Guild Wars 2

A quick questions for you all

I love healing classes in every game, and I was wondering if an Elementalist focused on healing (full healing power) fits in this game.
Can I decently heal my party? And if not, is there any class that’s better in this?

I’d consider both ele and guardian superior in this matter.
Guardian due often dodges, regen, f2, elite and in “healer” as supporter by crowd control and booning allies.
Pretty much same goes to ele. But for WvW (i don’t think there’s a need to to boost much healing power in PvE due its easiness) full healing power isn’t such great option. You end up with low any other stat. On the other hand 900-1300hp works great.
Ele has soothing mist which is great for small scale fights when each of your allies (even if they are far away) are getting healed for around 150 every second. Not to mention EA dodge+ swap to water which heals anybody around for over 5k (with written above healing power), gives regen (8sec with 60% boon duration), cures 3 conditions (with cure on regen trait) and applies soothing mist – repeatable every 10sec. With any weapon set.
Same as with mentioned guardian, ele is pretty good with applying boons to allies and decent with crowd control.
In my opinion there’s no better character that these two for this matter while still being decent attackers.

Depending on the context it can. Probably the place that it would shine the most is in WvW. With evasive arcana and staff you have two water fields available along with one dodge roll that heals and another that can blast the water fields. That said, you should not just be trying to heal or you’re going to spend a lot of time doing nothing. Staff elementalist can be a great nuker since meteor shower rocks if you can get it off with good placement. In addition, you have access to a decent amount of crowd control (frozen ground, static field, gust, unsteady ground, shockwave). Cleric’s gives a pretty good balance of stats if you want to do a decent amount of healing. The primary is healing power, but also gives toughness to synergize with healing and power to help you deal damage.

There are no healing classes in this game except out of niche combos and builds which abuse Water fields in WvW.

This game is designed so that no one can be a dedicated healer.

Remove this concept from other MMOs in your mind when playing GW2, and instead look to creating other kinds of characters instead. The Elementalist is no healer, but they are great at providing heals over time, damage mitigation through protection, a bit of CC, and also offering some DPS.

Basically, you should focus on DPS for now. There’s a lot more to it than that of course, but for now, please do not spend a single point on Healing Power on gear. You will be sorely disappointed. Healers in the traditional sense do not exist and DPS is king in PvE.

(In PvP formats, “Bunkers”, or tanks, exist, and actually often stack Healing Power so that they can heal themselves rather than others.)

^

There are no actual dedicated healer classes in GW2, for many reasons.

It sounds bad, at first, to people who like playing healers, but trust me, it’s not. Unless you want to do absolutely nothing except watch health bars and use dedicated heal spells. That option is not available, just like the option to play a “tank” and stand still getting face-punched by godzilla’s mom is also not available.

Every player is responsible for keeping their character upright and fighting as much as possible. Every player is also a healer by default, when an ally goes “down” anyone can revive them. Don’t think of this as a “rez” from other MMOs. Downed does not equal dead. Reviving a “defeated” (dead) ally takes much longer than reviving a “downed” ally, so if you want to focus on a healer role, watch those HP bars. Towards endgame you can also spec heavily into quicker and more powerful revives, no matter your class. It still surprises me how many veteran players equate downed with dead (mostly in PvP).

(putting this in it’s own line because it’s so important)

Reviving someone from downed is effectively a 50% HP heal.

I will often go “down” as a tactic to GAIN hp, when I know I can revive quickly myself by killing a low hp mob, or if I know I have allies ready with a quick rez.

With zero healing power, you can still give anyone a 50% HP heal simply by using the “interact” button near them at the right time, or killing something they have “tagged”.

In addition to the downed mechanic, the damage output in most situations will far outstrip the ability to heal no matter the healing power.

Damage in this game is mostly supposed to be avoided (dodge, block, aegis, blind, immunity skills, etc) or mitigated through boons and traits/gear. Theoretically, (at endgame anyway) if you are taking significant damage, you are doing something wrong (or you’re in a dungeon, and hopefully your party understands reviving and mitigation by then). Positioning is extremely important, using terrain and tactics to mitigate damage are more important than straight up healing.

For PvE stuff, I run a build with zero healing power, and I have never heard “stupid ele, why you no heal?” like in most other games. Full damage cleric anyone? Yeah, don’t want that in the party…..

My WvW build has a bit of healing power by default because of the traits and gear I chose for different reasons, but I wouldn’t seek to stat healing power even there. An extra 50hp per sec regen for 5 people isn’t worth the loss of 1-2k damage per second aoe. The important group skills, CC for enemies and healing fields for allies to blast finish (your healing power does nothing for blast heals anyone else procs in your fields) are unchanged by lack of healing power.

Your own survival stats should not be ignored, however. A dead elementalist heals for 0 and deals 0 damage.

I don’t play sPvP much, but when I do, I definitely stack healing power. It’s such a tight meta there aren’t really many builds which work for anything but screwing around. At least you don’t have to buy separate gear or level up for it though, so it can be a good way to learn a bit about class mechanics and stuff without committing to leveling and gearing a full character.

Staff elementalist support build:
0 0 10 30 30.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImUbpxygjDAkHvYCLjChUeMzO2A-TkAgzCmIuRdj7GzNybs3M+A

Have fun adapting that for PvE / WvW. Btw, Glyph of elementals: Fire have blast finishers (I believe), water heal, air stun, earth tank pve like a boss (well the elite does)

or: with stun break
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImUbpR4gjDAkHvYCLjChUeMzO2A-TkAgzCmIuRdj7GzNybs3M+A

Thank you very much for your in-depht explanation.
I already knew that healers in gw2 are not others MMO healers, so I’d like to support my party with sustain and protection, and with DPS and CC as well when the situation requires it.
After reading your posts, I think I’ll go with healing power runes, Dwayna’s I guess, and I’ll see if the build fits with the game mechanics. I mainly play PVE, so I really hope this will work out.

Aron.8429:

Thank you very much for your in-depht explanation.
I already knew that healers in gw2 are not others MMO healers, so I’d like to support my party with sustain and protection, and with DPS and CC as well when the situation requires it.
After reading your posts, I think I’ll go with healing power runes, Dwayna’s I guess, and I’ll see if the build fits with the game mechanics. I mainly play PVE, so I really hope this will work out.

Play a Hammer Guardian. It is the closest you’ll come to this. They can provide perma-protection, have great CC and area denial, and very good DPS.

have a thief spam cluster bomb in your water fields

The not having dedicated healer thing is actually everyone can be healer
Its just Eles and Guards are the pro among the professions

If you want to heal, you can, but please for the love of god don’t go for staff !!!
Staff’s heal is very situational: water auto-attack is nice but limited, and the rest is just combo fields (which means that your teammates have to have healing power for them to be optimal) that have long cooldowns and combo limits.

The real heal in elem is with the scepter, and in this weapon you can invest points in healing power and become a true reactive healer, let me explain:
The following spells have a base heal of at least 1300 and a coefficient of healing power of one, which means that the entirety of your healing power will be added to the base heal of the spell:
-water trident (20s cd, 16s with trait)
-cleansing wave (25/20s cd)
Go for 30 in arcane and get:
-EA (10s cd)
-Attunement swap to water (~10s cd)

How to use them? if you see someone low on hp, dodge towards them and swap to water just before the end of the dodge (proc EA + attunement swap), then cast either water trident or cleansing wave, swap to an other element during the cast, rinse (wait 10s), repeat.

The numbers?
Every 10s: 3x (1300 + 1x healing power) = 4000 + 3x healing power, at least.
Also you will have soothing mist rolling in.

To this date I am yet to find a class that can reactively heal better than the elementalist.

Ah kitten , I wanted a staff healer so bad..
Let me ask something else:
What if I wanted to build a full CC elementalist? Could this be good?

Aron.8429:

Ah kitten , I wanted a staff healer so bad..
Let me ask something else:
What if I wanted to build a full CC elementalist? Could this be good?

Play a Hammer Guardian… Seriously. I’m almost certain now that that’s what you’re looking for.

Hammer Guardian provides:
-Perma Protection
-Very good CC (Wards)
-Incredible Self-Sustain
-Best Support Utilities in the game (Wall of Reflection)

Ele is a cool class but right now its builds are a bit weird. At best, Ele is a mid-range support, utility, and DPS character. But the things you are wanting to do are best done by Hammer Guardians with a good utility swap set.

Zelyhn.8069:

To this date I am yet to find a class that can reactively heal better than the elementalist.

A bomb healing engineer with healing turret and elixer gun can get pretty close. I haven’t run the exact numbers but it’s not a build you will see many running anyway. It would work best with a guardian and elementalist as well, for soothing mists and that virtue passive heal. Yay for team games.

I used to be a full time healer and i love my ele as a supportive character, lots of options for aoe boons/heals/cleanse. And crowd control on every weapon set.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Zelyhn.8069:

To this date I am yet to find a class that can reactively heal better than the elementalist.

A bomb healing engineer with healing turret and elixer gun can get pretty close. I haven’t run the exact numbers but it’s not a build you will see many running anyway. It would work best with a guardian and elementalist as well, for soothing mists and that virtue passive heal. Yay for team games.

I run a bomb heal engi. Some numbers:

At 1500 healing power, bombs heal for around 300 hp per explosion. They’re dropped at a rate of about 1.5 bombs per second, so the heal over time from bombs is about 450/sec.
It’s also very likely that the engi will have regen on the party permanently, from toolbelt skills for the turret and elixir gun, and the turret itself. That regen ticks for about 317 per second.
As one last heal over time effect, the elixir gun has Super Elixir, which drops a light field which heals for 3520 over 10 seconds, plus a burst heal. This can be maintained with about 40% uptime, so 352*0.4 = 140.8 heal per second.

This brings the engi up to a heal over time of 907.8 per second on the party; my engi is also running the backpack regenerator trait and passively healing for 192+ per second, but that’s not shared.

After that, there’s still the burst heals. Super Elixir mentioned earlier heals for 1.3k on impact, healing turret’s overcharge heals for 3270 (both on 20s cooldowns if the turret is detonated). I’m running runes of water, which add 1440 heal in an AoE when using healing skills, once per 10 seconds (effectively once per 20 seconds when detonating turrets). Finally, I have 6 blast finishers slotted and 2 water fields available, and with timing can usually land 4 of those blast finishers per rotation. Each blast finisher heals for 1620. (If the extra healing is unnecessary, bomb kit also packs a smoke field and a fire field for situational stealth or might)

Condition removal on the group is fairly weak. Elixir Gun has fumigate which pulses condition removal but does weak damage, and Super Elixir heals a couple conditions on impact. Healing Turret’s overcharge also removes several conditions.

Unlike a staff elementalist, the majority of engi’s healing comes from skills which also deal damage. A bomb heal engi in particular has his main source of damage as his main source of healing, and the heals which don’t deal damage have a combined cast time of about 2 seconds if they’re necessary to be used at all.

I’m actually finding engi a more efficient group healer than ele. Should be mentioned it has little boon support for the group, though.

Thanks for the input, but you gave us nominal numbers only, no base heal + coefficient + cooldown. I can’t make up my mind with just this!
Besides I am talking about reactive heal. Because heal per second is nice, but it is less useful for reasons that you can understand :)

I wouldn’t say better or worse, they are just very different styles. Merely pointing out that bomb healer can put out comparable healing.

As far as “reactive” healing, the elementalist may come out slightly ahead, if you only count your own healing output. If you have a party capable of stacking and blast finishing, the engineer (not even necessarily bomb-heal spec) can provide much more healing than a D/D elementalist by dropping water fields (the largest ones in the game) every 10 sec. I see that as reactive healing, not sure if it meets your criteria though.

The elementalist definitely provides more boons. An engineer can’t give you stability or protection, and those are very powerful support (well, not reliably, stupid thrown elixer random buffs). On the other hand, and elementalist can’t drop a smoke field for group stealth or poison fields for aoe weakness. Engineers also start with higher defense and health, making it a bit easier to use healing power gear without sacrificing personal defense as much.

Again, I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, they just fulfill the role differently.

Zelyhn.8069:

Thanks for the input, but you gave us nominal numbers only, no base heal + coefficient + cooldown. I can’t make up my mind with just this!
Besides I am talking about reactive heal. Because heal per second is nice, but it is less useful for reasons that you can understand

The numbers I posted were at 1500 heal power, which is a little below what my engineer has before getting any life stacks/food buffs. If you’re considering a healing build, you’ll get somewhere around that number.

As you asked, cooldowns/base heals/coefficients:

Each bomb heals for 145+0.1*heal, with varying radius on the AoE (minimum 120, with a trait to increase by 50%, and the largest radius possible is 360). The smallest bomb is the autoattack with no cooldown.
Healing Turret – Cleaning Burst: 15(pick up)/20(detonate) seconds, base heal: 2520, coefficient: 0.5 (placing the turret self heals for the same amount, but doesn’t heal allies)
Elixir Gun – Super Elixir: 20 seconds (16 traited), base heal: 700, coefficient: 0.4 (this skill also drops an AoE healing field that pulse heals 10 times for 204+0.1 * heal)
Superior Rune of the Water: 10 seconds (but really tied to the healing skill, so 15 or 20), base heal 690, coefficient 0.5
Blast Finishers: base heal: 1320, coefficient: 0.2
Cooldowns for blast finishers (Base cooldown/Traited):
Magnetic Shield: 30/24
Big Ol’ Bomb: 30/variable, but caps at 23 (toolbelt recharge rate)
Elixir Gun – Acid Bomb: 15/12
Detonate Healing Turret: 20
Supply Crate: 180 (Supply Crate also spawns 6 (9 if traited) bandages or more if traited, which heal at 1000 base + 0.5 coefficient on pickup
There’s one utility slot free, which I use for Rocket Boots (20/16) personally, but there are several other blast finisher utilities, including Throw Mine(18/14.5), all turret detonations (20, 30, 50 and 50), and Thumper Turret’s activated skill Thump (30) and toolbelt skill Shockwave (45/34.5 with max Tools)

Water fields are available with a 1 second duration on Healing Turret’s F1 skill (25/19.25 with max tools) and about 4 seconds with the turret’s activated skill (15 or 20, depending on pick up or detonate). Most of the blast finisher cooldowns line up perfectly with the water fields’ cooldowns, though I’d recommend only using skills with a high cast speed on the toolbelt skill’s field (Rocket Boots works well). A bomb-heal engi may also drop a bomb when dodging if they have 10 in the power line for increasing bomb AoE, meaning dodges won’t interfere with the passive bomb heals much.

Healing scaling is awful compared to Power or Toughness. The game is designed so that healing isn’t a role. If you try it, you’ll be disappointed, because you won’t be effective, and you’ll get more out of devoting your points into Power or Toughness.

Here’s how healing scales at level 80 every 100 healing power for the following skills
Regeneration: (Base heal 130 + 12.5 per 100 healing power) per second
Geyser: Base heal 808 + 25 per 100 healing power
Water Trident: Base heal 1448 + 100 per 100 healing power
Cleansing Wave: Base heal 1302 + 100 per 100 healing power
Water Blast: Base heal 370 + 10 per 100 healing power
Healing Ripple (trait): Base heal 1302 + 100 per 100 healing power
Water field + Blast Combo: 1320 + 20 per 100 healing power

With the weak return from healing power in combination with the long recharge and infrequent use of heals, it’s better to spec into damage or damage reduction.

The best way to heal is to prevent damage in the first place, which the guardian is very good at doing with Aegis’ and Protections from Virtues and Shouts. Even then those are available infrequently. Leaving the best way to prevent damage being skill players who know how to use their dodges and profession mechanics.

That said, what the OP would likely find most enjoyable is either a Staff elementalist or a Staff/Mace&Shield Guardian with Tome of Courage with Shouts and Sanctuary

@Dingle
Thanks for taking the time to get all the data, I appreciate this!
You are right, it seems that the engi is able to put out quite some heals.
It is less reactive though, and has a bit more limitations (such as having to combo and locking you into some utilities and traits way more than the elem scepter heal).
I’d say it is quite viable as a healer, I have never seen it in practice though but you seem to know what you are talking about!

@Shockwave
“The game is designed so that healing isn’t a role.”
It’s not entirely true. The game is designed so that you cannot dedicate yourself to healing exclusively. However it could be efficient to dedicate one of your three stats to this role. This would make you one third of a healer
Also have you not noticed? ANet is producing new content that promotes a very different gameplay from what they gave us with the release version. I have a strong feeling that PvP-like gameplay will be the norm in PvE in the future.

I’m glad how this topic has been filled with very useful informations and sepcific stats!
Through all these posts, I think I won’t go for a full healing power ele, but I’ll try to be less healer than thought and be more protective, cc and dps when I can.

Aron, you have come to some conclusions that will definitely make you a better player! Always remember than the trinity is in you

I keep repeating it, and I’ll say it one last time. If you’re looking for a character dedicated to damage mitigation in PvE, a Hammer Guardian is probably the strongest option. The ability to cleanse conditions with shouts, reflect projectiles, provide boons, powerful CC, and give basically 100% protection uptime make it the best build suited to this role.

Arcanist Eles with either Fresh Air or 30 points in Arcana with Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave can somewhat fill this role, but a Guardian is still stronger in the vast majority of situations. I suggest taking a look at my guide in my sig for stuff like that if that interests you.

But Staff Eles with Clerics gear just aren’t all that great in PvE (in fact they’re really awful). Now, if your plan is to run with zergs in WvW and use those tactics to support large amounts of players, it becomes quite good because blast finish heals (such as Arcane Wave + Healing Rain) are very strong in that format.