Guild Wars 2

Most of the new heals released a few months ago are, to put it mildly, not useful – nobody uses them in any builds. They either heal for too little, or are too easily interrupted, or have some ICD that renders them useless, etc.

So, if resources are so important (“Be mindful of scope”, is the mantra we hear from ANet), then why did ANet waste resources making all new heals that no one uses? If they want them to be useful, why haven’t they announced adjustments to make them better?

Right now, it looks to me like they wasted a lot of resources that would have been better spent fixing bugs and actually making changes that would have created some sort of class balance.

The new heals have a theme to them. They are all based around offence or attacks in some way. They either have a component which requires attacking or eschews some of the healing in favour of improving your offensive capability.

Sure, many are undertuned. But only partially, for example the Mesmer Signet is really weak, but still taken frequently because all too often your healing won’t save you. A phantasm CD reset, that might do the trick (ofc in a full phantasm build, a second iDefender is actually more health, by a substantial amount).

But as far as that goes, Ranger, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, Elementalist are all useful depending on setup. Guardian I don’t know, Engineer needs to be instant cast and have slightly more healing on both effects and Necromancer… well… sure, it was too strong in the first drafts. But it needs to mostly be returned to that, remove the ICDs so that it can properly work against and with small attacks again.

I don’t really see the “waste of resources”. They have a lot of people using them, actually. :P

I saw a lot of people using them initially, but no longer see people using the new heals. At least, not in PvP or PVE.

Still seems like a waste of resources.

Ele heal used really often, because it’s another blast finisher.
Rarely i see Mesmer signet too, but i haven’t tried if it’s good or not.
Everything else is too situational or outright bad.

Necromancers have a right to be really angry about their new healing skill.

• It is weaker than every other necro healing skill.
• It is useless in 100% of all builds.
• It will get you killed if you use it.
• You have to be in combat to use it, and it heals you for less than what your enemies hit you for.
• When Anet gave a demonstration of the new skill, the necro died, just to prove the point.

If you’re going to add a useless skill, just don’t bother to add it at all. We need our skill list filled with options, not filler.

The only one i have actually seen people use is the Mesmer one, Warriors still pretty much all run Healing Signet for obvious reasons but some of them are hard to tell if they have them equipped.

The Mesmer one is inferior to Ether Feast in every build.

I find the warrior heal funny. Either it’s utterly useless (most situations) or it’s absolutely overpowered (big NPC attacks or stupid enemy players). There’s no middle ground at all with that skill.

At least in PvE, Defiant Stance is really good.

Wouldn’t it also be amazing for being frontline when zergs clash?

Thedenofsin.7340:

The Mesmer one is inferior to Ether Feast in every build.

Signet of Ether is situational, like most mesmer utilities. There are some bosses (like Alphard or Old Tom or Ghost Eater) where having two iWardens up can give you close to 100% reflect uptime, almost immediately, and this can be critical for group success. The active of the Signet is awesome for that reason, so I find myself switching to it fairly regularly. It’s definitely not useful as a heal, or in all encounters, though.

I personally love the new Ele one, because it’s a blast finisher to go in all my lovely staff fields - can heal for large amounts even in a 1v1 if I do it in a water field, or against a petting zoo foe, and it’ll trigger on-crit effects since it’s arcane.

As for the others, I’ve not really noticed them much - a couple of engis running AED, but not particularly well - only once has its burst heal happened in front of me. Occasional necro with their signet in small groups roaming WvW, for that little bit extra damage on a foe, but not after the first week or so in PvP.

I’m pretty glad that all the heals are a little bit weak right now - it means that they weren’t introduced game-breakingly strong, and can be gradually tweaked up until they’re on par with the others (warrior one maybe not quite so much until healing signet isn’t the only one used, and never even activated). For most balancing, nerfing should come before buffing to try and avoid power creep, but for new skills it’s maybe better that they’re a little underpowered on introduction.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The only one i have actually seen people use is the Mesmer one, Warriors still pretty much all run Healing Signet for obvious reasons but some of them are hard to tell if they have them equipped.

Defiant Stance is only good in WvW when fighting groups of 15+. Without receiving a lot of damage it’s heal is pretty bad. If I am roaming I use either signet or surge depending on which build I am using. When running with the guild looking for big fights is nothing but Stance. Also when traited, it grants vigor which is always nice to have.

Thedenofsin.7340:

The Mesmer one is inferior to Ether Feast in every build.

Signet of the Ether is strong in PvE.

Ether Feast is very good for healing the mesmer. For encounters where burst healing is less important, it is better to swap in either the mantra (for the extra +4% damage) or the signet (for the phantasm recharge).

I like Litany of Wrath personally
Venom Shares should love Skale Venom, my gf runs it and loves having it

Litany of Wrath.
It was bad even with my zerk guardian build.

Litany of Wrath is extremely situational and will either get you killed or heal for nothing in most situations. The developer’s attitude that no heal should be instacast while making Litany of Wrath a 2 stage heal (and having passive heals that heal for a metric ton like Healing Signet) is kittened.

I would argue that Skelk Venom is what finally made thieves into team players.

I gave Water Spirit a try, really did. Even gave it a chance in a spirit build to see its full potential in PvE/WvW. I couldn’t find a reason to have it slotted over TU/HS in solo or group play.

I think it works better than HS in any situation where the group has to be mobile, Wetpaw. That’s what my GF uses hers for, in any case. Ofc, no field.

But I think overall the spirit is quite ok. As is Skelk venom, my GF’s brother plays a venomshare thief, and getting 5 poisons shared out to the party is pretty awesome. Skelk Venom isn’t a lot, but it’s nice at what it does, and he enjoys that he can play a support spec which isn’t useless in either WvW or PvE. Sure it’s never the number 1 top spot performer, but you’ll hardly see someone complain about it either.

I really think the problematic heal is the Necro Signet. And mostly because of the nerfs it suffered with it’s ICD. Without an ICD on either effect it could be quite useful.

I think the balance team could come a long way if they approached this issue more with the idea of:

How can we make this skill useful?

and less with the idea of:

How can we prevent this skill from being overpowered?

They’ve clearly leaned too much towards the latter, and not enough to the former, when implementing this skill. The philosophy seems to be, “as long as it’s not overpowered, it is okay”. And I couldn’t disagree more with that. It is waaaay more important that a skill actually sees some use, than potential balance issues. Take Spiteful Spirit in GW1 for example. That skill dominated the game, but at least it was useful, and it was fun to use. The Signet of Vampirism isn’t that different. In fact, the concept has a lot in common with Spiteful Spirit and Barbs from GW1.

Ele, mes and warrior new heals are all good. The ele one I use full time. The mes one is situationally useful in a lot of places. The same thing can be said about the warrior heal. Its downright op in some places in pve.

Carighan.6758:

I think it works better than HS in any situation where the group has to be mobile, Wetpaw. That’s what my GF uses hers for, in any case. Ofc, no field.

I don’t care for the 1 sec+ cast time on Aqua surge triggered heal, so if in a mobile group everyone must stop within the Water Spirit 240yrd range and wait due to the spirit rooting itself/animation for Aqua surge, like you already mentioned does not have a water field to blast (by self/party for 10sec) or condition removal.

The passive effect I suppose if everyone is using a fast weapon attack, and hits a target every time with no immunities like aegis, block, Los, dodge, reflect, range, etc…it may work ok, too situational for me.

edit: I was wrong about the cast to trigger time only being around 1 second, it’s 3sec+.

Add the 20sec down time when the spirit is dead (granted that’s the same as Aqua surge cd minus the passive heal on hit), and cast time for summoning the spirit+3sec cast of Aqua Surge.

spoj.9672:

Ele, mes and warrior new heals are all good. The ele one I use full time. The mes one is situationally useful in a lot of places. The same thing can be said about the warrior heal. Its downright op in some places in pve.

The only time it truly is more useful than Ether Feast is in a situation where healing is not important, and you just use the heal to reset phantasms. That doesn’t make it a good heal – it’s just another utility at that point.

I use the Mesmer signet with my phantasm build. In PVE, I use it as you describe, a utility to bring on more phantasms quickly. In WvW, I also use it that way at times – to finish off a camp faster when roaming or to add more burst on an opponent.

In terms of healing, I agree that it’s basically always worse than Ether Feast. For me, using a PU phantasm build, I’m okay with the passive healing and the lesser active heal in exchange for the burst. If I don’t win with the burst, I expect to die (or maybe to run away).

I don’t do pvp, but I suspect it wouldn’t work well there.

I forgot to add that, because I use disenchanter, the signet is also my reset for clearing conditions.

The Mesmer heal is good – i use it all the time on my Mesmer in WvW

Signet of Vampirism on the Necro is a joke.

Going off the title of this thread, I don’t understand why these skills cost 25 skill points if they’re supposed to be balanced options. As is, the cost implies that they are all elite level skills, instead of something I would slot in a healing spot.

Chrury.4627:

Going off the title of this thread, I don’t understand why these skills cost 25 skill points if they’re supposed to be balanced options. As is, the cost implies that they are all elite level skills, instead of something I would slot in a healing spot.

I also really don’t understand, it’s not like they function as any real kind of sink for skillpoints or gold – and in sPvP they’re utterly atrocious, since the game is meant to be all ’everyone’s on an even footing’. The only possible reason I can think of is to introduce PvP players to the Tomes of Knowledge and force them to buy a few… and this is a pretty terrible way to go about doing this.