Where have all the Monks gone?

Be carefull of a E/Mo. A monk with energy storage in disguise.

I've been fortunate. My good times with groups far outweigh my bad ones. I really don't mind PUGs even with bad players in them; I've had other groupmembers berate the one guy who constantly screamed "Medic" and I've been complimented and treated very well usually. The anecdote I mentioned earlier was only to illustrate why, combined with having bad luck with PUGs, other monks are preferring henchmen.

Monks are not infallible and being a monk does not automatically convey a sense of decency and honor or even competence. I don't think anyone should have to put up with bad monks any more than they should have to suffer with bad warriors or elementalists.

I've played a monk all the way up to the desert missions, and I must say that I often get compliments, and that I've always been respected as a monk. i can really only remember one incident when a PUG treated me terribly, but the rest were experiences by which I was held respectfully.

I was speaking overall in my game experience as being a healing class character. GW has been a lot better about it than games like FFXI where you would be lucky to get someone decent in you party if you were below level 20. I have only played GW for about 3 days, and yet Ive still been yelled at by people who run off from the group and die. So until that changes, my opinion of how others treat the healing classes will remain the same.

different experiences, different opinions.

LOL I love that!! Makes me want to use it...

Those screenshots remind me of the ones you see on eBay character auctions.

I play a monk. I enjoy playing a monk. Only thing left is Hell's Precipice. Failed 3 times so far in 2 days, so no big deal.

As a monk I do notice right away who knows how to play in a group. Not solo, but in a group environment. I especially notice those , ermm, members who run out of radar site and come back with 8 red dots in tow. Lol.

Sometimes, I prefer to have all henchmen in group. It's peaceful and stress free. Managed to get to Granite Citadel with just henchmen. Managed to get 5-6 gold drops and 10-12 purple drops with just hench. From Crystal Desert to North Shiverpeaks.

Im sorry but that just isnt going to happen. As long as the average mental age of GW players remains around 5 and 1/2 everyone and their dog is going to get blamed for dying to 20 hydras cos you used to sprint to lose your own team.

Thats the point, monks need to just ignore the kiddies, because otherwise youll never play. Retarded uber leetsters will never learn, and will never stop to consider others in the team, so their is little point in hoping for that.

Its funny though, watching eles rush ahead of the group in the desert, or warriors repeatedly charging everything in sight, because obviously they are trying to show everyone else how good they are, but ultimatly end up looking like a complete clown.

Best way to deal with them is to just laugh at them, imo, and if they quite your team is probably better off.

i tried to play a monk by myself but it was just a huge dissapointment. first the imo ugly charmodels+armors they just suck to me. second watching the healbar all the time, being not able to select players with the keyboard (maybe there's an option for that but i didn't find one) and those guys that are never waiting for your recharge and think monk = godmode aren't helping either.

i tried a necro instead and its much much more fun

Yes, the necromancer is far more fun and even an advantageous character to bring along assuming the player knows what he or she is doing. However, after 3 days lfg at thunderhead keep and only seeing "we need a mo! pst, will buy mo for 500gp" as a necromancer I gave up on him and rolled my monk. Now I can incorporate my patience/willingness to help/support into a form that people can actually see and appreciate.

Finished the game as a monk, and farming still gives much better drops than helping people.

It's possible in the options menu to assign party member slots to the Numeric Keypad. That's what I do for my monk and it works well.

Because pvp only monks ar inferior to pve monks

Glad to see I'm not the only one that's noticed this.

I play a monk and I ALWAYS get less drops then my teammates and when I do get lucky enough to get a drop more times then not it's a crappy staff or holy rod.


I wish they'd just cycle through everyone for drops equally.

I wanted to be able to play a Mo support character on the side with an offensive base, so I went with N/Mo and it has been working out great.

Soul Reaping has to be one of the best perks related to the N/Mo, as I rarely lose pace throughout a battle. I also look forward to aiding parties in the future, possibly moving into Healing/Death, allowing myself to create meatshields in hopes of keeping some of the damage off of my party.

From what I've read on the site here, drop allocation is related to attacking and killing creatures, or causing damage... so if you don't attack anything, you won't get as many drops.

However, if a support character directly supports another character who is attacking or causing damage, then you are considered to be a part of the drop equation as well. So that's a bonus for utilizing and timing heals and buffs on those who are actually attacking and doing damage. Heal the warrior first and while they're attacking, and you might get more drops.

I guess.


Sorry every Necro and Mesmer and Ranger. If you aren't doing damage I'm not going to heal you. So sorry. Complain to the devs. for better drops for monks.

(some sarcasism, a little reality)

great!

thanks for the info

I really haven't had the same experience as seemingly alot of you have. I play a level 20 pre-acsended PvE healer monk. I admit I spend most of my time lagging behind the melee boys just out of range of the monsters. Most of the PvE monsters are easy enough to avoid. I do miss out on some of the game since I spend the vast majority of my time watching life bars. For the most part I am welcomed into any PUG with applause and I really think the drops are no different from anyone else. I can usually keep anybody smart alive indefinately and I apologize when I cant. The idiots I let die.....and die....... and die. Run-way-ahead-of-the-group-tank-wanna-be necros are my favorite. I have been know to rez them in the middle of a pile of minotaurs over and over till that -60 dp shows up. Then we can all go to town and get a team player. Dont get me wrong, I love a smart necro, they can be the best players in the game. But for gosh sakes, play smart!! The monk has this ability, to form a team and define the play style. I look forward to Pvp with all the elite skills Im stacking up and will probably play monk for a long long time. BTW my secondary class ............................. Necro!

Where have all the monks gone? The inefficient ones crapped out when they realized they suxx0rz as a monk, and went to play their W/Mo or Ranger (jk jk rangers and w/mo kick ass! Rock on!) while the efficient ones have moved on to PvP and HoH.

I'm a jobless monk. You can hire me for 1500 gp per mission

Let me know if you are getting takers on this. I may need to start charging!

My monk plays primarily with guildmates or henchies, very few PUG.

I just foudn it wasnt worth the hassle. Yes there's alot of good players out there and a good number of players I have on my friends list are from PUGs that I still keep in touch with.

I enjoy healing, I find it a challenge. Especially if a difficult mission where the team is taking heavy damage and I have to best manage my energy stores and heal effectvily. But I also keep a few other characters for change.

Any one class become boring after playing it for a long time, so I swap around alot. And I kinda find the W/Mo so overdone....go into a town where nearly 100% of the Warriors are W/Mo and mostl likely 80% of those use Mending and Rebirth...

Now THATS boring

The real answer to this question is......

they've joined guilds.

A good Monk gets offers easily, so can get into a good guild without much trouble. Then left with the choice of grouping with people that you know understand what 'don't run off' means, and the people who've been trying to do Elona's Reach for about 20 goes (because the monk was a noob, obviously ), which do you think they'll choose ?

As a healing monk I have yet to get a single complaint from people. If anyone ever dies its cuz they don't have very good armor, try to melee when they shouldn't, or just don't know when to run. The demand for monks in the game certainly is greater than the supply. If you are sick of shouting, "LFM for Mission!", then, if you haven't already, create a monk character. They're fun and challenging to play really, and of course its easy to find a group, not to mention you decide who live and who dies! mwahahaha!

It only takes a Ward of Melee and a Sympathetic Visage (or the ever popular Shadow of Fear + Enfeebling Blood) to shut down your masses of paladins. As a primary monk, I am much more annoyed by mesmers and elementalists.
Last time I tried (a couple of days ago), I was still farming more efficiently than most professions.
There is a missing link. Are you assuming, player pick monk to farm runes? That's one of the most amusing statement I've read in weeks.
Now this argument is frankly becoming ridiculous. PvE monks have never been using this exploit and most PvP monks are not using smitting unless the whole team is specifically designed for that.

Simply put, good monks hardly play in PuGs, and especially not in PvP or hard missions. They just don't have to. My guild has many (good) monks and they are eager to join a guild groups, just like nukers, tanks and support characters.

For the records, your argument about runes is absolutely inconsistent. W/Mo or Paladins as you call them, cannot use monk runes. The only players able to use monk runes are primary monks. As they are the primary target in PvP, most monk players don't want to sacrifice 50/75hp, so they stick to minor monk runes.

Where did you read that? Drop allocation is random.

I can relate to this very much. No matter how good of a monk player you are in a PUG, it only takes one crappy member out of a 6 or 8 member group for a mission to fail.

Hahaha. Yeah. The other guy said, "Dude, you're getting heals, just chill out," and he said, "I can't help it, I panic, I'm nervous by nature."

Much better than "ffs heal monk" when I'm in the middle of removing Backfire from our elementalist...

I play on my monk more often than my elementalist and ranger. He's a smiter, and from personal experience, smiters have the ability to outdamage most other classes and provide ways to protect themselves from inihilation. Funny, I didn't think I would be able to kill the entire White Mantle Army.

As for in competitive PvP, some people have been finding alternatives to primary monks. About the only way to avoid the Air Ele build is to either overwhelm them with decoys, spam protective spirit, or figure out that primary monks aren't always good for healing.

I have heard that, to foil leechers, if you don't cause damage or cast a spell on someone in your party who is, you won't get anything. Of course, I could be confused...

I play a monk, and as of lately Ive been going through the game with henchmen. I'm pretty much giving up on PvP PUG's in the tombs due to the lack of peoples knowledge of how to either protect a monk or how one works (especially protection monks) I get real tired of everything being the monks falt if the team goes down. Honestly I understand that it is 1st priority to take out the oposing teams monk but people need to pay more attention to whats going on with thier monks. People need to be aware also that when the team splits up to far apart then the monks healing capabilities become much less effective due to the fact that now we must run back and forth between members, oh but if someone dies than its "our monks suck". It is the teams duty to protect their monk, so IMO they should watch out for who is attacking thier monk and not focus so much on taking out the other teams monks, people need to play a bit more defensive and I think PUG's would be a little more successful. I mean there are plenty of spells that can disable the opposite teams healers (i.e. Scourge healing, backfire, etc) while the teams warriors and rangers take out who is beating on thier monks. I get tired of not being protected during the tombs pvp and then getting wiped instantly then people saying, wtf are you doing monk?...honestly it is hard stuff if you have everyone focusing to destroy you. No other class takes as much skill IMO in this game than to play a monk, if you dont agree then roll one up and play through ascension and to tombs then let me know what you think after. I love playing healers in any game and I always will, I just wish people would take the time to pay more attention to whats going on to their monks in PvP, cause basically it boils down to this, if your teams monks die then you (warrior, ranger, elem, necro, mes) arent doing your job that well are you? The monk has a very limited capability of healing himself but huge capability of keeping others alive, so please pay attention to your monks, we only mean you well and we would like to win also =) I have other thoughts on this matter just cant think of them right now hehe...cya

what is tombs?

Tomb of Primeval Kings, located in Dragon's Lair, leads to Hall of Heroes.

I'll look for the thread that discussed this. I'm pretty sure it was here, but may have been on one of the other sites. It was a couple of weeks ago, so I'll have to search for it. And it may have been inaccurate... it was discussing how experience and item drops were distributed through the group.

But still, I've experienced before where if I just don't participate in an encounter at all and stand there watching (which I have done a few times when the group was overpowered), that I don't seem to get any of the exp or drops assigned to me at all, and this can go for long stretches. When I go in and start helping again, then I do. But that might just be coincidence, who knows.

whoa..

i just made monk today and these post is making me nervous

If anyone annoys you tell them you won't waste energy healing them unless they stop whining.

Or don't be a moron...

When I am in the thick of battle, I just watch the red bars, not the names of the people to which these bars belong

I'm a Monk/Necromancer (although it seems like my secondary class really doesn't matter). I just did Ring of Fire, with me, one N, one E, 3 W/Mos, and Lina. We died a few times against the Fire Imps (our E was at -48% DP), but after that, my energy rarely went under 30, because my team knew exactly what they were doing. I really enjoy being a Monk. I rarely encounter people who yell at me, because I usually yell at them first ("don't run away from your healer and expect to survive, you moron. i'd rather keep the rest of the team alive than run after you"). I play with henchmen for almost everything except for missions. In missions, I use PUGs. I've had great success in finding good PUGs. Even the ones that can't finish a mission usually don't yell amongst themselves. PvP is fun, although it does get old being targeted first (although lately, no one's touching me; guess I've just been lucky). I enjoyed farming Riverside, although I didn't have the perfect setup until after the patch ruined it. As much as I enjoyed tanking 6 Justiciars, solo, I can see the justification behind the fix. I started a W/E, to see what it feels like to be a tank and damage dealer, but I still love my monk.

I usually wouldn't actually do it but the thread usually shuts people up.