Guild Wars 2

I have heard this said but I don’t know what it means. The functions I have seen for skills including healing all look pretty linear.

Can someone explain how healing doesn’t “scale” well, and what it would look like if it did? Is there an example of a skill that does scale well?

Thanks

Ok i’ll tell you what I know. Yes there are certain skills, traits, runes, sigils and effects that increase your healing by a significant amount after you invest into healing power, mainly on the guardian and elementalist, at times for a shout heal warrior. Healing themselves and allies.

I will now show you some examples of skills + traits that scale well with healing power
The key factor to look out for is the healing coefficient. which is the value mentioned in brackets after the healing amount. When you put your mouse over the question mark it shows you how its calculated, how it scales with healing power investment.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Ripple
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empower
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave (with evasive arcana every 10 seconds)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Shouts
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Trident
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Selfless_Daring

As you can see with the above, they are quite useful and are central to certain builds with healing power investment. Now i will give you some examples where healing power does not scale well.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Dolyak (0.023)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geyser (not so good with healing power, its better as a water field to blast)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_field (in general, the person leaping/blasting the water field doesnt need to have good healing power because the coefficient is only 0.2)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Regeneration (in my opinion its not worth going for healing power if you just want your regen boon to heal that tiny bit better)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet (the passive heal scaling is at the bottom and clearly not worth investing healing power for)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir-Infused_Bombs
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backpack_Regenerator

One thing to note however is that multiple sources of small heals will add up eventually to make a significant difference, but I hope this helped. I’m open to correction

What people often mean by saying “Healing doesn’t scale well” is that dungeon bosses deal so much damage that your improved heal compared to a normal heal will hardly make a difference.
Vitality and/or Toughness or full-out offensive stats (Power, Precision, Ferocity) have been proven more efficient to survive a boss encounter until it’s dead.

Dragzter.3810:

Ok i’ll tell you what I know. Yes there are certain skills, traits, runes, sigils and effects that increase your healing by a significant amount after you invest into healing power, mainly on the guardian and elementalist, at times for a shout heal warrior. Healing themselves and allies.

I will now show you some examples of skills + traits that scale well with healing power
The key factor to look out for is the healing coefficient. which is the value mentioned in brackets after the healing amount. When you put your mouse over the question mark it shows you how its calculated, how it scales with healing power investment.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Ripple
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empower
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave (with evasive arcana every 10 seconds)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Shouts
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Trident
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Selfless_Daring

As you can see with the above, they are quite useful and are central to certain builds with healing power investment. Now i will give you some examples where healing power does not scale well.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Dolyak (0.023)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geyser (not so good with healing power, its better as a water field to blast)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_field (in general, the person leaping/blasting the water field doesnt need to have good healing power because the coefficient is only 0.2)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Regeneration (in my opinion its not worth going for healing power if you just want your regen boon to heal that tiny bit better)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet (the passive heal scaling is at the bottom and clearly not worth investing healing power for)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir-Infused_Bombs
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backpack_Regenerator

One thing to note however is that multiple sources of small heals will add up eventually to make a significant difference, but I hope this helped. I’m open to correction

You’re almost competely on the money :-) I would correct though that it is not often as relevant to only look at the healing power coefficient, but the amount of healing power required to double your base healing. That number often gives a better idea of how much healing power will help you.

Skills that scale well will require something between 1000-2000 healing power to double. The elementalist has quite a lot of them. Healing ripple, cleansing wave, evasive arcana all require ~1300 healing power to double. The regeneration boon and soothing mist scale even better! Contrary to what you said, regeneration is a very important factor in considering healing power.

Skills that scale moderately well are between 2000-5000. Signet of restoration’s passive is a good example, and it’s typically the component of the dd ele that really pushes it over the edge in favor of healkng power.

Skills that scale poorly are anything above that. Skills from this category are abundant, and the most common, since every healing skill from every profession (as in the slot 6 skill) falls into this category! Don’t make the mistake that everyone does! Don’t build into healing power to buff up your healing skill.

Selfless daring (guardian trait) is an exception in this area since it scales absurdly well.

P.s.: if you want to calculate whether healing power would be a worthy investment of not, add up the healing power coefficient of all of your sources and multiply by the times you could ideally use them in a minute. If hou get around 15-20, i’d consider it worth it.

Also do remember you can share heals. Once you start doing that, the efficiency of the stat goes through the roof.

Thank you all for the great information!

I want to maximize my ability to heal allies in big fights. I have all my materials ready to make my ascended armor. I’m trying to figure out how much increased healing power is going to matter.

My first thought would be to go with clerics armor again, but it sounds like very few eles use that.

Where do you intend to use this ‘healer’ build, and with what weapons/ setup?

Use it mostly in WvW with a staff. I have a Wupwup (celestial) that stacks bloodlust and a Theodosus (cleric’s) that stacks healing. I have been running with Melandru runes on my armor, but don’t think I need the extra protection any more, so want to step up to something more potent.

I don’t expect to do dungeons with this character. She does a little solo PvE, but she is mainly intended for zerg.

For a WvW staff ele, healing power does indeed not scale very well as you have been told. Most of the healing will be coming from blasts in your water fields, which not only have a very low healing power coefficient, they also don’t even utilize your own healing power, but the initiator of the blast’s.

I’d advise against stacking healing power on a staff ele. Perhaps try going for some more damage, with a celestial/zerk/soldier/knight’s mix. Staff ele has the potential to deal stupendous amounts of aoe damage.

If you really want to play healer staff, go with water or monk runes.

I need to re-read this stuff, but if a high amount of healing power is not useful for an ele in WvW, why use monk runes?

You had also mentioned that eles have a lot of healing skills that scale well.

On top of that, commanders seem to really care about eles water fields, as if they are worth something to the group. Confused : (

Understandable, my mistake.

To put it simply, while ele does have some pretty nice scaling on many abilities, in WvW zerg combat, water fields are by far the most important source of healing. So although your water field is indeed a very important source of healing, and vital to most zergs, it’s not your field that’s actually healing people, it’s the blasts that people perform in these fields(combo area healing). If people blast your field, it doesnt apply your healing power to the healing that goes out, but the person who perfomed the blast. A water field from a full zerk ele is therefore almost as good as that of a full cleric’s ele. That’s why you generally don’t spec for healing power on a staff ele.

Thanks so much for the input. I’m glad I asked.

Could you explain why healing power from water or monk runes matters to outgoing heals in WvW if healing power elsewhere has no impact?

Gokil.2543:

Skills that scale well will require something between 1000-2000 healing power to double.

Skills that scale moderately well are between 2000-5000.

I’m not sure if you realize that even reaching 3000 is (almost?; too lazy to do the math right now) to reach, right? Not even with runes, healing as major stat on everything and full healing power stacks from a stacking sigil (I’m actually not 100% sure if that even exists and I don’t care enough to check that right now). Calling that “scaling moderately well” is just… a weird understanding of the word “well”. Even 2k healing power already requires heavy investment stat-wise, which would in most cases help you much more if it was spent in other stats. Unless you are playing a pure heal/support (and support isn’t really affected by healing power at all) char.

Saturn.6591:

I’m not sure if you realize that even reaching 3000 is (almost?; too lazy to do the math right now) to reach, right? Not even with runes, healing as major stat on everything and full healing power stacks from a stacking sigil (I’m actually not 100% sure if that even exists and I don’t care enough to check that right now). Calling that “scaling moderately well” is just… a weird understanding of the word “well”. Even 2k healing power already requires heavy investment stat-wise, which would in most cases help you much more if it was spent in other stats. Unless you are playing a pure heal/support (and support isn’t really affected by healing power at all) char.

I think you might be missing the point of the comparison here. You are correct in your thoughts that reaching 3000 healing power is very difficult (Elementalist might not be able to, I believe Guardian can get close) and probably not worth it, but that wasn’t really the point of the comparison.

Hopefully this helps a little.

I would correct though that it is not often as relevant to only look at the healing power coefficient, but the amount of healing power required to double your base healing. That number often gives a better idea of how much healing power will help you.

What Gokil is trying to say is that only looking at the healing coefficient is not as good of a comparison as using the base healing and the coefficient combined to make the comparison. This is accomplished by using the amount of healing power to double the base of the skill as a comparison tool that is easily readable.

and support isn’t really affected by healing power at all

Not sure what this means. Healing is definitely part of support, and unless healing is not affected by healing power at all, support is affected by healing power.

[Don’t know if I need to explain why I want a healing/support ele for WvW : ) It’s because I enjoy the psychological interplay of the simulated warfare. The group dynamics are interesting and intense. I like being a valued member of a team. It’s fun for me.]

Could you explain why healing power from water or monk runes matters to outgoing heals in WvW if healing power elsewhere has no impact?

Aquatic Benevolence

This trait and similar effects (Runes of the Monk) increase healing to others. This applies to the healing base of skills which can amount to effectively having more healing power without actually having that healing power. It can also be more efficient for skills that have a high healing base but a low coefficient for healing power (blasting a water field) than building healing power.

and support isn’t really affected by healing power at all

Not sure what this means. Healing is definitely part of support, and unless healing is not affected by healing power at all, support is affected by healing power.

Support in a general matter often includes several aspects that are not healing. These tend to be more utililty and crowd control (CC) oriented. Utility in GW2 tends to be Boons while CC is the various skills that either apply non-damaging conditions (cripple/chill/weakness/immobilize) or stuns/dazes. These other aspects are frequently looked at as more important as when they have both offensive and defensive uses. Healing by contrast is only a defensive support ability.

I guess it depends on the situation. Things change pretty rapidly in a big fight. There are times when water on tag means the difference between your zerg getting wiped or not.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

I guess it depends on the situation. Things change pretty rapidly in a big fight. There are times when water on tag means the difference between your zerg getting wiped or not.

I think your on the right track, support is an important and valuable role in all of what it can provide. Just keep in mind that within the current state of the game that going full healing power may not be as efficient as some other options. Dragzter and Gokil both gave fairly good responses on some of the mechanics that contribute to healing power being (at least usually) a sub-par stat. Its still useful and important, but perhaps not worth focusing on currently.

I’m also puzzled by the discussion of things like healing runes. Why are eles using these if healing doesn’t matter very much? Why not substitute runes with better stats?

I’m guessing eles are using healing runes because they don’t understand the scaling coefficient any better than I did when I asked this question.

I am thinking I will make soldier’s for my first set of ascended armor. Thanks again for the input. I really appreciate the good advice, after all the time and gold it has taken me to gather materials for my ascended gear.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

I’m guessing eles are using healing runes because they don’t understand the scaling coefficient any better than I did when I asked this question.

I am thinking I will make soldier’s for my first set of ascended armor. Thanks again for the input. I really appreciate the good advice, after all the time and gold it has taken me to gather materials for my ascended gear.

I use cleric for healing small-scale WvW stuff, like a small roaming group — because there, sure, others are blasting my fields but I’m always blasting my own fields too on top of all of us. I tried it out after reading another person’s positive experiences with this + aquatic benevolence and I loved it.

So, I think cleric has its place. I do think soldiers might be a little more universally useful to start out with, though.

I’m still traited 0,0,2,6,6 with aquatic benevolence and I have a clerics staff I can swap in that boosts my healing power by up to 350. But I am really enjoying being able to hit much harder. No longer playing a medic, new ascended armor, new job description.