A Monk's Perspective

As any of you who also read my personal blog will already know, recently I have taken up monking. As an added note, I have bored the balls off most of my teammates with long monologues about how my viewpoint of the game has changed, and now it's your turn to hear about it, so this post will be dedicated to the colourful new perspective I have gained from the experience.

My reason for monking actually originated from a certain unnamed guildy trying (and failing) to monk in hard mode arachnnis. He suggested that he and the other monk need not take condition removal. Thankfully the other unnamed guildy who was monking was using his head and loaded up on condition removal himself. As all of you who have been there know, Arachnni's is condition central.

The first thing that struck me when I began was just how much I was focused on the party window for once. I noticed it before, sure, but no where near as much as I do now. At first my eyes were so fixed on it that my view of the game was hampered by my concentration. Enemies could have come up and attacked me and I wouldn't have noticed until I realised I was taking damage. All I could see was that the people in the party needed healing.

Slowly, by picking the minds of Dave (who often solo monks hard mode dungeons) and Mark I gained knowledge enough to start colouring in some of those blank gaps. What I lacked in experience I made up for with my willingness to learn, and according to them I have progressed incredibly fast. I teamed up in a formidable monk duo with Dave at the end of the first week, and together we looked after a team in hard mode frostmaws.

Before this boost in my confidence, however, I was going to learn the biggest lesson in probably the entire four years that I've been playing: to survive in hard mode, rune in health! I always thought that energy was better, more energy means more spells, which mean more damage right? But I soon realised my mistake. Some of the hard mode bosses do over 500 damage in a spike. I saw Dave get hit by an elementalist boss only yesterday. I couldn't have stopped the spike if I had had all the time to try, he had 13 out of his 630 health left after the spike. If he had had any less he would have been down before I could blink.

What some people don't realise is that monks can't keep everyone in a team up all the time. Sometimes there are need for sacrifices, sometimes people die, sometimes the monk has to sacrifice herself to keep a key npc alive. People can shout "noob monk" at me all they want, but often when they do it is not my fault at all. Most players don't realise that the monk is one role in a team. If the others in that team are not fulfilling they're own functions how can the monk be expected to? Good monks can keep a team up in battle for whole minutes without respite, they can move on to the next battle with fifteen energy and still manage to stop anyone from dying, but if the rest of the team aren't killing anything, either because they're unfocused, or because they simply don't have the right builds for the job, what right do they have to shout that the monk is a noob?

Another affliction I have seen recently, is the monk who thinks he's invincible. As Dave says: "everyone can die" and he's absolutely right, that includes a monk. What this particular monk doesn't seem to understand is that the place for a team based monk is at the back. The formation and success of a party relies heavily on the players knowing their position in the team. The frontline, obviously the warriors and such, need to be at the front; the casters such as ritualist and elementalist in the middle and the healers at the back. If the monk goes first he takes the initial blows, and this is not a good thing as he's not free to heal the rest of the party, as they inevitably take damage. That said, experienced monks are sometimes needed to take the first blow, perhaps to keep a survivor alive. I have seen Dave do this a couple of times, but never in hard mode, and never with completely competent players.

As my perspective of the game has become more monk based my view has widened away from the party window. Now I not only watch what the other players/heroes are doing, but who is where, what they're wielding, the builds that they are playing, the hexes that may fall on them and how much damage they are taking. The monk is a heavy multitasker, from kiting to healing, to proting, to observing, they need to be on the ball at all times. A good team takes the pressure off, but never eliminates the need for a monk. The fact that I can see most things that go on within the team mean I can more easily pull off combo moves. Perhaps the sin is taking outrageous damage, I'd prot spirit him, patient spirit him and then dwayna's kiss him all in the space of about three seconds. Thus getting him to full health before the enemies can kill him, the lingering prot spirit enables me both to recharge and also to turn my attention temporarily to the other members of the team that may need looking after.

I also find that the more I play the more I become irritated by the stupid things that some team members may be doing, whether it's the elementalist who cannot kite, the warrior who charges in regardless of what he may aggro, or the arrogant mesmer who believes he can stand alone against an enemy group of twelve and still expect to live.

In the end there is no "I" in team, and without the monk the team is almost always lost and I know that I sure as hell couldn't do my job without a good team in front of me.