Monk practise

[cearah]

I have a feeling this is a maybe useless question, but I am gonna ask it anyway :cool:

Is there any other way to gain some monking practise for GvG other than playing GvG?

The guild I am in is just starting off with GvG and we don't get much opportunity to play more than once a week. I am filling one of the monk positions in this team.
Since I've got more time than the others I am wondering if there is any way I can get some practise on my own, or with just a few others.

I can't help it, eventho I am still learning to play a PvP monk ...I'm now hooked to GvG :grin:

Many thanks for any response made :smiley:

[red orc]

I have a feeling this is a maybe useless question, but I am gonna ask it anyway :cool:

Is there any other way to gain some monking practise for GvG other than playing GvG?

The guild I am in is just starting off with GvG and we don't get much opportunity to play more than once a week. I am filling one of the monk positions in this team.
Since I've got more time than the others I am wondering if there is any way I can get some practise on my own, or with just a few others.

I can't help it, eventho I am still learning to play a PvP monk ...I'm now hooked to GvG :grin:

Many thanks for any response made :smiley:

While GVG is unique, you can sharpen your monking skills in any of the other pvp arena before jumping into gvg.
Go to RA, TA and HA.
only take a build similar to or even the same as you would take to gvg.

[SurviverX]

You can even practice GvG in PvE!! Just keep your mouse pointer off the party menu and watch the field.

But really...GvG is more about communication and team work than your individual skill. You can't chain aegis without good communication.

[Yue]

To work on your own abilities, TA, and even RA isn't actually a bad place to start. You'll have to try to keep idiots alive, and you'll have to deal with alot of random bull**** builds being used against you. Run a prot bar or a typical gvg woh bar or something, and take it into RA. After you've gotten enough practice solo monking, do some HA where you can learn communication and what makes dual monking different.

[cearah]

ty for the tips ... Ye I started again in RA atm.

Forgot how much fun that can be ^^ even if only for the warriors who charge off across the map and are surprised you couldn't heal them lol

I noticed how hard it is to work together with another monk, do you guys happen to have some tips how to smooth the cooperation between me and him?
Any special things monks should think off i mean.
'Cause when it comes down to communicating it is still a bit of a chaos on TS and i notice that the monks aren't really deemed important enough to be heard.

[Selene Raseth]

Depending on which build you're monking as, you can set up a skirmish for some spike catching practice. Have a full team minus monks on one side, and 2 or so monks on the other side with some heroes. Set heroes to passive so they don't attack. Spike team builds up on random targets, and then get to practice spiking a picked target. The monks have to maintain healing for a while and be able to break off fast enough to catch the spike.

[Age]

I thought by now the best way would be to do scrim. against your alliance guilds.


But really...GvG is more about communication and team work than your individual skill. You can't chain aegis without good communication.
That is how it started as I never chain it.

[tegororn]

Stick to "TA" with ur guildies mate.

[Reverse Vision]

'Cause when it comes down to communicating it is still a bit of a chaos on TS and i notice that the monks aren't really deemed important enough to be heard.


I hope that will change. After all its you who allow all pushes and demand retreats to better positional or pressure reliefing place (If your strat caller doesn't seem to do so already :shocked:).
Make sure everyone knows why to listen your monks.
There is much less failing in games where everyone knows whats hindering the monks and act to stop it. Be it mesmer, warriors, positioning or energy problems.

To solve your problem. Guesting to other guilds seems to be the only option IMO.
You don't face many balanced or split builds in HA iirc ^^ so it's not worth it. Maybe if you'd get into ranked ha teams similar to your guilds skill level. Thats usually not easy since the team might be r6+ and you only have r4 or something :sad::sad:. Mmhh on the other hand HA might teach some ability to endure pressure.. and to communicate.

Well this is just something to think about: I'm not saying this is how it is; I'm saying how I feel it is. Please tell me if my post is a failure.

[Jacobbs]

A good excercise is to spec a match with a monk that you respect. They can point things out that you might miss. An even better extension of this is to let that person (somehow) spec a match of you monking. This way, the advice becomes personal.

I've had a few top level monks observe me play and give me tips that way, it really helps out.

[Ace Bear]

The best advice I ever remember getting was to get our monks to do RA with the party menu turned off. Our monks did that for a week on and off mainly, they became godlike. It teaches you so much about watching the field. Now if only the rest of the team could get better...:laugh:

[Jacobbs]

The best advice I ever remember getting was to get our monks to do RA with the party menu turned off. Our monks did that for a week on and off mainly, they became godlike. It teaches you so much about watching the field. Now if only the rest of the team could get better...:laugh:

Another exercise that is really good is actually to do this in AB as well. In AB, there are more people to heal and watch. It really boosts your battlefield awareness healing everyone you run into. Plus, AB is a little bit more forgiving because it is larger.

[Offatwork]

How to get better: Get good at Warcraft 3 where you can dominate a normal computer player, then go play Guild Wars.

[Fan of Pie]

a way to get better is to just go into HA, or TA, ta is a better way than in RA because you get more communication and vent, just watch the field and put prots on whoever is about to get spiked and be ready for anything, just remember to prot more than u heal and manage ur energy

[Spazzer]

One of the things a few of our members are experimenting with and encourage is to resize your skillbar down to discourage your want to click skills. Ideally, a monk should only be using mouse clicking to move. This can be overwhelming to a new monk player, especially since visual cues are key to effective anti-spike protection; balancing camera angle and motion is something that comes with time.

With clicking devoted to movement, a monk then relies on keypresses for all skill operations.

I can't claim to be one of the players who has an ideal key layout for monking, but it is really more common than you would think.

One more thing: Become very aquanted with your CANCEL ACTION button. It's defaulted to escape, but ideally you want it somewhere that is comfortable for you to hit it at all times. It is your panic button. It is the button that allows you to play with the minds of rangers and mesmers. Most importantly, it is the button that allows you to react to a change in the battle that may just spare your team an expensive downtime.

[edit]

One other thing we do (or used to do) is simulate splits in scrimmages. Three-on-three with actual guild bases. This really helps a monk know where his NPCs are and to not panic so much when faced with a similar situation in a game. It's vital (or used to be vital) that the monk know where his NPCs are so that he can keep them alive.

[Cirian]

That's some good advice. Key bindings.

I find that with comfortable key bindings and skill bar layout I can watch what's going on on my screen and concentrate on the game without having to glance at the keyboard.

Keys 6-8 are awkward to reach imo so I have skills 6-8 bound to Q, E and R.

Skill cancel is bound to Tab. Tab is a big fat key that's easy to hit in a real hurry.

5 a bit of a reach on the keyboard too, so I put a skill there that I can afford to take my time with.


On the practice front, GvG has quite large maps and a bunch of NPCs to be aware of, so you should practice in AB and FA too. You'll have players and NPC allies to keep alive that won't be in your party window, forcing you to watch what's going on and react appropriately. You'll also have far more complex things going on and decisions to make than in TA or RA, due to more players, NPCs and splitting.

[Darknicrofia]

Bring 3 Heroes and 4 henchies into HA, enter map, then keep the entire team alive by yourself as long as possible, it teaches you energy management, who to heal/prot at what times and who to ignore for a while if they are in no immediate danger.

[Vana]

Bring 3 Heroes and 4 henchies into HA

You can't.

[Monstrum]

^ hahaha paper theory advice ftw!!

play gvg with 2 overextending, overfrenzying wars, 3 midliners who don't know the meaning of "kiting", and a runner who never bothers to communicate.. we're actually looking for guests!!

[Vela]

The best advice I ever remember getting was to get our monks to do RA with the party menu turned off. Our monks did that for a week on and off mainly, they became godlike. It teaches you so much about watching the field. Now if only the rest of the team could get better...:laugh:

I remember how bar watching wasted so many of us. Great suggestion there, IMO. Much of PvP is about positioning (Sorry if you feel I am wrong). So, healing a war who has over extended is uncool but, its also uncool if the monk is staying far back (which you do a LOT in PvE). Hence, watching the battlefield helps a LOT in positioning yourself and improves your capability than watching the bars.

2 cents..hardly spent.

[Simply Kedde]

Combine two of the good old ones.
Monking in arenas with no party bar and using a build consisting of guardian, infuse, healing touch, remove hex and mend ailment.
I know that's outdated and it won't work as well for practice as it once would. But you get the idea.
You have some skills that aren't the best, but all have a single purpose.
It teaches you when you need to do what to survive.
The key element is that you only need to survive, not keep every team member at full health and all conditions and hexes off.

[Lunari]

Why is field watching better then bar watching? I mean obviously you can see things coming, but doesn't seem worth it IMO...

Now, don't rant me on this "^^ I am just curious to the full explination of field watching, since me as a PvE Monk I really like those red bars. (I've be wanting to get into PvP for quite some time now)

[Simply Kedde]

Because proactive play >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Reactive play

There is simply no way you can prevent any damage by looking at silly bars going forth and back and soon you'll have zero energy because damage will always be higher than what can simply be powerhealed.
Surely someone will explain it more in depth, I'm not in the mood for it now.

[Ryuujinx]

Because proactive play >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Reactive play

There is simply no way you can prevent any damage by looking at silly bars going forth and back and soon you'll have zero energy because damage will always be higher than what can simply be powerhealed.
Surely someone will explain it more in depth, I'm not in the mood for it now.

I want to say I hate you for this. :P

First a video example!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5AM-up253A
Watch at 1:15, you'll see the warrior running at me and I respond by protting myself with guardian before he lands a single hit. Since that's a boon prot bar, that's 7-9 seconds of guardian, he was using an axe and I think an IAS. Axe under ias is one attack every .665 seconds, so 10 attacks, and assuming perfect numbers 5 blocked attacks (it could be more, it could be less due to the nature of evaluating each chance on attack)

Average damager from an axe is we'll say about 35 so
35*5=175 that's of course assuming no attack skills, which would make the numbers even higher if it were to block, say an eviscerate.

(35*10)-(35*5)=175 Damage taken.
600HP-175=425 Health Remaining.


Now, let's say you try to reactively prot, and you notice the bar going down after 2 hits. You then reactively prot him and block the same 175

(35*2)+(35*10)-(35*5)=245 Damage taken
600HP-245= 355 Health Remaining.



Now, let's take a better example of spirit bond. (I don't have any video links of this, sorry :P)

Spirit bond heals for 96 HP/hit for things over 60. It's anti-spike. Now this is oversimplifying things but let's say that there's 7 hits at 100hp each.

In axample A you were being proactive and watched the battefield, spiritbonding before it all hit.

(7*100)-(7*92)=56 Damage taken.
600HP-56= 544 Health Remaining.

In example B you noticed packets coming off after 3 hits

(7*100)-(4*92)=332 Damage Taken.
600HP-332= 268 Health Remaining.

Now in example A, your done. He's fine sitting at 50hp under max no need to top him off until they pressure him some more.

In example B, you have o red bar him. Leaving someone under half health like that is asking for a spike so in example B you spent 10e on spirit bond and another 5e on say gift or word of healing.

Another great example is RoF, knowing their about to eviscerate (because the target usually gets shocked) you can throw an rof and catch that mitigating pretty much all of it. If you were redbarring you would see a small decrease in their health and wouldn't think much of it.

So in general, Proactive play will lead to better effeciency and less stress on your energy in addition your melee will be happy as they get to frenzy in casters faces because they aren't dead.

[Lunari]

Allright. Well yes that explains, but to "see" those spikes or attacks coming do require some practice, I suppose.

And another thing, you cant watch 7 charcters at the same time, how do you solve that?

[Yue]

Good way to practice is to heal people outside your team in AB. Shift click and hold control to select other allies, and essentially just follow warriors. Most spikes are going to have warrior on them.

Also, protting is more energy efficient than healing, so proactive monking will almost always ensure that you make the most of your energy.

[Simply Kedde]

Watching 7 people is definitely not impossible. people do it every day. Practice of course is needed, but that's logical.
Mistakes will be made both because of faults on your own side and because the other team will be trying to force those same mistakes.

Go practice.

[Lunari]

So I should be ABing this weekend (preferrably with party screen off?) and trying to heal everyone.

I'll try

[Simply Kedde]

That'll be good practice yes.