Spotlight on Skills #8
Originally Published by Sausaletus Rex
Every so often this column will shine the spotlight on a particular skill or set of skills for an in-depth analysis of just what that skill can do for you and the best ways to make it work. Keep in mind that Guild Wars is still under development and the information in this column is subject to swift and drastic change.
Back once again on that old new tip the Spotlight shines again. After a long absence we return and we return in style with a look at one of the most vital group of skills in the game. The skills that keep you vital, that is. Today we delve into the:
Anyone who’s played through the Pre-Searing tutorial is no doubt familiar with the skill Resurrection Signet, one of only two skills available to any character in Guild Wars. Once used it will bring a dead teammate back to life (In game, of course, don’t break out the razor blade and try this at home, thank you.) an ability that certainly can come in handy during a tricky mission or a pitched battle. The so-called rezsig has some ins and outs to learn – it’s a signet so it costs no energy and it’s usable only once unless you trigger a bonus that will cause it to recharge, for example – but it is only one of several options that a player or a team can use to restore their fallen comrades to fighting status. These skills are commonly referred to as rezzes, short, as you might guess, for “rez-urrection”. They’re all available through the Monk’s skill list and, therefore, to anyone who’s taken Monk as one of their professions. But with so many options, some rezzes will be better than others in a given circumstance, so some consideration must be paid to which rez is the best for your team.
And rezzes are, ultimately, team skills. Without them everyone on your team has but one life to give. With them you can potentially recover from disaster and advance towards you goal. A team, a group, without a rez skill is a team missing a vital safeguard against all the potential ills that can befall them in Guild Wars. Having at least one character in a group carry around a rez is as close to a necessity as it comes in this game. In PvE rezzes serve to avoid having your party wiped or so devastated by enemies that you cannot continue and are forced to the nearest lobby to start all over again. Therefore, they’re best kept on the characters that are least likely to be slaughtered in any encounter, which, depending on your party’s makeup is either the tank or the healer. The rezsig can work here but it’s a poor substitute due to its limited number of “charges” - although it can be recharged whenever you defeat a boss monster – so something a bit more useful is called for. In PvP a rez will, again, keep your party from meeting with ultimate defeat. Unlike PvE, though, where a map is a series of quick and brutal encounters, PvP tends to be one long, pitched skirmish. And one where the enemy is unlikely to give you much respite to use to recover. It depends on just what map you’re playing on, of course, but as rezzes tend to take an extremely long time to cast and are quite important in terms of deciding a battle they’re virtual magnets for interruption. Rezzes, then, need to be slipped past the enemy so there’s a premium on those rezzes that can be used quickly and safely to quickly get a teammate back up and into the fray. Here, rezsig has definite possibilities. It can only be used once, true, but as a signet it’s immune to a lot of measures that are used to cause interruption. They one use restriction isn’t that much of a problem as most battles will be decided before too much rezzing occurs. There might still be fighting but the outcome wouldn’t be in much doubt past a certain tipping point. No, the bigger drawback to rezsig is that it revives a target with little health and no energy so it takes some time before they can be effective again.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, though, there are certain fundamentals to the rezzes. As mentioned before these skills tend to have excruciatingly long casting times – the longest in game (No, we’re not counting Unnatural Signet. Just like the developers we’re forgetting it completely) so they benefit a lot from Fast Casting and other methods of dropping casting times. Most, however, have no recharge timer whatesoever. There are some notable exceptions to this but we’ll discuss those later. More important to note, though, is the issue of Death Penatly. When someone dies they’ll suffer from a Death Penalty or DP for short. It’s a percentile reduction to their maximum health and energy, so every time someone dies they’ll lose 15% of their health and energy, making them a bit less effective. That’s roughly seventy-two health and from three to five energy on a level twenty character that’s not using any items, so it’s nothing to sneeze at. Die again and you’ll earn another 15% penalty (There seems to be some sort of mechanism to prevent a character from earning too much DP too quickly, if you die immediately after being resurrected you seem not to gain any at all. I’m not entirely certain how this works, though, and have nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to support it.) up to a certain limit. It’s capped at 60% currently so you can only lose so much before further deaths don’t affect you. Rez skills don’t wipe away DP at all, you’ll need to earn a Morale Bonus or plain old XP in order to whittle away at it. So while rezzes will allow you to make up for mistakes those mistakes will still have some consequences. Still, death in Guild Wars is a setback rather than a dead-end. So let’s review the options available for a rez.
First, the archetypal rez, Resurrect.
When used Resurrect will cause the targeted ally to come back to life with no energy and a scant twenty percent of their health. That's a base of 96 health for a level twenty character with 480 health to begin with. That’s lessened by DP, of course, so it’s 82 health the first time you’re rezzed, 67 the next, 53 the next, and down to a minimum of 38 health when you’re brought back. They’ll be restored in the spot where they fell which can lead to a swift death so it’s best, if possible, to follow up Resurrect with an immediate infusion of health or a protective buff to prevent that teammate from falling too quickly. And that’s something you or someone else on your team will need to do because your newly revived teammate will be stuck regenerating their energy for some time after they’re brought back to life.
The obvious problem here is the casting time, which is a healthy eight seconds not including aftercast. It does have the advantage of being used from range and a fairly good one at that, so you can rez someone without placing yourself in immediate damage or making yourself too obvious of a target for interruption.
Resurrect is pretty much the baseline rez skill. It’s better in nearly every respect than the Resurrection Signet. The only real downside to replacing the rezsig is that Resurrect is a spell and can therefore be hammered by a Power Leak or other spell-based interrupt. Or, for that matter, Dazed or Arcane Conundrum which will turn that eight second cast into a twenty-four second cast. But Resurrect is a skill that most will turn to for their rez skill. It’s simple, it’s powerful, and it’s well suited to most environments. However, because it’s so general it’s often not the singular best rez for any given situation either. It’s a fine skill, in so many words, but there are better.
So, let’s look at another rez that might suit a particular need better, Rebirth.
Like Resurrect, though, it’s a rez skill you can use from range. When used your teammate will come back to life but they’ll come back to life standing nearly on top of your character. The drawback is that their skills will be locked - unusable until they recharge – for an amount of time that’s determined by your Protection Magic as well as being restored with no energy and twenty percent health. They won’t have the energy to use their skills for a while anyway as they’ll be stuck regenerating but no one likes to lock out their own skills. The benefit of this, though, is that it draws your teammate out of whatever situation they were in.
It’s of particularly good use in a PvE situation where a group of monsters might be hovering around or near their corpse. Using Resurrect or Rezsig will pop them back up only to have them aggroed right away without some careful planning and, perhaps, positioning. It’s best to wait until that pack of monsters has been cleared away first then so those rezzes get used after an encounter. Rebirth can be used as you regroup and are planning to retry that monster pack, teleporting your dead teammates out of harm’s way and to a distance where they can safely regenerate or even in the midst of a battle – especially at high Protection ranks – so they can get into combat quickly. It’s especially good for a tank, a Warrior or a Ranger who can function without skills by relying on their weapon as long as you can provide a bit of healing to get them out of one-hit territory.
In PvP it’s of less benefit as locking out skills is crippling a character. With the lack of health and energy whatever character you bring back will be out of the picture for a little while, at least. It can be useful, especially if your opponent’s in the habit of laying traps around a body or “corpse camping” but it doesn’t quite achieve the goal of getting a character up and back in the thick of things. It does, however, take a bit less time than other rezzes as it takes a mere – for a rez, anyway – six seconds to cast.
For Monks who are pumping up Protection or are interested in functioning best in PvE it’s a good, solid choice. It certainly offers more than the rezsig in those cases. Otherwise, the downside generally outweighs the benefits of using it.
Let’s continue on with another staple rez the WaMo’s dream, Restore Life.
The percentile restoration of health and energy here is a strong selling point. It’s linked to Healing Prayers so you’ll get roughly 26+(1.58xHealing)% health and 42+(3.16xHealing)% energy, letting that level twenty character return with up to one hundred eighty health and fourteen to twenty energy, depending on profession and before any items are added (And remember, this includes DP, too, so it’s a base of 408 health and 17~26 energy rather than 480 and 20~30 here.) with a Healing Prayers rank of 12. While that’s far from being at full functioning efficiency, it’s enough that they’re out of immediate danger of dying and have the energy necessary to immediately start using their skills. By throwing a heal or two at your teammate after the rez they’ll be able to head right back into the fight easily. Even unlinked you’re still at 26% and 42% respectively or one hundred and six health and seven to ten energy so they’re much better off in terms of their resources than with other rezzes.
The obvious use of this is in PvP where you want your team up and fighting as fiercely and as often as possible. But it’s here where the second point becomes a problem. Touch range means that your character needs to stand next to your teammate’s corpse in order to cast this spell. If you use it while you’re out of that range, you’ll run up into range. This means that it’s pretty apparent that you’re trying to rez your teammate and you might just have put yourself right into range of whatever it was that killed them in the first place. With that casting time of eight seconds, you’re very vulnerable to being interrupted or outright killed before you can get his rez off. That’s why, in PvP, this skill tends to be a favorite of Ranger/Monks and Warrior/Monks who have the defenses and protection to survive while using it rather than primary Monks. That leaves primary Monks free to concentrate on healing or defending or whatever else, too. Restore Life can still be interrupted no matter who’s using it, though.
In PvE it’s of less use for the same reasons that Rebirth is a good option. Using it puts you right in that pack of monsters that are attacking you. If you’re trying to recover after nearly getting wiped and want to avoid a fight for a bit, that’s not a good thing. And fights in PvE tend not to last as long as fights in a PvP setting, it’s a series of brief flurries rather than an extended conflict, so by the time a rez goes off it’s likely that the battle is nearly or almost over in the first place so getting a teammate back up during a fight is less important than getting one up afterwards. The benefit of Restore Life here, though, is that the range doesn’t matter when there are no enemies around and your teammate will spend less time regenerating so there’s less waiting before you move on to the next pack.
It’s a good rez to pack, even if you’re not concentrating on Healing Prayers. It takes forever to cast but so do all the rez skills. There are better options depending on the circumstances but that restoration of health and energy is hard to pass up.
Resurrect, Rebirth, and Restore Life are the most commonly used rezzes, and for obvious reasons, but let’s press on to the more obscure options with a rez which was, at one point, elite, Light of Dwayna.
Unfortunately, like Restore Life you have to be right next to a targeted dead teammate (It was once ranged but it lost that when it lost the elite tag) in touch range and once used, the “nearby” range isn’t very large at all. It’s something like the range of a Heal Area or a Divine Healing. Larger than a touch-range circle, but still just a small circle around your caster. If your team has enough bodies in that area to make reviving them worthwhile you’re probably having bigger problems than needing to rez your teammates.
The five-second casting time is about the only thing to speak of here. If you can figure out a way around the energy cost this is the truest rez with the lowest casting time. But it’s wiped out by the thirty-second recharge. Granted you, hopefully, won’t need to use this rez very much if you can get your team to all die in the same spot but try getting them and the enemy to agree. It’s marginally useful in PvE where after a tough fight you might just have some dead in close range of each other but if that’s the case you’ll also have the time to use a less costly and perhaps more beneficial rez at your leisure. If there are no enemies around then the only thing the casting time means is that you’ll spend a bit more time waiting to get people back up but you’ll have to wait for them to regenerate before moving on anyway so even if they die in a heap you’re not really getting much here.
By and large, a skill to avoid at all costs. There are far better rezzes for all but a handful of situations and those situations where Light of Dwayna shines are mostly out of your control and, therefore, rarely encountered.
Moving on, we reach a peculiar rez, Vengeance.
Being revived by Vengeance works like this. First the skill is cast, you’re revived – with, I’ll add, full health and energy, minus any DP you’ve suffered - and you’re enchanted with the Vengeance enchantment. For the next thirty seconds you can act just as you would when you were alive but when those thirty seconds are up you’ll be dead again. However, that death you’ll have when Vengeance runs out will not earn you any more DP than you already have. So, Vengeance gives you or a teammate thirty seconds more of life with all the health and energy they could hope for – they can hop right back in the fight as soon as Vengeance is cast. There is a danger here, of course, as because Vengeance is an enchantment it can be removed and if it is removed or otherwise canceled you’ll die prematurely.
However, there are ways of exploiting Vengeance – at least as of the last BWE – through relatively simple means. You see, when Vengeance ends it will “kill” you by dealing enough damage to reduce you to less than one hit point. A skill, the best is probably Divine Intervention, that would eliminate or avoid that killing damage will allow you to survive, even though the Vengeance enchantment would be gone. It’s not an easy thing to do, though, as having both Vengeance and a buff like Divine Intervention running for a while means you’re increasing the likelihood that you’ll get hit with removal. Effectively, you’d be rezzed at full health and full energy with no ill effect as long as you can manage to avoid that killing blow. Otherwise, you’ll be dead for a bit because Vengeance has a sixty second recharge timer.
In any event, Vengeance is a wonderful rez. It’s especially well suited to PvP because if the goal is to get your teammates back up and into the fight you can’t do much better than handing them all their energy and health. Thirty seconds isn’t a whole lot but it’s enough to make a difference. It’s enough that having a live teammate versus a dead one can make the difference between winning and losing and that’s not to be underestimated. Because you revive your teammate, albeit temporarily, at nearly full effectiveness you can use this rez to tip the scale of a battle in your favor. Many PvP maps have something called an auto-rez where anyone on your team who’s dead will be automatically revived. And that auto-rez happens at discrete and consistent intervals. It takes a bit of timing but you can squeeze the duration of a Vengeance into the time between auto-rezzes and have your teammate alive for thirty seconds and then come right back; all at full health and energy. Vengeance also has a low – by rez standards – casting time of four seconds so it’s quick to cast, which can make a big difference.
It’s also quite nice in PvP. Thirty seconds is about all your team should need to finish off a pack of enemies and once they’re gone you or someone else can use a “real” rez spell to revive your teammate before heading onto the next pack. Vengeance, again, lets them briefly participate in a battle at full readiness so when you want a teammate on their feat long enough to contribute this is the rez for you.
On to the last rez and on that’s going to be a bit familiar, Unyielding Aura.
It’s linked to Divine Favor and has that “more than four” mechanic – if you have more than four Divine Favor the spell will work all the time. If you have four or less there’s a chance that it will fizzle as you cast no matter what you do. With that sixty-second recharge timer you won’t get much of a second chance if it fails so it’s really only something for a primary Monk.
Being a maintained enchantment is both blessing and curse here. Curse because it will chew up your energy pool over time. You lose a pip of energy regeneration for each enchantment you maintain so if you use Unyielding Aura over the same duration as Vengeance – thirty seconds – you’ll have spent not five but fifteen energy on it. And it gets more expensive the longer you use it. It’s a blessing because you can cancel enchantments you’re maintaining at any time by double clicking them. This means you can be sure of timing things to end this enchantment before an auto-rez or make sure of the timing on a Divine Intervention type gambit.
Still, you’ll have to give up your elite slot for this skill. And only the most dedicated rezbots are going to want to give up their elite slot for a rez skill.
To sum it all up, rezzes are a basic, fundamental, and crucial part of any team. They’re an eraser for your mistakes and that’s an ability that cannot be overlooked. Which rez is best depends on circumstances. But that a rez is called for is not in doubt. Not every character in a party needs a rez, of course, but the party as a whole will benefit from spending a slot on that important skill.
Back once again on that old new tip the Spotlight shines again. After a long absence we return and we return in style with a look at one of the most vital group of skills in the game. The skills that keep you vital, that is. Today we delve into the:
Rezzes
Anyone who’s played through the Pre-Searing tutorial is no doubt familiar with the skill Resurrection Signet, one of only two skills available to any character in Guild Wars. Once used it will bring a dead teammate back to life (In game, of course, don’t break out the razor blade and try this at home, thank you.) an ability that certainly can come in handy during a tricky mission or a pitched battle. The so-called rezsig has some ins and outs to learn – it’s a signet so it costs no energy and it’s usable only once unless you trigger a bonus that will cause it to recharge, for example – but it is only one of several options that a player or a team can use to restore their fallen comrades to fighting status. These skills are commonly referred to as rezzes, short, as you might guess, for “rez-urrection”. They’re all available through the Monk’s skill list and, therefore, to anyone who’s taken Monk as one of their professions. But with so many options, some rezzes will be better than others in a given circumstance, so some consideration must be paid to which rez is the best for your team.
And rezzes are, ultimately, team skills. Without them everyone on your team has but one life to give. With them you can potentially recover from disaster and advance towards you goal. A team, a group, without a rez skill is a team missing a vital safeguard against all the potential ills that can befall them in Guild Wars. Having at least one character in a group carry around a rez is as close to a necessity as it comes in this game. In PvE rezzes serve to avoid having your party wiped or so devastated by enemies that you cannot continue and are forced to the nearest lobby to start all over again. Therefore, they’re best kept on the characters that are least likely to be slaughtered in any encounter, which, depending on your party’s makeup is either the tank or the healer. The rezsig can work here but it’s a poor substitute due to its limited number of “charges” - although it can be recharged whenever you defeat a boss monster – so something a bit more useful is called for. In PvP a rez will, again, keep your party from meeting with ultimate defeat. Unlike PvE, though, where a map is a series of quick and brutal encounters, PvP tends to be one long, pitched skirmish. And one where the enemy is unlikely to give you much respite to use to recover. It depends on just what map you’re playing on, of course, but as rezzes tend to take an extremely long time to cast and are quite important in terms of deciding a battle they’re virtual magnets for interruption. Rezzes, then, need to be slipped past the enemy so there’s a premium on those rezzes that can be used quickly and safely to quickly get a teammate back up and into the fray. Here, rezsig has definite possibilities. It can only be used once, true, but as a signet it’s immune to a lot of measures that are used to cause interruption. They one use restriction isn’t that much of a problem as most battles will be decided before too much rezzing occurs. There might still be fighting but the outcome wouldn’t be in much doubt past a certain tipping point. No, the bigger drawback to rezsig is that it revives a target with little health and no energy so it takes some time before they can be effective again.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, though, there are certain fundamentals to the rezzes. As mentioned before these skills tend to have excruciatingly long casting times – the longest in game (No, we’re not counting Unnatural Signet. Just like the developers we’re forgetting it completely) so they benefit a lot from Fast Casting and other methods of dropping casting times. Most, however, have no recharge timer whatesoever. There are some notable exceptions to this but we’ll discuss those later. More important to note, though, is the issue of Death Penatly. When someone dies they’ll suffer from a Death Penalty or DP for short. It’s a percentile reduction to their maximum health and energy, so every time someone dies they’ll lose 15% of their health and energy, making them a bit less effective. That’s roughly seventy-two health and from three to five energy on a level twenty character that’s not using any items, so it’s nothing to sneeze at. Die again and you’ll earn another 15% penalty (There seems to be some sort of mechanism to prevent a character from earning too much DP too quickly, if you die immediately after being resurrected you seem not to gain any at all. I’m not entirely certain how this works, though, and have nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to support it.) up to a certain limit. It’s capped at 60% currently so you can only lose so much before further deaths don’t affect you. Rez skills don’t wipe away DP at all, you’ll need to earn a Morale Bonus or plain old XP in order to whittle away at it. So while rezzes will allow you to make up for mistakes those mistakes will still have some consequences. Still, death in Guild Wars is a setback rather than a dead-end. So let’s review the options available for a rez.
First, the archetypal rez, Resurrect.
“Resurrect target party member” – Resurrect. Spell. 10 energy, 8 seconds casting time, instant recharge.
When used Resurrect will cause the targeted ally to come back to life with no energy and a scant twenty percent of their health. That's a base of 96 health for a level twenty character with 480 health to begin with. That’s lessened by DP, of course, so it’s 82 health the first time you’re rezzed, 67 the next, 53 the next, and down to a minimum of 38 health when you’re brought back. They’ll be restored in the spot where they fell which can lead to a swift death so it’s best, if possible, to follow up Resurrect with an immediate infusion of health or a protective buff to prevent that teammate from falling too quickly. And that’s something you or someone else on your team will need to do because your newly revived teammate will be stuck regenerating their energy for some time after they’re brought back to life.
The obvious problem here is the casting time, which is a healthy eight seconds not including aftercast. It does have the advantage of being used from range and a fairly good one at that, so you can rez someone without placing yourself in immediate damage or making yourself too obvious of a target for interruption.
Resurrect is pretty much the baseline rez skill. It’s better in nearly every respect than the Resurrection Signet. The only real downside to replacing the rezsig is that Resurrect is a spell and can therefore be hammered by a Power Leak or other spell-based interrupt. Or, for that matter, Dazed or Arcane Conundrum which will turn that eight second cast into a twenty-four second cast. But Resurrect is a skill that most will turn to for their rez skill. It’s simple, it’s powerful, and it’s well suited to most environments. However, because it’s so general it’s often not the singular best rez for any given situation either. It’s a fine skill, in so many words, but there are better.
So, let’s look at another rez that might suit a particular need better, Rebirth.
“Resurrect target party member, teleporting him to your current location. All of target's skills are disabled for 20-8 seconds. This spell consumes all your remaining Energy.” – Rebirth. Spell. 10 energy, 6 seconds casting time, instant recharge.
The first thing to notice here is that Rebirth is linked to Protection Prayers unlike the unattributed Resurrect. It’s useful without any Protection Magic but it gets better if you’ve increased your rank in that attribute.Like Resurrect, though, it’s a rez skill you can use from range. When used your teammate will come back to life but they’ll come back to life standing nearly on top of your character. The drawback is that their skills will be locked - unusable until they recharge – for an amount of time that’s determined by your Protection Magic as well as being restored with no energy and twenty percent health. They won’t have the energy to use their skills for a while anyway as they’ll be stuck regenerating but no one likes to lock out their own skills. The benefit of this, though, is that it draws your teammate out of whatever situation they were in.
It’s of particularly good use in a PvE situation where a group of monsters might be hovering around or near their corpse. Using Resurrect or Rezsig will pop them back up only to have them aggroed right away without some careful planning and, perhaps, positioning. It’s best to wait until that pack of monsters has been cleared away first then so those rezzes get used after an encounter. Rebirth can be used as you regroup and are planning to retry that monster pack, teleporting your dead teammates out of harm’s way and to a distance where they can safely regenerate or even in the midst of a battle – especially at high Protection ranks – so they can get into combat quickly. It’s especially good for a tank, a Warrior or a Ranger who can function without skills by relying on their weapon as long as you can provide a bit of healing to get them out of one-hit territory.
In PvP it’s of less benefit as locking out skills is crippling a character. With the lack of health and energy whatever character you bring back will be out of the picture for a little while, at least. It can be useful, especially if your opponent’s in the habit of laying traps around a body or “corpse camping” but it doesn’t quite achieve the goal of getting a character up and back in the thick of things. It does, however, take a bit less time than other rezzes as it takes a mere – for a rez, anyway – six seconds to cast.
For Monks who are pumping up Protection or are interested in functioning best in PvE it’s a good, solid choice. It certainly offers more than the rezsig in those cases. Otherwise, the downside generally outweighs the benefits of using it.
Let’s continue on with another staple rez the WaMo’s dream, Restore Life.
“Touch the body of a fallen party member. Target party member is returned to life with 26-45% Health and 42-80% Energy.” – Restore Life. Spell. 10 energy, 8 seconds casting time, instant recharge.
Now, the obvious difference here is two fold. First, this is the first rez we’ve seen that will revive someone with a significant amount of health and energy. Secondly, it’s a touch-ranged skill.The percentile restoration of health and energy here is a strong selling point. It’s linked to Healing Prayers so you’ll get roughly 26+(1.58xHealing)% health and 42+(3.16xHealing)% energy, letting that level twenty character return with up to one hundred eighty health and fourteen to twenty energy, depending on profession and before any items are added (And remember, this includes DP, too, so it’s a base of 408 health and 17~26 energy rather than 480 and 20~30 here.) with a Healing Prayers rank of 12. While that’s far from being at full functioning efficiency, it’s enough that they’re out of immediate danger of dying and have the energy necessary to immediately start using their skills. By throwing a heal or two at your teammate after the rez they’ll be able to head right back into the fight easily. Even unlinked you’re still at 26% and 42% respectively or one hundred and six health and seven to ten energy so they’re much better off in terms of their resources than with other rezzes.
The obvious use of this is in PvP where you want your team up and fighting as fiercely and as often as possible. But it’s here where the second point becomes a problem. Touch range means that your character needs to stand next to your teammate’s corpse in order to cast this spell. If you use it while you’re out of that range, you’ll run up into range. This means that it’s pretty apparent that you’re trying to rez your teammate and you might just have put yourself right into range of whatever it was that killed them in the first place. With that casting time of eight seconds, you’re very vulnerable to being interrupted or outright killed before you can get his rez off. That’s why, in PvP, this skill tends to be a favorite of Ranger/Monks and Warrior/Monks who have the defenses and protection to survive while using it rather than primary Monks. That leaves primary Monks free to concentrate on healing or defending or whatever else, too. Restore Life can still be interrupted no matter who’s using it, though.
In PvE it’s of less use for the same reasons that Rebirth is a good option. Using it puts you right in that pack of monsters that are attacking you. If you’re trying to recover after nearly getting wiped and want to avoid a fight for a bit, that’s not a good thing. And fights in PvE tend not to last as long as fights in a PvP setting, it’s a series of brief flurries rather than an extended conflict, so by the time a rez goes off it’s likely that the battle is nearly or almost over in the first place so getting a teammate back up during a fight is less important than getting one up afterwards. The benefit of Restore Life here, though, is that the range doesn’t matter when there are no enemies around and your teammate will spend less time regenerating so there’s less waiting before you move on to the next pack.
It’s a good rez to pack, even if you’re not concentrating on Healing Prayers. It takes forever to cast but so do all the rez skills. There are better options depending on the circumstances but that restoration of health and energy is hard to pass up.
Resurrect, Rebirth, and Restore Life are the most commonly used rezzes, and for obvious reasons, but let’s press on to the more obscure options with a rez which was, at one point, elite, Light of Dwayna.
“Resurrect all nearby dead allies” - Light of Dwayna. Spell. 25 energy, 4 seconds casting time, 30 seconds recharge time.
What might catch your eye here is the twenty-five energy cost, which is huge for any skill let alone one that takes five seconds to cast. But, it’s somewhat justified here because rather than reviving one teammate this spell will revive as many as are within range. It’s a rez bomb; basically, when it goes off you’ll have some live teammates. Teammates who’re at twenty percent health and no energy, of course with a bit of DP, but at least they’ll be moving.Unfortunately, like Restore Life you have to be right next to a targeted dead teammate (It was once ranged but it lost that when it lost the elite tag) in touch range and once used, the “nearby” range isn’t very large at all. It’s something like the range of a Heal Area or a Divine Healing. Larger than a touch-range circle, but still just a small circle around your caster. If your team has enough bodies in that area to make reviving them worthwhile you’re probably having bigger problems than needing to rez your teammates.
The five-second casting time is about the only thing to speak of here. If you can figure out a way around the energy cost this is the truest rez with the lowest casting time. But it’s wiped out by the thirty-second recharge. Granted you, hopefully, won’t need to use this rez very much if you can get your team to all die in the same spot but try getting them and the enemy to agree. It’s marginally useful in PvE where after a tough fight you might just have some dead in close range of each other but if that’s the case you’ll also have the time to use a less costly and perhaps more beneficial rez at your leisure. If there are no enemies around then the only thing the casting time means is that you’ll spend a bit more time waiting to get people back up but you’ll have to wait for them to regenerate before moving on anyway so even if they die in a heap you’re not really getting much here.
By and large, a skill to avoid at all costs. There are far better rezzes for all but a handful of situations and those situations where Light of Dwayna shines are mostly out of your control and, therefore, rarely encountered.
Moving on, we reach a peculiar rez, Vengeance.
“Bring target dead ally back to life at full health and full energy. After 30 seconds, or if this Enchantment is removed, the enchanted ally dies. Deaths while enchanted with Vengeance do not incur a death penalty.” - Vengeance. Enchantment Spell. 10 energy, 4 seconds casting time, 60 seconds recharge time.
Vengeance is an oddity because unlike the previous rezzes, it’s an enchantment and not an instant effect spell but also because it’s not a “true” rez at all. You bring your teammate back but only for a brief time after which they topple back over. So you’re not really reviving them at all, you’re just giving them a brief respite from death. It’s not something you’ll want to use, normally, if you’re interested in having a teammate back in perfect working order. Instead it’s something you use when you need them for that brief moment of time.Being revived by Vengeance works like this. First the skill is cast, you’re revived – with, I’ll add, full health and energy, minus any DP you’ve suffered - and you’re enchanted with the Vengeance enchantment. For the next thirty seconds you can act just as you would when you were alive but when those thirty seconds are up you’ll be dead again. However, that death you’ll have when Vengeance runs out will not earn you any more DP than you already have. So, Vengeance gives you or a teammate thirty seconds more of life with all the health and energy they could hope for – they can hop right back in the fight as soon as Vengeance is cast. There is a danger here, of course, as because Vengeance is an enchantment it can be removed and if it is removed or otherwise canceled you’ll die prematurely.
However, there are ways of exploiting Vengeance – at least as of the last BWE – through relatively simple means. You see, when Vengeance ends it will “kill” you by dealing enough damage to reduce you to less than one hit point. A skill, the best is probably Divine Intervention, that would eliminate or avoid that killing damage will allow you to survive, even though the Vengeance enchantment would be gone. It’s not an easy thing to do, though, as having both Vengeance and a buff like Divine Intervention running for a while means you’re increasing the likelihood that you’ll get hit with removal. Effectively, you’d be rezzed at full health and full energy with no ill effect as long as you can manage to avoid that killing blow. Otherwise, you’ll be dead for a bit because Vengeance has a sixty second recharge timer.
In any event, Vengeance is a wonderful rez. It’s especially well suited to PvP because if the goal is to get your teammates back up and into the fight you can’t do much better than handing them all their energy and health. Thirty seconds isn’t a whole lot but it’s enough to make a difference. It’s enough that having a live teammate versus a dead one can make the difference between winning and losing and that’s not to be underestimated. Because you revive your teammate, albeit temporarily, at nearly full effectiveness you can use this rez to tip the scale of a battle in your favor. Many PvP maps have something called an auto-rez where anyone on your team who’s dead will be automatically revived. And that auto-rez happens at discrete and consistent intervals. It takes a bit of timing but you can squeeze the duration of a Vengeance into the time between auto-rezzes and have your teammate alive for thirty seconds and then come right back; all at full health and energy. Vengeance also has a low – by rez standards – casting time of four seconds so it’s quick to cast, which can make a big difference.
It’s also quite nice in PvP. Thirty seconds is about all your team should need to finish off a pack of enemies and once they’re gone you or someone else can use a “real” rez spell to revive your teammate before heading onto the next pack. Vengeance, again, lets them briefly participate in a battle at full readiness so when you want a teammate on their feat long enough to contribute this is the rez for you.
On to the last rez and on that’s going to be a bit familiar, Unyielding Aura.
“Bring target dead ally back to life at full health and full energy. If you stop maintaining this Enchantment of the enchantment is removed that ally dies. Deaths while enchanted with Unyielding Aura do not incur a death penalty. (50% chance of failure with Divine Favor 4 or less.).” – Unyielding Aura. Maintained Enchantment Spell. 5 energy, 4 second casting time, 60 second recharge, 1 degeneration
The only elite rez, Unyielding Aura is pretty much a maintained enchantment version of Vengeance. The differences here are the casting costs – Vengeance is ten energy to Unyielding Aura’s five but Unyielding is maintained which drains another energy point every three seconds, and the fact that Unyielding doesn’t have a set duration.It’s linked to Divine Favor and has that “more than four” mechanic – if you have more than four Divine Favor the spell will work all the time. If you have four or less there’s a chance that it will fizzle as you cast no matter what you do. With that sixty-second recharge timer you won’t get much of a second chance if it fails so it’s really only something for a primary Monk.
Being a maintained enchantment is both blessing and curse here. Curse because it will chew up your energy pool over time. You lose a pip of energy regeneration for each enchantment you maintain so if you use Unyielding Aura over the same duration as Vengeance – thirty seconds – you’ll have spent not five but fifteen energy on it. And it gets more expensive the longer you use it. It’s a blessing because you can cancel enchantments you’re maintaining at any time by double clicking them. This means you can be sure of timing things to end this enchantment before an auto-rez or make sure of the timing on a Divine Intervention type gambit.
Still, you’ll have to give up your elite slot for this skill. And only the most dedicated rezbots are going to want to give up their elite slot for a rez skill.
To sum it all up, rezzes are a basic, fundamental, and crucial part of any team. They’re an eraser for your mistakes and that’s an ability that cannot be overlooked. Which rez is best depends on circumstances. But that a rez is called for is not in doubt. Not every character in a party needs a rez, of course, but the party as a whole will benefit from spending a slot on that important skill.
MMO Guru Network
