Ultimate Monk Gladiator

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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 in this article are given without particular order.

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 decided to take this route." All his power lies in this phrase. He chose the path along which he walks, and must not complain."

PvP versus PvE

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

PvE character has access to anything but must spend time and energy interacting the world to get what he needs. PvP character has most that is needed for battle to start right here and right now. The speed comes at price of freedom. PvP character is less customizable.

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

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 Eenemy

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 Guardian unlocked all normal and captured all elite skills available in The Mists.

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.

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

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 at the next 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. This is what you should use you prestige armor and prestige dyes for.

When you start a new RA session in a few seconds before the battle starts look at your team in first person view mode. If you see someone who wears expensive closes it may mean one of three possibilities:
a) this is an experienced player who may take a leadership of the team and lead it to a victory;
b) this is an experienced player who aren't willing to be a leader but may be given complex tasks;
c) this is not a warrior but someone who has other important things to care of; the possibilities are limitless: a kid with almighty "My Ma Credit Card", gladiator title bounty hunter, usual PvE player having a look at RA or something else.

UMG takes everything into attention in the battle and constantly modifies his tactic to suit it the best.

Good armor choice is a unique combination of one-two prestige armor sets dyed to make a resulting combination of 1-2 total colors. For God's sake please show a good taste of style of you appearance and ask someone whom you trust to judge your look.

Group C of previous list tend to choose a predictable combination of armor and dye, usually it has all peaces from the same armor style dyed black.

Not only your armor matters, weapons and shields may also have prestige look and should net be ignored.