Guild Wars 2

I imagine my opinions here are going to get a bit of hate since I’m asking for a particular skill to be nerfed, but I think there’s a pretty glaring balance issue when a vast majority of Engineer builds run the same healing skill and most other skills are never used. I don’t even see Elixir H used on HGH builds. That’s ridiculous.
So, here is what I think should be done with each of Engineer’s heals.

Healing Gyro is rendered crap by the fact that its cooldown is dependent on the Gyro’s lifespan. Even if this behavior is not removed for any of the other Gyros, I’m pretty sure all Scrappers will be thankful if the Healing Gyro’s cooldown is made to start immediately, even if that means removing the Scrapper’s ability to activate a self-destruct. No, we haven’t been able to test this skill yet, but its issue is already quite obvious. That’s a 42 second cooldown if it isn’t blown up early. That’s even more counterintuitive than Healing Turret, and in a way that punishes instead of rewards. This has nothing to offer over the similar-in-function Healing Turret and the similar-in-cooldown A.E.D..

A.E.D. seems to me to be slightly unreliable. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but my experiences have lead me to believe that “the damage is negated” is misleading. I believe that simultaneous damage sources are able to get around the damage negation as I’ve had times where A.E.D. didn’t quite perform as expected when up against Subject Alpha. Additionally, there are some extremely powerful attacks in dungeons that seem to down me even when A.E.D. is active, or it just heals far less than I expected as if the attack cuts into the healing. It takes some experimentation to learn when it’s safe to utilize A.E.D. and when it is not. Besides the occasional inconsistency, though, I think this healing skill is extremely good at its particular niche. I do wish Static Shock would behave differently, though. Utilizing auto-targeting and canceling instead of going on cooldown if the target is out of range, for example.

Elixir H is okay in its cooldown and base amount. Its position will be improved if Healing Turret is nerfed slightly. It does have a problem with its boons, though. Obviously some reliability would make it a lot better, but if the devs insist on some randomness, then it still has a problem in that it gives Swiftness instead of Vigor. I can only imagine the Swiftness is intended to help the Engineer run out of AoEs before they hit, but many AoEs in high end PvE content are too big for Swiftness to be sufficient, and Engineer already has a lot of Swiftness sources already. Swiftness is an extremely disappointing result in combat compared to Protection or Regeneration. I would like to see Swiftness changed to Vigor, which would make it fit better with the effects of Toss Elixir H, or changed to Super Speed which would more effectively help the Engineer flee AoEs and cannot be maintained quite like Swiftness can. I expect Super Speed is a little too good in combination with Scrapper, so Vigor seems like the better choice. That said, I want to reiterate that reliability, one boon I can expect every time I use it, would be even better.

Healing Turret is pretty silly in its current implimentation. Turrets, ideally, should be something Engineers keep out to provide support over time in combat. Let’s ignore for the moment that they, like every other minion in the game, are rendered useless by the absurd spike damage sprinkled throughout dungeons. Healing Turret has two problems unique to it. By picking it up after overcharging it, Healing Turret gains the best cooldown out of all of Engineer’s healing skills: 15 seconds. Because this is the same cooldown as Cleansing Burst, that leads to the turret’s other problem: There is no incentive for leaving the turret on the field. I believe the solution to both of these problems is to give the turret a 28 second cooldown. When picking up the turret, that would result in a much more fair (compared to Engineer’s other healing skills) 21 second cooldown, and it becomes more desirable to leave the turret on the field when party support is more important than self-healing.
As for the problem all turrets (and for that matter all minions and pets) face, I think the solution is fairly simple. Give minions incoming damage resistance and/or a damage ceiling from enemies higher rank than Elite. That would prevent enemies like Subject Alpha from rendering them completely useless.

Med Kit is useless in its current implementation. You can find the reasons all over the Engineer section of the forums, so I won’t beat a dead horse here, but I desperately want developers to realize the problem is with the pickups. Turn them into PBAoEs, modified copies of Med Blast, or really anything more reliable than what they are right now.

Edit: Fixed a few typos.

Healing Gyro , will be sadly useless … Also , if they remove those stuff to make them detonate and daze your target .Would steal our CC and if you decrease that cooldown it would be almost an unlimited daze and a lot of QQ aswell.Maybe yes removing , but also keep in mind.In the stream ! It wasn’t even able to keep up with the player itself ,which can be deadly and annoying aswell (!) Also they was moving around and left the player alone with their support , which is also some kind of a massive weakness for gyro’s (sadly … even if i like the idea so far)

A.E.D. I never tried it so far or well not that much in the last time , but if i was right it was used to negated ,that incoming damage and give you a massive heal , but yeah it have a really long cooldown.So i stopped to use it … sadly , even ,if the toolbelt was sometimes usefull.

Elixir H is a nice and usefull healing , i use it over HT , if i use alchemy and invention trait for example conditions playing around.It’s a nice short healing and gives some nice support , if you trait it right.

Healing turret… you want to increase it up to 28 ? and then if you pick it up reducing it down to 21 ? What would change ? I don’t really detonate it , since it knockback foes around.I keep it up for perma regeneration for my party + to combine my blastfinisher for healing them.Also if it’s close to die i pick it up and enjoy my 15 sec cd.Also i focus more to support ppls with the HT instead of blowing it up for myself.
Your minion idea sounds fun , but QQ in pvp for sure …. PVP AND PVE have to be 2 diffrent systems … in my opinion …

Med kit yeah … nothing to say at all … i still wanted a quickness tower for that … like they said in stream …

my minds about the heal skills…

Medic gyro: BAHAHA! Riiiight, like id slot that over the HT with its 20 sec CD, massive spike heal, huge water field, condition removal AND another very short but blast-able water field. The gyro isnt relyable enough to survive the whole duration..and its CD starts when it dies..and NOT when its deployed. The toolbelt on the other hand is pretty darn epic.. but its not worth to slot the gyro for that…not like it is now.

Elixir-H: Very good in HGH or alchemy in general related builds, relyable and a random helpfull boon ontop of it. Stacks might if traited, removes a condi if traited and got reduced cooldown. Very good and solid heal that never lets you down and doesnt share the weakness of the HT to be a squishy kitten and might be destroyed before you can nuke it..what happened a lot to me in the past. I use it a lot myself in wvw roaming…and even sometimes high level fractals if i dont need to worry too much about group heal, depends on the grouping mostly.

A.E.D: A tricky kitten that can backfire horrible…or give you an awesome safe from certain doom. I personally dont trust it enough to use it.. but i saw some MLG moments with this thing..also stun on toolbelt? Yes please…but not for me, maybe on the scrapper though.. gotta test it proper. Timing is key at this thing and you bet all your chips on one colour if you use it.

Healing turret: If jesus would be a machine he would be the darn healing turret…lets leave it at this. One of the few nice things we got that actually can outmatch something other classes got…and now that i said it they gonna nerf it..i know it…well they did with the turret nerf but im sure they can be creative with it..wouldnt be the first time. That salt aside (that i currently cant turn off for real, sorry about that).. its only real weakness is bad timing, very squishy and easy to 1 shot so gotta take a bit care at using it..specially in fractals where many things can 1 shot it.

Med kit: They should add a sad violin song if you equip it…its just not good…and to fix it would mean to re-work it completely…cept the visuals.. that syringe fist is awesome. Guys.. re-work it, make it awesome…so sad to see it like this.

I run the med kit. Yeah the kit itself is junk, but the tool belt skill is good. A heal twice as good as the healing turret, and (when traited) a static discharge and vigor. If you got kinetic battery, you can pop it twice in a row when you dodge. I just wish it would get the recharge reduction from mechanized activation.

As for the kit itself, you get 20s of swiftness and a projectile reflect for a few seconds when you swap to it with streamlined kits. Only bad part is there’s no Condi cleanse on it.

SilvasRuin.5713:

Healing Gyro is rendered crap by the fact that its cooldown is dependent on the Gyro’s lifespan. Even if this behavior is not removed for any of the other Gyros, I’m pretty sure all Scrappers will be thankful if the Healing Gyro’s cooldown is made to start immediately, even if that means removing the Scrapper’s ability to activate a self-destruct. No, we haven’t been able to test this skill yet, but its issue is already quite obvious. That’s a 42 second cooldown if it isn’t blown up early. That’s even more counterintuitive than Healing Turret, and in a way that punishes instead of rewards. This has nothing to offer over the similar-in-function Healing Turret and the similar-in-cooldown A.E.D..

so… 42 secs is definitely too long for a heal, but the only thing medgyro really needs to stay competitive is a decent hps. all it has to do is hover around (pun lol) the effective hps of prot rolled H or the hps (+ utility) of turret.

so basically, if it were to die immediately, its hps would be… what… 4.5k/30? for 150 hps? for reference turret is 5k/15 for around 333 hps or 6.5k/20 for 325 hps + 1.0/(15 or 20) healing power hps + blast potential + cleansing + regen. H is 5.5k/20 for 275 hps + 1.0/20 healing power hps + 33% chance of prot. the important thing is:

at 4.5k initial heal + 30 sec cd medgyro gives half as much hps as the “good” heals

if medgyro dies immediately, which is the case that should be assumed, its unusable. it needs to sit at a minimum of 275 or so hps, which means ~double the initial heal or cut that cd in ~half.

thats what will make it usable. lets assume anet makes it usable (read: 300 hps for my head math) for the next part.

what would make it good is if it staying out increases the hps to something more like 400-500 hps. so. if it ticks on a 3 second interval for 800/tick, it produces 266 hps for the duration its out. that means leaving it out hurts you. if its a 2 sec interval @800/tick, it helps you a little by producing 400 hps, but the bulk of the cd time is still going to be ~300 hps, so averaging in 12 secs of 400 hps wont really raise the overall hps much — only to around 328 hps (head math pls correct if its egregiously bad). which matches healing turret pretty close in hps… but definitely does not provide the utility. if we double it to 1600 hp / 2 sec tick, its gonna average to around 500 hps (maybe 600 if you cut the cd in half instead of doubling the amount healed initially), which might be a bit much, but thats the entire point of gyros. enemies are supposed to want to kill them, and allowing an engi to have 500-600 hps instead of 300 is a losing proposition.

tldr: med gyro needs to be doubled for it to be worth considering. all aspects of it: halve the cd or double the initial heal, and double or triple the ticks.

OP, I agree with your assessment about Medic Gyro vs. Healing Turret. I understand the hate you may get about it, as I have also previously expressed that HT is too good, an opinion which is not very popular.

I think your suggestion to increase HT cooldown to 28/21 seconds would put it in line with the other heals (though, as others have pointed out, some of our other heals are also too weak and need buffs). It wouldn’t change the drop and pop playstyle for HT, but I think that ‘prolonged healing’ is a niche that Medic Gyro could fill.

As insanemaniac says, significantly increasing Medic Gyro’s healing, and especially the heal over time component, would make it more competitive. It would also reward the user for keeping it alive. Currently it pulsed 800 healing every 3 seconds for 15 second (I guess 5 pulses), for 4000 healing, plus 2600 from the initial heal = 6600 hp every 45 seconds (30 second cooldown + 15 seconds duration of the gyro). This is terrible for the long cooldown, and I agree that a doubling or tripling of the healing, as mentioned, really is necessary to make it viable. Increasing the initial heal would only reward the player for using it like HT, so I would rather see the initial heal left alone and the heal over time significantly increased.

They have broken engineer healing and I don’t think they have the proper fix for it. I’ve just about given up on the idea of them improving engi heals because they seem to be sucking at making it something worthwhile. I hoped to one time create that full Cleric’s armor in ascended, but now I wouldn’t want to make anything because they keep making an entirely different class every couple of updates. They really do motivate me not to want to play GW2 if I were a healer again.

Waiting for healing bombs to show up, if not I’m cutting my GW2 time tremendously if not completely.

Chazz.6709:

Your minion idea sounds fun , but QQ in pvp for sure …. PVP AND PVE have to be 2 diffrent systems … in my opinion …

That idea was meant exclusively for PvE anyways. I don’t PvP and kind of assumed the NPCs in PvP either aren’t designated Champions or wreck minions in seconds like PvE Champion creatures do.

archmagus.7249:

I run the med kit. Yeah the kit itself is junk, but the tool belt skill is good. A heal twice as good as the healing turret, and (when traited) a static discharge and vigor. If you got kinetic battery, you can pop it twice in a row when you dodge. I just wish it would get the recharge reduction from mechanized activation.

As for the kit itself, you get 20s of swiftness and a projectile reflect for a few seconds when you swap to it with streamlined kits. Only bad part is there’s no Condi cleanse on it.

Engineers in PvE almost always immediately (in my experience) have the turret use Cleansing Burst the moment it is deployed, which results in a slightly larger total heal than Bandage Self. The comparison only gets more unfavorable from there.
(Bandage Self heals 4920 with a coefficient of 1.0. Healing Turret + Cleansing Burst heal for a combined 5040 with a combined coefficient of 1.0.)
Half of Healing Turret’s heal is an AoE, and it removes 2 conditions and gives Regeneration on all allies it effects. If Mechanized Activation worked with Bandage Self, that would only have a faster cooldown by 0.55 seconds, which isn’t enough considering the kit skills are terrible. Healing Turret has a longer cooldown to wait on to benefit from Optimized Activation and Static Discharge, but it can also benefit from Experimental Turrets for 3 seconds of Vigor compared to Optimized Activation’s 2 seconds. This means Bandage Self’s only advantages over Healing Turret are Kinetic Battery and Streamlined Kits. Both of those traits could be used on other skills, and both of those traits could accidentally be put on cooldown by other skills. I used to use Med Kit too, before the Specialization update came and removed Drop Bandages and the newly combined and renamed Streamlined Kits was made to no longer proc Invigorating Speed. This is why it’s so important for the kit itself to be made useful.

While we’re at it, can we pleeeeaase reduce elixir H casting time to .5 from 1s? healing turret has a .5 cast time… I’ve died so many times waiting for the bloody skill to go off even when I initiate it at 4k health.