Smiting Monk build : GW Submissions

An (E) after the skill means that it's an Enchantment. (ELITE) means it's an Elite.

Skills -
Zealot's Fire(E) - For 60 seconds, whenever you use a skill on an ally, all foes adjacent to your target are struck for 5-37 fire damage.
Retribution(E) - While you maintain this "Enchantment", whenever target ally takes attack damage, this spell deals 33% of the damage back to the source (maximum of 5-17 damage).
Balthazar's Spirit(E) - While you maintain this "Enchantment", target ally gains adrenaline and Energy after taking damage.
Divine Spirit(E) - For 1-9 seconds, Monk spells cost you 5 less energy to cast. (Minimum cost: 1 Energy.
Divine Boon(E) - While you maintain this "Enchantment", whenever you cast a Monk spell on an ally, that ally is healed for 25-61 points, and you lose 2 Energy
Blessed Signet - For each "Enchantment" you are maintaining, you gain 3 Energy, maximum 3-20.

Abilities -
Divine Favor - 12
Smiting Prayers - 12(+2)

The Theory -
Believe it or not, Divine Boon is the vital skill in this build. No points have been dropped into it. It doesn't deal damage, and yet without it there is no way this build would work.
Begin by casting Retribution and Balthazar's Spirit. Wait a few seconds for your energy to top out, and run through a mass of monsters - you want as many as possible on you.
Stop and cast Zealot's Fire, Divine Boon, and Blessed Signet. You should have almost full power and health at this point. Now you get to see why Divine Boon is such a vital part of this build - it has a 5 energy cost (reduced to 3 by Divine Spirit (-4) and Divine Boon(+2)), 1/4 second casting time, and no recast time.
Spam this ability like a madman. Because of Zealot's Fire, each time you cast this it damages the enemies around you and also heals you. The damage that gets through is causing you to gain more energy as well, allowing you to continue spamming this ability as long as neccesary.
Due to the mass of Enchantments on you, using Blessed Signet whenever possible will help you with your energy usage.

Variations -
This build takes up only 7 of your skill slots. The 8th is personal preference. Some favorites of mine are:
Shield Of Judgment (ELITE) - For 8-18 seconds, anyone striking target ally is knocked down, and suffers 5-41 damage
This ability helps prevent the foes from 'spiking' their damage.

Balthazar's Aura(E) - For 10 seconds, foes adjacent to target ally take 10-22 holy damage each second.
Another Enchantment to boost both your damage output and the effectiveness of Blessed Signet (depending on what runes/equipment you are using).

Channelling(E) - This is a Mesmer ability that gives you 1 power for each enemy around you every time you use a skill. This should keep you topped off on power for the first part of the battle, until less than 3 mobs are left.

Draw Conditions - If you are duo-ing (possibly with two of these builds) You can use Draw Conditions on your partner for the same effect as Divine Boon (1/4 casting time, 5 power (reduced to 3), no recast) and could be twisted with Divine Boon for 8 casts per second =)

I'm still toying with the build somewhat, but you can see the principle. I am guessing that once this makes it into mainstream, Divine Boon will be nerfed.

Well...you clearly haven't tested this at all. You can only have one elite spell in your bar at any time, with two excptions. You've either just captured one while having a different one equipped, in which case you lose it when you go back to town. You can also take one from your team mate with Arcane Mimicry, but that only lasts a short time and you can only take one. So, in other words, this build isn't viable at all.

[quote="raker"]Well...you clearly haven't tested this at all. You can only have one elite spell in your bar at any time, with two excptions. You've either just captured one while having a different one equipped, in which case you lose it when you go back to town. You can also take one from your team mate with Arcane Mimicry, but that only lasts a short time and you can only take one. So, in other words, this build isn't viable at all.[/quote]


Raker... why don't you point out the 2 elite skills he has in this build for me? I see one elite skill - in the part about adding a non-essential skill to the 7-skill build.

Here's a cool thought - why dont' you discover and post something useful. You posted once to let us know a wreckage site in a diff post was gone, and now here, trying to bash the smiting build (which you're obviously compeltely ignorant about)

So... how about you post something positive or complimentary for someone, and maybe even (gasp) contribute!

cheers

I'm still trying to find the second Elite skill...
If you had read the top of my post, and (E) after the name means Enchantment. This was just to point out how many enchantment spells are used in this build to demonstrate how effective the Blessed Signet would be (full effectiveness for your skill level in most cases).

I have in fact tried this build. I was debating whether or not to post it, as it will probably lead to it being nerfed.

When I try to cast Draw Conditions it says invalid spell target ? any ideas ? is this not for a solo encounter maybe ?

Draw Conditions requires an ally (Target Other Ally). You should be spamming Divine Boon instead of Draw Conditions.

I know akanon has demonstrated this build to me in-person but I can't remember what other skills he had on his bar. Maybe Life Attunement would be a good choice since you aren't doing any combat damage...

As for the elite slot, I would suggest either signet of Judgement or Shield of Judgement especially if dealing with foes that have knockdown.

BTW, for those wondering why spam divine boon: it has an incredibly low casting cost (which gives you divine favor bonus each time you cast it), has a 1/4 second recast time making it VERY spammable, and it heals based on your divine favor bonus each time so you're looking at 25-61+divine favor bonus each time you recast it. The recasting activates zealot's fire, and actually the divine boon might not even take place since you're recasting divine boon (don't know that one for sure). Regardless, healing every 1/4 second for 3 points and doing ~35 damage to everything around you is nothing to sneeze at. You could almost call this the "walking monk bomb" build!

Ah - thanks for catching that, elsimer.

Corrected the build - a big OOPS! Somebody give it a shot and post whether it's worth anything.

It works with any monk build actuallly. Good work I do this with E/Mo and N/Mo with slight variations against Melee monsters only.

This will not work against any mesmers... -=(

This build is genius! Awesome for farming or just all around kicking !@#$%^&*.

It works ALLRIGHT with a N/Mo with points in Smiting + Soul Reaping, but you really do need a few points in Divine Favor to get Divine Spirit to work, and to get more healing from Divine Boon.

This is DEF the build I'm going with for my Monk primary, Healer Smiter with a few points in Divine Favor. Can't wait to get to Lion's Arch and Droknar's

This build got me thinking of another type of tank crowd controller.
So far i havent gotten a whole lot of the skills for either class so there are probably better sets. But this is for a W/Mo and so far ive been able to kill mobs of 20 monsters (all were only 1 lvl higher than me) without having much trouble.

**Main Skills**

Healing prayers 8-10 (for mending to give regen of 3 and the higher the better for vigorous spirit)
Axe Mastery 10+ (this is for more damage with your axe and cyclone axe)

Best part it only actually requires 4 skills to work.
1. Mending (just to help incase things get out of hand)
2. Balthazar's Spirit (Optional part to increase smiting prayers to increase gains)
3. Vigorous Spirit (not to be confused with Live Vicariously the Enchantment version)
4. Cyclone Axe

Optional

Smiting Prayers 8+
Strength any amount

Sprint (helps to gather large groups)
Symbol of Wrath (with smiting prayers at 8 or more it does good damage to the massive groups surrounding you)
and any healing skill in case things start going wrong.

How it works is you put on the Spirit and Mending which effectively gives you NO mana regen. That is why we cant use Live Vicariously because a negative mana regen would eventually make it end and Vigorous Spirit works. But thats fine because it gets restored so fast once you get hit youll never notice. Then gather large groups of enemies (mesmer and ele types excluded since they dont group together that well.) and cast Vigorous spirit and symbol of wrath then use cyclone axe every time it recharges.
It can be somewhat slow but each time u use cyclone axe ull heal for 8-10(depending on healing prayers) for each enemy. Which means the more enemies the easier things get. Also being a War means that you get to take advantage of the heavy armor.

BTW i loved the original build but i prefer War main for the heavy armor.

**EDIT** forgot to add that this build becomes nearly invincible if you carry a good healing skills and then have a group of 5 or more long range type enemies that will do only 0 - 2 damage (they will give infinite energy and the damage they do will be fixed by mending alone and they stay far enough away youll never hit them)