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!