Guild Wars 2

I’ve been theorycrafting a variant of the meta Dragonhunter build that sacrifices ~25% of its damage (bringing it to ~11.5K DPS, or 16.5K with Quickness/Alacrity) to put out 1.1K/1.7K HPS to half the team. However, I’m not sure whether this amount of off-healing would be of any benefit to a dedicated healer, or if it would just result in overhealing.

I should mention that I’m not talking about elite-level play here; this is more for semi-organised guilds or PUGs. I find that most wipes are caused by players making mistakes and being downed rather than the boss enraging due to a lack of DPS. My gut feeling is that losing 2-3% of the total party DPS is worth it if it can help keep everyone on their feet.

So, would it help? Are off-healers a thing?

We use it and it work.

On VG I see biggest problem with our casual team mates. So druid heal, and guard tank/heal. Working pretty well and dmg is acceptable.
On gorsy druid tanking and healing-9x dmg helping too.
And sabby , well, I still believe that here no heal needed but good trick was for us ranger dps(kite) and half auramancer at meele. Funny kill :-)

Sounds like a pretty big sacrifice to DPS.

Keep in mind that one druid should be more than enough healing for 99% of the encounter. And when it’s not enough it’s because your group failed some mechanic that resulted in them taking a ton of damage (missed a circle at VG, didn’t break Gorseval fast enough), and in that case the only thing that would help are big healing bursts. I’m not too familiar with dragonhunter so I don’t know if that healing would be big burst healing or small amounts of constant healing.

If a Druid healing isn’t doing it I would maybe try a build that allows for some healing without a big hit to DPS, something like having a couple of tempests using Wash Away the Pain. If you were to have for example a druid and 2 tempests (with standard DPS builds), then your druid should be able to cover 99% of the healing, and the tempests can run rebound and wash to cover those emergency moments where you need even more healing. If they use the fresh air D/W build they can also use the water shouts and overload for even more healing if the situation is truly fubar, but that will most likely rarely be needed.

This is what my team and I usually joke as #struggleteamcomp. It works and we use it when we feel it’s fair to carry guild mates who are tackling on mechanics instead of feeling entitled to be elitists. We run two druids at VG, Sab, or hammer DH, or off-heal tempest and we have no shames about it. At the end of the day, the goal is a fast, smooth clear instead of an amazing, brag-worthy record. There are always time and place for different things.

Have seen people use a shout warrior instead of PS for extra healing or multiple tempests with a bit of added healing, a healing guardian to tank or anything else which adds more healing than you’d need in a perfect situation.

You have to find something that works for you if you are struggling at one of the bosses. There is more than enough room to do them without having the most optimal of groups.
You won’t be breaking any records but worry about that once you master the raid.