Guild Wars 2

This post is made entirely with the assumption that healing, on the scale that druid provides, will be vital to clearing raids. If your issue with this post is because of your concerns with the dps meta, healing being useless, etc., please voice your opinion elsewhere.

I must make some speculation on the power of druid healing because we do not have skill coefficients. However, after seeing the numbers in the stream with no healing power, it’s hard to argue they will not be competing for strongest healer in the game.

The Elite Specs:
Currently we have two largely healing elite specializations. The first being druid, the second being tempest (with a staff). The main issue: druid only needs one trait line to be an effective healer, while tempest needs three (water, arcane, tempest). This allows druids to run dps traits (marks, skirm) in addition to getting amazing healing options (with quick draw you can keep the flower wall up half the time, or chain two back to back!). Tempest you must run a very strict template (powerful aura, evasive arcana, elemental bastion) and skills (all the aura shouts) to attain the healing prowess of druid’s staff, celestial form, and glyphs.

While tempest might be able to outcompete druid healing depending on celestial form’s cd and shroud buildup, tempest will lose massively when it comes to supplementing damage. (you can run spotter, frost spirit, AND outgoing damage glyph as a druid, c’mon now!)

The Core Specs:
Ventari is meant to heal, and roy recently posted on rev forums that ventari has “sustained” healing while druid was “burst healing.” You can get some pretty high numbers on the delayed tablet heal especially with the insane amount of outgoing healing rev can build up so I won’t speculate much on ventari healing until this weekend. As with druid, this one traitline provides formidable healing. However, due to rev’s profession mechanic, I doubt ventari will be anything more than a supplemental healer.

Guardian. The spiritual successor to monk. (1) The aegis application on guardian is being buffed (shield 4), and pure of heart is an extremely unique and clutch way to play healer (dare I say protter?). Too bad it has pitiful base healing and coefficient. Communal defenses will probably see play in raids because it has no target limit. I really want aegis guard healing to be wanted in raids, and hopefully we can see some buffs to pure of heart and aegis duration OR cd on communal defenses for HoT pve. Guardian has amazing heals per second, but is missing any good way to burst heal. (2) You need to spec into valor (communal), honor (EVERY gm trait is good), and virtues to get a good amount of heals per sec. This spreads your traits thin and avoids any dps lines, like tempest.

I am largely unfamiliar with engie healing. They have some really awesome healing traits, and I’m fairly certain we will see a medkit buff soon. It looks like inventions with alchemy can provide some good healing, but will lack ranged burst healing (water blasts are great but limiting position-wise).

Mesmer mantras are cool but I think chronomancer will have enough on its plate keeping alacrity, quickness, and other fun party support up without the need to supplement healing.

tl;dr
Druid and Tempest provide excellent healing options that will see use in raids. Some healers (guardian, tempest) require too many traitline investments compared to other healers (druid, ventari), therefore reducing their effectiveness at other jobs. Please consider these ideas and builds in the upcoming beta so that we can have a discussion on the future of viable healers in GW2. I want to see more than ele and druid in the healer role for raids.

Who would you like to see as a viable healer in raids, and should you need to invest in multiple traitlines to provide viable healing?

Ps – we need some stat spreads with ferocity and healing power for healer deeps. And yes I’m salty about tempest.

Necros can make a strong showing as secondary healer, but theirs is burst only for groups. It’s easy for a Necro to hit 12k group heals, but that has ~30 second cooldown.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros can make a strong showing as secondary healer, but theirs is burst only for groups. It’s easy for a Necro to hit 12k group heals, but that has ~30 second cooldown.

Actually if the scenario requires things dying fast enough (let’s say 2 mobs every 15 seconds) reaper could burst out some impressive healing , a transfused soul spiral could heal over 10K with a cooldown of ~15 seconds thanks to reaper onslaught. It is niche but it can be done.

I’m very interested to see where healing is going to go in HoT. I can see Guardian being more tank using it’s heals as boosts to its self to “tank”. At least that’s how I’d like to see it work.

What about shout warriors?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNBhSDbknDaBxOPwyDoDxQRQpdRTkF2A8ABQ+E9dSA-TxxGABAcBAwTJYk6Ay9BAMp6P+s/wSK/CAgA8e3DA+5P/5P/5P74G34G34GnUA+t0C-e

Practically permanent regeneration through inspiring banners, and quite sizable heals on lowish cooldowns from vigourous shouts, condition removal through runes of the trooper+low cooldown shouts and traited warhorn, huge weakness uptime from the mace’s autoattack chain and the warhorn, and massive swiftness+vigor uptime to help people avoid damage in the first place.

I’d love to see a Healing Minion Master Necromancer in like Settler’s gear. I think all the Necromancer healing and siphoning needs to be updated to scale off of healing power and toughness. The healing needs to effect all minions as well as five party members. Minion’s need to be invulnerable to the one-shot AOEs, since they are too stupidly programmed to move out of them.

I thought about warriors for a bit but unfortunately I don’t think they’ll see much use because banners are so strong. Perhaps on a party’s second warrior it could see some use? Definitely an example of low investment healing though – just one trait and a few skills and you have some intermittent burst party healing available.

I didn’t give much attention to reaper traits, but onslaught could make an interesting healer! Although I don’t think you really need much heal power to make it effective and the ‘heal when leaving shroud’ competes with vampiric aura (which scales on power). Perhaps it’s worth it to invest a bit in HP since most people will be taking reaper and blood traits.

I think the comments so far have raised an interesting question:
Would it be more fun or easy (not having to wait for a fully specced ele or druid) to have a few supplemental healers than one or two totally specialized healers?
Or do you not want to have to spec for healing at all if you are taking dps role? Because while the supplemental healing could work with multiple people, it certainly could not contend with druid or ele specialized for healing.

It will be interesting to see if Mantra Chronomancer can manage it (using Quickness to pump out faster). Tbh just the theorycrafting alone is great at this point.

What about elementalist?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWnMICtMglOAOOA0RgBBAjeCJhMZEAClHgaT2ETDA-TxhAABSfBAYV9H0U+x1+DQqEEgHAQh6ACAcA8+7BgjP+4jP+4O+4jP+4jLFgfLtA-e

The lava axe being there as an offensive weapon that’s usable while remaining in water attunement, and thus retaining the attunement’s passive soothing mist party heal.

Coulter.2315:

It will be interesting to see if Mantra Chronomancer can manage it (using Quickness to pump out faster). Tbh just the theorycrafting alone is great at this point.

People really do underestimate Mantra healing. With proper runes and gear with perhaps phantasmal support (pretty much perma-regen and/or damage reduction stacking with protection) you can do a lot of healing especially if you give yourself quickness or get it from the group.

Of course, the only problem is it may require a lot of castings of mantras so you’d be relying on phantasms to do more heavy lifting than normal.

Leo G.4501:

Coulter.2315:

It will be interesting to see if Mantra Chronomancer can manage it (using Quickness to pump out faster). Tbh just the theorycrafting alone is great at this point.

People really do underestimate Mantra healing. With proper runes and gear with perhaps phantasmal support (pretty much perma-regen and/or damage reduction stacking with protection) you can do a lot of healing especially if you give yourself quickness or get it from the group.

Of course, the only problem is it may require a lot of castings of mantras so you’d be relying on phantasms to do more heavy lifting than normal.

Yer the constant channeling puts me off but the Well Heal is also great group support and the Blurr Well too, coupled with Distortion Sharing and Signet Distortion I could see a Mesmer acting more like a Disc Priest from WoW but having that emergancy pump up for health with Mantra of Pain in the back pocket. This spec also gives access to AoE ranged Snares from GS or AoE Weakness with rupts for any dangerous add fights.

Its exciting to think like this again ^^

However Healing Power as a stat remains pretty poor (max HP increases Mantra by 300(ish) per cast – pretty woeful – its only real benefit I see is from Regen and Well Heal).

Yep. I think you’re underestimating mesmer mantra healing

Holy guardian undersell batman!

Amongst the base classes, at a relatively minor dps loss guardians blow everyone else out of the water for healing. —especially if you go virtues.

The signet elite has a significant pulse (the cast is useless though, or just about).
So do symbols (if you’re doing trying to heal, you’re doing hammer/honor anyways),
whatever the healing breath is called is is one of few legitimately group-oriented heal skills

You can do some rediculous sustained group face tanks (ie level 49-50 mai trin, holding the whole group up) with guardians, stuff just not possible with any other kind of healing.

Coulter.2315:

However Healing Power as a stat remains pretty poor (max HP increases Mantra by 300(ish) per cast – pretty woeful – its only real benefit I see is from Regen and Well Heal).

I see this to be a pretty big problem. Healing power coefficients on a lot of skills are just awful. Anet MIGHT kill the “zerker meta” with new content that requires healing, but the healers will probably all be running around in Zerker gear because the difference between Zerker and full healing gear is marginal.

Hopefully they address this with some balance changes tomorrow.

“Who is a viable healer in raids?”

I am. Don’t worry guys. I got you all. ( Druid / Herald for life \o/ )

I would add engineers. They can be decent healers/support if set up properly.

You may call me crazy, but i see a shout warrior with healing shouts, cleric’s gear and trooper runes to be a really good spec to keep your front line healthy. You are almost impossible to kill since your healing signet is so strong, combined with having the toughness to take hits, and your shouts not only heal, but also remove conditions, next to their usual use, I still considder “For great justice!” to be one of the best skills in the game, fear me has immense use in trying to rez someone when you have adds, or to controll adds in general, shake it off is good for adding another condi cleanse, making the skill clear 2 condi’s and stunbreak, and even on my mark has use on bosses with burn phases to instantly get it to big vuln stacks so dps is optimal. Of course battle standard elite seems only logical in raids.

Add to this mace/warhorn/shield/torch + hammer for utility they provide, depending on what is needed, and you’ll have a big tanky front line healer/tank.
(seriously try out the heal shouts in normal gear without heal power, they are even powerfull without putting stats into them.)

problem I think is people going the wrong direction;

Realistically the only viable healers are Druid, Revenant, and Guardian/DH.

Nobody else remotely has the healing sustain to keep people going. Almost every variant has been tried.

Windsagio.1340:

problem I think is people going the wrong direction;

Realistically the only viable healers are Druid, Revenant, and Guardian/DH.

Nobody else remotely has the healing sustain to keep people going. Almost every variant has been tried.

In content where healing isn’t necessary at all, sure. Eles can output pretty strong healing as well.

Of course, healing is a duty that can be split over the party fairly well. I imagine a dedicated healer won’t be necessary, but without one the party will have to dedicate a few more skill slots/traits to make up for it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Windsagio.1340:

problem I think is people going the wrong direction;

Realistically the only viable healers are Druid, Revenant, and Guardian/DH.

Nobody else remotely has the healing sustain to keep people going. Almost every variant has been tried.

In content where healing isn’t necessary at all, sure. Eles can output pretty strong healing as well.

Of course, healing is a duty that can be split over the party fairly well. I imagine a dedicated healer won’t be necessary, but without one the party will have to dedicate a few more skill slots/traits to make up for it.

My point would be that the longer the encounter the less vaible most of these options are. In much of the content neither spike nor sustain is an issue, but almost all of the options have no sustain. Ele is close, but the uptime on their heals is relatively low, so it puts a lot of extra pressure on all the other players (staff water 1 is okay, but much lower than healing symbols, for instance).

The healers that I can see working tend to have a lot of healing on their weapon skills and passives along with, in general, protective boon generation.

teef!

ummm…. anyone?

kitten

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

teef!

ummm…. anyone?

kitten

Actually curious about commentary on this one. I don’t think thief could ever be a main healer but how effective could you make one with leeching venoms, regen, and condi clears with stealth.

thief can give some fun boons and healing if people sit in stealth…doing nothing…but having stealth. Venoms do not heal enough per use compared to their cd. Maybe if there were some significant health gain from having the revealed (de)buff?

I think it’s important to understand how much of a different level tempest, druids, and guardians are in comparison to the rest of the current professions. This is what I find worrisome. There needs to be some recognition that if healing is in fact necessary, there are only three or four professions at the moment who can deal with it. These are not casual builds with supplementary healing that we’re going to need if the druid is any indication.

Guardian can get over 800 health per second (symbol, regen, resolve) with a sizable bump from courage (over 1500) every 10s. What I’m afraid guardian lacks is any on demand healing, which is where pure of heart should shine – but instead is a lackluster 2000 heal that might not even trigger given how short aegis duration is. Access to protection is notable, but it certainly is not on top of heals by a long shot.

Tempest has 4 shouts, 3 of which give auras (3000 heal with powerful auras & elemental bastion), soothing mist (200/s), water attunement swap & skills, magnetic aura heal, and evasive arcana (frost field blast +3000 and 10s cleansing wave). Ele can definitely compete in chunk healing, but has little regen access and other than soothing mist no heals per sec.

Druid obviously has a lot of healing.

I’m still quite underwhelmed by Ventari but we will see for sure. I’ll look at mesmer healing but I believe they have better utilities and skills to bring to the table than mantra healing. Mantra healing also has no range, the same issue with engie healing. Guardian also has little range, an important fact to keep in mind during build testing.

Engineer has a trait that distributes %12 of the healing he receives to the party.
You can get them some soldiers along with vampirism and leeching.
Backpack regenerator trait also heals you constantly while you have a kit equipped,not to mention all the blast fields and regeneration.
Could make a good hybrid but may stuck as a role filler where both dps and healing are needed equally.

Pretty sure that Tempest with those 3 trait lines comes with the bonus of extra boons that the Druid can’t provide with a singular Druid trail line without taking something like Spirit ones. And the Tempest spec line does provide DPS just as much as healing….boons and shields too. It’s an all around spec that does well with whatever synergy that you set up.

And a Staff Ele just by them self with a full healing gear set, healing runes, healing sigils, and the proper spec design can be a great healer. Heck, I’ve power healed some peps in WvW with just a simple Celestial build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZEQNAoYVnMJCFNhNNBePBMshjWiyXGtRKyHijoI0BwBsAA-TxxBABCqPo5TBwnq/AmyPAeCAXt/AiKBDAcAsbd7+7BO+4jP+4j74jP+4jPuUAQssC-e

This is probably the best you’re going to get as a thief healer.

The thing is, the class isn’t designed as a dedicated healer. It’s best to think about how you can maximise damage while still healing for noticeable amounts, and condition damage venom share actually does quite significant damage, while providing decent heal support.

Spider venom is 3888 healing to each person on a 32 second cooldown, which isn’t amazing, but given that it also inflicts 40380 poison damage, it’s probably acceptable.

Skelk venom is definately worth its cooldown at 8080 points of healing to each person

Skale Venon isn’t amazing either, at only 2/3 of spider venom’s healing, but it’s probably okay as a damage hybrid too.

They can’t compete with druids in raw healing (Unless they have a water field to spam blasts on with shortbow), but venomshare thieves are also very reasonable condition builds.

only real contenders are atm Revenant and Guardians.
Engineers are an unfinished work and in Inventions trait line there are some cool ideas the seems to undertuned for the fear of being OP, but after seeing the Druid skills…

IMO it’s pretty clear that it’s going to be better to have a larger number of dps/support hybrid specs than attempt to have dedicated dps and heal specs. The game just isn’t setup for that.

I’d say a lot of classes can be healers but won’t be able to do it alone.

Venomshare thief, Shout warriors, Blood necros/reapers, Revenants with ventari, Druids, Bomb engis

I don’t know all the healing stuff of all the classes but I imagine every class can sort of heal a raid for a bit. Druid and Revenant probably best.

It looks like Druid, Ele, and Revenant will all be mandatory in raids.

Druid will be necessary for the massive heal bursts to heal after one of the strong attacks.

Ele and Revenant will both be necessary for heal over time and versatility. Both are the only professions that have the versatility to be a healer without sacrificing support or damage capability. Other professions sacrifice a lot more to be a healer.

On the surface I would expect 1 Druid, 1 Revenant (Ventari/Glint), 2 Eles, 3 control/damage specs, and 3 pure DPS specs in raids.

Something I do think might be worth mentioning is the target limit on the guardian’s passive sustained healing, whereas a warrior with 2 banners and 35% boon duration can provide 100% regeneration uptime for 10 people simultaneously via inspiring banners.

Torsailr.8456:

It looks like Druid, Ele, and Revenant will all be mandatory in raids.

Druid will be necessary for the massive heal bursts to heal after one of the strong attacks.

Ele and Revenant will both be necessary for heal over time and versatility. Both are the only professions that have the versatility to be a healer without sacrificing support or damage capability. Other professions sacrifice a lot more to be a healer.

On the surface I would expect 1 Druid, 1 Revenant (Ventari/Glint), 2 Eles, 3 control/damage specs, and 3 pure DPS specs in raids.

Well the need of the druid is dependent on the strength of damages and timing.
For OHKO damages, no need of any healer, toughness will do it.
For smallish spread damages, any classes with a bit of off-heal or good regen uptime will make it (if not everyone can do it with self heal).
For bigger spread damages, aegis, blocks and dodges can be enough to mitigate.

Maybe the question will be either bring a “dedicated” healer, druid or Ventari/Glint herald or bring some hybrids like venom share, engie or mantra mes to make some damages on top of their heal.
If they stick to their design this is the way it should go : bring the people and build (maybe gear) them to have the required amount of DPS/CC/Mitigation/Sustain.

Undeadkemea.4865:

I’d say a lot of classes can be healers but won’t be able to do it alone.

Venomshare thief, Shout warriors, Blood necros/reapers, Revenants with ventari, Druids, Bomb engis

I don’t know all the healing stuff of all the classes but I imagine every class can sort of heal a raid for a bit. Druid and Revenant probably best.

FYI healing bomb engis do not exist since 23rd june patch.
Which is truly sad.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

teef!

ummm…. anyone?

kitten

Thieves would have a lot of potential if they were able to chose what bundle they will steal from an ennemy (in PvE). This way, a dedicated thief healer would chose to only steal Healing seed and blast in it for condicleanse, party regen, and descent burst heal. Sustain heal would be done via a proper use of venom rotation. Obviously, boon sharing come naturally with steal.

Gaaroth.2567:

Undeadkemea.4865:

I’d say a lot of classes can be healers but won’t be able to do it alone.

Venomshare thief, Shout warriors, Blood necros/reapers, Revenants with ventari, Druids, Bomb engis

I don’t know all the healing stuff of all the classes but I imagine every class can sort of heal a raid for a bit. Druid and Revenant probably best.

FYI healing bomb engis do not exist since 23rd june patch.
Which is truly sad.

Yea. Healing/support engineers are in a bit of a strange spot. I think they could alleviate that if they buffed the med kit a little (and for the love of all, give the 1 ability a tiny attack damage component so people using it get credit for the fight). Beyond that, engineers have access to some pretty cool healing/support options – we just need the kit to be useful.

Eponet.4829:

Something I do think might be worth mentioning is the target limit on the guardian’s passive sustained healing, whereas a warrior with 2 banners and 35% boon duration can provide 100% regeneration uptime for 10 people simultaneously via inspiring banners.

If regen had any meaningful value that’d be great. It’s pretty insignificant though

Roxtar.6487:

Guardian can get over 800 health per second (symbol, regen, resolve) with a sizable bump from courage (over 1500) every 10s. What I’m afraid guardian lacks is any on demand healing, which is where pure of heart should shine – but instead is a lackluster 2000 heal that might not even trigger given how short aegis duration is. Access to protection is notable, but it certainly is not on top of heals by a long shot.

Gotta beat this drum, Healing Breeze/Receive the light Is a 6525 damage (taking the numbers from wiki 1305×5 pulses) group heal. If you specc Honor, you get a heal (varies to gear but sitll on demand from dodge rolls, and even without virtues tree Virtue of resolve is a group heal on demand.

There’s really no question in a mobile fight beyond druid and guardian, at least as far as healing goes.

support is a different discussion somewhat, but we’re talking about heals here ><

I’d like to see some more trait support for thief healing TBH. Venomshare heals are okay, but some sort of shared lifesteal on steal or other venom/steal related stuff for a viable thief healing build would be pretty awesome just to round out build options.

It would also be nice if we could rebalance venoms so VS was a less boring overall build to play, but alas, one thing at a time.

It’s extremely nice to see people who know how to play a heal Guardian.

Full Ventari gear, superior runes of the monk, hammer with cleric stats, all Knight accessories. Spec for straight healing power, healing symbols and self heal when boons are applied and you have a absolute tank. I’ll link a build later but I agree, Guardians are awesome.

celestial mantra can maintain continuous 1500HP/sec group heals while dealing damage through phantasms and mantra AOE dmg spam, just saying…

“Who is a viable healing in raids?” Well #1, we dont know if were even going to NEED a “healer” in raids, everyone should be able to support the overall survivability of the party to their own extent (others moreso).

1. Any class with viable healing abilities/traits would more than fill this niche (again some more than others, particularly Herald/Druid)

scerevisiae.1972:

celestial mantra can maintain continuous 1500HP/sec group heals while dealing damage through phantasms and mantra AOE dmg spam, just saying…

I’d like to see the build that can do that :p

Windsagio.1340:

Eponet.4829:

Something I do think might be worth mentioning is the target limit on the guardian’s passive sustained healing, whereas a warrior with 2 banners and 35% boon duration can provide 100% regeneration uptime for 10 people simultaneously via inspiring banners.

If regen had any meaningful value that’d be great. It’s pretty insignificant though

Regen is only noticeable when paired with a lot of outgoing healing modifiers like with Revenant. Regen can tick for around 800-900 health per second with a Ventari/Salvation specced Revenant in full Cleric’s gear.

Windsagio.1340:

scerevisiae.1972:

celestial mantra can maintain continuous 1500HP/sec group heals while dealing damage through phantasms and mantra AOE dmg spam, just saying…

I’d like to see the build that can do that :p

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAsfWl0nhS0YVawINQtGLrG05RCS0L3wICA60r+TA-ThBXwA3UCCQ5nU1LCpPQw+D9URhUA+N0C-e

Restorative Mantras is 2717/2.75 = 988 healing per second
Healing Prism is 649 healing every 10 seconds = 65 healing per second
Illusionary Inspirations causes phantasms grant sustained regeneration of 174 healing per second to nearby allies
Sigil of Renewal heals for 575 on weapon swap every 9 seconds. = 64 healing per second

Add them together
= 988+65+174+64 = 1291

Outgoing heal effectiveness to allies is boosted due to rune of the monk and delicious rice balls to 121% (1.1*1.1)

1291*1.21 = 1562

The zealots gear mixed in was just to adjust for the +300 healing power granted by healing prism for having three illusions out, it’s actually possible to reach over 1500 in full berserker gear.

Fun fact: Mantra of pain has a coefficient of 1.0 per power spike.

It takes around 6 seconds to both cast and unload mantra of pain, which results in a damage of .5 coefficients per second, doing literally nothing but casting mantra of pain. A constant mantra channeling build can heal for that value, while still doing half the damage they would while sword autoattacking, and still heal over 1000 while doing the same or close to the same damage by dropping every mantra but mantra of pain and casting it on cooldown.

Druid will undoubtedly be an amazing healer, but guardian will still remain one of the top dog healers.

With this build that I just threw together, you’ll heal for over 2k hp for all your allies around you per second.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWlsAhShYrQwWIQQEHME1tY7yAAXBTQJknv87DA-TByHAB0pE8HlKHpsq2nAQj6DeU9Hd2fAgTBQAAEgb2mt5NDc0je0je0j2RP6RP6RPapA8bYE-e

That’s right, more than 2000 health p/sec of outgoing healing with this build, while still maintaining reasonable DPS (nothing spectacular, but not bad either).

I’m bearish on the healing potential of Druids. Thier healing potential is gated by a life-force like mechanic, and their form has a cooldown.

I think raid healing will work like it does now. Water field blasts providing the healing.

If the content truly is difficult, then group blocks and/or protection will be more important than just heals.

I note that the Ventauri heralds and the Druids don’t provide that much group boons. I think the healing meta will end up elementalist/guardian/engineer.

nekretaal.6485:

I’m bearish on the healing potential of Druids. Thier healing potential is gated by a life-force like mechanic, and their form has a cooldown.

I think raid healing will work like it does now. Water field blasts providing the healing.

If the content truly is difficult, then group blocks and/or protection will be more important than just heals.

I note that the Ventauri heralds and the Druids don’t provide that much group boons. I think the healing meta will end up elementalist/guardian/engineer.

I don’t thing CA form has a cd. Look at this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZHhJQn0B8&t=13m17s

When he switches to CA form, there’s no cd timer on the F5 key.

The limiting factor seems to be how quickly they can build life force because it doesn’t seem you can enter the form without it being full. Once in the form, it lasts about 20s.

Edit: Can’t get the link as a url so have left it in its text form.

I think though, the counter argument is that if most classes specced to bump their self heals and party-wide support, there will be less need for a straight healer. If we all go into the raid rocking zerker with straight burn down skills, then yes we might need a heal only class.

AOE Healing is king, and do not underestimate the Flag healing Cleric Geared Warrior, with Sigil of water and life, or benevolence, plus runes of Dwayna or Monk.

Behold the Herald http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJEQNBHhRakpD6+wCQwFEoDxAZQp78DsBZEEARO2298jD-TByDABM8kCKS53pKBfa/BAOlC2o+zAm/ORfDpA+WoF-e

Windsagio.1340:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Windsagio.1340:

problem I think is people going the wrong direction;

Realistically the only viable healers are Druid, Revenant, and Guardian/DH.

Nobody else remotely has the healing sustain to keep people going. Almost every variant has been tried.

In content where healing isn’t necessary at all, sure. Eles can output pretty strong healing as well.

Of course, healing is a duty that can be split over the party fairly well. I imagine a dedicated healer won’t be necessary, but without one the party will have to dedicate a few more skill slots/traits to make up for it.

My point would be that the longer the encounter the less vaible most of these options are. In much of the content neither spike nor sustain is an issue, but almost all of the options have no sustain. Ele is close, but the uptime on their heals is relatively low, so it puts a lot of extra pressure on all the other players (staff water 1 is okay, but much lower than healing symbols, for instance).

The healers that I can see working tend to have a lot of healing on their weapon skills and passives along with, in general, protective boon generation.

Based on the new spec for ele you could have a tempest healer. I could see that being pretty good if you do it right. Can almost keep a permanent aura on surrounding allies if do it right. With the new tempest auras heal, plus you’d be throwing some might stacking in there and soothing mist. I don’t love the tempest but i could see it being quite a viable with heal/damage mitigation.