Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen some decent video footage of Tempest heals on VG, but I’m wondering what your guys experience has been healing as tempest, as I’m curious about what kind of healer to gear up. It seems like everyone wants druid, and it’s a lot of fun, but ele seems far more reliable at keeping people topped off pretty effortlessly. However it seems like druids are able to offer more than tempests can in regards to group support. The auras are nice, but only in preventing damage and might stacking. What else does ele bring to the table as a dedicated healer, more DPS? What builds do you recommend, and what has your experience been as a healer?

Staff on VG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ozwUAZDLeA

Auramancer on VG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2xJZHT8NGY

Can’t find any footage on Sabetha/Gorseval, link if anyone has, please!
Thanks!

No support…. Um free 40% protection is amazing for survivability, and when you rotate it well you can keep it up permanently.

I’ve killed VG around 20 times using my Healing Tank Tempest.
I use staff and I’m able to keep the melee group alive at all times using my water autoattack with 1k+ heals per autoattack along with my soothing mist which heals for around 600 (not counting any regen and burst heals that I can put out with overload water and wash the pain away).

I’m able to keep the ranged group alive by constantly dropping water 3 and 5 and blasting it with arcane wave. I use water 4 and blast it to give the ranged group frost aura for a substantial heal + regen ticks. I can also drop water 4 to control the seekers.

Being able to tank and heal at the same time allows our druid to focus on more DPS and more seeker control which is very useful.

I use a similar build for Gorseval. I change out my build with scepter/wh because that fight only requires situational healing so I can provide protection and might with my rotations.

We had a tempest healer both on VG and Gorseval, but imo druid would do better. Tempest probably have more overtime healing, but druid has better burst healing. Along with that druid also helps the party dps a lot which is definitely needed on Gorseval and I don’t think Tempest healer is good for that boss at all. It obviously depends on how experienced your party is and when they’re able to dodge everything, you’ll do better with druid.

Generally I’d say that tempests do a better job at the actual healing with massive protection uptime, large aoe spells to ensure everyone gets healed and a steadier more consistent heal pattern to minimize overheal. Druids does however offer really strong (and unique) offensive support such as grace of the land and glyph of empowerment.

I commented some time ago in the Raid/Fractal forum about healers, I’ll copy paste it here.

Raid Gorseval: http://www.twitch.tv/particlar/v/27489306

Comparing tempest to druid, I’d say that both are really viable and have different niches. Druid has better burst heals (say heavy heals for 10s) and better party wide offensive support.
Ele has better personal damage, way better party wide defensive support (prot -40%, frost aura -10%, vigor) and better sustained heals (higher HPS, healing per second).

The end result will probably favour druid in more skilled groups since the offensive support easily outweights the ele’s superior personal damage.

Thanks for the responses guys! I’ll probably still gear both reasonably (as I’m nearly done) but I think I’ll just do Druid in the short run just so people don’t complain when we need heals about my choice of class. Once I get some practice healing I’d probably try tempest and compare with a better frame of reference.

I’m sitting on a set of zealots insignias and monk runes that I haven’t committed to anyone yet. Both look interesting, and I think they will both have encounters where they’re needed. I’d probably argue that Ele is a strong choice for sabetha, though I haven’t seen it.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Thanks for the responses guys! I’ll probably still gear both reasonably (as I’m nearly done) but I think I’ll just do Druid in the short run just so people don’t complain when we need heals about my choice of class. Once I get some practice healing I’d probably try tempest and compare with a better frame of reference.

I’m sitting on a set of zealots insignias and monk runes that I haven’t committed to anyone yet. Both look interesting, and I think they will both have encounters where they’re needed. I’d probably argue that Ele is a strong choice for sabetha, though I haven’t seen it.

We got a video from our last kill with tempest healer if you’re interested. However, it’s not from his point of view.

Tempest no longer has the 40% protection trait, it’s been replaced by Invigorating Torrents.

The 40% protection trait has now been placed into the Minor Grandmaster trait buddy, ‘Hardy Conduit’.

Where is the crew who was clamoring about how tempest is terrible at tanking and healing before raid release?

@Particlar: I saw Deroir’s reddit post and I really like the direction that you guys were taking. Excellent game play!

Doesn’t the 40% protection affect the Tempest only? As in, Protection is applied to allies as well, but only the Tempest benefits from the more effective Protection?

The trait affects the protection you apply to yourself as well as your allies afaik.

@Iris Thanks! Raids are awesome <3

“Gain protection while overloading an attunement. Protection has increased effectiveness.

Incoming damage decreased; stacks duration. Protection (3s): -33% Incoming Damage
Effectiveness increased: 20%"

Always read this as Protection that the Tempest receives has increased effectiveness. Hmm.

Hardy Conduit’s Protection Effectiveness Increase is only supposed to work on Protection which is applied to the Tempest themselves (but any source of Protection is affected). However, I haven’t done the testing myself to see if that’s true or not.

Neko.9021:

Hardy Conduit’s Protection Effectiveness Increase is only supposed to work on Protection which is applied to the Tempest themselves (but any source of Protection is affected). However, I haven’t done the testing myself to see if that’s true or not.

That’s what I thought! Groupwide 40% increased Protection effectiveness is kinda OP, and I do not think that is how it currently works. It should (and actually does) affect only the Tempest IMO. I’ll try to test it out (kinda difficult to do without two other people, might try Svanir in the PvP lobby.) If I can get to it, I’ll post results. I’d appreciate any testing someone else can do in the meantime though.

Glenstorm.4059:

Neko.9021:

Hardy Conduit’s Protection Effectiveness Increase is only supposed to work on Protection which is applied to the Tempest themselves (but any source of Protection is affected). However, I haven’t done the testing myself to see if that’s true or not.

That’s what I thought! Groupwide 40% increased Protection effectiveness is kinda OP, and I do not think that is how it currently works. It should (and actually does) affect only the Tempest IMO. I’ll try to test it out (kinda difficult to do without two other people, might try Svanir in the PvP lobby.) If I can get to it, I’ll post results. I’d appreciate any testing someone else can do in the meantime though.

Regardless if its OP or not, its not really needed. Sure prot in general is nice to have, when people are doing mistakes and take large chunks of damage. But put aside this, and as time goes on, more and more will be better at knowing mechanics and avoiding damage. In that case, which is the ideal progression for any team, druid will come superior in Spirit Vale wing due to providing raid damage that outshines tempest’s personal dps.

I finally got to making a video talking about aurahealer and comparing it to the druid.

Have a watch if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2gCKlPwoMY