Heal Skills
I see your point but I am afraid looking only at our heal skills and trying to compare them to other classes options will get you nowhere.
Since we have a low healthpool I rarely have the feeling that any does not perform well.
shelter is special it really is half utility half heal skill. you mentioned the benefits
does it need a little kick… maybe. But how much are we talking about? 1.000hp ? better scaling? Its worth a lot if your opponent knows that you can counter his go to burst attack.
Signet is the no.1 enemy frustration skill. they think they got you … and you back at 95%. It already tends to overheal quite often.
Even our medi heal can be used quite effectively – if it would be instant as all medis are intended I am sure it would see some playtime.
short answer:
Do you think our go to heal ability hinders our class performance?
- no
Is an unrealized reason why we may not have the same amount of sustain in dps roles as other classes do?
- i do not see any connection here.
Shelter isn’t there for the heal as much as it used for the invul. Most healing comes hammer using hammer #2 inside an ele’s water field. Traited with two-handed mastery, the hammer blast finisher has a 4 second cooldown. Healing rain has a 6 second duration, in an ideal situation you could blast it twice. Most melee resets tend to consist of water → blast → empower. You can go from almost dead to full HP within a matter of seconds if your group has half a brain.
Comparing to elementalist, I use ether renewal over signet.
Comparing to warrior, I recently stopped using healing signet in favor of Defiant Stance. Using Defiant Stance in the same manner as Shelter, it’ll heal to almost full HP. Granted, my experience comes from NA T1 with a heavy focus on the necro well bombing meta.
Jade Quarry since Beta
Shelter is amazing and does what it’s supposed to do— block burst damage. Healing Signet is of course really strong and sort of ridiculous in some cases but it falters under burst damage unless the warrior can manage a counter offensive. As for the ele heals, well, I think playing an ele would make it obvious why the heals are so strong. Both heals are also heavily kitten with application of poison, while shelter suffers reduced healing too, it doesn’t matter as much as you were using it for a block.
It does suck to go on full cooldown if it fails and I think that may be too big of a punishment. In the end though, the amount healed isn’t that important— if it were people would be taking signet of resolve more, but there’s a big reason why a lot don’t— people can just burst you down as you heal, even if you ignore interrupts.
Oh, and btw now that’s a heal skill,
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Turret
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)
For sure, healing turret helps engies do amazing things. That was the first thing I noticed when watching engineers 1v3-5 people, the mobility and quick refresh of health constantly.
We as guardians rely a TON on meditations or altruistic healing depending on the game mode.
After that we also have dodge roll healing if you have good healing power.
Our weapon healing in staff and mace are “meh”, either cause cooldown or speed of heal. I don’t know…. Then there is our Virtue of Resolve….passive is really weak.
So typically our primary sustain is to block/blind, and rely on either AH for group fights, or meditations on solo.
I don’t feel meditations provide the same amount of sustain as other dps classes have, personally.
AH is amazing, in a group at about 600 or less range….horrible solo.
Of course it is clearly defined that guardians work best in a group and not so well solo, I guess we just need to accept that sometimes and always tag along with others?
The problem is that it is assumed that a guardian will have alternative heals built into their spec, so to compensate our primary heal skills are set behind higher cooldowns than the other classes.
The issue with this, however, is that it forces guardian builds to take either AH or MF as sustain to compensate. It is, in a sense, begging the question.
The problem is that it is assumed that a guardian will have alternative heals built into their spec, so to compensate our primary heal skills are set behind higher cooldowns than the other classes.
The issue with this, however, is that it forces guardian builds to take either AH or MF as sustain to compensate. It is, in a sense, begging the question.
This ^ more or less.
Every & I mean every guardian build that has seen use at higher tiers has either altruistic healing or monks focus in the build.
Guardians just cannot compete without them.
Something that could be done would be to replicate the idea of monks focus/altruistic healing but in other trait lines & in coordination with other types of utility skills.
For instance what if they redesigned the grandmaster radiance trait “Perfect Inscriptions” to something like this
“Perfect Inscriptions: Gain X precision for each signet you have equipped & whenever you activate a signet you are healed for Y.
The same basic idea could be applied to consecrations in the virtues tree & something could be added to zeal to heal for a % of the damage you do.
This would add a great deal of build diversity as you would no longer be pigeon holed into honor or valor.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
As for ways they could rework some of the heals
Signet of resolve, They could cut the CD down to 28-30 seconds base but reduce the healing provided to around 6 ish thousand. (this combined with the change I proposed to perfect inscriptions would be great)
Litany of Wrath, Given the low amount it heals for they could make it instant & reduce the CD to 25 seconds. Or make it instant & heal for a few thousand more at base.
Or they could make it instant & the effect shared with nearby allies.
Healing Breeze, they could up the amount that healing power effects it, & or reduce the CD to 30 seconds.
Once change healing breeze could definitely use is to become an AOE centered on the guardian.
Shelter, not sure how they could make it better in a balanced way. It is the heal to which all other guardian heals are measured after all.
Personally though I think the CD could be reduced by a couple of seconds, 25-28 seconds doesn’t seem to unbalanced.
Healing Breeze, they could up the amount that healing power effects it, & or reduce the CD to 30 seconds.
Once change healing breeze could definitely use is to become an AOE centered on the guardian.
I think a CD reduction to 30 seconds and/or a higher healing power ratio on its allied healing would be nice, although Healing Breeze isn’t actually bad at the moment imo. It’s just that most guardians don’t really go “squishy support”, so most guardians go for Shelter instead.
Making it a PBAoE sounds like it’d make it take much less skill to use (might even make it op), as it wouldn’t have to be aimed at all or directed to a specific ally/set of allies (in other words, it would have no decision making either). If anything, instead of making it a PBAoE, I’d personally prefer it if its range was increased to 900 so that saving distant targets with it would be more flexible. Not that its current range is that bad.
The problem is that it is assumed that a guardian will have alternative heals built into their spec, so to compensate our primary heal skills are set behind higher cooldowns than the other classes.
The issue with this, however, is that it forces guardian builds to take either AH or MF as sustain to compensate. It is, in a sense, begging the question.
This ^ more or less.
Every & I mean every guardian build that has seen use at higher tiers has either altruistic healing or monks focus in the build.
Guardians just cannot compete without them.Something that could be done would be to replicate the idea of monks focus/altruistic healing but in other trait lines & in coordination with other types of utility skills.
For instance what if they redesigned the grandmaster radiance trait “Perfect Inscriptions” to something like this
“Perfect Inscriptions: Gain X precision for each signet you have equipped & whenever you activate a signet you are healed for Y.The same basic idea could be applied to consecrations in the virtues tree & something could be added to zeal to heal for a % of the damage you do.
This would add a great deal of build diversity as you would no longer be pigeon holed into honor or valor.
I like the copy paste of deep strike, I’m still hoping they will turn signet of wrath into a precision signet given how useless condition damage is to a class with 1 damaging condition.
The problem is that it is assumed that a guardian will have alternative heals built into their spec, so to compensate our primary heal skills are set behind higher cooldowns than the other classes.
The issue with this, however, is that it forces guardian builds to take either AH or MF as sustain to compensate. It is, in a sense, begging the question.
Thank you, exactly my original point in more succinct words.
@ Vizard
I’ve been suggesting hoping for the same thing since beta.
Maybe another round of grandmaster traits that could be useful into creating new metas would be useful.
Burning enemies heal you? Yes please.
Shelter is pretty awesome, but in some settings (PvE), I think Healing Breeze is often underrated.
Basically yeah, you can burn enemy when healing with Defender Flame.
Shelter reached its optimum usage in traiting Might of Protector and AH.
You HP replenish from 1% to 100%, that is, if you are being targeted by everyone in group fight.
12K AP
Level 54 Bear Rank
Level 54 Bear Rank
Maybe another round of grandmaster traits that could be useful into creating new metas would be useful.
Burning enemies heal you? Yes please.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Litany_of_Wrath
Takes in account also condition dmg and retaliation.
Too bad I cannot make it work for me, the block from shelter is too darn good and especially when u block a nice burst and your might go up to 20+ from valor.
I wish the devs will revisit Litany as they said in the past that the cast time could be reduced even further but they haven’t adjusted it, and it’s really a shame because no one is using it. Also, even with a reduced cast time, it still won’t compete with Shelter imo. Having 0 stab in a medi build, using Litany = dead
Maybe another round of grandmaster traits that could be useful into creating new metas would be useful.
Burning enemies heal you? Yes please.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Litany_of_Wrath
Takes in account also condition dmg and retaliation.Too bad I cannot make it work for me, the block from shelter is too darn good and especially when u block a nice burst and your might go up to 20+ from valor.
I wish the devs will revisit Litany as they said in the past that the cast time could be reduced even further but they haven’t adjusted it, and it’s really a shame because no one is using it. Also, even with a reduced cast time, it still won’t compete with Shelter imo. Having 0 stab in a medi build, using Litany = dead
Yeah I’ve always wished that LoW could be a viable option. I think these changes could help make it more useful.
- Instant cast time
- Cooldown reduced to 25s (20s traited)
As it is now, there’s really no reason to take it over shelter. The blocks can be too valuable to not take, and if you were going to take anything else it would be SoR. By lowering the cooldown and cast time LoW would gain the advantage of being a quick heal. The other three heals are on long cooldowns (30s/40s/40s) and take some time to use.
It certainly is a high risk/high reward heal by nature. If you can dish out the dps you will get good healing in return. While I don’t think those two changes would break the heal, I do think they would give more synergy in meditation builds.
(edited by Shanks.2907)