Guild Wars 2

So I have been testing Litany of Wrath with a full Meditation DH build, and it seems rather powerful. Litany of Wrath benefits from the meditation bonuses as well as casts Smite Condition when used. I gain about 6-7k healing with a shorter cooldown and faster cast than Shelter, although I do lose the block. On top of that I remove a condition and gain fury for both meditations, 9 seconds total.

Any input is appreciated, I like the heal but if anyone has more experience with the class and has advice I would be grateful.

Litany of Wrath is certainly more competitive than it used to be, and that’s mostly thanks to the sheer amount of synergy it has in meditation builds.

However, shelter is certainly not lacking in synergy either, because there are a lot of guardian traits that are activated on block, which include Communal defenses, Hunter’s Fortification, Defender’s Dogma, Invigorated bulwark, Retributive Armor, Might of the Protector and Amplified Wrath. It’s quite a hard healing skill to beat, thanks to its 2 second block and its great synergy with on block traits.

I’d say which healing skill you choose would depend greatly on your trait setup. You’d have to weigh the pro’s and cons and see which benefits you the most overall. If you have a lot of on block traits equipped, then naturally shelter might be helping you out a lot more than you realize at a first glance. There is a reason it’s been considered meta for so long.

If you don’t find yourself needing the block, either because you don’t have many on block traits or are surviving fine without the extra defense, then the utility and dps offered by LoR is certainly useful. In terms of PvP though, where enemies will more actively avoid your attacks, I think LoR is less useful. The 2 second block from Shelter, on the other hand, is incredibly useful in PvP.

I run hambow guardian and I play pure meditations, along with LoW.
It has one of the best synergies among all out traits, it has low cooldown and really nice heals but 25% damage converted into healing feels a little weak, but maybe that’s just me.
Even then, during team fights when mighty blow or true shot crits, the heals are real !

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

Eh, from what I’ve seen, guards not running shelter do just fine. The healing trap saw plenty of action in the pro league.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

Eh, from what I’ve seen, guards not running shelter do just fine. The healing trap saw plenty of action in the pro league.

That’s mostly because it offers Stealth with Trapper Runes in addition to its Blind and Daze on trigger, so it can sort of simulate Shelter’s effect. If it only healed for a large amount of HP, I doubt it would be a consideration.

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

You are right about that, always evading and blocking attacks is better than soaking it in but it all depends on the situation.
I’ve spent all 4 months almost every day doing mostly pvp on guardian, trying all the fancy builds and constructing my own.
Shelter is great indeed, but 6 seconds between heals sometimes is really a big gap that gets you killed.
Let’s say that we run marauder stats. Shelter heals for about 4500 health while traited medis with smite condis heals for about 5500 and gives you 6 seconds of 25% damage converted into healing (which in a mix with AoE blast crit spree, it might get + 2k more heals or even more, depends on how many enemies there are both in pvp and pve), as well as shorter cooldown.
As I used shelter after some fights when I needed a desperate heal, I somehow felt like I wasted that skill but LoW I could pop anytime and be fine with it.
Once you pop shelter, you will just get that health dropped down in seconds if you get unlucky, but with LoW (traited) as a partial dps utility, it’s great for counter attack, you get more fury and pop some stab in it so you don’t get CC’ed while healing with that 25%. (though It sometimes feels weak, it might be 50% damage converted to healing :>).

It’s a different story with a block bunker build though.

Soryuju.8164:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

Eh, from what I’ve seen, guards not running shelter do just fine. The healing trap saw plenty of action in the pro league.

That’s mostly because it offers Stealth with Trapper Runes in addition to its Blind and Daze on trigger, so it can sort of simulate Shelter’s effect. If it only healed for a large amount of HP, I doubt it would be a consideration.

You’re forgetting that Shelter can get easily interupted now, thanks to all the unblockable CC effects certain classes have. I would hardly ever have Shelter interrupted prepatch but now it’s every other game for me. Especially when I’m against a Reaper.

Right there, is half the reason why people don’t use Shelter in the competitive scene. That and Trap heals is ridiculous if played correctly; precasting the heal off for a chance it can get off cd and casted again.

Saiyan.1704:

Soryuju.8164:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

Eh, from what I’ve seen, guards not running shelter do just fine. The healing trap saw plenty of action in the pro league.

That’s mostly because it offers Stealth with Trapper Runes in addition to its Blind and Daze on trigger, so it can sort of simulate Shelter’s effect. If it only healed for a large amount of HP, I doubt it would be a consideration.

You’re forgetting that Shelter can get easily interupted now, thanks to all the unblockable CC effects certain classes have. I would hardly ever have Shelter interrupted prepatch but now it’s every other game for me. Especially when I’m against a Reaper.

Right there, is half the reason why people don’t use Shelter in the competitive scene. That and Trap heals is ridiculous if played correctly; precasting the heal off for a chance it can get off cd and casted again.

Unless some skill facts aren’t updated, Reapers haven’t actually gotten any unblockable CC’s that Necros didn’t already use regularly. So long as I don’t try to use Shelter when the Reaper’s got their Staff out, I don’t usually have any issues. Nothing the Reaper has in Shroud is unblockable (Fear included), so you’ve got a free pass with Shelter whenever that’s up, which is quite often. When they’ve got Scepter/Warhorn out and I’m already close, I typically run or dodge directly through them before attempting to heal. The time it takes them to react, reposition their camera to face me, and then channel Wail of Doom’s 1/2 second cast typically buys me plenty of time to cast Shelter.

Druid, Chrono, and Scrapper also don’t have access to any new unblockable CC’s, as far as I’m aware, and they make up half of the new meta. You need to watch out for other DH’s with Test of Faith and Deflecting Shot, and Heralds that are either condi-based or running Staff (but only when they’re in Shiro and after they cast Phase Traversal). You also need to not heal when someone’s got a Shocking Aura up, but you’ve got full control over that one. I don’t think there’s too much else new. There’s way more general CC than there used to be in the game, sure, but only a small fraction of the new stuff is unblockable. I’ve gotten interrupted with Shelter a little more often than I used to, but I haven’t found it to be a consistent problem.

I’ll also just mention that the majority of power-based Heralds in both the NA and EU league matches recently were running the Soothing Bastion trait in addition to the Shield. Personally, if I knew I couldn’t rely on blocks to protect me from most CC, I wouldn’t opt to take a trait that’s going to randomly root me whenever I get low on HP.

I’m not saying Purification doesn’t do its job, by the way – the thread wasn’t even about it to begin with. The league results show that it’s obviously the heal of choice for DH Trapper builds (though that’s all we’ve seen so far), but my original point was that Litany of Wrath isn’t going to get the same results just because Purification happens to be working out for people. A high heal + Fury is nice, but the abundance of CC in the game now works directly against Litany, and without burst mitigation from Shelter or Purification, you’re just asking to get lit up when you run it.

You can interrupt shelter during the start up animation. It does happen enough to be annoying. I’ve recently swapped to trap heal with trapper runes to help with my sustain.

Shelter getting interrupted at the beginning is likely you getting shock aura’d when traited with Smite Condi.