Excessive Heal Syndrome

There are many monk appreciation threads going on these forums, and for a good reason: good monks are rare. There are several reasons why they are so rare, many of the reasons have been covered in this thread. Some of the players of the game are just not very nice people/mature/good players. This goes for all classes.

Most of the players (>50% that is) are propably nice people, but the unpleasant ones are always more noisy and overshadow the nice ones. Thus if a group has a one bad apple, be it a monk or an adventurer of any other profession, the whole group is labeled bad. And sometimes misunderstandings make the group just seem bad...

I for one, tend to state few common principles when i join a new group (as a monk). I try to say things in a non-bossy, polite way. Things like: focus on one enemy at a time (good players know when to stray from this strategy, but for a group of random players it is a good common rule), stay close together so it'll be easier for me to heal you. I try to not rant for long and in the end i promise that i'll do all i can to keep you alive, to let them know that i'm a "pure" healer with absolutely no ability to make a dent in any kind of armor. Sometimes saying these things after joining a group is appreciated (if there are new players along or no dedicated leader), sometimes people just ignore it and sometimes (rarely though) it's seen as bossy.

Even though i honestly think that a good dedicated healer can multiply the effectiveness of any group, i'm the strongest supporter of versatility in a group and really do appreciate every profession. Monk alone, or a group of monks is pure cannon fodder, but a group of almost any composition without dedicated healer is even more so. Or actually the group of monks is not necessarily cannon fodder as their survivability is very high, but their damage output is just about high enough to kill carrion crawlers... The reason why the "debate" about idiots in this game is so heavily focused around monks is the reason that a group lacking any other type of character can be succesful in many scenarios, but a group without a healer, well... often can't. For instance the most succesful 4v4 random PvP group I've been in didn't have any warriors.

Some people become healers because they want the appreciation or to be bossy, some healers become bossy because they get frustrated in the lack of appreciation. I bet every healer out there meets more of the "WTF you didn't heal me!!11!"-idiots than players of other classes meet the elitist healers. And that makes some of the nice healers become not so nice.

These healer-threads get many posts that state "You don't want to piss off your healer", in my opinion it should be "You don't want to piss of the members of your group", because co-operation is the only way to thrive in the long run. That's why it saddens me to see posts like "The healer needs me more than I need him" or "I'll punish him for being stupid and I won't heal him". The first example shows that people try to make their characters self sufficient which is a waste in a team oriented game. Sure it's useful to be self-sufficient if you can't find a good group, but if the group is working well together, those couple slots that take up skills that are used for SELF-healing (warrior/monks, anyone?) could be used for skills that benefit the group effort more. The second example is just not a very constructive attitude to play with, sure some kids (and some older players too i'm sure) do stupid things like run ahead of the group and die, but the only way to teach them to be nice is to try and be nice to them. Sure it's good to explain them what they are doing wrong, but doing it in a polite way is always more effective than by childishly mocking them and revenging by not healing them...

Ah well, here I go on and rant... For those of you who are too tired to read the whole post, let me sum it up for you: Be nice to each other and you'll eventually find nice players to play with.

What is it, fake life? You think GW is not a team based game, which is quite the intelligent thing to think and all.


I really laugh at all the people who think [some] Monk's are assholes. Maybe we should compile a list of screenshots and videos of what we put up with on a daily bases from pug's, and you can decide who the asshole is.

I think you are forgetting that this is real life for some people

While over healing can be an issue, I think the biggest problem with most Monks is that they use the wrong kinds of healing. It is very rare that I encounter another monk that uses Mend Aliment and Remove Hex. These two spells are "preventive medicine." By addressing negative conditions on your team mates you can eliminate 25-50% of your big heals, thus conserving energy. In a large battle I am constantly casting these spells, as well as doing minor heals. If I am using Divine Boon, then I also heal for +61 each time I cast one. This can make for excessive healing, but it also goes in "preventive medicine" again.

I have been known to become very short tempered while playing my Monk. For a lot of the reasons listed above. At times I have been known to try and take control of the party, but only because I know of a better way to do things. It is sad to say, but there are not a whole lot of leaders in GW yet that are willing to take their time and minimize the chance of error. The key word there is yet. It will come in time.

Lazarus

I'm pretty sure this spawns from people that have played the "Healing" class in other games (be it clerics, white mages, monks what have you) and being complimented on it. Often when i played a white mage in final fantasy 11 or a cleric in Everquest, I would get complimented on my abilities to keep the party alive even in the most sticky of situations (Wow mae, excellent healing! five pugs and were all still alive, except for poor joe, may he rest pieces). Enough of this and it tends to go straight to the head. What people dont seem to relize right away however is that healing doesnt translate the same from one game to the next, so while you were good at playing the healer in everquest, its quite possible you suck at it in guildwars. Since its human nature to "Go with what you know" so to speak, these people pick up the healing class in another game when they get tired of the other and automatically assume they are "the bomb" and that no one else could possibly fill thier glass slippers; somtimes to comical effect. Somtimes they ARE all that and a bag of dental floss, somtimes they end up in the trash can wondering what the heck happened and what in the world are they sitting on thats so squishy?

Only advice I can really give is bear with it and see how good they are. If they are as good as they say, or even 1oz of it, then theres no real worry and the worst that can come from it is having to listen to his lunatic laughter of how kick butt he is. Order out a pizza and kick back, you may be in for a long night, but it'll be a long night of living and relativly few screw ups.

Basically they may have an ego, but as long as you dont add to it or try to inflate it even more you'll be better off. Trying to pop this ego is extreamly dangerous however, i wouldnt recommend trying it without large earmuffs, latex gloves and a VERY large needle. It can get messy

ya I noticed the same thing with people just using orison and healing breeze while everyone is dying of poison or some hex. Mend ailment, purge condition, and remove hex are all very cheap and effective. It's not always the monks fault. I'm sure posts with pop up soon about necros dying constantly and quickly in battles and blaimng it on everyone else. Monks spend so much time healing support/nuke casters that their energy is just going to waste. I know in other games hate was to control if you played right but here it just seems like they go after the weakest character/whoever has the special item/whoever they saw first. Is it a bad hate system? I dunno, it seems kinda out of whack though

That is always the first thing the healer should do. But it doesn't always work. You threaten to take away their healing when they decide not to listen to kind words. To date, I have only had to use this gambit twice, once because the guy just would NOT listen to anything the group said and would rush into battle when we were still at half health and energy, and once when the guy was scribbling all over the minimap, clicking excessivelly and randomnly, and, when he wasn't just scribbling, drawing obscene pictures. You know what? They both stopped immediatelly after the threat was made.

Being a Monk Rocks ( I apologize for this post, it has no use what so ever and is not valuable to this thread)

Actually i think that's been the only post so far that has had any relevance to how a monk should be.

The last phrase "Do we have a ----ing Monk in our team" was when i was a lvl 17 and teamed with other similar lvls with a negative -60% we were getting owned by the worms in lonar's. so in my eyes it was completely outta line and needless to say that person found a spot on ignore. **not like it matters but hey,lol**

Thats really the only time I have gotten the last one. but it sticks with me pretty vivid. I am always open to suggestions on tactics skill load outs ect if someone asks or mentions. But basically my above post is my default tactics if i am not in a great team or there is no leadership.

normally its something like "for f---s sake" or something like that when a person dies that is rude. and get this I have had the same people give me a a guild invite can you believe that to top it off. As matter of fact I had it happened today . ROFL

And yes I have to agree with you being a Monk rocks. Sometimes better than others. Just got out of the underworld this morning and was in there for sevral hours. Second time there. ****Edit I want to give thanx for the person leading the team and to all those who were in the team. ****


whether i am good or not is another story. I will leave that for the team to decide its none of my worry. I enjoy being a monk and will do so whether people think i am good or not. If they do not like me I am sure they can find another easially.

Safe Journey's

Actually, that's precisely what it is. It's a game. It's not any more real life than D&D is.

As far as being on a team goes and leading specifically...well, a leader actually leads. Calling yourself a leader because you threaten to take away what you are able to contribute to the group if you don't get your every whim...well, I guess it works in preschool. "Do what I say or I won't heal you" isn't any better than saying "Heal me nownownow."

And to cut off your more-than-likely response about how you can pick and choose who teams with you but non-monks can't pick and choose monks, so you SHOULD get your way: that's wrong. What you can pick and choose are the very people that you complain about. The players who are actually skilled at this game would not put up with that kind of crap, and if that's all that were available, they'd learn to utilize the henchy and do just fine.

Propably this isn't true in your case, but sometimes people say things like that just because either they think they did something stupid that got them killed or they were hit by a critical etc that caught them by surprise. I know that i might say something like that if i'd die, without the profanities though . But then again as i'm paying a monk i tend to take all remarks following death almost personally... Because if someone dies, I feel that i failed, whether it was my fault or theirs...

And to the "Being Monk rocks" poster: Exactly! Being a monk is absolutely great, it's the best way to find the nicest persons in the game. (And the best way to learn to avoid the not so nice ones)

But honestly i don't think that there's need for these "Love your monks"-threads, the real underdog when it comes to recognition is the mesmer. Most random groups don't even notice if a dedicated mesmer is doing anything or not, even though it might be the mesmer that is the difference between winning and losing.

Actually you can tell if you're mesmer is doing a good job. The other team is dead and only 30 seconds have expired on the timer.

Wounded,

That could be why they say it I, reckon.

makes me wounder sometimes tho. It's all good.



In my case I was not posting for any recognitioin . I was just sharing some of my thoughts at the time of reading this thread.

Mae govannen!

I don't have the greatest expierience in the game (I only hit Lions Arch for the first time like 3 hours ago), but playing as a E/Mo I made pretty good expierience with PUGs.

Like with one recently on the Krypta Quest to get to Lions Arch. I was the only healer on the team, 3 Warriors, a E/Me, OK and Alesia because one of our members dropped the mission before.
Anyway on our first try we all dies in the swamps with the undead. Second try we ran off to the bonus first, and the Justicar dies - mission ended quickly. On the third try (I couldn't actually believe that noone from the PUG dropped and we all made it thru the third try) we did it! In the swamps, all but me died quickly again. So I lured the undead away from the corpses to the NPCs and the Justicar so they would have something to do. I rezed everyone and we made it safely to LA.

I now have one from that party in my Friends, and anyway the party play was very good, from a healer-view. Whenever I was attacked in CC, the warriors rushed to me and saved me, and I healed as much as I could, and rezed when someone didn't make it...

Haven't made a bad expierience in the game yet... but I suppose they will come from what I read in this thread.

Great to hear . Most of my experiences with this game have been great too. And often it's easy to avoid most jerks by taking your time when assembling the group before the mission, the rushers and bossy types tend to leave the group if the mission start within 10 seconds after they join the group .

Last Night we did the Gates of Kryta the hard way... You know at the first swamp well before Kryta you can take a left and fight almost endless amount of undead. Finally as you get through you end up in the area where the quest normally ends. We killed the "end bosses" and tried to approach Kryta from tha back and *poof* just like that the end cutscene starts and Justiciar (who we hadn't met at all) starts to talk... It was a bit odd .

I play a monk since beta and i rarely seen people yelling at me. I usualy get good comment. More than 1 time i managed to keep a separated group alive running from one side to another keeping everyone healed. Most of the time people thanks me after a big fight or after i resurected them.

I only did PvE and i've finished most of the missions with henchmen. So sometime i do lead when i know the way and the team seems lost. When i lead, i know where monster are, i know what to take on first, i know when two patrols might be merged togeter and how to lure only one out of the two.
Some people might hate when the monk is leading the group, but i think a lot of monk know what monster to kill first, what monster to avoid and how many monster the party can take at once. (edit)Of course i stay in the back in fights and i follow others if i never made the mission before.(/edit)

I usualy manage to protect my self pretty good. I use the field to avoid some attack(like hiding behind a wall to avoid arrows). I'm also able to lure the monster to a warrior so i can focus on healing him and the party instead of wasting everything on myself.

Anyway.. Monks who get people yell at them are unlucky because it happened only once to me. A pretty weird elementalist though it would be fun to run in front of everyone into two patrol of maguuma centaur to use AoE. He then told me i was the worse healer he have ever seen.. I just told him he was the worse "warrior" i've ever seen and he left. We then managed to finish the mission with no problem and everyone thanked me.

Today i had one of our party member whisper me saying i was a very good monk but he couldn't stand the party running everywhere cluelessly and he left. All the rest of the party was saying how stupid he was to leave like that and they all left also.. so i rejoined the guy who wishpered me and we finished the mission without problem

So yes i think that all the monks who get yelled at are very unlucky. Altho i never went into PvP yet so i don't know.. and i'm sure i would be yelled at in there.. I don't think i'm ready for the stress of being primary healer in PvP.

It all comes down to people not taking any responsibility for their own actions. The best example is of the Elementalist you are talking about, he messed up, agroed 4-6 mobs on himself, then berates you for not bailing him out. Same thing will happen in PVP. The biggest piss off I see is after the match, one of the losing team will say, "Was a good game. We would have won if my team didn't suck so much." Makes me wanna punch someone, lol.

Hehehe, I read through the post and had a good giggle. I think the best part is some one stating that Monks are the be all and end all of a game. In tuth, its a two way street. Warrior types need to get heals from a Monk and the Monks need the tanks to keep em alive.

I only have seen one experience of a whack job Monk spouting orders and curses and funnily enough they said the magical line of "You F---ing idiots listen oto me or else you will die cause I am the key of the team"

It all started because we hit a rough spot and had 2 Mantle Abotts spamming heals, all the tanks focused on one Abott while the Monk was screaming blue murder cause he wanted the other killed (WTF) made no difference but we did evenutally live through it only to read their curins and bitching as to how ubar they are and next time if we don't do as he says he is outa their.

To me, very childish as we explained to the ten year old behind the keyboard that their were two Abotts and we focused on one and killed the other and all was ok. But alas, it never sunk into their skull as they kept bitching and moaning that THEY were surpreme and the rest were dead heads.

So onto the next battle. We do as he says, beat the snott out of said target but something went wrong, a bunch of mantles decided to beat on the Monk and the Monk screamed for help. The outcome was somehting like this

Monk - HELP ME YOU FAGOORS @$#$^@(*(
Us - But you said to focus on the abott
Monk - DO AS I SAY (&*@&*@*&@()@)
Us - But you said you dont need us. So you do need us to protect your sorry ass ?
<<Monk dies at this point and lays on the ground>>
Us - Umm do you need a Wa/Mo to res you? Or in your supreme wake you now understand you need warriors to protect your sorry ass ?

Hmm after that the monk logged off.

So the moral of the story;

Don't F--- with your team mates in any way as it is them who keep your sorry Fabric Armoured Ass alive. And without em, your playing with Henchies for a long time

Heheh cheers

It's true that there are very few monks in the later stages of the game. You may come across many monks in Yak's Bend or even Druid's Overlook, but when you arrive in Thirsty River and places beyond that, like Ring of Fire, you'll notice the amount of monks that are there with you. Ring of Fire - Warrior/Monk to Monk/xx ratio: 20 to 1, maybe?

The problem is clear. There are way too few monks.. their scarcity somehow makes the monks think they are superior to any other team member and are like a god among the peasants. This would definitely also be the case if there was a Warrior to Monk ratio of 1:20. The Warriors would be rare and they would run the 'monopoly'. Do what I say, or I'll leave and you won't have a tank.

Too many monks are a-holes just because of the ratio. Just because there are so few monks around, does not mean you can boss your party around! Far from it! If you come into my party, I'll just kick you out of the team (or when in mission, I'll just not tank for you) and replace you by the two stupid (but effective if you know your way with them) Mhenlo and Lina, the monk henchman and henchwoman.

Also because of the rude and arrogant monks and the amount of monks around, my friend made a new character that will be a dedicated healer monk.

Hopefully the scarcity of monks will cause a 'Monk-boom' -> Suddenly many players give up on their current role and make a new character that will be a primary monk (or E/Mo). But there's also the chance of having too many monks, and the current rare role of monk will be replaced by the rare warrior, or rare elementalist. Whichever.

PS. I'm a R/Mo and I chose this role because I thought when I bought this game: 'As a ranger, I'll have my bow and be far away from the tanks and monsters. I'll deal damage, but I won't contribute to tanking in any way... It'll make my job pretty easy compared to the warriors that suffer all the blows.' I decided to be a R/Mo, so I could also help out those warriors.

Draw Conditions is an excellent skill for me. As I'm not getting hurt, I 'sacrifice' myself to remove their conditions (e.g. Bleeding, Deep wound, Weakness) and give them to me.