How to be a protection monk?

Hi Guys.

Yesterday I arrived with my lvl20 Mo/Me in Elona's Reach. And I got shocked in the deserts. They are really tough. And I sometimes see people losing 3/4 of their health within a sec. So I thought I may switch to protection prayers instead of healing prayers. But I can't seem to find a good way.

I think I'm also lacking some key skills. I tried to run

Shielding Hands - but it has a very high cool-down-time
Aegis - simple rocks. But when should I cast it? I always cast it at the beginning of the battle, but maybe it would be better to cast it in midtime-battle when I'm starting to run low on energy...?
Reversal of Fortune - quick to cast, but I get no feedback if I "blocked" a 70-90dmg attack or just a 7-10dmg attack. And so I never know if it's worth it.
Protective Spirit - it's IMHO hard to use. Because I have to guess whos going to get hit deadly. I have a very hard time watching where my teammates are and what they are doing. So it is nearly impossible for me to predict whos going to get beaten I normally use it after someone lost 3/4 of their health with one or two big hits and 'hope' he will also receive the next wave. And it's quite too expensive to spam it on all tanks..
Guardian looks good, but I haven't got it yet. It seems pretty spamable, so I think it could be very useful...

I think I got quite good (at least I am a better healer than most monks I normally PUG with) at beeing a healing monk, but for protections I totally suck What strategies/skills do you use and how and in what situation. And is it worth to be a protection monk in PvE? Or should I stay a healing monk and only switch to protection if there is another healer in the team?

I haven't done much with protection Monks, but one good idea is Divine Boon. With Divine Boon and high Divine Favor, you'll be able to use spammable protection spells (like Reversal of Fortune), in the same way as you'd use Orison of Healing. Here's a build that I'd try:

Reversal of Fortune
Signet of Devotion
Shielding Hands
Aegis
Protective Spirit
Mend Ailment/Remove Hex
Divine Boon
Rebirth

12 Protection Prayers
12 Divine Favor

With the high energy costs of Divine Boon, Signet of Devotion is a good spell to spam, because it's free and doesn't set of Divine Boon. It will help you keep people alive with no cost to you, other than time. Against enemies that are harder, you'll need to use your protection spells to heal, instead of Signet of Devotion. Shielding Hands goes on people who are being hit by lots of small attacks, Reversal of Fortune and Protective Spirit against people who are being hit by a few large attacks. Aegis is good to cast once you are fully engaged and a few party members have lost health. Reversal of Fortune, when used with Divine Boon, makes a good emergency heal.

alert! never use boon unless you have a reliable way to gain back mana. Peace and Harmony, Offering of Blood, and Energy Drain are the best ways. otherwise you will run out of mana really fast.

One of my personal favorite protection builds is what is called a mana battery. Put protective bond on everyone you anticipate to take damage.Then put balthazars aura on yourself. you should be at -2 energy regen, or -4 if you have parties of 8. Use blessed signet and offering of blood to keep your mana up. Use devotion signet to heal, and only use protective spirit and reversal of fortune when you need to.

With this setup, basically all damage being dealt to the party is halved, since the half going to you is watered down by more than -30. Every time anyone in the party takes damage, you gain energy (balthazars spirit) even if you take 0. Any part monk can put an essence bond on you so they will gain this energy boost too.

can be used pvp, but better for pve.

I haven't actually played a primary monk in PVE but i've experimented many protection builds in PVP long enough to hopefully give some good advice.

Enchantments IMO play a big part in a good protection build since they're capable of supporting each other. Example's would have to be life bond and balthazar's spirit. By casting Balthazar's spirit and Life bond on you're most vulnerable teamate's (Or the tanker's in PVE situations) can give you a good energy supply. You can always keep up the energy supply by using thing's like blessed signet or Peace and Harmony (Elite skill, probably shouldn't worry about this since it's post-ascension).

Thing's that are worth using-

Divine Boon
Aegis
Protective Spirit
Reversal of Fortune

There are also alot of other's that I haven't mentioned, basically theclam gave a pretty good build already so I'm not sure how to do much better.

The thing about being a protection monk is that you have to retune your gameplay from a healer. When you're a healer, your eyes are glued to the health bars, and maybe the immediate area around you. If a bar gets too low, you react in a predictable way: You heal them.

Protection is a bit different since there it's not quite as linear. Your goal is different. Rather than being "I want to keep people's health up", it's now "I want to keep people's health from falling too quickly". And since you'll probably the only one doing that, the biggest skills are target prediction, and energy management.

First off, there are some basic ways that you can protect someone:Provide health to a target when they sustain damage, or do anything passively (Healing Seed, Vigorous spirit) Keep people from attacking (Amity, Pacifism) Reduce damage to a target(s) (Sheilding Hands, Mark of Protection, Life Bond, many Earth magic skills, etc...) Prevent people from successfully hitting a target (Aegis, Shield of Protection, etc..) Remove conditions and hexes that drain the life of people (Mend Ailment, Purge COnditions, Martyr, etc...) A subset of reduce damage, but spells that keep people from popping should not be overlooked
Remember that not all these skills have to come from the Monk protection spells category.

The next thing to do is to figure out what to cast, and when given that you have little energy, you can see what's attacking before then land a single point of damage, and most of the spells only last for 10 seconds. That's a judegement call:
If you're dealing with things that hex, or place conditions on you, but seem to die easily, then you should spend most of your time removing those hexes, and conditions If you're dealing with lots of things dealing small amounts of phisical damage, then you should look to reduce the number of hits people are getting, and/or providing protection the few that are taking the brunt of the damage. This also applies for situations where you're gettng large amounts of damage from few targets (Can anyone say 'Underworld'?) If you're dealing with large damage amounts then you need to provide additional protection to anyone who can be in the path of the destructive potential. If you're dealing with Fire Elementalists, then you need to remind people to get out of the Meteor Storm. Remember you can spam some spells quite well (Revesal of fortune, Mend Conditions/Ailments) but most of the rest are not suitable for that kind of load. Look to enchantments to help if you need longer term protection.
A Typical loadout will consist of : Aegis, Mark of Protection, Mend Ailments, Healing Seed, Remove Hex, Protective Spirit, Divine Intervention, and a Res. Tune for whatever you plan on doing, and keep divine favor up since the passive healing benifit will come in handy.

My typical loadout for a Healing/Protection Monk goes: Aegis, Balthazar's Spirit, Revesal of Fortune, Divine Boon, Orison, Healing Breeze, Life Bond, and a res. I cast Life bond on the 2 people I expect to take the most repetative damage, cast BA on myself, then let that be my energy supply while I do some healing, casting Aegis when I can. This means I reduce the amage in half to all the people I'm life Bonded to, and every 15 seconds prevent 50% of the phisical attacks. If I wanted to forgoe the Healing, I could add the contdition removal for Orison, and Protective spirit for Healing Breeze.

Anyway, there's some ideas for you.

As far as Aegis spell is concerned:

Keep it, it's an awesome spell. Wait for your party to land a few hits (2 seconds after you engaged the enemy), then cast Aegis, then go with the rest of your spells from there.

I dont recommend Protective Spirit however (unless you are doing Underworld or Fissure), because it costs way too much to cast and wont be 100% effective in this case. If you have some healing prayers, you should go with Heal Other instead of Protective Spirit. Use Heal Other when your teammates life is at 50% or below, so all that precious 10 energy points are fully used on healing them. Anyway that's my 2 cents.

Here is the build I use when I am running pure protection. It has served me quite well in PvE and is my build of choice in the Fissure of Woe.

Protection Prayers: 15
Divine Favor: 13

Reversal of Fortune
Guardian
Mend Ailment
Aegis
Life Barrier {Elite}
Divine Boon
Blessed Signet
Rebirth (yes, yes, godawful in PvP, but for PvE it's my res of choice. Let */mos do combat ressing.)


With Divine Favor at 13 Blessed Signet can return up to 21 energy per cast, which, handily enough, is exactly what you will get if you have Life Barriered your party. You will gain enough energy back to be able to maintain 7 Life Barriers and still cast an Aegis or Reversal of Fortune when needed. Obviously if you are acting as a mobile Force Field unit this way, you need someone else handling healing, but since Life Barrier halves all incoming damage except for DoT type effects, your healing partner's job shouldn't be too difficult.

However, there are those places (Wailing Lord I'm looking at you!) where you simply won't be able to maintain a full party worth of Life Barriers since your enchantments get dispelled right and left. This is when you toss up Divine Boon and switch modes to spot protection and ghetto healing. If Boon gets dispelled just cast it again. It's cheap and fast. Between Boon and Favor you'll be tacking on 100 pts of healing to the effects of your spammable Reversal or Guardian. You do chew up your energy this way, but no build can do everything.

For PvP, it's probably best if you maintain life barrier on your other monks and throw around protective spirit / aegis and RoF. I don't see the use in a pure protection monk, you're always better off with healing seed and an orison or heal other. I can't get a pure prot. monk to work as well as a prot/healing monk.
For PvE, prot. monks are awesome. Life bond everyone and balthazar's spirit on yourself and you have an infinite energy supply as well as halved damage from all enemies (most pve mobs use melee attacks).

Thanks, that are some awesome ideas. I'll try them all

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In many of these higher level missions, buffs are killing you not melee attacks. So, a true protection monk should carry a lot of remove hex, mend condition, smite hex type spell.

Hex/Condition removeing is half of your job as a protection monk. Also, as a protection you are NOT the main healer. It's your job to make the main healer's job easier.

Pump some points in to smite and use the smite spell that increase your group damage output like Retribution, and Balthazar's Aura.

I like being a protection monk better than a healer. With healing timing is just too hard: heal too much and you waste energy needed later in battle. Don't heal enough and the group die.

If you decide to go protection be sure to tell your group you area protrection monk and that you need a true healer. Just follow Sleazy D's advice and you will be okay.