Guild Wars 2

What is everyone’s consensus on healers in Guildwars with HoT out? Seperate responses for the following:

SPVP
PVE
WVW

I tried druid a few days after the expansion and let me tell you, pretty fun.
I’ve never tried a healing class in any MMO before so iunno
AND this game has some issues sometimes..
BUT HEY
Them heals be fun
Structured doe

Vyras.9078:

I tried druid a few days after the expansion and let me tell you, pretty fun.
I’ve never tried a healing class in any MMO before so iunno
AND this game has some issues sometimes..
BUT HEY
Them heals be fun
Structured doe

Druid is not a typical MMO healing class. No spec in GW2 is and it will never be without rebuilding game’s combat and profession philosophy. What most people mean by healer is a class that is focused on watching other people health bars and playing whack a mole with them. GW1 had such healing (actually monk from GW1 was my favorite healing class from any MMO I ever played and I played many). GW2 does not. That being said, if you stack some druids in a zerg, they can make a difference. But as a druid you wont be constantly saving people’s lives.

During big map events I tend to swap Shiro legend to either Jalis (tagging, defense against big hits/AoEs for pugs) or Ventari (mainly just camping projectile dome and occassional condi cleanse).

Haven’t seen any encounter in open world where me bringing heals would actually matter much than me bringing ton of DPS, but I’m looking foward to raiding anyway.

I will comment only on PvE.

It’s hard to know until we see just how healers are going to operate in raids. In the meantime, it seems like ANet has put in more options for players to heal if they want to, but have not developed the event credit structure to allow those healing to obtain full credit for their efforts. This seems kind of silly to me if their goal is to enable players who want to to play the healer role.

Awe.1096:

Vyras.9078:

I tried druid a few days after the expansion and let me tell you, pretty fun.
I’ve never tried a healing class in any MMO before so iunno
AND this game has some issues sometimes..
BUT HEY
Them heals be fun
Structured doe

Druid is not a typical MMO healing class. No spec in GW2 is and it will never be without rebuilding game’s combat and profession philosophy. What most people mean by healer is a class that is focused on watching other people health bars and playing whack a mole with them. GW1 had such healing (actually monk from GW1 was my favorite healing class from any MMO I ever played and I played many). GW2 does not. That being said, if you stack some druids in a zerg, they can make a difference. But as a druid you wont be constantly saving people’s lives.

Raids have player health bars, you have to focus on them when playing a druid to keep them alive. It was very very similiar to GW1, with one exception. You could not see people conditions in the raid Squad UI.

reapex.8546:

Raids have player health bars, you have to focus on them when playing a druid to keep them alive. It was very very similiar to GW1, with one exception. You could not see people conditions in the raid Squad UI.

Glhf focusing on menu health bars, because all skills heal skills are either targeted AoE or pbAoE with about the range of a stretched out staff.

Regarding stacking druids in a zerg, it will be a mediocre. I mean sure, some zerg healers are great… But guardians easily fill that role too and have as much or more utility, plus they can frontline. On top of that, 90% of the zergs heals come from blasting waterfields, which you actually only need a zerker ranger for and not even a druid. While I have no doubt druids will be part of zerg (everyone on ranger will probably go druid due to speed trait) I dont think many of them will have any kind of healing or even use the staff.

Awe.1096:

Vyras.9078:

I tried druid a few days after the expansion and let me tell you, pretty fun.
I’ve never tried a healing class in any MMO before so iunno
AND this game has some issues sometimes..
BUT HEY
Them heals be fun
Structured doe

Druid is not a typical MMO healing class. No spec in GW2 is and it will never be without rebuilding game’s combat and profession philosophy. What most people mean by healer is a class that is focused on watching other people health bars and playing whack a mole with them. GW1 had such healing (actually monk from GW1 was my favorite healing class from any MMO I ever played and I played many). GW2 does not. That being said, if you stack some druids in a zerg, they can make a difference. But as a druid you wont be constantly saving people’s lives.

Pretty elementary view of what MMO healing is, lol. Healing in MoP was closer to how DPS play than it was “playing whack a mole.” Some healers barely even utilized raid bars at all.

I have played healer in many games. It will never work in GW2. The reason – huge amount of damage coming from everywhere.

For healer to be effective, spread the healing skills over time and apply healing where it is needed, players need to stay alive for enough time. In PvP, WvW or PvE boss battles everyone is at full health and dead 1 second later. There is nothing healer can do when damage hits like steamroller.

First the damage needs to be reduced back to reasonable levels so fights do not end in few seconds. Only then can we start to discuss if there is point being designated healer.

After playing HoT for a while I’ve come to the conclusion that I still don’t need a healer or healing power. I’ve seen the raid bosses in the last beta and even there you didn’t need a healer even though they had a constantly ticking 1200 range aoe dmg area around them (the lazyest way possible to enforce healing). Personal heals for the small stuff and blasting waterfields for larger heals works way better than any designated healer ever will.

I Don’t play much pvp so i can’t comment. But druids are worthwhile in wvw atleast, in PVE not so much.
In PVE everyone is in zerker gear going full dps to end the fight as quickly as possible so generally there’s only 2 positions they are in full health or downed state, neither of which requires a healer and even if it did any class can heal/self heal, it might not be the largest heals ever but its enough to keep the dps chain going.
In WVW people run different gear to pve and assuming the druid is in clerics or nomads gear with the right traits u can easily survive frontline, i like the druid for its consistent sustain, the problem is for raid heals, u generally have a commander and that commander can call for a stack and water blasts which doesn’t require a healer spec/healer gear.

It would be nice to see the armor/heal gap widen so people aren’t downed before a heal can even go out, or remove downed state altogether so people cant just rally spam, This would cause alot more issues though >.>

Dawdler.8521:

reapex.8546:

Raids have player health bars, you have to focus on them when playing a druid to keep them alive. It was very very similiar to GW1, with one exception. You could not see people conditions in the raid Squad UI.

Glhf focusing on menu health bars, because all skills heal skills are either targeted AoE or pbAoE with about the range of a stretched out staff.

Was talking about raids not zergs, the druids did a great job healing us in raids.

They should rework healing power to be more effective, like offensive stats are