Lets shatter a dumb myth

Have you ever heard the myth that only a monk can heal? Lets take a look at something.

Monk - can heal stronger but lacks strong energy recovery.

Ele - Relies on enchantment (renewal, prodigy) and energy storage to keep energy up.

Necro - Relies on soul reaping to keep energy up.

Ok ok, basically looking at this you can see monk is only good healer for GvG or tombs because lets face it death and enchantments aren't a reliable source in those cases.

Now lets look at 4 v 4.. Can you rely on death? no.. Can you rely on enchantments? sure... its a rare feat that one person has strips in 4 v 4 let alone an entire column of them. In this case there is this thing called healing breeze, a well built ele has the infinite energy so just plop this up and call it a cover enchant.

Oh heres a nice ele heal build if you don't beleive me
-Renewal - Hother - Breeze - Orison - Reversal - Aura of Rest - Armor of Earth - Kinetic Armor.
Then Spec 12 heal, 6+4 storage, 10+1 earth, 6 prot. Or less prot more storage or whatnot, I find that spec works the best.

And remember the guy that started this build? his name was "I Am Stupid Taken" well yeah that was me.


AND NOW WE TALK ABOUT PVE!! This is the part that really ticks me off.
Ele - relies on enchants, a cover enchant is overkill to make this build work.

Necro - relies on death, if somethin isn't dying about every 10 seconds there is something wrong with your group...

Monk - with 16 heal and 13 divine they heal for 230 instead of 151, whooptee do, they heal 4 times and they're stuck regaining energy (unless they use a 15/-1 in which case your just stupid don't even bring that up). Also the actual extra heal is a lot of the time overkill, 230 life is half of a normal persons life (health is 455 with a sup vigor and 1 sup rune) and very few monks actually wait until half health to heal cause hell a caster could be dead in the second it takes to cast the heal if they're at half health already.

With that on the table lets compare usefulness - imo - ele is best healer in pve. Modify that build above, basically renewal and a few enchants is the key, and you got an ele healer that can spam cast every heal spell in the book and by the time he reaches 15 energy he fires off renewal and keeps going back to full mana.

Necro - heals for less yes, less overkill heal anyway, but has a significantly faster energy regain than monk. If going heal a nec would have to spec 12 heal 16 soul reaping. Thats 16 energy every time something dies... 16 energy is a lot of energy... energy drain with 10 inspiration only gives you 11 energy (16-5)...

Its funny there is always a million groups looking for monks but a bunch of eles and necros that could go heal. Even when one offers they get turned down because people are just so dense they don't see the positive half.

And as far as a prot monk, I do suggest goin monk for this in pve because divine favor really helps pve wise more than the extra energy since prot is so completely utterly different in pve than pvp.

Hi my name is logic, I'm in your head somewhere beggin to come out but your heads too thick to let me.

Don't even play teh newb card, I spend almost too much time on this game
my /age, "you have played 934 hours and 4 minutes over the past 4 months"

Three times through game, 192k faction mostly from 4 v 4, and 818 faction, and playing every effective build ever thought of will do that.

You'd better call the firefighters in advance.

i beleive the only reason for a monk primary is because of divine favor, with out it your ele build would keep the gang in tip top shape , another good healer might be the mesmer cuz of fast casting but i havent really had the chance to expiriment with this idea.

funny you mention this.

the day after the game came out I was doing the last mission in the game and about mid way through I dumped all my points from blood and death into healing because our monk couldn't keep up with the damage.

Me and my healing breeze spam did wonders for the team.

healing prayers is just right with only 12 healing, only 3 healing prayrers skills are worth more than 12 healing prayers.
Healing seed works best with 14 12 or 16 healing.
Live Vicariously and virgurous spirit work best with ~15 healing.
Otherwise you are just wasting attribute points, or even worse, max health.

its not the more healing skills the more healing prayers. its the more skills on allys the more divine favor.

Actually most superior monk runes are close to utterly useless for PvE.

Mesmers can be good with healing, too, but its tricky. its more the fast resurecting and quick emergency healing here.

Monks are the best healer in the game period.

E/M can work well enough, but they still are not as effective. If I pick up a ele, I want him nuken.

Necros can ues well of blood, its true. But thats it, and thats in a very small area.

Fast casting helps so little for healing........ heal spells have 1 second cast...... and not like firin off as many as you can in the shortest time is the idea. The idea is keeping your mana up so you can keep healing.

Oh and nice of you to back up your reasoning, congrats to giving in to what everyone tells you, my first character was a monk, I had a choise of deleting him, an ele, or a war when I went to make my necro.... I deleted the monk cause ele was such a better healer it was depressing.

And Mander did you miss the whole idea, well of blood isn't healing, well of blood is a waste of energy.

aha third edit, lets blow another myth, the uber nuking ele... against lvl 24+ monsters a necros vampiric / pact / agony / touch attacks do as much as an eles because of armor. But then there is AoE, if by rare occasion more than 1 guys are standing AoE its a miracle, and even then if the guy is alive for the duration of the AoE then, again, there is something wrong with your group.

As others have already mentioned, the main problem with ele healers is the lack of Divine Favor. Ele are superior smiters, and probably equal to monk primaries in protection. But without Divine Favor, it is difficult for the healing spells to be effective enough to counteract the large amounts of damage that high level monsters (and other players) can deal. I think ele's can make great supplemental healers, easing the workload of the primary healer. But I don't think they can carry the burden alone.

Stop it. Come on. Use the search button wisely and you'll discover why an Ele is not a better healer than a monk. I don't want to be involved in the destruction of your thread.

Where is Shinsei when you need him? I'm not that good at flaming. Odd Sock? Blackace? Eonwe? Algren Cole? Xellos? Anyone? It's time to use your bad attitude for a valid reason!

Please!

/sarcasm

An extra 40 points of healing per heal oorrr

Infinite Energy - Energy Storage (renewal setup)
16 energy per kill - soul reaping

Erm, what spell are you talking about here? It would be nice of you to name it as you kinda base your whole "Monks suck" arguement off it.

the only skill that heals that much... (directly breeze doesn't count)

Heal Other...

Oh now people are gonna say well I use orison and heal for 80 for 5 mana
Ok you go ahead and heal your 80 for 5 mana and I'll heal 151 (12 healing prayers heal other) for 10 mana and call it even.

Since the OP can't even recognize eng management skills, including but not limited to Energy Drain/Blood is Power/Peace and Harmony, I'll not even bother making a decent reply:

Monks will always be better at healing than an E/Mo. Even without using sub prof for eng management, there's always skills like Divine Spirit that allow short burts of massive healing for almost no cost. Utilization of such skills aren't as straightforward, so they're not used en mass by people who like FotM builds.

Your arguement: Elementals have more eng.
Common sense: Monks have 54-69 eng. Unless you're elemental is running 138 eng, your orison vs. heal other strategy is utter nonsense.

Enchantments are already fragile, and getting more fragile all the time as ANet packs more enchant removal on mobs to offset enchantment loaded farmers.

Any necro who puts 16 points in Soul Reaping is just plain silly. There are no skills based on that line and necros have many stronger spells in their other lines. In PvE reaping is decent, but in PvP it's a total waste of your points IMO.

Have you ever played monk?

peace and harmony, its funny when people use this skill for "energy" when they can use word and heal for more and be more mana efficient. Not to mention its an enchantment and requires a cover enchant to work.

I beat the game for the first time as a monk... then deleted him because my next char (ele) was so far and beyond a better healer

Energy Drain - 11 energy gain (presumed 10 insp spec)
Offering - 11 energy (presumed 10 blood spec)
BiP - a lot of energy, requires a necro, works on ele and nec healers too, sacrifices a lot of life, sucks up the necros elite spot.

It's easy to figure out where I stand concerning people who would choose such names...

And...

Its arrogant comments like that, that make this:

FTW as they say. Maybe there were some valid points hidden in their somewhere, but it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

And hidden with such a mastery I have never heard of, sir.

When you play as much as I do and only have 1 slot for pvp chars you get sick of using the same name and resort to stupid "crap" for builds you just like killing newbs with.

I'll take my orison for 5 energy...couple it with a 16 divine favor for an extra 48 then toss a boon on and heal you for well over 151 with an orison. This game is about energy management not HP not Healing not dmg not anything other than having as much energy as you possibly can for as long as you can possibly have it. I'm not saying the route I mentioned is the best one out there. Heal other is definately a viable skill to use and boon does take 1 pip of regen away. But know when to use your skills you don't always need to heal for 151 hp. If you heal for 151 and they only need 120 you're wasting mana.

Divine Favor makes monks a better healer than any other class. Elementalists can heal fantastically well...necros can heal amazing well...but they don't even hold a candle to a monk. You can get by with an ele healer you can get by with a necro healer...but saying either of them is a better primary healer than a monk shows a level of ignorance that would match most WaMo's

funniest comment of the day

You can't base anything off total Energy. As there are so many ways to remove energy from a player. And at that point even if you had 80 or 20 Energy Max you're still only going to gain so much per sec. And once you're dropped to 0 you are screwed no matter what class you are.

Primary Monk will always be the king of team healing. Because that little extra healing will do wonders when you can only get 1 heal spell off before having all of your energy taken from you.

There is no excuse in this 'Verse for childish names like that.

So let me get this straight, there's no point to this thread really. All it is is you praising yourself.

You posted common knowledge, and not really anything more than that. This thread should be retitled "Basics of Guild Wars (You already know this.)"

Also...why the hell are you proclaiming that you're the "first ever ub3r E/Mo" or something like that, I'm pretty sure I don't remember you. I'm pretty sure tons of other people have thought of that "wicked build" as well, many before you did. The only difference is they KNOW that they're not the "founders of a great build" because it's nothing special, and definately not unique or hard to think of. Hell I tried that one day just because I felt like it, I'd never heard of anyone named "I Am Stupid Taken", I just thought like throwing together some skills and random attributes. Does that make ME founder just because I thought of it all by myself? No, of course not. We all KNOW what you posted. Well, at least we know the FACTS that you posted, a good part of it was your opinion and what sort of builds you like me thinks.

And there are many, many, MANY people who "play as much as you", in fact there are probably many who've played much longer than you. So what if you have "only one slot for PvP", big deal, I'm pretty sure that's the case for the majority of PvE players who enjoy some PvP. In fact there are some with 2 accounts (or more) with all their character slots filled. Number of hours played, or amount of character slots filled does not who anything specific or special about you as a person.

How about this?

Let's agree on, there is no "best way" or "only way" to play GW? GW promotes creative thinking and out of the box strategy.

unless you're a Wa/Mo...that build promotes out of the box idiocy

You get a gold star for the day. I like seeing things like that written out. People can play GW, whether it be when it comes to healing, damage dealing, etc, however the hell they want. People can be pretty creative, and you can bet there are build we haven't even thought of yet. Some builds are better than others------Cheers.

(xonic's cool)

Best quote of the day. I don't even want to dive into the OP to make the difference between valid points and stupid statements.

Nope - I never heard anyone claim that only a monk can heal so I'm not sure where you're coming from.

The funny thing is that you start by comparing an Elementalist healer who relies on secondary monk skills to heal
to a Monk healer who is too dumb to use any secondary profession skills (e.g. energy drain/tap) to keep up his energy.

.... a little biased, don't you think?

I believe that this thread is proof-positive of how people believe that if you do not do it their way, you are wrong.

That means it's bullshit.

Are you the guy with the bullshit formula, or am I thinking of someone else?

The two best things in the topic were said by Xonic and Teklord. I couldnt have said either better, so I am left only to say: woo!

He's the guy with the bullshit formula.

Peace,
-CxE

Shatter Myth [Elite Spell]: For 0..1 seconds, target of Shatter Myth has an open mind. When Shatter Myth ends, the caster takes 1022..913 posts of "Flame" damage.

Good points made though. The problem is getting people in the arenas to listen

I will concede that the Elementalist females look much nicer than the Monk females - plus they have that nifty Elem dance. That's the strongest argument I'd have for making one.

I'm an ele/monk ward-healer. I know I'll never outheal a monk, because I have played one with 16 divine favor + 15 healing prayers.

This game isn't about only healing, it's about preventing damage and upping armor level as well, so I don't understand what the argument is about.

So, wait, you claim monk aren't best healers, and yet you use E/MONK as an example of better one. Secondary or primary, these are *still* monk spells we're talking about. It's simple.

that inside the box silliness. everyone does it, but no one really knows why. ^^

Look... I don't care about the facts regarding energy storage or divine favor or any of that crap.

Monks dance like kung fu guys...

KUNG FU GUYS!

If you're not using dance style as your main means of choosing a Primary Class then CLEARLY you have missed the point of this game.

Now if you will excuse me I need to get back to pop'n and lock'n. Peace out yo!

Just hold on there, buddy!
You mean to say that you'd pick a female kung-fu monk over a jiggling elementalist? C'mon. I like Jackie Jet Chan Li as much as the next fella, but you can't turn down an elementalist lap dancer (if you're a guy)!

that's actually a very valid argument as to why an elementalist can be a decent monk. Protection IS far more important than healing. This IS a game about damage reduction and energy conservation. Elementalists can make good Protectors...but you really can't make up for divine favor. Protection monks heal even when they are just trying to protect. Monks make the best healers/protectors it's not even an argument.