Guild Wars 2

So let’s rap about what’ up under #6 of engi’s skill bar. And it’s nasty. We have 4 healing skills in general, but not all equal.

A.E.D. kitten good and balanced heal, i use it myself and am very happy with it. It has one major hole however – confusion. Neither does it cleanse it nor defend against it, and we gotta remember that unlike other heals A.E.D. is designed to be used in near death situations. Situations where stacked confusion will kill you for trying to cast it.

suggestion – add resistance to it’s 3/4s casting time, and have it remove confusion as well on it’s fatal heal.

Healing Turret – the choice of most engineers. The reason is obvious – it’s too good. having mere 1/4 s casting time, providing 2 water fields (overcharge + tool belt skill), condi cleanse with overcharge, blast finisher to use on said water field, soon baseline cc on detonation, or 15s cooldown if you decide to pick it up right after placing and overcharging.

suggestion 1/4s cast time is plain unfair for the hp gained. Increase cast time to 0.5-0.75s, so it’s no longer the “uninterruptable condi cleanse party quick heal” while other options have to struggle with enemy cc.

Elixir H – Heals for moderate amount, has moderate cooldown, grants random boon but has abysmal 1s cast time and huge tell. First in the line for getting interrupted of all your heal skills.
Elixir H is the fat, ugly redhaired kid of engi’s healing skills family. Getting a boon is nice, but here it’s random, and you risk getting the last thing you wanted. 25s base cooldown seems unfair when compared to healing turret’s, also it’s toolbelt skill doesn’t heal any hp at all, making the all too easy to stop base skill the only big heal you got. For that reason elixir H is dead last in line for getting slotted on the bar.

suggestion – split the heal between toolbelt tossable exilir and base elixir, improve it’s total value. No more random boons. Tossable elixir grants protection (6s), base grants regen(8s).
Casting time reduced to 3/4s.

Med Kit – if there’s one thing i would change here, it’s the antidote.
It should drop 2 antidotes spaced a bit from eachother (so two different ppl can use one each), each removing 2 condies.

This is a *med kit. It’s dedicated to healing. Yet here we have healing turret’s overcharge cleanse twice the conditions, on 5 ppl, with aoe water field on same cooldown, while antidote cleanses one measly condition on single person at the same time.

Comments and suggestions welcomed;)

I can’t help but feel that they’ve done a lot with the update.

Med Kit looks very interesting. There is also a TBD part of it. Making the effects AE when picked up would be pretty nice. However the synergy with Heals = blasts and blasts = heals make this quite interesting. I can just swap to medkit every time that Internal Cooldown is down and grab a blast into a fire field which will now heal! drop your pylon for whatever buff that is, maybe stim pack and move on. I think med kit will work pretty well at this point with all that synergy.

I fully agree with AED, it’s so niche right now it’s not even funny. The possibilities are vast on how to fix it, such that I don’t even want to make a suggestion or comment on any, just make the thing better!

Elixir H will also have some interesting synergy, already it’s almost only used with HGH builds, and well… so are most Elixirs aside from a few toss skills. With HGH you’ll be down to a 20s reuse, though overall I agree it still feels a little weak, especially on the toss skill.

I don’t think turret needs any changes. I think med kit and turret will compete at this point depending on build. Elixir H will still have it’s spot in an HGH build. But, AED is still your super rare situation where you do something funky and the funky heal fits it, but outside of that it’s just bogus.

Matt Lotharius has done a bang up job for Engi, a little more love on Elixir H and something on AED could have all the heals pretty well balanced IMO.

Naw, healing turret already got nerfed by not allowing it to regenerate in the future, and players being able to crit / put conditions on it.
#pokerface

Someone just made a good point I had forgotten in another thread. Healing Turret will also do a knockback when you detonate. That’s not something you’ll always want.

Healing turret needs nerf yeah, i agree with all of it

The biggest problem I have with AED is how godkitten useless its toolbelt skill is. It’s too low range and high risk to be using 99% of the time. If that gets changed to something useful (or even something support-y considering it’s a heal skill) I think it’ll be taken more often.

Elixir H also needs the random element removed. Just have it give 3s Protection, 5s Regen, 5s Swiftness on consume and 3s Protection, 5s Regen, and 4s Vigor 100% of the time on toss. Random elements kill skills.

I think Med Kit will be fine after the coming changes actually. You can already get it to a pretty kitten low cooldown for the big heal with tools, and it scales fairly well. It does have a lack of condi cleanse though- just 1 cleanse with a casting time isn’t going to help all that much. I’d like to see that antidote drop give Resistance instead of clear 1 condi.

100% agree with Sins here.

Imho, AED’s main issue lies in its opportunity costs – waiting until you’re almost dead to use that also means you haven’t been able to heal yourself before that time comes. And in other heals’ case, it often means having used those multiple times.

And i agree about Elixir H…the random element is just detrimental.

No matter what you change, healing turret will be the obvious choice. Every engi spec is going to take healing turret and blast on-dodge. Having a water field on your heal while being a walking blast finisher made staff ele immortal at one point in the past (For those who don’t know, evasive arcana on eles used to be bugged a long time ago and blast in every attunement, so staff eles would throw up a water field and dodge while swapping attunements to blast repeatedly). It’s even easier and without the drawbacks of being a staff ele.

If you want to make other heals an actual option, the water field would have to go, but that isn’t going to happen.

Healing turrets most common and obvious use is insta-overcharge, blasting water field then detonation for one more healing blast or immediate pick up for lower cooldown.

If things were “balanced” 95% of engies wouldn’t be running turret. The biggest problem here is it’s overcharge and how it can be triggered on spawn by using it before turret is placed.
0.25s cast time for it’s initial self heal is already a stretch, but bearable one. Overcharging however should have it’s own cast time that either allows for an interrupt, or destruction of turret.
1/4 s, or heck, even 3/4 a second is not a time where it’s possible to spot, target and destroy a turret with sharp observation skills alone. Only way for that to happen is sheer luck, like treb hitting engi’s newly spawned turret or him spawning it inside a meteor shower field and few lucky meteors hitting the right spot at the right time.

And you all know it well as I do.

Also A.E.D. is more powerful then it seems, because off it’s fatal damage negation. If it’s something strong like lich form projectile or treb fire, other heal would melt in one moment. A.E.D. on the other hand ignores the part of attack that would take you below 0 hp and deals full heal instead.

Simple example – enemy treb hits you for 10k. you got 5khp. You pull out turret do your magic and get 10khp before treb hits you. It hit you. You’re back where you left off, but on cooldown for turret.

A.E.D. – you take 5k damage and trigger A.E.D. The other 5k damage is ignored. A.E.D. gives you 13k hp.

Result. healing turret – 10k hp gained.
A.E.D. – 18k hp gained (5 negated, 13 healed).

BlackBeard.2873:

No matter what you change, healing turret will be the obvious choice. Every engi spec is going to take healing turret and blast on-dodge. Having a water field on your heal while being a walking blast finisher made staff ele immortal at one point in the past (For those who don’t know, evasive arcana on eles used to be bugged a long time ago and blast in every attunement, so staff eles would throw up a water field and dodge while swapping attunements to blast repeatedly). It’s even easier and without the drawbacks of being a staff ele.

If you want to make other heals an actual option, the water field would have to go, but that isn’t going to happen.

Possible scenario. Mortar’s number 3 heal becomes water field. Med Kit activation is a blast with trait. Mortar has a blast in it with trait. Dodging has a blast trait. Blasts heal traited.

Mortar 3, mortar blast, pop med kit blast, dodge blast, heal for stupid amounts as not only do you get the water blast but also the blast heal, and possibly add med kit heals on top of that if you aren’t already full

If the “heal skills blast” has 10s or less cooldown I really feel I’ll be using med pack quite often, especially if the buff pylon is worthwhile.

Yes, I’m hyped on mortar and all our new blasts

I don’t agree with splitting Elixir’s H healing between the base and toolbelt skills. Other classes have to deal with getting their heals interrupted, Elixir H just needs to be worth the trouble.

Removing the RNG impact is the right approach. Make Elixir H a heal+regen, and Toss Elixir H a AoE 5sec protection and 5sec ethereal field (similar to Necro’s Spectral Wall), so it has its own little niche.

you could just lower elixir H’s cooldown and have 409 cure one condi on toss and two if you drink it. if it was lowered to 20 secs, then when traited it’s a low cooldown heal with condi clear and might. HGH with mortar could be pretty potent if it has no minimum range.

I’ve seen people complain about healing turret being so fast, but there are other classes that have constant or totally uninterruptable heals. Eng lacks stability so a longer HT cast time would lower the survival even more than other classes. It has one of eng’s main cond removal tied to it as well. Overall I don’t find it to be out of line everything considered.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toss_Elixir_H

1/2s cast time. That’s 2x longer then turret. Yet I hear no voices raised that “that’s unfair and other classes have to deal with their heals getting interrupted”.

But time will indeed tell if elixir traits get compressed enough to make elixir H easier to buff to a point where it makes sense. Though currently i see them removing potent elixirs which does worry me (i like having my elixirs buffed).

As it stands now elixir H is not worth it at all. Subpar heal, horrid cast time, second worst cooldown and random nature.

Pretty sure Healing Turret has a half second cast time, not 1/4 second. Either that or both the tooltip and my stopwatch are lying to me.

What classes have issues with their heals being interrupted except necromancer? And the odd ether renewal ele?
Signet of restoration, healing signet get interrupted?
Withdraw?
Shelter only gets interrupted by unblockable stuff but they can heal with stability anyway.
Ether feast is quick enough and mesmer has plenty of ways to prevent interrupts like stealths, teleport, distortion.
Ranger heals are arguably interruptable but I haven’t noticed it being an issue to be honest.

robertul.3679:

What classes have issues with their heals being interrupted except necromancer? And the odd ether renewal ele?
Signet of restoration, healing signet get interrupted?
Withdraw?
Shelter only gets interrupted by unblockable stuff but they can heal with stability anyway.
Ether feast is quick enough and mesmer has plenty of ways to prevent interrupts like stealths, teleport, distortion.
Ranger heals are arguably interruptable but I haven’t noticed it being an issue to be honest.

Other classes’s heals also have a weakness. Healing turret is EASILY the best heal in-game. It has higher hp/s than healing signet, is a burst heal (so it’s strong against both constant pressure and burst), it gives a water field so its incredible support, heals 2 condis (more than most heals), AND is pretty much interruptible.

Most requests for a real cast-time are to at least give it SOME drawback.

If you want to go through other class’s weakness
Healing signet and SoR: weak to burst
Shelter: weak to constant pressure due to long CD
Ether feast: weak against condis (esp poison)
Withdraw: weak to poison (but still OP imo)
Ranger heals: troll unguent is weak to burst, the others are weak to constant pressure or interrupts.
Consume conditions: weak to interrupts.

My honest opinions:
Turret: I love this skill! But yes I main engi and I wouldnt like to see a nerf. However I do understand the “OP” aspect. I think it should heal less on overcharging it but give lower recharge time on overcharge could change the skill completely since it then would be made into more efficiënt to hold your turret alive.

Elixir: please remove the rng… and the toolbelt indeed is a waste of the cast time. I think or would fit to give the toolbelt a small AoE heal and boons, while the the skill itself does the same but more effective only for you.

Med kit: The actual healing on toolbelt can be immense good since you can horribly lower its recharge rate so that is in a good spot. The kit itself needs helps but thats done with trait changes patch.

AED: I think making is (near) instant would be awesome. Also reduce the cast time on toolbelt so I can actually stun my enemy.
(Freaky AED idea next: make toolbelt skill instant and longer range so you can interrupt your enemy who is trying to interrupt you AED casting!)