Ultimate Monk Gladiator

Ultimate Monk Gladiator (UMG) — a monk designed to participate in Random Arena (RA) battles with maximum possible effectiveness. Because of great balance of Guild Wars there is no such thing as perfect character for any in-game task. So in particular there is no perfect RA monk and cannot be. However there are basic concepts of what can increase your effectiveness there and what can lower it. The goal of this guide is to enlighten everything or near everything related to RA monks.

Please note that you never know what you will face after you start a new battle session, so you will never know what part of your build is the most important. Materials here are given without particular order.

Another important thing to turn your attention on is that there is no objective definition of "good game". Winning is what everyone wants, but you may lose yet still have a good game, or you may win but have a poor game. The difference between a good game and a bad game lies within your heart and nowhere else.

The point of the guild is to light most of monk's abilities, needed for good game.

Accepting Destiny (by Paulo Coelho)

"The moment he starts walking, a warrior of the light recognizes the Way. Each rock, each bend welcomes him. He identifies with the mountains and brooks, sees a little of his soul in the plants, animals and birds of the field. Then, by accepting help from God and God’s Signs, he allows his Personal Legend to guide him towards the duties his life has reserved for him. Some nights he has nowhere to sleep, on others he suffers from insomnia. He discovers the suffering of certain lost illusions, and the despair of bestowing too much expectation on important moments. "Such is the Way," thinks the warrior. "It was I who decided to take this route." All his power lies in this phrase. He chose the path along which he walks, and must not complain."

Getting Started

You don’t need much to become Ultimate Monk Gladiator. Only one thing is required: a battle spirit. Whether you have it or not you will be told by your heart and nothing else. The player who is not a gladiator within leaves the arena immediately. Those who care about the rewards of battle more than the battle itself leave the arena soon after getting what they needed or getting bored.

True gladiators come to arena to take a look at it but fall in love at once. They fight because nothing is better that a good fight for them. Everything that they want lies in the eternal perfection of themselves in battles. Matching themselves against another gladiator in the arena in a good fight is only thing that makes them happy.

A gladiator is someone with the above unique state of soul--no matter how experienced he is. However the state of an Ultimate Gladiator is the almost unreachable state of a warrior who achieves perfection in fight. Hundreds and thousands of hours in training lie between these two.

Thus, so if you willing to be an Ultimate Monk Gladiator, go create a new PvP monk, take three henchman with you and visit the Isle of the Nameless, which is north from Balthazar's Temple. Be patient there, learn all what trainers want to teach you there. Then defeat all masters that are offensive there to learn their techniques of fighting.

These basics are enough to start Random Arena. However for advanced practice visit Training Arena followed by Zaishen Challenge and Zaishen Elite. Knowledge there is invaluable.

PvP versus PvE

The title of this chapter should be read as "Player versus Player versus Player versus Environment". :)

The PvE character has access to anything but must spend time and energy interacting with the world to get what he needs in order to succeed in battle. The PvP character has most of what is needed to start battle immediately, without interacting with the world. This speed comes at price of freedom. The PvP character is less customizable.

The best advice is to use a PvE character as a main UMG and many PvP characters for training.

Heal, Protect and Smite!

These are the purposes of monks in a battle field. The monk role means support and usually it is very important support. Having no monk in a ream is a serious handicap. To be effective one should know his place in the team and to know it well. Of cause you may place an accent on your secondary profession, however being primary monk means having monk runes and divine favor, which are intended to support a team.

Healer. This role is most popular among monks not only because they like it but also because it is highly demanded by other players. A full half of the monk's skills and attribute lines provide healing: healing prays and divine favor. However, healers are usually very weak and are thus primary targets of all spike classes, i.e. classes capable of dealing a very high amount of damage in a single attack (more about spikes later). A perfect example of the healing monk is the Master of Healing on the Isle of the Nameless.

Protector. Since this role is usually combined with some healing it is popular too. The protection monk really shines when combined with healing monk, since this combination is extremely difficult to defeat. His skill and attribute line is Protection Prays. One should be aware that there is no better target for shutdown mesmers than monk, especially if he specializes in protection. A perfect example of the protector monk is the Master of Enchanting on Isle of Nameless.

Smiter. Such monks are based on the smiting prays line and utilize the fact that holy damage ignores armor. Smiters are not so popular in random arenas because of the relatively small team size; however when implemented correctly, the smiter can still be a viable part of a team. Moreover, since most enemies expect you to be a weak, harmless monk, that you can deal lots of armor-ignoring damage to them could be a big surprise. This role is well represented by Smiting Monks team in Zaishen Challenge.

Suggested Build for Starting Healer

Profession: Monk Mesmer
Skills: Word of Healing, Orison of Healing, Dwayna's Kiss, Healing Touch, Mend Ailment, Distortion, Inspired Enchantment, Inspired Hex.
Attributes: Healing Prayers: 11 + 1 (head) + 3 (rune), Divine Favor: 10 + 1 (rune), Inspiration Magic: 9, Illusion Magic: 3, Protection Prayers: 3.
Weapon: Healing staff with fast cast and fast recharge.

Stay back from fight. Use Orison of Healing mainly but try not to over-heal to save energy. Use Word when anyone has life level below 50%, Healing Touch on self or if someone is close. As soon as anyone will be under condition cast Mend Ailment, for many conditions watch for its recharge and recast as soon as it is available. Inspired Enchantment and Inspired Hex are not only very useful on their own but also give you back their energy cost, try to use them as much as possible. In case of getting attacked activate Distortion and run away healing yourself with Touch. If you inspired a slowing hex or protection enchantment use them at your advantage.

Suggested Build for Starting Protector

Profession: Monk Mesmer
Skills: Reversal of Fortune, Guardian, Mend Ailment, Mantra of Recall, Signet of Devotion, Protective Spirit, Inspired Hex, Divine Boon.
Attributes: Divine Favor: 11 + 1 (head) + 3 (rune), Inspiration Magic: 10, Protection Prayers: 10 + 1 (rune).
Weapon: Protection staff with fast cast and fast recharge. Another good option is +30 life sword and +30 life off-hand.

Stay back from fight as all casters without heavy protection do. Always keep Divine Boon on you. Right before the fight starts cast Mantra and recast it every 20 seconds as soon as previous one has gave you energy; do not recast it too early, though. Reversal of Fortune and Guardian are your main spammable spells. Each has good healing side effect through high divine favor and divine boon, while providing protection from future damage for a couple of seconds. Use them as often as your energy allows. Mend Ailment, Inspired Hex and Protective Spirit are used to counteract conditions, hexes and spikes respectively. Every 7 seconds use Signet of Devotion as free 100 health giver.

Suggested Build for Starting Smiter

Profession: Monk Mesmer
Skills: Signet of Judgment, Bane Signet, Signet of Rage, Spear of Light, Banish, Healing Breeze, Mending, Mantra of Inscriptions.
Attributes: Smiting Prayers: 12 + 1 (head) + 3 (rune), Healing Prayers: 8 + 1 (rune), Divine Favor: 2 + 1 (rune), Inspiration Magic: 10.
Weapon: Insightful Smiting Staff of Fortitude for life and energy.

Playing Smiter is like playing healer, who is able to shut down any attacker, since they tend to target monks. Right before battle activate Mantra of Inscriptions but you should regenerate all energy back before you start to use your spells. Always keep it up by recasting when necessary. At the very start of fight stay back where monks are usually standing. You are not a tank. Start to act like usual healing monk occasionally using Mending and Healing Breeze so the enemy will be fooled by your acting like a typical healing monk. Find a right target, usually an attacking warrior. Don’t do it too late, you can use healing during recharge time of your signets. At the moment of his attack cast Spear of Light to release its bonus damage to attacking targets. At his next attack activate Bane Signet to release knockdown with its damage. As fast as possible add even more damage with Banish, Signet of Rage, and then Signet of Judgment to knockdown him once more. If your target was trying to attack you try to increase distance by running while he is knocked down. Save Signet of Rage for warriors, or use it for extra damage. Use Healing Breeze as needed. Interrupt key spells and skills that have long activation times with Signet of Judgment. If you see someone in opposing team is near death, delay its using to interrupt resurrection.

Know Yourself

Ultimate Monk Gladiator can everything and has no limits. To accept this is to become the one. To be UMG is act perfect. Having doubts is limiting you abilities.

Perfect warrior is only perfect because he mastered use what he has by the best way. Every action may be done too earlier, at the right time and too late. UMG knows the difference.

Resting from battle Ultimate Monk Gladiator spends hours of free time mastering every single skill and each of endless skill combinations that he possesses. While you can do this in real RA match it is not recommended to do it there. Your team is alive players and expects the best from you. Better use training grounds instead. Isle of the Nameless available at any time and have more then anyone could ever need including artificial teams to train with. Use it wisely.

Know Your Enemy

No doubt that to defeat opposing team first you need to know it more or less. Actually better you know strong and weak sides of every opponent more chances you have to win.

It would be better if you play each game class at least once. Unless you have significant experience with a given class it is recommended to pass Arena Training, Zaishen Challenge and Zaishen Elite courses with this class. Pick classes one by one, load standard templates and pass training courses. Harder in training easier in battle!

Remember again, good gladiator knows what other players do, what helps them and what they fear.

Key things Ultimate Monk Gladiator monitors is skills of opposing team to counter, hexes and conditions to remove, long casting spells to interrupt, predictable spikes to care about, preparation skills to alert your team and even psychology of actual players to play on. ;)

Guild Wars utilizes famous balance concept "Rock, Paper, Scissors". Each skill has counter-skill. Every action has counter-action. For everything your enemy does you may find a counterpart. The key of victory is not in using an ultimate skill, there is no such one, but in using the right skill in right time.

Skill Set

To win at RA you don’t need specific skills, any good set of skills should work. "Good" in this case means been tested well and proving to work as supposed.

However Ultimate Monk Gladiator never stops mastering each skill and each set of eight skills available in the game. You have no limits in changing your second profession and selecting exotic skill sets for battle. First master the skill sets, that was chosen by many, then use every possibility to research better combos. This is how currently popular builds was invented.

Yes, it means that Ultimate Monk Gladiator unlock all normal and capture all elite skills available in The Mists.

Healing

In the game balance healing is counter-action to damage dealing. This trivial concept has not so trivial conclusion. Since there are several damage dealing techniques, there are several healing techniques.

1) Fast Healing is used after spikes of damage. The purpose of it is to restore one's life to maximum as fast as possible before enemy attempt to do another spike. The price of speed is its cost. Average arena fighter has about 500 life, more or less. To restore it from near zero back to maximum monk usually needs to cast several healing spells at once. This means large energy consumption and may lead to its complete lack, making you useless monk. Each UMG knows it and usually uses one energy management technique or another.

2) Slow Healing is used in long battle where forces of competing sides are near equal and the battle becomes a test of patience. The only hope of enemy team is ether to force you to spend all your energy on healing, to deal more damage over time than you can heal, or simply to kill you to stop constant health restore of your side. You can do good Slow Healing when you are able to constantly restore good amount of life over time as long as needed.

3) Health Regeneration. The slowest of all healing is used to counter health degeneration. Good health degeneration master is very guileful fighter. His constant degeneration could damage more health in total than spike spells or constant adrenaline pressure of warriors. If you face a team with several life degenerators then condition and hex removing with low cost Slow Healing spells are not enough or may be not efficient. Of cause health regeneration spells can be used for Slow Healing too. The difference between Health Regeneration and Slow Healing is in that spammable low cost healing spells are more suitable to drive the accent of your monking from one party member to another, and regeneration spells provides more total life.

4) Zero Cost Healing should be used all the time when no extensive healing needed. Don’t waste your energy to heal back each bit of life drop even if your teammates cry for your to do so. Good spikers usually start with low damage dealing to force opposite side to waste some of their energy on healing or simply to waste some important skills which will be recharging when spike occurs. Your can use healing signets, spell cost decreasing enchantments, native health regeneration after combat or even allow your party to heal themselves.

5) Self Healing. Some spells have different effect when applied on yourself. Even more, some spells works different when applied to hexed or enchanted target. Some spells requires touching. Some spells may be used only on self or only on other ally. You should consider all this facts when choosing whom to heal. In hard times Ultimate Monk Gladiator must decide who will die due to a lack of healing. Only he knows the answer, he is ready to make such decision whether it should be he or someone else. Dead party members can be resurrected or they may resurrect you. All depends on the situation on the battlefield.

6) Over-Healing should be avoided at all cost. If you have restored one's life from 50% to 95% the job is done, no need to waste energy and charges of your spells to heal every pixel of life bar unless you expect spikes.

7) Team Healing is used in cases when whole team is losing health at the same time, for example because of traps, massive degeneration or area of effect spells. Healing whole team with usual spells could be very energy and time consuming. If your secondary profession is elementalist consider to use Glyph of Lesser Energy + Heal Party + Heal Party combo every 30 seconds in a battle, because it gives massive health to whole party for just 7 total energy, which you will regenerate during the time of its casting.

Enchanting and Other Protection

Wise man says: "Battles are won by preparation". Guild Wars has so many defensive magic that it is divided into several schools. Stances officially are not magic, however they aren't much differ. Each school of protection magic differs by the way of its implementing and thus the way to counteract it. Monks on arena usually expected to use not only some kind of self-protection but a party protection too. Even if Ultimate Monk Gladiator uses only healing magic he has a skill or two for self-protection because everyone usually targets monks first.

Any action you are going in battle can be canceled by interruption. This tactic has many aspects itself and will be described later.

1) Enchanting is probably the most effective and then most frequently used defensive method. Enchanting means that a character becomes improved by a spell for a limited time of forever. Protection Prays are mostly enchantments. Enchanted character can be identified by a yellow up arrow at the right side of his life bar. If monk casts an enchanting spell from his primary profession the effect of Devine Favor triggers and the target is healed in addition. This feature is very important for any protection oriented monk.

Because of its great popularity enchantment is usually expected by both sides in the battlefield. The main way to counteract it is using disenchant spells, usually maintained by Mesmers and Necromancers. Ultimate Monk Gladiator knows that using enchantment is very predictable and constantly monitors what enemy monks and some other classes are doing to effectively use both enchanting and disenchanting whenever possible.

2) Spirits are summoned allies from other planes to aid you in combat. Usually they are widely used by Ritualists and Rangers, however they may be used by monks who aren’t much dependant on secondary profession and have a free skill slot or two. Protection spirits could be a good choice in this case because they provides effects similar to popular protection enchantments but are invincible to disenchant spells and give protection to everyone in their area of effect. The drawback of spirits is their vulnerability to damage. Once a spirit has killed his summoner should spend quite a lot of time and energy if he wants to replace it. Summoning spirits by monks is very unpredictable action and can be accomplished in the heat of battle in the back line without a notice.

3) Ward Spells are exclusive to Elementalist profession. They create area of influence that cannot be removed or avoided while its target stays inside. Monks can use Wards as a great alternative backup protection especially against warriors partied with disenchanting necromancers or mesmers, who usually love to attack monks.

4) Shouts are another kind of protection that cannot be removed by any mean. Moreover, shouts are instant and cannot be counter-acted even by interruption. Since they affect all allies in the range of earshot, Untimate Monk Gladiator could choose 1-2 of them for backup party protection.

5) Stances are bonuses working much like shouts with one exception that they affect only their user. As well as shouts stances cannot be prevented by any way unless they meet their limitations. Due to their incredible protection effects they are widely used by monks on arena in cases of being attacked. Good example of such stance is Dark Escape, which is very popular among PvP monks now.

6) Chants are very similar to shouts, but are used exclusively by Paragons. Unlike shouts chants have long activation period and thus can be canceled by interruption. Chants are a new addition to Guild Wars by Nightfall. Many paragons showing outstanding defensive class were seen in arena, however potential of chants as a backup protection for monks is yet have to be realized.

Smiting

Usually intended to heal, monks also have an ability to show some teeth, and these teeth are sharp. Completely ignoring armor smiting prayers are a big surprise for any attacker of monk forcing it ether to run back or die trying to kill the monk first. Though most direct damage smite skills do good damage to 100 armor stand, compared to damage of Elementalist's spike spells on it, monk offensive skills have ether high energy cost, big recharge cost, or both. Offence-only monk could be effective in some cases, however among arena monks smiting prayers are usually used as a compliment to healing or protecting.

Healing / Smiting hybrid monks do less amount of health restoring per time than standard medics however they are able to seriously harm any warrior, who dares to approach them without appropriate support. When not being attacked their direct holy damage could be a nice addition to team spike as well.

Protection / Smiting hybrid monks usually do indirect holy damage through their teammates. Such smiting skills enchants target with additional holy damage, converse their damage to holy type, reflect damage back to attacker or do similar things. For example popular smiting pray Zealot's Fire damages all, who is standing near your targeting ally, while you frequently cast spells on him / her.

Making Conditions and Their Removing

Guild Wars has many kinds of negative effects, which can affect characters. However conditions seem to be the most popular of them. Each profession have one or several skills, that cause conditions. They usually are cheap, easy to reapply and very effective. Blind or weakened warrior is useless warrior; dazed casters are just crying children; bleeding, burning, poisoning and disease really kill people; deep wounds greatly prevents effective healing; and crippling negates running. This is not surprising that many arena fighters are built around conditions and heavily depends on keeping their targets under conditions until death.

A player under a condition has a brown down arrow at the right side of his life status bar.

Removing conditions is another job of monks, even more, sometimes the rest of your party can heal themselves (as most of RA builds) but strongly demand condition curing as fast as possible. To satisfy this role monks have more than enough condition removing skills with different positive side-effects (not counting usual healing from divine favor).

So that means that Ultimate Monk Gladiator always considers to equip a condition removing skill before going to arena. When no emergency healing or protection required you should remove conditions as fast as possible. Since most such spells are from protection prayers skill set the best is to have special weapon switch for it with 20/20 protection wand and 20/20 protection off-hand. See equipment chapter for detailed fast casting weapon description.

Hexing and Hex Removing

Hexes are another group of negative effects, which every monk should be ready to counteract. As conditions are usually favored by melee and range attackers, hexes are tools of spell casters, especially mesmers and necromancers. Unlike conditions most of which are side effects of attacks, most of hexes are independent spells. It has many conclusions, hexes are more expensive than conditions, they have longer recharge and casting times, and they can be interrupted as other spells. The good side of this class of effects is that hexes usually very powerful and last long.

As hexes are widely used to completely shutdown others, you should constantly pay attention to statuses of your teammates. A hexed player has purple down arrow at the right side of his life bar. Unfortunately you cannot see under what negative effect other player is, unless he calls it, so watch at what others are telling you.

As well as in other cases fast cast weapon is recommended to effectively clear your team from hexes.

Resurrection

Among those who play in arenas for a while there is an agreement that some kind of resurrection skill is a must have for every serious fighter. You may customize your character as much as you want but once you have any resurrection skill equipped you already are a valuable team member.

There are many resurrection skills differ by cost, activation time and power. The most effective and most popular of them, Resurrection Signet, has the shortest activation time in the game and restores 100% health and 25% energy. The only problem with it is that you may use it only once in arena battle. To be able to resurrect unlimited amount of times monks have a nice list of restore life skills.

Unfortunately since resurrection are usually expected from you as a monk when someone in your team is killed all enemies who can will look for you to interrupt your easily to interrupt long casting time resurrection skill. If you don’t have any way to deal with the interruptions better take the Resurrection Signet or may be even don’t take any rebirth at all, because monks have many other skills that could be more important.

Perfect example of one of the most effective resurrect combos in arenas is Glyph of Concentration + Restore Life. It can only be interrupted at the start, and onece you have finished, your teammate is brought back with almost full energy and health. Another such example is Glyph of Sacrifice + Restore Life. However, this one adds 30 seconds to resurrection skill's recharge time.

If you have good equipment with fast cast of all spells, you may try to use Resurrect spell, followed by healing, as more simply alternative, useful when there is no interrupters around.

Energy Management

All normal monks in normal state have 20 energy to spend on their tasks, usually with additional 20 on staff and armor. The cheapest spells cost 5 energy, the most expensive - 25, and some spells can take all your remaining energy. If needed you may increase your energy pool significantly by proper equipment, however many arena fighters prefer to tune their equipment for more important things: defense, life and fast casting.

In neutral situation most monks have 4 points of energy regeneration, represented by right arrows at energy indicator, usually called "pips". Each pip of energy regeneration means one point of energy regenerated in 3 seconds. Therefore, average monk has 40 energy to spend, regenerated in 30 seconds.

Most monks skills cost more energy than is regenerated during there skill-cast end skill-regeneration time. For example please look at typical healing skill, Orison of Healing. It costs 5 points of energy, activates in 1 second and recharges in 2 seconds. If you cast it as frequently as possible, then every 3 seconds you lose 5 points of energy and regenerate 4 of them back, resulting the lose of 1 point total. More expensive skill takes even more energy when used consequently. Moreover if you count only activation time of any eight healing spells, then you will find that casting all of them leaves monk with empty energy pool unable to do anything, save for running away from enemies crying "I have 0 energy of 40".

To handle this situation without a panic you should cast your spells with enough pauses to regenerate all energy back (for example Orison of Healing can be safely cast once for each 4 seconds).

However Ultimate Monk Gladiator usually uses one or several energy management techniques, allowing him to cast all needed spells forever without regeneration breaks even with maximum fast cast equipment. Here is most frequently used of them.

Glyph of Lesser Energy. Unlinked elementalist skill, reducing the cost of two next spells by 15 points each. It works the best when followed by two expensive spells, however even you cast only 5 energy spell it still saves 5 points of energy for you.

Glyph of Energy. Unlinked elite elementalist skill that is more powerful version of Glyph of Lesser Energy, however working with only one next spell, but recharging twice as fast.

Divine Spirit. Divine favor enchantment, reducing the cost of all monk spells by 5 points for short period of time. Unfortunately it has 60 seconds recharge time, but you may handle it with Glyph of Recharge or Echo.

Air of Enchantment. Works almost like Divine Spirit but recharge in 8 seconds and affects only enchant spells.

Offering of Blood. Necromancer elite spell. Instantly gives you from 8 to 18 energy for 20% of your health. If you have 500 total health, it takes 100 points of it, which can be easily healed, for example by Signet of Devotion or another monk. As result you have nice backup battery, recharging every 15 seconds.

Peace and Harmony. Elite divine favor spell. Gives +1 energy regeneration for moderate period of time, restoring 1 more point of energy each 3 seconds.

Channeling. Inspiration magic enchantment. Gives you 1 energy for each enemy "in the area" every time you cast a spell. Channeling may be a bit tricky to use, but works well when is used properly. "In the area" is a zone about half of your aggro circle. This enchantment in random arena works with the most effectiveness when opposite team is completely alive and is fighting rather closer to you. As result it gives you back some of energy lost for casting spells.

Power Drain. Inspiration magic spell. It has two important uses that make it very popular: it interrupts an enemy spell casting, and it gives you from 1 to 25 energy if the interruption is successfully done.

Mantra of Recall. Elite Inspiration magic enchantment. Another very popular and very effective energy management spell, favored among monks. It gives you from 10 to 22 energy when it ends, normally after 20 seconds.

Boon Signet. Elite divine favor signet. Recharges every 5 seconds and when used, gives you 2 points of energy for each enchantment of targeted ally, no more then 6 points. Very popular among protection monks.

Blessed Signet. Divine favor signet. Gives you 3 energy for each maintained enchantment. For example if you use one instance of Mending, it reduces you energy regeneration by 1, causing 1 energy "loss" for each 3 seconds. Blessed Signet's casting + recharge time is 12 seconds, so during this time you will "lose" 4 energy from Mending but get 3 from the signet. Usually all monks, utilizing maintained enchantments fix energy loss with Blessed Signet.

Signet of Devotion and Signet of Rejuvenation. Divine favor and healing preyers respectively. This signet does not cost you any energy, but heals as well as spells. For example at level 13 divine favor and level 14 healing prays, using both on active ally restores 216 health and you regenerate 4 points of energy during 3 seconds of casting time. It actually equals to casting Orison of Healing two times in 11 seconds time range.

Ether Signet. Inspiration magic signet. Instantly gives you from 10 to 18 energy if your current energy level is below 5...9. Very good energy management skill, unfortunately recharging in whole 60 seconds. It can be fixed with mantra of signets, mantra of inscriptions and some other recharge skills.

Another energy management technique is built around energy hiding and maximum energy equipment. Read respective chapters for all details.

Interrupting

If you ask any arena monk what he hates the most, probably you will get one of the following answers:

• Melee attack (warriors, dervishes, assassins).
• Interruption (mesmers, rangers, warriors)
• Mass degeneration (mesmers, necromancers).

All these threats are bane for each monk, however nothing else can disable an unprepared monk better than constant skill interruption.

As its name says interruption cancels skills if it is implemented right in time of their activation. Not all skills have activation time, but those that have all are potential targets for interruption.

From victim's point of view interrupting looks like this. You start casting a long activating spell, say Remove Hex with its 2 seconds. This is displayed as a progress bar in your interface, allowing you to see how well you are doing. Then suddenly the progress bar becomes purple, you finish the casting, the skill starts recharging, however its effect doesn’t occur. You are interrupted.

You are able to cancel using a skill during its activating by pressing Escape button, or running away, however in this case the skill will be recharged unlike when you are interrupted.

From point of view of those who interrupt, it looks like this. Say, a mesmer, looks who is in opposite team pressing Tab and looking at class abbreviations. He stops when he finds a monk and usually casts a degeneration hex with a cover hex. Usually after this the monk is starting to cast a hex removal or healing spell with big activation time (usually 1 second or more is enough). Then as soon as possible the mesmer casts an interruption spell, when he sees the skill activation progress under victim's life bar, causing the monk to stop his casting, usually attempting to cast another spell. The task of such mesmer is to prevent all casting of the monk, making him useless in the battle.

Another good way to interrupt you is knockdown, widely using by many close combat characters and elementalists.

There are two ways to deal with interruption:

1. Skills with short activation time
2. Skills that prevents interruption

Also you may just run out of enemy casting range, however this is not always possible. Usually it is a matter of adapting to arena configuration and a situation on the battlefield.

Choosing skills for your next arena battle, pay special attention to their activation time. It is impossible to interrupt instant skill or even a skill with 1/4s activation time. Unfortunately monks have only few such skills. Here is the list of the most useful ones during being attacked by a shutdown character:

• Contemplation of Purity (1/4s)
• Glimmer of Light (1/4s, elite)
• Infuse Health (1/4s)
• Protective Spirit (1/4s)
• Reversal of Fortune (1/4s)
• Shield of Absorption (1/4s)
• Shielding Hands (1/4s)
• Purge Conditions (1/4s)

When playing a protection monk keep in mind that you may freely spam 1/4s protection spells to heal yourself and your allies through divine favor.

If you have 40% chance to half the casting times, then many your 1s or 3/4s spells will be almost instant as well.

Many interruption skills affects only spell, so sometimes while being attacked by shutdown mesmer you may use all signets without any problems, laughing at his face when he loses energy for the interruption.

Some actions don’t have fast alternatives. Good example is resurrection. In this case you may use special interruption preventing skills like Glyph of Concentration, Mantra of Concentration or others. E.c. casting Glyph of Sacrifice with Restore Life on just killed ally could be very depressing act for enemies. Note that such skills can prevent interruption, however they do nothing to knockdowns.

Preventing knockdowns are rare on arenas, this is probably why the knockdown tactic are so effective against casters. However still there are several ways to protect yourself from it. Common ones are Ward of Stability and Balanced Stance.

Another thing to watch for is Dazed condition, which causes you to be interrupted every time when you are attacked at time of spell casting.

By taking a right secondary profession you may interrupt others as well, however keep in mind that this will be hard, because as a monk you usually need your allies to be selected, and to interrupt you need to select a foe.

Spikes and Their Counters

Dealing a lot of damage in short period of time are called "spike" in arena, probably because this action actually looks like a spike on Score Chart (see it in game menu). This style of damage dealing is preferable if you can kill someone before he can be healed back to full life. The back side of spike skills is their high energy or adrenaline requirements, long recharge times, exhaustion or other side effects. As result spike spells usually gives less total cumulative damage in a whole battle then some other more simple spells.

Monk is a unique profession that has many useful anti-spike skills. Most frequently used of them are: Protective Spirit, Life Bond, Protective Bond and Life Barrier. Casting any of these skills on ally before it is attacked by a heavy spike usually is enough to prevent all possible troubles.

Using Vital Blessing on top of another spike protection skill will guaranty the success of defense because of great increasing of total life on target.

Experienced monks also use Infuse Health in "1" key to instantly heal spike victims; however effective use of this skill requires some good reaction.

Equipment

Gold means nothing for UMG, he leave only to perfection himself. However he need gold for a reason.

There are no small points in battle, everything matters. One single point of health can save you life, you may miss one single point of energy to cast a healing spell on your ally and save him, small fraction of second of skill recharge may lead you to killing you opponent before he will be healed by enemy monks.

It is not the willing of Ultimate Monk to use the best equipment -- he must use the best to survive in arena.

Fortunately, "Rock, Paper, Scissors" balance concept works there as well. Higher attributes comes at price of life and energy.

Mastering your skill sets you should note what you will benefit most of. Knowing this Ultimate Monk Gladiator works hard to get enough gold for his experiments. He is not greedy snob accumulating money for nothing useful, he is a scientist who needs big investments for life-saving research, he is an explorer who needs gold for organizing a long expedition to unknown lands. Perfect Warrior needs a perfect weapon to realize his potential.

One thing Ultimate Monk Gladiator should remember. Even the best sword is just a peace of metal in wrong hands. It is your abilities what makes it the best. Guild Wars is designed so that any item could be beaten by right skill: basic spike spells negates any +life, basic healing spells negates any +attributes, "enchantments last longer" means nothing if enemy disenchants you in no time and so on. However when used right each item attribute is vital, like one additional point of life can save you from organized enemy spike to be healed back to full life and turning lose into victory.

The wins are not made by items, and not even by skills. The spirit of warrior is all you need.

Speaking in particular UMG experiment with all kinds of unique and collector monk's weapons, off-hands, all runes, insignias, upgrades and other.

Fast Cast Weapon Set

Guild Wars is action game, based on "those laugh well who shoots first" concept. When you enter an arena and the action begins it ends only after a win of one of two sides. Usually you have only very limited time before someone in your team will be killed. Your team must be first who kill all who oppose, and as a monk you are always response for too fast death of your allies. Guild Wars is a race where start is beginning of match and finish is killing all others. The first who has reached the finish wins the match and takes prizes.

The job of monks in this race is keeping opposite team at the start of the race, the imaginary state where your team is at full health.

There are two important kinds of speed in a race: average speed and momentary speed.

At the end of a track, near finish, a runner must use a second breeze to do a spurt: increasing his momentary speed as much as possible. When his teammate is about to be killed in the next few seconds Ultimate Monk Gladiator casts healing or protection spells as soon as possible. He knows that at the same time his enemy is trying to finish the teammate before he will be healed back to full life. That one who is faster wins this little competition. In this case it is a battle between activation time of monk spells and time that opposite team needs to finish its job.

All other time the runner in the track is working on constant keeping as big average speed as he is able to keep for the whole match. Ultimate Monk Gladiator has hit the balance between using his skills as often as possible and saving breath for the final spurt.

Momentary fast casting needs only skills with as short activation time as possible. Average fast casting needs both short activation and recharge time.

Except obvious choosing skill with short activation times all you can do to reduce it is:

• Weapons, reducing activation time of spells. The most effective, easy and popular way to fast casting. Typical example is "Halves casting time of Healing Prayers spells (Chance: 20%)", usually referred as "HCT Healing (20)".
• Glyph of Sacrifice and Glyph of Essence. Make next spell instant. Because all glyphs have 1 second activation time, they have very limited uses for monks, usually for instant resurrection.
• Choosing mesmer as a primary profession and monk as secondary. Mesmers are unique casters because of there fast casting attributes and sometimes make better healers than monks.

Increasing average casting speed usually is a bit more complicated task. In basic frequency of recasting a spell is limited only by its activating and recharge time. However in long run it is also affected by not so obvious things: energy management, running and defending.

Here are all ways to reduce recharge time of skills:

• Weapons, reducing recharge time of spells. E.c. "Halves skill recharge of Healing Prayers spells (Chance: 20%)", referred as "HRT Healing (20)", or "20/20 healing" if it has reduction of activation as well.
• Recharge time reduction skills like Glyph of Renewal, Mantra of Recovery, Serpent's Quickness and others.
• Duplicating skills with Echo and Arcane Echo.
• Morale boost. Recharges all skills instantly. (Unfortunately doesn’t occur in random arenas).

The bottom line is that the best way to increase your casting speed using equipment is using 20/20 wand with 20/20 off-hand weapon.

Max Life Set

In global any RPG game is a battle of life bars. The battle is won by those who will be first to decrease opponent's health level to zero. Skills are just what makes this value comparing interesting: everyone can use skills to damage other's health or to protect own vitality. All Guild Wars skills are designed for this more or less, even if this is not obvious.

This vita-centric thinking leads to "the biggest health wins" Utopia, no doubt. For example, simple Life Bond spell when working halves incoming damage, thus effectively doubling health of your bonded friend. However even in this case base health actually is what makes this skill useful.

If Ultimate Monk Gladiator chooses "The Way of Vita", then he is able to achieve the maximum of 670 base health:

• 480 - core health at level 20
• 40 - full set of Survivor insignia (head + torso + legs + arms + feet)
• 50 - Rune of Superior Vigor
• 40 - four Runes of Vitae
• 60 - weapon set (e.c. hale staff of fortitude)

Prestige

If you think you are important in the world you waste invaluable self energy needed for battle to feed your pride. If you think you are important in GW you have a weakness in arena. If you care about self importance in arena you act selfish and ruin team play.

Ultimate Monk Gladiator knows this thing and uses it for his advantage. Ability to identify weak targets in opposing team may lead you to a victory in the match.

At the other hand prestige look also has its value. To win random team must act like a team, not like a group of undead monsters speeding over a field. One player in a team must be a leader. Usually standing in the back line of battle monks have a very good opportunity to monitor the whole situation and can make a great team managing. However, unlike friends in your guild people of your random arena team know nothing about you as well as you know nothing about them.

In armies of all times and all nations leaders were distinguished by their uniform. Having a prestige look may mean being an experienced player who knows the game and may give valuable commands in battle.

To be a leader or not to be one Ultimate Monk Gladiator should decide by himself. Each way has its advantages and disadvantages.

Leaders should care about self importance trying to force other members of the team to listen to them. They constantly worry about what others think about them, how they must act, what impression they produce. Sometimes all they care in battle is do others like them, do others respect them and do others admire them. At first, being a leader means high responsibility and more work. It is not as easy as it looks from distance. Another use of prestige is making your enemies to fear you, playing on their feelings and imagination.

Being ascetic doesn't always mean being poor and pitiful. If a warrior can give up his feeling of self importance, he gets two important things. The first is release of energy which his illusion of self greatness feed on. The second is appearance of free energy that is enough for penetration to the sphere of second attention, the stance in which it is possible to see the real greatness of Universe. In the battle sphere of second attention allows warrior to know what others did, are doing and going to do as well as what he must do. It is a stance of warriors in minutes of great danger when you know exactly what to do, but cannot describe how you have found an exit when it is all over.

Being ascetic without second profession wearing starting PvP armor dyed grey is a great way to foolish your enemy to your advantage. Playing fool you lose nothing but win important battle initiative by surprising opposite side in key moments and forcing it into doubts. Your precious stuff and rare titles have better use when you need to form a party in PvE, team arenas or other places.

Good Tactics Against Typical Opponents

Unless you want to spoil your fun with reading a walkthrough first time you are playing a campaign you never know what skills will be used by monsters and how they act. This element of surprise makes playing it interesting. When you re-play the campaign you are ready for each battle and it makes you surprisingly effective, for example you don’t take hex remove if the next area has only warrior monsters.

If you came to arena after passing a campaign you may feel yourself lost. You never know what the next match will be like, which skills enemies use. Real players never fall into a behavior model like computer-AI monsters do and not even balanced with your abilities as monsters in campaign are balanced for you to be able to defeat them.

However a good arena match is not a total chaos: there are many typical situations on it. To be effective you must know what to do in each usual scenario. To help you with this Isle of the Nameless has many masters who are willing to tell you how you can handle each situation, to show you how they handle any of your damage dealing builds or to test your monking abilities.

The second possible practice is training arenas, where you may be invited by The Master of Paths. Upon completing this test you get the right to train in Zaishen Challenge arenas.

In Zaishen Challenge Ultimate Monk Gladiator have an ability to prove his guard skills against another set of typical offensive opponents. Winning fights against any 5 of 6 total teams will unlock Zaishen Elite training arenas, where you may face the same teams with increased difficulty because of random team selection and growing opposing party size.

Master of Healing

This trainer reflects the behavior of a typical healing monk, which you may meet in arena. If you are set up as a healer then you should act like he does since he does it very well. To see how he handle things hire a single Zaishen Fighter henchman in temple of Balthazar and come close to the master while looking attentively at what skills he is using when.

The main tactic of any healer is to over-heal all damage, done to him or any of his party members, maintaining energy at good level. Hexes can be quickly dispatched with fast recharging Remove Hex and Contemplation of Purity.

Master of Healing is perfect at this task. To actually kill her you need to bring tons of raw damage or a good interruption + degeneration mesmer as support.

Master of Enchantment

Through the effective usage of protection prayers this trainer demonstrates impressive defense technique against usual direct damage attackers: warriors, elementalists, rangers and their kinds. His combat style is a good example of common protection monk, the second most popular monk role in arenas.

The purpose of a good protector is reducing gained damage as much as possible and healing the rest of it. Probably absolutely all protection monks have high divine favor for strong side-healing effect of their protection casting.

When engaged by an attack-based fighter like warrior, Master of Enchantment casts Guardian to negate half of incoming attacks, absorbs large part of the rest with Reversal of Fortune with Shielding Hands and heals all life drops with Healing Breeze and Watchful Spirit.

In case of 90-100 points spike damage skills the master demonstrates a beautifulness of Protective Spirit, combining fraction damage negating skills with fixed amount damage negating skills, Reversal of Fortune in this case.

To be able to defeat him one needs to bring some kind of indirect damage like life degeneration conditions and hexes, interrupt skills or even knockdown, energy denial skills, or shutdown skills like daze and silence.

"I Will Avenge You!" Warriors

These warriors could be the hardest team for monk to beat because warriors usually are natural enemies of monks. Each IWAY Zaishen Warrior uses this skill set:

1. Eviscerate
2. Executioner’s Strike
3. Penetrating Blow
4. Disruptive Chop
5. “I Will Avenge You!”
6. Rush!
7. Charm Animal
8. Resurrection Signet

These skills are designed to unload a high damage once a warrior has built enough adrenaline. Once their pets are dead the warriors call IWAY and start to build adrenaline even faster. The most annoying part of such enemy is Disruptive Chop that frequently interrupts your key skills.

Fighting IWAY team is a perfect example of “monk vs warrior” duel which is very common on arenas. You can easily survive this mess by proper use of protection prayers, for example Aegis + Guardian + Reversal of Fortune combo. Take fast casting weapon set for this fight or warriors will interrupt and shutdown your key skills leaving you without any defense. The actual killing should be done by your other team members, for example elementalist heroes with Ward Against Melee.

Obsidian Flame Elementalists

Obsidian flame is a very common skill in random arenas, so this team can give you a great practice of fighting against earth elementalists.

Zaishen Obsidian Spikers are elementalists with monk secondary and use the following skill set:

1. Glyph of Energy
2. Obsidian Flame
3. Earth Attunement
4. Ward Against Melee
5. Heal Area
6. Mend Ailment
7. Remove Hex
8. Resurrection Signet

Their tactic is simple each 15 seconds they do coordinated spike of 4x 100+ damage armor ignoring obsidian flames at the weakest target, damaging it with normal attack in between.

Countering them with monk is very easy task if you follow any anti-spike monk technique. Also simple staying next to them will surely heal you a lot because of strong healing from their Heal Area.

Ward against melee makes warriors less effective in this fight than any casters.

Zaishen Obsidian Spikers also are perfect targets for interrupt practice if you have such skills.