Guild Wars 2

To be honest, playing the role of a ‘healer’ in either a PvE situation or a WvWvW, it becomes terribly apparent that DPS is far more appreciated. Most of the time, given that the battlefield is always moving, it’s increasingly hard to use WA heals because they’re AoE type, static effects.
That, and people in WvWvW automatically dodge anything they see on the ground, including your healing circles.
Honestly, I think that there needs to be ally-targeted heals and the like because AoE heals are fairly useless. Or maybe something that signifies that it’s a healing effect, not a damage effect.
Another thing I’ve encountered is that even if someone stands in your heals, whoever stands in the heal gets punished for not moving by other classes, and it usually ends up in someone getting incap’d, despite having increased healing from the traits tree. It really feels unrewarding to play in a healing-oriented way.
Then again, I’m not exactly high on the level count either, maybe this’ll get better with time. But seeing as group play is hard to come by without having people you know outside of GW play with you, gaining levels as a healer is terribly slow.

Well every game is hardmode pve side for healers.
There are no dedicating healers in this game so you are just there for situational healing not for keeping everyone alive.
As for targeted heal the water1 skill (auto atk) on staff actually heals others, and if you target them atk goes to them and everyone that passes through is healed too.

The thing being, there’s always a situation that needs a healer. Problem is, it’s incredibly hard to BE that healer. Heals don’t do a lot in the way of healing, and I end up using them just to top me or an ally nearby off on HP after a fight if they- or I for that matter- manage to live.
I didn’t know about the staff healing thing, but it also seems to not do that much. But, it’s nice, constant(ish) healing as compared to trying to land AoE heals on moving allies.
It’s still kind of ridiculous that dedicated healers have no purpose in this game, and it’s almost infuriating when I try to do anything even with a small group and we end up wiping and having to start from the beginning of something.
It would be nice to see some improvements on healing even in slight ways, that way if someone DID dedicate their specialty into healing, it would make a difference. The way I see it, if you hit the end of the Healing trait tree, you wasted your traits for nothing.

Key to healing most of the time is actually getting out of water attunement often. Sooner you get out of it, the sooner you get to go back into it and get all your bonuses from switching to water again if you’re traited for it (giving everyone regen, the AOE heal, clear a condition etc).

Funny enough, you also can hand out a lot of healing playing a defensive minded build and playing aggressively in dagger/dagger.

Eles feel kinda wonky at mid levels but in the end it all comes together quite well.

Healing rain has such a large AOE on the ground you’re going to tag a lot of your friends with it in WvWvW. I like to make that the last thing I do in water attunement, then drop over to earth (hands out protection to everyone) and staff earth #2 in the rain to activate combo field which does AOE healing.

Typical 20 water 30 arcane stuff. You can roll into your water fields with evasive arcana (30 arcane) to give another AOE heal burst. I slot runes with more +boon duration on top of the 30% boon duration from going 30 in arcane, all the attunement switching hands out plenty of long duration regens and protection buffs

TLDR: It gets better later. You just need a lot in water and arcane to make it all come together, which of course means being high enough level to have the traits. It all comes down to the 10 point arcane talent giving you the attunement bonuses, big boon durations, and all the great things that happen when you attunement switch to water. Key point with that of course is, you have to leave water to switch back to it (with 30 in arcane, you can switch back in 9 seconds too).

Healing is a team effort is this game; one provides the water field, the other one turn it into additional healing via finishers. Elementalists can also frequently finish their own combo fields with Eruption and Evasive Arcana.

yeah i think you gots to have a water field to really heal.
ranger/ele is a pretty good combination for healing.

In general, I don’t think the best approach is to plan to make a traditional healer, and spend all your time trying to heal your group. This will only result in frustration, and it’s not really how GW2 is designed.

Instead, just focus your spec toward healing, but when you play, just play normal. Do your damage, CC, debuffs, buffs, and yes, healing as normal. You will find that you are still adding a good deal of healing to the group.

My D/D Ele winds up healing a lot just from normal play. I will try to position my heals well, but if no one is around, then oh well I get healed only.

I think part of the problem is there are only two classes who really “need” to learn anything about combo fields as they level… elementalist and engineer. And a lot of engineers manage to just spam grenades and never figure them out either.

So when you aren’t working in an organized group with a battle plan, no one makes use of any tactics that could maximize a support toon to his fullest. I often try to teach my partners about combo fields and finishers… it is amazing how much more useful I become when they start paying attention to them and using them. A water field in staff when you only have 1 distance blast finisher is kind of lackluster… but when the whole party sees it go up and triggers their blast finishers suddenly you have an entire party refresh.

My best advice to you is learn to communicate with your party… even if it’s a PUG… and explain/develop some simple tactics you can use in the heat of battle.

Also… remain flexible… as an elementalist only interested in healing you are useless… but an elementalist interested in tossing down support of every kind in his toolkit is a massive help to his party. Especially when you learn WHEN to provide that support and where, on the fly.

You can do self-combo to be efficient. Below can give you 2 x area healing + healing from skill itself. Combination with healing ripple you can heal yourself around 8-9k (not sure exactly how much but I healed from 1k to over 9k with this combo)

• Eruption → Geyser → Arcane Wave
• Healing Rain→ Eruption → Arcane Wave
  As for targeted heals you can do Healing Ripple (traits). At lvl 80 this does over 2700. I set 10/10/10/20/20 but if you allow 30 for water and arcana I am pretty sure you can do even more with grandmaster traits.

That said like everyone is saying, you can’t be a true healer in this game, so you have to make up the lacking of healing ability by preventing damage for your party. I list what I do for this below.

• Elemental Attunement (water/air/earth all are good for support. More point you have on arcana and bonus from runes you can increase duration. I have 20% from traits and 40% from runes which make it 60% increase for my cleric gear.)
• Elemental Surge
• Evasive Arcana
• Cleansing Wave
• Cleansing Water
• Staff has a lot of control skills such as Frozen Ground, Shockwave, etc. All these help your party
• Glyph of Storms (Earth or water. Earth is my favorite and I don’t think not many people realize while sandstorm is on foes are blinded entire time. This is super useful skill for support role)

ManyTailedFox.8973:

……It’s still kind of ridiculous that dedicated healers have no purpose in this game, and it’s almost infuriating when I try to do anything even with a small group and we end up wiping and having to start from the beginning of something.
……..

You are not going to be able to outheal incoming damage. The other players are going to have to know their classes and mitigate or avoid damage and use their own heals too. But, wait, there’s more, for a limited time….

The complaint seems to be that your groups are falling fast. In other games the dedicated healer class can make up for alot of bad play on the part of everyone else. We all know how the healer always get the blame when the others are the ones who sucked. Be thankful neither eles nor any other class can be blamed for lack of healing lol.

It sounds like you are running together with the same people and if so, there is alot that you guys can learn to do better together than most pugs. Attack with surprise. Target marking is #1 for concentrating dps. That is the first thing you guys should be doing. At that point there is nothing to heal yet. Put up some fields for ranged projectile finishers. Concentrate your melee on one target and get on the offensive fast. Pick the targets in the correct order. They will be the ones scrambling to stay alive and the ones getting rolled. In theory at least.

Eh, I don’t like the idea of everyone having to pitch in on healing. Main reason? No one DOES, it seems. I don’t always run with the same guys, but either way I always end up getting stomped out in small skirmishes and having to be picked up after the fight’s done, even trying to deal damage and situation heal.
I guess I’ll just have to grit my teeth and deal with it til the end. Everyone says it gets better then. Let’s just hope so.

Is DPS more useful in this game than healing? Probably. Is DPS more useful than support in this game? Absolutely not.
Please, stop trying to be a healer, and start trying to be a “support” and you’ll find that DPS is not the end-all be-all of this game. Spreading buffs like might and protection, clearing off conditions, and tossing around the occasional heal is HUGELY helpful in all types of group PvE. While outright healing, as everyone has mentioned, is.. Not. You’re just not going to keep people “Topped off” in this game. You’re not supposed too, they have their own heals that they’re supposed to know how to use appropriately or die for it. You, on the other hand, can mitigate damage with chill and protection, along with other CC, increase damage with vulnerability and might, both increase damage and mitigate it with condition removal. And most of all, keep up with the fields in combat. Whether you’re dagger or scepter and have a myriad of finishers for every time you see a white circle on the ground, or you’re staff and laying them down (While praying your party does something with them.) Elementalist has probably the most varied group of fields and finishers in the game. I say this from my mesmer main who places ethereal and ONLY etherial fields and having an elementalist in my group to combo off of instead is a HUGE relief besides doing ANYTHING and getting.. chaos armor for it. Which is good but…. Chaos armor. All the time, every time.

Try this when you want to heal. Go 30 into arcana for Evasive Arcana. Next time you see someone needing heals toss up a water field and roll around in it (dodge). You can even roll around in other water fields (rangers have the only other one I believe). Remember though, any blast finisher will trigger massive aoe heals when used in water fields. We aren’t the only ones with blast finishers so make your team aware that you are putting up a water field and to use thier blast finishers in them for some healing.

You don’t have to use Evasive Arcana as we do have a plethora of blast finishers with other weapon sets (scepter/dagger) and if you run with some rangers they can provide the field to use them in.

We cannot singlehandedly keep a party alive, but we have the tools to make healing powerful as a group effort. This is afterall the entire piont of this game..group effort, no one class able to carry others.

ManyTailedFox.8973:

Eh, I don’t like the idea of everyone having to pitch in on healing. Main reason? No one DOES, it seems. I don’t always run with the same guys, but either way I always end up getting stomped out in small skirmishes and having to be picked up after the fight’s done, even trying to deal damage and situation heal.
I guess I’ll just have to grit my teeth and deal with it til the end. Everyone says it gets better then. Let’s just hope so.

I’ve discovered the majority of players with different classess (with the exception of maybe the mesmer or the engineer) don’t even know HOW to trigger these heals, or even what type of finishers they have…or fields for that matter, with my regular group, I have had to figure out who had what and tell them. It is just not that important to the way thier class is played. Which is broken if you ask me. shrug

Yeah, I’d have to echo some other people in here. Elementalist healing is actually really effective, but the way to get the most out of it is unfortunately pretty counter-intuitive. Healing Rain is all-around fantastic, but it’s a 5 skill, and takes quite a while to recharge. Geyser is powerful too, but only when you drop it on someone who isn’t moving very much (it’s extremely useful when you’re in a dungeon party with 2-3 Warriors/Guardians all clustered together).

But really, most of your healing is going to come about by getting out of Water Attunement ASAP, so that you can switch back in. With the proper traits, that results in an AoE heal for an instant 1500-1750 or so HP, plus five seconds of regeneration, and removal of a condition. With 30 points in Arcana, Chocolate Omnomberry Cream as your active food, and two Water and two Monk runes, your Boon Duration reaches 200%, bumping the regeneration up to ten seconds. That’s an effective AoE heal of 3500~4500 or so, in addition to your skills, as often as every 9 seconds, if you don’t spend time casting any actual spells.

And then there’s Evasive Arcana, which lets you use Cleansing Wave every 10 seconds for another ~1500 AoE heal. And Evasive Arcana spells are Blast Finishers, so if you roll into a Geyser or Healing Rain, that’s another ~1500 on top of that – and you’ve also got Eruption and Arcane Wave to use as Blast Finishers, plus whatever the rest of your party can combo your Water Fields into.

If your Elite skill is the Elemental Glyph, the Water Elemental is actually a reasonably powerful healer in its own right, assuming it doesn’t die too quickly.

All of that together is obviously quite a lot of healing, and it’s diversified enough that you’re never really waiting for cooldowns, the way you would be if you tried to make do with just Staff 3 and 5. But focusing entirely on Healing isn’t really the most effective way to heal anyway. You’ve got oodles of skills that will snare, slow, blind, or knock enemies back (Air 2, 3, 5, Water 4, Earth 4, 5, Glyph of Storms in Earth Attunement is an AoE pulsing Blind, the Air Attunement Evasive Arcana is also an AoE blind, etc), and you have to consider every hit that you prevent your allies from taking as an effective heal for that amount, and every reduction in the rate enemies can attack as damage mitigation for that percentage of their damage.

And much like the Regeneration from swapping into Water Attunement, doing the same with Earth Attunement gives AoE protection – with a nearly constant uptime, if you’re traited for Boon Duration. A flat 33% reduction in incoming damage is some pretty kitten effective support.

Basically, doing proper Elementalist support takes a lot of getting used to before all the attunement swapping and the combo fields and finishers, plus managing all your snares and other CC, etc becomes intuitive, but it is extremely effective, and once you really get the hang of it, you’re more than capable of keeping a party alive through most dungeon scenarios, as long as they aren’t actively attempting to die.

Ok, there are things I can say here about the whole issue.

The first being that Support Elementalist is fantastic. So much so, that it has become my favorite ever! This coming from a player who has 120+ inventory slots on Elementalist and carries several weapon sets and armor sets in invisible bags. I just need to pay a trainer to restat and get the build I want.

The second is that in other MMORPGs a player gets a Support Build where most of what you do is three things

1) Stand still and try to not aggro anything or claim hate.
2) Look at health bars of players and enemies
3) Spam your super-skills hoping your MP does not drop to zero.

Playing Support in Guild Wars 2 as an Elementalist actually takes skill. It takes a full build too.

I have to see a lot more of the battlefield and switch between buffing players around me on attunement swap, debuffing enemies that would buy everyone time to react. Not to mention time my heals accordingly in order to not waste them.

It has become my favorite and when done right it really is an amazing support.

Consider that its an MMORPG and one healer can really make a difference if played right.

It also comes down to the people you play with. There are groups I can support who know what they are doing and I can act within those groups. Then there are groups who force me to needlessly waste my stuff that I can’t support as I can or should and we all get slaughtered.

Then there are the players who say “You should have kept me alive! I died!” and they dare to argue with me saying “If you’re a healer, why should I ever need my self-heal?”

…I always tell players “Use your self heals, do what you need to do. I am here for support.”

….Water Elementalist to me has been something fantastic and I love that the more I play, the better I get and there is a learning curve different in support than in offense. Also, just because you can only use one weapon set, does not mean you shouldn’t carry a full set of weapons. Always have your two daggers, your staff along with your focus and scepter…and their sigils because you will need to swap at times.

Yes. I do use my Blast Finishers and I have my entire skill bar set up to really be an awesome support. If I was horrible, I wouldn’t be asked by WvW commanders and players in Lions Arch to dungeon run with them by name.

I think The problem with Water attunment in general is that it really not that supportive. Besides its Incredibly crappy healing naturally(you tend to just blast finisher it for spike heals anyway..The rest is sort of just a little healing and does not help to much in the long run). Water should be the Support attunemnt, and Anet told us from the start we don’t want Dedicated healers. Yet…When your in water attunment, Your only form of real support is through….HEALING!

There are multitudes of ways to provide support in this game, and the water ele gets turned into a dedicated healer whenever you attune to it. You don’t get any buffing of allies, you to increase there effectivness. You just Try to keep them alive(which is really hard).

Water attunment also has excesivly long cooldowns, on skills that don’t warrent it. Healing rain is bugged and lasts 4 seconds…For an outrageous cooldown. I know were not supposed to dedicated healers, but as a water ele, it sucks that I tend to use only 2 skills on my staff becuase the rest of them “Im saveing for when I really need it”.

Water ele needs improvements to turn her into something useful. Either buff the healing, or reduce cool downs. Or something that lets her be a True asset to the team when she turns to supportive styles. My level 80 guardian is a support guardian and she heals more then my ele through a 15 second cool down symbol…Then the ele does through healing rain! That is bad!

bluewanders.5297:

I think part of the problem is there are only two classes who really “need” to learn anything about combo fields as they level… elementalist and engineer. …
… it is amazing how much more useful I become when they start paying attention to them and using them.

This is SO true. About 1/3 to 1/2 of your overall healing, sanring AND dps comes from using combo fields. If you use them properly, you can double your snare’s duration, have a permanent speed boost and at least 15 stacks of might on you at all times. And then you won’t feel as underpowered anymore.

But to come back to your original post, I feel that the staff elementalist is doing itself a disservice if they focus on just a single aspect of their build. They don’t do either damage, conditions, healing or support, they do all of it. And since they don’t specialize in anything, they need the other effects to back up the power they miss in a single role. Dunno if that makes sense, but that’s how I feel they work.

2 observations:

1) I find that having one or two classes that provide strong group sustain, regardless of class, can be tremendously useful in dungeons. It’s when everyone is left to only rely on their own utility heal that groups get worn down and die a lot. Support elementalists can fulfill this role as good (or arguably better) than anyone. I play a 0/0/10/30/30 ele, and I find groups often love me. Once the players you’re playing with learn to not step out of the circles from your water fields, you actually become a very effective healer. As I’m sure others have mentioned, combos through your water fields are of utmost importance. You can perform 3 blast finishers yourself, and you should be getting other players to perform their own combos through them. Position them so rangers/thieves are firing projectiles through them. Toss them on melee who are performing leaps and whirls, etc.

2) Your observation that damage is appreciated is apt. The best groups I’ve been in have had tremendous dps. You really notice it when you’re playing with players who can dish out the damage.

The best and easiest way to provide healing is to spec into the water and arcane lines get some plus healing gear and then switch into and then immediately out of the water attunement (maybe use a water field if it’s up, but get out fast so you can switch back in). Then use the rest of your abilities to cc and put pressure on the enemy so people don’t get hurt in the first place.

First off from the start it was said no real healer. Nobody can keep a focus fired glass cannon up all by themselves.

That being said we patch and pitch in here and there but healing is a group effort if you need it run to the guy who has it and his fields. The other thing to note is that the personal heal every player has is the king of all healing heal speced or not. Our job isn’t to keep players alive they do that on their own all we can do is help them survive. We cant carry a single player who’s not on their game and its as simple as that.

Setsunayaki.4907:

The second is that in other MMORPGs a player gets a Support Build where most of what you do is three things

1) Stand still and try to not aggro anything or claim hate.
2) Look at health bars of players and enemies
3) Spam your super-skills hoping your MP does not drop to zero.

You are either inexperienced as a healer/support(or horrible at it) or you play some poorly designed games. I’ve been a support healer for, hmmm, 6 years now and I’ve never had to do only the 3 things you listed(sure, I could, but…why when I could do so much more?!).

Playing Support in Guild Wars 2 as an Elementalist actually takes skill. It takes a full build too.

I have to see a lot more of the battlefield and switch between buffing players around me on attunement swap, debuffing enemies that would buy everyone time to react. Not to mention time my heals accordingly in order to not waste them.

It has become my favorite and when done right it really is an amazing support.

Consider that its an MMORPG and one healer can really make a difference if played right.

It also comes down to the people you play with. There are groups I can support who know what they are doing and I can act within those groups. Then there are groups who force me to needlessly waste my stuff that I can’t support as I can or should and we all get slaughtered.

Then there are the players who say “You should have kept me alive! I died!” and they dare to argue with me saying “If you’re a healer, why should I ever need my self-heal?”

…I always tell players “Use your self heals, do what you need to do. I am here for support.”

Yeah, that’s more like it. Might come as a surprise to you, but that’s how well-designed healers work in MMOs.

Ultimately, no class in GW2 would ever satisfy a dedicated healer. Ele comes close, but you will always lack the ability to keep a party alive against all odds, just because you are good at what you do(which is what a good healer in a good MMO does). No more Godcomplex for healers in this game….