Guild Wars 2

Im running duel axes on a shout healing/dps hybrid build im currently working my way up to get the gold to buy exotics. I like the ability to heal and also buff up my group with shouts but i dont want to go a full tankey build i wanna dps and heal that the same time. My question is first is that even a viable strat? Second how would you gear yourself to be able to pull that build off without going fully +healing/toughness. Right now with no +healing and 20 points in defense i find my shouts heal for very little. Would +healing help all that much?

Shout healing is a gimmick that’s just not worth the investment. And I really wanted to love it. Hell even Taugrim, who loved shout healing as well, admitted that the shout heals are pretty much poo in the scheme of things. Severely kittens your dps and even when fully geared for +healing the heals you get from shouting are only a minor speedbump against the incoming damage.

Same with banner regen sadly. They’re just not really worth building around. Use the shouts by all means, and hell even get the cd reduction and soldier runes for cleansing, but traiting for healing on your shouts is pretty much self-kittening.

Hmmm I was just thinking about the same thing. Could you suggest a trait build that would work well for a dual axe/rifle + shouts build?

Depends on the build you go into
if you go into a dps build, it aint worth it as it is kittening your dps as you are getting something of 1,5-2k heal every 30s x3 which compared to your 20k+ health pool it isnt worth it, But you are going to say 1/5 omg the shout saved my life >.< yay shouts

if you are going tanking, the shouts do the same heals 1,5 -2k to a 25k+ health pool every 30s x3 which is really low, but on the other hand, you dont die as easly, as you can mitgate some of the pain, until you get the nice dicy mobs, or the bosses that laugh at that dont care about your spec, AKA, range or die, then the kittened dps as a tank is sad and your role now is pure support and again your shouts dont do that much (to you, but to others it does alot like a thief that has 10k+ health)

Sure, they don’t heal as well as I’d like, but, in large group situations Shouts are a great tool to have, and spec’ing 30 into tactics is fine with me anyway due to the buff duration increase and 300 Vitality.

Not sure if it really makes any difference though, but, meh, I keep it on there as an OHSHI- button.

I disagree with the worthlessness of the heals. They’re gravy on top of already solidly designed shouts. They’re instant and don’t interrupt anything else you would be doing (100 blades, reviving, activating a signet, etc). They’re uninterruptable and can be used while crowd controlled, which makes them the most reliable healing in the game.

5k every 20ish seconds (3 shouts at 1.5k+ per) doubles your healing potential as well as providing an awful lot of AoE healing for teammates.

I think where people start to look down on the healing is because they’re stacking large amounts of Vit, which directly devalues your healing as a percentage of your maximum HP. It is really sort of a bummer that this trait is in the Tactics line when it would have both more perceived and actual value at the end of the Defense tree (both for the bonus healing and the extra toughness).

I think Taugrim’s error is that he has been pushing a Rifle Warrior build. The shouts at rifle range don’t reach the people who need it most (those up front in the scrum), and Rifle is going to be at a damage deficit which is harder to recover from. The Shout heals became more about personal survival at the expense of a large amount of damage when he could easily just kite/knockback and avoid most of the pertinent damage in the first place. If you’re running around with a Rifle, Shout Healing is a pretty mediocre way to go and Taugrim was 100% correct in this assessment.

I’ve narrowed down Greatsword as being perhaps the best way to make a Shout Healer work. As mentioned before, going full Tank with Shout Healing wont do enough to save you from super-boss-strikes, and you’re tough enough with shouts alone for everything else. The Greatsword Trait (or most overpowered weapon trait in the game) does a prettykittenfine job of shoring up lost offense by going that deep into the Tactics tree. You wont do the damage of a 5 Signet 100 blader, but you’ll still pump out more than just about anyone else in the group while being a centerpiece of team support. Greatsword additionally gives the best Evade I’ve personally used in the game (I used to really love Death Blossom, but it feels sluggish as kitten now), which really helps you buy that last couple seconds before another “healing volley.”

There are two big hurdles to making this build work as DPS. The Tactics line sucks, it has good stuff in there but the 5,10,15 traits are mediocre at best. The other hurdle is that gearing for it can be a bit awkward (I’d love to find gear with Heal/Precision as that would give Shouts/Greatsword the most bang for the buck). I’m making it work with a mix of Cleric and Berserker, but it can be pretty frustrating trying to strike the right balance.

AinSoph.5063:

Sure, they don’t heal as well as I’d like, but, in large group situations Shouts are a great tool to have, and spec’ing 30 into tactics is fine with me anyway due to the buff duration increase and 300 Vitality.

Not sure if it really makes any difference though, but, meh, I keep it on there as an OHSHI- button.

The additional buff duration really is the best consolation prize of the Tactics tree. Makes the Elite Signet prettykittensolid with a 66% uptime.

I run what I call a squad leader build using Axe/WH with Shouts. I may switch vigorous shouts for lung capacity but the healing is a nice extra on top. I don’t invest in any +healing though. Basically the spec, with soldiers runes makes condition dmg my kitten.

For WvWvW I run with Knight’s and a longbow in the alternate set, with a Battle Standard.

For sPvP I run with Berserkers and a Sword/Shield in the alternate set, With Elite Sig

What I hate about shout healing is that it reduces the usefulness of shouts. Two of the shouts are most effective when used on cooldown (“For Great Justice” and “On My Mark”) and the other two are situational (“Shake it Off” and “Fear Me”).

I either have to waste a cooldown or delay an effect for a small heal. I almost feel it would be more useful if shouts granted regeneration and banners healed.

Never use them for just healing, the healing is like icing on top of the muffin. You could just eat the icing but you’re probably going to end up dead.

You can effectively use them with different builds as they do heal you for a small amount but that small amount has kept me alive more than 1 time. It is all up to you as a player though and going deep into healing is not the way I would go. I would just worry about damage output on items since you went into tactics that far.

I run a mixed build. Right now I use 30 tactics, 30 discipline, and 10 strength. Might move 10 out of discipline but it is working for now.

Mix gear between Bersekers (legs, shoulders, glove, amulet, earrings) and Knights (chest, head, legs, rings).

Gives you solid damage ability and some toughness from knights. From what I read about healing it isn’t really that worth it. Runes of the soldier give more vit and toughness.

I think my shouts heal for about 1200 each. With a little under 24k hp that is about 15% every 20-24s or so which IMO is quite a bit.

It doesn’t work, Shout healing is pointless.

1) To get decent heals on your shouts you need +heal stat. To get this you completely kitten your damage.

2) You have to take 3 shouts. Problem is instead of using them when you need them you just end up using them as 3 quick heals.

3) When facing someone you have 3 heals for 1200 each to throw in when your health drops. OR…I could activate endure pain and ignore 10k worth of damage (more if it worked for 5 seconds instead of the 3 it actually does).

4) Whilst i’m ignoring the damage I can be out putting lots of my own damage because I didn’t kitten my dps by getting shout heal setup.

5) You avoid the need for healing by killing the other guy first or mitigating it. The longer it takes to kill him, the more damage he can put out vs your damage, and a few 1200hps heals here and there won’t change any outcome against a good player.

I think Taugrim’s error is that he has been pushing a Rifle Warrior build.

Actually with shout healing he was pushing a hammer build. He used shouts on his rifle warrior, but never ever traited for healing.

thanks for all the input guys didnt expect this much… right now i gotta process it but from what i gather +healing is a waste and healing should be the icing on the cake… I think i might just run a duel axe and signets but swap out a signet with “For Great Justice” I know greatsword is best but i really dont enjoy it as much as i do duel axes.
All in all i belive warrior is at an extreme disadvantage as they seem to be pigeonholed into a specific build either full tank or full dps no mix or hybrid. I dont know how other classes are but warrior traits/skills need a little reworking imo

phaeris.7604:

It doesn’t work, Shout healing is pointless.

1) To get decent heals on your shouts you need +heal stat. To get this you completely kitten your damage.

2) You have to take 3 shouts. Problem is instead of using them when you need them you just end up using them as 3 quick heals.

3) When facing someone you have 3 heals for 1200 each to throw in when your health drops. OR…I could activate endure pain and ignore 10k worth of damage (more if it worked for 5 seconds instead of the 3 it actually does).

4) Whilst i’m ignoring the damage I can be out putting lots of my own damage because I didn’t kitten my dps by getting shout heal setup.

5) You avoid the need for healing by killing the other guy first or mitigating it. The longer it takes to kill him, the more damage he can put out vs your damage, and a few 1200hps heals here and there won’t change any outcome against a good player.

Let me put shout healing in a better perspective. It is not 100b easy ergo not many people will be successful with it. It is actually reliable and it can still output high dps. Will it be 100b high? No because it does more than just stand still and deal damage.

I personally find banner healing build to be a little better than shout healing, however i do NOT recommend gearing for +healing in either shout or banners as the +healing i find to really not make enough difference to sacrifice other stats.

I run a dual axe/longbow banners build with KNIGHTS gear(i sometimes use shouts instead in places where people steal my banners or such) And it is overpowered in PvE and WvW tbh. Its dps is only a little lower than glass cannon builds but the survivability is just so much more.

personally i use axe/axe and longsword with berserkers the classical glass canon build.

But on the other hand i use a tactic’s banner to provide that 1k+ heal to my team8s, not on CD but many times when my HP is low i back off and provide healing as much as i can.

The heal aint much on the banner , esp with no healing gear but its there even miniscule and it adds up with my regen signet.

I really like it in dungeons, plus u can chain healing with all 5 members of the group: Pick it up, use heal, drop it and another guy picks it up, use heal, drop it and so on and forth. Not bad at all when the team works as team.

Shouts Heal is a trait in the SUPPORT line for warriors. It is not meant to be a tanking or self-sufficient build. Shouts Heal is for healing allies, not yourself. It becomes incredibly strong when you are healing more than one person. Trying to build a DPS/self-heal build around it will always fail. However, building DPS with party healing is very viable and makes the warrior a cleric of sorts.

If you’re going to take this approach, maxing out your healing is vital to being a good supporter as the shouts won’t make enough of a difference otherwise. Clerics is an obvious pick here as it keeps you alive to keep the party alive. For DPS, Longbow is your friend. You won’t be personally doing tons of damage, but you’ll be boosting your ally damage by a ton.

If you choose to go more of a DPS route, Banner Regen is better than Shouts Heal. Keep a banner with you and you’ll get permanent decent regen ticks while not taking up your entire hotbar. With this type of build, you can afford to choose from a variety of DPS options.

As others have said, the heals on shouts is icing on the cake. The rest of that cake is the actual effects of the shouts, the fact that you can use them while in any form of CC, that you can use them to build adrenaline rapidly, and that you can use them to remove conditions. All of these things combined give some options on how you may want to use your shouts for a given situation.

In regards to your gear I wouldn’t avoid toughness but its your call. My biggest advice is not to fall into a full cleric set up. It’s highly unnecessary sacrifices way too much damage for a single aspect of your abilities. Go for a balance. I’m using cleric armor + back slot and the rest of my trinkets + my weapons are all knight. My shouts still heal for about 1700 but I have a 47% crit chance with Fury up (which has 100% uptime). Unlike a full cleric set this kind of crit lets you make good use of crit sigils.

I generally run with axe/warhorn + longbow. I may swap the horn depending on the situation but even when condition removal isn’t a big deal the vigor/weakness is just about always useful. axe/axe puts out more adrenaline though and lets me fit an eviscerate in between combustive shots. It’s not 100b kind of damage but it’s still powerful, steady, and I can stay mobile.

0/10/15/30/15 in traits

Berserker armor, cleric Trinkets. Soldier Runes.

Greatsword and Longbow. Water sigil of greatsword, fire sigil on longbow.

Makes a very nice balanced support build, you are capable of doing respectable damage, tanking, all while providing nice buffs, AoE heals and AoE condition removal to a large group of people.

The traits are also semi flexible so you can say swap to a mace/shield for tanking the more slow hitting mobs. Or taking the 1200 range longbow trait for fights where you don’t want to be near anything.

I can’t imagine playing warrior any other way.

To be honest, I decided to make a warrior because I wanted something that was similar to the “support” type of characters that I was used to playing in MOBAs.

In other words, something that could buff, debuff, crowd-control, “peel” and heal, as needed.

I ended up going with an Axe+Warhorn/Rifle – 0/0/30/30/10 “shout-based build” and, so far, I’m loving it.
I’m not an healer. I don’t use my shouts strictly as heals. I use them when they are needed (to remove conditions, CC enemies and to buff allies), the healing component is just a bonus. Just one more way to increase their effective HP, ever so slightly.

The strength of the build comes from its utility. You can invest in healing to improve that utility even further — becoming more of a “pure support” — or you can branch out, invest on some offensive stats and add to the group’s damage output.

Either way, you’ll be a valuable asset, imo.

(edit this is for WvW)

if you want to see how good healing shout is, try running with a 5 warrior party.

5 warriors, all have healing shouts. Healing Surge. Utils are Shake it off, For Great Justice, X, Battle Standard.

4 rifles, 1 longbow.
1 axe/horn, 1 sword/horn, 2 great sword, 1 hammer.
X = 2 fear me (horns), 2 frenzy (greatswords), 1 on my mark(hammer),

everyone runs runes of the soldier. No one have +healing gear.

10 healing shouts (12000) that removes 15 conditions every 20 seconds. Healing surge for 9k if you really need it. Battle standard when one goes down.

Scary amount of death at ranged, with mad bursts with 2 frenzied volleys. Longbowman drops fire field near them to create combo projectiles with every auto attack/volley. Your pressure is constantly high because its very very hard to make to you drop back to heal with that much shout healing going on.

I love shout healing, The best part of it is it has UNLIMITED targets. The boons from the shouts themselves, like many other AoE types of spells only targets up to 5 people, but EVERYONE in the radius gets the heal. Sure, the 1.5k heal might seem small if its just you going 1v1, but it gets exponentially better when your in a huge team fight, like in WvW.

You don’t have to necessarily gear +healing either, the base heal is decent enough. You don’t HAVE to spec into 3 shouts for pvp either (i run with just shake it off and fear me, freeing up a 3rd slot for something else, usually bolas/bulls/endurepain. Plus if your going for 6/6 soldiers, you’re probably packing at least 2 shouts, so you might as well have them heal also.

Braxxus.2904;

Shout healing is a gimmick that’s just not worth the investment. And I really wanted to love it. Hell even Taugrim, who loved shout healing as well, admitted that the shout heals are pretty much poo in the scheme of things

Um, I didn’t say that.

I said taking Vigorous Shouts was not worth it unless you stack +healing. In which case it’s worth it.

It basically means you’re going heavy support though.

There have been some people who claim that Vigorous Shouts is worth it with DPS gear, and that’s where I strongly disagree.

chainsawsamurai.5067:

I think Taugrim’s error is that he has been pushing a Rifle Warrior build. The shouts at rifle range

Try to find any post on the interwebs where I’ve recommended Rifle with shout healing. (Hint: you won’t find one).

The only shout healing build I recommend is “Captain Hammer”, and that’s because aside from heals it brings sustained CC. And it has +healing gear.

I been using healing shouts for quite a while now. Personally I build a tank warrior with healing shouts. For weapons I use a mace/shield combo or a hammer. Now the beauty of this build is that it takes so little damage if you time your cool downs correctly that is insanely over power. I use for for dungeons and WvW, done a few Spvp tournaments with it but honestly I prefer a sword/shield build for those due to the amount of mobility the sword gives me. If your team during a dungeon is close to you, you can shout to give their health a boost while buffing them and removing conditions off them, you can use fear me in tight situations to buy yourself and your team time for healing cool downs to finish cooling or give them time to revive a fallen player. In WvW you can take multiple enemies at once if you time your attacks perfectly and even if you can’t down them all you can put quite a fight against overwhelming odds. Again buying your team time.

The dps in this build isn’t as high but I crit for about 2.5-3.6k, which imo isn’t so bad. My hp is somewhere around the 27k and 32k, 27 in normal circumstances and 32 with 3 orbs in WvW.

I spec my gear with + power/vit/toughness mostly but I have a few pieces with +healing. The hammer build I use is very similar to “C.H.’s” But I find it more shinny for Spvp than for WvW and as I been doing more WvW lately I haven’t gave it enough love.

I done a sword/axe build which had decreased toughness and increased power. The build was quite good as it stood well against most foes, but it lacked much survivability, but of course dealt more damage.

I been thinking of building around banners for heal and damage but honestly the will to do it isn’t there as I’m too lazy to make more exotics for the set up I want.

Taugrim

Um, I didn’t say that.

I said taking Vigorous Shouts was not worth it unless you stack +healing. In which case it’s worth it.

It basically means you’re going heavy support though.

There have been some people who claim that Vigorous Shouts is worth it with DPS gear, and that’s where I strongly disagree.

You’re right, I took some of the viewpoints you’ve expressed and didn’t explain my conclusion properly. Apologies, I will attempt to clarify (I’m not the greatest wordsmith so bear with me).

Taugrim

Berserker’s Amulet outperformed Knight’s Amulet. While the latter provided more HP, fights took longer to resolve because of the lower Power (-229) and lower Crit multipler (1.85 vs 1.7). This reinforces a theme that has become increasingly apparent to me in GW2: it’s better to end fights quickittenhan try to try to wear down your opponent. DPS seems to beat damage reduction, and by reduction I mean mitigation and condition removal. I have witnessed this dynamic in tournaments, as multiple guildees have run tank builds that perform well in sPvP but simply don’t work in tournaments because they can’t apply meaningful DPS or boons or debuffs or sustained CC or area denial.

30-pt Tactics healing trait Vigorous Shouts does not provide meaningful healing unless you stack +healing. If you invest 30 points into Tactics but don’t stack +healing, what you end up with is healing that is not significant, even factoring in the AOE aspect of it. Shout healing without +healing is merely a speed bump for opposing DPS.

I made a claim based not only off of your singular statement about shout healing requiring +healing to be of any merit, but also drew from your findings about DPS stacking and the nature of damage vs mitigation in TPvP (which I have found to be true as well).

Real damage mitigation comes from dodging, and your actual abilities (area denial, evasion tied to attacks such as mesmer/thief, guardian invulnerabilities, etc).

In order to get any meaningful heal from shouts you have to spec/gear so heavily for them that you completely kitten your damage output, which would be fine if you could bunker like a guardian for example, however the truth is that the return for that investment is still very lackluster overall imo.

I wrongly assumed that you came to similar conclusions after reading your statements above (when taken together instead of individual remarks) and your subsequent removal of shout healing from your hammer (rifle now) build in order to obtain a higher offensive output.

Anyways, apologies again for misspeaking earlier and making a broad statement about a singular quote from you without clarification.

Braxxus.2904:

In order to get any meaningful heal from shouts you have to spec/gear so heavily for them that you completely kitten your damage output, which would be fine if you could bunker like a guardian for example, however the truth is that the return for that investment is still very lackluster overall imo.

Captain Hammer does solid sustained damage with the power and might stacking, but the issue is the crit rate is the default 4%. So the spec lacks burst.

CH is a build designed for group play, and it’s really good at controlling a target while a glass cannon ally blows them up.

Braxxus.2904:

I wrongly assumed that you came to similar conclusions after reading your statements above (when taken together instead of individual remarks) and your subsequent removal of shout healing from your hammer (rifle now) build in order to obtain a higher offensive output.

I started playing “Hammer Gun” because I wanted to provide meaningful DPS. The tradeoff is losing the shout healing.

Braxxus.2904:

Anyways, apologies again for misspeaking earlier and making a broad statement about a singular quote from you without clarification.

It’s all good, you provided informed opinions in this thread.

I’m playing with a 0/0/30/30/10 warrior build. My weapons of choice are sword+shield and longbow, with condition damage armor and undead runes.

Each time I use all 3 shouts, my burst skill is charged, so i can apply a lot of condition damage just starting the combat. With 28k of health and more than enought of damage mitigation, the regeneration sigil and 3 heals of 1700, it takes a lot of punishment to defeat me. Also, “for great justice!” boost the condition damage.

Love it both in PvE and PvP