Guild Wars 2

Med Kit got a sneak upgrade: the 1 ability now has a cool mist spray sound effect. However, this doesn’t change the overall effectiveness of the kit.

Personally, I think turning the med kit into a dedicated healing kit (on par / competing with ventari, water tempest, or druid) would definitely be an improvement and move the kit towards having a purpose besides proccing other effects. The traits are already there (increased outgoing healing while using medkit in the Alchemy line) the numbers just aren’t. In addition, if this were going to be a healing kit, the 2 – 5 abilities would have to change slightly in order to more fit the style of raids so far: consistent AoE Damage mixed with spikes, however aoe spikes can be covered with elixir gun and Mortar 5.

Can we get any insight on what the devs are thinking concerning medkit, or the role of Engineer as a Healer / Support in raid environments?

In terms of the stat itself, for what we’ve seen of the raid so far, a 10 man zerker group will not be able to clear the first boss simply because there is an add you can only damage with condition damage. Given that there is an enrage timer on the boss, you wouldn’t be able to kill it fast enough with only zerker groups.

Not to mention the unavoidable aoe damage and the somewhat avoidable aoe damage.

That’s basically the only reason healers are needed in any game: Constant unavoidable damage, sometimes it just comes in different forms. While the first boss / trash is supposed to be the easiest, there are also mechanics that aren’t unavoidable, such as standing in the lightning so that the entire raid doesn’t take a spike of damage. Sometimes the seekers hit you while you are doing that, so healing is necessary or else your entire raid takes damage which cannot be self healed if it happens before cds are up. Would you rather have him target random players and deal unavoidable damage to them? This is a mechanic in other MMOs. There are no (or very few) single target heals in GW2, thus the need for AoE damage.

Obviously tuning still needs to take place, but I think it’s definitely a good start for creating build diversity.

For example, the red guardian can only take condi damage. At phase 2, the real boss splits into the 3 guardians, thus you have to have your condi focused dps focus on red, unless they have the red debuff (in which case they can’t do any damage to red). It’s a simple mechanic, but it adds another thing to the fight that you have to learn and deal with.

Also, people have to remember, you’re supposed to be able to defeat the first few bosses / first wing without full ascended gear. All beta characters have full ascended gear.

I agree, it may require an additional patch, but I would be ok with that as long as I have an option to hide it.