Advice from one monk to another.

Just hit lvl 20 last night with my mo/mes character and doing the thursty river mission but having a hard time keeping my party alive in that one. Its not only me though, been in some bad unorgainized groups.

I need to know what skillz to bring into this mission. I aced it the first time through with my el/ne character. Thats a build im really good at playing. But my mo is a diff story.

My skills are:
1. Healing breaze
2. Heal other
3. Reversal of fortune
4. Healing seed
5. Aegis (my fav and most valuable)
6. Vigorous spirit
7. Raise signet (for a quick raise in tough time)
8. Rebirth (not liking this for this mission)


All my attr points are in Divine favor, Healing and protection. Still have a hell of a time trying to keep my team alive doing this mission though. They dont all attact the same target, thats mainly the problem. I asked a few of them whats their armor def at cause they were getting hit at times so hard 2 hits would kill them. And guess what, 2 of them had 30 armor. And they bitched at me cause i cant heal them and keep them alive. shesh. Anyway, whats a good strategy for keeping these types alive in this mission. Ive never had any problems keeping a party alive before.

When you get to the gate should you ignore the first mob and head right to the boss?

PUGs can really be a pain in the acsention missions. Usually takes me 3-4 times to get a good PUG to complete them.

My monk uses mainly

Signet of Devotion (heal for no energy)
Osirion of Healing
Dwayna's Kiss
Healing Seed
Healing Breeze
Divine Boon
Skill of choice. Life bond or life essence (which ever one gives you energy I can't remember at the moment), could be usefull if your running low on energy a lot.
Rebirth

Going both healing and protection is stupid, although you like aegis it is what is holding you down. Max healing prayers and divine favor. Your prot spells are stopping some of the more valuble healing prayers to go out. Part of this mission is to practice for the hall of heroes battles, with priests ect. Then, you should have 2 seperate kinds of monks, 1 prot monk and 1 healing monk. If you decide to go prot monk instead of healing monk make sure you let the group know they should get another healing monk.

My skill set is

Orison of Healing | Word of Healing{E}(you get it on that mission, bring cap signet in its place) | Healing Touch (for healing yourself) | Healing seed | Mend Ailment | Smite Hex | Res Signet | Ressurect.

1. Orison - Not sure why you dont have this, I like it better then heal other. Makes divine favor more useful and a better use of mana
2. Word of Healing - After you cap it, its very effective for healing people getting targeted.
3. Healing Touch - Double divine favor but you have to touch the person, use this on yourself.

^^ All of those are 5 mana skills and you can spam them as you like.

4. Healing seed - Use this on W/mo before a big battle, but dont use it during.
5&6. - Remove bad conditions and hexes when allies need it (ie: bleeding, disease, backfire, ect)
7. Res Signet - Quick res when the battle is going downhill, res the first person that dies right away.
8. Ressurect - Use this if to res someone in an easy battle or after a fight.

Remember to take the mission 1 step at a time. You have 2 minutes to kill the priest, take atleast 1:30 to kill all of the monsters, if you havnt killed them all by then but you still have all of your guys(usually will happen if good monk) then charge and spike the priest(i would bring along an air ele in the group to call target). If its 1:30 and your losing, pull back and res and try again after the next res.

The problem is not with your skills, the problem is with the morons you've unfortunately been saddled with.
Check out the party members in your group. If they LOOK like they're wearing newbie armor, they are. Leave the group. If some dimwit is stupid enough to leech off people all the way to the desert without going through the five minute trouble of buying decent armor, don't waste your time with him.

You're a primary healer, you're rare and you're valued by a TON of experienced, appreciative players. Do not bother with morons like the people you've described.

As for strategy, I tend to wait until one group of patrollers is far enough away from the priest that he won't ress them, kill that group, wait for a fresh 2 mins, then attack (you can even attack at like 1:50 or so, gives you ten extra seconds, since the priest won't raise anyone who's not dead ). Kill the minions first, keep an eye on the clock. At about 1:40 or 1:35, attack the priest. Best thing is to have a nuker nail him from outside, but you can send a warrior in to gank him.
Once all the minions are dead, THEN attack the boss.

The only time you'll want to potentially change the minions / boss strategy is for the very last one, since he's a monk and heals like thing possessed.

It's not you, nor your build. Bringing 2 resses, Aegis AND breeze and healing seed makes you a god in your party. If shitty n00bs can't figure that out, screw em.

Edit : I'm not sure I agree with CAT. While a specialized healer / protector works better at their choice than someone who tries to do both, Aegis rocks the house hard, and that 50% missed attacks for 10 seconds is a LOT of damage you don't have to heal.
I missed your use of Heal Other, it's probably better to change that for a smaller spammable heal, like Orison.
My e/mo uses Heal other, because I have a ton of mana and don't have Divine Favor, so I need the big boost from the actual spell. A primary monk would do better with orison, I think.


Creston

Is divine boon worth it? Never thought of it being a good skill to have on. Same as Dwayna's Kiss. Where do you get the skill (forget the name too) that you mention above where you get energy for each time a guy is hit? Also where do you get vengence?

I'd say

Word of Healing
Orision of Healing
Healing Breeze
Healing Touch
Healing Seed
Remove/Smite Hex
Mend Ailment
Rebirth

I went full protection with zealots fire(only smite i use) and never looked back. Best choice I made in this game by far.

The reason I use zealots fire, is everytime I use a skill on an ally it gives out 30-40 fire damage to surrounding foes. That helps alot if the warrior is mobbed down, cause now all those foes take damage.

Divine Boon adds about 50 healing to each of my healing skills I cast. I consider that worth it for extra 2 mana. Its like casting another orison for 2 mana. Dwanyna's Kiss I find more useful than heal other, as it can do some good healing with divine boon and if the player is hexed. The skill that gives you 1 energy everytime target ally takes damage, I'm not sure where I got it. Vengence you should have long before the desert I believe.

Also make sure the warriors are tanking. Warriors should stay far far ahead, and only after they have engaged should everyone else run in. If you have ele's running in and dying all the time I would at most throw them a healing breeze, if they can't get out of the way let them die. Its better one team member die than the whole party. A tanking caster will use all your energy very quicky, they are not worth it. Make sure you let them know ahead of time your not going to waste all your energy on them.

Divine Boon hurts on energy management. I found that more times I will not even turn it on when I was in a mission. So I replaced it with some spells I will actually use.

Thanks for the reply's. And ill agree with Creston, that Aegis rocks, it saves me a lot of healing and mana. I had orison but picked heal other cause of its big healing capabilities from the people that wear post searing armor. Those mofos get hit one time and have like 80 life left sometimes. But will take it out for the suggested.

4 kinds of monks...

Healer
Protecter
Smiter
Heal Buffer

I disagree with the previous poster, going both healing and protection is actually a very good idea in PvE. Even in PvP, it can work out well with SOME team builds (but not others). I have yet to see anyone play a protective monk in PvE outside of FoW/UW, and if no one else does it, go ahead... because if played right, it makes an immense difference in keeping the group alive.

My monk healer/protector can run groups through some 'bottleneck' missions like Ring of Fire alone.

Now lets look at your build. I see you are using no elite skill, and you dont use one of the best monk spells in the game (protective spirit), which can be acquired in Amnoon Oasis. You also have no skill to heal yourself except healing breeze, which is often too slow and can be stripped. You should be able to keep yourself alive - if you die, who will heal the rest of the group?

It also should not be necessary to carry a rez signet in addition to rebirth. Other group members should carry rez signets, you should not even have to rez during battle, and after battle rebirth will work nicely - because it rezzes people out of agro range and brings them to you. (Same goes for PvP - primary healers should leave the mid-battle rezzing to W/Mo's and similar).

Suggestion:

Get rid of heal other - not energy effective if you use WoH. Replace with word of healing [elite] which can be captured in both Elona's and Thirsty River.

Bring orison of healing for both yourself and as an additional, extremely fast recast heal spell on others (can be spammed in addition to WoH)

ABSOLUTELY add protective spirit. And teach the group to not all draw agro at the same time. Protective spirit + healing seed on the main tank = no further healing needed. Regenerate energy meanwhile.

Keep Aegis.

Keep Reversal of Fortune. If someone is taking damage quickly, it can buy you a few seconds of time if you cast it right before word of healing (and then protective spirit if they keep the agro)

Keep healing seed.

Keep rebirth.

Get rid of the rez signet.

I find that it's extremely difficult to go both healing AND protection at the same time (this is from personal experience). Although it can be done, it's best to have a healing monk and a protection monk in a mission. I managed to make it through a couple of the ascention missions with my protection monk being the only protection monk by doing little more than spamming RoF (one of the best protection spells imo) and keeping aegis up as often as i could. It also helped that i had intelligent people on my team that, once they found out I was protection, took some self-healing (and every class has some).

A slightly tangental piece of advice: If you end up going protection, leave groups that whine and try to get you to go healing. They obviously don't understand the utility of protection and probably won't play smart enough to survive even if you do switch over.

I agree with Arothian. Divine Boon works great with Orison, and Dwayna's Kiss. It's more energy efficient but heals for a bit less than Heal Other by itself. You should get Orison, Dwayna's Kiss and Divine Boon.

When your energy runs really low and your team mates are really dying, take off Divine Boon, and keep them alive with low life points with Orison and Dwayna's Kiss.

If they only have 30 of armor at that point of the game then im sorry it's not your job to keep them alive, tell them to get new armor and leave the team.

you should really take word of healing
it heals a lot for less
(i thought it was 5 energy, and it heald for 80 + 100 if the target has healt blow 50%)(this is with my monk, dont know how many attribute points you have in healing)

I agree with getting rid of res sig. Personally I usually go into missions without rez, and requests the warriors to bring rez sigs or rebirth, since tanks are usually the last to go down, and easiest to heal.

I recommand the original poster consider mend ailment and remove hex into his build, because you would run into different conditions and hexes that would turn out a pain in the butt if you ignore them. (blind on warriors, daze on casters, etc.)

good luck.

I found once you go protection monk, you never look back. By far the most under-rated class skill in the game IMO.

Aegis for 10 seconds is awesome, especially if 2 monks are carrying it. =)

Just make sure you know both are carrying it and coordinate. I had one mission where we both were hitting aegis at the beginning of a fight and it took us until halfway through to figure out the other one had it

How can you tell if a party member is blind? Most times they will tell me but i know there are many that dont.

A few things:
1. You probably want to get more low-cost healing spells. I personally carry four (Dwayna's Kiss, Word of Healing, Orision of Healing and Healing Touch), which if you know how to use correctly, are extremely easy to get by on. (Dwayna's kiss if they have any hexes/conditions, Word of Healing if under 50% health, etc)
2. You have 2 rez spells/skills there - you really only need one. I prefer Rebirth above the rest of the spells beacuse in PvE there's most always a time where you can run back if everyone else is about dead and then use Rebirth to rez them and move them back at the same time.
3. Reversal of Fortune is ok but really should be used on another monk (protection monk). It's really not worth it for the only healing monk to have it (though I could think of some situations where it may be useful... who knows).

After reading some of these posts (great thread btw), I agree that sacrificing a slot for the ress siggy is a bit of a waste (although it's a great way to get that tank with his 500+ health up and running again).

I'm not a huge fan of Rebirth, because it seems to me it's STRICTLY used for healing the party after they're all dead and somehow have monsters standing on top of them.

While I've had a dead party on my hands often enough (I think I'm becoming legendary in Gates of Kryta with the amount of parties that I've saved there, singlehandedly ), I've never really had an issue with the monsters being right on top of them. Most of the time, the mobs will just walk away.

The bad thing about rebirth is that it's not the greatest thing to cast during combat, since you bring a guy back then cripple him for another 10 secs or so with his skills being ganked.
I believe it also eats up all the rest of your energy?

I prefer a normal ress, but that's just me.

Creston

this is mainly caused by the lack of voice-over-ip in the game....I couldn't believe that a game released in 2005 wouldn't have a VoIP feature atleast for the party. The party should be able to talk to eachother...the fact that it's not there is a HUGE dissapointment.

Ugly ugly ugly lol Mo/E~~~

Breeze
Vigorous Spirit (efficient + goes well with kiss)
Dwanyas Kiss (use w/ vig spirit or on heavily hexed allies)
Word of Healing (ur main heal throughout)
Healing Touch
Armor of earth (+50 armor...)
Ward Melee ( > aegis)
Ress

14 healing, 13 divine, & 11 earth

I had absolutely no trouble using this setup..

To be fair, divine healing should be left to advanced monks. Most monks do not actually have a good sense of how much they heal for by looking at someone's health bar. As a result these are the monks who have trouble with energy management. Divine Boon is an incredible spell, but it only serves to make a mediocre or even decent monk into a bad one.

[ ]

Um, no it's not. I've cleared all the missions twice, completed the underworld, and hit the Hall of Heroes without using Vent nor TeamSpeak. Teamwork, cooperation, and strategy are not equal to being able to talk about "nubs" through voice chat.

Voice chat tools can help, but the people who are reliant on them have problems they need to face outside of the voice chat. I tend not to like it as a monk because:

1) I'm already watching the field. It's my job. I know who's getting hit and by whom. I don't need you to scream in my ear while I'm already addressing the problem.

2) I don't attack. I'm a monk. I don't need the distraction of you screaming in my ear "FOCUS FIRE FOCUS FIRE GET THE MESMER".

3) The group leader should be the one directing traffic, and the group leader should probably be a class that allows him to type. As a monk I certainly don't have time to heal eight people, watch for threats, and direct traffic--whether by speaking or typing. That said, I don't see how this requires much more than calling targets. If a leader needs to direct a specific person, it takes about two seconds of typing or one called skill assuming you had the presence of mind to come up with that plan prior to the fighting.

Frankly the drawable compass, target calling, and announcements of energy/skills/etc are more than enough for a cohesive group to beat any mission or to take on another gruop.

[ ]

Agreed. Overhealing is a big problem with some monks. Our job is to keep the party alive, not have full red bars on everone. I find that with I don't have much problem with energy management. If a monk really needs energy in a pinch, they could quicky equip a different offhand item that gives a large bonus to mana at the cost of a regen. This is logical as long as your team waits for you to regen all your negative energy.

Here comes another beating for another dead horse...

*Insert warrior stereotype here* that turn tail and run when they're at 1/4 or 1/3 health. Why???

Your job is to stand there, soak up blows, and hopefully deal some big damage, not turn and run the big melee-bashers right down the casters' throats. Trust that a healer will keep you alive, if you die, so what? Maybe you'll take someone down with you.

(my brother is guilty of doing this and I have to restrain myself from putting his head through the wall...)