User talk:Lancy1214/Monkarchives/Monkarchives

Cool! ^_^ Now we can better devote discussions to each profession. --Falconeye 20:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Monk Skill Balance & New Mechanics

How about giving Smiting Monks some Anti-Holy(Light) damage abilities, or abilities that work better affected by or dealing with all things Holy? With exception of Dervish, they are supreme masters of dishing out this armor ignoring, summon-hating, cant-be-countered source of power; so why cant they be masters of mitigating it? Having difficulty with an undead infestation? Bring a Smiter! Need protection against an Avatar of Balthazar? Bring a Smiter! For that matter, why not give Rits several Anti-Shadow(Dark) as well? --Falconeye 02:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

While it's an excellent suggestion it is WAY too far into development ( 3 years i believe) to consider adding such a huge update like that. Hope for the best in guild wars 2 is all I can say--Lancy1214 21:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Why does Divert Hexes need a nerf? Sure it may be a wee bit overpowered, but its use is so limited because you're wasting your elite slot if you don't come across hexway. It needs to be rebalanced for more general usage, probably something along the lines of:

Divert Hexes. 10 1 5 Elite Spell. Remove up to 1...3...3 Hexes from target ally and heal ally for 30...126...150. For each Hex removed in this way, healing is reduced by 30.

If you really wanted, you could move this to Healing Prayers, and do a few tweaks.. --Ezekial Riddle 02:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's really a nerf I gave it. I made it stop hexes...?--Lancy1214 02:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I can see that you tried to rebalance it for the better. However, you killed alot of its power and usefullness. No condi removal, no healing and a hex limitation over a removal. You basically turned it into Holy Veil-Diversion salad without any hex removal and a very small limit. Any non-elite hex removal is stronger than your proposition because A) it removes the hex completely, and B) it isn't elite.

Which brings me to the next point of if this skill is going to be reworked, it has to lose a lot of its "niche-y-ness." It can't be an elite that utilizing it effectively requires the opposite team to bring oodles of hexes. Against a hexway, your suggestion still falters. Against a good hexway team, they will either target someone else or will burn the Divert Hexes with the less powerful hexes. Against a bad team, they may burn the elites, but there is still a lot of hexes that will go through. Facing against teams with minimal to no hex pressure means that you wasted your elite slot. You could very much accomplish more with Word of Healing plus hex removal on your monks rather than have one monk dedicated to hex removal/protection/limitation. I can't really see your suggestion being viable in any PvP. Even in PvE, the current version may be better. --Ezekial Riddle 05:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Your suggested balance doesn't make sense because the caster of divert hexes gets punished for removing hexes by a reduction in healing? Explain :( Proper usage of the skill gets punished and also, direct healing isn't really well suited for the protection line.

I feel my suggestion is perfectly balanced because this is good in cases for shutdown hexes. For example, Precast this on yourself and Visions, and Diversion will have very limited use. Place this on your warrior and their insidious parasite becomes almost useless...With high investment in protection prayers, this skill will hinder a hexteam's ability to spread pressure GREATLY. While you can use small hexes on the target, they also suffer a recharge penalty making their important hex vulnerable to removal. While removal is essential, this adds protection against shutdown hexes without the energy draining of holy veil and also causes hexes cast on the target to take x seconds longer to recharge. --Lancy1214 19:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, discussions like these are exactly what we need mid-term as they can only serve in refining skills. ^_^ --Falconeye 03:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

My main critique of your proposition is that it is still only meant for specific use: against hexways. You're not going to face hexways every time, and as such there are better elites to take, simply because they have a more broad use. ZB and WoH, for example, are good for catching spikes and can also serve as heals.

This is why I proposed something more general, such as a heal. If someone needs a heal, they get a heal. If someone needs some hex removal, they get hex removal and a not quite so much a heal. I also said this version could go under healing prayers if you really wanted it to, if someone was so concerned with "themes." If you wanted a "protection themed" one, I guess you could go:

• Divert Hexes.

10 ¾ 5 Elite Enchantment. For 4 seconds, the next 1...3...3 enemy spells cast on target ally fail. Hex spells have their recharge increased by 15...100...121%

or something to that extent.

I have to ask one more thing about your proposition. Would it work retroactively, such as if I got hit with a 23 second Faintheartedness, which lasted for 3 seconds before my monk used Divert Hexes (15 prot. prayers) on me, would it only change incoming hexes, or would Faintheartedness then be instantly reduced to 2 seconds remaining? --Ezekial Riddle 04:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes that was the intended effect. It would also reduce the duration of hexes cast on target ally after the enchantment is up. I guess your right about being too narrow of a skill. However, the skill's purpose is used to for countering hexes due to the fact that the healing and condition removal are solely dependent upon the successful removal of a hex. What do you propose we could do to make the skill more favourable for general usage?--Lancy1214 01:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Modifying your suggestion, I would propose something like this:

• Divert Hexes -

5 ¼ 12 - (Protection Prayers) - Elite Enchantment Spell. "For 8 seconds, target has -10...-22...-25 damage reduction and 1...4...5 health regeneration. Hexes against target ally have their durations reduced by 30...78...90% and take an additional 1...12...15 seconds to recharge. Ends after 1...3...3 hexes have been cast on target ally."

I have a hard time trying to work with your proposal, but basically, in order to make this more viable, it just has to do have more effects without having very constricting requirements. --Ezekial Riddle 02:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Healer's Covenant & Peace and Harmony

So everyone has his/her opinion about this skill. And it doesn't sound exactly bad, with typical spell costs reduced by 60%, with only 25% reduction in power, not even counting Divine Favor. But how does the -1 maintenance fit in? Is it worth it? Let's hear what the numbers say:

We assume a typical monk with Healing Prayers and Divine Favor in the 13-16 range and lots of 5E spells.

How does HC increase the cost of spellcasting?

It heals for 25% less. If we take Orison of Healing as our run-of-the-mill, all-time-favorite non-Elite healing spam skill as the average case, then the total healing effect of a spell will be composed of about 66% Healing Prayers healing and 33% Divine Favor bonus. Only the 66% are affected by the Covenant penalty, therefore we have (divine favor)100%*33% plus (Healing Prayers) 75%*66%, which equals 33%+50% = 83% total healing effect. To offset a 83% healing, we need 120% as many spells and therefore 120.5% as much energy than without Covenant, because 0.83 * 1.2 = 1.

As a result, if we had been spending 4 pips of energy before, we would now have to cast spells worth 4*1.2 = 4.8 pips to get the same effect as without Covenant.

Now for the good news, which is the -3 cost. For 5 energy spells, this means a cost reduction of 60%, which means we only need 40% of the energy to get the same effect. So if we've been working with 4 pips before, we would now only need 4*0.4 = 1.6 pips. However, as we have seen above, we must provide 4.8 pips, so in total we need 4 pips * 1.20 * 0.4 = 1.92 pips to get the same effect as without Covenant. (Note that 5 energy spells is the optimum; for 10E spells our energy reduction drops from 60% to 30%; our costs increase because for 10E spells, the ratio of Healing/Divine Favour effect typically increases, which in turn gives the 25% penalty more weight.)

Because of Covenant maintenance, we have 3 pips available to pay 1.92 pips worth of spells, so in grand total:

When spamming typical 5 energy healing spells at typical Monk attributes, Healer's Covenant works out to around 1 additional pip of energy

Already stopped sounding so impressive. But it goes on.

The "Elite Monk skill for +1 pip" should ring a bell with any GW veteran: yes, Peace and Harmony, one of our, if not THE most loathed Monk Elite. It does basically the same thing, it gives +1 pip of energy. But what are the technical differences that set the skills apart?

• Every Monk on the team requires his own Healer's covenant instead of one PaH for the whole team. For 2 or 3 monks obviously 1 or 2 Elite slots are wasted.

• Arcane Mimicry is at most a theoretical option, because it still costs a regular skill slot, determines your secondary class, is prohibitively slow, expensive, and most of the time plain impossible to use because of recharge. Try recasting Covenant for a whooping 20E, minimum 4 seconds, and ONLY if mimicry happens to be recharged. PaH handles these issues far better.

• If the HC monk does not cast, the extra pip basically disappears until he starts casting again, because saving a pip in costs can by definition only happen when expending energy. PaH's pip, however, is always present.

• With HC, you are restricted to the 5 energy healing spells of the Healing Prayers line. Anything more expensive or from a different line and the energy save is greatly reduced or even turned into a loss. PaH doesn't have such restrictions, because the pip is yours to use. (Wanding foes for 1 damage is an easily suppressable reflex, so the PaH cancel condition is a non-issue).

• HC severly reduces heal spikes, because all healing spells are dulled by at least 17%. Healing Prayers spells that have a larger effect also have a higher percentual, not only absolute, reduction. Again, no such concerns with PaH.

To be fair, recasting PaH requires some communication between the monks and HC has a .25 cast time. But communication should be given anyway in teams where at least 2 monks work, and the latter doesn't even come close to making up for all the shortcomings of HC vs. PaH. Also, instead of direct healing spells, one could instead use Healing Breeze, Vigorous Spirit and other enchantments in the Healing Prayers line. For this purpose, HC looks favorable. But the real power of Healing Prayers, i.e. spike healing, is lost either way when using HC.

My conclusion: for all except fringe application (spamming Healing enchants) HC looks a lot worse than Peace and Harmony .

--Roland of Gilead (talk) 14:12, 1 July 2007 (CDT)