Guild Wars PvP Lives Here

Hey guys, I know a bunch of people have discussed some relevant issues in monking recently and have asked for my opinions. Since I started school last week, I haven't really had much time to do many write-ups on the forums, but hopefully this post will satisfy anyone with any questions.

There’s generally a lot of people who make posts that say that they really aren’t interested in the material and don’t want to invest the time into reading a discussion like this, and so, I’m just telling you in the beginning this time that I’m not going to force or expect you to read my posts. I simply write them for those who have expressed interest and perhaps some others who might find insight along the way.

As always, if I'm unclear about anything or you have any follow-ups, please feel free to ask. Also, if you disagree with something or want to take the discussion further, I encourage you to do so as well.

I just have a series of quotes here, each of which I will offer my input on. They are listed in no particular order.


I made a point to quote this with little or no text early in the thread to show how absurd the statement was. Weapon swapping really is easy enough, and swapping to high sets for casts is by far the easiest and most crucial swap to accomplish.

Let me just try to lay this out as simply as possible. You are monking. You cast spells. They cost energy. Eventually, you cast too much or your energy gets drained, so a four pip set is no longer going to support your casting. You swap to a high energy set (+15 energy wand, +27 energy focus) and cast your spell(s). Immediately after the cast, you swap back to a normal energy set. The next time you need to cast, if you are still in "negative energy", you swap to your high set again and cast, immediately swapping back down once again. There are two possible outcomes at this point, assuming you are being very communicative with your team about your situation at all times: your team will either recover, and your health and energy bars will stabalize, allowing you to return to your "normal energy" sets, or you will continue to take heavy damage and the energy in your high set will diminish, leading you to call for a team fallback.

Either of these scenarios is essentially a success for the monks. You did everything that you could, and gave absolutely everything that you had. If you did a good enough job negating and healing damage, then something else about your team strategy is going to have to improve once you have recovered and are ready to reset the battle (this is assuming that your team hadn't full wiped and you were able to utilize your NPCs, which should ideally be the case).

Not swapping to a high set when taking high damage, on the other hand, will almost always lead to a failure for the monks. When a monk confines him or herself to one static energy pool, there is no good measure of how much longer they can sustain the team without allowing a death. After a push or burst of pressure, they may find themselves with low or no energy in their only set, and that will lead to not having enough energy to save a team member. If this becomes the case, a full team wipe is likely, as "energy clicks" should never be allowed to occur, and if they do, a chain reaction normally follows. One way that some monks try to prevent this is to call low energy when in reality they still have an excess of energy in their normal sets. This leads to their team falling back prematurely, either all the way into their base for a reset, or at least linebacking to relieve pressure, while letting up all of their own. Falling back while low energy on a single set and no offensive pressure once again risks "energy clicks", as the other team will be all-out offense and will still be able to damage through your linebacking, risking the chance that energy will indeed run out and you will have insufficient reserves to save a teammate.

Thus, one very overlooked benefit of the high energy set is the ability to have some kind of objective measure of energy, rather than guessing when your one set is going to run out. If this is where you want to view the high set as an "emergency set", then feel free, as whatever you call it, you'll know exactly how much you can give your team until you can't heal any longer. Communication is key, as if your team is going to need just a little more time to score a kill or two, it will be worth it to stay engaged on a dry energy pool. Obviously, many offensive players get cocky and think they are doing better than they actually are, so there's a high level of trust that must be involved in this communication, or you can just make up for it yourself with your own observations and judgment. More practically than being able to kill the other team in time, you will be able to support your team during the fallback at the very least, in due time so that there's never a great risk of taking deaths. The judgments of when to fall back are going to be hard at first, but as you get better at evaluating what your energy set(s) mean, as well as the threat from the opposing team based on their strategy and build, you will be able to support your team for much longer periods of time.

The common misconception about energy sets is that once you swap to one, you're stuck on it. Meaning that once you have swapped to a two pip energy set, that is going to be your energy recovery until you can swap back into lower sets. This is where the whole idea of the "emergency set" comes in, and people think that once their energy pool is exhausted, it's just going to come back twice as slowly. That couldn't be farther from the truth. If you are swapping to your high set only to cast as you should, then you are still sitting at four pips when you are not casting, meaning that your energy regen rate is going to remain constant while simply offering you a larger reserve pool. Under no circumstance should any monk, or any player at any position for that matter, be sitting on a two energy pip set for any extended period of time. The scenario that I described above should really be the only way that you're using your high set. What then, is the downside to a high set if it only offers more security, objectivity, and energy? The answer is that you are indeed losing energy every time that you cast in a high set, but only at a rate of .67 energy per second spent casting, not in the set itself, since you won't be sitting in it. There is also the time that it takes to swap weapon sets, but that's so elementary that the time it takes should be negligible. If you're new to it and it's hard for you to do quickly, then all it means is that you're going to need to call fallbacks more preemptively.

I personally will spend a great deal of time in matches on my high set and won't think twice about it. I always view my energy as x of 72, not x of 35, 40, or 42, simply because I know it's available to me. Although that swap offers by far the least efficiency, it still offers staying power at the stand or otherwise. Often times, during offensive pushes, I will exhaust my high set because I am removing conditions, hexes, and maintaining veils. I play very offensive-mindedly, so if I see my team pushing well, or if they inform me that they have the opportunity to, I don't hesitate to heal and cast out of my high set. Monks are offensive catalysts, and being able to full push into an opposing team with an Aegis up and prots flying around is the ultimate way to score kills and win games. If we are taking enough damage to push me into my high set and my team is still pushing, then I'm going to throw up a 15 energy Aegis in my high set anyway. You don't only lose energy when doing something like that. The reason that you bring and use skills at all is because you believe that the energy costs and casting times will be made up for by the benefits. In this case, the blocks from Aegis while you push into their team, NPCs, or base outweigh the energy you had to spend, a net gain, which will actually help to get you heighten your energy rather than push you deeper into your high set.

The only reason that I ever really call to pull out is due to threat level, where a team is executing a massive push with AoE damage in choke points, full monk attacking, and absurd amounts of instantaneous damage. This needs to happen at the same time as energy runs out on the high set in order to truly be a threat. Most of the time, I can sit in a high set for 10 or more minutes and not feel it, as was the case against  in the most recent tournament when they were running hexes, and we didn't take a death in the first twenty minutes, going on to win at VoD. This happened once against versus hexes recently in a game against DF, although that was largely due to their lack of direct damage (they only had one physical damage dealer). The efficiency of the skills that you use, as well as how you use them, will often be enough to let you recover from any high pressure periods, at least eventually.

It's a personal belief that a high energy set is used for recovery at the stand as well as to facilitate offensive pushes, not to keep a team alive in an emergency situation. Although that is one of its uses, viewing that as the primary focus of the set limits a team offensively, as it either lets up pressure completely or disallows a greater number of pushes with longer durations.


You basically answered your own question through your phrasing and the conditionality that you made sure to point out. The only misconception that you had was that Prot Spirit is more likely to prevent damage. Spirit Bond will not only reduce damage strikes of 60+, but also damage strikes that would have been 60+ if not already stacked with other prots, such as Prot Spirit, Shield of Absorption, or Shielding Hands. Also, most players run between 570 and 640 health these days, meaning that they will both be triggering at around the 60 damage mark, so if anything, Spirit Bond is more likely to trigger randomly, which is what I think you were getting at. I think you’ve confused Spirit Bond’s mechanics, since it’s not going to heal if your ally takes 60+ damage within the next ten hits, but rather heal the next ten times that your ally takes 60+ damage.

As for the part of your phrasing that I said answered your question, it was the part about only using Spirit Bond when you know for sure that your ally is going to take more than 60 damage. Well, yes, that’s essentially the only time that you’re going to want to be using Spirit Bond or Prot Spirit anyway, in a proactive attempt to pre-prot a spike or high damage train. Spamming them randomly on targets taking damage will never prove effective, so it wouldn’t really matter which you were using as it will just come out to chance anyway. As far as the duration goes, it doesn’t really matter, since they will both only be triggering at the beginning of their durations anyway, and the added length will only make a difference if the opposing team is bad and doesn’t switch targets, or at VoD for NPC/incidental damage.


Dust trap.

No, actually, it's just to look cool. Every other secondary class has, or has had, some kind of useful skill for monks to use, while ranger is just a trash collection. Natural Stride or Melandru's Resilience don't count because they are just funny to use and don't actually have any kind of purpose. For the record, though, I do normally spec 3 points into Marksmanship and 1 point into Beast Mastery.


Practice, practice, practice. Practice in HA, RA, TA, AB, GvG, and wherever else you can. The goal of this is to eventually make your weapon swapping automatic, so that as soon as you think to use a certain skill, your fingers swap to the appropriate set beforehand without any kind of thought. Associate certain skills with certain weapon swaps, the weapon swaps that maximize the efficiency of those specific skills (40% FC 20% ench staff for Prot spells, 40% FC 40% SR wand+focus for Heal spells, etc). Once you have the association ingrained far enough into your brain, you can just do the weapon swap and spell cast as one fluid motion, pressing the swap key a millisecond before casting the spell. Do this on each and every cast, for each and every spell, and even between casts, as the maximum efficiency when not casting comes from an entirely defensive weapon set.

If you're talking about the technical aspect of swapping, then I really believe that it just comes down to preference. Since I use a largely default interface and key settings, I use the F1-F4 keys to weapon swap and 1-6, h, and y to cast spells. If I'm anticipating a cast, my hand will hover over the weapon swap keys as well as the spell keys, and once I do need to swap, I hit the swap key and the cast key in a single synchronized motion, obviously swapping with a minimal fraction of a second before casting. Where your swap keys and cast keys are on your keyboard is not a big concern, as long as you get used to using them together. It does mean that you have to press two buttons instead of one to cast each spell, but this will be done almost instantly. As you practice, the speed with which you will be able to execute this motion will increase, and there will be less of a delay between identifying the proper swap/spell and the fulfillment of the action. Once again, it's all about making it automatic.


Unless you're healing non-stop, literally, there is always time to weapon swap. It takes the smallest fraction of a second before a cast and the same amount of time afterward. It should be possible to multi-task quite easily and efficiently with weapon swapping, casting, and moving, especially when the weapon swapping and casting have become one fluid motion, as described above. I’ve heard a lot of monks talk about not wanting to weapon swap because they have to click on their weapon sets and that takes away from other things, but if you can just achieve a configuration that you’re comfortable, that shouldn’t be a problem. Clicking really should never be used on something where reaction time and speed is so vital, unless you’re dedicating a great deal of attention and effort to it, like clicking to move or clicking the party bar, both much more important functions than weapon swapping.


This quote alone might be taken out of context somewhat since the question was asked so long ago. For some background, this was after discussing weapon setups on certain monk bars, when I listed my LoD monk bar as RoF, LoD, SB, Kiss, Dismiss, Veil, SoA, Aegis.

Well, I established the bar based on my philosophy and personal style when monking, which was essentially “If you don’t take damage, you won’t need energy”. Basically, the energy management on the bar is the efficiency of the skills themselves and the efficiency based on how they are used. I’ve been shocked when going to guest with a guild and they tell me “You don’t need Aegis”. My first response is to ask them whether they already have three copies on midliners or something. No one has ever responded ‘yes’ to that question, so I insist on bringing it anyway, even if I have the only one. The reason for that is because passive skills like Aegis are efficient in themselves. Even though they have a steep energy cost (well, not so much any more), you’re using the skill based on the assumption that the damage it will negate will come out to more than 15 (now 10) energy out of your pool, resulting in a net energy gain instead of loss. This was discussed in more detail above. The reason that I’ve singled out Aegis first is because it’s the skill that monks have been most hesitant to run on its own because it “needed” energy management.

The next way that the bar(s) maximize your energy is via proper usage of prots, both big prots like SB, PS, and SoD, as well as small prots such as Guardian, SoA, and Shielding Hands. This keeps in line with the “don’t take damage” mentality, as prots will obviously reduce your need to heal. Everyone knows that and most people utilize it rather well. However, most builds normally don’t run the sheer quantity of prots that we have been, especially not small prots, and leads to the negation of not only spike skills/spells, but also incidental and “auto” damage. Whereas pre-protting spikes with big prots spells stays consistent across all monk builds and playstyles, this one takes away even more damage. The efficiency of a single small prot spell might be minimal, and it certainly varies based on the amount of damage that a teammate takes throughout the duration, but in the end, it will still always do something to reduce damage and negate the need for heals. In the end, not allowing your team to take damage will always reduce deaths more than relying on pure healing will, regardless of how much or little damage is actually stopped. This might be a bigger drain on energy, but it actually increases efficiency, at least based on a post from a while back where I defined efficiency not by energy and team standards, but by minimizing individual deaths.

On the other side, it may actually help your energy a lot more than energy management skills or heals will anyway. Big prots should only be used when the condition for damage reduction will be met guaranteed; small prots can be used in all other scenarios. In those “toss-up cases” where you are using small prots, it’s often hit-or-miss where it will negate a minimal amount of damage or enough damage to be worth an entire pool of energy (okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the point). It’s kind of like winning the lottery a lot of the time, but with much better odds. Although individual small prots may fail and not do as much as you had desired, the returns in the long run will be positive and the expected value of each individual prot will be higher than the energy cost, despite the distribution of damage negation. Graphically, the damage reduced by small prots would show a high frequency of small values, drop down in the middle, and then slope back up to represent many high values as well, with the mean landing above the amount that could be healed for the same energy cost.

Now obviously, this is all under the assumption that you are using these spells as intelligently as possible in order to get the most out of them. This makes watching the battlefield and map all the more important, as you are not simply scoping out spikes any longer, but also “auto” damage. It will require you to constantly watch physical damage for opportunities to shut it down, with will be rather frequent. Practice with this will lead to more efficient usage of all of your spells, as well as increase your field awareness in general.

The final reason that I choose to run a bar with no explicit energy management is probably the biggest and, in my opinion, the most obvious. I like skills that do something. I like skills that are their own skills and have their own unique uses. Explicit energy management skills such as glyph of lesser energy simply allow you to use your current skills more often. While this is fine, and even preferred, on bars with SoD or some other high energy cost, super powerful elite, on it, it’s really not worth it when each of your skills is situational. Pumping more energy into your current skills means that you are sacrificing potential efficiency that could be obtained by using better suited spells. It’s hard to say where to draw the line on that, because certainly, if I could have only five skills on my bar and the ability to use them non-stop, it would be a very tempting offer. However, I believe that none of the current non-elites are powerful enough to warrant the sacrifice of space on a bar for a greater usage of less efficient skills. The one argument that could have been made at one point was 15 energy Aegis, but I didn’t even think it was worth it back then, and it certainly isn’t now that it’s been knocked down in energy cost. Sticking with the small prot versus big prot usage example, energy management spells would basically allow you to cast Spirit Bond or Prot Spirit on whichever teammate was taking damage that could potentially be negated. However, there is no guarantee that they will even have any effect at all, as the prerequisites are fairly high (60 damage taken for SB, 60-64 damage taken for PS), and they generally are not worth using unless you are positive that their conditions will be met for sure, as stated above. The other option would be spending the excess energy on heals, but I’ve already stated how I feel about those. They’re just simply not as efficient as prots, and you should have plenty in that department to scrap up the spare damage, especially with LoD. So if the skills that you fuel with energy management just aren’t doing a complete or efficient job, then why pump them instead of equipping smaller, yet more situationally effective spells in that last slot?

I’m going to discuss the ultimate example of “skills that do nothing” or “skills that aren’t their own skills” later on in this post. At least I think I am since there was an entire thread started about it, and I can’t imagine having passed over it without a quote.


It’s not necessarily bad. It was a common practice back in the day when energy denial was heavy and monks were bad to run four swaps purely for energy. Now, granted, they weren’t maximizing their utility, but it did have some effect. One swap for low energy via negative energy weapon and focus, one set for normal energy, one set with +15, and one set with +30. The players could just build their way up through the energy pools as their energy diminished, receiving only a .33 energy per second penalty from the +15 set instead of the normal .67 energy per second, as well as only exposing a small pool for denial. Then, when you do need the highest set, you can start swapping into that rather than the moderate energy set, and still have a minimal amount exposed, working your way back up as your energy recovers.

It’s still a rather useful idea, and if that’s something that you’re really afraid of, then I would highly recommend it, since high sets are extremely vulnerable to interrupts or denial. I don’t know that I would ever completely drop the 72 energy set, since it would definitely be realistic to use both while avoiding the exposure that you’re concerned about. I don’t think that I would ever do that personally, since I love both of my efficiency sets and need at least my defensive and high sets, but if you aren’t super, super attached to each of your four sets, then it would most likely work out favorably.


There was some discussion about my statement at the time that I made it, since I’ve noticed that a decent number of teams still equip Infuse Health. Let me start off by saying that I don’t think that Infuse is necessarily a bad skill. I just think that it’s not entirely necessary. With the abundance of prot spells going around these days, the amounts of passive defense, and most importantly the emphasis being put on pre-protting spikes, Infuse simply does not come out to be the most effective spell in the vast majority of circumstances.

I ran Infuse on my bar for quite some time, and it would always be worth throwing around just because it was there. However, one day, I just decided to see how far I could get with pre-prots alone. What happened was that I didn’t see the need to use Infuse for an entire week and had forgotten that it was on my bar. It also made me far more energy-efficient, heightened my awareness, and allowed me to be more proactive in calling tactics.

Now clearly, some monks are very experienced and have become quite good at pre-protting, enough to take away the majority of a spike if both monks land their spells in advance, but some aren’t. In order to rely solely on prots, you need two trustworthy players who are capable of catching every spike, and that means that the burden is also going to fall largely on the off-monk, usually SoD these days. If synergy is developed well enough, it will often lead to the ideal scenario that I described above.


Oh boy. My favorite skill in the world. Signet of Devotion.

Okay, here’s the thing. Signet of Devotion is not its own spell. It’s used for one of two reasons: energy management or to fuel hex removal, perhaps both. What I mean about it not being its own skill is that there are alternatives out there that are infinitely better. And it’s not the kind of situational choices that I described above, but rather, there are spells that will always be better and are exact substitutes, Gift of Health for example. Signet of Devotion is a poor excuse for Gift if you are simply looking at the heal numbers. They have the same recharge, and Gift has a significantly higher heal, gets the divine favor bonus, and has a much shorter casting time. The only benefit of Sig of Devo is that it’s free. So what does that mean? Basically, it means that you sacrifice what your skill does for energy. Like I said in an earlier section, Signet of Devotion is the ultimate example of sacrificing a skill that actually does something for a more “secure” energy situation. Thus, the first use, energy management. Why is this energy management unnecessary? See the section regarding the issue above. The same concepts apply.

Before I get onto the second use of the skill, hex removal, let me take the time out to explore the question “Is Signet of Devotion really free?”. I know it sounds unnecessarily philosophical, but it really is looking into. The answer is no. What I mean is that at the very least, you’re not quite getting the heal that you subscribed to when casting Sig of Devo. I’ll go over why somewhat quickly. The first reason is that every build runs an LoD monk, and that is used for filling up multiple party bars, especially topping them off. Sig of Devo can only be used to top off bars and not make them go from low to high quickly (like Gift can), so a lot of the health that would be healed by Devo will get mopped up by the incessant LoD spam anyway. The casting time is two seconds, and with aftercast, it is a 2.75 second investment. Often times, when monks use Sig of Devo, warriors will switch to attack them and they will either have to cancel and get nothing or suffer through taking damage themselves to get the spell off. I’ve seen Sig of Devo lead to such tanking far too many times, and it’s almost unavoidable. This is especially true since Sig of Devo is used most frequently when the team is under pressure and the monks are low on energy. If the monks are low on energy, they try to make up for it by casting a “free” spell often. At the same time, since the opposing team is applying the heavy pressure, they will primarily be attacking monks, meaning the damage taken will also increase with the need to cast for the purpose of energy management. Also having to do with the casting time is the potential for missed prots. Big pre-prots on spikes as well as small pre-prots on “auto” damage may be missed, or at least made less enery-efficient, due to the delay of the long cast of Sig of Devo. For these reasons, the Signet will not be doing exactly how much you want it to. The amount healed from LoD, amount of damage taken while casting, and damage negation forgone due to not protting must all be subtracted from the base amount that Signet of Devotion is said to heal for in order to come up with a more accurate number. Of course, this is the case with nearly all skills, but the situation is never nearly as severe as that of Devotion.

The second use for Signet of Devotion was to power hex removal via Deny Hexes. Hmm, that sounds alright, right? A slightly effective heal that also adds to hex removal? Well sure, but only if you could have 16 skills on your bar. Since we already know that Sig of Devo is never being used primarily for the heal itself, it’s going to be just as good as its secondary function. So how does it fare as hex removal? Well, objectively, it’s really not too bad. It’s great against hex teams because it can remove not only the top hex, but the important ones buried underneath as well. And that’s not to mention that the second hex removal is free, since it goes along with the first, which would always cost five energy without regard to the number of hexes removed.

The downside is that it’s simply not practical. The first reason that you’re devoting an entire slot on your bar to a second, or even third, hex removal spell. Now clearly, hex removal is good, but if you’re using that many spaces on your bar for it, you’re clearly passing up something that could be far superior. The next problem is that it’s not going to get any additional utility (multiple hexes removed) against teams that aren’t running a pure hex stack build. A normal team with scattered hexes, such as water snares, blurred vision, and diversion, will only leave one useful hex on a target at a time. A second real hex removal such as Remove Hex or Holy Veil would be better in this case since it could be focused, and the target as well as the timing could be spaced accordingly. Another argument against the skill for removal purposes is the existence of a clearly superior alternative: Divine Spirit. I don’t want to get into the reasons why it is so much better, as I’m sure it’s apparent to most people out there, and is often brought as the first DF spell to fuel Deny anyway. Any more skills past Divine Spirit just make you desperate to bring any skill at all to deny you of skill slots and diminish the marginal utility of the conditionality of Deny Hexes. Now the most obvious reason that Sig of Devo does not work as hex removal, even against a pure hex stack team, is the two second cast time and five second recharge. In order to pull three hexes with Deny every time is recharged, you are going to need to cast Sig of Devo, a 2.75 second investment, once every 13 seconds, and then you only have a five second window in which to use Deny. Now that means that you are giving up whatever you would be doing otherwise in those 2.75 seconds to cast a skill that preps your hex removal and you could be spending them maximizing efficiency of prots, kiting, or something else useful. It also gives you a five second window since the recharge is so short. There may not be a sufficient stack of three hexes worth removing in those three seconds, and you won’t be able to split your removals or target them on the individual players you want at the specific times that you want, you’ll be forced to use it since prepping it again would mean another 2.75 seconds of prep time and again only a five second window. You also may get pressured in that five second window (you did just waste the previous 2.75 seconds, after all), and not be allowed to cast Deny, as you may be getting trained, or your team may be taking so much damage that it needs to be healed or protted immediately.

With all of those reasons that I’m not a fan of Signet of Devotion right now, let me just say that I never think Sig of Devo was good. Not in the WoH days, Boon Prot days, Blessed Light days, or at any time. The flaws of the skill have always been the same, and it’s at least slightly better now that it has a second purpose in hex removal due to the recent buff of Deny. The metagames and views of monking back then may have allowed you to get away with it with losing less than you do now, but the effect was never entirely positive, or at least not high enough to warrant equipping and using. That’s all in my opinion, of course.


What would you be getting out of Reversal of Damge that you wouldn’t be getting out of Reversal of Fortune? You would be passing up the considerable heal that RoF offers, and getting in return some unfocused, small damage. Your spec isn’t going to be very high, so the damage numbers won’t be game-changing, the recharge is going to be considerably more noticeable, and the actual damage that is put out is going to be random. It’s not like the damage is actually going to coordinate itself with your offense and spike or assist targets. It’s just going to be thrown out on whoever is attacking you. Since they’re apply pressure by attacking or casting themselves, chances are that they are not the ones on the other team being pressured, and the damage will be lost.


That’s a very cool combination, actually, and I think with Tainted and Aegis in the build, it would prove rather effective. The problem that I would foresee is having to waste two skill slots on something that you can’t control. The efficiency of those skills relies on the enemies attacking you, and there’s not much you can do to induce that. Along with that, it means that you won’t be able to equip skills that would help your allies more in varied situations, and as you might be able to tell from some of the statements above, I really like being in complete control of the situation without leaving it up to chance or the actions of another player or team. It would also mean that you would likely have to move the Aegis over to a midline character, and while the Tainted Necro might be ideal, you might have some other plans for his bar.

Now that said, I still think the combination would be rather effective, and so it’s worth a try. You certainly need the right build to play it in, with a lot of off-monk and midline support, or at the very least, you can use it to dominate Team Arena.



Now I'll open the floor to questions, comments, criticisms, and complaints.

You seem to place complete and total confidence on prots over healing, most specifically in your arguement against infuse. What happens when the other team is running what I was just running recently, 2 shatters, 2 drains, and 1-2 rending touches? There were many spikes we were able to push through that could have been stopped if the other monk had infused, instead of blindly relying on the stability of his preprots.

Questions: On the no infuse thing wouldn't it be a more efficient use of energy if when they spike the SoD monk SoD's the target and then maybe RoF. and the LoD just infuse the target and be done? Rather then both monks proting and healing it up with RoF and some alternative heal?

Comments: Thanks ^.^

Criticism: I don't recommend turning the paper in to a professor without edits.

Complaints: You didn't put it in the monk thread. (A Strict violation of Vanq's rules.)

And again:

Comments: Thanks ^.^

Oh, did I not include that? My bad. It was certainly in my notes. And I'm fairly sure you were the team that made me think of the argument. I'll throw that in there, I don't know how I left it out.


Haha yeah, to be honest, it was TL;DR for me to want to edit. I just wanted to be done with it. Maybe later.

I'll edit this later when I have time.

Great post, very informative. It confirmed a lot that I already assumed. Should help average players more than anyone.



It's funny you say this because I saw a Mo/R bar ran effectively that didn't have either of those skills. It had Serpents Quickness+Divine Spirit on a ZB bar. This was before the nerf to ZB of course. The monk just had a massive healing output being able to use ZB every 3 seconds under SQ, and then gain 5 energy off it because of Divine Spirit. Obviously he would cook this off every 45 seconds, and was able to pump his bar full of energy doing it, while having a massive healing output. This was in HA, I found it cute since it enabled him to have better positioning than most monks because he didn't have to rely on channeling for energy. I'm not saying this bar was the greatest or anything, but I think it was at least a cleaver idea and it showed the capability of SQ.

tommy why dont you like gliph of lesser?

I agreed with all of this post except the secondary profession section. I just think Paragon looks better than Ranger because mop is cooler than mor.

EDIT: What's your position on Signet of Rejuvenation? It's a powerful free heal with a pretty nice recharge. I think it would be better than Shield of Absorption in most cases because once a good warrior sees a prot go up on someone they're hitting, they will usually switch to another target, making the damage reduced from SoA very little.

I'm assuming the discussion in this thread, and answering questions, is open to more monks than just Tommy. Since you compared the skill to SoA, I'll start with that.

At 14 Healing Prayers, Signet of Rejuvenation will heal for 71 HP, and an additional 71 HP when meeting the condition, yielding a 142 Heal when meeting the condition.

On an LoD, you're most likely running somwhere between 9-11 Protection Prayers, yielding a 5 second SoA at 9 Prot, and 6 second SoA at 10 & 11 Prot. With a 20% enchant mod, you have a 6 second SoA when running 9 Prot, and a 7 second SoA running 10 or 11.

Given Tommy's Bar: Rof, Dwaynas, Dismiss, Spirit Bond, LoD, SoA, Veil, Aegis
You already have enough "Red Bars Go Up" skills on your bar already. Assuming you are replacing SoA, from that bar, for Rejuv, you will then essentially have 4 skills doing the same thing, pure healing. Granted, RoF isn't a pure heal, using it as a small prot/never red-barring with this skill, will yield the greatest return in (HP Prevented & Healed)/(Energy Cost). Dwaynas also has the ability to yield greater returns than Signet of Rejuvenation, and has a better recharge. With effective protting, Dwaynas should yield greater returns or near equivalent returns when compared to Sig Rejuv 99% of the time. Dwaynas is already ahead of Rejuv when the none of the conditions of either skill are met (when you include the divine favor heal with dwaynas).

Dismiss again, with effective protting, will yield greater returns than rejuv when the condition of Rejuv isn't met and is still ahead of rejuv in term of the heal. Dismiss also has added utility of removing a condition which could be a deep wound, thereby healing more than Rejuv when Rejuv's condition is met. And, Dismiss has a faster recharge.

Finally, the comparison to SoA. Being that the skill animation isn't as recognizable as Prot Spirit, SoD, or SB, many damage dealers will continue striking some1 with SoA on them, until they realize they are doing significantly lower damage than normal. I'm not going to go over the mechanics behind SoA, but simply assume that a target will most like take 3-5 before damage dealers realize that they have to switch. 3 Hits to a target with SoA on it has already reduced 30 dmg, 4 Hits reduces 50 dmg, 5 Hits reduces 75 dmg. Again, at that 5 hit mark, SoA has prevented more dmg than Rejuv could heal, granted Rejuv doesn't meet its condition.

This is where I would like the point out that the most effective monking is not reacting to dmg, but rather reacting to intended dmg. Rejuv would be the reaction to dmg, and SoA the latter. SoA is also, infinately more useful than Rejuv when it comes to protecting anything taking pressure from all sources, ie. Flag Runner. A flag runner can get SoAed, then have it covered by a big prot such as prot spirit, and that flag runner isn't dying for a while. By the time, the warriors are ready to spike, SoA will have already accumulated enough dmg to stop the entire spike, and since its covered, multiple removals would have to be used. SoA will almost instantly pay for itself in this situation while with Rejuv, you will only get 1 free heal every 8 secs, and still have to pump more energy into keeping that flagger alive.

SoA, like i said earlier at 3 hits will reduce 30 dmg. This will primarily be the +x dmg on skills like Eviscerate, thereby essentially reducing the warrior to his base axe dmg, strength bonus, the dmg if he's lucky enough to crit, and possibly his vamp/sundering mod. While it may seem menial, it will mean a lot in the grand scheme of things.


This maybe the only time Rejuv will yield the conditional heals 100% of the time, at least of the greatest majority of the match. I guess, this would be where you have to ask yourself, will the pure healing of Rejuv, outweigh the dmg negation of SoA, on hard targets nontheless, for the entire match, especially at VoD.

why be casting when your whole team can just run around and prevent dmg!! in all srsns good post. It comes a bit to late I suppose, since gw is dead and all.

I notice that a lot of times retreating causes more deaths than fighting because you lose the midline utility effects, and the majority of warrior damage on the enemy while they are free have their way with you, yet if you were to stay and fight, you would eventually full wipe because of a clear build advantage.

So, my question is; what is the optimal point [probably measured in terms of energy] at which you call a retreat to minimize team deaths? Or is this just completely situational, which I am thinking it is.

wow tommy wtf, this is soo long! yet informative!! i just read bits hear and there.

.......people didnt know or asked you about energy swapping to a high set and how that works.......? they were good players too...? man people are so stupid.I thought that was like the first thing you learn in gw, "need more energy than your 42/47set? swap to your 72set use a skill once than swap back" people are terrible
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Retreating is something teams do poorly now. Just because you're retreating doesn't mean you stop calling spikes(try spiking offense at this point), or that you stop using adrenalin and spells. When I guest and the call to pull back is made the warriors are normally the first ones running to the base and the monks are left for themselfs in the back getting snared/trained the entire way back to the base.

that cleared up a couple of things
im still gonna run rejuv for now
cos im still fairly shit at e-managing