Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,

Could any of you tell me what scenario you would use each of the 3 healing skills?

Glyph of Elemental Harmony
Signet of Restoration
Ether Renewal

Ether renewal all the time now. In a panic can pop it then mist form to full health and wipe away everything.

Signet’s best on a heal-stacking D/D, as the benefit from healing power on it is a larger percent of the total healing than Glyph/Ether Renewal. Scepter and Staff’s attacks are too slow to it to be worthwhile on them. Signet’s heals can’t be interrupted unless you use the active effect, which you really shouldn’t unless you seriously think you’ll die without it. Skilled opponents in pvp may be able to prevent you from healing as effectively by putting you in situations where you can’t use skills; signet is especially weak vs confusion if you can’t remove it. Signet would be very powerful if having 30 trait points in earth is viable, as you’d be able to use the active effect without losing the passive… but a build that does that gives up a lot from either water or arcana, and those are more or less a necessity for any pvp situations.

Glyph is fairly useful all-round, but works best in builds that have a lot of boon duration increases. Faster cast speed than ether renewal makes it more reliable without building around it, and you can also reduce the cooldown with traits, and trait to cure conditions whenever gaining regen to make it weak condition removal in water. Depending on the situation it can be used for quick might stacks (if you don’t expect to need additional heal/defense) or a few seconds of protection (if you expect to take enough damage that the regen would be worse overall) or some swiftness (for when you’re just travelling)

Ether Renewal has the best condition removal and the shortest default cooldown (though matched by traited glyph this was wrong, thanks for correcting me Chaosky). However, the long cast time means it can be interrupted unless you have stability/mist form ready, and once a single pulse has fired an interrupt will put it on full cooldown, where the glyph would be available in 3 seconds. If it goes off properly, it cures 8 conditions total, which is the most any elementalist skill can deal with, but needing to cure that many is rare outside of pvp/wvw.

They have their uses, but I think glyph is the best general purpose due to the overall utility, thanks to the boons. It has the best healing total (in water) before taking gear into consideration, but scales the worst with healing power (but scales better with boon duration). Signet only works in specific builds (but does a great job in them), and Ether Renewal can’t really be built around in the first place and is just used as-is.

So what it comes down to is if your build supports Signet or Glyph, use those as appropriate, if not, use Glyph or Ether based on personal preference.

Dingle.2743:

Ether Renewal has the best condition removal and the shortest default cooldown (though matched by traited glyph).

Traited Glyph is 20 seconds, whereas Ether Renewal is 15 by default.

I run fairly offensively-oriented builds, so I find the extra condition removal and healing offered by Ether Renewal to be invaluable – the trick is generally to either line-of-sight or wait for/bait CCs.

I go with Glyph of Elemental Harmony 100% of the time. I love the boons it gives and don’t typically have a hard time fitting sufficient condition removal elsewhere into my build. Also, with the Air trait giving a boon on Glyph casting, I end up with 100% Swiftness uptime just from casting GoEH lazily.

Thanks for correcting me.

It still remains true that for about 20% more healing and more condition removal, Ether Renewal takes more than twice as long to cast, and if you take even two hits during the cast time you’re probably going to end up worse off than using the glyph, unless you’re using it primarily for the condition removal. And if used in water attunement, the total healing from Glyph will be higher, and if used in earth attunement it’ll give you 3+ seconds of protection…

Math there is… simple enough. Ether Renewal is 5000 + 1.2* healing power over 4 seconds, Glyph is 4894 + 0.75* healing power in 1.5 seconds, followed by 10+ seconds of regeneration at 130 + 0.125 * healing power each, 2 ticks brings the total multiplier before Ether Renewal finishes to 1.0 with a base of 5154 + 1.0 * healing power – this requires 770 healing power before Ether Renewal is better healing over time, and once you count in the rest of the regen ticks it’ll fall further behind.

It’s likely than an ele will have other regen sources, and if it can be more permanently achieved via other means the Glyph can still be used for Protection, which can potentially be worth more effective health than the regen (and hence even better total healing than Ether Renewal)

As for condition removal, there’s a ton of ways to trait into that, but not using those is one of the only reasons to use Ether Renewal over the glyph. At least, that’s my opinion. Those extra 2 seconds are 2 seconds I could be doing something else, and my build is giving me condition removal elsewhere (2 whenever I attune to water, 1 whenever I dodge in water, 1 whenever I use a cantrip or 4 if it’s Cleansing Fire, 1 if I cast glyph in water, 8 over 9 seconds from healing rain – so much delicious trait synergy for elementalists)

Dingle.2743:

*lotta text

The thing about the Glyph is that it’s best to save it for when I’m low on health to avoid losing out on healing, but that means that I’ll be using my water attunement heals frequently, which means that I won’t be able to get the regeneration out of it reliably.

Also, Ether Renewal’s really good against condition specs, and for removing immobilizes that are buried under, like, 5 other conditions.

(I’m really only concerned with SPvP and WvW, by the way.)

I’m always using a healing power build in WvW with Glyph of EH, and I’m the type of guy who runs head-first into an incoming zerg/group so would you suggest me changing from that to Ether Renewal as it removes a lot of conditions or would the cast time be too long as it might lag and ineffectively might be unable to cast?

Nice write-up.

One thing I’d add is that since ether renewal is on the lowest cooldown, it’s also the best for activating on heal effects. If you’re not maxing out boon duration, you can get runes of the water for a nice aoe heal every 15 seconds that scales with healing power, or runes of the adventurer which synergizes well with evasive arcana. The downside is that the effect procs at the end of the channel so you have to make sure you won’t get interrupted.

You should also consider other sources of regen. You’ll have some decent regen uptime if you’re using elemental attunement, and more if you’re using water III. You might also be getting regen from your party or teammates.

Dingle.2743:

so much delicious trait synergy for elementalists

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Dahir.4158:

I’m always using a healing power build in WvW with Glyph of EH, and I’m the type of guy who runs head-first into an incoming zerg/group so would you suggest me changing from that to Ether Renewal as it removes a lot of conditions or would the cast time be too long as it might lag and ineffectively might be unable to cast?

The signet is best if you’re charging in with D/D or even S/D. When traited into evasive arcana, you can get 2-3 signet procs depending on which attunement you’re in. You don’t get the signet proc if you don’t have the dodge traits. Every attunement swap also counts which plays very nicely with a rapid attunement swap playstyle that /D demands. The downside of the signet is that you’re vulnerable to burst. Signet should offer the best healing over time for long, drawn-out fights where you can use tools in water attunement to heal up instead of using the signet active effect.

So for the Signet I shouldn’t use it early on in a battle but leave it for a while for the healing to become even better?

Dahir.4158:

So for the Signet I shouldn’t use it early on in a battle but leave it for a while for the healing to become even better?

Yes. In a full healing power build, the signet will tick upwards of 350. When you add up all the ticks from skills, attunement swaps, dodges, and utilities, it adds up quite quickly. If you use the active effect early on, you lose the effect for 25 seconds (20 if traited). With a very modest 1 tick every 2 seconds, you’ll lose 12*350=4200 healing from the passive alone. Even if you take earth XII to keep the passive, the heal actually ticks for less than it would before you used the active.

Oh kitten didn’t know that. Normally what I’d do is heal up when my health is low while switching to water attunement and my HP would insta become full again :P

Thanks for the help <3