Life Barrier and other protection skills

I found the only way I could get it to work effectively was as a mo/me because of the inspiration skills. Mantra of Inscriptions enabled me to use Blessed Signet almost twice as often so I could still use my other protection spells as normal.

Also, the only use I had for the spells was on the soft targets in the party because any warrior should be able to take damage better than anyone else in the party. There aren't many areas where enemies are constantly spamming attack spells so Life Bond works better in most cases since regardless of level of protection prayers it reduces damage by 50%. As mentioned it also triggers Balthazar's Spirit for extra energy should you opt that skill as one of your energy management tools.

Life Barrier is also an elite, and you lose out on Offering of Blood should you choose to have necromancer as your secondary. It's one of the best energy management skills in the game and doesn't run the risk of being interrupted with a 1/4 second cast time. I know this is PvE, but still in times when a battle goes wrong a 2 second Blessed Signet being hit by a distracting shot means trouble.

The energy cost and recharge comes into question during midbattle against enemies with removal, or if you drop below 50% health when they're hit. Since you've been trying to protect/heal like mad, you're probably low on energy and reapplying a 15 energy skill on multiple party members can spell the end of a group. Life Bond will continue to work until you die or the target the spell is under dies.

Personally I find Blessed Aura combined with Shielding Hands and Healing Seed/Shield of Regeneration can keep a target alive under Life Bond for any amount of time. Not to mention an extended Aegis and Protective Spirit. Find a 20% enchanting staff and you're enchantments become a lot more effective.

funniest thing is haveing two monks on the party - one with life bonds and the other with life barriers. ohhh its part of my super gay mesmer build v3

i got a question:

If someone casts Life Barrier and Life Bond on some one and that person is using Protective Spirit, then will life barrier half the dmg from Protective Spirit ( so 10% of the dmg ) instead of the full wack. Then will that dmg be halfed and delt to the person who is maintaining life bond.

So would that work, i mean the way i have read it, it should and it will leave the person maintaining it getting no dmg at all and the other one getting hardly any.

..... or am i missing something, just want to check if it works b4 i go ahead with it lol

protective spirit isn't 10% of the damage, it's 10% of max health

so during pve usually tank gets hit, so the protective spirit pretty much means nothing to a tank when usually they take less than 50 damage anyway

thats not the point i know the way protective spirt works and i am not useing it for a tank :P.... well i am but a different type of tank

.. just would it work

The good thing about life bond, is the fact that if you run the bonds with balthazars spirit, you gain energy when your bonds are activated.

Enchants + spirit or essence and blessed signet make it possible to run 8 enchants with no trouble, and in times when people are taking lots of damage you can run like 12 or more, I am serious.

It is spectacular. I love being a prot monk these days Any size team, so much fun! Pvp or pve!

Yay monks!

Somebody wrote that when using life bond even if you receive 0's for dmg its still dmg... Not so. I was using life bond today, and balths spirit. My tank was taking hits, I was getting 0's for dmg and my energy was not going up. Either its been changed since this thread started, or 0 dmg is really what it is......ZERO. You have to take dmg to get energy.. right?

If you're going to be a protection monk, it's best to mix it with a smite monk. There are several smiting skills that would also protect your party members, such as Shield of Judgement. Protective Spirit isn't the best of the monk's elites, however it isn't the worst either. Some good alternatives to that elite you should think about if you plan on staying protection are Shield of Regeneration (fairly good for its recharge time), Mark of Protection (the best protection elite in my opinion), and Shield of Deflection (not that great but has a real good recharge time, making up for its short duration). If you do plan on becoming protection and smiting, do get Shield of Judgement. It has always worked the best for me, that and Mark of Protection (Shield of Judgement works better though).

I plan on capping Shield of Judgment at some point, but I'm not sure I agree with you on Mark of Protection. It is a wonderful skill, no doubt, but disabling my other protection skills for 10 seconds is a hefty cost, and the recharge time is a bit lengthy. I used it for a time, but I much prefer Life Barrier in PvE. And I do mix in some smiting, great minds must think alike

What were you referring to when you said that Protective Spirit isn't the best elite? Protective Spirit is a protection prayer, but I'm pretty sure it isn't elite. What skill were you thinking of?

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Linguistically it seems like damage reduced to zero should still trigger Balthazar's Spirit. Take the phrase "Target takes 10 damage." That would trigger Balth's. Replace 10 with 0. Now the phrase is "Target takes 0 damage." Only thing that changed is the amount of damage taken, not the situation itself. Zero damage seems like it's still "damage", even if it isn't very damaging to your health. I don't have physical proof to back this up, but I could run 3 Life Bonds & Balth's Spirit on my Mo/Me and see what happens. With 4 enchants, I should have zero energy regen, so if I see my energy changes at all without me casting, Balth's has kicked in. I'm going to go test this right now. I'll edit my post here with my findings.

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