Guild Wars 2

As the title says. I have grown very bored of the Flamethrower build lately and I want to switch to another, very different perspective: Supporting.

I’m open to all suggestions (as long as they reguard PvE and not WvW or PvP).
I’m looking for support builds and/or healing builds. Between the two I prefer the latter.

I’m asking you not only the builds, but if they are viable. Are healing based engineers actually useful in a dungeon (read: not necessarily speedclears) or they just suck at it?
Thanks everyone for future answers
(One last question: other than the GW2 forums and GW2builds.net, which I’m not very fond of, is there any site to check for builds?)

I would check out BamfJoe’s build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/WvW-Healing-Engineer-Outnumbered-Vid-6/first#post2966643

Thanks for the very fast reply, but ain’t that a WvW build? I’m looking mainly for PvE builds

edit: or do you mean that’s viable for PvE too?

I can’t image why it wouldn’t be viable for PvE. If you are talking healing it’s really about the water fields and bombs.

This is one I use on my engineer sometimes. Works well in dungeons! http://intothemists.com/guides/1372-wvw_heals_engi

This is the one I use: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQJAqelIq6dn1yuF1bJxoCdOkiCbYQFqrIF5X/fKwWA-jwxAIOhQqBIFKI5xioxWdLiGremIqWdjJFAErBA-e

It’s tweaked for WvW since I play a lot of WvW, but I’ve used it many times in PvE as well (i.e. personal story, map exploration, dungeons, fractals, &c.). It’s designed to have a high amount of group healing available in addition to being able to apply notable condition pressure (particularly burning). That way you’re not just a heal bot that can never kill things.

It’s quite open to tweaking since things like rocket boots aren’t as necessary in PvE and you could possibly take some more damage oriented traits. Some alternative utility choices would be elixir R, elixir U (for projectile walls), or another kit, although you’ll probably want to keep the elixir gun and healing turret. I prefer running the rocket boots though since you get extra AoE burning and the blast finisher combined with the escape utility just fits this build quite well. Also helps when you just want to run around since you get boosted, and if some mob cripples you it’s easily cleared.

With this particular configuration, you can blast in the healing turret’s water field 3 times in quick succession, and you can use another blast finisher with the healing turret toolbelt skill for 4 water blasts. It can actually be a very significant amount of healing, capable of healing at least 3/4 of your own HP as well as a very significant amount to people around you, which can be very good in dungeon parties. Then you also have the healing from the elixir gun as well as some group condition removal. The flamethrower can work good in crowds, but you probably don’t want to sit in it all the time.

Sigil of leeching might seem a bit odd, but it provides you with another method of healing yourself and damaging the enemy (975 every 10ish seconds), but something like a sigil of renewal would probably work well too, or energy or perhaps something for more conditions.

I haven’t played too much with elixir infused bombs since I don’t really like the bomb kit that much, but that would probably be another solid choice for general PvE.

I use this build for supporting:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF1LJyoCdGoCAmIF5nl95xbJXQIA-jwCBYjChkIBhIAM5rIasVNFRjVVjIqWXDzeDxgLaWcp2qDAA-e

Regarding all heals, this build gives you:

243 (0,075*HP) selfheal per sec on average
27,8 ( 0,003*HP) single target heal per sec on average (Elite)
551,4 (+0,205*HP) multi target heal per sec on average (AoE-Heals)

All values by using skills optimal.

I can’t recommend elixir infused bombs. This trait is broken weak for a grandmaster trait. You should not go for it, even if you try to support.

Anyway, not according on what build you are using, let’s talk about gear. As you can see, the values in marks (xx*HP) show you how this kind of heal profits from your healing equipment. For example if you do have 500 healing power (HP) your multi target heal increases from 551,4 (102,5) up to 653,9 per second.
If you do have 1200 HP: 0,205*1200 = +246. Means 551,4 246 = 797,4 per second at all.

As you can see, doesn’t really matter what build you are using, healing power is not that great. With a full healing power set you do not even increase your healing by 50% but you neuter yourself in any other functionality. That’s why I recommend celestial gear for support builds. It gives you about 500 HP but you still deal very fair sustain direct and condition damage beeing tanky enougth for any content through the additional vita and toughness.

Don’t forget: blind, slow down (chill, cripple, immobilise) and vulnerability is also a great way to support your party. My build allows 3 sources of blindness with fairly short cooldown and also multiple slow-down skills and a lot of vulnerability.

Min-Maxing does not work well in this game because everything follows the law of saturation. Maxing out the damage in pve is also not effective, you lose so much for the last 20% but on the other hand, most content does only need damage.

Build in my sig. But regardless of class, PVE and dungeons are best done in full zerker. Support builds just unnecessarily slow the dungeon down, while not providing much in return. Someone in full zerker does basically the same support as a support specific build.

These healing builds are for WvW/spvp.

Ill be honest, I love playing a supporting role… The issue in GW2 is that your support is underwhelming in PvE for other players (you will always heal yourself for far more than others)

Now healing builds are great as bunkers but that’s more of a PvP/WvW build. Im not saying that healing is not “viable” but you would just be more effective as a dps. I truly do hate the Berserker/Might meta for PvE but to be 100% honest it is just so… much… better lol

plz don’t take me as a downer, I do love my Healing bombs build with Clerics gear but mostly in WvW. In dungeons ill run full zerker and i do a TON of dungeons, all of them too not just CoF and CM speed runs, best groups are all highly oriented on DPS.