Guild Wars 2

No, I’m not crazy and yes, I know it’s a bold statement. I’d appreciate it if you would read what I have to say before calling me an idiot based on the title alone

Healing Turret does not synchronize well with the Inventions line. The Inventions line is seemingly focused to buffing all other heals, to break the dominance HT had. Let’s take a look at the traits.

The first minor trait, Cleansing Synergy, clears a damaging condition when you heal. HT used to have a monopoly on condition removal. This trait makes sure that other heals can remove some of these conditions as well. Only damaging ones, sure. However, I’ll come back to why you don’t need HT for condi clear anymore later.
The second minor trait, Heal Resonator, gives all heals regen, so that HT is no longer the nearly sole supply of regen.
The third minor trait, Energy Amplifier, gives you 250 healing power when you have regen on you. This works fine for HT, sure. But since the other heals also have access to regen outside of the actual healing skill itself (Regenerating Mist for HT, Throw Bandages for Med Kit and Toss Elixir H for Elixir H). Only exception is AED. But that does not need other regen. The regen Heal Resonator gives lasts for 6 seconds. AED lasts for a maximum of 5 seconds. This means you will always have the +250 Healing Power when the AED heal goes off.

Now let’s take a look at the major traits.

The first one is sort of hard to not choose: Automated Medical Response. It resets your healing skill when you fall below 25% health, on a 10 second cooldown. A smoke bomb that gives no smoke field is trash, and while the shield trait itself is fine, in order to use a shield you must also use a pistol, which basically means no power builds can run shield. And even if you use shield, AMR is probably still better than the shield trait. The problem for HT here is that, right now, AMR does not reset Cleansing Burst. This means that in most cases you will not get a high heal and 3 condition cleanses, you will only get a 2.5k heal and 1 conditon cleanse. That’s pretty bad. In fact, you will only ever be able to use the trait efficiently if it procs when your HT has between 5 and 1 seconds left on cooldown, and even then, if you drop down to 25% again, which is quite likely, you will not get the full combo, only the 2.5k heal. Now, pretty much this entire thread is based around the fact that Cleansing Burst is not reset. If this is a bug, and it should be reset: Thread closed. HT is still the boss. If it’s not a bug, I think I have a valid argument against HT’s dominance.

The second major trait is Mecha Legs, this reduces the duration of movement-impairing conditions applied to you by 33% and gives you a passive 25% movement speed increase. Expirimental Turrets is fine for turret builds. Soothing Detonation does not heal enough to justify picking it up over Mecha Legs. Mecha Legs and Overcharged Shot (rifle #4) make short work of movement-impairing conditions. You don’t need HT for that. The condi’s that remain are weakness (quite a rare and usually short condition), blind (usually short, so condi removal won’t do much against it) and vulnerability (this can become a problem in some cases, true). All in all, HT is not needed to stay alive against most builds, and if you’re facing condi heavy classes engineer’s in trouble anyway, HT won’t help you much. Besided, because it’s really easy to kitten yourself over with AMR, the difference in condi removal capabilities is not all that much between HT and no HT.

The third major trait is either Bunker Down or Medical Dispersion Field, which heals allies for 12% of incoming heals to you, on a 5 second cooldown. The third option, Advanced Turrets, is only for turret builds. Bunker Down is fine, but by no means a no-brainer. Medical Dispersion Field is bad for HT. 12% of 2500 is only 300, not much at all. Since it has kitten cooldown, you will only heal allies for 12% of the HT itself, not 12% of the full combo. This is where I’m going to introduce the heal I think beats HT right now: AED. If you use AED and it procs, you get healed for 12.2k(!), not including the healing power you get from the regen you get when you use AED. It also removes a couple of damaging conditions from you. If It doesn’t proc, it will heal you for 4.3k, not including the healing power. If you use Medical Dispersion Field with AED, you heal allies for either 500, if it does not proc, or for 1.5k if it does proc. That’s better than Bunker Down, in my opinion.

AED has a 40 second cooldown. That’s long. Automated Medical Response has a 10 second cooldown. This means that when you’re dropping below 25%, you’ll get your heal back, and when you use it, if you die, which is quite likely given you’re so low, you get 12k health back. That’s higher than a full HT combo. And you don’t have to wait 40 seconds to be able to heal again, since in 10 seconds you’ll have it up again if you need it. The synergy between the Inventions line and AED is, in my eyes, so much better than that between Invention and HT that AED is a better heal than HT right now.

Cleansing Burst gives you a water field. It used to be that our only water fields were on HT. Now, however, we have Mortar Kit. Elixir Shell is also a water field. Sure, it has twice as long a cooldown, but it should give enough group support, especially when paired with the AED+Medical Dispersion Field combo.

Thoughts? Anything I missed, or worth mentioning?

I was hoping people would keep this on the DL. It probably is going to get nerfed.

You make some good points. I’ll give AED a shot.

With the gadgeteer bug i got aed off 4 times in qbout 15 seconds, still died thou.

As it stands AED traited is actually useful considering how burst focused everything is now and people usually don’t pay attention to the AED buff, the 2 different cooldowns is confusing more so if you screw it up you get minimal heals and you are going to be locked out of healing 20-40s.

that’s if AMR doesn’t bug it.

I think the 2 different versions of the skill when traited is fine it adds play to the skill it never got, however the the second burst heal off the trait proc is op. It would be okay if it behaved like a buffed version of Defiant Stance the warrior skill that converts incoming damage to health or it should just give a flat 5-6k hp tons of boons and remove the listed condi.

Also it has tons of counter play, anyone paying attention knows don’t hit this guy for 5s and he gets a poop heal, tbh it punishes people who just mash buttons till whatever is targeted dies more than anything.

in my point of view AMR is a bug. 10sec cooldown is a joke. You can run AED on 10sec cooldown

I guess 30sec cooldown for AMR would be ok. But 10sec is crazy.

It is pretty kittened. Almost makes engi’s unkillable by condition specs. They always have their heal, and conditions pecs can’t stop their conditions from ticing..Instant 12k heal every 10 seconds…It’s hard for even a power build to not cause lethal damage when they have AED active because one hit is usually enough to do it.

I’m putting this right there with the grenade bug. It feels like post-patch engi is being completely supported by these bugged (or completely illogical) traits.

AED + AMR hasn’t improved. Truth is it’s an even bigger gamble than ever this days.

Some of the (very effectives) actual counters :

• Any 5k+ damage skill (Backstab, Eviscerate, Fire Grab,…)
• Condi & CC builds (Guard & Necro mainly)
• Simply use CC or disengage before 25% HP when the buzz sound triggers.
• Healing from regeneration, med kits or allies can prove to be lethal.

Plus you’ll have to keep yourself from using Self-Regulating Defense and Elixir S for it will often lead to an A.E.D. effect elapsed at the time it ends, leaving you really low.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

AED + AMR hasn’t improved. Truth is it’s an even bigger gamble than ever this days.

Some of the (very effectives) actual counters :

• Any 5k+ damage skill (Backstab, Eviscerate, Fire Grab,…)
• Condi & CC builds (Guard & Necro mainly)
• Simply use CC or disengage before 25% HP when the buzz sound triggers.

AMR used to have a 90 second cooldown. It absolutely has been improved.

It needs to be scaled back to like a 25 second cooldown. Keep it shorter than AED’s base CD, but 10 seconds is absurd. Sounds like a band-aid they put on our class to mitigate some of the huge burst other classes received.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

AED + AMR hasn’t improved. Truth is it’s an even bigger gamble than ever this days.

Some of the (very effectives) actual counters :

• Any 5k+ damage skill (Backstab, Eviscerate, Fire Grab,…)
• Condi & CC builds (Guard & Necro mainly)
• Simply use CC or disengage before 25% HP when the buzz sound triggers.
• Healing from regeneration, med kits or allies can prove to be lethal.

Plus you’ll have to keep yourself from using Self-Regulating Defense and Elixir S for it will often lead to an A.E.D. effect elapsed at the time it ends, leaving you really low.

Condi classes are always hard to counter on engi. Nothing will change that.

Most 5k+ hits are easy to evade, only backstab is dangerous. But when you see a thief go stealth, you can use Mortar Kit and blast your heal field to survive the backstab.

CC: since engi has barely any stab, this can be dangerous. However, AED gives a stun as toolbelt, so you can stun them and then use AED, to prevent being interrupted. Disengaging is of course also an option, but engi can but out quite a lot of damage in 5 seconds, so forcing the enemy to wait 5 seconds is quite an advantage for you.

I don’t quite understand what you mean with “healing from regeneration… to be lethal”. Do you mean for the MDF? I’m pretty sure that regen doesn’t proc it, you won’t usually get med kits since you’re not using bunker down and allied heal… bunker guard and shoutbow warr are all I can think of that heal you…

Yvonio.9380:

Condi classes are always hard to counter on engi. Nothing will change that.

Then why make it worse?

Yvonio.9380:

Most 5k+ hits are easy to evade, only backstab is dangerous. But when you see a thief go stealth, you can use Mortar Kit and blast your heal field to survive the backstab.

To gain 1 or 2k HP and stand open armed while casting a 30 sec CD?
More efficient to sit in AOE with Juggernaut or break stun and dodge imo.

Yvonio.9380:

CC: since engi has barely any stab, this can be dangerous. However, AED gives a stun as toolbelt, so you can stun them and then use AED, to prevent being interrupted. Disengaging is of course also an option, but engi can but out quite a lot of damage in 5 seconds, so forcing the enemy to wait 5 seconds is quite an advantage for you.

Static choc is a 1 target, 1 sec stun on 25 sec CD. Although it can be usefull if you are built to sit on point, a non-pointholder non-condi build see its chances diminish the longer the fight lasts.

Yvonio.9380:

I don’t quite understand what you mean with “healing from regeneration… to be lethal”. Do you mean for the MDF? I’m pretty sure that regen doesn’t proc it, you won’t usually get med kits since you’re not using bunker down and allied heal… bunker guard and shoutbow warr are all I can think of that heal you…

You’ll won’t understand until you get healed by an Ele just before hitting 0 HP and the end of A.E.D. Or you walk on one of your medikit from Supply Crate when you were about to reach 25% HP and get your A.E.D. CD back but instead get Arcing Arrowed.

Those are wonderfull feelings, please enjoy.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

Yvonio.9380:

Condi classes are always hard to counter on engi. Nothing will change that.

Then why make it worse?

Yvonio.9380:

Most 5k+ hits are easy to evade, only backstab is dangerous. But when you see a thief go stealth, you can use Mortar Kit and blast your heal field to survive the backstab.

To gain 1 or 2k HP and stand open armed while casting a 30 sec CD?
More efficient to sit in AOE with Juggernaut or break stun and dodge imo.

Yvonio.9380:

CC: since engi has barely any stab, this can be dangerous. However, AED gives a stun as toolbelt, so you can stun them and then use AED, to prevent being interrupted. Disengaging is of course also an option, but engi can but out quite a lot of damage in 5 seconds, so forcing the enemy to wait 5 seconds is quite an advantage for you.

Static choc is a 1 target, 1 sec stun on 25 sec CD. Although it can be usefull if you are built to sit on point, a non-pointholder non-condi build see its chances diminish the longer the fight lasts.

Yvonio.9380:

I don’t quite understand what you mean with “healing from regeneration… to be lethal”. Do you mean for the MDF? I’m pretty sure that regen doesn’t proc it, you won’t usually get med kits since you’re not using bunker down and allied heal… bunker guard and shoutbow warr are all I can think of that heal you…

You’ll won’t understand until you get healed by an Ele just before hitting 0 HP and the end of A.E.D. Or you walk on one of your medikit from Supply Crate when you were about to reach 25% HP and get your A.E.D. CD back but instead get Arcing Arrowed.

Those are wonderfull feelings, please enjoy.

Lol, seems like you’re just a bit kitten by situations that are in fact quite rare.

AED is not all that hard to get off correctly. You shouldn’t spam it like you spam HT, you should use it when you know you’ll die. If you have a D/D ele besides you who just entered water, don’t use it.

Static Shock isn’t amazing, sure, but in a 1v1 situation it’s a fine way of getting your heal off relatively safely.

And well, the healing combo is to make sure the backstab doesn’t kill you.

A.E.D. is a powerful heal, indeed, but keep in mind that the low cd of AMR was surely not intended, and if it was, then they surely slipped how horrible OP that is for 1v1’s.

However, A.E.D. has not really improved when it comes to group-support, even if you pick all possible trait for it.
A fully traited A.E.D will clear 1 damaging condi for allies, and all damaging ones for you. It applies 6 sec of regen, and that’s basically it.
A traited Healing turret will heal allies for 2.5k-3k(depends if you’ve picked soothing detonations or not) every 15sec, remove 2 condis in 480 range, and 1 damaging condi in 240 range, brings 2 short-lasting waterfields, and applies perma-regen to allies. additionally it comes with a blast-finisher, and if you pick AMR you basically have that one ready every 10sec. In case your build also goes down the explosives line, you additionally get a knockpack every 10, 15 or 20 seconds.

Directly comparing A.E.D and HT for its group-support (aoe-heal, aoe-condi-clear, combo fields), HT is still the superior choice, and for raw heal-output A.E.D wins. Still, both heals have access to forms of CC, which the HT wins again since it’s a aoe-cc, and the fact that you also get a blast-finisher settles this in my opinion.

I tried out the A.E.D. + AMR combo shortly after the changes, and it is indeed quite effective, but more often that not I lost 2vx scenarios since I was missing the utility from HT, especially the waterfields. Regardless if I were running p/s or rifle, not having the F1 from HT for a spare blast / leap finisher surely did hurt my survivability, and as soon as your opponent understands the A.E.D. combo, he either disengages or exploits it by saving up hist burst and stunlock.

I guess this is a question of taste, and what synergyzes with what in your builds, but I generally tend to get better results from HT.
Also, automated bomb-dispenser is indeed a smokefield, especially useful with juggernaut, since it gets triggered regardless if the cc was successful or not, and then can be combo’d with Flameblast or HT itself.

Tried it. Going back to healing turret.

Yea, it’s fun when you get several chances to chain it in a row, but you’re basically waiting for low health to get any decent heal clear and against good opponents, your chances of being able to cast that half second skill is slim due to CC.

There’s just simply too much counterplay for any decent player. They can either CC you, wait for the AED 4 sec to run before finishing, or just let condis drop you down below 10% to prevent the Automated Heal Response.

The problem with AED that I don’t feel it’s old balance accounted for is how you wont use it before you are almost dead, unlike Healing turret and Bandage Self (there are no other heals right ;p ) that you use as soon as your health drops down 5000. This means other healing skills can be activated much sooner and get off cooldown much sooner.
This also takes better advantage of AMR, since you would have used your healing skill before you hit the treshhold unlike AED. It is way to easy to accidently let AMR proc before you use your AED and then miss out of the healing skill reset when you counted on it.

Today I tried Medkit, Healing Turret and AED in diffrent builds in Silverwaste, Drytop and Southsun cove. For some reason AMR never proced healing turret, however, Kinetic Battery proced Bandage Self quite often, giving me AED level of healing when I needed it. I need to do some more testing, but if AMR procs bandage self, then Med kit might be the better option for bunker builds that want to max out self heal (let us just ignore how bad the kit itself is for now).

AED worked kinda well for Explosionles SD rifle builds taking Firearms, inventions and Tools. But that was mostly because I could use bunkerdown to keep my health up and didn’t really need to bother thinking about using the main heal. And the AED toolbelt ability aims SD quite well.

So, OP gave me an idea for an SD build:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Z70;2V2Wv026oRFx0;9;4jkm;0246157048;4Xs0;3CoF2CoF2a0f

Stab from Juggernaut should make activating AED easier (even if there is still a 3 second delay between equipping FT and the boons from Juggernaut kicking in) Picked Rocket Boots over Rifle Turret (for Surprise Shot) and Tool Kit (for Gear Shield) since I figured the need for an immobilize cleanse with a short CD made shorter with Gadgeteer is greater than what the other two could provide (even with Mecha Legs + Hoelbrak Runes cutting movement impairing condis by half) Utility Googles is the only stunbreak with a targeted TB skill, and with Gageteer, the long CD shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Supply Crate as the Elite was pretty simple, once I remembered you can now overcharge the Healing Turret that comes with it to help with conditions, though if they make changes to Mortar’s projectile finisher to make it easier to proc, I might consider using Mortar and using Light field combos for cleansing conditions; more effort to use, but shorter cooldowns all around.

I picked Hoelbrak over Vampirism since Vamp’s effect could get in the way of an AED use, and over Ogre or Pack for the condi duration decrease. The new-ish Marauder seems like the best choice; Would give you an almost 75% crit chance in close range once you get a stack of bleed on, which almost makes FT’s AA good enough that you won’t hate yourself for sticking with FT most of the time to keep the might and stab up, and swapping to Rifle for bursts, rather than sticking with Rifle and only picking up FT for stab, blind and CC.

Yeah, no…

Everything you mentioned (except useless gadgeteer) still improves the healing turret.

I feel like you took the best case scenario for AED and compared to the worst case scenario of Healing Turret (while leaving out important benefits of Healing Turret).

Just because the other heals can remove 1 damaging condition now that doesn’t mean Healing Turret is outclassed. It’s just that much better because it removes 3 now. If you think 1 damaging condition is all you need to remove, you’re going to have a bad time.

Also you go into the Inventions line extensively, and rightfully so when talking about healing. However the key point you miss here is that Healing Turret synergizes FAR better with this trait line. It makes other heals close to the utility HT offers, but that means it just makes HT that much better. Also the heal on blast finishers is another point in HT’s favor.

I’m all for finding ways to use the less popular skills. I would love to run builds that don’t have such similar skills to every other build, but it’s just not as good if you do that. There’s a reason 90% of Engis out there use HT, Supply Crate, Nades, Egun, Tool Kit. Sure I have some fun builds that use other stuff but they’re just that: fun. They’re not very good. Which is okay, but the distinction is important I think.

Well, at least there are now niche places where other heals can be used, so that’s always nice.

I’ve been using A.E.D. a bit after seeing the sheer ammount of condis and burst in PvP post-patch, and had some funny moments with it (like absorbing ~30k damage in Rampager and surviving). Today, playing Hot-join, finally found someone who knew what to do against it (not counting stun-locks here, since those would interrupt HT too): an Axe/Shield + GS Warrior who stopped attacking and stood at range as soon as I popped A.E.D., leaving me with roughly ~7k after the heal (and I died promptly after).

If the opponent doesn’t know how it works or how to counterplay it, A.E.D. does fine, sometimes making the enemy overcommit to the fight and finding itself in a disadvantage when you’re at 12k+ and they’re down at 6k. If they know how to play around it, well, it certainly is lackluster.

IgnisVulpesXI.3015:

Well, at least there are now niche places where other heals can be used, so that’s always nice.

I’ve been using A.E.D. a bit after seeing the sheer ammount of condis and burst in PvP post-patch, and had some funny moments with it (like absorbing ~30k damage in Rampager and surviving). Today, playing Hot-join, finally found someone who knew what to do against it (not counting stun-locks here, since those would interrupt HT too): an Axe/Shield + GS Warrior who stopped attacking and stood at range as soon as I popped A.E.D., leaving me with roughly ~7k after the heal (and I died promptly after).

If the opponent doesn’t know how it works or how to counterplay it, A.E.D. does fine, sometimes making the enemy overcommit to the fight and finding itself in a disadvantage when you’re at 12k+ and they’re down at 6k. If they know how to play around it, well, it certainly is lackluster.

In a weird way, A.E.D. arguably works better against condi builds than pure dps builds. Even before the patch, using A.E.D. I’d have people stop attack after I used it, but still have it trigger from condition damage, and cleanse every damage condition (except confuse, for some reason) in the process, and now with the new condition formula and burning and poison stacking, IMO it’s really only in 1v1s with builds like the Axe/GS warrior you mention that you’d ever worry about not taking fatal damage in time.

Now , i like to play with elixir H. The reason is hgh is quite good now … and i need at least 2 elixir… so usually i take elixir H and something else

Well, I tried it and failed, but maybe it’s because I am stupid and slow.

Sometimes spike is so high that when you reach 25% and the cooldown resets the you won’t last those 0.75 needed to use it.

Maybe I’m wrong, but seems like if you get targeted by a thief you won’t last enough to use it (or I’m just way too slow for this).

It might be because I took it in hotjoin and it’s all a great mess (you get jumped by 1v1 oriented builds, 3v1s and so on).
Or because I tested it along with a build camping flamethrower so I was too near to everything.

Come to think of it, if you use HGH you might also think about using Elixir H, it removes 2 conditions and gets 636 hps (even if you have to survive one whole second). Plus it has one more thrown Elixir (cleanse+condi removal).

Well, with Alchemy, Elixir C and other stuff you might become pretty impervious to condis (you might also add Sigils of Purity and Generosity).

Alright, AMR is now 90 second cooldown again. It’s back to horrible status. Closing this thread, because now HT reigns supreme again. Thanks for the discussion everyone!

If you go from 25% to 0 in less than .75s then it doesn’t really matter what you do other than find a way to survive. Try using a rune that has a defensive effect at 20%, use that to get to safety, then pop your heal. I agree it can be hard to make use of AMR without the proper build.