Guild Wars 2

If you are traited so that meditations heal, and if you are very aggressive after you use it, then the healing is actually on par with your other heals. I really like that it promotes a more pro-active and aggressive playstyle, and I feel like it gives a meaningful choice to the class. You can choose litany of wrath if you want to proc the fury on meditation trait, or shelter if you want to wait out your enemies highest damage rotations.

Except the cast time kills it. It takes a long time to cast, so that when you are finished you have less hp than when you started. You could run away and cast it, but then your overall healing is reduced by the time it takes you to get back into combat (not to mention that this kills the active playstyle). You could pop focus 5, but then your damage mitigation is reduced when compared to what it would have been taking shelter, and you take more damage overall.

I have never been put into a better position by this heal. A button that took away 100hp and gave me fury would be actually be more beneficial. The cast time really needs to go.

Arkimedes.8730:

If you are traited so that meditations heal, and if you are very aggressive after you use it, then the healing is actually on par with your other heals.

I think I see the problem here…

The issue isn’t really with Litany in my opinion. It has its benefits and drawbacks.

The issue is that shelter in comparison is just so much better.

Guardian isn’t the only profession with this issue either. Majority of the professions gravitate towards one heal. Only a couple of professions have multiple heals that all are very respectable (Thief being the only one where all heals are worth consider taking). Whether it’s because one heal is too good or alternate heals are too weak is different per profession.

For PvE this skill probably works great.

ryokoalways.3450:

The issue isn’t really with Litany in my opinion. It has its benefits and drawbacks.

The issue is that shelter in comparison is just so much better.

Guardian isn’t the only profession with this issue either. Majority of the professions gravitate towards one heal. Only a couple of professions have multiple heals that all are very respectable (Thief being the only one where all heals are worth consider taking). Whether it’s because one heal is too good or alternate heals are too weak is different per profession.

I think the real issue is that its just not good enough even for offensive guardians, which is what this was geared for. Bunker’s obviously aren’t going to run it, since the damage isn’t there. But why would an offensive guardian run it when it can be countered so easily. I wouldn’t say shelter is too good, as I think it is just right as a heal for us, lower healing than signet, but the added bonus of blocking, which can still be countered by certain skills. Litany however is easily countered by any cc, or just by simply kiting away from the guard while you see it active. In PvE it is fine, because you don’t have to worry about your target moving, in anything PvP it is near useless.

Ludus Rex.1562:

Arkimedes.8730:

If you are traited so that meditations heal, and if you are very aggressive after you use it, then the healing is actually on par with your other heals.

I think I see the problem here…

Also this, Why would someone invest in something so much just to make it ON PAR with the basic function of our other heals. Your wasting so much effort to make something broken work, when its alot easier and effective to just use something else.

I experimented with zealous blade and litany of wrath. Its interesting but still not worth using.

Bash.7291;

I think the real issue is that its just not good enough even for offensive guardians, which is what this was geared for. Bunker’s obviously aren’t going to run it, since the damage isn’t there. But why would an offensive guardian run it when it can be countered so easily. I wouldn’t say shelter is too good, as I think it is just right as a heal for us, lower healing than signet, but the added bonus of blocking, which can still be countered by certain skills. Litany however is easily countered by any cc, or just by simply kiting away from the guard while you see it active. In PvE it is fine, because you don’t have to worry about your target moving, in anything PvP it is near useless.

That’s a guardian’s perspective, in that shelter is the norm and interruptable heals are too weak. I think it needs to be mentioned that the norm for healing skills are 1 second casting time, and that while in theory that’s easily interruptable, in practice that is not the case. Otherwise no healing skills would be up for consideration unless it had less than 1/4 cast time (which would even leave out heals like healing spring and healing turret).

A lot of the acceptable heals at the moment such as Hide in Shadows, signet of malice, Ether Renewal, Ether Feast, Consume Conditions, Troll Ungunt, etc, all have “interruptable” casting time, but they are being used because in practice the player using the heal isn’t just a sitting duck waiting to be interrupted. Additionally, not everybody is running 10/30/0/0/30 thief.

As far as litany itself is concerned, as a stand alone heal when traited for meditation, it’s actually a respectable amount of heal on a short cd (24s) that offers additional heal through pressure for 6 seconds. Theorycrafting states that you should just not engage the guardian for 6 seconds, but I can guarantee that in practice you are not going to avoid fighting the guardian for 6 seconds. That will have a far worse result than fighting the guardian while trying to minize damage taken, which is what you do normally anyways.

If there is a complaint about the heal (other than it’s not shelter), it would be the same complaint for several of the new heals, in that they are not applicable unless you trait into that particular utility skill type (skelk, along with litany, are by far the worst offenders).

ryokoalways.3450:

That’s a guardian’s perspective, in that shelter is the norm and interruptable heals are too weak. I think it needs to be mentioned that the norm for healing skills are 1 second casting time, and that while in theory that’s easily interruptable, in practice that is not the case. Otherwise no healing skills would be up for consideration unless it had less than 1/4 cast time (which would even leave out heals like healing spring and healing turret).

A lot of the acceptable heals at the moment such as Hide in Shadows, signet of malice, Ether Renewal, Ether Feast, Consume Conditions, Troll Ungunt, etc, all have “interruptable” casting time, but they are being used because in practice the player using the heal isn’t just a sitting duck waiting to be interrupted. Additionally, not everybody is running 10/30/0/0/30 thief.

As far as litany itself is concerned, as a stand alone heal when traited for meditation, it’s actually a respectable amount of heal on a short cd (24s) that offers additional heal through pressure for 6 seconds. Theorycrafting states that you should just not engage the guardian for 6 seconds, but I can guarantee that in practice you are not going to avoid fighting the guardian for 6 seconds. That will have a far worse result than fighting the guardian while trying to minize damage taken, which is what you do normally anyways.

If there is a complaint about the heal (other than it’s not shelter), it would be the same complaint for several of the new heals, in that they are not applicable unless you trait into that particular utility skill type (skelk, along with litany, are by far the worst offenders).

First off, shelter can be interrupted, and if it does, it goes on full cool down, with 0 healing. the only other heal I know of that does this is ether renewal, also possibly mirror, though I never tested that. Second, I never once said that the reason shelter is better than litany is because it can be interrupted, I said it is because it requires us to be on the target for 100% of the duration to even be worth it. For most guardians, that is almost impossible, as we lack soft CC to keep people near us. The issue is that there are SO MANY ways to counter litany, while most healing skills you don’t have to worry about immobilize, or cripple, or chill, or just flat out being kited.

Bash.7291:

First off, shelter can be interrupted, and if it does, it goes on full cool down, with 0 healing. the only other heal I know of that does this is ether renewal, also possibly mirror, though I never tested that. Second, I never once said that the reason shelter is better than litany is because it can be interrupted, I said it is because it requires us to be on the target for 100% of the duration to even be worth it. For most guardians, that is almost impossible, as we lack soft CC to keep people near us. The issue is that there are SO MANY ways to counter litany, while most healing skills you don’t have to worry about immobilize, or cripple, or chill, or just flat out being kited.

This. Whilst roaming it’s pretty rare to find a opponent that is skilled enough and lucky enough with CDs to interrupt a heal, and in a group you’ll most likely have stability.

However, with Litany it’s a very regular occurrence to have your targets kite/blink/evade/blind/block/invuln out of your damage area leaving you with a lot less health than when you started.

You can trait into valor to make just another medi-heal, but ideally it should be a heal that allows you to forego MF+FM and let you spend those points elsewhere ( ie increase build variety )

1. I agree shelter can be interrupted. However, how frequently do you think it happens? Similarly, healing spring and healing turret can also be interrupted at 1/2s cast, but how frequently do those happen? The reliability of these heals are what makes them so desired. If you go through all the unblockable abilities in the game, there are a total of 3 that can be used quickly and on-demand to bypass blocking, and only one of them is actually used in any accepted builds at the moment.

2. Regarding you have to be doing damage to the target for the entire 6 seconds for it to be worth the hp gain to cd, I disagree with the accessment. Shelter is 153 per second of cd, whereas litany is 151 per second of cd if the guardian lands 0 hits during the 6 seconds of litany. As far as healing amount goes, they are identical. The difference, and the reason why all guardians are still on shelter in tPvP, is because how guaranteed shelter is along with the additional damage mitigation. It has nothing to do with hp gain to cd efficiency in this instance.

In the case of being unable to keep up with a target, that’s what your teammates are there for. You can’t expect guardian to have everything in the game available to them.

Just to clarify, as I feel things went slightly off-topic: Shelter is by far the best heal a guardian has, and for any legitimate build shelter will still be the heal to take. But using shelter as the benchmark for the shortcomings of litany is an unfair comparison, as it sets shelter as the benchmark of healing skills, whereas the benchmark is closer to traited litany. That was the point I was trying to make. In comparison to other healing skills, traited litany has parameters that are inline with the benchmark.

Litany dictates the actions of my med burst build once activated. Shelter allows me to position for a setup. And it leaves me stacked with a lot of long duration might. Signet of resolve simply works.

Would trade them all for Healing Signet.

@ryo: It really doesn’t though, How many other healing skills in the game do you have to trait to bring up to par? MAYBE Signet for CDs but thats only 10 points, for litany it is 30. And as I said, litany has far more counters than pretty much any other heal in the game, just due to requiring us to do damage. Even taking traits into effect, HPS isn’t everything as you said. Every heal has an added effect other than the basic heal yourself part, the issue is that litany’s just doesn’t cut it due to being easily countered, and that isn’t just compared to shelter, that is in general.

Even with traited Meditations, Litany has a very long cast time for its base and potential heal. Even when traiting for Meditations, Shelter is still a better option due to the minor that gives Might on blocks.

20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…

something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.

The heal is very under par. The biggest issue Guardian’s have is sticking to their target to do meaningful damage. Since the basis behind this healing skill is to keep doing consistent damage, therein lies the problem.

Liewec.2896:

20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…

something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.

I’d say the conversion amount and the cooldown is about right – there is only 18 seconds of downtime for the skill, and it’s pretty easy to generate 35k of damage in 6 seconds as a dedicated DPS guardian.

Also I don’t really see an issue having a heal that only works for a limited set of builds ( because it was supposed to encourage a certain style of play ), but as it stands it doesn’t work for any builds at all.

0-cast time would help a little bit ( allowing you to activate when you see you have a good chance of getting reasonable damage numbers ), but it still would not fix the Guard’s underlying deficiency in the soft CC department. If it proc’d a static field on cast it might just be viable…lol

First of all, its indended to be a niche heal, mainly for meditation guardians (other builds only in pve). Secondly its a high risk high reward skill, if used correctly its essentaily a full heal (but difficult to pull of since good player will try avoid it).

And its better than healing breeze…

The problem is heal mechanics vs needs of the build. Our POWER builds (the supposed focus of the patch) are weak on sustain/control/mobility. This heal offers short sustain over 6 seconds, but requires at least one of the other weak spots to be addressed to be as effective as other heal skills that simply work when you press the button. The ability to heal even more in a short burst if you get lucky is small reward for a build with very little vit/health. Power builds would benefit more from a longer duration, like 10% over 12 seconds, provided we had means to stick in a fight.

Or BURST builds are where this skill is actually traited for, but the mechanics are wrong for burst. Burst is very fast damage on a very glass cannon build in an effort to destroy your opponent before they have a chance to retaliate. The cast time kills this skill for this role as it leaves you vulnerable and if used when your health is low, still leaves your health low. If used preemptive to low health before a burst, you waste your sustain on overheal. Most med builds heal on meditation, but open with 2 of them. Opening with a 3rd in place of a heal skill is simply more health wasted, less escape if things go wrong.

Tarsius.3170:

Liewec.2896:

20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…

something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.

I’d say the conversion amount and the cooldown is about right – there is only 18 seconds of downtime for the skill, and it’s pretty easy to generate 35k of damage in 6 seconds as a dedicated DPS guardian.

Also I don’t really see an issue having a heal that only works for a limited set of builds ( because it was supposed to encourage a certain style of play ), but as it stands it doesn’t work for any builds at all.

0-cast time would help a little bit ( allowing you to activate when you see you have a good chance of getting reasonable damage numbers ), but it still would not fix the Guard’s underlying deficiency in the soft CC department. If it proc’d a static field on cast it might just be viable…lol

Are we talking about the same thing here? This is a tpvp discussion. Are your really telling me you routinely do 35k worth of damage on demand (and that has what it has got to be for the heal to be worthwhile) in a six second time frame in tpvp against people that are good? I call shenanigans. Never mind the fact you can count on one hand the number of dps guardians at the top level of any pvp soloq or team arena precisely because what you are claiming to do easily is so hard to do. The heal is junk plain and simple and you sound like a theory crafter pulling optimal burst numbers that are insanely difficult to pull off except against training golems and pve targets.

While I find Litany an interesting and refreshing change of pace, after a couple of days of solid sPvP with it I can’t find any reason to run it over Shelter except in duels that you already know you’ll win. It certainly isn’t very useful if you’re being team-focused.

It just doesn’t heal for enough, even in an MF build. Whether you can dish out 35k or 100k damage in 6 seconds without interruption, any smart player will stop part of or all of that damage somehow when they see you pop your heal.

That said, I’d be more inclined to use it if the base heal were increased by 50% and the heal % were increased to 30%. But even then, I don’t know.

brannigan.9831:

Tarsius.3170:

Liewec.2896:

20% is just too low to make it a viable alternative to the others,
for raw healing you can’t beat the signet,
8-9k heal on a 32 second CD (with signet recharge trait)
in order for Litany to heal for similar numbers you’d need to deal 35,000 damage in the next 6 seconds…

something needs to change, either make the buff last for a meaningful duration (15-20s) or make the healing 40-50%.

I’d say the conversion amount and the cooldown is about right – there is only 18 seconds of downtime for the skill, and it’s pretty easy to generate 35k of damage in 6 seconds as a dedicated DPS guardian.

Are we talking about the same thing here? This is a tpvp discussion. Are your really telling me you routinely do 35k worth of damage on demand (and that has what it has got to be for the heal to be worthwhile) in a six second time frame in tpvp against people that are good? I call shenanigans. Never mind the fact you can count on one hand the number of dps guardians at the top level of any pvp soloq or team arena precisely because what you are claiming to do easily is so hard to do. The heal is junk plain and simple and you sound like a theory crafter pulling optimal burst numbers that are insanely difficult to pull off except against training golems and pve targets.

No, you are quite right, I have been following the thread over the past few days and had managed to forget the spvp focus. Apologies for the confusion

It might have been more interesting as a signet style heal on damage passive effect which is put on cooldown when a mediocre passive heal is activated

How does this sound?

Litany of Wrath (1-second cast/30-second recharge)
Meditation. Heal yourself. For a brief time, heal yourself based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies.
Healing 3,000 (0.1 gain from Healing Power)
Litany of Wrath (3 seconds) 50% of damage dealt is returned to you as healing.

The skill could be more acceptable if buffed a bit… healing from a 3k basis, a casting time of 3/4s, and a 25% return on damage for example.

If you compare it with Signet of Resolution… same casting time but 9k healing, with condition removal, or Shelter, it’s clear it’s actually subpar.

Being a Meditation seems not enough to save it from oblivion, i’m afraid :/

The 1 second cast time is annoying and conflicts with earlier changes by the developers to make Meditations instant casts. The thing I like about Shelter is that the moment you cast it you stop taking most damage. Therefore it leaves more room for errors, unlike our other heals.

When traited towards Meditations it increases the heal by 2100 to around 3800 and gives almost 5 seconds of Fury. It’s a risky heal in 1v1 but it certainly comes in handy when you’re involved in larger team orientated battles.

The problem is that it’s complete and utter garbage without traits, which isn’t the case for any other heal in this game as far as I’m aware.

DISCLAIMER ~ I am a bit new to guardian but I wanted to discuss the new skill as well.
I feel that in guild wars 2 there is more than one way to use a utility skill for example being able to use a skill that is meant as a gap closer as a get away tool. I feel like this is the same for Litany of Wrath. In some sense Litany of Wrath can also be used defensively. Damage from retaliation counts towards the damage for Litany of Wrath. That being said if we can’t deal damage to them, we can also count on any incoming damage as potential gain for healing and damage dealing at the same time. Now before people argue with me about how people would stop attacking me, 1) then thats a good thing because that would mean you are not taking damage and 2) in pvp its realistically impossible to keep track of everyone’s boons/conditions 100% of the time. The methods and mechanics are there yes but it would be hard to do especially in the middle of a fight. Also no team would stop attacking and trying to take a capture point that could help decide a match just because they would worry about one guardian popping a potentially dangerous heal. Additionally I feel the best use of this heal would be some sort of combination of meditations and retaliation up time. Meditations to help heal yourself, clear conditions, stick to target, and bonus heal on use and retaliation to help push at that extra damage on your opponent for the heal.

20% damage conversion would give you 40-60 HP from retal each hit you take. That’s not a lot of damage mitigation. Shelter is much better in instance.

Velimere.7685:

The problem is that it’s complete and utter garbage without traits, which isn’t the case for any other heal in this game as far as I’m aware.

Not true the new heal of the necro is garbage even with traits…

Edit: I am sure that Anet sole intension for this healing skill was meditation builds. And for those build while not strong it is ok.

I agree that Litany of Wrath’s cast time is way too long consider the 20% returning healing. This skill is useless unless they increase the base healing or decrease the cast time. Note that warriors have Defiant Stance with only 1/4s cast time and thiefs have Signet of Malice that heals passively.

The Dev’s want us to blow Stability just so we can use our heal…..

Oh Wait.. we typically don’t HAVE stability in a mediation build…. let the x/x/30/x/30 build begin! Good to know I have to blow a 65s cooldown just to use a kittenty kitten , POS though out ability.

Amins.3710:

The Dev’s want us to blow Stability just so we can use our heal…..

Oh Wait.. we typically don’t HAVE stability in a mediation build…. let the x/x/30/x/30 build begin! Good to know I have to blow a 65s cooldown just to use a kittenty kitten , POS though out ability.

There are two meditations which are stunbreakers though, one of them makes you teleport straight to your enemy. Nevertheless, I do realize that despite the stunbreakers enemies can retreat the moment they see you cast the heal making it risky when fighting 1v1.

Anet made a brave atempt to create more diversity and i will salute them for trying. Sadly the ide was so unfinished EA is currently trying to publish It.

Litany will only ever be worth it if you fight 5vs1 basicly, and that is assuming your foes are extremly special, probably about spirit weapon AI special.