People who rush into EA's after grouping

An e/mo specced to healing can heal longer, as opposed to healing for more per heal. It's a six of one, half dozen of the other situation. In some situations a monk primary will be better, in other situations an e/mo will be better. But suggesting an e/mo can't be an effective healer is just plain wrong.

I've been in difficult areas like underworld or fissure without a monk primary and done quite well. Granted a monk primary is welcome in those areas, but far from necessary.

Now if you depart from healing and start getting into prot the e/mo really shines. An e/mo with protection can typically chain cast until the end of the battle, usually regarldess of the number of foes. This often more than offsets the piddly little 30ish heal you get from a rimary monk's prot spells, especially in a long and difficult battle when the primary monk runs out of energy 1/2 way through.

Having a "stick to your primary profession" mentality is overly restrictive and results in missing out on many effective builds. But hey, whatever floats your boat, I'll continue doing better than most with "bad" combos and skills

and....

Is EVERYONE carrying their Rez Signet? Not you, Monk

Check out mark of protection if you like healing seed

Nothing like a persistant Reversal of Fortune to keep a dumb w/mo alive who's charged ahead.

Hey, that's cool. I'd rather have you kick me than go into a mission with a group who can't take five minutes to coordinate skills. I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume your skillbar can't be tweaked and improved for each individual group with a little bit of communication.

I prefer Protective Spirit to Mark of Protection because it doesn't nuke my other prot skills and has a faster recharge. But that's a matter of style probably. I am also a BIG fan of Reversal of Fortune.

Shielding hands, otoh, makes me a sad panda. Maybe I just haven't found an effective combination of skills to justify its presence on my bar...

Back on topic for a moment again...
IMHO the explanation for this is simple: the majority of players are single-mindedly driven towards "beating the game." (Well, that and getting uber loot). If I only had a nickel for every time I've seen someone spamming "where's the next town?!?!" To each his/her own, but it's just too bad that these people aren't seeing the forest for the trees. I've made my best memories on days where it took 3 hours just to get around some corner in the Crystal Desert when everyone had 60% DP.

On a similar note, the majority of players, and many of the posters in this thread, seem to be stuck in the mindset that a character's primary profession is more important than secondary. But E/Mo's can be just as competent as Mo/X's as primary healers, Me/E's can nuke just as well as E/X's, and a Mo/R just might be an excellent trapper that eliminates the need for heavy-duting healing in the first place.

The convention that I've found most successful is to seek players that announce their roles rather than their professions: "support healer LFG," "nuker LFG," "ranger with winter LFG," etc. I don't even pay attention to their professions (unless I notice something especially peculiar, such as a W/R claiming to be "primary healer"). And I have never regretted using this convention.

BTW, I got through all the Ring of Fire missions just fine without any monks. I simply announced "Group with BOTH healer henchies LF more!" I found that people who responded to that kind of silliness were more mature players with keen strategy and a fun sense of humor that motivated the entire group. And if you learn how to protect your healer henchies, they are astonishingly good.

Why is healing seed not usable by a secondary monk?

Incidentally, I was just in a group (in the Life Bond/Balthazar's Spirit setup) that did the steal-the-sceptre mission. 2 guys dropped early, so we were down to 4.

So we had some fun. I put Life Bond on the other 3 and Balthazar's on myself, and it went pretty well -- I got mana back whenever anyone got hit, and we dealt with mobs.

Then the monk got the bright idea to Healing Seed me, and we stood in a clump.

Whenever anyone got hit, they only took half damage, I got a point of energy, and we all got healed for 26.

Kinda thought you'd like it. My guild elmo's and I have great fun.

However, MoP lasts 10 seconds with a 45 second cooldown. Not all that useful IMO.

Haha.. Dude I don't think you really know what you're talking about. Was in a group last night with 4 E/Mo's, a ranger, 2 warriors and a mes that went to the UnderWorld and we cleaned up in that place. Oh yeah. We had NO monk and we were kicking ass. The Underworld is about as tough as it gets. The E/Mo's were able to heal the whole group just fine while still being able to put out some major damage.

This is not true. Healing seed is quite good at 12 healing, and in fact most monks should not even be exceeding 14 healing as to put on a superior rune is such a big hp hit that they die far too easily when they grab agro.

There's no doubt it's an incredible spell, but to say that it's primary monk only is not accurate. I have both el and mo mains well past ascension, and to be honest I find seed more usable as an el due to my higher pool, and lower relative loss that 15 energy is versus a 45 energy monk, particulaly later in battles, even with peace and harmony and a necro for ritual.

Well, back to the original post.

I've started making my own groups and advertising with, "Forming a group for XXX mission, this is going to be a slow group that will communicate"

It gets rid of a lot of the rushers.

I'm a monk so it's a little easier for me to get a group formed up that way but I think it'll work for everyone.

My problem is kinda like yours. When I get to a new town I usually spend some time with Hench before I move on. I like to unlock all the map and I'm in no hurry. When I come back in and am ready to join a group I need to add res to my skill lineup and swap out my skills the dish damage or give me speed for ones that heal the group.

btw, I love El/Mo's as healers, heck they have 70+ energy. The only real difference is they have to plan a little further ahead than a primary Mo's to make up for the smaller size of their heals.

Or... they take some nifty protection/ward/hex removal spells and help the primary monk not have to heal nearly so often or so much...

An Ele with high energy storage with a monk secondary are good healers. Divine Favor makes a difference, but so does having 80+ energy.

I suppose based on your post that you don't even pick a secondary profession... why bother?

You obviously haven't been in any of the groups where my El/Mo was the only healer. Ele/Mo can make a great healer if played properly.

LMAO! I was our party's only healer for the entire Fire Islands quests and missions! And since we finished the game that night and had no dp, I guess I did just fine, huh?

What I meant by "high" I meant your standard 12-14 range. Healing Seed will not last long enough if you are primarily a Elementalist with a few points in Healing. The 25 second recharge time is an eternity if it expired 10 seconds after you cast it. Kind of pointless to use the skill if it's unavailable to you over half the time. With proper equipment (faster recharge time, etc) you can actually have another Healing Seed ready before the first wears off. There have been countless battles I've been in as a monk that has sat around twiddling my thumbs as one Healing Seed did all of the work.

They're not talking about elementalists with 12 fire magic and 5 healing prayers or something. They're talking about e/mos with 12 healing prayers 10+x elemental line and 8+1 energy storage, or 12 healing prayers 10 protection prayers 8+1 energy storage.

aka: use them refund points dammit!

Okay, I've been avoiding posting my thoughts the El/Mo build here for awhile as it is not the topic of the thread, but it seems as though the topic is pretty much gone..

Creating an El/Mo with the express purpose of playing like a Monk isn't really the most efficient way to heal (or protect, smiting is debatable) I've seen alot of people pointing out that an El/Mo's heals only lack the DF bonus, and that by simply outlasting a primary monk they can pull ahead in the overall healing output. But one of the things your forgetting is that an El/Mo does not have access to runes to enhance their healing potential. At 16 healing prayers and 12 divine favor the majority of healing spells from a Monk heal double that of an El/Mo with just 12 healing prayers. There are some spells that the difference is smaller than that, but playing a class combo that already has predefined limitations leeches away your adaptability, something you will miss greatly.

Entropius hit on something to an extent here;

But that isn't even the full scope of the situation, if a Monk's heals are twice as effective as an El/Mo's then the advantage of a large energy pool is negated, then when you finally hit the point where both characters are drained in terms of healing output its as though a Monk has twice the energy regeneration that an El/Mo does.

And now, just to cover my butt, let me say this... I fully believe that an El/Mo can and should play the role of healer as needed. Due to the fact that some monks don't know what the hell their doing, or are utter jerks, or just aren't available there are times when I've asked an El/Mo to heal instead, or to cover healing as a secondary, it is a 100% perfectly viable way to play. Do I think that its the best way to do it? No, not really, but its been said before... That is one of the beauties of this game, it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what I enjoy. Have fun. Enjoy the game. Play as you wish. We all have our roles.

I love E/Mos. Almost more than Mo* primaries...

Simple reason. Energy Storage. Get me more frequent heals vs. VERY FEW high powered ones. What's more, the Earth Magic line means LOTS of damage prevention ^_^

I'll try to continue the trend of actually discussing the original poster's thoughts (while ignoring the "elems can't heal" ignorance).

My primary character is an E/Mo and I've had plenty of problems with zero communication/rushing after joining a pug. One pug in-particular was bad. Upon joining I see there isn't even a secondary monk in the group other than myself. I greeted them and asked to give me a minute to respec and loadup on healing. Not more than 10 seconds later without warning we were out the door...

I asked them what the hurry was, why they didn't give me a chance to change skills, and who they were expecting to keep them alive. They said "you", I fired back with a "good luck and don't ever ask me to join your group again", and promptly warped back.

rangers aren't gimped.

That being said, a secondary monk can never! ever! heal as well as a monk.

That's why you're an ele and they're a monk.

You can play as a support healer, but can never equal one in terms of healings.




If you have someone in your group who thinks that he can heal as well, the best way to deal with him is to give him the boot, or leave the group. Because quite obviously you've got a noob spouting non-sense.

an ele/mo can heal just as good as a monk.
think of it this way, eles heal for 25% less but have twice as much energy. It evens out and sometimes a e/mo is even better because of the ability to last much longer than a monk.

LMAO I play a E/Mo regulary. From Dragons Lair on I ended up being the primary healer or it was me and another E/Mo doing all the healing cause of a lack of monks. Never did we have more than 2 peopl dead from dragons lair until the first Ring Of Fire mission. I have also played tombs and the Fissuire of Woe with primary monks and me as a secondary and the monk left and I had to heal and we made HoH in tombs and cleared the fissure.

Now back to the topic of this post as ther are many threads comparing E/Mo and Mo/xx as healers.

I hate it when people dont wait a few miniutes to hammer out stragey and change skills or when u get a stragey and then no one follows it. With the E/(insert any casting class) your skills and attributes are expecially important. I have found that the people least likely to wait are the groups lead by W/Mo 's. Just leave the group and tell them that they should wait in the future. this is really fun in the tombs but you should wait to leave until after the first matcch starts to make the lesson sting more.

monks are the best healers but are not the only good healers

for what a group *needs* -- E/mos heal just as well as monks
(I'm not saying you get the same heals - but you get sufficient heals)


plenty of groups do well with no primary monk in group

I agree with the original poster completely. I would rather have someone kick me from the group if they are that much against any sort of coordination. The best way to deal with this is simply to join a decent guild, though. There is no way to make the average player care about common sense.

About the other topic here - E/Mo vs Mo/*

E/Mo can heal perfectly well in PvE. I wouldn't expect to see anyone use a healing E/Mo in PvP, but a protections E/Mo can work (provided he's not maintaining enchants). The big thing is Divine Favor, of course, but it's not how most people seem to be looking at it. It's not just the bonus heal you get, but there are some excellent abilities in the line as well.

For example, try that life bond + balthazar's spirit build as an E/Mo, and you miss out on Blessed Signet. That can give you a great deal of energy back every 10 seconds and far, far surpass the benefit of energy storage.

Try your healing elementalist against a divine boon healer with 16 in divine favor and 12 in healing prayers, and 6 in blood magic (for Offering of Blood).

Sure, the E/Mo has more energy at the start of a battle, but there is no chance that an E/Mo can even slightly keep pace with a properly designed healing monk. He has absolutely no chance whatsoever of keeping up in either duration or in healing power because the Boon heals are extremely efficient and cheap to cast. Healing Seed is just as powerful for a Monk primary. The 15 energy is no hassle even with divine boon, because its effect is such an efficient heal that it saves you more than it costs most of the time.

The E/Mo in the hands of a good player can, however, easily do the healing duties for a PvE mission. They are by no means weak healers. It's just that a monk is far better.

I also want to respond to something Moskel said.

The Divine Favor bonus may be meaningless, but you should note that Spell Breaker linked to the Divine Favor attribute. With a DF of zero you get 5 (I think) seconds, 12 DF gives 15 seconds, and 16 DF gives 18 seconds.

Getting some players to talk strategy before a mission is about as hard as getting some forum users to stick to topic.

I try to solve the former by purposely delaying starting the mission to screen out the "OMG can we just GO!1!" players. I don't kick the antsy ones (not yet anyway) but it gives me some clues about who I can count on in the mission and who I can't.

Dalia

people dont like wasting time planning for easy PvE runs...

They also don't like "wasting time" planning for the hardest PvE runs either

You should be ready for anything, even on the easy runs. It sets precident, it gets habits going. If you are used to doing it every time then its easy to do it again. Even when I go back and help friends with some of the very easiest missions I make sure that all the bases are covered, because it'd just be silly not to.

Just wanted to inform you that 'mend conditions' is not linked to Divine Favor.

Divine Favor, the attribute the player is missing, heals for 3 everytime a monk spell is cast.
Assuming a player tries their best to max divine favor, im guessing the highest level is around 16-17, which would equal about 50 hp heal with every monk spell.
Now while this is a nice bonus, personally it doesnt lead me to believe that divine favor pwns all other secondary monk builds for keeping your team alive.
Fast casting and energy storage could easilly be more effective at keeping people alive in certain situations.

I would imagine, for example, that when facing a lot of hex spamming necros and mesmers, and someone has the bright idea to cast that spell that spreads hexes to all nearby foes (I forget its name, outbreak?), that being able to cast a monk spell on an individual and give them 50 hp more might not be as much use as being able to remove those hexes asap.

Im quite sure when faced with a team that ALL have -10 health regen, and the enemy only had to put -10 on one ally, that the groups healer would be rather concerned, and 50hp extra per monk spell might not do the business.

Anyway it comes down to what you can create with the tools you have been given and not what everyone assumes a build should be, and any newb who thinks otherwise is exactly that, a newb.

51 points for 16 divine favor plus 73 points for divine boon means that anything the boon healer casts heals for 124 points plus whatever the effect of the spell is.

Hard to beat that sort of efficiency. Even if you have infinite energy, you can't outheal that in the most extreme situations. The boon healer just heals for a lot more in a given amount of time, and he won't run out of energy for a good long while. All of his spells cost only 5 energy, and offering of blood can be cast every 15 seconds. And dont forget that only a Monk primary can make use of Healing Touch to keep himself alive.

I know it's been a while, but yesterday we did Thunderhead keep without primary monks, we were two E/Mo reskilled with healing and I think only 1 person died.

Most of the group I saw were looking for 2 primary monks to get into the mission.. we did it without one !

This is a fun topic. As a ranger you really need to coordinate /w your team. When facing nasty groups of Mergoyles, I like to use Nature's Renewal. You can imagine how pissed off a wa/mo gets when you strip all of his enhancements right as he enters combat! Necromancers need to coordinate on corpse usage. Mesmers can drain, interrupt, hex, or play any number of roles depending on the team's build. You're right -- the difference between a good team and a poor team is the planning.

In one of the betas I seem to recall everyone in the party having the ability to 'cancel' entering the mission. I really liked that. Now, whenever I've not been given proper notice -- I click 'Leave' as soon as the "Entering mission in ... seconds" displays on my screen; or, if I somehow don't see that, when I'm re-skilling, I simply disconnect as soon as I've entered the mission. I hate doing it this way -- but if a group isn't going to give sufficient warning, then it is their own rudeness that bit them.

..

In PvE, I think a El/Mo is better. Let me explain. For PvE setups, you have a series of disjoint 1-2 minute encounters -- rarely do you have an on-going 3+ minute battle. Further, you can almost always rest between the encounters for an indefinite period of time. This gives an El/Mo plenty of time to recover their full energy storage. So, overall, I'd say an El/Mo has an _advantage_ in PvE over a primary monk. That said, in PvP, where the encounters can be long and tiresome, a healer El/Mo is far far worse than a primary monk; once that initial pool of energy is gone, the primary monk's efficiencies kick-in and really start to make a difference.

You don't have to be forced to not heal just becuase you don't have Devotion Prayers. Ooooh, wow! 33+ hp with every healing spell. Yes, it helps alot, but missions aren't the HoH. You'll never come up against an elite Korean Charr TS guild on The Great Northern Wall mission.

Anyone can put up alot of healing, even a W/Mo; things like Healing Hands and Breeze Healing go a LONG way when you have no monk. In most missions it's hard to find even 8 people that match well together, let alone a monk!

I've seen times when I was the ONLY person in the Abbadon's Mouth waiting area. And other times the only monks around have gone AFK on a dancing emote. It's good to have people who can heal them selves and others, you can't always rely on the Monks.

If A.net really wanted to reduce the high monk demand, they should add more and better healing spells for characters. The high monk demand is partially due to the fact that most characters can barely heal themselves. Healing Signet-heals at the cost of nearly double damage with maxed armor. Aura of Restoration-never seemed reallly usefull to me, cast as spell just to be healed for a % of the amount of energy. Troll Ungent is fairly decent, but when Healing Breeze can top that like it's nothing, whats the point.

Actually, all of his spells with cost (spell energy amount) + 2, if he uses Divine Boon. That also takes away a pip of regen. Offering of Blood gives me 14 energy with 8 or 9 Blood Magic. So you're only gaining 9 energy each Offering of Blood. That's only enough to cast another heal spell. The monk using Divine Boon in the last missions will run out of energy fast.


As for the E/Mo can't be a main healer in the last missions. Have you ever tried it, to say it can't be done? Wouldn't a primary Monk need a backup healer, so why couldn't a E/Mo do it with a backup healer also?

On topic:

Getting organized before the mission is paramount. The most important thing for me is to find out who the caller is and that everyone knows what to do when a target is called. Yeah...there are people that just don't know what to do when a target is called.
My second toon is a primary monk and there is nothing more frustrating to be in a group that attacks 3-4 different targets at the same time. Prolongs the fight and stresses my mana pool not to mention that in the worst cases some people are out of range of my healing and i need to run around to keep them healthy.
Attack the same target and stay in range...is that so hard to understand??


On the secondary issue of E/M vs M/x as primary healers:

To me the most important issue is that an E/M forced to be a healer is a waste of a primary proffesion. Think about it: Instead of dealing massive amounts of damage you are reduced to a healer on 'wellfare'.
Let me qualify the last statement:
A Mo with DF at 12 that has boon on him gets +61 bonus on EVERY monk spell.

So with 12 at healing the following is true:

Orizon gets = 60 +61
World of healing = 67 +61 (+83 if <50%)
Kiss = 51 + 17(for each Ench) +61
Mend ailment = +61 (+57 for each remaining cond)

All 4 spells cost 5 energy, are fast casting and highly spamable.

The only spell that an E/M has to match this output is Heal Other but what do you do when that is recharging? In the heat of battle 2-3 secs might as well be an eternity. Also in the late missions where the squishes in your group get pounded for a 1/3 or more of their health per hit, a 60 here and a 50 there is not going to cut it.

YES....if there is not a monk around an El/Mo is the best alternative. But If i was an El/Mo and a group asked me to be a healer I'd be pissed.

To the guys that say that they finished this or that mission with only E/M as healers...well, I've been in a few good groups in fissure that most of the time I only had to Heal Seed one of the warriors before each and every major encounter and then stand back and watch as the damage dealers did their job. Cast an orizon there and maybe a mend ailment here, but nothing more than that. A realy stress free experience. But how often you are in a group like that?

If any of you guys need a Monk for whatever reason look me over.If I'm logged in i'd be glad to help out. Finished the game with both my toons and currently trying to find a good group that has the time and it's willing to clear Fissure.

Sent.-

That 10 energy also takes DOUBLE the amount of time to regen. A monk with mostly 5 energy extremely efficient heals (word of healing anyone, healing touch to keep yourself healed) can keep healing for a very long time without running dry. An e/mo with 80 energy is forced to use more expensive heals because he/she doesn't have the divine favor bonus, and will not be able to keep healing once the initial 80 energy is gone (read -- longer battles).

Think about it this way -- an E/Mo using primarily 10 energy heals gets 4 pips of energy regen... and so does a Mo primary. The difference is the Mo uses 5 energy per heal, and it only takes 3.75 seconds to regen that energy . It takes 7.5 seconds to regen the 10 energy the elementalist used.

For shorter battles, sure an E/Mo can do fairly well.