Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.

The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.

Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

AED Skill: http://strawpoll.me/845838

Toolbelt Skill: http://strawpoll.me/845845

It’s good, but heal turret is better.

1 – horrific and bad

Every other heal is better, even the racial ones.

It’s not bad in certain (limited) situations. It’ll probably be my goto heal when zergdiving. I don’t see it replacing the medpack when I’m roaming in wvw or soloing in pve, or turret when I’m in dungeons/fractals.

3- It has the exact problem I knew it was gonna have. It has the normal heal cast time which is a few seconds. You simply don’t have time when below 25% health to cast it. If this skill were instant cast it would be amazing. Also the f1 skill 1second stun is garbage elixir h has a much better f1 skill.

Imho, there are multiple issues. One is that we’ve got a single trait per gadgets, so at most we can have a cooldown reduction (and considering the high cooldown, it is appreciated anyway).A second issue is that neither that or the toolbelt provide condition cleanses, so we’ll have to rely on other utilities. And i consider the reward to be too low for the risk involved, considering also the cooldown, cast time and how easy is to spot its activation.

Could be useful when the zergs starting to crash.
Pop AED at maybe around 50% HP mark.
If you’re being targeted by zergs, you will be almost full HP within 4secs.

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, there are multiple issues. One is that we’ve got a single trait per gadgets, so at most we can have a cooldown reduction (and considering the high cooldown, it is appreciated anyway).A second issue is that neither that or the toolbelt provide condition cleanses, so we’ll have to rely on other utilities. And i consider the reward to be too low for the risk involved, considering also the cooldown, cast time and how easy is to spot its activation.

this exactly. it could honestly be a 4 or 5 on terms of how well it works with multiple builds. But it falls extremely short by not having traits to help it out like elixirs and turrets do. The only build i would run this with in wvw would be something running elixirs for condi cleanse… in pve… meh, id still rather have the turret and the water field/condi cleanse.

I made a few comments on how it couldve been better on reddit. I said a few things like making it have a (traited) 32 sec cd after its used…. Make it so the casted effect is a condi cleanse and grants fury/might/retal/haste for 3 seconds and also puts it on the 32 sec cd(if you use the casted effect you no longer get the heal if you go down, basically the casted effect now becomes boons/utility and the passive becomes the big heal.) Reduce the cd on the TB skill aswell. I also suggested, since its passive is a big heal and theres no risk other than using it and it being on cd and having no heal, that the 25% heal recharge trait NOT effect it. now you choose between a condi cleanse and extra dps… or your heal.

I just gave it very quick trial run in WvW with my Bomb heal build. Zergs collide, after initial push I popped the AED heal, hit second push and was pretty much at 25% health. AED would set off its heal and I would normally be back up to 90% health. Did this a couple times. It was fun but for running in a group or even roaming Healing Turret seems much better still. AED seems like it would have its uses but without healing bombs and E.Gun for the healing during the long cooldown I’m not sure it would be that great for a heal skill.

Cooldown way to high, Treshold to low should be 5%, should be instant or give 1 sec stability on cast. with the 12k heal there should be a condition remove.

Also, i would add another problem in its design. It is supposed to give a big heal when you’re about to die, with a rather large cooldown. This also means we must avoid using it until the last moment – thus having the heal skill on uptime, while we are seriously damaged.
But then isn’t it more convenient to use one of the other skills – some have half the base cooldown of that – and just heal to get back to our max hp when it is needed, putting it on cooldown and, as it has got a faster recharge, having it ready for another good healing if we ever get in danger?

I give it a 3 out of 5.

It’s a solid concept. It just needs tweaks to make it good. Lower cooldowns, lower cast times, increase stun range. For a skill with such a low hp threshold to get the big heal, a 1s cast time is far too long. Timing is everything with this skill.

Also, it’s our only heal without a healing counterpart in the toolbelt. I recommend changing the skill to a bouncing skill that stuns the target and then bounces to the nearest ally and applies regen. Since the range is so low it’ll probably come back to the caster, which gives us a secondary heal to fall back on. Especially since the 40s cooldown is far too long.

It doesn’t feel well designed. No condition removal, limited trait synergy. Impractical cool down. Just a poor skill made even worse by it’s far superiors alternatives.

I just can’t bring myself to try it yet. It seems to have no synergy with anything else I use. No synergy with any of condition removal that’s useful, Cleansing Formula 409, and no condition removal itself. If I take this heal then I have no condition removal whatsoever, unless I drop a kit and take Elixir C which I just can’t see being viable.

Gonna give it a try. Seems like there will have to be a bunch of traits to make the best use of it. like the conditions immunity trait, the healing cooldown reset trait and others that make use of a low health threshold. I think Anet was really looking for a missing piece in our ‘rsenal when they had a look at our skills and traits for this new heal, and I think that’s pretty cool. I’d really like instant cast time though since there’s no stability or condition removal granted.

I’m liking it so far for pvp. Combined with Automated Medical Response and Self Regulating Defense, my engi is harder to kill than ever.

Honestly, I love the concept, and when you DO manage to pull off the massive heal, it’s really fun!
However, I agree that it could use some buffs. The Automated Medical Response trait (which I think is one of the more obvious synergistic traits for this ability) should not trigger if your heal skill is not on cooldown, pure and simple. As it stands, you have to make sure you activate it before you hit 25% health to take advantage of that, and the odds of dying in 5 seconds with over 25% health are….not the best, if you’re trying to play well.

I also agree that a casting time of 1 second is too long. I think it should at LEAST be half a second, and really it would start actually working as an emergency option if the cast time was nothing.

However, I don’t think the health threshold should be raised to 5%. Part of what I like about the skill is that it negates all overkill damage.

And of course, I wouldn’t mind having the cooldown reduced, but I think it’ll become OP quick if the cooldown is reduced too far, especially if any of the above changes are implemented as well.

I gave it a try, traited. Giving it a 3.

Without the cooldown reduction from speedy gadgets, i would give it a 2.
The cooldown is indeed way too long. It doesnt need much, maybe a 35 seconds untraited? 30 seconds?

Also some measure of condition cleaning would be welcome, either by new traits for gadgets, or built into this skill or its toolbelt skill. Right now being poisoned reduces its effectiveness by 33% which is great for the one poisoning us, but not so great for us as we have way too few ways for condi-cleanse.

I like the high-risk/high-reward style, but its depressing when i see my high reward part being reduced to mediocre because i couldnt cleanse a poison.

Would it be too OP to keep the current cooldown, but have it cure burn, poison and bleeding like Hide in Shadows, before the heal of course? I dont think so.

When your health drops below 1hp and you get the massive heal, do conditions fall off? I mean, effectively your health dropping that low means you die so conditions should end right?

Can someone test it (I’m at work)?

When you are downed, you lose all conditions on you. You can actually get daily condition remover that way.

But A.E.D. doesnt let you get downed. You get healed before that, which is good, because it doesntadd downed penalty. But alas, it leaves every condition on you. Including poison that hinders the heal boost.