Guild Wars 2

Edit: fixed some math errors, but skip towards bottom as I created a baseline to compare each profession skills against each other while minimizing inflation of stats with things like signets or traits that up healing power

Healing power is generally seen as useless to a majority of the GW2 community, but we have seen and shown how it can be highly effective in some builds, especially here on the guardian side of the house.

Some random musing about survival and what is the best way to gain that, with and without healing power.

Our list of healing abilities to include self and group:

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (0.7%, 0.9% traited)
• Regeneration (1.2% per tick, 7% total with hold the line)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6% per boon at around 2% in group scenario)
• Monk’s Focus (15%)
• Writ of the Merciful (0.9%)
• Staff Empower (13%)
• Mace Faithful Strike (2%)
• Zealous Blade (0.1% per hit, best case burst heal with 10 whirling wrath hits and 5 targets, 9%)
• Selfless Daring (3% PvE, 2% PvP)

I would argue that shouts are bad for DPS specs, in general. Reason being is that a our primary healing shout, Hold the Line! will probably have a regeneration boon heal maxing out at around 1002 healing with at most 300 healing power in your spec. Your life will be around 13000 at most in a full glass cannon set up.

This will only provide 7% of your life back every 28 to 35 seconds. This is opposed to something like Monk’s Focus which will provide 2140 healing back every 16-20 seconds with Smite Conditions, this is approximately 15% life back every 16-20 seconds.

The only caveats to keep in mind with that is you do not get the protection boon with smite conditions and the cooldown only starts when you use it, so it will not be a continuous tick and you will have down time between the next available heal (large gaps in no healing).

Without putting anything other than trait points into healing, virtue of resolve will provide 102 to 127 healing a second, writ of the merciful provides 129 healing a second with symbols, mace auto attack gives a 389 heal. These are all anywhere from 0.007% to 2% healing, VERY minor returns.

Staff empower gives a decent amount back with 1800 healing which is 13% of your life.

The break away from these low numbers is our saving grace, Altruistic Healing, but it is only useful in groups, as it’s effectiveness is horrible when alone. 72 healing per a boon applied, most frequent return is from crits and symbols in groups, which is typically 5 people max. So in the best conditions AH will provide 72*5 healing a second, 360 health which is about 2% of your life, but it ticks consistently if utilized correctly.

So mace auto attack and altruistic healing provide 2% life back a second, yet our core class mechanic, virtue of resolve provides 0.007% life back a second…..yeah that needs to be fixed I think.

Now lets put max healing power into the mix and review those abilities again.

2398 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (1.6%, 2% traited)
• Regeneration (3% per tick, 18.5% total with hold the line)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6% per boon at around 2% in group scenario)
• Monk’s Focus (24%)
• Writ of the Merciful (2%)
• Staff Empower (26%)
• Mace Faithful Strike (5%)
• Zealous Blade (0.1% per hit, best case burst heal with 10 whirling wrath hits and 5 targets, 9%)
• Selfless Daring (18% PvE, 9.5% PvP)

Regeneration, all of the sudden becomes very powerful, and surpasses altruistic healing in effectiveness.

Now, healing percentages vary depending on maximum health, so a weaker heal could be stronger on a lower health pool. So the above numbers are not the end all tell all of what heals to pick. I still think it is intriguing and takes into account the stats that go along with a best case scenario glass cannon build versus a full heal bunker build. I could have given the GC build zero healing power, and maybe that would have adjusted the numbers to show better for them…or maybe worse.

Another factor to consider is frequency of application, a low percentage heal may happen very frequently, thus adding up in effectiveness (altruistic healing) versus a high percentage heal that has a long cooldown (monks focus).

I do think this shows that a build with no healing power, should probably not try to rely on regeneration for sustain, but should rely on “shocker” altruistic healing or monk’s focus.

Still, the utilities are easily replaced since the majority of healing will be provided via crits and symbols, the shouts are minimalistic to the build at most.

This also shows just how drastically ineffective our core class mechanic, virtue of resolve is in sustain, and I once again argue that it needs to be adjusted to give us more build diversity and realistic survival outside of AH/MF or full clerics.

Thanks for all the information. It kinda confirms what builds I know people are running on SOR and in JQ for WvW and why some of the builds people say work awesome, didn’t really work for me or my friends.

Thing is, VoR is more about the active than the passive. That’s kinda’ been the whole point. Active abilities will always be more desirable than passive in the interest of player skill. Although I guess this is more from a PvP stand-point.

Much of what’s wrong with the PvP game currently are all the passive stuff going on that’s out of active player control.

The Guardian, contrary to popular belief, is a fantastic design. Almost all it’s strongest abilities are active, distinct, and mostly well balanced. The Virtues are a good example of this.

I usually always prefer a support melee type role and while everybody always complains about healing power, I’ve mostly run Cleric’s with a smidge of Magi upgrades here and there and it’s allowed a lot of the small group encounters my little guild does actually achievable. I may not do a lot of damage (although 4 runes of rage + 2 water is my new favourite! ) but I very effectively keep my allies alive so that they can continue doing their monstrous amounts of damage for longer than they would have been able to do otherwise. I’m also somewhat of a boon factory.

On your own, yes, healing power makes fights longer than they could be but with allies, I find it to be pretty amazing and even after reading through all the somewhat angry berserker gear related threads and even trying out some pretty amazing damage builds, I always land back on my trusty old Cleric’s gear.

Excellent comparison.

You missed some group heals: Selfless Daring, Shield of Absorption (2nd sequence) and Orb of Light (both sequences) – and you have other sources of regen from Inspired Virtues, focus#4 and mace#2

It can be quite hard to quantify the synergies between traits and skills though – the classics being Altruistic Healing coupled with Empower or Hallowed Ground, or Merciful Intervention and Monk’s Focus

I would argue that the passive abilities from virtues are supposed to be strong for “you” and the actives are supposed to be strong for the “group”.

Right now Virtue of Justice is a good example of passive/active utility, but then burning is under the popular opinion of meh for the guardian.

Virtue of Resolve is a arguably inefficient passive for yourself and a pretty good active for yourself and group, “IF” traited for Absolute Resolution.

Virtue of Courage is really easily ignored active or passive, it just kind of is there. Some good uses of it are an on demand block in any build, but the cooldown is so extensive it is only clutch in very small and limited situations and typically will not turn a fight around. Traits can make it somewhat useful in the sense of stability/stun break but again a lot of trait points have to be dedicated to make it “ok”.

As far as missing healing sources, I purposely omitted additional regeneration sources, as the heal per second is what was important, and just used our primary regen shout as an example of “what it does”. I also ommitted Orb of Light, because I was lazy =p, pretty decent heal for group, but difficult to use effectively most of the time.

As far as Selfless Darring, I completely forgot about that one when making this list, and I will go back and add that one. Good to know if it is worth it to pick up without healing power or not, as it requires you to dedicate 15 points into a non-offensive trait line, if you are specing for offense.

Now advanced synergies that you can do with AH and consecrations as well as staff empower are beyond the scope I was looking at, and simply thinking of when to pick what sustain mechanic in a general sense. Monk’s Focus giving multiple procs of healing from Merciful Intervention is probably a bug, and at most it should give two procs (one for ability and one for trait), but again just speaking in general terms and that is sort of beyond the scope.

Again, this is not the whole picture and frequency of application and intensity of incoming damage could warrant a “lesser” heal source.

Also again the size of your HP pool changes the percentages, so percents are not the end all to saying it is a “good” heal, but just trying to gauge some commonalities between the heals.

Actually the point of why people run shouts on a zerker build is to not be selfish kitten, provide that aegis (retreat), provide group -33% damage reduction and provide group stability ALL with group condition removal attached to this (not just removal but conversion actually)

Fact is I can’t see any reason to go healing spec in pve, heals of reason in wvw, but none in pve (people will enjoy what they enjoy) however going something like monks focus to keep yourself alive longer, but not help your party at all and have them die because you are hitting for wet pancakes with no power to speak of or precision.

The other great thing about a guardian going down the honor line is if you play a precision build (not even crit damage but something like knights will still work) is that you can get 100% uptime on vigor which is doubling your dodging time and giving you an extra 2400hp of heals over four dodges (20seconds) not to mention using them to actually evade.

I would also like to mention if you can get vigor from someone else you can actually boost dodge healing (which heals the entire group) up to 3.3k heals, that is an extra 3.3k group heal ontop of vigor.

I have no issue with non zerker builds despite my using one, but any build that doesn’t give a team benefit just seems utterly pointless to me.

Getting additional vigor from another source shouldn’t be needed, if your crit rate is high enough to maintain the proc, and it doesn’t stack in intensity so additional vigor from another source shouldn’t matter, unless you can not maintain the boon on your own.

Shouts are useful in a group utility set up in an offensive set up, but to a minimal degree in terms of healing. The protection boon is highly useful, but the regeneration boon is seemingly pointless as it heals for so little, but if you have nothing else, why not.

Also you could replace the shouts with other utlities that may help the group as well, such as wall of reflection (projectile reflect), shield of the avenger (projectile block and weakness), purging flames (condition removal), hallowed ground (stability), merciful intervention (low hp ally heal), bow of truth (condition removal), signet of judgement (weakness?…maybe I"m stretching on that one).

Protection is the only group utility missing, but if you trait down virtues you can give the group protection with VoC, and if you use hammer it is going out with a higher up time than the shout.

So there are ways to not use shouts and still not be a selfish jerk and support your group at the same time.

Still going over the shouts some more, stability, retaliation, aegis, and swiftness from Retreat and Stand your ground are additional shouts you can run in an offensive set up to provide utility, and if you are down the Honor tree with your offensive set up you can also clear conditions with shouts.

I am not saying shouts are not good for an offensive set up, I am saying, how ever, shouts are not good for self sustain in an offensive set up.

You could also go as far as the argument that everyone should support themselves and a dead dps is no dps, so self sustain with top damage is a good way to help support the group by doing as much damage as possible and killing things as fast as possible to maybe rally allies that downed mid combat. Another argument another time, and I run a more group support role typically, regardless.

Going back to the main point though, I was pondering these things in terms of pvp and wvw survival and not so much pve. What are ways that we can help “ourselves” survive?

CMF.5461:

I would argue that the passive abilities from virtues are supposed to be strong for “you” and the actives are supposed to be strong for the “group”.

Right now Virtue of Justice is a good example of passive/active utility, but then burning is under the popular opinion of meh for the guardian.

Virtue of Resolve is a arguably inefficient passive for yourself and a pretty good active for yourself and group, “IF” traited for Absolute Resolution.

Virtue of Courage is really easily ignored active or passive, it just kind of is there. Some good uses of it are an on demand block in any build, but the cooldown is so extensive it is only clutch in very small and limited situations and typically will not turn a fight around. Traits can make it somewhat useful in the sense of stability/stun break but again a lot of trait points have to be dedicated to make it “ok”.

As far as missing healing sources, I purposely omitted additional regeneration sources, as the heal per second is what was important, and just used our primary regen shout as an example of “what it does”. I also ommitted Orb of Light, because I was lazy =p, pretty decent heal for group, but difficult to use effectively most of the time.

As far as Selfless Darring, I completely forgot about that one when making this list, and I will go back and add that one. Good to know if it is worth it to pick up without healing power or not, as it requires you to dedicate 15 points into a non-offensive trait line, if you are specing for offense.

Now advanced synergies that you can do with AH and consecrations as well as staff empower are beyond the scope I was looking at, and simply thinking of when to pick what sustain mechanic in a general sense. Monk’s Focus giving multiple procs of healing from Merciful Intervention is probably a bug, and at most it should give two procs (one for ability and one for trait), but again just speaking in general terms and that is sort of beyond the scope.

Again, this is not the whole picture and frequency of application and intensity of incoming damage could warrant a “lesser” heal source.

Also again the size of your HP pool changes the percentages, so percents are not the end all to saying it is a “good” heal, but just trying to gauge some commonalities between the heals.

The thing I want to point out about active and passive of virtues is that if you do trait for them, they become exceedingly better. Taking the Traits for AR and IC don’t just provide those benefits, like stability and 3 condtion removals with heals. If you went far into Virtue lines you get boons upon activation of virtues(VoJ=Might, VoR=Regeneration, VoC=Protection which also means more mitigation of damage and making heals regeneration and other healing sources a lot better.) and with 15 in Virtues you also get retaliation. Full 30 in Virtues itself also synergizes with the benefits given through traits with the 30% Boon Duration.

Another thing I feels takes away DPS is the need for boon duration if you are going to use AH builds (shouts primarily). You don’t need boon duration but shouts become a lot less useful as far as regen goes unless you do have that extra healing power to cover the lack of boon duration. Now, as mentioned a few times earlier, the only to keep defensive boons up is to use the respective weapons that can apply those boons (hammer:protect, mace:regen) which can be useful in some situations but can take away from DPS as well.

I am not sure how to look at this as a simple build synergy problem or just poor design mechanics. Guardians are one of the primary class to utilize boons or least spec into boon duration in order to pull off some build synergies. Mostly this is regarding classes like rangers/warriors/mes that have access to perma regen without need for boon duration.

It would be interesting to see how all these heals compares to other classes. Too much work I would think. Much of what you demonstrate is inline with intuitions I had. I feel that there is a good analogy between our burning as offense and our healing as defense. They can be good, but you sacrifice quite a bit to get them their. Most the time, we accept builds where healing is ‘good enough’ to maintain a minimum DPS. I would love to see more traits that provide you offensive bonus for defensive traits (like Retributive Armor).

Updated original list with Selfless Daring, pondering going down the list seen on the wiki here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing

It would be interesting to see, but I don’t know all the other professions to the same degree that I understand guardians, so I may end up with sub optimal setups and errors and what not.

Heavy Armor

Guardian (Adjusted stats/gear to be consistent with other profession breakdowns)

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (0.7%)
• Empower (13%)
• Orb of Light (2.4%)
• Orb of Light Active (7%)
• Faithful Strike (3.7%)
• Shield of Absorption (9.9%)
• Light of Judgment (0.7%)
• Bow of Truth (0.7% per tick, 29.2% total)
• Merciful Intervention (15.5%)
• Sanctuary (2% per second, 12.2% total)
• Light of Deliverance (“full heal”)
• Healing Area (10.5%)
• Symbol of Judgment (unsure of total health when downed, so can’t figure percent)
• Altruistic Healing (0.5%)
• Monk’s Focus (15%)
• Pure of Heart (5.2%)
• Selfless Daring (3.1% PvE, 2% PvP)
• Writ of the Merciful (0.9%)
• Zealous Blade (0.2%)
• Battle presence (VoR to allies)
• Regeneration (1.2%)

1710 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (1.3%)
• Empower (23%)
• Orb of Light (4.4%)
• Orb of Light Active (13%)
• Faithful Strike (5.5%)
• Shield of Absorption (11.8%)
• Light of Judgment (1.7%)
• Bow of Truth (0.7% per tick, 28.9% total)
• Merciful Intervention (21.4%)
• Sanctuary (2.5% per second, 15.1% total)
• Light of Deliverance (“full heal”)
• Healing Area (15.4%)
• Symbol of Judgment (unsure of total health when downed, so can’t figure percent)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6%)
• Monk’s Focus (19%)
• Pure of Heart (7.7%)
• Selfless Daring (13.2% PvE, 7% PvP)
• Writ of the Merciful (1.7%)
• Zealous Blade (0.2%)
• Battle presence (VoR to allies)
• Regeneration (2.5%)

Warrior

300 Healing Power w/ 18372 Health

• Vigorous Shouts (7.8%)
• Adrenal Health (1 Bar 0.9%, 2 Bars 1.6%, 3 Bars 2.2%)
• Regeneration (0.9%)

1704 Healing Power w/ 18532 Health

• Vigorous Shouts (13.8%)
• Adrenal Health (1 Bar 2%, 2 Bars 2.7%, 3 Bars 3.3%)
• Regeneration (1.9%)

Adrenal Health ticks every 3 seconds, making the heal per second percent:
300 Heal Power (1 Bar 0.3%, 2 Bars 0.53%, 3 Bars 0.73%)
1704 Heal Power (1 Bar 0.67%, 2 Bars 0.9%, 3 Bars 1.1%)

Medium Armor

Thief

300 Healing Power w/ 10805 Health

• Shadow Refuge (16.4%)
• Assassin’s Reward (0.73%)
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation (3%)
• Regeneration (2%)

1392 Healing Power w/ 10965 Health

• Shadow Refuge (24.4%)
• Assassin’s Reward (1%)
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation (4%)
• Regeneration (3%)

Ranger

300 Healing Power w/ 15082 Health

• Signet of the Wild (0.53%)
• Spirit of Nature (3.2%)
• Harmonic Cry (22%)
• Chomp/Drake (13.2%)
• Chomp/Armorfish (13.2%)
• Carnivorous Appetite (pet only)
• Natural Healing (0.89%)
• Regeneration (1.1%)

1691 Healing Power w/ 15242 Health

• Signet of the Wild (1%)
• Spirit of Nature (3.1%)
• Harmonic Cry (24%)
• Chomp/Drake (14%)
• Chomp/Armorfish (14%)
• Carnivorous Appetite (pet only)
• Natural Healing (0.87%)
• Regeneration (22.4%)

Engineer

300 Healing Power w/ 15082 Health

• Bandage Self (35%)
• Drop Bandages (8%)
• Launch Elixir (2.9%)
• Super Elixir Impact Heal (5.4%)
• Super Elixir Pulse Heal (16%)
• Elixir-Infused Bombs (1.2%)
• Backpack Regenerator (0.88%)
• Regeneration (1.1%)

1704 Healing Power w/ 15242 Health

• Bandage Self (43.4%%)
• Drop Bandages (12.2%)
• Launch Elixir (4.7%)
• Super Elixir Impact Heal (9%)
• Super Elixir Pulse Heal (25%)
• Elixir-Infused Bombs (2%)
• Backpack Regenerator (1.3%)
• Regeneration (2.3%)

Light Armor

Elementalist

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Water Blast (2.9%)
• Geyser (6.4%)
• Water Trident (12.7%)
• Cone of Cold (6%)
• Cleansing Wave (11.6%)
• Tidal Wave (2.6%)
• Glyph of Elementals (47.6%) does it scale with healing power?
• Water Arrow (0.3%)
• Healing Ripple (11.6%)
• Evasive Arcana (Casts Cleansing Wave on dodge when in water, 50% weaker in pvp)
• Soothing Mist (0.7%)
• Regeneration (1.2%)

1709 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Water Blast (3.9%)
• Geyser (8.8%)
• Water Trident (22.6%)
• Cone of Cold (9.4%)
• Cleansing Wave (21.6%)
• Tidal Wave (3.5%)
• Glyph of Elementals (47.6%) does it scale with healing power?
• Water Arrow (1.3%)
• Healing Ripple (21.6%)
• Evasive Arcana (Casts Cleansing Wave on dodge when in water, 50% weaker in pvp)
• Soothing Mist (1.2%)
• Regeneration (2.5%)

Mesmer

300 Healing Power w/ 18082 Health

• Restorative Mantras (14.7%)
• Restorative Illusions (1 illusion 5%, 2 -> 6%, 3 -> 7%)
• Restorative Illusions w/ illusionary persona (0 -> 4%, 1 -> 11%, 2 -> 12%, 3 -> 13.5%)
• Regeneration (0.9%)

1570 Healing Power w/ 18242 Health

• Restorative Mantras (16%)
• Restorative Illusions (1 -> 6%, 2 -> 7.6%, 3 -> 8.6%)
• Restorative Illusions w/ illusionary persona (0 -> 6.5%, 1 -> 14%, 2 -> 15%, 3 -> 16%)
• Regeneration (1.8%)

Necromancer

300 Healing Power w/ 21372 Health

• Deathly Invigoration (1.7%)
• Transfusion – Life Transfer (does not heal self, but does heal for a huge amount, heal is fixed at 2628 a tick for 9 ticks.)
• Regeneration (0.8%)

1570 Healing Power w/ 21532 Health

• Deathly Invigoration (3.6%)
• Transfusion – Life Transfer (does not heal self, but does heal for a huge amount, heal is fixed at 2628 a tick for 9 ticks.)
• Regeneration (1.5%)

four break down posts should be enough, will delete the extras later…but taking a break for now, will update the rest today or tomorrow…..unless someone else wants to help do the work? no? …. ;p

I may go back over what I already did and add heal percent per second, to include ability cooldowns to compare with healing over time effectiveness… blah more work, why do I make this game so complicated??!

CMF.5461:

four break down posts should be enough, will delete the extras later…but taking a break for now, will update the rest today or tomorrow…..unless someone else wants to help do the work? no? …. ;p

I may go back over what I already did and add heal percent per second, to include ability cooldowns to compare with healing over time effectiveness… blah more work, why do I make this game so complicated??!

I have a half finished spreadsheet of healing per sec / per minute calculations against various skills and traits – I can try and dig it out and update it if you like ( might take a couple of days )

The spreadsheet would be awesome, but don’t feel obliged to dig around, I’ll probably do the calculations myself cause I’m slightly OCD

I didn’t do anything tonight because of the SAB update….spending time hating my life in tribulation mode :p

I will go back and finish this though, no worries. This week it will be done!

Updated lists, sorted by heavy, medium, light / lowest health to highest.

Missing mesmer and necromancer at this time but tired of looking at numbers, will update rest tomorrow.

CMF.5461:

This also shows just how drastically ineffective our core class mechanic, virtue of resolve is in sustain, and I once again argue that it needs to be adjusted to give us more build diversity and realistic survival outside of AH/MF or full clerics.

The core mechanic is 3 virtues, not just one. I’m also not sure why you feel the passive, free VoR should be competitive with the trait that takes 30 in one fairly useless line. Once you trait and gear around enhancing VoR it becomes far superior to AH. What’s the problem?

The most powerful “active” heal Guardians have, with healing gear, is selfless daring. By a huge margin. Your lists ignore cooldowns so are misleading in many ways.

Anyway, the only real conclusion I draw from this is that scaling of healing power is completely inconsistent. Some skill scale ridiculously well (usually because their initial value is so pathetically low) and some barely scale at all (the large base heals).

i don’t understand the necessity to point it out in % of “your” max health… isn’t better to write the effective health gained?
then i also don’t understand what’s the sense of this… “guide”? why not to write healing skills and their coefficients instead of 2 examples (min/max healing)?

anyway good job but you can do it better

Stuff like this looks good on paper, but works different in actual combat. I love my 13,805 health shout build. It’s a monster in combat. As long as you understand your limitations and capabilities you’ll be fine. Getting more healing for the sake of healing more is irrational to me. Just go straight kill happy

ymmv – still haven’t completed all traits and applied AH calculations to everything ( although I’ve done it for VoR ), and I haven’t done a proper proof read so it might have some calculation errors

If you download the doc you can edit the settings at the top to tweak your trait assignments, group and gear composition and HP

http://tinyurl.com/guardian-healing

A lot of us have gone over the healing by numbers thing, I havn’t seen a healing by percent.

I personally feel percentage is misleading, as I stated with the changes in HP affect the percentage of life that you get out of it, so you can make it sound like you healing for 50% of your life!!! but your life is only 1000 max so its a 500 point heal. Or 1% of your life out of 10000 and you get a 1000 point heal…you see what I’m getting at there.

Still, in my post I tried to state multiple times that this is only part of the way to look at things, and I said it ignores cooldowns as well as assuming percentages without showing raw numbers, but I was trying to keep it simple and just observe effects.

I did not intend to go through the rest of the professions, but it was requested, and I got curious.

Percentage with a standard is a decent way to observe the effects though (although this is a losely based standard as the hp and stats adjust from class to class). Also mentioned earlier in the thread, I could have a weak heal that only heals for a fraction of a percent, but it ticks very frequently (Altruistic Healing), so it looks bad on paper but is actually pretty good.

I acknowledge and understand these things, but it is just trying to look at the problem from another point of view. This is not the end all be all analysis, but it is another piece of data to use to help us make more educated decisions and factor where our strengths and deficiencies are.

@Yaki
I understand there is more to our “core mechanic” than virtue of resolve, but I am talking in terms of self sustainability, our “core” mechanic in that is stated to be our ability to regenerate life to make up for a low health pool.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession#Guardian
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian

Virtue of Resolve does become better, but I’m not sure you can say it is better than AH or MF, and warriors have the healing signet with no healing power at all doing more than virtue of resolve does with max healing power.

Healing Signet with no healing power does 392 a second.

AH around 5 people with no healing power does 354 a second (69*5).

MF is a little more complicated to factor in terms of heals per second as it is a burst heal via 3 or less utilities on varying cooldowns, but with no healing power and using Smite, JI, and Contemplation with reduced cooldowns you will do about 9800 healing (3 smite, 1 JI, and 1 Contemplation healing for 1960 each. Divide 9800 by the max seconds, 48, and you get about 204 heals per second (still inaccurate as you won’t be using them on cooldown, so its actually lower.

Writ of the Merciful will do 287 (full healing power) and 107 (no healing power) a second when in stationary symbols.

Virtue of resolve, with every point possible into healing, mace gives healing power, absolute resolution, healing food, signet of mercy, and max sigil of life stacks will do 228 untraited and 285 traited healing per second….but you used up all your stats to max it out and it is still not amazingly beyond the capacity of MF and AH.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApeENhTIZKAAEE7BAAAAwlCI6hA-jQCB4hBkaAILqIasFQMaslXAqZER1qGYWcER1uEYBB8N-e

Everyone has access to regeneration boons, so it is not a class mechanic unique to guardians.

Now you can combine VoR with Writ of Merciful, and Regeneration boons to hit 1003 healing per a second, which is pretty impressive, but you need to be in your symbol, and are restricted to mace, while doing wet noodle damage.

Again as pointed out, other professions can do good healing and sustain while doing damage, we sacrifice everything.

@Kjeldoran
It’s not a guide, but talking points, as I am mostly thinking out loud. More often than not I’m breaking down the game to try to understand it and bring it back into useable gameplay. Mostly analysis and pondering, not a guide.

@Tarsius
Awesome, I’m pillaging your spreadsheet now and going over it!

@anyone else reading

Bottom line, what I’m trying to do here is show guardian healing in comparision to others, and establish an understanding to help argue for improvements in our self sustain mechanics without needing to delve so deep into healing power.

By giving us more flexibility in self sustain, you open up more possible build variety available to the players, if they don’t have to worry about a low health pool and keep traiting and gear to cover up that weakness.

Finished the initial comparison with each professions self heal abilities. I realize I neglected the actual “heal” skills, such as signet of healing, shelter, healing spring, etc.

I do want to add those as well as break it down to heals per second to include cooldown at a later time and date. Done for now though.

The work is good, but I take issue with you expecting a ‘passive’, class archetypal ability to be as strong as an actual healing skill, or some type of trait variant that requires an actual cost.

Comparisons to Heal Signet are unfair because they’re out of context. In practice a warrior running heal signet, especially in PvP, doesn’t have the sustain of a similarly geared guardian because of many additional factors.

The description of VoR on the official website essentially states it provides regeneration… Which is does. The wiki seems to attribute the guardians ability to sustain itself to VoR alone, which everyone knows isn’t the case at all. If anything needs to be changed, it’s the description, not VoR.

VoR obviously appears to be balanced around the class as a whole.

The wiki is incorrect in that the guardian description for VoR: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian links to Regeneration, rather than Rejuvination ( about 40% weaker ).

Let’s not forget VoR’s active either which pretty powerful when spec’d into Virtues and/or AH

The wiki states the VoR is quoting a post from an ANet dev on some forums as to why guardians have low HP, and he cites VoR as a reason. Go check out the citation source at the bottom of the wiki page.

I do not think that passives should be all mighty and powerful, and I think many of you read too far into those statements.

I feel it is not balanced to the current flow of gameplay and is primed to be adjusted to enhance our build variety.

Warrior Signet is a fair example, as without AH, MF, or even WoM (writ of merciful) the only heal over time ticking is VoR. Warriors augment the passive heal with adrenal health to layer the self sustain and concentrate on damage.

VoR layered with AH/MF/WoM would create the same sort of synergy.

Warriors are not drastically less capable of surviving damage than a guardian, and this is a player base misconception. Previously they were prone to condition damage deaths, but with some recent patches they are able to keep those off with lots of adrenalin usage.

Condition removal was something guardians were fairly unique at, and still are in a group sense. Warriors can block like guardians, roll and maintain vigor like guardians, now they can passively heal “like” guardians and clear conditions like guardians.

The one thing warriors don’t have that guardians have good supply of, I believe, are blinds.

I do think the warrior passive heal should be looked at maybe, but I don’t think it should be nerfed to the ground. On the contrary, I think what they did for warriors is a good thing and should be spread out to other professions, namely the guardian who’s job it is to heal and make up for a low health pool.

We get hindered by the game wanting to avoid making a “healer” though, so a lot of our group capable heals are handicapped out of fear of the trinity.

With the passive taken care of, I think the actives are actually pretty good if traited.

VoJ – AoE Blind, Burning, Might
VoR – Group condition cleanse x3, regeneration, burst heal
VoC – Protection, Aegis (with any aegis secondary traits), and your pick of Stability and/or stun break.

I have no issue with the actives, maybe lower the cooldown and let us use them more? But I think those are in a good spot at the moment.

Going back to our passive, I do not want us to solely rely on the passive, but the passive “is” supposed to be strong for “us” and we sacrifice a “lot” to give support to our allies when activating virtues.

As it is now, I’m not worried if my virtues are down or not for myself, as i only use them for the active abilities and the passives are an after thought.

I am not sure why people don’t want VoR to become an acceptable avenue for self sustain allowing us to pull away from AH/MF or full healing specs.

Again the Heal Signet comparison is unfair in my opinion because Heal Signet is a ‘choice’…

A Warrior sacrifices a strong, active heal for an incredibly strong passive heal over time. (Possibly stronger than it should be, even if the active part is almost garbage).

A Guardian ‘always’ has VoR in addition to a strong active heal of their choice… On top of other traited stuff like MF/AH/Selfless etc.. If the active heal is used, VoR still does it’s job, with the active component still available.

It seems you want to look at comparisons of purely passive healing, but I don’t think it’s accurate to kitten balance like that. Passive and active forms of healing can’t really be considered separately if you’re trying to gauge class healing strength. Nevermind the other forms of damage mitigation, which could be considered an indirect form of ‘healing’ also.

It’s a very different situation for both classes. Also I’m under no illusions about warriors and their sustain, but it really isn’t comparable to that of a guardian. In this condi spam environment, most of that comes from Berserker Stance and Cleansing Ire.

As to your last points, I fully agree with you that it could be improved in certain ways without becoming too imbalanced. Boosting the passive however is a poor way to do it imo. Cool down (or CD scaling with virtues) adjustments and changes of that kind are more interesting and better for the game.

Contrary to what you wrote about the passive vs, the active, I personally think VoR is (and should be) all about the active. It’s good for you as much as it’s good for your allies. Sure, you lose your passive but as we’ve already ascertained, it’s not a massive loss anyway, especially when traited to AoE clear conditions. Coupled with Renewed Focus, it’s pretty strong.

Again, I’m really not against improving things, but I’d just prefer if those improvements are considerate of the classes abilities as a whole, not just regeneration, and the less passive those are the better.

TBH as far as condition cleansing goes whether its group or self, it comes down to build. Doesn’t matter if its a warrior or guardian both can be traited/geared to have a lot of cleansing or very little.

I think if anything some of the scaling should be tweaked a little to make healing a bit more viable than it is now.

@Red
I think your best counter argument for why VoR shouldn’t be upped is the idea that Healing Signet is a choice and VoR is a fact. We always have it in any build, and I see what you mean.

On the contrary, I am not asking for VoR “alone” to be as good as Healing Signet, but something we can layer with other abilities to gain strategic builds based on synergies and smart use of cooldowns.

My biggest argument is the total loss of any other stats in order to make VoR useful for specs other than full heal, it should be a viable and useful asset to promote build diversity, but not a crutch that every build is based on.

Active versus passive gameplay starts to delve into more “what is wrong with the game” than just our class. There are a lot of passive things going on in this action oriented game.

That famous quote recent that goes something like: “You have to actively react to the passive abilities” is a sign that maybe we have “too” many passive things going on in GW2 right now.

It can’t be denied that initially the idea was that Guardians were supposed to be low health with lots of healing capability to sustain themselves. The idea sounds active in our survival, but the effect is a lot of passive things just happening as we fight.

AH, Regen, VoR, WoR all just persist throughout combat without a lot of thought.

MF is the only one that could be argued to be an active gameplay decision to use.

If we had more control of when we heal and how we heal, as well as more blocks, blinds, dodges, condition removal, then I would be more interested in active survival.

As it stands now, we are sort of in a juxtaposition between active and passive gameplay. A majority of healing ability cooldowns are fairly long in the terms of combat usage, and fairly weak as to not promote a “healer” in this game.

Also, no one would want to sit there with a 2-3 second utility skill that heals to make up for getting rid of passive healing…we press 1 enough as it is, so auto attack/auto healing is a bad idea.

I think if more heals were interwove into our attack skills on weapons, you could argue to keep VoR the way it is, or remove passive effects like it, to make up for our low HP.

Then of course, the guardian survival relies on being in combat range and being prone to kite completely kills our ability to survive in that scenario.

What would you give us, to actively promote self sustain?

Or maybe the game has reached an arms race of damage and conditions and things should be toned back and re-evaluated?

I think we’re on the same page now. Thanks for the understanding.

Healing Signet is certainly teetering on the edge of what I feel is acceptable for the balance of the warrior class. It either needs a slight nerf tap or ideally, Berserker Stance needs a hit (in the region of 25-50% duration reduction instead of virtual immunity) to allow poison to do it’s job on the healing. A counter, warrior already has further ‘counter-play’ to in the form of Cleansing Ire.

It would be a sweet-spot balance situation and promote some great play opportunity, as long as poison application/durations were controlled more aggressively.

Still, this is about guardian…

Now we’ve cleared that up, I completely get what you mean about VoR outside of heal/support-centric builds. It seems it could warrant being stronger all round.

I’ve often mused that Inspired Virtue’s effects should be a standard, and that the trait should double the boon duration of those applied effects. This way the same 5 points in Virtues bolsters, in this case VoR in a way that improves the healing power of the skill overall, but doesn’t super-charge the active to the point it get’s dangerously close to becoming a second heal skill.

The only thing is, 10 seconds of protection might be pushing it though on Courage. Could almost be considered broken… The max duration on that would have to be something like 7-8 seconds before boon duration. Especially since it’s AoE and Renewed Focus can double that… Is there enough boon hate to make it fine? Not entirely sure…

As to more interesting forms of active healing, the idea of having it tied to other skills is a strong one and the class is well designed enough to already have some examples already.

Staff is fantastic in this regard. Orb spike as I call it, is great… While staff isn’t a primary DD weapon by any measure, this skill pierces, can do considerable critical damage ( especially powered by Empower), and has such a ridiculously short CD (traited), it’s hard to match it with efficient usage. On top of all that, it has a light heal attached and a fairly strong AoE detonated heal (with weak damage), balanced by increased CD. Shield 5 of course has something similar also.

If some of this skill duality was pushed onto the more offensive but weaker weapon skills, we’d be looking at some interesting options.

Sword 2 is incredibly weak damage but great utility. For extra CD cost it could detonate into a heal.

Hammer 5 (while not weak) could create a short duration water field.

Torch 5 could detonate into a burst heal scaled by the duration of the base channel, making it not the most useless skill in the game.

Things like that could work. Although if damage and skill-spam were toned down, none if this might be all that necessary…

CMF.5461:

@Yaki
I understand there is more to our “core mechanic” than virtue of resolve, but I am talking in terms of self sustainability, our “core” mechanic in that is stated to be our ability to regenerate life to make up for a low health pool.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession#Guardian
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian

Virtue of Resolve does become better, but I’m not sure you can say it is better than AH or MF, and warriors have the healing signet with no healing power at all doing more than virtue of resolve does with max healing power.

Healing Signet with no healing power does 392 a second.

AH around 5 people with no healing power does 354 a second (69*5).

MF is a little more complicated to factor in terms of heals per second as it is a burst heal via 3 or less utilities on varying cooldowns, but with no healing power and using Smite, JI, and Contemplation with reduced cooldowns you will do about 9800 healing (3 smite, 1 JI, and 1 Contemplation healing for 1960 each. Divide 9800 by the max seconds, 48, and you get about 204 heals per second (still inaccurate as you won’t be using them on cooldown, so its actually lower.

Writ of the Merciful will do 287 (full healing power) and 107 (no healing power) a second when in stationary symbols.

Virtue of resolve, with every point possible into healing, mace gives healing power, absolute resolution, healing food, signet of mercy, and max sigil of life stacks will do 228 untraited and 285 traited healing per second….but you used up all your stats to max it out and it is still not amazingly beyond the capacity of MF and AH.

Healing Signet is a heal skill. We have one too. To compare it to one of our passive mechanics that we get on top of heal skills is very misleading.

AH is great but it is a GM trait. Same with MF.

But what none of those has is the ability to provide group wide healing. VoR can provide ~250 healing per second to the entire group. That far outstrips what those other skills can do. If you want to “heal”, VoR is awesome. Not so much if you’re standard DPS build but then why should it? You get passive Aegis as well. Don’t forget the VoR also has an active use heal.

We have low health not just because of VoR. It’s because of the overall access to heal skills and protection abilities. We can maintain permanent protection. We can maintain permanent regen. We get AH or MF. We get Aegis from multiple sources. We get a few reflection skills. We get things like dodge heal. If we had Warrior level health we’d be insanely powerful.

Yaki.9563:

Healing Signet is a heal skill. We have one too. To compare it to one of our passive mechanics that we get on top of heal skills is very misleading.

AH is great but it is a GM trait. Same with MF.

But what none of those has is the ability to provide group wide healing. VoR can provide ~250 healing per second to the entire group. That far outstrips what those other skills can do. If you want to “heal”, VoR is awesome. Not so much if you’re standard DPS build but then why should it? You get passive Aegis as well. Don’t forget the VoR also has an active use heal.

We have low health not just because of VoR. It’s because of the overall access to heal skills and protection abilities. We can maintain permanent protection. We can maintain permanent regen. We get AH or MF. We get Aegis from multiple sources. We get a few reflection skills. We get things like dodge heal. If we had Warrior level health we’d be insanely powerful.

Couple of counter points first, We have access to permanent protection on hammer and permanent regeneration on mace, we can not have both permanent protection and regeneration at the same time.

Typically it is better to keep protection up and use regeneration on a cooldown basis to keep damage down and give yourself time to regenerate.

Aegis from multiple sources is: VoC 30-40s cooldown, or active 69-90 seconds.
Retreat 48-60s
Valorous Defense, every 90 seconds if you dip below 50% life.

Typical combat you will see 2, maybe 3 aegis activate. If you are bunkering down maybe 4.

Aegis is strong but not as strong as you make it out to be in our survival.

Throw in mace block too for good measure to count to the aegis block as well.

Blinds are much more effective as they stop all attackers in range and not just the next hit.

Our projectile reflection skills are nice, no argument there. We are kind of a mix between engineers and warriors. Warriors are almost all block, engineers are almost all reflection. We are in the middle of block and reflection.

Back to the point though,

I think you hit it on the head on why VoR is so small, and I think a good compromise would be this:

ANet is trying to avoid building a “healer” class, VoR is group capable so it is limited in effect. Although it is group capable only via using a 30 point trait.

What if Absolute Resolution and Battle presence were both 30 point traits in the same tree. Then absolute resolution could be drastically increased in effect to make self sustain with just VoR much higher, but if you want to support your allies you have to drop the high self sustain and get battle presence which would have VoR doing what it can do now, about 200ish heals a second.

The only problem I have with that solution is it doesn’t promote build diversity, it forces us down another tree, if anything it keeps us in honor or virtues still.

Tough problem, but I don’t see the guardians as the almighty gods that a lot of you feel we are. I think we deserve more attention besides tooltip updates.

I am not trying to make us OP, but I am trying to find ways to get us build diversity. I don’t think buffing VoR would put us anywhere near the realm of OP.

Dmg while having full bunker is pathetic.

Yes, we can build for super sustain… however, if you do so, you ~cannot~ out dmg a Warrior who decides to take up just 15 pts in Defense + a healing Signet and then Runes of Dwayna.

Let’s not even go into if they decide to pick up a banner or go shout healing.

Additionally, the ~only~ trait a warrior needs if they go bunker is Unsuspecting Foe (50% Critical Chance while target is stunned). That’s ~insane~. The dev needs to be slapped for letting that one slide by: 0/10/30/20/10. Great Dmg, Awesome Sustain, Good Condi Removal. Support the build via Food + Runes… overall much better then a guardian w/ very little (and here’s the single most important point of all discussions around Warriors) ~SACRIFICE.

Guardians sacrifice everything if they swing the pendulum to either extreme: DPS <→ Bunker.

Other classes do not have this issue to such an extreme.

For the sake of just looking at guardian heals for now cause I had it on a spread sheet already. What I did is take the value of the heal and divided it by the cooldown time. If this is a problem go ahead and let me know if a better way to figure heal per second please.

This is only trying to factor in cooldown time and not cast time/animation time…NOT EXACT!!!.

Monk’s Focus I based on a Smite Condition 20 second cooldown.

Writ of the Merciful I was assuming 100% symbol uptime with something like hammer, but there will realistically be small gaps between hammer symbol and larger ones in mace, staff, and greatsword.

Pure of Heart we are just considering a 40 second refresh on virtue of courage to proc aegis.

Altruistic Healing I based on a 1 boon a second to 1 person and 1 boon a second to 5 people. Yes you could activate multiple boons a second with crits and symbols and so forth, but just trying to keep it simple.

Again, this is just trying to take a glance at things at face value and see what it looks like on the surface level to see if there are any interesting trends that are worth looking more in depth to.

Skill Name – Heal Per Second
300 healing power

• Writ of the Merciful – 130
• Pure of Heart – 18.225
• Zealous Blade – 25
• Altruistic Healing – 72 (360 if with 5 people) minimum of 1 group boon per second, could be more depending on setup
• Monk’s Focus – 104
• Virtue of Resolve – 102
• Improved VoR – 127.5
• Faithful Strike – 194.5
• Regeneration – 168
• Shield of Absorption – 34
• Selfless Daring – 42.9 (85.8 with vigor)
• Sanctuary – 2.341666667
• Empower – 90

1710 healing power

• Writ of the Merciful – 235
• Pure of Heart – 27.05
• Zealous Blade – 25
• Altruistic Healing – 86 (430 if with 5 people)
• Monk’s Focus – 132.2
• Virtue of Resolve – 187
• Improved VoR – 233.75
• Faithful Strike – 321.5
• Regeneration – 344
• Shield of Absorption – 41.05
• Selfless Daring – 183.9 (367.8 with vigor)
• Sanctuary – 2.933333333
• Empower – 160.5

I should have added a note to the spready – I factor in animation times for auto attack skills and dodging, but not for anything else.