Guild Wars 2

Herrroo…

Up until a few minutes ago I was fairly set on playing a necro.. however.. I’ve been missing the more supportive feeling I get on healers in other games, and I am wondering if elementalist healing is really something noteworthy and worth rerolling for.

I understand that there is no dedicated healer in this game, but I enjoy the feeling of helping my team mates and I am wondering if staff-heal oriented elementalists bring significant heals to the table..

Any advice would be much appreciated! Thank you!

You can also make a healer with a necromancer.

And with a Mesmer!

But are they assssssss good at healing as elementalists?

Also someone please link a build or guide to necro healing if you know one Thank you

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdG1IhWpetmrG9eCQmR0UP9gbw3G+wtA-T0AgzEdp6y1lpLZX2uGhsCZ7wJkZDvQA

I’m playing my double dagger elementalist on heal. And I must say it’s great. Everytime I switch to water I’m able to heal myself to max or almost max. The only problem is that it’s not worth it if you do not switch through the elements much.

A Mesmer can heal for 3k with no healing power in an AoE. (Every 3 seconds, too).

Okay what do necros do for heals, please? I don’t really care much about mesmer healing, sorry ><

Shyhalu.4891:

Okay what do necros do for heals, please? I don’t really care much about mesmer healing, sorry ><

Life siphoning. Since one of the newer patches life siphoning is dependent on the healing you have.

Hello Shyhalu, I wouldn’t recommend abandoning ship based on those reasons, both necromancer and elementalist are pretty stable classes in my mind. Granted the elementalist has the heals with their water trait. While I love my elementalist, the hardest thing for me to get used to is the fact that you cannot switch weapons, you are locked in with the 1 weapon set you use, yet you can switch attunements. It’s a very different playing style for me in comparison to my thief or guardian.

For party wide heals I would say the elementalist has some pretty good heals with their water attunement, I would say in pve both necromancer and elementalist bring an equal amount of support to your team. No matter what you decide to play, either shouldn’t be too hard to join a party with. Good luck.

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

Shyhalu.4891:

Okay what do necros do for heals, please? I don’t really care much about mesmer healing, sorry ><

Life siphoning. Since one of the newer patches life siphoning is dependent on the healing you have.

This is purely self healing right?

Life Transfer can be traited to heal surrounding allies when channeled. If your life force runs out while channeling, you will be healed as well.

Healing Elementalist:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.2|6.1f.a8|0.0.0.0.0.0|1m.71d.1m.71d.1f.71d.1m.71d.1f.71d.1m.71d|31m.0.31m.0.21m.0.31m.0.21m.0.3u.0|0.0.a3.u15b.u58b|0.0|1m.1o.1y.23.28|e

Remember that elementalist barely has supportive spells beyond #6. Its supporting abilities come from water skills #1~5 and traits (and switching elements). For utility spells you can choose what you want. I like glyph of storms, some like shields for survival, but elemental summoning is nice, too.

If you’re alone, switch to earth’s scepter dagger with condition food.

Hmm well if anyone knows where I can find a fleshed out support necro guide, please let me know Thanks for all your halp.

first priority should always be damage mitigation before healing. 100% protection uptime in your group really go a long way. blinds, reflects and debuffs on enemies as well. only then go after heals if it really is necessary.
the amount of healing necessary to increase your base healing by 33% is absurd compared to the little effort it takes to keep protection up (ie auramancer ele with a few boon/protection duration runes, or simple hammer guardian with a few symbol-traits if necessary).
and while your auramancer can still basically be a zerker who actually helps the others by killing stuff faster, a pure healing ele will be dead weight.

if you really want to support your team, give them boons and remove their conditions. don’t go full healing, go full support if you really must. your heals are still appreciated but endless fury and either constant 15-25 stacks of might or fulltime protection as well as the occasional regeneration, blinds on enemies etc are A LOT more useful. and if you go after boon duration, you can still do damage and be an active part of your group.

The thing about necro tank healer is that he reaches the amount of armor a warrior has and a high amount of health: Health: 22k-28k Armor: 3k
The minions do damage each when siphoning health, the necromancer does damage when siphoning health plus the normal damage he and the minions do from normal attacks.

Oranisagu.3706:

first priority should always be damage mitigation before healing. 100% protection uptime in your group really go a long way. blinds, reflects and debuffs on enemies as well. only then go after heals if it really is necessary.
the amount of healing necessary to increase your base healing by 33% is absurd compared to the little effort it takes to keep protection up (ie auramancer ele with a few boon/protection duration runes, or simple hammer guardian with a few symbol-traits if necessary).
and while your auramancer can still basically be a zerker who actually helps the others by killing stuff faster, a pure healing ele will be dead weight.

if you really want to support your team, give them boons and remove their conditions. don’t go full healing, go full support if you really must. your heals are still appreciated but endless fury and either constant 15-25 stacks of might or fulltime protection as well as the occasional regeneration, blinds on enemies etc are A LOT more useful. and if you go after boon duration, you can still do damage and be an active part of your group.

Yes, pretty much this, coming from both a longtime ele player and a critic of the “zerker or get out” mindset. You do not have to be a healer to support, and in the case of GW2, it’s much more effective to be a non-healing focused supporter than a pure healer.

As a general rule of thumb, you cannot heal enough to save a bad player, and a good player will usually not need your heals. There will be pinches where a heal will keep an ally a tooth’s skin from death, but those pinches tend to be too few and far between to make being a pure healer worth it, especially if you invest into damage mitigation instead.

Do not play ele by equipping a staff, sitting in water attunement, and standing in the back while occasionally using skill 3 or 5. You will kitten your potential severely, and I say that from experience. Instead, focus on using skills like Frozen Ground (staff water skill 4), Static Field (staff air 5), Ring of Earth (dagger earth 2), or any other movement-controlling skill to slow down enemies when you see them chasing a teammate. If an enemy is charging an attack, use a stun or a knockdown to interrupt them. Trait to provide boons like fury, might, and protection, either through the group auramancer build or just an Arcana-heavy build that provides boons on attunement. Put ten points in water and you can strip conditions off nearby allies whenever you attune to water. Equip a focus and you can block projectiles with air 4. Those are all ways you can support a group without being a healer.

Granted, there’s nothing wrong with tossing out some heals here and there. Just don’t make it your main focus.

Well, to be honest a guildie of mine is a great necro healer, he outheals everybody!

how does he do it?
well, with wells!

I don’t know the exact build, though

If you really want to heal an ele with staff would give you water fields that others could blast finish, for extra AoE heals. I prefer using a scepter/dagger set up with the persisting flames trait to stack 15-18 stacks of might AoE and over a minute of fury AoE, and then switching to lightning hammer to DPS things and its autoattack is a blast finisher so you can get even more support through that.

Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger auramancer and fresh air builds are both also extremely nice for support and DPS too!

nearlight.3064:

If you really want to heal an ele with staff would give you water fields that others could blast finish, for extra AoE heals. I prefer using a scepter/dagger set up with the persisting flames trait to stack 15-18 stacks of might AoE and over a minute of fury AoE, and then switching to lightning hammer to DPS things and its autoattack is a blast finisher so you can get even more support through that.

Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger auramancer and fresh air builds are both also extremely nice for support and DPS too!

a water field with exactly two blast finishers from ele himself (arcane blast & earth staff#2) every now and then isn’t really that great. as you said, auramancer/thorele are a lot more useful.

played around my engi yesterday. more or less easily accessible blast finishers (at least 7 I found) and 2 giant water fields with decent cooldown (though short duration, it takes practice to fire of more than 2 finishers in each). if the group is coordinated, you can easily blast 5 times in each field, which means pretty much everbody is about full health again. engi can do that every 10 to 15 seconds.
extremely powerful yet I still would prefer a thor-ele or auramancer over such an engi in any of my dungeon groups, because most of the time, I’m not nearly dieing and in desperate need of a heal, I’m rather dps-ing and would prefer to get fury, a few might stacks and protection.

since yesterday rangers have a blast finisher on the already good team-support warhorn (with a red moa 100% aoe-fury uptime), which means their healing spring just got more useful. and it’s a longterm water field even the slowest player should be able to recognize and blast finish a few times in.
if you use sword you get a short-cooldown leap which heals yourself for a good amount as well if you pass your spring. greatsword has a leap as well, and you’ll not be one of the bad ranger that stays in the back sitting in his healing spring while the rest of the team has to tank and gets zero benefit.

in a normal group I’ll cringe and accept a full healer player and block them afterwards so I don’t accidentally group up with them ever again (inb4 elitism: everybody has a right to a group composition they like. healers and other inexperienced players probably will find a place in other groups, just not mine). in a speedrun I started I’ll definitely kick them, a healer has nothing to do in a speedrun group (or any experienced group, tbh). a buffer&debuffer I’ll gladly keep depending on dungeon, because I know if they didn’t screw up their build they’ll still do decent damage (especially thor ele is a beast with incredible boosts and good damage).

Sorry but what the heck is a thor-ele?

Shyhalu.4891:

Sorry but what the heck is a thor-ele?

I assume it’s an ele with thor’s hammer, mjölnir. Basically the summoned hammer.

Shyhalu.4891:

Sorry but what the heck is a thor-ele?

I guess depends on interpretation, one of which is:
a build which uses scepter/dagger, goes for longer firefields + fury when blastfinishing (gm fire trait), uses a rotation of fire #2, #4, #3, arcane blast, earth #4, #5, and in the next rotation fire #2, #4, #3, arcane blast, lightning hammer, 1-1-1, 1-1-1 (once the firefield is gone, make use of the other skills as appropriate)

lightning hammer third attack in the #1 chain is a blast finisher (and blind), thus using it in a firefield grants 3 stacks of might and 10 seconds fury every 1.5 seconds or so.

it’s a bit more complicated (usually goes for full damage, uses the water trait for more dmg in water to vulnerable foes and uses the hammer while in water) but that’s the main gist of it. I’m sure there are vids/builds which explain it better.

this can easily keep 15-25 stacks of might (long lasting ones) and permanent fury (a few rotas stacked it to 2 minutes when my brother and I tested it together). you can do this while going full zerker and with lightning hammer you do a lot of damage. if you go boon duration you can keep might even better, but usually it’s not necessary as the team probably brings a few boons by themselves.
you’re pretty squishy, so it only works in a group with decent defensive support, or you’ll have to trade of some damage for toughness/vitality. you’ll still be able to keep might/fury up though, no matter what gear you use.

I really like this build, as it’s an incredible addition to a team. it’s not that easy to play, because dodgeing etc will like mess up your rotation if you’re not used to it yet (happened to me at least, first trial run with it in AC I only kept about 9-18 might stacks on the group, not 15-25 as I should’ve).

tl;dr: thor ele is an ele who wields the lightning hammer to its full potential, bringing ragnarök to his foes! =) and personally, I like those a lot more than healers – because ANet did their darnest to make sure a focus on healing alone is never ever profitable in any group.

Ele’s healing has saved me from dieing loads of times and saves a lot of players running around WvW or the rest of the group…

Its really good, Ele’s healing is probably way, way better than the damage they do in fact…

Meglobob.8620:

Ele’s healing has saved me from dieing loads of times and saves a lot of players running around WvW or the rest of the group…

Its really good, Ele’s healing is probably way, way better than the damage they do in fact…

ele damage isn’t bad, if you stop insisting wearing useless armor. also, he has blinds, cripples, immobilize and chills, a few of the more important CCs in wvw.

especially in wvw you don’t win if you heal more than your enemy – you win by killing them. quickly and decisively, before reinforcements arrive.

I absolutely love it when our commanders say ’I’ve put some healing to the front’ and you see a healing rain, while they autoattack from the back.. great. 1.5k healing surely works wonders against 20k dmg per second..
you know what really works in wvw? not getting hit in the first place. eles ALSO have swirling winds on focus in air and a smallscale reflect on earth, or a smokescreen from a thief, or a wall of reflection from a guard (or engi) or a feedback, temp curtain or illusionary warden from a mesmer.. they all are capable of mitigating incredible amounts of damage.

ever placed a feedback/wall of reflection into a hallway leading into stonemist lordroom? I’ve inflicted several 100k of damage with that. every single point of damage was one my team didn’t get and theirs did. guardians and mesmers (including myself) have saved me from far more damage than any healer ever will be able to outheal.

yes, an occasional heal is nice, in wvw or anywhere, but it’s neither necessary nor useful, when that person could also mitigate the damage in the first place and also deal damage, instead of trying to outheal.

for most people PVT and clerics are a clutch they use when they have trouble with the effects of so many attackers, or lack the reaction to dodge when something really bad is coming. there are of course exceptions of those that actively try to play a linebreaker, and they’re very useful for the rest of the group to do damage while they distract the enemies, but most players are really not that good at being the focus of every enemy and just die, no matter the armor – thus they could as well wear something useful and do damage.

So I suppose my final question is.. why bring an ele over a necro? is there a reason? in WvW and PvE.. thank you

All said and done, any healing is better than none. If a group with Ele, Necro, Mesmer, Ranger or Engi or whatever combo group-healed a little when they can it does make things a lot easier all round for the group especially when fighing the big ’uns (Champs etc).

Off topic i know but I miss the total healer class (monk), totally underplayed by a lot but never undervalued in high level areas. A good monk was the most precious player, a bad monk was public enemy no1

I wouldn’t suggest necromancer for healing groups… ele, mesmer and engi do much better. ~imo~

Man, this thread is so misleading. If I didn’t know my Necromancer very well, I would have believed that Necromancers out-heal elementalists and soon even Guardians lol.

It is well known that the best heal/support classes are Elementalists and Guardians. Even if Necromancers can do some AOE heals through traiting wells (30 in blood magic), the ability to give out buffs for your party is very limited and negligible.

So if you are asking for group support, definitely go elementalist. Healing is just half of the role, group buffs is much more important.