Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played the game too much and I like to play caster healers in most games. So I was curious to ask something about Ele healing.

Is Ele healing good for sPvP? Is it powerful enough?

Is it possible to go with a pure healing build that would be very useful to a sPvP team?

Ele answer. Not in spvp but in WvW within Zerg it actually is quite a useful support role.

Okay thanks. Does there happen to be any class that is good at it in sPvP?

There’s nothing in this game you can get away with pure healing on. There are several classes that can let you do a significant amount of healing, but you won’t be playing anywhere near full efficiency if you aren’t playing offensively. That is true for every MMO I’ve ever played, but even more so in GW2 since it lacks the traditional healer character.

If you want to play support, the ele works very well, but don’t expect to just use heal spells and nothing else.

k thanks dreztina

I think the class you are looking for is the guardian. They have the most support, and lots of ways to heal themselves/their team. Also, guardians are one of the best classes in every game mode, all of the time. They are on the line of almost being over-powered b/c of how good they are at their support/survival, but are just below that line so they only see minor buffs. They are also one of the favorite classes of the devs, and they always look for new ways to buff guardians.

Eles will give you nothing but heartbreak, trust me. Anything we get to do well ever just gets taken away until we are very sub-par overall.

P.S. Dreztina was absolutely right that there are no pure healers. Everybody contributes in part to the damage/support/control setup Anet designed this game for.

IDooMx.1289:

I haven’t played the game too much and I like to play caster healers in most games. So I was curious to ask something about Ele healing.

Is Ele healing good for sPvP? Is it powerful enough?

Is it possible to go with a pure healing build that would be very useful to a sPvP team?

And therein lies my conundrum – I want to be a healer in PvP as well as PvE…

Dang ANET!

You can do this easily:
Try the support bunker build: 0/0/10/30/30 with apothecary or cleric gear in PvE and shaman or cleric gear in PvP.
This will give you a strong focus on healing, while letting you do a little it of damage.

Just a side note: Water staff is good for the water fields (coordinated zergs use blast finishers for AoE heals), but not for the small direct or regeneration heals which have the standard AoE cap of 5 anyway. I wouldn’t use any healing power gear on the ele right now (the golden age of ele self-heal bunkers has ended).

The self-heals of bunker eles have not changed at all in PvE and WvW.
Only the damage, cleansing and mobility have been reduced a bit. The support bunker ele is still as strong as ever!

Because it hasn’t been nerfed, it does not mean that it’s actually good. Direct healing in PvE/dungeon is worthless, because no amount of healing will safe you from a one-hit-KO or heal enough for a second near-OHKO. Direct Healing in a zerg is worthless because it only affects 5 people. The zerg support comes from the water fields, because it is a source of multiple aoe heals.

The “support/bunker” spec actually only ensures your own life and helps a lot in a small group. Not more. Not less.

I think you are being too drastic. Even in fotm 70+ I find that a bit of support healing is beneficial to the group, especially when it comes at no dps cost (my build include 20 in water). One of the reasons for this is that people will get downed, maybe one-shot, but they will also rally and at this point they will need heals. Of course I am not saying that being focused on healing is any good.

I don’t understand why the target limitations are a problem. As far as I know there are only very few skills that are not limited, so this is not a comparative disadvantage to heals.

Yes, I was overly drastic, but it’s important to understand that the zerg healing support comes only from the water field and not from the actual heal. A water field can be blasted multiple times (say 5 times) for AoE heals (each have a cap of 5) totaling into 25 healed people. But: The blast heals don’t scale with the field owner, but with the blaster – the elementalist’s healing power only affects 5 people (which is still good in small groups).

Yes of course, but then you are comparing the use of six skills (water field + 5 blasts) versus the use of one skill. Each of these blasts only affects 5 people, just like any of our direct heals.

The point is, that the water field gives an AoE heal to skills that would not heal otherwise. I just want to point out that you don’t need to stack healing power for a zerg support build. The water field does the work. Not your heals/your healing power. A full berserker healing rain helps the zerg as a whole as much as a full cleric one.

Not in sPvP. But in GvG or Zerg fights, cleansing combo is very important.

So no for sPvP but yes for staff ele in WvW