Guild Wars 2

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

LegallyBinding.4937:

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

Squad UI was fixed for the last part of raids where you can see allies health.

I doubt you’ll get health bars over player’s head ever. It’s because AN don’t like people looking at UI’s and thus the squad UI is probably the best you’ll get. It is usable and it’s due to get a few more buffs after release with boon markers on players etc.

Terra, sorry but your argument doesn’t make much sense. If ANet doesn’t like us looking at the UI constantly (and neither do I, one of the reasons why I love this game), that is why they should enable health bars on top of players heads, like they do for enemies.

The druid is all about correct placement. Indeed, if we can’t tell which of our allies need healing, that makes it too cumbersome to play.

Exactly, placing health bars above allies heads would make us look at our allies and see who needs the healing most (instead of staring at the UI at the side of your screen like in many games). It would definitely be a good change so we don’t need to spam heals randomly.

Yeah, I found Druid rather useless in the Legendary Wyvern event. Half the time I was trying to heal people who already had 100% health. That’s just boring and annoying.

Terra.8571:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

Squad UI was fixed for the last part of raids where you can see allies health.

I doubt you’ll get health bars over player’s head ever. It’s because AN don’t like people looking at UI’s and thus the squad UI is probably the best you’ll get. It is usable and it’s due to get a few more buffs after release with boon markers on players etc.

Unfortunately for anet, they will have to start caving in to player demands about qol functions like these. Also, I don’t think players really give a hoot what anet wants with regard to UI, we can put as much crap on our screen if we want. It’s already happening with all these new apps so that’s not a valid excuse anymore.

Healing with no health bars above people’s heads is like doing DPS without seeing red numbers. Kinda silly, no?

CandyHearts.6025:

Healing with no health bars above people’s heads is like doing DPS without seeing red numbers. Kinda silly, no?

Yeah, it’s pretty silly.

I don’t know about that. I’m afraid that some content in game like wvw zerg fights or world bosses would be a mess, if we see the health bars of all allies on the field.

Kodama.6453:

I don’t know about that. I’m afraid that some content in game like wvw zerg fights or world bosses would be a mess, if we see the health bars of all allies on the field.

They would make it an optional setting…

As an optional setting, perhaps they could add a hp threshold that shows an allied player/entity’s hp bar on the field only when their health falls below that threshold like say 90% or so.

Bonus Developer Points: Allow the player to be able to tweak that threshold anywhere from 0% to 100%, then everyone can pick when they want hp bars to show up.

I would settle for just an on/off toggle

This needs to happen in some form. Playing as a healer without knowing who needs to be healed is kinda… sucky.

AlphaK.9486:

As an optional setting, perhaps they could add a hp threshold that shows an allied player/entity’s hp bar on the field only when their health falls below that threshold like say 90% or so.

Bonus Developer Points: Allow the player to be able to tweak that threshold anywhere from 0% to 100%, then everyone can pick when they want hp bars to show up.

I love that idea, although I don’t think it would ever get implemented. I gave you a +1.

Rash.6514:

Terra, sorry but your argument doesn’t make much sense. If ANet doesn’t like us looking at the UI constantly (and neither do I, one of the reasons why I love this game), that is why they should enable health bars on top of players heads, like they do for enemies.

The druid is all about correct placement. Indeed, if we can’t tell which of our allies need healing, that makes it too cumbersome to play.

This isn’t my stance, it’s AN and they can be quite stubborn. In Raid settings, there is slightly better access to player health bars because of squad UI. In event settings there is a much stronger case for them. Still, I don’t think AN will do something like this in the foreseeable future.

Swagger.1459:

Terra.8571:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

Squad UI was fixed for the last part of raids where you can see allies health.

I doubt you’ll get health bars over player’s head ever. It’s because AN don’t like people looking at UI’s and thus the squad UI is probably the best you’ll get. It is usable and it’s due to get a few more buffs after release with boon markers on players etc.

Unfortunately for anet, they will have to start caving in to player demands about qol functions like these. Also, I don’t think players really give a hoot what anet wants with regard to UI, we can put as much crap on our screen if we want. It’s already happening with all these new apps so that’s not a valid excuse anymore.

The part in bold, I take it you are referring to other games, not UI stuff for GW2? Just asking because any mod that accesses the game’s info (which is needed to do this) goes against the ToC and can get you banned so would’t advise it.

As many people have pointed out, there is demand for health bars and the like, but AN stance in the past and from various developer videos is they want people playing the game, not the UI. I was simply stating to the OP that AN are unlikely to add anything like this in the foreseeable future but instead further develop their squad UI.

Terra.8571:

Rash.6514:

Terra, sorry but your argument doesn’t make much sense. If ANet doesn’t like us looking at the UI constantly (and neither do I, one of the reasons why I love this game), that is why they should enable health bars on top of players heads, like they do for enemies.

The druid is all about correct placement. Indeed, if we can’t tell which of our allies need healing, that makes it too cumbersome to play.

This isn’t my stance, it’s AN and they can be quite stubborn. In Raid settings, there is slightly better access to player health bars because of squad UI. In event settings there is a much stronger case for them. Still, I don’t think AN will do something like this in the foreseeable future.

Swagger.1459:

Terra.8571:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

Squad UI was fixed for the last part of raids where you can see allies health.

I doubt you’ll get health bars over player’s head ever. It’s because AN don’t like people looking at UI’s and thus the squad UI is probably the best you’ll get. It is usable and it’s due to get a few more buffs after release with boon markers on players etc.

Unfortunately for anet, they will have to start caving in to player demands about qol functions like these. Also, I don’t think players really give a hoot what anet wants with regard to UI, we can put as much crap on our screen if we want. It’s already happening with all these new apps so that’s not a valid excuse anymore.

The part in bold, I take it you are referring to other games, not UI stuff for GW2? Just asking because any mod that accesses the game’s info (which is needed to do this) goes against the ToC and can get you banned so would’t advise it.

As many people have pointed out, there is demand for health bars and the like, but AN stance in the past and from various developer videos is they want people playing the game, not the UI. I was simply stating to the OP that AN are unlikely to add anything like this in the foreseeable future but instead further develop their squad UI.

We can load up a bunch of apps for gw2 from overwolf to clutter our screen as much as we want so that’s the point… It’s not anet watching our screens so who cares how much an individual player has all over the place…

So what you are saying is that you’d prefer healers watching the squad UI instead of gameplay?

And when healers are standing in red circles dying because they are watching the squad UI I’m sure that will work out well…

I don’t understand the “Play the Game, not the UI” stance when it comes to healing players. Sure it makes sense in terms of enemies who have telegraphed attacks and abilities but players/allies don’t telegraph their health visually and I think I have only heard a low health VO from another player once in a blue moon, not that it would help in a zerg like situation.
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My experiences on a healing druid in Beta were lacking because of certain problems with it.

1. Its cumbersome to find a player or a group of players who need healing because it takes too long to find them via mouse.

This is somewhat mitigated in parties and squads due to health bars in the party/squad UI but this presents another problem. It forces you to find a low health player on that UI, then you need to find the player on the map, and then you need to target/position and heal them, all while avoiding damage. Due to the way damage spikes in this game, you’ll be lucky if they are still around by the end of all those steps. This means the best strategy is to simply stack up and push continuous heals which feels to me is less engaging and also presents an additional problem in Raids due to the 5 target cap.

2. Their is nothing to aim for in the open world as a healer because its difficult for the player to get feedback when healing big/zerg groups.

Sure, you get to see pretty green numbers but outside a party/squad, you can’t tell if your healing players who are almost dead, those at almost 90% or more health or somewhere in-between. A option for a visual healthbar for players/allies on the field would give players a visual indication of how they are healing and allow the player the feeling of accomplishment when they burst heal a 20% health group up to 100% just like the feeling dps players get when they burst down a mob from 100% to 0%.

In an MMO, it’s important for a player to feel like their accomplishing something and not just spinning their wheels which feels like is an issue with the druid at this time.
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Those two issues (assuming I’m not forgetting something) and the major reason in my first paragraph are a big reason why visual health bars on the field especially with tweakable thresholds would be a great and necessary addition to the game.

LegallyBinding.4937:

I would settle for just an on/off toggle

This is the best and only option. Permanent would be silly. Never would also be silly. A toggle would be fantastic. <3

Rash.6514:

AlphaK.9486:

As an optional setting, perhaps they could add a hp threshold that shows an allied player/entity’s hp bar on the field only when their health falls below that threshold like say 90% or so.

Bonus Developer Points: Allow the player to be able to tweak that threshold anywhere from 0% to 100%, then everyone can pick when they want hp bars to show up.

I love that idea, although I don’t think it would ever get implemented. I gave you a +1.

+1 also.

Only concern I had with healthbars would be that it would clutter the screen when lots of players are present. This simple, yet effective, solution seems like a good way to have both our cake and eat it.

…or maybe we could toggle a setting that would show blood spurting from wounded allies. The closer to death the more blood until they look like someone in the Sword Battle in Kill Bill :-)

Archon.6480:

…or maybe we could toggle a setting that would show blood spurting from wounded allies. The closer to death the more blood until they look like someone in the Sword Battle in Kill Bill :-)

Get out.

CandyHearts.6025:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I would settle for just an on/off toggle

This is the best and only option. Permanent would be silly. Never would also be silly. A toggle would be fantastic. <3

The only problem with a simple toggle is that in zergs, I feel full health (or close to full) players are gonna block out too much with their healthbars. This would need at least a 90% or lower health display threshold to help prevent a “sea of green”.

Thinking about it, a toggle ally healthbar hotkey with a config option to set the health display threshold when the toggle is on would be ideal, no? Every player can set it to their preferred threshold which would also useful to other classes (Revenant Ventari, ect.) that may be more about sustained healing or the like.

Archon.6480:

…or maybe we could toggle a setting that would show blood spurting from wounded allies. The closer to death the more blood until they look like someone in the Sword Battle in Kill Bill :-)

Lol!

All the effects from skills plus health bars over players heads’ is just more stuff covering up the action. The ui allows you to the health of people in your party regardless of whether they are in front or behind you.

Serraphin, I don’t think you’ve played a Druid in the beta weekend.

I did indeed play a druid in the last beta in a couple of raids none the less. Heals are aoe even if you put your cursor on the person that needs to be healed most he/she may not be healed at all.

Rather than implement health bars that in the end may not do anything but add more clutter on screen, Devs should spend the time adding code that will apply the heals to the targets that need it the most.

Terra.8571:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I know that for many the lack of the ally health bars was one of the biggest impediments to enjoying the healing of the Druid.

Any word if this will be fixed for HoT release?

Squad UI was fixed for the last part of raids where you can see allies health.

I doubt you’ll get health bars over player’s head ever. It’s because AN don’t like people looking at UI’s and thus the squad UI is probably the best you’ll get. It is usable and it’s due to get a few more buffs after release with boon markers on players etc.

I keep seeing this kind of response and it still makes absolutely no sense. You are correct that Anet want people to play the game and not the UI like in other MMOs. That’s EXACTLY the reason they should have player health bars above people’s heads available in raids at least. The squad UI does the exact opposite of this. You are staring at a UI to see who you have to heal, instead of just looking around you, seeing who is at low health and going over to them to heal them. Visible health bars for this kind of game are absolutely necessary. At the very least it should be a toggle. If you don’t want that on your screen fine, but I do want it.

AlphaK.9486:

CandyHearts.6025:

LegallyBinding.4937:

I would settle for just an on/off toggle

This is the best and only option. Permanent would be silly. Never would also be silly. A toggle would be fantastic. <3

The only problem with a simple toggle is that in zergs, I feel full health (or close to full) players are gonna block out too much with their healthbars. This would need at least a 90% or lower health display threshold to help prevent a “sea of green”.

Thinking about it, a toggle ally healthbar hotkey with a config option to set the health display threshold when the toggle is on would be ideal, no? Every player can set it to their preferred threshold which would also useful to other classes (Revenant Ventari, ect.) that may be more about sustained healing or the like.

That would obviously be more ideal and I like it! But my brain tends to go more towards “what would be easy for them to implement so we can actually HAVE said thing?” You know?

I understand what you mean although I don’t think a person should necessarily limit their suggestions over perceived difficulty of implementation(excluding unreasonable/crazy idea’s or suggestions).

If a developer does go with an idea or suggestion in this topic, I have confidence that they will if necessary scale back and adjust the implementation to fit the constraints they are working with.

In any case, if they do happen to see this topic, I just want them to think about how far they can go with our suggestions with it, even if they choose in the end to simply make it a simple toggle with no other adjustments.

Swagger.1459:

We can load up a bunch of apps for gw2 from overwolf to clutter our screen as much as we want so that’s the point… It’s not anet watching our screens so who cares how much an individual player has all over the place…

So what you are saying is that you’d prefer healers watching the squad UI instead of gameplay?

And when healers are standing in red circles dying because they are watching the squad UI I’m sure that will work out well…

That’s a L2P issue. It’s no different from watching your own skill cd’s, healthbars, the enemy’s boon/condi status etc.

Also, squad UI just gives you a picture of other member’s health (not numbers), you don;t need to constantly stare at it. GW2 isn’t like most mmo’s because every class has their own heal skill and can manage 90%+ of their health bar without any aid. Raid’s may shift that paradigm a little bit, but every player will need to look after their own health pools with the druid/ healer helping when low.

Because of this, health bars above the head are not necessary but for some, I can see them being a QoL feature. Look at the first Vale kill, the druid would obviously have loved the Squad UI to help his allies but managed to keep everyone up without it.

xarallei.4279:

I keep seeing this kind of response and it still makes absolutely no sense. You are correct that Anet want people to play the game and not the UI like in other MMOs. That’s EXACTLY the reason they should have player health bars above people’s heads available in raids at least. The squad UI does the exact opposite of this. You are staring at a UI to see who you have to heal, instead of just looking around you, seeing who is at low health and going over to them to heal them. Visible health bars for this kind of game are absolutely necessary. At the very least it should be a toggle. If you don’t want that on your screen fine, but I do want it.

The question is, is it necessary? Unlike other games (e.g. FF XIV), 100% healing hasn’t been necessary and even in raids, you heal for may be for only half the fight (because everyone class has their own heal and some form of self survivability). We’ll have to see how the meta evolves, but pure healers (where all you do is watch an allies health) might actually be detrimental because of enrage timers.

I’ve mentioned above, squad UI health bars are like your own bar’s, you simply glance at it time to time (it is a picture so the brain quickly interprets it). Once people get use to it, you won;t have to constantly stare at it.

If they add it as a feature I won’t mind but because of the way healing is done at the moment where:

• No targeting ally (single target) heals
• Small radius heals
• Limit to 4 other chars
• High burst heals limited to druids
• Combo fields allow non-healing player’s to heal themselves
• Lack of Credit for healing in many game types e.g. events
• All classes have their own heal skill
• All classes have 2 dodges and other tools to help mitigate damage

With the upcoming raids which are meant to be the hardest content, given the above, you might want to bring a support spec to help top up everyone’s hp but they won;t be needed as 100% heal bots. If a player dies, unlike in some mmo’s, it won’t necessarily be because of a bad healer.

There was a good post in the BWE3 review of the druid where they said, druid healing was good but they found that most of the player’s who needed the heals were the same ones. Whilst the better players tended to need little to no healing.

As I mentioned above, the first Vale kill (with Cleric druid) was done with no squad UI at all. So if they added it because a large proportion of player’s wanted it, I have no issues with it and that’s AN decision. But with what we’ve seen so far, it’s not mandatory but a nice QoL feature for some.

You’re missing the point terra so go back and reread the conversation.

I sort of think Druids will be of little use in open world PvE and raids without being able to see the health bars above your allies heads (like we see the little red lines showing enemy health).

Rangers and Druids don’t have “skill rotations” where you mindlessly cycle through the skills in a set pattern. They are reactionary, for the most part. Sure you can equip a LB, swap to it, and rotate through 2,1-3,5,2,4 (or whatever you think is the highest damage rotation) every time. That is not going to work as well as using the right skills for the situation.

If a Druid is using anything other than Nomad’s armour, he is going to need to be dealing damage when all his allies are at full health, it will only make sense to swap to staff or the avatar when allies are taking heavy damage… otherwise you’ll be a useless waste of space when not healing… Toothless. If the game is designed in this way, there will be no need or use for Druids in any raid. Period. It looks to me like their healing is on par (maybe a little lower) than the old school Ritualist. And be sure, Ritualists could dish out some sweet damage too.

I think the consensus is pretty clear.

We need a toggle on/off for player health bars (would be very useful for PvP as well).

If people are worried about the UI getting cluttered with health bars, you don’t have to use them. For those of us that think they would be a great QoL improvement for dedicated healers, it should be available.

Please implement this Arenanet. The squad/party UI would work fine with single target healing, but we don’t have that. We need health bars to make healing/support work with the positional based healing spells Druid will have.

Even if Druids will highly use it, it will be useful for anyone, regardless if they are support, control, damage.

If you see an enemy chasing a low hp ally. You can:

• Stun him to stop it from chasing.
• Put tons of defensive boons on him.
• DPS the mob down.

I don’t know why this hasn’t been in the game from the beginning. Most modern MMOs give you an option to toggle HP bars on/off. If you don’t want it, don’t use it. If you want it, it’s there for you.

What exactly is the issue? “Play how you want to play”

Perhaps this feature will be needed in the future. It is us, the community, who will demand it once raids are out. Let the big and hardcore guilds fail raids because they don’t know who to heal and then we might see something like that implemented in the future.

I can’t remember exactly. But one thing I remember when I played druid during the beta is as long as the squad UI was up and running I think i could indeed see ally health bars. Atleast most of the time. It wasn’t very big or flashy but I remember them being there.

This please, I really enjoy support, in all mmorpgs I played and gw2 is even more fun because I can do more than heals, but it’s really annoying that I don’t know who to help half the time…

and for the Anet doesn’t like it argument, well I don’t care, I’m the one that needs it…

They could do it like in starcraft 2, health bars only show if the unit loses health, so it’s not messy and we know who to help immediately

You can’t target an ally specifically and you have no real control over who in a 8 man stack gets healed. With the staff it is clear for people to see the beam if they need to be heal they need to line up with it.

Adding a health bar really would be a was of time considering the first two points. This also assume that healing will be needed. Regardless of game mode it would be wasted effort.

Without reading anything else in this thread but the title:

YES, PLEASE! Make it optional and turn it off by default, I don’t care, but I want to know who needs help in open world raids, instead of randomly going into cele form and spamming #3 and #4 hoping i’m saving someone.

Ally health bars in PvP would be awesome. Been bothering me last couple of days playing Stronghold. I have to keep mousing over stuff to see its health which is really tedious.

Instead of health bars, there should be a symbol that appears over allies who could be in use of some healing. the symbol can change color based on how low their health is.

I wish AN to be less hidebound in that specific case. This lack of UI feedback never made sense anyway and I don’t want to install 3rd party stuff to have it.

Still waiting for Health Bars! At least in PvP give us this option.

LegallyBinding.4937:

Still waiting for Health Bars! At least in PvP give us this option.

In pvp you’re always in a group, so there you can at least see health bars in the party ui. I think it’s more of a problem in pve/wvw.

This is extremely frustrating. The health bars already exist on a mouse-over, how hard can it possibly be to add an option to make them permanent?
Also, making the toggle hotkeyable would be great.

People are already complaining about pvp rank icons a sea of health bar would be terrible.

in open would healing isn’t needed and if it was only one in ten players would need this.

Plus with the squad ui you can see whos low on health select that player would give you the target indicator.

A small minority want this but its definitely not needed. plus would only create more clutter on the screen.

They could colour the player names by health (e.g. white for 95-100% health, something light for 50-95%, a bit darker for 1-50%), that would only add minor clutter and still help healers a bunch.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

People are already complaining about pvp rank icons a sea of health bar would be terrible.

in open would healing isn’t needed and if it was only one in ten players would need this.

Plus with the squad ui you can see whos low on health select that player would give you the target indicator.

A small minority want this but its definitely not needed. plus would only create more clutter on the screen.

I truly dislike when people claim to speak for the majority, with absolutley no possible way to prove they do. Please stop that.

As for the topic, it should be optional, is that so hard to grasp? You don’t like the idea, fine. I do. If it’s optional, no reason for anyone to argue against it, right?

Where did I say I speak for the majority. I said people are already complaining about icons. I said only about 1 in ten need this as currently raid size is 10 and I haven’t seen more than one dedicated healer per raid.

Optional or not I would rather the devs focus on bigger issue is that so hard to understand.

Qol changes are nice but not at the expensive of other things that need to be fixed.

This Qol change wont pacify me as many Qol are intended to do when there are real issue left on the table. So yes there are reasons to be against this.