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A stronger, easier, 55 monk build - WITHOUT protective spirit

 01/21/2006
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Harrow The Pious Profile

Author: Harrow The Pious
View Profile of Harrow The Pious

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70 Comments
 This is for all those 55 monk owners who have noticed that the common protective spirit monk build is limited to around 14-17 mobs per shot, while also running the risk of getting prot interrupted. This build eliminates both problems. With this build you will be able to tank 30+ mobs and never fear interruption again. Lets get started.

STATS



This is with the standard 5 supior monk runes

SKILLS



1. Sheild of Judgement - Elite
2. Blessed Signet
3. Bonettie's Defense
4. Sprint
5. Essence Bond
6. Balthazaur's Spirit
7. Protective Bond
8. Mending

Casting order will be discussed later.

GEAR

Armor - Full tatoo set for the mana increase. A MUST. More mana = more life in this case. As for the type of head tat get the smiting one.

Weapons - Any kind of enchant mod is welcome but not needed. And of course the -50 hp cesta

CASTING ORDER

Ok. This is really hard and easy to screw up. Cast enchantments 5 - 8. Done. Use Blessed signet until your energy is full. Hope this doesnt confuse ppl. ^^

Now that you have your enchants on...let me explain how they work considering that your probably looking at prot bond and thinking to yourself, "Ya %5 dmg is great but you lose energy and it disappears. Wtf..." WRONG. True you lose 3 energy every hit with it on but consider balths and essence bond. Thats +2 for every -3. So more or less -1 energy per hit. Again you ask how do I prevent myself from losing all energy. Easy. Bonnetties defence. Ok...your starting to see how this works now. Lets go through an example farm run just to make sure you get it.

TROLLS - outside droks

You zone in, cast your enchants and heal your energy. Ok run to the cave and sprint past avicara. At the cave heal the energy you lost from avicara. Run in aggro all the trolls. ALL THE TROLLS, including bosses. Then pick a lucky troll and start attacking him. This allows your bonnettis to recharge faster. As soon as bonnetties gets full cast it quickly followed by Sheild of Judgement. Now you need to watch your energy. As soon as it hits round 10 cast bonnetties. Repeat untill Soj wears off. Then spam bonnetties until Soj is back and recast SoJ while casting bonnetties when your energy is low. Woila. Uber tanking with good dmg output. Usually takes 2 casts for trolls and griffions. With spell breaker this build is invicible. You could literally sit for hours watching 30 mobs attack you in vain.

Much of the credit for this build goes to my friend mwpeck aka Crimson The Healer for turning me on to the idea of using Protective Bond on a 55 build. Much love Crim.
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User Comments
Nice!  neoelasticman on 01/22/06 23:58

Let me be the first to congratulate you on a good job with taking something everybody knows and making something original of it. Keep it up!
  Julia Heartilly on 01/23/06 02:48

QUOTE
While you maintain this enchantment, target ally cannot take more than 5% damage at one time. When Protective bond prevents damage, you lost 6-3 energy or the spell ends.


It is at any time possible that PB ends on a hit, then the next hit is lethal, this is why PS is used.
With PS you see the end coming and can renew it, with PB you could suddenly die at any time.
  Hammerite Rozsda on 01/23/06 03:40

the sudden death you talk about is not so sudden.
you lose 1 energy each time they hit (3-2) and if u have what, 40 mana thats 40 hits, cast 1 blessed signet when you see its getting low and you gained 12 more. or as she said cast bonettis and you are full again.
obviously there wont be 40 mobs hitting u at once because there is a maximum limit of...12 maybe...of how many mobs can hit u at one time.

fear not, u see the end coming here as well :)
  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 04:55

Sorry to say, this build is not new... this was the basics of the first invinci-monk build.

Protective Bond does take -3 energy, but it used to take -2 (with 16 in Protection), that would make your energy stable... but, with a Protection Prayers +1 20%, you could cast Prot Bond over and over until you got -1 (17 in Protection)... You were basically protected, and constantly gaining energy per hit - making healing yourself a "Breeze".

It was known as the 105hp build, because of the +1 Protection off-hand, instead of the -50hp. The skills were:

Protective Bond
Essence Bond
Balthazars Spirit
Divine Boon
Zealot's Fire
Balthazars Aura
Bonnetti's Defense
Blessed Signet

The way to heal yourself and damage at the same time, with a constant supply of energy - was to cast Divine Boon on yourself over and over... It used to have no recharge time, healed you, and triggered Zealot's.

They since nefred the basics of this build, making it very unstable.

-

Also, taking on all the trols in the cave can be accomplished with the Griffon Farming skill setup - and the build is far cheaper and easier to create.
  mwpeck on 01/23/06 05:28

Genesis_Dragon: From what It looks like, this build is completely different then that, it has 5 skills in common out there, i could show you a ton of other builds that have the 5 skills alike, and are completely different. And what griffon build would you be talking about? ANY build with Protective Spirit has a limit of 13 trolls.....you can sometimes get lucky and kill 14, but its very rare........we have both taken on groups of 24 trolls with this build.
  Harrow The Pious on 01/23/06 05:33

Well it was new to me and I didnt see very many people using it so I thought I would post it.

  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 07:03

mwpeck...

So he uses a couple of different damage dealers...

The protection - The very Basics of the Invinci-Monk Build, I'll echo that, the basics of the build - have been done before... I was stating, again "this was the basics of the first invinci-monk build"...

And the Griffon Farming, in which you can take on as many Trolls as you can get to agro you in the Cave, is a Warrior Build. Only one superior, and the Elite is an aid, and not a requirement. Hence cheaper and easier. I should have stated it was a Warrior Build, my apologies.

And how can a build that shares 5 common skills, be "completely different", surely you mean slightly different.


-

Either way it's a good guide, just not a new principle.
  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 07:25

Here's a screenie of it in action, as you can see it was an early attempt and I could do it without the 5 Superiors.



I also used Healing Breeze, but Divine Boon was equally useful... especially against the meteors of hydras.






  Tor Den Mektige on 01/23/06 07:46

I have to say, thats a pretty kick ass build :D definitely somthing I will be using/modifying for my self :D thank you!
  Stealer of Pie on 01/23/06 08:57

You might be able to eliminate the risk of sudden death by having 16 (might work with 15) in prot, though it results in lower damage.
Very good guide.
  Rogue on 01/23/06 10:51

why do you need 55 hp if you're not using prot spirit?
  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 12:57

Because protective bond works the same way as Protective spirit, differences being you can only take 5% damage from a single attack or spell, but each time the enchantment protects, it costs you a minimum of 3 energy.
  Harrow The Pious on 01/23/06 14:41

Stealer of Pie.

The max protective bond with 16 prot stats still takes away 3 energy...so why not save some points and put it into smiting?
  Harrow The Pious on 01/23/06 14:43

Also Dragon your screenshots are pre nerf. You can tell because you dont have the option to hide your cape. Also my way kills ALOT faster.
  Harrow The Pious on 01/23/06 14:47

man...comments need an edit button.

Dragon. Your using a previous build using a item that gives +1 to prot thus making the protective bond give -2 energy instead of -3. With essence and balths you have -0 energy per hit. With signet you keep your energy up and thus y that build USED to work. My build is post nerf....get with the times.
  frogy1752 on 01/23/06 15:46

This build is horrible unstable....
#1 : you cant heal yourself good
#2 : Blessed Sig is almost always interupted
#3 : Bonnettis Doesn't always stop interupts
#4 : It may be possible but it will be impossible hard
If you use this build make sure to cast PBond before you go into a mob - wow, some people don't understand this

I personally believe that the PS+HB build are much easier - i can sucessfully farm UW solo - don't get me wrong - it's very hard and not really worth the crap 6K an ecto anymore...

Thanks for thinking up a new build though - there always fun+welcome
  Harrow The Pious on 01/23/06 16:48

Dont knock it till you try it. Its surprisingly ez
  SirShaitan on 01/23/06 17:42

With this build you end up using Bonetti's as much as you did Protective spirit in the other build, not much difference either way.


  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 17:46

I suggest you read my posts...

I said, your build "the basics of it" are not new, and I'm showing old, pre-nerf screenies to proove that point.

My whole point, before it was taken out of context, is that Protective Bond, Essence Bond and Balth's Spirit as the Protective part of an Invinci-monk build... HAS BEEN USED BEFORE. It was abandoned, because it was unstable - with people opting for Prot Spirit and Healing Breeze as the safer option.

---

I also stated it is a good guide! And yes it does work, and no I'm not knocking it, I have tried it. Please find anything I've said that is negative about your guide! Just because I'm not blowing your trumpet, doesn't mean I'm saying it's crap - because I'm not.

Oh and the old pre-nerf used to give you energy per hit, 16 in protection, with +1 offhand used to get a -1 in Prot Bond. Essence and Balth's gave 1 each, so your energy used to go up on it's own, without any other aid (except being smacked by 8 Aatxe), Blessed was just to get it up after the initial Enchantment cost.
  Genesis_Dragon on 01/23/06 17:53

Sorry, was just getting a bit miffed.

At least I'm /bumping it to the top of the Guides section for you ;D
  Nihil Zarathustra on 01/24/06 00:55

dont take your anger out on the poor writer. I'm going to say something that's going to anger alot of people out there. There are no original builds left anymore. Every build that anyone has unless they just threw random skills together has already been made by someone else. It's not a 100% truth but chances are someone out there has or is running the same build.
  bigbadchad666 on 01/24/06 02:19

PERFECT! I just tried this build not even 1 minute ago, and I must say, it worked flawlessly! As long as you are using Bonetti's constantly, and right before you cast SoJ, you can't die. I was very impressed at how well this worked. Anyone that complaines about it hasn't tried it :)
  bigbadchad666 on 01/24/06 02:21

hmm, it posted twice.. oh well..
  doublehelix on 01/24/06 11:14
 
Yes, this has been done before. Yes, they have nerfed PBond to near uselessness. Yes, they have nerfed smiting AoE skills (both directly and indirectly, a la AoE AI update) to kingdom come for any PvE purposes. And they nerfed the ultimate in iMonk abilities by killing the ability to change attribute points outside of towns and outposts.

Yes, I and every other player that has been around long enough to have used the old builds have tried this exact build. The sad fact is, for anything but UW (and hydras, but that's another story and involves PB and an echo'd SoJ), solo monks are no longer superior for much of anything. A solo W/Mo can do the trolls faster and easier than the monks can now. Griffons are almost pointless with AoE/aggro updates and the seemingly frequent decrease in drops.

I can do hydras in the desert with greater ease and speed with my monk than my warrior.. and for solo UW monk is still it, but that's about all. Even in UW, you're better off teaming up with an SS necro and playing sponge rather than trying to solo it just for the sake of ease and speed.

I definitely regret getting bored with the old UW build that I used to run and not doing it day and night. Back then I could throw up my 1e Protective Bond, my 2 energy gaining enchantments, Mending.. Using 8 attribute refunds to get the +4 Mending, -1e PBond, and having 16 in smiting. I didn't even bother with Boon/Zealot's and opted for SoJ and SoW instead. Either way, it was a 15 minute UW run clearing all the Aatxe and Smites.

Oh.. and ignore frogy. He's the same one that wrote the guide on how to be a better noob. Take it from his guild.. it's a list of things he does, not a joke.
  Liquide Suicide on 01/24/06 17:07
 
u guys r confusing me with all this arguing i do not doubt that this will work but im just gonna stick to my old tried and true 55 build=D
  Liquide Suicide on 01/24/06 17:09
 
u were right Harrow the comments do need an edit button =P idk what ur talking about only being able to take on up to 14 in on shot i aggro everything in the troll cave outside of droks and kick major ass.
  vinnie33 on 01/25/06 10:37

pretty original :P u dont have to worry about prot spirit now but i doubt it if it'd work in UW, nightmares will own your ass

good guide

  Harrow The Pious on 01/25/06 15:00

surprisingly no. The nightmares are as ez to deal with as ever...just sprint. No the problem with UW is the Darknesses. Energy Drain. So they pwn you good.
  uproarwest on 01/25/06 19:52
 
i don't really know why everyone is picking this build apart, there are no mistakes in Harrow's build. i saw that his skill list and went to build it w/o looking at the attributes, then when i got mine down i check it against his and they were exactly the same.

nice build, but i think i like the prot spirit version better. for me it takes them down quicker.
  mewmew921 on 01/26/06 16:58

ummmmmmm I always die before I can get bonetti's defense on this is really hard I think or I am just doing something wrong....... :P
  doublehelix on 02/01/06 15:07
 
You die before you can use Bonetti's Defense? You have pre-casted the maintained enchantments, correct? I'm assuming that you're using some type of one-handed weapon with an 18-20% enchantment upgrade? If not, I would recommend it.

If you have having trouble with dying before you can use Bonetti's Defense, then I would suggest using the age-old trick of attacking the nearest enemy after gathering them together, so that you build adrenaline faster. Really, the only thing that I find Protective Bond builds good for anymore is nostalgia griffon farming. Unfortunately, with the spiteful degree of nerf to Protective Bond and the AoE AI change, you have only Shield of Judgement available to you as a "hassle-free" source of damage with these builds. Since you absolutely can not run a Protective Bond build without Warrior secondary to provide energy through Bonetti's Defense, you have the problem of a single casting of Shield of Judgement not killing the enemies. This results in somewhere around 20 seconds of doing nothing but using Bonetti's while you wait for the shield to recharge.

It is truly unfortunate that Arena Net feels the necessity to punish players for ingenuity. The AI update regarding AoE damage is easily the worst choice that they have ever made. There is no excuse for seriously limiting the usefulness of an entire category of skills in half of the professions in the game.
  ogrim lightbringer on 02/05/06 11:56
 
hey this build is cool and all and it works ( ive tried it) but where would you need to use it? i cant think of a farming place with the 30+ monsters you described and everywhere else i can use the protective spirit build which is faster
  Janus Anobix on 02/19/06 13:38

at the end of your guide you say that
QUOTE
With spell breaker this build is invicible. You could literally sit for hours watching 30 mobs attack you in vain.


where is your dmg dealer then? seeing how SB is an elite, I guess you could bring zealots, but that could be a pita.
  nickyd88 on 02/21/06 18:16
 
i like the idea of using bonettis to counter the -3 PB... but since i don't have a pve monk, i've got to settle for the ultimate 55 farm - N/Mo Spiteful... sooo much more fun - use spiteful, mark of pain, (enchant sword and -50, so mark of pain is great) - mending, watchful, essence, balth, prot spir, breeze... it's pretty sweet - can't figure out how to deal with the cave troll interupts... oh well

anyway-- i still think mo/w farming is for lamers... mostly because i don't have a monk
  hendi5689 on 02/22/06 21:30
 
i have a few questions..

my monk is only lvl 13 but i have 2 of the 5 sup runes and the -50 cesta where can i buyessence bond,and prot bond? and also where can i capture soj?
  Charlotte The Harlot on 02/28/06 00:07

does this build work in the uw or do the cfs just own you since bonetis doesnt owkr on them this si if im jsut doin a smite run btw
  Zmallex on 02/28/06 06:31
 
Yes, works in UW.

My question for this one:

When I take my lvl 20 monks hp and -75, -75, -75, -75 and -50 it's still not 55. I don't use any vigor runes. Your comment:
"This is with the standard 5 supior monk runes" 5? Monk's have only 4 skills so I can't find the fifth.
  hendi5689 on 02/28/06 16:47
 
im just all of a sudden dieing...is that because prot. bond is being taken off? is there any way i can prevent that?


  LAone on 03/02/06 14:43

QUOTE
Yes, works in UW. 

My question for this one: 

When I take my lvl 20 monks hp and -75, -75, -75, -75 and -50 it's still not 55. I don't use any vigor runes. Your comment: 
"This is with the standard 5 supior monk runes" 5? Monk's have only 4 skills so I can't find the fifth.


Just need to buy the cheapest Monk sup rune and stack it, u do not get the +3 but they are nice enough to give you the - Health...


  Zmallex on 03/03/06 13:12
 
Makes no sence, then I'll be the first with 130 hp monk and it's MUCH cheaper than 55hp ;)
  Phydeaux on 03/19/06 19:28
 
Personally, 55 monks are better as 2 man runs for the UW nowerdays - the 55 necros, while less stable, are considerably faster farmers. Take hydras, for example - monks have to play all sorts of games to get hydra farming to work, while a 55 necro simply walks in, casts SS, and waits.

And the W/Mo troll axe farmer just take the cake for the cave.
  vvaffle on 03/29/06 22:57
 
play games to farm hydras? I have a 55health Mo/W and farming hydras is not a problem. SoJ + zealots fire for the damage and they go down decently fast. You can take bonettis or balanced stance, depends on how good you are with energy. If you use bonetti's, just pay attention to when they are casting meteor.

I don't understand what you think is hard about it.
keep up the good work!  arieswargod2002 on 04/09/06 15:44
 
I must say i was kind of worried about using a 55 build w/o PS but this one really suprise me. If anyone says this build isn't "stable" try it before you bash it please. Thanx for the awesome build!
  Freekill. on 04/09/06 21:05
 
I've tried this, works very well, and very simple indeed. I found that sprint wasnt much of use for me so I switched it with vigorous spirit, to me, it works a lot better. The avicaras arent much of a threat to waste a skill slot =]. Big ups.
Where does everyone use the build?  Forn Of Theta on 04/27/06 15:20
 
Where has everyone tried this build? Does it work only on Trolls or have you made it work in other areas such as UW, FoW, SF?
  Arcantas the knight on 05/22/06 21:38