Guild Wars 2

Hello! I don’t play much sPvP but I have watched a few tournaments on steam. One weird that that struck me was how long the players would wait to use their heal skill. So often I’d see players (professional players, no less) sitting at 50% health for 20-30 seconds (sometimes longer) when their heal was off cooldown and ready to be used. Why do they do this? I’m sure there’s a good reason but it’s lost on me.

They’re just messing up. With some rare exceptions, heals should be used on cooldown.

Lopez.7369:

They’re just messing up. With some rare exceptions, heals should be used on cooldown.

That’s not necessarily true at all. 50% is a lot of health and certain builds have lots of healing besides the utility slot or ways to avoid damage in general. Also, some heals have secondary abilities like the Guardians Shelter. You don’t just use that automatically when it comes off cooldown you want to use it to avoid a burst rotation.

The best way to use your heal is to heal close to 95% of your total hp. This gives you time to last longer by extending the amount of hp you get per second.

For example, if your heal is at 5k, you wait until you take about 5-6k dmg to use your heal. This will put you up back 90%+ and your heal would be on cool down. Most good players will know their strengths enough to be able to use their heal at the right time. Your goal as a player is to break your opponents hp/sec gain. This is probably what is happening when you see them low in hp. Of course the main goal is to kill, but lessening your opponents heal/sec is just as good.

Guardians have like one of the highest hp/sec gain in game, so some can afford to get low before they use their heal.

Hope that helps you understand.

Some heals also double up as condi-cleanse (e.g. necro/warrior/thief (if using hide in shadows + stealth condi removal traits)/mesmer(traited)) and using them prematurely means you can get tagged with a lot of condis (which are everywhere at the moment) and get spiked from 100-0 while immobilized (i.e. since you can’t dodge while immobilized).

When a heal should be used really depends on the class, the situation and the type of heal. e.g. If a guardian uses his signet of resolve he loses the passive condition removal for 40 seconds (up to 4 condis). In this case it’s better to let some conditions get cleansed then heal rather than heal right away and eat a lot of extra damage from 8-10 stacks of bleeding.

An additional possibility was that they didn’t expect to remain so long in combat mode.

+ traits that give buffs while <X% hp.

Two main reasons why you could choose not to heal:

1. If you know you’re currently not the enemy team’s main target, you don’t necessarily need to heal immediately, and it may be more important to be putting DPS on your team’s main target. In a teamfight, it’s a race to down the first person, and sometimes that’s more important than healing yourself if you aren’t being targeted since healing takes a precious second or more out of your DPS rotation.

2. If the fight is likely to be over soon, it’s not that important to heal — just finish the fight, then wait for out of combat to heal you.