The Role of a Monk
The Monk is the quintessential support class that supplies ample blue numbers to allies in order to keep them from dying. One might call this class the "healer" of Guild Wars. That said, the monk isn't completely one-dimensional, and can do its job in many different and interesting ways. I feel that with recent skill updates, certain skills have been hurt or boosted in PvE at the expense of others. I think that ultimately, all skills (especially Elite Skills) should be equally useful. I'm going to discuss further below how one might go about making the lesser-valuable skills on par with others.
The Monk is based upon a few key components:
First and foremost, the Monk directly heals his allies and himself. Healing Prayers is the direct way of doing that, although some Divine Favor skills do it as well. Basically, this is what most people expect when they get a Monk on their team: they expect him to heal everyone and keep them alive directly.
This is an idea that is relatively unique to Guild Wars. Basically, the Monk will prevent damage done to allies rather than simply healing off whatever damage is taken. This can create the net result of the Monk doing less work to counteract the same amount of damage, which can be very advantageous in conserving the Monk's energy while still achieving the desired goal of saving lives.
In order to keep the Monk from being completely one-dimensional in saving allies, the Monk also has access to an attribute that focuses on dishing out damage in the form of holy damage. As most non-standard damaging attributes usually have a special feature about them, it's important to consider how much of this damage is done. In many cases, Smiting Prayers support the team, but forfeit any healing for damage, such as in Smite Condition, Smite Hex, Judge's Intervention, Reversal of Damage, and others. However, the Smiting Prayers line does have direct damaging skills as well, such as Banish and Ray of Judgment. Lastly, many of the skills in Smiting Prayers are enchantments, rather than direct effects. Some examples of those enchantments are Holy Wrath and Balthazar's Aura. All of these aspects of Smiting are important for consistency and the feel that Smiting Prayers have. In my below suggestions, I will strive to maintain these trends.
Skill Suggestions
The following suggestions are skills for a Monk as I think they should be. I've carefully thought about the interactive elements of each edit I'm proposing, though I by no means claim to have them perfectly balanced, especially for the PvP environment. If anything, the balance is loose and you should look more at 'how' the skills function as opposed to their exact numbers.
10  2  30  - Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5...10...11 seconds, party members have a 5...81...100% chance to block. Block effect: You lose 8...2...1 energy or this enchantment ends on all party members.
- So you're probably thinking "This is Aegis on crack!" and I won't lie, it is. I added the energy loss block effect because this can give party members a >50% chance to block and it helps a lot with keeping this fair for PvP. I am actually surprised ANet didn't do this for Aegis instead of just giving up on it.
- Massively useful for PvE where Protection monks really want to protect their allies. Can be stacked back-to-back with Aegis for serious blocking potential, at the cost of pretty much the Monk's entire energy pool.
- The energy loss hits 2 cost per block at 12 Protection Prayers, which makes this very unfavorable to use by non-Monk primaries.
5 1 25 - Elite Enchantment Spell. For ... 1...5...6 ... You ...
5 ¼ 5 - Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5...9...10 seconds, the next time target ally would be knocked down by a foe, that foe is knocked down instead and takes 10...50...60 holy damage.
- This has the same functionality as the original, but with added holy damage to really punish the source of the knockdown.
- The damage is really important to make this skill worth the elite and worth using over "Brace Yourself!" or Aura of Stability.
- The damage is the same as Smite Condition's, which makes sense given the cooldown, conditional requirement, and elite status of the spell.
5 1 25 - Elite Enchantment Spell. For ... 1...5...6 ... You ...
5 1 15 - Elite Spell. You gain 0...3...4% of target ally's current health as energy.
- Complete functionality change, while keeping with the theme of preserving energy by some means.
- The previous incantation of this spell is terrible because ultimately you don't want to be recasting hexes and you don't want the enemy to constantly be hitting you (unless farming). This inhibited its general value, especially considering that its use when farming is limited anyway because there are other preferred elite skills.
- This version allows you to use allies as a continual source of energy so long as they're healthy. A 500HP ally will provide a return of 20 energy, which is amazing on a 15 second reload, though not totally reliable.
5 1 25 - Elite Enchantment Spell. For ... 1...5...6 ... You ...
5 ¼ - Elite Spell. Deals 5...33...40 holy damage. If your target was below 33% Health, this spell takes an additional 10 seconds to recharge.
5 1 - Elite Spell. Deals 5...33...40 holy damage. If your target was below 33% Health, this spell takes an additional 15 seconds to recharge.
- This skill is terrible in its current form. It's too energy inefficient, doesn't deal enough holy damage, and can't finish off a weakened foe.
- This version of the skill has a 5 energy cost with reduced damage and no base recharge. In this light, you truly can spam this to your heart's content until the target hits 33% health.
- The additional recharge time was reduced to 10 in this version so that it's actually usable and not totally removed from play if you do cast it on a foe under 33% health.
- PvP form has an increased cast time to facilitate its interruption and an increased conditional recharge to further punish the caster if they use it on an enemy under 33% health.
10 ¾ 3 - Elite Spell. Heal target ally for 10...114...140 Health and remove one hex and one condition. You gain 5 energy if both a hex and a condition are removed.
5 ¼ 10 - Elite Enchantment Spell. For 10...46...55 seconds, Healing Prayers spells cost 1...3...3 less Energy, but heal for 25% less health.
- Moved from Healing Prayers to only allow primary Monks to use it, even though secondary Monks can use it if they can keep recasting it.
- Gave it the Healer's Boon treatment, which makes it not stressing to a Monk's energy when used. That it's maintained right now is one of the biggest contributing factors to it not being a useful skill.
10 10 - Elite Skill. For 12 seconds, signets you use that target a foe deal 5...21...25 holy damage to that target.
- This skill in its current form is pretty useless since if you're using signets, you really don't have energy issues in the first place.
- Adds holy damage to signets, which makes it very favorable to use with Smiting Prayers signets such as Bane Signet, Signet of Mystic Wrath, and Castigation Signet.
- Has a short reload time and relatively short duration so that you constantly have to reuse it, which costs more net energy over the course of a battle and makes it more vulnerable to skills like Diversion.
- Costs 10 energy over 5 energy because its effect is so powerful. It
10 1 - Elite Spell. Remove all hexes from target ally. All party members have those same hexes removed as well. Removal cost: +20...7...4 seconds recharge for each hex removed.
- This is extraordinarily useful against pressure hexes that are applied to many members of your team, as it removes them all in one skill.
- It really needs 10 energy instead of 15 to be worth using, even with this powerful effect.
- Requires massive Divine Favor investment in order to cut the recharge substantially, and even at 12 Divine Favor can be disabled for a good half minute if it removes several hexes.
- Because of the party-wide effect of the skill as I've suggested it, this may actually see use over something like Divert Hexes.
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