Guild Wars 2

I think you should realize the problems with that.

Before the lovely batch of healing buffs, Warriors were in a rather pitiful state, the lack of sustain made us a low-tier PvP class akin to the current lackluster professions of today…I won’t say any names but I know you are out there, and I feel for you.

The Warrior right now is in a broken state, strong but broken. Our other healing alternatives are not even average with the current average health pool across all common warrior builds, and are counter-intuitive to the way the warrior plays and its utilities.

I could start with Healing Surge, a heal based around a stronger heal with each adrenaline bar you have, and also fully refills the adrenaline if it is not full. Sounds good on paper, extremely terrible for the warrior in play. Other healing utilities on other professions provide a trade-off if you want to activate it, or have some second feature when active. Why, then does Healing Surge actually PUNISH you for activating the huge gimmick of the profession (Warrior Burst) by reducing the healing you gain from activating it? Not to mention its extremely high cooldown in which it cannot really be popped more than once in any given fight, which is odd since it is supposed to be stronger the next time it is popped yet it is given a 30 second CD…

Let’s have a look at Mending then, every twenty seconds you can do a 5k heal that removes three conditions. It sounds simple, but with the recent changes to the warrior traits (Dogged March, Cleansing Ire) on top of warrior utility changes (Berserker Stance gives condition duration immunity) the state of warrior condition cleansing without tapping into the healing utility is already pretty high. That alone reduces the effectiveness of using Mending in professional play.

The newest Heal, Defiant Stance, actually had some thought put into it. It is extremely difficult to pull off well without prior knowledge of the opponent’s build and damage, however it opened the doorway for warrior builds specilized in stances, Sure-Footed can actually be looked at! But, the only issue I have is that the enemy is given a huge deal of information such as HEALING numbers on their screen when they are hitting a warrior with it. Sadly, this mechanic would be much better if it were harder but not impossible for the opponent to watch the warrior’s buffs.

So, now that I have listed the problem with the other utilities, what can we do about it?

Here is my proposal:

Healing Signet: Reduce the healing per second by maybe 35-50 healing per second gone. Raise the flat active healing a bit more, 3.5-4k healing on the active won’t cut it for the channel, make it a solid 5k and leave it at that. So around 350 / sec and a strong 5k heal active.

- Healing Signet should be the sustain warrior’s dream. No other heal should compare to the per-second heal, yet if a warrior realizes he is getting bursted or poisoned at least he can pop the active for a bit more time…but just a bit. Right now the ~400 healing base-line is slightly too high.

Mending: Flat Heal is fine, but the condition cleanse needs to be reworked. My ideas for this are:

- Mending heals for 6k, provides regeneration for about 5-8 seconds and immunity to poison for half the regeneration time. Why? Literally make Mending a means to making a condition resistent build with some sustain, but not nearly as good as the per second sustain of Healing Signet. If this proves too strong, make the channel time for mending a bit longer so it can be interrupted, we can all think of Mending as the Warrior way of ‘band-aiding’ one’s self. The poison immunity is unique to this healing utility and paves the way for this ‘in-between burst and sustained healing’ utility to shine.

Healing Surge: Remove the kitten adrenaline refill instantly all together. Make it passively raise your adrenaline every three seconds, and increase the burst healing across all levels by a solid 25%.

- This is your healing ability if you want a steady stream of Adrenaline, and its burst heal is now actually in line with other professions. Maybe heals 40-55-70% life at the different stages instead of its pitiful state now. However, once used you lose the steady adrenaline coming in, which could be good or bad for the warrior. Best part, it is a trade-off now instead of a punishment.

Defiant Stance: NO number changes. Instead, enemy sees only ‘0s’ for all his damage, from all sources. The Warrior Health Pool is shown rising though since the warrior can see the healing on himself, and the Defiant Stance buff is seen as well.

- What this does is make the opponent fighting the warrior actually think and start looking at the warrior’s buffs. “Why are my AAs doing no damage, is it Endure Pain or Defiant Stance?” Condition-based classes would have a slightly less time figuring out the defiant stance if they see their conditions tick for 0, which right now would indicate something is really wrong. However, both instances the smart opponent would have to track the target’s buffs moreso, and helps the healing utility stand on its own. Defiant Stance is now actually interesting to play against, and could potentially be viable in a few unheard-of builds.

These changes would be a superb way to deal with the healing state of the warrior. However this is purely in the healing aspect, and does not factor in how damaging the warrior is. That is a discussion for a different thread…

I also find warrior heals (other than signet) a bit bad. High cd with low ammount healing compaired to the whole healthpool.

I actually like your ideas. But if they were to buff the healing on surge again by 25% across the board it would make you heal for almost 3/4 of your entire health (assuming no poison).

I’m going to assume you don’t know that Healing Surge has a healing power modifier attached to each level.

.9 at 0 adren
1 at 1 bar
1.25 at 2 bars
1.5 at 3 bars

Now with this is in mind buffing surges healing prowess isn’t the way to go tbh. I do like your idea for it giving a pulsing adrenaline every few seconds but giving it an additional 25% across the board isn’t the right way to give it that extra umphh.

As for a whole you’ve given great reasoning to this. As someone who has played warrior since launch and onward I actually agree with you almost entirely across the board. +1 sir. Maybe this should be forwarded to the guys in the balance department at ANet.

Who cares what the Warrior’s healthpool is? The heals should be competetive with other heals in the game, not the health pools of their respective classes.

Healing Surge is an amazing heal when compared to other heal skills and given the way the class works. I have no idea what you were trying to explain. It heals for more than most heals in the game with 0 adrenaline. Heals for 66% more with a full adrenaline bar. Gives you a full adrenaline bar once you use it.

Mending is awful if you have cleansing ire and berserker stance, and not really that great without them. But if you don’t get cleansing ire, you’ll need additional condition tools and this may be the best you could come up with.

Defiant Stance is better than some of the other healing options that came out.

Most people who look at healing signet objectively will admit that it alone isn’t even that overpowered. It’s strong, sure. Stronger than every other heal in the entire game in fact. But given the way the class works, it’s a reasonable heal. There’s only an issue when you factor in Healing Signet and Adrenal Health, but even then I’d argue it’s not that bad considering the class has no protection. No, you don’t start reaching the absurd levels of OP’ness until you start factoring in all the class’ mobility, endure pain, defy pain, berserker stance, etc etc.

And worse than all of this? I haven’t a clue how you fix it. Even slight adjustments to anything would likely cause this class to become a nonfactor again. I’m also not sure just how ‘over the top’ Warriors really are in the grand scheme of things. Does anyone feel they’re on their own level? I personally don’t… I’d say they’re about even with Guardians and Necromancers overall. If Thieves had something more to offer a group I’d put them in this same group too.

I think if you want to say Warriors are overpowered, you’d have to say Guardians, Necromancers, and Thieves are too. And at that point, what metric are we trying to pretend this game is balanced around? Rangers? God help us…

Travis the Terrible.4739:

I actually like your ideas. But if they were to buff the healing on surge again by 25% across the board it would make you heal for almost 3/4 of your entire health (assuming no poison).

I’m going to assume you don’t know that Healing Surge has a healing power modifier attached to each level.

.9 at 0 adren
1 at 1 bar
1.25 at 2 bars
1.5 at 3 bars

Now with this is in mind buffing surges healing prowess isn’t the way to go tbh. I do like your idea for it giving a pulsing adrenaline every few seconds but giving it an additional 25% across the board isn’t the right way to give it that extra umphh.

As for a whole you’ve given great reasoning to this. As someone who has played warrior since launch and onward I actually agree with you almost entirely across the board. +1 sir. Maybe this should be forwarded to the guys in the balance department at ANet.

I don’t know the specific numbers, I merely wanted to convey a strong ‘ideal’ for each of the healing utilities.

Healing Surge’s HP modifier honestly could be reduced severely to compensate, with the many warrior builds that could benefit from running a burst heal without healing power being needed, certainly it might be a bit too much for the healing power to remain unchecked.

However…

If a warrior ran healing surge with a plentiful amount of healing power, I don’t think it would be so unbalanced for the surge to heal the warrior a tremondous amount for their investment.

The numbers can be tweaked, but I still want Healing Surge to be the prime Burst Heal for warriors.

Sykper.6583:

If a warrior ran healing surge with a plentiful amount of healing power, I don’t think it would be so unbalanced for the surge to heal the warrior a tremondous amount for their investment.

The numbers can be tweaked, but I still want Healing Surge to be the prime Burst Heal for warriors.

Maybe separating the healing into 2 parts. A base heal and a part based off of adrenaline. Sort of like Consume Conditions (a necro heal). Consume has its base heal which has its own modifier and healing for each condition with its own modifier attached. Having a mass amount of healing power would still grant you massive quantities of health and would still function the same but helps to balance out power with healing power builds.

Sykper.6583:

Here is my proposal:

Healing Signet: Reduce the healing per second by maybe 35-50 healing per second gone. Raise the flat active healing a bit more, 3.5-4k healing on the active won’t cut it for the channel, make it a solid 5k and leave it at that. So around 350 / sec and a strong 5k heal active.

- Healing Signet should be the sustain warrior’s dream. No other heal should compare to the per-second heal, yet if a warrior realizes he is getting bursted or poisoned at least he can pop the active for a bit more time…but just a bit. Right now the ~400 healing base-line is slightly too high.

You do realize that this trait is still too strong even at that level? 350 h/s is still higher then a traited blood fiend (which is 317 h/s) and the 5k heal outperforms the popping of a blood fiend as well. On top of that risks the necromancer to lose his blood fiend which healing signet doesn’t . Also the blood fiend’s passive healing doesn’t scale with healing power.

Mending: Flat Heal is fine, but the condition cleanse needs to be reworked. My ideas for this are:

- Mending heals for 6k, provides regeneration for about 5-8 seconds and immunity to poison for half the regeneration time. Why? Literally make Mending a means to making a condition resistent build with some sustain, but not nearly as good as the per second sustain of Healing Signet. If this proves too strong, make the channel time for mending a bit longer so it can be interrupted, we can all think of Mending as the Warrior way of ‘band-aiding’ one’s self. The poison immunity is unique to this healing utility and paves the way for this ‘in-between burst and sustained healing’ utility to shine.

I take it still removes three conditions? I like this idea honestly I also suggest that instead removing three conditions, it removes all damaging conditions (burning, posion, bleeding, confusion, vulnerability and torment).

Sykper.6583:

Healing Surge: Remove the kitten adrenaline refill instantly all together. Make it passively raise your adrenaline every three seconds, and increase the burst healing across all levels by a solid 25%.

- This is your healing ability if you want a steady stream of Adrenaline, and its burst heal is now actually in line with other professions. Maybe heals 40-55-70% life at the different stages instead of its pitiful state now. However, once used you lose the steady adrenaline coming in, which could be good or bad for the warrior. Best part, it is a trade-off now instead of a punishment.

You do realize you already have a passive adrenaline gain called signet of rage? Also a 25% healing boost could be in order is around 409 h/s at full adrenaline and may be a bit much so I suggest a 10% boost (360 h/s) .

Defiant Stance: NO number changes. Instead, enemy sees only ‘0s’ for all his damage, from all sources. The Warrior Health Pool is shown rising though since the warrior can see the healing on himself, and the Defiant Stance buff is seen as well.

- What this does is make the opponent fighting the warrior actually think and start looking at the warrior’s buffs. “Why are my AAs doing no damage, is it Endure Pain or Defiant Stance?” Condition-based classes would have a slightly less time figuring out the defiant stance if they see their conditions tick for 0, which right now would indicate something is really wrong. However, both instances the smart opponent would have to track the target’s buffs moreso, and helps the healing utility stand on its own. Defiant Stance is now actually interesting to play against, and could potentially be viable in a few unheard-of builds.

I haven’t seen defiant stance in action so I won’t say much about it but I think it won’t make much difference.

Tim.6450:

You do realize that this trait is still too strong even at that level? 350 h/s is still higher then a traited blood fiend (which is 317 h/s) and the 5k heal outperforms the popping of a blood fiend as well. On top of that risks the necromancer to lose his blood fiend which healing signet doesn’t . Also the blood fiend’s passive healing doesn’t scale with healing power.

Yet the advantages are that Blood fiend applies additional damage while the Necromancer Profession carries the unique mechanic of Death Shroud to deny its actual health pool from taking any more pressure.

The problem with your scenario is that the Necromancer already has a lot of synergy with many of its healing utilities, Consume Conditions is a strong cure-all conditions that gets stronger with each condition on the necromancer, where said necromancer’s own utilities can apply conditions to itself…

Necromancers also get minions that can intercept projectiles, have their own conditions or mechanics that complement said minions and so forth. Not to mention the health pool of a necromancer is lower than that of a Warrior’s…

Which makes these healing comparisons hard, and why a 350 / sec is a perfectly valid form of sustained healing for the warrior. With concern to the necromancer power level, there is likely an overwhelming issue with giving Blood Fiend a HP ratio when you combine all the potential dangers…Minion necros are a strong offender of this.

Tim.6450:

I take it still removes three conditions? I like this idea honestly I also suggest that instead removing three conditions, it removes all damaging conditions (burning, posion, bleeding, confusion, vulnerability and torment).

I thought about that, but my interpretation had no condition cleanse whatsoever, only a strong burst heal with regeneration and a temporary poison immunity. Though I can see a Mending remove damaging conditions and warrior builds not relying so much on Cleansing Ire anymore.

Tim.6450:

You do realize you already have a passive adrenaline gain called signet of rage? Also a 25% healing boost could be in order is around 409 h/s at full adrenaline and may be a bit much so I suggest a 10% boost (360 h/s) .

Yes I know.

Healing Surge would stack according, granting 2 ticks of adrenaline every three seconds while in combat (works the same way as Signet of Rage). The difference lies in their actives and CDs.

Also yes the intent of Healing Surge was to be put in line with Healing Signet’s Passive healing over the same duration. Regardless it needs a decent buff.

Tim.6450:

I haven’t seen defiant stance in action so I won’t say much about it but I think it won’t make much difference.

It is more of an interface issue than anything else. If you were facing a warrior with defiant stance, what would happen over the course of the fight is that the warrior, if he were using it, would take a quarter second to channel it before a slight blue glow (very very hard to see) appears on their body much like how Endure Pain looks, except more subtle. Any and all damage you are currently doing to the warrior shows up as GREEN numbers instead of red, extremely visible and apparent.

Which is the problem, it’s so obvious no warrior will be able to really gain an advantage with Defiant Stance unless they time it perfectly and abuse the opposing player’s delay in reflexes, so a warrior could time his stance right at the start of a thief basilisk burst combo, ignore and heal all that damage. But after that, the remaining time Defiant Stance is up most enemies just stop attacking, you might get only a third of the stance actually under fire while the remaining seconds of it grant you nothing.

What I suggest is making you see zeros, so that a less-experienced player might assume its Endure Pain, not give a quick glance to the warrior buffs overhead to look, and continue healing the warrior despite being wrong. It returns the advantage to the warrior instead of the attacker, which is fine considering its a 35 second CD heal.

Warriors don’t have many ‘tricks’ like other professions, having Defiant Stance being a viable one would be nice.

Atherakhia.4086:

Snip…

Who cares what the warriors health pool is? Warriors and classes who fight Warriors care. But think about what you are saying. with 0 healing power and full adrenaline Healign Surge can heal for roughly 10K (more like 9,600). At minimum warrior can have around 18,000 health with no vitality. Now this sounds nice as a 10K heal would heal more than half your health but. Minimal blocks coming from 3 skills spread across two one handed weapons and a shield. No access to protection or aegis. and two skills that grant immunity to damage and conditions respectively. and they have downtimes of over 50 seconds (depends on traiting). So with these problems having so low vitality is worthless. Not only that but a 10K heal is worthless. The reason why Healing Signet is popular is that it has allowed the Warrior to become what the developers stated it would be. The warrior was supposed to be a class that became stronger as the fight dragged on. This simply wasn’t the case as the game progressed. You state that it heals for 66% more with a full adrenaline bar. Then you state that it grants you a full adrenaline bar, as if this magical bar was stored somewhere for emergencies. The heal is worthless for adrenaline gaining. With such high vitality needed to survive you do not want to waste the heal gaining adrenaline, so why have adrenaline gain as a mechanic of the skill if gaining that adrenaline punishes you?

Case and point it may be a better skill in comparison to other classes but you CANNOT compare other classes! Classes are different for a reason. And what will work for an Elementalist, Thief, or even Ranger will not work on the same level for Warrior. I believe Healing Signet most likely single handedly cracked the condition meta. As warrior, when traited properly, can have the best condition cleanses. Now your definition of OP’ness comes from mobility, endure pain, defy pain, and zerk stance all with Healing signet and adrenal health. Mobility comes from the Warriors skill “Savage Leap” the second skill on the sword, and the great swords Whirlwind attack" and “Rush” skills. Our mobility is based on our weapons. Now why is healing signet OP in most peoples eyes? You cannot stop it unless you use enough poison to kill an elephant, and the warrior can attack you. Now warriors are the masters of CC, but CC is also tied to weapons. So what am I getting at? CC improves Healing signet, as you can heal while attacking your stunned opponent. And yet you complain that warriors have mobility, when that really only comes from great sword. “But what if they have both weapons?”. Warriors CC is incredibly telegraphed, and if any warrior comes at you with a great sword you know he is trying to set up 100 blades, as that is the only real source of damage as the auto attack is much too slow. So Warrior is not OP but simply needs tweaks to make some of the mechanics more easily countered. But you cannot have access to mobility, CC, massive condition cleanse, damage immunity, condition immunity, and stability all in one build. Sorry if you feel like this semi – rant was unneccessary but I feel like so many people are misinformed about Warriors and only see bits and pieces. If you wish to prove me wrong I challenge you to make a build with absolutely no weaknesses.

Sykper.6583:

Tim.6450:

You do realize that this trait is still too strong even at that level? 350 h/s is still higher then a traited blood fiend (which is 317 h/s) and the 5k heal outperforms the popping of a blood fiend as well. On top of that risks the necromancer to lose his blood fiend which healing signet doesn’t . Also the blood fiend’s passive healing doesn’t scale with healing power.

Yet the advantages are that Blood fiend applies additional damage while the Necromancer Profession carries the unique mechanic of Death Shroud to deny its actual health pool from taking any more pressure.

The problem with your scenario is that the Necromancer already has a lot of synergy with many of its healing utilities, Consume Conditions is a strong cure-all conditions that gets stronger with each condition on the necromancer, where said necromancer’s own utilities can apply conditions to itself…

Necromancers also get minions that can intercept projectiles, have their own conditions or mechanics that complement said minions and so forth. Not to mention the health pool of a necromancer is lower than that of a Warrior’s…

Which makes these healing comparisons hard, and why a 350 / sec is a perfectly valid form of sustained healing for the warrior. With concern to the necromancer power level, there is likely an overwhelming issue with giving Blood Fiend a HP ratio when you combine all the potential dangers…Minion necros are a strong offender of this.

I wouldn’t even talk about blood fiend “damage” as some sort of acceptable trade off… It hits for 50, with an incredibly slow attack animation. Even with a full siphon build you are talking about 110 damage per attack….

That is of course assuming it connects on the attack, and doesn’t get dodged, stunned, invuln, blocked, all of those things PREVENTING the healing side of the minion. Being out of range, getting stuck on an arbitrary part of the ground.

That unique mechanic of deathshroud also disables any positive side effect of the blood fiend except for that previously mentioned massive 50 damage it deals, as the passive healing won’t work in DS.

CC is the best heal in the game in my opinion so no argument there, but that has nothing to do with comparing healing signet and Blood fiend.

But just for a moment as yourself how many necromancers you have seen running around with blood fiend and not all the other minions? None… because its a bad, situational, and poorly implemented “healing” skill.

While HS on the other hand is on 90% of warriors everywhere. Even with the suggest reduction, I am sure the vast majority would still use it.

I tend to agree the only way to fix the overly used healing skills (CC included) is to weaken them all, and buff the lesser used ones, so you suggestion is in that direction and makes sense, but even with the nerf it would be FAR superior to a blood fiend.

Sykper.6583:

Not to mention the health pool of a necromancer is lower than that of a Warrior’s…

Which makes these healing comparisons hard …

A necromancer has the same health pool as a warrior, that’s why I took blood fiend and healing signet together with the way they both work (passive sustained heal, can be used for a bigger active heal and on a 20s cooldown). A better comparison you won’t get.

Sykper.6583:

Yes I know.

Healing Surge would stack according, granting 2 ticks of adrenaline every three seconds while in combat (works the same way as Signet of Rage). The difference lies in their actives and CDs.

Also yes the intent of Healing Surge was to be put in line with Healing Signet’s Passive healing over the same duration. Regardless it needs a decent buff.

That’s why I suggested 10% since it would bring you above the level of the new healing signet.

Sykper.6583:

It is more of an interface issue than anything else. If you were facing a warrior with defiant stance, what would happen over the course of the fight is that the warrior, if he were using it, would take a quarter second to channel it before a slight blue glow (very very hard to see) appears on their body much like how Endure Pain looks, except more subtle. Any and all damage you are currently doing to the warrior shows up as GREEN numbers instead of red, extremely visible and apparent.

Which is the problem, it’s so obvious no warrior will be able to really gain an advantage with Defiant Stance unless they time it perfectly and abuse the opposing player’s delay in reflexes, so a warrior could time his stance right at the start of a thief basilisk burst combo, ignore and heal all that damage. But after that, the remaining time Defiant Stance is up most enemies just stop attacking, you might get only a third of the stance actually under fire while the remaining seconds of it grant you nothing.

What I suggest is making you see zeros, so that a less-experienced player might assume its Endure Pain, not give a quick glance to the warrior buffs overhead to look, and continue healing the warrior despite being wrong. It returns the advantage to the warrior instead of the attacker, which is fine considering its a 35 second CD heal.

Warriors don’t have many ‘tricks’ like other professions, having Defiant Stance being a viable one would be nice.

I suspected something like that. First of all the warrior doesn’t need ‘tricks’ and ‘tricks’ doesn’t fit with the idea of the warrior. Secondly defiant stance does produce advantage by not taking damage.
an example: if an enemy had an auto attack dps of 1000 then you have ‘gained’ 3*1000+1853+intial strike(not always but most of the time)=5853. Not much but it scales with the amount of enemies on you so 5 enemies = 29265.
On top of that you didn’t gain any conditions like blind,cripple, chill,… and if they do you heal extra sinc they attacked you. finally if your enemy has clones/minions/phantasm/… or conditions on you they can’t even stop attacking. So all in all you gain a serious advantage even if they don’t attack.

About the visual I think it most stay for aoe users since they don’t see your status unless they are lucky so to know that they are accidently healing you they will need the visual.

Rennoko.5731:

- Snip -

Had to do a double-take on DS healing to get the gist. Fair enough.

Let’s reflect back to Healing Signet’s sustain though, aside from that and Adrenal Health which is a smaller heal per three seconds of at most 360 (or 120 every second with full adrenaline), that is it for warrior healing. There are no normal utilities that will heal the warrior unless specifically traited for, so Shouts in Tactics (which is just wrong in anything but a WvW environment, large scale fights).

Warrior Regeneration buffs come from Dogged March procs or Healing banners, for a health pool as large as ours we have much fewer tools than say a Guardian, Thief, and even Necromancer to heal ourselves with. Looking at the new Guardian heal which gives healing back for a % of the damage dealt I envy them. We can’t leech life, we just provide damage and CC.

Reflecting back to pre-buff Healing Signet, the healing was around (can’t find a valid source on the actual number, just some old estimates with HP) 200 / sec. Absolute trash skill, we get the sustain doubled and it became viable, but still heavily influenced by poison like many over-time healing capabilities are.

I absolutely cannot accept a healing signet nerf that would bring it under 315 per second. I also must mention that there are some builds that are extremely specilized in a certain area, and it is perfectly acceptable to have a warrior run healing power and across all his sacrificed utilities for sustainability, reach 1000+ per second total (I think you know what I refer to). At that stage though it is not Signet that is broken but other things as well.

Tim.6450:

- Snip -

Defiant Stance is not in the same catagory as normal utilities, as you sacrifice any other potential healing utility for it. It’s not ‘You don’t take damage’ it’s ‘I need to take enough damage to heal.’ You use it when focused hard, and that’s the difficult part.

For your example, I will give you a more realistic scenario. If an enemy had an auto-attack dps of 1000, for the first second they will hit me under the effects of Defiant Stance, so 1000 + 1853, and pending on whether their next auto-attack did an effect, maybe the burning would tick me for a couple hundred every second so let’s make it simple and say under the 3 seconds (or 3.75 seconds with Sure-Footed) I get a nice flat 4k heal, and within that second of hitting me they see green numbers. The veteran player is aware of Defiant stance, they stop attacking. In a 1v1, that means I only heal for 4k life while doing maybe a few more auto-attacks or abilities in retailiation. For 30 seconds after the Defiant Stance wears off, I have no sustained healing, nothing.

In the wholesome scenario where it is a 1v2, I might get attacked by another person, maybe less experienced, maybe they stopped prematurely while waiting on CDs. They can see their conditions on me heal myself though, which means they shift to kiting before doing anything else. More wasted healing gone, the heal is an entirely situational one more so than any other heal in the game.

More often than not, it will be a disadvantage since it is painfully obvious to see healing numbers on the screen compared to the usual damage numbers, and although you might think warriors should not have tricks up their sleeves, their very nature is to outlast and beat down enemies through raw power, enduring and relishing in battle. Defiant Stance is a tricky heal, a unique heal special to the Warrior Profession that I would love to see be used far more than now.

Also even if the warrior can get an astounding amount of healing and life from being 5v1ed, at the end of those few seconds they are just going to get bursted down to nothing regardless, no profession should be able to 1v5, that’s an unfair comparison to try to promote a false benefit of Defiant Stance.

As for AoE users, they should be aware of the risks of AoEing a group, regardless of whether there are Defiant Warriors among those AoEed. They are still doing damage to everyone else, it’s a fair trade-off.

Sykper.6583:

Snip

Guardians are as jealous of warriors defiant stance as warriors are of guardians litany of wrath. The funny thing is that despite all the envy, neither heal is all that useful.

Tim.6450:

Sykper.6583:

Not to mention the health pool of a necromancer is lower than that of a Warrior’s…

Which makes these healing comparisons hard …

A necromancer has the same health pool as a warrior, that’s why I took blood fiend and healing signet together with the way they both work (passive sustained heal, can be used for a bigger active heal and on a 20s cooldown). A better comparison you won’t get.

Sykper.6583:

Yes I know.

Healing Surge would stack according, granting 2 ticks of adrenaline every three seconds while in combat (works the same way as Signet of Rage). The difference lies in their actives and CDs.

Also yes the intent of Healing Surge was to be put in line with Healing Signet’s Passive healing over the same duration. Regardless it needs a decent buff.

That’s why I suggested 10% since it would bring you above the level of the new healing signet.

Sykper.6583:

It is more of an interface issue than anything else. If you were facing a warrior with defiant stance, what would happen over the course of the fight is that the warrior, if he were using it, would take a quarter second to channel it before a slight blue glow (very very hard to see) appears on their body much like how Endure Pain looks, except more subtle. Any and all damage you are currently doing to the warrior shows up as GREEN numbers instead of red, extremely visible and apparent.

Which is the problem, it’s so obvious no warrior will be able to really gain an advantage with Defiant Stance unless they time it perfectly and abuse the opposing player’s delay in reflexes, so a warrior could time his stance right at the start of a thief basilisk burst combo, ignore and heal all that damage. But after that, the remaining time Defiant Stance is up most enemies just stop attacking, you might get only a third of the stance actually under fire while the remaining seconds of it grant you nothing.

What I suggest is making you see zeros, so that a less-experienced player might assume its Endure Pain, not give a quick glance to the warrior buffs overhead to look, and continue healing the warrior despite being wrong. It returns the advantage to the warrior instead of the attacker, which is fine considering its a 35 second CD heal.

Warriors don’t have many ‘tricks’ like other professions, having Defiant Stance being a viable one would be nice.

I suspected something like that. First of all the warrior doesn’t need ‘tricks’ and ‘tricks’ doesn’t fit with the idea of the warrior. Secondly defiant stance does produce advantage by not taking damage.
an example: if an enemy had an auto attack dps of 1000 then you have ‘gained’ 3*1000+1853+intial strike(not always but most of the time)=5853. Not much but it scales with the amount of enemies on you so 5 enemies = 29265.
On top of that you didn’t gain any conditions like blind,cripple, chill,… and if they do you heal extra sinc they attacked you. finally if your enemy has clones/minions/phantasm/… or conditions on you they can’t even stop attacking. So all in all you gain a serious advantage even if they don’t attack.

About the visual I think it most stay for aoe users since they don’t see your status unless they are lucky so to know that they are accidently healing you they will need the visual.

Necromancer has good access to regen via staff and traited dodging.

I know that there are a lot of others like me that have been calling out for a nerf to HealSig, but most of them seem to suggest insane 150-200 HPS nerfs. Sykper, the reasons you listed out are precisely why I’ve been suggesting to nerf it by somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 HPS, at least for starters.

Over the past few months, I have increasingly gotten the feeling that class viability is determined to a large extent by three different variables: base health, base armor, and basic healing ability. This would explain why, for instance, ele is at the bottom of the class hierarchy. Its healing skills are all absolutely godawful, it has the lowest base health of all classes (though the same as thieves and guardians have), and it wears light armor. Eles can get some degree of healing through the Water trait line, but the amount of investment required to get the necessary healing is extreme, the damage output and utility from any water skill set on any weaponset is lackluster, and even the healing itself that you can get from the Water trait line is fairly disappointing as well. On the other hand, warriors are the best in all three of those areas: they have the highest base health, they have heavy armor, and their healing is absolutely excellent. Rangers have medium armor, average base health, and pretty decent healing, so it’s no surprise that with the brain-dead Spirit 1 spam specs they’ve become a pretty good class (though all of their other builds are worse than the optimal builds of most other classes). Engineers are the same way, which has lent to them being as powerful as they are as of late. Anyways, I think you get the point.

As a result, the best course of action would almost certainly be to nerf HealSig by just a small amount. I personally believe that HealSig is something like 40% of the problem with warriors right now (where Cleansing Ire accounts for another 25%, Adrenal Health for 5%, Stances for 10%, the high base health combined with heavy armor for another 15%, and everything else for the remaining 5%). Since it’s so delicate, it’s clearly best to nerf it only by a small amount for starters, and then by more until warrior is balanced.

I supported the buffing of warriors back when they were the worst class in the game, and I wouldn’t want to see them return to that state. However, HealSig clearly needs a nerf and I think a small one would be just fine, at least to see the effect it has.

Sykper.6583:

Had to do a double-take on DS healing to get the gist. Fair enough.

Let’s reflect back to Healing Signet’s sustain though, aside from that and Adrenal Health which is a smaller heal per three seconds of at most 360 (or 120 every second with full adrenaline), that is it for warrior healing. There are no normal utilities that will heal the warrior unless specifically traited for, so Shouts in Tactics (which is just wrong in anything but a WvW environment, large scale fights).

Warrior Regeneration buffs come from Dogged March procs or Healing banners, for a health pool as large as ours we have much fewer tools than say a Guardian, Thief, and even Necromancer to heal ourselves with. Looking at the new Guardian heal which gives healing back for a % of the damage dealt I envy them. We can’t leech life, we just provide damage and CC.

…

I absolutely cannot accept a healing signet nerf that would bring it under 315 per second. I also must mention that there are some builds that are extremely specilized in a certain area, and it is perfectly acceptable to have a warrior run healing power and across all his sacrificed utilities for sustainability, reach 1000+ per second total (I think you know what I refer to). At that stage though it is not Signet that is broken but other things as well.

First of all thank you for insulting my build (I run a healing shout warrior in PVE). Well the second point is that again the necromancer is in the same position unless you count minion builds or well build. The so feared dhuumfire/fear build (which by the way is not very popular in the necromancer community) has no extra healing besides consume conditions, and necromancers are supposed to be an attrition class. Now about the healing signet I think ~315 h/s is sufficient may be even a bit higher. I have to aggree though lower and it’s just not worth it.

Sykper.6583:

Defiant Stance is not in the same catagory as normal utilities, as you sacrifice any other potential healing utility for it. It’s not ‘You don’t take damage’ it’s ‘I need to take enough damage to heal.’ You use it when focused hard, and that’s the difficult part.

For your example, I will give you a more realistic scenario. If an enemy had an auto-attack dps of 1000, for the first second they will hit me under the effects of Defiant Stance, so 1000 + 1853, and pending on whether their next auto-attack did an effect, maybe the burning would tick me for a couple hundred every second so let’s make it simple and say under the 3 seconds (or 3.75 seconds with Sure-Footed) I get a nice flat 4k heal, and within that second of hitting me they see green numbers. The veteran player is aware of Defiant stance, they stop attacking. In a 1v1, that means I only heal for 4k life while doing maybe a few more auto-attacks or abilities in retailiation. For 30 seconds after the Defiant Stance wears off, I have no sustained healing, nothing.

…

Also even if the warrior can get an astounding amount of healing and life from being 5v1ed, at the end of those few seconds they are just going to get bursted down to nothing regardless, no profession should be able to 1v5, that’s an unfair comparison to try to promote a false benefit of Defiant Stance.

As for AoE users, they should be aware of the risks of AoEing a group, regardless of whether there are Defiant Warriors among those AoEed. They are still doing damage to everyone else, it’s a fair trade-off.

You do realise that you just outperformed the guardian’s shelter in that example but class compairison aside. In your example your defiant stance would be the equal of a flat ~8000 heal . Not too bad but like I said see group fights. Now for most aoe users have to endure longer cooldowns, scaling issues, … so I think the price for aoe is already paid.
About that 5v1 issue I may have exagerated but in 2v1 and 3v1 it still scales well.

Tim.6450:

First of all thank you for insulting my build (I run a healing shout warrior in PVE). Well the second point is that again the necromancer is in the same position unless you count minion builds or well build. The so feared dhuumfire/fear build (which by the way is not very popular in the necromancer community) has no extra healing besides consume conditions, and necromancers are supposed to be an attrition class. Now about the healing signet I think ~315 h/s is sufficient may be even a bit higher. I have to aggree though lower and it’s just not worth it.

Let me just say I don’t mean anything too harsh about shout warriors, in fact I am all for a change in PvE meta so that support and tankiness are evaluated more highly than the ‘Go Berserker or go home’ that dungeon runners these days are going for. Shout Warriors have a specific role in support, but in a SPvP or WvW setting due to their investment in Tactics they might not be capable of getting all the defensive or offensive perks that really mesh them out. I honestly do not care at all about having one or two people in my PvE parties going support, and Shout Support is a good one.

Tim.6450:

You do realise that you just outperformed the guardian’s shelter in that example but class compairison aside. In your example your defiant stance would be the equal of a flat ~8000 heal . Not too bad but like I said see group fights. Now for most aoe users have to endure longer cooldowns, scaling issues, … so I think the price for aoe is already paid.
About that 5v1 issue I may have exagerated but in 2v1 and 3v1 it still scales well.

Indeed, though there is something that needs to be considered throughout all of this, and it goes across all professions and that is, I suppose I should say Mitigation.

In WoW Mitigation referred to how strong certain defensive stats were on your character if you wanted to ‘tank’ an encounter. Higher armor means every hit against you was reduced, high block chance means you might block a blow here and there and take impressively reduced damage, and high dodge means you avoid the attack out-right. Any given tank’s mitigation was measured by a combination of these three stats, and the vertical scaling made the stats impressive for veteran geared tanks.

In GW2, Mitigation is similar in that we have blocks, dodges, protection, condition immunity, hard damage immunities, and so forth. There are a lot of things that factor into how well any given build will succeed, even with the right healing utility.

Defiant Stance is special in that it is both a healing and mitigation tool, which puts it into a special spot. A-Net likely wanted Defiant Stance to be mingled with Stance Builds that also use mitigation (Berserker Stance, Endure Pain) while at the same time, paying off the warrior nicely if he uses it at a right time.

Now, in my example, I posted that Defiant Stance does get stronger in a fight where a warrior is outnumbered. That would be fine, if a Warrior could reliably be capable of dealing with more than one person at a time easily. But, unfortunately there are skilled players running rampant everywhere, and practically all of them will not lose a fight outnumbering a single warrior running stances instead of sustain or utilities.

Warriors might have a huge benefit in a bigger health pool than other classes, but in the scheme of overall damage ranging from sustained, or burst or potent conditions, that health pool is just an additional second or two of standing up before falling down. Warrior cooldowns for mitigation are extremely long, and the best warriors will find even if they ran every single mitigation that there is a sufficient period where their mitigation is down for their 23-26k life to nothing.

And don’t get me started on Toughness, I would rather have 2k armor with reliable Protection than 2.8k armor, the curve on that stat is just wrong.

…Hmm, seemed to have ranted a bit, back to the guardian example, Guardians are the class you go to for Damage Mitigation, between their Virtues, utilities and weapon sets the guardian can keep his blocks, blinds and even punish foes for attacking him with retailiation. To that end, Shelter is a 2 second block on a 30 second CD that heals for its intended amount, whereas Defiant Stance is a 3 second stance on a 35 second CD, where its healing is NOT guarenteed. Guardian Shelter is better since it’s heal compared to the Guardian health pool is rather intense, versus the Warrior one which more than 50% of the time won’t fool the opponent.

Shelter is a perfect (maybe even slightly strong) guardian heal.

Defiant Stance needs to be changed mechanically.

A higher health pool is not a handicap. Ever. Well, unless you run scholars runes.

Mightymealworm.8409:

A higher health pool is not a handicap. Ever. Well, unless you run scholars runes.

( On a side note, I had typed a fairly lengthy response to this, but somehow I mistyped and deleted it all. Such misfortune… anyways if my current response here is quick my apologies. )

A higher health pool is indeed a perk, I did not mean to insinuate it was a handicap.

My issue is that people are trying to overvalue its worth, Warriors have already had a trade-off with the higher health pool in that they do not have an active way of getting Protection without runes. Protection is by far the strongest boon in game, as it does not lose effectiveness like Toughness, and the main reason why Bunker Engineers and Bunker Guardians are so effective at taking a lot of heat without having the ‘health pool’ that warriors do.

With that said, why then should warriors also have their health pools apply a defect to their other capabilities? If a warrior health pool were a true benefit, then the sustain must reflect that or else the health pool becomes a worse ‘Death Shroud’. …Though I wonder if that is debatable, but thinking back to previous warrior sustain before the changes to their healing I think the case is there that without an adequate scale to the warrior health pool in terms of sustain, the warrior health pool becomes obsolete.

So with that said, Healing Signet definitely alleviated that issue, but it went a bit too far. 315 / sec would be fair I believe…

Shifting the conversation, with around a 10% buff to Healing Surge and the change to its effect, the Stage 3 Heal would be around 10.5k at the very least. That’s around 350 healing per second under the right conditions, which includes no poison or chill, maxed adrenaline without using the Burst skill first to lose the adrenaline and uninterrupted. Extremely fair considering its an active skill that requires skill much like other professions in the game.

Mending is a tough one, my suggestion would open doors for builds that might not care for Adrenaline being high or low…so certain traits in the Warrior tree that grant bonuses under high adrenaline might open up. However removing all harmful conditions is a pretty good alternative…

Defiant Stance is…well, I don’t really know what it needs, it is stupidly specialized. I wonder if a block/stance build would work with it.

I would personally argue that stability is often more powerful than protection, but that is my own opinion. Both are top shelf when it comes to defensive boons.

It is important to note that protection is almost always (on most classes) up for short periods of time, and if skills are blown to stack the duration it becomes very vulnerable to boon removal. When protection IS up, the benefit is a reduction of physical damage by 33%. Assuming static health (no healing) for the duration of an encounter, this is effectively equivalent to a 33% larger health pool if the boon is kept up for the entire duration of an encounter and if none of the damage sustained is from conditions or retaliation. As 100% up time is often unrealistic in an actual encounter, protection can have either a relatively strong or completely negligible effect in a given encounter depending on when it is activated.

The true strength of a well timed protection is the magnifying effect it has on healing. In contrast, a larger health pool is always ‘active’. It is easy to assume there is a diminished effect of healing on a larger health pool, but I believe that is because we see our pool as a % of full or empty most of the time. 5k health left on a maximum pool of 11k hp looks far more impressive than 5k health left in a 25k pool, even though they offer the same obstacle to an attacker to overcome.

There is also weakness, a condition that causes your attacker to inflect an average of 25% less damage to you, and stacks well with protection. While a warrior has no native access to protection, they do have some access to weakness. Warriors are also no completely left out when presented with options to gain vigor, blind, block, and can be quite strong at mitigating conditions. Hard cc skills also award a loss of damage to your opponent much like a block or dodge, so those cannot be discounted either. I would rather see the class be able to take more advantage of these mechanics than the current more passive nature of its sustain.

Healing signet, like all other signets that immediately come to mind, should never have a stronger passive effect than active effect. The biggest problem I think with the original number was simply how low the active was when paired with a low passive. I think the wrong end of the skill was buffed. 250 passive regen with say, a 9.5k heal on a 40 second base (32 second with traits) cool down would have been more in line with most healing skills. Currently the low healing active on a low cool down cannot keep up with burst enough compared to the passive to make it useful in any situation except a last ditch effort before imminent death.

Mending has too much competition from cleansing ire in its current form to be very attractive. I agree it needs some new direction.

Healing surge is ‘good’, but I think the health variables keep it from being ‘great’. Stage 0 and stage one are too weak and too great a punishment for what is supposed to be a burst fighters best heal. A constant stage 2 healing effect with the variable being stronger defensive boons granted per adrenaline level might be more interesting.

Defiant stance suffers from the same problem all the new healing skills suffer from (excluding mesmer, that one actually works out pretty good). They are far too strong on the situational side and far too weak on the consistent side. Those are fine and wonderful mechanics for utility skills, but horrible on the one skill that is most depended upon for survival. Defiant Stance should have a base heal of 6.5k and reduce damage taken in all forms by 50% for 3 seconds.

Edit: I almost forgot to add that very few fights take place in a vacuum. While some classes depend on easier access to boons to make up for lower base stats, boons can be and are often shared with others. Higher base stats are not. For example if a Guardian is powerful with his boons up and a Warrior is powerful without the need for boons, how much MORE powerful is a Warrior when boons are shared so easily. I believe this is where a lot (not all) of the God-like perception of the class comes from.

Guys, are you willing to demonstrate this OP healing signet against condition Engi? I will promise that no matter how good warrior is and what build ever he uses good condi engi will come out of the fight with over 50% hp while warrior has tried to avoid getting hit for most of the time instead actually fighting back because if he did he would be dead.

HS OP? That’s cute – waterfields

No you just got done telling us how all of the other warrior heal skills are bad. Then you propose to nerf the only good one we have, then gave us a bunch of ideas on how to fix the others. Which sounds like just giving the complainers what they want but then making another healing skill something to complain about. Plus the changes that you provided would not give warrior enough sustain. Then you would nerf there sustain. So it sounds just like you just don’t want warriors to have sustain.

Warrior is in a good spot right now, they are not the best class anymore and anyone with the right build can beat a warrior. The ones complaining are new players or less skillful and knowledgeable players. Give it a rest already, there are way worst things in this game involving balance than healing sig, and some of them are newly introduced.

Healing Signet was the wrong buff. Instead of promoting the old game design, they put a bandaid fix that covered it.

Another thing:

From what I got, warrior at first was split in 2: Warrior and Juggernaut class. Then they decided that the difference between the two was too slim, and merged them.

Seems like ANet decided the warrior should look a bit more like the juggernaut, and gave signet and stances.

If that’s the case, maybe they should be split again: Warrior as a class that might even be sturdy, but is ultimately based on movement, with a “wrecking ball” type of gameplay, in and out of the fight.

Juggernaut as a class that is highly resistant and deals heavy damage BUT is slow and every single attack is a skillshot (telegraphed and requires aiming). When all those skillshots land, the juggernaut is unstoppable, when too many skillshot miss, the class becomes laughable.

I am so tired of healing signet topics.
you know what. nerf it.
go anet. do it.
i don’t godkitten care.
enjoy your 100% all boons protection stealth engineer with your petting zoo necromancer and rangers and perma stealth 8k backstab thieves with 0 cooldown teleporting all around my kitten .
Everything is fine. Except Warrior and Healing signet.
we are very sorry! i am sorry to make a lvl80 warrior too!
this community went to kitten really fast. i swear.

Nuorus.8415:

Guys, are you willing to demonstrate this OP healing signet against condition Engi? I will promise that no matter how good warrior is and what build ever he uses good condi engi will come out of the fight with over 50% hp while warrior has tried to avoid getting hit for most of the time instead actually fighting back because if he did he would be dead.

HS OP? That’s cute – waterfields

Since 1 month, i meet with godkitten engineers everywhere faceroll me to death.
My healing signet gives me back like 5-10% of his dmg.
Then i get him down to 2% hp. he go invulnerable, and then water field blast 2 times, 100% hp. GJ ANET. Nerf healing signet.

Warlord.9074:

No you just got done telling us how all of the other warrior heal skills are bad. Then you propose to nerf the only good one we have, then gave us a bunch of ideas on how to fix the others. Which sounds like just giving the complainers what they want but then making another healing skill something to complain about. Plus the changes that you provided would not give warrior enough sustain. Then you would nerf there sustain. So it sounds just like you just don’t want warriors to have sustain.

Warrior is in a good spot right now, they are not the best class anymore and anyone with the right build can beat a warrior. The ones complaining are new players or less skillful and knowledgeable players. Give it a rest already, there are way worst things in this game involving balance than healing sig, and some of them are newly introduced.

There is nothing balanced about having only one of the few healing skills viable in the majority of warrior builds.

It is true that right now Warriors are in a good spot, but the fact remains that Warriors do not have burst healing if every single build is running healing signet while the other healing skills are lackluster. Hence my ‘Strong but broken’ accusation.

Having Healing Signet down to 315 / second puts it right at the line the sustain for warriors should be, whereas every other heal needs a huge buff to be put in line with the new healing signet. That way, there will not be one set way to beat the warrior sustain that is healing signet if warriors are running a stronger Healing Surge, or even a reworked Mending. If people complain about the new incarnations of the heals then they are really, truly misinformed about what can counter them.

As of right now it is not just bad players but good players that see Healing Signet as slightly too strong. I would rather have more options for healing to help the Warrior profession as a whole than keep the broken profession weak against the condition meta as is.

For confirmation, I am not calling for just a nerf to Healing Signet, I am calling for a buff to Warrior Healing in General.

No matter what weapons or traits we have, if the Healing Signet is the only healing we have then every single warrior build has a blantant weakness to poison and high condition ticks OR burst (pending on what toughness you run). Even with Cleansing Ire and our condition immunities or reductions Poison will always be a problem with every build, any viable build we warriors run.

Overall the Warrior profession would be in a BETTER state if they had more access to other heals so they are not universally countered.

SpecterMAT.7306:

Nuorus.8415:

Guys, are you willing to demonstrate this OP healing signet against condition Engi? I will promise that no matter how good warrior is and what build ever he uses good condi engi will come out of the fight with over 50% hp while warrior has tried to avoid getting hit for most of the time instead actually fighting back because if he did he would be dead.

HS OP? That’s cute – waterfields

Since 1 month, i meet with godkitten engineers everywhere faceroll me to death.
My healing signet gives me back like 5-10% of his dmg.
Then i get him down to 2% hp. he go invulnerable, and then water field blast 2 times, 100% hp. GJ ANET. Nerf healing signet.

Did you notes how the whining stopped :P? Everyone knows HS can’t save anybody from these engis nor can any other of our heals.

Any nerf to cleansing ire or/and healing signet will make warriors unviable again.
We re tired of explaining that to people.
Leave healing signet as it is.