Guild Wars 2

Hey all! Just wanted to share a build I’ve been enjoying lately.
Disclaimer A: This build intentionally gimps its damage for the sake of healing. While I feel that it’s a worthwhile tradeoff in most of the content I run, and I can typically pull my own weight, this build isn’t good everywhere. Try to do a zerker speedrun with it, and you’ll be kicked from group before you can say “medkit”.

Disclaimer B: THIS IS NOT A DEDICATED HEALING BUILD. NO SUCH THING EXISTS. You will have significant healing ability, but that is no substitute for intelligent play.

I change up small elements of the build frequently, but here’s my current default:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlsTpCrlXxdLkfNyjxM6OKpiQ9soDYgHA-TxwGABA8AAy9CAI0+DAA-e

Here’s my thoughts on the choices made:

Weapon: Rifle and P/S are both solid choices, and have solid utility. I pick rifle largely because I prefer its “feel” to P/S, but P/S honestly would probably fit this build better.

Healing Ability: Healing turret is a wonderful skill, don’t get me wrong. However, I prefer the medkit for a handful of reasons. First, it has wonderful synergy with on-healing-skill procs. Second, since I’m going fully into Tools, it has the lowest CD of any heal. Third, because of boon duration and Packaged Stimulants, #5 offers 19.5 seconds of swiftness and fury on a 20 second cooldown. Due to this, I can give an ally upwards of 90% uptime on those two boons as long as I don’t miss / they actually try to pick the stimulants up. While it’s harder to heal people with this than the healing turret, I feel that its tradeoffs are worth it.

Single versus Multi-Kit: I prefer single-kit builds because I’ve got less I need to manage. Additionally, our elixir abilities are good enough that I feel you can justify taking two of them and a kit.

Elixir Gun: This is what you’ll spend most of your time using. You can heal allies for a decent amount using its #5, you can weaken enemies with your autoattack, you can cure up to 5 conditions on allies using your #3, and you even have a stunbreak.

Elixir Abilities: I like the insurance of a second stunbreak, so I typically take R and U. R provides a powerful AoE rez field, and its immobilize removal / dodge refill is handy in a pinch. U gives a wall that either reflects or blocks projectiles, both of which are handy, and quickness is always wonderful. One useful tip: if you have quickness, then your autoattack with EG fires off fast enough to build weakness duration on champ+ mobs.
If I trade out an elixir, it’s usually R for B when I know my party will need stability or when they just aren’t dying enough to warrent R. Rarely I’ll take S instead of U, but I find that S rarely offers the utility that U does.

Elite Ability: Supply crate is arguably our best utility. However, I honestly love elixir X. Due to elixir-boosting traits, we can have an elementalist’s or a warrior’s elite ability on a significantly shorter cooldown and longer duration. Furthermore, their CC is often quite handy, and the doubled health makes emergency use Elixir X to survive high damage an option.

Traits: I typically dump points into Alchemy and Tools, and put the 10 left over in Inventions or Firearms. Alchemy provides wonderful boon duration, and Tools gives that awesome CDR on toolbelt skills.
- I like taking Backpack Regenerator for the passive healing. It’s not that much, but it’s pretty handy.
- Armor Mods gives better Aegis uptime than most Guardians have, and makes you much harder to kill. Since I’ve also got the Alchemy minor that converts incoming conditions to boons, this gives significant defense against slow enemies.
- Elixir CDR and duration increase are great with an elixir-heavy loadout. The CDR makes R, U, and X available more often, giving you better quickness uptime and more frequent transformations. The duration increase gives you a longer-lasting everything, which is especially nice for both elixir tosses, Elixir U, and Elixir X.
- Packaged Stimulants provides 50% more outward healing with medkit, as well as significantly increased uptime on swiftness and fury.
- Speedy kits are awesome. ’Nuff said.
-Last 10 points should go into the 20% reduced damage while disabled, 20% CDR on elixir gun skills, or in rare cases the reduced fall damage.

Gear: Sigil of Renewal and Runes of Water synergize wonderfully with medkit. Sigil of Water is a nice addition to your healing capabilities. Sigils of Life and/or Benevolence are valid replacements, and any of the +Healing Power runes with an on-healing skill proc are valid options instead as well. In particular, if you want to play a more offensive support, Altruism is a solid choice.
In terms of stat suffixes, I personally run celestial, but that’s mainly because I only have the patience for one set of ascended. Whatever floats your boat will probably work.

Im sorry dude, i dont mean to be that guy.. But i wouldnt ever find your suggested build useful in any scenario outside someone intentionally trying to ruin/ kitten someone off..
Its a great thought, but it sadly wont be efficient enough anywere..
In PvE dungeons a few attacks from a single scrub mob would outdamage the heals by far..
Maybe there is some quest(heart) somewhere where it might be fun to try, where healing is.. a possible solution to get anywere in the quest..

However, as long as you have fun, its fine, as long as it doesnt affect other peoples fun too much..

Seems fun! I actually ran a similar build when me and two friends ran a dungeon for fun. Obviously, due to the nature of the game, I wasn’t an amazing “healer” or anything. But, I could keep regen up and had near permanent regen on myself, which makes it easier to rez. And, of course the elixir gun combo (5 > 4) is fun! Though, I ran healing turret instead of med kit for more regen and my initial displeasure with med kit.

I didn’t run exactly your build, but something similar, and found that it made the dungeon more lenient. Sure, it isn’t the optimal thing to, but we all had fun. I think next time, I’ll use this build for fun/casual running. Thanks!

I certainly see your point. The main place I see it as useful is something like the silverwastes, where you have to keep an NPC alive. Since they lack healing of their own, and have very predictable movements, you can use this build to keep them alive longer.

Why do You cut your heals in half? Why not elixir infused bombs? I mean – I understand that 15 seconds cooldown on bedkit is nice but it is only 1k hp more per heal than the healing turret.

Also: Selentir there actually IS dedicated engineer healing build. I use it, it is fun. Sure – zerkjerks automaticly kick everyone who does not have zerker gear, but with this even pugs menage to clear dungeons without much effort:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQJAqelUUpdr9Zx+KseNiaBFaCAouoo/4VyCA-TxBBwAXOBAAM/FV5nQ1fo8AAsoEc2+jeASBYmML-e

Weapon of choice:
Pistol and shield. I like rifle for it’s 5th skill which grants me certain mobility when moving around and about dungeons however in combat situations shield and pistol prove superior due to blast+waterfield combo

Healing skill:
Healing turret 2 cleanses and a powerfull heal of 6k hit points. On 15 second cooldown. With waterfield (use shield’s 4th skill for blast finisher healing you for additional 1250 hp) racking up 483 hit points per second. It also gives you toolkit skill called Regenerating mist which creates another water field and can be used to make a combo (however inbetween the healing turret ones). The regeneration gives you another 600 hp per second for 5 seconds. The regeneration given to you by Healing turret and it’s active skill grants you 270 hp per second for 2/3 of time rounding the healing to 380 hit points per second from regeneration itself alone.
HPS for now: 483 + 380 = 863

Utility skill 1:
Elixir Gun
Toolkit skill called Healing Mist is one of two stun breaks you have and it gives you a regeneration on similiar terms as other skills thus allowing you to have almost constant regen. 3rd skill – Fumigate is great to clean your teammates of conditions and 5th skill Super Elixir grants you one time spike heal of ~1200 hit points and creates light field which heals you for another 349 hit points per second for 10 seconds (+ 1 on the beginning of the skill). It has 20 seconds cooldown which starts after you deploy the exlir thus making it effective 10 second cooldown. To break the numbers down you get 175 hit points per second from ticks and 60 hit points per second from initial hit.
HPS for now: 863 + 175 + 60 = 998

Utility skill 2:
Bomb kit is your main damage dealing and healing tool. The damage is there – and it is it’s only advantage – while with each bomb (also The Big’ol’bomb from the toolkit. Notice that it also have blast finisher allowing you to generate additional heals or whatever you wish) you do dish out 349 hit points per half a second. Thus making it the greatest heal generator of our time: 688 hit points per second.
HPS for now: 998 + 698 = 1696

Utility skill 3:
Elixir S is your runaway button. Breaks stun and makes you invincible for 3 seconds. On 60 second cooldown. No heals, but it is great. The toolkit skill is 5 seconds invisibility on 60 second cooldown. Great for disengaging or running through groups of enemies you do not want to aggro. It is an aoe skill and allowes you to hide yo’ friends and hide yo’ family as well.
HPS for now: 1696

Elite Skill:
Supply Crate also known as care package. Couple of bandages, a tad of healing here and there and stationary, deployable healing turret which works for a minute, grants you regeneration and is there for your friends and family in need. Nothing exceptional but not too shabby either. Didn’t want to count it’s heals becouse of long cooldown.
HPS for now: 1696

Traits
This build relies on couple of traits which make it go faster or even make it possible.

Infused Precision – Firearms #2 – allows you to gain swiftness for 7 seconds if you deal critical hit (with the gear I have suggested that means swiftness every two seconds).

Elixir infused bombs – Inventions #6 – this skill makes your bombs heal people. Self explanatory.

Invigorating speed – Alchemy #2 – this skill grants you vigor for 7 seconds (+100% endurance regen) each time swiftness is applied thus granting you endless vigor.

Self-regulating defences – Alchemy #4 – puts another Elixir-S on autotrigger when your health hits 25% limit. 90 seconds cooldown. Since majority of mobs and monsters do not deal massive-one-hit-kill-blows but rather short bursts of condensed damage this trait will save your hide many times.

Backpack regenerator – Alchemy #9 – grants you additiona hit point regeneration. Another 189 hit points each second to help your healing pool.
HPS for now: 1696 + 189 = 1885

Gear and foodstuff
I suggest magi gear for any starting healgineers. It is horribly cheap, you can buy almost full set with accessories for something around 40 gold. It rises your precision and allowes you to crit more often triggering various effects.

I have suggested Superior Rune of Dwayna because of it’s regeneration elongating effects and spontanous regeneration. You will most likely have constant regen with these runes.

I have suggested Superior sigil of health because when you have it each 6 seconds with your current critical chance you will steal around 300 hit points. I’ll add it to the pool:
HPS for now: 1885 + 50 = 1935

And since it is very forging build when it comes to enemies hitting on you you I have suggested Superior Sigil of Water for additional 50 hit points per second.
HPS for now: 1935 + 50 = 1985

You can also eat mango pies for some hit points per second effectively raising your HPS above 2000. Remember that these hit points fluctuate here and there and sometimes you will heal for more than 2000 per second and sometimes you will barely make it past 1100.

Also notice that you can heal up to 5 people for 1800 hit points per second thus making you an effective AOE healer.

Urdhgag.2450:

snip

Thanks for this—I’ve been running with the normal meta zerk build and have been a bit bored with it, not to mention I have no intention of ever doing speed running (and rarely do dungeons to begin with) so having the “best, optimal” build isn’t really important. This looks like fun and a good change of pace; I like the look of both builds but this one seems a bit stronger.

I’d say more durable but thank you for your kind words. I actually have set a goal before myself: beat every single dungeon story mode solo. So far I managed to beat Ascalonian Catacombs, Honor of the Waves, Caudecus Manor, Twilight Arbor and Crucible of Eternity.

Here is a tad militarised version of the build I have described above. It works in very similar manner. The simple differences i will explain below:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQJAqelsTpdr9Zx6KseNiaBFaCgIvSW+YEWKA-TxBBABV8AAAw8XUK/ES9HA3fwiTAoEcG9AkCwMZWA-e

What differs?
The first thing that differ and you will notice it instantly is the healing skill the Madkit.
Medkit grants you ability to perfectly time the usage of Altruism Runes these runes grant you 6 stacks of might and fury every ten seconds for 8 seconds. Since medkit by itself does not have a cool-down you can even make a couple mistakes and simply use it when the time is right without major difference. With current stats the medkit’s toolkit skill Bandage Self with 3 Drop Bandages skills grant you 461 hit points per second in spike of various cool-down.

Utility skill 3:
Elixir B grants you instant fury, might, retaliation and swiftness. This combined with Drop Stimulant and Runes of Altruism will allow you to keep up fury constantly rising your critical chance to around 62%.

Traits
This build drops the "swiftness and vigor combo* to take two skills (one you can choose on your own) from the Explosives line: #10 – Forceful Explosives -granting you 3 stacks of might every 10 seconds for 21 seconds (thus giving us effectively 6 stacks of might)

The gear and might
Thanks to the change of runes this gear set allows you to keep up constantly 11 stacks of might (even out of fight) and the Superior Sigil of Strength in your pistol will allow you to rise this number to 21 when fighting tougher enemies (weaker ones die too quickly for us to deal enough hits). The Superior Sigif of Frailty will grant your enemies vulnerability because f*** them.