Nude Beach recruitment

[WarBlade]

Well, while Somewhat Zen is good at what she's designed for, she can't handle solo healing (Heal Party is not going to cut it, especially with the 15 energy cost)

The 15 points are actually quite economical if the whole team is hurting and it can buy time to get back within single-heal range too.

BTW, I do use Healing Breeze, Heal Other and Healing Seed with her and can cover solo healing, just not as effectively as a character 100% dedicated to the job. The casting cost is no obstacle at all, rather it's a case of having a bow instead of a focus (precluding those yummy 20% chance advantages) and half the skill bar specced to dishing out pain instead of healing or protection options.

You're right on one thing though. She's good at what she's designed for and being designed to operate as either 80% efficiency healer or 80% efficiency archer as need dictates has a massive benefit in a large team environment.

[Lurker Wyrm]

The 15 points are actually quite economical if the whole team is hurting and it can buy time to get back within single-heal range too.

Heal Party is a 67 point heal with the attribute at 12. When you've only got a supply of 20 energy to work with, that 15 point cast can be problematic. Note that I said it would be problematic, referring to the team build, not that it was for you.

BTW, I do use Healing Breeze, Heal Other and Healing Seed with her and can cover solo healing, just not as effectively as a character 100% dedicated to the job.

The only reason I said you couldn't is because I've never seen you do it, so if you can/do, then apologies go your way; it's just that every time we've gone out with Zen you've always insisted that Alesia and Lina go along as well if no other RB monks were available. And... not to try and be critical, but you're really not going to be able to solo heal very effectively in tense situations with just Party, Other, Breeze, and Seed as your only heals, they're just too energy intense to maintain for a long period of time.

[Drasca]

I'm rather interested in a Ranger/Monk 'expertise healer', as high levels of expertise skill tends to bleed over to many skills that aren't exactly attack skills, but aren't direct spells either. Healing spring and/or fertile season/symbiosis are the obvious choices for ranger healing/support, but expertise may work for various monk signets as well. Reduced energy cost healing signets may be ideal in a prolonged battle with sub-par energy recovery.

[Green_Gloom]

I'm rather interested in a Ranger/Monk 'expertise healer', as high levels of expertise skill tends to bleed over to many skills that aren't exactly attack skills, but aren't direct spells either. Healing spring and/or fertile season/symbiosis are the obvious choices for ranger healing/support, but expertise may work for various monk signets as well. Reduced energy cost healing signets may be ideal in a prolonged battle with sub-par energy recovery.

Signets don't cost energy in the first place, that is one of their advantages (disadvantages are usually longer casting time and recharge).

[WarBlade]

Heal Party is a 67 point heal with the attribute at 12. When you've only got a supply of 20 energy to work with, that 15 point cast can be problematic. Note that I said it would be problematic, referring to the team build, not that it was for you.

Actually you were referring to Somewhat Zen if you read back and not the nudists to which you are referring now.

The only reason I said you couldn't is because I've never seen you do it, so if you can/do, then apologies go your way; it's just that every time we've gone out with Zen you've always insisted that Alesia and Lina go along as well if no other RB monks were available. And... not to try and be critical, but you're really not going to be able to solo heal very effectively in tense situations with just Party, Other, Breeze, and Seed as your only heals, they're just too energy intense to maintain for a long period of time.

Raising several points . . .
1.) I doubt that you ever see where the heals come from, so you've made a pretty wild assumption on what Somewhat Zen does and doesn't do in thinking I don't do something because you've never seen me do it. Do you ever see monks heal you often? I know I don't - Just the sparkles and the blue numbers.
2.) I insist on those two henchies to compliment the healing style I've developed with my character, not because she can't be effective alone.
3.) The assertion about not being able to solo heal with just Party Other Breeze and Seed is another false assumption seeing as I wind up doing exactly what you've decided I can't do on a fairly regular basis.

#1. and #3. are exactly the kind of assesments I continuously run up against in this game and in this post you've just made another illustration of a point I was making in the "They don't understand my characters!" thread.

Why do people do that anyway? I got it a lot in Diablo II and the trend was entirely baffling. I run characters through these games to the advanced playing areas and then find people only too willing to inform me of things my characters are not capable of doing despite having done these things on a number of occasions. I know what my characters can and can't do.

[KingOfPain]

If it wasn't for the fact that, in Guild Wars, one cannot attack without a weapon I would not have wanted to make any weapon allowances at all. So it turns out that even with starter-grade weapons it is not much of a compromise except we can use skills associated with the chosen weapon type.

Note: Starter-grade weapons = we do not have to stick with the weapon the character is created with. We are free to choose our weapon(s) base on aesthetic reasons, so long they are of allowable types with your character and they are of similar power to starter weapons. We do have to look good, right?


Your test on the Mursaats is good news. It means we can freely choose which piece of infused armor to wear based purely on aesthetics. If we need that infused allowance at all ;p

The rules, as it stands, to say the least, is brutal. And it's meant to be that way. As WarBlade mentioned to you, we are the kind of people who would attempt to finish Doom with just a chainsaw; and will likely pull it off too. Well, at least we will have fun trying.

We need to start off on the right foot and restrict ourselves to the bare essentials (nice name for a line of lingerie). Only then, we can know what we can get away with - how far we can push the game and ourselves. I know you have not played Diablo before, but let me give you an example anyway. Diablo is more or less the same hack and slash game that is Guild Wars under a different system.

A passage pulled from Realms Beyond History and Philosophy
... If you're familiar at all with Diablo, you might know that a Sorcerer is fairly easy to play, in fact at high levels he can be grossly easy. Well try playing one who wears no magic items. That's a naked mage, and a nice variant. Buy why stop there?? Go Beyond!!! Wear no magic items EXCEPT cursed items!! See the player killers expression on his face when he sees your elite gear fall to the ground, like that Tin Ring of the Fool! You can't help but gain in skill as you learn how to master the "Beyond Naked Mage" (BNM).

A Nake mage is totally naked as in no items whatsoever while a Beyond Naked Mage seeks and wears the worse cursed items he can find. A cursed item would be something in the line of, in Guild Wars term, Major/Superior runes without the attribute bonus, Vampiric prefix with life degen but without life steal. Even those minus 50 life focus items them smite/55 monks seek are too good to be considered cursed items, since they have some energy bonus. The Beyond Naked Mage upstaged the Naked Mage in terms of challenge level and was created more or less just for fun, to taunt the pubbies.


The BNM was not (then) thought to be a viable character, but the skilled people here soon proved a BNM can easily "finish" the game on all difficulties and went beyond to take on more challenges that other people cannot do with a normal character. However, as a matter of course, we soon find the BNM was a tad too easy and went on to created other variants that would make playing a BNM seem like a walk in the park

As difficult as a NM and BNM may look we have yet to look at the Naked Warrior (NW) and the Beyond Naked Warrior (BNW). They really got shafted. There just wasnt going to be much compensation made to the rules to make a NW or a BNW more playable, or balanced to other classes of the same variant. The NW and BNW were more challenging to play than thier counter parts by a few notches - If you want to play a warrior, then you have better wanted that extra challenge

The funny twist here is that a couple of us managed to take a Beyond Naked Warrior to 3@30 (finish the game at lvl 30, Lvl 30 (max level is 50) is the earliest a character can get into hell/hell), but, a Naked Warrior turned out to be the more difficult one to play (if not impossible). A Naked Warrior is naked, period. A NW punches (punching works in Diablo) his way through the game while a BNW is allowed to use a magical weapon.

We don't want things too easy, do we?

In Guild Wars, the warrior is blessed with many skills that do not depend on weapon damage as well as some niffty benefits under the GW system. The warrior need not worry about his to-hit percentage, need not pump attributes to block, nor waste points to acquire a decent amount of health. And, lets not forget a character can have 2 professions to compliment a build.

Guild Wars warriors are not meant to be the main damage dealers even in normal games... but that is not a reason to give it the shaft. I just don't see it needing any special compensation. Besides, this is a team variant, compensation comes from other characters in the team, the people we play with.

I hope this help explain why I would want to set the bar high and make no special allowance on weapons and shields.

KoP

[Zed-F]

A quick question... how far did you guys get yesterday? Do I need to do a bit of catching up with Ember Buffy? I could go grab a couple skill quests to speed things along a bit, if necessary.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Actually you were referring to Somewhat Zen if you read back and not the nudists to which you are referring now.

You need to learn how to read context. I was replying to Hawkmoon who was talking about using ranger as the secondary with the example of Somewhat Zen.

But ranger is also good for interrupts (if you haven't already, you might want to read WarBlade's post about "no one understands my characters!", with special reference to his monk/ranger - a character like that would be useful for the team).

That's what I was replying to.

Heal Party is not going to cut it, especially with the 15 energy cost

That's what I said that appears to be so antagonistic to you. I was speaking in the future tense, which refers to the nudist team both because I was keeping the same tense and following the same trail of thought that Hawk was; and also because I was speaking futuristically, referring to a character that hadn't been created yet. Had I been referring to Zen in that statement, I would have used the past/present tense, and I would also have specifically referred to Zen, saying something along the lines of "Heal Party doesn't cut it," or something else that would have read "WarBlade's monk hasn't been able to cut it." I didn't start talking about Zen's ability to solo heal until you brought it up. Solo healing is something no 1 monk can do without help from the other party members once you get past the desert. Up to (and even through some parts of) the desert, if you've got an organized team that can self heal you can probably make do without a monk.

Moving on...

A quick question... how far did you guys get yesterday? Do I need to do a bit of catching up with Ember Buffy? I could go grab a couple skill quests to speed things along a bit, if necessary.

Heh, we still haven't even done the first mission. That's what we have planned to do first thing next time we meet. Last night we basically did the first few skill quests, since 3/4 people were playing with (relatively) new chars.

Which also brings up another point. How are we going to split the team up when/if everyone is able to play at the same time (before we join them together)? Obviously Seijin and Drasca can't be on the same team since they're the monks, so how should things get broken up?

Right now it's (in alphabetical order):
Drasca: Mo/W
Hawk: E/N
KoP: N/R
Shand: N/?? (Me or Mo maybe?)
Seijin: Mo/R
Wyrm: E/Me
Zed: E/R
??: ??/??

I think we should also try to keep the dynamics of members together for a smoother running team (if that didn't make sense to you don't worry, I don't even wholly understand it). Shand and myself tend to play at a faster pace than most other people in the guild, so we would probably work well together. On the flip side of that, I play with Shand more than anyone else in the guild so it might be fun to be on the oppossite team to play with others. I don't think I've played with Drasca since the January BWE...

We should also get that 8th person signed up. I don't mind playing on the team with less-than-max people, but having a full team once we get to the Southern Peaks would be nice. Hopefully they'll at least be a Mo secondary.

[Seijin]

Well, i was just throwing a suggestion out there.

As a healer I like to see enemies fall ASAP because it means one less thing causing damage to my teammates.

I'm sooo not used to the energy though...I feel like I'm a warrior.

I won't be casting too many HB's or HP's anytime soon because of their energy costs. Dwayna's Kiss isn't until Kryta and WoH isn't until desert which would offer me two more 5e spells. Gonna have to look through my monks list of skills to see what else I can use and when I can get it.

First day was pretty interesting.