The Monkunist Manifesto

A heal that does 100-180 with a 10-15s recharge would be a nerf. Players already whine about later missions being too hard. They would be harder with spike heals, making it difficult for an average Monk to be a sufficient healer. Then you get back to my point about nerfs and difficulty levels.

A Monk's health is still the first priority. Going from 4 players to 8 isn't drastically different because there are more players to heal. Only a couple players will be taking significant damage at any time (except for AoE builds, although that isn't popular, with the exception of Putrid Explosion), so it's much like 4v4 Arena, except your allies take twice the damage, but you have twice the Monks to counteract that damage.

True, but those abilities have their downsides. You'll be spreading your Attribute points out a bit thinner. Energy Drain is good, although the cooldown is a little lengthy. Energy Tap takes too long to cast, as does Shame, which also gives you too little of a bonus. Channeling can work well, in Tombs and GvG, but often it is useless. Bonetti's Defense only works against melee attacks. Melandru's Resilience is ok, but you have to be careful about letting Hexes and Conditions build up, since if it runs out at the wrong time, you lose. Offering of Blood is your best bet, but then you're sacrificing life, when you're the main target. There are lots of different ways to manage energy using your secondary class. Still, unless your team is much better than the enemy, you're going to run into energy problems eventually. You still won't have enough energy or time to both heal and use an energy generation skill (if you did, then your team would never die). A Power Leak and an Energy Drain, back-to-back, and I become useless in less than two seconds.

My point was that a team with 6 Monks couldn't defeat a team with only two, in a timeframe of 15 minutes. If Monks are that overpowered, then they should have won easily and early. Of course this is just anecdotal evidence.

Well, since Monks are such a big threat to you, and 2/3 of the classes in this game are casters, maybe you should take some anti-caster skills. You're a secondary Mesmer, right? If you take Energy Tap and Energy Drain, you'll be able to easily fuel your Warrior skills, as well as greatly setting back an enemy Monk.

Choking Gas should interrupt half her spells, assuming you're using a 2s speed bow and she's continually casting 1s cast spells. Note that you don't just have to hit your interrupts after they start casting. You can predict a little bit, as well. Use a nuke and immediately follow with a Distracting Shot. Chances are, you'll hit her staple heal spell. Note that you only have to hit a staple spell once with it and she'll be much less effective for 20 seconds. Of course, if she's casting 1/4s spells like Reversal of Fortune, there's always Backfire and Diversion.

Necros have many fast casting cover Hexes. Follow up a Mark of Subversion, Wither, or Malaise with a Parasitic Bond or Faintheartedness. A Necro's enchantment removal will take off powerful spells like Protective Spirit or Healing Seed.

Well, good thing this is a team game and not one on one. Plus, all their Mesmer counters are prime targets for interrupts, except for maybe Hex Breaker, which isn't a Monk skill, anyway.

Pacifism takes 3 seconds to cast. If your team lets that go off, you deserve to have it. Amity is a waste for an elite. It has a 60s cooldown, it's only a minor annoyance to 2/3 of the classes in the game, you can get rid of it by taking damage or getting it removed, and it doesn't stop you from using your secondary profession's skills. I don't know of anyone who uses it. Bonneti's Defense is good, but it only works against Warriors. If you see them use it, switch targets for the short time that it takes to go away. Still, I would agree that Warriors are one of the easier classes for a Monk to counter.

You mean that people can use Elementalist skills against Elementalists and Monk skills against Monks? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

If a Hammer W/E comes up to me and none of my teammates stop him, then I'm screwed. I don't carry Amity or Pacifism or Bonetti's or blinding or anything like that. Those skills are too specific and I prefer to carry around spells that work against many threats (Healing, Reversal of Fortune, Hex/Condition Removal, etc).

I'm curious, CaptainGuru, have you ever played Monks? Have you played them in FoW, UW, PvE missions, 4v4 Arena (both Team and Competition), Tombs, and GvG? I have. I'm a good Monk, although probably not a great one. I could be wrong, but at least I have the experience to back up what I'm saying. You don't seem to be speaking from experience. Yes, a Mo/W can easily counter a Warrior and a Mo/Me can usually counter a Mesmer, but I build my Monk around keeping myself and my friends alive against a variety of threats, not against a specific class. This is a team game and you have to act in concert with your teammates in oder to win.

Also, you misattributed Kiiron's quotes to me.

No, they don't, because for most monks that's a waste of skill points. Most monks don't have any points at all in smiting, because adding in smiting skills would displace skills for healing/protecting. It's only the occasional monk who actually brought some defense that suprises the warrior.

And as I said, run away if you can't take it. What would you be doing normally? Running up behind me and whacking away. Why is it so bad when the tables are turned every once in a while?

Yep =) Though I tend to concentrate on one or the other. And really, a monk pretending to be a nuke is just asking to be slapped by a mesmer.

Is this a result of class imbalance or bad planning on the part of the team who didn't bring any disenchants?

I don't think she was a noob, I think she was a smiter/air monk who knew the other team always goes after the monk first and used that to her advantage. She had a plan, and it worked pretty well.

And any non-noob warrior will have some way of catching up to a running target (sprint or knockdowns) and of removing hexes, even if that is by broadcasting it so the team monk can heal =) Besides, what percentage of monks actually carry these spells? Pacificism takes too long to cast if your team is taking damage. Also, since we only get 8 skills, every defensive spell a monk brings along will remove from his healing spells. When a monk is practically required to carry a direct heal, a group heal, a self-heal, a condition removal, a hex removal and a resurrect, you won't see too many packing pacificism.

Meh, can't think of anywhere else where it's different, though. Maybe the problem with warriors attacking monks in GW though is that warriors simply aren't the anti-monk class. Unless you're skilled at knockdowns/interrupts, a warrior going to have a hard time going mano a mano against a decent healer, for the simple reason that the healer can heal far more at once than a warrior can dish out. You need a mesmer to be able to easily take down a monk. Which is where things actually start to get interesting, because then, instead of taking the monk out first, your aim is to take out the enemy mesmer who's locking down your monk, hopefully while your mesmer is locking down theirs.

I'll just go out on a limb here, and I may be wrong, but when I read your posts Cap, this is what I hear, "I can't do everything. I have to depend on other people. I am not a badass. And this is wrong." Frankly... this is why I love GW instead of WoW. There is no super ultra build. You MUST rely on other people when doing team things.

In the 4v4 arena, nothing is stopping people from putting together a team of Mesmer/Monks to counter the Mo/Whatever. I honestly do not see the monk profession being detrimental in any way. Yes, there may be a monk shortage, but people reserving spots for them in a group is not a bad thing. It's what monks do.

The simple fact remains that everyone agrees that the one class that you must have at least one of in any group (both PvE and PvP) is a Monk. This may be either an actual imbalance in the game, just in the minds of players, or simply inherent to all MMORPG's, but it remains an imbalance.

What bothers me the most is that every non-monk class in Guild Wars has some kind of self-heal, but these self-heals have such severe restrictions that they become unusable in most situations. For example, a ranger (who is supposed to be a completely self-reliant charachter, at least that's what I think of a ranger), has some quite powerful healing skills in Troll Unguent and Healing Spring. In fact, at rank 12 in Wildernes Survival these can heal for 180 and 250, repectively. However, the 3-second casting time of Troll Unguent, and the fact that Healing Spring is interrupted by any attack, make these self-healing skills almost useless during any battle situation (unless you take 1 or 2 extra self-defence skills, just to be able to use your self-healing). The self-healing of Mesmers (Ether Feast) is not very powerful, and has a long casting time. The warrior's Healing Signet (which reduces armor by 40), is consided suicide by many. The Elementalist has some very weak healing in Aura of Restoration. The only class with some self-healing that can actually by useful during battle is the Necromancer.

I don't mind that the Monk class is the only class who can efficiently heal others, but making the self-heals of other classes more useful would go a long way in reducing the absolute dependency on monks, which is worse in Guild Wars than in any other MMO game I have seen.

Ok now think of this. Imagine a team of monks with no offensive spells. Equally as rediculous a team with no healing spells. There is your balance.

Offence and defence is pretty balanced, however there are various types of offence and various classes specialised in different styles. The Elementalist and the Warrior, or Necro highlight that multiple different styles of inflicting pain exist, and that those different styles are usually applicable to only one class of character.

The monk has access to every type of non offensive build healing spell. What I mean is they dont get the warriors healing sig, but they do get A healing sig, they dont get the mesmers energy feast, but what they do get is access to the entire library of dedicated class healing spells.
Perhaps if they split the monk class into several seperate classes, and only gave one class Healing, and another class Protection it would stop people like you whining about the unbalance. Infact if we had 4 more types of monks you would probably cry 'perfect balance' however its highly likely that the game would be broken, as far as healing classes are concerned.

People say monks dominate, as iv said the truth is that BY FAR offensive classes make up 90% of the gaming population, but healing classes are REQUIRED for a well balanced team. You can go into battle with basic offence, or basic defence, but when you come up against tricky opponents that require a bit more freedom or power in offence or defence you will be in trouble. Thus a well balanced group that has the ability to breeze through minor challanges and has the versatility to compete with higher challanges is a MUST amongst anyone with half a clue.

Why do these threads keep appearing? So many people in this game have no clue.

You couldnt split a monk up into several classes because versus a certain opponent their entire range of skills and spells would be rendered uselss, just by the opponents existance and not by any particular condition or counter or spell.

Then once you have managed to get a bit of a clue via playing Guild Wars for more than 1 hour, you will come to realise that on an individual level builds like Necro/Mesmer combination start to blur the lines between offence and defence, and start to break the mould of 'click this button to inflict XX pain on said foe'.

Monks sit in the background of the team, manipulating health and their own energy in order to keep the team alive. Iv played a necro mesmer that sat in the background manipulating my opponents life and energy to spread disease, keep myself at full health, and inflict both direct and DoT pain on single or multiple enemies.

Infact you could create a necro/mesmer that is able to manipulate its own or the enemies health and energy to spread pain and death, and it could then manipulate the enmies death to give your TEAM health and energy.

The inbalance is in your poor knowledge of this extremely deep and complex game.

As said before this is not a game design problem but a player perception problem. What you ask for is already very much possible.

I play an ele/mo that is setup for damage and backup healer. At the side of a monk i can supplement his/her healing power well enough to dismiss the need for a second monk and i can still do the awesome damage that ele's are famous for.

I think a party with 2 Ele/Mo in that setup would be able to heal enough to keep the group alive. Remember that a setup like that can do a lot of damage fast and that way prevent a lot of damage done to the team.

I use the AOE spells that last for several seconds. During that time i can use heals while still doing damage.

In PVP i switch my ele side to earth and set myself to protect and supplement the monk.


Shaquira

Gladly. You sound like the type of monk I don't want anyway. So don't party with me.

What I said, if you read it, is that there are times when it isn't worth taking a res signet. If 6/8 members have rez spells or signets, and I am playing a specialised role like a mesmer, I can do far more for the party by stopping the spell that would kill you than by hoping to still be up and rez you.

What I said was that not all classes have a remove hex/condition, and that it isn't necessary to bring one. For example, my Ranger doesn't carry one, but carries a self heal that deals with the damage - a 10 pip Troll Unguent does pretty well, and I also have Melandru's Resiliance on my skillbar - very little hurts me - and since my ranger is R/Mo he does carry Rebirth, allowing me to recover froma a party blowout, while a Mesmer shutdown player has little chance of lasting long enough to res and can't pull the body out of trouble. I can't remove a condition like blind or cripple, but I can survive poison and disease just fine.

What I said is that sometimes it is better to prevent damage than to heal it. If you ever travel with me (and I hope not, you are far too self-absorbed) you'll realise that when we take on a group of three hydras and they get off no meteors and 1 fireball before dying it's because I popped back and forth shutting them down - I don't carry a res signet, but I shut down over 600 damage (and that's area damage). Seems like a fair trade. My necro doesn't carry a self heal, but can reduce the damage coming in by putting mass weaken and attack slowing on the enemies while doing focus fire and AoE - that reduces damage coming in hugely - and that is better than healing, if there is already one healer in the group. With one monk already in the party I'd rather a debuffing necro or a good mesmer than a second monk for most missions.

If it is convenient and efficient I carry my own heals - my ranger has 14 WS, so taking Troll's Unguent along is just sensible, and if there are condition/hexers around I'll have Melandru's on my bar. My necromancer frequently has a mild heal in the form of a 7 pip Well of Blood (I would hesitate to call that a self heal as it is only available in the area of a corpse, and isn't capable of the amount of healing that a Healing Signet or Troll's Unguent can deliver) but reduces incoming damage by a huge amount, saving much effort - I know I partied with a monk who asked if he was even needed with me around - so I obviously do enough to reduce damage. My mesmer doesn't carry a res; I do carry a self heal, but only because I have ~12 Inspiration anyway - I wouldn't have gone out of my way to pick up a mediocre heal for myself (investing in Inspiration just to get a modest heal isn't worth it - only because I have Energy tap and Power Drain is it worth the investment). Instead, I know how to play. I shut down damage before it happens, I shatter hexes to save other party members and cause massive damage to my enemies, and if the monk is in trouble I can interpose myself - knowing full well that it's better if I go down than if our healing disappears - but honestly, it's better having a cry of frustration or power leak to keep folks alive than to have a rez signet to bring a monk back once, especially if there are multiple people with rezzes already.

People who think in black and white terms like "You must have a self heal, a condition removal and a res spell" are narrow minded and inflexible - it's like believing that you need 2 monks, or that a tank is a necessity. They aren't, and none of those things is a requirement. Sure, all of those things are signs that the person thinks of the party as a team, but so does knowing how to body block someone away from the monk, whether damage reduction is in the case of your character more effective than healing, and whether conditions and hexes are a threat to you and worth carrying a method to remove them (if there is even one available). I don't need inflexible folks along. I need people who actually know their strengths and how they can benefit a party most, even if it means that they carry an extra spell instead of a res.

Bingo.

Because you're narrow-mind Jackass. I've always been a team player since NWN. I never really like soloing since you're alone most of time and I never do any Rambo antics when PvPing. You (and other people from what I see) assume every person on here who complains doesn't know how to play or know how to play on a team. Guess what, half the people who play have experience, but don't like what they see when observing classes.

As I said, people who don't want nerfs are the very same people abusing these exploits. Same thing in NWN and WoW when people shouted to nerf Clerics and Rogues.

I posted a topic kinda bashing the people with huge monk reliance but the topic was closed by Inde because of the title. As mentioned before by some others though, its the people that glorify the monks, so yea, I wouldn't say they are broken. If you read this post look in the riverside Inn and search for that topic, i don't want to copy paste it all.

Have you played WoW? Spike Heals actually works because it prevents the monk heal every second and cycle through his heal. The only that would happen is that groups would probably start taking two monk instead of one monk to heal. 100 to 180 HP within 10-15 second isn't bad since 100 is 1/4 of your HP and equal to 3 orison's heal and two healing breezes.

Nope, actually the priority is his friends. If his friends are low on health and he doesn't heal them, they will die and that leave a team member with their hands free fight someone else.

Except for Channeling and Bonetti's Defense, I've never seen a monk use any of the skills you noted.

Monk's don't kill you with spike damage, they kill you by stacking damage.

My ideal built is W/Me who uses Leech Signet, Energy Tap and Energy Drain, but Energy Tap and Leech Signet have long casting time, which means I can get knocked out of it.

Dude I know how to play a mesmer, I noting how the Ranger has a hard time lockdown a monk.

Again, they are good against protection monks or monk who don't bring hex removers.

Cast it prematurely and behind a wall and you'll get you land it. And then there is the fact, that another monk may have the spell.

[QUOTE=theclam]Amity is a waste for an elite. It has a 60s cooldown, it's only a minor annoyance to 2/3 of the classes in the game, you can get rid of it by taking damage or getting it removed, and it doesn't stop you from using your secondary profession's skills.[QUOTE=theclam]

If you say so, had a N/Mo used both Pacificism and then Amity as I was trying to take out the Mo/E. Took me out of the fight for a while.

As I said, Rangers have hard time countering 1 second spells so they have little worry about, plus Bonneti's Defense is good to raise Energy back up.

I'm saying monks have access to the same skills other class do when they cross class, meaning they can use Obisidan Skin, Ward Against Elementals, Whirling Aura or spellbreaker to avoid being a target for spellcasters.


Most non-noob monk, bring defense spells.

PvE and Tombs. Mo/El and Me/Monk.

My Orisons usually hit 100 by themselves.



If I had to choose between letting my team member die and sacrificing myself to save that team member, then I'll let him die. If I die, then they'll just kill that team member within a few more seconds and it will be a waste. If I'm alive, I can keep healing the rest of the team.

You've never seen anyone use Offering of Blood or Energy Drain? Those are two of the best energy management skills in the game. They're dependable and cast quickly. Most of the Boon Monks that I see bring Offering of Blood.

I don't know about that. Getting hit by 4 Bane Signets and 4 Banish killed me once or twice. Plus, multiple Balthazar's Aura will make me heal as much, if not more, than spike damage.

Leech Signet is 1/4s cast time. If Energy Tap is a problem for you, then use something like Power Leak.

My point is that if a Ranger can't shutdown a Monk by himself, a Mesmer on his team can help him. This is a team game.

Did you read what I said? Toss on a powerful Hex, then throw on Faintheartedness and Parasitic Bond. Even with 2 Monks on their team removing the Hexes, the powerful Hex will stay on, while Parasitic Bond and Faintheartedness get removed.

Well, there's always Hex removal. If you ctrl-click Pacifism, hope that someone on your team removes it from you.

Bonetti's Defense only works against Warriors. It lasts a short period of time, ends if you use a skill, and does nothing if the Warrior stops attacking you or switches targets. I think that it's a balanced ability, if not a little weak, seeing how many people actually play Warriors. If it really bothers you, there's always Wild Blow.

This is true.

If I'm not playing a pure Healer, I bring Reversal of Fortune, Protective Spirit, Guardian, etc. I don't bring skills like Pacifism (only works against 1/3 of the classes) or Bonetti's Defense (only works against 1/6 of the classes). I only bring general purpose skills. You don't really need to make a Monk that's totally self-sufficient, anyway. You've got teammates.

I don't find that at all. You just have to time it. You know that roughly .75 seconds or so after the last spell went off he'll be casting another one, so you fire off your distracting shot there. I've hit the chain-casting monks before, it's quite doable. That or use one of the two preparations that can counter a spell, a fast bow and tiger's Fury - a shot hitting every 1.33 seconds that counters your spell will get annoying fast, and is pretty much going to hit something. If the monk is trying to cast a spell frequently the odds are good of hitting it, after all, you can hit 8 times or so during the duration of a choking gas, during that time then any 1 second spell cast by the monk will be interrupted 75% of the time. That's not bad, if he tries to get 4 spells off you'll counter three of them.

Considering many monks didn't come to this revelations until now, there aren't many monks, but after a while this'll become epidemic as we have reports of monk beating HoH with just a team of monks only.

There is suppose to balance, if you can both protect/heal yourself and damage at the same time, that make you rather uber.

[QUOTE=Kiiron]Is this a result of class imbalance or bad planning on the part of the team who didn't bring any disenchants?

Mesmer enchantments can only break on enchant and you can counter shatter enchantments just as can counter shatter hexes. Put Zealot's Fire on yourself and then use Healing Breeze. Healing Breeze is destroyed and not ZF.

She was smiter/energy storage using Divine Boon while using ZF.

Sprints, yes; knockdown no unless they are hammer and warrior rarely bring hexes. An exaggratation on your part.

Ummm...I don't know if you know this, but that's how the strategies go these days.

hmm looking at your profile your a W/Me and your saying you have no skills in energy drain or interuption...

Here's your sign..

Except for this little thing we monks like to call Divine Favor. And oh yes, those nifty little runes. Stating that he could Orison for 100 is quite reasonable.

You quintuple posted?

i played a boon healer for a long time before i decided that i wanted my 4th pip of regen back... with 16 healing and 13 df on an orison it was 73+64+42 (i think) which added up to 179. a solid dwayna's kiss could easily heal over 200, but thats on other targets only. backfire, diversion, energy drain/tap, all of those shut me down well enough.

also, i made a pvp E/Mo smiter that runs with zealots + boon. with symbol of wrath + balth's aura i was hitting for a solid amount of damage, and then i put up ether renewal. with aura of restoration up, each cast of boon was netting me about 100 health and 15 energy. woohoo! im invincible! oh wait... a 147 point backfire. hits me twice before i stop. then i get energy drained, and when i go to recast ether renewal it gets interrupted. so i'm basically dead in the water for a minute.

it isn't unbalanced at all... you could shatter my zealots fire which would destroy my dps, if boon got hit with diversion then i'm almost even worse off. your typical w/mo uber tank is going to be able to take down a smiter 1 v 1 in most circumstances.

It's 100 with Divine Favor. It can go above 60, with more than 12 points into Healing Prayers.

You mean that your team has a disadvantage every time a team member dies? I don't think anyone disagrees with you about that.

I would think that Boon Monks would be harder to kill, since they have to cast less in order to heal for the same amount. Thus, it's harder to hit them with an interrupt. Still, the 1/4s interrupts and non-interrupt techniques are just as effective as with a regular Monk. You have played a Boon Monk, right?

I mentioned those spells because you mentioned them. Cry of Frustration and Power Drain work well, also.


I know that, but it's easier to shutdown multiple players if you've got Rangers helping you with interrupts.

How many Signets do Monks use? Only about half of all Monks bring a Signet, maybe much less than that. All Monk Signets take 2 or 3 seconds to cast, making them easy to interrupt with a Distracting Shot. Signet of Devotion heals for far less, per second, than every other heal spell that Monks get. Blessed Signet only helps if you have many maintained enchantments.

It only takes 5 mana to remove a Hex and the target gets healed through Divine Favor. Since Pacifism puts a Warrior mostly out of comission for several seconds, I'd remove it if a Warrior ctrl-clicked it, unless my team is getting majorly hammered.

BD ends if you use any skill, even a signet. I said to use Wild Blow only if BD really bothers you. If it doesn't really bother you, then don't use it.

Got bored one day and went to the 4v4 arena. Randomly entered the arena and noticed after a few games (15~20) that every match when a team did not have a monk, they lost.

Then again, this was 4v4. I was told by some m4d guildwarsguru in the gladiator section that the game was built with 8v8 in mind, not 4v4. Who knows...

This doesn't prove that monks are overpowered, just that having a monk is a good thing if the other team has one. The same is true of most classes, or more broadly: If you go in without any healing (and they have some) you are in trouble, if you go in without damage dealers (and they have some) you are in trouble, if you go in without counterspelling (and they have some) you're in trouble... The issue is that if you get 4 glass cannons on one team without any healing you'll be destroyed by any team with damage prevention - most players seem to like to play awesome damage dealing glass cannons, so when 4 get randomly placed together they are in trouble. Same would be true of monks - if 4 healing monks were placed together they might do ok, but they'd have trouble killing anyone and would be very vulnerable to energy denial and sudden spikes, as well as generally just being worn down/out of energy.