Guild Wars 2

This has always been something that has bugged me and my friends to no end over GW2 is how generally useless healing power has always been.

For those of you who don’t know healing power scales in a faction of a point restored per healing power:

What this realistically means is lets just say a full set of healing power items gives you 500 healing power most abilities that heal allies have a .5(Average) healing scale ratio meaning that full set of healing as the main stat gives you ONLY 250 HP PER HEALING ABILITY!

Furthermore because of the hp of each class being in the 15k-15k+ range that means per every 30 seconds YOU HEAL FOR 1.6% MORE MAX HP AT BEST AND ONLY 1% MORE MAX HP HEALED AT WORSE

For those of you who argue it works because druid works I will simply Tell you the final set bonus of rune of the druid: After using a glyph for the next 3 seconds gain 500 and this has NO COOLDOWN combined with druids casting an AoE heal from a trait when they use a glyph means druids are FORCED TO WORK.

This means that if a druid needs to heal he can just use 2 glyphs which can also give protection further helping the healing to have 3 times more healing power then any other class will also gaining potentially the most healing abilities allowed at once in the game by a long shot.

So I ask you: Should healing power/Ratios be reworked in my honest opinion is yes.

Edit: Why I ask for a rework is that currently healing power is in a poor position. Its generally useless to the point of well the devs making rune of the druid.

While some classes have such high base healing that they don’t ever need healing power even in a defensive builds.

That’s why I personally want healing power as a whole to be reworked to not be useless on any class but not too overpowered on another and to make getting healing power actually matter in the slightest(healing power scales horribly but some heals have such a high base amount that people THINK you have healing power when you don’t).

Also from what I read on that thread Endless soul its not a complaint about healing but of passive tankiness and base healing being too powerful not healing power its self.

I can’t tell what kind of ‘rework’ you’re asking for. Are you talking about a Healing Power buff or nerf?

Meanwhile over on the Heart of Thorns board: There is too much healing in this game

Diversity, isn’t it grand?

Healing power is overpowered on some classes and totally useless on others. Individual skill adjustments would probably be a better avenue for exploration.

Both.
Healing power should not work based on minimum fixed numbers, but it also should have a much more relevant scaling in asociation with the points invested in Healing Power.

Basically, a build with Healing Power 0 shouldn’t be able to heal effectivelly. A build with Healing Power at the top should super heal.

I don’t understand your point where you first say “…using a glyph for the next 3 seconds gain 500 and this has NO COOLDOWN combined with druids casting an AoE heal from a trait when they use a glyph means druids are FORCED TO WORK.” then “This means that if a druid needs to heal he can just use 2 glyphs”

The Druid is FORCED TO WORK but only needs to use two glyphs to have the best healing in the game?

I don’t have a druid, but I often incorporate healing power into most of my builds (as a matter of habit from playing so many years as a healer in other mmos).

From my experience, healing power works pretty well as-is. While having a dedicated healing skill is nice, for any substantive healing you need it to come from multiple sources… and that’s how it should be.

If you want really good condi cleanse, you have multiple kinds. If you want really good damage reduction, you don’t use just toughness but find ways to incorporate protection, etc. If you want really good damage, you don’t rely solely on power and your weapon attacks.

So, if you want really good healing, it must come from multiple sources.

On a Warrior build I’m currently working on, I’ve allocated ~1k healing power. The build gives him a natural healing-over-time from 3 sources (w/o any shout or stun-break heals) totaling roughly 1,242 health per second. With 0 healing power, but all the same stats, it’d be roughly 1,007 health per second.

So, 1k healing power means a difference of ~235 health per second total from 3 sources. There might be more sources of healing… but, that’s something I’m still toying with in relation to the overall build. Should this difference of 235 from 1k healing power be more? Should it be less? How does this compare to your druid healing (since you didn’t give much in the way of difinitive numbers – just estimates)?

OP, you say healing power should be reworked… but my opinion is different. I think there are places it could be tweaked (like others have said), but over-all I think it’s pretty solid.

~EW

edit: OP, your number estimates must be really off…. looking back over your math, and comparing it to my numbers. That difference of 235/sec means that if I use the 15k health pool you used in your example (which he normally has more than that, but this is for the sake of comparison), my warrior heals 7050 more health over 30 seconds. This is almost half of his total health pool. So, not only is my warrior healing for 25% more (1k to 1.25k /sec), but that’s an extra amount of healing that accounts for 1/2 his total health pool every 30 seconds. Your 1.6% is likely way off. Sometimes using percentages can really skew numbers/perception.

I don’t know what OPs point really is but true enough some healing skills on classes other than druid need to be reworked to scale better with healing power so that they could actually function as a supportive healer, only class that truely works in this fashion is Ele/tempest and even that is vastly outclassed by druid.

Overall self-healing skills with 0 healing power are just fine as they function very similarly to potions etc in other games.

Now to OP’s point to it not working, it does work, especially on druid as the healing is additive from the million sources you have(literally 4 staff skills, heal, 2/3 utilities, elite skill, and sigil of water) The main point of being a dedicated healer is to devote your rotations for maximum healing output, if it was too easy it would be boring(not to say that it isn’t really easy)

TL;DR Healing power is fine, most skills that heal need fine tuning on classes other than druid.

ps. never use rune of the druid, use monk rune instead, it’s much better.

Ardid.7203:

Both.
Healing power should not work based on minimum fixed numbers, but it also should have a much more relevant scaling in asociation with the points invested in Healing Power.

Basically, a build with Healing Power 0 shouldn’t be able to heal effectivelly. A build with Healing Power at the top should super heal.

The way healing works in this game is by design. Characters are supposed to take care of their own health bars, with maybe just a wee bit of help from their allies. Someone who specs into Healing Power is providing that wee bit of help in conjunction with the use of skills that provide AoE healing.

In order to make Healing Power more effective, the game would have to be completely redesigned. Base heals would have to be reduced in effectiveness. Most characters would end up being more dependent on dedicated healers because their own heals would be weaker. In order to “take care of your own health bar,” you’d have to have Healing Power just to get the same results you get now.

The alternative to this scenario would be to leave base heals as is and still boost H. Power. I hope I don’t have to tell you how many complaints there would be in PvP/WvW, where bunker builds are already reviled. I also hope I don’t have to tell you that having that “wee bit of help” be stronger would make PvE even easier.

So, I would not be in favor of the OP’s suggestion. I prefer the game as is. I also believe that ANet spending a huge amount of time reworking the game’s mechanics would detract from ANet moving forward with sustainable, more frequent content releases.

Also, what’s up with using the question format for this thread? That’s supposed to be for questions other posters can actually answer, not theoretical discussions about game mechanics where there is no “correct” answer. What’s the OP going to do, choose the post that most agrees with his position as the “answer?”

Warcrafterfour.3759:

This has always been something that has bugged me and my friends to no end over GW2 is how generally useless healing power has always been.

For those of you who don’t know healing power scales in a faction of a point restored per healing power:

What this realistically means is lets just say a full set of healing power items gives you 500 healing power most abilities that heal allies have a .5(Average) healing scale ratio meaning that full set of healing as the main stat gives you ONLY 250 HP PER HEALING ABILITY!

When you think about that 50% returns is actually really high. The deadweight is “1” or you get 1 point of HP for every 2 healing power invested. That’s a better ratio than most other stats (including power) in the game in most circumstances.

Furthermore because of the hp of each class being in the 15k-15k+ range that means per every 30 seconds YOU HEAL FOR 1.6% MORE MAX HP AT BEST AND ONLY 1% MORE MAX HP HEALED AT WORSE

The problem here is that you’re looking at singular ability. Concurrent healing (every class has it, from passives to actives and additional optional effects) generates a totally different set of numbers. Combined that 1.6% can get as high as say, theoretically, 12% if we look at the same time frame combining self-healing actives, passives, and optional effects that scale with healing power.

So I ask you: Should healing power/Ratios be reworked in my honest opinion is yes.

No. My reasoning is that first the game is designed to be action oriented so you do not want people essentially building a repertoire of sustains and second the sustains themselves tend to be very heavy when considering other elements that effect damage taken. For instance when truly put together healing power and toughness effect one another greatly; ignoring other game modes in PvE it generally trivializes (regardless of time increase) most challenges presuming the player is paying a modicum of attention to their surroundings.

I think the scope of healing power has been, for some time, misunderstood. I mean I personally would love the passive sustain to receive a little love of maybe 1 or 2 percent simply because some of it suffers from being gimmicky but not a real rework.

That’s why I personally want healing power as a whole to be reworked to not be useless on any class but not too overpowered on another and to make getting healing power actually matter in the slightest(healing power scales horribly but some heals have such a high base amount that people THINK you have healing power when you don’t).

Also from what I read on that thread Endless soul its not a complaint about healing but of passive tankiness and base healing being too powerful not healing power its self.

But why make another stat “mandatory”? Or rather, why reduce the effectiveness of roles and builds that were specifcally mandated to work that way? A Druid that now needs toughness is no Druid at all! Or so I would believe. I can see your point though.

Healing power is only decent if you have multiple sources of healing, or a skill with a really good conversion rate (…I’d say 20%, but that’s still abysmal). So it can work well for guardians or particularly tanky warriors, but even then, it’s still mostly a dump stat.

To be honest, healing power just needs to go. It should have been converted to Concentration a long while ago, before the new stat sets showed up. Reactive healing isn’t as powerful in GW2 as having the boon duration to keep Protection, Aegis, and Regen up for longer periods of time.

While we could beg to have heals lowered and healing power coefficients raised to prominence it’s obvious that the balance team is struggling to account for the variable ranges of healing power as an attribute. From what half-cooked calculations I’ve poked at, healing power at 1000+ hardly gives a 20% boost in recovery power.

If there’s some concern about balancing incoming and outgoing heals, kill Healing Power, make Vitality give a slight boost to incoming healing, and give Concentration the outgoing support role. 10% per 1000 should be sufficient for impact.

tl;dr = Normalize all the heals, ditch healing power, and add some other support stat.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t understand your point where you first say “…using a glyph for the next 3 seconds gain 500 and this has NO COOLDOWN combined with druids casting an AoE heal from a trait when they use a glyph means druids are FORCED TO WORK.” then “This means that if a druid needs to heal he can just use 2 glyphs”

The Druid is FORCED TO WORK but only needs to use two glyphs to have the best healing in the game?

I think what he’s saying is that the druid has built-in cheats that break the normal rules of the game to make it work. Compared to other things in the game, those buffs/advantages are horribly overpowered, but they need to be if the druid is going to fill the role of healer because healing is broken in this game.

At least, that’s how I understand what he’s saying.

Palador.2170:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t understand your point where you first say “…using a glyph for the next 3 seconds gain 500 and this has NO COOLDOWN combined with druids casting an AoE heal from a trait when they use a glyph means druids are FORCED TO WORK.” then “This means that if a druid needs to heal he can just use 2 glyphs”

The Druid is FORCED TO WORK but only needs to use two glyphs to have the best healing in the game?

I think what he’s saying is that the druid has built-in cheats that break the normal rules of the game to make it work. Compared to other things in the game, those buffs/advantages are horribly overpowered, but they need to be if the druid is going to fill the role of healer because healing is broken in this game.

At least, that’s how I understand what he’s saying.

I guess. That’s not the usual meaning of “forced to work” but since he’s never bothered to come back to the thread to discuss what he said, no telling what he meant.

Palador.2170:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t understand your point where you first say “…using a glyph for the next 3 seconds gain 500 and this has NO COOLDOWN combined with druids casting an AoE heal from a trait when they use a glyph means druids are FORCED TO WORK.” then “This means that if a druid needs to heal he can just use 2 glyphs”

The Druid is FORCED TO WORK but only needs to use two glyphs to have the best healing in the game?

I think what he’s saying is that the druid has built-in cheats that break the normal rules of the game to make it work. Compared to other things in the game, those buffs/advantages are horribly overpowered, but they need to be if the druid is going to fill the role of healer because healing is broken in this game.

At least, that’s how I understand what he’s saying.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. A forced Blank thing means the devs cheat/change the rules of the game/how that thing works to work how the devs intended.

Warcrafterfour.3759:

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. A forced Blank thing means the devs cheat/change the rules of the game/how that thing works to work how the devs intended.

So your OP was about reworking healing power and ratios on the Druid specifically, not on the stat/ratios in general across all professions? Sorry, I misunderstood that. I thought you were just using the Druid as an example.

Edit: and if you do mean a rework across all professions, then all professions need to be represented as part of this discussion… not just the Druid you brought to the table, and the Warrior that I did.

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Warcrafterfour.3759:

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. A forced Blank thing means the devs cheat/change the rules of the game/how that thing works to work how the devs intended.

So your OP was about reworking healing power and ratios on the Druid specifically, not on the stat/ratios in general across all professions? Sorry, I misunderstood that. I thought you were just using the Druid as an example.

Edit: and if you do mean a rework across all professions, then all professions need to be represented as part of this discussion… not just the Druid you brought to the table, and the Warrior that I did.

~EW

Sorry about that but I generally used druid because its the worse offender of how messed up healing generally is because it has VASTLY more healing power then any other healer could ever get. It has the most healing abilities in the game(taking into consideration of any glyph as healing because of druid’s trait that makes them spawn AoE healing adds adds up to a total of about 13+ healing abilities compared to most classes 1-2(3-4 healer focused ones).

But I am generally talking about most healing abilities in the game but druid is such a big offender its not even funny.

The ratio should be reworked and have diminishing return.

Just an idle thought,
Change it to a % increase scale, like prec and fero.

x heal power = 1% increase.

Perhaps additionally
y healing power = 1% outgoing ( to other players) healing increase.

yiksing.9432:

The ratio should be reworked and have diminishing return.

Nothing in this game has diminishing returns and you do not want anything in this game to have diminishing returns. That would be the exact opposite of solving this particular problem since it effectively reduces the value of Healing Power even more.