Guild Wars 2

I should make it clear that I’m not expert on this game, but it seems clear from playing my Warrior that the active component of Healing Signet just isn’t worth using.

The amount that it heals isn’t worth disabling the regen for 20 seconds. Either it needs a shorter cooldown or a bigger active heal.

I still use it because the regen is very good, but I feel that having an active component that is detrimental to use is a very big design flaw.

the active should just be a stronger regen.

Depends on the situation, sometimes that health tick might not be enough to save your life. I will agree though, that in the majority of cases, the active is a bad move! Once you use it, you are sitting there going “Well, that minor heal really wasn’t that beneficial”.

In all honesty, i got the signet at about level 8, and haven’t EVER switched it for a different heal. That being said, nor have i used it much with over 250 hours played as my warrior. I think i have used the active about 5 – 10 times at most, simply because of your exact reasoning.

The only time i ever use it is when i am expecting a boss to do a big hit, have no stamina to dodge, and know that if i don’t heal ill be down.

Ive used it if Im desperate. Its very much an emergancy button. You get a surge of healing but then lose the passive for a long time. Ive used it mainly in situations when Ive been trying to get out of melee and Im close to death or if Im in a spot were it will be unlikely that I can be rezed. I also used it once to buy me time to throw down a battle standard to rez 3 of my allies.

It has uses I think but its not something you use casually. The passive heals are just too good otherwise.

The only plus for this signet is getting heal over time without a healing animation (and +40 precision if you’re traited that way). Otherwise this signet is all negatives and objectively worse than the other heals.

- it heals less over time than the other heals (e.g. mending), breaking the first rule and fundamental point of HOTs
- its healing is further screwed over by poison; any ticks under poison get reduced, whereas you simply wouldn’t use your main heal while poisoned, or mending would auto remove it
- any ticks at full HP are wasted

The HOT needs to be significantly more. This is basic HOT mechanics.

Vehementi.1094:

The only plus for this signet is getting heal over time without a healing animation (and +40 precision if you’re traited that way). Otherwise this signet is all negatives and objectively worse than the other heals.

- it heals less over time than the other heals (e.g. mending), breaking the first rule and fundamental point of HOTs
- its healing is further screwed over by poison; any ticks under poison get reduced, whereas you simply wouldn’t use your main heal while poisoned, or mending would auto remove it
- any ticks at full HP are wasted

The HOT needs to be significantly more. This is basic HOT mechanics.

I agree it heals less then the other skills over time and lacks the secondary effect that both other heals have but if it is used in conjunction with Adrenal Health (heals you based on adrenal level) it is a massive amount of health.

Does it really matter if its trying to heal you while your at full life? what detriment is it really doing?

Anyway it really comes down to the style of warrior your making. (in my opinion)

Vehementi.1094:

The only plus for this signet is getting heal over time without a healing animation (and +40 precision if you’re traited that way). Otherwise this signet is all negatives and objectively worse than the other heals.

- it heals less over time than the other heals (e.g. mending), breaking the first rule and fundamental point of HOTs
- its healing is further screwed over by poison; any ticks under poison get reduced, whereas you simply wouldn’t use your main heal while poisoned, or mending would auto remove it
- any ticks at full HP are wasted

The HOT needs to be significantly more. This is basic HOT mechanics.

Well it would be fine if the active wasn’t terrible. Like if you kept the passive on cooldown it would be good.

@Khristophoros
The heal portion is just right, its actually not bad, you shouldnt be using it at all, unless you got into a really OMG situation, and you need to save your life to go back into combat, but thats not the problem, its the regen when you look at your warriors health, vs regan your getting is pitiful, it should be scaled much higher to be worth it to be used, other than that don’t waste your time with singet. but dont get me wrong it has saved mylife a couple of times and died because of it way more

It’s not meant to be a huge heal, that’s the point. You use it because the regen is immense, if it gave you 90% health when clicked as well then what’s the point in even having the other heal skills? It’s already overpowered, just be happy with it until they nerf it.

Safh.7280:

It’s not meant to be a huge heal, that’s the point. You use it because the regen is immense, if it gave you 90% health when clicked as well then what’s the point in even having the other heal skills? It’s already overpowered, just be happy with it until they nerf it.

It’s actually underpowered.

Mending gives you more healing over time if used on cooldown compared to the regeneration of Healing Signet.

The Healing Signet active heals for less than you would regen over the 20 second cooldown. So by activating it you reduce your sustained healing even more, even though it wasn’t good to begin with.

So basically it’s really bad at sustained healing.

Is it good at burst healing? Haha no.

How is it overpowered? Seems completely underpowered to me.

Khristophoros.7194:

Mending gives you more healing over time if used on cooldown compared to the regeneration of Healing Signet.

I’ve not had that experience. My survivability is a lot better than the warriors in my guild that use mending.

After doing some quick testing:
Using mending you have to wait until you’ve taken 100% of the healing as damage before you activate it if you want the skill to be efficient, whereas signet is healing every second. You just can’t get that level of efficiency out of mending, and then you have the problem of not being able to dodge and heal at the same time, having the cast time of the heal spell… I can’t get this skill to output nearly as much health as the signet.

The time it takes you to activate a traditional heal is the time wasted, that could otherwise be spend to dish out damage in the thousands, especially with condition/precision builds that rely on frequent dodging and high defence to come up for their shortcomings in the other areas. Healing signet is just perfect for these, but mostly inferior for any other Warrior build, unless otherwise stated.

Why the distinction: pressure/condition builds lose a lot by not attacking their target even for a split second. Burst damage and control builds do not lose much by not auto-attacking their target for 2-3 seconds, if they can set up a damage spike shortly after.

Why do you need 3 seconds to activate a signet?

You’re not really meant to activate the signet in the first place. It’s an emergency scenario, and carries high risk.

Demosthene.2195:

The time it takes you to activate a traditional heal is the time wasted, that could otherwise be spend to dish out damage in the thousands, especially with condition/precision builds that rely on frequent dodging and high defence to come up for their shortcomings in the other areas. Healing signet is just perfect for these, but mostly inferior for any other Warrior build, unless otherwise stated.

Why the distinction: pressure/condition builds lose a lot by not attacking their target even for a split second. Burst damage and control builds do not lose much by not auto-attacking their target for 2-3 seconds, if they can set up a damage spike shortly after.

The active on Healing Signet has a casting time so it’s not even good in the builds you’re talking about. The passive is but not the active.

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

Khristophoros.7194:

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

But if the active were good “Mending” would be completely pointless… its a choice, regen
or burst heal. Having both on one skill would be lovely, of course… but it would be ridiculous also!

Khristophoros.7194:

The active on Healing Signet has a casting time so it’s not even good in the builds you’re talking about. The passive is but not the active.

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

I’m talking about the skill in general, not it’s active part. Skill itself works as intended.

Safh.7280:

Khristophoros.7194:

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

But if the active were good “Mending” would be completely pointless… its a choice, regen
or burst heal. Having both on one skill would be lovely, of course… but it would be ridiculous also!

This.

Healing Signet is one of a handful of very well designed, and perfectly balanced skills. The weak direct heal AND the low(ish) refresh for it, offsets the fact that you are constantly regen’ing HP’s and effectively don’t have to do squat. If you mess with it, if you boost it’s direct heal or lower the refresh; you’ll throw it out of balance.

Right now, it is the ideal heal skill for PvE leveling. If you’re using a different heal while PvE’ing, (imo) yer basically doin’ it wrong.

But if you’re gonna jump into a dungeon or PvP, you kinda need to swap it for one of the other heal skills. Healing Signet’s regen and low heal will not get the job done for the spike damage you get from dungeons or PvP.

My signet heals for 205 per second, 5125 per the 25 second cool down of mending. The on use is 3470.
My mending heals for 5701.

I’d say it’s prettykittengood for PVE leveling and events , depending on the dungeon encounter I swap between those two.
Regen + oh kitten heal vs the removal of 2 conditions, seems pretty well tuned to me.

Your total HP/sec from regen is irrelevant. Making that number bigger doesn’t matter. If you have a choice of 100 hp/sec regen or a burst heal that turns out to be 150 hp/sec if you’d averaged it out, you choose the latter or you’re making a mistake. The “it starts working immediately when you take damage” argument doesn’t hold water. The only real advantage as stated above is not having to cast it, but if you’re a melee warrior I promise you’re going to have time to cast it.

Vehementi.1094:

Your total HP/sec from regen is irrelevant. Making that number bigger doesn’t matter. If you have a choice of 100 hp/sec regen or a burst heal that turns out to be 150 hp/sec if you’d averaged it out, you choose the latter or you’re making a mistake. The “it starts working immediately when you take damage” argument doesn’t hold water. The only real advantage as stated above is not having to cast it, but if you’re a melee warrior I promise you’re going to have time to cast it.

So when the facts don’t work for your idiotic opinion; “they are irrelevant”, that is a clear argument winner you got there mate.
But wait , let’s throw in some totally fictional numbers in there for good measure.
Very well done, pat yourself on the shoulder.

Mending is superior for countering large spike damage and has a higher HPS over its CD but single discreat damagekitten are not the only form of damage. If you are geting small packets of damage periodicly your not going to burn mending untill you get low enough to use it where as the warrior that was useing signet probably stayed toped off that whole time due to the passive effect. If you both take a big spike say 20s in after already takeing that incidental damage you are now either criticaly low because you hadnt used the heal yet or have no spike heal available because you just used it to counter the smaller damage packets. The signet warrior on the other hand was full HP before the hit and now has to choose to either hope the passive recovers him enough or if he should burn the active effect. there are pro’s and cons either way and which is best depends on the damage pattern you expect to face and your own ability at avoiding that damage.

In PVP your probably better off with the stronger heal as your more likely to face a big spike and then be useing the heal on CD if the fight drags out long enough for multipul uses. PVE I tend to find the regen the better option as damage is often more predictable and avoidable even in dungeons. That said I do agree with the notion that the active on signet is really not worth useing most times. PVE I’ve only intentionaly activated it a handfull of times sense I got it at low level although I’ve used it quite a few times due to fatfingering my keys and regreated it every time.

One big issue that goes is the healing signet is only as good as when the damage is low.

Anywhere else the damage will be much higher PLUS the more than frequent conditions u must cleanse.

Hence mending is the way to go imo.

In certain situations like graveling burrow events in AC explorable, Healing Signet’s passive is actually really good. Keeps you from getting worn down by the hatchlings so you can keep doing damage, but 90% of the time I keep Mending on because condition removal is more valuable.

Torgaard.1864:

Safh.7280:

Khristophoros.7194:

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

But if the active were good “Mending” would be completely pointless… its a choice, regen
or burst heal. Having both on one skill would be lovely, of course… but it would be ridiculous also!

This.

Healing Signet is one of a handful of very well designed, and perfectly balanced skills. The weak direct heal AND the low(ish) refresh for it, offsets the fact that you are constantly regen’ing HP’s and effectively don’t have to do squat. If you mess with it, if you boost it’s direct heal or lower the refresh; you’ll throw it out of balance.

Right now, it is the ideal heal skill for PvE leveling. If you’re using a different heal while PvE’ing, (imo) yer basically doin’ it wrong.

But if you’re gonna jump into a dungeon or PvP, you kinda need to swap it for one of the other heal skills. Healing Signet’s regen and low heal will not get the job done for the spike damage you get from dungeons or PvP.

A skill should have more uses than PvE leveling. There are so few skills in this game that if they’re not all good in PvP then ANet has totally failed. Might as well go back to thousands of skills if it’s gonna be like that.

Heal signet is good for low-mid level. The regen doesn’t scale well into the higher levels, and it becomes useless.

If i run low level stuff i sometimes take heal signet still, but anything over level 50ish or so and i swap back to mending.

If they want to buff heal signet, the regen needs to be way stronger, like 400 hp a tick minimum.

I find that often, I get hit for about the amount that was healed by the time the animation finishes, so I’m right back where I was, but without any regen.

Khristophoros.7194:

Safh.7280:

It’s not meant to be a huge heal, that’s the point. You use it because the regen is immense, if it gave you 90% health when clicked as well then what’s the point in even having the other heal skills? It’s already overpowered, just be happy with it until they nerf it.

It’s actually underpowered.

Mending gives you more healing over time if used on cooldown compared to the regeneration of Healing Signet.

The Healing Signet active heals for less than you would regen over the 20 second cooldown. So by activating it you reduce your sustained healing even more, even though it wasn’t good to begin with.

So basically it’s really bad at sustained healing.

Is it good at burst healing? Haha no.

How is it overpowered? Seems completely underpowered to me.

I think your calculation is wrong.
Reason being that at first being dmged you would not cast mending but the signet will immediatly start correcting for the dmg delt.
You calculation would only be correct if you take a hit which deals more dmg then mending can heal and you used it instantaniously.

craidt.9436:

Vehementi.1094:

Your total HP/sec from regen is irrelevant. Making that number bigger doesn’t matter. If you have a choice of 100 hp/sec regen or a burst heal that turns out to be 150 hp/sec if you’d averaged it out, you choose the latter or you’re making a mistake. The “it starts working immediately when you take damage” argument doesn’t hold water. The only real advantage as stated above is not having to cast it, but if you’re a melee warrior I promise you’re going to have time to cast it.

So when the facts don’t work for your idiotic opinion; “they are irrelevant”, that is a clear argument winner you got there mate.
But wait , let’s throw in some totally fictional numbers in there for good measure.
Very well done, pat yourself on the shoulder.

LOL! Get out.

It’s simple. If I have a choice of 300 hp/sec regen and no heal, or 200 hp/sec regen and a heal every 30 seconds that gives an equivalent of 150 hp/sec regen, it is better to choose the latter. Choosing the former just so you can “the bigger regen number” is a bad decision.

That is the case here. Healing Signet provides a lower amount of HP healed per minute than any of the other heals. This defies the basics of designing a HOT skill. It doesn’t make sense to use it unless you are taking advantage of the +40 precision (still not worth it compared to mending’s 2 condition removals) or the lack of casting time (in practice it turns out you have time to cast it when your enemy makes a gap etc.)

edit:

Heal signet is good for low-mid level. The regen doesn’t scale well into the higher levels, and it becomes useless.

It actually scales properly at all levels, it’s just… like 10-20% (I forget) less HOT than mending (and even worse compared to the other heals) at level 80. Not useless, but still the wrong choice.

I used in in the low level areas because monsters dont hit as strong for several reasons, not to mention my gear was a bit more tanky due to random drops not being berserker stats. However at higher levels the heal is just inferior to everything else. Another point is poison, in Orr just about every mob poisons you, that further decreases the efficency of the signet compared to mending. Besides the acutal numbers, I really dislike game mechanics that benefit passive gameplay (eg the non-use of signets) Personally id like to see the a doubled hot effect on the active use for 10 seconds, then you have 10 seconds without a hot. Traited you even get a little bit more hp/s

Roga.3284:

Khristophoros.7194:

Safh.7280:

It’s not meant to be a huge heal, that’s the point. You use it because the regen is immense, if it gave you 90% health when clicked as well then what’s the point in even having the other heal skills? It’s already overpowered, just be happy with it until they nerf it.

It’s actually underpowered.

Mending gives you more healing over time if used on cooldown compared to the regeneration of Healing Signet.

The Healing Signet active heals for less than you would regen over the 20 second cooldown. So by activating it you reduce your sustained healing even more, even though it wasn’t good to begin with.

So basically it’s really bad at sustained healing.

Is it good at burst healing? Haha no.

How is it overpowered? Seems completely underpowered to me.

I think your calculation is wrong.
Reason being that at first being dmged you would not cast mending but the signet will immediatly start correcting for the dmg delt.
You calculation would only be correct if you take a hit which deals more dmg then mending can heal and you used it instantaniously.

So in other words, Mending is better at healing over time in situations where you take a lot of damage… aka serious content like dungeons.

Also Mending removes conditions.

See, Healing Signet is great if you are doing easy stuff and you don’t want to hit another button. That is not “balanced” or “viable”. It has no place in challenging content and yet there are only 3 other heals to choose from. This is unacceptable in a system with so few skills.

Khristophoros.7194:

I should make it clear that I’m not expert on this game, but it seems clear from playing my Warrior that the active component of Healing Signet just isn’t worth using.

The amount that it heals isn’t worth disabling the regen for 20 seconds. Either it needs a shorter cooldown or a bigger active heal.

I still use it because the regen is very good, but I feel that having an active component that is detrimental to use is a very big design flaw.

The healing signet on use is pretty balanced against itself. It heals for roughly 15 seconds worth of regen, so if you need that healing right now, then you can use it to front load the next 20 seconds of healing at about 75% efficiency.

Unfortunately, unless you want the bonus precision from the signet skill, it’s not very good compared to the other warrior heals for reasons stated in this thread.

Tallenn.9218:

I find that often, I get hit for about the amount that was healed by the time the animation finishes, so I’m right back where I was, but without any regen.

You’re back to where you were at, but that means you stayed why you were at, even though you took daamage. Right back to where you were is better than lower than where you were. That said, active is only used if you get away from the main fight but are 1 heal away from getting of dots or the range of ranged weapons firing at you.

The passive nature of the healing signet is a benefit as it allows you one less thing you have to focus on allowing for faster reaction times. In combat where movement and mobilty will do far more to keep you alive than any heal skill available reaction time and data processing bandwidth can’t be overlooked as a benefit. Every byte of information you have to process slows down your ability to react. From a HIP perspective the signet is superior because to get the full benefit you don’t have to think about it. It also has synergistic effects with the precision trait and can be brought down to a 16 sec cooldown with the cooldown trait. All these things can’t be overlooked when assessing the value of the skill.

Venexis.5308:

Depends on the situation, sometimes that health tick might not be enough to save your life. I will agree though, that in the majority of cases, the active is a bad move! Once you use it, you are sitting there going “Well, that minor heal really wasn’t that beneficial”.

In all honesty, i got the signet at about level 8, and haven’t EVER switched it for a different heal. That being said, nor have i used it much with over 250 hours played as my warrior. I think i have used the active about 5 – 10 times at most, simply because of your exact reasoning.

The only time i ever use it is when i am expecting a boss to do a big hit, have no stamina to dodge, and know that if i don’t heal ill be down.

I agree with this post. But I have to ask, 250 hours? So the games been out less then a month and you’re going on 11 days played? Holy cow my man. I hope you’re exaggertaing

This is true. In the earlier beta builds, the Healing signet ‘use’ actually had a long (40sec) recharge and was our largest heal on use. The design made sense in that you used the passive for regen, and only used the active for a big emergency heal.

I don’t know why they changed it; it doesnt make much sense and I wish they would switch it back.

I like the suggestion to change the active instant healing part into a stronger regeneration. This would make it actually useful.

Otherwise the active is almost always useless. It heals so little that you’re better off trying to dish out a high hit and try to finish your foe. If you can’t win that way the chances are ENORMOUS that the little health it gives make no difference at all.

The times that the active saved mykitten (and I exclusively use this healing skill because of +40 precision trait) can be counted on one finger over 80 levels.

Tallenn.9218:

I find that often, I get hit for about the amount that was healed by the time the animation finishes, so I’m right back where I was, but without any regen.

This. Granted, only at level 30, but I switched to mending. When I need to heal I need to heal. Not net gain 50 health. /shrug Everybody’s different.

The cast time is too long to make it an emergency heal. You’ll be down before it finishes. The heal amount is too small (and almost non-existent if you are poisoned). You are just better off blowing all your other utilities and hoping you can burn down the mobs before they get you. And the cooldown is too long for the small amount of healing. Make it instant cast, double the heal and cut the CD by 25%. Then it might be useful.

Spunkmeyer.2846:

Tallenn.9218:

I find that often, I get hit for about the amount that was healed by the time the animation finishes, so I’m right back where I was, but without any regen.

You’re back to where you were at, but that means you stayed why you were at, even though you took daamage. Right back to where you were is better than lower than where you were. That said, active is only used if you get away from the main fight but are 1 heal away from getting of dots or the range of ranged weapons firing at you.

Don’t get me wrong- I still use Healing Signet. I just don’t use the active heal anymore unless it’s either that, or go down.

It’s just not worth losing the regen for. So, the only time it’s worth using is as a last resort, even if most of the time it doesn’t make enough of a difference. Occasionally it does, and if you’re going down anyway, you don’t lose anything by trying.

Considering that in PVE when you are killing one or few mobs at a time you pop in and out of combat so the health reset kicks in, so in the run of the mill slaughtering on a given countryside you don’t even need a small heal. It’s only when you encounter something more challenging that your health starts to matter, in these cases the more powerful on cooldown heal becomes more useful than a small regen.

The only upside of the signet is in a fight which lasts less than two activations of the more powerful active skills, so a case where you first benefit from the passive regen and then as a last ditch use the active and live to tell about it. In any other scenario you are just losing on efficiency, so all in all I see very little point for running the signet unless you want it for the +40 precision trait.

Signet is the best short-term heal.

You’re all looking at this from either a 5-second burst window, or a 5-minute heal per second view.

Look at it from a more reasonable perspective you get in non-trivial solo content: 30 second fights.

In this situation, you will have the Signet regen for most of the fight, and then a small burst from the active. For Mending, you will not use it near the beginning since you will waste most of the heal — you will use Mending once during the middle of the fight. As a result, you basically get “regen x20 + 1 smaller heal” versus “1 bigger heal”.

In this case, Signet comes out ahead because the fight is over and you can let your Signet cool down. E.g. the Signet cooldown is out of scope of the fight. The analysis for a hell of a lot of solo and small-scale play works out in this fashion. In addition, the low cooldown (traitable for even lower) of Signet can synergize with other traits/runes.

So, Signet is not as bad as you may initially mathcraft. For more bursty play, naturally Signet is not the choice. But that’s why you have choices.

I think the variety of heals as-is is fine enough tbh. The consideration here should not be “we don’t have enough heals”. The consideration should be “are there any types of heals that we are really missing?”

Signet passive heal is amazing. Signet activated heal is anything but.

Since the activated Signet heal is basically an emergency button, it would blend well with either granting a short (3s) protection or vigor boon; it would then be used far more often and increase the skill level of its use due to the signet’s activation time (to counter burst).

Mending already has condition removal. Healing surge grants 10 strikes of adrenaline. Activating Healing Signet just needs something more.