Monk - Dissapointed

Well, this was my first, and my last, BWE. After long thought, and carefrul consideration, I chose my profession - Monk. Ive played a healer-type in most games Ive played, but this hadnt prepared me for what I was about to come to.

I played to almost lv 10, and I was realizing more and more than the Monk wasnt a very good healing class. At the time, I was lv 9, I have about 220 HP and about 50 MP (I couldve had 60 if I went for another -1 regen arrow). So, my group was going through the mission, and we kept on dying. I had almost all healing spells, save 3 - Ress, Bane Signet, and Fire Storm. The precise spells I had were Healing Breeze, Heal Other, Heal Area, shielding Hands, and Healing Hands. I had put 4 into Divine Favour, 4 into Healing Prayers, and 2 into Protecting Prayers.

So... On with the story...

The group and I were fighting, and I kept getting agro from no where! Left and right, everything was hitting me for no reason. I hadnt cast a single spell, nor done ANYTHING to generate "Agro". This kept on happenning, and eventually, I left out of frustration. Everyone kept dying, and I couldnt even keep myself alive. The 3 warriors (8, 10, and 11) were getting pummeled by creatures lower level than themselves. The lv 11 was down to 1/2 in under 4 hits, and the 10 was dead by then.

Is there something Im doing wrong? Is it just me, or do these being a "healer" in this game almost seem impossible?

At least I know this much - I know what I WONT be playing coming release time...

Healers in this game are not impossible to play, instead they're vital for a party to survive.

Monks are generally believed to be the best healing class.

You're not mentioning mission so I can't comment on what exactly you may be doing wrong. I can only say that non-aggroed monsters shouldn't aggro for no reason. Either they get too close to you (patrols), you get too close to them, or it's because you attack them. Patrols sneaking up from behind may be confused by an auto-aggro, but it's because you're in their patrol path. Ensure you know where nearby patrols are walking so you don't attack a mob and then another one walks up to you, giving you a nasty surprise. In this case, you should of course kill the patrol first.

As for party composition for PvE, 7 non-monks + 1 monk is generally considered a bare minimum. In that case, you may do it, but it can get rough for the single primary monk to keep up in tough battles. In a 4 player mission, one monk should suffice though.

Your problem seem to be that your team took on too many monsters at a time. A monk is no divine being, it's only a profession, that just like any other has both abilities and limits. Your team's character levels doesn't matter if you take on too many monsters.

Next, some golden rules of GW gaming, not just Monk playing:

- You must always have someone call targets. A disorganized team will kill a Monk played by an elite gamer.

- You must always pull targets when the mobs are too large for your party to handle. Game experience will soon start telling you when a mob is getting too large for your party to handle immediately. Have a single ranged attacker run ahead of the party, fire a few shots to aggro them, run back to the rest of the party, and hope he got a more managable amount of monsters to handle for your party.

- Your party must always protect the Monk if s/he's in trouble. If your fighters are on some "front" a bit away from you and you're getting pummeled in another place, you'll be dead. They need to come back and help the monk first, so you can at least get time to heal yourself and the others. If you get some firepower on your attackers they might aggro those instead and suddenly the tide of the battle may turn as you'll get some time to heal yourself and them, and not just click like a madman on your healing skills to just keep yourself barely alive.

- You must be careful. Do you know where that moving group of monsters are heading? Will they come back meanwhile you're fighting monsters? Is it better to attack a group of monsters from another direction instead of getting into a crossfire? Plan your moves. The monsters will stand like good puppies and wait while you decide what to do. Run for your lives if you see a mob is way too much to handle -- run, run, and hope the monsters will let you go and move back to their positions and reconsider your tactics.

I have no idea how much experience you've got with this game, so I'm just giving you some very basic GW suggestions, as you must be doing something seriously wrong if you're under the impressions Monks are bad healers. The guilds dominating the ladder would disagree strongly.

It seems like all the healing spells you have are the big time relatively huge energy consumption spells. Usually, I'll have Orison of Healing, Word of Healing and Signet of Devotion as my staple healing spells. They only cost 5 energy each. Drop some of those you have equiped for these. Will help alot in healing alot since you'll seldom run out of energy. Maybe you might want to keep heal area as a self heal spell since monks are really bad at keeping themselves alive.

Do you mean an organized team?

Dwayne, I understand your frustration.
Unfortunately at low levels the spells that are available to many of the classes are very lacking and are huge energy sinks.

As you gain levels, and obtain the spells you'll actually WANT to use, you'll see your gameplay change dramatically.

If you get a moment, read up on some of the build reviews of monks, you'll notice that smiting isn't the best option if you really want to be a healer.

It may seem like you're not able to do much, however a well played monk can make the difference whether it be PvE or PvP.

With the spell availability the way it is, you'll unfortunately have to suffer through the lower levels until you can get to the bread and butter of your class.


Mind

dizorganized, the own teams monk

Monk's arent designed for combat like you sound you were using yours, but instead to hang back, heal and perform spells on the enemy.

A few tips:
- put all you atribute points into healing, the rest into divine, until you have healing to some level 8. You have wery few atribute points till level 15, so it's vital fo focus on just one atribute line.
- don't use any -1 energy regen items!
- stand as far back as possible. let the others go ahead and start the fight, then move in just so close that you can heal. The mobs aren't stupid, they know that the monk is the cornerstone of the party.
- get Orison of Healing, this is THE spell for healing, cheap and effective (you can capture it from the grawl monk boss in the Great Northern Wall mission, and I think in the Old Ascalon explorable area too). Heal other is just to costly.
- drop firestorm, that 15 energy is beter spent on healing.

Aggro isn't generated in this game by doing actions- the enemies will look for the weaker targets and attack them. One thing I'd ask is if you upgraded your armor at all by level 10... if you're still using level 1 armor at level 10, you're going to be torn apart by the enemies you encounter at that point in the game, and having a low armor level means that the enemies will often pick you as their target.

Also, I'd recommend not using items that give +energy but cost an arrow of regeneration. These seem attractive, but you're losing 1 energy every 3 seconds when you have those equipped(as that's what you would regenerate from one arrow of energy regeneration). They can be useful to switch to for an extra boost when you run out of energy, but most of the time you should try to keep all your energy regeneration.

I'd suggest to throw in some cheap heals(orison of healing comes to mind), and drop your divine favor a couple levels to increase your healing prayers attribute more- you'll gain a larger benefit at low levels by investing in Healing Prayers than in Divine Favor.

Monks aren't bad healers, but you do need atleast 2 primary monks in a team of 4-6 just to stay alive. One monk can't really save the whole team alone.

Having a good team makes the difference.
And like the other person said, monks aren't very good at healing theirself.
I guess they need to have one major flaw.

Im not using my monk in combat, Im doing as I should - Standing back and healing. I will take some of your suggestions and use Orison of Healing instead of heal other, as well as drop firestorm. Illl also replace my +15 energy wand and focus for something without -1 regen.

Thanks for the advice

I don't want to sound like a expert player or anything, but maybe you just suck? I have a monk/warrior and been having a hell of a time. I've been in combat, and out of combat, healing people and swinging swords. Only died 4 times since the begining of this bwe, and those were when it was me vrs an army.

Hehe, yeah, maybe that's why he's wondering how he can do better too... One could answer like that too all questions asking for assistance with something... Would sure make things easy, but wouldn't help much.

I'm not seeing how Heal Other is too costly.

Orison of healing + 10 levels Divine Favor:
60+32 = 92 healing
92 / 5 = 18.4 HP per Energy point

Heal Other + 10 levels of Divine Favor:
151+32 = 183 healing
183 / 10 = 18.3 HP per Energy point

the difference comes when you consider Healing Per Second

Orison of healing (92 heal + 2 second recharge):
92 / 2 = 46 Heal per second

Heal Other (183 heal + 3 second recharge):
183 / 3 = 61 Heal per second

oh and erm...Heal Other takes a shorter time to cast...plus the heal per second and the massive healing in general (183 is hefty) is good for dealing with spike damage

...if your problem is keeping your party alive...I don't really see how taking orison is going to help that much. If your problem is keeping yourself alive...then yeah...perhaps orison is the skill for you. Main disadvantage of heal other being that you can't heal yourself with it (as name suggests)...its ok for PvP when you're organised...but it can be a serious hassle in disorganised PvE

Sounds like you had a bad group too.

I'm not sure I understand...

...also I've been looking at some skills...and its technically possible (though highly impractical) using infuse health to bust out over 1200 HP heals...I gotta try that some time

EDIT: using life attunement...I think its technically possible to heal for 1833.6318 health...
...thats a LOT of health O.o;

Just to reiterate whats already been said.

I find healing monks to be quite difficult to keep multiple targets alive in hairy battles at the begining of your campaign. (ie lower levels).

As already said, I'd definitely consider dropping divine off in favour of getting your healing to the maximum ammount. Untill you have a lot in healing you wont see yourself being able to keep teams alive.

But don't get discouraged, your healing wont go un-noticed even at the early points in the game. Just stick with it and level up as much as you can and keep dropping into healing. Once you get to the higher levels monks are so cool and so very needed in teams.

As many people said, you have to stay back and out of the main action. Some people may not agree with me on this but i think smiting spells are very helpful. Especially when you are lower level. I stay back watching my team mates while dealing up to 60 damage with my 2 smiting spells.

If mobs were all over him, obviously he wasent bein protected.

Problem: You have experienced a difficulty in the game and died.

Wrong solution: Post an 'I quit!' statement on the public forums.
Weaker solution: Ask other people to do the research for you by posting on strategy forums.
Correct solution: Find out what you did wrong, what was the weakness of your character build, and try to pick better skills.

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To be specific - the 'Aggro' was your being a Monk.
If you equate healing to damage dealt - Monks are somewhere on the top damage dealers. Therefore they should always be the target of any group you engage.

The solution is to find anti-gang skills - and there are many effective ones.

I havave or hada lvl10 monk/mes and he is an expert healer, I had no problems keeping myself or my team alive in every mission withouta single death, sometimes to me it seemed to easy. I didnt invenst any points in smiting or and other damage abilities I was a pure healer. I had loaded at all time Healing Breeze, Orison Of Healing, Heal Area, Heal Other, Live Vicariously, Healing Hands, Shielding Hands and I think thats it. The trick is to be quick and know what spells to cast on whom and where. I stood as far back as pssible and had no aggro problems and if I did get aggro the I just cast healing breeze and Shielding Hands and then my party would come and kill the mob. my points were distributed only in Protection, Healing, Divine favor, and the one passive ability that mesmer gets for energy regen (forgot name). In pvp my monk could withstand alot and heal himself well enough to survive. Healing in this game is very exciting and fast paced, you really have to pay attention and know what you are doing. Once you get the hang of it watch out because a party with a good monk is deadly.

Solis of Whitelight 10 mo/mes

I tend to agree with the Thread starter.

It is frustrating to be a monk with limited healing capability from a very limited skill selection in the beginning. The guys replying are experienced players that usually plays NON - pick up groups - they go through the PVE expereince together. I am guilty of that too - we use Teamspeak and we do well. But for a guy new to the game - hell it must be really frustrating in the beginning.

In regular gameplay - yes you are strolling along and you are able to heal fine.

Every missioion though there will be an unexpected Aggro and you usually end up as toast. In those situation yes - at low level you don't have a chance regardless as a monk. You have healing hands, shielding hands and maybe count breeze as emergency heal - but when all player take damage - yes you are toast. It is frustrating and you have to play the mission again.

I had a high level go through Gates of Kryta and was amazed when I died two times in a row. I felt really sorry for our monk. I made two mistakes as a tank and we were toast. I should have played more wisely - but the monk ended up feeling the blame.


PVP

Just wait untill you go PVP...

1 Monk on team - you don't have a chance - you get all the heat - all the focus fire. Your mission is not to heal the others - it is to stay alive - most of the emergency like Healing seed doesnt work on yourself so you are toast.

2 Monks on the team - you probably will be able to cope, but only if you are cordinated - very cordinated. Both monks usually end up under focus fire and it is all about staying alive and then be able to throw out an emergency heal now and then... I brought 2 self healing spells and 2 protection spells - Ward of Melee and Armor of Earth just to stay alive.. All fire is on you and the other monk.

3 monks on the team - now you have a chance to be a healer but only if you are coordinated again. But now your group is sacrificing offensive power. Now you can afford a monk with Life Bonds and some other goodies...and if you do alright you survive IF your offensive team mates have enough damage output.

I am sick of the healer aspect in PvP

- the maps for one are extremely repetetive and you play the same scenarios again and again to get to HoH. Once there you meet a team that beats the crap out of you in round 1 or 2. Then it is all over agian the same grind.

- I'm tired of beeing the Monk Tank. When were the monks supposed to be tanks ? Why give the Warriors all the armor in the world and call them tanks ? If this is somewhat a roleplaying game - Guild Wars fail miserably - you are not a healer you are a frigging tank.

- the strategy of every time is the same - kill the monks which is what I do as a Warrior too -its the only strategy now. IF ANY OF YOU say anything else is true - go hide.


Release is here soon and too late to change anything and I don't have all the answers - none to be more correct. But I would suggest that something is done so you don't have to stack your teams with monks to be successful for the regular player. Either lower the armor levels on the so called tanks to divert some of the focus fire from the monks, increase their armor and be able to use some emrgency heals like Healing Seed on themselves or come up with something...that would allow for other classes to utilize their more refined skills. Again, I dont have the answers.

All I know is that if you are a regular player and you are playing a monk - expect to be the Healer and the Tank for your group. Monk is by far the hardest class to play right now wether it is PvP or PVE.

The Guild Teams are an exception they can create strategies with hidden healers and such, but don't even bring that up. This is in repsonse to the regular player.

I am a burned out healer.

I had this same problem until I upgraded my armor. UPGRADE YOUR ARMOR!!! Rob peter to pay paul and beg for materials you need to upgrade your armor, you will then find that the mobs do not find you as much of a tasty target.

You failed to mention the energy management problems you'll run into spamming heal other.That spell should be saved for healing people fo a lot of health when they need it, not for routine healing and such. That's what Orison is for.

Did you read Ratatass' gripes about being Monk in Pvp in this thread :
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ead.php?t=3151

I would have to say I agree.

Can anybody remember WORLD WAR I?? Certainly not, but my point is that in that war, it was all about massive battles of numbers. 50000 grenades in one day in the Battle of Somme, or whatever. 1 Million dead over a few months. And 100 meters of ground won. And so on.

While World War II brought much more "fluent" battles, where true skill was awarded, you could say.

Sadly, GuildWars is turning into WWI, _not_ WW2!!


Right now, there is one, and ONLY one goal to the game in PvP. To kill the monks of the other team. Fair enough.

But there is a serious "flaw" in the game; There are no drawbacks to target the softest targets of the other team, said Monks!

There is no reward in killing other team members than monks, really. Who cares if a Mesmer falls? Or a Ranger, God Forbid.

In combat, killing a monk is the only goal of any character;

For enemy melee, they know they have heavy armour and can take a lot of beating, and thus not getting beaten on really. So they can safely stay within arms reach of the enemy, and pound away. If they get focused, they KNOW the other team is doing inefficient damage, so its just a good thing

For enemy casters, they have the range to hit the said monks full scale.

In this game, vicinity and distance has lost much of its meaning! It is like a game of chess, where it doesnt matter where the pieces are, they are just sent massively in to kill the other team's king, i.e the monk.

You see the bishops, the pawns, the towers, the queen, all damn pieces on the darn board 2 spaces away from the King (monks), pounding away mindlessly, endlessly.

In all "normal" warfare, you can make a frontline. Not in this game. "normally", the heavily armored units "tanks" will hold the frontline, and when the line is broken, serious trouble is acoming. Not in this game.

In this game, you see 16 ppl amassed within a small confined space, nobody really caring where they stand and do. Its all about killing those 3 monks of the other team.

I played a few monks this time, and an El/Mo. Most particularly I saw this trend with the El. I was cycling Whirlwind+Aftershock and doing good damage on 2-3 targets over time. But nobody cared; the game field was totally chaotic with people of both teams mixed evenly on every piece of the board.

Arena Net say they really want to see skill as the key factor in this game. Right now, that measure of skill is only "to find the best way to kill the enemy monks", and that is not really what they had in mind, I would say?

So now the Wave ("Deathgate Cycle") will correct itself. More and more resources are being amassed to
- kill enemy monks
- to protect enemy monks.

The latter is the highest priority. If you cant achieve that, you definitely loose. If you cant achieve the former, you wont win, but you dont loose either.

So the Wave will correct itself toward more Monk protection. We saw this so clearly this weekend. First, we ran with 2 monks. Forget it. Then 3 monks, 2 Divine Healers, and 1 Protection Smiter (me) carrying 4 Life Bonds on both monks, and 2 casters. I got no idea how much damage I absorbed, but at times there were 3, 4, even 5-6 "0"-"10", "whatevers"'s each SECOND of absorbed damage, and spikes too of course.

Then we added Ward of Melee to the fray, taking away much of the melee effectiveness.

We used Healing Seed for immense healing on the 2 monks situated very closely to each other.

At least one of the guys used Armour of Earth all the time.

Still it wasn't enough..hehe.

So what is next? 4 monks on the team? A few Mesmers to counter other mesmers? First priority is to survive, and right now this will force the Wave to lean more and more toward Monk protection. That means more defense. And the way this game is built, you can never outdamage a healer one on one.

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So what is the point of this post? I just wish there was a way to add some benefits of drawing a front line, a way to hold it, a way to add that kind of tactical elements into the game. It doesn't look like it, and that sadly means that the afore mentioned 8 skills, 8 character mix, is still only trying to do ONE thing right now, and that is to kill MONKS only.

Sure, there are advanced teams that cut through any defense fast, efficiently, deadly. Great fun. For them. But for 90% of the gaming population, this is turning into PVp GRINDING, and that wont keep the game fresh and afloat for too many months onward.

And I second that "Fertile Season" must out of the game . Impossible to kill ANYBODY with that one up. Truly boring..

I don't really know what to do with it. I know that the monks are just too vital for any build to have success. If the devs can make it so it would be possible for a team without monks to reach very high in the rankings, problems would be solved. But now, if you do not kill the monk, you do not kill anything. If you fight something else, the monk will heal that person. So the only valid way to kill the team is to kill their healing. Third party heals at the moment are far more valuable than self-heals, and through various nerfs, the devs have made that even moreso. This is pure speculation though, it may just get worse if they do that. It's a difficult problem. You could half the healing monks do, but I'm sure we'll have little to no monks left then... I guess they're just as riddled as to diminishing the importance of monks.

actually we found a neat little way around the party killing our monks. we had 2 m/w in group that went all defense abilities and no healing. They were truly awesome tanks that could do nothing but tank. They dealt very little damage and had no healing BUT while other teams were trying to kill them we wiped out them 1 at a time with some good focus fire. There really is a counter for everything in this game.

Is it me or am I the only monk that found no problem healing in PvP or PvE? Ive played nothing but healers in mmo's for the past 6 years and have found the monk in guildwars to be one of the most skillful of healers. I had a lvl 10mo/mes and found no problems keeping myself alive or my party members. I will addmit that it is tough and you need to be quick and know what spells to take into battle with you. Its really all about skill in this game. I played PvP alot in the BWE and for the most part (as long as the rest of the team was skillful in thier chosen proffesion) we always won with me healing. Yea and I had people trying to attack me from all sides as well but I would run and heal myself and while people were too busy trying to chase me down, my rangers and elementalists in my group would destroy them and the opposing team would start to drop like flies. Yea everyone is busy trying to kill the monk so that gives the rest of your team the opportunity to start taking the casters out 1st then the warriors and rangers. Melle couldnt do enough damage to me to kill me (for the most part, yea there were some good melle that got me a few times) and if I saw teammates health dropping a quick healing breeze on myself then while thats going and someone is trying to kill me I drop a healing breeze on my teammate whos health is getting low then take off running again and let my energy restore, healing breezing myself once again. I would cast live vicariously on the casters and so when they were getting beat on I would be getting healed, then Id cast healing breeze, and healing hands on me and the warriors and pretty much I would regen health at an incredible rate. Oh and if for some reason I saw everyones health dropping fast I would call out "gather to me" then my team would all locate me and gather around me in a tight knit circle and then Id heal area a couple times and fill everyones health back up then we all scatter once again and coninue on with the battle, this all happens very fast so you must really be on your toes. I seriously had no problems at all healing. PvE was ajoke for me, I thought it was too easy and most people thought it was too hard lol. I did every mission I could up to lvl 10 and even repeated some to help people get past them and not one death. I had no aggro problems cause I would stand back as far as the game let me to heal. If for some chance a mob did aggro on me, it usually met the tank or ranger was getting hit so then again I cast Live Vicariously on them, Shielding Hands on me and then I would again regenerate my wounds with no problem until my party came and killed the mob on me. This game is all about skill not click heal click heal. If everyone knows how to play thier class and know what spells to use in certain instances you will have a very succesful team that can be in some cases unstoppable for a very long time. I love my monk and will continue to be a monk when game is released. At first I was weary and scared about being the 1st on the hitlist, but really if everyone knows what to do then and you communicate well with your team you should have no problems keeping yourself alive. If your team is selfish and disorganized and everyone only looks after themselves of course everyone will get wiped. I have a feeling as soon as it is released and out for a while these "monk" threads will soon disipate as everyone will be a little more skillful with them.

Solis of Whitelight 10mo/mes

I killed me quite a few monks this bwe, but if they know what they're doing, you cannot melee them. Protectors are far better tanks than warrior monks. So I try to steal their energy... which is pretty much the only thing that can shut them down... unless they're using blessed signet. Then it's very hard. I used Rend Enchantments and Wither to kill monks, proved quite effective. Most monks use too many enchantments, makes them counterable. Far more difficult is a monk with enchantments a la reversal of fortune. There's no countering that melee.

I found that for the most part I could keep up with a party of 4 but when we hit a party of 6 I couldn't cast fast enough if warriors just went running in. It can be frustrating in a random party:

1) It sucks when you're the only healer and two warriors decide to split up and take on two sets of monsters and then start screaming about why they didn't get healed fast enough

2) If an ele/memsmer decides to engage when I'm not looking sometimes they can be killed before I even notice they are fighting if they don't have the armor/hps to take on creatures. Even if they are staying in the back and waiting if they don't have good armor it can hard to keep them alive if it only takes two swipes to kill them...

..but I know my guild needs healers and I know they appreciate it so it makes the bad times worth it... A nice tight party, have someone good calling out targets it is generally easy to keep everyone healed and if everyone is healed and a charr is running away it's very satisfying to cast a bane on it to knock it down...

Don't give up, get in a guild with like-minded folks...

Yup. Using smiting to finish off a difficult monster saves you from having to heal the damage it would have done. Best defense is a good offense. Also, allows for some PvE exploring/farming on your own. But for primary healer using that energy is risky.
As far as staying back, you run into a problem when the front line starts chasing monsters and the group gets spread out too much. Spending time running across the battle field plus casting time can get someone killed. Start out in back, let the monsters pick their targets, then move in. And learn to run!