Guild Wars 2

I dont know if its just me but ive just hit 40 on my ele and put 10 traits in water for the increased healing and also have 10 in lightning n fire. I thought i would try a healing build since ive got some healing gear and made off spec healing items from my crafting.

I went to do a few events to help keep people alive and on all 3 of the events i got Bronze – where as if i went fire its a gold most of the time. The healing is water is weak and thats an understatement! yes we have 2 aoe heals but at what cost…hardly any healing with a 15-30 secs cd. waterbolt is poor healing also so when im trying to keep people alive i thought that might contribute towards a gold but i was wrong. Now i just dont see the point of healing on my Ele since i get no reward for it…. Is this a on going issue or does it sound like im just raging over water expectations?

not spell checked this so was in a hurry to type it :P

I guess that u should not only heal, and so if u rotate your attunements you should get the gold medal.

I’ve noticed the same with my ele and even more generally with my warrior: if I run around ressing people I get bronze, if I just hack at the enemy with no thougth for the other players around, I’ll get gold.

The measurement for the contribution level in an event needs to be adjusted for ressing and supporting characters (I’d wager the guardian and probably most other classes too can have the same problem, if they’re too support-oriented).

btw: don’t underestimate the default staff attack in water. mine heals quite a bit and its AoE, so in combination with a few melee guys its pretty useful. or if you’re running along alone, you can run to the monster and hit it and get healed. you won’t do much damage but you can stand forever ;-)

Events are determined by the damage you contribute. Pointless to be support during an event if you want gold.

Honestly, the purpose of a support/healing setup is for dungeon/WvWvW play. Besides even with a full healing power setup you won’t see absurdly high healing numbers. I was actually just talking to a friend on steam about this for Engineers healing since I play a support Engineer with my friends for explorable dungeons. I told him healing is not meant to be traditional “Sit there and heal the person and move on.” You supplement the healing with blinds, slows, daze, knockback, knockdown and just crowd control in general and evade in order to make the healing actually count.

You should find balance in your build. An all exclusive healer won’t do much good.
As staff ele I usually keep on fire, then if players need a little heal I swap to water, get the 2 water field out (by swapping I also apply regeneration, then I blast my arcane wave inside the water fields for extra healing). Then swap to something else until water is on cooldown. The 2nd skill is a good damage as well, waterbolt is meh. And if you get close with arcane blast you also do damage.

As bennyrosso said it, you should rotate attunements.

To the OP,

I am an MMO healer by inclination too, but we need to get over that attitude. There’s no such thing as a pure healer in GW2, the abilities are simply not designed to allow a consistent and sustainable stream of healing.

Instead, ANet are emphasising that people need to be responsible for keeping themselves alive; primarily by avoiding damage altogether, as well as by mitigating damage and self-healing.

It is possible to play in a support-centric manner, but you need to rotate through abilities, debuffing, DPSsing and dropping your heals too. If you’re an ele, you must not just sit in water, or you’re wasting most of your power.

It took me a while to get used to this. Of course the flipside is that people can’t stand around expecting you to fix their mistakes. In GW2, you really can’t heal through stupid :)

The downed mechanic is also super-important. Rezzing people is very valuable, and professions with rez-related talents can also make a huge difference, but it’s everybody’s responsibility.

I know it’s a bit odd, and a change of pace, but it makes an odd sort of sense.. Think more Diablo 3 than WoW (oh god, people are going to rage at that :D). Give it a go, the faster-paced style is quite fun :)

I still do it. I like seeing the splashes and green numbers around everyone. I do drop Ice Bombs often and roll out my fire sigil (sp?) when it’s up. I love keeping my eye on the screen for people that need rezzing and jump on that. Sometimes I’ll flip into Fire if it’s easy peasy, or start in fire.

Plus, at 15 water (I think it’s 15), there’s a heal that happens as you change ‘into’ water, so it really does nudge you with the idea of changing our attunement during combat.

Regardless of whether I do a fight switching it up or straight on water, or how much I rez or drop ice bombs or use my condition sigil, I usually seem to get Golds if there aren’t ‘that’ many people around. Silvers in really big zergs. And that’s ok. If I throw in all the bronze ones I get when I’m just standing around fighting mobs for crafting drops and not interested in the DE, it all evens out. I don’t pay too much attention to it.

I love helping others. I’m that person that runs over to rez random people or tries to get them out of a tough spot.

However, in GW2 “healing” is largely the responsibility of the individual. It’s good to have “group benefit” skills, but healing is something a person can and should manage themselves through use of dodging and their own skills.

Support is certainly useful, but not so much as direct healing. Adding boons and removing conditions is useful and can help someone out. Abilities that “heal” are a bonus, and my experience is that they help people a little bit, but not as much as that person using their own skills can help themselves.

Better not to try to push toward a “healer” build – which doesn’t really exist in this game (and isn’t supposed to), but more a “helper” build, but still being able to carry your own “weight” in the fight.

I do think more than damage done should matter in participation level, however – but it seems it would be incredibly complicated to lay out the criteria. Perhaps worthwhile, but it would take some time to implement.

OP,
I wouldnt throw the towel in about healing. carry a healing set of of weapons for your ele, and switch when you want to heal ppl when there are alot of other mobs killing stuff but they could use the hp suppor.
If there are not alot of toons slaying things wipe out the staff and Bam toasted mobs. Its tough to find the right balance.
As a guardian i always carry a staff and throw out some hp and help out my buddies. Good luck with th ebalance though. Dont get stuck in one or the other cause just like yoda said, " you must unlearn what you have learned". HAHA sorry couldnt help it.

This definitely seems borked. Healing/rezzing or even clearing trash instead of the event main boss nets less than just concentrating on the main boss results. This needs to be addressed.

zeuseason.5281:

instead of the event main boss

The event was about the boss, not about the trash or the fellow players.

Agreed with the points above, I’d love to be able to get credit for healing during events but the event reward system is very much every toon for themselves. In group events I tend to stick to doing damage and save the healing for when I’m running a dungeon

I think it would be a smart move to consider the amount of healing done in the event zone towards the goal for events. Reviving is a form of healing, so this would help people who revive as well. My guardian has a similar problem if I shift him into a tanky build to take big hits from veterans or event bosses – I tend to get silvers if I do that.

Seems silly that for many events, I can get a bronze for walking by it and making zero contribution or a bronze for full-out supporting during the event. It should be worth at least a silver.

On my ele, I tend to stick with fire for events. If a player is downed, I swap to water long enough to drop a geyser on him and then go back to fire immediately.