Guild Wars 2

After running full zerk on my guard, I wanna try something different. Namely, I want to experiment with a healing power build that revolves around Selfless Daring.

Current thought is 0/0/4/6/4, picking up Mace of Justice from Valor, Persistence/Merciful, and Absolute Resolution; even though I’m not a huge fan of the virtues traits for this build, boon duration seems like it’d be pretty useful anyway. And even if I dropped points from Virtues, I’m not sure what I’d take instead.

Plan would be to run mace/shield as primary, with staff on swap for empower/swiftness(which, coincidentally, also heals now), with a full set of Zealot gear with Monk runes; Zealot for the str/pre/hp, and monk for the hp/boon/10% outgoing heals.

Any chance anyone’s experimented with this/has any thoughts/suggestions?
Apologies in advance if this question’s already been answered; I did a brief check, and didn’t see anything in the stickies/search.

The problem is that +healing isn’t all that great and you see builds that incorporate +healing even less and less in WvW too. The main reasons for this are;

a) Healing generally scales really poorly with most abilities, making investing in other stats more beneficial to yours and other’s survivability.
b) The few exceptions to this are empower, which suffers from a long CD & low base heal, and selfless daring, which does NOT turn your dodges into heals. It adds a healing effect to your dodges, that’s it. You still need to keep your dodges for when you need to avoid damage, if you do not do this you cut off your own survivability significantly. Statements like “I have dodges to spare” are completely absurd, in any game mode. Finally, selfless daring has a small base heal, meaning you need significant +healing gear to make it worth while.
c) Most important heals have a high base heal. This means that you can heal for a significant amount regardless of your gear. It also means you can add more toughness or vitality gear without losing much healing power, while significantly increase the time it takes for you to keel over and thus allows you to perform these heals more often. A good example of these is a waterfield or tome of courage.
d) +Healing only scales with… healing, which is (relatively) quite limited in this game. Most forms of support, which (combined) play a far larger role (reflects, stealth, protection, stability, etc… ), do not at all.

When is +healing useful? In sPvP bunker builds. The main goal in sPvP is to stand on a single point and not so much actual combat. Apart from toughness and vitality, it is the only stat that directly boost your survivability. If you want some advise on builds for sPvP, recently a dev has made a new sticky that collected builds from various sPvP teams.

If you really want to incorporate healing gear in your WvW builds, combining celestial with soldier gear is what you should then be looking for. A good mix is celestial armor and soldier trinkets+weapons.

For PvE? Well… PvE is dodge or die. Any damage you can’t avoid is perfectly healable with your base self heal. Any damage you have to avoid, basically means instant death or when you do live, you simply can’t consistently recover from due to the lack of real means of sustained healing in this game. The mantra of the game is support, damage and control. Not healing, damage control. Healing is just one of many, many more ways to support a party.

Always keep in mind that the design from the ground up behind GW2 was to have no real healers. Guardians were especially made the way they are with that in mind. Support is our strength, we bring it no matter what we do. Healing is not, it is only a small subset of our abilities. It is like saying the letter “j” represents the alphabet, while in reality it just one of many components of the alphabet. We are far more proficient at preventing the need of healing.

Rangersix.1754:

d) The regeneration boon does not scale with your own gear. If you provide a regeneration boon to someone else, the amount of health they regenerate depends on their own amount of +healing, not yours. Example of a Guardian’s ability to apply regeneration is the mace’s symbol (#3) and ‘Hold the Line’.

Are you sure about that? I just now tested this to see if it was true. My regeneration heals me and my target for 311 hp per sec. And the person I tested it on has 0 healing power while I had 1600+.

What might occur is other players regeneration is taking priority over the one you are giving. So it gives the illusion that regeneration is based solely upon the receivers healing power and the not the provider.

Aza.2105:

Rangersix.1754:

d) The regeneration boon does not scale with your own gear. If you provide a regeneration boon to someone else, the amount of health they regenerate depends on their own amount of +healing, not yours. Example of a Guardian’s ability to apply regeneration is the mace’s symbol (#3) and ‘Hold the Line’.

Are you sure about that? I just now tested this to see if it was true. My regeneration heals me and my target for 311 hp per sec. And the person I tested it on has 0 healing power while I had 1600+.

What might occur is other players regeneration is taking priority over the one you are giving. So it gives the illusion that regeneration is based solely upon the receivers healing power and the not the provider.

Hmm, you’re right I suppose. There are other abilities with similar names that I think I’m mixing it up with, I’ll remove it unless I can prove otherwise.

Rangersix.1754:

Aza.2105:

Rangersix.1754:

d) The regeneration boon does not scale with your own gear. If you provide a regeneration boon to someone else, the amount of health they regenerate depends on their own amount of +healing, not yours. Example of a Guardian’s ability to apply regeneration is the mace’s symbol (#3) and ‘Hold the Line’.

Are you sure about that? I just now tested this to see if it was true. My regeneration heals me and my target for 311 hp per sec. And the person I tested it on has 0 healing power while I had 1600+.

What might occur is other players regeneration is taking priority over the one you are giving. So it gives the illusion that regeneration is based solely upon the receivers healing power and the not the provider.

Hmm, you’re right I suppose. There are other abilities with similar names that I think I’m mixing it up with, I’ll remove it unless I can prove otherwise.

Try it yourself, don’t take my word for it.

Also, while I agree with a lot of your post. Somethings I don’t. For the most part healing is a good stat, just not in pve. Many of the guardian skills scale well with healing, some like AH do not. Tarsius has a great chart he created that shows how skills scale with healing power. Its pretty nice:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As5Q5haUqZ8edHJPaGhRNk9BN2VWaWw4QzByamtXNXc&usp=sharing#gid=0

Regeneration that you apply uses your healing power, but it only starts ticking after other people’s regeneration effects wear off that were applied before your regeneration (at least I believe that’s how it goes). Regeneration also scales very well with healing power.

Empower, Regeneration, and Selfless Daring aren’t the only things which scale nicely with healing power either. Off the top of my head, Orb of Light scales extremely well with healing power, Heal Area from ToC scales nicely with healing power, so does Healing Breeze, Virtue of Resolve (active), and Writ of the Merciful.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Regeneration that you apply uses your healing power, but it only starts ticking after other people’s regeneration effects wear off that were applied before your regeneration (at least I believe that’s how it goes). Regeneration also scales very well with healing power.

Empower, Regeneration, and Selfless Daring aren’t the only things which scale nicely with healing power either. Off the top of my head, Orb of Light scales extremely well with healing power, Heal Area from ToC scales nicely with healing power, so does Healing Breeze, Virtue of Resolve (active), and Writ of the Merciful.

Zealous Blade and Faithful Strike.

Also, Writ of the Merciful is quite good. If you stack two symbols on top of each other it doubles the output of WoM. With a decent amount of healing power, one can give the group 400+ healing per tick.

Sigil of Water and Rune of Dolyak also scale well with healing power. With 1400+ healing power, sigil of water does 600 hp procs every 5secs or so. Rune of the Dolyak gives around 85+ health per sec, turning it to another mango pie.

Thanks for the input, guys!

I realize that currently, pve currently rotates almost entirely around the “bring zerk everything, stack properly, dodge properly, kill it before it kills you” mindset, but I was hoping to find something that was a little less..bland, I guess?

But maybe PvE’s just not the right place for that. What about as part of a WvW zerg, then? (I know you mentioned healing is okay in sPvP, but I’ve never really ventured there yet, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I’m good enough to hold my own in pvp anyway.)

Would it be at all useful (vague, I guess, since technically anything is useful in wvw, /somewhere/) to aim for a supporting role again with mace/shield+staff, but 20066? Fiery wrath to make up for some lost damage, but otherwise, all three Writs, UC/master of consecrations, shielded mind?

Grabbing as much celestial stuff as I can find seems to set me at 800-900 healing power, which is ~1k heal per roll, ~160 per tick from WoM, and ~550 or so from Sigil of Water. Assuming that I’m not attempting to get up in people’s faces and play it safe from staff range, maybe this could contribute without feeling as if I’m leeching off other people’s efforts?

Zealot’s gear should work nicely on a healer guardian in WvW (wish it was usable in PvP), although I don’t think using a mace with it is the best idea since you’d likely be rather squishy due to zealot’s not offering much self-survivability. I’d personally use a scepter&focus/torch and a staff, support at a safe (mid-long) range while dealing decent damage with the scepter, and only get close when I need to. The staff goes nicely with the scepter too since it allows you to kite with it better via SoS (#3) and LoW (#5).

This should work nicely: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdWl8ApXoFDxeI0ENR8gkd5xprKA2Xj2F-TVyGABAcCAwTJ4Q7PwmmgKV+l7hAIS9ATq+DBPBgAAIA3sObzdG4n/8n/8n/sf+zfuzduzSB4syI-w
You can make alterations as you see fit (eg. swapping out Consecrated Ground for UC, swapping one tome elite for the other, and so on).

A mace-user should probably run cleric’s gear (or celestial maybe) since it offers some more survivability besides healing power, whereas the intention behind zealot’s gear is probably more to support via healing and still deal a good amount of damage (think mage/healer hybrid).

In a WvW zerg it probably won’t matter much what you run since numbers and organization trumps anything else. A larger organized guild group wouldn’t let you run this kind of healing build either I don’t think.

So yeah, if you want to run that build for WvW zergs then go ahead, but you aren’t going to serve some kind of dedicated role, you are still going to “bring zerk everything, stack properly, dodge properly, kill it before it kills you”.

When I run my healing style guardian, I use magi armor, clerics everything else, 0/0/4/6/4 like you had, made/shield+staff, with water sigils, monk runes, and a sigil of benevolence.

I feel it performs best in pug zergs (and you could afford to take it into pug dungeons, at least ones that don’t have read). Between an absolute resolution’d battle presence, regeneration, and everything else I bring, 5 lucky people nearby are getting nearly 1k HP’s, with quite a few others having little green number clouds rain all over. You won’t be doing damage, but I’ve seen it increase the survivability of my groups heavily in prolonged fights, which we seem to run into often.

If you love it, and care for it, and tell it it’s pretty, it’ll work out for you.

I currently run this in our 5 man group.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApeWl8ApZotCxXI8DNRCRl5M8fYnBtQZeZA0AA-TFCDABHqEUq9H0S5HAnAh90ngp6PBcICm4JAEA4AIc/9AHf8xHf8xd8x/e8v/WKAv2CA-w

Imo guardian healing isnt that good except for the elite tome and the aoe heal metitation with teleport, and proly healing breeze.
I always saw guardian acting more like a protection monk while healing is suposed to be within water eles and other classes waterfields since even engi can get is own waterfield blast.

Honestly ive been dabbling with a nomads guardian in my WvW team. Its actually very effective since you have the tankiness from the toughness and vitality. Yes the healing power doesnt scale great but once you get to 900-1000 its the optimal level. Boon duration also really helps. Perma regen and high protection up time, long might stacks with empower. Selfless daring and sigil of renewal give quite a chunk of sustain for your front line.

What is suprising is that because of the very long stability up time you can run healing breeze and heal 5 allies for 9k hp on a 40 sec CD and not worry about getting interupted.

Aeolus.3615:

Imo guardian healing isnt that good except for the elite tome and the aoe heal metitation with teleport, and proly healing breeze.
I always saw guardian acting more like a protection monk while healing is suposed to be within water eles and other classes waterfields since even engi can get is own waterfield blast.

Hmmmm I’m not sure I can entirely agree, though I can see how you are comparing guardian to a protection monk. My opinion is most players look at healing the wrong way:

• They try to compare it to traditional healers found in mmos

In traditional mmos, healers generally play a passive/back line role. They do not attack but their entire focus is on healing. Healing is a direct counter to damage. You can be hit for 7k, but the healer can heal for 7k.

In gw2, healing takes a active role. Most heals involve being active in some form, while few allow you to sit back and heal. When I say active I mean that you are actively participating in combat, hitting the mob or player. One example of a active heal is the auto attack for mace or staff ele with water attunement. Many skills and weapons follow this pattern in some way or form.

What is interesting about tome of courage is it allows you to become a traditional healer, albeit for a very short duration. This would be a direct example of a passive role, with tome up you can just sit back and heal. But this type of play style is very rare in the game.

• Most associate healing being bad because it doesn’t produce large numbers similar to what is found in dps

The way I see healing in gw2 is a form of mitigation along side of protection and aegis. I view it as a mechanic used to fill in the intervals when defensive skills, boons, and dodge are on cooldown. I do not see it as a form of mitigation that directly counters damage but a form of mitigation that alleviates it.

One of the strongest perceived heals in game is healing signet, but looking at how much it heals per second (362 per sec), its not very large compared to how much damage a class can dish out in the same time frame. But over time in conjunction with other defensive mechanics mitigates a lot of damage. Guardian has similar and often times greater abilities. Zealous blade with healing power provides significant mitigation. So does selfless daring, VoR with absolute resolution.

Tarsius has a great chart exploring guardian healing. I would recommend everyone take a look at it if they have not already.

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

With their new water trait, some people say that they out heal guardians. Even if they do, I don’t feel it really matters. Since it takes much more than raw healing to sustain a player/s in combat.

I do the 0/0/4/6/4 on a cleric guardian with water runes, will prolly switch to monk. Use in wvw. Pretty cool on keeping your zerg up and going. Use staff and mace shield. Then switch traits around for two handed and hammer chill when i swap mace shield for hammer to knock people around. Tome of courage great for massive healing spike and keeping your flame ram guys up under heavy fire.

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Just the fact that they drop waterfields, makes them infinity more useful than a ‘healing’ Guardian.

Rangersix.1754:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Just the fact that they drop waterfields, makes them infinity more useful than a ‘healing’ Guardian.

Maybe in a big WvW zerg or with someone who can reliably spam blast finishers (most cannot as far as I’m aware of), otherwise, not in your wildest dreams. Not to mention one would have to use their typically limited blast finishers which could have been used on other fields (or already have been and are thus on cooldown).

Healing Breeze alone outheals like six water blast finishers. Not that a healer guardian would only support and sustain allies by healing, as Aza pointed out.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Rangersix.1754:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Just the fact that they drop waterfields, makes them infinity more useful than a ‘healing’ Guardian.

Maybe in a big WvW zerg or with someone who can reliably spam blast finishers (most cannot as far as I’m aware of), otherwise, not in your wildest dreams. Not to mention one would have to use their typically limited blast finishers which could have been used on other fields (or already have been and are thus on cooldown).

Healing Breeze alone outheals like six water blast finishers. Not that a healer guardian would only support and sustain allies by healing, as Aza pointed out.

Well in a zerg water fields work well if you have a large group of people who are all on voip to coordinate blast finishers. But the way people tend to illustrate water fields is:

• They have a infinite duration
• They have non existent cooldowns
• There are infinite blast finishers to go around

None of this is true though. But since no one has measured water field heals in regards to durations (they vary) and individual class/weapon set blast finishers then its very hard to estimate how much or how little healing they do. Furthermore, its (or can be) a cross profession mechanic.

- Multiple waterfields can be dropped.
- Many classes possess over blast finishers with short cooldowns, Guardian included.
- Water fields have an extremely large base heal, completely eclipsing many other heals.
- Other heals have (large) cooldowns too, some (like regeneration) are tied to intervals while waterfields are not.

Rangersix.1754:

- Multiple waterfields can be dropped.
- Many classes possess over blast finishers with short cooldowns, Guardian included.
- Water fields have an extremely large base heal, completely eclipsing many other heals.
- Other heals have (large) cooldowns too, some (like regeneration) are tied to intervals while waterfields are not.

A water fields base healing is 1320, if one had 1600 healing power then the healing of the field scales up to 1640. That’s not extremely large, its average and it scales average. The thing is when you and others compare water fields to lets say a guardian heal. You are comparing dozens of people blasting vs one healing guardian. Then of course water fields would out heal it.

If you compare them 1:1, that is to say one person blasting vs one healing guardian then no a water field doesn’t even come close to a healing guardian. But if you want to compare it 12:1 or even 50:1 then certainly a whole zerg of players blasting would be better. So in that respect your comparison would contain many half truths and is a bit deceptive.

A skill like healing breeze out heals a water field blast, 50 guardians using healing breeze would out heal 50 people using a blast finisher in a water field. But 50 guardians running healing breeze would be impractical. So I think it would be better for you to say not that water fields out heal guardian heals but they are more practical to utilize than to have a zerg of guardians specialized to run healing breeze and other heals.

Lucente.5071:

Honestly ive been dabbling with a nomads guardian in my WvW team. Its actually very effective since you have the tankiness from the toughness and vitality. Yes the healing power doesnt scale great but once you get to 900-1000 its the optimal level. Boon duration also really helps. Perma regen and high protection up time, long might stacks with empower. Selfless daring and sigil of renewal give quite a chunk of sustain for your front line.

What is suprising is that because of the very long stability up time you can run healing breeze and heal 5 allies for 9k hp on a 40 sec CD and not worry about getting interupted.

Just wanted to post this video of my Monk guardian, front line sustain in WvW is crazy. It can be done.