Guild Wars 2

I have found conflicting information on this. Does Cone of Cold self heal as well or not?

Yes.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

Huh? Cone of Cold only heals others.

No.. it heals you too.

Con of cold heals you. I use it alot, nice short cd. It looks like regen healing you but it does actually heal you.

This is so easy to test, just use it while soloing.

Also, heals you additionally if you have Signet of Restoration since SoR heals every time you cast something…although I’ve personally found SoR pretty ‘meh’ even compared to Ether Renewal.

Actually, I prefer Ether Renewal myself as it’s also a powerful condition removal.

Anyway, that’s getting off topic. Yes Cone of Cold heals yourself incrementally during its cast just like your allies so interrupting its cast interrupts part of the damage and heal. Also, it doesn’t need to hit anything to heal yourself so you can cast it while you run away.

It heals you for less than it heals your allies. It definitely does heal you though.

@ Leo G: is ether renewal actually any good? i use the default signet for the extra boons. i’ve never used ether because… the heal seems really crappy.

Ether Renewal healing is pretty good: heals around 400+hp per tick (12 ticks in 4 seconds) and every tick removes a full condition. The only problem is that it’s a channeling; you can move while you use it, but if you get interrupted you’re dead.

Ether Renewal’s heals is about average, healing around 400 per tic over 4 seconds like Melkiah said. That comes to about 100 HP less heal than Glyph of Harmony.

The trade offs are:
-Heals a bit less
-It’s a 4 second channel
-Can be interrupted
-It’s not a Glyph, Signet, Arcane or Cantrip so isn’t affected by traits that do
~It will wipe all conditions from you as it can remove 12 over its cast
~It recharges fastest @ 15 seconds. With cast time included, it’s available every 19 or 20 seconds vs 25 seconds
~It’s a channel, it synergizes with other abilities that are channels like Zephyr’s Focus (100% Endurance regen) and Obsidian Focus (+170 toughness at lvl 80) which grant bonuses while channeling

Ether Renewal is a good heal in PvE when you can easily kite npc foes or jump out of a fight to bring yourself back up. Probably the worst heal for PvP. In WvW, it depends, do you run into lots of conditions? I find it’s very serviceable when you’re trying to run away and someone tosses a chill, cripple or immobilize on you to stop you. Player traps aren’t as intimidating when you can just walk through them.

That said, I think I might revise my build since I run mainly cantrips. With 30 in water, I can set it up to give regen with every cantrip, have cantrips recharge faster and get +2% damage for every boon I have on me. Cleansing Fire will be there to remove conditions and give me regen (but inferior to Ether Renewal) while Glyph or Harmony will give me a boon to do more damage.

Not sure if I’ll like the new build but I’m sure I can get used to it.

Cone of Cold heals the caster and those allies in the cold.

Ether Renewal is the best PvP heal in the game. It is the only thing that guarantees you can always escape from combat, when combined with Mist form. It removes all conditions making every condition build a free kill for you.

I use it in both sPvP and WvW as a d/d spec elementalist with Power/Toughness/Vitality gear. I run a cantrip build with mist/flash/earth armor and 0-10-20-30-10 and all of the aura/cantrip traits.

Lastly, best trick to my build that few people seem to use, 100% crit damage on weapon swap is amazing for an elementalist, throw 5% damage increase on your other dagger.

That said, I think I might revise my build since I run mainly cantrips. With 30 in water, I can set it up to give regen with every cantrip, have cantrips recharge faster and get +2% damage for every boon I have on me. Cleansing Fire will be there to remove conditions and give me regen (but inferior to Ether Renewal) while Glyph or Harmony will give me a boon to do more damage.

Not sure if I’ll like the new build but I’m sure I can get used to it.

I love this build, it’s pretty awesome. I run 30 in water with cantrips grant regen/vigor, regen clears conditions, and cleansing wave (I skip the 20% cdr of cantrip mastery cause it’s bugged and doesn’t work with mist form, not worth it imo). Also, I run the ubiquitous 10 pts in arcane to get elemental attunement (EA). My 3 cantrips are mist, cleansing fire, and lightning flash, and I use glyph of elemental harmony.

Because of this, i get two condition clears attuning to water (cleansing wave and regen from EA grants clear. Note, both are AOE, so you clear conditions from allies and if granting them regen, get an extra condition clear for each you pump out). Mistform grants regen/vigor and clears 1 condition. Lightning flash give regen/vigor and 1 condition clear (great for when you’re “immobilized” as it clears it). Cleansing fire gives regen/vigor, burns the enemy and clears FOUR conditions. Finally, glyph (if used in water) gives a heal, regen, and clears 1 condition (2 conditions and more regen if I use dwayna runes, which I really like for WvW, I like to play healer). Basically, I laugh at condition builds, no other class can cleanse themselves as easily/quickly as we can with this build. I love it.

Um the 100% crit sigil gets uses up by our minor traits (i.e. deal damage when attuning to air, aoe damage when attuning to earth, etc.). So it’s pretty useless.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Um the 100% crit sigil gets uses up by our minor traits (i.e. deal damage when attuning to air, aoe damage when attuning to earth, etc.). So it’s pretty useless.

That would be interesting, but I mainly use it with Fire for the opening crit on my combo. Thanks for the info though, I will try and pay attention to this later. If only this game had a decent combat log to view.