Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure whether this belongs best in Discussion or Suggestions, but here goes.

Healing Power and Vitality are attributes, that to me, aren’t very fun, and don’t make much sense due to ANet’s anti-Holy Trinity mentality.

Below I will discuss something that doesn’t make Healing ineffective, but makes the concept of dedicated healer something that doesn’t mean ineffective damage dealer, something that is less bound by attributes and by extent, gear.

Focusing on Healing should be a matter of skill choice, and to an extent Major Trait choice, but not something you “spec into” by sacrificing a great deal of damage dealing.

It’s rather unfair that while boons don’t require you to sacrifice stats, Healing does.

Healing Power, is one of the main culprits that help keep the Holy Trinity alive – or at least Risen – in GW2.

Let’s take a look at the defensive Attributes and Effects:

• Aegis, Protection, Blindness, Weakness and Condition Removal scale with incoming damage, and do not require any stat investment.

• Healing does not scale with incoming damage and requires stat investment.

• Toughness scales with incoming damage, being a great defensive stat to invest on

• Vitality is just a buffer – while it makes you take longer to reach 0 Health, once you lose that extra health granted by Vitality, you also take longer to heal to full.
  It’s good to give you time to react to spike damage or heavy condition damage, but that’s it. Only worth investing up to a certain point, if at all.

• Healing Power gives you some healing, but costs you damage, health or mitigation, allowing the concept of dedicated Healer to persist by sacrificing soloing capabilities.
  —-

I believe the game will be more fun – and truly free from the Holy Trinity – if the following is done:

• Remove Healing Power from the game
• Make Vitality affect incoming healing (less than half the effectiveness of Healing Power)
• Make Power and Condition Damage affect outgoing healing (less than half the effectiveness of Healing Power)
• Power may be restricted to direct healing while Condition Damage may be restricted to periodic healing, but that might create problems.
  Note: X Vitality + X Power/Condition should result in a lower total Healing than the one produced by X Healing Power, due to the fact that there would be more healing available to damage dealers.
• Alternatively, no attribute would affect outgoing Healing.

This would make healing effectiveness depend less (but still a little) on the one producing the heal, and more (but not much) on the one receiving it.

I like the idea, but not for the same reason. Right now if you’re speced and geared healing you essentially kitten yourself drastically in your ability to solo, due to a complete lack of power and precision.

Not that I agree with Arenanet’s Anti-Trinity method, but where’s the logic in having a stat designed to describe how much we’re hurting something govern how much we’re healing something? Even if healing from power is a smaller amount, now players who have tremendous amounts of power (as is the norm currently) will be able to heal themselves very well, as opposed to them being glass cannons designed to dish out punishment but not take it very well. If you have a class that can not only do tremendous amounts of damage, has good toughness and vitality, but can also heal very well now, game balance will collapse quickly.

I forgot to mention, if Power were to govern outgoing healing, Condition Damage would also need to contribute, otherwise they would be at a disadvantage.
Condition Damage would only affect healing over time (regenerate and rejuvenate) while Power would only affect direct healing.

Maybe only Vitality would govern incoming healing, and no attribute would govern outgoing healing.

Note however, that:

• the gain in healing from 100 Vitality + 100 Power/Condition should be smaller than the one gained from 100 Healing Power.
• every profession would now be balanced around not using Healing Power, thus everyone would have a decent amount of damage and healing, and none would become “overpowered”.
• Precision and Critical Damage would not affect Healing in any way.

The holy trinity really isn’t alive in this game since everyone knows that pretty much every dungeon can be run without dedicated healers. The only thing that kind feels necessary is at least one tankiy melee but even those don’t usually need specific stats or builds.

Healing power is there for those who want it and I like that, since it doesn’t actually force you or any other member to run with it.

Could work it out so that you’re better at healing others, but not as good healing yourself, reducing the need/benefit of dedicated healing while encouraging the “RAWR IM DPS” people to better utilize their group heals without sacrificing the 1337 numbers they crave.

@Archer
Dungeons can be run without dedicated healers, but having someone focus on healing and defense greatly improves your success.
If ANet makes harder dungeons you will see more and more players adapting by focusing on key roles.

Focusing on healing should rest on the skill and trait choices, as well as the players receiving the heals, rather than greatly affecting your choice of gear in a way that severely reduces your ability to deal damage.

@Phy
Becoming better at healing others, instead of yourself, kind of encourages dedicated healing.

Vitality increasing incoming heals, and attributes having less effect on outgoing heals would “abolish” dedicated healing mentality, without affecting teamwork mentality – as far as gear goes.

Healing skills would still be just as useful, but focusing on using them would be less punitive towards your damage.

The point of Healing power is to give players who actively WANT to heal the ability to do so, without them pushing for high dmg. The anti trinity concept was employed to support 2 ideas.

1) That you need not be required to have a tank, dps, or healer to play content.
2) That you could effectively play in a manner you find enjoyable without that screwing you.

Lets be realistic. Most everyone wants to play the role of that one player who does high numbers and lays waste to their foes, and fewer want to play the role of hte guy who gets punched in the face, or the guy who stands in the back staring at HP bars adn not the action.

Giving players the ability to self heal and evade attacks to reduce dmg means theres less need for tank/healer/dps combo, and you can get by with straight dps.

But the healing stat gives the option to playres who want to play support/heal teh ability to do it. But they have to actively choose to do it. If you make the ability to heal based on power/con damage, then you will have the problem that poeple who push for super high dps will also have high sustain and can swap to healing on the fly with no consequence. And if you reduce the effectiveness of healing to power ratio, then you will end up with requiring emense amount of power to do decent heals.

So with the current set up, the game allows you to play the way you want, but must also pay the price for doing so.

@ Nurvus: Yes, to an extent, but the idea is to stop a class from becoming OP by themselves with high damage and high heals. Would it not be better if becoming a dedicated healing was as simple as swapping skills rather than entire trees and gear?

EDIT: I could live with swapping gear, but paying to swap trees frequently is a mood killer.

There is a trinity: Support, Damage and Utility. Support = Heals, Damage = DPS, and Utilitiy = CC. The thing is that utility does not really have a stat. Therefore, the only decision you make is Damage or Support with the amount of Utility each person brings based on how much support you have. In reality, we have traded the Holy Trinity for the Ultimate Duo.

@Iron Wolf

The choice of whether to focus on healing or not, should rest on the choice of skills, traits, runes and sigils.

Even though I suggest reducing the power to healing ratio, I suggest putting some vitality to incoming healing to compensate.
The fact I suggest the sum of X Vitality + X Power should result in lower healing than X Healing Power, is due to the fact that focusing on healing will not result in such a damage loss, and slightly more healing will be available to everyone.

With my suggestion you can still focus on healing through your build.
Glass Cannons will lack either self-heal or survivability (or both), as they will not invest much into Toughness or Vitality in order to boast great amounts of Power + Precision + Critical Damage.

@Phy

I am precicely suggesting that becoming a dedicated healer would be less necessary AND simpler (not requiring gear swaps).
Traits will always have an impact on the skills you use.
The trees that currently give Healing Power would have to give something else instead, so you would not likely be having to change traits to heal.

Removing and changing existing stats’ mechanics to this extend after a month of release? After people farmed or bought their exotic gears? Without pissing alot of people off?

Not going to happen.

Anet is not against roles, but against obsolete taunt tanking and dedicated healing, which are both unviable in GW2.

I think it would be better to give us dual trait builds. Getting a set of green/yellow gear with different stats isn’t that difficult for most people, carrying another set of gear is annoying, but switching trees is the most annoying.

Maybe in an expansion they can redo the entire stat.

Ofcourse I’m not expecting ANet to do such a huge change mid-release.
It’d be something for an expansion indeed.

@Phy
The reason you want dual trait builds, is the reason I’m making this suggestion.

You are constantly being held back by gear, attributes and traits when attempting to adapt your skills to the situation.
My suggestion is one step towards fixing that problem.

You would be able to use the weapons, traits and gear you like, and swap utility skills between offensive, control, support or healing without feeling kittened by your gear/trait choices.

Which would be great, but requires a large restructuring of every class and gear. The main reasons people don’t like those specs is they don’t enjoy that play style, and it severely hampers solo/farming. I know that for me a dual spec system would be a huge improvement.

The idea of letting it sit with traits, skills, and so forth can be argued with power, or precision or any stat for that matter. Why have stats when the skills themselvse should dictate what or how a player plays.

Also how would healing be made apparent to players. If power x vit = healing potential, how much of either one makes good healing? Would you get good healing if you had high power low vit, or high vit low power? What about characters who prefer tankier builds. If you make healing based on power x vit, then wouldnt they be pretty hard to kill because they just need healing skills/weaps and they can take damage all day long, out heal you, and deal out fairly decent dmg to kill you. Same if you made it power x tough. Or waht about vit x tough. Then you have unkillable healers, who will just self heal and kite and tank and cause all sorts of issues in WvW, sPvP and so forth.

The point is, if you have a stat thats specifically for healing, the player must make the conscious choice to pick it up and forgo another stat in its place. Much like if you decide to go power/con/pre/etc, you will be a glass cannon and suffer the drawbacks for it. Because retraiting is pretty cheap, you can gain access to all weapon skills, and all class utilities, the only thing grounding players in making choices about their playstyle is armor.

One last thing to point out. As mentioned above in your original post, you said healing was listed as a defensive trait that gave you some bonus healing, but you lost damage and mitigation for it. which pervades the concept of dedicated healer. I have to ask why is it that picking up bonus healing reduces your dps or mitigation is bad? Its like you are saying that picking up healing should not affect the ability to dps or resist damage. Much like toughness or vit, if you pick a defensive stat, you are going ot have to drop offensive stats to cover the cost.

Nurvus.2891:

I’m not sure whether this belongs best in Discussion or Suggestions, but here goes.

Healing Power and Vitality are attributes, that to me, aren’t very fun, and don’t make much sense due to ANet’s anti-Holy Trinity mentality.

Below I will discuss something that doesn’t make Healing ineffective, but makes the concept of dedicated healer something that doesn’t mean ineffective damage dealer, something that is less bound by attributes and by extent, gear.

Focusing on Healing should be a matter of skill choice, and to an extent Major Trait choice, but not something you “spec into” by sacrificing a great deal of damage dealing.

It’s rather unfair that while boons don’t require you to sacrifice stats, Healing does.

Healing Power, is one of the main culprits that help keep the Holy Trinity alive – or at least Risen – in GW2.

Let’s take a loot at the defensive Attributes:

• Toughness, Aegis, Protection, Blindness, Weakness and Condition Removal scale with applicable incoming damage (i.e: the heavier the incoming damage, the better they are)

• Vitality is just a buffer – while it makes you take longer to reach 0 Health, once you lose that extra health, you also take longer to heal to full.

• Healing Power gives you some healing, but costs you damage and mitigation, allowing the concept of dedicated Healer to persist.
  —-

I believe the game will be more fun – and truly free from the Holy Trinity – if the following is done:

• Remove Healing Power from the game
• Make Vitality affect incoming healing (less than half the effectiveness of Healing Power)
• Make Power affect outgoing direct healing (less than half the effectiveness of Healing Power)
• Make Condition Damage affect outgoing periodic healing (less than half the effectiveness of Healing Power)
  Note: X Vitality + X Power (or Condition) should result in a lower total Healing than the one produced by X Healing Power.
• Alternatively, no attribute would affect outgoing Healing.

This would make healing effectiveness depend less (but still a little) on the one producing the heal, and more (but not much) on the one receiving it.

You seem to be under the impression that healing power is the only stat on gear. Let’s take a look at the PvP amulets that have healing power.

Shaman’s Amulet
798 toughness 569 healing power 569 condition dmg/ jewel 125 tougness 75 condition damage 75 healing

Valkyrie’s Amulet
798 power 569 tougness 15% crit dmg 284 healing power/ jewel 125 power 75 toughness 5% crit dmg and 45 healing

Cleric’s Amulet
569 power 569 toughness 798 healing /jewel 125 healing 75 power 75 toughness

Not going to count the celestial because it has 295 everything and 15% crit damage the jewel is 45 everything and 5% crit damage.

If you look at the Amulets as just a sum of stats on gear (as it is), then you can see the above doesn’t “kitten” your damage.

Let’s compare the Valkyries Amulet with the Berserker’s Amulet.
V 798P 569T 15%CD 284HP
B 798P 569Pr 284Vit 15%CD

So the trades between the two are 569 precision for 569 toughness, and 284healing power for 284 vitality. The only difference there for damage is precision roughly 26.9% crit chance versus 569 toughness

The vitality is equal to 2840 health, while the healing power is different depending on class.

The passive regeneration is 200 per second at level 80 and 0 Healing Power, increases by around Healing Power * 0.0325 per second.

If that is right then the extra 284 hp adds a total of 9.23 hps.

If anything Healing Power just needs to have higher coefficients given to it. I think the OP is making the classic mistake of not understanding that dead dps is 0 dps. There are parts of the game where you simply can’t spec glass cannon and roll everything. You need to have some defense. This might come in the form of sustain, or mitigation, but there has to be some defense there. For people that want to specialize in one or the other a move like this would only further homogenize professions.

Another example is take the Warrior’s Healing Signet. The heal increases by 1 for every point of healing power. So with the 284hp amulet you would increase your regen by ~9hps, and heal another 284 when you used the signet.

@ Iron Wolf
Mm, I didn’t say Power x Vitality. I said Power + Vitality.
If you want self-direct healing, Vitality + Power would be best.
If you want self-periodic healing, Vitality + Condition Damage would be best.
If you just want to heal others, you can focus on Toughness or Vitality as it won’t matter and just get Power or Condition Damage depending on the kind of Healing you want to use.

@Phy
Indeed it would take restructuring, but not as much as it may seem at first glance, specially when talking about something to be introduced with an expansion.
There would be no need for Dual Trait, either, and there would no longer be hated builds or roles.

@GSSBlunaspike

No, I don’t want glass cannon builds.
But healing builds are not just a “non-glass cannon” build. They sacrifice alot of damage.
Trading 1 damage stat for 1 defensive stat makes alot of difference, due to the multiplicative interaction between them.
When it comes to Precision, it affects damage itself, then affects effects that trigger on crits and whatnot.

It’s not me making a classic mistake or wishing for homogenized professions.
It’s me wanting builds less about specific, prohibitive gear.

I can use gear and traits focused on damage, and use defensive utility skills focused on protection, Aegis, removing conditions, converting conditions into boons, Wall of Reflection and whatnot as needed without needing to swap gear.
But when it comes to Healing, it’s a different story.

I shouldn’t need to hit like a wet noodle in order to be supportive, because focusing on being supportive is already taking its toll in my character’s activity, before stats are even considered.

Oh when I said Power x Vit, I didnt mean it as a multiplier. I meant it in the same manner you meant. Where both stats add up to create the third stat, so to speak.

My stance is just that I think if you made it a combination of two stats to get the third, the clarity required to determine an optimal heal would become quite a headache, and it will create balance issues in certain classes/playstyles that will easily snowball. Having it as a stat just makes the players actively choose what they want to do. I mean healing is not required. It makes things go smoother, but even if you had a healer in party, its not going to be the make or break in almost all cases.

Well my point being that since healing is quantifiable like damage, it needs to scale somehow.
I would like it to be as intuitive as effects like Protection or Aegis – effects that do not require you to build specific gear in order to use optimally.

If you know that more of the stat you use for damage is going to make your healing stronger, and the more health your target has, the more healing he will receive, it doesn’t require you to build gear specifically towards healing – you’ll build gear for damage and healing will come naturally.
That’s the thing – you wouldn’t need to think about it at all.

Well, you would need to consider your gear when thinking of using Heal over Time effects versus Direct Heals, unless Power and Condition Damage both affected all type of healing.

GW2 healing isn’t something you do for others. The self-heal capabilities outstrip what you can do for allies.

Healing Power as a stat is meh. 300 healing power will get you about 5% on most heals. So don’t take it. I’ve never seen a serious build for tournament or whatever that’s based on healing power.

Vitality is handy to give yourself a buffer, particularly against conditions, since many professions have limited condition removal abilities (either have to wait on a proc or they’re on utilities).

ANet is struggling to try to balance what they have currently. A complete overhaul of the stats and gear is a bad bet, and impractical.

Yes, Mulch, it’s impractical mid-launch. But quite practical for an expansion if it proves to be a sollution to alot of problems.
Even now, some of the team is fixing bugs, others are thinking on how to balance the game.
And here I am, suggesting one potential sollution to more than one problem.

The unbalance in the game comes from how alot of gear, skills and traits interact inefficiently.
If my sollution solves some of such inefficiencies, it will also naturally alleviate some of the unbalance.

Nurvus.2891:

@GSSBlunaspike

No, I don’t want glass cannon builds.
But healing builds are not just a “non-glass cannon” build. They sacrifice alot of damage.
Trading 1 damage stat for 1 defensive stat makes alot of difference, due to the multiplicative interaction between them.
When it comes to Precision, it affects damage itself, then affects effects that trigger on crits and whatnot.

It’s not me making a classic mistake or wishing for homogenized professions.
It’s me wanting builds less about specific, prohibitive gear.

What I’m showing you above with those numbers is that it isn’t a big hit in damage. It’s actually giving you more damage by having defensive stats on gear to begin with. Even with maxed out stats you aren’t having to kitten your damage by as much as you might think you are. Sure a 27% crit drop seems huge, but that’s only with no other precision gear on. Due to DR you won’t have those issues. That allows you to build both offensive and defensive at the same time. I just can’t see this big loss of damage.

I think I will actually work out how much damage is lost from this tonight and post it.

Though if you say that a person hits for 1k damage a hit, at 1 time per second, with a 30% crit rate they would deal 11500 damage over 10 seconds. While with no crit you would deal 10000 damage over 10 seconds. I know that’s only roughly there, and I will have to actually do the math on it.

@GSSBlunaspike

I understand, but it’s not just about numbers. It’s about mentality too.
You’ve shown me some, and I’ve shown you some as well.

The only quantifiable supportive or defensive effect that scales with gear is Healing.

If I can focus on P/Pr/CD plus T/V and use Aegis, Protection, Blind, Daze and whatnot to reduce/prevent damage taken while occasionally using my small heal, why does Healing require me to sacrifice an offensive or defensive stat, either:
- dealing less damage to heal better – making the fight last longer,
- or dying faster to heal better, risking getting killed by damage that often comes in irregular bursts

…all the while Healing isn’t that much stronger than the other defensive or supportive effects?
- Stacking Toughness reduces damage taken to the point that your weak heal is quite effective at keeping you alive.
- Stacking Healing may make your heal Strong, but this game isn’t based on 1v1, and against multiple enemies this quickly loses effectiveness against Toughness as Toughness scales with incoming damage, and Healing doesn’t.

Healing as a stat causes problems, and if removed would make the game feel better for everyone, even those who wish to focus on healing, as they would still heal well based on their targets’ Vitality and their own offensive stats.

the problem as i see it is that even if you build ‘support only’ spec (elementalist, 0,0,10,30,30 staff), and wear +healing only gear, it is not enough healing to be able to keep alive other players by yourself, even if you blast every water field you put.
the cooldowns for heals are so long and the regeneration ticks are so low… that players must heal themselves in “spike” moments, and most of the time remove their own conditions.
the dedicated healer is kittening himself in damage and still cant heal properly as in classic MMO.

IMHO the +healing stat coefficient that affect regeneration should be higher- 50% as higher to be efficient, or the cooldowns for “direct” heals be shorter→ lets say as a 30 point major trait.

p.s. i have such elementalist purely for group healing, and I cant support dungeon run as good as i can as a dedicated healer in different MMO …

The trinity is already removed. Just because some people want to have more effective healing at the cost of something else doesn’t mean there is a problem.

To be better at something you make sacrifices at others.

IMO this would remove complexity from the game that gives it additional depth. Not to mention the balance implications of this allowing people to stack much more vitality along with another stat.

Healing stat is fine, leave it as is.

Healing power is a joke of a stat…. I don’t mind an idea of diminishing returns and things so you don’t stack defense to tank or heal through a fight, but +200 on a direct heal for +1000 healing? +1000 on any other stat is incredibly more effective.

Besides, how many healing sources are available on one character? What are the cooldowns? Oh, if you buff +healing then you can feasibly heal through a fight if everyone is chaining their healing… wait, doesn’t that also go along with the design philosophy of working together?

+1000 to healing should be a substantial increase on your direct heal; +200 on a heal for that much +healing should be per tick of the regenerate boon (and substantially less if the regen is a passive trait, effect).

Like the thought, might need some more work, but great idea!

You guys forget that regeneration is not the only heal, and that Healing isn’t the only stat that makes healing more effective.

On my Necro my regeneration for Well of Blood tics for 700 compared to like 250 and thats in an AoE. My regeneration tics for ~300. When I use Well of Blood it procs my Dwayna rune and heals those around me for 1000HPS for about 7 seconds + 4 1/2 seconds of protection.

Healing scales very well with high toughness and protection. Its just not a stat that is meant to be used by itself.

Wait I’m confused… you’re regeneration tics for 300 yet your dwayna rune (which procs the regenerate boon) is 1000 health/sec. Is the regen for 300 per tic passive? As far as I was aware, Doylak runes and the engineer’s backpack regenerator are the only ones that have passive regen and thusly allow you to stack the intensity of regenerates rather than duration.

This is the equation for the regeneration boon:
5 + (1.562 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power)

So for 1000 health/sec on the boon, you’d need something like 7k healing power (I’m assuming you’re level 80). Even for 300 health/sec on a passive regen source, you need near 1360 healing power. I can’t say anything about the Wells since they have set values that they tic for and then scale differently with +healing (which I haven’t found the equation for).

Maybe necros get better scaling with heals? Idk, seems a little sketchy either way.

I realize there are other heals, but in my example the +200 extra healing points was off a direct heal (from a combo), not regen.

The Dwayna proc gives AoE regeneration to people around you including yourself when you use a heal (Well of Blood).

Well of Blood (~700 HPS) + Regeneration (~300 HPS) = 1000 HPS with about 1.3K Healing Power.

The bad thing about Healing Power is it only seems to scale with 2 of my abilities (Regeneration and Well of Blood). None of my other healing abilities are affected by healing power from what I can tell anyway.

Er, Healing Power isn’t restricted to Guardians, so no, this thread doesn’t belong there.
Thanks for all the well thought feedback, everyone.

My warrior uses Toughness (which also gives healing power) in traits along with Vitality to make him extra beefy. I notice when my Healing power gets lower and does not take away from my soloing ability but rather allows me to survive for a long period of time while stacking bleed condition. So far i tested in Dungeons and i usually end up as the carry always having to take the aggro and res everyone. Sword + shield, Rifle, 3 signets 2 banners. The banner that increases Healing Power is not used often i noticed that its effect can be felt greatly I could be slowly dying only to change the entire battle by throwing it down and watching my character start regenerating all the damage while still fighting. Do not under estimate healing power and its effectiveness. I also taken it to WvWvW and i am the only warrior that can run into a horde (20+ people) with melee and escape afterwards. Most people i seen run into a horde and die in 1 sec. healing power has its use sure i lose power but the point of my tactic is if i can hold 5 people on me that is 4 people less for the enemy team that are being effective which means a lot in fight.

Healing simply requires an investment no other defensive maneuver does.
If I can ignore healing and instead focus on negating incoming damage, without sacrificing stats, why must I sacrifice stats to heal?

Anndd this is why I like my Ranger. +Heal and Pet effectiveness.

I do like how the system is overall. I do not really have a retort, sadly. Maybe later.

The thought of pocket healers make me sad. I’ve been in way too many games where one “wants to be the super healer! (annoying healer)”, especially in PvP. I came from Rift and you should see the amounts of heals tossed around in that game. Even with classes that could reduce healing to 50%, the healers were basically invinsible and could heal through especially if they had others (which was rare to only have 1 healer in a raid of 20). I think pure healers just ruins the content because you add a full spec to that, then they need to increase DPS output of classes to trash a healer that is solo healing which leads to more inbalance.

Keep the game how it is. I love this change tbh; it is more real life scenario than “hey I just got shot with a shotgun, I am so dead”… “It’s ok I shall heal you with one skill and TADA the shotgun is useless now” :p