Guild Wars 2

I like to think I’m greatly supporting my team with my current healing build (lvl 45, done AC a couple of times)

Rejuvanting gear and weapon. No runes or sigils yet.

I’ve seen that it’s mainly the burst heal that makes the difference, for example I switch to water – that’s an aoe heal + aoe regeneration. #3 staff is a 2 second heal and #5 also provides a lot of heal and condition removal, this all in a matter of seconds seems like a pretty good deal + possible runes and sigils and it all sounds too great. I find myself usually when close to death that I can heal myself back up completely by doing this (I use the healing signet on passive, almost never activate it).

What I don’t like of course is all the damage I’m missing out on and how the frost bow doesn’t have any good healing skills even though it increases your healing :/

Of course this is balanced around AC dungeon, I’m not sure how good the healing will be on the higher levels, so what’s your experience with healing builds? Do you think the ele’s healing is one of the best if not the best? And how’s the healing on the higher lvl dungeons like fractals/arah?

If you want to be a support then you can do exactly that fairly well. Keep in mind though that even though you are a “healer” you still need to be able to dish out damage and take punches. In GW2’s PvE everyone in the dungeon needs to be their own tank/healer, all the while dishing out moderate damage. Healing power does not scale well in my opinion.

It can work yes, but if the boss is going down too slow your party ends up taking more damage. I am FotM-31 and my guild’s dungeon master, trust me when I say you can’t go support and expect to be carried.

I suggest Conjured weapons for you. If you stay in water-atunement all the time your allies will still get the passive heal, meanwhile you could pull out your flame axe/lightning hammer for when dps is needed. When fighting structures use the ice bow#4, then drop it.

I use to play main spec healer for competitive WoW raiding in the past, and I can honestly say that there is no “healer” in the game by traditional definition, given how long cooldowns are. You have two options if you want to be a support centered Ele. that has the ability to heal-

Run Staff with 30 points in Water & 20 in Arcane to have larger AoE circles, and the ability to cleanse with applying regen. OR, D/D Auramancer with 30 in Water and 20 in Fire, and 10 in Earth & Air to constantly provide boons and auras to help mitigate damage, with 2 &5 occasionally healing in Water.

Dedicated healing is not viable for you to sit in the back as Water and cast 1 over and over while waiting for 3 & 5 to come up as Staff, you need to be rotating elements as soon as you finish casting all the available spells in your current element that matter.

For example, I start with Earth and cast 2→4→5→3, rotate to water and drop 3,2,4, and switch to Fire and do 2→3, and then Air for 5→2 and then back to Earth. You need to be actively doing as much damage as you can, keeping up DoTs and AoE fields to bolster your team’s damage output, and healing scales really badly. Because of that you still stack DPS stats even if you want to be supportive. The faster the enemy dies, the less healing needs to be done, no encounter requires any dedicated healing, but extra attention to bad people standing in fire or debuff fields helps.

I used to play healer too, so I guess when I tried the ele water specced it brought a tear to my eye. Anyway if healing scales that bad then I guess I can go dps mostly but just keep the healing traits. I mean it’s not like I planned on spamming 1. I switch a lot, cripple/chill and drop firestorms accordingly, I also pull out the fiery sword and think man I could be doing a lot of damage so wasn’t sure if having healing gear was worth it. I think it’s not now I guess I can try diff runs with different gear and judge accordingly.

Playing healer only gimps you party. Best defense is offence.

What Haviz said. That doesn’t mean you can’t be very supportive to your team but don’t make it your “role”. You can do some great amounts of healing by using combo finishers too. Putting fields on bosses/people lets them get healing from leaps/projectiles, you can blast your own fields (with the eearth blast finisher you have to cast in BEFORE you can the heal field in most cases). Arcane wave, dodge roll with evasive arcana (in earth).

When I do dungeons I just stick with D/D, you’re doing good damage, dishing out buffs, cleansing conditions and healing effortlessly. Though I do carry a staff too.

A healing/toughness based build can be very resilient…but it revolves more around keeping yourself up than keeping your allies up. That’s just a bonus. ;-)

Save the healing gear for WvW and other forms of PvP. PvE is about active mitigation and doing as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time. You will not heal your way through dungeons.

Good use of blocks (e.g. Arcane Shield), ignore pain, mist form, etc. are far superior to poorly scaling heals. Support also doesn’t mean healing, it can mean keeping up weakness, aoe might stacking, aoe fury, and stacking other boons and conditions.

it’s better to use soldier’s gear (power/vitality/toughness), perhaps carrion’s jewelry (condition damage, power, vitality), monk’s or other group supporting rune set (most of the healing power runes have party bonuses, also centaur’s for group wide swiftness). and having between 20-30 points in water. healing power doesn’t scale very well, but having 300-400 isn’t bad.

You mainly do your support via laying down combo fields, conjured weapons, and doing some moderate aoe damage and a little bit of healing mostly through applying regen regularly with some condition removal.

if you’re staying in water attunement waiting on recharge, you’re doing it wrong.

For the love of god, quit making munchkins in PVE. You don’t want to make a “supporter” “glass cannon” or “tank”. In PVE your character should be able to deal damage, survive, and contribute something to the party all at the same time. Dungeons are more like doing your own thing with 4 other people than a mechanic where you NEED one other guy for you to do anything.

Try a more balanced approach that does everything or you’re gonna have a bad time.

Ele healing for party is terribad, Ele healing for yourself is good.

Marius.8052:

Ele healing for party is terribad, Ele healing for yourself is good.

I completely disagree. With a combination of the healing I get when attuning to water and D/D #2 & #5, I can burst heal myself and my party for close to 7k HP. Not counting regeneration & soothing mist.
With staff you can do water #3 > #5 and then quickly lay down earth #2 for a blast finisher in your healing field.

Obviously elementalist =/= healer. But we do have good support healing.

I play a water focused elementalist, and when I’m in a dungeon, how much time I spend in water depends on how the rest of the team is doing.

I play staff. I do this thing where I burn it with fire, switch to earth and grab the projectile finisher. Then I look at my party’s hit points. If they’re dropping at all, I hit, the earth blast, swap to water, and drop healing rain. If they’re not, I hit the earth blast, switch to either water or air (it’s kind of a whim) and drop either freezing ground or that air combo field. I do see keeping the rest of the team alive as my responsibility, and so keep an eye on their hit points, but unless someone really needs healing, why would I do anything but damage and crowd control?

Tarvok.4206:

I play a water focused elementalist, and when I’m in a dungeon, how much time I spend in water depends on how the rest of the team is doing.

I play staff. I do this thing where I burn it with fire, switch to earth and grab the projectile finisher. Then I look at my party’s hit points. If they’re dropping at all, I hit, the earth blast, swap to water, and drop healing rain. If they’re not, I hit the earth blast, switch to either water or air (it’s kind of a whim) and drop either freezing ground or that air combo field. I do see keeping the rest of the team alive as my responsibility, and so keep an eye on their hit points, but unless someone really needs healing, why would I do anything but damage and crowd control?

I get that’s your play style, but gw2’s design is really that the party’s survival isn’t anyone one person’s responsibility. Each person should take care of themselves and shouldn’t be relying on another person for heals.

If someone is dying, it means they are not dodging, need to retrain or regear for more defensive stats or learn when to self heal.

This is unless you are in an organised group where there are others who are built as glassy glass cannons., and you are the designated support person for topping up minor damage and they are dodging all big attacks.

Yeah, I get that. But there’s really no point of dropping healing rain unless someone needs the healing, so I keep an eye out to see if a healing rain would be appropriate. Given I’m specced to water (for RP reasons, not because I seek out the healer role), this is my most buffed ability, so it just makes sense to make use of it when necessary. If I want to focus purely on myself, I switch to d/d.

My dungeon experience is limited so far to only AC Explore and all story modes, as I’m only just starting to focus on one character, being Elementalist. My build is S/D 0/20/0/20/30, and I stack healing power on my gear between Cleric’s and Magus sets.

It’s true that you can’t simply heal; I spend very little time on Water Attunement despite my heavy investment into healing power. Still, I find the burst heals between switching to Water and using Cleansing Wave, Water Trident and Evasive Arcana allows people who might otherwise be backing off to continue a full assault. More importantly, perhaps, healing power allows me to quickly negate any damage I might have taken, lending to a sort of bunker playstyle. By itself I recognize that’s not enough, but between the AoE burst of Scepter’s Fire and Dagger’s Earth, and the might I give to my party (between 9 and 15 stacks every 20 seconds) I feel I lend to my runs.

Food for thought from a heal spec.