Guild Wars 2

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am all for something such as healing on actions, perhaps even similar to ele’s healing signet. The fact that it heals, with poison applied, as strong as many professions heals with a 25s, that do not have poison applied, in a passive manner, is problematic.

I’m still waiting for your math. I never claimed at Healing Signet under poison healed for more than any other heal skill under poison, so go ahead, please.

killahmayne.9518:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am all for something such as healing on actions, perhaps even similar to ele’s healing signet. The fact that it heals, with poison applied, as strong as many professions heals with a 25s, that do not have poison applied, in a passive manner, is problematic.

I’m still waiting for your math. I never claimed at Healing Signet under poison healed for more than any other heal skill under poison, so go ahead, please.

The sad thing is, it does heal for more under poison than most other healing skills do without poison. Not all of them, sure. Troll Unguent and Ether Renewal both have higher HP/second than poisoned healing signet (but less than non-poisoned healing signet). All of a Guardian’s and Necro’s heals, for example, have lower HP/second than poisoned healing signet (bar Consume Conditions eating 2+ conditions).

Do the math yourself. It really isn’t difficult.

coglin.1867:

It seems to me a good option is to lower the passive, so that it still has sustainable value, while adding the heal per second difference into the activated function. This theoretically gives it the same value, but no longer promotes the concept of ignoring the active. As well, it gives warriors a bit of a heal in burst situations.

But you already have other active heals if you want to go down that path.

Harper.4173:

coglin.1867:

It seems to me a good option is to lower the passive, so that it still has sustainable value, while adding the heal per second difference into the activated function. This theoretically gives it the same value, but no longer promotes the concept of ignoring the active. As well, it gives warriors a bit of a heal in burst situations.

But you already have other active heals if you want to go down that path.

So your defending the extreme passiveness? You do understand that aspect is the problem everyone has with the skill.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

killahmayne.9518:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am all for something such as healing on actions, perhaps even similar to ele’s healing signet. The fact that it heals, with poison applied, as strong as many professions heals with a 25s, that do not have poison applied, in a passive manner, is problematic.

I’m still waiting for your math. I never claimed at Healing Signet under poison healed for more than any other heal skill under poison, so go ahead, please.

The sad thing is, it does heal for more under poison than most other healing skills do without poison. Not all of them, sure. Troll Unguent and Ether Renewal both have higher HP/second than poisoned healing signet (but less than non-poisoned healing signet). All of a Guardian’s and Necro’s heals, for example, have lower HP/second than poisoned healing signet (bar Consume Conditions eating 2+ conditions).

Do the math yourself. It really isn’t difficult.

Healing signet passive heal > Virtue of resolve passive healing :P

Aeolus.3615:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

killahmayne.9518:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am all for something such as healing on actions, perhaps even similar to ele’s healing signet. The fact that it heals, with poison applied, as strong as many professions heals with a 25s, that do not have poison applied, in a passive manner, is problematic.

I’m still waiting for your math. I never claimed at Healing Signet under poison healed for more than any other heal skill under poison, so go ahead, please.

The sad thing is, it does heal for more under poison than most other healing skills do without poison. Not all of them, sure. Troll Unguent and Ether Renewal both have higher HP/second than poisoned healing signet (but less than non-poisoned healing signet). All of a Guardian’s and Necro’s heals, for example, have lower HP/second than poisoned healing signet (bar Consume Conditions eating 2+ conditions).

Do the math yourself. It really isn’t difficult.

Healing signet passive heal > Virtue of resolve passive healing :P

Virtue of resolve is not a heal skill.

coglin.1867:

Harper.4173:

coglin.1867:

It seems to me a good option is to lower the passive, so that it still has sustainable value, while adding the heal per second difference into the activated function. This theoretically gives it the same value, but no longer promotes the concept of ignoring the active. As well, it gives warriors a bit of a heal in burst situations.

But you already have other active heals if you want to go down that path.

So your defending the extreme passiveness? You do understand that aspect is the problem everyone has with the skill.

Everyone?
You mean the dozen people or so who keep posting this stuff on the forum? No – that’s not a problem.
There are problems in the game -sure – but just because you want to see one doesn’t actually make it a problem.

Passive gameplay is still gameplay. There’s nothing wrong with the skill.

killahmayne.9518:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am all for something such as healing on actions, perhaps even similar to ele’s healing signet. The fact that it heals, with poison applied, as strong as many professions heals with a 25s, that do not have poison applied, in a passive manner, is problematic.

I’m still waiting for your math. I never claimed at Healing Signet under poison healed for more than any other heal skill under poison, so go ahead, please.

I’m not that interested by the argument, but because I was bored, I did the math :p

Special heals (Signet of Vampirism, Defiant Stance…) don’t bring much datas to the table, obviously.

The entrys on the left of each graph (Shelter to Signet of Vampirism) are the instant (or close enough) one. The middle one (Healing Breeze to Well of Blood) the castable HoT one. Those on the left (Healing Signet to Signet of the Ether (3)) are the passive one.

Number in parenthesis (on healing surge and SotE) are the corresponding amount of resource (adrenaline/illusions).

The “specific triggers mentioned” in the titles are triggers like “number of hit”, “condition on self” or “illusions alive” that give a bonus without modifying the base (unlike Healing surge, for example). Those triggers are capped at the real value, meaning the graphs for “10 triggers” is in fact “up to 10, if applicable” (like Consume Conditions).

In all cases, the heal is only the self one. AoE is not taken into account. Since it matters mainly for sPvP, it shouldn’t alter the values too much. If someone can heal all his teammates with a single Healing Spring, the team is doing something very, very wrong xD
In addition, all castable heals are considered as casted immediately on cooldown, without special tricks (like Healing Turret water blast, which makes it look underrated).

The orange line is the mean Heal per Second. Nt very accurate since some heal are kitten in the graph by their mechanic.

I forgot to put the Blood Fiend drain, which is quite good (a bit over 300) provided you can keep him alive. Can’t bother to redo the screencaps though :P

What can we learn, then?
- Healing Signet passive indeed heals for a lot. Like, really. It can be beaten on certain circumstances, but the fact it is passive is a definite plus. At 0 healing power, only Mantra of recovery beat it, and it means a highly interruptable heal and a self daze of 2.75s every 14s.
- Consume condition is a beast whith a lot of conditions involved. No surprise, but still fun to see.
- Water Spirit can be quite nice, even for simple self heal (povided you ahve some Healing Power), if you can trigger it enough.
- While not awesome-tastic, Healing Surge and mending aren’t that bad numerically.
- Glyph of Elemental Harmony gain a nice boost from its regen in Water Attunement.
- Skelk Venom is 100% as bad as previously thought.
- Signet of Vampirism can get acceptable if you tick enough. If you get all the 24 ticks, at 1000 Healing Power, it is one of the best heals (only 12 condis Consume, and 24 triggers Water Spirit beat it). But, yeah… context, and probability tell us it won’t happen.
- Obviously again, never use A.E.D when you aren’t about to die, and never activate the healing signet at all.

I can send the spreadsheet and explain the math used if someone is interested, just PM me.

Edit: forgot the conclusion.
Healing signet indeed is better than 80% of the heals. But while poisoned, it is just a bit above the average of the other, unpoisoned, heals. Not above 80% of them, but still better than half of them (including the approximations on specific heals). Overall not OP as numbers go, but really good in all situation, and uninterruptible.

Just a reminder, Elidath; Signet of Vampirism can only have a maximum of 6 specific triggers per person due to the ICD on the active. On top of that, it’s incredibly difficult to get that 6 triggers, 5 being more likely.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Just a reminder, Elidath; Signet of Vampirism can only have a maximum of 6 specific triggers per person due to the ICD on the active. On top of that, it’s incredibly difficult to get that 6 triggers, 5 being more likely.

Silly me, I indeed forgot that ^^’
With this correction, the signet suck in all situations for self healing. Instead of being good in a totally improbable situation and sucking in all the others.
I know it is supposed to be a group heal, but WoB is, too. I can’t see any applicable situation where SoV is better.

Harper.4173:

coglin.1867:

It seems to me a good option is to lower the passive, so that it still has sustainable value, while adding the heal per second difference into the activated function. This theoretically gives it the same value, but no longer promotes the concept of ignoring the active. As well, it gives warriors a bit of a heal in burst situations.

But you already have other active heals if you want to go down that path.

So you figure if people don’t like the strongest option, they should just switch to the mediocre alternatives? The other 3 healing skills need a rework just as much as healing signet does, only difference is they need slight buffs and mechanic changes while healing signet just needs an overhaul from head to toe so it isn’t free healing with no drawbacks.

Receive some spike damage? No worries, pop a stance or run out of there, or put up your defenses such as shield stance, counters, cc, w/e you have on you. The second you take damage HS goes to work, so it’s not like you get wiggled down and suddenly get nuked for 5 digits.

Ever stand on the edge of your seat spectating expecting a warrior to fall at low health with healing signet ticking them up? Sometimes its like watching paint dry….

Would you mind breaking it down for use, showing how it is the strongest option. Would you mind doing it with both poison and non-poisons numbers?

dancingmonkey.4902:

Would you mind breaking it down for use, showing how it is the strongest option. Would you mind doing it with both poison and non-poisons numbers?

You could not be lazy and do the math yourself but since you insist.

If the conditions are right Defiant Stance is our strongest heal. Time it right and you can get 15+k health every 35 secs but it is extremely situational so not a good option and pretty useless outside of those specific situations and can be interrupted.

Healing Signets ticks for 362 per second without any healing power for a total of 21,720 over a period of 60 seconds. Depending on how much poison up time you have you could drop as low as 14,552 if you had 100% perma poison which is highly unlikely. Average would be around 18k. Can’t be interrupted.

Mending heals for 5,240 oin a 20sec .CD for a total of 15,720 over the period of 50 seconds. “Condition removal is done before healing, negating healing reduction caused by poison.” Not much higher than and 100% poison uptime signet and it is awkward to use if you rely on it for condition removal. You are either wasting a heal for some cleansing or wasting some cleansing for some healing. Since we can get more reliable cleansing elsewhere and get better healing form signet this heal quite inferior. Can be interrupted.

Healing Surge although it can heal for 9820 with stage 3 adrenaline for a total of 19,640 over a period of 60 seconds. If you clear the poison before using it is pretty close to signet HPS wise. The added bonus of filling adrenaline bar sounds great on paper but in practice it is quite bad.

Our adrenaline mechanic works against it. If you trait Cleansing Ire which is our best (only viable) source of condi clear you will be spending you adrenaline constantly and won’t be able to get that full heal when needed. The only real advantage this heal use to have was you could use it before entering the fight and open up with a burst, if you played right it would be ready to use again when you actually needed healing. Now that adrenaline has been butchered this heal has lot the only real edge it had. Is also can be interrupted.

Conclusion, Healing Signet is the best and only viable option warriors have. Why use anything else when you know you are only gimping yourself?

Julie Yann.5379:

Conclusion, Healing Signet is the best and only viable option warriors have. Why use anything else when you know you are only gimping yourself?

You did prove the first part (“best heal”) but not the second (“only viable”).
Since the first part is true for about every heal in the game, not only the warrior one, it obviously makes the two other look weak in comparison.
As an example, you stated that mending is “quite inferior” to HS. True. But it heals about the same as Healing Spring or Healing Surge with 2 bars, while cleansing conditions, and it’s cooldown is quite short. So it doesn’t suck, it is just HS being better.
You stated Mending/Healing Surge can be interrupted. Yet again, true, but misleading, since almost every heal in the game can be. Only one that can’t are Shelter, Withdraw, HS and Signet of the Ether. Medkit, Defiant Stance and Healing Spring can be hard to interrupt, though. So again, it isn’t a matter of the warrior’s heal being bad, but of HS being good.
Basically, the signet has anything a warrior need, so why not take it? You can take another heal and do acceptably well, but it is not an optimal choice.
Sadly (and it s a personnal opinion, not a fact), what makes it good makes it also boring.

Even Shelter can be interrupted, though it is much harder than most. Necro warhorn daze does it, as does traited Reaper’s Mark I think Mesmer has some unblockable dazes as well.

Minot nitpick, I know. Carry on.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Even Shelter can be interrupted, though it is much harder than most. Necro warhorn daze does it, as does traited Reaper’s Mark

You are right, I fogot there are some unblockable cc than can interrupt shelter: Magnet, Earth Shield’s Magnetic Shield, “Fear Me!”, Static Shield, Static Aura, Static Field, Line of Warding, Ring of Warding, Unsteady Ground, Sanctuary, Pull (Binding Blade follow up), Throw Mine, Slick Shoes, Tripwire, Corrupt Boon. I think we got them all here.
Notably, those either are niche (who uses Slick Shoes or Magnetic Shield in sPvP? :P ), or require something specific to happen to interrupt. The static aura/shield need a dot of some form to be applied on the ennemy/on the ground beforehand ; the KB lines (warding, sanctuary, etc) are nullified by basic situation awareness ; Corrupt Boon require stability to be corrupted ; Magnet’s cast time makes it unpractical. In those, Throw Mines, Binding Blades and traited Reaper Mark seems the most usable.
Enough for Shelter to be considered “uninterruptable, with exceptions” more than “interruptable”, like you said

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I think Mesmer has some unblockable dazes as well.

Not that I know of.

Elidath.5679:

Basically, the signet has anything a warrior need, so why not take it? You can take another heal and do acceptably well, but it is not an optimal choice.
Sadly (and it s a personnal opinion, not a fact), what makes it good makes it also boring.

I guess we have a different opinion of what acceptably well is. The way I see is is that the sustain from HS is just right. If every other heal is inferior to it that they are weak and unacceptable (Except zerging with defiant stance, that’s just OP). I am also speaking of PvP/WvW. PvE is a completely different requirement where other heals could be considered acceptable.

If the heal from mending were increased by 15% it would probably be a viable option and I would probably use it. Healing Surge as stated is just counter intuitive to our class mechanic and only works well in PvE where you sit on your adrenaline throughout the entire fight.

Julie Yann.5379:

I guess we have a different opinion of what acceptably well is. The way I see is is that the sustain from HS is just right. If every other heal is inferior to it that they are weak and unacceptable (Except zerging with defiant stance, that’s just OP). I am also speaking of PvP/WvW. PvE is a completely different requirement where other heals could be considered acceptable.

If the heal from mending were increased by 15% it would probably be a viable option and I would probably use it. Healing Surge as stated is just counter intuitive to our class mechanic and only works well in PvE where you sit on your adrenaline throughout the entire fight.

Well, since most class can make do with heals inferior (and by a lot for some classes) to Healing Signet, I am inclined to say that yes, our opinion on what is “acceptable” differ (and be it known that I don’t mean it in a demeaning or offensive way, I don’t consider “not agreeing with me” as a problem in any way ^^)
Btw, I am speaking about s/tPvP. PvE doesn’t require much in the way of healing anyway, and WvW is an entirely different beast due to its scale.

The thing with healing surge and mending, is that they force you to do what HS explicitely allow you not to do. That is, to make a choice. Indeed, they aren’t exactly powerful, but not extremely weak either. And in any case, they make (for me at least) for a more interesting gameplay than a slot-and-forget signet. I think they could get a buff without getting OP, but I don’t think they need it. Same that I think HS could take a nerf without getting UP, but don’t need it either.
Best thing HS could get imo is an actually usefull active., forcing you to let go of his powerful healing to get some other, equally needed effect.

Elmago.2961:

If a warrior isn’t running the hambow meta in which they’re pigeonholed into, they barely stand a chance against other classes, even when fighting mediocre players.

^^ Summary – Warrior doesn’t need more nerfs right now. The class mechanic has been nigh-broken by Anet on Sept 9th. There is basically 1 to 1 – 1/2 viable specs for Warriors now. No one plays them seriously for the more favorable Ele/Engins/Rangers/Mesmer classes. They do remain noob friendly which is why still see the quantity of Warriors in PvP/WvW.

First, yes, Healing Signet (HS) is boring.

Many prior Warrior ideas (even pre-HS update) were offered in a discussion with devs and absolutely nothing was done with those very reasonable suggestions back then. In fact, devs tweaked the passive of HS up to a higher heal value (see below) until nerfing it back done to where is is now when poison condition durations were reduced (same patch).

I know that I specifically gave Anet devs a reasonable passive heal tick value and healing formula to use and ANet decided to go to the extreme and well above that passive recommended level (and many many other Warriors repeated the value ranges of reasonable).

However, for those ~3 months in 2013 when Warriors were the supreme FotM class, everyone was screaming and ANet devs only slightly tweaked HS down at the end of the day.

Tangent: Noticing the same thing with Ranger Longbow.

Also, Healing Signet is fine since melee Warriors lack sustain without it (in Pve). Yes, it is boring but there is no viable spammable Warrior version of ranged DPS. Therefore, Warriors are basically forced to be melee which means they are taking brute force (or are condition bombed/AoE bombed) against the target(s). Warriors have a health pool and if that health pool drops significantly at once, there is no return Healing Signet can provide.

Honestly, healing (as a stat and as a class function) is still very weak in the current meta/mechanics of the game. Only classes that can rapid AoE heal which is done through water fields is really an issue (if at all).

So add a water field to HS active and you’ll see it used.

Artaz.3819:

So add a water field to HS active and you’ll see it used.

IMO this is the best sugestion till now.

For me personally, my opinion has changed to an extent based on someone posting the numbers. I can be swayed by comparative fact, and not hollow arguements. As I see it now, the change that fixed adrenaline, makes healing signet a reasonable heal. Particularly in the context of the current professions design. I do still feel the passiveness of it is lacking to some extent.

I had leveled all 8 professions to 80 shortly after release, primarily in WvW. This week I have spent several hours on each in WvW. Every profession has passives of some kind. In all of the other cases though, they require at least some action by the player or an opponent to one extent or another. Either by receiving an attack or making one in some fashion. I would like to see HS function in one of those ways. At this point, my only problem with it, is that it requires no action of an kind from the player or an opponent to offer healing comparable to many heal skills.

I don’t care exactly that healing signet is so effective, I wouldn’t mind if warriors had an even higher hps heal.

What I don’t like about healing signet is that it requires no skill, no interaction, no decisions and has no animation. A player logging into pvp for the first time gets as much out of it as the best warrior player on the planet. Set it and forget it. It can’t be interrupted, requires 100% poison uptime to be even remotely countered, and is, as has been described here, a boring skill.

I would like to see other warrior heals improved and healing signet shaved further to try to address that.

Elidath.5679:

Julie Yann.5379:

Conclusion, Healing Signet is the best and only viable option warriors have. Why use anything else when you know you are only gimping yourself?

You did prove the first part ("best heal") but not the second ("only viable").
Since the first part is true for about every heal in the game, not only the warrior one, it obviously makes the two other look weak in comparison.
As an example, you stated that mending is "quite inferior" to HS. True. But it heals about the same as Healing Spring or Healing Surge with 2 bars, while cleansing conditions, and it’s cooldown is quite short. So it doesn’t suck, it is just HS being better.
You stated Mending/Healing Surge can be interrupted. Yet again, true, but misleading, since almost every heal in the game can be. Only one that can’t are Shelter, Withdraw, HS and Signet of the Ether. Medkit, Defiant Stance and Healing Spring can be hard to interrupt, though. So again, it isn’t a matter of the warrior’s heal being bad, but of HS being good.
Basically, the signet has anything a warrior need, so why not take it? You can take another heal and do acceptably well, but it is not an optimal choice.
Sadly (and it s a personnal opinion, not a fact), what makes it good makes it also boring.

It really is the only viable heal that the Warrior has. If you compare it to many of the top heals in the game (Consume Conditions, Healing Turret, Ether Feast, Troll Unguent, etc) they have comparable HPS. And if they don’t they have extra effects to make up for that.

What might be a good heal for one class, may be a terrible heal for another. Mending could be a decent heal for let’s say a Guardian, Thief or Mesmer, but it is terrible for a Warrior. Signet of Restoration is a very good heal for an Ele, but would be a terrible heal for a Warrior.

Alot of classes have great access to healing, protection and regeneration like Guardian and Elementalist. You have to take that into account as well. Classes like Thief and Mesmer have stealth to avoid damage, re-position themselves and alot of active defenses, you have to account for that too.

Warriors have the highest HP base and Armor along with a bunch of stances that temporarily mitigate damage. They don’t have stealth, protection, lots of healing and generally require close-quarters to be able to deal damage which is generally the price for having the highest base stats.

What I find more and more is that it is useful to compare HPS of the healing skill between classes, but only up to a certain point. Every class is different, have different mechanics and therefore have different needs.

Warriors need the amount of HPS that the Healing Signet gives them in order to sustain. That is why Mending and Healing Surge don’t cut it. If they bumped up the Healing from mending to about 6,000 it would be a good healing skill for the Warrior. If they gave Healing Surge a non-obsolete extra effect, it would also be good.

Where as Mesmers and Thieves live through damage avoidance, a Warrior lives through sustaining through the damage that is dealt to them. That is why when you do hit a Mesmer and a Thief, it generally hits much harder, but in turn it is much harder to hit them. Where as with a Warrior, when you do hit them it is weaker, but they are much easier to hit. Or with an Ele, you hit them hard (sometimes) but they have the ability to regen alot of it back up.

So, in conclusion. Healing Signet is balanced FOR the Warrior. I agree if you put Healing Signet on many other classes it probably would be OP (imagine an Elementalist or Guardian with Healing Signet).

Another interesting figure to look at would be the % of HP that is healed through use of the healing skill. Many people dismiss this figure, especially when used to argue in favour of the balance of Healing Signet for the Warrior because they have the highest base HP. However it is still a very useful metric, given that HPS shouldn’t be considered in a vacuum.

Not so much now, but alot of pros were using Sigil of Doom to deal with Warriors and it was very effective. It kind of shows you how well it works against Healing Signet.

No. It is not the only viable heal. Ask some engineers and mesmers if they would love to have a heal that removes 3 conditions. Engineers either have to hit multiple button presses to cleanse 2. It might serve the discussion best if you didn’t state your opinion as if it is favt, when it is simply your opinion. Particularly when using words that practically epitomize subjectivity such as “viable”.

NinjaEd.3946:

killahmayne.9518:

NinjaEd.3946:

I was hopeing for quick responses, guess I replicated the other post on this exact page O.o

Lastly, while ~380 health may not seem like a lot, that’s 380 health on a heavy armor profession which more often than not has numerous defenses in their build. Simple example, I would never take healing signet if it was given to my thief even if it was healing me for a large % of my health. Thief naturally gets hit hard given their viable builds don’t invest into a load of toughness. You see the exact opposite result on warrior however because ~380 health is something you can fight with.

An update to the other 3 healing skills would be a great move, but feels like it’d be a power creep without addressing the real problem. Should hit both places at once and address the entire selection of warrior healing skills so no 1 option is superior in an overall build.

I think you missed the point. With active healing skills, you actually have the option if you wanted to, to completely negate the poison and heal for your full amount. Healing Signet does NOT have that option, you take the poison NO matter what, no counterplay. And some healing skills better yet bypass the healing reduction of poison.

And what is the overall net difference in having Healing Signet tick, and using your active heal to heal yourself to full?

Not all warriors invest alot into toughness, many run with 2,500 armor which isn’t a lot given the mechanics of this class. 2,500 can get spiked very hard, and healing signet would not help them very much. People need to get out of the archetype of light, medium and heavy because of factors of healing, stealth, protection, etc that add many intangibles into the equation. They do not impact tankiness as much as people think. For example, the main reason why a Warrior is considered tanky isn’t because they have 150 more armor than a thief at base value.

As a warrior, well should say any profession, you have the choice to run with effective condition removal and warrior has solid options. Cleansing ire, soldier runes with shouts, zerker stance (to ignore any additional applications), brawler’s recovery, generosity sigil (atleast for pvp, wvw/pve is impractical given its cost), shake/shrug it off, etc.

I think only guardian has the potential to heal to “full” with their active because A) signet of resolve heals for a lot and scales off healing power well, and guardian is the lowest health tier so reaching high % health is easier than say a necro using consume conditions with multiple of them. The difference however is with active heals such as withdraw, consume conditions, healing turret (although pretty kitten strong imo), is that you have to find the best time to use those, you wouldn’t pop a 4-6k heal when you were just hit for 2k.

While you are taken down and planning to halt all offense to pop your heal, healing signet lets you continue your rampage. At worst you have to pop shield stance or use ww and rush to fall back and have HS heal you to the fullest amount but those active defenses compliment healing signet and are what I would call unbalanced. I wouldn’t say HS as a skill is necessarily OP, but it is definitely up being on a class with skills like endure pain, shield stance, or heavy vigor for quicker dodges, and having the highest armor rating (heavy armor) and health pool. The armor makes each tick of HS that much more valuable and the high health basically gives your active defensive skills a chance to come off cooldown so you can protect HS and resume your offense.

Not having to take extra time off to actually recover with an active heal and just letting your passive do its thing with no downside isn’t the kind of passive that should be available to any profession. Poison can be removed just like it can be applied and is no different from using shelter or withdraw or troll’s unguent with poison on. I do not want to see healing signet flat out nerfed, I want to see mending/healing surge/defiant stance improved overall (not just a number’s increase) and a suitable adjustment to the active and passive of healing signet that will still keep it in serious play even if it requires a small trait investment to best utilize it.

to the moderator watching over our choice of words, feel free to just merge this thread with the other one on this page. I didn’t expect long response when I made this thread, but since it took that route it doesn’t seem necessary to have 2 threads on the same exact topic. Thank you!

Sounds like a good counter to the extended skill animations associated with the warrior. Could it be they need to take a closer look at condition damage or allow CI to be passive also to counter the condition focusing which happens when warriors are on the scene? Especially since the last adrenalin patch.

Which is what I just explained. What might be a good healing skill for some classes might be a terrible healing skill for others and vice versa. The fact is that those classes don’t have those healing skills, the Warrior does, and it doesn’t fulfill the Warrior’s needs so the heals aren’t good. And they aren’t good because we have already established that Healing Signet is *balanced*. Just because a heal would be good for another class, doesn’t make it viable for the class that has it.

Viability is my opinion, and I support my opinion using facts there is a difference. And viability can be measured using some sort of metric so it isn’t necessarily subjective sort of like how Diablo III has a system for measuring which skills are used. If it was viable why don’t people use it more often? Oh no it can’t be because Healing Signet is overpowered if we say it is balanced. The other heals are a combination of it doesn’t give enough sustain and why use an objectively inferior heal. If I could justify using an alternative heal in quite a number of situations, then I could say it is viable. However, the answer to whether I would consider any other situations where I would use Mending or Healing Surge, my answer is never, and I am sure it is the same for many other people.

I would still rather have Healing Turret over Mending, and I am fairly sure most would as well. You have to press two extra buttons which isn’t a big deal. And it heals for approximately 1,300 extra, and it gives you regen. Plus Healing Turret itself has access to two water fields through the active use and toolbelt use. So you can blast using detonate turret or blast/leap the extra water field. As well the turret does damage when you detonate it as well.

Ether feast is arguable, it heals for way more but doesn’t give you condition removal.

What I also find interesting is that many healing skills have useful traits in which you can build around to have a better heal. Warriors seem to lack useful traits/utilities toboost the capabilities of a healing skill, whether it be through healing or some other means. I mean all we have is a 20% reduction on signet cooldown (which is useless for Healing Signet and a 25% stance duration which doesn’t even increase the duration of Defiant Stance for a second). This is perhaps a route that ANet could consider exploring.

For example there are many traits compatible with Healing Turret, a whole lot compatible with the Elixir Heal. Med Kit as well too.

Elidath.5679:

The thing with healing surge and mending, is that they force you to do what HS explicitely allow you not to do. That is, to make a choice. Indeed, they aren’t exactly powerful, but not extremely weak either.

Role a warrior and tPvP with it over the next month using only mending and healing surge and then come back and tells us those aren’t weak. They can’t provide the level of sustain needed. I would love to get rid of the stupid signet and have a more active heal but the other options just don’t make the grade.

Julie Yann.5379:

I guess we have a different opinion of what acceptably well is. The way I see is is that the sustain from HS is just right. If every other heal is inferior to it that they are weak and unacceptable (Except zerging with defiant stance, that’s just OP). I am also speaking of PvP/WvW. PvE is a completely different requirement where other heals could be considered acceptable.

If the heal from mending were increased by 15% it would probably be a viable option and I would probably use it. Healing Surge as stated is just counter intuitive to our class mechanic and only works well in PvE where you sit on your adrenaline throughout the entire fight.

I don’t think a number is going to fix this. Its a functionality amoungst all healing skills warrior has to choose from. Mending although is nice as a dual purpose, you don’t really get any bang for your buck for timing it right (such as consume conditions). Healing surge is nice but with the adrenaline change you can’t really couple rapid burst skills with holding onto adrenaline. Lastly defiant stance is too situational and easy to counter to find its way into builds.

It just leaves you with healing signet, let it do its thing while you focus on offense and the defense here and there. There is no downside to using healing signet, and nerfing or buffing numbers is going to get nowhere.

Julie Yann.5379:

Elidath.5679:

The thing with healing surge and mending, is that they force you to do what HS explicitely allow you not to do. That is, to make a choice. Indeed, they aren’t exactly powerful, but not extremely weak either.

Role a warrior and tPvP with it over the next month using only mending and healing surge and then come back and tells us those aren’t weak. They can’t provide the level of sustain needed. I would love to get rid of the stupid signet and have a more active heal but the other options just don’t make the grade.

I use mending all the time in tPvP, it is not weak. the prehealing condi clear is great with condi necros/engies.

Lets talk about the alternatives for a bit and why they dont see a much use. If I had to suggest a band-aid fix for them,

[mending] same cd/healing but gain 15% reduced incoming condition duration for each condition removed (does not count restorative strength). Effect lasts 5 seconds.

[healing surge] same cd/healing but gain increased healing for every (full) bar of adrenaline you gain.

[defiant stance] same cd/healing but now break stun, lasts 4 seconds, an has a brighter animation while active.

[healing signet active] increased healing to ~6k base, same healing power scale, now gain up to 800 toughness ( depending on level) while casting. 1.25 second cast time, same cd.

To give one suggestion, and I’m open to constructive feedback/criticism would be it would be interesting to see how healing signet operated if it’s heal was based off of the warriors toughness stat.

A pure berserker/assassin w/ great sword-axe/shield feels about right with healing signet. Any other zerker amulet profession can shred holes in the warrior fairly quick and the warrior themselves can deal high damage.

A hambow with soldiers/cavalier/knights w/ the 6 points in their healing/toughness line you can really feel the difficultly increase to down them with increased toughness/healing score with healing signet.

The lower the toughness the better results you get from healing signet. The higher the toughness stat the more diminishing returns you get from it.

However, universally every profession in game has their primary heal affected by their healing stat, so it is entirely reasonable for warrior’s to operate the same way. It is fair their heal operates under the same rules as everyone else’s.

Anyway, just a concept to chew over.

To be honest, on tougher hambow like builds healing signet can be a pain to deal with..however on fractal level 35+ healing signet is not a heal that is ever going to save you perse’ because it is ‘Too strong.’ This needs to be remembered considering all skill changes affect level one starter zone players, level 50 fractal players, top 20 Tpvp players and casual dungeon runners. Nerfing it again because ppl are finding it hard to deal with in broken field hotjoin matches is very different to say, that it allows warriors to stand directly on top of fire shaman at lvl 50 and tick heal through any ol’ thing shaman can throw at them.

All in all, the signet is fine. Is it boring?..arguably..but this is nobody else’s problem apart from dedicated warrior players. If they don’t have issue with it, then realistically, non warrior players shouldn’t have issue with it either because it is not a skill that is making their skill bar boring.

killahmayne.9518:

It really is the only viable heal that the Warrior has. If you compare it to many of the top heals in the game (Consume Conditions, Healing Turret, Ether Feast, Troll Unguent, etc) they have comparable HPS. And if they don’t they have extra effects to make up for that.

Huh, well… I did just that: just a few post before, you can see said comparison. And the only heals that get close to HS in a believable situation are Troll Unguent (same as HS, but worse since interruptable), Mantra of Recovery and Med Kit (if you want to spend 100% of your time healing), Signet of the Ether (with the condition of 3 illusion up, good luck) and Healing Surge, stage 3. The other have 100 HP/s less or worse.

As for the rest of your post, while interesting, it either agree whith what I already said (importance of context, not OPness of HS…) in a more developped way ; or state opinion as fact (“the other heal are bad” without any metric). You might very well be right, but you don’t bring anything that prove your point

Julie Yann.5379:

Roll a warrior and tPvP with it over the next month using only mending and healing surge and then come back and tells us those aren’t weak. They can’t provide the level of sustain needed. I would love to get rid of the stupid signet and have a more active heal but the other options just don’t make the grade.

You assume two things :
- that I didn’t already do that ;
- that because you can’t do something, nobody else can ;
My opinion still is that while weaker than HS and not terribly good, they aren’t totally unusable either. They just isn’t a single reason to pick them in a competitive environment since HS is so much better.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To give one suggestion, and I’m open to constructive feedback/criticism would be it would be interesting to see how healing signet operated if it’s heal was based off of the warriors toughness stat.

A pure berserker/assassin w/ great sword-axe/shield feels about right with healing signet. Any other zerker amulet profession can shred holes in the warrior fairly quick and the warrior themselves can deal high damage.

A hambow with soldiers/cavalier/knights w/ the 6 points in their healing/toughness line you can really feel the difficultly increase to down them with increased toughness/healing score with healing signet.

The lower the toughness the better results you get from healing signet. The higher the toughness stat the more diminishing returns you get from it.

However, universally every profession in game has their primary heal affected by their healing stat, so it is entirely reasonable for warrior’s to operate the same way. It is fair their heal operates under the same rules as everyone else’s.

Anyway, just a concept to chew over.

To be honest, on tougher hambow like builds healing signet can be a pain to deal with..however on fractal level 35+ healing signet is not a heal that is ever going to save you perse’ because it is ‘Too strong.’ This needs to be remembered considering all skill changes affect level one starter zone players, level 50 fractal players, top 20 Tpvp players and casual dungeon runners. Nerfing it again because ppl are finding it hard to deal with in broken field hotjoin matches is very different to say, that it allows warriors to stand directly on top of fire shaman at lvl 50 and tick heal through any ol’ thing shaman can throw at them.

All in all, the signet is fine. Is it boring?..arguably..but this is nobody else’s problem apart from dedicated warrior players. If they don’t have issue with it, then realistically, non warrior players shouldn’t have issue with it either because it is not a skill that is making their skill bar boring.

Better idea, have it scale off the +healing stat like every other heal to a far greater degree. Defense, Warrior’s Toughness line, secondary stat is already +healing.

Of course, I’d rather see this across the game and not just for one Healing ability. But that’s just me. To me, + healing stat should be synonymous with sustain.

Elidath.5679:

killahmayne.9518:

It really is the only viable heal that the Warrior has. If you compare it to many of the top heals in the game (Consume Conditions, Healing Turret, Ether Feast, Troll Unguent, etc) they have comparable HPS. And if they don’t they have extra effects to make up for that.

Huh, well... I did just that: just a few post before, you can see said comparison. And the only heals that get close to HS in a believable situation are Troll Unguent (same as HS, but worse since interruptable), Mantra of Recovery and Med Kit (if you want to spend 100% of your time healing), Signet of the Ether (with the condition of 3 illusion up, good luck) and Healing Surge, stage 3. The other have 100 HP/s less or worse.

As for the rest of your post, while interesting, it either agree whith what I already said (importance of context, not OPness of HS...) in a more developped way ; or state opinion as fact ("the other heal are bad" without any metric). You might very well be right, but you don’t bring anything that prove your point

Julie Yann.5379:

Roll a warrior and tPvP with it over the next month using only mending and healing surge and then come back and tells us those aren’t weak. They can’t provide the level of sustain needed. I would love to get rid of the stupid signet and have a more active heal but the other options just don’t make the grade.

You assume two things :
- that I didn’t already do that ;
- that because you can’t do something, nobody else can ;
My opinion still is that while weaker than HS and not terribly good, they aren’t totally unusable either. They just isn’t a single reason to pick them in a competitive environment since HS is so much better.

Here’s your metric. I honestly can’t believe I have to explain why Healing Surge and Mending are bad healing skills for the Warrior. Healing Surge at maximum efficiency heals for about 316 HPS, then 263, 210 and 189. All of these values are significantly lower than Healing Signet. Healing Signet heals for 362.

However, the HPS is only part of the equation. The heal is very conflicting with Warrior mechanics. If you want to derive the benefit of adrenaline from it, you pay for it with a very terrible (terrible being an understatement) heal. If you want to derive the most healing from it, you sacrifice the effect of it. Usually and by usually I mean 99.9% of the time, the former is never the sacrifice you want to make.

And with the adrenaline nerfs, adrenaline is much harder to come by and maintain these days. The biggest drop you see in HPS is in between 2-3 bars of adrenaline. You aren’t always going to have 3 bars of adrenaline when you heal, since it can be quite difficult to build it up sometimes. You often have to hold back on expending adrenaline in order to heal that amount, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for these two things.

#1: Most of our condition removal is tied to expending adrenaline (Cleansing Ire)
#2: If you actually derived a better benefit from holding on to your adrenaline than just an above average heal (but not a great healing amount for a Warrior)

There is not much you can do if you have to clear the conditions on you by expending adrenaline, even if it means healing for a terrible amount which will probably get you killed anyway.

Ironically, at least half of our adrenaline generation comes from getting hit. 25% probably comes from versatile rage and another 25% of it from actually hitting targets. This means that you actually have to take damage willingly sometimes in order to have enough adrenaline to heal for the maximum amount. Kind of a strange concept.

Healing Surge itself defines a Catch 22.

Mending heals for about 250 HPS. Yes it removes 3 conditions, but there is no getting around that 250 HPS is not very good at all for the Warrior and doesn’t meet the needs for Warrior sustain. if it was bumped up to around 280-290 HPS then it would be decent. Or even 300 HPS but only removes 2 conditions. Or at the very least allow it to be traited. Not to mention the heal isn’t very bursty, heals only slightly better than healing signet under poison and given that we can just use Cleansing Ire + Berserker Stance + Brawler’s Recovery and - condition duration, and not suffer the huge HPS loss.

There is absolutely no reason to use any other Healing skill besides the Signet. Since according to most people it is balanced for the Warrior in terms of the heal, this means that the other heals are terrible for the warrior, especially since they pretty significantly underperform under most situations compared to it. Not that Healing Signet is OP, so which is it?

Technically any heal isn’t "unusable" if we want to go there. Hell I’ve used the healing venom in tPvP once. But when a "balanced" healing skill is what is keeping us in the tPvP scene, that is a hint that the other heals need to be buffed.

Elidath.5679:

You assume two things :
- that I didn’t already do that ;
- that because you can’t do something, nobody else can ;
My opinion still is that while weaker than HS and not terribly good, they aren’t totally unusable either. They just isn’t a single reason to pick them in a competitive environment since HS is so much better.

That pretty much means “not a viable option for competitive play”. If HS is so much better and the sustain from HS is considered to be balanced, how can the other 2 be considered viable options? You are in an environment where the goal is to be the best, how is that possible with options that offer so much less?

The skills still work, they aren’t bugged, you can still use them but you are gimping yourself and your team if you choose to use them.

I don’t think the Signet is OP as it is.. It’s on the strogner side but that’s not a problem.

I do, however, think it’s a pretty poor design. Healing skills are arguably the most important skills and timing your heal correctly is very important for most classes to stop it being interupted and to get the most out of it. Having a passive heal which has no interaction for the user or opponent does take an important element out of combat, IMO. Obviously this isn’t something entirely unique to Warriors… Eles have their Signet too, and thieves Withdraw is generally just spammed off CD due to it’s low CD and no cast time, but the Warriros design is certainly the worst of them.

Eh, what if they made it so the warrior is healed every time he gains adrenaline?

killahmayne.9518:

Healing Surge at maximum efficiency heals for about 316 HPS, then 263, 210 and 189. All of these values are significantly lower than Healing Signet. Healing Signet heals for 362.

Significantly lower, yes, like most heals in the game. No particular problem here, since HS has no side effect unlike the two other. But like you say, it is only a part of the equation.

On Healing Surge: the worst problems of this heal are the over reliance on Cleansing Ire, and the recent change on adrenaline. This heal makes total sense for the warrior, when CI sin’t in the equation: as you said, a big portion of adrenaline come from getting hit. So chances are, when you need to heal, you’ll have full adre, and there Surge is a beast. And if you don’t need to heal, Surge can provide some adre for a burst and push the advantage. On the other hand, why does the warrior have to expand his (offensive) class mechanic to obtain a basic defensive function (cleasing, via CI)? That makes no sense to me, not Healing Surge.

On Mending: why not use CI + HS instead? Well, for starter, that makes you less reliant on CI. You can cleanse without risk of a simple dodge wasting it and all of you adre at the same time, or having to switch to longbow. Yes, it underperform compared to HS + CI, but considering howstrong those two are, it doesn’t tell much.

killahmayne.9518:

Technically any heal isn’t “unusable” if we want to go there. Hell I’ve used the healing venom in tPvP once. But when a “balanced” healing skill is what is keeping us in the tPvP scene, that is a hint that the other heals need to be buffed.

The main problem of balance between heal, for me, doesn’t come from individual heals themselves. Context, has you said
Healing Surge, more than a tweak, would really help a change on the adrenaline decay position. Less decay, more grace period out of combat, would go a long way.
Mending could be boosted as for heal/s, but more than anything, a rethink of Warrior condi cleanse would be needed. Conditions are supposed to be a class weakness, but as of now cleanses are either too weak or too strong. So it gives the idea that either you don’t take CI and get wrecked, or you take it and make Mending redundant and Healing Surge useless.

Again, I’m not saying those heals are perfect and shouldn’t be buffed. But saying they are complete unusable trash is sadly something a lot of people repeat without asking themselves how and why. Obviously you thought about the question, and even if I don’t totally agree with your conclusions, well, ok, that’s fine.

Julie Yann.5379:

That pretty much means “not a viable option for competitive play”. If HS is so much better and the sustain from HS is considered to be balanced, how can the other 2 be considered viable options? You are in an environment where the goal is to be the best, how is that possible with options that offer so much less?

The skills still work, they aren’t bugged, you can still use them but you are gimping yourself and your team if you choose to use them.

The thing is, gimping yourself and your team doesn’t equal “being not viable”.
Like in a fighting game, you can play a top tier character and win easily, or pick a weaker character and have an harder time. Middle tier characters are viable, and win competitions too. But if you play only to win, you won’t have a reason to pick them.
What I think, is that HS is powerful enough to make it suboptimal not to pick it when you aim for the top. But the other heals are not bad enough to make you lose automatically when you pick them.
Basically, the difference between “notably less powerful than option B” and “utterly broken in all shape and form”.

Elidath.5679:

Julie Yann.5379:

That pretty much means “not a viable option for competitive play”. If HS is so much better and the sustain from HS is considered to be balanced, how can the other 2 be considered viable options? You are in an environment where the goal is to be the best, how is that possible with options that offer so much less?

The skills still work, they aren’t bugged, you can still use them but you are gimping yourself and your team if you choose to use them.

The thing is, gimping yourself and your team doesn’t equal “being not viable”.
Like in a fighting game, you can play a top tier character and win easily, or pick a weaker character and have an harder time. Middle tier characters are viable, and win competitions too. But if you play only to win, you won’t have a reason to pick them.
What I think, is that HS is powerful enough to make it suboptimal not to pick it when you aim for the top. But the other heals are not bad enough to make you lose automatically when you pick them.
Basically, the difference between “notably less powerful than option B” and “utterly broken in all shape and form”.

Does the rest of your team feel the same? Do they know you are running a sub optimal build or using skills that are “notably less powerful than option B”? Do they mind that you will be the weaker link and have a harder time staying in the big important fights?

Playing a weaker spec for the extra challenge is fine if you are playing alone or in duels, or having fun in hot join but not in ranked play unless you are teaming up with friends. That is the reason why I state that they are not viable. They don’t have to be exactly even with HS, just not so noticeably weaker.

@ Elidath (cuz it is too much to quote)

IMO, the worst part of Healing Surge is it’s very counter-intuitive design and it’s terrible trade-off. In order to heal fully, I need to have max adrenaline and therefore if I have max adrenaline the extra effect is useless. And if I want to go from zero to max adrenaline, I have to take heal for a worse than paltry amount and wait another 30 seconds till the heal comes up again. That risk is almost never worth the reward. Unless you are some glass cannon eviscerate build and even then if your eviscerate misses you are screwed. There is clearly an imbalance of trade-off when 99% of the time it is better to take the max heal over adrenaline. People have been saying this since the beginning that this game came out, even before CI that this design needs to be changed because it doesn’t make sense.

CI is needed for both the condition removal and adrenaline gain. Even if you didn’t need the condition removal, you still take CI because of the adrenaline gain. Adrenaline gain is really bad without CI. I don’t necessarily agree with having to expend an offensive mechanic to derive a defensive benefit being bad design. Fundamentally it is a well-designed trait, having to perform an active play in order to derive that defensive benefit. The only problem is that Warriors are heavily reliant on BOTH the adrenaline gain and condition removal aspects of it.

For example, if we had better options to gain adrenaline, we would see builds that that move out of the Cleansing Ire mould. For example you could take Brawler’s recovery, maybe a purity sigil and you would be golden for your condition removal. That is about 3 conditions removed every 10 seconds which isn’t bad. Or maybe take Berserker’s Stance/Signet of Stamina for even more condition removal. Mending still probably wouldn’t be taken because it is a still very weak heal for the Warrior.

If we take the strict definition of viable, then technically everything is "viable". You can still do dungeons successfully with Mending or the Venom Heal for example. You can still beat somebody in a 1v1 with those heals. But is that not partly because of something like player skill, or other aspects of a build that allows you to be successful while using a subpar heal? Or in a team for example, how do you know it isn’t mostly because of the rest of your team, rather than the heal in of itself being good enough to be "viable"?

Heck, in that case even taking "no heal" in your healing slot is viable because you can still technically be successful, but do you ever hear anybody saying that? It’s not that it is viable in of itself, moreso it is the other mechanics that allow you to do so.

I don’t really want to continue this argument about viability because it is a messy argument so ...

I think we can just all agree (or most of us) that Mending and Healing Surge are weak alternatives for the Warrior and that both of these healing skills need to be buffed or changed in functionality (more so for Healing Surge).

killahmayne.9518:

I think we can just all agree (or most of us) that Mending and Healing Surge are weak alternatives for the Warrior and that both of these healing skills need to be buffed or changed in functionality (more so for Healing Surge).

Don’t forget the active of healing signet and defiant stance ^^

Sadly warrior is not the only victim for poor healing skill selection (cough necro…. cough)

nicknamenick.2437:

Speak for yourself pls,

I like it because it gives me more time to focus on my target.

Warriors dont have many ways to create some time for healing moments, thats why i love HS.

If you dont like its passive then use healing surge.
Becausr that healing skill does better vs poison classes.

This seems just another nerf topic to me, just stop it.

hurr durr don’t touch my HS!

Atherakhia.4086:

fellyn.5083:

Atherakhia.4086:

They should have given the class access to protection and regen as opposed to giving them that signet imo. I certainly understand the need for it, but it’s just lazy design to offset the longevity issue the class has.

Another problem is they’ve given the class so many counters to so many mechanics that there’s simply nothing the other heals could offer to ever be more valuable than the signet. Imagine if the class was actually weak to condis and the only way to counter them was with a healing skill? That would certainly push the issue away from the signet and put real balance into the class without needing to change it.

That all said, and given the laziness of ANet and the unlikelihood of them ever balancing the class properly, the best thing they could do at this point is at least find some reason for the class to activate it.

Ehm… warrior was and still is weak to conditions. Outside of cleansing ire and now maybe brawlers recovery warriors have pretty pathetic condition clear. Ironically those things are made mandatory because conditions are so easily spammable, which is why they were given to warrior in the first place.

Besides that, healing sig was and still is countered easily by high spike damage. Couple that with poison and there you go.

I’m getting flashes of deja vu here. People wanting warriors to be what they were for the first year or so of the games life. Easy kills in pvp and free bags in wvw.

Nah. Cleansing Ire, Berserker Stance, and a signet are great counters to condi. More than some get certainly. Add to this the passive healing of healing signet and Warrior is easily one of the strongest. But yes, you need to burst them down and apply constant poison to get ahead of it. But Warrior has tons of counters to avoid the high burst as well.

The problem is the signet is too powerful to begin with. The activated portion and the other heals for the class will need to be horrendously overpowered to ever stand a chance against the signet.

Like I said originally… the only way to get around that would have been to engineer some severe handicap the class would have and would require another heal to fill in that gap. Condi being the easiest one to do.

But ANet will never do that so /shrug.

And we got warhorn, shouts, to a very minor degree you can use runes/sigils.

Warriors have some of the best options to keep condi classes bogged down. However to survive the condies and “match the spam” they become next to useless tanks. You prolly wont kill warriors specced to tough it out, but they wont necessarily kill you either.