Guild Wars 2

Hiya fellow engineers. I see many great ideas for new kits and weapons, so I want us to add our forgotten utilities into the conversation. Please keep in mind that this post has a particular focus on PvP, but surely other players can apply their experiences from other game modes into the discussion. With that, let’s get down to business about the Med Kit.

What’s wrong about it?

• Bandage Self is objectively the weakest primary self-healing of the profession (besides AED, which is a topic for another day) with the lowest total healing, no boons and no cleanses. The kit skills were probably intended to cover for the low healing, but refer to their clunky uses below.
• Med Blaster fails to balance the cost to use it. The total output for 1.25s casting is between 319 to 352 (assuming the typical friendly has between 2 and 5 boons and not including Health Insurance from the Alchemy tree). Engis lose all dps to perform this meager heal. We achieve relatively the same result without losing dps with Super Elixir and Healing Turret.
• The critical flaw of the kit is the clunky throw skills. The casting animation, travel time, and pick-up items feel awkward and potentially disastrous because any unintended friendly players, pets and minions could pick them up. The kit demands extra, tedious communication to either tell players off from using your pickups or have the people who need them go on an “ooo-piece-of-candy” tour.
• The kit also suffers from the extra effort needed for minimal cleanses. #2, 3 and 4 cleanses only one condition of each category that they cover in a meta that readily stacks every condition of every category. #5 has the best counter-condition mechanic, but on an unreasonably high cooldown and resistance duration that’s too low.

Is there anything good about it?
It’s probably impossible to defend the kit’s practical uses, but #2 and #5 have the best designs that suffer from poor implementation. #2 bypasses the first-applied-first-cleansed rule, which is an effective way to deal with condition builds that apply damage conditions in the middle of “cover” conditions (i.e. 20 bleed stacks sandwiched by cripple, poison, chill, vulnerability, etc.). #5 has a simple and effective design as mentioned above, but its cooldown, clunky throw mechanic and potential for friendlies to steal pickups makes it too awkward to use.

How would you design it?
That’s the big question I wanted to ask you all after discussing the kit’s flaws. I’d buff its focus on team boons and cleansing while making the kit smoother and more streamlined to use. Perhaps #1 could apply debilitating conditions like vulnerability, weakness or chill for enemies caught in the blast. I also want to synergize #2 through 5 with the alchemy tree to benefit from traits like HGH, Alchemical Tinctures and Inversion Enzyme, or if the people want to keep the throw mechanic, then synergize the skills with the explosives tree to create alchemical grenades that damage enemies and heals friendlies in the blast.

As a final word, I believe the kit is in such a poor state that there is limitless potential for its redesign. Thanks for reading and I look forward to everyone’s input.

tl;dr Med Kit is in a bad shape. Too awkward to use and lacks competitive usage.

I did once try to play healer engi with the med kit in pvp, magi amulet for ensure i had the max healing power possible, the build peformed meh at best, and the build couldnt do anything against burst skills, the healing offered is so slow for retake the lost health produced by constant burst.

My healing average was 225K of done healing, and, i had to use my own self-heal for help with the healing as well.

I used to be happy with the results, but once i tried healer ele, the build outpeformed healer engi so ez, i do hope, one day, do something serious with the med kit, that med kit has the key for take us to play something esle that its not pure dps only.

The skills from the kit by itself is bad but it makes a good catalyst for other heal skills via health insurance. Running zealot stats along with cleric trinkets and rune of dwyana I’ve been healing people ranging 500-2.2k per tick along a triple water+blast combo that does 1.6k per blast. Not saying the kit is in a good spot but yeah it does lacks the ability to be efficient on its own.

For millionth time, throwable med kits need to hit multiple allies. Guild Wars 2 is not FPS.

IMO at the very least they should behave like throwable potions and have an aoe effect.

@Sean

For the record I also believe the MedKit is unlikely to see any use in any content and its quite likely the devs are fully aware of this as well. This is likely a contributing factor for recycling the medkit at friendly sentry points in wvw, in the Bunker Down trait (Throw Bandages + Mine Field) and Stimulant Supplier trait. However, I’ll play devil’s advocate here on the medkit:

Who/what is this kit for?
• The short answer here is: new players.
• Engie’s best heal has always been the Heal Turret, but is also the most complicated heal for engie (arguably the most complicated heal in the game). It requires casting it with the overcharge on summon and then blast finishing the water field as well. For vet players this isn’t that big of deal, but I’m sure to new players this is neither intuitive nor well communicated:
—> skill queuing healing burst on summon + need to combine with a swap skill on toolbelt, not at the healing slot.
• The medikit heal offers a low skill entry point for a heal skill (keep in mind the AED wasn’t added until later on); push one button and get health back

Is the healing amount fair(ish)?
• The short answer here is: probably
• I honestly believe that the devs intended for new engie players to fairly quickly come to realize the shortcomings of the medikit (both intended short comings like no combo field and blast finisher, and the unintended shortcomings like how incredibly awkward to use any of the actual kit skills are) and migrate over to the Healing Turret. That said Bandage Self skill does interact properly with ‘on heal’ traits as well as benefit a CD reduction from the Tools traitline (highly taken traitline before gobs of powercreep was injected via HoT).
• The healing value is less than Healing Turret, but the devs added Medical Insurance and put it into a mandatory traitline (again new players will come to realize this on their own soon enough) which brings the healing from Bandage Self much closer inline with Healing Turret for the engie him/herself.

To summarize: the MediKit is pretty bad, but it’s likely intended to be suboptimal. Note: this doesn’t excuse the awful execution/implementation of this kit though (i.e. the unintended badness about it).

For me a really standout flaw with this kit is the #1 skill which requires to you target allies in a game that doesn’t let you target allies with skills by design. The second fundamental flaw imo is that the skills are all needlessly cumbersome. 2, 3, & 4 all remove a single condi from a cateogory (damaging/debilitating/movement-imparing), and a single low impact boon – and this all before the whole ground target, project flight time and run-over-it to get the effect mechanic comes into play.

cyberzombie.7348:

The skills from the kit by itself is bad but it makes a good catalyst for other heal skills via health insurance. Running zealot stats along with cleric trinkets and rune of dwyana I’ve been healing people ranging 500-2.2k per tick along a triple water+blast combo that does 1.6k per blast. Not saying the kit is in a good spot but yeah it does lacks the ability to be efficient on its own.

Except you give up two water fields for blasting that Heal Turret provides, and you are very limited for practical options for blast finishers that you can use when you are in Med Kit.

It is possible to combine:
• Medical Dispersion Field
• Automated Medical Response
• Near perma regen (+ Energy Amplifier)
• Health Insurance
• Backpack Regenerator
• Sigil of Benevolance, Sigil of Transference, Monk Runes (Water Rune is better imo for the additional AoE heal procs and boon duration); stack a bunch of healing power

+

A) Tools — Kinetic Battery (works with Bandage Self so you can use it twice in a every 40s), Optimized Activation reduces CD on Bandage Self to 14.75s

OR

B) Scrapper — Rapid Regen (plus more utility and survivability from the traits, utilities and hammer)

Sure its possible but not practical.

It is useless and has been useless forever. At least AED had a small window of sunshine when AMR had a really low cooldown. Now it’s back in the shadows along with the med kit.

The two main options for the heal are the HT and MG, with the Elixir H seeing some play in specific builds.

There has been so many good suggestions in threads talking about the kit, but no one from Anet im sure has ever bothered to read them.

There was a short time when MedKit did see play in PvP. Players would build up piles of bandages around the node between fights so that they could then pick them up during the fight. But ya, this kit is pretty poorly designed and I don’t just mean because it is a suboptimal.

AED is awful and has always been awful. The issue with AED is several fold:
• it’s basically an all-or-nothing type heal (compared to warrior’s Defiance Stance)
• it had an incredibly long cooldown
• it didn’t remove conditions on death. In fact its a testiment to how rarely trash skills/traits are revisited by Anet, as its been 3 years since the condi removal was added and to this day it still doesn’t remove confusion
• it has very loud audio cue the lasts its entire duration to signal others to stop attacking you
• it has a long cast time (originally was 1s) combined with the fact you weren’t going to use AED until you were right about to die to try to benefit from the large heal means that an interrupt was an automatic death sentence in most cases
• it doesn’t work well with many of engie’s other tools for survival – auto elixir S, high amounts of regen uptime, bandages from bunker down, even others trickle healing onto you can hose you over
• until scrapper was introduced you had no real way to way to protect the cast with stability
• the toolbelt skill Static Shock is absolute trashcan tier (likely because the devs thought the heal itself could be very strong) – single target, melee range (frontal cone hit zone even though skill is listed as 180 radius), 0.75s cast (its a redressed Fire Grab animation), only 1s stun

I’d really like to see the trash skills and traits get bumps and tweaks much more frequently as well. What does concern me with this is Anet’s approach, specifically Heart of Thorns. As devs they need to be like Batman (or at least put on their bigboy pants) and do what’s best for the game and not just what is easy and/or feeds the endlessly crying massess (i.e. basically everything mechanical added in HoT) . This may mean shaving down rather than just pumping up unused skills and traits.

Healing turret, medic gyro and elixir H are the best healing skill ( i rate them in this order ) . i am trying medkit on a wvw build in which i have no speed. It is bad… but not that terrible if you have snake gyro. with snake gyro in some situation i prefer medkit to medic gyro becouse gyro dies really fast. With medkit for the most i use f1 but in stealth other utilities can work . without snake gyro i find medkit no viable at all …F1 alone is too weak . Medkit 4 is really handy if you have a build with no inventions and no tools and u want to avoid speed from a rune … then it becomes a must

The update to med-kit actually managed to make it worse. I used to use med-kit in a few niche builds (b4 hot power creep). Now, the kit is useless for anything I’ve found. Replace it with “plant a tree: You tree will slowly grow as you water it” and I bet more people would use it than med-kit.

Basic needs for med-kit:
-AOE functionality. Yes, this is what you bring to heal or treat lots of people. It should be great in some zerg build, and other niche situations. With the other heals, we cover a lot of bases, this should be your heal others kit, and it can’t do that with the current functionality.
-Stronger healing, and it should counter burning, bleeding, poison, chill and weakness. But not be useful for immobilize, cripple, torment, confusion. Give it a niche, but make it strong. When I am treating my allies with the med-kit, it should be hard to kill them through condi spam by things a med-kit is supposed to treat. And the direct healing to others should make it ideal to focus the engie first when he has his kit out.

If they could do those two things. The kit could be useful.

small suggestion: Give it some minor pulse damage on some skill (maybe even 1) So that it can proc med kits and mines with traits. That would offer some counterplay to people getting right in a medigineer’s face. Not damage for damage, just to proc sigils/runes, and hit/crit traits.

I do agree in one thing, the suboptimal healing in order to be the other’s healers is something i can live with.

But these skills must be improved, it doesnt necessarily have to be 1 consume unit, my ideas is that they acted like wells.

AoE areas that heal periodically and grant periodically a Boon/condi removal.

Our AA could get more skill reward benefits, currently it only expands his healing if your ally has a bunch of boons, but theres must be something more than that.

Grant an extra percent healing to allies who are below the treshold is an example.

Or grant an special effect, like have 10% more boon duration if you ally health is in the treshold.

These are some of my ideas on how the AA could be signifcantly improved, along with, oviously, improve the Healing power scaling of the AA.

Copy pasta the old Guardian healing tome abilities, change the healing base numbers, scaling with healing power and cool down timers for balance purposes, done.

pro’s, group support/utility with boons and some boonstrip, con’s, long cooldowns on skills 3-4-5, no water fields, you want water fields you take HT or medic gyro.

SKILL 1
Heal Area now Synergistic Healing 7sec cooldown, .75sec ct:-
Heal allies in the target area.
Healing: 700
number of targets: 5
radius: 240
range: 900
SKILL2
Purifying Ribbon now Containment Beam 12 sec cooldown .75sec ct:-
Release a beam of light that bounces to nearby enemies and allies, curing conditions on each ally hit and blinding each foe hit.
blind: 3 sec
conditions removed: 2
number of bounces: 3
range: 900
SKILL3
Protective Spirit now Protective Grid 35 sec cooldown 1sec ct:-
Grant protection and regeneration to allies in a cone.
Protection: 10 seconds
Regen: 10 seconds
number of targets: 5
range: 900
SKILL4
Pacifism now LED incapacitator 35 sec cooldown 2sec ct:-
Pacify foes.
Daze: 2 seconds
Number of Targets: 5
Boons removed: 2
radius: 600
SKILL5
Light of Deliverence now Emergency Threshold Overload 60 sec cooldown 3sec ct:-
Heal all in the area and apply resistance.
Healing: 3000
Number of targets: 5
Radius: 600
resistance: 4 seconds

NUMBERS COMPARISONS
Druid Cosmic Ray vs Synergistic Healing
Cosmic Ray .50sec ct no cooldown, only usable in celestial avatar
Healing: 650
number of targets: 5
radius: 120
range: 1200
Synergistic Healing .75sec ct 7sec cooldown
Healing: 700
number of targets: 5
radius: 240
range: 900

Tempest Water overload vs Emergency Threshold Overload
Overload Water 4sec ct 20sec cooldown
Healing: 3220
number of targets: 5
radius: 360
regen: 8sec – 1040hps
Emergency threshold overload 3sec ct 60second cooldown
Healing: 3000
number of targets: 5
radius 600
resistance: 4 seconds

I kinda think that the druid’s staff skills are basically what the healing kit should have been.

I love the Med Kit Auto, but HATE the 2-5. Skill #1 is great for open world and even PvP, with potential in raids. Skills 2-5 are what hold Med Kit back.

What skills #2-5 need are damage or splash healing, or both. Make a skill or two a nice AOE heal, and a few others damage so we can tag enemies for loot while healing PLZ.

Med kit has the potential be be a viable healing skill, but the #2-#5 need fixed.

Okay. Ill give it a shot. It wont be a pretty one.

Kit skill changes:

1) Skill one now has a 10 second cooldown but heals for a significant amount with a cast time identical to fumigate (easier to interrupt)

2) Skill 3 (throw stimulant) now removes blind, weakness AND vulnerability. There is few cases where walking over to or even casting a pack on the ground is a better way to remove blind than just auto attacking once. Vulnerability is also mostly used as a cover condition (in the cases where you are actually bursted down because of vulnerability there are more favorable actions than stopping to maybe remove it.). Weakness is usually the most critical one to remove, so allowing it to do so reliably while cleansing junk conditions off you might make it more worth its cast.

3) drop antidote resistance duration increased to 3 seconds. Now you might notice it before its over.

In this change i removed the “auto attack” nature of skill 1. This is because you do not want it to be the go to skill of the kit without a cooldown (forcing it to be weak). Giving it a burst heal means you are also free to attack in normal fashion in between to defend yourself (better option than just slapping damage on it in my opinion.). You might also want to look into increasing the healing/healscaling of the bandages themselves.

Traits!

i) Medical dispersion field: Now changes the medkits to detonate in a small radius when picked up, meaning in a point fight you can support multiple allies and dont have to worry about a gyro picking up one of your packs cough medgyro with stimulant supplier cough.

ii) Stimulant supplier now also increases the duration of the kits. And it also increases the radius of all tossed elixirs by 50%.

iii)Remove automated medical response (smiters booning is when they nerf something so hard that it is clear that they do not want it to be a seirous option. This relies on that there are alternatives worth taking) and move health insurance here. New trait in alchemy to replace it: “Hazardous waste: Consuming an elixir leaves a broken bottle on the ground. Enemies threading on the shattered glass bottle are crippled and a boon is removed.” I dont know. We should start recycling those bottles.