Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently been thinking about the stat as I’ve been playing a healing Auramancer Tempest in PvP to great success. A build I sort of made up which uses Healing Power as a main stat (Magi’s), to which the reaction from everyone abounds “get off my team u casual”. In my honest opinion I feel that Healing Power as a stat is actually fairly balanced. If it were scaled any higher I honestly think I couldn’t die in PvP even if it were 5 on 1. One idea I had while thinking about this though, was what if you could “Critical” Heal? In the same way that precision and Fury scale with damage, perhaps a way to make the Healing Power stat more interesting would be to actually DECREASE its base power, but allow you to heal for double or more on a critical. I would be really interested to hear some opinions on this. Thanks for reading

It’s a remnant of previous iterations of the stat system. They kind of didn’t know what to do with it. But removing it would only decrease the number of stats. And if they removed any stat that can end up becoming too much, we’ll just have the base weapon strenght and armor from gear, and nothing else.

The current stats can’t be final, since they do noy really fit an action combat game.

Sooner or later they’ll have to rethink the stat system altogether, doing things like removing or reducing parts that depend on RNG excepting the base variations in weapon strength, and make mechanics more situational, and the stats fit better those mechanics.

well I run a water elementalist as a secondary tempest as well, I choose for Zealot (Keepers) armor/weapons and either Clerics jewels or Zerk if needed….

It’s 800 heal/hit+1200-2200 dmg or 1200 heal/hit and 1000-1500 dmg for my build with zerk and clerics jewels. toughness is 1000 and 1426 respectively.

Healing power does influence things having 3200 or 4800 healing per hit is a big difference. (not counting soothing mist, regeneration through healing rain and aura’s, waterblasts and such.)

But I tend to agree Magi even though it is glass is a waste of slots… you would still like to invest in power and precision IMHO. I know Zealot isn’t godmode either but it will allow for good healing and good sustain… even though you could go 100% healspec.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

well I run a water elementalist as a secondary tempest as well, I choose for Zealot (Keepers) armor/weapons and either Clerics jewels or Zerk if needed….

It’s 800 heal/hit+1200-2200 dmg or 1200 heal/hit and 1000-1500 dmg for my build with zerk and clerics jewels. toughness is 1000 and 1426 respectively.

Healing power does influence things having 3200 or 4800 healing per hit is a big difference. (not counting soothing mist, regeneration through healing rain and aura’s, waterblasts and such.)

But I tend to agree Magi even though it is glass is a waste of slots… you would still like to invest in power and precision IMHO. I know Zealot isn’t godmode either but it will allow for good healing and good sustain… even though you could go 100% healspec.

Zealots is an interesting choice although not an option for PvP, I believe the closest option would be Menders which has a little bit of Vitality tucked into it and I have tried to use. However I’ve found that having as much Vitality as possible is important to avoid getting one shot even through the -50% damage upkeep an auramancer maintains. Magi’s seems to work best for me.

What I’m really curious about is how people would feel about Healing Power being an equal and opposite stat to Power but having both of them scale with Precision in the same way.

Nezuralli.2794:

One idea I had while thinking about this though, was what if you could “Critical” Heal? In the same way that precision and Fury scale with damage, perhaps a way to make the Healing Power stat more interesting would be to actually DECREASE its base power, but allow you to heal for double or more on a critical. I would be really interested to hear some opinions on this. Thanks for reading

That would be completely worthless and awful. Most people do not build extra health, so you can already easily full heal people if you’re investing in healing power. Letting me randomly heal for double would usually be useless. Especially coupled with a baseline reduction. You now randomly fail to adequately heal or randomly overheal. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, it forces people wanting to heal all into the same build. Precision and ferocity is now required for healing power to be good. Heal + condi? Nope. Heal + tanky? Nope. And we already have very poor distribution of healing power in gear stat combos. This would only make that problem worse.

If you want to make healing more interesting, make the act of healing itself more interesting. And there’s already some pretty decent gameplay out there, mind you. Auras are by far the least interactive way of healing that we currently have.

reikken.4961:

If you want to make healing more interesting, make the act of healing itself more interesting. And there’s already some pretty decent gameplay out there, mind you. Auras are by far the least interactive way of healing that we currently have.

What do you think the most interesting way of healing is in the game at the moment? And could you think of any way to improve it or a new way?

Although your point about other players not having enough health to need Healing Power to heal them is definitely true in some cases. So perhaps what we need is a revamp to the way Regeneration works to support those builds better?

I suppose I’ll put the question out: What changes could be made that would make you consider putting Healing Power on your build in both PvP and PvE.

I’ve noticed on my engineer that it seems to have more of an effect on regen than it does actual heals

Mally.6298:

I’ve noticed on my engineer that it seems to have more of an effect on regen than it does actual heals

Every heal in the game is affected by Healing Power differently, and for the most part I think that they are balanced. However I’ve found that Regeneration as a boon is fairly under powered even with 1200 Healing Power. Although I haven’t played much Engineer so is it scaled to be a good source of healing for you?

They need more stat variations wth healing power in it.

Like power, vitality and healing power concentration for example xD or something like that as having toughness in a raid when you are not the tank could spell trouble xD

Nezuralli.2794:

I suppose I’ll put the question out: What changes could be made that would make you consider putting Healing Power on your build in both PvP and PvE.

For me, I already have Healing Power on my PvE build. A lot of it.

Here’s the thing… If you want to have effective condi damage, you need to stack multiple types of condis. If you want to have effective dps, you need to have multiple types of attacks, and damage from other sources than just your weapon attacks. Likewise, if you want to have good healing, you need to get it from multiple sources.

Imo many people seem to think about healing singularly… in that, one heal skill should cover all their needs. To me, that’s like saying AA is the only attack skill you ever need.

My warrior has sacrificed a fair amount of damage to stack on as much healing power, and heals from as many sources as I could think of. My build would be considered laughable by many people. BUT, I can survive stuff most people can’t even fathom. To me, it doesn’t matter how fast you kill something, it only matters that when the dust settles if you’re the one still alive.

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Nezuralli.2794:

I suppose I’ll put the question out: What changes could be made that would make you consider putting Healing Power on your build in both PvP and PvE.

For me, I already have Healing Power on my PvE build. A lot of it.

Here’s the thing… If you want to have effective condi damage, you need to stack multiple types of condis. If you want to have effective dps, you need to have multiple types of attacks, and damage from other sources than just your weapon attacks. Likewise, if you want to have good healing, you need to get it from multiple sources.

Imo many people seem to think about healing singularly… in that, one heal skill should cover all their needs. To me, that’s like saying AA is the only attack skill you ever need.

My warrior has sacrificed a fair amount of damage to stack on as much healing power, and heals from as many sources as I could think of. My build would be considered laughable by many people. BUT, I can survive stuff most people can’t even fathom. To me, it doesn’t matter how fast you kill something, it only matters that when the dust settles if you’re the one still alive.

~EW

Could you go into detail about that build? I main Warrior so you’ve got me curious to try it.

Nezuralli.2794:

I suppose I’ll put the question out: What changes could be made that would make you consider putting Healing Power on your build in both PvP and PvE.

More stable sources for it. Unlike power, precision, condition damage, toughness or vitality healing power is an activated stat and because heals are active in this game and sustain / passivity is discouraged only a few classes (elementalists, necromancers, or guardians) gain much from the stat at all. This is esp. true when considering things like outgoing healing which doesn’t increase sustain for the user themselves.

It’s not a bad stat but it isn’t well used even when giving it’s understandable allowances (balance between the two game modes makes healing power much weaker in PvP / WvWvw due to players having higher aspd ) and such.

Nezuralli.2794:

reikken.4961:

If you want to make healing more interesting, make the act of healing itself more interesting. And there’s already some pretty decent gameplay out there, mind you. Auras are by far the least interactive way of healing that we currently have.

What do you think the most interesting way of healing is in the game at the moment? And could you think of any way to improve it or a new way?

hard to say. maybe blasting water fields, not counting engineer’s healing turret. blast finishers don’t really scale with healing power though.
I don’t play druid, but their heals look somewhat interesting.
One thing I can say is that in my dedicated raid healer 1500 healing power build, my main heals have a much smaller radius (180-240), so I actually have to pay attention to where people are. (as opposed to the 600 radius on auras)

maybe ice elemental’s command skill. And this one is very easily improved. It is delayed by an enormous amount (we’re talking like 6 seconds), making it generally pretty useless, and it’s very hard to notice anyway. Also doesn’t scale with healing power.

Oh, I’ve got it. Ventari tablet, and those fragment things that you can walk over to get heals. I think I’ll pick that as the game’s most interesting healing.
also Thief’s venoms is an interesting concept, but it’s not that interesting to actually use. could be improved in a number of ways

Mally.6298:

I’ve noticed on my engineer that it seems to have more of an effect on regen than it does actual heals

Healing skills (slot 6 on the skill bar) as a general rule are not affected much by healing power. Additionally, blast/leap finishers on water fields are barely affected by healing power.

All other sources of healing tend to have reasonable healing power scaling.

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

Valento.9852:

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

That might be better than using Precision actually.

Nezuralli.2794:

Valento.9852:

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

That might be better than using Precision actually.

What they have to do is increase a bit the scaling on some specific skills, or use HP to slightly increase the healing but the full benefit would be the critical healing chance.

Not to mention it opens up for more support-ish traits, for example, curing a condition whenever you critically heal, or critically healing splashes heals around yourself, or place a buff that revives you from downed (think elementalist’s Fire-attuned Glyph of Renewal), or place 3 seconds of protection… all of these obviously with their internal cooldowns. Secondary effects would give support-oriented builds to play a stronger role and be desirable by players, but I have this feeling that ArenaNet is too locked on to max DPS race and they can’t solve this design issue.

Valento.9852:

Nezuralli.2794:

Valento.9852:

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

That might be better than using Precision actually.

What they have to do is increase a bit the scaling on some specific skills, or use HP to slightly increase the healing but the full benefit would be the critical healing chance.

Not to mention it opens up for more support-ish traits, for example, curing a condition whenever you critically heal, or critically healing splashes heals around yourself, or place a buff that revives you from downed (think elementalist’s Fire-attuned Glyph of Renewal), or place 3 seconds of protection… all of these obviously with their internal cooldowns. Secondary effects would give support-oriented builds to play a stronger role and be desirable by players, but I have this feeling that ArenaNet is too locked on to max DPS race and they can’t solve this design issue.

Wow I really like those ideas

Nezuralli.2794:

Could you go into detail about that build? I main Warrior so you’ve got me curious to try it.

I’ll PM you in just a little while with the details, no worries.

~EW

Nezuralli.2794:

.

What I’m really curious about is how people would feel about Healing Power being an equal and opposite stat to Power but having both of them scale with Precision in the same way.

What would determine the crit amount for healing? The only way I think it’d be balance is either if heal critting with a non-healing build got very little to no return on a heal-crit while a heal build returns a slight improvement or if critting with a heal offered some other kind of advantage other than healing more hp that purely scales off heal power.

Like what if heal-crits offered more HP over maximum HP or maybe ablative armor ontop of your HP that subtracts directly from crit hits.

Valento.9852:

Nezuralli.2794:

Valento.9852:

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

That might be better than using Precision actually.

What they have to do is increase a bit the scaling on some specific skills, or use HP to slightly increase the healing but the full benefit would be the critical healing chance.

Not to mention it opens up for more support-ish traits, for example, curing a condition whenever you critically heal, or critically healing splashes heals around yourself, or place a buff that revives you from downed (think elementalist’s Fire-attuned Glyph of Renewal), or place 3 seconds of protection… all of these obviously with their internal cooldowns. Secondary effects would give support-oriented builds to play a stronger role and be desirable by players, but I have this feeling that ArenaNet is too locked on to max DPS race and they can’t solve this design issue.

I also like these ideas. Some interesting things going on. Healing Power deserves some sort of build-play like other stats offer.

As a bit of an update I will say that the auramancer build I mentioned at the start got me though to about halfway though rank 3 before I met teams of entirely Condi Reapers and CC heavy Dragonhunters and got no further. So maybe I really was wrong to try to play a healing build in PvP :/

Valento.9852:

Healing Power could be re-purposed to work like a “healing critical chance”.

Still won’t take it.

Healing power is bad, because it’s a value issue. You have to choose from a limited pool of stats and it only influences a small percentage of skills for classes with dedicated healing weapons or one or two skills in classes that don’t.

The issue is further complicated, because the healing abilities that don’t scale well with healing power to begin with are still effective enough without healing power to complete all non-raid PvE content and since everybody runs either glassy power builds or glassy condi builds, the base HP pools of everyone is so low that any additional investment into healing power just results in overhealing.

So in light, of that, what does a critical heal really get you?

PvP is a bit different, not, because these same issues aren’t present, but rather because they have removed a number of amulets that support and bunker builds would take over the one’s with large healing power bonuses, leaving….the one’s with large healing power bonuses as being the next and only choice.

In WvW, free of confines of the amulets and with a need for group based healing, backline staff elementalists still don’t take it, because water field blasting is where it’s all at and healing power does really kitten for water fields. Water field’s have a 20% coefficient on healing power, but it’s one time heal and healing power stats at 0, not 1000 like other stats. Therefore, going full clerics only nets you an addition 267 hp on a base heal that’s already 1320 without it, which is nothing compared to how more damage you would get on multiple skills for investing into power.

MAYBE, if healing power granted the potential for crits off water fields, it would have a place in WvW, potentially making it insane as far as sustaining a zerg.

They designed the game to remove the healer role and make everyone self sufficient without it or healing power and as a result, no one takes healing power. It’s almost unfixable.

Leo G.4501:

Like what if heal-crits offered more HP over maximum HP or maybe ablative armor ontop of your HP that subtracts directly from crit hits.

only suggestion in the thread that I like
this would be pretty great. I’ve always liked shields more than heals anyway

Critical healing have never been any good in any game, so please scrap that idea.

Healing power main stat is a meta build for PvE WvW and PvP right now. I don’t know what you people are talking about. It is in a perfect place right now, why would you want to change it?

Alright another update.
After reaching Legendary with the Elementalist build I mentioned I was thinking about the trait that adds Regeneration with Auras. Even with that build with its main stat Healing Power, Regeneration amounts to almost nothing during play so what if instead of stacking in duration Regeneration instead stacked in intensity?

Nezuralli.2794:

Alright another update.
After reaching Legendary with the Elementalist build I mentioned I was thinking about the trait that adds Regeneration with Auras. Even with that build with its main stat Healing Power, Regeneration amounts to almost nothing during play so what if instead of stacking in duration Regeneration instead stacked in intensity?

Regeneration is in a rough place, IMO.

It’s too easy to stack and some builds rely on you having perma-regen. I don’t think swapping regen stacking from duration to intensity would be balance unless you remove some instances of the boon’s application. It’s an interesting idea though.

Another thought, you’ve got multiple stats for personal offense and defense seems split among personal and ally. Healing seems to benefit allies more than yourself which isn’t a bad thing…but in regards to Regeneration, what if it scaled based on the target’s healing? Meaning, a character that is most likely going to be dispensing regen gets a larger benefit from it. Just the precursor of an idea I had while making some coffee.

Leo G.4501:

Regeneration is in a rough place, IMO.

It’s too easy to stack and some builds rely on you having perma-regen. I don’t think swapping regen stacking from duration to intensity would be balance unless you remove some instances of the boon’s application. It’s an interesting idea though.

Another thought, you’ve got multiple stats for personal offense and defense seems split among personal and ally. Healing seems to benefit allies more than yourself which isn’t a bad thing…but in regards to Regeneration, what if it scaled based on the target’s healing? Meaning, a character that is most likely going to be dispensing regen gets a larger benefit from it. Just the precursor of an idea I had while making some coffee.

Perhaps something similar to the Druid trait? Gaining stacks of Regeneration whenever you heal an ally or give them Regeneration.

Healing Power is what Kenny G uses to make his music.

Example A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=447yaU_4DF8