Guild Wars 2

The full title of this post should read:

“Please change Ventari items to have Healing Power as the primary attribute”

I have to admit I was pretty excited when I saw the stats on the new “Ventari” items.
Having played a Monk or support Ritualist for most of GW1 I always found it incredibly unfair that, while DPS characters were still allowed to focus exclusively on that one role in GW2 if they so choose, support characters were no longer allowed to focus exclusively on their chosen role, instead being forced to tank, support and deal damage all at the same time. That kind of multitasking didn’t suit me at all which is one of the main reasons why I never enjoyed GW2 as much as I did GW1.

The new set of “Ventari” items (Toughness/Healing Power/Vitality) as well as the increased recent focus on support specializations, seems to me like Arenanet is finally extending a hand to those of us who wish to focus more on support and less (or not at all) on dealing damage.
I just cannot for the life of me understand why Toughness is the primary stat instead of Healing Power.
Both from a lore perspective and a player role perspective it doesn’t make any sense.

Having always been interested in the lore surrounding Ventari and the Sylvari race, Ventari somehow never struck me as a tank, throwing his own body in the line of fire whenever there was combat. Rather he was a nurturer and healer, something that is also reflected in his Revenant skills and the Salvation specialization around it.
Indeed the Salvation tree itself puts heavy emphasis on increasing Healing Power to the highest amount possible which makes it doubly strange that the Ventari set, at the moment, is not the best item set for achieving that goal.

From a player role perspective as well it would make considerably more sense to have Healing Power as the primary stat instead of Toughness.
Characters who choose to equip Ventari items are clearly focusing their character build on party support and pay a heavy price for doing so in not really having any DPS left whatsoever.
Surely an item set focusing on support should at least have the highest possible healing output, otherwise what’s the point?

Making Healing Power the primary stat will finally give support players the tools they need to focus on the role of their choice while still having good tanking capability as well.
I understand no GW2 character will ever bring back our beloved Monks but at least with this sort of item set, there would be an opportunity for support characters to only focus on two roles, support and tanking, instead of three.

Well, that confused me for a bit. Nomad stats have been around for almost a year now, it’s a bit late to be calling it new or to ask for it to be changed, given people who have already invested into it did so with the expectation that it’s more for tanking than healing. Wouldn’t it be more than a little unfair to have that switched out on them just to satisfy your opinion on what it should be?

Hope a new, similar set with Healing Power as the main stat comes out for you one day though.

Well that would depend on how many people actually use the item set at the moment.
Obviously the data on that is not available to us but I daresay, not many.
There are very, very few scenarios in the game right now where you would want to use a setup that is purely focused on tanking and sacrifice all DPS.
99% of the time people who want to tank use hybrid sets with one damage and two tanking stats (usually Soldier for power or Dire for condi).

Additionally Toughness is already extremely common as a primary stat as well whereas Healing Power comes in only very few combinations.
All in all, I think Healing/Toughness/Vitality would be used considerably more often than Toughness/Healing/Vitality.

And while I agree that Nomad items have been around for almost a year now, it wasn’t until very recently that Arenanet really began to put more effort into the Support role. An item set to match it seems appropriate.
It goes without saying that I’d be perfectly happy for both a Toughness/Vitality/Healing and a Healing/Toughness/Vitality set to exist together but somehow I doubt that’ll happen given the overlap in roles.
And either way, from a lore and background perspective it makes tons more sense to have any item with “Ventari” in its name have Healing Power as the primary attribute.

What would be perfect for players who want to play support (for whatever reason) is Healing Power / Toughness / Boon Duration or Healing Power / Vitality / Boon Duration.

Brimwood.7963:

Well that would depend on how many people actually use the item set at the moment.
Obviously the data on that is not available to us but I daresay, not many.

Sorry, but that is a terrible argument. It doesn’t matter how few people you assume would be affected, it’s still a change that would affect builds for reasons completely unrelated to game mechanics.

I mean, really, how happy would you be if you got a Healing Power/Toughness/Vitality set and ANet suddenly changed it to Vitality/Healing Power/Toughness a year later because someone made the argument that there aren’t enough Vitality sets and your set didn’t have the right name?

It goes without saying that I’d be perfectly happy for both a Toughness/Vitality/Healing and a Healing/Toughness/Vitality set to exist together but somehow I doubt that’ll happen given the overlap in roles.

It’s not that unlikely, remember that Berserker and Assassin also overlap, as do Sinister and Rampager. Also two of the dungeon collection rewards are Vitality/Power/Toughness trinkets, which overlap with Soldier stats.

I recently tried and made a support Guardian. So much heals… I used the nomad set and wondered the same thing. Healing power as a main stat would have been better for my purpose.

Yeah that’s exactly what I mean.

For tanking purposes, a Healing Power / Toughness / Vitality distribution is still perfectly feasible. A pure tank using it would lose barely any tanking ability compared to a Toughness / Healing / Vitality setup, they’d just take a bit more damage and heal a bit more as well.
And most of the time, they would probably prefer the extra healing power over the extra toughness because tanks are nearly always expected to offer party support as well.

For a support build however, the difference in having that extra Healing Power is pretty huge.