Guild Wars 2

Is it possible? Is it viable? Will it be possible to actually play a support role and still do decent soloing pve?

I suppose I would need to get cleric* (or whatever its name) items with healing power and toughness? What about weapons and traits?

30 water 30 arc 10 earth

Staff, or sceptor / dagger.

Cleric gear

Water traits on recharge 20% and cantrip renewal, with reduced recharge.

Arcana traits on attunment buff, endurance recharge / blasting staff / arcane shield, and spell at the end of your dodge.

earth : obsidian toughness.

Also, use ether renewal for healing.

I am using 30 Air 30 Water 10 Arcana

I set up my build here: http://www.gw2builds.org/view/750105/pure_healer_water_elementalist

Still messing around with it a bit.. but so far so good. Don’t have a problem with dying. At all.

Look at the water and air spells with staff… they are all very good for support, mostly in groups or for WvW

I find that 2 simple low tier traits are over the moon for support: Elemental Attunement (arcane V) and Cleansing wave (water V).

If you plan on gearing healing power, remember to focus on aoe effect (“heals nearby”) or splash healing (water field+blast) not regenerating, regen for others counts their own healing power.

I am fairly certain Soothing Mist scales with + healing as well. So if you take Powerful Auras anyone near you will be healed constantly.

I love Ele as suport, I’m using this build ATM ( I have changed a little a few days ago to give some more Damage ).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEQQFAWhImIbnx1wjDAkHvYCLyDYUZMzOA;TcAKvMeJ8y6lzLpXjGA

Why i have chose 15 Air, 30 Water and 25 Arcana? Well this is why:

Having 25 on Arcana i can change from attunement from 8 to 8 seconds, and this let me keep the smoothing mist ( Aura healing ) all ways up and why? Because of Lingering Elements ( 15 on Arcana ) lets say I’m on water and i want to change to Fire ( have the all team with full HP I can make some damage now ) but the water attunement it will keep up for more 5 Seconds and since the CD its only 8, I Can change back to water and never lose the aura of Smoothing mist.

Why did i choose Elemental Attunement on Arcana? Well if I have this, i can give boon’s to the ppl near me, such as Might, Protection and other’s 2 … and cobining this with Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave I will remove to the ppl near me 2 conditions that they have every 8 second’s.

I think the rest of the its preaty easy to know why i have chose it, but with this i can still do good AoE damage, and allways try to keep up the health of the ppl arround me up.

Remenber that on this game there isn’t a “proper” healer, if the other ppl don’t dogde and such, don’t matter what build u do, they will die, what u can do its to try to minimalize the “damage”

This is what I’ve been playing with, I’m liking it but I need to make some tweaks to be sure it’s the “final product.”

Things I love about it:

• AoE condi removal on water attune
• Potential for more AoE condi removal, or blind, or two forms of damage on dodge roll plus they count as blast finishers. Internal cooldown of 10 seconds, but still amazing imo.
• Cripple on attuning to earth adds extra CC for kiting.
• Being able to maintain a relatively high uptime on protection/regen, and might is always nice.
• Being able to keep my group always swifted in WvW
• Soothing Mist was on par with guardians Virtue of Resolve regen when last I tested … Healing Ripple is healing for just under 2k in my pretty crappy gear at 80 (most of it very outdated) and both are nice “freebies” for being in water.

If you don’t have a thief doing the perma-weakness thing, you can do it yourself at the expense of sitting in earth attunement more. It works OK with dual daggers as well, though ultimately staff has the stronger support options, particularly through the use of combo fields.

I am aiming for a mix of Carrion and Cleric’s gear. The idea is to still do decent damage while not imploding when a boss looks at you, and having respectable healing (which pairs nicely with your higher vit). I do switch out my utility skills some, though with staff I find it very hard to justify losing Arcane Wave because it’s another blast finisher. I’m also liking Glyph of Storms a lot for the AoE blind you can drop in earth. Makes some clusterkitten much more doable. I also like Arcane Shield though since you can cast it during channels and not break the channel. Can’t decide which I want more at this point.

All that said, I still nub it up and I’m sure this build could use some tweaks. I may look back a year from now and go “Oh my god, what was I thinking!” but I’m enjoying it at the moment. Your mileage may vary if you try it. I have nowhere near the health a carrion-heavy exotic gear set will give me right now (sitting at about 14k health) and for PvE and dungeons I’m still rarely dying. WvW I implode if heavily focused but that goes for almost any class. I anticipate no real problems when I get proper gear.

(At least I finally replaced those level 56 boots … :B )

What are y’all using for Armor Runes on your support build. I am not overwhelmed by the bonuses of any of the runes with Healing.

Of Dwayna: 15 heal / 15% regen duration / 35 heal / 3% chance to gain regen for 10 secs when hit
Of the Water: 15 heal / 10% boon duration / 35 healing / 3% chance to remove condition when hit
Of the Grove: 15 heal / 15% protection / 35 heal / 3% chance to gain protection for 10 secs when hit
Of the Guardian: 15 tough / 10 heal / 35 tough / 25 heal

(major runes, obviously. can’t afford superiors yet)

Is there any other useful rune that I am not seeing? I am also looking at Dolyak (tough/vit) for survivability…

i think healing scales rather badly so youd want more defensive stats, but im not sure yet, currently using 6x undead cause i had the mats and can craft it myself, its decentish but not really happy with it

Vyral, I use mostly Carrion. Healing scales very poorly right now, though I do have some cleric-y jewelry for more toughness and a little +heal.

Dear friends, Soothing Mist is not considered an aura in terms of our traits.

Shocking Aura, Frost Aura, Magnetic Aura, etc are considered auras. Our soothing mist is NOT affected by Powerful Auras (Water XII). We will apply Soothing Mist as long as we have at least 5 points into water.

Soothing Mist does NOT grant the boon regeneration, either. Although they do the same effect, it will not be considered regeneration and thus will not be affected by Cleansing Water (XI). Imagine if it would? Standing next to allies, they would lose any conditions once every 3 or so seconds (when Soothing Mist reapplies). That is not how it works though. One needs to apply the * boon * regeneration for Cleansing Water XI to work.

Just wanted to clarify