Guild Wars 2

Healing Power, is currently a ‘wasted’ stat. Now, this is not my opinion, it seems to be the collective opinion of all non guardian players. However, there is a simple fix, that would make the Meta accept this, because what I propose would allow players to, theoretically, carry their 25 stacks of might around for awhile. And before you say, “But that’s to strong! They should have to work for their 25 stack of might!” They all do. every ‘Zerk build worth its salt brings a fire field, and blast finishers. People are spamming aoe might stacks so fast, that there is only a short ramp up time in each fight. Only ’trash’ mobs don’t experience a full 25 stack.

“Well, you have my attention…. what is this simple fix your talking about?” you ask….

‘Healing Power’ is rescaled to include ‘Boon Duration’,

…So a player, such as a Nomad Guardian, gets rewarded rather than punished for bringing ‘sub optimal’ DPS to a group… and because they can maintain a higher boon stack for longer, not everyone needs to bring fire fields and blast finishers. They can concentrate on say, laying down 31 stacks of bleeding… (Lookin’ at you sword/sword warrior in sinister gear.)… or focusing on keeping the target, stunned, dazed, knocked down, or whatnot… (Lookin’ at you lightning hammer elementalist)… perhaps your ranger can work on keeping up perma fury on everyone, rather that bringing a torch (condi weapon, if the tooltips are to be believed) in a ’zerk build, just to help everyone blast more.

Now, I understand that not every Meta build has this problem. ‘Zerk Necro for instance, can keep 25 stack of might on itself, and 25 stacks of venerability on the enemy… but people don’t like necros… why? Not because they do crap DPS… in fact they do great DPS (see what mine does to the ‘Elemental Source’ for instance.) But they don’t help others do it better.

All that gets thrown out the window if ‘Boon Duration’ gets added to ‘Healing Power’ now the Zealot elementalist can have the ‘Fury’ on attunement swap trait from arcane last long enough to cast ‘Churning Earth’, or Resistance could last just a few seconds longer than (The warrior heal that does that… which escapes my mind at this moment)

Now, of course, each boon should have its duration scaled differently. For instance,

Might should be affected most, and Stability and Resistance the least.

These all already have unique algorithms for that, as traits and runes that buff specific condition durations already attest.

Now, I know some of you are thinking, “but now I’ll never burst down a bunker guardian!” or “but that means whole zergs will be carrying perma might, fury, regen, swiftness, and stability!” which is only partly true. What this does, is it makes stripping boons much more viable. And also increases build diversity. A Nomad guardian will last forever, but do virtually no damage…. and he will get face stomped (face step let down) by a properly kitted Necro. this changes nothing about the rock paper scissors element of PvP. Especially if the skills that currently provide boons are reexamined after the initial ‘Healing Power’ + ’Boon Duration" patch.

So in short, this idea encourages build diversity in PvE, and will upset the balance in the short term for PvP…. no worse than the introduction of the Revenant… probably less.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of the community here, but especially the thoughts of the A-net balance team.

Still wouldn’t be meta precisely because people can easily stack 25 might without any bonuses to duration.

The mere fact that there is a hard cap to might etc. means that just like with healing the second you max out any investment you made into doing that becomes worthless. Only damage is infinitely useful in a game where stats become irrelevant the second the fighting stops.

Support is already in the meta.

Bring boons, strip defiance stacks. You’ve done your job.

Support is not about stats for the Nth time.

I like the idea. I did it slightly different in my own suggestion, mainly because I think that Boon Duration is the "main" stat for support, not healing power.

You idea would certainly mean less changes over the stats and current items than mine would though. :p

Infact I’d rather see Healing Power as a stat replaced with Boon Duration, than what we have now. Healing power scales so bad that it has little uses outside of some specific builds in some modes. And would actually help support, instead of just boosting your heal-skill.

Folks missed what I meant, I think. (my fault for putting up so much text ;p ) I’m not saying that people are having trouble stacking might, in fact the contrary… what I’m suggesting, is that with the stats coupled (‘Healing Power’ + ‘Boon Duration’), only one or two players would have to focus on it, meaning that condi builds would be able to focus on stacking damaging conditions. And while ‘stats do not matter once combat stops’ this would be the first step in making them matter in just such an occasion. (ie: letting you bring 25 might stacks, fury, regen, swiftness, and ageis from the last trash fight to this one, making combat more reactive as all the ‘DPS’ can skip their might stacking rotations ((usually the only rotation most of them know)) and use the highest DPS rotation, which is much different at full buffs.)

And while I agree that healing power does scale poorly, and it should have its effectiveness increased… and while I understand that the A-net team is resisting this for fear of the trinity resurfacing, quite simply, it can’t due to how agro tables work. Even if they push the stat up to the point where a ‘healer’ becomes viable…. (and they almost are, as my Zealot ranger can attest) there cant be a ‘Tank’ as such.

also, this change, as I said, would require a rebalance of current boon duration. in Most cases shortening them by a lot. And making the new stat (call it ‘Altruism’) scale exponentially. so the 1 sec of protection I get from earth attunement in ‘Zerk gear, becomes 3 in Zealot gear, and 8 in Nomad. (or something like that, I’m not a math or coding major.)

The point of what I said, was how to make these stats, and this play style viable. not why it currently isn’t, for the Nth time. (you sound angry, want a hug?)

We didn’t miss your point, we just don’t agree with it. If we need to take healing power for some boon duration that mean we don’t take one of the 3 damage stats and that we have less damage. Why would we do that since we can get 25 stack of might without sacrificing one of our damage stats?

That mean that for your idea to work, we shouldn’t be able to stack 25 stack of might without some healing power/boon duration. Which mean nerfing boon duration like crazy because stacking might is super easy.

Nerf might duration a bit, the PS warrior will get Runes of Strenght + Dumplings. Nerf it a little more, the PS warrior will take FGJ instead of his signet. Nerf a little bit more, staff Ele will take back their Arcane Wave instead of their signet. Nerf it a little bit more, S/F Elementalist will become a thing again. Nerf it again, the meta will be 1 PS Warrior + 1 Staff Ele + 1 S/F Elementalist. Now if you nerf it enough that those 3 can’t keep 25 stack of might, that mean that might is basically useless in PvP or in solo.

Another way your idea may work is if you remove all boon duration from Rune/Food, or at least to standardize it so that Rune/Food don’t give such high amount of it compare to armor. That’s a huge rework, but it could work. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it could work.

Watch these: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCxfgAjHhmmwpAM9N2AgBQODeGx33wRih

Healing power is already powerful as are defensive stats. But, it takes intelligent use and application. Having run with the person in the videos, well, it’s kitten effective. But, doesn’t mean you want 3 of them in a party. The only problem is with most content being pretty easy already you don’t see much difference when you make it even easier. It’s very noticeable in Fractals though. I think the only fractal I would call even remotely hard while playing with that group was Dredge but that’s just because I suck at dodging the 1-2 punch from the one end boss.

Point being, it doesn’t need more incentive, we just need new content and people being smarter about it’s use.

The Meta is all about support already. Might, Fury, Vigor, Blinds, Reflects, Blocks, Stability, etc. People seem to think that unless your character is built as nothing but a support character they’re not doing support. This isn’t that game and if you want that game then you’re in the wrong place.

Jerus.4350:

Watch these: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCxfgAjHhmmwpAM9N2AgBQODeGx33wRih

Healing power is already powerful as are defensive stats. But, it takes intelligent use and application. Having run with the person in the videos, well, it’s kitten effective. But, doesn’t mean you want 3 of them in a party. The only problem is with most content being pretty easy already you don’t see much difference when you make it even easier. It’s very noticeable in Fractals though. I think the only fractal I would call even remotely hard while playing with that group was Dredge but that’s just because I suck at dodging the 1-2 punch from the one end boss.

Yup. The two main problem of healing power isn’t healing power itself.
1) The quantity of active defense mean that healing power isn’t needed. No active defense would mean that we need more healing, but then the game would be a lot less interesting to play.
2) The difficulty / experience of player. The game is easy and old so people don’t have a hard time running with just a big of active defense. A hard enough content will push everybody to use all active defense available. Really good player will then use their skill, while healing power would help everybody else to have a more smooth run.

What’s the difference between a pug group with berserker gear, and an organized guild run in berserker gear?

Answer: It’s not DPS, it’s support. The organized group is much faster and smoother through the dungeon because they know how and when to bring the exact support they need for each encounter.

Thread should be retitled “How To Change Healing Power to Be More Useful but still not meta: turn it into boon duration”

Turning it into boon duration has all the problems everyone here has posted about. Coupling the two together makes the stat desirable, so some of us will want to loose a damage stat to take it. And I agree that the zerk meta does work better in an organized group… but this generates hate for longbow ranger and ds necro because the dps is selfish… I’m suggesting an alternative which allows zerk to go full dps, with virtually no support, if you bring a dedicated support… OR bring all zerk pluss support, and have everyone spamming the moves. Also condition based support, like blinds, will ben unnafected by the change. Also im not saying that a ‘support’ build ought to be nothing but…. however, if you want to bring an all support all the time build, the meta shouldnt punish you for it. In fact, they should be saying things like, “oh sweet! We have a support ele, let me swap out my phalanx strength, cause my extra stacks aren’t helping.” Then they can take a trait line focused on survivability, or dps, and not have all the builds hardlined into partial support roles. Then we wont lament ‘selfish’ dps classes like necro.

BrokenGlass.9356:

Turning it into boon duration has all the problems everyone here has posted about. Coupling the two together makes the stat desirable, so some of us will want to loose a damage stat to take it. And I agree that the zerk meta does work better in an organized group… but this generates hate for longbow ranger and ds necro because the dps is selfish… I’m suggesting an alternative which allows zerk to go full dps, with virtually no support, if you bring a dedicated support… OR bring all zerk pluss support, and have everyone spamming the moves. Also condition based support, like blinds, will ben unnafected by the change. Also im not saying that a ‘support’ build ought to be nothing but…. however, if you want to bring an all support all the time build, the meta shouldnt punish you for it. In fact, they should be saying things like, “oh sweet! We have a support ele, let me swap out my phalanx strength, cause my extra stacks aren’t helping.” Then they can take a trait line focused on survivability, or dps, and not have all the builds hardlined into partial support roles. Then we wont lament ‘selfish’ dps classes like necro.

So are you sure that the increased DPS from that will be equal or greater than the loss of an entire party slot?

Until anet changes the encounters , all that matters is DPS.

So far, EVERYTHING can be done with proper utilties/traits/dodging that give the needed active defense to survive any encounter. That means DPS is all you need.

This suggestion does nothing since there aren’t any encounters that require the need for such suggestions..

Honestly I feel just a significant buff to Regeneration could do the trick here + give most classes a way or another to apply it via baseline skills, weapons or traits. And I don’t mean to self only.

Only classes with some significant other healing form outside of regeneration (Engineers come to mind) could go without easy access to it.

And mind you, by “significant” I mean that at 2k Healing Power, I should be healing… I dunno… 3k+ per second? Probably. I mean I built the char around it, let it be powerful. Conditions and direct damage are powerful if built around it, too.

I like the idea.
Buuut, it’s been suggested at least two or three times prior to this thread.

You’re also going to have a tough time suggesting to the speedrunners that it’s a good idea, just because “zmg support already there”.

Not to say they’re wrong; support is already there. The bigger point is to give some stats more impact. Healing Power is the game’s biggest statistical sin, and it could use a solid bonus like boon duration to shake up the gear metagame a little.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I feel just a significant buff to Regeneration could do the trick here + give most classes a way or another to apply it via baseline skills, weapons or traits. And I don’t mean to self only.

Only classes with some significant other healing form outside of regeneration (Engineers come to mind) could go without easy access to it.

And mind you, by “significant” I mean that at 2k Healing Power, I should be healing… I dunno… 3k+ per second? Probably. I mean I built the char around it, let it be powerful. Conditions and direct damage are powerful if built around it, too.

I was much more a fan of having Regen stack intensity instead of duration. Yeah, it’d probably require lowering the base heal and increasing the HealPow coefficient, but that would make Regen a solid counter to some of the condition spam out there.

I hear what you guys are saying about the encounters. They can be avoided with active mitigation. However, dead, dodging, downed, or rezzing ’zerkers are doing no dps for the aforementioned situations. So, if the presence of one full healing power build can make them dodge half as much, be downed half as much, ensure that no one is ever dead, and they are the dedicated rezzer, (rez boosting trait, and lowest dps) the uptime that he or she gives to the ’zerkers will definitely make up for the loss of a slot.

We have all met glass cannons, who seem to fire broken glass, at themselves…. we all know the warrior who dies evry time he tries to land hunderd blades….

Imaging that guy survives his way through his HB and realizes he’s taking damage, gets a good 45 sec of powerful regen stacked on him, aegis, and buys time for him to actually use his heal skill.

And I’ve already said that ‘healing power’ ought to have its coefficent upped… though 3k HPS is to high, I see your piint and agree. Due to the active mitigation, 1.5k HPS for a ‘Altruism’ main stat guy is about right. 800 HPS for a zealot, or 2ndary stat guy is great. If they up the damage of encounters, and they should, then they should increase the healing scaling much more. Though that moves things back to the holy trinity again, but the trinity is different, and not WoW, EQ, or whatever’s trinity of Tank, Dps, Dps, Dps, Healer. Its more…. Boon Aplicator/ HPS, Condi, Condi, Zerk, Zerk. And this can be filled as well by a few hybrid toons filling half of the proposed slots… like a hybrid condi support, and hybrid zerk support, together fill 1 support slot, and half of the 1 condi slot and half a zerk slot.

Thus makes things more dynamic. And rewards build creativity. Not just poppung onto metabattle, grabbing the “latest and greatest” clicking into your toon, and failing to play it correctly. Perhaps metabattle would have so many diffrent builds that people would have to read and explore the why of what they’re doing.

Now, im not saying that you esteemed reader, are that guy that im talking about. But I know you have dragged that guy kicking and screaming as he facerolls his keyboard through a level 31 fractal screaming “oh my gawd! Dodge the mossman! You know its comming!” Then proceeding to 4 man the content anyway.

In those situations, I go get my full zealot ranger with cleric trinkets and runes of altruism, and suddenly everyone but that guy actually gets their scholar bonus. And that guy just keeps barely recovering from the edge of death.

Now imagine a group with 4 dps, who know they can dps through the first big hit because the incomming healing will let them tank the dps. Delay the dodge, trash drops faster. Heal through the dps, boss drops faster.

Oh and.. yes regen should stack intensity. With an exponential logarithmic upward curve to HPS

BrokenGlass.9356:

I hear what you guys are saying about the encounters. They can be avoided with active mitigation. However, dead, dodging, downed, or rezzing ’zerkers are doing no dps for the aforementioned situations. So, if the presence of one full healing power build can make them dodge half as much, be downed half as much, ensure that no one is ever dead, and they are the dedicated rezzer, (rez boosting trait, and lowest dps) the uptime that he or she gives to the ’zerkers will definitely make up for the loss of a slot.

We have all met glass cannons, who seem to fire broken glass, at themselves…. we all know the warrior who dies evry time he tries to land hunderd blades….

Imaging that guy survives his way through his HB and realizes he’s taking damage, gets a good 45 sec of powerful regen stacked on him, aegis, and buys time for him to actually use his heal skill.

And I’ve already said that ‘healing power’ ought to have its coefficent upped… though 3k HPS is to high, I see your piint and agree. Due to the active mitigation, 1.5k HPS for a ‘Altruism’ main stat guy is about right. 800 HPS for a zealot, or 2ndary stat guy is great. If they up the damage of encounters, and they should, then they should increase the healing scaling much more. Though that moves things back to the holy trinity again, but the trinity is different, and not WoW, EQ, or whatever’s trinity of Tank, Dps, Dps, Dps, Healer. Its more…. Boon Aplicator/ HPS, Condi, Condi, Zerk, Zerk. And this can be filled as well by a few hybrid toons filling half of the proposed slots… like a hybrid condi support, and hybrid zerk support, together fill 1 support slot, and half of the 1 condi slot and half a zerk slot.

Thus makes things more dynamic. And rewards build creativity. Not just poppung onto metabattle, grabbing the “latest and greatest” clicking into your toon, and failing to play it correctly. Perhaps metabattle would have so many diffrent builds that people would have to read and explore the why of what they’re doing.

Now, im not saying that you esteemed reader, are that guy that im talking about. But I know you have dragged that guy kicking and screaming as he facerolls his keyboard through a level 31 fractal screaming “oh my gawd! Dodge the mossman! You know its comming!” Then proceeding to 4 man the content anyway.

In those situations, I go get my full zealot ranger with cleric trinkets and runes of altruism, and suddenly everyone but that guy actually gets their scholar bonus. And that guy just keeps barely recovering from the edge of death.

Now imagine a group with 4 dps, who know they can dps through the first big hit because the incomming healing will let them tank the dps. Delay the dodge, trash drops faster. Heal through the dps, boss drops faster.

No thanks, I prefer my warriors dodging, you know because it buffs them. I prefer my 5th player providing damage rather than being a crutch for players who don’t want to learn the encounter and know when to dodge, blind, block, reflect.

BrokenGlass.9356:

I hear what you guys are saying about the encounters. They can be avoided with active mitigation. However, dead, dodging, downed, or rezzing ’zerkers are doing no dps for the aforementioned situations. So, if the presence of one full healing power build can make them dodge half as much, be downed half as much, ensure that no one is ever dead, and they are the dedicated rezzer, (rez boosting trait, and lowest dps) the uptime that he or she gives to the ’zerkers will definitely make up for the loss of a slot.

That’s only an issue for bad players. Good players don’t down, die or rez.

• No matter what, this game will never see dedicated support at the expense of damage be a meta thing in content that is so well known experienced players can sleepwalk through it unless that dedicated support is required.
• Might stacking as a mechanic is used as part of profession design to compensate certain professions for shortcomings in other areas (e.g., lower damage coefficients, health pool size). Messing with how that is balanced is going to have unintended, negative consequences.
• I’m not sure that allowing Cele/Ele D/D users to have increased access to boon duration at no cost is going to be well-received.

BrokenGlass.9356:

I hear what you guys are saying about the encounters. They can be avoided with active mitigation. However, dead, dodging, downed, or rezzing ’zerkers are doing no dps for the aforementioned situations. So, if the presence of one full healing power build can make them dodge half as much, be downed half as much, ensure that no one is ever dead, and they are the dedicated rezzer, (rez boosting trait, and lowest dps) the uptime that he or she gives to the ’zerkers will definitely make up for the loss of a slot.

Check out the videos I posted, really do it. Now those are 3 mans, but the concept is the same as what you say. The clerics guard holds agro with toughness/proximity while we blast it from max melee behind. We just have to do a little dodging for a few big attacks but even most of those the guard is catching with Aegis. That’s what is in the game right now. There’s already power in that setup if you learn to use it. That means having players that trust the healer and don’t run out of range of the heals and all that jazz.

Easy fix for bringing ‘Support’ into the Meta – bring something useful and stop being hipster-build user.

And yes – meta for dungeons is by and for noobs only – for dungeons you can get whatever you want they are so easy. (also even if you nerf current meta a new one will pop-out and whine will start all over)

If you want some strange things like standalone support/healing don’t play GW2 – play D&D and try to find party in there – gl.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• No matter what, this game will never see dedicated support at the expense of damage be a meta thing in content that is so well known experienced players can sleepwalk through it unless that dedicated support is required.

We have fractals and Arah where I see people die constantly. As I understand it way back a Pillar guard was meta. No reason that style of play couldn’t make a comeback to be normal, it has strength.

Now the term “Meta” is a bit troublesome as of course Optimal no, it will never be at least when you consider it in the sense of making it go as fast as possible ignoring skill differences. It however could be considered best in the sense that it makes things easy and consistent. It just depends on the players skill levels and how they value ease of play.

Obviously you find many here who ignore those two elements and jsut focus on what the fastest possible outcome is, even if they have to wipe a dozen times trying to do so or wait 10 minutes to fill a group (or do Arah4 4-man because you refuse to take anything but an Ele >.< that was my group the other day haha).

Make condi cleanse skills dependant on Healing Power. Balance around it.

I think my problem is that “something useful” is very nearly the same something for each class. The reasons why “pure support” builds are seldom a good idea are well taken, but I’d still like a little more variety. I think that fixing the condition stack limits and making poison and burning stack intensity was a big step in this direction – condition builds are no longer worthless outside of PVP. But yes, healing power is still the wasted stat.

If I’m understanding most peoples’ points here correctly, it’s that even if healing power weren’t a crappy, pointless stat, people still wouldn’t take healing power gear, and outside of Celestial, I broadly agree. I’ve seen some effective Zealot builds – I call these pug-savers because they can help paper over problems with pugs – but they’re niche and rare.

This would be one change among many that could help improve variety a bit. I think in practice you’d still see mostly zerk, but variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

I know, I know, there’s some variety in WvW and sPvP, which I’m quite happy about, but while we’re wishlisting, I’d like some more in PvE too.

@Ardid: That’s an interesting idea, but how would that work? Condi cleanses are kinda binary: they remove the condition or they don’t, mostly. This also risks making healing power mandatory, which I wouldn’t want, but it has potential depending on implementation.

Same conversation, different title. Support is already in the meta.

Let us see the current top META builds.

Staff Elementalist. Support = Blinds, CC, Might, Vulnerability, reflects/projectile destruction, condi removal/heal if needed.

Mace/Torch GS Guardian. Support = Blinds, Heals, Blocks, Reflects, Stability, Mobility, Quickness, CC, Fury.

Sword/Sword Sword/Focus Mesmer. Support = Boon stripping, reflects, Quickness, Slow, condi removal, stealth.

D/D S/P Shortbow Thief. Support = Stealth, Reflects, Blasting, CC, Blinds.

Phalanx Strength Warrior. Support = Banners, Might, Fury, Vulnerability, CC, 150 Additional Power to nearby party members, Instant res banner.

Dinks.2478:

Same conversation, different title. Support is already in the meta.

Let us see the current top META builds.

Staff Elementalist. Support = Blinds, CC, Might, Vulnerability, reflects/projectile destruction, condi removal/heal if needed.

Mace/Torch GS Guardian. Support = Blinds, Heals, Blocks, Reflects, Stability, Mobility, Quickness, CC, Fury.

Sword/Sword Sword/Focus Mesmer. Support = Boon stripping, reflects, Quickness, Slow, condi removal, stealth.

D/D S/P Shortbow Thief. Support = Stealth, Reflects, Blasting, CC, Blinds.

Phalanx Strength Warrior. Support = Banners, Might, Fury, Vulnerability, CC, 150 Additional Power to nearby party members, Instant res banner.

No Dinks That’s called Debuffing and Booning, and some general utility,

Support is more then Booning alone.

Though in PvE healing and boon duration obviously are no longer useable.
(as a WvW player I am very aware of soft and hard CC, debuffs, buffs, reflects and other small things kitten ppl quickness yeah it works wonders (in 25-30 man groups? or in 70 ppl zergs?) .. Also I’d like to see healing buffed, and boon duration could use some love.)

Well said Pax. Thats exactly why I proposed a solution to bring it back to PvE

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

No Dinks That’s called Debuffing and Booning, and some general utility,

And? They are still support. Support for me include all debuff, boons, reflect, condition removal and Healing. It’s just that one of those is weaker than the others.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Dinks.2478:

Same conversation, different title. Support is already in the meta.

Let us see the current top META builds.

Staff Elementalist. Support = Blinds, CC, Might, Vulnerability, reflects/projectile destruction, condi removal/heal if needed.

Mace/Torch GS Guardian. Support = Blinds, Heals, Blocks, Reflects, Stability, Mobility, Quickness, CC, Fury.

Sword/Sword Sword/Focus Mesmer. Support = Boon stripping, reflects, Quickness, Slow, condi removal, stealth.

D/D S/P Shortbow Thief. Support = Stealth, Reflects, Blasting, CC, Blinds.

Phalanx Strength Warrior. Support = Banners, Might, Fury, Vulnerability, CC, 150 Additional Power to nearby party members, Instant res banner.

No Dinks That’s called Debuffing and Booning, and some general utility,

Support is more then Booning alone.

Translation: I don’t like the facts you introduced that counter my position, so I will re-define the terms in an extremely narrow way to suit my own case.

Nike, thats more akin to the flavor of your post.

Im reasonably sure that Pax and I have a greater vision of what support can be… this is not a thread about what support currently is.

BrokenGlass.9356:

Nike, thats more akin to the flavor of your post.

Im reasonably sure that Pax and I have a greater vision of what support can be… this is not a thread about what support currently is.

I don’t even get the point of your “vision”

This isn’t going to change the meta at all…

What exactly is boon duration in healing power going to do? You realize a couple extra seconds of fury pointless when it can already have a 100% uptime??

You realize most fights(encounters) in this game don’t even last long enough to make full use of boons… everything burns and dies quickly enough as it is…this isn’t going to change a kitten thing at all.

I’d rather anet spend resources on changing the ENCOUNTERS to shake up the meta, not this ridiculous notion of healing power + boon duration lol..

BrokenGlass.9356:

Now imagine a group with 4 dps, who know they can dps through the first big hit because the incomming healing will let them tank the dps. Delay the dodge, trash drops faster. Heal through the dps, boss drops faster.

You suggested removing one of the pillars of gameplay in this game. Making personal active defense, in the form of dodging in your example, irrelevant destroys what GW2 is in order to make it something that it was never intended to be.

Ok, I’ll make a counter-proposal: the concept behind this thread was to find a way to make the Healing Power stat relevant, and the proposed way to do that was to tie it to Boon Duration. I hear folks saying “that’s useless”, from two different directions. One, that the Healing Power stat does nothing helpful and even if it did, nobody would use it because there are better ways to achieve the same thing; and two, that more Boon Duration is either unnecessary or would be overpowered. So, given that, what would you do to make Healing Power a useful stat?

Now, I think there’s a few questions to consider here: Vitality and Toughness are only particularly useful for a few builds, and the usefulness of Condition Damage is – if I understand correctly – still in limbo right now. Thus, the stats we care about are Power, Precision and Ferocity, generally in that order – with the interesting side effect of rendering Berserker gear the ideal choice for almost everyone, almost all the time. Is there ever a case where Healing Power matters to anyone? If it were also tied to Boon Duration, would that change? What would it take to make stats other than the Zerker Three broadly useful? Not OP, not “the only thing you should ever use”, but “also a reasonable alternative”?

As an aside, it strikes me that if zerk gear were F/pw/pr instead of Pw/pr/f, there would be some harder tradeoffs to make. This might be good, it might be bad, but it would have far-reaching consequences.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Dinks.2478:

Same conversation, different title. Support is already in the meta.

Let us see the current top META builds.

Staff Elementalist. Support = Blinds, CC, Might, Vulnerability, reflects/projectile destruction, condi removal/heal if needed.

Mace/Torch GS Guardian. Support = Blinds, Heals, Blocks, Reflects, Stability, Mobility, Quickness, CC, Fury.

Sword/Sword Sword/Focus Mesmer. Support = Boon stripping, reflects, Quickness, Slow, condi removal, stealth.

D/D S/P Shortbow Thief. Support = Stealth, Reflects, Blasting, CC, Blinds.

Phalanx Strength Warrior. Support = Banners, Might, Fury, Vulnerability, CC, 150 Additional Power to nearby party members, Instant res banner.

No Dinks That’s called Debuffing and Booning, and some general utility,

Support is more then Booning alone.

Though in PvE healing and boon duration obviously are no longer useable.
(as a WvW player I am very aware of soft and hard CC, debuffs, buffs, reflects and other small things kitten ppl quickness yeah it works wonders (in 25-30 man groups? or in 70 ppl zergs?) .. Also I’d like to see healing buffed, and boon duration could use some love.)

No, they are called support. You don’t like facts that is fine, you don’t get to redefine them for your own convenience.

I think folks are frustrated becaus I’ve claimed that what I’m talking about could change the way they want to play.

And yes boon stacking is easy, and everyone does it. I’m saying that it’s too easy. And folks all do it… so every blast finisher in a fire field past 25 stacks is wasted if another move has higher dps than that blast.

So if you can hand that job off to one guy… the others can spend time not wasting valuable dps time. Remember the 26th stack of might is wasted. Unless they remove that cap, and they definitely should not.

So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.

Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.

So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly. Then couple stats together.

This gives people a reason to take healing power. Because might stacking becomes hard without it.

Then, once people open up to having a HP/BD guy in the group, when you up the damage in encounters, it isnt as catastrophic a change. It increases the skill cap, and prevents faceroll play style.

So yes. The encounters need to be made more challenging. The fact that stack n’ whack exists is testament to this.

I’m proposing a reason to take HP.

@Jade:

Basically go into WvW or PvP, and other stat combinations becomes more useful: Cleric Amulet is still used for bunkers in PvP.

And Soldiers is the prefered stats for many in zerg fights, and using might stacking and focus fire to compensate for lacking offensive stats. And this can be added in some Clerics as well for a bit healing power to taste.

In short, in other areas of the game where you actually meet resistance (enemy players) the different stats becomes much more valuable. There is still a focus on Damage (Or Conditions in WvW-Roaming).

Healing power is still a reject stat in most cases, and the only cases I see it used is Clerics/Apothecary for the armor+low healing aspect. Or Celestial because it’s free stat.

To fix it ? Well giving it Boon Duration would make it a LOT more popular in WvW at least, and would make several classes try to stack it, especially support oriented guardians and elementalists.

The problem is that Healing Power itself isn’t really support at all, so we don’t have any stats for support. But that is what most people I’ve talked to "wants" it to be. And neither ANet nor most of the payers wants Healing Power to be buffed to the level where it heals everyone around you so much that content is even more trivialized than it already is.

For Healing Power itself, I’d wish to see it affect healing of the character itself, and not anyone the character applies healing to. Make it a selfish stat, and make it obvious, so people doesn’t think it is a "support" stat when it is not. (That, and roll it into Vitality already!).

Boon Duration is the closest thing we got to a support stat.

Since my 200$ laptop sucks too much to frontline on my gaurd i decided to try full clerics with staff and mace/shield.

Every dodge roll I do heals for about 2,100 in an aoe, and with energy sigils on both weapon swaps thats pretty decent healing.

Empower heals aoe 3k abouts

shield 5 heals about 2k and blocks projecticles a little while

cone of healing heals for about 10k altogether in an aoe cone

that healing elite heals about 1,600 every 10 seconds

the passive traited f2 heals allies about 200 every second

and with soldier runes i have 3 shout utilities giving regen and protection stability whatnot

I dont know if Im helping more than I would be helping as a frontliner or backliner, but im definitely helping.

BrokenGlass.9356:

I think folks are frustrated becaus I’ve claimed that what I’m talking about could change the way they want to play.

And yes boon stacking is easy, and everyone does it. I’m saying that it’s too easy. And folks all do it… so every blast finisher in a fire field past 25 stacks is wasted if another move has higher dps than that blast.

So if you can hand that job off to one guy… the others can spend time not wasting valuable dps time. Remember the 26th stack of might is wasted. Unless they remove that cap, and they definitely should not.

So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.

Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.

So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly. Then couple stats together.

This gives people a reason to take healing power. Because might stacking becomes hard without it.

Then, once people open up to having a HP/BD guy in the group, when you up the damage in encounters, it isnt as catastrophic a change. It increases the skill cap, and prevents faceroll play style.

So yes. The encounters need to be made more challenging. The fact that stack n’ whack exists is testament to this.

I’m proposing a reason to take HP.

I’m still not taking Hp with your suggestion.

You are asking anet to universally shorten current boon durations (NERF)
than proposing them to BUFF it indirectly through HP….. WHAT???

you are just going in circles here man….
Even with your suggestion a 5man zerk is still better than your 4 man zerk BY A WIDE MARGIN. Because you might as well be afk and not even fighting if you role into a dung with those awful HP stat gears.

This is honestly pointless. I don’t want HEALING POWER. Majority of the ppl here could care less about HP in PvE encounters. With your suggestion, now you want at least 1 person in your party to have HP so you have enough might duration?

this makes no sense. Now you are forcing players to find a HP guy… Might as well add the holy trinity if you want your vision of HP to be true.

This is dumb imo. Healing power is pointless in PvE and will remain pointless in PvE and the majority of the playerbase is totally fine with that.

BrokenGlass.9356:

I think folks are frustrated becaus I’ve claimed that what I’m talking about could change the way they want to play.

And yes boon stacking is easy, and everyone does it. I’m saying that it’s too easy. And folks all do it… so every blast finisher in a fire field past 25 stacks is wasted if another move has higher dps than that blast.

So if you can hand that job off to one guy… the others can spend time not wasting valuable dps time. Remember the 26th stack of might is wasted. Unless they remove that cap, and they definitely should not.

So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.

Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.

So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly. Then couple stats together.

This gives people a reason to take healing power. Because might stacking becomes hard without it.

Then, once people open up to having a HP/BD guy in the group, when you up the damage in encounters, it isnt as catastrophic a change. It increases the skill cap, and prevents faceroll play style.

So yes. The encounters need to be made more challenging. The fact that stack n’ whack exists is testament to this.

I’m proposing a reason to take HP.

If the encounters called for it to begin with then there would be a reason to take HP. That itself is the solution. Anything in between is just an intentional nerf to the game.

BrokenGlass.9356:

So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.

Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.

So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly.

might stacking becomes hard.

You are proposing that everyone else be made weaker (reduced boon duration on everyone) so that one person in a group can be subsequently made stronger (giving him more boon duration).

So long as your suggestion centers around taking things away from others so that your pet play style/build can be made mandatory for high performance play you will run into some pretty significant opposition.

Dinks.2478:

BrokenGlass.9356:

I think folks are frustrated becaus I’ve claimed that what I’m talking about could change the way they want to play.

And yes boon stacking is easy, and everyone does it. I’m saying that it’s too easy. And folks all do it… so every blast finisher in a fire field past 25 stacks is wasted if another move has higher dps than that blast.

So if you can hand that job off to one guy… the others can spend time not wasting valuable dps time. Remember the 26th stack of might is wasted. Unless they remove that cap, and they definitely should not.

So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.

Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.

So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly. Then couple stats together.

This gives people a reason to take healing power. Because might stacking becomes hard without it.

Then, once people open up to having a HP/BD guy in the group, when you up the damage in encounters, it isnt as catastrophic a change. It increases the skill cap, and prevents faceroll play style.

So yes. The encounters need to be made more challenging. The fact that stack n’ whack exists is testament to this.

I’m proposing a reason to take HP.

If the encounters called for it to begin with then there would be a reason to take HP. That itself is the solution. Anything in between is just an intentional nerf to the game.

HP is an illusion I’ll agree with dinks on this.

This as toughnes and healing are way more powerfull then vitality is(even with healing).

Imagine a

• 20k HP toughness & healing and
• mitigate 40% from the dmg remaining by toughness
• 35k vitality & healing build and a
• 10k heal 20 s and a
• constant pressure of 3k hits /sec
  You can reduce 66% of incoming dmg by active defence, or the Booning and condition spam Dinks referred to and (I know reflects will work longer. but for comparison of dmg taken)

given you will get~1 hit every 3 secs the result will be

time 20k 35k
3 s 18.2k 33k
6 s 16.4k 30k
9 s 14.6k 27k
12 s 12.8k 24k
15 s 11k 21k
18 s 9.2k 18k
20 s 19.2k 28k (<-here you the difference toughness lost .8k and vit7k)
21 s 17.4k 25k
24 s 15.6k 22k
27 s 13.8k 19k
30 s 12k 16k
33 s 10.2k 13k
36 s 8.4k 10k
39 s 6.6k 7k
40 s 16.6k 17k (<-here you the difference toughness lost 3.4k and vit 18k)
42 s 14.8k 14k
kitten 13k 11k
48 s 11.2k 8k
51 s 9.4k 5k
54 s 7.6k 2k
57 s 5.8k Downed
60 s 14k ….

in the end the 20k wins due to the fact it mitigated 20 times 1.2 k HP evn though it has 15k less health… in case of a condition based attacker the toughness would have long bought the farm though

problem with this nice example:
DPS is not 3k/sec in most cases it is way more.
Heals are rarely 10k due to the idiotic way they have been implemented
Most fights vs armored opnents can be finished very fast through condi spam… see a bunker in PvP send 1 or 2 condition users..

I made a proposal

• which also lowers base heals and
• adds to scaled healing and itroduces
• vitality of the receiver a minor modifier on top of the healing (0-20%) and
• adds some boon duration based upon healing.

These 4 changes factors should lift healing as a stat and will not interfere with acive defence, it will just lower all healing for non healing users by 25-50%, As most people do not rely on their healing skill anyways this shouldn’t matter.
It would also make vitality a little more viable other then just being a value utility foods are scaling from…. and a modifier for just a base level of HP.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

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 50% 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)

TexZero.7910:

Support is already in the meta.

Bring boons, strip defiance stacks. You’ve done your job.

Support is not about stats for the Nth time.

And that’s the problem, Healing power is at the moment kind of superfluous. You don’t need it to heal effectively or provide support, for most classes it does next to nothing. My thoughts is heals needs to scale much more on healing power and have their base values rammed into the floor, so if you want your heal to be effective you have to invest in healing power, and if you want to full zerk, fine, but you better not get hit – ever.

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

TexZero.7910:

Support is already in the meta.

Bring boons, strip defiance stacks. You’ve done your job.

Support is not about stats for the Nth time.

And that’s the problem, Healing power is at the moment kind of superfluous. You don’t need it to heal effectively or provide support, for most classes it does next to nothing. My thoughts is heals needs to scale much more on healing power and have their base values rammed into the floor, so if you want your heal to be effective you have to invest in healing power, and if you want to full zerk, fine, but you better not get hit – ever.

Or its actually not a problem. The problem lies with the players who have an antiquated mindset that you need healing power to be an effective support.

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

TexZero.7910:

Support is already in the meta.

Bring boons, strip defiance stacks. You’ve done your job.

Support is not about stats for the Nth time.

And that’s the problem, Healing power is at the moment kind of superfluous. You don’t need it to heal effectively or provide support, for most classes it does next to nothing. My thoughts is heals needs to scale much more on healing power and have their base values rammed into the floor, so if you want your heal to be effective you have to invest in healing power, and if you want to full zerk, fine, but you better not get hit – ever.

That is contrary to this games point. The point is that you DON’T need to run any one specific stat. Sure soem of the playerbase has decided that they expect people to wear zerker gear, but that is inherently different than making the game impossible without a specific stat. You’re hinging dangerously on imposing the tank/heal/dps trinity, and nobody wants that or we’d be playing a game where the trinity exists. This game has it’s own trinity, DPS/Support/CC. And each class can do all of that. It makes for very fast party grouping. Unless you’re very picky in which case that is the fault of those people and not a system wide design flaw.

I think Healing Power would be more worthwhile if it made healing more powerful than it currently does.

I feel as though the wide majority of responses have missed the point here. To a startling degree. Specific exceptions speak for themselves with civil tone, and good points.

In making explanations of specific theoretical cases, folks seem to think I’m saying things with words like, always, only, or never… these concepts are absolutes, and are not what I’m talking about.

Lets be clear on what I’m not saying.

A. I’m not saying we should have to have a ‘Healing Power’ guy in the group.

B. I’m not asking for my preferred play style to be buffed. Of my six level 80 toons, only one uses ‘Healing Power’ and its a ranger in Zealot gear, and it does not need to be buffed to any great degree. (Is it sub optimal? Yep. But you’ll appreciate it if you run fractals with me.)

C. I’m not saying that everything needs to be nerfed. I’m saying that there is no point to the 26th stack of might, so why would you use a skill that applies more might on a 25 stack, when it gives no benefit?

Now, lets be clear about what I am saying.

A. What would be nice, is if a person specced into healing power joins your PUG, and tells everyone that he is a support build, then people will have the chance to change their damage rotations to be more efficient because fire field blast finisher spam from everyone will not be required to maintain a might stack.

B. People should not be penalized for spending their time and energy, (and money, thanks gem store!) creating a build to help fellow players, only to be kicked from every group of elitist jerks. They should be able to bring a variety of builds, and be able to synergize with various combinations, not just all ’zerk, all the time.

C. A group of ‘Zerkers should be able to get their 25 stack of might… exactly as they do it now. But instead of blasting 50 stacks of might and wasting 25 of them into dead space… they should have a 25 stack simply maintained through group effort…. and really, if your stack fell to 24 stacks… that 1% isn’t breaking you.

Where the “nerf” to boon duration applies is in sPvP… or roaming in WvWvW. or Open World by yourself, instead of that 14 stack of might that just happens when you use your the same every time damage rotation, it comes out to say 7 stacks of might. Your putting up all the same amount of stacks, but they are falling off quicker.

In sPvP, that 7% dmg isn’t going to make or break you, because your enemy is equaly “nerfed”.

in WvWvW, that 7% dmg wont hurt you, because friendly players will, even when your roaming, show up often enough to help you stack it on up… and in 1v1, that guy is also down 7% dmg, so, back to equal…. again.

So… the only place where is actually harms you, is solo Open World content, which I highly doubt anyone is prepared to say, was to difficult.

DISCLAMER: the specific numbers presented above, are RANDOM RECTALY GENERATED NUMBERS. I leave significant decisions of the specific numbers to the design team.