Guild Wars 2

After thinking about it for awhile and doing some checking I had a feeling that the ranger was missing a healing method that fits the theme of a beast master type build. I ended up thinking of various possibilities and came up with one id like some feedback on. I had hoped to find something that could aid a pet in surviving situations it currently can’t.

Signet of the Companion. Base cooldown 40 seconds. Cast time One second

Passive Effect: Attacks made by the pet heal the ranger (base x amount) Attacks by the ranger heal the pet (base x amount) The amount scales with the healing power of the ranger.

Active Effect: The Ranger is healed by an amount equal to the percentage of health his pet has remaining. (If the ranger is at 10% health and the pet is at 70% health he would be healed for 70% of HIS total health. Bringing him up to 80%)

The Pet is healed by a percentage equal to the percentage of health its master has remaining. (If the pet is at 70% health and the ranger at 10% health the pet would recieve a 10% heal bringing it up to 80% health)

The skill can not heal for less that 7% of either pet or masters health

The goal here was to promote observation to the pets health as relative to his own. In order for him to know and predict how much healing he will receive. This ability has direct counterplay in being able to kill the pet to reduce the healing the ranger recieves. While also preventing that from being too easy by promoting the pets high hp through rapid attacks in order to maintain the pets survivabilty. This also makes retaliation a form of counterplay to the passive effect. (in order to heal the pet through direct damage without using the active youl have to rapidly hit the target. Leaving you vulnerable to retaltion causing you to take more damage while healing your pet. And vice versa) So the skill wont be an easy thing to manipulate alone.

However it gives the possibility of extreme heals as long as you have the awareness to pull them off. (ranger at 3% but manges to get the heal off with a recently swapped pet active. Heals back to 90% health)

The biggest issue that might make this skill overpowered is the pet swap mechanic. Can’t you just swap pet and then heal for 100% heal? The thing is doing this would be like shouting at the other player (im about to try to heal). That combined with a telegraphed animation would prompt him to stop you through either reducing it with poison or a stun or daze. Meaning that the theoretical “super heal” would be a risky thing to attempt. (similar to using an engineers AED or a warriors healing stance) Making the ideal use being the passive effect. With the active effect being an act of desperation to save either the ranger himself or his pet from imminent death.

If someone has put forth this idea in the past on the forums. I ask that you post a link in your comment so I can edit my OP to include his/her post.

Please comment with any ideas/concerns/questions you may have on the idea.

as you said too strong of heal on pet swap, and too cheese of an effect for passive. Insanely strong in 1v1 scenarios, useless in huge wvw groups (you pet has to be alive to provide you with heals). Its just not balanced. Remember, rangers already have some crazy infinite healing builds, this would put those builds over the top. Think never dying BM condi healing builds. It would also be very strong for LB ranger that could easily spec for reduce signet recharge (makes it 32 sec recharge, making it the best heal to recharge ratio of any of the heals available to ranger, plus giving you better cool downs on your other signets). Not sure if you would want to see a LB ranger with that kind of healing power. Hunters shot, pet swap, back to full health. Plus, I don’t agree that there is any sort of risk associated with pet swapping and then healing. 1 sec cast not really the end of the world for cast time. You could just start the cast of the heal , and swap pets mid cast to avoid any sort of pre-tell.

As I said. I was looking for suggestions. My main goal was to think of an idea for a heal that fit the duel nature of signets as well as filling a “BM” role heal. Which currently doesn’t exist. Numbers can be switched. cast times can be lengthened. Scaling can be reworked.

Ill start with a few ideas. I agree that the heal on the active has the potential to be insanely strong. A cap could be put on this skill just like theres a minimum there could be a maximum. Say you can’t heal yourself for more than 50% of your total health. The cast time and cooldown could be changed to ensure that its used in the way that its supposed to. As a last ditch method of surviving. One method might be that instead of a flat percentage you gain a heal RELATIVE to the amount of health your pet has remaining. Say your pet has 100% health you gain 100% of x amount of heal instead of a flat percentage. Less health you gain less healing down to a minimum amount. And vice versa. The amount is of course still affected by poison.

The cooldown doesn’t have to be 40 seconds. That was just a random number I made in order to start conversation on the idea. A heal this strong could have a longer cooldown to match it. Again. the idea is for the passive to be the ideal. Not the active.

As for wvw. Theres methods of keeping pets alive in wvw that most people simply dont bother with. One of those methods is the carrion devourer. Which provides a nice poison field on downed as well as a duel attack will a pulsing aoe hit to it. Both of which would proc the heal for quite a decent number of procs. A marsh drake as well often survives fine with careful handling. And can also make good use of the passive.

The longbow ranger would definetly get quite good use of this signet. Hed be able to heal his pet for quite a bit in a wvw zerg through the use of traits such as piercing shot and read the wind + barrage and rapid fire. Enough healing infact that hopefully in combination with other skills (such as signet of stone) theyd be able to maintain there pet in quick skirmishes against hte enemy zerg.

My goal is to find a heal that fits the BM playstyle (either the power bm OR the condi bm But builds focused on synergy between the Pet actions and the BM trait line as well as other factors instead of minimizing the influence the pet has in your combat). I had originally hoped heal as one would be changed to be more friendly to the playstyle (as it doesn’t really have a complete niche of its own like healing spring or troll ungeant or even water spirit). However at this point I have given up on a revamp of older mechanics and am looking forward to new options that may fill the gap.

I would IDEALLY create a heal skill that supports the BM playstyle without giving increased sustain to what is already considered a “plague” build. The Condi Regen BM build. Obviously this is not that skill. YET.

It does not have to be this specific mechanic. And I am no more attached to it than any other. My hope is to use this as a starting point. See if a way could be discovered to have it fulfill its role in the current state of the game.

If such a way isn’t possible in the eyes of the community. Ill scratch it and look for a different method to fulfill the roll I believe is necessary.

Do you have a suggestion? Maybe alter the active affect so that instead of a base heal its another factor entirely. One that requires a bit more careful planning.

Maybe one that causes the you and the pet to regain health based on damage done for a short time (instead of healing each other for a short time you heal yourselves). At a percentage significant enough be worth using. At a different scaling for your pet than for you.

so going along your theme of Beast Mastery

Signet passive: Your attacks heal you and your pet for " X " (750 (.1) ) (3 sec ICD)
Signet Active: Revive and Heal your pet. You and your pet gain multiple Boons for a short duration.

Protection: 4 sec
Resistance: 4 sec
Regeneration: 10 sec (1300 heal)
Swiftness: 10 sec
Stability (2 stacks): 10 sec (upcoming stability change)

or….

Signet passive: Your attacks heal you and your pet for " X " (750 (.1) ) (3 sec ICD)
Signet Active: Revive and Heal your pet. Recharge your current pet’s F2 Skill.

warriors healing signet has shown that the active portion of a signet, needs to do something other than heal if its going to be worth popping.

Thats a fair point. Im worried that the internal cooldown would cause it to either heal for a large base chunk or less of a heal than is needed in most combat situations. Its why I leaned towards the (on pet hit) idea so that the heal would be justified in not having an internal cooldown as well as having it scale heavily with healing power.

As for the boons. I definitely like the idea. And the ability to rez a pet is something many have wanted for quite some time. Many Bm rangers focus on a single pet at a time. Such as masters bond builds (although those are extremely rare due to the limiting nature of the trait) and pet might stacking builds. So having the ability to more quickly recover from a mistake made in pet control could go along way.

So the active I have no issue with.

My question on the passive is. With an involved internal cooldown. How much healing would it need to give in order to not end up an alternate version of signet of vampirism? Which instead of a heal became simply a really bad form of mitigation?

its much different than signet of vampirism because you have to land attacks, meaning you have to be on the offensive, not the defensive for it to work.

With my example, you are getting healed for 7500 passive every 30 seconds

Lets compare to some other heals at base healing power

heal as one: 6520 every 20 seconds
troll unguent: 850 every second for 10 seconds, – 8500 every 25 seconds

the fact that my signet is passive makes up for being the lowest heal of the bunch (higher than healing spring but spring clears condis),

so I would say that my example is pretty much on par for where it needs to be healing wise, considering you have to be attacking and landing attacks for it to proc.

I believe it would be taken by many rangers who don’t need condi clear, or who already have a great base of regeneration going.

great idea , then with signet mastery , it would improve its active being able to Revive the pet more often every 22secs , though in this case i think its cooldown will be better suited for 35secs> 28secs(traited)

I agree. The Idea is sound. It would be a useful alternative to the BM playstyle. And I could even see a zealot set ranger invested in the BM tree as well as the signet line using it.

I wish all discussions in this sub forum could actually reach something useful without biting its own tail like this.

I’ve checked the healing skills and ours are just sooo bad.
No good cleanishing, barely acceptable values, long recharges and casts, etc.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I’ve checked the healing skills and ours are just sooo bad.
No good cleanishing, barely acceptable values, long recharges and casts, etc.

I can only guess they were originally designed with the idea that only Heal as One (and the regen procs from healing spring) was the only healing skill to directly effect the pet, then somewhere that changed and they’ve never been to up to date on direction of ranger design and what the game itself focuses on.