Guild Wars 2

for a 3 skill point skill you would think it would be better or at least have something to make it more. As a lvl80 ranger it heals for 6723 takes 30 secs to recharge and can not be used under water (well you cant prayer under water very well so i give them that one). My first healing skill that came with ranger gives 6759 healing with only 20 sec cooldown. So a free skill is better then the racial skill unless it heals people around me as well (which it doesnt state) it is essentially the worst healing skill. Toll urgnet heals 884hp/sec over 10 secs which if your looking for some major healing is best considering it gives 8840hp over the course of its activation it also has a 25sec recharge. It seems like the gods have really left the humans Also the blessing is not allowed in PVP making it even worse.

The point of racial skills are that they are there for flavor and can be used to fill missing utility(For example, my Charr warrior feels lonely without the Warband support, although Thieves Guild is stronger.) They are weaker than profession utility and you are not suppose to use them because they are insanely good.

Prayer of Dwayna though is pretty patheticly weak compared to a skill like Healing Seed. I mean its a single heal on a 30 second CD that is weaker than most of the other heals including the 1 point heals. Why make it a 3 point heal if its going to be so weak.

As a ranger I have absolutely no reason to use it. It’s basically just Heal as One with a longer recharge.

I understand that the racial skills are there for flavor and not meant to be used seriously but there’s absolutely no reason to use it. It’s a complete waste of skill points.

runeblade.7514:

The point of racial skills are that they are there for flavor and can be used to fill missing utility(For example, my Charr warrior feels lonely without the Warband support, although Thieves Guild is stronger.) They are weaker than profession utility and you are not suppose to use them because they are insanely good.

I understand the reasoning, but if any single skill is completely dominated by another(in all categories, cost, amount healed, reuse timer and underwater capability), it is useless and a waste of development time. It might as well not be in the game at all.

Flavor skill or not, there should be some incentive for using it.

Its even worse for Engineer from a tool belt perspective. A ~800ish heal. That takes 6 seconds to get the regeneration portion completed and has a 60 second cooldown. With that value being valid for level 80.

Its only slightly better if you spec for lots and lots of heal, and even then its 1.5K every minute.

It’s the best mesmer heal… so I don’t think it’s weak.

stax.3087:

runeblade.7514:

The point of racial skills are that they are there for flavor and can be used to fill missing utility(For example, my Charr warrior feels lonely without the Warband support, although Thieves Guild is stronger.) They are weaker than profession utility and you are not suppose to use them because they are insanely good.

I understand the reasoning, but if any single skill is completely dominated by another(in all categories, cost, amount healed, reuse timer and underwater capability), it is useless and a waste of development time. It might as well not be in the game at all.

Flavor skill or not, there should be some incentive for using it.

There really isn’t other for the looks(which I think can be buffed somewhat), the entire point of racial skills are for flavor. If anyone of them are even closely to useful, it should be nerfed to the ground as it would give advantage to that race.

People keep defending them saying they are for flavour only but what exact flavour do the human skills add?

Other racial skills can be used to provide extra stuff to classes they don’t normally have and look cool doing it, Charr calls in his friends and buffs them with his Charr roar, Sylvari can put down Turrets and has a group heal, Asura’s racials adds a poison field to every class. Humans get the worst heal in the game with no added benefits and a poor animation.

My Guardian heal.

Sigent of Resolve: heals for 8,491 & removes condition every 10 seconds if passive is active. 40 seconds cooldown.

Prayer to Dwayna: Heals for 6,752 & 30 seconds cooldown. Looks cooler.

I want to use Prayer to Dwayna because it looks cooler, but the Signet of Resolve is so much better. So yeah, I wished they boosted them a little bit somehow.

Speaking of racial skills, I think Hounds of Balthazar skill needs to be changed so the dogs last until they die, similar to a necromancer’s fiend skills. The skill should begin recharging once they dogs die. Considering the skill needs 30 skill points to buy and has a 2 minute recharge time, why do the dogs only last 30 seconds? It would be nice to have this on my warrior for crowd control, but only 30 seconds of support doesn’t make the elite worth using over Signet of Rage.

But to add to the discussion, Prayer of Dwayna, for a warrior heals the highest amount consistently (the first heal heals more if you have a full bar of adrenaline), but I don’t use it because I have other heals that also heal conditions and apply other bonuses. If this skill is strictly healing, I agree, it should be buffed a little.

Mr Mango.3504:

It’s the best mesmer heal… so I don’t think it’s weak.

I’m afraid it isn’t. Ether Feast is our best heal, with a 10sec shorter cooldown.

I said this during Beta and I’ll say it again. It needs something, whether it’s a shorter cooldown, more healing, or better yet, some kind of mechanic to make it more interesting. All of the other healing skills in the game have some kind of interesting mechanic or flavor to them. Prayer to Dwayna is boring, weak and a waste of skill points. Please add something to it to make it at least useful. It doesn’t even have to be equally powerful, but it should at least be interesting. As a thief, Hide in Shadows does nearly the same amount of healing, at the same cooldown, and also removes a bunch of conditions and stealths.

Yeah – the Dwayna healing skill seems pretty useless to me as well – playing as a warrior, I can’t really find any use for it as pretty much every other heal skill I got outpeforms it.

Even if its there for flavor, why is it there at all if it is being outperformed anyway ?

UnderworldSkull.1863:

Speaking of racial skills, I think Hounds of Balthazar skill needs to be changed so the dogs last until they die, similar to a necromancer’s fiend skills. The skill should begin recharging once they dogs die. Considering the skill needs 30 skill points to buy and has a 2 minute recharge time, why do the dogs only last 30 seconds? It would be nice to have this on my warrior for crowd control, but only 30 seconds of support doesn’t make the elite worth using over Signet of Rage.

It actually has a 4 minute cool down. (240 Seconds). I believe the skill is absolutely fine as it is. Pardon me for my unpopular opinion. They’re called Elites for a reason, which is to be used when you’re in a real pickle. Not to have an everlasting effect that can unbalance your strength in the long run. I use my hounds with my pet all buffed up to get some serious meatshields on Vets, champs or a group of mobs. But anyway, all that side. I rarely have to use an elite. If you’re in a position where you need to spam elite skills to survive, then that’s a pretty clear indication that there’s something wrong with your build.

As for Prayer to Dwyana? I believe it to be an useless skill as well. Though I always figured that it had something similar to what we had in GW1’s “Gods Favor.” That is, I was expecting that the skill would become stronger if the world was granted “Gods Favor.” Though much to my surprise gods play a very lacking role in GW2. Alas, I’m not a fan of this skill since it doesn’t play a real lore integrated part at all.

It is a pretty miserable healing skill; every class has a healing skill (usually the starting one) that heals for more/has a negligible difference, usually has ‘extra’ stuff (Elixir S gives buffs, Heal as One heals the pet as well, ect) and (as far as I’m aware) all of them recharge faster as well.

Warscythes.9307:

stax.3087:

runeblade.7514:

The point of racial skills are that they are there for flavor and can be used to fill missing utility(For example, my Charr warrior feels lonely without the Warband support, although Thieves Guild is stronger.) They are weaker than profession utility and you are not suppose to use them because they are insanely good.

I understand the reasoning, but if any single skill is completely dominated by another(in all categories, cost, amount healed, reuse timer and underwater capability), it is useless and a waste of development time. It might as well not be in the game at all.

Flavor skill or not, there should be some incentive for using it.

There really isn’t other for the looks(which I think can be buffed somewhat), the entire point of racial skills are for flavor. If anyone of them are even closely to useful, it should be nerfed to the ground as it would give advantage to that race.

Then you would need to “nerf to the ground” the majority of racial skills. Norn snow leopard, anyone? Stealth for 5 seconds with a 5 second reuse timer? That enables a norn to stay stealthed more or less continually for 30 seconds. Would you call that “even closely to useful?”. I would.
.
Most of the racial skills are useful in some way or another. But a skill that has no advantage over a similar skill is a liability that will never be used in a competitive environment. And a skill that will never be used is a waste of development time.

the only human racial skill which is a little bit useful is the condition removal skill. some professions need it.

Racials are never intended to be better than profession skills.

Then you would need to “nerf to the ground” the majority of racial skills. Norn snow leopard, anyone? Stealth for 5 seconds with a 5 second reuse timer? That enables a norn to stay stealthed more or less continually for 30 seconds. Would you call that “even closely to useful?”. I would.

Surely you’ll need that stealth if you take that elite. It’s so useless in every other way..
I’d rather have an elite that would allow me to kill the enemy, not run away and hide from him very well.

Mr Mango.3504:

It’s the best mesmer heal… so I don’t think it’s weak.

Lol what? Compare it to ether feast. If you still think it’s better, you’re a bad mesmer.

Trakarg.2095:

Mr Mango.3504:

It’s the best mesmer heal… so I don’t think it’s weak.

Lol what? Compare it to ether feast. If you still think it’s better, you’re a bad mesmer.

Ether Feast is around 5,600 base healing with 640 additional healing per illusion. When do you usually need healing? Yeah when things go bad. Think twice before posting maybe.

The problem is that they can’t make the racial skills too good so one race isn’t better than another.

What if the skills had PvE versions that were much better than the PvP versions of the same skill? Then the races would be more differentiated, the Racial skills suddenly are good, and in PvP everything is still balanced between the races. PvE unbalancing isn’t really as big of a concern to me.

iPhoenixi.4793:

UnderworldSkull.1863:

Speaking of racial skills, I think Hounds of Balthazar skill needs to be changed so the dogs last until they die, similar to a necromancer’s fiend skills. The skill should begin recharging once they dogs die. Considering the skill needs 30 skill points to buy and has a 2 minute recharge time, why do the dogs only last 30 seconds? It would be nice to have this on my warrior for crowd control, but only 30 seconds of support doesn’t make the elite worth using over Signet of Rage.

It actually has a 4 minute cool down. (240 Seconds). I believe the skill is absolutely fine as it is. Pardon me for my unpopular opinion. They’re called Elites for a reason, which is to be used when you’re in a real pickle. Not to have an everlasting effect that can unbalance your strength in the long run. I use my hounds with my pet all buffed up to get some serious meatshields on Vets, champs or a group of mobs. But anyway, all that side. I rarely have to use an elite. If you’re in a position where you need to spam elite skills to survive, then that’s a pretty clear indication that there’s something wrong with your build.

As for Prayer to Dwyana? I believe it to be an useless skill as well. Though I always figured that it had something similar to what we had in GW1’s “Gods Favor.” That is, I was expecting that the skill would become stronger if the world was granted “Gods Favor.” Though much to my surprise gods play a very lacking role in GW2. Alas, I’m not a fan of this skill since it doesn’t play a real lore integrated part at all.

Yeah, sorry for the mess up. I meant to say 4 minutes and not 2. And I do agree with you in the fact that elite skills shouldn’t be needed and that they shouldn’t be spammed either. I guess I just wanted a little more out of the 30 skill points I spent but after some thought, having those dogs at all times would be pretty overwhelming. Anyway, we’re getting off topic :P

I use it on my Guardian because it heals more than the first one… the 2 seconds of block on the first one doesn’t really make up for the lower heal amount. :/

It’s fine if racial skills aren’t better than profession skills.

It’s bad if racial skills are literally useless.

They should be niche utility skills. If they do 90% of things worse than a similar profession skill, they need to so something that little bit better to justify their existence.

It should be changed…not buffed. There is no flavor to this skill at all, its just a heal. It should do SOMETHING else, ANYTHING at all. Like…maybe give you a boon, or maybe some kind of teleport to safety, just something to make it interesting. As of now its a boring skill.

PTD is lame. They need to make it at least as useful as the default healing skill of each class. At least that way you get a cosmetic change and won’t unbalance things. There’s no reason at all to use it when it’s worse than the power and cool down of my heal as one though.

Necromancer here, and i like PTD. In fact i can choose from different healing skill

-Minion (which is quite useless if not in a minion build, and if they kill him you lost your heal)

-Feast condition: base heal 5500 (or better) + removing condition

-Well: Area heal (with high cd)

-PTD: near 6400 heal

So i use PTD and switch to Feast condition only whend there’s a boss with lame condition (like poison or burning)

Consume conditions is undoubtedly better than PTD though…

5s shorter cooldown, and removing a condition= higher healing. So, remove a few conditions and you are getting more healing.

It also synergises with corruption spells and the plague signet.

on my guardian I mostly use this skill for my heal, becasue of the cooldown

As ArenaNet said, racial skills are intended to impart, along with flavour, the ability to fill in gaps in your profession. It stands to reason, then, that if your profession is already strong in an area, you’re probably not going to get much out of a racial skill that fits that.

In this case… the strengths of F6 skills actually varies wildly between professions. Rangers have among the strongest F6 skills in the game, if not THE strongest, so they really do gain nothing from Prayer to Dwayna. Other professions, though, have F6 skills that are more situational (due to having special effects rather than simply providing healing) or just plain weaker (probably being balanced by those professions having access to healing from other sources, at least in theory). For them, Prayer to Dwayna can be quite useful.

draxynnic.3719:

As ArenaNet said, racial skills are intended to impart, along with flavour, the ability to fill in gaps in your profession. It stands to reason, then, that if your profession is already strong in an area, you’re probably not going to get much out of a racial skill that fits that.

In this case… the strengths of F6 skills actually varies wildly between professions. Rangers have among the strongest F6 skills in the game, if not THE strongest, so they really do gain nothing from Prayer to Dwayna. Other professions, though, have F6 skills that are more situational (due to having special effects rather than simply providing healing) or just plain weaker (probably being balanced by those professions having access to healing from other sources, at least in theory). For them, Prayer to Dwayna can be quite useful.

There isn’t a single class heal skill in the game worse then Prayer to Dwayna.

I’m level 80 and I use this skill on my guardian too. Even though some of the other heal spells heal for more, this skill has the shortest cooldown that heals for the most of its cooldown and I like spamming heal as much as possible. Even at 30 seconds, sometimes I’m anxious for my cooldown to end in order to use again, because I’m taking up so much beat down even when I’m dodging around after building up so much agro.

The usefulness of this spell sounds like it depends on your class based on the responses I’ve seen in this thread.

Levetty: It’s situational. Take the guardian, for instance (I can make the comparison easily because I have a human guardian) – the guardian healing skills all have something else they can do, but on pure healing/recharge terms, Prayer to Dwayna comes out ahead. Signet of Resolve comes close, and if you apply the Signet Mastery trait it comes out ahead, but if you don’t have the trait and you’re doing what often happens in drawn-out fights and using your healing skill on recharge to keep your health up (and/or you’re fighting enemies that don’t make a lot of use of conditions, and other condition removal you have is easily keeping up) PtD comes out ahead. Now, when you consider the utility added by the guardian’s F6 skills, you can say that they’re more valuable overall… but sometimes raw healing/second is what you want, and PtD wins there. (Again, if you’re not taking the Signet Mastery trait.)

Mesmers, on the other hand, have no reason to unlock Prayer to Dwayna. Ether feast is more efficient even without having any illusions out, due to the shorter recharge.

I’m also wishing somewhat I’d made my elementalist human for similar thinking. Ether Renewal does win in healing/second, I think, but only if you don’t mind channeling for four seconds out of every fifteen (and don’t get interrupted in the process). Signet of Restoration is harder to analyse due to how its effectiveness is tied to casting rate – I think if you can manage to keep yourself casting a spell a second or so it’s competitive, but if you have to activate the signet (and don’t have Written in Stone, which is a grandmaster earth trait) the healing you get should you end up in a F6-on-recharge state is suboptimal.

(For anyone who wants to do the comparison yourself, Prayer to Dwayna heals for a little less than the self-heal from Healing Breeze, but more than 3/4 that from Signet of Resolve. Using the same assumptions as the numbers on the wiki, it probably sits at about 6250)

What’s a f6 skill? Every professions I’ve tried stopped at f4.. o.0

Sorry, my brainslip. Substitute for slot-6.

My guess is that Prayer of Dwayna scales very strongly with Healing Power (something most people wouldn’t bring if they got it for free as an added bonus).

For my Elementalist, Prayer of Dwayna is the strongest heal of them all. However, the recharge is also the highest and skills like Glyph of Restoration provide other benefits besides the heal.

So it has its niche, but I don’t use it personally.

runeblade.7514:

The point of racial skills are that they are there for flavor and can be used to fill missing utility(For example, my Charr warrior feels lonely without the Warband support, although Thieves Guild is stronger.) They are weaker than profession utility and you are not suppose to use them because they are insanely good.

Its the best healing skill an elementalist has got so its very underpowered when used with an elementalist. Sure you can atune to water to bolster it but in the middle of a fight you can’t just attune to water when your trying to roll out damage.

Paulus magintie.7432

Sure you can atune to water to bolster it but in the middle of a fight you can’t just attune to water when your trying to roll out damage.

I’d like to correct you on two points.

For one thing, switching to water magic doesn’t increase the power of your heals (it will make Glyph of Restoration add regeneration, but that’s a skill effect, not an attunement effect).

Secondly, you CAN switch attunements when dodging. And while ressing. Or talking. Or even while casting Fire Storm. In fact, switching to Earth (with the stability trait) can be a way to finish casting the spell safely at times.

The human skills are probably the weakest of all the racial skills.

Personally for an 80 Engineer i find prayer to be better unless your elixer spec, sure it has a longer cool down but Prayer to dwayna heals 6,50 on a 5 second longer cool down, and the tool belt ability heals 995 with a 100% chance for regen and is on a seperate Cool down of 40 seconds, were the elixer H heals for 5,560 and the tool belt for elixer H doesn’t heal and has a random chance for one of 3 buffs so for non elixer spec i prefer prayer, ive never really tried heal turret much so i cant really compare

All the human racials are garbage, I only picked them up because why not, and because sometimes you just have to turn into a tree to troll people.

I use this on my guardian :’(

I think it’s the strongest burst heal for Elementalists, it looks cool, and it fits my character who mains in Air magic. But as I’m guessing it under-performs compared to other heal skills. Yeah, I get that racials aren’t supposed to be more powerful than regular skills, but these aren’t even usable in sPvP, so the least they could is make racials on par with regular skills. Maybe make Prayer to Dwayna remove 1 condition, or add regen for a few seconds.

I totally agree. PtD needs a 25 sec cooldown to be viable. Currently, my thief’s standard heal skill provides MORE healing AND stealth on the same CD. For me to even consider it, it would need 25 sec CD.

Since we can mostly agree that while yes the Prayers (and in engi’s case Blessings) are underpowered as skills but decent for being racials that are there just for flavor, but because they are called PRAYERS, it would be nice if they could at least have some audio to go along with them like the Mesmer’s Mantras.

Jasott.7914:

Since we can mostly agree that while yes the Prayers (and in engi’s case Blessings) are underpowered as skills but decent for being racials that are there just for flavor, but because they are called PRAYERS, it would be nice if they could at least have some audio to go along with them like the Mesmer’s Mantras.

But there is no flavour to it. And it is under powered compared to other racials.

If racials are there for flavor, then Dwayna should have flavor. It’s a basic self-heal. Pretty flavorless imo.

I’m some what knew to guardian, just hiting the lvl 40 mark, and was looking at the heals my self, came here to see what people had to say about them and this quote realy sums it up in my opinion.

Stax.3087
“Most of the racial skills are useful in some way or another. But a skill that has no advantage over a similar skill is a liability that will never be used in a competitive environment. And a skill that will never be used is a waste of development time.”

As this heal sits now I wont spend any points on it, and as a developer why even put this in here, If you ask the question “why would some one use this”, you would have to conclude “they will not use it”, it is inferiour to the other heals.
The way to fix this cold be having racial skills on there own ability buton, like f5 and leting the players determine what they want to use, but as it stands now using this would be like using under lvld gear when I have proper gear. and thats just not going to hapen.

Slight edit here:
It ocured to me after writing this that we already have a racial slot in f4, and as a racial skill this would be beter serverd being moved there, then you have the option of using it as added healing, or some thing else for whatever it brings to the table.