Guild Wars 2

Quick set of questions/discussion about the guardian healing skills
If it’s not shelter, which healing skill do you use, and why do you use it?
If you only use shelter, why don’t you use the others, and how would you improve them so you would use them.

I usually use the signet heal in pve, the heal/sec is pretty high and i don’t usually put myself in the situation where i need a whole lot of blocks. Other then that i don’t pvp with a guardian :\.

PvE, PvP and WvW.. shelter, and else shelter, I really dont think I ever change it, a few times Litany of wrath but thats so rare that its hardly worth mentioning.

In both PvP and WvW the block is just.. a life saver

90% of the times I use my heal in PvE I am already on full health and use it for block (mosman, lupi, you name it). I used to run the signet alot, back before I learned bosses and when to block.

Sigfodr.9576:

PvE, PvP and WvW.. shelter, and else shelter, I really dont think I ever change it, a few times Litany of wrath but thats so rare that its hardly worth mentioning.

In both PvP and WvW the block is just.. a life saver

90% of the times I use my heal in PvE I am already on full health and use it for block (mosman, lupi, you name it). I used to run the signet alot, back before I learned bosses and when to block.

What changes to the other heal would have to be made before you would want to use them?

BobbyT.7192:

What changes to the other heal would have to be made before you would want to use them?

I don’t think there is change to be done with them that would change that. The block on shelter is just so pratical.

Signet of Resolve is already super powerful. Now you can even have the trait that improve Signet in the meta and with that the Signet is 67% stronger in healing than the Shelter. But that doesn’t change the fact that shelter have a block

Receive the light is also a strong heal. High support, combine that with shout trait/runes and you have a insane support machine. But that doesn’t change the fact that shelter have a block

The only healing skill that could use a rework would be Litany of Wrath. It’s a good healing skill, but a situational one. It’s never a good idea to have a situational healing skill, since it’s so important to your survival. That said, it’s a decent heal with Monk Focus. But that doesn’t change the fact that shelter have a block

Litany of Wrath is good for Medi Guard now. Shelter is still probably the best option otherwise, even though it got a pretty hefty nerf to the counterplay it can provide through block procs. Signet is a strong heal, but it’s too obvious of an animation and has too long of a cooldown to really be worthwhile. Receive the Light is just pretty poorly designed in general. It shares the cooldown with Signet, but has an even more obvious animation, heals for less on yourself, and is hard to land on allies.

Even with a 30s cooldown on Shelter, Guardians still need to take AH or MF for sustain just to remain competitive. Right now our heal skill selection alone just isn’t enough to stay alive.

I use Litany of Wrath for heals and more burst damage, it seemed pretty effective in PvP. However, Shelter will always be the number 1 heal that a guardian has.

Litany of Wrath because it’s a Meditation and currently running a full Meditations build.

Looking at the other profession’s more common used healing skills, you definitely notice a trend on what gets used and why.

Warrior, strong passive healing, no need to cast
Elementalist, semi passive healing, lots of other sources of healing, no need to cast
Thief, instant cast, short cooldown
Engineer, can quickly cast and combo off of, low cooldown.
Right now it’s definitely seems like the more common heals in the game are the ones that give an instant or safe return, which for the guardian is the blocks

Only sad part is how do you design future healing skills that people would want to take?
At this point it just seem like any healing they come up with by default wouldn’t hold up to shelter.

BobbyT.7192:

What changes to the other heal would have to be made before you would want to use them?

hmm hard to say, since the block is so strong, but first we need to decide WHERE we are looking, PvP, open PvE, closed PvE or WvW since all 4 have different requirements (a block is always nice, but it will also have more value some places then others and the same will other things).

Lets take Open and closed PvE and look at “Receive the Light”, 2.25 sec casting time is.. so long that I dont even know how to.. and it only heal allies in front of you.. in front of the guard, so the guard is standing behind his melee allies and is ranged??? what? The skill just dont make sence at all. Now if it was an aoe heal (or even if the come was 180degree behind you, that might work, but it either need to bring something extra like a condi clean or protection or something and the casting time need to be 1.5 sec max. with all this… I might consider it, only might.

To talk about all the healing skills and in all formats, well that become a novel, so another time

BobbyT.7192:

Looking at the other profession’s more common used healing skills, you definitely notice a trend on what gets used and why.

Warrior, strong passive healing, no need to cast
Elementalist, semi passive healing, lots of other sources of healing, no need to cast
Thief, instant cast, short cooldown
Engineer, can quickly cast and combo off of, low cooldown.
Right now it’s definitely seems like the more common heals in the game are the ones that give an instant or safe return, which for the guardian is the blocks

Only sad part is how do you design future healing skills that people would want to take?
At this point it just seem like any healing they come up with by default wouldn’t hold up to shelter.

Just again want to point out the importence of remembering to mention if we are talking PvP, open PvE, closed PvE or WvW (I assume yours is about PvP).

Lets take the skall classes for closed PvE (open PvE is another story).

Warrior, signet = press it before the fight start for more dmg (war dont have a heal during a fight unless its a LONG fight)
Elementalist, Arcane = press it before the fight start for more dmg (ele dont have a heal during a fight unless its a LONG fight, or the use water)
Thief, several good options, but mainly Deception = press it before the fight start for more dmg. OR Signet, no need to cast.
Engineer, Turret = press it before the fight start for more dmg.
etc.

Like Thaddeus said, Litany can be used very effectively in certain scenarios. I switch between Litany and shelter frequently. When you know you’re up against condi builds, necros, and eles, Litany is more useful imo. Litany only keeps you in the cast for 1/4 of a second which allows you to keep applying a lot of pressure, and not waste time on a cast. Additionally, if you manage focus 5, blinds, and f3 decently, you can get by without the block from shelter. This of course changes when you’re fighting more than 2 or 3 people though, and shelter becomes a much better choice for survivability.

Litany of Wrath is second best after shelter but still, the second one is superior.
We should be able to pick heals that fits our play style and not something that is just “lel meta”. Litany could be better if working in ways such as:

1. 50% of damage is a heal for 8 seconds – that would make this ability more appealing and gave more survivability as 25% is slightly too little and you don’t even feel that heal while in combat and due to lack of cripple enemy just kites away while we get flimsy 6 seconds of already relatively weak healing based on damage we deal.

2. longer cooldown but 4 seconds of 100% damage received is healed (cause why the kitten not ? Let us have at least one ability that will make our enemies feel terror and slight respect towards DPS guard other than burn)

3. 25% damage dealt and received (perhaps 50% damage reduction) is converted to healing for 10 seconds

Now tell me why these could be bad and think about what other classes have for their healing and passive defensive abilites.

P.S. don’t you think that ele’s auto attack capabilties of healing on resto signet isn’t a bit too much ? It heals much for more health and more frequently than guard’s virtue of resolve passive.