by Cerb

Guide originally written for GuildWarsGuru.Com

Introduction

Some of you may be familiar with the solo monk, often referred to as “invinci-monk”. However, for some others, it’s a brand new concept. I am writing this guide to share my knowledge with you, so you can hopefully exploit a monk’s potential as much as I can.

Note: In the guide that follows, I might refer to a Spell, Hex Spell and/or Enchantment Spell as “skill”, to make it simpler.

The Fundamentals

The invici-monk is built around a single spell: Protective Spirit.

As described, this enchantment will prevent an ally (including you) from losing more than 10% of your maximum health from a single attack or spell. So if you had 400 health, you couldn’t lose more than 40 health from a single attack, thus allowing you to be able to tank for 10 hits at 40 damage per hit, the last hit killing you. A long time ago, people were using Protective Bond instead (take only 5% damage per hit, but you lose energy), however, it was changed so that you lose more energy every time you take a hit (you’d lose 4 energy per hit with level 17 protection prayers).

If you lower your maximum hp, you will obviously take less damage per hit, considering you’re enchanted with Protective Spirit. How are we going to do this? Take a guess.

With 5 superior runes, your maximum health will be 105 at level 20 (480 base health at level 20, minus 5 superior runes, excluding vigor: 480 - 375), and you will also get a nice +3 bonus for all your primary attributes. There’s also a quest called Cities of Ascalon, received from Symon the Scribe, that will earn you a –50 health Grim Cesta upon completion.

With five superior runes and the above Grim Cesta, you will reach 55 health, unless you have a weapon with Fortitude mod, which you do not want, since the aim is to get your health as low as possible.

Obviously, monks have 4 primary attributes, so you’ll want to double up on a superior rune of your choice, it doesn’t matter which, but you should choose the cheapest on the market.

With 55 health and Protective Spirit on, you will be take 5 damage per hit, therefore making you able to tank 11 consecutive hits (10 hits actually, the 11 th would be killing you). However, you will be taking with you Mending and Healing Breeze, two enchantments that will give you health regeneration. With 10 pips (arrows) of regeneration (which you get with 9 points in Healing Prayers), you will be gaining 20 health per second (each pip is 2 health per second), which is more than enough to tank small groups.

The Basics

Okay, now we have three skill slots we are taking to keep you alive. But there are still five left, right? You’ll probably want to reserve a slot for a damage-dealing skill, huh? You want to kill stuff after all! Since you will be taking on groups and not single individuals for the most part, we need a skill that can damage a group of enemies. Shield of Judgement is a monk elite that will suit your needs perfectly; but you can also take Spiteful Spirit, a necromancer elite if you want to. The first one can be captured from monk boss Myd Springclaw in the Mineral Springs, an area near the Granite Citadel. As for the latter, it can be captured from Nighh Spinechill in Talus Chute (as well as a few other bosses), south of Camp Rankor, if you get a lucky spawn.

Some of you might think Balthazar’s Aura is a good idea, but it’s not. After the November 10 th, 2005 game update, monsters will flee from similar Area of Effect (AoE) spells, therefore making it a useless farming skill.

If you are using Shield of Judgement, you may also consider Zealot’s Fire, since both skills are from the same attribute. The latter deals AoE damage and is triggered every time you cast a spell on an ally (you) once activated. If you trigger it too quickly (for instance, casting using two skills in a row, without delay), it will cause the monsters to flee for a few seconds. You can prevent this from taking your time, and giving yourself at least a two seconds delay after casting a skill before casting another.

Now that you are self-sufficient in damage-dealing and life regeneration, you’ll need energy, as many of those skills cost a lot of it. You have four choices, and one of them will depend on your secondary profession. Usually, it would be best to combine two or three of them. First, we have Balthazar’s Spirit, which gives you a certain amount of adrenaline points (points contribute to adrenaline strikes) and 1 energy everytime you take damage, whether it is physical, elemental or spell damage. Next, we have Essence Bond, which is somewhat similar to Balthazar’s Spirit: you gain 1 energy everytime you are struck for physical or elemental damage (althought it only mentions physical damage). The last two skills are none other than Blessed Signet (you gain 3 energy for each enchantment you are maintaining, up to a certain maximum) and Bonetti’s Defense, a warrior stance (for a short amount of time, you have 75% chance to block attacks and gain 5 energy for each successful block).

The skill combination is entirely up to you, however I’ll give you some tips to help you make your choice.

• Bonetti’s Defense should be used in conjunction with Balthazar’s Spirit and never with Essence Bond, as it requires a high amount of adrenaline, which you get a bonus of from Balthazar’s Spirit
• If you are going to fight against enemies dealing elemental damage, do not take Bonetti’s Defense, as it’ll only work against melee attacks and arrows, therefore you will not be gaining energy against elemental damage
• Blessed Signet requires points in Divine Favor and you must be maintaining at least three enchantments for it to be any useful.
• Balthazar’s Spirit and Essence Bond is a nice combo, as you will be gaining two energy points per attack.
• Balthazar’s Spirit doesn’t require any attribute point in Smiting Prayers, althought it’d help if you are combining it with Bonetti’s Defense.

My personal favorite combinations are the following (may vary depending on the situation): Balthazar’s Spirit, Blessed Signet and Bonetti’s Defense

• Balthazar’s Spirit and Essence Bond
• Balthazar’s Spirit and Blessing Signet

Now you should be taking 6 to 8 skill slots, depending whether you are taking 3 skills for energy management or 2, and whether or not you are taking Zealot’s Fire. Here are a few skill suggestions you could fill your remaining slots with:

Equipment and Attributes

Attributes

Now that you have your 8 skills, we’re to talk about attributes. I can’t just give you numbers, since it’ll vary depending on the place where you’re farming as well as your build. I’ll definately help you with them, though.

First of all, your primary damage-dealing attribute should be maxed out, whether it is Smiting Prayers for Shield of Judgement (and optionally, Zealot’s Fire) or Curses, for Spiteful Spirit.

As for healing prayers, it’ll be either 9 or 13 total (counting runes and scalp bonusses, if appliable). To figure out which, you have to know the area. If you know you will face health degeneration hexes or conditions, go for 13 points (This way, you get +4 regeneration from Mending and +8 from Healing Breeze). Against a lot of degeneration, you might also want to consider adding Watchful Spirit to your skills. It is very important not to spend 13 points in healing prayers if you will not be facing any degeneration, because regeneration is capped at 10 pips, therefore you would be wasting many attribute points.

Protection prayers is up to you: it’ll only affect the duration of which Protective Spirit last, unless, of course, you bring another skill of the same attribute (like Guardian, for instance).

If you are taking Blessed Aura (smart idea if you’re using Shield of Judgement), invest a decent amount of points in divine favors. Even if you aren’t, all your remaining points should go there.

If you need points in a fifth attribute, lower your points from protection prayers and divine favor, and spend some here. Five attributes is a lot though, I don’t really recommend it unless it’s really needed.

Equipment

You should be wearing a full Ascetic set with five superior monk runes, one of each and double up on the one of your choice (take the cheapest, since runes don’t stack). Remember, your aim is to bring your health as low as possible, therefore don’t use a superior vigor. The ascetic set will give you a nice energy bonus, you shouldn’t be wearing anything else, since armor does not matter at all with this build (you’ll be taking 5 damage per hit whether you have ascestic or censor/judge’s).

As for the scalp, you should use the one corresponding to your highest attribute, to save points (if no attribute is maxed) or to maximize the effect (if your highest attribute is maxed).

I highly recommand you place your four different runes on your chest, arm, leg and foot designs, and the doubled one on your scalp (it’ll help if you have to change the scalp).

Right now, if I took Shield of Judgement and had smiting prayers as my highest attribute, I’d use a +1 Smiting Prayers scalp with a superior divine favor rune (cheapest on market), and I’d upgrade my chest, arm, leg and foot designs with healing prayers, protection prayers, smiting prayers and divine favor superior runes. Get what I mean?

As for the weapon, you’ll be looking for one with a longer enchanting mod, if you can afford it, a HoD +5 energy long sword with a 20% enchanting mod will be great, but if you can’t, don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal anyways. I personally use an Icy Dragon Sword of Enchanting with a perfect 20% enchanting mod, because I think it looks great, but really, 15% enchanting and up will do fine.

Earlier I mentioned the –50 health Grim Cesta from the quest Cities of Ascalon, well that’s the offhand you want to use. I also keep a –20 health offhand in my inventory, which I will use if I happen to die. With 15% death penalty and the –20 health offhand, my maximum health will be 13. With so little health, I’ll be taking 1 damage per hit, and with 10 pips of health regeneration, that’s no problem.

You can also get 8 health with 15% death penalty by switching a piece of your armor for the exact same but upgraded with a major monk rune rather than a superior. I prefer the –20 offhand for 13 health, but if you can’t find one, 8 health will work too. Perhaps you are wondering why you reach such a low amount of life after dying, shouldn’t it be 15% off your maximum health (55)? Well, no. The death penalty is calculated from your base health (480 at level 20). Here’s how it works:

• Base Health: 480
• Death Penalty: 15% (72 health)
• Maximum Health after 15% death penalty: 408
• Health substracted from base with five Superior runes: -375 (5 * -75)
• Maximum Health after 15% death penalty with runes: 33
• Maximum Health after 15% death penalty with runes and –50 offhand: 1 (theorically –17 from 33 - 50, but cannot have a negative amount of health)
• Maximum Health after 15% death penalty with runes and –20 offhand: 13 (33 - 20)
• Maximum Health after 15% death penalty with 4 superior runes,1 major and –50 offhand: 8 (-350 from the runes; 408 – 350 = 58; 58 – 50 from the offhand)

As for the damage you take per hit with Protective Spirit on, you take the integer from 10% of your total health (it’s not rounded), with a minimum of 1 damage (cannot take 0 damage if the damage is reduced by a percentage). Hence why you’ll take 1 damage per hit with 8 health (10% of 8 is 0.8, but you take a minimum of 1 damage), and you’ll still take 1 damage with 13 health (10% of 13 is 1.3, the integer is 1), and 5 damage with 55 health (10% of 55 is 5.5, integer is 5, but it’s not rounded, therefore 5 damage and not 6).

I hope you understand all of this stuff. Okay now, just a few more tips before you can finally start your training!

Thinking During Your Runs

How to think in battle is one of the most important aspects in the invici-monking. If you just follow a build, you won’t get any better. Give anyone your recipe for muffins, and the muffins will be just as tasty as yours. However, that person hasn’t learned to cook.

Unless you farm easy places for the rest of your days, you will come across though places with interruption-happy or enchantment-stripping enemies. You might have trouble at first, but you have to learn to deal with them. Once you have, that’s when you learn you’ve just gotten better.

You should study monsters in an area before going there so you know what you’re going to face. GuildWiki.org has a bestiary that will suit your needs perfectly.

• If you’re taking heavy damage and your health is running low, recast Protective Spirit and/or Healing Breeze. You will gain a bonus amount of health depending on the points you spent in divine favor. Sometimes, that small bonus will save your life.
• Protective Spirit should always be on. If it isn’t , you’ll probably die from one or two hits.
• If you kill most monsters from a mob and there’s only one or two left, you might not need to recast Healing Breeze. Save your mana for your main damage dealing skill(s). If you’re losing too much health, just cast it.
• If Healing Breeze wears off during a big fight, don’t panic, just re-cast it. If you get interrupted, you can recast Protective Spirit for the divine favor health bonus until you can successfully cast Healing Breeze.
• Don’t be scared to re-cast Protective Spirit and Healing Breeze during a battle. This way, if you get interrupted, you’ll most likely have time to recast them.
• Some monsters (like Aatxes from the Underworld) have only one interrupting attack. To prevent interruption, you can wait until they use it, then cast your skills freely until their skill is recharged. If there are too many enemies, you can also watch them graphically: as soon as they hit, quickly cast your skill.
• When running, to prevent a surround, don’t stop to cast your skills while two mobs from opposite sides are chasing you. If one group chases you from behind, you’ll be fine, however if you have one chasing you from behind and the other from front, you might be surrounded. Watch out for those kind of situations.
• While the 8/13 health builds might seem appealing, watch out for high health degeneration (burning for instance), as they give very little time to react.
• If you’re using Spiteful Spirit as your main damage dealing skill, cast it on as many different enemies as possible (make sure they’re close to each other too)
• Bonetti’s Defense will refill your mana in a matter of seconds against a decent sized group of melee enemies. However, try not to use it (nor Guardian) when Shield of Judgement is activated; you will block most your enemies’s attacks, and they won’t take any damage. It can also save your life when under very heavy damage (a large group of Smite Crawlers in the Underworld, for example), just spam it along with Protective Spirit and Healing Breeze.
• Place your most important skills in first slots for easy access, and the enchantments you are maintaining in the last ones. This way, you can quickly react using your keyboard when you have to.

Basic Training: Desert Griffon farming

A good place to start training as soon as you got the skills, equipment and runes is Augury Rock. Set your skills, your attributes and put on your equipment, then exit the town west to Prophet’s Path. You’re ready to solo Desert Griffons and Minotaurs.

There’s no best build for it, it’s all up to you now. Any secondary profession will do too. I’m going to go with Mo/Ele since I like the Shield of Judgement / Aftershock combination, but that’s just me. I’ll show you pictures of my run and explain my attribute/skill choice afterwards.

Once you get out of Augury Rock, cast your enchantments, followed with Blessed Signet. As you can see, I am wielding a 20% longer enchantments weapon. (must be one handed) and the –50 health Grim Cesta I mentioned earlier.

My attribute points were as follow:

• Healing Prayers: 9
• Smiting Prayers: 15
• Protection Prayers: 9
• Divine Favor: 10
• Earth Magic: 8

I was wearing a +1 healing prayers scalp for that run, but I should have been wearing a +1 smiting prayers one (forgot to switch :P). And I’ll repeat once more: there is no right and wrong build for this. The above build is the one I chose to use for that run, but any secondary profession works. I chose 9 points in Healing Prayers because you won’t be facing any kind of degeneration (poison, bleeding, mesmer or necromancer hexes), the 10 pips of health regeneration you’ll get from Mending and Healing Breeze will be all you need (remember, 10 pips is the cap).

Anyhow, as you can see from the pictures, Protective Spirit is always on when there are enemies around. I just ran straight for the Desert Griffons and made sure to never stop running and keep aggroing griffons until Rockshot Devourers stopped following me (they use an attack skill called Distracting Shot which interrupts your current skill and adds a 20 second recharge to it); it’s best to avoid them, I’m sure you don’t want them to interrupt your Healing Breeze or Shield of Judgement.

After taking the first group, I took on the second one. If the monk boss happens to spawn during your run, just ignore it, he takes way too long to kill and he’s not worth the time. Warrior one is easily killable though. That’s about it for the Desert Griffons run, there might be a few in the center, dispose of them if you wish.

Keep practicing this, and once you’ve completed a dozen runs without dying, you should be ready for the next step

Training Continued: The Underworld

If you succeeded the previous training, you should now be ready to farm the Underworld. It’s doable solo or 2-man (usually done with a necromancer), and I will teach you how to do the latter, since it’s not only twice as fun, but it’s also about five times faster, and you’ll get more drops from a 2-man team than solo in the end.

A commonly asked question here is how many ectos drop per run. Well, for a “smite run” (takes about 20-30 minutes), it’ll vary between 0 and 4 Globs of Ectoplasm per run. There’s also a lot of EXP to gain from there, as well as neat drops (namely rares Eternal Bows/Shields), I’d recommand bringing a key or two per run.

Before we begin, I’d like to mention that if you haven’t went through the basic training, you will most likely get killed here, to a point of wondering if it’s even worth trying. For those other readers who went through the first challenge, I shall go on.

I’m going to be teaching how to perfect the “smite run” (from Aatxes – beginning, to the Smite Crawlers), and I think it’s important you know who drops what. The Underworld is the home of Globs of Ectoplasm (referred to as “ecto”) and these are the reason most people farm this place. Only the Bladed Aatxes and the Smite Crawlers can drop them during smite runs, so don’t expect anything from Grasping Darknesses or Coldfire Nights.

Bladed Aataxe	Grasping Darkness	Coldfire Night
Smite Crawler	Dying Nightmare

Your secondary profession should be warrior for Bonetti’s defense, it will save your life countless times. As for your skills: Protective Spirit, Healing Breeze, Blessed Signet, Spellbreaker (Elite), Bonetti’s Defense, Mending, Balthazar’s Spirit, Blessed Aura. Your necromancer partner is going to use Spiteful Spirit to kill the mobs, and you’re going to be tanking.

You will also need a customized, max damage smiting rod (req. lvl 10 or less) to kill Dying Nightmares as soon as they pop up. Worth’s Holy Rod is a very good choice, as you get a neat casting and recharge bonus for Protective Spirit and it’s also cheap (you could find one for 5k or less in Deldrimor War Camp). You should be using the 55 hp build with two weapon sets: your main weapon with an enchanting mod and the –50 health offhand, and a smiting rod with the same –50 health offhand.

Your attributes should look like this:

• Healing Prayers: 13
• Smiting Prayers: 10
• Protection Prayers: 13
• Divine Favor: 13

You will be facing bleeding, so 13 points in Healing Prayers is a great idea (+4 pips from Mending, +8 from Healing Breeze). You are spending points in Smiting Prayers for two reasons: to deal full damage from smiting rod and to gain more adrenaline (Bonetti’s Defense will charge really fast with 10 points here). Protection Prayers only affects Protective Spirit’s length, so 13 points is a good number. As for Divine Favor, it’ll affect Blessed Aura, Spellbreaker and the bonus health you gain from it will help tremendously against a large amount of Smite Crawlers.

I took a few screenshots from a run with a very good necromancer partner, Mr Jerrypants, which is also Faithful Sno’s partner in crime for his UW-clearing runs. I can’t give a map of The Underworld, but you should get it from the screenshots (took at least one in each area), it’s pretty simple.

Important Information and Tips

• Cast Spellbreaker before aggroing Aatxes, if a Dying Nightmare pops up, switch to your second weapon set (smiting rod), and kill it; it should die from 2 or 3 hits. Watch out for those, they strip all your enchantments!
• Aatxes and Grasping Darknesses can interrupt your skills (Grasping Darknesses especially), don’t be scared to re-cast Protective Spirit and Healing Breeze even when their respective icons aren’t blinking.
• Ask your necromancer partner to use Sympathic Visage when you’re against a bunch of Grasping Darknesses if he doesn’t think about it, otherwise they can make you lose all your mana, preventing you from casting.
• Spiteful Spirit is triggered upon attacking, therefore using Bonetti’s Defense will not slow the damage down, unlike with Shield of Judgement. (However, it does slow down Sympathic Visage, if it’s on you)
• If you’ve got Aatxes or Grasping Darknesses hitting you, try to stand still and not to move towards unexplored grounds too much; it might trigger the apparition of a Dying Nightmare, and the chances you will succeed casting Spellbreaker against those beasts is very low (unless they’re out of energy)
• You do not have to cast Spellbreaker before aggroing a mob of Smite Crawlers; they cannot interrupt you, therefore if a Dying Nightmare was to pop up, it would be safe to use your elite skill, before finishing it off with your rod.
• Try not to use Bonetti’s Defense against small groups of Smite Crawlers (5 and below), it affects Sympathic Visage and doesn’t make it any effective.
• For your first runs, do not aggro too many Smite Crawlers, 8+ can easily kill you even if you have Protective Spirit and Healing Breeze on.
• To survive large groups of Smite Crawlers (9+), use Bonetti’s Defense as soon as it’s ready, and when it’s recharging, spam Protective Spirit and Healing Breeze everytime you can. A not-too-effective Sympathic Visage is much less trouble than a dead monk.
• Coldfire Nights are easy to kill; try to keep Spellbreaker on though. They will tend to spread out, making Spiteful Spirit half as effective, but if you stand still as soon as they’ve entered your aggro bubble, they shouldn’t move too much.
• Another thing I’ve noticed but cannot confirm yet : it appears that if you move a lot, under the Coldfire Nights’s aggro, they will cast Maelstrom (if they do, move out of it, else you might as well be dead); whereas they wouldn’t if you stood still.
• Tip from Mr Jerrypants: Communication between the players is the key to successful/fast runs. You can use a voice-chatting program like Ventrilo or Teamspeak, normal chat or even the in-game radar, but you’ll have to communicate with your partner. Explaining your aggroing patterns is very important too.

Conclusion

I truly hope this guide helped you with your invinci-monk! I put a lot of effort into writing it, and I hope you’ll learn stuff from it. Remember: no build is wrong. There’s always place for creativity in a game like Guild Wars.

I would like to tank a few buddies of mine: Faithful Sno (one of the best american monks out there, he also gives UW training classes for both monks and necromancers, check out his thread in the Ventari’s Sell >> Services forum, it’s worth it!), Mr Jerrypants (best necromancer in the world!) and Cancel Skill (great friend, always nice to play with him – we’re going to release a 3-man SF farming video soon!).

I might update the guide from time to time adding little details here and there, and I plan to add a running section too! Until then, go practice invici-monking!

To leave your comments and feedback on this guide visit the forum thread: Comprehensive Solo Monk Guide.

- Cerb