a hex build straight up with hex removal, hell you never have been able to. Hex removal is a precision tool, something that you can use to pull off important hexes. It's part of a solution, not a complete solution - you have to pick and choose who to keep clean from what, so that you can keep your offense moving and hold your defense up. It's a similar situation to enchantment removal. You can't keep a team clean of enchantments with removal, not if they're dedicated to keeping a bunch up. But you don't have to, you have to strip off just enough enchantments to punch through their defenses, or to weaken their offense so that the rest of your build can continue to work.

It took me a long time to really understand what was going on, but I agree with the premise now - a straight game of removal vs. enchantments/hexes is undesirable. Both teams need a chance to play their games. Straight removal can't be the entire gameplan, it needs to be a bit more involved. A combination of hex removal plus hex mitigation is what you need to fight hexes - similarly, a combination of enchantment removal plus the ability to exploit opportunities is strong against enchantment defenses.

I do feel that the game is missing a good, general purpose hex removal, along with a good, general purpose enchantment removal. Sometimes you just want something simple to deal with an overload problem. Other than that I'm happy with the options currently available.

Peace,
-CxE

Considering the forced self heal after OoB, P&H will give the same energy over 15 secs and you dont risk killing yourself in the process.

i think this was a perfect change as it helps even the playing field amond the elite energy skills
i wont be surprised if it still remains the most popular to use

wow mend ailment really got hit big lol

The modification to Mend Ailment is a bit harder to understand. Maybe it's due to the fact that many conditions like Weakenss via Enfeeble are 5 second recharge skills. Putting Mend Ailment at that recharge at least evens the playing field a little. There are plenty of skills out there where the energy needed to cast them isn't an issue, but the recharge is the issue. I think Mend Ailment just joined their ranks.

OoB doesn't force a self heal. Timing on P&H and Mantra of Recall make them inferior to OoB.

I think it is a good thing that a Booner with a warrior on his tail can no longer cast OoB, RoF and be up on both energy and health. When the monk is supporting, OoB remains extremely effective. While the monk is being pressured maybe Recall/contemplation of purity is stronger. I have yet to be sold on P&H; I see how it could be used but you almost have to build around it to get full use.

How often are you not under pressure as a monk? In 4v4 OoB does force a heal in most situations.

Peace and Harmony is moderately interesting on a 3-backline where you can maintain it on several people at once. If you're only using it for yourself it's downright terrible.

Peace,
-CxE

I've explained it with figures, even if you dont take into consideration the risk using OoB.

If you explain how P&H is worse we'd be getting somewhere.

What's wrong with Rend as a general purpose enchant remover? I can see how Profane is too situational though.

I imagine Mend Ailment was nerfed to make warriors easier to shutdown.

The only difference for Mo/N is that you can't use it when being ganked anymore. Not a big deal. However I started using MoR on my boon prot just before the patch came out, and I love it. Energy is a little less reliable, but most mesmers end up getting rid of the mantra when I'm low on energy anyway. When getting ganked I just CoP off both the mantra and boon for the extra energy and health. Keeps you alive through a gank much longer than OoB ever could. It just takes more skill to use properly.

I also just use Mend Condition now.. sure you can't cast it on yourself, but if it's that important then you probably want to CoP it off anyway (or have another monk take care of it).

I mean a spot removal. Rend is a perfectly good skill for knocking out an enchantment stack. But if you just want to pull off one enchantment, well, you have Drain (which is priced for the emanagement) and it's long recharge. If you just want to pick off enchantments one at a time there's no skill that does that, they're all package deals.

Peace,
-CxE

I use Leech sig and Power drain on my monk, sometimes even more mesmer interupts, I've found them to be very useful, but require a lot of awareness...if you see a big spell getting cast just spike it and ruin their strategy whilst preventing damage and gaining energy. It works Very well on high damage ele spells, but i'd say this build is more of a PvE/RA/TA build, my head would pop doing this 8V8.

OoB looks a bit nerfed for monks, after 20% you'd HAVE to heal yourself (people are going to be watching for that 20% drop...), and if your running boon that's -7 energy just wasted...otherwise it's still 5

I think there's something very wrong with this change, now that monks are the only class who can still use OOB to good effect. This is supposed to be a necro elite skill and now it doesn't look that elite to necro players anymore. There's just something wrong when other primary class (especially one that's your class' nemesis) can do better with your elite skill than your own. IMHO a better way to change this skill is to make it cost 20% health to anyone with divinity 4 or above, but stays 10% to everybody else. Just a thought.

yeah, it is a bit hypocritical for a monk to be sacrifing their life energy in some dark ritual ^^

I never thought Offering of Blood was any good to begin with. Think about it. First you are using 5 energy to use the skill. Then even more energy to heal what you sacrificed to get energy.

Not to mention there are not that many other useful skills in the blood line(if any) for a monk

Personally i like Melandru's Resiliense better for Energy management. With draw conditions. At least in pvp i found it very useful as you would allways be hit with hexes or conditions. i could get a full +10 energy and health regeneration for 16 seconds with 10 in wilderness survival. + its a stance so no one would interrupt or take it away. This time it got a buff too.

I guess i'm lucky. i never had the chance to become 'addicted' to OoB. Equating overuse with unbalanced, however, is not accurate. Good skills see more use than bad ones, and more proffesions choose them because they are good. I've never seen a monk with both the mana and the HP to tank a Warrior, cast spells, and still have enough time between all of that to wand something to death. Thats overbalanced. BALANCE is a healer monk having the ability to survive against a single character, keeping his mana up along with his health. We don't have that balance right now. If P.Spirit gets stripped or interupted, we die 1v1. Thats my experience.

Mend Ailment was a nuke heal. with more than 1 condition and boon, it was capable of doing near WoH heals for 7 mana. I don't like that it was nerfed, but it deserved to be. maybe they'll finally balance it with a decent hex removal for monks, seeing as we've needed one from the start of this game. OoB...I reserve judgement. There may be a new monk Elite coming out in factions to address the core problem with monks (i.e. how we got reamed on the mana side of casting). If they don't, if 'the cheese is not in Staion N' for those of you farmilliar with the book, then its an injustice to monks, who only picked it up because we had little else to use.

You know ... Ranger has been my favorite class for quite some time, and i'm just getting into Monking now ... I can't believe this had never occurred to me before o.O

It is, still, rather conditional ... especially when facing a non-conditioning, non hexing team (damage dealers alone: Rangers, Elementalists, Warriors) although you will probably end up with a few conditions from them.

I'm going to try it tonight, in RA, and run straight at the mesmers and necros and /dance ...

... well, ok, i'm not that arrogant? I tried another word here, and got RED ENGINE'd. Oh well, thanks for the great suggestion!

Even if you figure in a Healing Touch after every OoB (which in most cases will make up for the 20% loss and then a little bit more), you still are gaining exactly the same amount of energy as PnH. But PnH is an enchantment (thus vulnerable to stripping or even worse: shattering), and with a 30 second recharge, you can't keep it up all the time if they do remove it. Even Drain Enchant and Inspired Hex give you back a better energy return, and they have another positive effect with only a negligable condition and they aren't elite.

PnH only works if you can run it on multiple allies consistently. With its 30 sec recharge, that's quite difficult, plus the condition of it ending prematurely severely limits what characters you can use it on (from what I can think of, only heal monk, prot monks, and battery necros).

With a bit lower recharge (I think 20 seconds would be nice) you could run it constantly on 2 chars despite moderate enchant removal, or 3 if you are lucky.

Not a big PnH fan, but if i remember correctly, with a decent sum in DF and a 20% mod you could keep PnH up on 2 people at once provided no removals.

Actually for a boon monk you'll only gain 4 energy after the heal, for other monks it's 6. With P&H you'll get 5 in that time. Now factor in less self healing from mend ailement (so you're usually covered in conditions), you'd risk dropping your health by 20% with OoB under that kind of pressure for 4 - 6 energy? It's suicidal.

P&H isn't the answer to our problems, but personally I'd feel a lot safer running that than risking suicide with OoB. I've been trying P&H, channeling and divine spirit, and it does work to an extent.

To be honest though, monking in 4v4 is a complete joke right now. Without OoB people are stripping your enchantments all the time, our best self heal reduced by more than 50% with very little way of removing conditions, hammer warriors with blackout...it's impossible to do your job and no fun at all. It's just a gankfest on monks.

More innovative builds will result. That is my take.

I agree, and add, "Change, or die." The 3-2 update is one of the two most interesting skill balances in the history of our game, and has some wide-ranging effects beyond OoB. Right away, I'm seeing all sorts of people playing Mesmers (primary and secondary) using Ineptitide, more Sword warriors, monks struggling more, everyone unpacking the always-useful, but not used enough Shadow of Fear, more Shock instead of Gale....

These changes have fundamentally changed the entire dynamic of the game. I really welcome them, if only as a personal challenge to modify my char/team builds as quickly and effectively as possible. As for OoB, I didn't use it that much, even when running my primary N/Mo, but it's just one of so many changes that 'domino change' the builds we all face in GvG/HoH, I don't pay that much devoted attention to it.

Melandru's Resilance ^_^, I've always gone mo/r or mo/me with mesmer interupts or ranger stances. OoB to me was the IWAY of monking.

It's a total suicide if you use OoB at low hp.

I, uh, don't know exactly what to think of this.

an example would be the player is @ 100/500, using oob would kill the player

I think they meant something along the lines of: "Well, DUH!"

And Keyote, I'd still take OoB over PnH, just because I have control over when I get the energy, not an enemy mesmer.

Three pages of discussion, and then he comes in and says pretty much the most obvious statement anyone has ever said ever.

Yeah.

It's going to take some time before we know whats best to use and many people agree with you.

I've been testing P&H with channeling in 4v4 and it's working out ok. The energy isn't as good as it used to be and it does get stripped, but not that often. I found it hard work using OoB because I need to heal almost every time I use it. I dont see MoR as an option for a boon monk so at the moment it's the best I've got.

that enchant on u and it'll be shatterd as soon as 1st opposing mesmer sees u... 130hpp damage, no e-regen, plus u have to waut 4 it to recharge so u can cast it on u and hope for the best...

P&H is pve-only skill and not for all pve areas... nobody in the right mind will bring it in UW/tombs UW/FOW f/ex...

Here's what I dont understand. People keep saying P&H sucks because of the small energy gain and enchant removal, but monks being ganked in PvP are willing to take a ~100 health sac for barely any gain?

Boon is an enchantment too, since when did damage from getting that removed stop people using boon?

Boon has a near-nil recharge, in comparison to P&H's 30 seconds.

Also, OoB is preferable primarily because of its ability to get you energy now. That's why it's used.

If you want more than 4 - 6 energy from OoB, you need to let your health regen naturally or you spend it back on the self heal. If you manage to do that in PvP, I'd love to know how.

The recharge is a problem if P&H gets removed, and believe it or not it doesn't that often, but I'm using with channeling and divine spirit so it's not a complete loss if if I have to wait. I was also talking about damage from shatter enchantment, which still applies to boon.

I started to use mor + contemplation..works nice..:cop = oob now
not for boon prot though....

it's also nice to get your energy back after a death...
mantra + immediate cop afert his..insta 30+ energy

cos i can recast it immediately (5sec recharge) and heal myself in process...
but 2 enchants shattered at the same time means trouble for the monk...

edit: actually if u heal urself using sig of devotion (with maxed DF its almost 100hp) u'll get more than 6-7enrgy - i'm trying to save my favorite boon prot build - i dont use heal touch at all... i have 0 points in healing...

i'm going to try melandru's resilence for pve - not sure about pvp yet cos i remember there is a warrior skill that can remove stances on u - berserks in fow are using it wish i remember the name... also i think fingers of chaos monster skill can remove stances on u but i'm not sure about mo/r have to check it - it works diff way on diff professions... but it pvp i guess all tanks're equipping this skill alrdy

Energy drain ftw