The art of Monk precognition, Knowing what will happen...

Monk Precognition in PvP – how to go about beating time

First I want to clarify that I’m not an expert at this, this is merely an attempt to point out some general guidelines. The basic I idea here is to “know” how the damage situation will be for your team the next 3-5 seconds, adapt your healing accordingly, and thereby keeping your team alive in an effective manner. If any other more experienced healer whish to comment on this, just do so below and I´ll edit in your comment (and give credit where credit is due).

Fist we´ll look at some of the more common spells that probably will be hitting your team (note: this will be focusing on direct damage, not indirect mesmer tricks). Set up as this; skill name / activation time / recharge time

Chain Lightning / 2 / 20
Lightning Strike / 1 / 5
Lightning Orb / 2 / 5

Aftershock / 0,75 / 10
Obsidian Flame / 2 / 5

Warriors can not usually spike damage right away so their “damage curve” will be constant with smaller spikes in between. Attack speeds go from 1,33 to 1,75 sec (axe/sword----->hammer). EDIT ; The warrior shall not be underestimated, the warrior can and will do spike damage. But I´m less worried about that since it will (usually) require some kind of build up in terms of time (either energy regen or adrenaline charging) before that spike comes. During that phase of build up the monk can adapt his healing (while taking a note off the warriors secondary).

The basic thing to keep in mind is that when you, as a monk, see the health bar deteriorate on you or a team member, it means that someone in the other team took an action about 1 sec earlier. Now, you can´t know the exact skill setup of the enemy team…but what you do know is their primary and secondary profession, and what weapon they carry. This can in turn help you guess what you will be facing…and what type of damage they will deal.

The second important part to keep in mind is that when you react to a team-memer losing is health with an instant heal, that heal will take some time (your casting time) before it goes into effect. Let´s look at a few common healing monk skills;

Heal Other / 0,75 / 3
Orison of Healing / 1 / 2
Healing Touch / 0,75 / 5
Dwaynas Kiss / 1 / 3
Word of healing / 0,75 / 5
Healing hands / 0,25 / 25

So usually there will be a 1 sec delay between you clicking the heal skill, and the team member receiving the heal. During which time…the opponent could be loading another attack skill.

By knowing your own recharge time and your opponents attack time, and keeping an eye on the team mate who gets hit, you should be able to predict what’s going to happen to his health bar the next seconds. Adjusting to that could be to chain your heals, even though team mate A just got hit for just 10% damage of his life bar and healing with a single orsion would do the job…if the enemy has a lot of spike damage, that first 10% might be the tip of the coming iceberg…and at the same time with orison you could fire of heal other, to counter the damage that will probably come. If done right your second heal should arrive at the same time as another damage spike from the other team and thereby cancelling it out.

The time earned by keeping your heals one step ahead of the damage could be what makes a win.

*Hmm...seems like it´s time for me to go to work. I´ll try and edit in the stuff i missed later.* http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/forums/index.php?showtopic=2186