Biggest Gripe on PvP & PvE

PvP - Dependency on Monks. If your party doesn't have a monk or some form of secondary monk who heals, its game over usually. I'd like to come up with strategies for facing other parties without depending on what my team is going to do based around the monk.

PvE - Skill points. What is the point of doing the other paths? You get ~13 skills from quests for each secondary you pickup for free. If I want to try out different combinations, I've got nowhere near enough skill points.

Also, PvE -- there is still a grind when searching out better weapons and loot drops. I went through Mineral last night for an hour, 1 weapon drop was a gold short bow max dmg, all other weapon drops were not even max dmg. Is it wrong to assume an area like Mineral Springs should drop all max dmg items, even if they are white/blue/whatever.

I'm not sure about PvP, but PvE, my group did Dunes without having a single Primary or Secondary monk in the whole group. Warriors have healing signets, rangers have troll ungent, necros have vamp, mesmers have ether feast. Monks are nice, but they aren't totally necessary for a group to be successful. A well thought out strategy will go al ong ways towards needing less healing.

hmm, pvp without a monk.

i guess a group of 8 ele/mes or mes/ele (mainly with domination skills and obsidian flame for dmg or domination and the fotm air skills) could work even without a monk.

(roughly 8*100 dmg from obsidian flame = insta dead targets. and 8*70 dmg from energy burn, and then there`s the elite spell energy surge that`s another 8*70 ae dmg)

i`m sure there are some other combinations that could do it but would need more time and thinking to find one

basically everything that can dish out dmg faster than the monks can heal and has a bit of control powers should be sufficient.

just don´t expect to be able to win every fight