Each non-monk class needs 1 more self-healing skill.

Hi, I think the chorus of "Group LF Monk" cries in every mission area, every town , in the Team pvp arena, etc indicates a problem. There's no other class that is considered as *essential* as a healer. You can skip ranged damage, skip spell damage, skip warriors, without any problems, but skipping healers usually means trouble.

So, I think Elems, Warriors, and Rangers should each get another self healing skill. (I've never played a Mesmer, so I can't speak for them, and I think Necros are ok.) It should be different to the existing self-healing skill, and if you sacrifice 2 slots to equip both (or heaven forbid, 4 slots to equip both from each of your classes), it should make you more self-sufficient with regards to healing. (But at a severe cost to power, of course).

It also gives more options to those who want to only devote 1 slot to self-healing. They can choose a self healing skill that complements the skills that their party monk has chosen.

I consider this problem important enough that the skills should be added to the basic game rather than as part of an expansion.

Here's some ideas, but my basic point was the above.

Elem skill: Energy Storage. Cast time 1 secs. Energy cost 5. 30 secs recharge.
When used, player will be healed 50..100 percent of max health. However, player will lose all Energy. This skill causes Exhaustion.

Warrior skill: Tactics. Instant cast. No energy cost. 30 secs recharge.
For 30 secs, gain health regen of 1..3, and energy DEGEN of 2.

Ranger skill: Wilderness survival. Preparation.
Causes arrows to become vampiric, player gains 1..4 health when they hit.


So you see, nothing too powerful, but handy in certain situations, and used differently from the existing self-heal skills.

PS.

I'd also like to see more classes being able to remove conditions, enchantments, and hexes, but do it much more poorly than the classes that can do so at the moment. Say, Elem can cure hexes, Rangers can cure conditions, and warriors can shout away enchantments. But the skill that they get to do it is much inferior (high cost, chance of failure, etc) to similar skills that Monks, Necros and Mesmers have.

Giving every class a poor alternative to monk healing/removal will not do anything to make monks less desirable, because groups of eight autonomous individuals will get trampled by eight people who brought a monk along, freeing up their self-heal slots for effective class skills. As it is, teamwork will always prevail over individualism and that's how it should be.

It might have a marginal effect on PvE but that's it.

the eight autonomous individuals you speak of... don't get trampled
they get trapped and raped because the other classes are rangers/monks and mesmers
their abilities which are CHEAP, NON ELITE... instantaneous non deniable denying of your abilities as a warrior/self healing monk... but this is of course... was in my other thread

AND YOU GUYS.. are so good...

Darren Jasper: Ah, but it makes a no-monk team a little more viable than it is now. So maybe if the no-monk team is more skillful than the other team, then the mere addition of a monk to the other team won't even the odds to such a large degree.

And a group of pve'ers will feel a little more confident in setting out on their own with some tweaks to their skill line up, rather than standing around shouting "LF Monk".

Like I said - I don't want a drastic change. Just a little something to give us more options to narrow the gap.

Your complains about mesmers class, while they are hilarious, really don't belong in this thread.

Sure, if you want these skills to feel safer in PvE, that's one thing. That's fine. I just think you're profoundly mistaken if you think these kinds of shoddy self-heals will replace a monk against a solid team.

so you must be a mesmer then?

Nope. But every time I see a mesmer lock down a pine-fresh noob who can only think to counter it by holding his breath, kicking his feet and shouting "nerf", I crack a little smile...

One more self-healing skill won't do anything. The real dilemna is this: Give non-monks EFFICIENT healing, or no? Right now, non-monks do NOT have efficient healing, and this is why you want change.

HOWEVER, let's see if other classes have efficient healing, what's that leave? Monks are pretty much useless, except for a few talented Smiting monks. Other than that they will be outclassed in every aspect.

Yeah, and people refusing to invite monks because they are essentially worthless indicates a problem as well.

Try playing monk sometimes. It's amazing how many people bring up stuff like this without even experiencing monks first hand.

i didn't say nerf...
i said... THIS GAME IS BULLSHIT...

warrior cuts your dick off
you die...

(of course i'm defending warrior and i'm a monk/necro... warrior meets my shield of judgement along with a bunch of other retarded spells which allow me to win INSTANTANEOUSLY TOO... so yeah.. we're all in the same faggot boat... we beat the warriors)

BASICALLY MY STANCE IS NOT I LOVE WARRIORS
i am a selfish monk who doesn't want to HEAL!! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
kiss my ass mesmer lover

Well, whenever you're done making a big spazzy racket and want to explain what your stance is, be my guest.

500+ heal for 5 energy, non-interruptable and 30 sec recharge? I'd say that's pretty powerful.

oh i didn't even read his post... i was just fighting with the other guy
hahaha... um that's a bad idea

Hey, I've played a monk. And like the other person said, having a monk specialising in healing will always be important. Even IF individuals have efficient self-healing, it will come at a severe cost in skill slots - that's the beauty of GW's 8-slot system. And I'm not even arguing for efficient self-healing, anyway.

As I've said again and again, I'd just like to narrow the gap. 1 extra self heal won't change how we organise our builds and our groups - but it might give us more viable options at the fringes. (like 2 monks vs 3 monks? Or which 2nd class to choose for a character focusing on his primary?) etc.

Oh - one place the extra self-sufficiency might make a difference is in random pvp - (I know people look down their noses at it, but it's fun sometimes too, right? Like selecting the "random char select" option in a fighting game) You can gamble and make a self-reliant build, and if you end up getting a monk on your team, then you've wasted a slot or two on your inferior self-healing skills. But if you don't have a monk, then you have a better chance than you used to against a random team that does.

Well, fine. Up the recharge time and energy cost then. Or make it a one-use signet. Or come up with a completely different idea for the alternate Elem self-heal. I was just trying to illustrate my point with some examples.

Hmm, I seem to have misinterpreted your motives, but you need to understand that 1 single skill of the same calibur as the current ones (like...Healing Signet #2) is pretty much a waste of time to implement.

If they were really to provide you with truly viable options, then that would make monks unnecessary. Anything less and it's not really viable, is it?

...This is rediculous, honestly. Monks are valuable for a reason, because everyone wants to sit there and do damage, I mean "pwn ppl."

So the newbie suggestion? GIVE EACH PROFESSION MORE HEALING!!!11!!!oneone

Some of the healing abilities of the profession are strong enough, maybe you should look at entire skill listing before screaming about changes.

Whilst I said I do play a monk, it's a monk secondary and I use it primarily for healing. And my monk is not high level, nor do I pvp with it. So, ok, I don't know a huge amount about monks.

So, are you saying that apart from healing, monk skills are useless? Their condition removal, protection spells, and various enchantments don't contribute to a party at all? I know they're -supposed- to, but are you saying that, in practice, if a party doesn't need healing from a monk, then the other abilities that monks have aren't useful enough to justify using a party slot on them?


I don't personally know about GvG and such - but say any class could become self-sufficient in healing by sacrificing 4 skill slots on all the self-heals. One or two tankers in a group does so, whereas the mesmers, elems and stuff choose not to. In this situation, the party gains the option of choosing 1 monk instead of two. Or if they have 2 monks, one of them can focus on something other than healing. (Whereas currently, you need both monks to be healers.) Would this be a good thing or a bad thing? I thought it would be a good thing because the team has more choices - the original 2 healing monks, plus the additional 1 healing monk and another class (with some members of the group going self-sufficient), or 1 healing monk and 1 protection/smiting/other monk.

I guess from your point of view it would be a bad thing - since the party gains the option to have 1 less monk, thus lessening the demand for monks. I dunno - would it reduce the essentialness of monks to a balanced level? Or will it nerf them out of existence? I guess it depends on just how good those extra self heals are. And how crap a non-healing monk is. Any experienced players care to comment?

As for wasting of time, I think, out of all the changes people have been suggesting on this board, adding more skills is probably the one thing ANet has the tools and processes to do easily - since their expansions will hinge on it.

They all have not just heals, but methods to prevent damage as well. No matter how many 100's of monks may be on a team, if you can spike the 500 damage it takes to kill someone fast enough, your target's still going to go down unless they have damage prevention.
Elementalists have defensive buffs for themselves, and ones that aid all party members in the area in addition to Aura of Restoration and Ether Renewal. Other methods of avoiding damage include movement debuffs+buffs, which enable them to move to a better location in order to avoid damage, and inflicting status effects, such as Weakness or Blindness.
Rangers have Troll Unguent, and Healing Spring for actual healing, defensive stances to avoid attacks, movement buffs+debuffs, and they can inflict blindness as well.
Warriors have many tactics skills to keep damage off of them, and Healing Signet for a heal. Healing Signet is best used in conjunction with a defensive stance to help prevent damage while vulnerable. (Not x2 damage anymore, now it's a 40 reduction in AL.) They have the Weakness condition (at least, one of the weapons does), Crippling condition for a run debuff, and run buffs for themself to get to a better location.
Mesmers have Distortion, Illusion of Weakness, Ether Feast, Ineptitude, Interrupts, Illusion of Haste, 4 movement debuffs, 2 casting slows, and a lot of inspirations stances to choose from to reduce damage. And Ether Feast heals for quite a bit as well.
Necromancers have quite a bit of options for self healing at their disposal, I'm not even going into it.

It's not so much as a matter of needing more heals, as needing to make the most of the ones you do have, which're pretty potent. Toss on a second class, and you've got even more options at your disposal. Although, I do enjoy the prospect of more skills, all of the ones above have liabilities to them except the necro ones, and adding more might mess with that. Ether Feast doesn't recharge rapidly enough to keep yourself healed under fire. Troll Unguent takes an ungainly amount of time to use, and Healing Spring is easily interrupted. Healing Signet gives you an armor reduction. Elementalists don't cast spells to spike the healing when appropriate. I've never heard of an elementalist saving a high cost fast casting skill just to trigger aura of restoration at a good moment, and ether renewal is elite with a recharge time 3x longer than its duration.

You know, Ive suggested something along the lines as this before too.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17398

Curiouslly enough, I think it read like, "blah blah blah gimp monks blah blah".
At least, thats how people responded.

My take is. If you consistanly need 2 or more of one class as opposed to anyother...then that class has an advantage the others dont.

Now,...time may tell. As we all learn and play the game, there may be builds that damper the "monk" nessecity. The closest thing to my mind now is, have a team of all secondary monks.

The bottom line is that each class has a role in PvP - needing 2-3 monks in a team of 8 does not mean monks are over-powered, it means all those other classes deal so much damage that you need that many monks to counter the damage.

But it causes Exhaustion-what if the Elem is in a really bad situation when she's at full energy? She can heal herself long enough to turn tail and run, because Elementalist's are pretty useless without their energy. And I'm not bashing them here: I made an Elemetalist/Monk-why? Because of Energy Storage (and cooler outfits). And a lot of Elementalists are Monk secondary, so that screws over their team, too-it's a high price to pay, but doable if you know what you're doing. On the other hand, team members shouldn't be worried about losing their monk temporarily if they had that one extra self-heal skill, lol. I totally agree, btw.

I got rid of my W/N for that reason right there-if there weren't corpses around, I got screwed (in Kryta, I always got screwed). And Healing Signet is a joke. I know I'm not the only Warrior who doesn't use tactics, which means I will always only get +40 HP out of my Sig...

And Monks would NEVER be obselete-I'd sooner carry around an extra attack skill and have a good monk than have to essentially *waste* that 8th slot. I know I'm ranting now, but besides there being tons of groups "LF Monk" there just aren't enough reliable monks.

And this is TOTALLY off topic-but I'm going back to corpses here-when people die, their bodies don't just *poof* disappear into thin air-they sit there and rot-why can't I leave a corpse waiting for me and heal AFTER the battle rather than have to sit there thinking, "Gee, I hope that White Mantle corpse is still there when we finish we these Undead"?

The exact skills would have to be fine tuned slightly, but that's an excellent idea. EXCELLENT.

You can't skip healers, same as you can't skip damage. The reason why people get all hyper about the healing "issue" is that there's only one class for that, while damage comes in multiple forms.

Right, which is why healing should too.

I agree with original poster; don't make it godly and completely remove the point of having a Monk.

Yeah - I'm not sure what it is - maybe there's an overabundance of "OMG GIMP MONKS" posts, and people have built up an annoyance on anything vaguely related to the topic. Or maybe, monks ARE super important, and the people who play monks enjoy feeling like that, and are prickly about losing that (they fear "becoming useless" because they are not a damage dealing class or something) so they become very heated in shouting down any topic like this. Or maybe a combination of both, I dunno.

I've tried to keep a high cost fast spell as a quick heal (eg, stoning), but usually I'm in trouble the most when I'm also out of energy :P

I think your point is a good one, with regards to the numerous other damage avoidance skills available to all classes. But in most situations they can't save you - your non-monk self-heals aren't good enough. Putting up wards and spamming self-heals usually only buy you more time for the monk to heal you. No monk, you die. None of your non-monk teammates can help you out in any useful way. (This can be less true in some situations than others. If you're getting attacked, they can try to kill your attackers. But if you're suffering from health degens, all they can do is watch you die).

Maybe that's it - dont give us more self-heals, but give all classes more skills to help out teammates. Give the warrior a combat-based self heal, and make "healing signet" available for everyone (like rez signet). And make it targetable on others. Also give a "remove one condition from target ally" signet. Also it would be nice to have an alternative rez signet - that has unlimited uses but only raises with 1 HP and 0 Energy. And takes a long time to cast. Maybe also costs energy, or a portion of your health. Basically one that would be useless in battle, but handy to avoid those "helplessly stuck because the monk is dead" situations.

I dont know. You see many posts on the forum saying that "a monk is a tough job and one of tremendous responsibility etc". You'd have thought that it would be good to have something that makes their lives a little easier, and gives them an option to spend some time on non-healing activities.

Exactly. ONLY MONKS can counter the damage. In fact, since monks have the best team defensive skills as well, ONLY MONKS can reduce the damage meaningfully.

With regards to defense, mesmers and rangers are pretty good at supporting and protecting their teammates too. But there's no such alternative for healing (a necro can kind of do it, but is too reliant on corpses, and thus isn't good for emergency heals.)

I never said Monks were overpowered. They're fine. I saying that the other classes working together aren't able to partially fill the hole when there is no monk, or not enough monks. That's less true of the other classes - usually you can make up for not having an elem, or not having a ranger, or necro, etc. I think thats a problem. (and no, monk secondaries are not the solution... at the moment, if you're going to concentrate completely on your primary, then the "default" secondary is Monk, since it gives you a nice rez and better healing options.)

A more evil alternative is to give every class some super-utility that makes them indispensable. So any party that doesn't have every class represented is SCREWED :P :P :P

maybe if they implement something like this it might force some of the monks to lower their rates they charge .

I really don't see the need for another spell for each non-monk profession.

I've played Mesmer, Ranger and Warrior and I don't see the need for an additional healing spell.

Although I've never played Elementalist, Elementalists are not primary damage takers. Aura of Restoration should be enough to compensate for what little damage they should take.

Ive sensed this also.

Even if you add a few spells to each characters arsenal, who do you think would use it? My elementalist is already packed to the brim with spells to use, and if I had to depend on myself to heal myself, it would be near impossible. You should think of the jade armors in the later parts of the game. Even fully infused, with max defense armor, jade armors do a lot of damage to anyone who doesn't have protection spells on. And if I were using this healing skill to heal myself, it better have a small recharge time and heal for 200-400 HP, because otherwise I'd be spending all my time healing and none of my time attacking.

Everyone just needs to accept the fact that monk's are required, whether you like them or not.

Having played with all of the classes for probably a more than healthy amount of time, I have to disagree with the OP.

This line of thinking seems to be straight down the line of not understanding why you have a monk in the team anyway!
If you have a monk in the team to keep you alive, then you need to think more during the battle.
YOU need to keep yourself alive. Any monk in the team is there to try and make that job easier!

So many players fight blindly. Lets say your a warrior and you have empathy and isideous parasite on you. Do you carry on kicking off your best damage attacks vs your opponents, relying on the team monk to keep you going? I see this so often. They don't even think that the monk may have his own problems. Mayby he has backfire on him or is trying to stay alive vs the 3-4 players that are beating on him.
When your monk has chance, he will do what he can to 'help'. In the mean time it is up to you to fight with your brain.
Switch to some defence stances! Run away! Kick off some minor self heals! Smite your hexes! Drop an Aoe on your trapped monk to save his butt for a change! etc etc!

You can usually tell when your with someone who does not understand how to pick his skills when they charge rift wardens in the tombs and need a monk to heal them! - If you can't solo a rift warden with ease, why did you go attack it? If you were taking too much damage, why did you stay? 100% of the time this type of player will be a drain on your monk and need constant looking after. Any group leader worth his position should kick that player when back at the post.

(Note to the above poster: If you can't solo the Jade Armour then let someone else do it. I have several characters that can happily solo them. My W/M can take a group down without needing a monk to look after him. Each class is better at handling different things. Play them all and know their strengths and weaknesses. Don't think that 1 build is going to be the best vs all things. Sometimes you need to let others deal with problems!)

I think my view is a little tainted in that I play a E/W. I'm probably the least survivable class combination in the entire game. To make my build viable I'm heavily invested in defensive skills and self-healing. But I'm not talking about myself - I NEED a monk to do well, and would continue to need one even with the additional self-heals I describe.

My main concern is how often I would join a group, (for pve or team arena) and then the consensus of the group is "we need a monk..." and then everyone has to wait quite a while until we're lucky enough to get one.

It could be perception - maybe we dont really need a monk that badly, and we just think we do. Or it could be truth. I'd also think that monks would probably be annoyed that, because they are so rare and precious, they're basically forced into a healing role wherever they go. And cop a lot of blame and abuse if the party wipes. If we had more tools to take the load off the monk's healing, then they would have more options to do different things also.

Actually - I just realised that of all the primary atts, Divine Favour is the only attribute that has no value to your subclass. That pretty much means any monk primary is forced to focus on their monk skills to get benefit from divine favour. That's kinda bad too.

Can't all classes use the Signet of Healing? If not it would be fair to allow them to use that and only that!

Leave the healing to monks... much as I dislike needing them so badly in all groups in later missions. They are are the healing in this game and we shouldn't take their purpose away from them.

Hmm i never meet a Team without a Monk in the Tombs. Normaly they got 2 or 3 Oo. So i agree with Rieselle. It should be an Option to take or not to take a monk like u choose to take or not to take a Ranger with u. Perhaps they fix this later with another Healing class.

I am nuts and going to ask something else, potions.

A small quick slot toolbar over skills that is used to store potions, the sad fact is there is too much reliabilty of monks for healing and none of the NPC monks are doing a good job of healing, it also forces groups to take a Monk NPC for res and healing duties.

That way we sould not be as screwed in having to rely on monks, potions would be a money sink as well and help to destroy gold in the game world, we simply need to make sure potions are not a substitute for a monk abilities.

You said it yourself, protection monks are sometimes the best option. That obviously leaves healing in the dust, since you emphasize the protection > healing.

So if protection is so great, why do you even want more healing for any character when protection is better. After they implement this, I'm sure somebody is going to ask for a good protection skill for each class as well.

You are not asking for a "viable" form of self reliance for non monks. Crap healing 1 + Crap healing 2 = twice the crap. You just want to take away another attribute that the monk specializes in. I don't know if it's me, but it seems that people who would rather not play the role of 100% healer want to make their tank/nuker/etc. into an invincible killing machine.

You claim monks are unbalanced and are overpowered. So you say add healing (even if it's just 1 skill) to all other classes. Now, if this were crap healing, then it wouldn't make a difference. If it were actually VIABLE healing then you would totally negate healing monks. Oh, sure, monks still have protection and blah blah blah. Ok, how about we completely obliterate any way to make a decent sword warrior? You still have hammer and axe so stop crying. I'm sorry, your motives may be in the right place, but making all classes have usable heal is not the right way to balance the game.

I think the problem was not that the requirement of teamwork. The problem is that their is one single class that is required in every group. No other class is absolutly required. This is a discouragement to strategic planing not an encouragement.

Warriors are a necessity later on.