decided to create a MONk (small rant)

well I have a level 20 Necromancer/Elementalist and love that character.

after hardly ever finding any worth while monks to play with I decided i would make one. M/W. Its a PURE Monk.
Healing and devine Favor Monk.

At first I was like "WHOA" its hard enough keeping myself alive but now I have to watch everyone else as well! with Small parties it wasn't too bad at all but now that im grouping with parties of 6 its much harder to keep everyone alive. I'm doing a great job so far and have been asked to be added to friends lists so they can call on me again.
the funny thing is I really don't get to watch the game or see too much of whats going on. I just stare at the 6 red bars (or pink/green depending on the situation) and keep everyone alive. if it gets hairy for me i hit "warrior Sprint" and get out quick to then return and save the day. MONKs are cool.

and i found its SOOOOO much easier to do missions and bonuses with a "quality" healer on board.

my only couple gripes are:<Start Rant>

team mates that after a battle quickly run off to do more battle when im low on energy and trying my damndest to still keep up with them and save their dumb asses. THAT and also team mates that don't protect me well. I mean C'MON im saving their butts CONSTANTLY and no one cares that Im being targeted by the mobs and helps me out. so I end up having to fight them off, AND save myself, along with all my team mates. GAH!

anywho.... MONKS rock.

P.S. skills ive invested in:

L14
Healing Prayers: 10
Smiting Prayers: 2 (this will be removed though in favor of devine favor)
Devine Favor: 5

I know excatly what you mean

lol its a good thing i played through the game already or I'd miss everyhting!

yeah. classic story so far.
Dont start as a monk if you want to see the game.

Unless of course you are playing a smiting monk like me... I only have to worry about healing myself... and if I notice our prim healing monk is having trouble, then I start to help out a bit with healing the party...

wait... there's more to the game than those red bars???

thats cool, but most groups apon finding out that you are really a holy warrior, frown on you. (generally speaking)

everyone expect a Monk to be a Healer. I knew this going in and since my biggest gripe before was finding said "healer Monk" I decided upfront thats what I'd be. a support character, a healer.

Now protect my ass ,(in my best Dave Chappelle voice: "I'm a healer Bitch!"

ha ha ha ....sadly yes. and if you look around to see; a party member will die

Ya I've had a bit of trouble finding groups sometimes (not too often though... most groups I've seen are willing to take almost anyone...and if I can't find anyone I just go off alone... lol) While in a group I can keep myself alive (one less person for the healing monk to worry about) and if I need to I can generally keep one other person... but other then that I am still trying to prove myself as a smiter! Hopefully my luck will hold out and I will continue to be able to find groups when needed...

What I do when my monk is being attacked and is in danger, rather then just being annoyed by a bone fiend, is to run to the warriors and dump whatever is attacking me off on them.

i have been doing this LMAO. thats how I have been ditching 'em exactly!

well for just the fact that you will keep your self alive I'll party with you anytime! one less person to worry about!

rofl yeah i dont even look at my screen, just the red bars.. if its too low, click it and cast a spell

When you start getting into parties like that (6-8 players) Get more than one monk in the party because I am starting to get sick of playing monk because people always complain...a note to those people...HOW ABOUT YOU TRYING OUR POSITION FOR ONCE WITH ONLY 40 ENERGY!


-agamond

Made a monk once, played through to yaks and finally deleted. It's the least fun I've ever had playing a game. Getting kudos and such from the party is nice (other classes don't get this), but the actual gameplay was like a dumbed down version of wackamole.

Unfortunately, I've pretty much unlocked the skills for everything but monk and warrior, so I'm pretty much stuck with monk/warrior, unless I wanna be part of the almighty paladin zerg.

^^ be a smiting paladin zerg instead

Or even funnier... my better-half/boss/life organizer (wife) has a W/Mo18.. I looked at her skill bar the other day and saw she had 7 monk skills. I was like "wtf are you doing?!!" and she said, "well damn alesia keeps letting everyone die so I thought I better help out!" Hahaha!!!

lmao ya right. they prefer to run full on into a enemy mob with no way of keeping them selves alive..knowing that we will. try being a monk! hell try bringing along your "healing signit" warriors. that would help out a bit.

First your first problem, I have discovered a perfect solution: it's an Elite Skill called "Unyielding Aura." It ressurects allies with full HP and Energy, and if they die again they don't get DP-- but you have to maintain their life with an enchantment (gives the normal -1 E regen drain).

That means: Dumb Warrior "Iown Joo" goes and aggros a mob, and before the first is done he aggros another and dies. Rather than ressurecting him normally to do this again, you put him on a leash using Unyielding Aura; you ressurect him, but if he tries to run off again you cut the enchantment-- and boom, he's dead (with no extra DP).

It's the perfect solution to keep them from doing stupid things

However, when you face enemies with Disenchant spells it gets . . . messy. Oh yeah, and randomly cutting enchantments to just kill people is the most hilarious thing you can ever do as a Monk.


In response to your other point, I've actually found that once you reach the Crystal Desert, being a Monk actually requires very little watching of the health bars. I do more group leading, map directions, and target calling than I do bar watching-- and that is how a good group should be. Also, people tend to listen to Monks more in terms of leading because they already put a lot of trust in the Monk to keep them alive; if you keep them at full health, they trust you to lead them on the right path.

It's easy to tell a bad group: you have to constantly watch their health bars and spam healing spells just to keep the alive. That is not what happens in a good group, so it is easy for a Monk to tell when it's a bad group. Once you get better spells and higher stats, it doesn't take much to heal people.

Also, it helps that tougher monsters spread out the ability levels of players: if they sucked before, they're dead no matter what you do later in the game, and if they were good before, you almost always keep them at full health later in the game (and when they do die, they knew it was gonna happen).

But you must try Unyielding Aura! That is the greatest spell in the entire game for amusement! "CHARG-- WTF DEAD?!" "Whoopsie! My cat hit the keyboard!"

Agreed! For all those people that are always crying to be healed and then flame their monk when they die: Try bringing along your own healing skills... every profession has at least one... and you'll only need to use it sometimes. I very much doubt that there is any healing monk out there that will leave you to completly heal yourself just because you bring along one back up healing skill. They will always be behind you casting away... but sometimes they need a bit of help!

You complain too much. So I stare at hp bars a lot, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing I do. Sure, if you are single monk in 8ppl party, you're just *asking* for it, but that's your own fault. Unless your team composes of total morons, you don't need to heal everytime someone loses 3hp - plus you can always get Alesia to assist you. Basically I(we) used her everytime when there was place in party(I almost exclusively party with guild members). Hell, as a Me secondary I had to be anti-caster few times - I couldn't do it if red bars were my only concern, no?

Edit: About Unyielding Aura - it's an Elite, I much prefer Word of Healing or Peace and Harmony, or maybe even Spellbreaker. You put warrior on a "leash", but you lower your effectivness as a Monk. There's regular spell that does the same for 30 seconds(Vengeance? or something)