Guild Wars 2

What the hell? This is why people shouldn’t be allowed to post.
Currently defensive/supportive builds > dps builds by tons, go pvp before you talk. Support/defense is utterly overpowered and gamebreaking

Defensive builds are gamebreaking because of the natural tankiness of the builds. Look at Guardians, specifically, who have high hp/high armor/high damage mitigation and therefore only have to supplement themselves with light healing to survive.

On my support Ele, I run Soldier’s because the 5k HP you gain is MILES better than the +healing clerics provides. Like these people are saying, what you actually gain from +healing is awful.

The key here is that support builds should lose some of their natural/proactive tankiness, and become reactive healers. This forces those defensive builds to actually have to hit their buttons and avoid stuns/interrupts to stay alive. The bonus to this is that they are providing greater team healing if they DO survive. A more reactive gameplay is much more fun to watch, much more fun to play, and much less frustrating from a dpser’s viewpoint.

what anet wants is changing the old “tank-healer-dps” role system and they did it by giving everyone a self heal, nice defensive options, good damage options and if the ratios werent like this their effort would be futile

If they reduced bunker builds a lot and increased healing ok
At current point healing would make bunkers indefinetly best choises ingame.

Look at it this way. If healing and support was strong in GW2, players would start to want healers to depend on, just because they’d make things so much easier having them around. That in turn would bring back holy trinity that they tried to remove. (Assuming Bunkers become the tanks)

As things stand now, everyone can fight on the front or back lines and everyone can lend a little helping hand to thier fellow player in some way or another.

So you’re suggesting that glass cannons shouldn’t be able to kill quickly and that we should introduce healers back into the game? No.

Anet removed the holy trinity for a reason. It pigeonholes people into certain roles and makes finding proper groups incredibly annoying. And you are suggesting the holy trinity. Heals are weak because strong heals means a class can specialize in them and become a healer.

Throughout your whole post you’ve been suggesting that you should be unkillable if specced right, that you should be able to outheal any damage in 1v1. We already have bunkers who are unbeatable against 1 person, and the devs consider that a problem. We don’t need stronger support.

Division.9618:

So you’re suggesting that glass cannons shouldn’t be able to kill quickly and that we should introduce healers back into the game? No.

Anet removed the holy trinity for a reason. It pigeonholes people into certain roles and makes finding proper groups incredibly annoying. And you are suggesting the holy trinity. Heals are weak because strong heals means a class can specialize in them and become a healer.

Throughout your whole post you’ve been suggesting that you should be unkillable if specced right, that you should be able to outheal any damage in 1v1. We already have bunkers who are unbeatable against 1 person, and the devs consider that a problem. We don’t need stronger support.

You misunderstood his entire post so badly… Anet removed the holy trinity because it pigeonholes people? Like being pigeonholed to only play dps in order to feel like you’re making a contribution? He never said anything about being unkillable if specced right, or being able to outheal damage in 1v1, I don’t know where you got any of that, all he said (and I agree 1000000%) is that healing skills are vastly underpowered compared to damage skills, and that investing in healing is 1/8th as effective as investing in power. If I’m running with a team I’ll heal spec my guardian, as it’s the closest thing I can get to a healer, but if I’m pugging there’s absolutely no point, and it kittens me off that Anet has taken away my choice on what kind of character to play, whilst simultaneously praising themselves for not having to rely on the holy trinity.

Healers don’t pidgeonhole players. They pidgeonhole entire groups. Healing is a finnicky concept in gaming because having dedicated healers means one of two things.

A) At least one healer is absolutely necessary for every group

B) Healers serve no purpose other than to slow the game down

Remember people standing outside story missions spamming “LF monk”? You don’t see that anymore. In fact, you rarely see anyone looking for any specific classes. That’s because people are more free to pick their play-style, and roll with it when dedicated healers do not exist.

and to add to Rottaran

healing skills are plenty powerful, they’re just designed to be used for bunkers instead of dedicated healers.

Healing is a crutch and is reserved for games where there is barely any skill involved. Enabling dedicated healers means either making them OP or slowing down the game significantly. This is why a lot of action MMORPG’s trash the healer concept, because healers are bad for a game if you have other ways to mitigate or recover from damage.

Like Rottaran said, healers serve no purpose other than to weigh the game down, especially in a game like GW2 where dodging is possible. If you actually want to stand in the back and spam healing spells, this is the wrong game for you.

Besides, he said damage prevent/healing are low performance, meaning he has no idea how dominant bunker builds are in sPVP. Guardians and Elementalists rely heavily on having a lot of self healing spells to survive.

Support does not mean just healing. It includes boons, sprints, haste, stability, it is intentional there will never be dedicated healers in this game. The difference is DPS can stand on it’s on and do well, support and control struggle more, but a good support and control + DPS will always beat two or three DPS unless they are not yet good players.

Nobody talk about create the HT.
Nobody talk about weken DD.
Nobody talk about create a dedicate healer.

All of us just talk about BALANCE and make a sense of healing powers and altruistic healing skills…

The gap in playing, skill, level between dps and heal/support is huge.

Please, compare altruistic HEALING skills with Damage skills and draw your own conclusions…

CD
Damage: 5-10-15-20-30 seconds.
Healing: 20-40-60-90-120-240 seconds.

Area effect
Damage: a lot of yards… a lot…
Healing: 600y

Effect
Damage: from 1000 to 5000 damage… every 5 seconds.
Healing: from 150 to 2000 life restored… every 20 seconds…

Taget
Damage: click your target and spam it!
Healing: I suppose “here” might be a good place to throw the spell… oh no! I miss it again! Let’s whait others 90s and let’s fail it again!

Bonus
Damage: 1 point in “Power” = 1 damage.
Helaing: 1 point in healing power = 0.125… it means 1=8

Contribution
Damage: Yes! You killed him! 10pvp points!
Healing: Oh, that 1000 healing was yours? Noce… good boy.

No Holy Trinity
Damage: yes… you can do it.
Tank: no taunt… but something can be done (I’m doing it, so I know it can be possible)
Healing: no you can’t.

Why make it possible to create a build that’s focussed on support and/or CC – and at the same time discourage using such a build by not giving xp for using those skills?
Why does reviving give xp, but not healing, nor things like aoe retribution and -damage mitigation?

We have to paint a wall. Me and you…
Damage is “red paint”. Healing is “blue paint”.
Why your brush is bigger than mine?
Why your can of paint is bigger than mine?
Why you can give 5 brush stroke and me just 1?
Who will chose blu paint, if this is the state?

we are forced to play DD build cause sup/heal is low performance

The way stats are scaled is completely unbalanced… Your return on investment in an offensive stat greatly exceeds the defensive stats (in ignoring vitality).

Not only would this help those who like to support, but it would also encourage support. There are those who like to watch the white numbers, and there are those who like to watch the green numbers. Classes should be self sufficient, but only up to a point. Those who put time and effort into being the supportive types should be rewarded for doing so.

I agree with the OP. Most of the support skills in this game are terrible. The only ones that are really useful are the ones that happen automatically, or have no cast/cooldown and don’t cut into your time spent dealing damage. Heals are marginally useful when they’re used on a target that has extremely high toughness, but that means a support is only really good at keeping themselves alive. The healing from a support build isn’t going to do anything to keep your thief or warrior buddy alive.

Pretty much the only supporting action that actually requires player awareness/input/positioning and is also not a complete waste of time, is reviving downed players by pressing F. This basically means “support” is actually just building tanky and keeping yourself topped off so that you can live long enough to sit there and channel a revive when your DPS goes down. Maybe you also throw some incidental condition removal or small heals on your allies, but it’s not really something that has a big impact on how you play since it kind of just happens as you hit people.

I much preferred the healers seen in most MMOs to the GW2 support builds that consist of being hard to kill, accidentally buffing people around you, and pressing F to revive.

The main problem is how do the arenanet devs allow the possibility for builds that can effectively keep allies alive without those builds becoming unkillable when using all their support skills on themselves? With the SPvP capture mechanics a tanky healer doesn’t work, and with the flexibility of GW2’s profession system anyone who makes a healer can also make it tanky. It’s not a problem with an easy answer. I have some ideas, but I don’t see how to do it without making pretty significant changes to trait trees, itemization, scaling etc. Other than possibly just increasing the healing done by support skills in WvW/PvE and leaving SPvP alone.

quotes still not working so
@Leeian
You’re talking about balancing healing and support spells, but the way the game is right now simply doubling regen rates or something similar will destroy balance.

Making healing stronger would mean that burst damage would become useless because people can be easily healed from that initial burst. Bunker builds would become ridiculously powerful, especially eles and guardians with their abundant healing. Even if you nerf bunkers some other way, the game would become much slower paced because everything would die much slower.

To me it seems like you want a different game. GW2 is nothing like most other MMOs in how it handles things. It takes a lot of hints from online action RPGs like dragons nest or vindictus. Things like dodging, those semi-combos we have, and the relatively tight hitboxes from attacks. It’s a half and half games, taking part of its mechanics from the traditional MMO and part of it from modern action MMORPG’s. You can’t hold this game to similar standards as games like WoW.

Arenanet made this game to be more fast paced and skill based. Fast paced and skill based doesn’t meld well with high healing and strong support. The support skills are weak compared to the offensive skills because the support is made to compliment the offense, not be it’s own thing.

Arenanet made this game to be more fast paced and skill based. Fast paced and skill based doesn’t meld well with high healing and strong support. The support skills are weak compared to the offensive skills because the support is made to compliment the offense, not be it’s own thing.

I don’t agree… :\

All the people forget the reason why Anet removed the HT.
70% players Dps
20% players healer
10% tank
In a game that require all the 3 classes, there is not balance because a lot of DPS will be out… no dungeon, no arena… not enough support…
That’s why they created a kind of self-sufficent classes. So… IN CASE OF ABSENCE of tank and healer players, nobody will be out and DD players could play anyway.

Something wrong happened in the process… at the end of the story even if there are a lot of skills, traits, equip and boons dedicated to Healing… healing build is useless… and Anet turned the game in a monoclass: DPS self-sufficent
So… no morte 3 options (like the others mmorpg) but just one.

Improve the healing will not create HT. Will just meke happen the ORIGINAL Anet idea.
Self sufficent in case of absence of healer and tank.
In thys way ALL the player will be free to play what they want, when they want and how they want…

You’re talking about balancing healing and support spells, but the way the game is right now simply doubling regen rates or something similar will destroy balance.

Bleeding x24
Burning
Poison
Confusion x?
Vulnerability x?

How many damage a player will suffer?
How can I counter it with 150hp regen???

How can you say Regen x3 would unbalance? In my opinion x3 is still not enough…
Obvously we have a different idea about balance. :P

Making healing stronger would mean that burst damage would become useless because people can be easily healed from that initial burst. Bunker builds would become ridiculously powerful, especially eles and guardians with their abundant healing. Even if you nerf bunkers some other way, the game would become much slower paced because everything would die much slower.

If Anet will improve the Healing, how many players will be influenced?
Just 20% play support/healer

What will be the possibility to meet a player with this BALANCED improvment?
20%…

In this 20% players, how many will be skilled, tough enough to be a good challenge?
10%… maybe less…

How much stronger it should be done?
This is the real question.

If Anet cross the line, making healing too much powerful, yes… the problem you are talking about will become real.
A little improvment, like regen x3, healing power 0.3 (not 0.125), friendly target, healt bar etc… will be balanced and will give a sense of those altruistic healing skills (right now useless, and nobody use it).

Yes… burst damage will be a little bit (not too much) countered.
And this is fair.
I can’t find where is the fun in a game where a stealter rogue pop behind ma and kill me in 2 seconds. He can cast 8 skills dealing a lot of damage with 15s cd… I have 120s cd and I can heal myself with 2000hp!!
Balance??? o.o

If sone one like win easly, should organizes a private boxe match with an 8y old child and stop play in a COMPETITIVE game.
GW2 should be competitive, and not a DPS dedicated game.

The truth is that -right now- all the DD players are living a beatyfull dream… kill, kill, kill, kill and more kill. That’s whay they don’t want change nothing.
Sup/Healers players are simply bored and they will left the game soon if nothing change…

By Altruistic healing are players talking about the guardian trait?

Because if you think that is underpowered you are clearly playing wrong.

“In case of the absense of a tank and healer” . No they deliberately abolished them, and here’s why.
Take a look at any gamer with some idea of what a metagame is. Heck let’s go even broader and include and gamer who has rudimentary knowledge of the “Holy Trinity”. Put a healer in a game and 9 times out of 10, they aren’t going to want to do anything without a healer to support to support them. Sure you could probably get through the easy areas without one, but anywhere with actual difficulty would make a healer go from a suggestion to a requirement. And there in returns all whats wrong with a healer, the queing times, the stress on the healer, the blame games and other dramas. Instead of making another game like that, Anet set out to make a game where everyone is self sufficient. Instead of a game which forces teamwork that forces teamwork by making everyone depend on eachother, they made a game where you can depend on yourself and encourages teamwork with abilities that help those around you.

As for you point of regen vs condition damage. Condition Removal says “hi”.

Also, if everyone in GW2 is dps, doesn’t that make no one a dps and just normal?

And sorry your point of healing output vs damage output is just flawed. Why? Because everyone’s thier own healer and own dps. Thus players have to depend on themselves to survive. It’s not healer vs dps, it’s player vs player. Players fighting with nothing but their personal skills to keep them alive. No depending on someone to fight for you, no playing recklessly because someone else is keeping you alive.

Excuse the redundancy of my post. I’m writing this on my phone.

Ya it’s a burst game, like you know – FPS games… but without the aiming that makes FPS games challenging.

I guess they replaced that with the twitch reflex that is the dodge mechanic and other support / control options – which with a clear head, observant eyes and good reflexes determine the gap between skilled and unskilled players.

I’m very underwhelmed.

It even goes against their own trash can argument that they want this to be an esport, becaus the most important part of becomming truly skilled at this game is being intimately familiar with the different profession abilities and casting animations on different races.

There is no question: healing should NOT (!) be higher in this game, if they would implement that it will become another generic game: we already have bunkers (tanks) and dps, we do not need people to start healing allies like crazy, because healers ruin pvp in games – all your mistakes are forgiven if you go with a pocket healer, and on the other hand sometimes even playing without any mistakes will get you to loose if enemy simply outheals you (best example wow 2×2 arenas, double dps unless creating a perfect CC chain will most probably loose against the same skill healer+dps team).

Reasons why healing < Damage

1. Dodge (tottaly avoids any damage trown at you)
2. Defencive skills (evasions, invisibility, block, illiusions, guardian domes, reflecting projectiles and stoping foes and so on)
3.Downed form (they created downed form so you enter it, if you got altruistic healing you do not need downed form)

Now about conditions, many classes got condition removals yet very few classes got working decent boon removals thats why boons are weaker then conditions.

Even if i match boons look Vuln 25 stacks-25% more dmg,<Protection 33% less damage

Stacking up many conditions is harder then stacking 1 regen/protection.

Thats about it.

No thanks. Too many games have overpowered healing and damage avoidance, and even this game has builds that are too strong in that department (bunkers).

Totally disagree with the OP. There are tons of useful support skills available to every class. As for healing, I think the lack of powerful/spamable heals is one of the greatest things about the pvp in this game.

Some people are saying just up the power of healing skills, but what they are really saying is give us dedicated healers like in those other, crappy mmos. You can only tweak the current healing/durability/damage equation; the magnitude of change that the OP and Co are talking about would break the game.

The classes are not balanced, the weapon damage + power > armor + tough
A guardian full tough can be easily killed in 4 hit cos dont have the same evasion of other classes and lower hit points of warrior. This is not game for pro this is a game for worst player cos you need only ZERG for win a fight not be skilled or op zerg azerg everywhere 1vs 1 thief reign sovereign, guardian lack of def stats most of other dps exept warrior can reach the evasion and the damage thief / mesmer
If one classes is fulldef it should be do low damage but dont go down even if heal or not healed cos HAVE a heavy armor, but in this game armor dont reduced the damage in % but only numbers based on tough, tough and armor should be different things indeed………..

@Tesq: I’m assuming you only play sPvP, which is a disorganized mess. Pit a zerg against an organized team from tPvP and I can assure you the Zerg will lose. That’s why pub stomping exists.

Also, what you said about Guardian shows you have little understanding of how to play guardian.

@ Immo.9217
No i don’t mean that.
I used the same name but I mean Self-Healing (the one you use for yourself) and Altruistic-Healing (the one you use for your party).
that traits is good and i use it.

As I said:
“The truth is that -right now- all the DD players are living a beatyfull dream… kill, kill, kill, kill and more kill. That’s whay they don’t want change nothing.”

Nobody answered the main question:

1) Healing power add 0.125 for each poit to your heal…
If my gear give me total 1.000 healing power… how much it will be?
125…
So… if my altruistic healing spell restore 1.000, it will be 1.0125.

Why I should use Healing Power?? o.o

2) A basic Damage skill deal from 800 to 5.000 (or more damage).
An altruistic healing restore from 150 to 1.000.

A basic Damake skill have from 5s to 30s cd…
Healing from 30s to 240s cd…

Calculating a fight of one minute… how many damage a single skills can deal?
Damage: average of 20.000 damage
Healing: average of 4.000 hp recovered

If my damage influence the game like that… ad I can spam it a lot…
Why I should waste a skill for heal some one else?
Is not better destroy my enemy so as avoid every problems?

3) If my healing doesn’t give me contribution in the dynamic events, I don’t gain honor points in pvp and all my support does not receive rewards… but all mu damage is awarded… why I should do it?
If I heal my friends they will gain points and not me…

4)Why there are a lot of useless sup/heal skills like merciful intervention, orb of light, healing breeze, signet of mercy, sanctuary, line of warding, etc…?

5) Why Anet make it possible to create a build that’s focussed on support/healing and at the same time discourage using such a build??
What is the point?

6)why Anet create skills and stats like that if they are useless??

Please… answer this questions.
No… just to be clear “GW2 is a game without healers”, “No holy trinity” and “Go back WoW” is not an answer…

LoL

The game needs a nerf in defensive skills, if anything. Ever tried to fight bunker builds? Or double Guardians that chain-rez each other until the end of times?

I love the fact there are no direct healers. You know why?

Because every other game i’ve played it generally works out the group who has no healer will die.

In Rift the side which won the bg was the side with more healers. Spam heal, spam heal, spam heal. It was easy mode tbh.

In Daoc 8v8 you needed 2 healers per grp as a rule.

In TOR, healing made for such easy wins.

(I never played wow, so don’t care about it’s mechanics).

This game is all about damage avoidance/well timed cc, not blindly pumping out heals into yourself and your grp whilst they hack away without a care in the world, and if the other guy has no healer there’s nothing he can do.

Oh…btw..have you ever been up agianst a guardian+bunker elementalist? Good luck downing either of those two unless you have 4+ players….

Also..he who mentioned LoL….

None of the heals are spammable, they heal for a relatively small amount in comparison to damage taken and no way you can keep someone up under any sort of focus fire with those heals.

I still do not read answers to my questions.

The reason no one is answering your questions is because you would just ignore any answers which aren’t the answer you are looking for (which is that in your opinion healing is useless and there is no valuable support).

The fact is you are wrong. I don’t feel like taking the time crafting a response to address all your points which will result in a post by you countering everything I stated with your opinion rather than facts.

Healing and support are very important in this game and using them effectively can change the outcome of a match.

Can you tell us how the meeting goes?

ryston.7640:

Ya it’s a burst game

Which is a disappointment.

I found the actual combat in PVP (WvW in my case) to be more fun during the beta weekends when people were level 20ish, had bad gear and few traits.

Who won and lost came down to who played better, not who was quickest on the draw.

Wait, you’re going to have a Balance Meeting? WvW only becomes massively unbalanced when one server obtains 3 Orbs.

How can you Dev’s ignore the Orb buffs ARE the imbalance to the game? Talk about turning your heads from the actual problem when it has been looking you in the face the whole time.

I actually think the way GW2 is spec’d now it actually pigeonholes people more. Thieves are by far the best roamers, Guardians are the best bunkers, etc. It just the way that the classes play, I’ve not played all of them, but it seems by far some classes are just best at filling a certain role.

There is another dynamic you are all missing out on and that’s mitigation. I think the balance between healing and damage gap is bridged by mitigation i.e. dodge, stealth, block, fear, etc. There is more than one way to skin a kitten, as the saying goes.

That mitigation is where survivability is in this game and in all honesty you just don’t see it that much, not in MMO’s. That’s where i think most of the complaints lay, it’s just a different dynamic. IF you can quickly get out of combat, you don’t even need a heal skill, the out of combat regen rate is pretty high.

My mesmer has ONE viable build in PvE: Illusionary persona with either 20 dom/dueling, or 10 dom/dueling/chaos/inspiration.

When I tried a build that a) didn’t use mainhand swords and greatswords, b)didn’t invest points dom/dueling and gearing, and c) didn’t have Illusionary Persona

it was horrible; on a Chaos/Inspiration heavy build my mesmer was getting respawns before he could finish killing group of mobs. I see warriors and guardians go full glass cannon and still maintain similar survivability to any of my balanced specs just because of the innate armor advantages. It’s particularly egregious with warriors. My AoE even with sword/sword+greatsword and illusionary persona shattering is still deficient relative to the range and frequency of aoe available to other classes.

Some classes like the guardian trivialize PvE with high protection, aegis, regen uptime, while my mesmer even traiting with no damage can at best hope to give allies regen with phantasms, and that’s as far as group support goes besides vigorous revelation. Restorative Mantras is not good at all compared to elementalist and guardian group offhealing.

Supposedly mesmers and thieves offered support with stealth skills for rezzzing. Guess what? Bosses in explorable dungeons LOVE to drop AoE on downed players that will kill anyone before they even finish rezzing, so stealth does nothing in helping get players back up. Mass Invisibility can even reset an encounter. I’ve yet to use any elite as much as Time Warp.

All I do on my mesmer is damage, and that damage isn’t even up to the levels of what warriors and thieves can do anyways. In PvE my mesmer just feels awfully limited besides being a Time Warp elite provider. Anything else another class will provide in greater quantities and more efficiently.

Zenith.7301:

My mesmer has ONE viable build in PvE: Illusionary persona with either 20 dom/dueling, or 10 dom/dueling/chaos/inspiration.

When I tried a build that a) didn’t use mainhand swords and greatswords, b)didn’t invest points dom/dueling and gearing, and c) didn’t have Illusionary Persona

it was horrible; on a Chaos/Inspiration heavy build my mesmer was getting respawns before he could finish killing group of mobs. I see warriors and guardians go full glass cannon and still maintain similar survivability to any of my balanced specs just because of the innate armor advantages. It’s particularly egregious with warriors. My AoE even with sword/sword+greatsword and illusionary persona shattering is still deficient relative to the range and frequency of aoe available to other classes.

Some classes like the guardian trivialize PvE with high protection, aegis, regen uptime, while my mesmer even traiting with no damage can at best hope to give allies regen with phantasms, and that’s as far as group support goes besides vigorous revelation. Restorative Mantras is not good at all compared to elementalist and guardian group offhealing.

Supposedly mesmers and thieves offered support with stealth skills for rezzzing. Guess what? Bosses in explorable dungeons LOVE to drop AoE on downed players that will kill anyone before they even finish rezzing, so stealth does nothing in helping get players back up. Mass Invisibility can even reset an encounter. I’ve yet to use any elite as much as Time Warp.

All I do on my mesmer is damage, and that damage isn’t even up to the levels of what warriors and thieves can do anyways. In PvE my mesmer just feels awfully limited besides being a Time Warp elite provider. Anything else another class will provide in greater quantities and more efficiently.

You realize you are posting in the PvP forum? My god, get this whine out of here. You are complaining about PvE balance in one of the most casual PvE games ever created, lol.

Given that skills are not split besides Confusion, their impact and meaning from PvP to PvE is the same. Offhealing doesn’t suddenly become useful because the format changes.

Feel free to keep up your terse attitude toward other posters — it’s not my post who will be attracting moderator attention.

However this is the pvp forums so most likely yours would get more attention to being off topic.

I wish we could watch the devs meetings and see more reasons for why things get shot down or get passed.

Defektive.7283:

Can you tell us how the meeting goes?

That’s some amazingly wishful thinking bro. About as much chance of that happening as there is of a dinosaur falling from the sky and killing the Easter bunny…No exaggeration.

Op, you want a new game, the type of mechanics you want are horrible and would go against the nature of the game.

you have to aim your heals, this is on purpose, it makes healing more about paying attention to the battlefield and coordinating with your team.

you want healing to equal dps, this is overpowered, it means that it would be impossible to kill someone as long as a healer is around, AND keeping in mind people have self heals. It also implies you think you should be able to outcure a pure dps, this would trivialize all game modes.

You are ignoring that anet said they didnt want a dedicated healer. The class roles they were talking about were control support and dps. Support is more than “altruistic healing” support is blind, interupts, reflects, boons, and healing.

Now one cold argue for more interesting healing skills, and lower cooldown/lower healing skills, but dont know if it matters that much, i think prevention skills are more interesting and fit the game style better. Maybe a sacrificial healing skill where you give away your hp.

Essentially the stuff you want makes for a different type of game, that i dont think would be a good change to what this game offered people. I understand feeling like the healing stat sucked, but they had it more effective in beta, and even in that short a period, those classes quickly became dedicated healers.

Wow… a game designer.
Let’s hope something good will come out. ^^

No Seether.7285
If Anet didn’t create some stats like “Healing Power” and some skills like “Merciful Intervention”, removing completly the possibility of making a sup/heal build, I would not have had any problems. A game disigned for self-sufficent classes should not have some kind of things…
But right now there are some stats or skills that evidence to the contrary…
So… there we hare 2 way:
1- Remove it
2- Make it functional

No sense to keep it as they are cause nobody use it.

you have to aim your heals, this is on purpose, it makes healing more about paying attention to the battlefield and coordinating with your team.

Yes…
Why this is not happening for the DD skills?
Why I should pay attention for the healing, and not for the damage?
Why a player who want to help others, need an hardest difficulty? o.o

And no… I can’t pay attention with skills like “merciful Intervention” that heal RANDOMLY engi tuttets, mesmer clone, necro minnion and ranger pet and not players…
I can’t pay attention if my orb of light DISAPPEAR if the terrain is steep.

you want healing to equal dps, this is overpowered, it means that it would be impossible to kill someone as long as a healer is around, AND keeping in mind people have self heals. It also implies you think you should be able to outcure a pure dps, this would trivialize all game modes.

No. Not healing equal to dps. That would be realy unbalanced.
Just a little improvment to make sense of skills and stats dedicated to healing…

Can you understand how much is useless healing power 0.125?

If Anet will make the improvment with criterion, there will be no unbalance.

You are ignoring that anet said they didnt want a dedicated healer. The class roles they were talking about were control support and dps. Support is more than “altruistic healing” support is blind, interupts, reflects, boons, and healing.

Again… i have already answered to this…

I’m not asking for a dedicated healer.
I ask just balance and a make a sense of certain skills and armor bonus that currently are useless.
And yes… I know that support is not honly healing… I wrote it 30000 times… but in this topic we talk about HEALING and not support in all his aspects.

Now one cold argue for more interesting healing skills, and lower cooldown/lower healing skills, but dont know if it matters that much, i think prevention skills are more interesting and fit the game style better. Maybe a sacrificial healing skill where you give away your hp.

I like damage preventing too.
Guardian have it, Aegis, and it works properly.
Give away your HP is a good idea, maybe in the future there will be something like that.

Essentially the stuff you want makes for a different type of game, that i dont think would be a good change to what this game offered people. I understand feeling like the healing stat sucked, but they had it more effective in beta, and even in that short a period, those classes quickly became dedicated healers.

Different doesn’t means worst and wrong.

Every player would be able to play what they want.
And this is good.

Healing is probably a little OTT for some classes and a little UP on some others.
Honestly don’t think its anything to whine about at this stage.

It does however require traiting and gearing for it.
Maybe a slight increase in the effectivness in points, and a lowering of the healing amount on some of the more abused skills would be alright.

IMO the healing now is good as it is. Last thing people want—last thing we want is a situation where healers can outheal any DPS. It drags fights into long boring stalemates, and its very frustrating to play when you’re DPS. Very. It will ruin PVP, like what happened in WOW after the release of Cata.

Sorry about the late reply. The hurricane took out my internet. Stupid nature.

I don’t agree… :\

All the people forget the reason why Anet removed the HT.
70% players Dps
20% players healer
10% tank
In a game that require all the 3 classes, there is not balance because a lot of DPS will be out… no dungeon, no arena… not enough support…
That’s why they created a kind of self-sufficent classes. So… IN CASE OF ABSENCE of tank and healer players, nobody will be out and DD players could play anyway.

Something wrong happened in the process… at the end of the story even if there are a lot of skills, traits, equip and boons dedicated to Healing… healing build is useless… and Anet turned the game in a monoclass: DPS self-sufficent
So… no morte 3 options (like the others mmorpg) but just one.

Improve the healing will not create HT. Will just meke happen the ORIGINAL Anet idea.
Self sufficent in case of absence of healer and tank.
In thys way ALL the player will be free to play what they want, when they want and how they want…

Anet didn’t want to make people self sufficient in the absence of healers and tanks, they wanted to remove healers and tanks entierly. That’s why there are no taunts, and exactly why healers are missing. You can’t have it the way you’re describing. If they make dedicated healers, they will be demanded everywhere and people won’t run without them.

The healing skills are there for bunker builds. People that want to play defensively in PVP, not for dedicated healers.

Bleeding x24
Burning
Poison
Confusion x?
Vulnerability x?

How many damage a player will suffer?
How can I counter it with 150hp regen???

How can you say Regen x3 would unbalance? In my opinion x3 is still not enough…
Obvously we have a different idea about balance. :P

You’re not supposed to counter with 150 HP regen. You’re supposed to counter with condition clensers, high HP, and multiple healing skills. You’re looking at it way too linearly. It’s not about which number is bigger, it’s about how many options you have to avoid damage. Instead of just pure healing you have to account for dodging, blocking, aegis, protection, stability, condition cleansing, etc.. . All of these mitigate damage, and you aren’ t considering any of them.

How much stronger it should be done?
This is the real question.

Actually Anet has said multiple times that bunker builds are way too strong. Bunkers rely on a lot of healing to get by. I played an elementalist bunker before, and with the large amount of healing and defensive skills i had, no amount of bleed, poison, and whatever could beat my defense, protective spells, healing water magic, and regen.

If sone one like win easly, should organizes a private boxe match with an 8y old child and stop play in a COMPETITIVE game.
GW2 should be competitive, and not a DPS dedicated game.

The truth is that -right now- all the DD players are living a beatyfull dream… kill, kill, kill, kill and more kill. That’s whay they don’t want change nothing.
Sup/Healers players are simply bored and they will left the game soon if nothing change…

GW2 is competitive. Just because a lot of people focus on damage doesn’t mean it’s skilless. There is far more skill here than in any game with a healer. Like i said, being successful is no longer about standing far away and spamming healing spells, it’s now about working with your team to perform combos, doing the right moves at the right time to mitigate damage, and making sure that you survive to help your team beat the enemy.

Healers are a crutch. Often times they take no skill to play and they take away the need for skill from other characters. Why should i dodge when i know a healer can just heal me up if i take damage? Why do i need to put up stability or a stun breaker to break out of an enemies burst if a healer can just heal me before i die?

Division.9618:

Healers are a crutch. Often times they take no skill to play and they take away the need for skill from other characters. Why should i dodge when i know a healer can just heal me up if i take damage? Why do i need to put up stability or a stun breaker to break out of an enemies burst if a healer can just heal me before i die?

Spoken like someone who has probably never even attempted to fill a healing role in any kind of truly competitive environment.

In games with healers, they’re not a crutch, they’re part of the game dynamic. If you face tank damage because “well I’ll just get heals”, you know what’s going to happen? Your healer is gonna go OOM spamming on your clueless self and you’ll lose the match. It’s that simple. Being a decent healer in competitive pvp is typically 90% about positioning, which is what the vast majority of players have trouble perfecting. You have to know where all enemy players are all the time (as well as what abilities they have available at all times) so you don’t get interrupted or otherwise controlled at critical moments – and you have to know where your teammates are in relation to you at all times so you can keep up with insta-cleanses and whatnot. The other 10% comes down to having decent teammates who know that they need to actively try and mitigate damage on themselves in any way they can so as to a) help you conserve mana, and b) avoid placing you in vulnerable positions.

Granted, none of that is very relevant to GW2 pvp in its current state, but that’s how it is at the competitive end of any MMORPG with a standard design model.

Actually i played (well.. was forced because no one wanted any other type of paladin for PVP) to heal on my paladin in WoW when burning crusade was the latest expansion. In matches with more than 3v3 people healing usually consisted of standing in the back and spamming heals on anyone that looked like they had low HP.

They’re a part of the game’s dynamic because a lot of the more traditional RPG’s don’t have any way to truly mitigate damage. They’re a crutch and those games need crutch because of how its combat is designed. They designed the game to make the crutch look better. This game doesn’t need that crutch and it wasn’t designed for it.

Division.9618

In matches with more than 3v3 people healing usually consisted of standing in the back and spamming heals on anyone that looked like they had low HP.

Thanks for proving my point I guess? When I said “competitive environment”, I meant against serious competition, not at sub-1500 ratings where people barely know what to do with their class.

Anyway, not trying to hijack the thread – just wanted to correct the absurdity of that “healers take no skill” comment.

Noctred.6732:

\

Thanks for proving my point I guess? When I said “competitive environment”, I meant against serious competition, not at sub-1500 ratings where people barely know what to do with their class.

Anyway, not trying to hijack the thread – just wanted to correct the absurdity of that “healers take no skill” comment.

Well to tell you the truth i was talking more about PVE and lower ranked PVP.

I guess i can partially retract my statement. In competitive environments healers take as much skill as other classes.

I think the cd on support skills may be a little long in this game and some of the support weapons not so great. Healing Power was nerfed in Beta and does not seem to be as high as it should be.

Leeain,

I agree with a lot of what you say, but have some things to share that might interest you. I play a staff Elementalist in dungeons. I know this is in the sPvP section, but much of this applies. What you want is to be able to heal your teammates efficiently, but think it is not possible/effective. This is because to heal effectively, you must blast Water fields.

I use Soldier’s (power/vit/tough) armor and weapons, along with Cleric’s (power/heal/tough) jewelry. All exotic. I am able to heal my entire team up to full with no problems. This is because I can blast my Water fields multiple times. My spec is 10 Earth (Earth’s Embrace) 30 Water (Cleansing Wave, Aquamancer’s Alacrity, Cleansing Water), and 30 Arcane (Elemental Attunement, Blasting Staff, Evasive Arcana). Here are the things I can do for my team:

Triple Blast Geyser: Likely anyone in range is at full HP.

Quadruple Blast Healing Rain : Everyone in range is at full HP and loses all conditions.

Triple Blast Lava Font: We all get 10 stacks of might.

Blast Frozen Ground X times: We all get Frost Armor, very situational.

Blast Static Field X times: Usually an out-of-combat thing to give party swiftness, so will probably be 1-2 blasts as Evasive Arcana can only be used while in combat.

On top of that, I end up tanking a lot because mobs and bosses seem drawn to players with high toughness. I also do good damage, especially AOE, because of a high power stat. And don’t forget that staff also has great CC.

As far as cooldowns go, yes, the healing cooldowns tend to be pretty big. But with the trait Aquamancer’s Alacrity, the cooldowns are lowered by 20% to 16s for Geyser and 36s for Healing rain. This still seems high, but you will be switching attunements a lot to give other things to the party, as well as switching to CC as needed. By the time you get back to Water attunement, Geyser will be up. And the next time you come back to Water, Healing Rain will be up.

As far as being able to effectively hit your party with the heals, know that the trait Blasting Staff increases the size of your AOEs, and also consider that they don’t even have to be standing in the Water field to receive the blast heal. Just near it. And with Blasting Staff, the radius of Healing Rain is absolutely massive. And if some of your ranged players are too far from your blast to get the heal, they can still shoot through it for regen, and can still get all their conditions removed. Also remember you’re not the only one who can blast your fields. Throw in a hammer Guardian for a whole lot more fun.

As far as sPvP goes, Geyser can cover a regular sized point, and Healing Rain can cover a large point. “My” build (probably switch Aquamancer’s with Soothing Disruption) is one of the things people complain about in sPvP as far as bunkers being bs. This and Guardian bunkers. Yeah, we probably won’t kill anything there, but we can hold a point very well due to blasted Water fields and Cantrips.

Just something to think about.

TLDR: If you want to heal, you are playing the wrong class.

@Division.9618

Anet didn’t want to make people self sufficient in the absence of healers and tanks, they wanted to remove healers and tanks entierly. That’s why there are no taunts, and exactly why healers are missing. You can’t have it the way you’re describing. If they make dedicated healers, they will be demanded everywhere and people won’t run without them.

In the beginning, the main idea was that. During the game realization Anet choose to remove it entierly… but they didn’t cause now there is not traditional HT, we have GW2 Holy trinity:
Sup/Dps , glass cannon and bunkers.

I’m not a wow player. I am GW1 player.
In GW1 there was no taunt… taunt is not a GW option.

The healing skills are there for bunker builds. People that want to play defensively in PVP, not for dedicated healers.

Really? I don’t think so…

“Teleport to the nearest ally with the lowest health and create a healing area around them.”
“Command the Bow of Truth to barrage its location with healing arrows. This destroys the bow.”
“Create a geyser to heal nearby allies.”

This is just an example …

You’re not supposed to counter with 150 HP regen. You’re supposed to counter with condition clensers, high HP, and multiple healing skills. You’re looking at it way too linearly. It’s not about which number is bigger, it’s about how many options you have to avoid damage. Instead of just pure healing you have to account for dodging, blocking, aegis, protection, stability, condition cleansing, etc.. . All of these mitigate damage, and you aren’ t considering any of them.

Dodge works (just 2 times) on direct damage. You cant dodge Bleeding x24
Block and Aegis and Protection too. Incoming and direct damage, so if you are beleeding or you are burned, you keep it.
Stability make you immune 5 seconds to CC, don’t remove Conditions and don’t make you immune.

Don’t mix part of the fight that have nothing to do with a SPECULAR comparison.

- 11 conditions:
5 of them deal damage.
6 make you weak
Stack per amount and duration
Yes… You can remove it (not 100%, there are condition spammer build, like necro).

- 9 boons:
3 are healing/damage preventing
6 are buff
Stack just in duration.
Yes, people can remove it too… or convert it on themselves. And this balance the condition cleansing.

GW2 have a specular game design.
Everything have his opposite for balance.
But some time the balance is on the one hand.

Actually Anet has said multiple times that bunker builds are way too strong. Bunkers rely on a lot of healing to get by. I played an elementalist bunker before, and with the large amount of healing and defensive skills i had, no amount of bleed, poison, and whatever could beat my defense, protective spells, healing water magic, and regen.

Bunkers are a problem… but is not an healing problem…
I can’t see nothing wrong if you create a bunker build and people can’t kill you… If you choose to leave all the stats and the damage skills just for became a punching bag is ok… you’ll never die, but you’ll never kill.
Since the days of Baldur’s Gate people call it “Tank”.

The problem is that bunkers some times melt you. OP damage.
You have to choose… Damage Dealer or Punching Bag… not both of them.
This is not balanced.

GW2 is competitive. Just because a lot of people focus on damage doesn’t mean it’s skilless. There is far more skill here than in any game with a healer. Like i said, being successful is no longer about standing far away and spamming healing spells, it’s now about working with your team to perform combos, doing the right moves at the right time to mitigate damage, and making sure that you survive to help your team beat the enemy.

I can’t see the problem.
If you create, with your party, a team build like that, healers or not healers in the fight, your party will rest the same as always.
I’m talking about more playstyle options and not just crithammer or bunkers if you are a guardian (is an example).

Healers are a crutch. Often times they take no skill to play and they take away the need for skill from other characters. Why should i dodge when i know a healer can just heal me up if i take damage? Why do i need to put up stability or a stun breaker to break out of an enemies burst if a healer can just heal me before i die?

Have you ever play healer?
Have you ever play in a good team with coordination?
Healer is not God… some times is impossibile take care of all yout party.
You should keep play as always… why you should not?
If in a pro team some one act naif just because have an healer in team, he get kicked out.
You should keep play 100% with or without healer.