Guide:GvG Monk

Monk's Tasks
As a Monk, your job is the most simple to explain in the game; don't let people die.

If you let your team die; your team loses pressure and the other team can afford to pressure even harder (and eventually push balls deep).

Another part of your job is to keep your Warriors clean from hexes (pretty much impossible) and conditions (Blind and/or Weakness), and to make sure your Mesmer can actually push to their backline, so use Guardian on your Mesmer often to make sure he doesn't get interrupted by the Ranger.

Skills such as Aegis are helpful as they effect all of your allies within earshot, making interruption from sources which are physical less likely.

Follow and prevent damage
Don't redbar like a mad man. Know what their Warriors are hitting at makes you react a lot faster, which leads to reducing more damage and Healing and Protecting (also referred to as 'Protting') more efficient. After knock-downs; Warrior's will deal mega-damage so be sure to at least Prot it, especially if it's at your co-monk. Guardian is quite efficient when something is knocked down, as Spirit Bond doesn't protect against the auto attacks. Aura of Stability lessens the impact of the opponent's Hammer Warriors.

Shit, Power block!
Interrupts change the tide of the games, especially Power Block. Usually (yes, usually, it actually goes a lot off this chart because they can interrupt more) a balanced team's interrupts are based this way. Remember, weapon swap accordingly to your cast. When doing prot's, use your 40/20%, when doing heals, 40/40 heal set. Otherwise, you're going to get alot of interupts on your face.
 * Ranger: Interrupting Resurrection Signet/Death Pact Signet, Diversion/Shame, Aegis, Glyphs and occasionally Elite Skills.

If your hammer has trouble with the blind, which he usually shouldn't, Distracting Shot is used on Glyph of Immolation.


 * Mesmer: Using Power Block (PB) to interrupt Restore Condition/Guardian, using Power Leak to interrupt Word of Healing or Guardian on Word of Healing Monk, Power Drain whatever is left (including the flesh). If you take Cry of Frustration, which a lot of teams do, use Cry of Frustration on Signet of Humility (most commonly found on the Me/N).

Mesmers will occasionally use Power Leak or Power Drain to interrupt Aegis too, but that usually starts from where the Ranger can't keep it down.

Also; Diversions and Shames are situation based, therefore, it's hard to explain.

Several "tactics" your opponent will attempt, and are important for you to know;


 * Landing a Diversion roughly two seconds after a spike, where the Word of Healing Monk sometimes cast Word of Healing.
 * Shaming Word of Healing, then spiking the Restore Condition using knock-downs.
 * Spiking your Warrior, causing you to push for him and forcing your Word of Healing Monk to use Word of Healing, making it easier for the opponent's Ranger to predict the use of Word of Healing and therefore use Distracting Shot to interrupt it and disable it for an additional 20 seconds.
 * Cancel whenever needed. If you're running out of energy; you still should unless you're far into your high set. Remember, pleak sucks 16e, canceling only 5e.

Monk's Equipment

 * A bunch of shield sets (including 7 and 8 tactics-shields) with -5, a no-inscription one and a +5 spear. Will come back on this later.
 * 40/20% Protecting set for Guardian, Protective Spirit and Aegis on a Word of Healing Monk, and all Protective Spells on a Protecting Monk.
 * A high energy set(+30/-2).
 * Vitae runes and survivor insignia's (for Heroes' Ascent and Team Arena/Random Arena you should take the VS. Physical Damage (Stalwart) insignia's on upper and lower body).
 * For a Word of Healing Monk take a 40/40 Healing set, for a Protective Monk a 20/20 'all skills' set for veiling (Mesmers may use Power Leak your veils when they can't use Power Leak on anything else).

Comparing Protection to Healing
The difference between a Protective and Healing Monk used to be small (Boonprots), but times have changed so some Monks can't even do the other job because of it.


 * A Protective is more active in the field then a Healing Monk, because he has to use Spirit Bond.
 * A Word of Healing Monk has Word of Healing (how surprising), so he just heals after the damage comes, not before (unless it's fagspike).
 * Protecting Monks have Reversal of Fortitude (RoF) against spikes and for oshitting, while the Word of Healing has Patient Spirit VS. degeneration and general team bar pressure.

Protective/Protection
As a Protection Monk, you'll have two choices of skill sets.

Restore Condition (RC) Monk [build prof=Monk/Any][Restore Condition][Reversal of Fortune][Guardian][Spirit Bond][Aura of Stability][Holy Veil][Optional][Optional][/build]

Life Sheath Monk [build prof=Monk/Any][Gift of Health][Life Sheath][Guardian][Spirit Bond][Aura of Stability][Holy Veil][Optional][Optional][/build]

Optionals
 * Disciplined Stance and Balanced Stance
 * GoLE and Aegis. This choice is recommended.
 * Sprint and Disciplined Stance. Recommended variant for split maps. A speed boost on seven or eight of your team's characters gives you a major advantage.

Specific Skills

 * Spirit Bond (SB): this skill is the most important skill on your bar. If it gets Diverted, spikes will be flying around like insane and energy will be sucked from keeping things alive. Versus good teams it will pretty much means you'll have to spend a lot of energy on healing the spike back up, while they're still doing big pressure. Use it wisely, that means don't throw it up against every Warrior that uses an adrenaline attack or Bull's Strike at someone, as they generally don't unload all of their power at once, meaning your energy will be wasted. Against Warrior's Endurance, Spirit Bond is going to be used a lot, because Power Attack and Protector's Strike will triggers Spirit Bond quite often.
 * Reversal of Fortune (RoF) is the worst and occasionally the best skill on your skill bar. It's extremely determined on when you hit it and a bit of luck is helpful. It's also your o-shit skill, that means if you miss Spirit Bond you'll generally use Reversal of Fortune because you get the maximum effect from it before a spike. It's at it's best when the opponent lands critical hits who are 59 damage (if you hit someone in while he's running, it will always result in a critical hit). Thus, Spirit Bond doesn't trigger, so Reversal of Fortune is amazing in such situations. With the current Primal Rage meta, Warriors will be flying around hitting critical hits, so Reversal of Fortune should be used quite often. Besides that; Reversal of Fortune is also the first skill you're going to let diverted. For example; they're spiking your Word of Healing Monk, and putting Diversion on you. So, what to choose? Letting your Word of Healing Monk die or having a skill diverted? Letting Reversal of Fortune diverted is generally the smartest action.
 * Restore Condition (RC) not much to mention; just a big redbar condition removal. Don't use it at Blinded team mates; but rather let the blinds get drawn as in the meta a Distracting Shot or Diversion on Restore Condition means a party wipe. Do use Restore Condition against Melandru's Shot, however.
 * Aura of Stability. This is basically the best anti-hammer Warrior skill in the game, it may even be more useful than the Blind condition. Don't use it to eat Bull's Strike, however. Bull's Strike should be generally dodged by standing still before he would hit or by using a 1/4'th/spearing, wanding etc. Many people think that you should just use Aura of Stability on your Word of Healing, but even when it seems the most efficient; you shouldn't save it for him only. Just use it on your ally which the opponent's Devastating Hammer hammer will knock-down, usually try to time it just before the Devastating Hammer Warriors will hit, so he can't really do anything about it besides calling for enchantment removal.
 * Guardian. I think this actually is the most awesome skill on your skill bar (not the strongest, however) and it's fairly easy to use compared to other skills. However, this is actually the skill they're most likely going to interrupt, because it has a 1 second casting time and you want to use it often. Guardian (among with Spirit Bond) gets shattered/drained a lot. Use Guardian on people who get knocked down, or they get spanked to death. If running a backline with dual Guardian, be sure to Guardian each other and not yourself, unless it's a Monk train. Having your co-monk kite instead of standing still for 1.75 second is quite good.
 * Life Sheath (LS). Not really a lot to mention; it's basically a Reversal of Fortune with condition removal so you use it often on spikes. Be sure to check whether the Mesmer is casting Diversion; because Life Sheath is really easy to divert and it's pretty important on your bar, this is your only condition removal.
 * Gift of Health Gift of Health is just your redbar skill. Don't put in too much effort, because they're not likely to disrupt it anyway. Just use it as a degeneration counter because you don't have the massive heal from Restore Condition.

Heal Monk
[word of healing][patient spirit][optional][draw conditions][infuse health][holy veil][optional][optional]


 * In the first optional; bring either Protective Spirit if you're running mo/e, if mo/w bring guardian.
 * As the same for like a prot, you can go mo/w with disciplined stance and a skill of choice(SoA, SH, SoR)
 * On split maps, also go for the mo/w with sprint and disciplined stance. Also take dismiss instead of draw there, because you want to remove your own conditions.

Indepth skill usage
I'm not going to explain the skill's I've already explained; they are a little bit different usage on a WoH but not much.
 * WoH Pretty much the most important skill on your skillbar. It's not really hard to use itself, but the hard part on using it becomes from the interupts and diversion/shame, as WoH is a keyskill for monks. Try not to get owned by tips already given.
 * Patient Spirit Your 'mini' WoH. Because WoH is so great, you don't want to spam it like a mad man; patient gets around that problem because of it's 1/4th speed. Use this pretty much on any target >50%. You could even try and use patient before spikes; and having the +120 heal midspike.
 * Protective Spirit While this skill used to be imba with VoD, it's not really great anymore. The best thing is it's duration. While it's not so great anymore; it's synergy with SB is still great, and it's free when you have glyph. You're not going to use this skill alot, but it pretty much gets around DP and is nice with glyph, so people still take it. Protspirit warrior's that need2frenzy mainly, targets with DP and against endurance warriors or when someone has SB and is being trained(it makes SB a suberb heal and makes it trigger at even lower health, thus warriors' critical attacks trigger SB).
 * Draw Conditions Spam this as a mad man against blind and weakness, keep your warriors happy. If running RC, I'd not really use it at poison alot, but ocassionally isn't bad either. Not really much to say about draw. Also; if their midline is good with blind; let the hammer call his spike and draw him on the combo so it actually gets through.
 * Infuse Health If they rendspike or your prot is bad; this skill is your man. You will probally touch it like 3 times a match only, or you're doing something wrong. You just need to have it in your skillbar to be able to take spike builds like rawrspike and kappaspike. Don't hit it too early; try to have the heal when the guy is about 20%, so you'll still a bit security. Don't infuse like a mad man, usually WoH will still save a kill. Also; be careful with your positioning when infusing, because if a warrior is close you can easily get killed after the spike.

Positioning & Random Tips
A few tips to mention.
 * You don't need to Aegis your warriors. Having it at both monks and your midline(mesmer, def midliner) is fine enough. The further you push the easier they interupt. If they're backlining and it's possible, ofcourse, nothing stops you from.
 * Against a powerblock mesmer, let your WoH monk push a little bit up and let the prot monk stand behind him. That means your WoH monk can clean warriors(draw, remove hexes) and keep them alive, while the prot can protect himself against powerblock mesmers.
 * Cancel cast alot(mainly prot vs powerblock). Losing the 5 energy from canceling is alot less energy then you'd lose on a pleak on your ass.
 * Be wary when using your skills. When they spike for example; the ranger could just be on you trying to dshot WoH. Watch the field and don't let it happen.
 * Have maximum distance between your monks. The further the monks are away from each other, the weaker their field becomes and they might lose sight so you can get aegis up. And it actually helps really well against pressure too, as they can't easily swap through your backline.

Pressure
Will be added l8er

Spikes
There currently is still going some rawrspike around, but most switched to pressure builds because of Lingering Curse lameness. Rawrspike mainly is the thing that going around, as as monk you should be aware of a few things against it.
 * Hammers. They fuck your prot up. If you are in AT, take balanced stance(+disciplined stance) to get around that problem, if not, have your midline or flagger fix him because magehunter's goes right through your guardian, which means you can't SB the spike.
 * Adrenaline. Warriors usually spike when adrenaline is loaded, so counting adrenaline usually is a very valuable skill, as you know when the spike is going to land and you have SB on the right target.
 * Positioning. Bad positioning equals kills. If you see someone; correct them and make them aware of it(midline usually is less aware of positioning then monks, so as a monk you can correct him if you feel like). This doesn't just count for spikes but pretty much counts against any build. The better the positioning, the easier it is to (pre)prot and the less damage you take.
 * Animations. Animations(and the sound of the skills) give away spikes really easy if they're a bit early timed, which the most obvious animations for spike teams usually are; Shell Shock(not really meta) and Ancestor's Rage(rawrspike and often on flaggers in other spike builds).
 * Rend Enchantments. This skill is a hell if they time it well. You can't really do much about it besides asking for an interupt; or just using SB right after they rended. However; with the latter you have a chance that most damage already got through. RoF quite helps when they're about to rend, as it won't be rended but triggered 5/6 of the times.

There also is another major spike variant, it's the w/r/e/me-e/n-rt spike build; I like to call it fagspike, I don't know the meta name of it as I've heard alot. Some things that should be mentioned against it, this doesn't count for monks-only.
 * Fix the n/rt. It's bar contains the most valuable skills of the entire spike. Pleaking on him makes his energy even more tight, so do it alot. You should also keep the rend/pain as much down as possible; as if you have a good prot they won't kill without it.
 * Draw/RC blind/weakness quickly. You have plenty of energy against fagspike, so use your energy to keep your warriors happy.
 * Don't do hard on a infuse. It's a spike build; they won't kill you after you infuse like a balanced/pressure build can.