Don't Any Monks Know How to Play Anymore?

Ok, let me just briefly set the stage. I'm playing my three week old warrior, just getting his armor infused for the first time. I get into a group, we have 4 monks, an ele, ranger, and two warriors, myself included. Looking at the numbers, I figure this should be no problem, considering the amount of healing power he have compared to the difficulty of the mission, although the mission might take a long time because we'll have less firepower than normal, but that's fine with me.

And during the mission, for the mostpart, I haven't had any problems with healing. However, I run into a lot of problems with conditions and hexes. The mursaat love to use enervating charge, the stone summit and white mantle drop various other conditions, the mursaat mesmers and necros use tons of hexes, and the azures use spiteful spirit. So when I pick up something serious, usually a spiteful or a weakness, I ctrl click to let them know that I need condition or hex removal. Nothing happens. Fine, they're busy: I keep fighting. Next battle, same thing. And again. And again. I ask them if they brought condition removal, and they don't even seem to understand what I'm talking about. I mean honestly, 4 monks, and not a SINGLE one thought to bring mend ailment. Or mend condition. Or purge conditions. Or martyr. Or remove hex. Or smite hex. Or holy veil. Or anything. How can you get to level 20 in this game as a monk and not realise that you should be bringing at least one of condition remove or hex remove EVERY mission? Haven't they noticed that every second mob uses them? That they are extremely crippling to the team? I mean, don't get me wrong, using orison of healing or healing seed at the appropriate time is important too, but there is more to being a monk than just healing.

Please, if you play a monk in PvE (especially anywhere from crystal desert on) or PvP (anywhere), controlling conditions and hexes are your jurisdiction. It's time to drop the healing breeze for mend ailment, and vigorous spirit for holy veil. Your team will thank you for it.

Rico

These monky tips will work for me as I've never played a monk before and just started one.
Don't plan to touch him for a while though.

But seriously, 4 monks?
Isn't that overkill? Or rather, overheal?

by the sounds of things, that wasn't an over-heal... and the most annoying thing about Alesia is that she doesn't have any counters to being poisoned. As a primary healer, I take mend aliment with me every time, it comes in handy as a rather bad self-heal and I learned a long time ago that a team without poison/bleeding on them is less draining than myself.

Dunno about prot. monk though, last I remembered, I had a hex remover on that too.

its your fault not to ask the monks beforehand.

There are a couple of things I would like to say because you're not taking some responsibility you should be.

You have a secondary class. I know for sure rangers, monks, and mesmers have condition/hex removal. Take some responsibility for your own health. That is not just the province of the monk class. Do this and a real monk and the team you play on will thank you for this.

It's the responsibility of primarily the group leader, and the also the whole party to talk about roles, especially at later points in the game. Didn't you think to ask a couple of the monks to build for smiting so you could be more effective damage dealers. Have one monk build for protection with healing backup and the healer build for heal and condition removal. The smiters could build for hex removal. The rest of the party should have some self-heal and ability to deal with conditions until the monk can get to you. Bottom line, the monks should have brought condition removal, and the party should have talked about it first to make sure no one let it slip by them.

I know you don't play a monk or you wouldn't have said something so ignorant as drop healing breeze for mend ailment. There is a time to remove a condition or hex and a time to add regen in some manner. In an environment where constant condition application is present you normally don't mend a condition, you apply regen. It's just better energy management, not to mention casting time spent on one individual. There are two types of condition removal one that heals for the number of conditions left and one that heals based on removal. Which one to bring? Not as simple as it sounds.

So discuss the mop list before you go out and the groups build role. Was everyone else a warrior? Were you going to try to group and use a seed strategy to maximize healing and energy management? Or were you just figuring the monks would magically keep everyone healed all the time with the same saavy as Lina and Mhenlo do with superhuman computer reflexes?

rofl @ ultima

the bigger problem is that in pve, there is no coherent organization of roles for the group and people end up taking assumed positions. add to the problem of the general lack of interest in teamwork in pve, you end up with a big mess once the mission starts.

and in regards to the topic question, most monks in pve are very confused as to getting a decent set up on skills and using them, with the exception of a few.

With 4 monks, one should have been creative enough to bring some condition and hex removal or atleast bring up the issue.

4 monks? Entering a mission with 4 monks should have been your first clue that none of them knew what they were doing.

As for the "anymore" comment, it's not really that monks don't know how to play anymore. Rather, it's that they never did in the first place.

There is a grand misconception for some reason that all W/Mo's must be morons who can't play, and all monks must be super players who are experts.

Simple reality is that like players of any other class, most monks do not know how to play properly.

Start questioning your monks with the same thoroughness that you'd question any other class. Otherwise, problems with horrible monk players are to be expected.

I got pissed right about here.

First off, if you're so worried about hexes and conditions, maybe you should
(zoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomg!) BRING SOME REMOVAL OF YOUR
OWN. Don't pin a shortsighted choice on the people keeping your ass alive.

Oh wait, that's 99% of people in game. I almost forgot.

My god, you didn't have a smooth infusion run. Let's all go to the mountains
for you. Be thankful you only have to do the run one time nowadays, the last
one I ran on you had to go 1 run per piece of armor. Also, since when does
running to get infused entail tangling with the Mursaat? Sounds like an idiotic
meatpuppet decided to be a hero. (GLARE)

Only one of the Azures on the mission has Spiteful Spirit, the rest are
monks who use Signet of Judgement. Do your homework next time.

In short, shit went wrong, people were stupid, and your first infusion run
didn't go well. Boo freaking hoo. Suck it up and try again.

Only a shit player blames everything on the monks.

My first character was a monk, I know all the ropes. When I party in PvE, I normally tell the warriors to forget their healing sigs, I can handle it. Conditions, no problem. Hexes, I can do that to. And that's just me. There is no reason why other classes should be making themselves weaker when a monk is perfectly capable of handling those things.

By the way, I play W/Me, so no, I have no condition removal available to me. I do have hex removal, but no, I shouldn't be bringing it unless there's some very specific reason to do so.

I wasn't leading this team, it was a random PUG I joined up. I generally don't take more than 2 monks in a given PvE mission, it just isn't worth it. Frankly, in most missions getting even those two monks is difficult. Regardless, damage isn't the issue here.

Generally, I agree with you here. The point I'm making though is that by this point the monks should have known that they needed hex/condition removal because they are always needed at the point in the game. When I played my monk, I brought mend ailment every mission since the start of crystal desert, whether or not I thought we needed it. There was no discussion necessary. It would be like asking if I needed to bring orison of healing.

Actually, I finished the game as a monk, and play it a lot in PvP. Breeze is an extremely ineffecient spell, mathematically one of the worst. There is only one area in the game where I would use it over mend ailment, maguuma jungle, since you are constantly getting poisoned. Everywhere else, you are far better off with either healing seed, mend ailment, or just plain orison of healing. Run a search for "healing efficiencies and divine favour."

You always bring mend ailment, because it casts on self as well as others; mend condition does not. Breeze is also not better energy management that mend ailment. It is considerably worse for a few reasons: it costs more energy; if the person has even 1 other condition on, then a 16 pt mend ailment is more efficient in terms of health recovered per energy than a 16 pt breeze, and most importantly, breeze does nothing if the person is dazed, blinded, weakened, crippled, or deep wounded. Even I don't put a single point into protection prayers, I would still take mend ailment over a 16 attribute healing breeze.


I never said that healing was a problem, quite the contrary, in fact. It wouldn't have mattered how "efficient" we were at healing, because they didn't bring the right skills. This wasn't an energy management problem either (as an aside, you generally shouldn't run out of energy as a monk anyway, unless the fighting is REALLY intense, or you're being targetted a lot and it isn't safe to use energy drains or offering of blood).

Rico

I'm not sure why. The warrior isn't my first character. Frankly, I think most people would be a lot farther in the game than I am in 3 weeks with their 4th character.

As I mentioned above, I play W/Me, and as such has no condition removal options available to me. And, as I mentioned above, it is not my responsibility to do so.

Oh wait, that's 99% of people in game. I almost forgot.

There are plenty of mursaat elementalists in the mission and bonus areas, as well as in the major capsig areas.

First infusion run for this character. And in this case, yea, the monks were to blame. If I were playing my monk and didn't bring mend ailment or holy veil, then I'd blame myself for not making my build properly.

[edit - grammar]
Rico

HEX BREAKER.

And saying it's not your responsibility is crap.
If you're not gonna do anything to stop it don't complain about it.

Hex breaker doesn't remove conditions, obviously, it removes hexes. Mesmer doesn't have any skills that do, as far as I know.

Rico

I'm going to say there is fault by all parties (you and the monks) in this case. In PUGs you join, you have to be able to look after yourself as well as possible, unless someone else specifically states they can cover something. Maybe it's just my cynical opinion, but you need to assume all monks are going to be like Alesia, all warriors are going to go Leeroy, all elementalists are only going to have flare, meteor shower, and (maybe) arcane echo, et cetera, et cetera.

With PUGs you make yourself, you can get groups of people to have certain skills, and request certain people bring certain spells. But in 99% of the cases with PUGs, you need to prepare for the worst. Relying on random strangers isn't the smartest thing one can do.

Yes, and if you're that far, you're ascended. You could change your secondary for that mission and stop complaining.

Why should I have to change my entire build when one character can change one skill to fix this? Do you want your echo nukers changing to E/Mo so they can bring purge conditions and remove hex in case they get dazed or backfired? Your KD/AS warrior switching to ranger for antidote signet? You're grasping at straws here. If you've ever played monk in this (or later) regions, you've got to be aware that conditions are a big problem for all classes, and monks have the best repetoire of skills to fix it. Why should every player on the team need to have a way to deal with hexes and conditions, when one monk can handle it for the whole team with two skills? It's a matter of specialization: the monk is a specialist at healing, dealing with hexes and conditions, and protecting. A warrior is a specialist at absorbing damage and doing damage. A mesmer is a specialist at disrupting enemy targets. With a few monks in the team, everyone else doesn't need to bring skills that do healing, hex removal, condition removal, etc., and can thus be more efficient at the jobs that their classes are good at, thus making the whole team more efficient.

Rico

If a monk goes to level 20 without condition removal, thats retarded.

Of course, those monks just came back from soloing griffs, so they have no idea what condition removal is.

The point is Rico, its not one's responsibility to take care of your character but you.

If you dont want to make the sacrifice to even bother to start to take care of yourself, then you shouldnt expect anyone else to do it either.

What you're saying is, you cant change because it would change your whole build to do so. But you want them to add in a skill, that would change their whole build aswell.

So why should they change, when you wont?

You seem to neglect the energy strain a monk may experience. Most monks STILL don't carry some type of energy management, so don't expect them to spam condition/hex removals

Tips to help:
1. Take a self-use condition or hex removal. It's not hard; try it.
2. Coordinate the mission before hand. >.> (Should probably be #1, but I have no hope a PUG could do it.)
3. Don't attack through Spiteful Spirit.
Common sense, all of it.

People running through an area for their first time on a monk won't know whether to take Condition or Hex removal to be more effective; most monks just spam breeze as their condition "nullifier."

I, personally, don't bother with condition removals after the crystal desert. Everything that's causing a condition is being spammed, so there's no point in removing something that's going right back on. I'd rather outheal bleeding than keep spamming mend ailment to try and stop it.

I've also grown quite fond of Holy Veil for taking out a pesky hex. It also doesn't hurt to keep in mind that a warrior isn't usually at the top of the hex removal list. >.>

Monk hate isn't cool anymore; I wish people would bother trying to realize that it's obvious new monks are going to be fairly crappy while they're starting out. Don't let a level 20 fool you; they were probably run to Drok and have minimal experience healing or protecting!

No, the point is, every player on the team should be doing their job properly. As a warrior, my job is to make sure that as many of the monsters we are presently engaging are focussing their attention on me, because I have the most health and the highest armor of anyone on the team. Additionally, my job is to use the skills available to me to help the heaviest damage dealers of the team kill the monsters as quickly as possible. The monk's job is to make sure that everyone stays alive and is in a condition where they can do their jobs properly.

What I can't understand is why you're getting so worked up about this. If you look at the monk's skillset, compared with any other class, obviously monks are the best set up to deal with conditions, and are arguably the best (a fast casting mesmer might be better) at removing hexes. But then again, the other 4 classes have practically no way to deal with hexes at all, and warriors, elementalists and mesmers have basically no way to deal with conditions (and necros can generally only help themselves). For that matter, mesmers, rangers, and to a lesser extent elementalists, don't even really have a way to heal themselves.

I guess the question really is, why should I bother having monks in my party at all, if me and every other player on my team is going to have to invest skills, attribute points, and energy into doing the work that the monk should be doing anyway?

Rico

I didnt say anything about healing your character yourself, I said taking care of it. If you cant take care of your own character, you shouldnt be expecting them to do it.

Also, these roles you think the classes fill. Sorry to burst your bubble, but most people dont play in pigeon whole builds set to a certain standard. The monk will heal, but probably also has some points in smite or protection.

Edit: Also, all your definitions about what a class can and cant do, just throws out any knowledge of a dual class system. A mesmer cant do any condition fixing, but if they were to be a Mesmer Necro they could. Which is why there are alot of them out there.

Like I said, you have a secondary, deal with the problem.

I still see monks in tombs that don't run energy management. I just can't figure it out.


I run W/Me and hence have no access to condition removal.

I have a hard enough time getting people to organize properly in PvP. I'd love it if I could get this to work, but I won't hold my breath.

Obviously.

By the point in the game I'm referring to, I think these skills should be in your skillbar for any mission. As far as breeze is concerned, well, it deals with burning, disease, poison, and cripple well enough, I suppose. That just leaves all the more dangerous conditions. Sorry, I really hate this spell.

II don't bother mending something like bleeding. The big ones to get rid of are dazed, blind, weakness, and disease. Cripple is nice to get rid of in certain areas too. Poison is a toss-up, since of all conditions, it is the most readily spammable. Of course, in PvP, the rules are a little different. I can think of a number of times where I've been asked to run martyr as the party's condition cleanser.

I always have holy veil on my bar for my monk. I've never had a hex removed while playing my warrior.

I've never been particularly interested in being politically correct.

Rico

/agreed

Actually, most people do play in "pigeon whole builds set to a certain standard." There are certainly some people who think outside the box, but most builds are variants on fairly basic themes. When you see a W/Mo, R/E, E/Me, Mo/Me, etc, you pretty much know what you're getting before they ever join the party, particularly in PvE.

You're still leaving out a great many class combinations that can't deal with certain problems, many of which are some of the most popular class combinations that people use:

W/R - no hex removal, limited condition removal, very common build
W/E - no hex or condition removal very common build
W/N - no hex removal, common build
W/Me - no condition removal
R/W - no hex removal, limited condition removal,
R/E - no hex removal, limited condition removal, common build
R/Me - limited condition removal, common build
Me/W - no condition removal, common build (they don't need it as much as others, though)
Me/R - limited condition removal
Me/E - no condition removal, common build
E/W - no hex or condition removal
E/R - no hex removal, limited condition removal, common build
E/Me - no condition removal very common build
E/N - no hex removal, common build
N/W - no hex removal, common build
N/R - no hex removal, common build
N/E - no hex removal

That's 17 builds that lack at least one of hex or condition removal (or have just antidote signet, which does not treat all conditions). Of those, about 7 have neither hex nor total condition removal. That means about a third of all class combinations lack at least one, and about a seventh lack both. That means on any given team, it is reasonable to expect that at least one player should be playing a class that has no way of dealing with conditions or hexes, and at least two more who lack the capacity to deal with one or the other assuming they chose to bring all the necessary skills to do so. Many of these builds are quite effective; some of them are incredibly effective.

Rico

Im sorry this is just lame, your part of a TEAM.

That means your all responsible for staying alive, just blaming the monks is pointless.

Were they all healers? Did some of them take smite skills, did you communicate with them, if they didnt communicate back just leave.

If im in a group that dosnt answere any of my questions or talk to me before leaving, i just go.






As to bringing mend condition ect, i think thats a matter of choice. Personally i dont see the point, as anything you remove is 90% of the time just re-aplied (or another spell is), i always found it a waste of energy. I find using dywanas kiss (sp?) & healing breeze more helpfull in nullifiying hex spells & better for energy management, again though this is personal choice and others will disagree.

Good point. So why are you so worked up?

I haven't played monk all that much, but I do always bring hex removal.
Condition removal... Sometimes, but most of the time it just seems pointless.

Usually you have 4-5 people with a condition on them (you don't know which, except if it's poison), you can remove condition on one of them for 5 energy every three seconds, and the enemy WILL reapply it instantly.

I could stand around spamming mend ailment all day, and noone would get healed and noone would actually be free of conditions for more than a second.

In the end it just saves me a lot of work - and energy - to slap healing breeze on, and let it negate the degen. No, it's not very effective, but at 13 healing prayers it does do 160 points healing over 10 seconds for 10 energy (and has less tendency to overheal), meaning I can pay more attention to the other members of the team.

Frankly warriors generally aren't the main damage dealers either, so as long as they're alive it doesn't matter horribly if they don't do as much damage as they optimally could.

I'd much rather take a second hex removal than condition removal, partly because of the long(ish) cooldown on remove hex, and partly because hexes are bigger threats than conditions.

Also, sometimes you just get bright ideas for a build which turns out not to work. I took an enchantments/blessed signets build to PvP yesterday, and, well, let's just say it didn't perform as well as I'd hoped...


But yeah, I agree, lvl 20 monks which do not even know what hex/condition removal IS, have been run too much, too far.

I agree that with 4 monks, one could have brought Hex/Condition Removals. But more often then not, monks are not part of a "Salvation Army" that large. More often then not, I am the ONLY monk in a group of 8. I can't heal, protect AND remove conditions AND remove hexes AND conserve my energy in a way to keep the healing constantly coming all at the same time, you know. If I know that I am entering an area with heavy conditioning/hex casting by enemies, I tend to take Healing Breeze with me and just slap it on people with high heath degen to negate its effects. It works pretty fine and it allows me to quickly switch my attention to the next player requiring my services. Yes, I am using that method in SF, too (which is quite heavy on conditions and hexes). Yes, I am able to keep my team alive there despite I don't carry ANY hex/condition removal. If 4 monks were not able to keep you alive, either
a) the 4 monks all sucked
b) the other 4 players all sucked or
c) all 8 players sucked

My personal advice would be to designate a monk secondary player to carry hex/condition removal as you don't need to spend that much attribute points into monking to do that effectively enough. By the way, assuring that the team brings useful skills is not the MONK's job, it's the PARTY LEADER's job!

My monk is also built on the basis that I will be the only monk in a PuG, so I will carry Breeze instead of hex/condition removal. Occasionally I will pack hex removal in my wildcard slot, but I generally find mobs are better at spamming hexes and conditions than they are at enchantment removal.

I'm saying this to the OP in closing, then getting the hell out of this
train wreck.

If you KNOW the classes you play don't have a way to remove conditions,
you really have no right to bitch about how others failed to bring skills to
cover YOUR shortcomings. They have to keep the entire party going, not
just you. You're a meatshield, nothing more. You are between the casters
and the baddies that want to mash them to paste. They need to keep you
ALIVE, not condition free so you can land that whole 10-12 damage on a
Mursaat. Im sorry if it seems jaded but I'm sick of hearing warriors scream
about how they're the big damage dealers of the party. Blind, Dazed, and
the like aren't 'lethal' conditions for a melee class. Just wait em out and
let the monks concentrate on healing.

Indeed.

When im playing my warrior i bring hex / condition removals but i never really bother to use them on myself its never worth it, there always re-applied.

Instead i bring them to use on the monks or other casters if i see they have lots of degen or arrows.

But my monk never brings them.

If you want someone to bring them, ask before hand. Just dont go into a hissy fit if the monks dont want to bring them.

My main character is a monk and often the only monk in a SF PUG.

What i notice is that way to many ppl tend to rely on the healing power we have and not bring any defenses, heals, removals themselves.

I have played in a team with 3 Wa/Mo's and never once went below half energy keeping them all fit and well because they were also minding their own.

I also played with full groups that drained me completely in the first fight out of the gates and still not having killed all enemies at the end of my energy bar.

Also some ppl run/sprint ahead and attack, seemingly not knowing that if i have to move to heal it may be too late especially since some ppl get themselves killed in less than 2 seconds.

There is no way a monk will be able to save you unless she was prepared for the event.

On the topic of condition removal ... i run a divine boon build that uses condition removal ... so even if it is re-applied immediately at least i will also get off a good heal. But the fact is .. as many ppl stated before it WILL be re-applied immediately most of the time .. so in a sense it is rather pointless to do it.

Shakira Lowlander

I play a monk, and im pretty sure i do my job. Whenever i join a group i say primary healer, which means no condition or hex removal. If its not what they are looking for I just switch to protection and get condition and hex removal. Not that hard on my part.

The main thing you should do as party leader is check on what skills your people are bringing.

Dont get INTO a mission and then after the first fight ask "You didn't bring [insert skill]?!"

Also when asking don't get pushy and say "RUN THESE SKILLS" - everyone plays how they like, but tell them the kinds of skills they should run for that mission - They might not know....

As noted sporadically, removal of conditions is a prot monk's job. He can pull of a heal equal to an orison with a med ailment/mend condition/restore condition. Both heal and prot should bring at least 1 hex removal.

I'd quickly rid a warrior of his blindness because I'd rather have him do some dmg (anyone ever heard of condition removal on enemies, besides the guy that uses martyr elite??).

See i think this comes down to personal preferance.

When i play my warrior i dont expect the monk to remove blindness ect, i bring my own condition remover spells (though i tend to save them for other casters). Before i played as a monk i just assumed that it was too much of an energy drain for them, and now im playing as one this is what i find to be the case (energy vs benifit).

I think it just comes down to what the monk wants to take really, its too close cut to say one way is better over the other IMO.

I played my first character, which was a monk through and lost 3 times total for all missions in the game and I never took condition removal once. The game is way too easy.

Make conditions do some real damage and then it's worth bringing, otherwise I'll always take some smiting to get the boring things finished quicker.

I took Hex removal but conditions almost never kill people unless they're stupid, it certainly never cost me a mission.

I can't begin to count how many threads were created about this.

ZomG!! shUT Up and ReZ!!shift1oneone!!!11!