User:Zaq/Skills that need some love

Skills That Really Need Some Love
These are some skills that, while they don't usually make most users' lists of "worst skills ever," are either underused or underpowered. Some of these need love from Anet, some of them just need love from you.

Glimmering Mark

 * Pros: AoE blindness, not easily countered by condition removal since the blindness gets reapplied constantly.
 * Cons: It's an Air Magic hex, one of only THREE (one of which cannot be used with this since it's also elite), so it's damn near impossible to cover.
 * Suggestions for builds: Me/E with this and some other, quickly cast hexes to cover it? I dunno.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Reduce the recharge so that stripping isn't that big of a deal, or maybe increase the cost but make it not elite.

Clamor of Souls

 * Pros: Decent damage, quick cast time.
 * Cons: "Nerfed through neglect;" this skill was once ok, but other skills have been buffed and left this in the dust. Less damage than Ancestors' Rage, less damage, smaller area, and slower recharge than Glaive, AND you have to be up close and personal.
 * Suggestions for builds: I'm at a loss. There's no reason to use this over AR or DwG.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Reduce the recharge, increase the area, or make it targetable rather than point-blank.

Reverse Hex

 * Pros: Hex Removal and damage prevention in one stroke, acceptable recharge (7s).
 * Cons: 10e cost and 2s cast time is pretty hefty for a monk.
 * Suggestions for builds: Me/Mo, maybe? Any secondary monk with a moderate investment in Prot can use this, I suppose, since immediate reaction times are less important than for primary monks.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Make it cost less, make it cast faster, or make it reduce more than a single RoF.

Fetid Ground

 * Pros: Fast cast time, moderate damage and poison in one stroke.
 * Cons: "Knocked Down" is a very hard condition for necromancers to meet; they have only two skills which do so, both of which are elite, conditional, and not in this attribute line. Without meeting the condition, other skills like Deathly Swarm do more damage.
 * Suggestions for builds: Use with an air or earth ele who will be knocking down a lot anyway, or maybe with Wanderlust.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Reduce the recharge time or increase the unconditional damage.

Wail of Doom

 * Pros: VERY powerful interrupt, similar to Power Block in strength, can TOTALLY shut down most attacking classes and, at high levels, the duration exceeds the recharge.
 * Cons: It's in Soul Reaping. Friggin' Soul Reaping! It's the ONLY necromancer interrupt, and it can't be used effectively by secondary necromancers. It's not even tied to Curses, which would make sense.
 * Suggestions for builds: Man, I dunno. Could work well in an anti-attacker Curses build.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Tie it to Curses, or make it unaligned. Seriously, Soul Reaping? I love Soul Reaping, but that doesn't even come close to, you know, fitting.

Shroud of Distress

 * Pros: Good block %, nice duration.
 * Cons: Other skills do the job better. Assassins already have blocking skills, they need something to reduce the damage from eles and other casters.
 * Suggestions for builds: Use it as a cover for a more vulnerable enchantment, like Dark Apostasy.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Make it add a specific amount of armor, not block%.

Judge's Intervention

 * Pros: Prevents damage, near-instant cast, does really nice damage that can turn the tide in 1v1.
 * Cons: Unlike Divine Intervention, it won't actually keep anyone who's under heavy fire alive, and the recharge is too long to use it as a decent source of damage.
 * Suggestions for builds: Pair it with Divine Intervention, maybe use it on a whammo solo boss farmer.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Reduce the friggin' recharge. Divine Intervention's recharge makes sense. This one doesn't.

Tranquil Was Tanasen

 * Pros: Unstrippable armor buff, interrupt prevention is handy for casting spirits.
 * Cons: It's in Restoration. Ritualists who spec enough into Restoration to actually get a decent duration out of this rarely use many spirits, which is what the anti-interrupt is good for... plus, it's elite, which conflicts with a lot of other spirit-based spells (Soul Twisting, Rit Lord, Songkai). Not to mention that the armor is usually outclassed by Kaolai, which is non-elite and has a really nice duration.
 * Suggestions for builds: Use this on a Communing-heavy spirit spammer? Dunno how much more useful it would be than Rit Lord, but in certain interrupt-heavy areas it could be nice, plus Recuperation and Recovery fit nicely with defensive Communing spirits.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Tie it to Spawning or Communing. It would be a good skill if it didn't require you to mangle your attributes to make it last more than three seconds.

Lingering Curse

 * Pros: Extremely nasty effect. Removes all enchantments and breaks the cap for healing reduction, very nice for spike teams.
 * Cons: Expensive as HELL. Makes sense for what it does, but even with high Soul Reaping it's really hard to use for the energy cost, plus the recharge is nasty, so if it's stripped, you're SOL.
 * Suggestions for builds: Go N/A with a moderate investment in Deadly Arts, with its 1/4s cast hexes to immediately cover this. Doesn't matter what those hexes DO, just cover it long enough for you to slap on Parasitic Bond and Malaise.
 * Suggestions for Anet: None really. The skill's balanced and effective, just hard to use.

Power Flux

 * Pros: Fast recharge for an interrupt, energy degen is always handy.
 * Cons: Less effective for shutdown than Power Block or Power Leech, or even Power Leak.
 * Suggestions for builds: I honestly can't think of any time I'd use this over Power Leech or Power Block.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Bring back the "instant recharge if you don't interrupt" clause!

Icy Veins

 * Pros: Direct Damage is always fun, reasonably easy to spread around, damage-on-death is like a reverse Death Nova.
 * Cons: The damage isn't armor-ignoring, so you almost never actually do any real damage with it, either on cast or on death.
 * Suggestions for builds: Maybe useful with a spike team? Dunno.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Make it not elite, or make the damage armor-ignoring.

Aura of Faith

 * Pros: Makes it easy for prot monks to have it both ways, restoring HP and preventing damage.
 * Cons: It's got a loooooot of competition for that elite slot. Possible, but very difficult, to argue that it's better than RC, Div Hexes, ZB.
 * Suggestions for builds: Heroes use it better than they use ZB.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Maybe knock it down to 5e? Hard to say. It'd be overpowered if it wasn't elite, but it's kind of underpowered as an elite.

Deny Hexes

 * Pros: Cheap, non-elite, fast-recharging, reasonably fast-casting multi-hex removal.
 * Cons: Requires other skills, specifically Divine Favor skills, to be recharging. Dead weight on a monk's bar is... dicey at best.
 * Suggestions for builds: Divine Intervention is a useful DF skill that has a long recharge and a good effect, as are Divine Healing and Heaven's Delight.
 * Suggestions for Anet: Maybe make it "every MONK skill that's recharging"? That might be overpowered, though...

Release Enchantments

 * Pros: Fast, cheap, radar-range healing.
 * Cons: Since when do monks enchant THEMSELVES? Zealot's Fire maybe, Blessed Aura maybe, Divine Boon maybe, Healer's Boon maybe... but it's not fun to recast any of those, or to cast "normal" enchants on yourself to remove 'em. It's Div Favor, though, so only a monk can use it.
 * Suggestions for builds: Maybe a two-man team, where you're the heal monk, and the prot monk enchants you up if you anticipate trouble, so you can use this? Seems kinda inefficient though...
 * Suggestions for Anet: Make it targetable. "Target ally loses all enchants. For each monk enchant lost..."