The Invinci Monks - no fun anymore

sorry for my spurt there but in my opinion your argumenting a sole class and using narrow vision in 'your perception' of the economy. The solo 55/105 build is not the only class that can solo and farm there materials/resources. There have been powerful W/Mo and Elementalist builds that do this too. But this perception imo is geared against solo farming ... why then is there no argument against the solo rusher that is a Warrior/Mo ... heck I think my Ele should be in the running business ... but his windows of opportunity are severely limited. <<< A future post for you perhaps?

I dont see the need to be upset with the fact that I farm. I cannot afford the 150K to buy that sword ... I am farming for my pve characters to have the weapons available to them. I want to build them to a place when I can retire them until new content comes out. I do have high standards ... but my farming does not directly effect your economy except in a beneficial way. Have you ever seen my guild giving away free gold items for trivia on Fridays? Yep ... all items we don't want we give for free ... why ... I'm not gonna use them ... someone else may. This economy will not level its self out if we decide to through out farming ... it will just end up losing players, sad but true ... with over 850 hours clocked and all betas ... the only way I have saved the face of this game with some guildies is teaching them to farm ... or through useless things like our trivia games day ... if not for that we have nothing left to do ... we pvp every night for a couple hours now cause pve has been over for a long time for all our characters ... farming gives me a break from pvp.

The problem is not the build itself. I can solo with my E/Mo or W/Mo builds before, just not to such an extend.

The reason people solo is because of all the nerf, and is very hard to be successful with random groups. For me, I solo (or with henches) because I have a new born baby and have to afk a lot.

I played a monk yestersday and just wasted the whole morning with 3 random teams of 8 at mineral spring without capturing a single skill. I then go with henches and can clear the map without any problem.

I also want to say that most of my guild members stop playing GW because of all the nerf. I finished my 2nd and 3rd characters with less than 10k each with only 1 gold drop without unlocking anything. If I can get decent drops and gold, I will gladly go with henches (still, I will rather not play with random groups).

I think I will stop playing GW as well if ANet don't increase the drops or they nerf any solo builds. It is just a waste of time exploring but not getting anything unlock.

Make it so you need an 8 person party to go into the UW. It would anger a lot of people, but then getting GW fanatics angry makes me happy.

I don't see what you guys are debating. It's really very simple: one single class can solo areas which are supposed to be extremely hard, basically areas to tide us over until the next expansion, because of one single skill.
No other class can do it.

Not only that, but the skill is counter intuitive, so the less health you have, the easier it is to stay alive.

The effect is that every powergamer in the game is either already running this one build, or grinding to get the runes (and low-level POS item) needed to drop health low enough. Diversity is going right down the drain.

To me this clearly means one thing: the skill is unbalanced.

Whether this is a problem or not largely depends on whether one is using the build or not - those who do, do not feel it's a problem, but I think most other PvE'ers would disagree. I for one certainly don't want armies of 55/105 monks everywhere, even if they don't directly compete with me. I want diversity. I want to be able to find balanced teams, for teamplay.

The solution is equally clear: balance that one skill. That's all. There's many ways of doing that, several have been suggested here.

the 55/105 monk build is a build that utilizes perfectly balanced skills in the perfect manner. none of the skills themselves are overpowered and nerfing any of them would make the monks role almost useless in the game. I have a 55 Smiter build.....and yes I use it to farm. I would, however, never think of using that build in a mission/quest because it's a useless build. Any enchant remove skill and my monk is pwned in 2.1 seconds. Die twice and you insta die on rez....it's not a usefull build for anything other than farming and nerfing the skills that make it possible(with the exception of Bonetti's I don't use it as I am a Mo/Me...but Bonetti's is overpowered) would create a useless class....Monks wouldn't be able to heal effectively.

This is just stupid. It's like all the people who are saying that whoever bought the monk runes they needed at a sane price instead of paying 250k should be banned.

It's rediculous. The 55/105 health build only hurts when they join your random pug and then decide to get you all killed and then solo.

It does not hurt the economy AT ALL it just brings down the price of ecto. With all the people buying it across all servers (and with the lack of drops to idiotic smite groups) the ecto should be 20k+ now. Becuase of the 55/105 heal build, ecto is at an almost reasonable 10k.

Do you want ecto and black dye to be 20-35k? Oh, you do, huh? Low prices hurts your e-bay account, I immagine.

Agreed
Agreed again
You win a cookie for understanding basic economic principles

Quoted for absolute truth.

My god people are dumb. Ecto's would be 50k each if it wasn't for monks farming UW...

Fair enough. I agree that there are plenty of people using the 55/105 smiter solely for quick financial gain. Personally I don't have a problem with this (though it's not my reason for soloing). Still, I can understand why someone else - especially someone who doesn't care to play a farming-friendly build - would. I don't know if I agree that Prot Bond/Spirit make monks significantly better than other classes or even other monk builds in PvE. As a general rule, monk builds based around Prot Bond are limited in the scope of what they can do. It's certainly no Swiss Army Knife that can dominate all (or even most) aspects of play. Making headway through many regions/missions can be hard to impossible for a solo Prot Bond monk.

I'm sure you're mainly thinking about farming when you speak of the solo monk's PvE advantage, and it's true that a 55/105 smiter who picks his spots wisely should be quite a capable farmer. I don't know if it's the hands-down best farming build - there seem to be some very capable warrior and elementalist-primary farmers out there - but 55/105 smiters monks definitely have an advantage in this area. That seems to be the real question: does the fact that a few classes have an advantage in the area of farming hurt the game as a whole? It really shouldn't; gold and items in GW mean very little comparatively to other games. However, old habits die hard and I'm sure some people might steer away from less farming-friendly classes like mesmer and necro to get their piece of the pie, so to speak.

That would be my main concern, much more so than solo monks getting rich quick (which in GW really doesn't affect much in the larger scheme of things). But rather than nerf solo builds to limit farming options (and in the process limit options for people who, like me, just like to adventure solo), what I'd prefer to see is an expansion of the capabilities of mesmers and necros such that viable solo builds can be created with those classes in mind. Especially if these new builds required very different strategies to implement than current farming builds do. If every class had its own unique yet equally workable option for solo farming I am sure complaints over farming as a whole would drop drastically. Of course this is much easier to suggest than to implement, but here's hoping that a solution can be found that addresses your "unfair advantage" concerns while allowing me to continue questing on my own.

I transformed my Mo/W into a <very> bastardized version of the standard 55/105 monk build. I also have multiple armor sets so, if desired, I can function as a real monk.

Basically the only real reason I have this farming character is for 15k armor (and possibly a little dye for it) for my 3 PvE characters

/signed

I'm sorry but that is a little over the top. Monks will always be extremely useful in the game even if Prot Bond and Prot Spirit are nerfed. If these skills were changed so they were based upon your natural unmodified maximum health, then they would be useless for this particular farming build but the impact on regular team-based play with monks would be nil. Most parties have people running around with health very close to their normal maximum--people run one or two superior runes along with a vigor rune and possibly some health bonuses on their weapons and shields. The net effect is the current Prot Bond and Spirit would provide about the same protection as a "nerfed" version. None of the other skills even need to be touched, so all the other 73 monk skills that most people equip instead of these 2 for normal teamplay would be unaffected.

And I really like how you say nerfing any of these skills would be bad, but it is okay to nerf the overpowered Bonetti's, which you happen to not use anyway. How is Bonetti's overpowered? There's lots of Warrior skills that would bypass Bonetti's defense.

if you're using the 55/105 monk build in arenas you are an idiot and should stop playing guild wars....so it's obvious we are talking about PvE and not PvP. Bonetti's gives you 75% chance to evade attacks AND 5 energy for every attack you evade. It's essentially a recharge of full energy every time you use it. That's a bit overpowered....but when it comes to PvE it doesn't matter so I could care less if they "nerf" it or not.

also. If prot bond were nerfed the way you want it to be nerfed players with DP would still be protected against their normal max HP. Add a 30% death penalty and protection bond will only stop attacks from doing more than 50(give or take a couple) damage to a character that only has 365 HP due to penalties.

i.e. the skill would be useless as it would now be protecting you against one attack doing more than 15% as opposed to the normal 5% it should be doing.

My comment about Bonetti's is that any perceived PVE imbalance can be solved by giving more melee mobs some of the warrior skills that counter it. At any rate, it *does* do alot, but it requires you to survive long enough to get 8 adrenaline, which is no easy feat.

WRT to the problem with the DP, well DP really rocks your world no matter what skills you are using. That is what the P in DP is all about. Why should these 2 skills out of however many skills there are in the game, actually be IMPROVED by DP, while most other skills are not? Well, I guess you could say any healing skill is improved by DP, because the less HP you have, the less healing spells you need to cast to fully heal. If they were nerfed in this fashion, these skills would be exactly as effective with or without DP: they would cap damage at ~25 (prot bond) or ~50 (prot spirit). Just like the 2 spells Mark of Protection or Healing Hands are not affected by DP. So I am not seeing the problem. Prot Spirit in this case is really only useful as an anti-spike skill, while prot bond would be useful against any sort of heavy-damage enemy.

you're forgetting that protective bond is only 1 of the 8 skills needed for invinci-monk....take it away and we'll just come up with another skill to use instead of it. We'll go Mo/R and use Melandru's against condition casters to keep our HP Regen up at 12 constantly. The invinci-monk build works because monks can heal...not because protective bond takes the damage away. My 535HP Build doesn't even use Protective Bond and I can still farm the desert with it. To Nerf the Invinci-Monk you'd need to nerf Healing Breeze, orison, balthazars aura, mending, any number of skills the invinci-monk uses. Which would make healing near impossible for the monk to do.

Wow, 5% of max hitpoints yields 50 damage maximum? That implies 1000 max health, in which case you shouldn't be using Protective Bond anyway, or your math is a little off. The skill is there to take the bite out of nuke spikes, reducing them to around 25 damage for Bond and 50 damage for Spirit, and as such aren't useless one bit.

In PvP you shouldn't be worrying about death penalty - if you need to rely on either spell to keep someone with 30% DP alive, you've already messed up somewhere along the line.

you are correct. cut my numbers in half I figured 10% not 5%....either way there is a huge difference between 5% of 350(30% DP) and 5% of 500

I'm not forgetting. All (or at least most) classes have multiple builds that are effective at farming. I farm with a 437HP E/Me.

The invinci-monk build works, not because monks can heal, but because Prot Bond drops the incoming dps down to a rate that is less than the monk's healing rate. If this were not true, then how come people are not farming UW with an invinci-monk prot bond build with 400 HP? Because even with Prot Bond limiting damage to only 20 per hit, they still cannot heal the damage they are receiving fast enough to survive.

Protective Bond is the keystone of the invinci-monk build. Take it away, and the invinci-monk build dies, because with all of the spells you listed, it is not possible for the monk to heal the damage from 3+ Aatxes as fast as it is coming in--and if the monk does find a way to do that, they will not have any skill-slots left to do any damage or even the time to cast the offensive spells. The monk still has all the other viable solo-farming builds, but the efficiency with which they can solo UW will be drastically reduced, if not stopped completely.

First of all, it's a really bad idea to ever balance anything around PvE that may, and probably will, severely affect competition.

Secondly, I think he did you a favor. Would you have progressed without him?

Third, why must people get all pissed off whenever anyone plays the way they find enjoyable?

And finally, what is appealing about invincibility? Comon... Is that worth answering!?

how does this affect you? what do YOU lose by someone else using an invinci-monk build?

I doubt it will die, protective spirit would work just as well.. Sure, it is 10% instead of 5, but unlike bond, you don't lose energy when you get a hit, which means you can afford to cast more heals on yourself with all that mana coming in through essense bond.

Protective Bond and Protective Spirit use a similar mechanic, and both need to be addressed I think.

To all the merry 55/105 milkers outraged at someone suggesting a nerf to their latest cash cow, and demanding to know how their actions have any effect on others - let's not kid around, we both know you don't give a damn about ruining other people's fun as long as your purse is full, so even if I bothered to dig up the many threads discussing just how such one-sided farming influences people who don't participate in it and link them here, you probably wouldn't bother to actually read them anyway, and if you did (and you clearly haven't, since this very thread already contains some discussion on the subject you could've responded to), you simply wouldn't care in the end. Let's not waste eachother's time.

Just a few points on some earlier posts. Ecto now costs what it does now NOT because of farming but rather because what ANet did with the trader merge and the price caps. The economy was formerly the way it was with skyrocketing prices because of how the old code worked with the economy. No one was selling to the trader cuz they gave crappy quotes for the sell, so they sold in game. People still bought from the trader who's supply diminished and this caused trader prices to rise to the heights that they did. Plus there were those people that were affecting the market on purpose by buying out the traders when they had stock in items, and then selling them at the increased prices.

This build can only solo certain areas of the game, but so could other builds. At this point I don't see it as impacting the game too much other than the ability to unlock runes fairly well compared to other players, but that is something they've been needing to address for a while (PvP, especially). Economically, they get a nice money gain, but its not like they can influence the market since everything is fixed and as long as the traders remain in stock, which I believe will stabilize as time passes and everyone adapts. They help the market in some ways by providing a supply when the trader is out of stock.

The main thing I've been saying in other threads is that this is NOT the only farming build. It just happens to be a popular one that was advertised and spread like wildfire. There are people who ride other farming builds and make a nice profit just the same. Shall we nerf those as well? And if this build were to fall and another arise, would everyone be so quick to cry nerf?

If it affected PvP, I would definitely call for a balance as balance is more of an issue there than in PvE. And the only thing I think needs a look in PvP right now is spirits.

I think ANet could go either way. We'll just have to wait and see what they think.

Doesn't matter: we now have fewer healing monks and more Ubermonks who work their way into a PuG -- with the team thinking they're healing, while instead they're really there to show off and get cheap admission.

Today, I was able to see one of those Ubermonks die, and with their DP putting them at negative health, they were impossible to rez. That was priceless.

Frustrations aside, I'd like to see Mesmers and maybe Necros beefed up a touch so that every profession has an opportunity for glory. Plus, maybe Sorrow's Furnace (when it comes out) can have some spirit-build characters and more casters. Anything to mix it up a bit, and put more emphasis on these professions.

As for farming, I'm still hoping for the auction house idea. If for no other reason, it would be a better way to work player trading into the economy, and have those statistics better reflected in the buying and selling prices for things. I believe that's a better long-term solution to farming and frustration than nerfing everything.

(On the PvE side, anyway. There's still the PvP ramifications of Nature's Renewal and the like, for different issues.)

My Necromancer can solo most of the Ring of Fire.
Monks can solo most of the UW.

Big whooped. Don't nerf the spell, because the spell isn't overpowered. If you want to comlpain about something, you should complain about how this entire game is a cake-walk, IMO.

You want to fix it? How about giving UW creatures secondaries? Have Aatxes or Grasping Darknesses bring Rend Enchantment. But for the love of god, just because some spells are overpowered in a few areas of the game, don't nerf it.

If you want to nerf spells just because they are more advantagous to one area of the game, how bout nerfing winter? Or how about Bone Horrors? God knows I had fun with those in the jungles. Let's nerf sprint/charge! Wouldn't want to have somebody running around getting ::gasp:: infused, now would we? Or mabey we should nerf Life Syphon? Wouldn't want Necroes soloing most of the Ring of Fire, now would we?

Sorry to say, but I don't horde my money and such like some do. I end up giving out alot of things to random ppl, and I do my solo runs like most ppl. To say that the solo ppl are ruining the economy. Sorry to say it is the other way around. I end up putting alot of items and materials back into the system. How does that hurt the other players...hmm It don't

I am sure there are some ppl thath have ran into me in Ascalon. Running around giving out items gold and such. If you see Divine Soul Healer in Ascalon you bet I am giving things out to random ppl.

As Dazzler pointed out, why screw over people playing the game in a normal fashion just because the solo'ers are making a problem out of themselves? We've already seen global enchantment removal introduced, making incidental enchantments such as conjures useless for a large part of the game. Echo echo. Do you people even bother to read the thread?
Yeah yeah, you're a regular Robin Hood, that's why there's nothing wrong with abusing Protective Bond, you're abusing it for good ends! I'm sure everyone is just as righteous as you are.

The problem is that healing trumps damage for use and is able to be ramped up on top of that, in addition to all of the most effective forms of damage diffusal lying within one class as well. Then you combine that with a skill line that emphasises in bypassing damage reduction and defenses. One of these things need to get reeled back in or removed, perhaps both .

/Signed

Anet, stop worrying about the little things and get on to stopping these significant and obvious errors with the game. Oh, and btw, don't create anymore errors either thanks.

So mabey we should nerf Warriors, Monks, and Elementalists? Not all professions can solo Griffons. Not all professions can do runs.

I still fail to see how they are "ruining the economy".

I must say that he is right. ^^

This game is incredibly boring with the 4 character slots (not 8?)

Lets see.. I can solo uw and get the ecto for the totally meaningless fissure armor.. or just farm wherever and get rich

do some pvp.. oh it is incredibly inbalanced.. well hope is on the way..

I hope to see guild wars be more exciting in the future

and why exactly is it a problem? Why is it a problem for you, that someone else can solo a place you do not? Why should ANYONE bother what someone else is doing in PvE? ANet already separated us in different instances ... so that NOTHING someone else does in the field influences what YOU do on that same field. If you don't like farming ... well, don't! There are so many things to do in this game. Do what YOU like! So long as it doesn't screw other people's game (like, for example, rune botters).

Truth is, many people just like to complain, for the sport of it. A while ago the favourite whine was how "unfair" Droknar runners are (with the true message behind all the whines being "they are making too much cash! why don't I?"). Now the hottest new trend is to complain about the invinci-monks. Power-mesmers beware, you'll be next!

calling a monk farmer "greedy" because he's enjoying his game in a different way that you? Maybe we should call "greedy" those posters that like to count money in other player's storage chests, instead of making their own. Maybe I should call American-server based players greedy for hogging the favor all the time - give us Euros more space!

LoL, love to see your ele build that can solo the UW.

dont worry guys, im sure Anets gonna throw in more enchant removals

Actually i would find it difficult to see a class combination that couldnt manage to solo griffons. Every proffesion has anti-warrior solutions.

How about giving us the ability to see who is a 55/115 build, then we can choose if we want them in our PUGs or not.

This could be true for a player who does not ever sell anything to a trader, who never trades gold or items with other players, and even then, ArenaNet needs to keep a balance in how an average player earns money, to determine the weight of their money sinks in order to safeguard the economy. If one or two professions can earn a multitude on their own of what other classes can earn in a group, that means that on average those solo professions will be skewing the money balance upward, and prices will increase to reflect their buying power, not those of people playing the game normally. It's like a shoplifter stealing things from a store thinking he's not bothering any other customers, but in reality prices are forced up every time he steals something. You think you're not affecting anyone, the reality is different.
Hottest trend? I addressed this issue over a month ago, before most people even knew about this kind of abuse. Here's some truth for you: people want cheap ways to get rich quick, without a single care who is affected by their methods. I can respect that. The dishonesty and righteous squirming about it I could do without.

The buying power of a minority does not affect prices. Only if the same farmers were hoarding what they farm (ecto) would it affect prices, and indications are they are not.

Who said anything about a minority? Look at the sheer number of Mo/W and Mo/X characters in Temple of Ages. Look at the cost of superior monk runes before the trader reset, each hovering around 80k where the rest was below 10k, most even being under 1k. Minorities don't influence prices, you say? How people play their game doesn't affect others, right?

If this was a minority it wouldn't be a problem, but everybody and their uncle appear to be hopping on the 55/105 bandwagon. And why shouldn't they - got to milk it while it lasts, right? Even if it was a minority, I'd like to see more PvE balance to ensure new players to enter a semi-balanced game, where you actually need to work as a team to defeat challenges. If you don't like that sort of thing, why are you playing in the first place? WoW is there for you.

This conversation seems to be going around in circles. If everyone is doing it, then what's the problem? Apparently everyone doesn't seem to mind. If not everyone is doing it, then it's a select few that are causing problems.

But placing blame on farmers for pricing and inflation is wrong, the majority of the blame (if you want to call it blame) are the multimillionaires that buy out traders low, then wait for the prices to skyrocket while everyone else scrambles onto the purchasing bandwagon, then floods the market with their goods, then moves onto a different commodity. That is why you see such wildly swiging prices, lack of availability of items, and the rich getting richer. And the uber rich don't get that way via just farming, there are plenty of people that made their cash via sigil trading, droknar running, whatever.

Why do you think blue ink, of all things, suddenly became a hot commodity? What did everyone do at the price reset? Farm? No, they bought globs and shards. Suddenly, it's not just MONK superior runes, it's ALL superior runes. Superior Vigors start the day at 49K, and end up around 85K, just to drop back down again. It's morons spending 100s of thousands of gold for the most coveted storm bows just because it's cool looking.

I should know - our guild went from a bunch of guys scrambling to farm fur squares and feeling proud to break 100K, to suddenly being millionaires, where 100K was NOTHING, buying stupid crap like Steve Martin in "The Jerk", and thinking they were hot wall street commodities day traders - except for pork bellies and frozen concentrated orange juice it's black dyes and crafting materials. And all of this happened within a week period. And we're not the only ones, it's amazingly common, but not much talked about.

Everyone complains about bots, and farming, but the commodity market is where the real money is at. All you need is a small bankroll, and you're golden.

How many pugs can you get for UW that actually want to explore? None? Correct.

The UW monk lets you play the game like pre-searing and actually have stress free fun for the first time in two months.

Here's what I'll do. I will leach any Non-monk class through the solo UW just becuase I have nothing better to do.

Requirments: Armor set with 5 sup runes. 500 gold to pay your weight in. Brains.

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