Guild Wars 2

I’ve observed Arcane Brilliance, Defiant Stance, an occasional Water Spirit, Signet of Vampirism, Litany of Wrath, Skelk Venom, Signet of the Ether at least at some point during my travels in Hotjoin, Solo Queue, and Team Queues, WvW Roaming, and a few Dungeons. It’s been seemlingly quite popular on the Mesmer and Guardian heals, in particular.

Lots of these heals are not viable in every game mode, and that’s alright – there’s a great use for these heals in some part of the game. Water Spirit and Signet of Vampirism have mechanics that mesh with multiple people lobbing attacks at a big creature (PvE). Litany of Wrath and Defiant Stance take advantage of big crowds of people exchanging blows, a mechanic that meshes well with WvW.

In all my travels on my Engineer, I have not ever found a moment that A.E.D would be preferable over an un-traited Healing Turret.. I think this is a decent skills & balance problem.

Let’s analyze in greater detail:

A.E.D Flowchart use: http://i.imgur.com/XNTwrsz.png

Just as an opening observation, you can only use A.E.D one way. If you want to have comparable healing to taking other heals, when you use A.E.D, you need to have your health reduced to zero, and you need that 12k ‘defy death’ heal. If you take A.E.D into a fight with the intent of using A.E.D WITHOUT ‘defying death’, then any other heal should be taken. A 4.5k heal on a 40s cooldown without any secondary effect (evades, water fields, condition removal, etc), easily takes the ‘worst heal in the game’ award. So, A.E.D must be used properly – sat upon, until low HP.

Weak Synergy with existing traits & abilities. This is how it disagrees with a lot of good Engi mechanics:

• Automated Medical Response (Inventions 15pt). This trait works with all the other heal fine – you’re going to use your healing skills as early as possible without wasting the healing to get maximum healing over time. Naturally, when you hit 25% and your heal refreshes, it’s like ‘oh, sweet, this trait is awesome’. With A.E.D, you hit 25% and the trait is rendered useless because the ability isn’t even on recharge until sub-15% typically. It’s true you can track the internal 90s cooldown of this trait, and know when your heal is about to refresh – enabling you to use A.E.D at high HP without ‘defying death’. But really.. I don’t have time for that crap.

• Speedy Gadgets (Tools, 10pt). This trait brings A.E.D down to a 32s cooldown, which is cool. The biggest question is how can one justify taking this over Speedy Kits, Static Discharge, Power Wrench, or other essential traits? Not super attractive. It’s not that A.E.D is bad because of this, but since it’s a Gadget, it’s subject to all the lackluster gadget traits (or lack thereof).

• Condition removal. Equipping A.E.D pretty much removes all the viable ways Engineer has to remove conditions. 1) Healing Turret, and 2) Cleaning Formula 409. The only other significant condition removal you can get while running A.E.D is from Elixir C. Even if you manage to make this work in your build, you’re pretty much at the ‘shatter mesmer’ level of condition removal outside those long CD Elixir C uses. In PvP, as an Engineer with relatively low evade/invuln/stealth uptime, that’s like asking to be burned for 30s straight.

• Static Shock (A.E.D Toolbelt ability). It hits decently, that’s good. 3/4s cast and 1/2s aftercast equals 1.25s of self CC for 1s of enemy CC. That part isn’t so good. You only have .5 seconds to actually do something with this stun. I can see this being fun in a Static Discharge build, but one has to be extremely quick. Meh, overall. Useless outside of a Rifle SD build if you don’t even have enough time to cast a skill after using it due to the big aftercast.

• Opportunity Costs. Healing Turret is pretty much the best sustained healing, the best condition removal, hardest to interrupt, the best group utility, that requires no traits. Might Stacks decently well with Enhanced Performance too. Med Kit is great sustain with deep tools builds, and the best at might stacking. Elixir H is the best in Elixir Builds. I think these are the real reasons why A.E.D seems so disapponting – Engineer has really well integrated and awesome healing skills – and A.E.D is like 3 steps back.

Good Suggestions for adding more value to A.E.D:

• A.E.D To remove Bleeding, Poison, and Burning at the end of the effect.
• (Linc.6834) A.E.D To apply frenzy while the buff is up.
• A.E.D To prevent the Engineer’s health from going under 1, while active.
• A.E.D To have a .5 cast time to help even the disproportionate risk to reward.
• A.E.D To not have such a terrible heal when lethal damage is not taken. It’s really bad.

Question for the people reading this – How plausible is it for you to slot A.E.D, in your GW2 Experience? Can your build run it with the content that you do?

This skill could use some tweaks. It’s a high risk, high reward skill but not completely balanced right now. Still, i like the skill.

My biggest concern with it is the cast time. You will want to wait to maximise the skill effect but at the same time you are already risking not being able to use the skill at all. That’s an important difference to most other healing skills and even after casting it there is still the risk not getting enough of a beating to trigger the max heal. With a shorter cast time you reduce the risk to not being able to use the skill at all.
Another way would be to buff the base healing or add another threshold where the heal already gets slightly stronger.

I use the skill mostly in pve when i know my group doesn’t need the turrets support, so i can use the toolbeltskill for another damaging ability. But static shock could use a buff in its range, there are stronger stuns that hit more targets with a better range. Just a little more range would be nice.

Also in pve it’s easier to controll the damage you get and know what conditions you will have to deal with.

Most of the new healing skills are completely and utterly weak. The thief heal heals for too little for its insanely long CD, the ele heal is too unreliable, the warrior heal is far worse than HealSig, the guardian heal is too unreliable as well, the mesmer heal doesn’t heal for much even with 3 clones out (and certainly much, much less than HealSig does), and the necro heal has too long a recharge and relies too much on having allies nearby. A.E.D. is also unreliable for many of the reasons stated for other heals. The only half-decent one is Water Spirit, and that’s only because it even further encourages Spirit Ranger 1-spam builds.

Atleast in spvp i have seen it more often than most other new healing skills. But mostly by players that were easy to stomp. In fact most of the new healing skills are bad in spvp simply due the fact that they, while some are really powerful, are unreliable or even weak.
Heck the necro heal i would never use in any game mode be it pve/wvw or spvp, as all other heals, the necro has, are better in any situation i can think of.

The problem isn’t A.E.D. The problem is all the other heals that offer good reward for low risk. Bring the other heals in line and suddenly A.E.D. is fine.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

The problem isn’t A.E.D. The problem is all the other heals that offer good reward for low risk. Bring the other heals in line and suddenly A.E.D. is fine.

I agree. I feel that most of the new heal skills are very well balanced (exceptions aside), and it’s some of the old skills that need to be brought down. This applies to several professions.

I think the cooldown on AED is too long and the gain from it is too situational. The only time i could foresee myself using it was against some sort of PvE boss but even then I’d probably take Med Kit/ Healing Turret cos i’m more confident with them.

you saw people usin skelk venom? i didn’t

It needs other gadgets to be good so that you actually can run them with traited cooldowns etc. Gadgets just lack condi removal though (I suggested a change for PBR here).

JonPeters.5630:

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Hopefully that helps direct this discussion a bit. Let’s keep this thread to this particular heal. If you have concerns about the effectiveness (in either direction) of other heals either start an individual thread for those that you are concerned about, or start a general thread but keep in mind that you will have to work hard to keep a general heal balance thread focused and productive.

Jon

The critical heal on A.E.D it’s pretty strong, however if it doesn’t proc we heal for only 4.5k~ which is pretty low for a skill that have the base cooldown of 40 seconds, it’s too high (30 should be fine), the other problem is that engi lacks of any decent condition removal outside of Healing Turret, so if we use A.E.D we can’t use the other…
Gadget should be buffed in general, maybe by reworking them and adding new traits .
The only trait that affect Gadgets is the one that reduce their cooldown by 20%, on the counterpart Elixirs have more traits that can fit our playstyle: 20% cd reduction, 20% effect increase, boon removal, remove condition for every elixir used, …and so on

It does have a long cd time compared to what engineers are used to (with 25 seconds at worst) but I thin the problem is more of…gadgets don’t have support in general. Maybe once gadgets start getting support this skill might become viable without having to buff it.

I mean just look at gadget traits and tell me how many builds you can make with those traits.

To pose a question to Engineer’s. Why would you want it to be condi removal?

I would take advantage of the condi burst knowing it would be lethal and continue attacking. Its not like my opponent can stop the condi ticks to save their skin like they can stop attacking.

I think what it needs is to reign in the risk / reward a little bit and make it easier to obtain the reward.

Reduce in the lethal damage heal. and Lower the cast time so that Engi can feel AED is more reliable.

rpfohr.7048:

Reduce in the lethal damage heal. and Lower the cast time so that Engi can feel AED is more reliable.

I think the cast time is a big problem too. Before skill released players were assuming it would be like an emergency heal that could save you if you were stunned and getting bursted etc. but the cast time is a little too risky for what it does, people would rather just play with something safe.

I always thought the risk/reward came from getting a small heal or big heal on a long cd but the added risk of saving it when low on hp and getting it interrupted is a little too much.

If they don’t want it to cleanse conditions, just give us a viable gadget (or trait) that do that :p
Anyway A.E.D it’s already countered hard by condi burst because if the effect expire and you’re under the effect of poison it will heal a lot less (-33%), someone now will say: “every heal it’s affected by poison”, yes i agree with you but without decent condi removal it’s even worse…

Main issue with this heal is the long cooldown for a small heal if you don’t get deadly damage. And the no condi clear, but that’s a general issue with engineers.

In PvP you can easily counterplay this heal by stopping the attack as soon as you see the icon pop up, switch targets and refocus engi after he popped. The engineer has nothing left and will die because of it. Even 1v1 situations on side nodes this heal won’t be effective due to the counterplay.

In PvE, it’s handy for carrying the orb of light in Arah dungeon, insta 12k heal. It’s useful for situations where you get overwhelmed as well.

I am not entirely sure where it stands in WvW.

The concept is good, there is an active counterplay to it but this puts the engineer itself in problems with such a small heal and no real utility.

A.E.D. Suffers from being sub-par unless you trait for all other gadget traits, which then limits your choice of utility skills to at least 1 or 2 more gadgets. This means that it’s only likely to see play when you’re already using gadget AND it fits your builds playstyle.

It, along with a lot of the new heals, really highlights a problem with -%cooldown traits. They need to go, then the cooldown of the heals can be re-balanced to be where they need to be.

Lets look at the new heals, and what traits you Need for them to be competative:
Guardian – Needs heal on meditation and meditation cooldown
Necro – Needs signet cooldown
Engineers – Needs gadget cooldown
Thief – Needs Venoms steal life, venoms apply one more hit, and venom cooldown (many would argue also venom sharing)
Ranger – Needs Spirit’s follow you and Spirits have more HP
Warrior – Needs Stance duration
Elementalist – None, the blast finisher makes it strong enough to justify. However, Arcane cooldown is often used.
Mesmer – None, the passive is often strong enough to justify it in PvE.

It’s no surprise that the only 2 new healing skills you see being used with any regularity are Elementalist and Mesmer. The meditation skills are common enough that guardian is probably the next most likely.

Once the cooldown reduction traits go (and they should be removed for every utility skill category, then the skill can be balanced to have a good cooldown because it wont be able to be traited to have a ridiculous cooldown.

The entire point of healing in this game is to stay topped off. If a self-heal heals for 25 percent, everyone is supposed to use it at 75 percent. If it heals for 50 percent, everyone is supposed to use it at 50 percent. Etc. The entire point of healing is staying topped off to maximize the cooldown.

A.E.D. completely contradicts this mechanic, and it creates unnecessary risks.

It could be a good utility skill if it healed for much less, but it will never be seriously used in high-level play as a self-heal.

Lopez.7369:

The entire point of healing in this game is to stay topped off. If a self-heal heals for 25 percent, everyone is supposed to use it at 75 percent. If it heals for 50 percent, everyone is supposed to use it at 50 percent. Etc. The entire point of healing is staying topped off to maximize the cooldown.

A.E.D. completely contradicts this mechanic, and it creates unnecessary risks.

It could be a good utility skill if it healed for much less, but it will never be seriously used in high-level play as a self-heal.

That’s what I meant when I said other healing skills need to be brought down to A.E.D level. The problem is the other heals offer a good/solid reward for low/zero risk.

cast time is the biggest problem here for me. also I would like to see better gadget traits.

The necromancer signet is so bad it’s insane, if people use it they are playing really badly. So you seeing it being used is nothing speciel really, i’ve seen a few from my Guild use A.E.D as well. It takes some skill/timing to use that’s true.

I think they could change the CD to 20 or 25 sec cd BUT if the high heal occurs the CD is increased to the 40 seconds.
That way Engineers can live with the really weak heal and get a strong heal when they would have died. After that strong heal the enemy anyways has alot of time to kill the engineer until the heal is back from CD.

I’ve successfully used A.E.D in wvw but only ONCE. It was really hard to pull of.

It was before a clash inside sm.
1. precast A.E.D (even at full health)
2. slick shoes + rocket boots into enemy zerg
3. do some other kitten (if possible) while retreating
4. die under 5 secs only to come back with 12k hp
5. gear shield away

My suggestion would be to bring the safe heal cd down (25s?) and have it come back up to 40s if you get the risky heal.

AngelicLoki.1625:

A.E.D. Suffers from being sub-par unless you trait for all other gadget traits, which then limits your choice of utility skills to at least 1 or 2 more gadgets. This means that it’s only likely to see play when you’re already using gadget AND it fits your builds playstyle.

So, it is a standard Engineer ability?

The problem is definitely on the reward side. It is much better to use a smaller heal early and get it on cooldown then to heal at the last possible moment and still have a full cooldown til you can do it again.

I have 2 problems with the AED

1) for being a such a risk vs reward skill it has a very long cooldown why should i take the risk when i can have a consistent 5k heal every 20 seconds on med kits.

2) its tool belt skill is just bad i mean i guess its good for bombgineers but for other engineer builds the idea of getting up close is just a death sentence.

I personally feel that if this skill was allowed to trigger on fall damage you might see more use out of it and the fall damage trait as it would allow for more diversity and outplaying/planning.

Honestly, while AED has its issues, i think the real bugbear in terms of engineer healing is the healing turret. It simply outclass any other heal available. This by virtue of being a on call water field, for a profession that can virtually spam blast finishers.

In all honesty, ANet could have saved themselves a whole lot of headache by removing the option to detonate or pick up turrets. Because who in their right mind leaves the healing turret out, like it is clearly designed to be used?

It is much better to heal, overcharge, detonate, and have it ready to be repated in 20 seconds. If left out to be destroyed, then the cooldown goes up with the time it is left in the field.

JonPeters.5630:

I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Gadget trait empowerment is definitely the least toxic solution, while not being the smallest scope of work. I think the average player should feel confident in taking a fully traited A.E.D over an un-traited Healing Turret. Just like how a player feels confident in Elixir H after investing in Quick Elixirs, Cleaning Formula 409, and HgH.

I made a mock offensive Gadget build, in which to test which type of trait support would be desirable:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUnIEFxazL+uQ9aEZ0DOb06MRFyvPPer2CCB-jUCBYgBhgAhEBI7UZNRVQsMsIasKkYaXER12bFRrWKAmEWB-w

I’m a big user of fun Grenade variants, so gadgets are actually pretty interesting to me, when combined with explosives. This is just an example of a true double Gadget build that’s somewhat viable at WvW roaming, for example.

• Add Tools X “Leg Mods” effects into the Tools III “Speedy Gadgets” traits. Speedy Gadgets: Reduces recharge on Gadgets by 20%, reduces duration of Cripple, Immobilize, and Chill by 33%. This consolidates two pretty under-utilized traits, and opens up room for a Tools X Gadget trait.

• New Trait! Tools X. Stroke of Genius: Increase the ‘range’ of Gadget abilities. Damage of Gadgets increased by 33%.

Actual effects on Gadgets:

• A.E.D: Duration increased to 7 seconds, from 5 seconds. (Or, crazy option, grant A.E.D’s effects an 180 radius effect – dat allied defibrillator).

• Static Shock: Range increased to 400 from 180.

• Throw Mine: Range increased to 1200 from 900. Mine Field: Spread over a 480 radius area instead of a 360 radius (this removes the unintended ability for Engineers to instant nuke a point blank target with increased traited damage)

• Personal Battering Ram: Range increased to 400 from 130. Launch Personal Battering Ram: Range increased to 1200 from 900.

• Rocket Boots: Rocket Boot Range increased to 1200 from 900. Rocket Kick range increased to 600 from 300.

• Slick Shoes: Increased Radius to 120 from 60.

So in a round-about way, Gadget traits being supported are really big for A.E.D to be possible, but the biggest thing is probably A.E.D performing better at it’s purpose -being an actual tide turner – healing numbers aren’t everything. Healing Turret is a much better tide turner if using it removes a long burn or high bleed stack. I think adding the specific condition removal features to A.E.D, combined with incentives to use Gadgets would solve a lot of Gadget problems at once.

Honestly, it is SO bad, I never bought it. Even to test it. And I’ve mained engi from the beginning.
The other options are so much better, why would I try to make a subpar heal work?
Chaith nailed it. Opportunity cost is too great and there is no synergy with other skills.
It’s kind of a joke really.
With guard stacks, my health pool is around 23k. Why would I wait to drop my health THAT low just to see a big pretty green number that gets me back around half my health when I can just keep my health pool high with a different/better heal.

Imho, Lopez nailed one of the worst points.
It is more convenient to use any other healing skill when you’re still high enough on hp – so that it can recharge during the combat – than to wait with this skill useable and find yourself with half hp and an healing skill on a long cooldown.

JonPeters.5630:

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Besides the trait addition for gadgets that have been asked for a long time now, the two main problems with this skill is the amount it heals for and how it has the unnecessary cast time.

Compare this skill to healing turret (4,300 for AED and 5000 for HT) and you will find that healing turret heals for more, removes 2 conditions, and places a water field to further increase that heal amount if timed correctly. Assuming that the engineer has at least 1 blast/leap source in addition to the detonation form HT that 5000 point heal moves up to 7,600 points every 20 seconds or so depending on the other finisher used. This is almost double the base heal of AED on half the cool-down meaning that during a 40 second interval, HT will heal more than AED if the health threshold heal is reached. From a personal standpoint (based on my HP values), AED only heals half of my HP at the death-heal. My healing turret combo can pretty much heal that same amount (1-2k HP less) every 20 seconds whenever I need it and I don’t have to be sitting at near death to get the heal. Clearly there is a problem with the amount when another heal can achieve the same amount with little extra effort with much more convenience. Some have suggested making this like ride the lightning where it would half its cool down based on if it hit a target or not, something like that here would be reasonable with maybe some better healing power scaling or scaling to the actual hit point value. Even then though, its hard enough to get that bonus heal as is stands now. AED has to hit the health threshold every time to be even worth taking and its difficult enough to pull that heal off as is. You have to “die” with AED on to get that bonus health reward and most enemies can make AED work to their advantage because of this. Any physical damage based build just stops attacking and waits or plays defensive for 5 seconds then proceeds with his damage. Or because you have to activate this at near death, he burns through a low part of your health say 2k HP or so before you can even get off the heal. Condition based builds can’t really do this, but since the conditions still stay on you when that heal goes off, you are likely back down to a 10k heal that you just got (maybe like 6k if poison was on you as well) and still likely dead in the next few seconds. If the heal didn’t have to be activated via death, but rather at a reasonable health threshold for the trigger it might get some more use. Hypothetically, if you are at <10% health during the end of the 5 second duration you get the bonus heal. With this change obviously the 1 second cast time should not be altered to balance the larger health threshold. You can still get stunned out of this heal and still likely die with it being on a 5 second cool down at 10% health threshold, but you are not solely reliant on the opponent to keep attacking to get the bonus heal.

TL:DR
This is not a high risk/high reward skill, this is a high risk/low-medium reward skill. IMO this skill heavily requires the opponent to not be aware of this skill for its duration which is very unlikely. The two things (besides the gadget traits that may help it, but this is on the current trait listing) that need to be done to this skill is the amount it heals for in comparison to the others. Half of my heath is very lackluster when I had to almost die to get that heath. The other being the cast time/trigger mechanic because the enemy has a bit too much control over this heal skill.

Only three solutions i’m really seeing for AED are:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to. Even just removing the damaging conditions would be a huge step in the right direction.

Have it heal according to how much hp you currently have: at tiers of 25%. 75%+ hp rewards the current amount (possibly even removes a condition? as it’s still hella weak), 50-75% heals 30% more, 25-50% heals 60% more, 1-25% heals 100% more, 1% still heals the same amount. This makes you pay attention to how much hp you currently have before using it, and it makes the risk of using it at <50% actually worthwhile without having to reduce the CD.

Create gadget traits: We have 1, and it’s not very impressive. Other than rocket boots and mine field in a SD/burst build, every single gadget is incredibly weak baseline and we have nothing we can do to change that. Our utility slots are very valuable as they’re our only access to kits and therefore damage.

Also, buff pistol AA. It’s pathetic.

Make AED clear poison when it’s used. This way the counterplay for this skill becomes the same as Elixir R, which is not to kill the engi while it is up.

I think it should get an added functionality:

Make it worth the risk.

Ideas (one of these, not all):

• Take 33% more damage and deal 33% more damage while A.E.D is active. (Can be done through a stat in/decrease or, might/fury.)
• A pushback/damage skill that activates when you trigger the big heal.
• Recharge all your gadgets upon triggering the big heal.
• Daze, blind and chill all nearby enemies upon triggering the big heal.
• Gain quickness while A.E.D. is active.

You get the idea I guess…

Currently we’re risking our life to save our life… that doesn’t really make sense, does it?

If we are able to risk our life in order to gain an advantage… now we’re talking.

Egorum.9506:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to.

Elixir C?

JonPeters.5630:

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Hopefully that helps direct this discussion a bit. Let’s keep this thread to this particular heal. If you have concerns about the effectiveness (in either direction) of other heals either start an individual thread for those that you are concerned about, or start a general thread but keep in mind that you will have to work hard to keep a general heal balance thread focused and productive.

Jon

I’m from PvE perspective. I would like to see the following changes (reasons below):

Primary Wish:

The cooldown when the big heal does not activate should be shorter, in the realm of 10-15 seconds. It can heal for less than it currently does. When the big heal activates, it can go into the full cooldown.

One of the major issues I have with this heal is that, while other heals are designed to keep up sustained or near full in order to prepare for the major spikes common in PvE, with AED we will spend the majority of the time with depleted health. Either we try to go for the big heal (and intentionally remain in low health), or we use the small heal which is very sub-par AND also deprive us of any chance of big heal for the next 40 seconds.

If we have the option of taking a small cooldown smaller sustain heal with AED (and can have our chance of big heal back in 10-15 seconds) then it will become a lot more viable in more situations.

Additional:

- Cast time should be instant, or very nearly instant. I assure you we will still fail to activate the big heal very frequently even with instant cast. It is very hard in PvE. I planned to write about it but the post is becoming long.

- It should remove all damage-dealing conditions upon successful activation of the big heal. After pulling such a major feat consuming all our concentration (and ending our contribution to the fight for the duration of trying to activate it), it’d be incredibly pointless to wake up with just 75% HP and still have a throng of conditions that threaten to kill you in seconds.

P.S. That toolbelt is pretty darn hard to use anywhere outside of a melee stacking situation. But I’ll settle for an improvement to the main heal for now.

Arpheus.6918:

I think they could change the CD to 20 or 25 sec cd BUT if the high heal occurs the CD is increased to the 40 seconds.
That way Engineers can live with the really weak heal and get a strong heal when they would have died. After that strong heal the enemy anyways has alot of time to kill the engineer until the heal is back from CD.

You might have caught on to something here.
Even getting the short straw might not be the end of it for you, if the cooldown is shorter.
Basically, the heal will have 2 possibilities:
1) You eat a big hit and get a giant heal spike, AED goes on a long cooldown
2) You don’t take quite as much damage as you thought, get healed for a bit and got the AED back sooner.

Combine this with some improvements to the toolbelt skill(no1 likes aftercasts, they are stupid and take the action out of the game) and it might be a solid solution to the current problems with AED.

Jon Peters I hope you guys know that this healing skill is totally fine, but it’s currently outshined because of just how good the other heals are for no risk taken using them. What this game needs is more skills like you introduced in the last patch. Don’t overbuff them to the level of the current skills, because those are the ones that need toning down.

I don’t think the issue is with AED, honestly. Even though it can only be used one way (i.e. defying death) it’s at least as interesting as any other new or old heal in the game.

I think the real issue is that it is nearly unthinkable to go without healing turret. Its buff last spring was almost too well-designed. It was adjusted to fill one of the gaping holes of turret builds (condition removal) and introduce more support (toolbelt skill). It did that perfectly. Going without it would be…well, almost like a warrior going without healing signet.

I’d like to trade a nerf to healing turret (maybe only 1 condi or perhaps +5 seconds to cooldown) for buffs to other skills or traits. Engi is already very strong, so I don’t think we can ask for a straightup buff with no downsides.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Egorum.9506:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to.

Elixir C?

2k hours on my engineer and i forgot we had a full condi cleanse. fail

honestly, i don’t think i’ve ever even put it on my bar though. how does a clear every 40s compete with any kit? XD

Mizstik.1736:

One of the major issues I have with this heal is that, while other heals are designed to keep up sustained or near full in order to prepare for the major spikes common in PvE, with AED we will spend the majority of the time with depleted health. Either we try to go for the big heal (and intentionally remain in low health), or we use the small heal which is very sub-par AND also deprive us of any chance of big heal for the next 40 seconds.

If we have the option of taking a small cooldown smaller sustain heal with AED (and can have our chance of big heal back in 10-15 seconds) then it will become a lot more viable in more situations.

This is a constant problem in the PVE side of the game. It massively favors using short recharge skills over the long recharge ones, simply because they will be ready to use again sooner. This because any time a fight involves more than fodder, the fight can’t be ended with a spike. This then turn every fight into an attrition fight, and so you want to be able to use skills as often as possible.

Egorum.9506:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Egorum.9506:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to.

Elixir C?

2k hours on my engineer and i forgot we had a full condi cleanse. fail

honestly, i don’t think i’ve ever even put it on my bar though. how does a clear every 40s compete with any kit? XD

If the fight is so heavy with conditions that i need to dedicate a utility slot to a full cleanse, it is likely that the stacks will be right back where they were within seconds of me hitting the button.

May as well trait for 406 and put elixir H in #6, or slot med kit.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Jon Peters I hope you guys know that this healing skill is totally fine, but it’s currently outshined because of just how good the other heals are for no risk taken using them. What this game needs is more skills like you introduced in the last patch. Don’t overbuff them to the level of the current skills, because those are the ones that need toning down.

I want to put emphasis on Quickfoot’s post. Although some of the new heals can be slightly buffed, their overall design makes me wish that the old heal skills get tweaked someday and made harder to master.

I don’t agree. A.E.D. basically relies on your enemy being stupid enough to try to kill you when you’ve got such a flashy skill activated – cause unless you’re in the middle of a zerg, anybody can recognize it due to the animation. And stop attacking, cause that’s all an enemy needs to do to defeat us later on, unless we’re loaded with conditions (but in that case we’ll probably be mauled either way, since we’ll have still those on).

Versus good enemies, it becomes just a “kill me” button.

“Stupid enough”? Kind of harsh words there. I hardly feel it makes sense to call players “stupid” for attempting to kill there enemy. How are they to know you have AED equipped, much less active? Over time some will learn to identify it, but it is a fairly new skill. Not to mention the fact that you may still be killed by already applied conditions. Neither of which make a player “stupid”.

In WvW for example, you have various setting that change how other characters display on your screen. If you have 5 friend and 5 enemies on the screen at the same time and are on the 3rd from lowest setting, you will only see a default graphic for each profession. They may not be physically capable of seeing a graphic variation.

So until they change it so it is physically visible on all game settings, it is a bit illogical and rude to declare others who physically cannot see such a change as you are suggesting, as “stupid”.

JonPeters.5630:

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Hopefully that helps direct this discussion a bit. Let’s keep this thread to this particular heal. If you have concerns about the effectiveness (in either direction) of other heals either start an individual thread for those that you are concerned about, or start a general thread but keep in mind that you will have to work hard to keep a general heal balance thread focused and productive.

Jon

I think the following is ok:

• base heal
• reward heal

it could need:

• longer buff duration (2-3 sec)
• higher threshold (~5-10%)

it definitly needs:

• instant or nearly instant activation. For such a high risk/reward, it should be nearly uninteruptable.
• gadget traits to make it more attraktive to use gadgets over TK Trait, adrenalin implant or speedy kits.

Besides this whole AED thing, absolutely Engineers need more traits for Gadgets. There are as many traits that involve taking falling damage as there are traits dedicated to one of the major skill-types, Gadgets.

As for AED. Its entirely counter-productive to have a heal that basicly hinges on you more or less “dying” in order to be effective. Meaning you need to keep a close eye on your health and trigger it just before you die… but then, it also has a 1sec cast time. And its also countered by poison.
Fail to get the big heal out of it, and its the worst heal ingame, no contest.

It may seem like a big heal, but you had to get very low first before it actually triggers and still has a pretty massive cooldown. Compared to something like Bandage Self (20sec cd) it heals just 22%, or so, more over the same timeframe.

A rather poor trade-off for such a risky ability that needs to meet some difficult requirements to work properly. And then something like Healing Signet exists, giving 60% more healing then Bandage Self with no risk, skill or player input involved.

IMO, it’s basic idea is good. A heal which is indirect, but prevents death. Good for situations where you know high damage might be incoming (WvW, PvE).

The problem is the cast time on it. If I have a heal which can prevent my death, and it has a up to 5s delay of healing me normally, I don’t want another 1s delay on using it in the first place.

So that’s all I’d do: remove the cast time. Make it fully instant ofc, able to be used while other skills cast or while downed.

This’d make it quite useful for high-risk situations, of which there are plenty outside of sPvP.

I play at low skill level soloQ and had yesterday someone with a SD build gadget build as far as I could see. He used the AED / goggles/ram and tool kit.

He died in seconds because he had no condition removal but it was fun to see how the AED worked. I had a lot of 1vs1 against him. I play your build @ chaith and was at close and he pushed to me every time. I guess he was testing this build. He died every time and because of AED it looked like he died every time twice.

Based on this I guess AED makes no sense because of no condtion removal for gadgets. Generelly gadgets are too weak , like turrets.