Guild Wars 2

Hi all!

I’ve been rocking a full set of Valkyrie (with half ruby/half beryl orbs within) and beryl jewelry but have noticed I’ve lots of room for improvement in the support area and am seeking out a dungeon set of healing armor.

Here’s where the noob in me shines. While I’ve done a fair amount of dungeon crawling, I’m terribly clueless as to where to start and which set would serve me best (ie Vit/Healing/Prec or Vit/Toughness/Healing) so I’m hoping all you brighter players can lend me a helping hand!

Thanks in advance.

Yours truly,
Squishy wannabe support ele

I believe the karma sets come close to what you need. And then there’s the cleric crafting set.

But bear in mind that our support consists of more than just healing power, so you don’t have to focus solely on that.

ThiBash.5634:

I believe the karma sets come close to what you need. And then there’s the cleric crafting set.

But bear in mind that our support consists of more than just healing power, so you don’t have to focus solely on that.

I figured it ought to be the primary stat – any tips or tricks for others?

Well, you mentioned precision but unless you’re gonna get some power somewhere, or use traits that activate on critical hits, it’s not worth using in a support build.

Survival stats in general are useful for eles, so toughness/vitality is a good option. My advice would be to make sure you have at least 12k health so you can survive most boss spikes (but you probably knew that already).

As for more advice, it depends on what you want to use your build for. In my own build, I use a generic mix of all stats. Because I swap attunements a lot, I end up using a lot of different skill types (attacks, conditions and healing) and by mixing them up like that, I make sure any skill is decent. It also allows me to take full use of items like the Ancient Karka Shell, because I literally use all of the item. The benefit of this apporach is that I can reasonably supply what is needed at that particular moment in the fight. The downside of course is that nothing I do will ever be as strong as a specialist. But the combination works well enough for me, especially in WvW.

I might have the answer you seek because I also had the same question.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Vital-vs-Toughess-for-healing-gear/first#post825016

Since this is support role, I prefer vital version and I don’t really care about dps from this gear.

Apothecary has Healing major and toughness/condition minor. Mix in some Shaman jewelry for Vitality major and healing/condition minor.

Alternatively, you could get the Vhc gear from CM and use apoth jewelry, but the jewelry is 10-15g each so you would e paying more than if you bought apoth armor and shaman jewels.

Healing scales poorly on ele, leave it to other classes with better scaling imo and focus on power since it scales better than any other stat and even moreso if you stack crit and crit damage.

Staff:
Splash on Water Blast gets 10% of +heal
Regen gets 12.5% of +heal
Geyser ticks three times, each tick gets 25% of +heal, 75% if you stand in it for all three ticks

Dagger:
Cone of Cold gets 32% of +heal
Cleansing Wave gets 100% of +heal

Scepter:
Water Trident gets 100% of +heal

Skills:
Signet of Restoration gets 10% of +heal
Glyph of Elemental Harmony gets 75% of +heal

Attunement:
Soothing Mist gets a whopping 5% of +heal
Healing Ripple gets 100% of +heal

Staff scaling just sucks. With 1400 healing you’ll get about 500 splash healing at level 80 while doing paltry DPS with Water Splash and Ice Spike. The only good heal you get is when you actually attune to water.

Scepter is also meh, the only heal outside of ripple has a 20 sec CD.

D/D + Resto Signet is okay.

Water sucks unless you are D/D and it probably sucks then too . Soothing mist is bad no matter what you are using, it heals for less than 150 a tick with 1400 healing. When using staff, Water Blast and Ice Spike are bad and will always be bad, every second you spend in Water is a second with kitteny DPS and paltry heals. Staff water if only good for popping in for Regen/Condition Removal (Healing Rain), throwing down a Frozen Ground Ice Field and a bad geyser clutch heal (which is slightly better with healing from Healing Ripple factored in), i.e. you are about to die. Can throw down the fields in like 5 seconds then attune to a more useful element.

But yeah, I wasted a lot of time getting a ful heal set to discover that elementalist healing pretty much sucks, especially for staff, D/D might be different I think healing sucks to bad to mess around on it when glass cannon is so much more efficient. The DPS loss just isn’t worth it and unless you are using a healing signet then the healing on your gear is pretty much worthless unless you are actually casting a spell that uses it and most of those scale poorly.

Staff Water is bad, DPS is poor, staff healing scales poorly and every second in Water is a second you aren’t doing decent DPS in fire, air or even earth (if you’re condition damage spec). Every second you are doing actual DPS (i.e. not hitting stuff for 600 damage and critting for 1,200 with Water Slash) is time shaved off the fight. The difference in time to kill stuff between a full power build and a full heal build is upwards of 40%. Go test it on golems in the mists, with a full power it takes ~16-17 seconds to kill a golem while a full support build will take ~27-28 seconds. That is a big loss of DPS and during that time stuff can go wrong, shorter fight means using fewer CDs, a dead boss does no damage, etc. it can mean the difference between popping your elite skill once, twice or even three times.

We excel at putting down combo fields (we have the only water/ice fields that are weapon skills and not utility skills, the only lightning field and it’s a weapon skill, lots of fire fields, etc.) for others to combo off of and laying down AOE. Power scales the best and scales even better the more crit and crit damage you have.

Personally, as a staff user aiming for a full glass cannon DPS build I see no reason not to take 30 in both air and fire to get the most out of every point of power for maxed DPS and don’t think any talents in the other lines are worth trading for the 100 power you lose for every ten points you move from Fire or trading the 10% crit damage and ~4.5% crit you lose for every ten points you don’t put in Air. They all synergize, the 30 air makes the 300 power more powerful. I find that at least in dungeons survival is more about filling your endurance bar and removing a condition or two every now and again than stacking heal/tough/vit, at least for a glass cannon. Attacks that are dodged and conditions that are purged don’t do any damage.

You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for all the information – I’ll be looking over it all to hopefully make a decision soon and begin my mission to nab it.

Really appreciate you all taking the time to help!

Nonlinear.9823:

Staff Water is bad, DPS is poor, staff healing scales poorly and every second in Water is a second you aren’t doing decent DPS in fire, air or even earth (if you’re condition damage spec). Every second you are doing actual DPS (i.e. not hitting stuff for 600 damage and critting for 1,200 with Water Slash) is time shaved off the fight. The difference in time to kill stuff between a full power build and a full heal build is upwards of 40%. Go test it on golems in the mists, with a full power it takes ~16-17 seconds to kill a golem while a full support build will take ~27-28 seconds. That is a big loss of DPS and during that time stuff can go wrong, shorter fight means using fewer CDs, a dead boss does no damage, etc. it can mean the difference between popping your elite skill once, twice or even three times.

We excel at putting down combo fields (we have the only water/ice fields that are weapon skills and not utility skills, the only lightning field and it’s a weapon skill, lots of fire fields, etc.) for others to combo off of and laying down AOE. Power scales the best and scales even better the more crit and crit damage you have.

Personally, as a staff user aiming for a full glass cannon DPS build I see no reason not to take 30 in both air and fire to get the most out of every point of power for maxed DPS and don’t think any talents in the other lines are worth trading for the 100 power you lose for every ten points you move from Fire or trading the 10% crit damage and ~4.5% crit you lose for every ten points you don’t put in Air. They all synergize, the 30 air makes the 300 power more powerful. I find that at least in dungeons survival is more about filling your endurance bar and removing a condition or two every now and again than stacking heal/tough/vit, at least for a glass cannon. Attacks that are dodged and conditions that are purged don’t do any damage.

This is true. I’ve rolled support more often than not in dungeons/FOTM simply because we would be lacking in support roles. I’ve never opted for a full glass cannon build (and haven’t changed traits much since hitting 80) but are there specific glass cannon builds for both D/D and Staff exclusively or do they share the same makeup?

Precision gear isnt THAT bad since it can procs Renewing Stamina.
But seriously no Elem should go for stacking +Heal since EA nerf. Staff “support” does fine in Zerk/Valk geat if your mates are smart enough to use combo fields. Some D/D and F/ builds benefits of some +Heal but I’d go for Shaman gear on the later.

Boom.9304:

Nonlinear.9823:

Staff Water is bad, DPS is poor, staff healing scales poorly and every second in Water is a second you aren’t doing decent DPS in fire, air or even earth (if you’re condition damage spec). Every second you are doing actual DPS (i.e. not hitting stuff for 600 damage and critting for 1,200 with Water Slash) is time shaved off the fight. The difference in time to kill stuff between a full power build and a full heal build is upwards of 40%. Go test it on golems in the mists, with a full power it takes ~16-17 seconds to kill a golem while a full support build will take ~27-28 seconds. That is a big loss of DPS and during that time stuff can go wrong, shorter fight means using fewer CDs, a dead boss does no damage, etc. it can mean the difference between popping your elite skill once, twice or even three times.

We excel at putting down combo fields (we have the only water/ice fields that are weapon skills and not utility skills, the only lightning field and it’s a weapon skill, lots of fire fields, etc.) for others to combo off of and laying down AOE. Power scales the best and scales even better the more crit and crit damage you have.

Personally, as a staff user aiming for a full glass cannon DPS build I see no reason not to take 30 in both air and fire to get the most out of every point of power for maxed DPS and don’t think any talents in the other lines are worth trading for the 100 power you lose for every ten points you move from Fire or trading the 10% crit damage and ~4.5% crit you lose for every ten points you don’t put in Air. They all synergize, the 30 air makes the 300 power more powerful. I find that at least in dungeons survival is more about filling your endurance bar and removing a condition or two every now and again than stacking heal/tough/vit, at least for a glass cannon. Attacks that are dodged and conditions that are purged don’t do any damage.

This is true. I’ve rolled support more often than not in dungeons/FOTM simply because we would be lacking in support roles. I’ve never opted for a full glass cannon build (and haven’t changed traits much since hitting 80) but are there specific glass cannon builds for both D/D and Staff exclusively or do they share the same makeup?

I only use staff in dungeons but just from my experience most D/D specs go deep into water for 20% increased damage to vulnerable targets and lower cooldowns on your water skills (e.g. boomerangs). Plus healing and resto signet is better on D/D than other weapon sets because the daggers have fast attack speed so your heal gear is working more and you can do decent burst but I prefer the range of the staff.