Guild Wars 2

So, no one really uses the “New” healing skills like

Litany Of Wrath
Defiant Stance
Skelk Venom
Signet of the Ether
Signet of Vampirism
A.E.D
Arcane Brilliance
Water Spirit

With the possible exception of Arcane Brilliance and Signet of the Ether. As a whole they are Extremely Situational and not very reliable. I don’t think Ive ever seen anyone use the water spirit however it may just be completely useless…

However, there design is good. They are heals that reduce the base heal but offer you a chance to do your healing through damage ie playing normally while still getting a heal. This allows you to continue to do damage while staying alive. Sounds good in theory.

So now you have heals that are not as good up front but give you a benefit to continue attacking. just click it and off you..oh wait no. they all have a cast time, in some cases a long one. Suddenly the benefit is not so great because they are easily interrupt able and not easy to actually activate. now the benefit of being able to heal while still attacking is not enough to way the risks of activating it in the first place.

So to fix it? make them instant cast, so that they can be actually useful. Defiant stance is the closest at the 1/4 s mark but having any cast time ruins the flow and immediately takes away from them. and no they will not be OP… no one even uses them although they have some of the best potential in the game. you can trait to improve them and continue your damage while using them.

If you improve a Skill no one uses is it really a buff?

TL:DR Make them instant cast so that they may become useful

I use Litany Of Wrath and Signet of Ether a lot and they are fantastic with the correct build in most situations. Litany with correct use of aoe skills can almost insta heal you to max hp very quickly.

Some of the others I agree are mostly useless.

I actually love signet of vampirism, it does not work with every build but it offers same healing pluss some interesting offesive burst we ganging up as the warriors healing signet, and that is no small thing.

Arcane Brilliance is probably one of the most used Healing Skills for ele in pve. I love it, run into the group that’s killing me pop it and fully heal myself. I also use the Warriors Defiant Stance especially when I am taking damage. Those big one-off hits aren’t when I pop my heals anyway, I try to actively avoid those bit hits.

These Skills are mostly only then useful, if you play the right build with them. They have in the end not without any reason specific skill types, like Litany of Wrath counting as “Meditation”, so that you can use the Guardians Trait which reduces the Recharge Time of all their Meditation Skills by 20% so that the original CD of 30s can be reduced to 24s to make it possible to use this healing skill more frequently.

Thats the first thing people should most likely do, if they plan on using those specific healing skills to make them more useful in general.
Litany of Wrath is a Skill, that you should use only in combination with a build, that is able of dealing in 6 seconds alot of AoE damage against multiple targets.
Litany of Wrath simply sucks, if you try to use it at situations, where you fight agaits a single target, because then you simply lose way too much healing efficieny and using any of the original healing skills of the guardian in such a case would make alot more sense then, cause they heal alot more.

SO making Litany of Wrath your healing skills makes only then sense, if you can expect to battle agaisnt alot of targets, where your AoE Skills, your Conditions and any damage that you may reflect via Retaliation will count towards you and your healings via LoW within these 6 seconds.

LoW will heal only for 25% of your damage and itself has a weak self heal compared to the other healing skills. So its important that you self are able to deal also alot of damage, so that the heals you receive become stronger too automatically.
For a defensive build, this healing skill will suck, brief said, because its clearly designed for an absolute offensive build, that favors dealing alot of burst AoE damage in short time, where the player needs to find the perfect moment for it to use it to get the best healing back in return.
If you don’t tiem this skill well enough with your bursts, you might deal alot lesser damage due to hitting lesser foes.
So to support your build to hit as many foes with your AoEs, you want to cripple, chille, immobilize them, so that they can’t run too quickly out of your AoE range.
Best Weapons for AoE so far for Guardian are Greatsword and Staff.
When you activate LoW, you most likely want at that moment to hit as many foes as possible with as many Might Stacks on you as posisble with a high critical Whirl of Wrath, while whirling on one of your symbols, having retal up and letting your foes burn at least.
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Skelk Venom is junk. Its CD is too long to be useful. ANet should reduce it from 40s to 30s. Its again such a ridiculous venom skill, that makes only sense in using, if you plan on investing everythign in a high specialized Venom Build with all Traits set up for venoms. Way too much trait spec required here just to make a single Utility KSill Type of the whole Thief Class not useless and its one of the Thieves parts, that needs the most a redesign/buff to make Venoms in general a more viable build option for thieves.
ANet needs to incorporate through some trait merges soem of the venom traits into earlier points, or need to merge the trait effects with the utlity skils directly, so that theres no need for the trait anymore, so that theres space for a better new more useful trait, whiel venoms become that way more viable, because of not having to invest so heavily anymore traits in just only venoms to make them a viable option at all.

One problem of all the venom skils is also its low amount of hits instead of letting the venom effects count for the full amount of its duration for an unlimited amount of hits. What helps you a duration of 30s for a venom, if you can have with it only 4 hits, which are done in like 3 seconds. Skelk Venom is a Skill, that needs an Effekt Redesign, its too similar with Signet of Malice, which is more effective for a constant heal, than Skelk Venom.

What Thieves eavily lack in is a healing skill, that gives them an viable condi remove.

This is how Skelk Venom should work instead:

A: 1S, CD: 30s (Venom, so with Trait 24s)
Heal on Activation: 4200
For the next 15 seconds your Attacks steal Endurance from your foes.
If you steal endurance from your foes, you will get healed a bit and you lose a Condition if you heal yourself this way.

This way will be the Skill an interesting alternative to Shadow Hide, which also cures Conditions, but just only specific ones, therefore that it additionally stealths you.
Skelk Venom would have no Condition Removal restriction, but doesn’t stealth you therefore, but has the interestign unique side effect then, that you could use this venom in a way to make endurance pressure, what so far no class does by its skilsl to remove endurance from an enemy to stop them from dodging.
If theres any class, that should do that, then the thief with this venom!

I use Defiance Stance in SPvP but clearly it needs a buff. It can easily be nulled by Defy Pain and Endure Pain.

Need to add a stack of Stability to it if its going to keep the cast time.
Or add CC resistance. or a Proc at the end of the effect like protection at the end or regeneration at the end.

Congrats you have proved my point. Would instant cast make these skills meta? No. would it make them better? imo yes. and so far we have 4 people using 4 seperate heals only at specific times. obviously they need some love

To make Water Spirit more useful, its healing effectivity shouldnt be calculated only from Healign Power, but instead also from Vitality.
Means, so more Vitality the ranger has, so more should also heal the Water Spirit.
Vitality therefore should count for your self heal, and healing power for the part of how much allies can heal themself through Water Spirit with their attacks.
Then this skill would be alot more useful.

Also 35% chance to heal yourself on hit, is laughable, when there are thieves with Signet of Malaince, whic hhave a 100% heal on hit healing skill.
There shouldn’t be such a low chance just to get heals on hit from Water Spirit for those lousy 6 seconds of duration where it works. At least it shoudl get increased to 50%
Another change that Anet should do is, that the healing doesn#t get simply replaced by the healing of an individual, if it has more healing power, than YOu.
it should get changed that Water Spirits healing powers gets ADDED on top of that of your allies, while they are in teh near of the water spirit. This way WS would become a much better support skill option, especially for classes, and players that use builds with extreme low healing power.
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Signet of Vampirism sounds maybe nice on paper, but in reality its just useless, because if you get attacks to make its passive work, the passive is so weak, that you quickly get outdamaged (especially when u have lots of damaging conditions on you like bleedings, burn, poison, confusion and torment) and if you activate it, you have no heal and your allies just siphon a bit health. Conditions bypass the healing passive, it counts only for direct attacks from melee or ranged attack skills.

A better passive effect would be, if Signet of Vampirism would let you automatically siphon health from nearby foes, whenever their receive or lose a Bleeding Condition including stacks of it, making the siphon stronger, if more bleeding stacks at once got dealt to a foe or got removed.
That would make this skill more effective, especially when playing together in a group of players, that all can deal bleedings to your nearby foes. Then you would have a good synergetic healing skill that would make also by its effect more sense in regard of the skill’s name.

Signet of the ether is one of the better mesmer heals, gets used a lot. Arcane Brilliance is prob the most used ele heal (at least in dungeons/fracs) and defiant stance has quite a few more situational uses.

Can’t rly talk about all of them, but as for guardian, littany of wrath isn’t that great. Nothing really beats the 2sec block from shelter, it’s just so powerful.

Orpheal.8263:

To make Water Spirit more useful, its healing effectivity shouldnt be calculated only from Healign Power, but instead also from Vitality.
Means, so more Vitality the ranger has, so more should also heal the Water Spirit.
Vitality therefore should count for your self heal, and healing power for the part of how much allies can heal themself through Water Spirit with their attacks.
Then this skill would be alot more useful.

Also 35% chance to heal yourself on hit, is laughable, when there are thieves with Signet of Malaince, whic hhave a 100% heal on hit healing skill.
There shouldn’t be such a low chance just to get heals on hit from Water Spirit for those lousy 6 seconds of duration where it works. At least it shoudl get increased to 50%
Another change that Anet should do is, that the healing doesn#t get simply replaced by the healing of an individual, if it has more healing power, than YOu.
it should get changed that Water Spirits healing powers gets ADDED on top of that of your allies, while they are in teh near of the water spirit. This way WS would become a much better support skill option, especially for classes, and players that use builds with extreme low healing power.
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The vigorous spirits trait brings it up to a 70% chance, like the rest of the spirits. Not great, but better.

What I want to know is what is wrong wit ha situational skill? There are plenty of skills that are situational. They shine in different areas of the game with different builds.

Some could use tweaks and balancing a little more, sure, but the same could be said for a whole host of skills.

Arcane Brilliance is the heal an ele should have 90% of the time in PvE.

Defiant Stance is also very useful for a warrior on certain bosses, especially in low man settings.

I’ve always thought Defiant Stance should be 30s cooldown instead of 35, but as for Arcane Brilliance the only thing that needs fixing with it is the bug where the blast occurs wherever your target is rather than where you are.

Skelk Venom and Water Spirit are the only weak ones, in my opinion. As others have said, a lot of these skills are situational. A slight buff here and there wouldn’t go amiss, but there are far worse off skills and traits to look at as a priority.

Pockets.3201:

Orpheal.8263:

To make Water Spirit more useful, its healing effectivity shouldnt be calculated only from Healign Power, but instead also from Vitality.
Means, so more Vitality the ranger has, so more should also heal the Water Spirit.
Vitality therefore should count for your self heal, and healing power for the part of how much allies can heal themself through Water Spirit with their attacks.
Then this skill would be alot more useful.

Also 35% chance to heal yourself on hit, is laughable, when there are thieves with Signet of Malaince, whic hhave a 100% heal on hit healing skill.
There shouldn’t be such a low chance just to get heals on hit from Water Spirit for those lousy 6 seconds of duration where it works. At least it shoudl get increased to 50%
Another change that Anet should do is, that the healing doesn#t get simply replaced by the healing of an individual, if it has more healing power, than YOu.
it should get changed that Water Spirits healing powers gets ADDED on top of that of your allies, while they are in teh near of the water spirit. This way WS would become a much better support skill option, especially for classes, and players that use builds with extreme low healing power.
—-

The vigorous spirits trait brings it up to a 70% chance, like the rest of the spirits. Not great, but better.

problem is that it has a internal cooldown thats random and makes the passive heal useless. the active is weak due to how Spirit AI doesnt quite work well in terms of following.