Guild Wars 2

When it comes to self-healing, Engineers have kind of been left at a disadvantage. Elixir H gives good health boost and regen, but has a very long cooldown time, and by the time you need it again, it’s only halfway to being usable again. So I personally try to stay away from Elixir H.
The Med Kit seems a bit strange at first but can seem practical if used correctly. While you lose the ability to maintain an aggressive edge during battle, you become a support player to other team members. But, you can still have the Med Kit in your skill bar and just mash the Heal Self skill in the tool belt with a nice 20 second cool down. It just takes up a place in your skill bar.
The Healing Turret is…well…there’s discussion surrounding turrets, specifically that, while they might offer much needed support, they are extremely fragile and ridiculously immobile. Once you plant it but need to move somewhere else, picking it back up again will cause it to take 20 seconds to cooldown until you can place it again. While the turret heals you for the same amount Heal Self does with only 7 seconds between healing AND grants regeneration, turrets just become annoying.
So, my question is, what is your strategy? How do you best utilize the shoddy healing options we as Engineers have been given?

actually………. Engineers have it pretty good when it comes to their heals. Im not a big fan of elixir H but when built for elixirs is very good. its a very good heal and when traited for elixir cooldowns brings down from 20 seconds which is decent not to mention the buffs u get with it. Heal turret is great not for just planting it and leaving it up, but for dropping it, getting its initial burst heal and then picking it back up to go on cooldown. reason its so good is bc after picking it back up its CD is only 15 seconds i believe where as u have to trait for it to get anwwhere close to that with elixir H. Medkit is probably what i use most since i find myself usually traiting into the tools line which lowers the CD of all toolbelt abilities. when traited to full 30 in tools it brings your toolbelt heal CD to 15.5 seconds which is great. not quite as great as heal turret, but still great especially if u have a lot of healpower in your build u can drop your medkits and heal fotr 1400 a pack, keep in mind thats with A LOT of healpower which i like to run sometimes. If i seem a little biases its bc ive played mostly engi and only dabbled in other classes, but from the little exp i have with all other classes it seems im able to keep my self healed so much easier with a properly built engi than on any other class. Thats just my 2 cents worth, anywho………

ElixirGun + Kit Refinement for infinite small amount healing and condition removal. ElisirGun toolbelt skill regeneration wasnt useful, but better than nothing. Since I only have one utility slot available for kit and it has been occupied by ElixirGun, I bring medkit to get swiftness…..
Super Elixir+ Backpack Regenerator+Dolyah Rune was unmatchable. I dont even need to worry about incoming condition…..

Dolyah? Doesn’t that add like only 30 hp/s?

Healing Turret also only gives its listed regen amount while it remains on the field – if it’s picked up, detonated, destroyed or otherwise removed from the area, the remaining regeneration effect only gives 5 health per second. Picking up does do a little for the cooldown – takes it down by 25%, taking the Healing Turret’s cooldown from 20 seconds to 15 seconds. On the other hand, it can be used as a sort of ad hoc mine/grenade (depending whether Deployable Turrets is traited or not) with a potential for an AoE heal effect via combo field. I tend to use it to help keep enemies back, or give a quick burst of healing (or remove conditions).

On the note of Engineers having very few healing options: I once worked out a ridiculous amount of healing effects (including combos) that could be carried all on the same skill set. Let’s see if I can remember them.

Healing Turret (Area Heal potential – repeatedly, due to firing cycles creating short-term Water fields. Can be used for Condition Removal via Overcharge, which also creates a Water field within the cycles.)
2 Heals (Regen, Area Heal), 1 Condition Removal, 15-20 second cooldown.

Healing Turret Toolbelt (Also creates a Water field, so Area Heal potential).
2 Heal (Regen, Area Heal), 60-second cooldown (might be less, due to Tools ranks)

Elixir Gun (Super Elixir Light field, but can be used for Condition Removal via projectile finishers. Kit Refinement creates another Super Elixir Light field on kit equip. Fumigate’s supposed to remove conditions, according to the tooltip, too.)
2 Heals (Regen), 2 CR (Super Elixir has an unmentioned CR effect), 20 second cooldown for KR field, 9.6-12 second cooldown for Fumigate, 16-20 second cooldown on Super Elixir; if Elixir cooldown traits become applicable to Elixir Gun, then numbers will change.

Elixir Gun toolbelt (Regen, but no combo field as far as I can find without testing)
1 Heal (Regen), 10-second cooldown.

Elixir-Infused Bombs (Not sure how much it’ll heal for, having never used it, but it’s a full set of five potential healing effects with an applicable cooldown reduction trait and at least one combo finisher.)
5 Heals (Burst, probably), with cooldowns ranging from 0 (Bomb) to 20-25 seconds (Smoke and Glue bombs).

That’s twelve healing effects off of three skill slots (two Utility, one Healing). Add the Supply Crate’s medkits and healing turret into that, there’s fourteen off of four. I can’t recall any other Utility skills that bring healing to the party, but at this point, uh, well. Also of note: Every single thing I just listed can be used to aid others, instead of working solely for the user. Stack limits would be a concern, as would being careful to finish combos, and it’d require Grandmaster Inventions, Master Alchemy and at the very least Adept Tools.

Additional possible heal-related effects available alongside all that noise: Elite Supplies X to enhance the Supply Crate (more medkits), Backpack Regenerator to grant personal regen when wearing a kit, and Always Prepared.

Think that brings the total up to 16 Heals, as I wouldn’t count the Elite Supplies X effect as a distinct heal, with 3 Condition Removal skills, and a total cost of something along the lines of 60 trait points. Wouldn’t say that makes the Engineer lack healing options – although I would say there’s a rather overwhelming majority of Regen effects compared to direct heals and a very small amount of condition removal effects not involving combo fields. Most of the direct heals are also only accessible via combo.

Actually when it comes to self healing (as the previous poster in part points out) very few classes can match the engineer. Even discounting all the extra healing options we get and just looking at our main heals.
All our main heals do average to good healing compared to most classes.

Elixir H: 20 second CD when traited (and I really can’t see anyone taking it if they don’t trait elixirs) which is among the lowest CD for a heal apart from a very few exceptions.
Funnily enough 2 of those exceptions are also engineer heals:

Med kit: 20 – 15.5 second CD (not counting the bandages, which are fairly situational)

Healing turret: 15 second CD if you pick it up (20 second if you blow it up, I would advise against leaving it out in almost any situation), which is basically the lowest CD a heal can have apart from traited assassin’s signet (offers no utility and poor healing).

The excellent low cooldown healing is why I gear my engineer mostly for toughness instead of vitality in fact (that and the fact traited elixirs + EG make it so conditions slide off me like water off a ducks back).

Now as to which one I run with? Med kit; mostly because I run with runes of the centaur (100% AoE swiftness in W3? yes please) and the extra fury on #5 is always nice.

Healing turret should net you a bit more healing though, as well as sharing some of that healing.

Don’t forget Tools & Inventions – 15 point trait.
25% HP = Reset All Toolbelt and Healing Ability.
Run with Dwayna rune and watch the 30 second regeneration ticks.

Med Kit wins XD

As it stands, Med kit is the best option. You have your instant heal that you always have access to. Then when you need to make a quick escape you can pullout the medkit, get some minor heals, clear conditions, and gain swiftness.

Maybe one day they healing turret will be changed so its actually better to keep it deployed rather than deploy and immediately pick it up.

???? My F1 heals, my med kit gives me 3 heals, my elixir gun gives me an aoe heal, gain regen and refresh all my heal skills at 25% health, my supply drop heals me,my bombs heal me, and gain a non-boon regen when using a kit. How are my self-heals limited?

TheUnNamedHero.4167:

???? My F1 heals, my med kit gives me 3 heals, my elixir gun gives me an aoe heal, gain regen and refresh all my heal skills at 25% health, my supply drop heals me,my bombs heal me, and gain a non-boon regen when using a kit. How are my self-heals limited?

I suppose I was just unaware of all the possibilities. XD Next time I won’t be so myopic as to only consider skills specific to the healing slot in the skill bar.

I always come back to med kit for the antidote and swiftness+crit potion. The bandages are helpful while you are running away, but I’ve never found them very useful for healing other people (but then again, maybe I’m just not traited for them).

despite the bugs there are some really nice things about the healing turret.

If your for go the water field combo healing with the detonate and instead pair it with a fire or light field ((think elixir gun, or FT)) you can use the detonate to build additional might stacks or retaliation duration.

If you use static discharge detonating and then using the tool belt will next you 2 lightning bolts for a bit of burst dps.

With the explosives trait it also becomes an AoE KB on detonate.

If you pair that with deploy-able turrets you get a ranged knock back. You can also fore the utility skill and use the tool belt when you have deploy-able turrets out. This gives you a larger heal than medkit on a reduced duration thanks to the tools trait line.

but Medkit is better if your run solo imo. Since it’s a great escape tool and the condition removal / tricks like perma swiftness / vigor, or using condition removal food and spam equipping it, are fantastic.

Healing Turret has a nasty bug; if it’s destroyed the Regeneration drops to 5 per tick. That means you want to destroy the turret pretty much as soon as you deploy it (of course you wait for ~1 second to get the water blast finisher) otherwise you’ll give yourself and allies an useless Regeneration buff once the turret is destroyed or you have to reposition it.

They need to revamp this kit entirely. They need to at least to make the drops whole sets of bandages not just one at a time. they need to add more AOE heal drops. They need to fix the problems that cond/heal nerfs have caused with this profession specifically. And they need to improve a couple of the abilities on the elixir gun to improve it’s abilities and to not allow the regen abilities to be the same exact regen that the turret and AOE elixir shots give. They need a shorter larger burst per tick type of regen so that those regens don’t overlap with the ones from the Fkey skills and of the turret and the gun.

What I do with my engineer is the following:

Healing turret:

Use Regenerating Mist (tool belt when it has not been placed)
Place Turret (get a good heal)
Instantly use Cleansing Burst

Wait for Cleansing Burst to go off when the turret next attacks, and instantly detonate it so you also get a water healing combo.

This way you can get quite a bit of burst healing instantly, while also destroying your turret as soon as possible to get the cooldown going again.

The reason I always use medkit is for the stimulant (fury/swiftness), speedy kit, and/or superior rune (6) stuff that triggers on healing skill.

Is med kit still better than the turret even after all these patches ?
Or med kit is better for mobility and turret is better on camping( bunker ) ?
Just to know , I’m zerker > http://tinyurl.com/ac2zh5v

Kept reading about the healing turret regen bug when it was destroyed and thought that they already fixed it, when i realized that this was a 6 month old thread just necroed.

As it stands right now, i do believe med kit is our best self option while HT is a much better group oriented heal/condition removal.

I have been migrating slowly. I find the quick self heal on F1 to be awkward to hit in the heat of the moment. Doing the healing turret + overcharge + explode though helps train my fingers to get to F1. Too often in medkit, I forget it’s a KIT and hit my heal button, don’t get the heal (because it’s on F1), realize I’m in the kit, and then frantically try to hit 123, remember to also hit F1, then switch back to whatever I was actually trying to do when I started and it makes me feel terribly awkward. And then sometimes forget it’s a kit and then I start dispensing things when I try to use abilities and wonder why things aren’t exploding.

But it’s probably the best self heal. I just get pretzel fingered trying to use it.

I feel like Engi have some of the best healing in the game. They can all be boosted heavily with our traits, something a lot of professions can’t do.

Elixir H benefits from plenty of elixir-based traits that lower its CD and lets it cure conditions.

MedKit’s main self-heal is in the F1 skill, which canbe lowered greatly with points in the Tools tree. Also, it’s a heal skill that also grants might, fury, swiftness, and cures conditions. You just have to get used to the mechanics. Also, since swapping to MedKit has no CD, Altruism Runes can proc as often as their ICD allows (10s).

Healing Turret can be dropped, overcharged, blasted, and detonated very quickly for some massive aoe heals. Couple it with BoB, shield#4, EG#4 and you can stack huge heals.

And speaking of EG, we have another healing field from EG#5. Does it get any better?

And don’t forget, all of our skills come with an accompanying toolbelt skill. (MedKit I already mentioned) So when Healing Turret is on CD, you’ve got a 1s water field w/ aoe regen. And when Elixir H is on CD, you can toss it for a defensive boon (and condition removal if traited). And even EG has a 10s aoe regen on its toolbelt.

As to your title [MedKit v. Healing Turret], it was analyzed in another thread that MedKit wins for self-healing, HT wins for group heals.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Is med kit still better than the turret even after all these patches ?
Or med kit is better for mobility and turret is better on camping( bunker ) ?

Yep, med kit is better for the more mobile players, often hit-and-runners, turret is better on camping and point holding.

For my part I’ve started to swear by the Med Kit, the bandages heal for a total of 3k which isn’t something to spit on.

Healing turret’s fine for staying mobile too, really. Put healing turret down, overcharge it (which also removes conditions from you and anyone in range), optionally use a blast finisher like shield #4 or Big Ol’ Bomb, and finally detonate the turret (which is another blast finisher). That’s four heals and one condition remover on a 20 second cooldown, and in a battle with no swiftness, a three-step turret-overcharge-detonate can still be done without you leaving the combo field before the detonation gives you the third heal.

Plus, in the 20 seconds in between the cooldowns, you still have access to a regen that also creates a combo field that can be blasted for more heals.

I kittening love healing turret. I was a med kit user before the change, now I love that healing turret. 4 blast finishers = lots of healing.

I prefer the med kit over the healing turret, because now I can heal while in mist form from the runes of vampirism