Confessions of a Healing Monk

Concise and to the point. Excatly what I want as a healer monk. Monks do not need to be treated better. Please stop complaining about how 'hard it is' to be a monk.
Listen, if you (as a monk) are in a party with retards that agro and die...so what! As long as you pointed out your energy situation, and they still charged, who cares. You are doing your job, they failed to do their job. They will learn the hard way.
I focus my healing (And therefore my precious energy) on competant players. Try it. Keep the useful warrior, necro or ranger up. Let the incompetants die off.
Don't worry if they yell "Player so and so is dead!" in the chat window. Keep your primary targets up.

Or, better yet, find a guild to play in that will listen and go slow enough to regen. It works wonders when you play as a team.

But please, oh please, stop complaining that monks need 'more love' or 'more energy' or silly nosence like this.

Amen. By getting angry at your monk everytime you die you are effectively saying "This is all on the monk whether we succeed or fail." Rather perhaps look at yourself and why you keep dying.

Thank you Dayala! This is a monk player who gets it folks. Everyone in a team has their job to do. They need to worry about doing it, and not worry about who isn't doing their's.

Agreed. It's funny how the people who are crying for this aren't even monks.

This is a rather weird way of looking at it, you seem to think a healer or defensive person is a liability. You are looking at the game from purely a damage output standpoint and in that I wish you luck with your 8 ele groups.

Heh, first an amen to the OP, Monks take the brunt of the abuse when a mission fails. I have never heard a tank say "my bad" for aggroing a group. I've heard others blame a tank or any other character for stupid behavior, but rarely do I hear anyone take the blame for mission failure.

Now that said, 2 conversations have spawned of interest to me. The first is the original thought about not rushing off after a battle. The second is the "role" of various players. Each side has interseting thoughts, but I think what is happening here on the forums isn't happening when joining a group.

In the first case about rushing into battle, someone mentioned that we shouldn't freak out when moving to the next area. I think communication is key. Unless you say that lets move to the next area and recharge, how can we as monks not assume that a fight may take place? Are you asking us to believe that everyone thinks the same way as you/we do? I believe the team leader (and yes there should always be one) should be managing the team. Anyone who doesn't listen to the leader shouldn't have bothered to join a PUG and just get henched it. As a team leader, I usually check to see if my casters have energy. Not checking that has aggravated many casters and given that everyone depends on energy, it's the polite thing to do.

The second is in regards to the monk and the other players role. I generally suggest that healing be confined to the monks. If you want to bring a spare heal fine, I won't can't stop you, but killing the enemy is the key for most other characters besides the healing/prot monk and blood necro. I would recommend instead if you have a spare spot to use a protection spell of some sort. Whether it be an elementalist's armor spell or a defensive stance by a warrior, those are much more useful than sprint (just so you can run ahead of us and write how everyone else is noob) and heal spells that we weren't aware of. Protection against damage helps a monk much more than a heal so there is no overlapping skills (say 2 healing breezes on the same character). Regardless of whatever back-up skill is chosen, speak up before hand. Especially if it's a long wait to form a party. When I'm in the S. Shiverpeaks I'm usualy talking about mission and tactics before the start of a mission. And once in, I'm speaking up. Staying silent will lead to assumptions and we all know how well those go...

In the end, my biggest beef is that people don't say anything (monks, tanks, etc) till they are getting yelled at. If your testing a new build, say so! If you switched secondaries, but don't know what to do, ask! Bringing a healing spell? Ask your monk if they would like that or not. I also get bothered when I get into a mission as a prot monk and the ohter monk says, "I'm smiting, you heal." or for when a monk stops in the middle of a fight to rez while getting hit. If anyone should rez it should be tanks, we can heal them while they rez. Rebirth is a great spell but don't use it as a tank if your being hammered, you may live, but the newly revived will probably not. Again communication is key.

There are many other sad, sad anectdotes of poor teamplay in PUGs that get the response, "How stupid are you?!?" and to that, I say, all parties are guilty for non-communication and one party may be more responsible for additional mistakes. There is of course the occasional guy who flat out lies or misleads about what they can do, but the more common is mis-comm between groups.

Talk early and talk often!
-DW/Nymph of Light (PvE, Arenas Prot monk)

the OP didnt state monks need more love ...

the OP did post that when you die after he says he has no energy ... your fault ... so thank you for supporting what he said.

what came up in the discussion (IN PVE MISSIONS) ... was the usefulness of self heals. I personally run missions with henchmen or guildies ... when in pugs I am aware it is a pug and have a 90% expectancy of failure because I know America isn't made of Einsteins. Point has been proven playing as a ranger, as a Monk, as an Ele, as a Necro, and as a Warrior. In a tournament battle I would say do your jobs.

But PvE ... I don't see this as smart thinking. Who defines their job ... surely not you. The reason in PvE mission based pugs is because its very possible to still complete missions when everyone else dies.

Scenerio ... your in the wilds ... finally made it all the way to the end ... are fighting the justiciar habilion and his crew have used all res sigs ... things are fine at first ... then he hacks your monk down.

Without being self sufficient you wont likely win ... you will die in record time. Many mission are possible to complete including sanctum Cay ... a key mission. Some are not ... but some are and thats where this discusion has revolved around. Not love ... survival.

As I like to tell my buddies: "If your health bar is moving twords the left, please find a way to make that trend stop.". The implication is for them to try and prevent damage by moving out of its way, or protecting themsleves.

I don't care if they bring a self heal, or not, but if they stand in the middle of a firestorm, then I now have to decide whether I'll be OK in 10 seconds or if I have to not heal them so everyone else can get some love. If they are being gang-raped by mobs, and I can't keep up, then they need to start thinking about their will, or preventing the damage they are taking.

You don't need self heals most of the time, just "skill". If you don't have that, then bring a a self-heal, or a protection skill.

Oh yes this is another big problem I have with groups. People who die and instantly want to be rezzed chanting "Rez me monk, Rez, Rez, Rez". I am not going to rez you until the fight is over, do you realize how long a rez takes? Do you understand that I cannot heal anyone else while I am attempting a rez, do you see how more people die if I stop to rez you ultimately leading to a wipe? If you die, wait quietly until the current battle is over.

Yes, that is exactly my point. Let's take a team with 6offense/2monks vs. 7offense/1monk. Is the 1monk team able to kill enemies quicker, hence requiring less healing? Definitely. Should the 2monk team expect to get away with sustaining more damage? Of course.

If you're the second monk on that team, you can't think, "oh be glad that I'm here 'cause I could easily leave." That team took you instead of another damage dealer, so you have to make yourself useful and prove that you deserved that spot on the team.

You seem to think that it's either 7people/1monk or 7people/no monk. Keep in mind that the last spot could be filled by someone else.

Thanks Sir Maddox! You stole the words right out of this smiting monks mouth!

Well, depends a lot on the build of the team, not the numbers. You should know this.

Unless half the party is composed of Monks, those you do have with you aren't going to be able to give you constant, individualized attention. I would think that any character with even a semblance of self-preservation instinct would take it upon themselves to pick up the slack. Especially given the in-game environment, in which most, if not all, the other party members -- monks included -- are likely to be grade-A morons (and this applies whether you travel with humans or henchmen...).

All of my characters are built to be able to take care of themselves. Maybe not being able to solo, but definitely not requiring 24/7 Monk Attention. That way, a Monk is a blessing, not a necessity. Taking a second or two to tend to your own wounds is not going get you killed (in PvE, anyway). And if your party is so overwhelmed that anyone taking a second or two to heal themselves will result in their demise...well, the party is probably dead, anyway, regardless what the Monk does.

In my opinion, then, it is the non-Monk's job to be able to take care of himself (or herself, as the case may be), for those times when the Monk must focus attention elsewhere.

I haven’t run into a whole lot of players that I would classify as truly terrible. Some have been inexperienced, some have been arrogant, some seem unaware that they’re on a team, etc. But few that are truly terrible. Let me tell you about CTD, the Crash Test Dummy, the worst player I’ve ever run into. This was on my very first time through the game, so I wasn’t exactly a great player myself yet, but there was still something about this guy that set him apart.

I can’t remember his real name. His initials were CTD though, and so I named him the Crash Test Dummy. That was all he was good for. I had him on my team on Thirsty River. He was an Elementalist, a fire Elementalist. The rest of the team was pretty good; we’d gone through Dunes and Elona together, but we’d lost our Elementalist after that; he was done for the night. So, we ended up recruiting CTD.

Before everyone was done loading, CTD was off and running towards the enemies, sending up red signal flares on the map as he went for the Sand Giants. We went tearing off in hot pursuit, just in time to see him run straight into a mob and die. We probably should have gone back to town and restarted right then. But we were foolish, foolish optimists.

He grumped a little bit about dying, but seemed to take it in good humor. And then, as soon as he was up to full health and energy, he took off again. He went to melee range and started firing off spells. That time, he didn’t die, but our warrior did. The monk simply had to energy left for healing. CTD reacted by saying “OMG yur a warrior how did u die?” or something to that effect. By the time we got to the ghost, he’d died two more times, but no one else had died. We asked him what kind of Elementalist he was. He said that he was a Point Blank Area of Effect Elementalist. He used no defensive magic, because “thats what monks are for duh” (or something to that effect). He also started to get nastier with his trash talk, especially towards our monk.

Reasoning with him didn’t help against the first group of Forgotten. We really should have dropped and started over, but we were starting to run low on time ourselves and didn’t. Finally, after he aggroed both groups of Forgotten on the second stage, we decided to stop reviving.

The mission went smoothly after that. He spent the next fifteen minutes screaming at us, telling us that we were terrible, that our monk couldn’t heal, etc. He left shortly before we wiped out the last camp and beat the mission.

The morale of the story is: don't run ahead of your group with no defensive magics if you're an elementalist and your monk has no energy left and expect to be kept alive. Moron.

Personally I think a group of 7 people should be able to complete the mission themselves without the monk. The monk should be there to ensure that nothing unexpected happens. Warriors should be able to hold their own in almost all situations. The only time when they should be able to be killed is when they are hexed, hard, but that is where the other team members come in (ex. mesmers for hex removal and to disable the enemy caster for doing further damage). Currently most people seem to think that warriors should tank (also, for some reason it's the warriors job to charge in the back to take out the enemy casters too, which completely conflicts with tanking) while elementalists nuke everything away and a monk keeps everybody alive. The reason why such a team can fail often is that the monk can be interrupted, conditions and hexes can stack up, enemy casters may be spread out (meaning they all can't be nuked with mass AoE). Rather than simply having damage dealer and healer teams, people should make teams that contain tankers, healers, damage dealers, anti casters (rangers/mesmers), condition or hex removers, etc. In fact, there are probably more jobs than there are party members. Sure the damage dealer and healer team will be faster against weaker groups of enemies (massive amounts of melee that can be horded together and AoE'ed to death). Things go wrong when hexes pile up and when the team desperately tries to take out the enemy casters, which ends up breaking the line of tankers. One monk simply cannot fix these situations.

I appreciate that yuou (Blue stel ) are the exception to the usual player that acts as leader.
Of course you undersand that when yuo tell a Necro to bring well of blood saskid Necro will use it.
And you also undersand that when the well is working you move out of it's area of effect thereby waisting the Necro's energy and efforts.

Be awfuoll careful how you judge a person's intelligence by how well they use "proper grammer"
NOt everyone - such as yourself- had the opportunity to spend a pleasent time in Engilsh Lit. 101.
If I want to know how to raise a pig I'll go to a hog farmer and ask.
Most college professors I know - and I know quite a few- don't know the difference between sheep dip and horse manure.

There are quite a few of us that received our education in the jungles and the deserts of the world.
We know who the real warriors are.

Try typing Stop - "That's not the way to go" in under half a second- that;'s all you probably all the time you give anyone in yourr group anyway-.
Now try it with arthritic hands.

Good leaders pay attetion to the other members of the team.

oh stop jabbering man, youre a healer! everyone loves you!

I absolutely love playing a warrior, but because of the giant hassle you have to go through to be accepted in a FoW party as a warrior, I have a pve healer (named Glyn Wynterfury). Now, I consider myself a far better warrior than I am a monk, but as a monk, I've gotten way more compliments and far less bickering. Warriors have it way harder in this game, everyone automatically assumes you're an idiot. Granted, loads of warriors are idiots, but I am not.

I just think monks should stop quacking about the few people who pound on them for not keeping them alive, and realize this game is FAR TOO GOOD TO MONKS. You quack because you have it too easy. That's right, and I am a monk too, I only play fissure as a monk anymore, cause it's the only way I can know there's some good healing going on. There's a lot of idiot monks. When I get attacked, and I hardly take any dmg it's like "whoa glyn, you tank better than the warriors" but when my pvp warrior (Ander Roflcopter atm) takes out loads of people and puts in an awesome combo, it'll be normal.

Cooperate with your monk, and your monk will cooperate with you = WIN!

Last night I joing a PUG for the Ring of Fire. As a monk, and a focused Mo/E healer/warder, I was welcomed into the group. After five minutes, there were still no more monks in the area, and I said to the leader, if you bring Lina, and the necro brings energy regen for me, we may still win.

We had a few hiccups at the beginning, as we learned each others styles and methods, my reminding the necro that when I called low energy he whacked blood ritual on me before worrying about the eles (who on my advise later switched out to glyph of energy.. ). When I was on low energy and for the first time somone was getting under 1/3 of their health and calling heal repeatedly, after the fight and having spike healed him with Word of Healing the second it recharged I informed him, "please do not tell me how to do my job, and I will not tell you how to do yours."

One of the rangers asks, "Do you mind if we do the bonus, I have a spare set of armour that needs infusing". Being a fan of getting the bonuses the first time through, and things going okay we did so... and then the mission.

..And then Abadon's mouth.. and then Hell's Precipice (complete with bonus at my request "we owe it to the monk to at least try - and it's right here, and she has rebirth")..

Changed a few people between the last two missions (including loosing the primary necro )- but a pug with one heal monk and lina can work well!

There's a good reason why most professions choose monk as a secondary (e.g. the most popular w/mo).
As a monk, I heal whoever I can whenever I can, but if the other team members can throw up just a random healing spell on themselves every now and then, that saves me all the more energy to use on someone who needs it.

I do agree, however, that it is the monk's job to heal people, AND NO ONE ELSES. People just need to keep in mind that only having 30-40 energy and being expected to heal all 8 party members is quite a task indeed.

Allow me to /ignore you for simple-mindedness, have a nice day

Yes, henchmen AI is > average player AI.

most missions are much eaiser with henchmen team.