Guild Wars 2

Yo first post on here as was interested on what people thought about this.

At present I’m using Sword/Shield & Mace/Focus. I’ve got around 2.3k toughness and 1.3k Vit and 1.4k healing power. Most of my gear is Healing Power & Toughness with set bonus in Vit aNd toughness bonus. I have cleric accessories with Vit and toughness upgrades. I’m 30 in valour, honour and 10 in the bottom one.

All in all I can take most things, champions aren’t really a struggle, legendary I find also alright as long as they don’t have a 1 hit kill skill obviously. The healing roll is a life saver and have put the 50% endurance on weapons so I can keep rolling.

So after explaining all this is do you think it sounds effective, I do very little Damage but didn’t think it was too important, but wondering wether I should scrap healing power all together and just focus on Vit because I may survive more or shoulkittenep all 3?

Ryan

Healing power is notoriously bad (outside of your personal heal) and investing in it is hardly worth it.

Why is it bad? When I’m healed by my healing trait on roll I’m healing for loads and my virtue of resolve heals me a lot too, is this not affected by healing power?

Actually, Selfless Daring also has rather good scaling with healing power, at 1:1 (in PvE, and a still respectable 2:1 ration in PvP). Considering you must get vigorous precision before that, a build with sufficient crit to reliably proc vigor can dodge fairly often, throwing “miniheals” all over.

I don’t believe you get enough return on your trait ‘investment’ by pumping up your healing power. You can make a pretty strong defensive PVE farming build (re. pretty weak offensive) with it, but that is the extent of it’s usefulness. It’s ironic that it might be more attractive if we DIDN’T have access to lots of heals.

Healing power is not a healer class stat in this game… because this game does not support the idea of a “healer” like other MMO’s. You can’t stack healing power and stand in the back of the group keeping everybody else alive. What healing power does do on the other hand is augment the numerous sources of healing that Guardian class has at it’s disposal.

My guardian has 900 healing power and my selfless daring heals for 1029. 243 per tick of regeneration. 138 per tick of Virtue of Resolve. 2300 on the staff #4 skill (empowering might?). Over a period of 8 seconds with 4 dodge rolls you’re looking at 4116+1940+1104+2300= 9460 healing… divided by 8 = 1182.5 healing per second to myself and everyone in the group. Drop healing power down to 0 and you get 672+1040+1500=3212 or 401.5 healing per second (sans the dodge roll heals because you have 0 healing power, get it?).

That’s not counting all the other sources of healing I neglected to mention… because I don’t really use them very frequently due to the damage/healing trade-off. If you want to go full blown “healing on every button you press” you can add the mace/shield to the equation for 463 healing on the third strike of the mace, symbol of faith which applies regeneration, collapsing the shield bubble by pressing the #5 key a second time after activating the shield of absorption (yes, there is an AoE burst heal hidden in the shield’s abilities that heals for give or take 1500 to all allies around you). You can also trait for symbols that heal, which at 900 healing power will give you 174 healing per second while the symbol is active.

Now looking at all the above numbers, add in all the damage mitigation from Protection, Defense (armor + toughness), Aegis, and evasion from dodging attacks and you will see exactly what it is about the guardian that makes it such a sturdy profession.

Alas… there is a caveat. You have to acknowledge the fact that what you gain in one area you lose in another. More raw damage means less of something else whether it be Healing, Defense, Critical strikes, or Vitality. Same thing with Healing. You have to give something else up in order to have that ridiculous amount of healing power so you have to make a decision. Do you give up your Defense? Your Power? Your Crits? Or your overall Health?

If your enemies laugh themselves to death because you hit like a kitten (not a swear word, i literally meant kitten) then you might find 1700 healing power viable. Unfortunately the A.I. isn’t programmed to do that, so you’re looking a lot of very long and boring fights while soloing and a lot of dead party members while running dungeons because there’s no way in hell they’re going to stay close enough to you to benefit from all the possible healing that you can dish out. This game has people trained to kite, roll, and generally avoid damage which means they’re going to be very active and on many occasions no where near you. So of course, they will end up dead because you are not contributing much to the whole “killing the bad guy thing” because you just can’t deal sufficient damage and the fight goes on just long enough for your allies to run out of their own survival options. You have to be able to contribute to the damage whether it be with raw power, frequent but heavy critical strikes, or through asinine amounts of condition damage. Insane healing probably won’t help much in a situation where you take 4k damage from trash mobs in the cursed shore either. You have to find that balance and synergy with your build because ultimately you will never be a Holy Paladin from WoW, this game just isn’t built that way. If you extend your stats to far towards one extreme or another you will likely be shooting yourself in the foot. Too much DPS makes for ZERO DPS because you’re always dead. Too much Healing makes for ZERO Healing because you can’t kill anything and you eventually die (because the rest of your group has been dead for quite some time…) Too much of one thing means not enough of another- i think you get the idea.

In short, the answer to your question is- both, but don’t neglect the other stuff either. Find a balance. I use the Precision/Vitality/Healing exotics from Ascalon Catacombs, Berserker Greatsword/Staff, Clerics Amulet/Earring, a Knights ring, Valkyrie ring and Earring, as well as +healing runes (doesn’t matter what type, really) for stats that equal out to:

~2500 Power
38% crit +55% Damage
2700 Toughness
16,540 HP / +900 healing power

Traits are 0/15/30/20/5 focused on empowering might, altruistic healing, virtue activation, and faster recharge on shouts. That’s what works for me, and i’ve had a lot of success with that setup.

A lot of misinformation being dumped in here. Healing power is an effective stat to be stacked, but really you don’t want to go more than 1200 (excluding food + stacking healing bonus). I had 1500 healing, but I’ve shaved off 300 healing for about 2,000 more HP.

In my current build my Mace regen’s about 5,000~ health over its duration every time I drop it on the ground. For PvE I can face tank every boss, including the new dungeon, and as long as my group stays around me I can keep them alive with guarantee.

For WvW you’re basically the ultimate support class if you roll out the right abilities, but you’re far from being invincible if you’re being gang banged. Yet, I’m still ten times more survivable than on my Mesmer and Guardian. I rarely have to push the big heal button because my own heals keep me up well enough.

You aren’t a real “healer”, but you’re more like a Paladin. Healing gear has high toughness which in turn makes you “tanky.” So if you like being a tank, a healer, and a a semi-DPS than support may be your role.

Also, you CAN and I DO kill people 1v1 all the time (even killed bad players 3v1 a couple of times) because you can outlast them with your self healing.

Healing power is not a useless stat, however the value of it point-for-point compared to others is pretty low, and not worth stacking to the detriment of those stats.

I am at work and don’t have my notes/spreadsheets available but if you assume level 80 and 1000 Healing Power:
Regen = 130 + (0.125 * Healing Power) = 255
PVE S.D. = 129 + (1 * Healing Power) = 1129
PVp S.D. = 129 + (1/2 * Healing Power) = 629

Crunch that into likely triggers (S.D.) or ticks per minute and you will end up having to simulate a lot of other external (RE Group/RNG) factors that can’t be controlled or relied upon. Uncontrolled events/effects are the bane of theorycrafters, and make for unreliable outputs/performance, so other stats end up being more consistently valuable.

All that said I’m crunching a healer/support build out in my spare time (limited) but it WILL rely on synergies, surroundings, opponents, and luck – therfore probably be less consistently sucessful than a tanky/utility build.

Lets get it straight here, it’s not that I have no Vitality, I have still have a decent amount around the 1.3k mark with healing power at the 1.4k mark so it’s not like I’m sacrificing vitality at all, what I’m doing is trying to Balance the two with a high toughness. It seems to work, and I’ve hit the cursed shore and yes I may take more damage from conditions but because maybe I don’t have such a high vitality and have good healing power that as soon as I roll or use virtue of resolve I have health back.

I do understand the point with damage so will look at that, so may change some gear/stats around so that I can get a higher precision, it’s not that I do no damage but not as much as a DPS class obivously.
That’s what I’m asking basically if its possible too balance the two so that you have all 3 toughness/vitality/healing power

I guess it’s all about your own preference. I got bored of arguing with people, who are strongly defending their “Healing Power sucks” point of view.

However, if you play PvE, Dungeons specificaly, do not ignore Healing Power stat.
Even if people tell you that it scaled bad, and the healing you provide sucks – look at it from other perspective. You do AoE heal, if you are in a party – you should multiply your healing by 5, as it affects all the other party members. Not only you.

I’ve done over 300 dungeons runs I think, I’ve got a few Guildies who do it with me, and I usually don’t even have time to hit a foe, as I use all my healing abilities to keep them alive. Somebody mentioned it’s not possible here, to stand back and heal others, but it’s not true. You can, and you can do it very well. Not always, not in every group, but if people around you learn how much healing you provide and will have some trust, they will stick closer to you and have less worries about their own survival, making themselves even more efficient at killing.

Simple example.
Assuming you have ~1400 Healing Power and 0 0 30 30 10 traits, which configured properly grant a lot of healing and reduce cool downs of your most important healing skills.

Your Empower skill (staff) grants around 3k heal on final tick to all allies around.
In dungeon that’s 15k heal for the party – 3k for each party member. Without Healing Power you do only 2k for each member. So your party is missing 5k direct healing.

I’m using 2h Mastery, so I can use Empower every 16 seconds.
If you have no Healing Power at all, you heal for 15k HP (party wide) less per minute, from this skill only.
I think it’s A LOT heal you are missing, and it’s only from one skill.

Your dodge rolls, they can heal too. Without Healing Power the rolls heal for around 600-700 HP, with right amount of healing power, it’s almost 1,5k per roll. It’s also aoe heal. You can heal with rolls a lot, as you can maintain vigor up most of the time.

Regen – it heals better the longer it lasts, and the more healing you have.
With increased boon duration, my regen lasts around 11s and it gives over 3,5k healing. It’s also party range, with reduced shotus recharge time trait I can use regen a lot (as well as bonuses from virtues and Mace/Focus combo).

I could keep going on, as Guardian has so many healing skills and traits, that he can do healing very well. But the point is, if you invest some points into Healing Power, you and your party gain a lot from this. Many people use simple math and look at the small numbers in perspective of single player, but when you take into consideration full team – 5 people, and realize that all of them benefit from each 100 points of healing power you have, then it turns the table around. In my opinion, that is. I play in dungeons mostly.

By the way, I find it a very balanced set:
Full Cleric Trinket set (Power, Toughness, Healing Power)
Full TA Armor (Precision, Vitality, Healing Power).

You gain some armor, you gain vitality, you get some critical chance, but all of the pieces stack up Healing Power and turn you into very powerful healer… if you play it wisely, that is

Thanks Razzy, your build I think is the one that I have too. As I said with Sigil of Endurance I can keep it up by swapping weapons and usually heal myself right up, I also use Renewed Focus when I’m already really in trouble. I think if you only went with Healing Power and had no Vitality then I think you’d be in trouble, but balancing all three I think is the way to go. I think having Armor with Toughness and Healing Power with Set Bonus of Vitality on it with Cleric Accessories with Vitality upgrades on it.

I’m looking at swapping to a Staff, I like Empower and the heal it gives is pretty good too.

I’m using Superior Sigil of Life on my Staff, to stack up extra 250 Healing Power. I rarely get downed, in most dungeons I maintain my 25 stack the entire run so it’s quite nice buff for all my outgoing heals.

My Mace and Focus have Superior sigils of Water for more aoe heals on hits. For somebody who likes to be a healer, I find it the most efficient combination. I get a lot of Vigor from my critical hits (I spam skill 1 and 2 on staff for that purpose mostly, not for the numbers. I do laughable damage), so I can always dodge when it counts.

Yeah I have Sigil of Life on my Sword, which as you say gives me 250 Stack.
Hmm, going to staff I think is a possibility.

If you can get past all the heal stat haters, here is a build I posted up awhile ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Death-via-Support/first#post573335

My build is also a great way to keep the party alive. You dont exactly have to follow the race as i did (charr), but the main attribute points are still there.

For those of you that say healing power is a worthless stat, and not worth investing into. Unless you like your party to go down alot, its nice to have a “dedicated support” in the party, and there is no denying this fact. A guardian is the perfect dedicated support, we can offer you stacks upon stacks of might, massive amounts of protection/regeneration, and alot of healing as well via healing breeze(if you can aim it right) and virtue of resolve, Staff#4, Mace #2, and the third chain on mace #1.

Check it out, its in my sig.

ryan.5106:

I use the Precision/Vitality/Healing exotics from Ascalon Catacombs, Berserker Greatsword/Staff, Clerics Amulet/Earring, a Knights ring, Valkyrie ring and Earring, as well as +healing runes (doesn’t matter what type, really) for stats that equal out to:

~2500 Power
38% crit +55% Damage
2700 Toughness
16,540 HP / +900 healing power

Traits are 0/15/30/20/5 focused on empowering might, altruistic healing, virtue activation, and faster recharge on shouts. That’s what works for me, and i’ve had a lot of success with that setup.

I use the exact same build, but my stats are no where near yours. Granted you are in full exotics (and I’m not), but your numbers for toughness and power are really high. You vit is not bad either to get 16.5k HP on a guard, same with precision to achieve 38% crit rate.

I have a mostly green gear with some yellow weps/jewelry using power/vit/tough armor, knights jewelry, Knights weps. This gives:

Power 1700
Precision 1600 (36% crit chance)
Toughness 1900
Vit 1400 (15.6k health)
Healing 196

I have garbage for gear, but I don’t think I’d see +1000 to toughness and +800 to power by upgrading to exotic gear. If so then great!

My Guardian keeps 2 sets of armor, a toughness/power/healing power
and a precision/vitality/healing power.

I enjoy the latter set far more.

Kashien.6278:

For those of you that say healing power is a worthless stat, and not worth investing into. Unless you like your party to go down a lot, its nice to have a “dedicated support” in the party, and there is no denying this fact. A guardian is the perfect dedicated support, we can offer you stacks upon stacks of might, massive amounts of protection/regeneration, and a lot of healing as well via healing breeze(if you can aim it right) and virtue of resolve, Staff#4, Mace #2, and the third chain on mace #1.

Check it out, its in my signature.

(Not just responding to you)
Two things:
1) It’s not that healing power is bad, it’s that it’s worse than everything else, especially when it comes to scaling. This is even more true in sPvP, where you can’t create a build that’s most powerful when two or more allies are nearby. It reminds me of a often-had debate by Holy Priests in WoW. It wasn’t that extra critical chance was a bad stat, it was that every other stat did more for the spec. I feel healing power for Guardians is similar.
2) I don’t do dungeons myself, but I find it disturbing that you’d need a dedicated support-player. As much as I like the idea, it seems to go against what Arenanet wanted with the game.

I didnt say you NEED to have one, I just said that its NICE to have one.

Ynna.8769:

Kashien.6278:

For those of you that say healing power is a worthless stat, and not worth investing into. Unless you like your party to go down a lot, its nice to have a “dedicated support” in the party, and there is no denying this fact. A guardian is the perfect dedicated support, we can offer you stacks upon stacks of might, massive amounts of protection/regeneration, and a lot of healing as well via healing breeze(if you can aim it right) and virtue of resolve, Staff#4, Mace #2, and the third chain on mace #1.

Check it out, its in my signature.

(Not just responding to you)
Two things:
1) It’s not that healing power is bad, it’s that it’s worse than everything else, especially when it comes to scaling. This is even more true in sPvP, where you can’t create a build that’s most powerful when two or more allies are nearby. It reminds me of a often-had debate by Holy Priests in WoW. It wasn’t that extra critical chance was a bad stat, it was that every other stat did more for the spec. I feel healing power for Guardians is similar.
2) I don’t do dungeons myself, but I find it disturbing that you’d need a dedicated support-player. As much as I like the idea, it seems to go against what Arenanet wanted with the game.

Who said anything about a dedicated support-player? Even in my build, which I show you tube video on, you can see how active I am against the foe while giving healing support, boons, and stacks of might. Oh wait, no one continued to flame me after I posted that video. Maybe show the proof or don’t show at all comes to mind.

Kashien.6278:

I didn’t say you NEED to have one, I just said that its NICE to have one.

Apologies. I read that differently.
I’m not going to edit my previous post, so everyone knows how stupid I’ve been.

I’m not entirely sure when people will learn that the Min/Max of the trinity day’s doesn’t work quite as well w/ Anet’s concept.

Personally, if you don’t have 2800 attack, 2500 armor, 15k hp, 25% crit, 60% crit dmg, and 650+healing, you’re kittening yourself somewhere.

The only time i would say different is when you are actually setting up a tank build for dungeons: 3200 Armor, 17k Hp, 1000+healing.

Im looking to make a good tank/suppor to play with my wife and take on any champions we encounter, we mostly play pve.

Ive read all the thread and tried the build in the gw2 skill calculator but im not quite sure what you take

“Traits are 0/15/30/20/5 focused on empowering might, altruistic healing, virtue activation, and faster recharge on shouts. That’s what works for me, and i’ve had a lot of success with that setup.”

could you make the build and link it to me?

Amins.3710:

I’m not entirely sure when people will learn that the Min/Max of the trinity day’s doesn’t work quite as well w/ Anet’s concept.

Personally, if you don’t have 2800 attack, 2500 armor, 15k hp, 25% crit, 60% crit dmg, and 650+healing, you’re kittening yourself somewhere.

The only time i would say different is when you are actually setting up a tank build for dungeons: 3200 Armor, 17k Hp, 1000+healing.

Take out your 2nd sentence and your a fool. Personally, I think your build is personally foolish! WoWzer BoWzer, I don’t meant to insult… but to proclaim what you personally think in the sense its better than what other has posted in this thread; foolish.

I would love to see how you get the below stats with your gear and setup. Seems Like bull to me (posted by ryan.5106)

~2500 Power
38% crit +55% Damage
2700 Toughness
16,540 HP / +900 healing power

juno.1840:

ryan.5106:

I use the Precision/Vitality/Healing exotics from Ascalon Catacombs, Berserker Greatsword/Staff, Clerics Amulet/Earring, a Knights ring, Valkyrie ring and Earring, as well as +healing runes (doesn’t matter what type, really) for stats that equal out to:

~2500 Power
38% crit +55% Damage
2700 Toughness
16,540 HP / +900 healing power

Traits are 0/15/30/20/5 focused on empowering might, altruistic healing, virtue activation, and faster recharge on shouts. That’s what works for me, and i’ve had a lot of success with that setup.

I use the exact same build, but my stats are no where near yours. Granted you are in full exotics (and I’m not), but your numbers for toughness and power are really high. You vit is not bad either to get 16.5k HP on a guard, same with precision to achieve 38% crit rate.

I have a mostly green gear with some yellow weps/jewelry using power/vit/tough armor, knights jewelry, Knights weps. This gives:

Power 1700
Precision 1600 (36% crit chance)
Toughness 1900
Vit 1400 (15.6k health)
Healing 196

I have garbage for gear, but I don’t think I’d see +1000 to toughness and +800 to power by upgrading to exotic gear. If so then great!

Ok, I think there has been some confusion because of my miss labeling of my stats. It was late and I was a bit lazy when I wrote those down. I put power as opposed to attack, and I put toughness instead of armor. I just logged off GW2 after writing down my actual stats:

Power: 1508
Precision: 1591
Toughness: 1432
Vitality: 1458

Attack: 2619
Crit : 36% (41% with sigil of accuracy) +55% crit damage
Armor: 2643
Hit Points: 16,225 (a little less than my off the top of my head estimation, oops.)
+Healing: 901

I apologize for the confusion. In regards to my trait build:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVcz0V9cmvRN0mvRN9MfxGVMVoqMR

These are the traits that I use for PVE. The focus of this build is the synergy between critical strikes, boon distribution, and altruistic healing. This is about the most balanced build i have been able to come up with. Because i tend to view blind as the condition version of Aegis the idea here is to apply blind as often as possible to negate damage. I utilize Hold the line to apply protection and regeneration to mitigate and reverse damage received. Stand your ground is used to not only provide stability during key moments to prevent or reverse crowd control effects, but i also use it during fights lacking in enemy CC for the retaliation to increase damage output. Signet of Justice provides similar benefits when activated, it also reduces enemy damage passively as well as actively.

For my goals when gearing I wanted to have frequent critical strikes that hit a little harder than usual for several reasons:

-Activation of Vigor
-Activation of Empowering Might
-Spike damage
-Increased self healing from Altruistic Healing

The 15 points in radiance increase the rate of Virtue of Justice activation for more blinds and burning and Might stacks when combined with 5 points in virtues, which also increases self healing from AH. You can see how all these elements start to tie in together. Retributive armor is simply there to increase crit chance and Purity along with the healing signet are simply there for condition mitigation.

What i love most about this set-up is that it is not a weapon centric build. That is to say that you could substitute any weapon you prefer for the sake of whatever goals you are trying to accomplish and your traits will still be as effective. This build is also not mobility-phobic. Fights that involve a lot of movement will not be detrimental to your overall contribution. You are free to choose your weapons based on the situation, not the traits.