Guild Wars 2

The recent patch introduced a slight undocumented “buff” to medkit. The drops from medkit #2-5 are significantly bigger now (just a graphical effect, nothing more). It is easier to notice them in the heat of the battle, but this doesn’t yet solve the issues we have with this kit.

Here is the math how much different skills heal without any healing power:
Medkit heals 273 hp/s from bandage self + 185 hp/s from medkit #2-5 (always use instantly once they are off from cooldown + regeneration 130 hp/s
bandage self + medkit #2-5 = total heal 459 hp + regen = 589 hp/s including regen
Warrior’s healing signet heals 362 hp/s.
Healing turret heals 484 hp/s (assumed one blast per longer water field)

The above comparisons include the use of toolbelt skills. In fact the main heal of medkit is the toolbelt skill “bandage self”, which doesn’t benefit from Mechanized Deployment (bugged or then bandage self is not classified as a toolbelt skill, but a healing skill).

Utility:
Medkit can remove 10x damaging conditions per minute, 5.5x debilitating conditions per minute and almost 4 movement impairing conditions per minute
Medkit offers 63 % swiftness uptime and 55 % fury uptime.
Healing turret can remove 4×2 = 8 conditions per minute + it has a blast finisher + 2 water fields, allowing significantly more heals if you use finishers on these fields

Conclusion: Healing turret heals significantly more than medkit with 0 investment in healing power if we count in just the toolbelt skill “bandage self”. If we would use multiple blast finishers on the healing kit water fields, the total heal can be almost twice of medkit and it also provides more heal to the allies within the radius, thus making medkit even less viable. While the medkit utility looks great on paper, it takes roughly 2/3 of the total time to use all those medkit skills as soon as they are free from recharge. This means spending 40 seconds out of every minute just swapping between medkit, use medkit skills #2-5 and then swap back again. And this assumes the user is not using medkit #1 at all. Each medkit swap takes 1 second.

Obviously no smart player would spend so much time using medkit as this would barely leave time to use other skills and attack the opponents. Even on a less frequent rotation the time spent swapping into medkit, using 1-3 skills and back again is very significant. The loss of DPS in most situations in at least 33 , which is truly massive. Why would anyone select a heal skill, which requires 33-66 DPS loss and heals less than other healing skills?!?

In order for the medkit to be viable, it must heal more than other heals in the game. The idea of throwing the medkit #2-5 for allies simply doesn’t work. It heals so little and usually just cleanses one specific type of condition that it is almost invariably a better option to spend that time doing something else e.g. attacking the enemies, using CC skills at enemies, run to capture another point etc. The biggest problem is that medkit #2-5 affects just one character. The previous behavior where medkit skills dropped bandages and vials at the feet of the user was much better. It allowed the player to more quickly utilize the kit. It also allowed the kit to function underwater. If medkit #2-5 would be like warrior shouts: instant cast, 600-1200 radius and affect up to 5 allies I would see much more use to it. Then probably the cooldown of especially medkit #2 would need to be increased, not to make the kit too powerful.

Anyways the activation time of medkit #2-5 need to be reduced significantly. Make those skills either instant cast or have 0.25 second cast with over no over cast or delay. The base heal of each medkit skill "2-5 must be increased by 60% (still that would be roughly only 1000 per use!). Healing turret is so popular, not just because the utility and huge healing it brings, but because it has 0.5 second cast time (less prone to interrupts, engineer can spend most time using other skills).

This would solve the current BUG:
Have mecha legs trait equipped or swiftness, throw stimulant (medkit #3) in front of you, and run over it. The stimulant won’t activate and you need to backpedal to activate it. All these waiting for the medkit skills to activate really kills the kit in real life usage. If medkit #2-5 work unreliable half of the time, it absolutely kills their usage in any high spvp or WvWvW.

Medkit #1 is problematic in many ways.
- it heals only max 3 allies, and not 5 as in the description
- the cone is so narrow it often can hit just 1 ally
- it auto aims often at enemies, even though it does no damage
- the healing is so tiny it makes no noticeable dent
- it doesn’t affect the engineer (WHY? e.g. elementalist water staff #1 does damage, affects the user and has 1200 range to hit enemies)
- while you are using it, you are not doing anything useful

Here are few ways to fix medkit #1:
2-3x its base heal and make it also affect the engineer himself
or
make it also do some weak damage e.g. 2 sec poison or 4 sec bleed from full 1.5 s channel
double it’s base heal and make it heal 360 radius, 600 range

Discuss.

I just want Medkit available for underwater again. I used to use it for underwater. :/

I think a cool change to Medkit would be make the #1 a radial skill, like 360 radius and increase the heal.

The #2-5 should be buffing skills that buff the next #1 skill, so like #2 would heal 1k and remove said condition upon the engi casting #1.

I think it would be amazing if the heals all operated like Med Pack Drop does. Each ability on the med kit lasts 15 or so seconds and has a cooldown of 20-30 seconds, but drops 3-4 in a crate drop.

I’d go with what Arimas said if using abilities on targeted allies isn’t possible in the game engine, then it would at least be reliable

Skills #2-4 is bugged too.
They should remove some conditions, but don’t do this…
I count all heal with turrent and medkit with talent +15% to healing.
I should spam 13-14 sekonds with #1 to heal like my turrent (double use turrent and take it for 15 sec).
Engi is a great healer/condi remove sup now, but low mobility killing him (waiting scrapper).
Medkit was great, when we could activate runes (fixed bug at 29.09), but now…

Kirk.3086:

Skills #2-4 is bugged too.
They should remove some conditions, but don’t do this…

Medkit was great, when we could activate runes (fixed bug at 29.09), but now…

Bugged how? Please tell us. For me the biggest bug with medkit #2-5 is that they have some weird delays before they activate. In other words you cannot sometimes throw them at your feet and just instantly run over them, but wait until you can activate them. This utterly kills the real world usage of the kit. Swapping between medkit and back takes also considerable amount of time. Just to remove one condition and do a measly 505 base heal + 6 sec regeneration you need to spend about 3 seconds: 1 sec equipt medkit, use medkit #2, activate medkit #2, stow medkit.

Equipping medkit (pressing button 6) is still triggering the “on heal” effect of runes, like Lyssa and Altruism.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Here is the math how much different skills heal without any healing power:
Medkit heals 226 hp/s + regeneration (assuming every 6 second activation of medkit #2-5), 356 hp/s with regeneration
Warrior’s healing signet heals 362 hp/s.
Healing turret heals 484 hp/s (assumed one blast per longer water field)

shouldn’t you also account for the toolbelt skill for an apples-to-apples comparison? Bandage Self can add another 5k heal every 15 seconds by itself if you take Tools traitline. there’s also the capability to get an extra 5k heal roughly every 45 seconds if you take Kinetic Battery and are able to get it to proc at the right time, which can admittedly be unreliable.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Kirk.3086:

Medkit was great, when we could activate runes (fixed bug at 29.09), but now…

Equipping medkit (pressing button 6) is still triggering the “on heal” effect of runes, like Lyssa and Altruism.

This “bug fix” on the Medical Kit has really brought down the Medical Kit’s value.

The Medical Kit was great for creating offensive type passive attack such as Balthazar Rune Set similar to the old Kit Refinement. You can burn the untouchable Thief or immortal Mesmer, currently roaming the high tiers of PvP, for quite a decent amount giving you a few seconds of breathing room. Lyssa and Altruism are defensive type triggers with defensive stats, which are not very useful, but I’m sure Anet will get to them soon enough.

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

shouldn’t you also account for the toolbelt skill for an apples-to-apples comparison? Bandage Self can add another 5k heal every 15 seconds by itself if you take Tools traitline. there’s also the capability to get an extra 5k heal roughly every 45 seconds if you take Kinetic Battery and are able to get it to proc at the right time, which can admittedly be unreliable.

Op also forgot to mention about condition cleansing without using your main heal (tool belt) or that the ability to remove a burn from a guardian every 5 seconds will make the fight a joke.

My suggestion is to double all of the heals and duration of the boons given and double the cool downs of each. Because, let’s face it, that is a bit too much condition removal but the duration could be better. Also less tossing, everyone wins.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Kirk.3086:

Skills #2-4 is bugged too.
They should remove some conditions, but don’t do this…

Medkit was great, when we could activate runes (fixed bug at 29.09), but now…

Bugged how? Please tell us. For me the biggest bug with medkit #2-5 is that they have some weird delays before they activate. In other words you cannot sometimes throw them at your feet and just instantly run over them, but wait until you can activate them. This utterly kills the real world usage of the kit. Swapping between medkit and back takes also considerable amount of time. Just to remove one condition and do a measly 505 base heal + 6 sec regeneration you need to spend about 3 seconds: 1 sec equipt medkit, use medkit #2, activate medkit #2, stow medkit.

#2, #3, #4 should remove some conditions and take buff. Sometimes #3 don’t remove weakness, #4 don’t remove cripple, #2 don’t remove any damage condi…

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Here is the math how much different skills heal without any healing power:
Medkit heals 226 hp/s + regeneration (assuming every 6 second activation of medkit #2-5), 356 hp/s with regeneration
Warrior’s healing signet heals 362 hp/s.
Healing turret heals 484 hp/s (assumed one blast per longer water field)

shouldn’t you also account for the toolbelt skill for an apples-to-apples comparison? Bandage Self can add another 5k heal every 15 seconds by itself if you take Tools traitline. there’s also the capability to get an extra 5k heal roughly every 45 seconds if you take Kinetic Battery and are able to get it to proc at the right time, which can admittedly be unreliable.

My comparison includes the toolbelt skills.

Mechanized_Deployment doesn’t reduce the cooldown of “bandage”. It is still 17 seconds (and 18 seconds with using the skill).

Lite.3819:

Lyssa and Altruism are defensive type triggers with defensive stats, which are not very useful, but I’m sure Anet will get to them soon enough.

Op also forgot to mention about condition cleansing without using your main heal (tool belt) or that the ability to remove a burn from a guardian every 5 seconds will make the fight a joke.

Lyssa is a bit weak at it’s current form. It was nerfed too much over the years.

Try fighting a good burn guardian using just medkit as your only condition cleanse!

Burn guardians generally use geomancy and doom sigils, so that provides 3xbleed and poison as cover conditions. The burn stacks in WvWvW do well over 5k damage per second. Meaning just 2 seconds is 10k+ damage.

To cleanse the condition you must wish they are no cover conditions, swap to medkit (1 second) and activate medkit #2 (delays might make that another second), swap back (another 1 second). Because of this slowness you are pretty much guaranteed to suffer at least 2 seconds of the burning stacks. Most battles are not 1 vs 1, thus you are soon required to swap again to medkit, use medkit #2-5 again. You are spending big part of your fight just trying to cleanse conditions, which are applied much faster than you can cleanse them. The massive time spent using medkit and the weird aftercast delays on some medkit skills, really kills the kit.

Even if they buffed the med kit, I think healing power stat is a joke as to the way it scales.

One of the reasons med kit doesnt work in my opinion is because it is based on healing allies and not yourself. This itself isnt the problem, but the healing is outshined by heals that heal yourself aswell as allies, such as water+ blasts or things like druids. If we happen to get a huge buff to skill 1 and make 2/5 AoE, we can actually get things like nomads goin where your role specificly is to heal allies and not having to heal much yourself.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Try fighting a good burn guardian using just medkit as your only condition cleanse!

The funny part is that you can use Medical Kit as your only condition cleanse, but you can not with a Healing Turret. You will escape with most of your health if you are good with the Medical Kit. A good burn guardian get you 100% of the time if healing turret is your only condition cleansing. Hence, Engineer’s weakness to conditions.

When fighting in large groups, I prefer A.E.D in WvW, the all damaging condition removal + prevent death works wonder where you will drop instantly without invulnerable. It almost feels like an invulnerable (even the long cool down makes it feel like a invulnerable).

In smaller fights, Healing turret reign supreme. Elementalist and shout build will usually remove some of your conditions for you since they are good at it, so burst healing and high amount is the best route.

Lite.3819:

The funny part is that you can use Medical Kit as your only condition cleanse, but you can not with a Healing Turret. You will escape with most of your health if you are good with the Medical Kit. A good burn guardian get you 100% of the time if healing turret is your only condition cleansing. Hence, Engineer’s weakness to conditions.

Well good luck trying to beat good burn guardians using just medkit. Maybe I am lower skill than you, but I sometimes struggle against burn guardians with multiple sources of condition removal: elixir gun #5, mortar #4 + combos (prone to fail) + medkit. The big problem like I explained is that you need at least 2 seconds to remove any damaging condition using medkit #2 unless you are already sitting on that kit and thus doing zero damage. In all other cases you first must equip the kit, throw medkit #2 and activate it. In WvWvW this means usually at least 10k damage from the burn stacks alone (+ the direct damage) the burn guardian can inflict on you and in many cases there are cover conditions, which need to be cleansed first, thus the burning still remains. 5k burn ticks per second means 30k more damage in next 6 seconds, the next time you can try medkit #2. Medkit #5 offers very short time condition immunity with resistance, but with 20 s cooldown. Instead of counting on my ability to cleanse the conditions I win most of my fights against guardians by using the range game, control the distance using EG#4, rifle #4 and rocket boots. And use lots of blinds, cripple, chill, immobilize to CC the guardian. If it cannot hit you much, then you have much less conditions to cleanse.

If it is a 1 vs 1 situation, you need to do enough dps to kill the guardian, but most fights are not 1 vs 1. Burn guardian might be teamed up with a condition mesmer, celestial necro, trapper ranger etc. and you are just screwed.

Conditions are still a major weakness of the engineers, unless you go full elixir build with Alchemical Tinctures trait and that means giving up a lot of dps. If I get to fight agaist condition builds I wish I would be on my shoutbow warrior and not on my engi.

I am NOT asking the developers to remove this weakness of the engineer. I am not asking for more condition cleanse on medkit, but make increase it’s total healing per minute and improve it’s usability, which is downright horrible now. And I have 2500+ hours experience on using the medkit.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Here is the math how much different skills heal without any healing power:
Medkit heals 226 hp/s + regeneration (assuming every 6 second activation of medkit #2-5), 356 hp/s with regeneration
Warrior’s healing signet heals 362 hp/s.
Healing turret heals 484 hp/s (assumed one blast per longer water field)

shouldn’t you also account for the toolbelt skill for an apples-to-apples comparison? Bandage Self can add another 5k heal every 15 seconds by itself if you take Tools traitline. there’s also the capability to get an extra 5k heal roughly every 45 seconds if you take Kinetic Battery and are able to get it to proc at the right time, which can admittedly be unreliable.

My comparison includes the toolbelt skills.

Mechanized_Deployment doesn’t reduce the cooldown of “bandage”. It is still 17 seconds (and 18 seconds with using the skill).

I know it doesn’t reduce the cooldown, but it should. Whether it’s bugged is a different conversation. Your math is wrong either way. 4920 toolbelt heal every 18 seconds is 273 hps without regen and 403 hps with regen. Adding the 2-5 skills is another 195 hps. So total heal capacity is 598 hps (including regen) if things function without bugging and skills are spammed on CD. And that’s without traits or healing power.

They should also replace the lame throw stimulat trait in alchemy with a new grandmaster that makes the Medkit really great, like a Druid great.

Raolin Soulherder.3195:

I know it doesn’t reduce the cooldown, but it should. Whether it’s bugged is a different conversation. Your math is wrong either way. 4920 toolbelt heal every 18 seconds is 273 hps without regen and 403 hps with regen. Adding the 2-5 skills is another 195 hps. So total heal capacity is 598 hps (including regen) if things function without bugging and skills are spammed on CD. And that’s without traits or healing power.

Thanks for pointing out my mistake! I found the mistake in my calculations and fixed values in my first post.

Now indeed if you count in the all medkit #2-5 skills + toolbelt medkit can heal a bit more than the healing turret, but it comes with the price of spending roughly 2/3 of the time just spamming medkit skills the instant they come off CD and equipping and stowing the kit. No other healing skill in the game requires the user to spend so crazy amount of time to take full advantage of the heal. Warrior’s most popular heal, the healing signet, is totally passive, meaning no time wasted on using it and passive use cannot of course be interrupted either. Medkit spam on the other hand is very prone to interrupts and boons can be stolen, removed and corrupted.

The traits don’t actually increase the total heal much at all, because regeneration only stacks in duration. And Stimulant Supplier only activates using the F1 (toolbelt) skill, thus it can activate just once per 18 seconds, giving mere 505 base heal and 5 seconds of fury. That is not a very strong GM trait.

Cristobal.8640:

They should also replace the lame throw stimulat trait in alchemy with a new grandmaster that makes the Medkit really great, like a Druid great.

You mean Stimulant Supplier which is the major grandmaster trait in the alchemy tree.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stimulant_Supplier

I find it quite weak it it’s current form:
505 base heal + 5 seconds of fury every time you use a healing skill (only the F1 skill counts for medkit!)
internal cooldown is 10 seconds

To make it as strong as druid is an overkill. Ranger needs to have something special as well and not give all the goodies to engineer.

Here are some ideas to make stimulant supplier GM trait more useful, but not totally overpowered:

1. Make it also drop stimulant after a full 1.5 second channel of medkit #1. You could make it from a less powerful version, which only heals 505 and gives no fury, if permanent fury sounds too much. This would allow medkit #1 to be used as self-heal as well. It would be slightly stronger heal than elementalist water staff #1, water blast, but does not damage and affects just the engineer, while ele staff #1 can affect up to 5 allies (I didn’t test this though).

2. Make the stimulant supplies activate on equipping medkit (pressing button 6). ICD 10 s would still mean that you could benefit from it once every 10 seconds and get only 50% uptime of fury and this would mean swapping to medkit once every 10 secs and swapping back again (2 seconds spent on that alone)

3. Alternatively stimulant supplier could work so that every time you use medkit #2-5 it also generates an extra stimulant by the feet of the engineer. Meaning you can get double stimulant using medkit #3 or medkit #2 and #3 at same time using medkit #2.

These are all pretty selfish ideas. For more group support, maybe something like Druid’s Lingering Light. Each time you use a heal (or equip a medkit), it creates a wisp that orbits you and heals allies it touches. ICD 6 seconds or so, just like the druid ranger trait.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Cristobal.8640:

They should also replace the lame throw stimulat trait in alchemy with a new grandmaster that makes the Medkit really great, like a Druid great.

2. Make the stimulant supplies activate on equipping medkit (pressing button 6). ICD 10 s would still mean that you could benefit from it once every 10 seconds and get only 50% uptime of fury and this would mean swapping to medkit once every 10 secs and swapping back again (2 seconds spent on that alone)

You should know that you can use the switch weapons hotkey to instantly swap out of a kit and back to your weapons, bypassing the kits CD (I hope they just delete that stupid CD one day, one less hotkey to worry about). This has additional uses, like swapping out of Elixir Gun mid air after using Elixir Bomb, bypassing the leap and staying immobile if done right. Also quick triggering of on-swap sigils.

Cristobal.8640:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Cristobal.8640:

They should also replace the lame throw stimulat trait in alchemy with a new grandmaster that makes the Medkit really great, like a Druid great.

2. Make the stimulant supplies activate on equipping medkit (pressing button 6). ICD 10 s would still mean that you could benefit from it once every 10 seconds and get only 50% uptime of fury and this would mean swapping to medkit once every 10 secs and swapping back again (2 seconds spent on that alone)

You should know that you can use the switch weapons hotkey to instantly swap out of a kit and back to your weapons, bypassing the kits CD (I hope they just delete that stupid CD one day, one less hotkey to worry about). This has additional uses, like swapping out of Elixir Gun mid air after using Elixir Bomb, bypassing the leap and staying immobile if done right. Also quick triggering of on-swap sigils.

Keep in mind what would happen if you clicked a button twice with no cooldown. That would be incredibly annoying.

As you describe there’s already a button to press to instantly drop a kit, I don’t see why we have to change the kit swap button to do the same.

Adamantium.3682:

Cristobal.8640:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Cristobal.8640:

They should also replace the lame throw stimulat trait in alchemy with a new grandmaster that makes the Medkit really great, like a Druid great.

2. Make the stimulant supplies activate on equipping medkit (pressing button 6). ICD 10 s would still mean that you could benefit from it once every 10 seconds and get only 50% uptime of fury and this would mean swapping to medkit once every 10 secs and swapping back again (2 seconds spent on that alone)

You should know that you can use the switch weapons hotkey to instantly swap out of a kit and back to your weapons, bypassing the kits CD (I hope they just delete that stupid CD one day, one less hotkey to worry about). This has additional uses, like swapping out of Elixir Gun mid air after using Elixir Bomb, bypassing the leap and staying immobile if done right. Also quick triggering of on-swap sigils.

Keep in mind what would happen if you clicked a button twice with no cooldown. That would be incredibly annoying.

As you describe there’s already a button to press to instantly drop a kit, I don’t see why we have to change the kit swap button to do the same.

Less hotkeys needed, more fluid gameplay. Necro already can out of DS by mistake if double clicking, and it doesn’t really happen that often.

Biggest sup engi problem – too small radiuses of the water combo/dispersion field/soothing detonation/heal resonator/healing mist/potions radiuses/overshield.
Elem or guard can heal everybody at huge radius or permanently, without wasting time at combos. Even at pvp my allies just run away from fields and all my healing combos are neglected.
Engi is the best condy buffer (elexir gun), but too slow and has some problems with water combos…
If he at the middle of fight, so he can’t protect himself cos all his def abilities broke his healing potencial (elem can get buff from earth, earth armor, but engy waste his def at elexir gun, one burst protection skill and one more blast).

I would be beyond extatic if I could literally have the old med kit back and simply have a trait that allowed me to remove a condition with each med pack consumption. Then if I desire to be more group supportive I can choose heal turret.

coglin.1867:

I would be beyond extatic if I could literally have the old med kit back and simply have a trait that allowed me to remove a condition with each med pack consumption. Then if I desire to be more group supportive I can choose heal turret.

I would also love to see the old medkit back with a trait, which allowed a condition to be removed with each medkit bandage consume. From a group support point of view the current medkit makes no sense. The kit is designed for rather selfish use. Medkit toolbelt + medkit #2-5 are all single target and I think they should stay that way. Medkit #1 says it can affect up to 5 allies in the tooltip, but in reality it can affect max 3 allies and in most cases it will hit just 1 ally and does about 100 heal/tick, while the engineer is not doing any damage = really not worth, even if they double the current medkit #1 heal (it would only make sense if it would heal the engineer as well).

The old medkit healed about 504 hp/s, including the use of medkit #1-3 bandages.
This is more than the new medkit without regeneration, but less than with regeneration taken into account. The new medkit requires even more time spend on equipping the kit and using the skills than the old one.

This is probably just me, but i’m thinking the med kit should have increased revival speed when equipped. Adding onto that, some revival base line traits.

Medical Bed - While reviving an alley, sumon a water field that cleanses conditions on pulse and grants regen.
Operation Complete - When succesfully rallying an ally, you and them obtain boons. (Regen, Prot/Resist, Vigor)

Bandage should also cleanse bleeding on base and toss out more. The skill itself is plural so why do we only toss out 1 pack?

Our 3-5 skills should also be changed to that of an aoe, maybe a healing rain kind of thing, shorter radius though.

Funny idea with the rezz stuff, but I wonder if I would want traits that only work in the occasion when I have failed in my job of keeping people alive, and would I actually start taking risks with peoples lives just so I can use my revive traits.. Would people start dying on purpose to get the boons, would the new meta become “let’s die while the engi drops Elixir R and rezz with buffs!”.. xD

Cool idea anyways, throw in +15% revive speed to Health Insurance to make that trait more appealing too

What bugs me the most are Super Elixir & Elixir Shell, they are such fine healing skills and when traited they also grant 2 stacks of might for 27seconds, not shabby at all.
…and they’re in elite/utility kits?
imo it would make more sense to have an ability like that in the specialized healing kit?

Looking at Elixir Shell especially, it creates almost 7 second duration water field when traited, so it’s really good for pumping blasts, double orbi + acid bomb + magnetic shield is some nice bursts on top of the aoe field heal it has, don’t even think about others in the group blasting as well, because medkit starts to look pretty weak in comparison :P

Would be useless to trait for Health Insurance in that case tho, as you would lose the 15%+ healing when you drop the kit to use your blast finishers.

Oh well, keep brainstorming till we hit a homerun with something Hoping devs are starting to notice our whines.

Tiilimon.6094:

Oh well, keep brainstorming till we hit a homerun with something Hoping devs are starting to notice our whines.

I am sure the devs know that medkit is currently an underused heal and almost every engineer is using the healing turret. Elixir H has its uses in elixir builds and A.E.D. could work in WvWvW zerg settings. The developers are probably busy with HoT, so I don’t expect any major changes to medkit before the launch of HoT.

What they could easily is to tweak some numbers, mainly these two:
- increase the base heal of medkit #2-5 by 50% and reduce their cast time to 1/4 s
- double the base heal of medkit #1 and make it affect the engineer as well

After these minor changes medkit could be used in selfish builds to get the highest self heal in the game, albeit with the heavy price of spending more than half of the time just using medkit and not doing any damage.

The problem with the medkit is that it’s designed to heal others people, but it’s also designed to affect one person. The engineer isn’t even the one who have the priority with dropped items.

The Medkit need a serious rework. Again. The item system simply doesn’t work.

To me, the idea of the syringe on the arm, blasting things, was a good idea on paper (but the amount of heal is just so bad).

Instead of throwing things everywhere, the skills should be AoE or cones like the FT / EG poison cloud to give buffs, heal, cleanse. And affect the engineer. Medkit 1# and EG 3# are kinda ridiculous for that.

Personally, I would do the Medkit like this.

1) Same skill (but with better healing)
2) Throw basic bandages
3) Cleansing AoE / cone
4) Buff AoE / cone
5) Healing AoE (water field?)

As stated, the medkit is a purely supportive kit. It at least need some incentive, as we do not attack while using it.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

The problem with the medkit is that it’s designed to heal others people, but it’s also designed to affect one person. The engineer isn’t even the one who have the priority with dropped items.

The Medkit need a serious rework. Again. The item system simply doesn’t work.

The item system worked pretty well before the trait rework/Jun 23 patch. Dropping the medkit skills at your feet had far superior usability than the current ground targeting throw system. And the bandages stayed much longer time on the ground, meaning you could prepare yourself and surround yourself with several bandages.

Making medkit #2-5 affect up to 5 allies including the engineer would probably make it overpowered. Maybe the healing component should only affect the engineer, while the condition removal + giving boons like fury & swiftness would affect all allies in a 360 radius burst. This would make it a clearly weaker version than warrior’s shouts + warhorn: no healing and much smaller area + activation time, but medkit skills would have lower cooldown. Burst around the engineer in all directions would work much better than the current cone of medkit #1 or throwing the vials/bandages. The cone is simply too narrow and often auto aims at enemies (instead of allies) and does no damage.

I agree that medkit #1 must really affect the engineer to make any sense.

Deniara Devious.3948:

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

The problem with the medkit is that it’s designed to heal others people, but it’s also designed to affect one person. The engineer isn’t even the one who have the priority with dropped items.

The Medkit need a serious rework. Again. The item system simply doesn’t work.

The item system worked pretty well before the trait rework/Jun 23 patch. Dropping the medkit skills at your feet had far superior usability than the current ground targeting throw system. And the bandages stayed much longer time on the ground, meaning you could prepare yourself and surround yourself with several bandages.

Of course, I’m talking about the current system. Simply dropping bandages instead of throwing them is clearly better for the engi (but it’s still for one person).

And yes, the bandages used to stay longer, and that was practical too.

Making medkit #2-5 affect up to 5 allies including the engineer would probably make it overpowered.

Indeed, just modifying the current skills to affect more allies would be kinda overpowered.

Maybe the healing component should only affect the engineer, while the condition removal + giving boons like fury & swiftness would affect all allies in a 360 radius burst. This would make it a clearly weaker version than warrior’s shouts + warhorn: no healing and much smaller area + activation time, but medkit skills would have lower cooldown.

I also agree with that. To me, the main thing that define the engi is “many skills with low cooldown”. And having a kit available at all times based solely on support can’t have healing on par with Ele’s Geyser for exemple, or even the Warrior’s shouts, as you mention.

Honestly, I think that the medkit should simply get inspiration from the Elexir gun.

I don’t think medkit needs to be turned into elixir gun. Just make medkit #2-5 apply faster (1/4 s cast time) and make medkit #1 worth using e.g. make it similar to druid staff #1, which is just amazing. Ranger druid staff #1 doesn’t just heal, but it does decent 1200 range damage. Now doing very little healing and no self-heal + zero damage sucks for any game mode. Medkit #1 must self-heal, period.

I don’t ask to copy all the ranger druid stuff to medkit, but please consider copying the auto attack or give something similar to medkit.

The #1 should have a bigger radius/range and increased healing power (and heal for a lower amount the engineer) (something else too ?)

In my opinion the #2-5 skills should have the same effects but they shouldn’t be some “packs” we drop : it’s a waste of time, we have to aim, throw it and someone has to pick it up, all that just for a little amount of heal/boon.
They should be AoE skills with 240/300 radius that have the same effects, maybe a little more powerful.
But please, no more packs on the floor with the Medkit.

I really like the idea of iKeostuKen.2738 with increased reviving speed while holding Medkit

Medkit is the only thing im sad about with engi, if it was more “combat healer” oriented then i would be using it in all game modes. I have felt like im wasting time when sitting back throwing the pickups. If the medkit had a weakness or protection field so i can add something more to the fight while throwing out the pickups then it would be a kit to swap in and out of. As it stands you cant use it as a “osnap” button like HT so pvp is out and pve elixir gun with HT is easy heals with dmg or condi helping the team.

Did we give up on this?

There are some tricks to using it, like dropping BoB and OS on a waterfield and whipping out the kit before they blast for bonus heals from those blasts

I started using this kit with the thought that it would be a flat 15% bonus to ally healing when I have it in the skillbar, but nope

It’s quite interesting this way as well tho, because it requires me to think more, like if I should take the kit out while my SE is flying through the air to it’s target, so the impact heal would gain bonus %.

I’m not sure if it would be overpowered to have it give the % just from slotting the skill, perhaps it would and that’s why it works this way instead.

I can imagine more people swapping HT for it if they would change the bonus to apply all the time tho. Would really make it THE group healing kit with that simple change xD

btw, that 15% increase works for Toss Elixir R

I still stand with my suggestions. Medkit does NOT need a complete overhaul, the biggest problem is medkit #1, mediblaster, which heals way too little considering it doesn’t heal the engineer nor do any damage. Make it like druid staff #1, doing both damage and heal or increase the base heal significantly and make it affect the engineer herself.

Medkit #2-5, especially medkit #3, suffer from too slow activation times. Make them either instant cast (engineer only) or 1/4 s cast with no aftercast. They would also need roughly 30 % increase to base heal (still under 1000 heal/use).

After this medkit will be competitive in the hands of a very competent player. It will be the most complex healing skill in the game and require a lot of micro management swapping between other kids + main weapon.

i made a post a while back about making the med kit more viable which involved making the 2-5 skills charges that would buff the med blaster so you could swap in and out for a single blast that had the added benefits of the packs in a medblast or self heal, the main reason for it was so that the engineer wouldnt have to camp med blaster to make it effective but apparently the idea never caught on.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Idear-for-new-med-kit/first#post5247336

ukuni, I like the idea you linked but then again, it doesn’t take much to improve on the current state of medkit

ukuni.8745:

i made a post a while back about making the med kit more viable which involved making the 2-5 skills charges that would buff the med blaster so you could swap in and out for a single blast that had the added benefits of the packs in a medblast or self heal, the main reason for it was so that the engineer wouldnt have to camp med blaster to make it effective but apparently the idea never caught on.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Idear-for-new-med-kit/first#post5247336

But the MAIN problem of your idea is that it makes the usage slower and function differently than any other skill in the game. Both spvp and WvWvW are very fast paced, every fraction of second counts. Long time to activate something means very prone to interrupts. Now the biggest the problem is weak/useless medkit #1 and usage of medkit #2-5 taking too long time. If you are already not using medkit, you first need to swap to that kit (1 second) and then throw the vial and wait it for the activate. The total time is closer 2 seconds. If you have several ticks of burning on, they will tick tons of damage before you actually cleanse them. And you also deal no damage while you use the medkit.

I also didn’t understand one thing about your idea: Would it self-heal engineer or not? Because medkit #1 currently doesn’t self-heal (which makes it utterly suck, the tiny group heal + giving up all your other activities to maintain, almost never justifies it).

Medkit is close to being perfect utility + selfish heal with the suggestion I have made. But if medkit #1-5 would all not affect the engineer, it would change the usage completely, make it just a group buff+minor heal + incredibly weak self-heal (only toolbelt, which has one of the weakest hp/minute ratings, outside guardian healing skills).

Please let us choose ground target or dropping at feet med kit again that alone would make it useable for me again but I agree w everyone here that this kit needs to be looked at and improved either by buffs or by adding SOMTHING… Can we get a red post on this?

Dusk.4708:

Please let us choose ground target or dropping at feet med kit again that alone would make it useable for me again but I agree w everyone here that this kit needs to be looked at and improved either by buffs or by adding SOMTHING… Can we get a red post on this?

Dropping at feet was of course tons better than the ground targeting, but after using it ground targeting for many hundreds of hours + when Areananet increased the size of medkit #2-5 drops, I am getting used to it.

I never understood what is the point of ground targeting on skills #2-5. I only use those skills for myself + medkit #4 to speed up dolyak in WvWvW. It doesn’t work to throw at your allies at the heat of the battle.

I am sure majority of players would be happy if medkit #2-5 would drop vials at your feet, just like the good old medkit did. That good old medkit is still in the game by the way: every WvWvW sentry in Desert borderland has such medkit next to it.

Could change 1 to make it an point blank aoe (250 radius) that heals those in the spot every second for 2-3 seconds.

Turn 2 into something similar to grenade, where it is throwing out 2-3 of the bandages at targets, with a small cooldown so not spamming.

Really 3-4 and maybe 5 could combine in one for the condition clearer and heal.

Maybe instead have 4 a stimulant that grants stability and protection.

Maybe even add in resist conditions for 2 seconds on allies by selecting a skill.

The last one could be a targeted turret that heals and cures 1 condition in a small radius for 2 seconds. Scrapper might make it a spec that causes to act like a little Gyro that attaches to him and sprays out heals (but not to him, just those in the radius)

Cause right now, I don’t see it being of use to actually select the med kit for the heals and lose dps. Unless they can do something that makes it worthwhile.

I could understand medkit being garbage for healing other people when there really wasn’t the concept of a healer in the game. Now that we have druids, dedicated healing as a role is officially in the game— let engineers play it too! we can do more than condi dps please

Ron Cordova.9824:

I could understand medkit being garbage for healing other people when there really wasn’t the concept of a healer in the game. Now that we have druids, dedicated healing as a role is officially in the game— let engineers play it too! we can do more than condi dps please

exactly, we can do much more before the big trait change i used to run a full bunker heal support and i managed to pull off 2.1k heal power on my engi and his regen would no lie tick for about 510 per second. imagine what i could do with a med kit that worked hand in hand with that power…..or just make it so the cleansing/speed of the drops are better cause its too slow..

just make every medkit 1-5 skill a pbaoe that includes the caster as a possible target

heres a pic of my combat log when i have thrown elixir R on a downed played and swap to medkit after a couple pulses.

Neat. But it doesn’t make medkit 1-5 worth your time to cast, so I’m not sure the connection to this thread?

The connection is, that most people don’t know that medkit already increases revive speed only for that one skill, but still.