Guild Wars 2

I main necromancer, few alts and I wanted to see how far you could push necro healing. Not very many people know the kind of kitten we can do. So I made a build/breakdown, you can do this in any of the high healing power sets. So Apothecary, Cleric, or Magi.
Staff and whatever floats your boat for offhand weapons. Well of blood is also mandatory because the AoE heals on it is pretty fantastic, and you don’t need to be on point to do it. Necromancers can also maintain AoE regen permanently from 1200 as well with the staff. With the trait Life from Death, a sigil of renewal and Tranfusion you can actually burst heal for 15k in 3 seconds. Then in the mean time pulse 6k every 9 seconds by flashing Shroud. My theory crafting put up 1573 HPS with 1881 HP and 42.5% outgoing healing effectiveness. While it is not the best HPS in the game it is very bursty and Transfusion is a very powerful ability to get downed people out of boss cleave and to pick them up rather fast. You can actually keep permanent regen on a group at 1200, but be near the tank and dodge to get a second mark of blood for whomever you are nearby. So you can keep regen on 2 separate groups fairly decently. The only mandatory tree’s are Soul reaping(For Shroud cooldowns) and Blood magic.
Here’s my math: sigil of renewal 345 + 0.4 HP
Life from death 522 + 1.5 HP
Transfusion 360 + 0.2 HP
Well of blood AoE 280 + .4 HP
Regeneration 130 + .125 HP
42.5% outgoing healing, 1881 HP Sigil of transference 10%, Monk runes 10%, Delicious Rice Ball 10%, Sigil of benevelence 12.5%
Sigil of renewal (1097 base + 466 OHE = 1563)
Life from death (3344 base + 1422 OHE = 4765)
Transfusion (736 base + 313 OHE = 1049)
Well of blood (1032 base + 439 OHE = 1471)
Regeneration (365 base + 155 OHE = 520)
Totals for Heals per second(40seconds, well of blood cooldown):
Regeneration 520 X 40 = 20800(assuming permanent regen uptime)
Well of blood: 1471 X 5 = 7355 (I am only counting the ticks for people standing in it and not myself)
Sigil of renewal: (9 second CD = 4 uses) 1563 X 4 = 6252
Life from death: (Lining this up with sigil of renewal, better when used together) 4765 X 4 = 19060
Transfusion: (I am only going to count it once as it is a situation heal) (1049 X 9 = 9441)
Heals per second: 62 908 / 40 = 1573
Note: while ALL of this is AoE, I am only calculating one target, so this is a “per target” number. Also if this is the best a necro can do for a healing role, which is very sub optimal for raids, wvw, and general pve. Should Anet be looking at this?

Necro isn’t supposed to be healing support. It’s a self-sustaining, one man army class (to what extent is up to debate).

Outgoing healing power is multiplicative.

I tried healing with Guardian, Elementalist, Tempest, Warrior and Revenant. Never tried Necromancer, because with the idea that Necromancer would fail at it I never looked into it.

On most classes (except warrior) I achieved at max 2k heal per second, so the healing you calculated here would be enough as main healer.

The main thing I noticed is that heal per second is not saying how good it is at healing. The chance to hit (or radius) is a lot more important. For example the worst healer I have is the elementalist, because water staff auto attack heals a lot, but the chance is very small you will hit a party member with it. The best Healer is Tempest because the shouts have 600 radius, but the heal per second is not optimal. My main healer before HoT was guardian, it has around 300 radius heals which is really the minimum size.

Sigil of renewal,360 radius, 183 h/s
Life from death 360 radius, 715 h/s
Transfusion, 600 radius, 162 h/s (assuming per pulse)
Well of blood, 240 radius, 232 h/s (Annoying light field)
Mark of blood, 240 radius, 547 h/s (permanent regen)

When you hit everything it heals at max 1709 h/s.
Skipping all radius 240 skills then you are at 1060 h/s.

For PvE you have to remove runes of Monk and rice ball to do condition damage, this will reduce the total healing to around 800 h/s. However the burst heal is good, but you are better off using Ritual of Life (20% revive speed) and Runes of Mecry (revive at 80% hp and revive speed).

If you want to support it is better to use tempest, this can give protection and frost aura, which is reducing their damage taken by a factor of 2. With the healing build you would increase their healing with a factor of 2. In dungeons the only thing missing is either stability or CC. For raids, during the Vale guardian you can prevent most damage by knocking the seekers backs.

If you want to support, then boons is the way to go. With this build you double their healing, with a tempest build you can reduce their damage taken by a factor of 2 (Protection+frost aura). Or in most dungeons the only thing missing is stability or CC. In the raid at Vale Guardian you can prevent most of the damage by simply using knockbacks.

MasterElements.5023:

Should Anet be looking at this?

In general full healing power (1800) should increase healing by ~90%, to be equal to toughness.

DavyMcB.1603:

Necro isn’t supposed to be healing support. It’s a self-sustaining, one man army class (to what extent is up to debate).

One of the biggest things about guild wars 2 was that any class can fill any role effectively. Necromancers should be able to fill being a healer. A necro heals very similar to a druid in the sense that it’s raw healing. No boons, if that is the case then I would mind seeing a buff to our ability to stack healing power or a trait that improves regeneration as permanent regeneration is fairly easy.

Azzumy, I made this to see how far necromancers could go. So basically out of curiosity and to start a conversation. If I were to try to sell this to a raid group my only selling point is the Transfusion pull. Which is one point. So I ask again, shouldn’t Anet be looking at this? From what I’ve gathered from talking to raid leaders is that sustained HPS is better because if you get hit you screwed up. I’ve also heard lots of people say that a single downed player is equal to a wipe because of the DPS loss. You lose the DPS race in the end and wipe anyways.

MasterElements.5023:

One of the biggest things about guild wars 2 was that any class can fill any role effectively. Necromancers should be able to fill being a healer.

ANet defines the roles as DPS, Control, and Support, not Damage, Tanking, and Healing. Necromancers can provide quite a bit of support (the Transfusion pull, our unique life siphon buff, and lots of Vulnerability, Weakness, Blind, and Poison applications, for example) but “Support” is more than healing. Just because every profession can offer some support doesn’t mean they’ll all be equally good at it, and it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll all be equally viable healers.

If the Necro needs some buffs to its Support capability, these should probably be to bolster its unique strengths, not simply to homogenize its HPS.

That is a good point by Blaine and if that is the direction that Anet takes then content should require debuffs. having a mesmer/ele to spam boons shouldn’t be enough. Having ads with regen from pulsing small sourses so that poison and weakness are needed to handle them and not just a ton of AoE and protection. I think the biggest problem for necro’s is that there are so few situations where necro’s bring the tools needed. People would rather boon through content then debuff it and necro’s bring lots of debuffs. It also doesn’t help that soft CC ticks the break bar. At first I thought it was cool but then I realized that since, say, weakness ticks the breakbar. You don’t get the actual soft CC on it. Same for blinds, a boss can be perma/blinded and not miss a single strike. It kinda screws necro’s over because while a guardian mitigates damage with boons, necro’s mitigate with conditions and raid bosses are basically immune to them.