To Mend or not to Mend?

On a related note, don't feel too bad if you thought Mending was good. Some guilds who've been around a long time and made Guild of the Week still do.

This is all fine and dandy, but if you ask me, that -1 energy regen is better used on Divine Boon. Boon can really, really, really increase your healing powers. Look at it this way:

Orison of healing gives you 60 hp @ 12 for 5 mana. With Boon going, you get another 61 hp, for the cost of 1 pip of regen and 2 more energy. 120 hp for 7 energy before you even add in divine favor, which should be somewhere around 40 or 46.

Word of Healing: 67 + 83 (under 50%) + 61 (Boon) + 43 (Favor) = 254 hp healed for 7 energy. Just over 36 hp per point of energy used.

It works for any monk spell--don't forget that. Running Boon in PvP and spamming Mend Ailment will do WONDERS. People underestimate the amount of damage done in battles through poison, bleeding, and deep wounds. If you're really strapped for mana, try running Divine Spirit with Boon and spamming 5-energy spells like Orison, Mend Ailment/Condition, Word of Healing, Healing Touch, Guardian, or Reversal of Fortune.

AAAAAGH! Not this argument again, who brought this thread back (as I bump it).

The answer to this is one of playstyle, like I mentioned days before. If you like it, use it. If you dont, then dont use it. No reason to act all high and mighty about it, you like it or you dont. Quit trying to enforce your opinions on others. *Stares at Eonwe*

Dude, it's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of efficiency. You try to pick the skills which are most efficient, not the ones that, in your opinion, look good. And mending is just bad in PvP, where 4 health per second is useless when you're getting hit for damage in the hundreds. You're much better off with spells that deliver all the health in as little time as possible to counteract damage spikes. If anything, take healing breeze. It's slightly less efficient at 18 health/ energy, but it delivers that health more than twice as fast.

No, it is in fact a matter of opinion. The way you describe things, everyone should run the same 8 skills. Because there has to be a 'most efficient' set up.

As to your 'mending is bad in pvp' comment, I think most people would agree. I thought the conversation was regarding PvE.

4 health per second? What are you talking about, everyone has talked about 3 or 4 pips, which is 6 or 8 health per second. Sounds to me like you dont know what your even talking about.

Bottom line is, it has its uses. The reason it does is because I say so, and others do as well. If you dont think it does, dont use it. I have already said that I wouldnt even use it myself, that doesnt mean that others cant though. It is playability, if you are using blessed signet, its probably a good idea to run mending, for example.

No, the hostility isn't warranted- and since you think that his logic is so faulty, maybe you should be letting your reasoning be the focus, rather than hostility.

If you really want to convince someone of something, make it easy and graceful for them to agree, instead of putting their back up against the wall by being hostile.

Mending is good, but not as good as people expect it to be. As a W/Mo that's soloing and using melee weapons, Mending is good.

So anyway, in PvP, I have a +4 Mending on me. Know why? A Monk casts it on me while I cast 2 Life Bonds on both Monks. Works perfectly most of the time.

Well, I'm going to have to say it's good based on your build. My healer Char. is a Me/Mo so I know all about the whole "It'll get removed right at the begining" deal (that's My job after all ).
But for my Me/Mo it works great, I've even tried a couple of time's without it and compared the results to me with it and I tend to do better with it on. It helps me not worry about ME so much and focus on my interupts and healing my teams Primary Healer and our Nuker.
And as for the whole energy side of things. I don't worry about my energy one bit, I have means of stealing the energy I need being a Mesmer (not to mention it can really screw their Healers who need the energy ).
So all in all I crank up the Inspiration Magic, Healing Magic, and either Illusion, or Domination with the leftovers (depending on what role I need to play), and then I interupt, remain self sufficient, and protect our casters (by healing and screwing around with their attackers )

If you think about it, mending is a good counter to the monk skill "strength of honor" or maybe a conjure spell from someone with about 5-6 points in their magic skill. It might not keep you alive in an intense battle, but it might mitiage some excess damage you take from those spells or reduce the effect of a dot. Also once it gives you 2-3 pips of health, it would counter the effects of poison, bleeding, or things like that. So it might have a little use as a supplemental healing spell, but not as a main source of healing.

I use mending with Balthazaars Aura, healing breeze and blessed signet on my hammer warrior.

Before I engage an enemy ill have 2 enchantments and 20 energy, 0 regen. If they use strip enchantments then i either rely on my monk, or go with healing breeze alone repeatedly, until i get the opportunity to put them back on.

Blessed signet gives me 3 energy everytime I use it, being a hammer warrior I knockdown foes so have the opportunity to use skills/signets then. Very rarely will i have 0 energy, and 5 energy is all i need to use berserker stance or something like that.

If Im taking damage my energy increases, and my tanking of +10 regen constantly looks after itself. Its not the greatest tank, but thats not my aim.
If im not taking damage then i use blessed signet at opportnistic times to get some energy.

Very few casters of any description will survive long under a barrage from max damage max possible hammer mastery and superior strength level hammer warrior using berserker stance, and if they do i have my adrenaline skills mighty blow and earthshaker. The other skill is either a res, or irrisistable blow.

I dont need many attack skills, I just need them available for use often. I can manage my own health and energy if i need to, and when I play well I dont see any major 'omg u use mending n00b' type flaws in my build.

Unless your a monk every type of self heal is going to have its flaws and weaknesses, either you give them up, or you realise it wont be able to handle every problem you might encounter. How the player as an individual uses these skills determines what the effect is, and whether it is effective or not.

Ill agree mending on its own sucks, except for annoying the under lvl 20 ranger on the opposing team for a few seconds before the fight Id say being able to manage your own energy levels when you need to as a warrior so you can keep a constant +10 health regen on yourself is better than nothing, as long as it doesnt distract you from your task.

You need to understand one thing: Aaaaagh is never wrong. IF you are looking at efficiency, then its not your best choice. However, efficiency is not always what your going for. When running through a zone, efficiency isnt relevant. When using blessed sig, its more efficient to run mending...

Dont be so narrow minded. Again, I go to gameplay, and style. Also, yes mending isnt the most mana efficient, however, once its cast it stays (barring enchantment removal) that alone can be a great benefit, as other spells can be interupted.

Time to take off the goggles..

I should have been more careful with my choice of words; "warranted" is meant to be a synonym of "quite understandable" rather than "deserved" or "the best way" in this case. That, and my post didn't completely reflect what I wanted to say factually (I shouldn't post after skipping sleep).

I know it's not the best way to convince someone of wrongdoing, and that focusing on the reasoning is better (which I will do). However, understand that Blackace has not only managed to be accurate many times in his assessments, but has had to deal with imperfect reasoning many, many times. At this point I can understand him being annoyed when he has to deal with imperfect reasoning. To an extent, I can sympathize after reading many of the messy discussions that have taken place in GWG and finding that some portion of the population really isn't qualified to speak about class/game/skill balance.

When commenting on a thread whose purpose is to determine whether or not Mending is worthwhile in general (like what the OP was proposing), I would expect an overall picture of mending as a direct response to the OP. When an overall picture isn't provided, people operate under the assumption that what is being presented is that poster's overall assessment and react accordingly.

You said quite a bit more than "mending + low health + prot spirit make a great combo", and combined with an audience relatively fed up with imperfect reasoning and insults people got hostile (see my response to the post above). Allow me to explain:

When commenting on the general use of mending, I believe that one should give, at the very least, an overall assessment of mending. This was not done.

The situation you describe is an extremely specialized build that is not generally taken due to other risks. It requires extremely small amounts of max life and an additional enchantment that lowers the damage cap per hit which absolutely cannot be removed or a very quick death will result. It also has a massive susceptibility to health degen, and high-HP healing spells are made less efficient because of the risk of overhealing.

Yes, Mending is made much more effective here if you can accept the above constraints. But does this address Mending's (lack of) utility in the OP's original context? Not at all.

This can be (easily) taken to say that the Mending-bashers are fools to dismiss Mending because none of them apparently have the creativity to make Mending effective, or that the Mending-bashers hastily jump to conclusions in assessing Mending's effectiveness.

This does not get you sympathy points.

Your next post:

Well, first, the comment regarding Spell Breaker on the combo is questionable, I think. OK, you have your enchants protected from targeted enchantment removal, but at what cost? I certainly respect Spell Breaker but now the team misses out on other monk elites, and any lack of attention to the "tank", given a team with enchantment removal (good teams will most likely have it) will result in at least one dead player.

Again, this post says nothing about an overall picture of Mending except that it's "mostly PvE". You do not say that Mending lacks utility without this build; combined with your previous response, it could be concluded that you still see Mending as an overall useful/OK skill.

I hope this answers the question about why there was hostility directed towards you.

Or, you know, people can just stop defending shitty skills.

mending is useless unless you're a wa/mo and you have things like bonetti's for energy regain.

whenever a monk puts mending on me, i tell them to take it off IMMEDIATELY. they'll just end up running out of energy and being useless to the whole team.

Edit: This is unless we have a necro in the team who brought blood rit, then one or two mendings is fine.

Everybody, chill out.
(Allen Iverson voice) We're talking about Mending here.
MENDING. (/end Allen Iverson voice)

Secondly, you're creating extra work for me and the other mods. I already have work to do, now I have to go through and delete all the personal attacks in this thread. This is my friendly warning. Cut it out.

Finally, since we're back on subject, I'll throw my opinion in the ring.
I think the reason there's so much hostility directed towards mending is twofold:
A) Mending has been over-used in the past.
B) It's now percieved as over-used, triggering a lot of criticism.

Why was it over used? As Ensign and others have pointed out, it's useful in the early game and while exploring. It was also available early in the game during the Beta Weekend Events and is still available early on. And if my memory is correct it was also on one of the premade warriors. Making the skill available early in the game with few other choices teaches people to use the skill.

People start frothing when they talk about mending for the same reason they do when talking about Flare. Both skills are available early, and because they're the only tools beginners have, they learn to use them. They're adequate in that stage of the game.
The problem is that people (a lot of people) continue to use the same skills as they advance through the game. It's not really a problem, because you can play the game how you like (within reason) but when you play with others, they expect you to do your best. And everyone whose opinion I respect has agreed that mending is trash unless you're running instead of fighting. That could mean we're narrow minded people, or we've never been to the map that mending really shines on, but I'm inclined to think the problem is in the perception of the skill.

It's generally a subpar skill if you're with an organized team.
Direct some of this ire towards the developers for overemphasizing bad skills early on, which creates bad habits in the general player base. Skill availability has always been a source of problems.

So when you see someone using mending, you have two choices. Gripe or pump the fist. I pump my fist because I know if I ever play this person in PvP I'm a step ahead and more likely to win. Until the uber 8 man-mending squad strategy is released (currently being developed by a crack team of iQ and NASA researchers).

And that, friends and forum trolls, is how you gripe about a skill in public.

First up, thankyou, you have stopped my tears. I was almost afraid I would drown myself. C=| Anyway, I would like to ask whether you have seen my all W/Mo screenshots yet, or whether I could join in your UBER 8 MAN-MENDING SQUAD STRATEGY! It sounds like fun!

P.S. I work for NASA. No really, I do. I help tear research.