If Dev's Nerf 105/85/55 Monk build will you continue to play Guild Wars?

hopefully they'll increase drops so that the average joe doesn't need to solo UW for a few good items.

Then getting rid of the 105 monk build won't mean much

No alot of us dont do it becuase its incredibly lame. I have a full set of superior runes sittingmy box. I was thought about putting together a high prot gear set, but decided I dont want to explot and be a lame ass. I realyl dont get much feeling of acomplishment from exploiting an obvious oversight on the DEVs and then bragging about it. Just lame in so many ways. But hey its a free game who the hell cares.

But this is for sure, it simply HAS to be fixed. ANET will do something about this build. They have no choice before this game gets labeled as a game full of exploits and hacks. If they want people to take them seriously they need to do something.

Until now they have been very underhanded and nerfed things my putting more mobs in places, adding lame skills to the mobs and screwing drop rates. All of this has had the cumulative effect of making the game a incredible hassle to play. And Im sick of it, this cowardly "adjusting" of the game world to tip toe around exploiters and hacks is starting to piss me off.

Soo.. if they nerf it... everyone's going back to the other build which lets you farm (W/?) ?

I sorta find that a pitty, having a primary healer and having watched someone in underworld with one of the monks that can die only once, I found it absolutly fascinating to see them being attacked like that and survive.

Yeah, I'd love to have a go at that, if only for the thrill of having more than 3 monsters attack you at the same time, or the adrenalin rush of killing something instead of healing, but... considering I have only just finished ascention, I'll never get there in time to have a go at it if it gets nerved, simply because she's not a character I want to rush.

As for all the weapons trading, thanks, I get enough nice drops by playing with others.

So no, I would not quit the game over it, but... my faith in humanity is gonna go down a bit more.. the amount of jealousy from people here is amazing, if you're so jealous of this monk build, why did you not make one yourself? Or do you find it easier to whine about others making money than actually putting some effort into it yourself?

Judging by what the frog has said, I doubt they will do another ninja enchant removal placing and such, I am nearly certain that if they do anything (and so I hope they do) it will be directly aimed at the problematic skills and not at just certain areas.

If you sit to think about it the same will probably appear for NR when it is about to get "fixed" because all those who are not intelligent enough to *gasp* think for themselves will *gasp* complain that their only way of succeed (be it unfair or fair) was taken away. Maybe instead of spending countless hours defending an abovious exploit you should sit down and think about a new combo that may work, who knows you might find something far more enjoyable... so what if you can't be god to the Aatxe/Grasping/Smites big woop, if you want to be godlike I would suggest Unreal there the game will even call you godlike :P (that was only an unfunny joke, not a go play game X). Honestly people, if you opened your eyes to the problem and not be like monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, then maybe you will realise the problems that have been stated all so clearly and all so well.

Sure lets call me a jealous pro-nerfer, hell I will admit that I am jealous of not being godlike, but hell I don't want to be some wanna be copy cat, I have a morale... which many of you (judging by posts) do not have. I will stick with legitamite farming with my monk, because you know it is possible (and also my ranger, necro and mesmer O-o). Which bring me to the fact that the argument that monks finally can take down big creatures is utter bull. Where the heck are you pulling this out of? I can easily go take down Fleshies, Drakes, Hydras, Mursaat, and so forth. But wait, I am not godlike so I guess that it doesn't count for monk farming. Also the crap of compensation if all bull, if you think you need compensation for idiots in the game you think to highly of yourself. We would all like compensation, but heck we don't go using it as a defense to one of the most clearly out of order skills (broken has become stagnant). Oh I had a jack ass in my group that said I didn't heal, well I guess thats reason enough for me to go solo UW with an out of order build.

Lets all be unoriginal, lets all run NR, lets all run Invicimonks, lets all "do it because its there and because we can", lets all milk the cow until its only bones, lets all just simply destroy a great game. I see a trend, maybe I am biased but hell its crap. If you have some other reason to defend the build please say it and I will do my best to show the ludicracy in that idea (if there is any, some ideas are legit). The only reason I would accept this build is if an honest player simply used it to get their OWN FoW ugly armour, (which sadly makes FoW armour nothing but trivial 105/55 monk armour now), but unfortunatly it doesn't work that way, people aren't just going to say "well I got my armour let me stop 'cheating'" They will continue (as stated by Silmor, if I mispelled my apologize) to milk there cash cow, because we all know GW is nothing more than a cash cow right?

PS: The idea of selling the rarest of rares for 5-10k sickens me, but I value the idea of a rare, which many clearly do not. Hell lets just make everything blue, right now thats what they are simply turning into, trash that people want to simply get rid of. Woohoo I found a rare item, too bad its not worth anything anymore because some people are impatient (and that the GW trading sucks right now). Yay we can all be equal in PvE... oh wait last I checked some people (Algren) do not want balance... guess we can't have that either. Why not just have a game where those who have no lives go farm from dusk to dawn and become the elitists (not elite) and those who actually care about playing the game go by the wasteside (these are the true elites).

And so I ranted...woohoo. My point is simply the build is stupid/broken/etc... if you leave over something like this... well you are a sad sad sad individual.

I spent ages trying to beat thunderhead with my Ele. Beforehand, I had beaten it easily with my Necro. Does that mean I suck that I can't beat it with my Ele? There are 7 other players there, my single ele can't deal enough damage or heal enough (not that it can at all) to make up for everyone else's downfalls. The mission itself is easy, just like Elona Reach. It's just made so unnessarily hard by the people on your team that can't work as one. You can be the best player in the world and still have no luck with thunderhead keep (without using henchies of course).

Yes i will continue to play GW, because i dont have a monk file. The only thing the monks can farm solo that i cant with my Ele is UW.

Yeah. Thunderhead Keep is the ultimate collection of all people who fall apart when someone mentions the word "target calling" and "strategy".

I think Spirit Spammers are incredibly lame.
I think using run skills to offer taxi services to people is incredibly lame.
I think run skills generally are lame because most people only use them to run around battles because they are too lazy to play the game
I think Natures Renewal is incredibly lame because it basically makes whole enchantment builds USELESS

Did you ever see me bitching and whining about ONE of these things in forum and yell for a nerf? No? Well, that's because I DON'T FORCE MY PREFERRED STYLE OF PLAYING ON OTHERS.

End-all-be-all on 105/85/55 Monks: If you don't play one, prove it affects your gameplay, then begin your argument from there. Otherwise, it's not an issue for those who don't play them.

I'm sure most of you will continue to play, it will just be a little more of a challenge. That's ultimately what any game is about - the challenge.

Fantus, just because you don't bitch and whine about stuff doesn't mean no one else does. Tons of people bitched about spirit spam, running, and NR. Does it mean they want to force their playing style on everyone else? No. It means there's some balance issue that people think should be addressed.

Frankly you sound like you've posted in a powergamer vs. roleplayer thread on a Neverwinter Nights board. Forcing playstyle... lol.

Same poor excuse for an argument I heard countless times on my thread. I don't know where people get this misconception that if what youre doing doesnt effect anyone else it cant be unbalanced/abuse/exploitative,whatever.

Neither am I, You can play however you want, with or without an unbalanced and abused monk build. Typical Monkroach argument, its all about the monkroach, I dont care how YOU play, I dont expect you to care what I do, I expect anet to keep the game a lvl playing field. Or at least attempt to.

If you agree that what the "monkroaches" do doesn't affect anyone else - then why do you even care if what they do is "unbalanced"??? Are you some self-imposed Knight of Righteousness or what?

Good that we are in agreement here, too.

You can call me a monkroach as long as you want to. The monk in my profile is primarily a healer monk who goes farming every now and then to afford 15k stuff for herself and her guildmates. I don't trade with other players, I sell even the gold items to NPC traders. So feel free to insult my monk or my gameplay, I really don't care. And in all your bitching and whining you have still failed to prove why this kind of gaming is even a bad thing, especially since you seem to bascially agree that 105 monks don't affect others. You want an even levelled playfield? Cool, so do I. Especially when it comes to "abusive" gameplay that actually DOES affect others (umm..spirit spammers...). Why not go save the world where it really matters? Or is it (like so many people here like to think) really all about jealousy - despite you like to deny that so much?
Is Protective Bond a powerful skill? Yes, it is. Is it too powerful? That's up to ArenaNet to decide, not a loud handful of bitchers and whiners. There are hundreds of skills in GW. Some of them are utterly crappy, some of them are nice, some are powerful. Every class has powerful and crappy skills. Every class can do things other clases can't do. Have a lot of fun trying to make all skills and all classes evenly worthy. Happy whining...

Don't get me wrong, I think it's ok to voice one's opinion if someone thinks something need to be changed. However, the bitching about the 105 monk started at pretty much the same time it was invented. That was.. like a month ago, right? I think it's pretty safe to assume that ArenaNet is aware of the 105 monk build. Did they nerf it so far? No. It would be REALLY easy to nerf that build without affecting PvP, so this kinda should tell us that the build didn't get nerfed because A-Net didn't want to nerf it. Did the whining stop? No, it went on and on and on, like one of these energy cell advertising bunnies. The whiners started new "NERF THE 105 MONK" threads here DAILY - because they can't seem to get over the fact the A-Net didn't nerf that build despite they hate it sooo much.

Constantly whining about NR and spirit spammers is just as wrong, just to get my point over.

Maybe I did - I used to be quite active there...

I dont remember saying I agree that what the monkroaches do affects no one else, but even if I play along with that misconception, which I was for that comment, how does the supposed fact that it doesnt affect anyone else bear upon wether or not any behavior is abusive/exploitative/unbalanced? It doesn't.


Yep, and we still will be after Anet gets around to fixing protbond as well.



[QUOTE=Fantus]You can call me a monkroach as long as you want to.[/quote

I didnt call you anything, I stated you were using typical monkroach logic. And before you respond as if I am calling you specifically a monkroach, know what it means and decide wether or not it applies to you. The term was coined in my mind when I saw the multitude of monks crawling all over greneths statue waiting for that last win before favor. One day it was one/two monks waiting, next week it was 50... monkroaches.

Believe what you want, you can either choose to believe that I cant abuse that build and that I'm just jealous, or you can choose to believe that I'm quite capable of abusing that build just as much as anyone else and choose not to, either way its nothing to me.

Absolutely, but if you're trying to tell me that I dont have the right to post my opinion on the matter you're out of your mind.

Refer to my post (last one on page 7) for my opinion on that. Posting one's opinion is ok. Beating a dead horse is whining. I hope you can see the difference in that.

Will I quite if they nerf the 105 monk.......Nope, but I think we should take a long slow look at what we ask for. Nerfing is easy to do in most cases, but the cumilative effect is you will end up with a rather bland game with cookie cutter builds. Nobody will be able to come up with the next great thing, and if they do they certainly will not talk about it for fear of it to being nurfed. Never once have I considered that because someone chooses to play or use a build that seems to give them an advantage a bad thing for me. Sure I wished that I could do some of the things they did, but I also admred the creativity that they had in coming up with such a build. It is a real shame that folks feel the way that I may choose to play the game affects their game so much.

1)i don't have a 105 monk
2)even if i did money is not everything
3)they do make the classes unbalanced whatever you say... i can't compete for good weapons because of 105rs buying for insane prices.

no i would not leave if the 105rs are nerfed. i don't even care how they nerf it, my monk doesn't use protective bond anyway.

(i was in a group with a 55r on a south shiverpeaks mission, she died... a lot at the end she had 15 max hp. oh how we laughed)

Heh, beating a dead horse, I've started one thread about the 105 monk. The fact that I've not allowed flamers to browbeat me into changing my opinion is not beating a dead horse. Likewise, if the OP asks a question about the 105 monk build, its not beating a dead horse to answer his post. I'm sorry you dont like my opinions. As I've had to tell so many folks, if my opinion bothers you so much, dont read my posts, dont respond to me, its not required, nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to hear me one bit.

i dissagree.

i run a emo smiter as my only pve char. just in 4-5 days alone of farming "outside of toa" i mustered up enough gold for 50+ ecto and a few shads. but i got bored of it and went back to pvp.

i was farming the lvl 20 fog nightmares.

Also, the UW is a bad place to generate gold.

i play gw for it's challenges and will continue to play gw regardless of what happens. i developed my monk tank w/ some friends after we finished every single uw quests w/ a monk who aggro tanked for us 5 elems and 2 monks. i was about halfway thru the game w/ my healing mo/w which i had created because i've always wanted a tiny monk wielding a huge fellblade. i ascended quickly so we could experiment and test our builds with these prot monk skills i had never used before. i prefer my build to the popular 55/mending one - mending is for babies =)

i solo w/ my mo/w because it's fun and challenging, and because for a change i might actually see some gold items drop that i hear so many talk about. challenge is same reason that i offer to run players to different towns and mission in the crystal desert w/ my e/r char. i not only get to play w/ ranger survival skills, but i'm always up for a challenge running thru mobs of the mesmer squids near seekers passage.

with over 3mil xp on my elem, i've been to UW & FOW countless times and have cleared all UW quests down there once. In that crazy 4 1/2 hour run in which we finished UW hoping for some magical doors to open or some special reward I got 2 gold items and maybe 3 ecto. Honestly, even though the challenge of UW paled after that, I still went down there to help out parties because i just love nuking and managing my energy to keep those nukes constantly raining down.

However, with my monk, UW is exciting again and the drops are better because they're all for me. Clearing all the smites in under 10 min w/ an xp scroll, finishing wrathful spirits, clearing 2 monuments, wiping out all the coldfires and taking on a mob of 15 graspers with 6 bulls singlehandedly still has its challenges. admittedly i've never tried the 55/mending combo, perhaps all the challenge vanishes with that?
Also never having farmed before this, I know now what it's like to actually have more than 1 gold item drop and have it be for me.

I also solo the first FOW quest and kill random mobs after that. On days I don't feel like running around in UW, I see how quickly I can tank a pick up group to the FOW crafter, currently around 70 min.

As long as GW provides challenges and the possibility of a cool drop (like a gold smiting monk rod), I'll still be around nuking, healing, smiting, tanking, stealing blood and energy.

Hehe ... me too (I am currently paying almost 4K per skill I purchase, call me a skill collector).

Regarding the original question, it really depends on whether the game will continue to offer me something that allows me to continue my ambitions. I really don't care if I get tons of gold quick, after all, gold comes to you regardless, you can't avoid it, only spend quicker than it comes in.

Having said that, if all areas get bombed in such a way that gaining XP and consequently skill points becomes too much of a hassle, I would certainly consider moving on.

can we stop calling this build a "hack" or an "exploit"..neither of which are accurate. The skills was designed a certain way and the math for the algorithm was done so that at lvl17 you cast a protective bond that takes 1 energy away from you...it's not an exploit, the skill is working properly....it doesn't need to be "fixed" it needs to be reworked and the algorithm needs to be changed.


at the same time can we stop calling the Henchamn "AI"...that terms also incredibly false.

To me, the reason why everyone and their grandmother is all riled up over the 55/105 monks is because of one thing - ecto.

As sekkira said, UW is not the best place to solo for gold. Before items (99% of which is just junk for salvage), in one smite run (~20 min), gold averages to 2.5K after the 1K payment to get in.

FOW is easy to solo as well but no one ever complains about how the shadow crawlers should rend enchanments and how there should be a mob of mesmers+necros right when you zone in. Maybe if shards ever hit 10k per piece, they will.

just think of what would happen if ecto were removed from uw. i'm sure most solo monks aren't in uw for the drops. i get more gold drops from running around the crystal desert - unless you're looking for monk rods and staffs. the only gold and purple monk rods i've ever found have been from the smites.

as long as there is something in UW that can be sold for a tidy sum of gold, there will be uw farmers, whether they be mo/w, mo/e, e/mo or some other ?/mo using prot spirit or a whole other class combo i've yet to hear of.

uw can be solo'd w/ a lvl 16 prot bond, or a prot spirit, or whatever combo of skils out there that still lies undiscovered. as has been proven over and over in the case of solo farming or the hunt for gold, as long as there is a will there is a way.

Hack is not an appropriate term for this build. It arguably has shades of "exploit" to it depeding on your defintion. I'm not going to go into detail as to why, as I've a thread that went huge on that matter, but I consider prot bond in need of a fix because of the unlimited damage reduction possibilities with it. I really dont want to argue this again, and I certainly do not mean to derail this thread. So understand I know the arguments for no fix to probond well, and I simply disagree in my opinion.

Along with the inaccuracy of the henchman "AI" we might as well ask Anet to change the character creation screen to read more accurately. You'd have the PVP-only choice, and the Unlock things for PVP-only choice. Its a misnomer to call it a "roleplaying" character. It shouldnt be, but it is.

Nerf all "farming", add more and better cooperative content.

Jeezus. There is nothing in the EULA against farming. The frog objects not to honourable farmers. What is so freaking dishonorable about getting a monk, ascending him, getting shield of judgement and some other skills, buying 5 superior monk runes, and finding a -50 offhand focus? You guys should be thanking the 105'ers for driving the cost of ecto down so that more people can afford fissure armor--that is, people who can't farm UW solo.

There's more than one solo build in this game. I've seen rangers solo huge amounts of grawl outside of Port Sledge. My 55 monk can't do that. Do I want whirling defense nerfed because of that? Nope.

Again I ask, why does prot bond need fixing? Is it making your PvE gameplay worse because there are monks on your team that are great tanks? Come on. The 55 build is the most fragile build in the game. It's not an issue in PvP. It shouldn't be an issue in PvE, except for this reason alone:

All of you people who can't make the money on your own think you have a right to make that money, but you don't want to do the work, so you ask for ANet to nerf this build. I worked hard to get the money for those runes, I worked hard to get the rest of the stuff I have at this point. But you know what? I earned it, fair and square. Didn't cheat, didn't buy gold off eBay, didn't use exploits, just used the tools that ANet put into the game for us to use.

NOW SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT IS WRONG WITH WANTING TO MAKE MONEY.

nerf the whole game. when I log in I don't want to see things to do....I just want a black screen that says in "NERFED" in big white capital letters.

nothing is wrong with it. be careful what you wish for you whiny bastards. be prepared to ebay some gold to pay for the 20k+ ecto if they would actually nerf it badly.

farmers will still have other spots to make gold and pay whatever going prices are. whiny whittle baybeez will still be here complaining about something. if they make 8 person groups worthwhile and a better party UI that shows all players' currently equipped skills, good players might actually embrace pug's

#1 reason why I dislike the 105 build: it artificially drives up the cost of superior monk runes.

I mean seriously, would some of you even have bothered to buy superior monk runes at all if this build did not exist and was abusable on such a level? Or even made a monk at all? My "normal" monk would like to have one or two superiors he can choose to use if the need arises (i.e. if he has a specific role of healer or protector in a party), but the things are too damn expensive. The supply/demand curve for sup runes is shot to hell now.

I'm gonna make another post real fast, because something the frog said (hinting at changes in the combat system) reminded me of something. I don't mind if they nerf the 55/105 build, as long as the nerf isn't aimed at killing farming outright. I am almost positive that what's going to happen is some part of the 55 build will get changed so that it doesn't work as well, or doesn't work at all, and then everyone's gonna moan and whine etc. etc., meanwhile, there will be people out there finding new ways to farm with the new changes, and eventually someone will find a new way to farm. Inevitably, everyone will find out about this new efficient way to farm, everyone will rush to do it, and then the cycle will begin anew.

There's nothing wrong, though, with earning as much money as you can.

Ecto: 9.5 Plat atm. For a few weeks it has been sitting at about 10 plat. -500g, gg, this has hardly effected the market, if at all.

There's already enough games that are only about "earning as much as you can"...

It would be cool if the monsters would addept their strategy, which means they would currently get an enchant remover, and loosing some other important skill, and people could find some other way to beat them.

Oh yeah, so bad that in 1 hour last night I generated 5 plat and an ecto...

Remember when ecto was at 17k? That was just as the monk solo-ers were starting en masse... so it's gone from 17k to 9.5k in about a month. That's not bad going...

in 20 minutes last night I generated 15 plat in other other areas....

Assuming the patch update is exactly what it said it is... well, prices are being kept under control (change less quickly). That is player friendly but possibly a step away from a realistic trader system. Also, the new "global economy" was created. I know that ecto didn't come from Europe instead from Korea, as America was on the verge of sold out status.

Ecto isn't gold.

You're completely forgetting the trader reset which practically brought everything down. Selling stuff to the trader isn't too bad anymore as they'll give you a pretty fair deal.

Droknar running. 5 people at 2k a head for 5 people for a 20-25min run say 30mins total for forming a group etc. Thats 20k an hour as opposed to 14k an hour for an UW run that's presuming you get lucky with ecto drops and with the price going down due to all the 105s UW runs are going to be even less profitable as time goes on. Sure UW runs are the third best way of making money after Droknar runs and winning HoH but they certainly aren't vastly superior to other methods of making gold as most people seem to think.