Guild Wars 2

For some reason this thread now thinks there are two pages and just shows one as blank, with no posts and no way to navigate to the first page. Hopefully this fixes it.

NikeEU.7690:

D/D ele proves how useful healing power is in PvP and full AFK dungeon solos in tank gear prove how powerful it is in PvE

If you are talking about sustain you are not talking about just healing power, you are talking predominantly about boon uptime which the ele can do exceptionally well. There is a clip of a defensive built guard clearing HotW’s solo, think it takes him well over an hour. This does not mean that it is efficient by any means and it was mostly his perma protection that he derived sustain from, not healing power. I can use a rock to drive a nail into wood, may take me a while, but a nailgun is probably a better more efficient option.

A simpler way to look at it is how many people actively look to spec healing power into their WvW/PvP builds. Compare that to how many actively spec into power, im sure the split would lay heavily in favour of power. If you are receiving healing power points as a kind of bonus thrown in with other stats(celestial). They certainly have a place in this instance, as you are kind of getting them like a free coke with your meal.

The argument now becomes if Healing Power as a stat isnt utilised often, is this a good or bad thing?

In PvP healers and tankier builds are more useful because enemy players can and will kill you if you don’t have enough defense, unlike the monsters in this game.

That’s why i propose folding the healing increase into vitality. At present, toughness provides an approximate average increase to health and healing effectiveness of 50% per 1000 points. Healing power doesn’t even come close to those numbers.
It admittedly is ineffective versus conditions, but conditions have a great many other counters. The only counters to direct damage are avoiding or blocking it, or mitigating it through toughness.

since vitality does provide a buffer against all damage types, a proportional increase to healing would be a bit too strong, but something in the order of 10% per 300 over base (33% per 1000) wouldn’t be excessive, i don’t think. This would put it at about the effacity of healing power at present.

Narrrz.7532:

That’s why i propose folding the healing increase into vitality. At present, toughness provides an approximate average increase to health and healing effectiveness of 50% per 1000 points. Healing power doesn’t even come close to those numbers.
It admittedly is ineffective versus conditions, but conditions have a great many other counters. The only counters to direct damage are avoiding or blocking it, or mitigating it through toughness.

since vitality does provide a buffer against all damage types, a proportional increase to healing would be a bit too strong, but something in the order of 10% per 300 over base (33% per 1000) wouldn’t be excessive, i don’t think. This would put it at about the effacity of healing power at present.

To be honest, Vitality needs some help too. A mere 10 HP per point when the endgame HP numbers are in the 5 digits is really kind of slack. It’s a flat number that doesn’t scale for squat.
Maybe that’s just the warrior in me, though. Seeing my thief’s 11k kinda makes me cry. =P

So, yeah, I’d support quite a few of the following:

• Roll Healing Power into Vitality. HealPow converts to some other useful attribute, boon duration, probably.
• Add Healing Power to boon duration. 1% per 100 should be quite useful, far and above the slackness of Giver’s.
• Change Healing Power to a percentage boost instead of independent scaling. 1% per 100, possibly even 2% per 100, would really give healing impact, and it would make tweaking individual healing skills easier.
• Healing Power affects both incoming and outgoing heals.
• Change water blast combo scaling for more dramatic healing power impact.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

scaling should be improved, base heal should be lowered and
at 1000 vitality you recieve the normal healing MODIFIED by additional vitality, could add 2% effectivenes per 100 vitality on receiver only..
at max vitality it would add 36% to the normal heal..

I’ve though this through…
I also posted things in other threads,
I’d like base healing nerfed, values around 65% of their original values would be perfect, HEAL Scaling should be tripled minimum…
at 1000 vitality you recieve the normal healing above 1000 vitality MODIFIED by additional vitality ( actual-1000) , could add 2% effectivenes per 100 vitality on receiver only..
boon duration should be scaled from healing around 3% PER 100 HEALING…

I think we should be on to someting……

In case people like your suggestion better, remove heal scaling as is and:
add flat multipliers on healing… well would be my second option but I would like 1% for every 18/36 healing, so at 1800 I’d want 100% or 50% in this case… not 18% lol…. 18% is a waste of stats STILL!

This should extend to lifedrains and vampirics.
in this case I still want healing power to influence boon duration : boon duration should be scaled from healing around 3% PER 100 HEALING…

and in all cases: no combining of stats.

Id be happy with a 2% boon duration and a 1% outgoing healing boost(or vice versa) per 100 healing points . This gets around the problem of too much healing sustain on 1 class as the outgoing healing bonus only applies to others, not yourself.

As for vitality i think that is a discussion that deserves a thread all on it’s own.

Chorazin.4107:

As for vitality i think that is a discussion that deserves a thread all on it’s own.

Well that’s kinda what this was meant to be. i guess i didn’t title it very well

Narrrz.7532:

Chorazin.4107:

As for vitality i think that is a discussion that deserves a thread all on it’s own.

Well that’s kinda what this was meant to be. i guess i didn’t title it very well

With Vitality and Healing Power being the two weakest stats, it’s worth talking about them in conjunction.

I do support the original notion that higher Vitality should mean easier healing (incoming). But it also means healing power needs to be more effective. At best, full gear raises healing effectiveness a mere 15-20%.
If Vitality and Healing both contributed to healing in some percentage way, there would be a definitive sense of growth with it.

Hrm, still thinking of numbers to throw at it. 2% outgoing heals per 100 Healing, and 1% incoming heals per 100 Vitality. Self heals would benefit from both, at that point. It’s more moving pieces to balance around, but it adds value to the stats that otherwise, well.. suck.

Rauderi.8706:

With Vitality and Healing Power being the two weakest stats, it’s worth talking about them in conjunction.

I do support the original notion that higher Vitality should mean easier healing (incoming). But it also means healing power needs to be more effective. At best, full gear raises healing effectiveness a mere 15-20%.
If Vitality and Healing both contributed to healing in some percentage way, there would be a definitive sense of growth with it.

Hrm, still thinking of numbers to throw at it. 2% outgoing heals per 100 Healing, and 1% incoming heals per 100 Vitality. Self heals would benefit from both, at that point. It’s more moving pieces to balance around, but it adds value to the stats that otherwise, well.. suck.

That still means people need to stack healing power to be better healers. I just don’t think that’s actually gonna happen. only three professions really actually gain any benefit from stacking the attribute – maybe 4 with revenant coming in. even still, that’s less than half of the professions actually capable of benefiting from the attribute.

if vitality increases incoming healing(which would necessarily include healing you do to yourself, thus every profession can benefit), that gives a soft tank role for those that want it without upsetting the zerk meta. For healing, those professions capable of it should get a boon or trait to increase their own outgoing healing – something like the traits that guardian and revenant have already, scaling their heals by an attribute, though obviously revenant’s one would have to be changed.
This would make healing easier to balance, too; at present, because you have to forfeit so much offensive power to stack healing (are there even any attribute combinations that include healing with two offensive stats?) healing has to be balanced around two points; useful at the levels people are likely to take it (e.g. full celestial) without being overpowered if a full investment is made into it. I don’t know if that’s an impossible task, but it sure can’t be an easy one. Something which offers a fixed number will be easier to work with.

I’ve been thinking more about how healing could be managed without a healing power stat, to make it viable without being essential and useful without a major stat investment in it. I think a temporary boon is the way to go.

Benevolence: Stacks duration, increases healing to other characters by 33% (ie, not affecting self healing at all; vitality would be your way of increasing that)

No skills would ordinarily apply this boon (to fit with the philosophy of not requiring a character to sacrifice a major part of their utility to amplify their healing). Instead, different traits for each character would give them access to it:
-Engineer: Alchemy line, Tier 1: Health insurance now grants you 10sec benevolence upon equipping a med kit or elixir gun, and adds Benevolence to the boons applied by Elixir B
-Elementalist: Water line, Tier 2: Soothing Disruption now grants Benevolence as well as vigor & regeneration when you use a cantrip
Arcane line, Tier 1.5: Elemental Attunement gives you benevolence upon switching to water (all targets still gain regeneration)
-Guardian: Virtues line, Tier 2: Absolute Resolution also grants you Benevolence
Honor line, Tier 3: Force of will amplifies outgoing healing by the same amount that vitality usually increases incoming healing (basically, no change in function)
-Necromancer: Blood line, Tier 1: Ritual of Life causes well of blood to grant Benevolence upon activation
-Ranger: Nature Magic line, Tier 1: Allies Aid causes your water spirit and healing spring to give benevolence

(i don’t think the other professions have any noteworthy ability to heal allies)

added the idea from the last post into the first post.

I don’t like this idea purely because I don’t care for having to use an all cantrip bar or running arcane to be a good healer on an Elementalist. Especially with Tempest shouts being set up as a huge boost to your support ability that seems like it’s breaking just about every interesting build purely for the sake of getting that boon.
It’s idiotic enough that different spell types have some kind of arbitrary association with an element without making those associations so powerful that you don’t even really have a choice anymore. I think the only reason why people aren’t more upset about how badly the elementalist specs are designed right now is because the class is crazy good even without any specs chosen.

Aetrion.8295:

I don’t like this idea purely because I don’t care for having to use an all cantrip bar or running arcane to be a good healer on an Elementalist. Especially with Tempest shouts being set up as a huge boost to your support ability that seems like it’s breaking just about every interesting build purely for the sake of getting that boon.

mmm. perhaps put the boon on the inscription trait instead, then? I’m not as familiar with elementalist as the other classes, but it does strike me that regardless of your desired role, you can still only cast your major healing skills every so often – that was what i had in mind with suggesting that Elemental Attunement give Benevolence – you switch to water, cast healing rain & geyser(or equivalent skills appropriate to your weapon choices), then switch out again. The more sustained benevolence from Soothing Disruption or Elemental Attunement would be for builds that want to remain in water for longer, taking advantage of the passive aoe heal or the heal around projectile impact. Like i said – i’m not intimately familiar with elementalist, but it doesn’t seem to me that it would be overly build restrictive; it would require you to take water &/or arcane trait lines, but for a support focused build i think you’d be taking at least one of those anyway.

Yea, Water would definitely be included in any build that wants to heal, so it makes sense to put that kind of ability there.

I’m still not really convinced that the problem with healing is that you can’t heal for enough as much as it is that you don’t need healing enough.

Lol I still don’t see the problem with Vitality having the secondary stats of HP and Healing Power. Stacking Vitality would improve the amount of health and how much you can heal for (Healing Power no longer being a major stat on gear but there would be traits that directly improve this). I mean, come on, they both have the acronym of ‘HP’!

Secondarily, I’d also make certain outgoing heals (not self heals) be formulated off of your healing power and the target’s vitality so you’d get more health back if built for vitality when being healed by others.

Can also change the regen formula to incorporate Vitality more so that it’s based more on how much health you have to regenerate back and not just a base amount that gets relatively weaker and weaker the more HP you have…mind you it should work on how much Vitality you have, not a % of how much HP you have.

I don’t think vitality and healing power should be one stat. Healing power should be above all else the stat you build around to be group support, and that isn’t a role that screams “needs huge amounts of hitpoints” to me.

Aetrion.8295:

I don’t think vitality and healing power should be one stat. Healing power should be above all else the stat you build around to be group support, and that isn’t a role that screams “needs huge amounts of hitpoints” to me.

A dead medic is a useless casualty. You can’t build for support without building for personal sustain, especially if the playstyle will incorporate rescuing people from the clutches of defeat. When an ally goes down, and you have to pick them up, your options shouldn’t just be healing the other guy that’s picking him up.

Besides, there’s really no room to build for one thing. You build for support/defense or defense/offense or offense/support. Just like a berserk GS warrior with only signets isn’t likely the best option for much, neither would a full healing Guardian with no other support buff defense and horrible offense. The point is to make it simpler to do.

If healing and HP is merged there is no more need to strike a balance between offense/defense/support because defense and support will simply be the same thing.

Not making the vitality and healing stack together would be the answer then, as combining would both sustain the healer with it’s rediculous amount of HP and therefore create a potential invincible char.

I still like healing to be buffed, but I stick to my suggestion:

• nerf base heal (50-70% of present)
• buff healing multipliers on ALL healing related things
  (vampirics/ lifesteals/heals/regen/ and so on (300-500%)
• add vitaility as a influence in the overall formula

Now:

HEAL = BASE heal + (“healing scaler” x Healing power)

This formula consists of:

BASE heal being a fixed amount of healing you’ll always get this varies from 20 to 8250 ingame…..

“healing scaler” is the modifier most healing skills get to balance them, in practice these range from:
0.04 ( 1 health for every 25 healing power, with max healing power 88 points) to
1.25 ( 5 health for every 4 healing power, with max healing power maximum 2750)

Healing Power being the old name for the present Healing stat. This will range from 0 (no healing whatsoever) to about 2200 on full clerics guardians with runes of the monk (or other healing runes, healing food and utility and fuly stacked sigil of life (stacking sigil for healing power)

My suggestion

• Base heal (50-75% of present value)
• Healing scaler (300-500% of present value)
• Vitality will buff total healed amount by 1% for every 50 (or maybe 100) points (this will need to be tweaked) above 1000 OF THE RECEIVER ! (you’ll get a bit more HP if you have a huge amount of VITALITY in your build!)

(for 1% additional healing effectiveness per 50 vitaility)
HEAL = (BASE heal + (“healing scaler” x healing power)) x (1 + ((vitality-1000) / 5000))

(this works out to a little added heal based on vitality)
(read:
~15% for celestial,
~20% for minor vitality
~40-50% for max vitality.

If total healing without vitality modification was 5000 points it would end up being:
~ 5750 for celestial vitality
~ 6000 points for minor vitality
~ 7000-7500 for max vitality.

so your sentinels warrior would get 25% free bonus / heal compared to a zerk…

ADDITIONALLY
Also I’d like to see boon duration sale for 2.5% for every 100 points of healing.

BOON Duration = (Healing/100) x 2.5
(celestial(~700 healing) ~20% boon duration)
(minor healing(~1000 healing) ~25% boon duration)
(major healing(~1400 healing) ~35% boon duation)
(max healing (~2200 healing) ~55% boon duation)

This would still leave every stat as is, As ALL people state HEALING is only used when:

1. all active defences are used up, (else no dmg would be taken)
2. all dodges are used up, (else no dmg would be taken)
3. party has been hit and is suffering (with no dmg you wouldn’t heal now or would you?)

My changes would add 3 things:

• HEALING will now be beneficial to your build and add a DECENT amount of healing
• Actual health restored will be increased slightly if you invested a lot in VITALITY
• boon duration would also scale from HEALING making healing a true support stat

So when the people cannot hack it anymore you could call for a heal or hit #6:
most base heals ingame are 1000-8000 base at this moment. Having these base heals nerfed by ~33% would leave 667 to 5333 points which would not be a HUGE problem, but scaling would improve for the people who have a high vitality from STATS (not the basic HP bonus from necro’s, and warriors which isn’t recognisable by stats)
and if 1 person invested in healing and has AOE heals (S)He would add a lot to the party healing. allowing the #6 to be used for buffs from runes or at will while you can depend on 1 person running a slightly off meta build. (Zealot DPS/support anybody?)

EDIT: corrected an error in the formulae

• Numbers are a suggestion but as it is present numbers allow for heals to be
  8000+ base healing and an added 2700 points from fully specialized characters. I like to see the scalable part be something worthwhile… My suggestion as above will change this to 5333 and 6750 points, maybe even a bit more if the character recieving has vitality as stat. and an added boon duarion for the person who invested in healing.*

Aetrion.8295:

If healing and HP is merged there is no more need to strike a balance between offense/defense/support because defense and support will simply be the same thing.

There’s no need to now. Taking healing away from an attribute investment will at least make it more tempting, as it’s no longer a monetary investment/doesn’t take up extra inventory space/can be easily swapped at any time.

With the harder hitting content of HoT, allowing vitality to improve your healing will (i hope) increase the temptation to put points into defensive stats, but no matter how much healing power gets buffed, i don’t see people running around with it on in the open world. If you regularly farm content as a dedicated guild group, then perhaps there is a space for you to play a dedicated support role, but the average person has to be able to hold their own in solo play, and if you have a significant investment to healing power on your gear, your ability to do that is severely hampered. Even if you do build a separate set for healing, when you come across a group large enough to benefit from support, you’re going to have to stop, find a quiet place to swap in your healing gear (trinkets and rings ofcourse require bringing up the healing panel; can’t just double click) and even the you’re probably going to need to reassign traits to be effective.
It just makes more sense, for the style of content that GW2 offers (and which HoT will presumably continue to offer; only the difficulty was significantly altered in the part of Verdant Brink we played on the BWE), to have healing tied to the much-more-robust trait system.

Aetrion.8295:

If healing and HP is merged there is no more need to strike a balance between offense/defense/support because defense and support will simply be the same thing.

You would be right if there was a means to directly improve how much you support by just making said support better…In other games, you just take a heal skill that heals for more but sacrifice taking skills that do more damage. Or you allocate resources so you have a skill that improves team defenses more but allocate less resources to offense making them less efficient (having longer cooldowns or costing more energy to cast or something).

In GW2, it’s hard to make healing power worth its sacrifice because just loading on healing power doesn’t make you support. You have to take utilities, weapons, traits and sometimes runes to be able to support and yet very few aspects of the game back a “healing support” playstyle. It’d be different if healing power made my 6-slot skill recharge faster and castable on allies but it doesn’t. Nor does it even make the boons I offer more potent.

Basically what I’m saying is, healing as support is niche at best. You can hardly focus on it and even if you do, you have to generate the situation where it will make the biggest difference (instead of using other mitigation + your own heal). I won’t say no to keeping Healing Power the same but just making it stronger, but if it doesn’t do much else, that still doesn’t change its niche status.

Heck, even if Healing Power was rolled into Vit, the combo would be niche status, but at least you can make a healer that won’t die as easily to a time burst and has some resources left to allocate to offense.

Leo G.4501:

Aetrion.8295:

If healing and HP is merged there is no more need to strike a balance between offense/defense/support because defense and support will simply be the same thing.

You would be right if there was a means to directly improve how much you support by just making said support better…In other games, you just take a heal skill that heals for more but sacrifice taking skills that do more damage. Or you allocate resources so you have a skill that improves team defenses more but allocate less resources to offense making them less efficient (having longer cooldowns or costing more energy to cast or something).

In GW2, it’s hard to make healing power worth its sacrifice because just loading on healing power doesn’t make you support. You have to take utilities, weapons, traits and sometimes runes to be able to support and yet very few aspects of the game back a “healing support” playstyle. It’d be different if healing power made my 6-slot skill recharge faster and castable on allies but it doesn’t. Nor does it even make the boons I offer more potent.

Basically what I’m saying is, healing as support is niche at best. You can hardly focus on it and even if you do, you have to generate the situation where it will make the biggest difference (instead of using other mitigation + your own heal). I won’t say no to keeping Healing Power the same but just making it stronger, but if it doesn’t do much else, that still doesn’t change its niche status.

Heck, even if Healing Power was rolled into Vit, the combo would be niche status, but at least you can make a healer that won’t die as easily to a time burst and has some resources left to allocate to offense.

So you’re saying healing removes possibility to do DPS?

Healing is found on 9 sets 5 being minor stat 3 being major stat:
2 of those have power, 3 have no offensive stats and 3 are condition dmg and 1 can do all… just a bit less then others, but in all fields

Major:

• Clerics (Hlg,Tgh,Pwr)
• Aphothecary (Hlg,Tgh,Cnd)
• Magi (Hlg, Pre, Vit) (support only, no off stat)

Minor

• Zealot (Pwr, Pre, Hlg) <—- Seems to be an actual DPS heal combo. (No Asc trinkets)
• Settler (Tgh, Cnd, Hlg)
• Shaman (Vit, Cnd, Hlg)
• Nomad (Tgh, Vit, Hlg) (support only, no off stat)
• Givers (Tgh, BnD, Hlg) (Armor only, no Asc) (support only, no off stat)

I almost forgot Celestial… It can do anything anyways. it’s the optimum if you run power/condition/support on 1 character.

I agree on your comment stats alone will not make you a healer, but most classes can be decent healers if you spec ’m

• Shout heal warrior (will support well and banner could add an AOE regen)
• Warhorn/shout ranger (perma regen, do I do not know if it is self only or AOE)
• Mace guardian (either go DPS or shouts mace alone will heal ok)
• Water elementalist (water and blast, staff 1,3,5 will be your ally.
  Maybe tempest’s shouts will make for some more possibilities.
• Engineer should have some tricks… It always does
• Necro can heal with transfusion and wells, and has regen on staff #2 and dodge as well as on focus. Also vampiric will heal and the res traits will likely be buffed

Classes not very adept at healing:

• Mesmer has no real healing support
• Thief is a good resser but no real healer

Leo G.4501:

Heck, even if Healing Power was rolled into Vit, the combo would be niche status, but at least you can make a healer that won’t die as easily to a time burst and has some resources left to allocate to offense.

People do take vit now. The main purpose of this idea is not so much to make vit more prevalent, but rather just to bring it more into line with toughness, and at the same time make healing stronger in pve without (hopefully) breaking the meta in pvp, which is the more likely result of simply buffing healing power.

The benevolence idea, if implemented, would be balanced separately to keep healing roughly in the spot it is now – that might work out to be less effective healing than a full healing power focused build, simply because at current ratios, giving any character the equivalent of 1600-2200 healing power with a single trait &/ line switch would probably make healing too good in both game modes.

For those who really want some way to itemize boon duration, that could always be added onto vitality instead of an increase to healing received. that might be harder to balance effectively, though, and i think that almost certainly would cause a significant increase in peoples itemization of vitality.