Monk/Assassin - Lotus Monk

I have been playing this build for a few weeks now, and have tweaked it heavily. However, I would like to see what the gurus here think of it, with the hopes that your insight will improve it.

NOTE: This build has been used steadily for the last two weeks. It works. It could be better, but I'm not sure how. What I am getting at, is that it is not broken as is. Improvements are welcome. Also note that, at the moment, I only have Factions, although I would like to get Prophesies and add Balthazar's Spirit to this.

Healing Prayers 6
Divine Favor 13
Dagger Mastery 12
Shadow Arts 9
1 spare point that I can't seem to spend

Armor: Ascetic set, with Superior Divine Power and Superior Healing Prayers, plus Minor Vigor.

Weapon: Daggers of Xuekao

Golden Lotus Strike - 5/15 - +17 damage, gain 9 energy if you are enchanted
Black Lotus Strike - 10/25 - +10 damage, gain 5 energy
Way of the Lotus - 5/.25/20 - Next dual attack, gain 14 energy
Death Blossom - 5/12 - +35 damage, 35 damage AOE

Healing Breeze - 10/1/2 - +5 health regen and 64 + 39 heal
Shadow Refuge - 5/1/8 - +8 health regen and 56 heal if attacking
Divine Boon - -1/5/.25/1 - using monk spells causes 64 + 39 heal to targets
Blessed Signet - 0/2/10 - For each enchantment, gain 3 energy.

Reasoning:

Golden Lotus Strike >> Black Lotus Strike >> Way of the Lotus >> Death Blossom

For some reason, when I pull off this full combo, I always end up with around 90% full mana, regardless of how much I started off with. I have tried tweaking it and changing it, but it only works if I do it this way. Try it yourself. Death Blossom, by the way, was chosen solely because of the fact that it's a Dual Attack and only costs 5 energy to cast.

Divine Boon + Healing Breeze + high Divine Favor = a +5 regen with a nice 100 pt. heal, for 10 mana with a fast recharge.

Shadow Refuge is for when I get in trouble. For 5 mana, I get a self-only 8 health regen and a minor heal.

Concerns:
Under certain circumstances, I will run out of energy, but since I don't really understand why I am gaining so much energy from the full combo, I can't say why I run out of energy either. Usually it's when I am having to interrupt the combo to do some healing of other party members.

Any input would be appreciated.

Azog

Hmm...I just don't like that the build loses 5 skills to the assassin tree and that's your secondary... Also, you get almost no use out of Blessed Signet. Why not change that for Heal Other if you're really trying to improve the build? I guess if you really wanted to use your secondary to that extent you could try something like Marksman's Wager + Dual Shot for energy management...

I would just prefer that you have more heals and stay a little farther from combat (due to the unfortunate habit that we monks have of getting frequent whiffs of that "new carpet" fragrance).

I would say you have to 100% dump Blessed Signet and maybe shadow refuge for something like Heal Other + Orison. That should maintain your energy management and only raise your self-heal's cost by ~2e while more than doubleing its effectiveness. 8 regen = 16 hp per second. At 4 seconds thats 64 hp. The main reason that shadow refuge is used as a self heal is that it will heal the assassin during the combo, then they get out. As a monk, you won't trigger the heal it has nearly often enough.

If you don't want to bring heal other or orison, I strongly advise bringing something like Ressurection Chant so that you have a hard rez to give extra help to your team (with less healing than most, your team will likely drop a little more often).

You probably have too much energy because Death Blossom "hits" all foes adjacent to your target. It's also a **Dual Attack*. It hits twice. Your combo nets you ~17e on your target.

If you need to use that combo for energy management, why not go Golden Phoenix Strike-->Way of the Lotus-->Death Blossom? That opens yet another spot for a hex or condition removal (which is missing).

Good Luck with this...Anyone else have any ideas?

2 superiors and a minor vigor ? gg, that lands you at 365 HP with 60AL ? the moment a warrior even looks at you you're completely screwed. And don't even try to suggest to outheal the damage, cause seriously, you won't outheal anything, one KD and you're dead.

Also, res signet, maybe ? yes, i know, "monks shouldn't bring res signet", but then again, they shouldn't bring 5 assassin skills either, nor wear 2 superior runes, nor actually even consider hanging around the frontlines.

Anyway, thanks for the laugh, but this build is goin nowhere tbh. If you wanna play a monk, play a decent monk, if you wanna play with daggers, take an assassin primary

^^

He has a point there. Another thing you can do with your current build is simply go Assassin/Monk and switch 2 skills for heals and be sortof a "backup monk".

I have to agree with RotteN here. This is just a bad build, no flaming intended, i understand your new to the game (somewhat). You can't be a healer and impliment combos on the front lines. Heck, assassins can't even impliment combos on the front lines for very long, like wammos can.

If you want to heal, there are tons of better builds and blessed sig is only going to give you (limited) energy on maintained ench's (the ones that lower a pip of regen, like mending or boon *ooo a whole 3 energy return*) and not on healing breeze, prot spirt of RoF type spells. For PVE I'd go offering of blood (necro elite for e management) or go the mesmer side with things like inspired hex or mantra of recall, e-drain, etc. and stay out of the way of damage. Basically if you're a monk, you're going to struggle with energy, but being up front using sin combos will never be a good solution for that, since your going to have to use all the healing on yourself, wasting the energy you just earned back on self-heals.

If you want to be a 'sin, they are designed to teleport in combo and get out and no amount of mo secondary is going to divert enough of the damage, nor will you have the energy pool to run a wammo (warrior/monk) type build. I'm pretty sure if you look around in the assassin threads or monk threads, your going to find some really well tested builds that you might enjoy playing alot more then this one, many of which talk about the use of monk skills in a supportive self heal way and don't worry about party healing.

I could only imagine that you are henching most of the game, since ALOT of people will freak out if they party with you and you can do the job of a "real" monk.

I'm going to assume that this is a PvE build, correct me if I'm wrong.

Assuming that's the case this means that you have quite a bit more leeway than usual in designing a build. That's a good thing when you're learning.

I'll touch on that build in a little bit, but first off there are a few things that you should be thinking of when designing a build. Since it's PvE the usual order is reversed; ordinarily you would take your group of 8 characters and design the characters to fit into the group's MO. In PvE it's the other way around, you design your character first and then try to work it into a group. So the most important thing to determine is what you want the character to do, what is it's purpose? Once you nail down what purpose you want your character to serve then you can start choosing complementary skills. After this is set you can worry about group composition. You only have 64 skills in a group so you want to make sure that they're all serving a purpose. Take these considerations and apply them to your build.

At a glance, the main problem with the build you posted is that you're trying to do too many things at once, and the result is that you're not going to be able to do any of them all that well. Since this character is a primary monk it's going to be difficult to do a respectable job as an assassin. There are a few ways you could go with this;

If you want to take a traditional monk role you've picked a good skill, boon is pretty much the mainstay of versatile monks these days. Specifically a boon/protector. The only problem is no other skill you've picked synergises well with boon.

This is a factions only boon/prot that I posted at another forum.

16 Divine favour(sup)
11 Protection prayers (minor)
9 inspiration magic
Sup vigor (Or major since this is PvE)

Divine Boon (Core)
Signet of Devotion (Core)
Guardian (Core)
Mend Ailment (Core)
Spirit Bond (Factions)/Protective Spirit (Core)
Reversal of Fortune (Core)
Energy Drain (Core) (Elite)
Revealed Hex (Factions)
--
Holy Veil (Core)
Hex Breaker (Core)

It's not ideal, since you're missing some important prophecies only skills, but it will do it's job well. The basic premise is that boon will give you one of the most energy efficient heals in the game. Coupled with the excellent qualities of a protection monk it can be an extremely versatile build. Use RoF as your primary spammable skill, with guardian on targets that are being focused. Spirit Bond is great against many spikes and I would assume would work well against higher level pve monsters. Again, use it on someone who's being focused. Mend ailment is your condition removal, and revealed hex doubles as e-management and hex removal. If you're running against alot of heavy hexes switch in Veil for extra removal, Hex breaker is probably not so important to use in PvE so I'd give that one a pass. Finally use Devotion whenever you think that you can get away with the 2-second cast time.

If you instead want to focus on a more damage oriented role with your monk then an Aura of Enchantment based support smiter works well, though in pve you're going to want to make sure that you bring snares to make it easier for your warrior to keep the monsters in AoE. If you're interested in a good Aura based smite build I'll post one, but I don't really think that's what you were going for originally.

Finally, if you want to take it to the front lines then I would at this point suggest rerolling an assassin or warrior. A monk is going to have a very hard time being effective doing an assassin's job simply due to worse armour, lack of the assassin primary and lack of assassin runes. Which is pretty much everything.

As for modifying the posted build, there's not really much I can say. I don't know what you're trying to do with it, it almost seems as if you're using the assassin attack chain as an energy engine, with one conditional heal. The Blessed signet is really serving no purpose there and having breeze as the only spell that will trigger boon (besides boon itself) is really a poor choice. Ideally with boon you want quick casting spammable spells, ie. RoF. If you tell us what you're going for with this build then I or someone else can probably help you a great deal more, as it is, I hope what I posted helps a little.

By the way, thanks for the link Taiwanite it made my day, but I couldn't sit by and say nothing.

Edit; Cleared up some confusing statements.

Quote: Originally Posted by gabrial heart

Quote: Originally Posted by Hamanu

That is what I though you wanted to do with it is solo but you have to think of in the lines of defence.When you look at the 55 build its key skills are PoS and Shield or Signet judgment then the rest of your enchants.I would strongly suggest you read up on build and think of anything in Sin. line that can help you in defence.55 Monks don't go in a and attack things we smite them even if they get close to us in melee range as long as we have protective of spirit up we are fine.We do use something form secoundaries to help defend ourselves.

Its a workable build, though it seems if you want to do dagger damage, a assassin primary would be better...
If you are thinking of a damage type monk, take a look at my combat monk/assassin here: http://www.gwkb.org/cBuild.php?mode=Show&ID=4261

Quote: Originally Posted by Azog

As others have said, your choice of Monk primary, and especially Divine Boon, leave many of us baffled when the only spells that will trigger either effect are Healing Breeze, a Heal over Time (HoT), and Divine Boon itself.

I'd start by dropping Divine Boon. -1 pip of regen isn't worth the meager amount of healing you're getting out of it. And then drop Blessed Signet, because it serves no purpose at all without Divine Boon.

If you want to stick with the Healing Prayers route, I'd swap your Healing Prayers and Divine Favor attributes, keep Healing Breeze, and pick up Healing Touch. Or if you want a ranged heal, take Orison of Healing or Healing Whisper.

However, I'd focus more on the Smiting aspects if I wanted a Dagger wielding Monk. I'd try Zealous Fire, Symbol of Wrath (and/or Kirin's Wrath), Smite Hex (mobs use a ridiculous amt of hexes), and Healing Breeze. And drop Shadow Refuge, as it won't trigger Divine Favor, and is virtually duplicating Healing Breeze.

I'd try using the following attribute spread:

Divine Favor: 5 (4 + 1)
Smiting Prayers: 13+ (11 + 1 + [1-3])
Dagger Mastery: 12
Healing Prayers: 6 (5 + 1)

I think I need to go lay down.

Do we play the same game? If you want do damage, get some smiting prayers in there!

^^

What he said. Either build mostly for healing with some mix of assassin in for energy management (assassin's promise maybe?) or build for damage and get some smites in there.

Quote: Originally Posted by prodigy ming

Azog, I have to give you props for trying something new. I've wanted to try a Monk/Assassin build for some time but havent' gotten around to it.

Just some thoughts I had, none of this is tested, but hopefully these suggestions will help.

First, you're using two attributes from your secondary profession. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the more of your secondary you use, the more weight you give the argument to make that profession your primary, as it generally weakens the build to have so many points spent without rune augmentation. One thought I had was to use deadly arts instead of daggers and shadow arts. This would let you focus on one secondary attribute, and also allow you to keep some distance between you and your target since many of the DA skills are ranged. Considering the monk's AL, distance is good

Also on that note, since you seem to have your energy under control, instead of Aescetic's, consider using Censor's/Judge's armor for the +10 AL. If you're going to use melee skills, might as well dress for the occasion.

Maybe instead of Healing Prayers, try Protection. If you want to be up close and personal with the action, the defenses in Protection could work to your advantage. The Protective Spirit/Spirit Bond combo is becoming quite popular, just remember to use low AL armor (see here for details: http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=41254). Or use something like Shield of Deflection (needs Prophecies) or Shield of Regeneration for better defense.

Anyway, I hope those ideas help, have fun!

That is what we are talking about here on that post from TGH.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3053612

What about using Deadly Arts instead of Dagger Mastery? I'm experimenting (PvE, solo) with a Mo/A build and Deadly Arts skills do not require daggers as your primary weapon. Now, I do not need to be up close and personal with the enemies. I would carry three deadly arts skills and leave the rest for healing, mending/hex removal, etc. I've been relatively happy with this build, so far, but it needs some tweaking.