Guild Wars 2

I’ve only been playing the elementalist for about a day and a half and so far I’m thinking that i can spec him to be a healer.

does anyone think this is possible, or should i try not to bring wow to gw2?

Nope. Healing is way too low to heal people with it effecively. You may help a bit but its just not worth it. Cooldowns are way too long and effects way too puny. Even with full healing set its crap.. not worth losing other stats for it.
Trating into water however does help a lot. Mosty to your survivability.

Staff+evasive arcana+bit of healing power+30 in water = Heal/buff machine.

i´ll let other explain it better.

Have to disagree with Bond. The staff healing skills by themselves are negligible, but combined with water evasive arcana and a timed eruption you can get multiple aoe heals in one area. This will make an eruption>geyser>water roll>water roll combo heal for 5000+. And on a 15 second cooldown thats not bad. But you really cant just heal like a cleric or whatever but rather play full support with cc and buffs dealing damage at the same time. The same build you use for healing can be used to achieve mad might stacks on all of your allies within close proximity. That said, don’t bother with it until your an 80. Healing is kitten at lower levels. Don’t know why.

True. But in practice you can forget about it. The one that needs healing will moving like rabbit on fire and delay on your combo means you wont be healing anyone. I prefer to disrupt incoming dmg from start than chase the guy with heals. Ofc i drop heals and combos in my rotation, but id almost never heal for the sake of healing… its just there in rotation with water debuffs on enemy.

this is a variation on 0/0/10/30/30 staff ele

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImKbnx1gjDAkHvYCLjChUeEzM2A

full healing gear (Cleric’s / Rejuvinating) dwanyas runes and Sapphire jewelry can make a pretty solid support build.

just dont forget your DPS, you have also power as one of the stats on the gear.

Hmm afaik healing is not meant to out pace dps ie if 2 bunkers fight each other heads up infinitely a winner should be decided at some point in time. That being said you can spec to heal but most of the time players will not stand still for you to heal them. That doesn’t mean support heal is impossible. I see staff ele toss out healing quite a bit.

The real thing to remember is that the best tactic for survival for any player in this game is flat out evasion and not eating the hit. By going support ele you can help them stay alive as they attempt to dodge damage.

The other thing to remember is that as an ele you are versatile healing is one small part of that versatility. In many parties what ever weapon you use you will be healing, dpsing, and setting up combo fields all at the same time. You may even have to tank.

TL DR
Yes its possible to be a healer. Just remember we do more than that and that their is more to healing than just healing.

You can be about as effective a group healer as any class can be in Guild Wars 2. The two things to remember are:

1) Don’t try to be just a healer. Use all your attunements (in fact, a good portion of your healing is likely to come from switching into Water Attunement, so sitting in it for any longer than is necessary tends to be counterproductive). Boon stacking is going to provide as much, or more, support than direct healing could ever hope to, and you have a lot of options for stuns, cripples, immobilizes, blinds, etc, and every time you stop an enemy from hitting a player, you have effectively healed them for however much damage that enemy would have dealt. And even beyond utility, your healing/support skills just don’t cycle off of cooldown fast enough to be the only ones you use – when you can’t make efficient use of a support skill, you should be using damage skills.

2) The nice thing about Elementalist as a healer is that you can heal fairly effectively without going all-in on Healing stats. Water Attunement is always going to be there. A solid investment in Healing Power is a good idea, but you don’t need to maximize Healing Power. Increasing your Boon Duration, personal survivability, or even your damage-dealing capabilities will, at a certain point, be much more effective and efficient ways to build a support Elementalist than obsessing over direct HP healing.