Monk - Dissapointed

Well, this was my first, and my last, BWE. After long thought, and carefrul consideration, I chose my profession - Monk. Ive played a healer-type in most games Ive played, but this hadnt prepared me for what I was about to come to.

I played to almost lv 10, and I was realizing more and more than the Monk wasnt a very good healing class. At the time, I was lv 9, I have about 220 HP and about 50 MP (I couldve had 60 if I went for another -1 regen arrow). So, my group was going through the mission, and we kept on dying. I had almost all healing spells, save 3 - Ress, Bane Signet, and Fire Storm. The precise spells I had were Healing Breeze, Heal Other, Heal Area, shielding Hands, and Healing Hands. I had put 4 into Divine Favour, 4 into Healing Prayers, and 2 into Protecting Prayers.

So... On with the story...

The group and I were fighting, and I kept getting agro from no where! Left and right, everything was hitting me for no reason. I hadnt cast a single spell, nor done ANYTHING to generate "Agro". This kept on happenning, and eventually, I left out of frustration. Everyone kept dying, and I couldnt even keep myself alive. The 3 warriors (8, 10, and 11) were getting pummeled by creatures lower level than themselves. The lv 11 was down to 1/2 in under 4 hits, and the 10 was dead by then.

Is there something Im doing wrong? Is it just me, or do these being a "healer" in this game almost seem impossible?

At least I know this much - I know what I WONT be playing coming release time...

Healers in this game are not impossible to play, instead they're vital for a party to survive.

Monks are generally believed to be the best healing class.

You're not mentioning mission so I can't comment on what exactly you may be doing wrong. I can only say that non-aggroed monsters shouldn't aggro for no reason. Either they get too close to you (patrols), you get too close to them, or it's because you attack them. Patrols sneaking up from behind may be confused by an auto-aggro, but it's because you're in their patrol path. Ensure you know where nearby patrols are walking so you don't attack a mob and then another one walks up to you, giving you a nasty surprise. In this case, you should of course kill the patrol first.

As for party composition for PvE, 7 non-monks + 1 monk is generally considered a bare minimum. In that case, you may do it, but it can get rough for the single primary monk to keep up in tough battles. In a 4 player mission, one monk should suffice though.

Your problem seem to be that your team took on too many monsters at a time. A monk is no divine being, it's only a profession, that just like any other has both abilities and limits. Your team's character levels doesn't matter if you take on too many monsters.

Next, some golden rules of GW gaming, not just Monk playing:

- You must always have someone call targets. A disorganized team will kill a Monk played by an elite gamer.

- You must always pull targets when the mobs are too large for your party to handle. Game experience will soon start telling you when a mob is getting too large for your party to handle immediately. Have a single ranged attacker run ahead of the party, fire a few shots to aggro them, run back to the rest of the party, and hope he got a more managable amount of monsters to handle for your party.

- Your party must always protect the Monk if s/he's in trouble. If your fighters are on some "front" a bit away from you and you're getting pummeled in another place, you'll be dead. They need to come back and help the monk first, so you can at least get time to heal yourself and the others. If you get some firepower on your attackers they might aggro those instead and suddenly the tide of the battle may turn as you'll get some time to heal yourself and them, and not just click like a madman on your healing skills to just keep yourself barely alive.

- You must be careful. Do you know where that moving group of monsters are heading? Will they come back meanwhile you're fighting monsters? Is it better to attack a group of monsters from another direction instead of getting into a crossfire? Plan your moves. The monsters will stand like good puppies and wait while you decide what to do. Run for your lives if you see a mob is way too much to handle -- run, run, and hope the monsters will let you go and move back to their positions and reconsider your tactics.

I have no idea how much experience you've got with this game, so I'm just giving you some very basic GW suggestions, as you must be doing something seriously wrong if you're under the impressions Monks are bad healers. The guilds dominating the ladder would disagree strongly.

It seems like all the healing spells you have are the big time relatively huge energy consumption spells. Usually, I'll have Orison of Healing, Word of Healing and Signet of Devotion as my staple healing spells. They only cost 5 energy each. Drop some of those you have equiped for these. Will help alot in healing alot since you'll seldom run out of energy. Maybe you might want to keep heal area as a self heal spell since monks are really bad at keeping themselves alive.

Do you mean an organized team?

Dwayne, I understand your frustration.
Unfortunately at low levels the spells that are available to many of the classes are very lacking and are huge energy sinks.

As you gain levels, and obtain the spells you'll actually WANT to use, you'll see your gameplay change dramatically.

If you get a moment, read up on some of the build reviews of monks, you'll notice that smiting isn't the best option if you really want to be a healer.

It may seem like you're not able to do much, however a well played monk can make the difference whether it be PvE or PvP.

With the spell availability the way it is, you'll unfortunately have to suffer through the lower levels until you can get to the bread and butter of your class.


Mind

dizorganized, the own teams monk

Monk's arent designed for combat like you sound you were using yours, but instead to hang back, heal and perform spells on the enemy.

A few tips:
- put all you atribute points into healing, the rest into divine, until you have healing to some level 8. You have wery few atribute points till level 15, so it's vital fo focus on just one atribute line.
- don't use any -1 energy regen items!
- stand as far back as possible. let the others go ahead and start the fight, then move in just so close that you can heal. The mobs aren't stupid, they know that the monk is the cornerstone of the party.
- get Orison of Healing, this is THE spell for healing, cheap and effective (you can capture it from the grawl monk boss in the Great Northern Wall mission, and I think in the Old Ascalon explorable area too). Heal other is just to costly.
- drop firestorm, that 15 energy is beter spent on healing.

Aggro isn't generated in this game by doing actions- the enemies will look for the weaker targets and attack them. One thing I'd ask is if you upgraded your armor at all by level 10... if you're still using level 1 armor at level 10, you're going to be torn apart by the enemies you encounter at that point in the game, and having a low armor level means that the enemies will often pick you as their target.

Also, I'd recommend not using items that give +energy but cost an arrow of regeneration. These seem attractive, but you're losing 1 energy every 3 seconds when you have those equipped(as that's what you would regenerate from one arrow of energy regeneration). They can be useful to switch to for an extra boost when you run out of energy, but most of the time you should try to keep all your energy regeneration.

I'd suggest to throw in some cheap heals(orison of healing comes to mind), and drop your divine favor a couple levels to increase your healing prayers attribute more- you'll gain a larger benefit at low levels by investing in Healing Prayers than in Divine Favor.

Monks aren't bad healers, but you do need atleast 2 primary monks in a team of 4-6 just to stay alive. One monk can't really save the whole team alone.

Having a good team makes the difference.
And like the other person said, monks aren't very good at healing theirself.
I guess they need to have one major flaw.

Im not using my monk in combat, Im doing as I should - Standing back and healing. I will take some of your suggestions and use Orison of Healing instead of heal other, as well as drop firestorm. Illl also replace my +15 energy wand and focus for something without -1 regen.

Thanks for the advice

I don't want to sound like a expert player or anything, but maybe you just suck? I have a monk/warrior and been having a hell of a time. I've been in combat, and out of combat, healing people and swinging swords. Only died 4 times since the begining of this bwe, and those were when it was me vrs an army.

Hehe, yeah, maybe that's why he's wondering how he can do better too... One could answer like that too all questions asking for assistance with something... Would sure make things easy, but wouldn't help much.

I'm not seeing how Heal Other is too costly.

Orison of healing + 10 levels Divine Favor:
60+32 = 92 healing
92 / 5 = 18.4 HP per Energy point

Heal Other + 10 levels of Divine Favor:
151+32 = 183 healing
183 / 10 = 18.3 HP per Energy point

the difference comes when you consider Healing Per Second

Orison of healing (92 heal + 2 second recharge):
92 / 2 = 46 Heal per second

Heal Other (183 heal + 3 second recharge):
183 / 3 = 61 Heal per second

oh and erm...Heal Other takes a shorter time to cast...plus the heal per second and the massive healing in general (183 is hefty) is good for dealing with spike damage

...if your problem is keeping your party alive...I don't really see how taking orison is going to help that much. If your problem is keeping yourself alive...then yeah...perhaps orison is the skill for you. Main disadvantage of heal other being that you can't heal yourself with it (as name suggests)...its ok for PvP when you're organised...but it can be a serious hassle in disorganised PvE

Sounds like you had a bad group too.

I'm not sure I understand...

...also I've been looking at some skills...and its technically possible (though highly impractical) using infuse health to bust out over 1200 HP heals...I gotta try that some time

EDIT: using life attunement...I think its technically possible to heal for 1833.6318 health...
...thats a LOT of health O.o;

Just to reiterate whats already been said.

I find healing monks to be quite difficult to keep multiple targets alive in hairy battles at the begining of your campaign. (ie lower levels).

As already said, I'd definitely consider dropping divine off in favour of getting your healing to the maximum ammount. Untill you have a lot in healing you wont see yourself being able to keep teams alive.

But don't get discouraged, your healing wont go un-noticed even at the early points in the game. Just stick with it and level up as much as you can and keep dropping into healing. Once you get to the higher levels monks are so cool and so very needed in teams.

As many people said, you have to stay back and out of the main action. Some people may not agree with me on this but i think smiting spells are very helpful. Especially when you are lower level. I stay back watching my team mates while dealing up to 60 damage with my 2 smiting spells.

If mobs were all over him, obviously he wasent bein protected.

Problem: You have experienced a difficulty in the game and died.

Wrong solution: Post an 'I quit!' statement on the public forums.
Weaker solution: Ask other people to do the research for you by posting on strategy forums.
Correct solution: Find out what you did wrong, what was the weakness of your character build, and try to pick better skills.

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To be specific - the 'Aggro' was your being a Monk.
If you equate healing to damage dealt - Monks are somewhere on the top damage dealers. Therefore they should always be the target of any group you engage.

The solution is to find anti-gang skills - and there are many effective ones.