Grouping ethics...

Ok, I am getting a little frustrated... part of grouping with classes is to make your party more effective with all of those classes... I am a lvl 15 E/Me (so I have little to no healing capabilities.)

I recently was doing The Frost Gate mission and I decided that instead of soloing (with henchmen) like I normally do, I would get in a group... The full group we had consisted of THREE of the members being a monk as a secondary proffesion... I am thinking GREAT! We should breeze through this... one of them was in fact a lvl 20 W/Mo.

To my dismay I died several times and never got healed once. I unloaded my healing spells prior to the mission because there were three monks in my group. When I asked, "Uhh... do you monks ever heal?" the reply was pretty much "no, I am only a monk to heal myself..."

None of the monks looked out for anyone in the group, and to get a rez was like pulling teeth.

By the end of the mission I was at -60% stats...

It would be nice that if people want to party, they make it clear that they don't follow the path of their proffesions.

-Tyrana Mistfyre

W/Mo's very rarely are dependable as a healer in a PUG, typically...and im generalizing, W/Mo's tend to be a little selfish unless they just flat out say 'i only have self heal spells'

which is fine and they can play that way, and since you never played with, or at least not that much with a PUG before, you didnt really know what to expect

generally you'll come to know that if you have no Mo primary in your group, you shouldnt expect any healing...

By rule of thumb consider only primary monks as dedicated healers.

W/Mo miss the divine favor healing bonus and they are usually short on energy, so they can't afford to heal other party members very often.

Generally all the attack classes (W, R), that have a Monk secondary will see red when the fight begins and will refuse to heal anyone than themselves.

Of course there are exceptions, but more on the Ranger side.

Of the others mostly Ele/Monks can do some healing because of their large mana pools, but don't expect any life-saving actions, because the primary monks can heal much more effectively.

War/Mo are horrible in groups... tanks have too much to worry about without worrying about healing the party also. Ranged warriors would work but its pointless to do that since rangers are so much more effective at range... healers need to stay out of the action. Most people don't realize this.

So... basically when I am in a group full of monks who dont heal, maybe I shouldn't focus my damage spells on the multiple mobs attacking the warrior taking all the agro? Perhaps I should just sit back and conserve energy by only attacking the mobs who come at me?

The whole point of grouping with others is to help each other out. Damage is what I do, Im an E/Me, (fire based)... if I can't count on my party to look out for me and heal me, then why would I help them by killing 4-5 mobs at a time with my meteor shower?

I am just saying that it seems a little backwards to party with people who are Whatever/Mo who don't heal. I can use henchmen and stay alive longer. (Which is probably what I will wind up doing)

i'd lay the blame on the group leader for not getting any healers and going tank heavy

while having three tanks is nice...it leaves the rest of your group, which is usually some support characters, out to dry, as they will be targeted first...have less armor...and have nobody to heal them...

As a rule of thumb do not stay in groups, that don't have the healer role assigned - be it a full-time Monk or 2 secondary caster/monks for one primary.

Sometimes we do some actions without monks, but everyone has to be ok with that. Even in random groups. It's much thougher, because the warriors need to actually protect the most damaged characters and that's not what an average group will be able to do.

Actually most of the M/?? I have seen are rarely healers, I have seen more ??/M that are healers for some reason. Almost all of the M/?? I have seen are protection and some smiting. So IMO it is best to just advertise for a healer and see what you get, and do be suprised if the monk is secondary.

I started grouping with other players (other than my husband) this weekend. My Me/Mo was pretty much the only /Mo who was healing in all the parties I was in. I was surprised at the lack of healing of other party members being done by the other /Mo characters.

On the flip side, it did surprise the members of my parties that I was healing them. They were like "Who's healing us?" So, I guess it isn't expected of the /Mo characters to heal.

Many people take monk secondary for the unlimited res rather than the res signet. I do that with most my PvE chars and the other 7 slots are of my primary profession. Also if you are dying that much you are not staying far enough back. Let the warriors engage and once the battle is going run up and drop all your AoE on top of it.

I never rely on someone with /Mo unless they explicitly say they are 100% support healing.


I have an Elmo. I have a Nemo.

I MIGHT throw word of healing or breeze on a team mate to help out between my castings, but there is a reason Mo is my secondary... it's there when I have time for it. I have other things that take up my time and energy and if someone dies because I was midcast and couldn't fire up WoH, well, not my concern. I'm more than happy to stop casting and throw out heals to help the monk if shit hits the fan, but otherwise I'm cursing and raising my babies (minions).

Edit: Also, I HATE relying on a healer to "get to me when they can". That's why 3 of my skills are healing. Healing Breeze (+7 regen), WoH (supporting the team mates, cheap so why not?), Heal Area (after battles, I use on my minions, during battle, I don't CARE if it heals the bad guy beating on me, I don't want to die and 120 extra health is nice).

As being a being a primary monk i realized a long time ago that my 2nd class wasn't really gonna matter. I could not afford to burn up my energy with spells or go in there war style and beat them down with monk armor. I am far past lvl 20 and have beaten the game and i find myself as an exellent healer. I just hate when the team ALWAYS blames the monk/monks. I actually have just let my team die before bc they kept whining. I was only monk and i had to conserve energy to heal an 8 person team and yea i would let there health get below half or so before i healed them so i could conserve but they didnt die. They were dumb of the situation so lets just say the next mob taught them a lesson. From then on i got no gripe from that group.

I play as a dedicated healer, so it's good to hear that all the part-time monks aren't stealing our job :-)

Secondary monks can have a hard time keeping themselves alive. On more than one occasion I have found myself healing a W/Mo. To heal a team effectively, you really need to have multiple spells. For example, I often use a combination of Healing Breeze and Reversal of Fortune to keep a teammate from dying. To keep my own heal high so I can focus on healing others I use Live Vicariously.

It's also a matter of focus. Dedicated healers have little else to do but to heal.

I play a W/Mo and I'm one of those that will go to save the non-tanks if I see them being attacked. I don't have the energy to afford healing most of my teamates, although I want to. So, I try to heal myself to stay alive so the monk(s) can heal others. I'd also throw in a heal or two (if I have the energy) to heal the monks or those close to dying, and take the rez with me in case someone dies. In a general rule, don't expect secondary monks to be effective healers, especially warriors since they only have 20 energy. This is the same as asking a secondary warrior to tank, or a secondary ele to deal massive damage, because they should be focusing on the primary. There're exceptions, but don't expect much.

I play both W/Mo and Mo/Me, and let me tell you. W/Mo is NOT a healer. The energy regen is about 2 at most, and unless the warrior spend all the points on Healing attribute he's still only half as good as a healer than a Monk as primary class because of the missing Divine Favor.

Please do not judge a class without knowing all the facts. Even if a Warrior concentrate on nothing but healing, it's going to be VERY hard to keep the group healed... and then he won't have a chance to do any damage and play his role. When I play my healer doing high level missions, I have a very hard time keeping everyone alive even with my healing bonus... do not expect a W/Mo to heal the party other than keeping him self alive. And it's not selfish only healing him self, he's saving the energy the monk has to use to heal the warrior.

Selfish is when you don't bring a rez signet because you're not a healing class.

Lady Leara, I appreciate your point on this, but let me say that all of this tell me that if I am a dmg dealer (i.e. E/Me) then I have no reason whatsoever to party with real people because there is no one I can expect to save my neck.

My job is to deal massive amounts of damage... I am good at it... but as I mentioned I have literally little to no healing. If I as a damage dealer am going to be expected to deal dmg, then I would also expect the trade off to be kept alive. A warrior can tank a group of mobs till they are all halfway down on health, and as soon as I throw a meteor shower at that grouping, literally half of them come my way. I have no defenses against this. And as such, I DO think its reasonable for me to expect someone in my party with an /Mo to heal me.

As I said, the opposite point of view here is that I dont do any damage and I just sit in the background and only attack mobs that come my way. This isn't the way to play in a party. If I have to go out on a limb because my professions demand it, then I would also expect my party to reciprocate and make sure that I dont die. I out damage really good warriors by 2:1 with all my fire spells... I would think that I would be an assett to the party.

Tyrana Mistfyre
lvl 16 E/Me

Fie!

E/Mo's are, IMO, better healers than Mo/whatevers (or, at worst, only a hair worse). Sure they miss out on runes and Divine Favor (which hurts the healing/spell somewhat), but with a much larger energy pool, I can afford to throw my healing around a lot more. I can spam Word of healing + Heal Other + Healing Breeze combos for at least 3 people before I have to slow things down. I realize that after about 2-3 minutes into combat my extra energy has probably run out, but by that time if we don't have things pretty much under control, I don't think we'd have had a better chance of having it under control with a monk primary either.

However, when the group has an E/Mo, be sure to ask if they heal or nuke, because most of them do nuke.

Its really already been explained; You should not jump to conclusions based on a players seconday profession, if I went into a group expecting you to do interupts and other mesmer spells, would I be justified in being unhappy?

Its a question of effectiveness, I don't even like warrior/monks in the first place, I'd rather have them 100% focused on tanking and dealing damage than even healing only themselves. I will not play in a group without a dedicated healer in it. Quite frankly you chose the wrong group for what you wanted, so you truly only have yourself to blame.

You want healing? Get a monk. If your more comfortable with Alesia, Lina or Mhenlo then there ya go.

You can party with a Mo primary or a more mature group. As I mentioned, as a W/Mo, I would try to save a nontank as best as I can and throw in a heal or two if I have the energy. Just don't expect too much from secondaries. By all means, ask before you go into battle if anyone's healing (even if there's a primary monk, because he/she can go smiting). If none said so, either leave the party or expect to play more defensively.

EDIT: BTW, you should avoid damage anytime even if there's a healer, since you're just letting them down. I understand the pain as being targeted all the time, but you should try your best to save yourself first. You just can't expect it's others' duty to keep you alive.