Guild Wars 2

( NOTE: I ran out of space in the original post, so my second post in this thread features my updated experiences with the build )

So I was hella excited for Aquatic Benevolence (+25% outgoing heals), hoping among hopes that it’d allow me to finally play a true and effective healer spec. So I put a build together and ran some tests and so far…

IT WORKS!

It works. It works so well.

I was scared this trait would be essentially useless in that even with the 35% increase the heals wouldn’t be enough to make any noteable difference, but I was happily proven wrong after a few hours of research and theorycrafting these past couple days with a build similar to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQFAWnMISLDW4A+MAdEGAoMcxkRBRKPiZGbA-TkAAyCsI8S5lzLjXSvseN+A
(Note: Currently torn between Water Cooldowns and Boon Removal on Water Swap. Right now I’m running cooldowns)

I’m using runes of the monk (Boon duration & +10% outgoing heals), and sigil of benevolence (.5% outgoing heals on kill) and Energy (preciously I used Sigil of Renewal ) with a celestial rune in an 0/0/2/6/6 setup. This trait so far has been absolutely awesome for my purposes. In Team Death Match my build keeps my entire team topped off (was PUGs vs PUGs though). The only challenge I had was ensuring no one died like.. ever.

So I recorded some of my progress on the skills. Skills in parenthases are how much it affects me personally. This is with Staff – Celestial Amulet & 30 water, +35% outgoing healing and no charges from Benevolence:

Water Elemental: 5,000*

Healing Rain: 329x 15 = 4935(3660), 7470 w/Soothing Mist

Geyser: 1349 x3 = 4047 (1035 x3 =3105)

Evasive Arcana Water Dodge: 2985

Water Attunement Swap (Cleansing Wave): 2196* (1757)

Water Blast Finisher: 2028

Regeneration: 329 (244)

Soothing Mist: 169

So basically, this means..

• Dodging in Water Attunement is always preferable than BLASTing a water field in Earth Attunment. Larger heal AND aoe condi removal.
• Soothing Mist + Regen = 500 health per second for your team. Essentially giving AoE Healing Signet.
• Haven’t calculated “Heal allies on weapon swap.” I think it’s about 1k
• Numbers with an asterisk (*) are estimated and are likely higher than those displayed.
• All of this ignores the fact that others will be contributing heals & healing themselves as well.

So far this build has been working surprisingly well. I’ve been recording footage of some of my tests and once I clean up the vids a bit I’d be happy to post them. This trait makes elementalist have hands down the best healing in the game and makes it possible to play an actual pure support/healer role in PvP without entirely screwing over your damage.

The best thing about it is that -keeping with the prestige of playing a staff Ele- it’s not easy. This isn’t a build where you can simply mindlessly spam heals and assume you’re playing at 100% effectiveness. Most support players know that heals are only 50% of the role. You also have to effectively CC, deal noticeable damage to have some form of pressure, and share the right boons at the right time. This requires good positioning, excellent awareness, a general knowledge of combo fields/finishers, and sufficient skill with the staff weapon. No mindless healbotting here.

The build is awesome in Team Death Match, can bunk surprisingly well and offers unparalleled team support from heals, boons, and CC. I’m scared to say it, but Elementalist is slowly worming its way into becoming my main if this build continues to prove effective.

Seems good, gonna try it out.

I have a few questions:

1. Isn’t sigil of energy better than renewal? The extra dodging will not only up your survival, but the extra cleansing wave or extra blast finisher might be worth more healing than renewal.
2. I’m unsure about cantrip mastery. I feel soothing wave for perma regen might be a better option than toning the cooldown of a single utility skill.

Inb4 “I hate healing”.

UPDATE 4/22/14

So after using this build for a bit, I’ve made some pretty considerable changes. Before I go in to them, there’s a couple things I must emphasis:

• All testing has been done with an sPvP mindset for now, I haven’t yet dipped into WvW but I’m expecting some nice results since I was able to play an effective Support Mesmer, and this support ele blows that out of the water.

• In sPvP Aquatic Benevolence is strong enough to work effectively without any assistance (Monks Runes, Benevolence Sigil).

I’ve yet to run the new healing numbers, but I tried two different variants: Runes of Strength with Intelligence (though I considered trying Battle) Sigil and what I’m currently running with: Runes of Balthazar with Settler’s Amulet which turned my build into this: 10/0/0/30/30 (replacing protection trait with burning duration and Armor of Earth with Cleansing Fire).
With the previous build I found I had a pretty hefty weakness to condition damage, and couldn’t do much damage without assistance. Strength runes helped me improve my personal damage, but because of the nature of staff skills most of my attacks were still very easy to dodge.
Staff has surprisingly strong condition application. My two damaging attacks are Eruption and Flame Burst, which hit for 6.5k and 4.7k respectively. while I can’t take out any bunkerish spec (though they can’t kill me) this makes me very strong versus many other builds, especially glassier builds like Mesmer and Thief. As a result, I have an even stronger presence in team fights; taking out squishier targets and keeping my team healed/booned/cleansed.

Here are the new healing numbers for allies. This is Settler’s gear only: 943 Healing Power ( 300 of that from traiting into water. Idk where the “43” comes from)

• Soothing Mist: 159
• Regeneration: 310
• Water Auto: 760
• Water BLAST Finisher: 1886
• Dodge/Water Attunement Swap: 2806
• Geyser: 3915 (1305 x3)
• Healing Rain 4650 (310 x15) – 7035 w/ Soothing Mist

So it turns out Cleansing Wave (EA dodge) and Water Attunement Swapping heal for the same amount, my calculation was a bit off last time because the numbers were hard to read with all that green popping up. Like I said, even with the reduced healing and even without Benevolence Sigil/Monk Runes, Aquatic Benevolence is still very good.

@Diogo: Because of Evasive Arcana’s 10 second cooldown, energy sigils won’t make much of a difference in proccing it, but the extra dodges would help. Its more of a personal preference, really, either sigil would work. UPDATE I was so wrong. Energy sigils are some of the BEST synergy with Evasive Arcana due to each individual skill having it’s own 10 second cooldown.

As for cantrip mastery.. I find that I often have an abundance of Regeneration due to Healing Rain and swapping to water attunement, I considered Piercing Shards (20% more damage to vuln foes) for a nice little damage boost but ultimately I’d rather have Armor of Earth on a lower cooldown. While I normally make it a personal rule to not spend an entire trait on one skill, Armor of Earth is one of my few exceptions because of how incredibly useful it is.

You better retract your switching mains statement, sir.

Oh really Chaos? Switching over to ele? You post good threads on the mesmer forums it be cool if you stopped by the ele forums more often.

Imo this made ele a very good, if not, the best healer in game if specc’d and played correctly. That 47.5% increase in healing effectiveness to allies is just too much sustain to give up for the hybrid dps ele I used to run.

I like this build but in wvw what kinda rune you using ??? there is no superior rune of monk in wvw or dungeon..

lislis.8075:

I like this build but in wvw what kinda rune you using ??? there is no superior rune of monk in wvw or dungeon..

Monk comes from Ascalon catacombs, mate.

the sigil of water didnt seem to help alot……. btw ty might micah

lislis.8075:

the sigil of water didnt seem to help alot……. btw ty might micah

Yup, No problem!

just find out that sigil of renewal is pretty good too looks like . but not sure how much it will heal

For WvW would you recommend full cleric or a mix of gear? Full cleric would leave your power relatively low.

InFluEnZa.6908:

Imo this made ele a very good, if not, the best healer in game if specc’d and played correctly. That 47.5% increase in healing effectiveness to allies is just too much sustain to give up for the hybrid dps ele I used to run.

I’d argue that Necromancers are the flat out best when it comes to raw healing for allies (death shroud build) followed closely by ele’s and guardians.

Rangers are extremely potent healers as well when paired with mercy runes and ZS for their immense access to quickness and 30% rez speed + increased rez health they can keep their team from dying while perma regen + easy water field is capable of keeping allies going.

Then there’s venom share thieves who can literally give their healing skill to allies ontop of all their venom charges giving health to allies when they attack, it’s certainly more agressive but…. effective when done right.

@OP It’s a solid build, and from what i’ve seen it does work in coordinated team play, as long as the ele is protected by the team (much like an actual healer in other games) it’ll be VERY hard to take the team down in a team fight due to the healing you’re capable of providing.

Also, i’d HIGHLY recommend taking a frost bow, with only sigil of benevolence (max stacks) and ~1.2k healing power i was healing people for a thousand something, I could only imagine how powerful it’d be with all that bonus healing power.

My main problem with all this is that your allies should not rely on nor die because you didn’t have +35% healing.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@Diogo: Because of Evasive Arcana’s 10 second cooldown, energy sigils won’t make much of a difference in proccing it, but the extra dodges would help. Its more of a personal preference, really, either sigil would work.

I gotta take that back. I didn’t realize that each of Evasive Arcana’s skills have their own individual 10s cooldown, that makes Energy the one of the best choices for this build by far and definitely superior to the heal-on-swap.

@Ozi: Ty man. I’m a support player at heart in almost every game, so this trait really boosted my interest in ele.

@Durzilla: How do Necros heal allies exactly? I haven’t heard of any potent Necro healing build. Nor thief. As for Frost Bow, I’ll give it a shot, though I’m wary about losing one of my defenses.

@Timebomb: It’s not about reliance, and thats part of what makes it so useful. If my team is competent enough to stay alive on their own, then me giving them Healing Signet’s sustain ontop of all the listed burst heals then they should be nigh-immortal… which is pretty much usually what happens.

I love going full clerics DD with a 0/0/2/6/6 build in WvW. Sigil of Benevolence with Sigil of Renewal. All the heals in the world. The only disadvantage it has is the healing radius compared to a healer guardian’s.

Did Aquatic Benevolence make Eles strong individually? No, everything is the same pre-patch. But with a decent group who knows their roles it’s very fun.

@Chaos Something like that (keep in mind this site isn’t updated):
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-33;1I-J0E43JkJ0;9;59-TT;15;357C17CZcW320;0qNYCqNYC3Ny

Necro relies on bursty heals and doesn’t go well with stacking boon duration, it’s mostly direct heals. You can also keep perma regen on allies by Staff 2 without any investment.
Every necro who wants to add a little bit of group utility should consider Transfusion as it only takes 2 points with rather good stat line. Without healing power, it heals around 3k per target, exluding Necro himself on 40/32s cd in a short time. Another option is Deathy Invigoration utilized with flashing DS with Near to Death trait.

However, if we want to consider more “reliable” healing you may be interested in Well of Blood. It’s the strongest stand-alone AoE heal in the entire game and with Focused Rituals can be ground-targeted. Needless to say, 0.4 HP scaling for every second heal is pretty legit. The reason why it’s not as popular in PvE is because constant water blasting in zerg is just more effective and it’s a long-duration light field but it’s very powerful.
With current patch new support Grandmasters arrived, opening options for more sustained healing and support (build linked). Currently, Renewing Blast is a little bit less reliable than expected since it requires very precise aiming and has troubles with hitboxes (Unyielding Blast over Near to Death fixes the issue temporary) but in theory it’s a very good sustained damage+powerful heal effective in more crowded places.
Unholy Martyr, as mentioned, together with Plague Signet strips conditions from allies and it helps. There’s also that support side with ground-targeted wells (WoP is a beast) with reduced cooldowns.

You don’t really want to swap from staff either, just in cases if you need more damage/lockdown/more condi transfer/weakness/sigil stacks.

These aspects combined make Necromancer maybe not the best healer (since we don’t have many blasts nor water field), but the best stand-alone healer who can tap his group from 1 to 100% in no time and requires no effort on their side.

Please upload some footage. If you can play a pure heal/support in GW2 now i stop playing my monk in gw1 and give gw2 another try

@Flower I’ve already tested it with both Celestial, Cleric, in tpvp and in PvE with full stats food etc. All can I say is that ANet brpught back healer to GW2 with these changes. It may not have such strong tap aggressive healing as necro, but it’s very sustain. If you loved monk in GW1, you have a healer in here.

But there’s one thing – In current PvE content there’s simply no need for healer. I hope we’ll see this changed in new content coming up with updates. As it stands now, you can perform this role in hotjoins, Tequatl/other WBosses, WvW or open world PvE.

How could you Chaos! You’ve joined the dark side of eles! But in all seriousness, I cant blame you. Mesmer is not in its best shape right now haha (my second mains are ele and thief)

Been running close to the same deal. In wvw I am running full celestial armor and cleric trinkets. On my staff im using benevolence and water sigils. Found even just running behind your zerg shooting staff auto attack in water heals people even if you don’t hit an enemy target. The heal is pretty darn strong to. All together 47.5 more outgoing healing. Currently my staff auto heals about 700. So 47.5 more is 1015 on a 3/4 second cast staff auto attack that heals several allies each time.

I am using the celetial trinkets and PVT armor i only have 747 healing power if i switch to cleric’s armor i will have around 1300 healing power but i lost alot of vitality and alot of power. i dont know is it worth it for cleric armor

Do I really need to run AC in order to get these runes?

:-(

I hate that dungeon.

TimeBomb.3427:

My main problem with all this is that your allies should not rely on nor die because you didn’t have +35% healing.

Don’t look at it maxed out like chaos’s example. Think about it as far as versatility you could decide to go damage but still have high healing as if you specced some clerics.

What exactly is team death match? Lol. Sorry if this is a commonly known term.

(I know the game mode from call of duty, I just don’t know where it exists in GW.)

Mbelch.9028:

What exactly is team death match? Lol. Sorry if this is a commonly known term.

(I know the game mode from call of duty, I just don’t know where it exists in GW.)

It is in sPvP they added a new map that is basically for team deathmatch, no points no objectives at all just kill the other people.

oZii.2864:

Mbelch.9028:

What exactly is team death match? Lol. Sorry if this is a commonly known term.

(I know the game mode from call of duty, I just don’t know where it exists in GW.)

It is in sPvP they added a new map that is basically for team deathmatch, no points no objectives at all just kill the other people.

Really?! That’s awesome. Is it in soloQ or tourneys, or what’s the best way to join?

I’m going to have to get a team together lol.

Mbelch.9028:

oZii.2864:

Mbelch.9028:

What exactly is team death match? Lol. Sorry if this is a commonly known term.

(I know the game mode from call of duty, I just don’t know where it exists in GW.)

It is in sPvP they added a new map that is basically for team deathmatch, no points no objectives at all just kill the other people.

Really?! That’s awesome. Is it in soloQ or tourneys, or what’s the best way to join?

I’m going to have to get a team together lol.

It isn’t in tourney’s yet they said they want feedback and they may add it. It is custom arena map right now.

http://dulfy.net/2014/03/21/gw2-ready-up-episode-8-developer-livestream/

If you want to read on it. It’s the first thing on the link

Thanks. I might turn our custom arena into this map and just have a go of it with guildies.

oZii.2864:

TimeBomb.3427:

My main problem with all this is that your allies should not rely on nor die because you didn’t have +35% healing.

Don’t look at it maxed out like chaos’s example. Think about it as far as versatility you could decide to go damage but still have high healing as if you specced some clerics.

Hmm. Alright. But I still perceive this trait as being less than useful. Let me tell you why.

My first argument is that my allies shouldn’t need me healing an extra 25%. That one’s been refuted by claims that it’s simply nice to have, a nice buffer if you will, the extra heals. Fair enough.

In regards to pushing a non-cleric build to near-cleric levels of healing. Ok, I can understand the usefulness there. Let’s do the math.
Let’s assume we’re using valks or celestial. Averaging the two out, let’s say we have 400 healing power from the amulet.. We also have 30 water, so 700 healing power. With clerics, we have about 1200 healing power. 500ish more than our other choices.

Cleansing Wave scales very nicely with healing power – 1HP = +1 Health healed.
It has a base heal of 1302. Add our 700ish healing power from 30 water + cele/valk amulet, and we’re at about 2000 health healed from cleansing Wave. Nice!

Cleric’s Amulet gives us 500 more healing power, so now Cleansing Wave is healing for 2500!

But let’s go back to the valk/cele cleansing wave. 2000 heal. The trait just stacks the 25% on top of that, right? So 2500. Bam, we’re now cele/valk/whatnot with the equivalent healing of a clerics ele. Neato. Of course, we don’t get the extra heals ourself like we would with clerics, but we all already understand that.

Now. Let’s take a step back and look at an alternative to this wonderful new trait. Aquatic Benevolence may be interesting, but let’s not forget about Cleansing Water. Any regen we apply to our allies also clears their conditions.

Assuming we have 6 points in Arcana, every 10 seconds, we grant regen to ourselves and our allies. AoE condi clear. Scepter can now grant regen in a 180 radius, on a 20s CD. Staff, of course, can do it in a 360 radius every 45 seconds.

I would argue that you would be more useful to your allies if you had the condi clear. Condis are more likely to be noticably hazardous to you and your teammates than a few thousand damage (going on the notion that you heal that much more).

In GW2, the goal isn’t just to keep others alive. It’s not even just to keep yourself alive. It’s to kill the enemy. From my point of view, if you’re doing more damage and curing more condis, then you’re a larger asset to the team than if you were just healing a bit more than usual.

That being said, I’m interested in hearing more peoples’ opinions on this new concept of support ele, with Aquatic Benevolence. Why do you think it’s more viable, why do you think you are more of an asset to a team, with it, than without?

Hey Chaos, do you think this would be a viable WvW build and if so could someone get away with not running full Celestial? I normally run a war for WvW but it’s gotten a little boring as of late. That being said, I’d like to avoid dumping a month (not to mention the cash) into getting Celestial if I can avoid it. Thanks!

TimeBomb.3427:

My first argument is that my allies shouldn’t need me healing an extra 25%. That one’s been refuted by claims that it’s simply nice to have, a nice buffer if you will, the extra heals. Fair enough.

[…]

I would argue that you would be more useful to your allies if you had the condi clear. Condis are more likely to be noticably hazardous to you and your teammates than a few thousand damage (going on the notion that you heal that much more).

Doesn’t your first argument also apply to cleansing conditions? I personally would never assume that my team cleanses my conditions when I actually need it. You’re very unlikely to use your cleanse in a moment when your whole team benefits from it while heals are more likely to have a positive effect as long as you’re not dominating the game anyway (e.g. full health bars). Wether condition removal outperforms heals is extremly situational and from my point of view it is hard to name an uncontested winner.

So… it is better to heal as a Elementalist or as a Necromancer?

Also:
1) which is better at healing?
2) if they are both good at different ways of healing, what are the pros and cons of each class?
3) by the way, is there a way to be both healer and dps at the same time?

Many thanks!

I tried this build in www yesterday

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMMqcW4wnBd0AYAG5WwL4DKKAU+IcD6BA-TlSDwAIVmlT9mo7PkVpRDlg4URogZOAPAAJXAgU6AAA-w

the armor is magi because it is very cheap armor to buy using karma. also it increase vitality which is important in www.

staff auto attack = 1100 aoe healing per second.
mist 230 hp per second
regen boon 470 per second.
geyzer (staff 3) 5000+ in two seconds ( in three tics)

if i auto-attack the gate, the ram guys can sleep through burning oil and AC spam.

btw superior sigil of water is not that good.

@Rym: I’d love to see that necro build in action. Know of any videos?

@Toggle: Haven’t tried it in WvW yet, but I know QQing is, they and I shared notes and theories in-game and it’s looking like there’s almost definitely WvW potential with this trait.

@TimeBomb: Here’s my take on it, and why I love the trait (and healing classes) so much.

First lets look at Healing Signet, which which used to heal around 400 per second. Imagine if Warriors could use the active heal while retaining the passive effects. Now imagine if Mesmers had healing signet, Rangers, Engineers .. ect. THAT’S part of what this build offers, almost constantly. The Regeneration + Soothing Mist heals over 400 per second, for the entire team, essentially giving them all healing signet as long as they have regeneration (which is pretty frequently).

That’s mostly passive though, without me really having to put much effort in. Now ontop of that healing, Cleaning Wave, Geyser, and water attunement swap are all rather easy to apply and provide and with a simple Dodge-&-WaterSwap I can heal an ally for 5k before even using any of my skills, essentially a 5k heal every 10 seconds before using any abilities, blasting any water fields, or anything. A healing build offers damage mitigation, it allows for lackluster teammates to contribute more since they’re punished less for mistakes (assuming they’re getting healed) and for good players to essentially be unkillable unless I’m focused first.

After that comes the boons. I’m rapidly cycling through attunements in order to provide a constant stream of Fury, Swiftness, Protection, Regeneration, and Might. This is of course inherent to most eles who trait into Arcana, but in a support build like this it’s extra important, especially for protection and regen. Earth and Water are my key attunments that I need to be in the LEAST in order to swap to the MOST.

You mentioned condition cleansing being a better alternative, but I offer that as well. Though I don’t have Cleansing Water, I did eventually fall back to Cleansing Wave. Cleansing Wave, combined with water dodges, combined with Healing Rain means that I’m actually removing at least 2 conditions from my team every 10 seconds and 3 every 40 which is pretty good considering I’m doing that ontop of my obscene healing and most classes bring their own condition removal as well.

All in all, while I can’t say this is the best support spec for Elementalists, of all the many I’ve played this is definitely one of the strongest.

Also I’ve updated the build a bit, which can be seen by clicking here

It turns out going for condition damage has dramatically increased my condition output, also as far as sPvP is concerned, Aquatic Benevolence doesn’t need any other additional healing to be effective (like monks runes or benevolence sigils) which opens up quite a bit of gear diversity.

I read through some of the replies here, but not all of them. So bear with me if this is already mentioned.

Aquatic Benevolence works amazingly with directly applied heals as well. Blast finisher are great, but I found it hard to land them on my allies when they really needed it (a lot of times they’re squirrelling away).

I tried it on S/D – and it’s incredible.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArYhcMac25wwBd0AOAG5iwQYGKOCEA6gluCA-TJBFwAHeAAK3fAaZAAnAAA

You do decent DPS, and your direct heals (Water Attunement, Water Trident, Cleansing Wave) all heal allies for ~2500 EACH. And there’s still the heal which comes from your on-hit sigil.

The condi clear is a little weak compared to some builds. But it has good applications in tPvP.

UPDATED with healing numbers with only Settler’s amulet

That looks really solid KFC, gonna have to give it a try and compare it to my staff build.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@Toggle: Haven’t tried it in WvW yet, but I know QQing is, they and I shared notes and theories in-game and it’s looking like there’s almost definitely WvW potential with this trait.

I spent some time with Chaos whispering back and forth and testing d/d healing potential in the PvP lobby and than took the build into WvW to test it myself. I found the builds sustain and group support very interesting.

I did not go crazy trying to min/max the numbers, but with Celestial armor and cleric weapons/trinkets with Strength runes and Sigil of Battle/Water or Energy (fan of both to be honest) you can achieve 37.5% outgoing healing (after stacking benevolence) to your group with about 1200-1300 healing power while still maintaining power of at least 2100 after might stacking in a 0/0/2/6/6 build. Note that the Strength runes and Sigil of Battle are must haves IMO if you want to do decent damage, but this build works best in a group that already has good damage output. After healing food and Sharpening Stones etc etc the numbers were as follows:

Assuming a rotation of dodging into water attunement to get the water attunement heal + Evasive Arcana’s Cleansing Wave /w dagger #5 + Cone of Cold and factoring the passive healing from Soothing Mist’s regen etc, I was able to burst heal myself for approximately 11,000 health every 40 seconds and burst heal my group for about 15,000 health. Given the Cleansing Wave’s cooldown of 40 seconds , every 10 seconds you can burst heal for approximately 8,500 self and 12,000 group until dagger #5 Cleansing Wave is off cooldown again. (not saying you will go into water attunement every 10 seconds but that’s the builds potential). The healing output is just insane.

Sorry if my post is hard to understand. I woke up not long ago and have not drank much of my coffee yet so my brain is not working optimally :P.

Timebomb it is pretty common for your DPS to have to leave fights and heal (or go somewhere else) so they don’t die, assuming they know what they are doing.

Energy sigils are a must in case you get focused. I typically focus on using CC effects so running mostly clerics is quite alright imo, condis are so unreliable these days anyhow. The biggest problem seems to be landing evasive arcana heals which seem to have a very tiny radius.

A side note is that it is very important to keep mashing 1 even without a target (annoying) so that your signet keeps healing you (it heals a lot with +healing). Staff auto attack with signet is lots of hp…

It will take a while for the meta to adapt to this ele… Teams may not need to run 4 full support builds (hambows, spirit rangers, bunker guard/engi/necro etc) because an ele + guard/ranger is enough to keep everybody nice and healthy. Cleansing is the only problem but team cleanses are flying around like mosquitos these days

@Chaos – No, I don’t know any good Necro healing videos from after 15th. Once I’m done with IRL stuff, I will make one next month and send you the link

I’m going to thread necro with my own research since this is the only thread that I’ve seen on the topic, and there is some good stuff here. This is all from a WvW p.o.v. and are all my opinions based on playing the different setups.

I’m currently running full cleric/ sigil of benevolence/ sigil of water with water runes. I’ve chosen runes of water over monk, because the 6 bonus on runes of water combined with my 1700 hp gives a nice additional healing cooldown for pressured situations. I don’t think the extra 10% outgoing healing is better than an extra 1500 AoE heal(with 600 radius, that’s enormous) on demand. I’m running sigil of water over renewal, because with blasting staff, I shouldn’t be close enough to take full advantage of renewal(more for D/F-D/D-Guardians imo), but I’m far enough away to take advantage of water(good with air staff 1).

I run Arcane Blast(a must imo for support staff; it not only lets you blast your own water fields easily, but it’s sometimes the only way you can tag things before they die!), Armor of Earth, and Ice bow(depending on situation, I will swap to Lightning Flash). I personally run 0/0/4/6/4. I’ve found the stability from swapping to earth attunement more universally useful for both support and personal survivability than evasive arcana. I found myself using evasive arcana more selfishly in fights, and trying to use the really small AoE on cleansing wave got me into more trouble than it saved. With smaller more organized groups where stacking and less chaos happens, then evasive arcana is just the best trait ever since game launch. But for roaming around in server TS with blob, I favor stability on swap.

I don’t play like a DPS who has good healing power. I look for opportunities for my build to perform better, and that’s not in the DPS roll. I almost sacrifice all bags in large fights to make sure I’m maximizing my build and gear choice. In ZvZ, I make sure I toss out my Healing Rain immediately for the regen buff and condi removal at the meeting point between trains. I call target over the person leading our zerg(or guild) and target people nearby to them with water staff 1(with stacks, it’s a 1000 heal every 3/4th second). Otherwise, I provide crowd control to help break up their blobs. If Geyser/ HR/ MTRSTR/ CC are all down, I use ice bow and do the same thing I would do with water staff 1, since it’s more powerful. And yes, I will meteor shower when appropriate, but that’s really the only DPS cooldown I use(Icebow 4/ Arcane Blast to help tag if we’re winning).

But this build really shines in attacking and defending structures. With ice bow, full stacks, runes of water, and arcane blast to blast your own water fields(whoever blasts the field, it uses -their- HP for the ratio; so, you should try and blast your own with eruption into arcane blast), you can keep your rammers and repair people alive much longer. The amount of healing you can put out on people on rams with HR up, Ice bow autoattacks(1350 per ice bow 1 with full stacks), ambient water attument regen, water runes 6, and blasting your own water fields is pretty amazing.

Now, this is the interesting part of my research. The older healing build with Cleansing Water, Cleansing Wave, and Elemental Attument is just as effective, because the damage mitigated by removing conditions can sometimes exceed the healing done by aquatic benevolence and its counterparts. It’s playing the RNG game with your healing numbers(because the condis you remove may not be doing damage, but they may help your team do more damage, which is the point of healing in the first place). Also, it depends on your positioning in fights, but is less controlled by your healing rain cooldown to remove conditions from allies.

Like with the 20 in earth vs 30 in arcana, I’ve found the older healing build with both Cleansing Water and Evasive Arcana to be more successful in open field/ gvg where condi clear is more crucial in succeeding than higher HPS numbers. Benevolence(Trait/ Sigil) I’ve found to be better in both an organized attack/ defending situation.