Nuggetty Goodness

One of the questions I get sometimes is - Nuggeet! For a monk main, why do you share so few monk buildz?

Weeeeelll...

Like every monk in Guild Wars, I have builds for each of these four elites:
Healer's Boon
Zealous Benediction
Word of Healing
Unyielding Aura

...but to be honest, while these are 'safe' staples, at least two of them are overrated (UA and HB), and for the other two (ZB, WoH), well, it gets BORING playing them all the time. WoH bars, especially IMO, whether hybrid or otherwise, lack a certain synergy and utility.

As a result, I play around a lot with monk bars - I tend to rope in Alliance/Guild members as guineapigs, or test in FA/JQ.

Now, the problem with testing in FA/JQ is that the damage patterns are very different in PvE and PvP. PvP bars do tend to be easier to adapt to PvE than the other way around. However, you need to remember one basic difference between PvP & PvE (yes, there are masses of differences, but I find while running a heal, prot, or hybrid bar, that this is the greatest one): PvE tends to have way more party-wide damage than PvP.

This particular Protection bar was something I wrote more as a joke than anything, but when I went out and tested it, I found that it absolutely kicked ass. I have tested this extensively in Hard Mode - vqs, missions, whatever. Disclaimer though, it only works in Hard Mode - Normal Mode mobs don't hit hard enough to trigger Spirit Bond.

It is my favourite Protection Prayers build for PvE now. It has the most amazing spike reversal I have ever seen. It can save someone with 5% hp remaining - basically as long as you reach them in time to cast just two spells - Spirit Bond and Aura of Faith - their HP will leap back to full. And due to the nature of the build, it even works in areas with enchant removal (yes, even against mountains of Roaring Ethers with added boss ether]. It is fully meant to be used in conjunction with another healer - monk, rit, dervish, it doesn't matter - but it does depend on someone else to be the redbar provider.

On the down-side, this is not a faceroll bar. It takes a little while to learn and get used to, and if you prefer 'redbar spam' instead of judicious application, this is not the bar for you - you will run out of energy incredibly quickly. Arguably, if you prefer redbar spam, Protection Prayers is not the line for you, but I've written one Protection Prayers build that maximises on that, so, who knows?

Aura of Faith Single-Target Spike Reversal Protter - PvE Only

Skills
Spirit Bond
Aura of Faith {Elite}
Guardian
Seed of Life
Aegis
Cure Hex
Dismiss Condition
Selfless Spirit

Stats
Protection Prayers [12] + [4]
Divine Favour [12] + [1]
Healing Prayers [3]

Gear

• Superior Protection Prayers Rune
• Survivor or Radiant Insignia (I prefer Survivors on monks, but this is totally a personal preference)
• Major or Superior vigor rune
• Vitae or Attunement runes to finish off (I prefer Vitae, but again, personal preference rules here)
• Any staff / wand / spear / melee weapon + shield combo with hct/hsr Protection Prayers, and +20% Enchanting. I prefer a staff for this (Kephket's Refuge is a good one), but as long as you have the +20% Enchanting, anything goes.

Campaigns Needed
Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall

How to Use

• Judiciously. No, really. XD
• Precast Aegis - well-timed Aegis precasting reduces party-wide damage from all physical attacks by more than 50%. The best time to precast Aegis is when the mob of mobs is just a little bit outside of the your party's aggro bubble (that white circle on your radar), and moving towards you. Of course, Aegis should be recast (against physical attackers) whenever it's available, but precasting it always saves everyone pain against physical attackers.
• Seed of Life on anyone taking consistent, consecutive damage packets - helps to even out party HP as a whole, taking a little pressure off your healing partner
• Cure Hex and Dismiss Conditions to... cure hexes and dismiss conditions. -_- Who'da thunk. Hex removal - be circumspect about it. Remove it if they call it, it's something on you you need to remove, or if you're bored. Don't spam hex removal. Especially in PvE, it's just not worth it. All it does is eat your energy, and do you really care if a caster has Empathy?
• Selfless Spirit - Whenever you think the shit is about to hit the fan.
• Guardian - Mini prot, use it on anyone taking consistent physical damage
• Spirit Bond - this is your big prot, toss it on anyone taking consistent damage that redbarring obviously isn't able to keep up with
• Spirit Bond THEN Aura of Faith - this is your 'big gun', and the entire basis of this build. One thing you must remember when using Aura of Faith is that unlike Protective Spirit and the like, Aura of Faith cares when you cast it. To get the full bang for your buck out of Aura of Faith, you must cast Spirit Bond BEFORE you cast Aura of Faith. If you cast Spirit Bond, then Aura of Faith, and your target is hit, Spirit Bond will heal them for 200+ hp per hit, assuming the initial base damage of 60hp is met. If you cast Aura of Faith, then Spirit Bond, Spirit Bond will only heal for 104hp per hit, assuming base damage is met (which in turn is very difficult, because Spirit Bond doesn't count the damage that would have been done before Aura of Faith reduces it by 50%). Because Aura of Faith decreases all damage taken by the target by 50%, while increasing all healing done to the target by 103%, it synergises amazingly with a fellow healer. Not only do you cut spike damage in half with Aura of Faith, and provide a buffer with Spirit Bond, you make all THEIR spells heal for twice the amount as well. Not only that, it affects the Divine Favour healing bonus as well, so if your partner healer is another monk... yippee! It does, however, mean that you have to anticipate spikes, to get the full use out of this build. Please note that Spirit Light Weapon does not benefit from this Aura of Faith, though. :(

Variants

• Deny Hexes instead of Cure Hex Deny Hexes removes at least 2 hexes, as it counts itself as a recharging Divine Favour skill. While it doesn't have the healing power of Cure Hex (which wasn't very much, anyway, for 3 points), removing more hexes can be better than just removing one,a nd getting an extra heal.
• Other than that... there's nothing on this bar I would drop or change. When things get hairy, you will need Selfless Spirit. If you're running with a group that absolutely insists that you bring a rez, then you shouldn't be running a build like this anyway. Bring rez scrolls, or run something conventional to make them feel safe, even if it is less powerful. Failing that, leave the group altogether.

Counters

• General Caster Hate
• Injudicious facerolling - you'll run out of e and be useless

Additional notes

Where have you tested this?
Just about everywhere. Vanquishes, HM missions, Elite areas, you name it. Do not use this in normal mode though. If the damage requirement for Spirit Bond isn't met, your protted target will die. It's also weak against mountains of minions. Minions don't hit hard enough in general to trigger Spirit Bond, so it'll be Death By a Thousand Cuts for your protted target.

Can heroes use this?
No. Heroes think Aura of Faith is Reversal of Fortune.

OMG! A Prot build without Protective Spirit? NOOB!
You don't Protective Spirit with this build. No, really. NO ONE in your party needs Protective Spirit, if you use this build right.

I Jaden (that 1 gold piece in the image) is 1 USD. Yup.

500USD mounts.

And that 999USD item? It's one-use. For ONE piece of gear. Ayup!

...worship PWE's rapacity!

The best part being - the lotteries (0.50USD each) associated with each of the 500USD mounts.

The legendary Fire Phoenix, once only found in the depths of the Bonus Shop, can now be yours through the use of the Phoenix Fruit pack!

So no matter what players do (short of not buying at all), PWE rakes in the cash. Absolutely brilliant.

Allods? *point* *laff* NOOBZ!

This is how it's done. *shudder*

P.S. Perfect World Entertainment's 2010 First Quarter results here. They've really got something going.

We nuggets have a horror of filling in profiles. No one is allowed to know the contents of our Super Sekrit Ingredients List! The Divinity of our Delectable Deliciousness may not be revealed, for it would drive mere mortals mad... MAD!

...that, and I just hate filling out the darn things. So I don't.

For some reason evil OkCupid gave me the impression that a photo was mandatory though, so I uploaded a sample of my battery goodness. But barely filled in any profile details. *hides ingredients* And that was that!

Now, I hadn't realised it, but OkCupid spams you according to how often you log on - and I only started logging on again very recently. Which means - lots of random, brainless spam messages and chats from aliens popping out of the woodwork. I am - in case for some reason y'all hadn't realised it yet, a girlnugget. What else would I be after all - crispy golden battered breast and thigh forever! This makes random, brainless spam messages unsurprising - any decent looking chick who's ever put any photo of any kind up in a dating site will tell you so.

One of the reasons I recently got back into OkCupid was their very well-written blog. And so, in an attempt to ward off these Fake Meat Attacks, that did attempt to bury the real nutritional shiny goodness of a nugget, I gave in and put something in my profile. More specifically, I wrote this:

My Self Summary
I'm sure I saw an OKCupid blog post about how most messages on dating sites, to girls, with the words 'pretty' or other such adjectives in them go totally ignored. Make of that what you will. ;)

I also left my librarything booklist - you can find that under 'Nugget', if for some reason, you're interested.

Now, while this seems to have appreciably stopped most of the Fake Meat Attacks (for which I am very thankful), it's also given rise to a new kind of spam.

I've gotten some mails saying 'pretty' just to be silly about it - and making it very clear. In which case, we basically go, 'lol! cute! but we don't match, bai!' Which is all good.

And then there's the other sort.

In my inbox this morning I get, instead of a Fake Meat Attack, a Hostile Meat Attack. Without any preamble, this guy writes to me and demands to know 'why you presume men will find you attractive'.

[Edit: This is the actual message, or part of it, from my mailbox. I deleted it on OkCupid without opening the full thing, so it's lost to posterity. It's more hostile than I recalled... woot! I think.]

Why the assumption that men would greet you with the word pretty? Especially with just one low resolution [photo]...

Which kind of reveals the following assumptions:

1. That I was writing about me
2. That girlies might not/should not find juicy breast and thigh tasty (or maybe it's just that girls know better than to write such types of messages as detailed by OkCupid hmm)
3. That I presume that men will find me tasty, which leads, (I think), to how
4. I'm an arrogant bitch who needs a put-down
5. Time is well spent spamming me with a Hostile Meat Attack rather than moving on
6. That I couldn't possibly have any reason for putting that up there, certainly nothing like a desire to ward off Fake Meat Attacks
7. Utter cluelessness about how much spam girls receive on these sorts of sites

Now here's the thing. I'm a decent-looking sort of nugget, but I'm no goddess. (Well, not unless I take my true, golden-battered scrumptulescent form, but most mortal eyes are incapable of comprehending such golden gloriousness. Ahem. Right.) No one's going to fall at my feet and give me a golden apple.

So this guy finds it necessary to go on the Interwebz, trawl through chicks on OkCupid, and then send one (or more! who knows!) of them a Hostile Meat Attack. Why, I have no idea, since logically speaking, he'd do better simply sending messages to those who might like him!

On the bright (shiny, golden, crispy) side, his message told me a lot more about him in a very, very few sentences, than most of the messages I've received from others! I suppose that counts for something! ~_o

Apparently the key is to wait till the kittehs are sleeping. Or studiously ignoring me. Not sure which. XD

I frequently pug BLA for fun, and today looking through my Google analytics stuff (which I only do very, very irregularly), I find a very large number of searches for builds for BLA. >.>

No Zmobie Left Behind works well in BLA. I would recommend taking Blood Ritual over Go for the Eyes! though, since non-necro healers are very, very energy-hungry in this fight.

However, since there were ever so many searches, I'll share a healer build I run very often as well. No, it's not a monk healer build. I *have* a monk healer build I use for BLA, but to tell the total truth, the necro build is so much less stressful because of the infinite energy from Soul Reaping - especially in this fight. That being said, I would strongly advise against using this build anywhere else. The only reason it works well is that things are dying so fast, in such a small area, in BLA. It has absolutely no e-management (other than Soul Reaping), and very energy-heavy spells.

So, here it is:

BLA Necro/Rit Spiritual Heal n Prot Bot

OAhjYggaITRTSTpTDTWPcijTPOA

Skills
Soothing Memories
Mend Body & Soul
Spirit Light Weapon {Elite}
Protective Was Kaolai
Shelter
Rejuvenation
Life
Union

Stats
Soul Reaping [8] + [4]
Restoration [12]
Communing [10]

Gear

• Superior Soul Reaping rune
• Mix of Survivor and Radiant Insignia
• Major or Superior vigor rune
• 2 Attunement and 1 Vitae rune to finish off
• Sword/Spear and Shield (hsr/hct and hp are good. Do not go for energy, or you may have e problems when you recast Protective Was Kaolai)

Campaigns Needed
Factions, Nightfall (only if using Xinrae's Weapon or Weapon of Remedy in place of Spirit Light Weapon).

How to Use

• Put all your spirits up, preferably a little behind the two pillars in front of the gates of Lion's Arch (near the first stairs)
• Carry Protective Was Kaolai at all times
• Drop Protective Was Kaolai to counter group damage (dropping it twice should give you a 180hp party heal)
• Use Soothing Memories as your main heal (energy efficient when clutching Protective Was Kaolai - what, a necro/rit talking about energy efficiency? Shhhhh.)
• Mend Body & Soul to remove conditions
• Spirit Light Weapon to top up / counter degen, Mursaat, general stupidity, etc. You should almost always have at least one spirit in range, so Spirit Light Weapon should be healing for 24hp/s
• Renew spirits as fast as they die / your binding rituals recharge

Variants

• Xinrae's Weapon instead of Spirit Light Weapon [Requires Nightfall] If you don't like how people keep running out of range of spirits to chase things out the gates of Lion's Arch, thereby making Spirit Light Weapon heal for a measly 12hp/s, use Xinrae's Weapon instead. At least it even comes with a mini prot! XD
• Weapon of Remedy instead of Spirit Light Weapon [Requires Nightfall] So many conditions! AaaAa! And as mentioned, people keep running out of spirit range? (Where they don't usually live too long anyway...) Weapon of Remedy is the remedy for your woes! Off go those conditions. Wootz! Consider replacing Mend Body & Soul with Spirit Transfer, but be aware that the latter is a 10e spell
• Recuperation instead of Rejuvenation +3 Health regen for all your allies! And in BLA, you have a LOT of allies. And minions, should you have a MM, count as allies too. Of course, it doesn't top off party members quite as well as Recuperation, so it's purely a matter of personal preference. It's also appreciably more expensive to cast.

Counters

• General Caster Hate
• People running out of spirit range - no moar protz on them makez squisheh! With emphasis on HEH. -_-

Additional notes
Don't you have e management problems? You don't have any e management.
Nope.EVERYTHING dying to the left and right. If your enemies aren't dying, your allies certainly are! What's there to manage? And besides. Necros? Emanagement? AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ahem.

This build is so expensive! :(
There are worse builds. However, you can skimp and use a Major Vigor instead of Superior Vigor, if your sword/spear and shield have Fortitude mods.

Can heroes use this?
I haven't tried this on a hero, but they should use it pretty well. There's nothing in that bar that heroes use badly, iirc.

And that's that!

P.S.: To the guy who was looking for, "How the fuck do I get to Nahpui Quarter," sorry to disappoint you with screenshots. XD

...because what is it with these people?

This evening, as I was standing in the subway, minding my own business, nose in a book while waiting for someone, a salesguy for some random stuff (there were a bunch of them, and I don't know what they were selling), trots up to me and asks, 'Are you local?'

O.o

Look I wasn't even talking! He'd never heard me speak! I was just reading! XD

And then there was that taxi driver a week or so ago, who, at the end of a 20 minute ride, solemnly told me, 'You're Japanese. I can tell. You sound Japanese.'

OoOoOOOk.

And for the record, I'm not Japanese, and I'm supposedly local, though from all these specimens you probably couldn't tell.

...no idea what the nugget is ranting about? See my previous rant.

As they say, 'Well, you got a song out of it.'

And yes, the kittehs were asleep.