Healer or Protector

Hi there,
always thought that Monking would be boring, but darn, was I wrong.
It is flipping hard work, and not very much appreciated since everyone takes it for granted that they go off in the distance and stay alive , but I love it.
You won't appreciate healing until you have tried it, which was the case with my other 2 characters (W/Mo and E/Me)
Now I have ascended as a Healer, which I enjoyed, but what are (would be) good reasons to change to a Protector?? (PvE still, haven't tried PvP/GvG yet)
Might want to change to a 55 later, but then for going solo.

Your help (and patience), as usual, much appreciated

Fred

Prot monking just gives you a lot more scope for variety
As I see it healing is: wait till person takes some damage, then heal them or wait till group has taken some damage and then heal them
repeat

Prot monking is more varied

Active prot monk - is about casting spells that prevent or reduce the damage taken by the player .... ie guardian stops them being beaten up by melee characters so much. Aegis does similar but for the whole group.
Prot spirit reduces the total amount of damage they can take from one hit.
Spell breaker stops spells being cast on them.
Restore condition removes all the mean conditions on them.
and so on ....

Prot Bonding - is a slow and systematic method for reducing ALL damage taken by the individuals you are protecting (and taking pressure off the healing monk)

Prot Boon monk is a combo between preventing damage happening, removing conditions AND healing damage already taken ... (because of the huge healing bonus of Divine Favour combined with Divine Boon)
Basically you throw a prot spell on them AFTER they have taken some damage and first it heals that damage and THEN it prevents the next damage from happening (or reduces it, or removes a condition etc)

I tend to switch between the latter two types of prot monk - and really boon monk feels more like a healer simply because of the healing bonuses that fly up.

Spice

Well there is the old adage: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I generally stick to heal with a little prot mixed in.

One problem with protection spells is that many of them are enchantments. You generally don't want to make your monk build too enchant heavy in case of strips, but that also just comes down to knowing the area that you are playing in.

One thing protection is very good at is sometimes just keeping one party memeber who is being pounded on protected, freeing you up to spend a little bit of time on the rest of the party without concentrating on the one taking lots of dmg with your heals while the rest of the party is getting lower and lower.

I switched to Prot a while back and now I only heal if I really have to...

Most of my healing was done on reaction, I much prefer the prevention of prot.

When I did healing I felt like most of the time I was staring at the liffe bars, now I try to anticipate which enemies will do what and to which teammate.

I do like some of the heals you can throw in from the Divine section.
<-----huge fan of Watchful Spirit and divne boon (also a big fan of succor but its not from divine)