Guild Wars 2

With the way glint works i pictured the herald to be a perfect offensive support class for dungeons and upcoming raids. The release of quad stats and the return of boon duration made me want to make an offensive support class for dungeons/fractals/ raids.

The goal was to make a class that supports your team via boons but is still able to do decent dmg. I figured leave the healing to druids/eles.

The new commander stats along with herald’s f2 ability make it really easy to pit out a ton of boons. To be honest i might have gone too far into that as atm on paper it shows me being able to keep 25 stacks of might by just channeling a facet.

I picked herald for the obvious reasons… I also picked ironhammer for tankyness and the sustain you get from elite (50 % damage reduction va burst dps)

This is all in paper atm as i havent played the game sonce release enough to aquire all that gear yet. Let me know what you think and ideas on how to improve.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsemnXN2gSqJvQR/kbosgyPU4Q5IKYr8ElFNFitMppNtLIANwegJshA-TRCFQBAU5370HgNlg4T9HAY+TAPAAHcGAWwhAod7PQKAvmaB-e

Well, first of all you get 65% boon duration already between Facet of Nature and a minor trait in Herald. Second, boon duration is capped at 100%. So at most you can use another 35% before hitting the cap. At the very least you can switch to zerker accessories

edit: Weapons/armor give 21.67% not 35%

Zerikin.1593:

Well, first of all you get 65% boon duration already between Facet of Nature and a minor trait in Herald. Second, boon duration is capped at 100%. So at most you can use another 35% before hitting the cap. At the very least you can switch to zerker accessories, different food, and runes, and still be just above the cap with command weapon’s and armor.

Valud point guess i got too excited about the stat being back and forgot about cap.

What I would find interesting is would a healing spec rev would viable. You could easily run a power build with full zerker gear and get 100% boon duration with food/runes.

Zerikin.1593:

What I would find interesting is would a healing spec rev would viable. You could easily run a power build with full zerker gear and get 100% boon duration with food/runes.

I see it as one of those cases where it would take a lot of work to get minimal results. I believe ele and druid are much more efficient at it.

Hmm. You can get an awful lot of healing power from the salvation tree.
20% when health > 75%
Minor Trait always 15%
20% for 10s when you swtich legends
1.5% for every 100 healing power.

Not sure how they stack but that adds up to alot.

I don’t see why Ventari revs wouldn’t work as healers in raids.

With full primary healing power ascended gear, Runes of the Monk, Delicious Rice Ball and Furious Tuning Crystal you’ll end up with 1757 healing power. 1736 if you stick to ascended weapons and trinkets, but exotic armor.

On top of that, with Salvation/Invocation/Herald, you can get a whole lot of increased outgoing healing modifiers:

• Tranquil Balance: 20% (own health > 75%)
• Serene Rejuvenation: 15%
• Selfless Amplification: 25.5%
• Shrouding Mists: 25% (energy > 50)
• Superior Rune of the Monk: 10%
• Delicious Rice Ball: 10%

That’s +105% outgoing healing. There’s also +20% on Invoking Harmony, but since you drop back to 50 energy Shrouding Mists will deactivate if you need healing right that second. And that’s assuming you can actually afford to switch out of Ventari.

So assuming 1.7k healing power and +105% outgoing healing, your skills will heal for this much:

• Project Tranquility: 840 every 3 seconds
• Ventari’s Will: 3044
• Natural Harmony: 5412
• Purifying Essence: 1363 per condition
• Energy Expulsion: 3762 per fragment
• Rejuvenating Assault: 861 per orb
• Renewing Wave: 4920
• Envoy of Exuberance: 5064

Even if you spam tablet every ~3 seconds for 3k healing, you’ll be able to stay at 100 energy. If you need burst, you can use Natural Harmony and your weapon heal for 10k healing. Worst case, you can do that again after 2 seconds when you swap to your other weapon for another 10k while staying above 50 energy.

That seems pretty good to me.

Seeing those numbers, I’m not even sure it’s worth traiting for regen xD.

Gardios.3785:

I don’t see why Ventari revs wouldn’t work as healers in raids.

With full primary healing power ascended gear, Runes of the Monk, Delicious Rice Ball and Furious Tuning Crystal you’ll end up with 1757 healing power. 1736 if you stick to ascended weapons and trinkets, but exotic armor.

On top of that, with Salvation/Invocation/Herald, you can get a whole lot of increased outgoing healing modifiers:

• Tranquil Balance: 20% (own health > 75%)
• Serene Rejuvenation: 15%
• Selfless Amplification: 25.5%
• Shrouding Mists: 25% (energy > 50)
• Superior Rune of the Monk: 10%
• Delicious Rice Ball: 10%

That’s +105% outgoing healing. There’s also +20% on Invoking Harmony, but since you drop back to 50 energy Shrouding Mists will deactivate if you need healing right that second. And that’s assuming you can actually afford to switch out of Ventari.

So assuming 1.7k healing power and +105% outgoing healing, your skills will heal for this much:

• Project Tranquility: 840 every 3 seconds
• Ventari’s Will: 3044
• Natural Harmony: 5412
• Purifying Essence: 1363 per condition
• Energy Expulsion: 3762 per fragment
• Rejuvenating Assault: 861 per orb
• Renewing Wave: 4920
• Envoy of Exuberance: 5064

Even if you spam tablet every ~3 seconds for 3k healing, you’ll be able to stay at 100 energy. If you need burst, you can use Natural Harmony and your weapon heal for 10k healing. Worst case, you can do that again after 2 seconds when you swap to your other weapon for another 10k while staying above 50 energy.

That seems pretty good to me.

I really wanted to try out a healing Ventari build, but do you think that you should go for Jalis as your secondary legend or Glint? The party should already have very high uptime on might and fury, if not perma-25 stacks with the other party members, but there are not a lot of buffs in the game like the Jalis elite. If you know an encounter is going to have huge burst damage at a certain point that is either very hard to avoid or unavoidable all together, using the elite skill to reduce the damage to 50% is invaluable.

I was also thinking of either doing Staff/Sword+Shield for the max healing or Mace+Shield in Apothecary gear instead of Cleric to help put out a bit of condition damage since there are some mobs that only take condition damage in raids.

I did a quick dps calculation to compare the dps between a power build that focuses on power compared to one with condition. With 900 power, in clerics gear it took about 1 minute and 8 seconds to kill the target golem in Heart of the Mists, auto attacking with sword which is the highest dps for sword.
With 900 condition damage, just using the mace autoattack and and the #2 skill, it took about 44 seconds to kill the target golem. Mace/Shield condi in Apothecary gear is probably the best bet to maximize both healing and damage in a support role.

Narth.6094:

I did a quick dps calculation to compare the dps between a power build that focuses on power compared to one with condition. With 900 power, in clerics gear it took about 1 minute and 8 seconds to kill the target golem in Heart of the Mists, auto attacking with sword which is the highest dps for sword.
With 900 condition damage, just using the mace autoattack and and the #2 skill, it took about 44 seconds to kill the target golem. Mace/Shield condi in Apothecary gear is probably the best bet to maximize both healing and damage in a support role.

I hate to digress here, but in all my time, I have not been able to figure out how anyone does a DPS calculation without some form of in-game meter. How do you do it?

Dalent.9358:

Narth.6094:

I did a quick dps calculation to compare the dps between a power build that focuses on power compared to one with condition. With 900 power, in clerics gear it took about 1 minute and 8 seconds to kill the target golem in Heart of the Mists, auto attacking with sword which is the highest dps for sword.
With 900 condition damage, just using the mace autoattack and and the #2 skill, it took about 44 seconds to kill the target golem. Mace/Shield condi in Apothecary gear is probably the best bet to maximize both healing and damage in a support role.

I hate to digress here, but in all my time, I have not been able to figure out how anyone does a DPS calculation without some form of in-game meter. How do you do it?

The only way without a meter that I know works well is to go to the Heart of the Mists and kill the indestructible golem while timing it using a stopwatch. Then you take the health of the golem (which I dont remember off the top of my head but you could probably Google it) and you divide it by the time in seconds it took you to kill it. That gives you an approximate DPS.

For just comparing power v condition damage with healing power gear I didn’t calculate the dps because I was only curious how much damage they did compared to eachother.

I did some tests in Heart of the Mists as well using Heavy Target Golems. I timed it three times each and took the average.

900 Condition Damage
14s Mace #2 #3 off CD
15s Mace #2 after completed #1 chain
15s Mace #2 off CD
25s Mace #1
48s Staff #1
56s Staff #2 off CD

900 Power
17s Mace #2 #3 off CD
20s Sword #1
22s Mace #2 after completed #1 chain
22s Mace #2 off CD
27s Staff #1
30s Staff #2 off CD
32s Mace #1

Condition damage really does seem to be better if you stay on mace. Of course, depending on the raid bosses’ vitality and toughness the actual numbers might be different, but there’s obviously no way for us to know right now.

Disregarding the actual numbers, mace is probably the better choice anyway due to the fire field and blast finisher. Sword has vulnerability to offer, but chances are the boss already has 25 stacks anyway. It also has an evade, but you may end up in an unfavorable position due to the unpredictable movement attached to it. Mainly using staff might not be a bad idea for the healing orbs alone. They should appear on your tank’s side from time to time which helps with their HP (as well as kiting if you trait the orbs for swiftness).

Stat-wise I’m still on the fence what to use. Apothecary would make sense due to the superior damage if you mainly stay on mace, but I’d like to have a bit more vitality for the increased HP—the healer going downstate is a terrible situation I’d like to avoid. The only set with healing power as major stat and vitality as minor stat would be Magi. Magi comes with precision as the other minor stat, which is kinda wasted on condition damage since you don’t have on-crit condis if you run Salvation/Invocation/Herald. If you want to make use of the precision, you’d have to mix it with power (Cleric).

Legends, since we’ll be stuck on Ventari most of the time I don’t think we actually get to use them much. Swapping has the risk of you being stuck with only 2 weapon heals which could be really bad, and if you swap back to Ventari you’ll also lose the +25% outgoing healing modifier for a while since you’re down to 40 energy.

• Shiro: Only really has the stun going for him, which you likely don’t need since you’re already wielding the destroyer of break bars.
• Glint: Doesn’t offer much you don’t already have. You should have permanent fury and might stacks from your party and you get protection from the Herald trait spamming Ventari #6. Infuse Light is a good panic button, but you have staff #3 and shield #5 for that.
• Mallyx: Might actually be useful for some encounters for the boon strip alone, but that’s it.
• Jalis: The stability is nice, as is the elite. However, due to the 5 target limit, I’m not sure how useful the elite will be. If the boss’s tell is long enough, you can switch to Jalis, time the elite so that the boss strikes during the last second of the effect or so, switch back to Ventari right after casting the elite and then go back to healing the unlucky 5. That seems like it’s much more trouble than is worth it…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAW5unnNWNSyJrJRNl/ksoygS4U5QJIscrkFglhNjOKZNgBSw+2dDG-TxxGABA8EAwTJYuXEAFV/Zo9HWS5Hb6GIFgf7tA-e
This is the build I will -probably- end up using. Sigil of Transference would be preferable over Renewal, but since it’s locked behind scribe 400 (presumably), I’m not counting on being able to use it.