I think it’s safe to say that six months out from the HoT launch, Medic Gyro could use a revision or two.
That’s not to say it’s entirely bad. In fact it has one of the best toolbelt skills of all the healing skills, with a super long water field that pulses protection and moves with you. It just would actually be nice if the Medic Gyro was a strong choice too, because over the past four years—including the influence of a $60 expansion—the engineer hasn’t moved beyond the Healing Turret aside from a few blips on the timeline when HGH elixir builds were top-tier.
Part of the issue is that the Healing Turret by design covers everything you need. Burst healing? Check. Regeneration? Check. Water field? Check. Condi cleanse? Check. It not only outperforms pretty much every single healing skill we have in every one of these categories, it does so offering the added utility of a blast finisher in any situation you’re not blasting water (i.e., stacking might). It’s been the de facto choice for PvE, PvP, and WvW for almost the entirety of this game’s existence for that reason. But rather than nerf the Healing Turret—as that would only further widen the gap between scrapper and non-scrapper builds—I think it’d be beneficial if ArenaNet would reconsider how the Medic Gyro could fill a niche the Healing Turret can’t fill instead.
On paper it appears that ArenaNet intended the Medic Gyro to be better suited for large scale situations. Between the mobile water field and the pulsing AoE heal, there’s a lot of utility in taking the Medic Gyro over the Healing Turret. Here’s the problem though: in WvW gyros get shredded almost instantly, and in raids you have druids taking care of almost all the healing needs for your group. In truth, there’s just no situation where the Medic Gyro really shines.
This identity crisis is further compounded by the fact that the AoE pulse field on the Medic Gyro actually diminishes its healing potential over time.
The Medic Gyro heals for 4510 with an 820 pulse heal that ticks 4 times while it is out—or a total of 7,790 returning health. Because the gyro itself stays out for 14 to do this, that essentially means you’re getting 7,790 over 34 seconds (including activation time), or 229 healing a second. Comparatively, if one were to detonate the Medic Gyro immediately, instead of keeping it out, you’re simply getting the 4510 every 20 seconds—or 225 healing a second.
Keeping the Medic Gyro out seems to be the better option, especially when that healing extends to your allies and not just yourself, but consider this: with Final Salvo being the optimal choice for gyro builds, it’s actually better just to detonate the Medic Gyro and not leave it out.
Rapid Regeneration ticks 380 healing a second when under the effects of super speed. I’m sure you can tell that this is substantially stronger healing per second than what you get out of a baseline Medic Gyro. Detonating a Medic Gyro gives you 6 total seconds of super speed, or 2280 healing tacked onto every Medic Gyro activation (after it’s destroyed). I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
With Final Salvo, holding out your Medic Gyro results in ~10K every 34 seconds. (294 healing/sec)
With Final Salvo, detonating your Medic Gyro results in ~6.5K every 20 seconds. (325 healing/sec)
So not only does holding out the Medic Gyro lack any real utility in the current state of the game because of damage saturation in WvW and druids in raids, mechanically the scrapper traitline places emphasis on detonating your Medic Gyro immediately and cycling super speed as much as possible versus keeping it out.
As for what can be done to remedy this, I think there’s two ideas I have in mind:
1. Rework the Medic Gyro so that it doesn’t just pulse heal, it also provides a beneficial boon that makes it worth keeping out (e.g., Resistance)
2. Rework the Medic Gyro so that it cleanses conditions every tick instead of a pulse heal. (Or both?)
Both of these decisions don’t affect the fact that blasting the gyro is better healing, but it makes you decide between extra healing or another, perhaps more situationally useful effect.