Guild Wars 2

Hi i am rolling a support guardian for WvsW and was wondering if healing power is stat to go ,since you need alot of it to have minor boost in healing for some skills.

So healing power yes or no?

I can provide some information that could help you out. I did a test to see what influence healing power had on the stated healing values shown in the description for Virtue of Resolve and Signet of Resolve at level 80. I did this by adding subsequent pieces of gear with healing power. The following were my results:

Heal Power/Virtue Heal/Signet Heal
0/84/8150
101/90/8276
168/94/8360
236/98/8445
315/103/8544
494/114/8768
640/122/8950
863/136/9229

My own conclusions from this is that healing power doesn’t really give the sort of boosts to healing I would expect for the investment I’ve given to it in gear. I’m full exotic clerics with lower QL sapphire jewelry. What you do see is that the healing power increases linearly.

It’s not quite that simple – healing power only really comes into it’s own if you are traited to take maximum benefit from it

In other words exploiting synergies using various combinations of Altruistic Healing/Monks Focus with Empowering Might, Selfless Daring (good if you’re slotted/traited for endurance recovery), Writ of the Merciful, and Zealous blade.

Take a look at Altruistic Healing when combined with Staff’s Empower skill #4 for example.

Riellan.2590:

Hi i am rolling a support guardian for WvsW and was wondering if healing power is stat to go ,since you need alot of it to have minor boost in healing for some skills.

So healing power yes or no?

It depends honestly for me healing power is worth it and and it isn’t worth it. If you are traiting and or using sigils to boost healing power so that you can heal others with healing skills then it’s a waste, if you are boosting healing power for regen effects for youself it’s extremely worth it. I use AC dungeon armor and all my gear and such are set for Power, Toughness, and Vitality. My traits are 0/5/5/30/30, combine that with the runes on the AC armor (Superior Rune of the Monk), I end up with a fairly nice buff to my healing skill. This though has proven to not help a great deal accept for with my Virtue of Resolve passive, Skills like Save Yourself and Hold the line, and my Sigil of Water as well as my healing from Symbols. Direct heals don’t seem to get a great deal of boost from Healing Skill, but the minor heal over time stuff seems to be greatly affected.

I know this for a fact, without the boost to my healing skill my ability to survive takes a huge hit as I’ve come to rely greatly on my regens and my symbols to keep me up and fighting.

Though this is from the perspective of a dungeon runner.

I think the best answer is that it all kind of adds up, but essentially there is no burst healing except for the Guardian with AH, especially with Staffs #4.

If you run full Cleric gear with ~1400 hp, and pick up the traits all Symbols Heal you can seen methods to keep regen up on your party. I use mace/sheild and staff. A better choice would be mace/focus and staff, but I use the former for different reasons.

Essentially, you use #3 on Staff to provide regen/condition removal on your front line. Toss your orb, #2. Dodge roll in if need be, switch to mace and lay down another light field with does the same as Staff and cycle through mace skills x2. Dodge roll out and repeat. Toss in Healing Breeze when needed and it works ok.

I run the Rune of Daiwya(sp), and it helps with regen. Others use Runes to prolong protection, both are good.

Bottom line……mitigation/regen in this game does not keep up with dps. Once ppl exhaust dodge rolls and all other forms of mitigation the party is over, no matter what spec you are.

Take a look at what happens in dungeons if you miss time a dodge roll, you eat a ton of damage. The paltry regen in this game is not a hard counter to that. Now imagine the same thing in WVW.

Burst damage far exceeds any for of healing and its why, IMO WVW is a bunch of ranged stand off Tauren Mill WOWesque sillyness.

Warhammers method, sad to say is better for zerg vrs zerg fighting.

@Godorn

Mitigation/Regen in dungeons does keep up with the DPS. I can sit there and go toe to toe with bosses without needing to dodge anymore. Again, I have no idea how this would play out in WvW, but saying it doesn’t work in dungeons is false because I can even sit there toe to toe with Kohler while he has me stacked with weakness and doing his spin attack in my face while I continue to wail on him like nothing happened.

Even the screams only take me to half life now lol which quickly goes back up.

While I don’t know how it plays out in WvW, in dungeons it works quite well. It requires Rune, Sigil, Armor, Weapon, Trait, and Ability synergy.

Thnx all for your opinions ,what i seen so far is that healing power in not so good and i shoud not add bunch of it ,might still take couple of pcs on armor ,like with all stats adding bunch of it kills efficiency.
Anyone has maybe build that focus more on buffing and protecting people,since healing is not that good ?

Healing power helps in PvE content as GrayGhost mentioned, we can literally face tank/heal the party.

In WvW, i suggest you forget about it and go tough/vit, it’ll provide you more survivability than 1400+ healing power. The burst Dmg and the numerous conditions WILL greatly outmatch your HoTs and Direct Heals, not to mention the numerous Controls(Daze/Stun etc) flying around.

In sPvP, i also recommend going tough/vit, i realize sPvP has more burst damage going around compared to WvW.

You might be able to face tank a few instances, but try that with others and you will get 2 shot. Then look at the value of regen with heal power and tell me they are commensurate.

Yes, you can site a few places where its possible, and I agree its possible. Now try it in a few Inquisition runs. Specifically, eat the damage of the blue orbs while face tanking a boss.

For WVW, look at the damage of what some thief builds are doing and tell me that heal power scales as well or that the GS nerf was justified. Its certainly a conundrum from my perspective.

The problem with Healing Power is that except for selfless daring (healing power * 100% + 129) and the active on Virtue of Resolve (healing power * 75% + 1625), the scale factor is bad e.g. 7.5% on Writ of the Merciful, 6% on Virtue of Resolve passive (7.5% if you have Absolute Resolution), 12.5% on regen etc…

So unless you stack vigor, +40% endurance regen food, and superior runes of energy so you can dodge around like a monkey it’s not going to help much. You would take less damage and kill faster with damage stats + CCs + block/prot.

That’s why Monk’s Focus is so nice for sPvP: it scales like 10% + 1960. It means if you take Monk’s Focus you can just take damage stats (and some tough/vit) and forego healing power completely and not lose much.

If you go full cleric you can have perma +700hp per second through VoR, regen and Writ of the Merciful, but then you’ve just kittening yourself in terms of damage. The tradeoff is rarely worth it. Water eles heal better. Buffing allies is more efficient than healing as a Guardian imo, and you can do that without foregoing damage as much.

The only time I use cleric trinkets on top of Knight’s armor is for dungeons for pseudo-tanking. With enough toughness and a little vit so you don’t get one-shot, healing power becomes a lot better than vitality for your EHP. EHP is linear in both Toughness and vitality in this game so they are interchangeable, subject to not getting one-shot and having regular condition removal. In most of PvE including most dungeon that holds true. But EHP increases faster with toughness than vitality if you take healing into account.

So I’d say maybe invest in healing power depending very much on your build if you want to support and/or tank in dungeons but otherwise it’s not worth it.

I like it personally.

Cleric – Armor (5 water runes, 2 monk runes for effective 30% passive boon duration)
Amulet – Valk
Backslot – Cleric
Acessories – Cleric
Rings – Berserker
Weaps – Valk (both sets for a DAoC style weaponless(stats don’t change when swapping to off-set/tank/dps) template)

Altruistic healing coupled with might on crit and honor 12 (passive heal virtue becomes aoe) mace skill 2 and hold the line. All I see are heals flying off on friendlies changing W3 battles and helping dungeon runs allowing for tanking up front.
Understandably so the system can be improved upon and needs a large adjustment
But what works for 1 person will not work for another due to the biggest game changer of all….playstyle.

It really shines with as much boon duration you can get and are comfortable with. +50% always up for me, well almost always (omnoms ain’t cheap!!)

i run with shaman gear :2x superior rune of water 25heal/15% boon duration
2x superior rune of monk 25heal/15% boon duration
2x major rune of sanctuary 15 vitality/10% boon duration
Chocolate Omnomberry Cream (20% boon duration
i got +60% from gear and +20% from traits: i use 0/0/30/20/20 if i go tanky support
or 0/0/10/30/30 if i go full heal booner
+80% or +90% boon duration is very good and make more heal if i go only healing stat any skills have good heal with high healing but other is crappy if with +1300 healing have +300/450 heal if anet make better scale with healing power more people will play support

As somebody mentioned, it’s all about playstyle. Some people are more offensive minded, and THAT’S OK. Others go for what is theoretically more “effective.” I don’t like number-crunching, but I do like what happens to me and the party when I have over 1500+ in healing due to gear and Sigil. Simply put, healing power makes the game enjoyable to me, and it’s always nice to be useful to your allies/party (I don’t even use altruistic healing, but more my passive heals/shouts/blinds/blocks/signet, the latter healing for PROBABLY 80% health.)

I do believe that most people are not finding too much use in healing power, because it doesn’t match the way they play. In that case, extreme healing power will always “suck” to them, no matter how awesome it is to my guildies, random allies, and myself. There are not too many wrong answers, but healing power is certainly not worthless in any way or fashion-if you don’t like it, don’concentrate on it, pure and simple.

Healing power in general is a bad stat simply because of how it scales. We’re literally talking, like, an extra 1k healed on one or two skills and negligible gains in everything else, in exchange for potentially half your damage potential, half your armor, ability to crit, etc.

I do know people who literally do not want to do anything but heal (they might as well not even bother attacking since they do so little damage anyway) and that’s fine, but it’s not optimal either.

I think there’s a difference in simply not liking healing power and it’s true effectiveness in comparison with using those stats for vit or toughness and how much survivabiliity is offered. I tested this out quite a bit and found that the increase guardians get from healing really doesn’t help as much as using those stats to increase toughness or vit, if you’re looking at the survivability side of things.

From what i experience, for players who are Healers in previous MMOs(like me), +Boon Duration works much better than Healing Power.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Healing power in general is a bad stat simply because of how it scales. We’re literally talking, like, an extra 1k healed on one or two skills and negligible gains in everything else, in exchange for potentially half your damage potential, half your armor, ability to crit, etc.

I do know people who literally do not want to do anything but heal (they might as well not even bother attacking since they do so little damage anyway) and that’s fine, but it’s not optimal either.

I do not mean to offend, but what you are saying is an exaggeration-I don’t lose “half” my offense or armor by emphasizing healing, and my ability to crit is pretty high (30 Radiance). Sure, my offense is lower than most (at least most of my guildies like offense on their Guardian builds), but it’s decent enough, and more importantly, geared toward ally support, and I don’t easily fall at all. Further, perhaps those who you think “only heal” are helping you and your party in ways that are not easily appreciated, and that is valid too (I.E. what they do is not “optimal” to YOU, but to them, it may very well be.)

Obtena.7952:

I can provide some information that could help you out. I did a test to see what influence healing power had on the stated healing values shown in the description for Virtue of Resolve and Signet of Resolve at level 80. I did this by adding subsequent pieces of gear with healing power. The following were my results:

Heal Power/Virtue Heal/Signet Heal
0/84/8150
101/90/8276
168/94/8360
236/98/8445
315/103/8544
494/114/8768
640/122/8950
863/136/9229

My own conclusions from this is that healing power doesn’t really give the sort of boosts to healing I would expect for the investment I’ve given to it in gear. I’m full exotic clerics with lower QL sapphire jewelry. What you do see is that the healing power increases linearly.

You should try stacking healing power because 893 Healing Power is ridiculously low amount of healing power so there is nothing to conclude with such low number.

My guardian is around 1600 Healing Power and my own conclusion is that healing power is really worth it if you stack it on each piece of your stuff otherwise forget it.
My regeneration tick is around 360-380 (and i can maintain constant regeneration), empower is around 3000, dodge around 1500, staff skill2 around 1500, heeling breeze around 3600, bow of truth above 4000.

So yes full healing build works and you can heal in this game but you need full healing power stuff/ full healing build. Any hybrid build/stuff does really poor healing.

the state isn’t completly useless but the scaling SUCKS. i wouldnt go out of my way for it.

Tested yesterday after I read this post. At 1400 healing power, which includes 30 points in Honor. VOR increased benefit from the tactic in Virtues was 219 vrs 191 w/o it. Its garbage.

Healing power with a symbol build is marginal, but it won’t save anyone in pvp. Dodge rolling gets increased benifit also, and may be our best healing ability. What a joke.

Its no wonder that I see all the warriors in pvp using a ranged weapon. Heal power is a joke when you see thieves burst damage exceed 8K and on some classes its much higher.

Godorn.2931:

Tested yesterday after I read this post. At 1400 healing power, which includes 30 points in Honor. VOR increased benefit from the tactic in Virtues was 219 vrs 191 w/o it. Its garbage.

Healing power with a symbol build is marginal, but it won’t save anyone in pvp. Dodge rolling gets increased benifit also, and may be our best healing ability. What a joke.

Its no wonder that I see all the warriors in pvp using a ranged weapon. Heal power is a joke when you see thieves burst damage exceed 8K and on some classes its much higher.

Healing is garbage for YOU-it clearly doesn’t suit you. What you use probably wouldn’t suit my playstyle, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it garbage, because I respect people’s choice to play whichever the heck the way they want. Go DPS (a fair choice)-I’ll go heal, thank you very much.

The problem is that GW2 is a team game. If you’re running a crap build then all your teammates suffer as well. And healing power is the cornerstone of every crap build.

Healing power literally only affects two things to any extent that’s even noticeable: regeneration and roll healing. That means that unless your entire build is focused on rolling around healing allies, healing power is worthless. Moreover, stacking healing power means you’re not stacking a better stat. Is it worth losing 35% overall damage reduction, or 12k health, or 60% crit rate, just to boost your roll heal by 1k?

If your “playstyle” is stacking a useless stat, then fine, but don’t complain when my “playstyle” is running around aggroing all the mobs in the dungeon so I can speed things up by pulling them all back to the group and killing them all at once instead of one by one, because at least when I do that I usually succeed.

Healing power is not a good status unless you fully devote yourself and gear to it.

Our evades gets ana amazing scale (I believe it is 275 + w/e your healing power!) So you are healing 1 HP per healing you add.

All the others arent really good. Yes, bow of truth scale better and your 40 second CD healing breeze gets some too. But still, if you consider there is no room for glass cannons in a hard explorer path, you’d also agree that there isnt really need for a dedicated healer, as a healing power build actually demands.

So I’d strongly suggest you dont stack it due to poor scaling and you can be more usefull dpsing/tanking – yes you can – /buffing (and buffing, aside restoration, doesnt care about your healing power).

There are a few flaws in the logic presented here.

First of all, people are looking at HP in terms of the heals that it gives to a single target and then judging it as a personal survivability stat. That is a problem because HP isn’t a survivability stat, it’s a support stat. Yes, if you’re talking only about the damage that you yourself are taking and healing, then you’re better off stacking Toughness instead. HP is for builds that have several sources of healing, most of which are area of effect, just like someone shouldn’t be stacking Condition Damage if they only have one source of CD.

As far as scaling goes, there are two main things to look at here. One, the scaling on many abilities is likely low because a lot of abilities are area heals. The amount of healing that HP adds to Mace 1, Mace 2, Writ of the Merciful, Staff 2, Staff 4, Regen boon, etc. is a lot higher than the numbers that it adds to a single person because they’re all capable of healing multiple people at the same time. Put on a Mace/Focus shouter build and tell me that HP isn’t worth it.

You aren’t going to get huge burst heals in this game. That’s not the point, it’s about sustainability and quickly bringing wounded allies back in the fight. Yes, some of the contribution numbers should probably be tweaked, but it’s certainly not worthless. Also, keep in mind that Cleric’s gear still gives a bonus to Power, so damage isn’t completely hosed. There’s no damage-less build in the game.

“You aren’t going to get huge burst heals in this game. That’s not the point, it’s about sustainability and quickly bringing wounded allies back in the fight.”

You do realize that the above statement contradicts itself. However, I think I know what you are trying to say.

The only decent burst healing I have seen is with Staff #4. The problem is that it only useful for the Guardian. The only other thing I came across is using the elite book and its not necessary to stack heal power to get that group heal.

The poor scaling of healing power makes it inadequate for the burst and sustained damage in this game.

You know there is a problem when warriors are all using ranged weapons in WVW in zerg fights.

I suppose the devs belive that what we need is 20 coordinated guardians stacking heal power and dodge rolling at intervals. /sigh.

“I respect people’s choice to play whichever the heck the way they want. Go DPS (a fair choice)-I’ll go heal, thank you very much.”

Its good to know the score before commenting, agree? I never stated anything about your build, got it? I was commenting on my own, which is stacked heal power to 1400.
There is no doubt that heal power has horrid scaling compared to other stats. IMO, its why WVW is a joke.

In all honesty I think right now my Virtue heals me and my party members around me for 103~ or so each second, if I check that over 40 seconds that is 4120 healing, my own “6” heal is healing me for around 8200~ its not all that bad for a free half heal, even if it is spread out over a duration. This is of course with only 300 healing, but when you break it down, I feel it really is worth it, especially when its giving it to my allies, even if it gives it just me to and two others that would be 12360~ healing over 40 seconds.

Not to bad in all honesty, never focused heavily into it however. Lots of little heals soon add up, just don’t get your self killed before it has its value!

Godorn.2931:

There is no doubt that heal power has horrid scaling compared to other stats. IMO, its why WVW is a joke.

I would rather say that your post is a joke than WvW, matter of opinion. Get it ?

“You do realize that the above statement contradicts itself. However, I think I know what you are trying to say.”

It doesn’t contradict itself at all. You don’t need burst heals for the purposes of sustaining people longer in combat, nor do you need them to bring wounded allies back into fighting condition.