Edition5

Gamer's Mantra
Edition #5
Kalendraf, LQGaming Staff Writer
3rd of June, 2005

Upon entering a mission staging area, I can nearly always count on a few things: A Xunlai Agent watching over the storage vault, a mission advisor on a small podium, multiple henchman lined ready up for duty, and my chat window getting filled with messages like this:

I feel sorry for the primary monks that enter a staging area. Their chat windows and join requests must be almost an impossible-to-read blur of activity. Meanwhile, I've seen some groups spend 30 minutes or more begging to get a monk player to join their group, continuously spamming invite requests and plastering the local chat channel with the same "looking for monk" message over and over.

Why is the monk deemed so important for success? There are a number of factors involved, some of which include inaccurate perceptions of the game. This edition of Gamer's Mantra is going to attempt to dispel some of those perceptions.

Perception #1 - All monks are healers

While many monks are indeed healers, it's important to realize that not every monk is one. Some monks may focus on smiting or protection and completely avoid healing skills. Thus, just having a monk join your party doesn't guarantee you have a healer on your team. Most non-healing monks will be kind enough to point this out if they get invited, but even after this, the expectation that the monk is there to heal them may still exist.

Perception #2 - All healers are monks

While primary monks probably make some of the best healers, they aren't the only healers. First of all, it is possible for any character to have monk as a secondary class. These characters can serve as healers, and in some situations, they may be setup specifically for that. In the PvP format, monks are often early targets, so choosing an alternate primary class can give them a certain level of disguise to avoid this. Yet under the guise of that other class, they are still healers. Usually these folks will advertise this fact in the staging areas by saying something like, "E/Mo Energy Storage Healer LFG" or "Me/Mo Fast Cast Healer LFG". Go ahead and invite them if you want a healer.

Other classes have some ways to heal other characters, and you may find they can do an admirable job of keeping the party health afloat. Necromancers specializing in blood magic can help a group stay alive with a skill like Well of Blood and rangers can contribute similarly with Healing Spring. With smart tactical play, you'll often find that you don't necessarily need a full-blown healer, especially if each character brings a few extra ways to help heal themselves like Healing Signets, Ether Feast or Aura of Restoration. Instead, the party may just need a small extra boost to help their health, and these other characters may be able to supply the necessary skills to do the trick.

Perception #3 - A healer is needed for a balanced party

Ideally, having a balanced mix of characters helps ensure the team can more easily handle a diverse mix of situations and encounters. It usually helps to have a mix of melee and ranged attackers, or a mix of combat-oriented vs. spell-oriented characters. Much of this perception derives from other role-playing games where you tend to need a fighter, a cleric, a rogue and a wizard to cover all the bases. RPGs over the past two decades have driven this concept of party balance into our gamer psyche. In Guild Wars, the rough equivalent can even be seen looking at the 4 henchmen available in Ascalon City: Stefan the Fighter, Alesia the Healer, Reyna the Ranger and Orion the Elementalist.

Party balance is a good goal, but even though it's helpful to have a diverse party, it is not a requirement for success. You can complete missions with parties that do not include every style of character, even a healer. It is important to remember that the characters in this game are very well-balanced. Regardless of which classes you bring along, you can still have the same number of characters which in theory should make your party equally powerful. There are obviously trade-offs in having extra firepower vs. extra support, but if you are a skilled team, you can exploit your advantages to make up for the disadvantages your current team composition may have.

Perception #4 - A mission can't be completed without a healer

Quite often in the mission staging areas, I'll see someone say something like, "We need a monk to beat this mission!" To me, that statement essentially translates into, "We rely on a healer to save our bacon, allowing us to play recklessly." These tend to be the same folks who rush ahead, then complain when they die, usually blaming other members of the group for their failure. The problem isn't the rest of the team, it's their own play-style.

A good player realizes that the key to success in many of the missions is to be patient. Taking a slow cautious approach will allow you to complete just about every mission without a particular character type, including the healer. Completing the mission without a healer won't necessarily be easy, but it can be done. It will probably require a slightly different skill mix to help offset their absence, but every class has some forms of healing skills, and everyone can bring a resurrection signet. This exercise also helps demonstrate an important concept: changing up individual skills to help complement the team. Playing without a healer can also help teach how to play more cautiously, and how to succeed in situations where the primary healers on the team are out of commission.

I am not advising that you go without a healer. However, you may find situations where all your guildmates are on-line, and everyone wants to hook-up for a mission, but no one has a healer. Rather than leaving someone out in order to bring a healer, I suggest you go ahead and give it a shot with your current group. You may be quite surprised how well you can do without one, especially if you use smart play and proper tactics.

Perception #5 - The henchmen aren't adequate

For most groups having difficulty finding a healer, there is a worthy substitute, the henchmen Alesia the Healer. Unfortunately, I see far too many groups unwilling to bring along a henchmen, even the healer. Sometimes when I suggest bringing Alesia, I get the following response, "We need a REAL monk to beat this mission!" To me, this is even a bigger knock on their play-style than my translation in #4. Not only do they need a full-time healer to make up for their play-style, but they need a human one able to better anticipate and make-up for their reckless behavior.

With smart and patient play, Alesia is an adequate healer for mission success. The henchman AI is not perfect, and there can be situations where path-finding issues come into play causing a henchman to get stuck on or even within in the terrain. Alesia sometimes ping-pongs between party members, especially if there is a dead character somewhere nearby. On the other hand, the henchmen don't suffer from a dropped connection, nor do they go AFK in the middle of a mission. They also tend to be quite a bit more predictable in their behavior. Once in a while, they might accidentally stray too far and pull a pack of monsters, but real players sometimes do that too.

One other reason players don't like henchmen is that they feel they steal drops. It's true that by bringing a henchmen, the number of items you see dropped will be reduced when bringing henchmen; items you would have seen drop for a real character in their place are instead allocated to the henchman and aren't displayed. On the other hand, had there been a real player there instead, those items would have been assigned to them, so you or I would not have gotten them anyway. At the very least, if you feel you simply must have a healer, then you should be willing to make some trade-offs. If your primary concern is completing the mission, you shouldn't be too worried about your item drops.

I'd love to go into my next mission staging area and not see a single monk join request my entire time there. Unfortunately, a few too many players seem to have developed a play-style that won't let them survive without a healer, and now they aren't even willing to attempt missions without one. As for saying monk when they really mean healer, I have to cut them some slack. I too have a hard time avoiding the word monk when I actually mean healer. I am working on overcoming that, but it may take time. Just remember...

Not all monks are healers, not all healers are monks

If I repeat that enough, it should finally sink in.