Guild Wars 2

Hi there.

Many of you have already a cele armor and use probably Hoelbrak-, or Strength-, or Pack- runes, to boost your ele in a offensive way. I do that too. But lately I thought to use Monk runes again for more group support.

Think about it for a moment.

I play some open world contents with cele armor and zerk jewelry/weapons, like Tequatle or VineWrath. I do also pvp and wv3 roaming with full cele gear. In all those cases I am specialized in water and arcana too.

Both Elemental Enchantment (minor arcana trait) and Aquatic Benevolence (minor water trait) synergies well with the monk runes variant. Resulting in 25% more boon duration and 25% more healing for allies.

For example Elemental Attunement (minor arcana trait) last six seconds. And the heal increase for allies is also nice to have as an support class.

What do you think, and why would you (NOT) change to monk runes ?

In high end pve most people go berserker anyways. This game allows people to heal without having a healer in the party. The most optimal support builds are the ones that are designed to support yourself first and everyone else second. It’s healing your allies a bit, but it should not be a priority is where im getting at.

FrownyClown.8402:

In high end pve most people go berserker anyways. This game allows people to heal without having a healer in the party. The most optimal support builds are the ones that are designed to support yourself first and everyone else second. It’s healing your allies a bit, but it should not be a priority is where im getting at.

THX for your thoughts. I think that too for general pve.

Maybe I didn’t make my self clear. I know cele armor isn’t for dungeons, guild missions, solo and group pve. Instead I use it for zerg action with commanders, pvp and wv3 roaming. People die like flies there, even hard core guilds can’t prevent this. In such events healing becomes more powerful and some npcs can be healed effectively that way too. For example: Siege Carriers in SW can be healed, also can the (she) lord at stronghold.

I dont say every one should do that, just saying the ele with cele and monk runes can support much better then the other variations.

If you want to make like a d/d cele for large scale wvw you have issues with self-sustain. Alot of the time you will be more focused on trying to stay alive yourself instead of doing damage. Also, most people use water fields to sustain their groups. A cele build like that would work better for small scale group roams and stuff.

I play a celestial staff ele in wvw most of the time. I use traveler runes and a berserker weapon and sometimes switch to soldiers. With sigil of strength and bloodlust I can get back some of the damage lost from wearing celestial. I do perfectly fine in every dungeon and world event. I also have good heals and condition damage. Is there better builds out there, of course but this allows me to switch roles on the fly and I find it works pretty well in most scenarios.

If your intent of using monk runes I recommend full clerics or nomad in WvW with a sigil of benevolence/water and buy delicious rice cakes off the trading post. You will get such insane green numbers off everyone in a zerg battle its addicting. As someone who is in WvW all the time it would be awesome if there was a few ele’s running that build constantly.

Wolfmoon.2976:

If your intent of using monk runes I recommend full clerics or nomad in WvW with a sigil of benevolence/water and buy delicious rice cakes off the trading post. You will get such insane green numbers off everyone in a zerg battle its addicting. As someone who is in WvW all the time it would be awesome if there was a few ele’s running that build constantly.

This. It’s really fun, although I don’t know how useful it has been in a zerg set up. For funsies I went full Magi Armor (Healing, Vit, Percision) and Full Clerics trinkets with nomads weapons. If you use Runes of the Monk plus the Rice Ball, Benevolence and if you take the Soothing Power trait you can heal pretty well. My Soothing Mist heals for just over 800 a tic, swapping weapons heals for nearly 2k with Signet of Renewal, and I can burst heal for almost 5k just swapping into water.

But I don’t really think the heals are attributing much in a zerg setting, and when I ran in a small group roaming I was simply too squishy and picked off easy. Probably noamds gear may fix that, but often than not small scale fights are won by who deals the most damage the fastest, not who can sustain the longest.

Still, if you want to pretend like you’re a monk again, look into it XD It can be fun

Monk rune/any healing build has very little use in pve.

WvW is a whole lot different story, monk rune + cleric gear/rice ball food is aweasome and the heals can be impressive. Won’t do much in massive zergs but medium/small scale, healing ele is good.

The problem is that the more you go into healing power, the more you depend on others to kill stuff and if the dps players you roam with are not competent, heals won’t save it.

I personal find healing ele fun to play like once every 2 months for an hour or so, I just can’t play support and I hate to rely on other others doing dps sooooo WTB dedicated healer! :P

OP, I think monk rune is a decent choice if you are happy to play more support in wvw, especially since anet removed boon duration from traits, those 20% are even better BUT I woudln’t put them on my gear with strenght on it already.

Also, with xpac, we might get gear with new stats that would include boon duration/condi duration and you would probably regret changing strenght for monk runes.