Guild Wars 2

So, after playing the Guardian since BW1 I was wondering “How can I really protect people with this guy. He can spam bubbles but over time that wont do”
I began to refuse the idea that there is no dedicated healer class. At least there have to be ways to heal your time, one way or another.

After a few weeks I build myself a Guardian who can fully heal his team even under high pressure. Dungeons are pretty easy now and even with newcomers I can prevent many maaaany wipes.

But that made me wonder “Is this way of healing only restricted for the guardian?”

Browsing the wiki and calculating with Healing Power and Vitality I created healing builds for the Mesmer, Thief and Engy.
Its so much fun to keep your team alive but there is something that still bugs me and maybe others have found a way to do it

Are there builds for the Ranger, Elementalist and Necro to heal and let your team survive effectively?

I haven’t even bothered trying to come up with a dedicated class. Every time i make a build, i look at 3 things.
1)How will i survive
2)How will i support the team
3)How will i deal damage

In that order, too. If you have to focus on healing then the rest of your party isn’t doing their #1. This game is designed so that you don’t have to build an all out healing character. Trying to build a healing class just encourages bad players to continue to be terrible. Learn to survive for yourself so that you can support the team and accomplish the mission.

1)How will i survive
2)How will i support the team
3)How will i deal damage

same order for me, im not to big on playing wak a mole with the health bar but even when focusing on this I do A LOT of healing on my warier. Healing power go’s a long way with surviveing

Thats basicly what my Guardian and Thief does.

For the Engy and Mesmer the 2nd option comes first though because so far I didnt find any way to heal AND keep yourself alive longer. I do use some blocking and vanishing abilities though, in case anything goes wrong.

I still fail to build anything like this for the 3 missing classes

Playing water staff Elementalist, I feel very much like a dedicated healer.
Your first, basic spell heals allies that are in it’s radius (It is a damage spell but the splash heals)

Your third and fifth skills are both AOE heals, with the fifth being more powerful and with a wider range

Your other two skills are also very support oriented, so basically you can be healing/supporting the whole time

But you seem to lack into Heal Utility Skills. Except for that Ice Bow but that disables your Healing Rain and the Healing Well. The Regeneration from the Arcane trait line when switching to Water doesnt help too because you need to spam Element changing a lot.

Healing your party can be done in more ways than just stacking Healing Power and picking the few healing traits your class gets. Rangers, for example, don’t get very many ways to directly heal other people, but they do get Healing Spring which is one of, if not the, longest lasting water fields players have access to. Get your party to throw out some blasts and leaps while it’s up and you’ll have a ton of burst healing going around.

Thieves don’t have many methods of healing others either (Venomous Aura has an abysmally short range) but they do have Cluster Bomb which is arguably the most spam-able blast finisher players get. Coordinate with anyone who has water fields in your party and you can dish out some nice burst healing.

Elementalists have huge potential to build themselves to be “healers,” but one of the most potent Ele PvE support builds I’ve seen is actually very offensive in nature yet still provides party support through shared auras and smart field/finisher use.

Anyway, my point is that healing and general party survivability aren’t, and shouldn’t be things that just one person looks out for. The game rewards you for having everyone looking out for the team’s survival and sometimes the best way to keep everyone alive doesn’t involve bringing all of the pure, outright healing you can muster. Combos in particular are very powerful if used well, and are more about player coordination than they are builds.

I’d love to have team mates who look into surviving and even take use of Combo Fields. To be honest I never ever saw Healing Bolts happen for me. Not in a single group.

The main issue is, there are supporters (very less even) and there are DPS players. And usually those DPS players rush in and just faceroll their damage skills.

Its actually kind of sad

If i use the right armor mods on a warrior, they can be a good healer. LOL right? but true.
Traits like shouts heal, 20% banners and use FGJ, SIO shouts and use a tacts banner(has a regen heal skill 10s cd, you may be able to keep your friends up longer. Going to try this build in wvw to suport gate busting to keep others alive longer but a warrior can heal. Still have some work on this.

Being able to help others while keeping yourself alive is the best way to do it. Like a shout heal warrior with soldier runes, gives party wide condition removal and a 1-2k heal every time you shout.

Dungeons go very smooth if everyone brings something helpful to the team