Guild Wars 2

I tend to use GoEH, as my healing never exceeds 700, going for the bursty route. 644 currently in S/TPvP, and I love the GoEH for its extra boons it can provide. If using S/D, I would likely be picking the Inscription trait (instead of Aeromancer’s Alacrity), just to double (which it seems to do) the duration of the boons given by it, which is quite a help. Around 10 secs of protection when using it after swapping into earth with 10 arcane points and Elemental Attunement. Very helpful.

daphoenix.4283:

Scenarios:
Case 1
You are fighting 1 good player or several mediocre players and you are able to effectively get ~32 casts per 25 seconds.

SoR: 32×240 = 7680
GoEH: 5100 +optional 2300

Case 2:
You are fighting 2 high tiered competent PvP players. Assume this is a worst case scenario, and your 32 spells are halved to 16, and that you have to run, utilize LoS heavily, and get interupted extremely heavily.

SoR: 16×240= 3840
GoEH: 5100+2300

Case 3
My general case scenario in WvWvW and PvE. I rush in into a large zerg army and rambo (10-20 people, culling issues, underleveled players, clueless people, etc.)

SoR: 28×240=6720
GoEH: 5300+2100

Conclusion:
You don’t want to blow off all GoEH in water attunement all of the time, because this makes you vulnerable to instagib burst attacks since ALMOST ALL your healing is on CD.

SoR is generally almost always better for situations that you do not have to worry about bursting. This is mainly in easy PvE situations, and most sustained WvWvW situations because most people are not top tiered players. Glyph of elemental harmony shines in burst situations, where you are fighting competent teams and need to run / heal often.

This is why it doesn’t make any objective sense to use the signet.

If we go by these numbers the glyph would win. Scenario #1 represents the only situation in which the signet provides more healing, but it is only 280 more hp. The scenario is an easy fight. Do you need the absolute most optimal heal for an easy fight? If you survive because of 280 hp, the fight does not qualify as easy for you.

Somehow healing yourself to full or nearly full makes you more vulnerable to spikes than regenerating it more slowly. Stun breakers, dodging, protection and interrupting the enemy are the things that protect against spikes. If you don’t have or use any of those things, having more hp when a spike hits is objectively better than having less. Plus, you are contradicting yourself by claiming the glyph is better against burst, but claiming that activating the heal makes you vulnerable to burst. This is ridiculous when we’re talking about a comparison. The signet is worse against burst regardless of what you do with it. If the signet never offers any good option against burst, you can’t list the glyph being vulnerable against burst under some conditions to be a con.

We agree that the glyph is the better heal when things get somewhat difficult, which are the times when optimization actually matters. Why use a heal that is only optimal in situations that you would be very likely to win regardless of what heal you used? I have a better chance against competent players, and I still win against people that I just plain outclass.

Ether renewal and the glyph are better heals for those concerned about getting the overall best healing in a variety of situations. The signet is more of a style choice for people that don’t like to active a heal.

@Tei.1704

I haven’t really thought about that, but yes it does not make any sense to utilize a signet when the battle is going to be easy. At the same time, since the battle is easy, you can passively end it quicker without the need to cast a heal.

For harder scaled battles, you do want a heavier burst healing option. The end goal is survivability against any situation, so you are right, you should go for a GoEH or ether renewal.

I do not believe you should take SoR in any case for tPvP at all though.

When it comes to SoR vs. GoEH and Ether Renewal, it is a matter of playstyle. Passive players that want optimized damage go SoR if bursting is not going be an issue, vice versa ether renewal.

When it comes to tactical options (i.e. healing when needed).
SoR is great because you can use its passive and focus on water attunement primarily for burst healing.

GoEH and ether renewal are good in the sense that you can burst heal whenever needed, on top of waters attunement swapping. I tend to think of the utility 6 and water attunement as different modes of healing, giving yourself more variety to different situations. In this instance, you are using 2 burst heals from 2 different sources. There are no passive heals like SoR, so if you want to optimize damage, you would rotate into water as a passive heal, and GoEH / ether renewal for a burst.

At your argument concerning burst healing and being suspectible to another burst, you are correct, that is a flawed argument. I just prefer that if I had use GoEH, that my burst healing with GoEH did not overlap with my burst healing option with water attunement. This is because I worry about overhealing, since my vitality is low, thereby making the use of heal less effective. GoEH is used in earth attunement as well as another viable option, so this alleviates that need. GoEH casted under fire attunement is a waste, and imo a waste with air as well because perma swiftness is easy to obtain.

Tl;dr
You are right that signet is rather inferior in most regards. The only positive aspect of it is killing easy enemies in a faster frame of time. In the other regards, ether renewal / GoEH is much better. I use ether renewal every now and then in WvWvW, where you can alleviate its long interuptable obvious cast by using LoS or mist form. Personally I don’t like GoEH due to its long CD, but thats pure preference.

Honestly all 3 ele heals are quite usable, even without traits that improve a particular heal.

Signet of restoration is the one I keep loaded by default, simply because it synergizes well with our other healing incoming from water attune, water roll from evasive arcana etc. This is probably the best choice for ordinary run of the mill play with D/D. You probably should switch to something else while using a staff though, due to the slower attacks.

Sometimes I load up ether renewal when I’m in more dangerous situations but feel comfortable that I can do the channel. Sometimes in PVP, more often in PVE dungeon play. If you can get away with using it every time it’s up and can complete the channel, it’s the “best” heal as far as pure healing throughput. Obviously it has uses.

Glyph of elemental harmony I use the least in the D/D bunker, but I fiddle with it sometimes. Of course in 30 water build it’s yet another condition removal if used in water to apply regen. It gives ALOT of regen too if you have high boon duration. Since it gives 10s of regen base we’re talking 17 secs of regen with 30 in arcane and 40% from boon duration runes. Not shabby at all especially when you keep adding onto it by switching to water as it’s running down. Honorable mention for the protection from using this in earth attune too while armor of earth is loaded. Earth switch, armor of earth, glyph used in succession means your protection boon isn’t going away any time soon.

For lazy purposes, using glyph of ele harmony you can actually have 100% swiftness while just sitting in air attunement too with boon duration. Just using the glyph and shocking aura as they come off cooldown is enough (With 70% boon duration bonus, both give 17s of swiftness each, both are on a 25s cooldown) Glyph, Shock aura, RTL to get around. Course that’s not useful for anything important and I’m not using it as an argument to support the heal, just something to fiddle with when getting around in LA or some newbie zone.

So it’s no problem making a case for all 3 of them. You’re probably doing yourself a disservice actually by picking one. Much like a 30 water ele should switch back and forth between the 2 grandmaster traits (aura share or regen removes conditions) depending on situation, you should probably switch your heals as well.

It’s pretty simple to avoid interruption during ER cast time when you know what you’re doing.

I used the Glyph Heal pretty much through 1 to 80. And then starting experminenting my builds and once I discovered the wonders of Signet of Restoration, I never looked back. It’s surprisingly effective even without the Written in Stone trait. I rely on Water Attunement skills, EA in water and water field combos when I need a heal burst either using d/d or staff.

Why do people bring up that SoR kills people faster? Is one second of cast time really the difference between killing people or dying to them?

Minion of Vey.4398:

So it’s no problem making a case for all 3 of them. You’re probably doing yourself a disservice actually by picking one. Much like a 30 water ele should switch back and forth between the 2 grandmaster traits (aura share or regen removes conditions) depending on situation, you should probably switch your heals as well.

Ether Renewel is really nice cause of its short cd. With my current Healing Power it heals for 5792, which is a ton for that short cd. I think it should make it very useful in fotm and other harder instances. However I would not prefer this heal in spvp or small scale/solo wvw. With it you could also change Cleansing Wave for Aquamancer’s Alacricity, powerful aura or even cantrip mastery since you get plenty of condition removals already. Yet somehow glyph ends up on the bottom of my list despite it’s boons.

Razor.6392:

Why do people bring up that SoR kills people faster? Is one second of cast time really the difference between killing people or dying to them?

Sometimes it is sometimes it’s not. Have you never died cause you were a millisecond too late to cast your heal? It happens, if not that often. Although that passive healing in such situation would probably not have saved you either. However, in solo PvE and easy WvW fights you barely need to bother to heal if you have the signet, since it provides you constant healing. Surely one second of cast time doesn’t take away that much of your killing time, but if you are gonna talk about efficiency how could you deny signet being more efficient over glyph when you don’t even need to bother with your healing skill?

paleeshi.1924:

Razor.6392:

Why do people bring up that SoR kills people faster? Is one second of cast time really the difference between killing people or dying to them?

Sometimes it is sometimes it’s not. Have you never died cause you were a millisecond too late to cast your heal? It happens, if not that often. Although that passive healing in such situation would probably not have saved you either. However, in solo PvE and easy WvW fights you barely need to bother to heal if you have the signet, since it provides you constant healing. Surely one second of cast time doesn’t take away that much of your killing time, but if you are gonna talk about efficiency how could you deny signet being more efficient over glyph when you don’t even need to bother with your healing skill?

I’d take the risk and waste 1 second every 20/25 than being completely vulnerable to burst damage.

To me glyph seems like the obvious choice in healing, because it is less situational than signet, but judging by how many people use signet, it makes it seem like glyph is actually the situational one!

This thread was made not to call out every signet user (obviously it works better in some builds), but to raise awareness on how glyph isn’t a bad choice at all! In fact it’s better than signet more often than not.

Glyph can fit on anyone, while signet is only truly effective on 30 arcana DD ele’s that are fairly tanky already.

Razor.6392:

I’d take the risk and waste 1 second every 20/25 than being completely vulnerable to burst damage.

Isn’t using glyph making you more vulnerable to burst then? If you read daphoenix’s post in this tread, you’ll see that he explained it pretty well. Using up the glyph you will have no heal available for the next 20-25sec (if we take water attunement out of the equation), while with signet not only do you receive constant passive healing, but you can always use its active effect in “oh kitten” situations.

This thread was made not to call out every signet user (obviously it works better in some builds), but to raise awareness on how glyph isn’t a bad choice at all! In fact it’s better than signet more often than not.

Well I don’t think people have really said that the glyph is bad by itself. In fact I’ve seen and know many eles who use this heal.

Glyph can fit on anyone, while signet is only truly effective on 30 arcana DD ele’s that are fairly tanky already.

And hence why so many else probably use the signet, since the tanky d/d build is probably one of the most common ones, especially in pvp.

paleeshi.1924:

Isn’t using glyph making you more vulnerable to burst then? If you read daphoenix’s post in this tread, you’ll see that he explained it pretty well. Using up the glyph you will have no heal available for the next 20-25sec (if we take water attunement out of the equation), while with signet not only do you receive constant passive healing, but you can always use its active effect in “oh kitten” situations.

If you are being spiked down quickly, healing for 5k in a second with a few seconds of protection or regeneration afterwards is way better than regenerating a similar amount of hp over 25 seconds. Plus, you can’t logically claim using a heal makes you vulnerable is a con because that is true for all healing and defensive skills. If using the glyph made you significantly more vulnerable, the argument would be legit. However, the signet is the heal that is most useless against spikes, and makes you the most vulnerable after use. Burst happens over a much shorter period of time than 25 seconds, and using the active makes the signet’s healing over 15 or 25 seconds absolutely tank. If you’re being hit with the damage, you won’t live long enough to utilize the passive effect well. If you have to activate the signet, you’re at a rather large disadvantage. If you just avoid the burst, someone using the glyph or ether renewal can do the same thing.

daphoenix.4283:

I tend to think of the utility 6 and water attunement as different modes of healing, giving yourself more variety to different situations. In this instance, you are using 2 burst heals from 2 different sources.

Actually, I think of water attunement and #6 in the same basic way, but I don’t consider the healing effects from water attunement to be burst heals. Healing ripple is going to heal for about 2k tops and you get two regen effects over about 10 seconds. Evasive arcana, attuning and whatever weapon heal you have can add up to a burst heal (significantly more than any of the main heals), but it can take several times longer to reach that point than just using the glyph. Therefore, not burst healing. Traits give me sustained healing, and #6 gives me instant.