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.