General Healing Questions

[eaapops]

I just started a monk earlier today, I read up on various sites about the monk class and decided it seemed fun. But I come from many MMORPG's and I need to figure out what makes this class tick before I begin and get totally lost. So a few questions..

1. In most other games healers are one of those classes where it is almost 'required' to have top notch gear in order to keep up with healing and survival. Is it the same with this game? I plan on grouping as much as I can, I don't plan on farming solo at all.

2. Skills, I understand how they work and everything, but in general is it pretty easy to get them? I figure as a healer I will be expected to have all of my skills as soon as they are available.

3. As for a secondary class I am undecided between a elementalist and a mesmer, but no matter what I choose would it be a wise idea to pump healing first?

Well I guess that's all, my last game played was EQ and everything involving the healer class on that game was complicated for me. Didn't like the fact that gear outweighed skill for the most part. This game seems a lot easier for healers to get by but I just wanted to check and make sure before I made the same mistake again. Thanks in advance :happy14:

[asdar]

Well, either of those choices are good for the secondary. The ele gets energy storage and the mes gets the draining.

My last RPG was EQ as well and I played a healer there. This game is pretty complicated comparitively. The PvP death rate on monks is pretty high. If you're alive after 1 minute in PvP you've probably won.

Gear is very important in GW but the difference is that it's relatively easy to get, at least good enough gear is.

Skill is what counts in this game. If you're a better team, even in good but not quite top gear you can beat the best. EQ you'd just die, but they didn't even things out for PvP there much so it's kind of a moot point.

So Far PvE is too easy. Even with a group that's not targetting it's been steady wins and I've only lost 2 people since I started healing.

There's a couple of very frustrating things for monks, one is that it's a click style for targetting allies. Throw in a lot of flashing lights so your cursor is hard to see and sometimes it gets tricky to click, I'm used to direct targeting with a number which is much faster in EQ. It's not that big a deal but it's annoying.

The other is that it's a different style of healing. You regenerate mana at an incredible rate but your heals are less effective. It's a different way of thinking that was hard for me at first. Also aggro doesn't jump to the monk in GW the way it did to the healer in EQ. If your group is in front of you it's rare to get a whole pile charging. PvP it's always a pile as soon as they see you.

Well, not sure if I helped but there it is.

[monkeycid]

I find gear to be largely uninmportant for a PvE healer - you can adjust your playstyle depending on how much mana and defense is available to you. No worries.

For a pure healer monk, you have enough skills for anything by D'alessio Seaboard (Second town, 8th mission). You will be able to make do with the spells you have before that though. In general, don't worry about it :)

As a healer, you rarely have the attribute points for a secondary, since at least I advise you to pump both Divine and Healing to the max ASAP.

Asdar, you can get number-click targeting; go into hotkeys and set "select ally 1" "select ally 2"...."select ally 8" to 1-8 on the numpad. Then just click the number for your associated ally - no need to mess around with the mouse.

Aggro does jump on the monk first - but it's rather easy to shake. Just run so that the monster runs into another character - they will break your chase and engage. You'll learn how to do it in no time.

If you wonder more about the healing monk, I suggest you take a look at my thread at the amazon basin (http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/forums/index.php?showtopic=1645) to see my healing build.

Best of luck with the monk!