Guild Wars 2

How are Mesmer self healing compared to other professions? How would you rank Mesmer self healing?

If you are talking about the #6 skills then I’d say we have it decent, all 3 are useful and they are coming on a very short cooldown relatively to what others have.

If you are talking about other healing means, then I’d say we don’t really have anything significant other than occasional regeneration here and there. There is an option for some more self healing with restorative mantras, but honestly it’s not that good, IMO – it’s clunky and channeling for 3 seconds to get 2.6k heal is not really worth it, unless you run Mantra heavy build.

Ether Feast is one of the best healing skills in the game, and Mantra of Recovery has the highest HPS of all healing skills (although I believe the Engineer’s Medi Kit provides more HPS across all its skills). Of course it comes with its disadvantages, and is not often used over Ether Feast unless traited.

Mesmers also have access to permanent Regeneration through Phantasmal Healing and pretty potent healing from traits like Restorative Mantras and Restorative Illusions. These traits are not often taken though, as the main Mesmer builds don’t really have room for them.

Forget the exact number, but you can easily heal for around 5,000 during the duration of an ordinary three second stealth.

Some highlights of Mesmer self-healing…

1) Perma-regeneration (AoE) with some boon duration, even if your Phantasms occaisonaly die. 35% is more than enough to get it to work, although I’m sure more would work even better.

2) Constant AoE heals via charging Mantra of Pain with Restorative Mantras.

3) Arguably the best healing skill in the game when traited. Heals for more than any other while removing two conditions if you have Mender’s Purity and Restorative Mantras. Obvious downside of needing the charging, but it’s still very good.

4) Heal on shatter. IMO the second strongest of all our Grandmaster traits, Restorative Illusions can add a huge amount of additional healing, and is almost entirely on demand since you can activate it while stunned and the healing is immediate.

It’s strange that despite the Inspiration line containing extremely powerful defensive traits, it is almost never invested in outside of Phantasm/Reflection builds; and those builds don’t take the said extremely powerful defensive traits.

I think the problem is that the Mesmer’s ability to avoid damage coupled with strong healing skills makes the Inspiration line redundant, thus it makes better sense to invest in offensive traits. And we don’t see Mesmer tank builds being popular either because the way the Mesmer avoids damage isn’t very conducive to the point-holding gameplay of tPvP.

Although Mirror and Mantra of Restoration are not to be ignored. Yes, you can play through thousands (yes thousands) of hours before switching out of Ether Feast, but now I’m hooked on Mirror. Mantra of Restoration is useful for condition removal with Mender’s Purity and/or in conjunction with on-heal runes. Mirror also combos well with on-heal runes due to it’s cooldown being very manageable. The reflect is also nothing to scoff at.

In the end, you can do the math and, last time I checked (might have to re-do the numbers, but I can’t because I have to wake up early tomorrow) Ether Feast gets slightly more heal/second than Mirror, even without Illusions. However, keep in mind that in WvW you do get nuked, so having a heal on a shorter cooldown may keep you alive. In sPvP the fights don’t tend to go in that direction, so you should be fine with Ether Feast or Mantra of Recovery (if you’re doing a Mantra sPvP build).

Also, perma-regen from Phantasms is nice, but it’s not very noticeable as a Mesmer. If anything, when I try to get heals from regen, I end up being disappointed because I heal more off of a Minor Sigil of Blood than I do from regen (over the course of about 10 seconds, being eyeballed, of course).

Ah yes, Mirror. I started using it in sPvP like 3 days ago. It heals ok for it’s CD, but the real deal here is reflection. It can save you thousands of HP and you won’t even be aware of it.

I remember yesterday I was just messing around as usual and some rifle warrior came in… So we fought a bit on a spot, then I popped my Mirror just to get some health back and block some damage and it seems that just at that time that warrior decided that it’s a Kill Shot time… Long story short, he nuked himself for 5.5k damage, while I healed 4k. There you go, effectively 10k heal AND instant win button in your face nuke on enemy.

Now yeah, warriors are meat and that fight did not really matter, since I would win regardless, just because Mesmer vs Warrior is like beating a baby, but then you have rangers and engineers and I’d say those two can be extremely troublesome, that’s where Mirror shines, you will often see rangers nuke themselves for like 2-3k and stack awesome bleed on their butts and engineers suddenly getting a bouquet of conditions on themselves.

I’d say the only Mirror’s downfall is thieves, I’d like to pack Ether Feast there instead, but well. You can live with Mirror too and overall, I’d rather have more protection against rangers and engineers which can be kitten hard, rather than thieves which are pretty easy unless they suddenly drop on you in the middle of a fight in which case the deciding factor is if you have your escape utilities up or not.

Regeneration is a boon you only appreciate with Healing Power investment. It scales beautifully off Healing Power.

It is not at all difficult to maintain three Illusions with most builds, and with three Illusions Ether Feast heals about 45% more HPS than Mirror. Also consider that a lower CD is not always an advantage as you don’t always use healing skills on CD. With a difference of only 5s, it is not uncommon for the practical CD difference between Ether Feast and Mirror to be minor, if not non-existent.

This same “problem”, greatly magnified because of Mantra of Recovery’s channel time and multiple charges (it doesn’t go into CD until all charges are used, so you’re forced to use them all at once anyway if you want to maintain the CD advantage), makes Mantra of Recovery much worse than its HPS would suggest. With traits however its HPS can be pushed to ridiculous levels that overcome its shortcomings.

Mirror’s Reflection is great, however it is a situational effect that may well have no impact at all; thus I don’t like to count on it on a core skill.

Untraited Mesmer Healing? Decent healing, but nothing special simply because of Ether Feast being a potentially LARGE self-heal with 3x Illusions out on a decent CD. Mirror is probably the only unique Healing Skill we have, but its usefulness is … iffy in a number of fights when compared to the equivalent “Shelter” that Guardians get with their 2s Block. 2s Reflect is great when facing Projectiles, but a 2s Block blocks … well everything while Mirror still allows AoEs, Melee, non-projectile ranged attacks, and such to still get through for the benefit of the projectile hitting the attacker back instead.
Very, very circumstantial skill. And bringing up the 15s CD for Mirror vs. 30s CD for Shelter isn’t that much of a help as the Healing for Mirror is also lessened in comparison to Shelter.
-Not my cup of tea, but others have made great use of the skill. Especially in WvWvW and sPvP where projectile attacks are more common.

As for healing outside of the #6 skill? Doesn’t exist without traits beyond a few random Regenerations that randomly procs on Signet of Inspiration or Chaos Armor.

Traited Mesmer Healing? COMPLETELY different beast of things, once you start spending trait points into Inspiration or aiming specifically to improve it.
Mender’s Purity – Healing Skill #6 (Any of them) now clears a condition. Very useful in conjunction with Mantra of Recovery (or Costumes/Consumables that places a skill in the #6 slot). So for 10 in Inspiration, we can recover from a lack of Condition Clearing in our Healing Skills.
Restorative Mantras – For 20 in Inspiration, this fixes our Lack of Healing for allies AND it also heals yourself as well. Mantra of Recovery via Charge and 2x Uses roughly matches the burst healing of Ether Feast on yourself alone. Mantra of Pain turns into a semi-spammable Area Heal. Any other Mantra can be labelled as a backup heal if needed (MoPain beats them though) on top of their effects.
Harmonious Mantras-30 in Domination gets you a 3rd use out of Mantra of Recovery before needing a charge (in comparison to Restorative Mantras which turns Charging the skill into a usage roughly). Combined with Restorative Mantras, the healing from Mantra of Recovery is hard to beat. Add in Mantra Mastery, and its even more challenging.
Phantasmal Healing – 15 in Inspiration grants nearly CONSTANT application of Regeneration to anyone standing next to any Phantasm you have out. Suddenly lacking reliable regeneration on skills isn’t much of a problem.

If you go 30 in Inspirations? SHATTERS can either Heal You (and only you), or remove Conditions from you. The healing is relatively weak in my opinion for 30 in Inspiration, but considering it works for any of the 4 Shatters … well it can be a notable sum (but again usually not worth my 10 trait points). Removing Conditions on the other hand has always been a tempting option to use in a number of fights.

TLDR: Without Traits, Mesmer Healing isn’t anything special. Specifically TRAITING for healing on the other hand can make it VERY beneficial, with only the Guardian overtaking the Healing done IMO.

Edit: Whoops, thanks for catching that Kanto.

MLieBennett.9031:

If you go 30 in Illusions?

*Inspiration.

Just as a point, since people keep mentioning that not many builds go for the defensive/healing options in Inspirations, here are two that do…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Chaos-Maestro-Boon-Support-Tank/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Build-Doctor-Mesmer/first#post2039022

Also, for those who are interested, I’m going to crunch some numbers later today and see exactly how much HPS you can pump out with a combination of Mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Pain, Restorative Mantras, permanent regeneration, and Restorative Illusions.

I’ve technically gotten the number before – it’s surprisingly large, or, at least, it was to me when I got it – but I can’t seem to find the file anywhere now.

Ill be following those two builds, thanks Fuschia i am in the process of finishing my healing set and am looking forward to trying out a build i have in mind.

I like the utility of mirror in getting out of combat in wvw. The reflect helps avoid a lot of snares/stuns/dazes that people always seem so keen on applying once they have an advantage…as others mentioned, loads of damage mitigation means I’m not usually taking a lot of damage…unless I’m being focused on by a group…in that situation, I need to bail more than I need a strong heal..I’m not an amazing player though, so I’m sure it’s different for others.

I also prefer Mirror when fighting zerg vs zerg in wvw. This situation is not about healing numbers, it’s about getting out of hell. Mirror keeps you alive for about 2 seconds longer, and that’s the time you need to move out of the line of fire and make it back to your own zerg – alive! You’ll probably be at very low health then and your heal is on cooldown, but you can keep running. Run out of combat range until the auto-regeneration kicks in. Once your lifebar starts going up again you turn around and move back to the fight. You’ll have full hitpoints and your Mirror heal is ready.

The above doesn’t require any traits or investment in healing stats.

Mirror is a vastly underrated tool to escape from “oh crap!” situations.

Problem is, Mirror is not so good in other situations. It doesn’t help much when you only take mediocre damage and want to heal yourself back to full. It takes multiple casts of Mirror where often one cast of Ether Feast is enough.

Well, that’s where our traited healing skills come into play. With Phantasmal Healing you’ll have regeneration ticking almost all the time, which helps little but it helps enough to keep your hitpoints near full using Mirror heal instead of Ether Feast.