Monks - And why they are underplayed -

Mo/W, Although not many people use them they can be great in combat, and healing

the great freedom of a Mo/W is great. on a quest you can eather be a Tank (warrior) or Healler (monk) but the down side on this is that your skill points are very spread out and that sucks , so what i found out is that if your a Mo/W its much better to just choose your path eather smiting warrior or all out healing monk.

I play a monk. I get the occasional "Thank you" in PVE, and generally lots of thanks in the Hall of Heroes where skilled healer monks are few and far between. I stick with my parties through thick and thin untill everybody ditches in the tombs, so I generally get a lot of thanks for that alone. I know how good it feels to be appreciated, so no matter what class, I thank whoever I think is doing a good job.

"Thanks for the blood wells, they really saved me some mana!"
"Nice job interrupting that nasty spell!"
"Nice target call!"

And other lines like that are not uncommon to be seen from me. Unlike most players, I appreciate everybody who does their job. Often times, the ranger desirves the thanks for saving us all instead of the monk who wasn't doing a great job. Also, when in the tombs, I try to start parties with less popular classes since I tend to play monk in the tombs so I fit in any party. I've done knockdown/aftershock parties, ranger parties, and even necromancer parties. It works well, actually!

Need More Monks In M My Team!!!!!!!!!

And here is what im gonna say as monk:
"Axe the enemy!"
"Thanks for diing!"
"okay keep rushing, one less to care for!"
"If it heals or protects, just do more damage!"

I adamantly disagree that removal of hexes & conditions is moot. Remove Hex is a cheap & fast removal & can be spammed just fast as someone can cast hexes. Smite Hex(or the Mez Shatter Hex for you Mo/Me) deals a good amount of damage to any enemy near the person you remove the hex from. Not only are you treating your teammies by removing these conditons/hexes but you are also putting more work on the enemy as well. I have completed the game with my Monk & I never left town w/o some form of hex/condition removal & I managed to heal my teammies pretty damn good.



This is the basic bar I use. I change a spell out every now & depending on needs or whatever. Even tho I have Mend Condition(Protection Prayers) & Smite Hex(Smiting) I still consider myself a Pure Healer & advertise myself as such. The Protective Spirit is what I consider my "Xtra" spell. I change that out sometimes with Unyielding Aura or whatever suits my fancy.

I do not need 7 skills that do nothing but heal to keep my team alive. I only use 4 spells that ppl would call 'Pure Healing' & I do just fine.

Now on to something else... about not healing ppl. I will continue to heal most buttheads however there comes a point where I have to decide what is better.... keep the team alive or keep that butthead alive. I will always choose the team. If that means leaving him on the ground & continuing the mission w/o him then that is what I do. As a Monk my first duty is to my TEAM not the individuals that make up that team. If it better for the team for you to die I will let you die. If it is better for the team that you stay down & arent rezzed then you will stay down & wont be rezzed. This not only includes leaving buttheads that insult everybody & lower everybodys attitude but also the well meaning players... the good ppl that have too much DP to be anything other than a mana pit.

More Monks' & even more players need to understand the concept of triage.



-EDIT-
I should point out that I am strictly PvE.

i have found a fun monk build. M/N healer. don't put alot of points into healing prayers because frankly its not needed. divine favor adds just as much healing and to any spell you cast on your allies. there are 2 routes you can take. the first of course is the warlord. raising lots of minions and keeping them alive with heal area. this works quite well when 15-20 minions are running around. plus you have putrid explosion so you do have some area dmg and high dmg might i add. then 2nd route is a cursing monk using suffering and mark of pain (nice area dmg too). this gives you lots of options having 2 death spells or 2-3 cures and the rest healing you make a well balanced monk.

and the interface for the monk is just great. the problems come in when people can't use it effectively and don't know what they are fighting against.

You're WRONG!

Mine does 53 points of heal whenever I remove a condition. Plus, 38 points of heal because of Divine Favor. That's 91 heal everytime I remove a condition. With 2 second recharge time, you can spam it. So, you can keep a tank fully healed just from removing a condition every 2 seconds when the enemy spams that spell.

Use Archane Echo on top of that you can almost the whole group alive just from two spells.

This type of fore thought is missing in most monks game play. They are just heal-bots. However, there are a lot of good suggestions here. Dwana's Kiss great against hexes and conditions, too

Mo/N20, Miyu Mitsurugi.
HP: 405
MP: 44

Stats:
Blood Magic: 8
Healing Prayers: 11
Protection Prayers: 9
Devine Favor: 15 (delivers +45 hp per cast)

Skill Listing:
Orison of Healing (Heals for 102)
Signet of Devotion (Heals for 100)
Healing Breeze (Pip regen of 7, negating most hexes and giving regen)
Heal Other (Heals for 186)
Healing Seed (17 sec, Heals for 23 upon impact of target character)
Protective Spirit (16 sec)
Well of Power (14 sec, HP regen +4, MP regen +2)
Rebirth (Most monks pack a resurrect spell.)

A heal bot? Possibly. But i've kept just about any party alive using my method. Reguardless of most people's stupidity. Not only do I heal hp. I heal people's MP as well as my own. (Which suits most casters just fine.)

Call me selfish but I almost never heal the other monk in the party. My heals are almost always for the party tank.

Speaking of which, I was helping out a team for the Hell's Precipice mission with my warrior. Right from the start, I noticed heals were slow in coming. But with another warrior sharing the damage, it wasn't so bad. Then when we got to the lighted domes, the other warrior left, and someone aggroed a large group of monsters. I was totally surrounded by the fire beasts and with all the dumb conditions continually placed on me, purge conditions which I cast on myself didn't help...that's when I bailed out...no healing and surrounded by too many monsters = certain death.

You beat the game yet? Let me know when you do. I like your build though. Necro is a great secondary class. I like these odd builds like this they work well.


Never use Purge condition always use Mend condition per my previous post.

Don't act all high and mighty. There are as many bad monks as there are bad mesmers, warriors or any other profession. To claim players of one class are better than players of another is a fallacy. The fact remains as thus: there are no bad classes, only bad players. And all players do stupid things every once in a while.

Honestly, I think you underestimate other professions as much as you think other professions don't give enough credit to monks. All I know is with my skills as a mesmer/ranger, I can make a monk useless in battle. How bout them apples? LOL

On a serious note, instead of creating an angry and difficult-to-read flame, you may want to instead focus your energy on writing something positive. For example, instead of whining you could have offerred "as a monk, at times it can be difficult to keep everyone healed, please be patient," or "I humbly ask warriors to not swing if they have empathy cast on them. If a spell targets you, please check to see if it looks like such and such a design so you will know to stop swinging for approximately 15 seconds."

You could make suggestions for strategies that other players could employ that will help a group that has a monk - such as "Mesmers, if you cast empathy on all enemies who attack and backfire on all enemies who cast our groups will be a lot more successful."

Lastly, you should be open to consider new possibilities - such as the effectiveness of Chaos, which is one of the most damaging spells in the game. If a mesmer has Chaos and Arcane Echo in their lineup they can do double the damage - approximately 280 damage in 10 seconds with a reasonable amount of attribute points in domination. That is serious damage to a great number of targets.


One of the most important things all groups must do is sit down and talk about their strategy before they go into battle - be it PvP or PvE. All classes should discuss the skills they plan to mem before the battle begins and ask if anyone has any specific requests. I always suggest that people employ any self heal spells they have, a defensive skill, etc. I always make sure that I have at least one slot dedicated to our group tactic or a request made by one of the members (for example, a shatter hex spell is often requested).

I agree with Tuefel about healer monks only needing 4-5 healing spells. I run Mend Ailment and Smite Hex. I run Rebirth. Then I run Healing Breeze, Osirion of Healing, Dwayna's Kiss, Heal Party and Heal Other. Notice the lack of an elite? I do fine all over. Even if your smiting and protection are low, like mine, you still need hex/condition breakers to be successful, otherwise you'd run out of juice quick.

Oh, and I don't see a shortage of monks. If you stand around the ToA for awhile, more people are looking for nukers.

YES! That's it. It's amazing how people just join a group and head out with no planning at all. Then everyone dies and blames the warroir for rushing or the monk for not healing when, in fact, the entire mission was doomed to fail before it even began.

I found that later in the game a healing/ protection works better, especially for FOW or UW. There is now way you can heal for +250 damage fast enough. (Aegis and protective Spirit, it greatlly reduces the amount of damage taken.)

I especially enjoy for hex removal Inspire Hex, It gives back energy, plus in case you have extra energy you can cast the hex on a foe. Plus Mend Ailment is a must for energy conservation is 5 energy compared to 10 energy for Healing Breeze.

The only times I got complemented was in FOW when the other monk dc and I had to heal the entire group. Or a few times when the group I was in, ended with 3 people to finish the mission. (this was pre desert).

Inspire Hex works great when the foe cast hex to regain some energy, but you might run into problems if the foe is not casting hexes. If I know ahead of time that in the area there aren't going to be many hexes I also add Channeling or Energy Tap.