Guild Wars 2

In this game except for lore and personal preferences, there is no reason to play anything other than a human for a guardian: Prayer to Dwayna is the single most powerful healing skill in the game for that profession.

All classes have a healing strictly superior to Prayer to Dwayna except Guardian. What helps me say that? Math.

Let’s consider the two cases: 0 healing power and 300 healing power (full line for that profession).

When I speak about hit points per second, I speak on an average if used one right after the other. Also, I will consider self heal only because I’m selfish; so if a skill heals other players I will count only what happens to me. Also, a dictionary:
- “hpow”: healing power
- “hp”: hit points
- “hps”: hit points per second

Guardian

Healing Breeze recharges for 40 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 6525 hp = 163.125 hps
- 300 hpow: 6825 hp = 170.625 hps
Shelter recharges for 30 seconds:
- 0 hpow: kitten hp = 151.83 hps
- 300 hpow: 4765 hp = 158.33 hps
Signet of Resolve recharges for 40 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 8150 hp = 203.75 hps
- 300 hpow: 8525 hp = 213.125 hps

Human

Prayer to Dwayna recharges for 30 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 6520 hp = 217.33 hps
- 300 hpow: 6775 hp = 225.83 hps

One could argue that those guardian skills are useful! Yes some are, but Prayer to Dwayna is the best. Period.

- Healing Breeze: sorry but this skill shouldn’t even exist. Everybody should provide his own heal. We all have a heal slot, I see no reason that I should take waste this slot so that people don’t get killed. I provide enough boons as a guardian to be egotistic on this one. If it were a shout I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not. The heal over time is comparable to Shelter. A bit better, but not that much. Anyways it’s unusable as you have to manually target the guys you want to heal. Just no.

- Shelter: A nice option. Being able to block some attacks is great in some instances. For instance, you double-dodged in front of Alpha and you’re now out of endurance. Well, you got a get out of trouble card with this one as you can regain your endurance while skill evading his attack. But the drawback is a very low heal, the lowest of the game actually if we discard the extremely rare case where a necro get downed immediately after Well of Blood or if he jumps out immediately after cast. But hey, once you can dodge properly and you only take the “normal” hits, this skills serves to nothing.

- Signet of Resolve: Another nice option. Over time, you get healed in the same range as Prayer to Dwayna. In terms of pure heal, this is the best shot for a guardian without race consideration. The big downside of this skill is the recharge time. 40 seconds, compared to the 30s of Prayer to Dwayna. As a guardian, I prefer to heal for less in one time, but having the option to heal sooner. Exactly what prayer to Dwayna does. Our alternate ways of healing are good enough to allow this. But hey once the signet is recharged, you can heal your conditions…

- Prayer to Dwayna: it’s a vanilla skill, granted. Simple but efficient. Get healed for a fair amount of life, and only 30s later that good skill is available again.

Also, for a good guardian build, the other racial skills are marginal, yes all the skills, not exclusively the heal skills. So yes, if you’re smart, you should roll a human for your guardian only for this skill. It’s sad to see, but true.

I play a Norn guardian for nearly a year now and I’m used to switch between Shelter and Signet of Resolve depending on my gameplay. I’m sooo disappointed when I face the fact that I cannot access the best heal skill available for a guardian.

Edit: fixed a math issue.

Can’t you trait yourself for -20% signet cooldown in radiance to trim resolve down to 32s?

colesy.8490:

Can’t you trait yourself for -20% signet cooldown in radiance to trim resolve down to 32s?

You can, but you also miss out on builds like increase spirit weapon by 50%, or master of concecration. 0/0/30/30/10 is probably more superior to 0/10/30/30/0 if you have human heal.

colesy.8490:

Can’t you trait yourself for -20% signet cooldown in radiance to trim resolve down to 32s?

Indeed, I forgot to mention Signet Mastery for Signet of Resolve.

In that case, well… Signet of Resolve becomes your best heal skill. But you’re simply gimping yourself by not picking better traits, except if you take Guanglai Kangyi’s builds which are based on signets.

Prayer to Dwayna sucks period.

Having the bigger heal lets you have the ability to feign being weak to your enemies and pop full health.

Fror.2163:

snip

- Healing Breeze: sorry but this skill shouldn’t even exist. Everybody should provide his own heal. We all have a heal slot, I see no reason that I should take waste this slot so that people don’t get killed.

snip

Pretty much all I needed to read here.

Prayer to Dwayna is a good heal. However I feel you are too easily dismissing the condi removal from Signet and the block from Shelter.

I run Shelter for PvP
I run Dwayna for PvE only if Im already satisfied with my condi removal and depending on area of game.
I run Signet if I want the extra condi removal or if I for some reason have signet mastery.

I mean to be honest, PVE is so kitten easy I almost never have the need to pop my heal on cooldown.

Azure Prower.8701:

Prayer to Dwayna sucks period.

Having the bigger heal lets you have the ability to feign being weak to your enemies and pop full health.

Would you care to elaborate? I came with numbers and you discard them like that? Well, you better have a good explanation. Why is any of the guardian skills better than Prayer to Dwayna according to you?

You go full zerker on your warrior character too, don’t you?

I’ll take the signet heal over prayer just because condition removal is pretty handy.

Totally disagreeing, especially for WvW. HPs aren’t the only thing worth taking into account.

Actually there is a reason to play a guardian other than human.

I don’t think the numbers are strong enough for me to change what I want to play, if I like playing it. How many times out of 100 is that one skill going to save me or my party?

It’s like saying don’t play anything that isn’t absolutely the most efficient thing…and yeah some people play that way, but many people don’t…probably most people.

Efficiency in an RPG isn’t as important as being happy with your character in an RPG to a whole lot of people.

Xilo.9567:

Prayer to Dwayna is a good heal. However I feel you are too easily dismissing the condi removal from Signet and the block from Shelter.

I run Shelter for PvP
I run Dwayna for PvE only if Im already satisfied with my condi removal and depending on area of game.
I run Signet if I want the extra condi removal or if I for some reason have signet mastery.

I mean to be honest, PVE is so kitten easy I almost never have the need to pop my heal on cooldown.

In PvP, I agree, I’m really satisfied of Shelter. However Signet and/or Shelter for PvE are too limited and in general, for a good player, Dwayna is better.

Asura all day every day

Vayne.8563:

It’s like saying don’t play anything that isn’t absolutely the most efficient thing…and yeah some people play that way, but many people don’t…probably most people.

Efficiency in an RPG isn’t as important as being happy with your character in an RPG to a whole lot of people.

Yes. Yes yes yes. So much yes. Yes to the thousanth degree. Yes times infinity. Yes. Hai. Si. Yes in other languages. For God’s Sake YES!!!! I cannot Yes this enough. YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

….sorry, the agreement got away from me there.

Fror.2163:

Azure Prower.8701:

Prayer to Dwayna sucks period.

Having the bigger heal lets you have the ability to feign being weak to your enemies and pop full health.

Would you care to elaborate? I came with numbers and you discard them like that? Well, you better have a good explanation. Why is any of the guardian skills better than Prayer to Dwayna according to you?

Because it brings nothing to the table. I have a human guardian and have never touched it after trying it out for the first time.

99% of the time. You’re not going to be using your heal every time it comes off cool down. Only when you need it.

Fror.2163:

Xilo.9567:

Prayer to Dwayna is a good heal. However I feel you are too easily dismissing the condi removal from Signet and the block from Shelter.

I run Shelter for PvP
I run Dwayna for PvE only if Im already satisfied with my condi removal and depending on area of game.
I run Signet if I want the extra condi removal or if I for some reason have signet mastery.

I mean to be honest, PVE is so kitten easy I almost never have the need to pop my heal on cooldown.

In PvP, I agree, I’m really satisfied of Shelter. However Signet and/or Shelter for PvE are too limited and in general, for a good player, Dwayna is better.

You also can’t use racial skills in PvP so it’s a non-issue

Vayne.8563:

Actually there is a reason to play a guardian other than human.

I don’t think the numbers are strong enough for me to change what I want to play, if I like playing it. How many times out of 100 is that one skill going to save me or my party?

It’s like saying don’t play anything that isn’t absolutely the most efficient thing…and yeah some people play that way, but many people don’t…probably most people.

Efficiency in an RPG isn’t as important as being happy with your character in an RPG to a whole lot of people.

As I said, I play a norn guardian and I’m very happy with it. But well, I come to min-max now, and in that context, I’m sad to see that I have not the best option available to me and that my racial skills are… funny, yes that’s all: funny. The only racial I ever use is the wurm one to avoid some hits against Old Tom in the Uncategorized fractal, because wall or shield don’t work here. I can use one racial skill for 1 mob I play once every three days in an average. Wow, that’s some racial skill!

Ryuujin.8236:

Fror.2163:

Xilo.9567:

Prayer to Dwayna is a good heal. However I feel you are too easily dismissing the condi removal from Signet and the block from Shelter.

I run Shelter for PvP
I run Dwayna for PvE only if Im already satisfied with my condi removal and depending on area of game.
I run Signet if I want the extra condi removal or if I for some reason have signet mastery.

I mean to be honest, PVE is so kitten easy I almost never have the need to pop my heal on cooldown.

In PvP, I agree, I’m really satisfied of Shelter. However Signet and/or Shelter for PvE are too limited and in general, for a good player, Dwayna is better.

You also can’t use racial skills in PvP so it’s a non-issue

PvP in this case means WvW where you have access to racial skills, ofc.

I did the math. But I still end up using signet. Despite the passive, one single heal is more useful because in reality, you won’t spam heal whenever it’s ready.

Racial skills are supposed to be weaker then regular skills to avoid forcing specific profession/race combo. I understand your message now, nerf Prayer of Dwayna.

Afya.5842:

I did the math. But I still end up using signet. Despite the passive, one single heal is more useful because in reality, you won’t spam heal whenever it’s ready.

No, but it’s better to have it ready after 30s rather than 40s, because you might not be spamming it, but sometimes you just need it after 30s rather than after 40s.

Wolfheart.1938:

I understand your message now, nerf Prayer of Dwayna.

No you don’t understand. I don’t want to nerf Prayer of Dwayna. Playing a guardian Norn, I would like less stupid elite skills and more skills I can actually use more than once every three days.

I was being sarcastic. I play a norn Guardian too and I’m fine with having weak racial skills. If, as you say, Prayer of Dwayna isn’t weak enough, the answer is simple: nerf it

Also worth noting that if you are a norn Guardian you get access to stealth and a huge dash through one of our transformation elites. This comes extremely useful in WvW. So roll a Norn if you want to be a Guardian that plays WvW

After reading this thread, I think Anet should nerf Orr.

I have a human guardian and have never slotted the prayer. I use signet 90% of the time as condition removal is generally good to have in this game. And, as has been mentioned above, how often do you use your heal? In most fights, due to passive healing alone, I often see my hp trend upwards.. When I do need my heal it’s usually a big heal that’s needed. Signet fits perfectly.

Raine.1394:

I have a human guardian and have never slotted the prayer. I use signet 90% of the time as condition removal is generally good to have in this game. And, as has been mentioned above, how often do you use your heal? In most fights, due to passive healing alone, I often see my hp trend upwards.. When I do need my heal it’s usually a big heal that’s needed. Signet fits perfectly.

Fror.2163:

(lot of stuff)

There are a lot of things your calculations do not cover.

The most basic thing you missed is that if you keep healing continuously, most of it is going to get wasted due to overhealing. And Guardians have a lot of heal options, bot passive and active. Personally, when i need to use my healing skill, it means i am really in trouble, and i’d want as big effect as possible – Signet is better for this (and the condition removal alone makes it a valuable skill to have). If i were to consider any different one, it would be Healing Breeze (the fact that you don’t get that helping others can be extremely valuable doesn’t make that skill useless. It just means you are not that suited to the guardian profession).

Basically: heal per second is not DPS equivalent. Heals need to be considered more tactically, because you usually don’t chain them.

Fror.2163:

- Healing Breeze: sorry but this skill shouldn’t even exist. Everybody should provide his own heal. We all have a heal slot, I see no reason that I should take waste this slot so that people don’t get killed.

Aside from the fact it can selfishly generate over 20 seconds of retaliation, of course. Healing skills are just as situational as other utilities – you slot whatever benefits most for the task at hand.

So at 300 healing power, you are looking at the difference of 12hps… yeah I would trade that for condition removal any day. Also, this only factors in a base of 300 healing power through traits, for builds that use any more signet easily outstrips prayer. Shelter can also do alot more healing in the forum of blocking the damage you might take, and when fighting multiple foes, can add up to way more than any of the other heals.

Also, you take into effect no trait synergy what so ever that you get from each heal. Shelter with 25 in valor gives you might on block, which can easily stack nicely against multiple enemies and also can be traited for burn on block with just 10 in valor. Signet can be traited for better CD, removes a condition on use, and also boosted to remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds compared to 1. The only trait synergy that prayer has, are the ones they give buffs on healing skill, which also effects every other healing skill.

Wolfheart.1938:

Racial skills are supposed to be weaker then regular skills to avoid forcing specific profession/race combo. I understand your message now, nerf Prayer of Dwayna.

First…tell that to the asura. There is a reason you need to make one of them for certain builds.

Second..This whole thread I hope is a troll post. Hell if I wanted to pick a race off racials it would still be Charrdian for more fury. That aside the OP is missing the secondary effects of our heals. That is what makes them so huge. That 2 seconds of block is amazing. About to take 10k damage…block.

Seems to me like he’s looking down a narrow funnel…

Effective Healing > Static Healing

All day, every day.

Gizmo.9178:

Asura all day every day

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Wolfheart.1938:

Racial skills are supposed to be weaker then regular skills to avoid forcing specific profession/race combo. I understand your message now, nerf Prayer of Dwayna.

First…tell that to the asura. There is a reason you need to make one of them for certain builds.

I’ll let the Asura know, although it’s not my job as I’m merely stating what Arenanet developers clearly stated in the past. Please don’t make me look for a quote that could be 6 months old

Wolfheart.1938:

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Wolfheart.1938:

Racial skills are supposed to be weaker then regular skills to avoid forcing specific profession/race combo. I understand your message now, nerf Prayer of Dwayna.

First…tell that to the asura. There is a reason you need to make one of them for certain builds.

I’ll let the Asura know, although it’s not my job as I’m merely stating what Arenanet developers clearly stated in the past. Please don’t make me look for a quote that could be 6 months old

I don’t…someone help me I can’t figure out if this is sarcasm, or if this guy really didn’t understand what I was saying.

Let me put it in another way, because maybe it was my fault.

Sure every race has racial abilities that aren’t supposed to be very important, they are supposed to have a minor impact on the game. That said, actual game play often doesn’t reflect the true value of abilities. For an example I point you to the hidden Asura passive called “camerdoesn’tgofunkyallofthetime”, which basically gives you a much greater navigational ability inside a great many structures. While Charr have a hidden passive called “wtfbbqsaucecamerastopshowingmetheinsideofmyownkitteningskull”. They share this with Norn.

Aside from the hidden passives, there are also actual skill differences in the game. Take for example the asura skill that causes AOE weakness, AND poison. There are others, but I hope you understand what I meant now.

If you don’t understand, my comment wasn’t maliciously aimed at you. It was a joke about the current state of things.

That skill isn’t going to stop a shatter burst. Nor will it remove a condition every 10 seconds. Healing Breeze is pretty much trash — most people will agree — but Shelter and Resolve are mechanically far more useful than a flat heal.

You’re not factoring in the value of anything except base healing without considering damage stopped/reduced by potential passively removed conditions and damage blocked. These are calculations of static value. Effective value is what matters when it comes to theorycrafting and deciding what’s “best” for situations A, B, C, or all of them.

This was interesting and all, but it doesn’t prove anything.

Yeah, you’re completely disregarding the fact that if you block anything more than about a thousand damage with Shelter then your effective healing with it eclipses Dwayna. Dwayna is terrible. Use Shelter proactively, not retroactively.

Change that horrendously wimpy female GS animation and I MIGHT consider a human.

Also the pure utility that comes with the Guard heals trumps anything dwayna can do.

Charr guardian here: You’re oh s wrong with what you’re saying. A support guardian would likely be rolling Shelter. If traited right, every time shelter blocks you get a stack of might. Dwayna does not give you 25 stacks of might in the middle of a zerg nor does it block (most) incoming attacks while being channeled. Those 25 stacks of might also heal you for around 1700 if you are using AH. Best heal to be using in a zerg fight in WvW.

If you are running a DPS/PvE build you would likely be running the signet for its 8k+ heal. If traited for signet cool down, you have a 32 second cool down on that signet: Just two seconds over the Dwayna heal. You also get automatic condition removal with this signet.

The Dwayna heal is obsolete unless, of course, your build sucks. You should not be running racial skills.

Human guardian here – not using prayer to dwayna.
why?

because I don’t like to be killed while casting healing skill?
prayer to dwayna still have that 2 second casting time and heal is given at the end – so in most cases I pop heal I would be killed while casting it.
that’s why I’m using shelter.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Human guardian here – not using prayer to dwayna.
why?

because I don’t like to be killed while casting healing skill?
prayer to dwayna still have that 2 second casting time and heal is given at the end – so in most cases I pop heal I would be killed while casting it.
that’s why I’m using shelter.

Just tested, it is a 1 sec cast time.

Shelter:
Can get you 25 Might.
Can’t be Interrupted.
Makes you immune to incoming damage.
Makes you immune to incoming conditions.
Heals for a lot.

PtD:
Heals for a lot.

Azure Prower.8701:

Fror.2163:

Azure Prower.8701:

Prayer to Dwayna sucks period.

Having the bigger heal lets you have the ability to feign being weak to your enemies and pop full health.

Would you care to elaborate? I came with numbers and you discard them like that? Well, you better have a good explanation. Why is any of the guardian skills better than Prayer to Dwayna according to you?

Because it brings nothing to the table. I have a human guardian and have never touched it after trying it out for the first time.

99% of the time. You’re not going to be using your heal every time it comes off cool down. Only when you need it.

You can block more damage then Prayer of D can heal.

You can cure more damage then Prayer of D can heal.

You don’t always need to use a heal.

Time to chime in. For starters, most guardians do infact run AH. The might generated from shelter adds onto the heal pretty nicely depending on how many are spam attacking you. It alone can reach roughly 7k heals if it’s used correctly. On top of this, you can actively trait up signet of resolve to be killer under the radiance tree. Enough said, Sarok out!

One major flaw that discredits this whole experiment. You don’t heal every 30s. You will never heal everytime it comes of recharge more than 2 or 3 times in a row. Period. Signet is much better not even counting the condi removal.

newish guardian here, I really like your heal-per-second concept, and in fact did the same for my own calculations and arrived at the same conclusion you did (namely, dwayna is the best heal in terms of hps)

However, for the average guardian, your “heal skill”, no matter which one you choose, only comprises approximately 33% of your total hps. For my rather typical AH guardian, my heals include:

Writ of Merciful: 130 hps
Virtue of resolve: 107 hps
HtL regen: 33.4 hps
Omnom pie: 70 hps (against 1 enemy)
Sigil of blood: 45 hps (against 1 enemy)
AH from SoP: 75 hps (for 1 person)
AH from SYG, VoJ, VoC and others: around 10 hps (1 person)
Signet of resolve: 213 hps

for a total of 685 hps, of which the healing skill accounts for only 31%, and that’s not accounting for dodge heals, people nearby for you to leech AH, or more targets for you to proc off of. The extra 12 hps that dwayna has over signet of resolve would account for 1.7% of your total heals, an amount insignificant enough to be virtually ignored.

For that insignificant amount in heal, you can trade it for the condition removal every 10 secs of SoR, which imho is a very good trade.

tl;dr: Dwayna gives you an insignificant increase in hps at the expense of no condition removal.

Fror.2163:

Signet of Resolve recharges for 40 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 8150 hp = 203.75 hps
- 300 hpow: 8525 hp = 213.125 hps

Human

Prayer to Dwayna recharges for 30 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 6520 hp = 217.33 hps
- 300 hpow: 6775 hp = 225.83 hps

If you can’t look beyond hps then:

Signet of Resolve with Signet Mastery recharges for 32 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 8150 hp = 254.69 hps
- 300 hpow: 8525 hp = 266.41 hps

In agreement with others. You arent using a heal every time it is active. The block and AH procs of shelter are great to stsy alive. SoR is great to trait up or hold for passive condi cleanse. No questiond about it. Heal slots become much more than heaks per second on guardian. Oh and Tarsius = Win.

Signet is generally best just because of Signet Mastery making it 32 seconds, and the fact that there isn’t really anything good in that line short of Radiant Power (which is still basically mandatory). Prayer to Dwayna is an average heal but it’s nothing special compared to the signet’s near-full heal, and is only 2 seconds faster CD. Even comparing 30 seconds to 40, Signet is generally better just because it’s a large burst heal. Guardians typically only need to heal once or twice a fight, tops, anyway, due to their natural regeneration and high innate defense.

Then again. Saying best isnt the er… best. Situation plays great rolls in it. Sometimes the block is more relevant. Sometimes the condi removal is more relevant. But the human heal offers nothing special. I think we can all agree on that.