Guild Wars 2

I have some questions about water, fields, and healing, and wanted to know if anyone had already tested things and gotten answers. Thanks!

1. When you use a Blast Finisher in a Water Field, say, what is the radius of the heal? Is it the radius of the field or the radius of the blast? I’m thinking in particular of Healing Rain, which has a huge field.

2. When you use a Blast Finisher in a Water Field, how much does it heal for? Something related to the Field’s originating spell and the player doing the detonation?

3. What about a Projectile Finisher and a Water Field? I gather that it heals players close to the target and not the player that fired the projectile, right? (Something like the Water Bolt.)

4. Does healing scale in such a way that it keeps up with mobs damage as you level, or does it fall behind? In particular, assuming that you don’t have +Heal. Two sub-cases: 1) the Water Bolt’s heal, and 2) Projectile/Blast Finishers in a Water Field.

I’m going to do some experiments, but it’s a little hard to convince my buddies to participate in controlled experiments and it’s pretty much impossible to test things without at least one other (injured) player. Thanks!

1. I believe its the range of the blast based on my experience with teammates in dungeons
2. Dunno, i’ve never been too sure, but I suspect it scales with your own healing power, so cant really give you an exact number. Mine heals for around 2000 though.
3. Heals players close to target rather than yourself (unless you are also on the target)
4. I believe it scales based on your own healing power.

@Zenyatoo: Thanks, great answers!

One more clarification: on #4, I believe we have a base healing power and can then add +Heal gear, and you’re talking about the base without +Heal gear/upgrades, right?

I ask for three reasons: 1) I hear +Heal gear isn’t really that useful to acquire, 2) I’m thinking I can’t use too much +Heal gear or the party’s DPS will be too kittened, and 3) I’m assuming no one else in the party will have +Heal gear. So would my Water Bolt (I think that’s it, the one that damages and heals) be useless at level 80? And would my Water Field + my party’s Finishers (Projectile and Blast) be useless at level 80?

(Of course, that assumes that they’re useful pre-level80, which I haven’t yet determined.)

" I believe we have a base healing power and can then add +Heal gear, and you’re talking about the base without +Heal gear/upgrades, right?"

Yes. I dont run +heal gear for the first reason you stated, which is that healing power scales pretty badly. It’s really most useful in situations where you will heal far more than 1-5 players, such as in events (for which you wont receive credit for healing) or WvWvW (also for which you wont receive credit, but is offset because you get credit for standing in the circle, so whatever)

No heal is “useless” but they can often be “Use impaired” Heals will rarely save a teammate from death in my experience. You need 2+ heals to combat a single monster hit, and chances are if you’re able to maneuver and get those heals off on your teammate (who is most likely running away) chances are they would have lived anyway.

Druitt.7629:

2. When you use a Blast Finisher in a Water Field, how much does it heal for? Something related to the Field’s originating spell and the player doing the detonation?

Don’t know the exact formula for the healing amount but I know that it only depends on the stats from the character who finished the combo, the stats from the combo starter are irrelevant.

Zenyatoo.4059:

No heal is “useless” but they can often be “Use impaired” Heals will rarely save a teammate from death in my experience. You need 2+ heals to combat a single monster hit, and chances are if you’re able to maneuver and get those heals off on your teammate (who is most likely running away) chances are they would have lived anyway.

Hmmm… this gets me wondering if healing (water) is really useful at all.

In PvE, would it be better to throw conditions on bosses instead? (Or does weakness not work the same on bosses?) I haven’t had enough group time to tell if this game is more about DPSing until you pull aggro, then survive until someone pulls it off of you (or the boss is dead).

A buddy and I hit 30 and went to our first dungeon yesterday. It was a terrible experience, since the group was basically leaderless. Some of the other three knew the dungeon a bit, but no one ever said anything the entire time. I thought at times I’d try to throw out a Healing Rain and use Water Bolt, but then got to wondering if that really made any difference and if I should’ve been burning down stuff instead. (Of course, it really hurt us that with no leadership we didn’t focus on anything.)

Even without +Heal (i.e. focusing gear stats on damage or condition damage), I believe blast finishing (such as arcane wave) your own water fields can be helpful to your party. Kiting is usually done within a circle for the obvious reason of avoiding reset and adds, so you can anticipate where a party member will be and place your geyser accordingly. I usually do not expect anyone to actually stand in the geyser or even walk over it, I just place it where I can use a blast finisher on it.

If you choose to trait for it at level 60+, you also can get blast finisher at the end of your evade rolls, which help you burst heal (or burst whatever fields you want).

Even if your heal doesn’t bring them to full health or doesn’t seem like a lot, every little bit helps. Whatever health you gave them might let them survive their condition damage long enough to heal themselves, or recover enough stamina to dodge, or any number of things.