Pure Healer Efficiency?

I could use some help in choosing 'better' skills for my Monk. I am willing to change secondaries if that will help. I rarely use the Mesmer energy tap ability because it takes the focus off the party members and makes it easy to miss a heal (in other words, I have to target a bad guy to use it).

I want to only use the most efficient healing spells and get rid of the others. I am sure some people have run the numbers and can point out the most effective spells to choose.

Here is what I have:

Level 20
Monk/Mesmer
12 Divine Favor
12 Healing Prayers

Word of Healing (elite)
Orison of Healing
Signet of Devotion
Heal Party
Restore Life
Mend Ailment
Healing Seed

Try with 15 (or 16) healing prayers, and 11 divine..

Breeze
Heal touch (For self healing only)
Signet of Devotion
Mend Ailment
Heal seed
Restore life
Heal party
and Word of Healing..

Just a little mod..

Do most of your healing with WoH, and breeze.. and for warriors put seed on him etc..

Should work alright :/

16 Healing (Sup + Head piece)
14 Divine Favor (Major)
4 Protection (Minor)
1 Smiting (Minor)
(Sup Vig)

Orison of Healing
Healing Seed
Word of Healing
Heal Other
Divine Intervention
Healing Touch
Mend Ailment
Ressurect Signet

11-22 Healing Staff
Improves Casting Speed for healing prayers 20%
Improves Recharge Time for healing prayers 20%
+5 Energy (insightful staff head)
+20% Longer Enchantments (staff wrapping of enchanting)

Full tattoo armor, and you should be at around 51 energy, with 4 pips of regen.
Basically just spam orison and WoH, if you don't think you can save them in time, use intervention which should heal for 225+hp at 14 divine.
Touch is for yourself along with orison, mend the occasional condition

This build works, and i used it in Tombs for a 3 win streak with just me as the monk with 2/3 flawless

the best mesmer energy skills for a monk are inspired hex and channeling IMHO, neither involve loss of focus and will give you a nice boost.

As for the rest, you cant go wrong with dwaynas kiss, a monk without healing seed is like a warrior with no weapon and healing touch is the best self heal by a mile.

So thats five of your skills sorted.

The other three, well it depends on your playstyle, the skills being brought by the other monks in your party, and what it is that you are doing.

For me Healing Hands is now a vastly better elite than WoH on a healer, so I'd go that way. if you are still getting energy issues then signet of devotion is worth looking at, and if you're not involved in 8-sided PVP then some form of rez is a good idea (signet for arenas, rebirth for PVE). You might want some form of condition removal there - mend ailment can be used on self but isnt as good as mend condition (which cant). Two monks with mend condition are doing a better job than two with mend ailment, lets put it that way. Divine intervention is a great skill, but requires good timing to use, be careful with it. Well worth looking at AoE healing skills like divine healing and heal area too for times when your team has to bunch, altars and such.

Equipment: Defensive healing staff of enchanting for the primary weapon. If doing tombs or GvG you need a swap out weapon for those times when you need to lower your energy to 0. Personally I wear judges top and pants, tattoos on arms and feet., the reason being that most hits will strike chest and legs, and armour reduces damage. Reduced damage = reduced healing required. This is vastly more important than the extra energy in the pool which you will spend on self healing if you dont have the armour on (defensive mod on the staff for the same reason). Besides, if you are managing your energy correctly using the mesmer secondary skills then you dont need the extra, right? Its just more fuel for the surgers.

For this build I would take a superior healing and a major divine, aiming for something like 16 healing, 12 divine 7 inspiration. 405 max health, 40 energy, +4 pips.

Generally I would keep away from the very expensive heal other, and the equally expensive healing breeze only has a use in certain very specific team builds, ditto heal party.

My question here is what to do about hex removal. Would you consider putting in Contemplation of Purity or Remove Hex?

Backfire seems to be a good hex placed on monks so hex removal might be needed (maybe more so in PvP)....

you dont need an elite to heal methinks (gvg not tombs)... so use your elite for energy management. Mantra of Recall [e] from inspiration, then inspired hex, and drain enchantment gives you tons of energy.
For healing, healing touch, heal other and orison are all standard. You now have two slots to try and innovate. One can be filled with a stance. Some like hex breaker, some like mantra of resolve, but i like physical resistance. Shafts warriors spike a little bit - as for eles, youll be using prot spirit or dying either way. As for the last slot, another heal, or divine boon. Dwaynas kiss is always a good one. Kiss or boon.
As for stats, lots of health is always nice, and is probably more worth it over a couple more hp. Healing: 10+3+1 and Divine: 11+1 is nice, with 10 inspiration. Put your hex removal primarily on other characters, leaving just inspired on the monk.

Heal other?

Umm, that's like the most uber spell out there for healing....

Also might want to try going heal/prot and using guardian and RoF with healing spells.

it's also like the spell you can overheal with most easily, wasting energy.

Also, two spammed 5e spells get double DF bonus (divine favor)

My so called healers are hybred for rof and mend ailment.

Hex removal, i don't think they've nerfed holy veil yet, that's a nice one.

I use channeling and the +5e sword to draw me in, which works surprisingly well.

Overheal? I think its unfair to give up a spell if your incapable of using it properly. If you dont need as much health, use orison, but i find daily that heal other is very necessary.

Work out the energy efficiency of heal other compared to dwaynas kiss.

Dwaynas will almost always heal for a similar amount (because of the enchant/hex bonus) and costs half the energy. 2 x dwaynas will always out heal heal other by a long, long way for the same energy, and can obviously be put onto two people that are hurting instead of just one. There are much better spike heals out there, unless of course you have used your elite on energy management.

Versatility plus healing power plus energy management, the three basic concepts of a healing monk. Leave heal other at home, unless you are really stuck for something to put in that slot, which I would struggle to believe.

I follow this one rule with my monk. It only takes 5 energy skills to heal.
Must Have:

Orison*
Dwanas Kiss*
Divine Intervention
Divine Boon*

Style Choice:

Infuse Health
Vig Spirit
WoH
Aura of Faith (much better then Seed)
Heal Other (for a Min Master)
Healing Breeze
Heal Other
Martyr / Mend Ailment Combo

Orison and Dwanas do 90% of party healing in PvE. I have been on several 4 and 5 man farming runs in SF and those 2 heals are all I use. They are the main skills I use repeatedly. I bring Divine Intervention for those tight calls but find that it is a wasted spot most often. I usually run with D. Boon on all the time for the added kick to my heals.

I totally disagree that Healing Seed is required to be a healing monk. I know this goes against the mainstream. I simply feel that if I need something like this then Aura of Faith is a better choice.

I believe that a healer should always carry Infuse Health to assist in a sticky situation but I find that I don't have a need for it often.

Self Heal skill like Healing Touch is a wasted slot. If you need to self heal then you are probably a poor positional healer and should fix that first. In the case that you do need to heal yourself then use Orison.

Another fun thing to try is filling all of you skill slots with *only* 5 energy skills and see how much healing you do. This is how I started trying to make my energy go further. I have learned that there are times that you need a higher energy skill but those are few and far between.

This got me through Hell's Precipice.

12 Healing
10 Divine
7-8 Inspiration, I forget.

Heal Other
Dwayna's Kiss
Orison
Heal Area
Energy Drain
Inspired Hex
Divine Spirit
Restore Life/Rebirth/Resurrect

Too subjective. Circumstance dictates what heals you use, not ideals.
How?...How many hexes/enchants do you want to assume the guy has?
You need 6 enchants/hexes on a guy to heal for the same as Heal Other assuming 15 heal. Depends on your build, but for some...that'll just be plain unsuitable. Against certain teams again, that'll be plain unsuitable. How many hexes do you expect IWAYers to throw on you? You're going to ask your prot monk to empty all 6 of his enchants on this guy so you can give him a decent heal?
I'll use word when they fix word. Probably not even then.
Swish rhetoric.
No. Run it on 1 out of your 3 monks.
Certainly take kiss. Your typical insp heal monk has 5 slots devoted simply to heals. The OoB healer has probably 6. Divine Intervention is looking good, but other than that how many heals really do you expect to pack? I would rank Heal Other above Orison, Breeze, Seed, Heal Area. Versatility is the thing. Infuse Health some people like, but other times it can backfire badly, esp with the habit nowadays of running 2 diff prots and 1 heal. Versatility is the key here...I need a reliable big heal.

In PVE you are possibly correct, but in PVP both self heal and healing seed are 100% required - nothing to do with positional play, it has to do with the enemies targetting priorities and the huge potential damage that you can take very quickly - the kind of damage that is co-ordinated by the enemy team and you just dont see in PVE. In PVP it is not unusual for a team member to get taken down in less than a second from full health to dead, even with a 10% morale boost. There isnt anything positionally you can really do about that sort of thing, If you are the target then you are the target whether you are in their midst or on the other side of the map. The trick is knowing who the target is and doing something about it - this is where skills like healing seed and healing hands come in.

In PVP you will take damage as a monk, either from direct enemy attacks or from AoE attacks. You cant avoid it. So you do 100% need self healing - Healing touch beats orison on self heal because of the DF bonus, which will kick in for an extra 70 odd HP at 12 divine and will heal you after taking such incidental damage, or from the kind of damage inflicted on you by a warrior. Its not going to help you through a co-ordinated spike with you as the target, for that you need the other monks on your team to help you through, but like I say, for those times when you get caught up on the edge of some AoE effect then the use of healing touch will get you back to 100% health.

healing priorities;

Self->other monks->squishies->hard targets

Most of my recent monk esperience, certainly since the Sorrows patch, has been in GvG. In GvG the amount of enchants and hexes is huge, and the same is true of my rather limited recent tombs experience too although less so perhaps. Most team members will carry a self enchant, at least one, which is on pretty much all the time. Alot of teams chain aegis too, so there's another, and thats not even getting into the hex side of things. Not unusual at all to find a party member stacked with hexes and enchants.

As you hint, a monk is part of a three man (usually) monk team, and what matters is that the skills are co-ordinated between them. it is a mini team build on its own. Personally I wouldnt run a pure healer at all in most builds, but if I was then I would take dwaynas over heal other every time, and I cant see the room for both.

Take one of each as everous suggests. In some situations, dwaynas will kill it and heal for much more than heal other can for cheaper cost. However, what everous is stressing is you need to prepare for when that doesnt happen, i.e. when heal other is the better choice. So one of each is a possible compromise.

Besides, seed totally sucks now.

It used to be decent, with 'For (X) seconds, target gains (X) when hit.'
Now it's just another 10 second stall.

Used to be able to keep that up indefinately with enough Healing Prayers.

I can't agree. It really depends on the enemy if there are many hexes. Lately I see less Mesmers running around if most of the Mesmers use Energy Denial + mind Wrack, sometimes Wastrel's Worry.

An other popular combination is Migraine and Conjure Phantasm. Both are always max 2 hexes. And only on the monks...

So no: you normally don't have 6 enchants/hexes on an ally.

That is wrong. A monk may carry Channeling/Mantra of Recall/Blesses Aura and a Ele will have X Attunement. But what does a Mesmer, necro, Warrior or Ranger have? Nothing.

It is not unsual, but you can't rely on it.

If we take a standard monk with Channeling and chain aegis, you will have probably 3 Enchantments on him (Channeling, Aegis, and some prot enchantment because obvioulsy he is taking damage). Against IWAY, Ranger Spike, Trapper and most balanced Teams you will have 0-1 hexes on him...

Dwayna's is still great on energy effeciency - noone doubts it. But it's healing is unreliable. For example many teams rend the target before striking...

I definatly always take Dwayna's Kiss. It is very good heal. But on the other hand you can't rely on it as your only big heal. So I often take Heal Other with me as an Emergency Heal.

Heal Other is not very effecient in healing power per Energy, but it is very good in Healing power per second

I think you can't really compare this two skills. Heal Other is nothing you want to use outside an emergency situations while you always want to use Dwayna's.

So I really want to have one of the monks to have an emergency heal. And there are only three choices:
Heal other
Infuse Health
Word of healing

one of the is good to have in your mini-team. Because sometimes you really need a big heal and can't count on things like enemy hexes and no rends and stuff for healing power.


@Sister Rosette:
Healing Seed is still great. 2 monks can seed an ally with hardly any downtime. So it's still worth it.

the pure healer build I use normally:


Attribs:

12+3+1 Heal
12+1 Divine Favor

Must have Skills:

Heal Other
Orison
Healing Touch
Divine Spirit
Glyph of Renewal (E; Elementarist skill)
Restore Life (or Rebirth in UW/FoW for PUGs)

Optional Skills:

Healing Seed (in a small party with a single tank)
Heal Area (if you got a minion master in)
Dwaynas Kiss (more 1 energy healing)
Heal Party (if ya got a bunch of unexperienced players that run away far)
Remove Hex (for heavy hex enemies)

and for special uses:

Infuse Health (1/4 sec casting time! think yourself when this could be usefull)


Tactics: Try to have a constant Divine Spirit on you with clever Glyph of Renewal use. Get the glyph up at the start and cast divine spirit again instantly, wait till the glyph is recharged and do again. Gets abit to getting used to doing that, but if you learned it you can cast spells cheap nearly all the time. An Enchantings +20% staff or weapon helps alot.

ROFL!

And to contribute something useful Word is fixed, so you can use it if you want.

I couldn't agree with you more. I was talking PvE as that is what I thought the OP was wanting.

Just to confirm: it heals after both Boon AND DF bonus has been applied or just DF?...or just Boon?...Also when did they fix this? I didn't catch any anouncements with that in...damn stealth fixes -.-;

Doesn't matter, to use boon you need elite energy management anyways.

I like healing seed in conditions where you can direct which tank is taking the brunt if not all . Heal other is not bad to use , ok it costs 10 - with any kind of regenerating enchantment on someone getting pummeled or just having all 4 regen bars in itself does not hurt you to the extent it will break you to cast it. I do like infuse health on areas you get keg tanks/gears/scepters etc. Its the obvious choice to take. WoH is ok , if you manage the way you use it via its full potential - WoH when ally < 50% + breeze/heal other. That in itself will fill any classes Hp to 3/4 -throw in any shield/reversal/seed etc. from you or another source then jesus.

All this done on mediocre skill levels - 8 Heal/ 9 smiting/ 7 or 8 divine , im not on my game pc. You can support a crew of 6/7 depending upon your makeup meaning dont have all eles / necro / rangers with no exp etc. Then its all about tact once again ,knowing when to get the potential out of your spell/enchant & who not to waste your time healing , and then knowing that one person unstrategic move led to their demise and dont take it to heart , let them die. There are enough battles coming up to let them work off at least a 20- 30 % dp. If you feel bad for them , hit a scroll. Let them learn , youre not invincible , play with a strategy. I take nothing from those professions , I have yet to biuld a elemental or necro , but they deal a great deal of dmg , or make a party buff stronger on the whole and are a great addition if someone knows how to use them.

I'm fairly certain and reliable sources have told me that Word will work as long as the target was at less than 50% when the spell hits the target. So yes it would stack with Boon and DF bonus.

Morganas is right that Word + Boon is bad. Another reason is that you will overheal almost everytime.

It was a ninja fix, unnanounced

Word now isn't so bad. Its very efficient and certainly has its uses in some settings. Koreans do Mo/W Word of Healing and Sprint