Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently levelled up to 80 and have been running a mix of This Build which is a 0/0/2/6/6 healing support and This Build which is 6/2/0/0/6 as a DS power build.

As I love the healer support I got myself a suit of apothecary, but after some testing I’ve been wondering why I would be using this over Cleric…

So my questions are these;

1, what are the healer support classes like in both PvE and PvP? Are you more/less likely to get groups/be of help?

& 2, What outfit should I be suiting up to take this mighty task? Preference into Toughness/Vitality & Power/Condition damage explanation would be of benefit.

Thanking you in advance,
Orphio Cordyceps [Sea of Sorrows]

1) Its basically unnecessary to have a healing support in PvE, and in PvP its more an incidental side effect of running elementalist or guardian support builds. Necromancer doesn’t have good support builds.

2) If you want to force yourself into support, despite it being subpar (its fine if you just want to mess around and have fun, just realize its subpar), then healing power/toughness and either power or condition damage are the stats you want. You pick one or the other depending on your weapon/trait choices.

I have messed around with healing support for 2 years come October so I can be of some help, since I have had a full Apothecary set since then and full ascended for almost a year.

First off looking at your build you have definitely made a power based build but have chosen condi gear. Condition based builds, healing or no, do lot lend themselves to Axe, Focus, or DS. That said, I believe you made the right choice gear wise for a Necro support build. Why? Because focusing 100% on healing is bad in WvW, PvP and especially PvE. Fair warning you’re going to want a Zerker DS build in most old forms of PvE and Fractals (Although I really like Apothecary support in high level fractals when a team/pug isn’t cutting it). You need to be able to pressure and kill things as well as support in GW2, or you’re not fulfilling your role optimally.

Defensive stat power necros do not do a lot of damage compared to other professions and its mostly single target with no cleave. This is bad. It gets even worse when you have defensive/support stat gear (Clerics). The upside of condition/support Necros, is that you can exploit Necro’s hard area condition damage application and not depend on precision for ferocity for DPS, thus allowing room for Toughness and Healing Power. So instead of struggling to do 1K damage per second against one target which is terrible DPS, you instead can stack 10-15 area bleeds around you with Staff/Scepter/Dagger Off-Hand, torment etc. and consistently do 1K-2K area damage + normal physical damage which can actually kill people/NPCs. This weapons combo also gives you great utility and soft cc, another condi transfer, area weakness, poison etc…

If I was you I would go for what I use. something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW7Yjk00TbNNG1webihBR6UryMdtg/iKAA-TlyCABAcgCIUJof6GmUNkU0wk8FBgLlfbq6hQ7PMxTAIAACATciTciT84ECYxaA-w

Take special note of the sigils/food which is key to DPS. Switch your weapons as the CD on weapon swap recharges. Use Transfusion when in a group for a 600 range pulsing 5K heal and when alone (or want to be DPS oriented) switch to Mark of Blood.

If you’re really stuck on DS support (although I don’t recommend that type of support), you should be using Zealot’s gear for the power/precision/healing power combo. That’s the ideal gear for your hybrid DS build.

To answer your main questions:

1. Primarily Guardians and Eles are better at healing overall. Necromancer has three very good choices that are overlooked because many do not see the pros of the skill mechanics. We have Mark of Blood, which is essentially 24/7 area regeneration application anywhere within 1200-1480 range to 5 allies. Well of Blood which becomes one of the highest non condition/combo dependent area heals in the game (not to mention its a healing skill and not a utility/weapon skill) and with focused rituals, can be cast at 900 range. Transfusion as mentioned pulses 9 times for 5K healing overall over 600 range area, which is very efficient as its not all at once (same goes for Well of Blood). The other thing is that we can combine our ranged self sufficient heal skills with our boon debuffs and Condi cc, which can make us more useful than the usual support in some situations, especially in WvW. Guardians and Eles heal more and better, but Guard healing is focused on a 300-600 range around them and can’t heal in two places at once. Eles suffer some of the same problems in addition to the limitations of attunement management, but once a water field is being blasted nothing compares to their spike heals. Overall you are less likely to get a group as support then you are if you are running zerker in PvE, which is the best gear for getting groups in general. In PvP sustain and pressure matter most. If you can’t hold a point or take a point you are pretty much dead weight for your team. WvW go crazy.

2. As I said before, you want DPS in support roles as well. It’s almost impossible save for zealots to get good heals and ok DPS with power Necro. However, it’s very easy to get ok DPS and great heals in a condi build and there’s a lot more synergy between your weapon skills, utility skills and healing skills. If you don’t want to be squishy, you’re going to favour toughness over vitality. Almost universally in all game, unless you have a heal that heal based on % health, you want to combine damage reduction with healing per second, always. With my build you can heal yourself around 20K health over/every 32 seconds (I measure my fights based off WoB recharge) and about 15K-20K to allies. Having 3K armour helps a lot more than having 8K extra health + extra LF. I can pull out my calculations (I didn’t a lot of detailed data crunching before I committed to full ascended apothecary) from my own personal guide if need be to show where all the healing comes from.

Hope this helps.

I run a Power & Support build for open-world PVE. See the link in my signature.

As Bhawb said, it may be an unnecessary role in PVE, and as necros, we are not the best at such roles. However, I enjoy it.

WireTramp.1504:

What outfit should I be suiting up to take this mighty task? Preference into Toughness/Vitality & Power/Condition damage explanation would be of benefit.

Toughness is almost always better than Vitality when healing is concerned. The reasoning: Heals will always heal the same amount regardless of Toughness/Vitality. Therefore the less hp you have, the higher % of your hp you’re healed, and vice versa. When you reduce the damage you take, it essentially makes your heals more effective.

Vitality does have some use as it increases your Life Force pool by some small amount, it might edge out Toughness for a 6/x/x/x/6 build… maybe.

As for Power vs Condition dmg, you can go both ways depending how you want to play. Balekai posted a nice Condition dmg version, but for your build I would definitely go Power since you rely heavily on Life Blast. I would suggest dropping Near to Death for Unyielding Blast (Life Blast pierces and causes Vulnerability) and moving 10 points from Death into Spite, getting either Spiteful Removal to help with the conditions you’ll be taking with Unholy Martyr or Reaper’s Might because Life Blast spam. At that point you’ll be only 5 points away from a nice Healing Power bonus in the Spite tree, so if Unholy Martyr isn’t needed you can drop it for oooh 80-150 more base healing power depending on gear (yes that’s taking into account the -50 from Blood) + more from might buffs + 50 base power.

I would also consider dropping Deathly Invigoration for either Ritual Mastery or Ritual of Life, and use Signet of Undeath to pick people up + hey more life force for Blasting. Runes of Mercy are another thing to consider since Necros don’t have much for mitigation and dem zerkers are squishy, buuut you lose out on better stats and if people don’t go down, they’re useless.

Cleric or Zealot armor is the way to go, depending if you want to be more defensive with crap damage or offensive with less healing and survivability.

Unfortunately not many people are interested in having a healer in their group because it “slows them down”, but if you can manage to keep all the silly zerkers from going splat, that’ll result in more dps.