Guild Wars 2

While I play mostly DPS oriented builds I do have some interst in supportive builds.
While support isn’t limited to healing, healing is by far the most unrewarding
While I do not want to consider HEALERS, I do want to talk about healing.

I’ll try to be clear and constructive I hope you can do as well.

1st: Healing can be usefull (combined with condition removal) in high dmg area’s, these can be very limited in game, places where I find my healing builds usefull: WvW in large encounters, Big PvE events with large amounts of pressure (Temple of Balthazar) some other temple events and wordbosses, and occasionally in casual dungeon runs (mostly 1st timer or starter support)

2nd: Healing is more then just healing skills, healing influences: ALL HEALING SKILLS, WATER BLASTS, REGENERATION, Any LIFE-STEAL/VAMPIRIC Fuctionality (runes/traits/skills), TRAITS (Virtue of resolve, adrenal health, soothing mist)

3rd Scaling is EXTREMELY unrewarding: In most cases the influence on these skills is precentages or promilages of the healing attribute and the base values are HIGH. this makes for things like regeneration scaling rediculously little… All ingame functionality providing healing has scaling running from 0.0-1,0 (in extremel;y rare cases 1.25 times healing power)

Major ascended 1381 pts, minor 961 pts
Comparison:

• full secondary toughness provides a significant % dmg removed from all physical attacks
• full secondary vitality provides + 9610 health, base is limited per class butt varies between 11k and 19k
• full secondary precision provides +46% crit, chance base is +4%
• full secondary ferocity adds +~60% added critical dmg, base is +50%
• full secondary power provides 961 power, base is 1000 almost doubling base damage

BUT

• full secondary healing provides 961 healing with a maximum multiplier of 1.0 ( in rare cases 1.25) your secondary healing will ad a maximum of 961 (1200) health to your healing skills provided you reach this multiplier!
  Scaling is always very limited, health pools are between 11.8k and 19.7k on armor with no added vitality….
  e.g. Necro has way less effect from healing…

Heals scale bad… I understand heals could get overpowered easily, but most of these skills have cooldowns… These skills will sometimes not benefit more then the base value, or scale horridly. This is as most people do want a decent heal but will not invest in healing as a stat.

No healing skill will scale more then 2732 healing points due to the maximum scaling being 1.25 cosidering you bring a 1381 healing from main attribute, 180 for a available signet (guardian only) 175 from healing runes, 100 from utility food and 100 from actual food 1936 , you’ll need to add a sigil of life (250 added at full stacks) for a whopping total of 2186 healing power when fully focussing your build, giving you 2732 added healing to your healing skill… (Well with 1.25 scaling of Signet of Resolve you could, else you are out of luck you’ll end up with way less. any other build woul want power as main, could use food, buit use different skils and runes ending up with 1061 healing…. scaling 1.0)

• Vampiric isn’t even listed in the wiki, but does scale: the effect from healing at 0.04
• Virtue of resolve doesn’t scale accoring to wiki…
• Regeneration scales 0.125

Weapon Skills

• Life siphon (Necro dagger2) 0.04
• Empower (guard staff 3) 1.0
• Orb of light (guard staff 2) 0.2
• Detonate orb of light (gard staff 2) 0.6
• Faithful strike (guard mace1) 0.18
• light of judgemnt (guard trident1) 0.1
• water blast (ele,staff1,water)0.25
• geyser(ele, staff3,water)0.75
• water trident(ele, trident3,water)1,0
• tidal wave (ele,trident5,water)0,1
• cone of cold(ele,dagger2,water)0.32
• cleansing wave (ele,dagger5,water) 1.0

UTILITY:

• guard: merciful intervention scales 0.6
• guard: bow of truth command 0.05 (skill hits max 40 times on area but anyone could tell you you only get hit limited amount of times if you’d get hit 20 times the scaling actually doesn’t change)
• guard: sanctuary 0.05
• ranger: signet of the wild: pet 0.25, self 0.06
• thief: shadow refuge, initial scaling .9, pulsing heals .18

Elite

• guard:Signet of courage 0.5
• ranger spirit of nature: 0
• ele (water): glyph of elementals: Crashing waves: 0 according to wiki fixed heal.

Questions:

1. Would a doubling of all healing multipliers help to resolve this imbalance???
2. Would decreasing base healing create more need for healing in builds?
3. Would creating good scaling for vampiric and life draining traits resolve this imbalance?
4. Would adding BOON DURATION scaling on healing make a difference?

I’d suggest A-net to review all multipliers WITH ALL HEALING AND REGENERATIVE RELATED SKILLS/TRAITS to make an attempt to resolve the horrid scaling and the unrewarding attribute HEALING.

Bump, sadly healing sucks from start, and has received little or less love. Anet tries but something is clearly not right.

Healing synergies too well with toughness to scale better.

The issue is that damage and tankiness kind of nullify each other due to each individual stat having linear returns. The problem is healing got MORE than linear returns. The breaking point is that when your heals reach the point they allow you to survive until they are out of cooldown. At that point, healing gives you kind of infinite EHP.

I agree, but there is quite some room between unlimited EHP and the present situation.

I’d prefer scaling on -all healing reated skills- including vampirics, regenerations and life buffing traits.

I’d like a noticeabe effect from healing,
I’d like compensation of healing sklls for the removal of the 300 points formerly available from the traitlines which are more or less compensated through healing power on armor and traits which are mostly conditional….

In the end healing became a truly nerfed attribute, with boon duration and condition duration…. while most if not all others still seem balanced….

With the increased combat speed an improved heal would make healing fit in with the other atributes again. healing as is is very underwhelming…..

healing could be better… and yea needs to scale better to….but what really need to change to is poison. -33% healing…and there alot of poison…..like i said at one point it need to stack in intesity … like 1 stack is 5% and for like every sstack of poison u add like 2-3% more reduction so if u have like 20stack on u u will have 45-65%…. and as u can tell this actully open how poison can actully be more usful if used propley…also i think if u poison and try to plast a water field either it doesnt work or poison ur allies… think twice before blasting… just a suggestion though

ANet basically tore away Boon Duration, Condition Duration and Healing Power with practically no compensation. It sucks. But yes Healing needs to be reviewed and improved, not that’s it any decent now… No way. I hope ANet looks into this and balances things out.

POISON with regard to healing (poison reduces heals by 33%)

I see poison having influence, but it will be neccesary to destroy any close to unlimited EHP builds

(unlimited E(ffective)H(ealth)P(ool) being a character which can soak up so much dmg due to TOUGHNESS and can replenish through regeneration and conventional heals being scaled from HEALING he’s effectively invulnerable indefinately. They are uncounterable through any DPS means, but (often) will die quite fast through the use of condition dmg as they cannot mitigate it much…. Nomads/clerics and clerics being 2 examples of potential unl. EHP’s, of course there is also toughness/healing/condition dmg, being a way more dangerous variant)

LIFE DRAIN and healing

I personally like to see lifetransfers/life siphons/vampirics changed to healing AND power scaling. the fact you hit with liftransfer and are connected could be a DPS moment, the actual transfer should be based upon healing., same for life siphon and vampiric traits, like vampiric wells, vampiric presence and so on. I’d rather spec healing for my necro and get 2k dmg from power and 8-9k dmg transferred then now seeing good dmg 8k and 2-3k healing to ppl… the damage effects are the same…. only support would improve. Necro hass no water fields, and limited blasts… I could see a ilusion emoving some helth from a bar as well….

Water (Fields) and Healing (Blasted waterfields will give AOE healing (0.2 scaling), whirls will create healing bolts giving regen 2s), projectiles regeneration 2s and leaps will do healing 0.5 scaling, (Most ppl focus on blasts due to the instant and AOE nature.)

Water fields seems to have reasonably limited availability, elementalist, rangers, engineers that’s it. And yes they are powerfull especially the pulsing fields. This has to do with the highest healing being use nowadays (I believe they implemented it) and the fact certain skills can be blasted the amount of times the water field pulses (4-6 times) dealing 4-6 times 1320+scaled aoe healing.

Scaling figures taken from the official Guild Wars 2 Wiki….

i think that healing should receive a buff, and agree very heavily that there should be a new “stat” where boons and healing power are in same. This would give a reason for support roles.

I think the base healing values on most skills are fine, but the way they scale with Healing Power could use a revision.

I’ve noticed the same as the OP: the “Healing Power” stat makes almost no difference in your actual healing output, while almost every other stat makes a substantial difference in their respective area.

And yes, it’s true that Healing Power and Toughness kinda of multiply their effectivness together. But that’s not unlike Power, Precision and Ferocity.

stof.9341:

Healing synergies too well with toughness to scale better.

The issue is that damage and tankiness kind of nullify each other due to each individual stat having linear returns. The problem is healing got MORE than linear returns. The breaking point is that when your heals reach the point they allow you to survive until they are out of cooldown. At that point, healing gives you kind of infinite EHP.

Healing does synergize with Toughness, but it scales the same.

Higher toughness will mean less dmg needs to be healed but the heals will still be as weak. Healing still scales in the same bad way, actually the attribute healing has less importance with high toughness.

Now consider using vitality here you would actually benefit from healing as more healthpoints need to be healed so healing needs to be scaled better…. if you take a sentinels warrior you have a 38k Health pool but you are still limited by the tiny heals,,, 2.5k from a shout is way less the someone has on a no vitality build running 19k HP

In the end if you have higher vitality healing should become more effective to heal a comparable percentage as compared builds focussing on toughness

Suggestion

The scaling in healing skills should/ could be changed to heal a (variable) percentage of the healthpool…
With the percentage being scaled by healing to determine healing effectiveness.

It would make both healing and vitality way more usefull. and the system more constructive.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Healing does synergize with Toughness, but it scales the same.

No, it scales better. Normal EHP scaling on healing is linear true, but there’s a special factor going on : when you reach enough Healing power that you can suddently cycle one more cooldown before death, then the scaling for that point is definitively nonlinear is very high.

My guess would be that for HP to scale better, base heal numbers would have to go down. This would be detrimental to the way the game is currently balanced. I suspect improving HP scaling would require pervasive changes to many aspects of the game, far more than just changing one stat.

Effective Health is the amount you seem to have when playing due to mitigation and actual health, It’s mostly based on vitality and toughness and not so much on healing power.

healing power is the part that could replenish a character when drained. but scaling of healing is something different compared to

I have 10k health(vitality) and 33% mitigation(toughness) so I experience my healthpool like 15k (10*(1/0.66))

I understand if people get more healing, their healthpool could theoretically be expanded so implemented this becomes:

I have 10k health and 33% mitigation and 5k health by healing once every 20 seconds so I experience
my healthpool like 22,5k (10+5*(1/0.66)) during the first 25-30 seconds
with a further 7.5k after 25-30s (you need to take damage before you can heal up) with an additional 7,5k every 20s seconds afterward (I expect you either stay alive of be dead… after this 85-90 seconds you experienced a base health pool of 37.5k healthpoints, not including regeneration or other heals and buffs.

You can fit healing power into effective health like that : make it count as bonus HP equal to the amount you heal.

The trick here is that healing power, say on a skill that has a 1 coefficient gives you 1 EHP per Healing Power. Until the point where you live long enough to use your skill twice, then suddently you get 2 EHP per healing power, then 3 times and it’s 3 etc…

This scaling is hardly linear and more like exponential.

no it isn’t

Cause you forget there is a second thing, called time if you live long enough yes…
there is downtime as well… and the second time you will get your fixed heal. maybe a third and 4th time but….

But you will only heal up to maximum normal health and you’ll be at your maximum (potential) effective health again, when your healing skill is recharged again. you cannot have more. Cause your normal health pool cannot keep growing. It has a cap.

If you had 10 k health and 33% mitigation and the 5k heal (20s CD) you could get:
the 22.5k damage to soak up an your heal be on CD for 20 s, but never more then 15k EHP due to your characters cap being 10k health
then a heal for 5k (7.5k EHP) added dmg space and CD for 20s, but never more then 15k EHP due to your characters cap being 10k health
then a heal for 5k (7.5k EHP) added dmg space and CD for 20s, but never more then 15k EHP due to your characters cap being 10k health

BUT NEVER will you go above the ACTUAL 15K EHP cause you cannot get more then 10k NORMAL HP EVER.

if you would draw it out is seems you only get a bubble at the start where you can have some added portential EHP as you are stuck with the CD’s of your healing skill after this point, of course there could be regen or other buffs involved. but I’m ignoring them for now. if you have unlimited buffs you can stay alive easier then worrying about EHP.

That’s not how EHP works.

Say, I have a heal that gives me 5k HP every 30s. And someone is attacking me doing 150 damage every second. How much effective HP do you think I have in this situation?

An infinite amount, that’s right.

Healing power scaling leads to infinite EHP with a finite amount of stats. Thoughness can do that too but the difference is that is scales worse than healing in this case so it’s more manageable.

I don’t understand why when I make a “buff healing” post it gets only naysayers, when every other “buff healing” post I’ve ever seen gets a ton of support.

Yes, healing very obviously needs to be buffed, or completely redesigned.

Healing was already pretty low in it’s rewards, it’s the most unrewarding attribute to spec in.

the +30% stat increase did actually change the healing values to it original values for major stats on armors.. at least for Clerics and Magi. They went up a couple of dozen points compensating the trait line point removal as such the 30% didn’t affect major tarited healers, (CLERICS/MAGI)

There is no actual MINOR HEALING BASED ASCENDED TRINKET, you are left with Celestial or Clerics, Magi or a trinket with part Apothecary

Presently my necromancer with zealots armor has 645 healing ,795 healing in combat

he came from 496+300 = 796 points and the spite line trait: 7% of power is converted to healing (added 154 points) for total 950 healing
Which seems to account for for a 33% nerf OOC. When in combat the reduction is more then 17%…

Maybe this doesn’t sound significant, but It does feel like it

If I look at the trinkets I can compare with Zealots healing with ferocity values on zerk rings:

Amulet 108 points
Ring x2 85*2 points (170)
Earring x2 74*2 points (148)
or a total of 426 points…

This would instantly fix the weak feel of my zealot builds…

Regarding ascneded : No zealot, no shaman…. and lot’s of others missing, mostly with minor healing ? They just do not exist at all. [correction there’s : Ventari (ascneded Nomad’s) but it seems to lack synergy with zealots. maybe case toughness and vitality do not improve the power and precision very well.]

Just get me my rings and trinkets first, so I can actually make use of my build again. You an argue there is exotic Zealots, but I run fractals and WvW. I prefer to have slots for AR and WVW…

Then CONTINUE and update the scaling healing providing traits/ runes/sigils/skills/life steals /elites. All should have scaling. including those above mentioned life steals and Elites (Really? Yes, cause they give HP: it’s HEALING. ) I’d even accept a small nerf in base values

And scaling should be allowed to count for something, …. to invest 1/3rd of your stats in something and to get a tiny fractional revenue from them seems dumb…

All dps was buffed somtimes more then 20% but healing no… healing stayed the same and in many cases it DID get nerfed, unless you run Full Cleric or Magi. (Edit: or full Nomads)

stof.9341:

That’s not how EHP works.

Say, I have a heal that gives me 5k HP every 30s. And someone is attacking me doing 150 damage every second. How much effective HP do you think I have in this situation?

An infinite amount, that’s right.

Healing power scaling leads to infinite EHP with a finite amount of stats. Thoughness can do that too but the difference is that is scales worse than healing in this case so it’s more manageable.

If someone is attacking you in that case with 150 it’s either a nomads/magi build using ranged weapons and in all other cases they’d be above that limit.

Present heals do mostly 5-10k / 20s and you are hit with hits for 1000-1500 on average every second or faster so EHP is drained before your heal arrives. Even if that heal would manage to fill your healthbar with 15k HP in most cases you still have a good damage result and a draining healthpool.

As the damage here does outweigh the difference (1000*20 = 20k and max heal is 10k) you would be dead, if you do not manage to dodge/ avoid 50% of the hits. otherwise you’ll need heal to refill it before this time..
present heals are 1.5(shout heals)- 4k(healing spring/well of blood) health… or water blasts for 2k health…

your previous example for the 5 k heal with a steady “pressure of 150 pts/s” will never die, but with a second player doing 150 pts/s it will however… as the 2 attacks combined would do 9k dmg vs your 5k healing showing it should die eventually if you can maintain the pressure, In your example you were effectively creating a “Tank” , the tank would also die fast if he’d be focussed with conditions though… as they stack next to the basic dmg….

You should also be aware most groups 2 vs 1 to make sure they kill faster. in PvP you generally see 2 groups of 2 and 1 “tankier build” for platform defence and scouting… in some cases 3,1,1… nobody just goes and solo’s everything unless they have a HUGE DPS and good survivability (invisibility or superior range or other guranteed defence options.) problem is heals never are able to counter such DPS,

The 12k backstab still haunts me… As do confusion stackers and firebombs

The numbers 10 and even 15k heal would still leave room for kills,
At present Signet of Resolve has a base healing of 8,500 health but only a 1.25 multiplier, so you will get 8.5k anyways, but if you go deep into healing you get 11,2k… like that’s a good investment…?

it would also create room for 2 or 2,5 (IMHO even 3, 4 and maybe even 5) healing scale multipliers understand the max healing I mentioned is only possible on guardian
most other classes are stuck around 1750 points. this also means if you have a multiplier of 5 you will do 8750 healing…. on top of your base heal…

But when considering
Signet of resolve
present 8,5k base and scaling 1,25) and an
example of
7.5k base multiplier of 2 and 2.5) ,
based on 981 (max minor stat excluding buffs ) healing
and 2186 healing (maxed out healing including runes, food, sigil, utility and major stats)

These added values result in~2000-4400 and 2500-6600 ADDED healing respectively On a basic heal e.g. 7.5k with the 2.5 multiplier this would result in heals for 10k-14.k1
compared to 8.5k base and 9.75k and 11,25 leaving healing buil;ds with something up their sleeves. instead of nothing for their investments. It would mean you do not NEED healers but a healer would benefit ppl and in no way they’d be OP.

Healing is awfully broke! this shouldn’t even be a question at this point.
I remember GW healing regen that could buff characters crazily, insta full heals (almost at least) and many other great buffs. GW didn’t have a stat system the same way, nonetheless powerful heals or high defence and so on, and players still killed players, monsters still killed players.

Healing revamp is needed, sorely so!

I’ve been rethinking this again and again, and I’m at a point where I think my brainstorm has come up with 1 thing also posted in another thread.

Support is ESSENTIAL to DPS.

BUT support can be seen in a wide variety of ways:

Support:
Condition support:

• dazes/knockdowns/knockbacks/fear (interupting)
• stuns: no attacks possible
• chill: lengthening cooldown, sloing of enemy movement
• blinds: miss on next hit
• weakness: remove criticals from enemy attacks, 50% of the attacks will deal 50% dmg
• vulnerability: any damage will improve {stack amount} percentage
• poison: heals 33% less effective
• confusion: damage while using skills…
  (bleeds/burning/terror/confusion/chill) will be DOT for dmg as well

Boon support

• aegis: block 1st incoming attack.
• regeneration: regainhealth over time
• protection: reduce incoming dmg by 33%
• retaliation: returns some dmg for each hit
• quickness: faster attacks
• might: added power and condition dmg
• fury: added critical chance
• stability: invunerable to movement impeding conditions
• stealth/invisibility: impossible to hit
• vigor added endurance regen…

Other:

• reflects no dmg from ranged,return ranged dmg
• blocks no incoming ranged dmg

Direct healing / support

• condition removal, remove stacks from the condition barr
• heals adds healthpoints

And as is

• full glass DPS builds due to the fact they can KILL ALL before they get below dangerous values of health…

Why is support essential? A lot of builds contain traits which give buffs above 90% health
To make sure you maintain maximum dps it is usefull to stay close to 100% full health….

Healing and condition removal are important when boons and utility run out. Problem is no enemies are so dangerous (read: have the time to do so much damage) when using zerk you need to resort to last ditch removals and heals…

Generally AOE blindness,aegis, reflects and block, weaknesss. protection and MAYBE regen are enough… maybe with some condition removal to make sure you do not go under 90% (often/ever)

This also shows healing as stat is no longer interesting, with only regen being influenced by healing and the enemy will not be able to hurt the party -at all- anyways, so healing if people carry an AoE heal will be sporadic, still not creating a need for Healing as a stat

This will not be possible when parties have people running vitality or toughness, due to them lacking DPS pressure and the window becomes to long where you need to survive on those damage mitigators. the toughness carrying groups will not need alot of added healing, But vitality based caracters will however… They need healing to regain health, and in case of deep investment they’ll need people with healing as a stats to fill in their builds.

so regarding importance of stats:

1. power
2. condition dmg
3. precision
4. ferocity
5. toughness
6. vitality
7. healing

I’d love to see healing buffed

Suggestion would be to make

• Boon duration scaling from healing (suggest 3% per 100 healing +40% at 1381 healing)
• Heals: base heals only 50% effective compare to what they are now
• Heals: heal scaling of skills by 2,5-5 times better
• Heals: make vitality be an added modifier for any heals on the reciever. I suggest 3% for each 100 points above 1000 (base vitality) with max vitality 1381 you’d recieve a 40% buff to your healing. at 1000 you just recive the normal healing. It will reward both vitality and healing a bit lifting them to be on par with toughness.

But these suggestion will not make ’m overpowered in my opinion and the 2 stats will probably still on the bottom of the list as they do NOT AFFECT DAMAGE! (maybe in might and fury uptime, thats the influence as far as I can see ….)

Boons:

• aegis: block 1st incoming attack.
• regeneration: regainhealth over time
• protection: reduce incoming dmg by 33%
• retaliation: returns some dmg for each hit
• quickness: faster attacks
• might: added power and condition dmg
• fury: added critical chance
• stability: invunerable to movement impeding conditions
• vigor added endurance regen…

I remember the 2136 max healing and the 981 from minor stat based heals

2136 would give +64% boon duration (with some healing runes it would reach the cap for boons (100%).) and 981 would give 28,5% boon duration.
which could reintroduce booners and healers as support classes. being limited to not lethal skills I think this should be a possibility also I do not think this would break the game. but please correct me if it does.

hmmm. healing power could perhaps be converted into “willpower”, increasing incoming boon duration & outgoing condition duration, as well as raw healing power…

if some change can be made to make it an effective stat, i’m all for it, though the problem is that the game just doesn’t justify itemizing for support stats enough to justify having three of them (my opinion, obviously)

in essence, for healing power to be useful, it must provide an increase to survival in line with toughness (vitality, as i mentioned in my thread, is already not worth taking above the barest minimum), or else must also contribute positively to dps to such an extent that it’s worth dropping one of the other damage stats to take it.

in its present form i don’t think it adds positively to the game; i think it muddles the already bloated pool of worthless stat combos. This needs to change, and the most straightforward way is just to take out the stat; if ideas like this one can be implemented to make the stat worth taking, that’s just as good.

Narrrz.7532:

hmmm. healing power could perhaps be converted into “willpower”, increasing incoming boon duration & outgoing condition duration, as well as raw healing power…

if some change can be made to make it an effective stat, i’m all for it, though the problem is that the game just doesn’t justify itemizing for support stats enough to justify having three of them (my opinion, obviously)

in essence, for healing power to be useful, it must provide an increase to survival in line with toughness (vitality, as i mentioned in my thread, is already not worth taking above the barest minimum), or else must also contribute positively to dps to such an extent that it’s worth dropping one of the other damage stats to take it.

in its present form i don’t think it adds positively to the game; i think it muddles the already bloated pool of worthless stat combos. This needs to change, and the most straightforward way is just to take out the stat; if ideas like this one can be implemented to make the stat worth taking, that’s just as good.

Healing power as is is a very nice option , but not worth the investment at this moment in time as all other stats give better revenue.

I hope we will see healing reworked in the future. I’m also glad there are multiple threads regarding healing in the forum at this time showing tghere’s both a wish from the public to have healing improved as well as a group who actuively tries to get this done. I’ll try to keep my suggestion aliver for now. and will try to discuss my ideas on other threads as well.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I hope we will see healing reworked in the future. I’m also glad there are multiple threads regarding healing in the forum at this time showing tghere’s both a wish from the public to have healing improved as well as a group who actuively tries to get this done. I’ll try to keep my suggestion aliver for now. and will try to discuss my ideas on other threads as well.

It quite obviously needs fixing, if not reworking, or even complete removal. i think the devs probably know that, it’s just a question of priorities & figuring out what change could make it viable without being utterly overpowered.

For my part i don’t think it’s a worthwhile stat, and anything short of a total rework which leaves it barely recognizable is going to fall short of the mark. with that in mind, i really think the most efficient option is a bandaid fix like i’ve suggested in another thread, removing it entirely and adding its effects into another stat.

when the devs have the time or a flash of inspiration to re-implement it properly, then they can reintroduce the re-imagined stat in whatever form it has morphed into. For now there’s simply insufficient use for it to be worth leaving ingame.

I think maybe you are just doing it wrong…

Ele’s with cele gear can heal themselves from dead to full 5-6 times using their heals

Guards in toughness/healing gear can face tank lupi

If anything healing power needs a nerf.

The only class where it is really really bad is necro who scale at numbers like 0.04 with a base healing of like 20.

The problem is pve is too easy. I’m not sure where you need healing power in pve. You need to change the game content more than you need to change the mechanic.

and another problem is you can heal too much without investing any point in healing, so no one bother to put point into it. The best way to me is to nerf the base healing so it’ll make it more rewarding to put point in healing power.

and there’s always those try hard, if people dont’ min/max dps, they’ll yell at people. That’s probably why healing power isn’t rewarding in pve. Since people will expect you to be good at dodging and dont’ rely on defense.

Guards have 1 healing skill whcihh does 8.25k healing base (no healing power involved and 1.25 (highest modifier in all healing skills) * healling power. with the small remark gaurds alkso have the highest atainable healing power in the game ~2150 excluding the bonus from mace. so their heal can heal for 11k easy… with the gaurds having a 13k healthpool… not figuring in regen, (mace auto heal), heal on dodge and self regeneration.

Elementalists do not really heal or that much, but have acces to healing on several skills and on dodge with evasive arcana as well as a regen when in water. Also water fields and the fact most ele’s have 3 heals on staff and more on other sets can make ele’s heal quite effectively, which still ha slittle to do with healing as

• the regen scales bad
• regeneration scales bad
• water & blasts scale bad. it’s the amounts of blasts and the pulsating field

These 2 examples are due to bad balancing (high base, low scale) not due to healing power. If the ele wouldn’t be in celestial gear healing would be nearly the same. same for the guardian, if the guardian wouldn’t be in clerics gear (but knights for example) almost all skils would do nearly the same healing EXCEPT the heals on dodge. They are the only skill/ability which does really scale….
If the healing (BASE) would be lowered the 2 proffesions in this example actually could be facing some trouble.. due to the fact they can no longer rely on base heals that much…
But in case of the celestial and the clerics they would actually benefit from the inproved scaling it. Making HEALING a factor in the build. and healing no longer as useless, also the improved boon duration would make for some added regen and protection in the builds mentioned.

Indeed HP could use a BIT better scaling but not that much. Otherwise some classes, like guardians,would become nearly invincible.
With a better scaling I would also completely remove regen: is a boring boon that with no gameplay attached, and we all know we want more skillful gameplay ;-)
Life steal is a mechanic that should used more often and in ths case might bring new utility to necros

I think ANET just don’t want groups/guilds/WvWer to bring 20 Healer typer characters and start massive healing to zergs. So, I think healing will continue to be underpowered for that reason alone. I think.

@ Gaaroth & SirDrygan:

There is a -difference- between

Reducing base healing and improving scaling on healing power
effectively removing an amount of healing from all DPS-only characters
and adding a small percentage of healing to people healing

and

changing everybody to all out healers.

This suggested change only affects people without healing a bit and makes the people using healing have actual benefits. Just check it:

For example the guardian aforementioned.

• With zerk (or any non healing carrying armor)
  At present he has 8.250 health added for just pressing 6

• with celestial (533 healing) (CORRECTION should be 640)
  8250+ 1.25 * 533 = 8916 points of healing
  8250 +1.25 * 640 =9050 ponints of healing
• with a minor stat healing: (961 healing)
  he would get 8250 + (1,25 * 961) healing 9450 pomints of healing

• with a major stat healing (1381 healing)
  he would get 8250 + (1.25 * 1381) healing 9976 points of healing

• with clerics, healing runes , and stacked sigil of life signet of life and foods
  he would get 8250 + (1.25 * 2186) healing 10982 points of healing.

My suggestion would be to reduce BASE healing and double maybe even triple the scaling (I’ll go for 65% of present base and triple the healing scaling (and the boon duration added for the idea))

First base heal reduced to 65% of original : 8250 * 0.65= 5623

• with zerk (or any non healing carrying armor) the effect would be :
  pressing 6 would give 5623 healing and +0% boon duration

• with celestial 533 healing (CORRECTION should be 640)
  5623 + ( 3 * 533) = 7222 healing +16% boon duration
  5623 + ( 3 * 640) = 7563 healing and 19.2% boon duration
• with minor heal 961
  5623 + (3 * 961) 0 = 8506 healing +28.8% boon duration

• with major heal 1381
  5623 + (3* 1381) = 9766 healing + 41.4% boon duration

• with maxed out heal 2186
  5623 + (3*2186) = 12181 + 65% boon duration.
  this would effectively add 10% to the max healing of a character if he’s fully specced.
  BUT IT WOULD MAKE HEALING A USEFULL STAT. Literally all others would be slightly reduced.

Also this would reduce healing by 33% for people completely ignoring the stat making this game a bit harder. but not impossible.

Remember:

We are still surviving through ACTIVE defence, dodges, reflects, blinds, aegis, protection, weakness and so on.

Nerfing base healing for all builds that don’t have healing power is a sure way to completely wreck the game balance.

I can’t even imagine the mess it’ll do in sPvP while you buff Celestial so much compared to non celestial builds.

stof.9341:

Nerfing base healing for all builds that don’t have healing power is a sure way to completely wreck the game balance.

I can’t even imagine the mess it’ll do in sPvP while you buff Celestial so much compared to non celestial builds.

And I’d say It’s a rebalancing. It will shift meta’s again. and celestial will always be the stat with no defects… but you’ll lose your maxed stats.

Did you also consider builds like condition dmg, toughness, healing or power toughness healing in your remark?

Also I noticed my numbers taken fform the wiki are in error with regard to celestial. they are the unmodified number (pre 23 june), and should therefore be multiplied by 1.3 and as such:

There is a reason why 80% of the people play celestial at this moment… it’s because it will always have an angle where it will be more powerfull to other builds.. even though it has less stat points compared to other builds. It will mean in 3 attribute fields it will outperform other builds. be it defensive, condition dmg or healing, the advantages are real. always delivering a more stable build.

6*640 (3840) attribute points from celestial
and runes of divinity will add 78*6 = 468 points
compared to
2*931+1381 (3243) attribute points from any 3 stat combination (and runes will add 175+100 =275 or 175+ 125 (300) (runes of the pack only) points

SHOWS why celestial is more powerfull… It has over 18% more stat points in total…
if you’d include divinity runes compared to 2 stat runes it becomes 21.5%…. more stat points…

CELESTIAL IS ALREADY MORE POWERFUL.. You’d just improve healing for all -who use healing- and nerf it for those seemingly not needing it.

Lastly look at the values:

before the sugegsted change the person would have had
8250 +1.25 * 640 =9050 ponints of healing
after the suggestion the same build would have had:
5623 + ( 3 * 640) = 7563 healing and 19.2% boon duration

in the end it’s less loss then the zerk build had with
(8250 before and 5623 after) but it’s not over the top much…

I cannot believe this is actually a consideration.

Some time ago I made topic with sugestion of lowering bases and increasing scaling of blast finishers on water fields → most notably supportive healing mechanic that now can be easily done by any build without any healing power without much outgoing healing loss (lets say, there were mixed responses).

Probably the most interesting changes regardless healing power and other defensive stats was:
- connecting healing power with boon duration → to make this more supportive and useful stat.
- connecting toughness/vitality with stamina regeneration → to connect them to more active form of supports.

Curently the only effective use for defensive stats are: nomad “you mad” PvP bunker/res/supp, and even then they usually require some additional means of protection (stealth / protection).
They are annoying (even sometimes impossible) to deal with, so people can think that defensive stats are powerful. (Still it is funny what would condi build do with this – especially if it can inflict poison well enough).

One of the reasons Healing Power has such a garbage ratio is because the formula is linear. Set the coefficient too high, and PvP/PvE have more survivability than can be planned for. Set it too low (as we have now), and Healing Power is worthless.

I find it hard to believe that smart people involved in programming, modeling, and simulation can’t use square root or logarithmic functions effectively in order to set a theoretical upper boundary. Sure, that would make full-cleric gear unnecessary, but maybe Healing Power needs decreasing gains to allow for a higher initial rate of return.

I do not think my suggested example was so extreme… I do not think after removing 35% of the base healing and tripling the multiplier the values became over the top either. I think it just shows it can be balanced and it will mean a higher skill level for certain classes. very much so.

But as it stands now, some, if not all, classes can get away with running no healing whatsoever. they only depend on base heals, which shows the inherent problem.

I think making the rewards and necessity bigger, would also return a use for healing as a stat. without instantaneously creating the second part of the trinity. (still do not have full tanks, full healers and full DPS.) we would get more squishy DPS and the healing side a bit more viable.

It doesn’t make a trinity or mandatory healers, it would just make ZERK more twitchy and some other parts more rewarding. Also as long as you can survive on active defences Zerk will not suffer anyways.

ANet doesn’t like diminishing returns. It’s not a bad thing really.

Also, Healing power already give you insane survivability : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DKZ45a0VU

stof.9341:

ANet doesn’t like diminishing returns. It’s not a bad thing really.

Also, Healing power already give you insane survivability : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DKZ45a0VU

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

look at the values:

before the sugegsted change the person would have had
8250 +1.25 * 640 =9050 ponints of healing
after the suggestion the same build would have had:
5623 + ( 3 * 640) = 7563 healing and 19.2% boon duration

in the end it’s less loss then the zerk build had with
(8250 before and 5623 after) but it’s not over the top much…

I think I am trying to show you something here…

the healing AS A STAT becomes more effective the resulting HEALS are lower!

Raising the skillcap, and making your remark pointless.

I’m trying to explain something.

Please read instead of just panicking please.

Lastly thinking I’d rather go Nomads Clerics in PvE , or dungeons is rediculous, let’s do the full dungeon tour you do it with 5 of those. I’ll take 4 zerks and 1 zealot.
And I’ll finish my HotW paths in 15-20 minutes each and you’ll be chopping away for an hour each path… Who has more fun? I can do something usefull after 4 hours with the money from those dungeons (probaly finished SE, COF, TA, COE, AC and HOTW by then maybe even 1 or 2 paths of arah…) and you just started your fourth dungeon path -.-

stof.9341:

ANet doesn’t like diminishing returns. It’s not a bad thing really.

Also, Healing power already give you insane survivability : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DKZ45a0VU

A nigh-two hour video for one spec of one class is an anecdote, not sufficient for statistical significance. Remove Altruistic Healing, and it’s suddenly not so ‘insane’ for survivability.

The real reason ANet isn’t going to change healing power is “e-sport” and PvP. If a bunker survives too long (and who doesn’t have knockbacks, honestly?), it’s suddenly a huge qq situation. That bugs me. They’re worried about meta-game blowback when they could actually just fix it by tweaking healing power and letting the meta sort itself out.

Rauderi.8706:

stof.9341:

ANet doesn’t like diminishing returns. It’s not a bad thing really.

Also, Healing power already give you insane survivability : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DKZ45a0VU

A nigh-two hour video for one spec of one class is an anecdote, not sufficient for statistical significance. Remove Altruistic Healing, and it’s suddenly not so ‘insane’ for survivability.

The real reason ANet isn’t going to change healing power is “e-sport” and PvP. If a bunker survives too long (and who doesn’t have knockbacks, honestly?), it’s suddenly a huge qq situation. That bugs me. They’re worried about meta-game blowback when they could actually just fix it by tweaking healing power and letting the meta sort itself out.

5 unkillable builds would be enough to waranty panick,

but this lowers actual healing , but makes healing and boon duration significant from healing as a stat. I think this would make PvP even faster and bunkers more squishy. unles they are really adept using boons.

Statistical evidence? A class solos a full dungeon without doing any dodging just by out healing all damage and it’s not evidence that the stat is doing more than enough work?

How powerful do you actually want healing to be oO Full HP heal at each regen tick?

so he’s mashing away for 2 hours doing only mace hits. if he doesn ’t do so he dies.

nice game he has. also the dps is horrid. 1hour 41 minutes for a dungeon path lasting 15-18 minutes at most… he doesn’t lose time while walking so his DPS output is about 1/8th of others… who using a more dps or DoT related build. The only thing you can do is stand on a platform and keep it.

Untill 1 guy comes with condition dmg and kills you in 20 seconds. Due to your perfect healing no longer functioning as you expoect as your armor is fully ignored. And you ’lll be melting where you stand.

clerics and nomads… I use it for mai trin fractal, I can res ppl in full combat just cleansing away, but in the cannon barrage I’d die in less then 10 seocnds due to conditions completely destroying me (they are applied too quick to survive or cleanse (I can clean 15 conditions in seconds), if I need to get hit by any reason… if it happens and I get 10 stacks of burning it takes 3 seconds and I’m dead. I do not want to think about condition builds, like PU condi mesmer, SB/trapper thief/ranger, terrormancer, burning guard, D/? earth ele or S/S warrior)

I just want to point out a bunker like his is based on 3500 armor mitigating most dmg, but armor doesn’t mitigate condition damage… in that case with a nice heal he’ll die as fast as most other builds. In PvP I’d just send 1 or 2 condi builds after him, he’ll lose 10 times in a row and change to celestial.. (yes I know there ’s no nomad in PvP)

the healing stat should govern outgoing heals, not incoming heals. its just silly how it works now.

stof.9341:

Statistical evidence? A class solos a full dungeon without doing any dodging just by out healing all damage and it’s not evidence that the stat is doing more than enough work?

How powerful do you actually want healing to be oO Full HP heal at each regen tick?

One class. One specific build of that class, which is already known for decent healing/defense/support. That’s an anecdote and an outlier. If someone can facetank the same dungeon with a water ele, I might claim that healing power is fine where it is.
Maybe.

It doesn’t excuse the fact that healing power is roughly meaningless, because the amount it contributes barely increases healing efficiency by 15%, if stacked with a ridiculous amount of healing power gear. An equivalent number in Power is going to raise base damage around 50%, before accounting for multiplicative benefits of Precision and Ferocity.

Similarly to how condition damage changed, and as Pax suggested, changing the base heal to be lower but allowing healing power more significance in overall gains would give importance to the stat. I’m not saying it should heal less than before, but the tuning should aim for a desired amount of healing power to keep the numbers the same, similar to how condition builds starting ‘working again’ around 700 Condition Damage.

Greymelken.1892:

the healing stat should govern outgoing heals, not incoming heals. its just silly how it works now.

Agreed… It would be more logic;
If I cast a water field and people blast it my healing is used instead of theirs. they only provide the trigger, the water field is mine.

Further more:
Thank you, Rauderi and others for replying,
even when I disagree I appreciate feedback

In the end Healing needs a change,
I would appreciate such a change.
And thank you all for understanding the point.

I hope developers from ArenaNet can fiind a decent and workable solution, I’d advise looking into a modified scaling I’d suggest to make a base around 60% for most skills and a resonable steep curve, with a 35% boost over present heals at 981 and a thus a 50% boost ate 1381. dedicated tank healers will have a way to get killed, conditions with poison will reduce healing significantly.

If needed gains from healing could be reduced to -50% when poisoned, also making poison stronger without strengthening the damage output.

And during that time of change I hope the programmers and developers figure out a nice set of zealot trinkets so we can actually use the Zeaolot stat combination to the fullest,

(Mehnlo, Danika zu helter, Dunkuro, Oghden and Tahlkora and other monks come to mind in the search of decent names for rings and trinkets…)

Thank you.

Even if healing scaled well, the demand for healing simply isn’t there in the game. Healing is a reactive ability, someone needs to be hurt before you can heal them, so what good does huge healing ability do you if there is never anyone hurt enough to need them?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

LIFE DRAIN and healing

I personally like to see lifetransfers/life siphons/vampirics changed to healing AND power scaling. the fact you hit with liftransfer and are connected could be a DPS moment, the actual transfer should be based upon healing., same for life siphon and vampiric traits, like vampiric wells, vampiric presence and so on. I’d rather spec healing for my necro and get 2k dmg from power and 8-9k dmg transferred then now seeing good dmg 8k and 2-3k healing to ppl… the damage effects are the same…. only support would improve. Necro hass no water fields, and limited blasts… I could see a ilusion emoving some helth from a bar as well….

Those things already scale that way. The damage portion is based on power while the healing is based on healing power.

I think you might need a new keyboard as well.

Greymelken.1892:

the healing stat should govern outgoing heals, not incoming heals. its just silly how it works now.

but governing outgoing heals is what it does now …

Khisanth.2948:

Greymelken.1892:

the healing stat should govern outgoing heals, not incoming heals. its just silly how it works now.

but governing outgoing heals is what it does now …

What if we increase outgoing heal like in the ventari GM trait? That way healing would be more useful without making yourself more tanky.

What if Regeneration stacked in intensity? If they were to reduce the base heal by a bit, increase the scale to 0.15-0.2 and adjust Regeneration giving skills/traits accordingly healing could be ok. I am looking at Burning example, where skills that applied low duration Burns now apply a stack of Burning and skills with high duration Burns now instead apply 3-5 stacks of Burning.

About Boon/Condition duration I don’t think the way is to give them through stats or joining it with other stats, the current system allows one to excel really well at some select Boons/Conditions but not for all of them. However, I find value in skills like Banner of Tactics and Hallowed Ground (sadly there are no more like these) that increase Boon duration for the group and it could really be interesting if more Boon/Condition duration was added in this direction.

Varezenem.2813:

Khisanth.2948:

Greymelken.1892:

the healing stat should govern outgoing heals, not incoming heals. its just silly how it works now.

but governing outgoing heals is what it does now …

What if we increase outgoing heal like in the ventari GM trait? That way healing would be more useful without making yourself more tanky.

Haven’t been following revenant stuff but I am guessing that is like the ele gm trait, sigil of benevolence and the WvW medic buff.