Guild Wars: State of the Game: March 19, 2007

This week's State of the Game takes an interesting walk down memory lane. Examining several builds from the past years, the article focuses on some of the more popular builds of bygone days:

The metagame, merciless in its constant evolution, has smashed many popular skills and ubiquitous character builds into the ground while elevating others to center stage. Intended mostly for nostalgic amusement, this article documents the rise and fall of some of this popularity. But who knows, maybe someone will think of a new way to use one of these relics, dust it off, and bring it back into the limelight.

My personal favorite, the Boon Monk:

Boon Monk - First introduced competitively in one of the final Beta events, the Boon Monk became perhaps the single most popular character build in all of GW PvP history. From that Beta event until the summer of 2006, you couldn't go anywhere without stepping on a Boon Monk. The character went through several iterations in its life span. When my team first ran it, we used one Healing-specced and one Prot-specced Boon Monk, and we made the Healing spec one our premade character for Prophecies. Others soon figured out that running two Protection Boon Monks was a superior strategy, and the Boon Prot metagame was born. In the beginning, most people relied on Offering of Blood to fuel the massive Energy consumption, but when its Health sacrifice doubled in March of 2006, people soon turned to Monk/Mesmers with Mantra of Recall or Energy Drain instead. After nerfs to Divine Boon, Energy Drain, and Mantra of Recall in late 2006, and the release of Nightfall, Boon Monks finally started to fall off the map, while attractive Monk skills like Divert Hexes, Zealous Benediction, and Light of Deliverance took over.