Guild Wars 2

You know that feeling, when you have your happy little continue balloon and you are on your way to the happy little continue cloud, who wants to raise a happy little flag, and you are happy…..then some spikes come up and pop your happy balloon….and your face

Just ran through on normal to test if it was bugged in infantile mode or not, still nothing.

Unless it is a flagrant situation of careless/lazy that gatekeeper on the right after spike hallway and before the giant ice slope is primed to be the last spot to have baubles in it.

Either it is bugged and we are supposed to be able to open it from that side, or there is a way in from the back/top/bottom/sides that we don’t know about.

Thing is, we have100% secrets found, so that room obviously doesn’t count as a secret room….so maybe we are not supposed to access it after all? It is hard to tell since you can see the white palm symbol to say that it is an openable doorm

Yaki.9563:

Healing Signet is a heal skill. We have one too. To compare it to one of our passive mechanics that we get on top of heal skills is very misleading.

AH is great but it is a GM trait. Same with MF.

But what none of those has is the ability to provide group wide healing. VoR can provide ~250 healing per second to the entire group. That far outstrips what those other skills can do. If you want to “heal”, VoR is awesome. Not so much if you’re standard DPS build but then why should it? You get passive Aegis as well. Don’t forget the VoR also has an active use heal.

We have low health not just because of VoR. It’s because of the overall access to heal skills and protection abilities. We can maintain permanent protection. We can maintain permanent regen. We get AH or MF. We get Aegis from multiple sources. We get a few reflection skills. We get things like dodge heal. If we had Warrior level health we’d be insanely powerful.

Couple of counter points first, We have access to permanent protection on hammer and permanent regeneration on mace, we can not have both permanent protection and regeneration at the same time.

Typically it is better to keep protection up and use regeneration on a cooldown basis to keep damage down and give yourself time to regenerate.

Aegis from multiple sources is: VoC 30-40s cooldown, or active 69-90 seconds.
Retreat 48-60s
Valorous Defense, every 90 seconds if you dip below 50% life.

Typical combat you will see 2, maybe 3 aegis activate. If you are bunkering down maybe 4.

Aegis is strong but not as strong as you make it out to be in our survival.

Throw in mace block too for good measure to count to the aegis block as well.

Blinds are much more effective as they stop all attackers in range and not just the next hit.

Our projectile reflection skills are nice, no argument there. We are kind of a mix between engineers and warriors. Warriors are almost all block, engineers are almost all reflection. We are in the middle of block and reflection.

Back to the point though,

I think you hit it on the head on why VoR is so small, and I think a good compromise would be this:

ANet is trying to avoid building a “healer” class, VoR is group capable so it is limited in effect. Although it is group capable only via using a 30 point trait.

What if Absolute Resolution and Battle presence were both 30 point traits in the same tree. Then absolute resolution could be drastically increased in effect to make self sustain with just VoR much higher, but if you want to support your allies you have to drop the high self sustain and get battle presence which would have VoR doing what it can do now, about 200ish heals a second.

The only problem I have with that solution is it doesn’t promote build diversity, it forces us down another tree, if anything it keeps us in honor or virtues still.

Tough problem, but I don’t see the guardians as the almighty gods that a lot of you feel we are. I think we deserve more attention besides tooltip updates.

I am not trying to make us OP, but I am trying to find ways to get us build diversity. I don’t think buffing VoR would put us anywhere near the realm of OP.

Oh, not the maze, I mean the one past the maze, right before the drop to the uphill climb. Left side opens, but right sides does not.

In middle of doing run right now with everything listed. stand by and I’ll say if it worked or not.

No go for me as well, proving to be well hidden. I think that right hand room in spike hallway is the key, but no idea how to get in it. If you look in the crack where the lips part, you can see a white symbol for the “fist” to signify the door can be opened.

The other option is that first hidden room that has two entrances and a bunch of icicles hanging inside of it. there is a separate partition with another room in it, but no access.

I don’t see any baubles in it though, so unsure if its just reusing already made geometry for ease of world making, or intended extra room with a way into it.

when you learn the songs it shows the numbers somewhere, like on the log, in the water with flower petals, or on the wall with ice.

Play the notes a few times and the effect happens so you know what it does.

Moto’s head to show a bombable area, the big mouth things can be controlled (open doors, or stop the gust of winds), and you can shatter ice with the last one.

the first one, will show moto’s head in areas you can bomb, but it isn’t 100% because at least one wall I know of is bombable without showing his head. You have to be fairly close to use it though so that may be the issue.

hmm, I seem to be at 16/17 hidden rooms, but I thought i had been to them all. Here is a list of areas I have been, anything I"m missing?

Area 1

• Raccoon forest gatekeeper left entrance
• Raccoon forest gatekeeper left exit
• Icicle cave entrance 1
• Icicle cave entrance 2

Area 2

• Nook wallet shop
• Under the 4 gatekeepers left (dead end yellow)
• Under the 4 gatekeepers right (raccoon forest right)

Area 3

• Ice rink chest door
• Entrance above shop
• Cave above the shop
• Block puzzle back drop
• frozen water fall behind block puzzle

Area 4

• Icicle room behind banana

Area 5

• spike room gatekeeper to ice maze
• top gatekeeper back to spike room

Area 6

• Gatekeeper to barrels and hidden portal

Area 7

• clouds to hidden shop/moto’s finger, and spike trap
• icicle puzzle top of mountain

found my missing secret, it was even posted up above, but reading comprehension and me don’t mix :p

Area 9

• Yeti fight gatekeeper

songs are in the different world 2 levels

123123 – on a log in a shop where he says the owls are not what they seem in w2z1

332331 – from dropping down into a mountain filled with poison with a flower that (vaguely remember that one, was in ninja area w2z2.

133133 – in an ice maze in w2z3

You have to learn it before you can use them.

is this the confirmed missing one? has someone completed the zone then?

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t remember seeing this one on your list. It may be the one you’re missing since there’s only ONE way to get it and it’s not listed specifically.

Is this on the first mountain before you teleport to the other? or after that?

General area is helpful to narrow things down on if it was found or not.

Adamantium.3682:

Thank you for posting this, after I try a bit longer I’m going to read through it. I’m glad we have a discussion for 2-3, as this has been the most frustrating zone in terms of finding all the hidden areas.

It seems every time I follow an obscure ledge out to some unused platform, there is no hidden area for it. I use bombs all around it and nothing. How are you guys finding these, is there a different pattern where bombs are normally used? I can spot some, others not at all.

In terms of just playing and exploring I really love this zone. Almost pure platforming, so great.

Adamantium.3682:

Also how do you know where do use the flute? Any cues for that?

Just use the flute anywhere and everywhere pretty much. Although the cave wall above the first shop that you drop into did not appear with the secret song, but it was destructible anyway.

Ahh, nm, I see it lower on in the paragraph now.

In area 3, by second block teleporter puzzle, you can go around the exterior of the cliff on the left side and find a frozen water fall with a purple bubble in it. May be one you are missing, didn’t notice it in your list.

@Red
I think your best counter argument for why VoR shouldn’t be upped is the idea that Healing Signet is a choice and VoR is a fact. We always have it in any build, and I see what you mean.

On the contrary, I am not asking for VoR “alone” to be as good as Healing Signet, but something we can layer with other abilities to gain strategic builds based on synergies and smart use of cooldowns.

My biggest argument is the total loss of any other stats in order to make VoR useful for specs other than full heal, it should be a viable and useful asset to promote build diversity, but not a crutch that every build is based on.

Active versus passive gameplay starts to delve into more “what is wrong with the game” than just our class. There are a lot of passive things going on in this action oriented game.

That famous quote recent that goes something like: “You have to actively react to the passive abilities” is a sign that maybe we have “too” many passive things going on in GW2 right now.

It can’t be denied that initially the idea was that Guardians were supposed to be low health with lots of healing capability to sustain themselves. The idea sounds active in our survival, but the effect is a lot of passive things just happening as we fight.

AH, Regen, VoR, WoR all just persist throughout combat without a lot of thought.

MF is the only one that could be argued to be an active gameplay decision to use.

If we had more control of when we heal and how we heal, as well as more blocks, blinds, dodges, condition removal, then I would be more interested in active survival.

As it stands now, we are sort of in a juxtaposition between active and passive gameplay. A majority of healing ability cooldowns are fairly long in the terms of combat usage, and fairly weak as to not promote a “healer” in this game.

Also, no one would want to sit there with a 2-3 second utility skill that heals to make up for getting rid of passive healing…we press 1 enough as it is, so auto attack/auto healing is a bad idea.

I think if more heals were interwove into our attack skills on weapons, you could argue to keep VoR the way it is, or remove passive effects like it, to make up for our low HP.

Then of course, the guardian survival relies on being in combat range and being prone to kite completely kills our ability to survive in that scenario.

What would you give us, to actively promote self sustain?

Or maybe the game has reached an arms race of damage and conditions and things should be toned back and re-evaluated?

Didn’t realize you can run along the ground… will have to try that next time.

What I tend to do is dodge roll towards the rock and you get an evade message, now you are right next to it and it is on cooldown before it jumps again.

I take that time to jump on top of it and off to the ledge without being knocked around.

The wiki states the VoR is quoting a post from an ANet dev on some forums as to why guardians have low HP, and he cites VoR as a reason. Go check out the citation source at the bottom of the wiki page.

I do not think that passives should be all mighty and powerful, and I think many of you read too far into those statements.

I feel it is not balanced to the current flow of gameplay and is primed to be adjusted to enhance our build variety.

Warrior Signet is a fair example, as without AH, MF, or even WoM (writ of merciful) the only heal over time ticking is VoR. Warriors augment the passive heal with adrenal health to layer the self sustain and concentrate on damage.

VoR layered with AH/MF/WoM would create the same sort of synergy.

Warriors are not drastically less capable of surviving damage than a guardian, and this is a player base misconception. Previously they were prone to condition damage deaths, but with some recent patches they are able to keep those off with lots of adrenalin usage.

Condition removal was something guardians were fairly unique at, and still are in a group sense. Warriors can block like guardians, roll and maintain vigor like guardians, now they can passively heal “like” guardians and clear conditions like guardians.

The one thing warriors don’t have that guardians have good supply of, I believe, are blinds.

I do think the warrior passive heal should be looked at maybe, but I don’t think it should be nerfed to the ground. On the contrary, I think what they did for warriors is a good thing and should be spread out to other professions, namely the guardian who’s job it is to heal and make up for a low health pool.

We get hindered by the game wanting to avoid making a “healer” though, so a lot of our group capable heals are handicapped out of fear of the trinity.

With the passive taken care of, I think the actives are actually pretty good if traited.

VoJ – AoE Blind, Burning, Might
VoR – Group condition cleanse x3, regeneration, burst heal
VoC – Protection, Aegis (with any aegis secondary traits), and your pick of Stability and/or stun break.

I have no issue with the actives, maybe lower the cooldown and let us use them more? But I think those are in a good spot at the moment.

Going back to our passive, I do not want us to solely rely on the passive, but the passive “is” supposed to be strong for “us” and we sacrifice a “lot” to give support to our allies when activating virtues.

As it is now, I’m not worried if my virtues are down or not for myself, as i only use them for the active abilities and the passives are an after thought.

I am not sure why people don’t want VoR to become an acceptable avenue for self sustain allowing us to pull away from AH/MF or full healing specs.

The physics of jumping are kind of strange but you figure out some quirks.

For that jump I go past it and turn into it, helps you get a couple of seemingly possible jumps but they are barely out of reach.

Other things are running off the edge slightly before jumping to gain distance

Dodge roll and jump at the same time (jump split seconds earlier as to not roll off the edge) takes some timing and it isn’t 100% with me, but you get even more distance.

Running for a second increases momentum, a stand still jump versus a step or two then jump are different, so as mentioned earlier you need some speed to it.

Oh and…..pssst oi….I see you are pinoy, rock on me too!

……read through it again and missed the frog cave by log house……… picks up sharp object and jabs eyeballs

Finished the initial comparison with each professions self heal abilities. I realize I neglected the actual “heal” skills, such as signet of healing, shelter, healing spring, etc.

I do want to add those as well as break it down to heals per second to include cooldown at a later time and date. Done for now though.

Hmm, just followed this to a “t” and didn’t get achievement at end of level

Opened chests and went in all the secret rooms, broke all the things in stores.

I did not bother with the hillbilly stills though, so maybe they do count.

Went back through all my shops again and got the update, screenshots to help others list out locations.

I’ll go through it again but I know I was 10/11 before walking into that room.

After seeing patch notes I went back two w1z2 with 10/11 stores, went in the booby trapped room before the poison, got an achievement pop up but I"m still 10/11……

Is it fixed? or do I have to go through all 11 stores again to update my 10?

A lot of us have gone over the healing by numbers thing, I havn’t seen a healing by percent.

I personally feel percentage is misleading, as I stated with the changes in HP affect the percentage of life that you get out of it, so you can make it sound like you healing for 50% of your life!!! but your life is only 1000 max so its a 500 point heal. Or 1% of your life out of 10000 and you get a 1000 point heal…you see what I’m getting at there.

Still, in my post I tried to state multiple times that this is only part of the way to look at things, and I said it ignores cooldowns as well as assuming percentages without showing raw numbers, but I was trying to keep it simple and just observe effects.

I did not intend to go through the rest of the professions, but it was requested, and I got curious.

Percentage with a standard is a decent way to observe the effects though (although this is a losely based standard as the hp and stats adjust from class to class). Also mentioned earlier in the thread, I could have a weak heal that only heals for a fraction of a percent, but it ticks very frequently (Altruistic Healing), so it looks bad on paper but is actually pretty good.

I acknowledge and understand these things, but it is just trying to look at the problem from another point of view. This is not the end all be all analysis, but it is another piece of data to use to help us make more educated decisions and factor where our strengths and deficiencies are.

@Yaki
I understand there is more to our “core mechanic” than virtue of resolve, but I am talking in terms of self sustainability, our “core” mechanic in that is stated to be our ability to regenerate life to make up for a low health pool.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession#Guardian
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian

Virtue of Resolve does become better, but I’m not sure you can say it is better than AH or MF, and warriors have the healing signet with no healing power at all doing more than virtue of resolve does with max healing power.

Healing Signet with no healing power does 392 a second.

AH around 5 people with no healing power does 354 a second (69*5).

MF is a little more complicated to factor in terms of heals per second as it is a burst heal via 3 or less utilities on varying cooldowns, but with no healing power and using Smite, JI, and Contemplation with reduced cooldowns you will do about 9800 healing (3 smite, 1 JI, and 1 Contemplation healing for 1960 each. Divide 9800 by the max seconds, 48, and you get about 204 heals per second (still inaccurate as you won’t be using them on cooldown, so its actually lower.

Writ of the Merciful will do 287 (full healing power) and 107 (no healing power) a second when in stationary symbols.

Virtue of resolve, with every point possible into healing, mace gives healing power, absolute resolution, healing food, signet of mercy, and max sigil of life stacks will do 228 untraited and 285 traited healing per second….but you used up all your stats to max it out and it is still not amazingly beyond the capacity of MF and AH.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApeENhTIZKAAEE7BAAAAwlCI6hA-jQCB4hBkaAILqIasFQMaslXAqZER1qGYWcER1uEYBB8N-e

Everyone has access to regeneration boons, so it is not a class mechanic unique to guardians.

Now you can combine VoR with Writ of Merciful, and Regeneration boons to hit 1003 healing per a second, which is pretty impressive, but you need to be in your symbol, and are restricted to mace, while doing wet noodle damage.

Again as pointed out, other professions can do good healing and sustain while doing damage, we sacrifice everything.

@Kjeldoran
It’s not a guide, but talking points, as I am mostly thinking out loud. More often than not I’m breaking down the game to try to understand it and bring it back into useable gameplay. Mostly analysis and pondering, not a guide.

@Tarsius
Awesome, I’m pillaging your spreadsheet now and going over it!

@anyone else reading

Bottom line, what I’m trying to do here is show guardian healing in comparision to others, and establish an understanding to help argue for improvements in our self sustain mechanics without needing to delve so deep into healing power.

By giving us more flexibility in self sustain, you open up more possible build variety available to the players, if they don’t have to worry about a low health pool and keep traiting and gear to cover up that weakness.

Chorazin.4107:

Seems a pretty big deal to me, my virtue of resolve ticks for about 375 traited with absolute resolution and 1350 healing power, the warriors in my group, their healing signet ticks for just over 400 with virtually no healing power. And they have anywhere from 20k(zerker) to 30k+(bunker) hp’s. I will have between 12k(zerker) to 20k(bunker)

Base heal for Virtue of Resolve passive is 84 and healing power coefficient is 0.06.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Virtue_of_Resolve

Absolute Resolution increases Virtue of Resolve by 25%
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Absolute_Resolution

So at most you will be getting 206 health per second with a traited VoR and 1350 healing power, not counting WvW bonuses:

84+(1350*0.06)=165
165*1.25=206.25

Just wanted to clarify the heal you actually get for the amount of stats you invest into it, lower than you were stating, exemplifying one of the problems I think we have for such low base health in today’s meta.

Updated lists, sorted by heavy, medium, light / lowest health to highest.

Missing mesmer and necromancer at this time but tired of looking at numbers, will update rest tomorrow.

The spreadsheet would be awesome, but don’t feel obliged to dig around, I’ll probably do the calculations myself cause I’m slightly OCD

I didn’t do anything tonight because of the SAB update….spending time hating my life in tribulation mode :p

I will go back and finish this though, no worries. This week it will be done!

It is exactly the arcades all over again, which is kind of cool in an homage kind of way, but not for here not for this.

For the sake of saying it I finished world 1, it is do able but takes a LOT of continues and trail and error.

I’m not mad at the difficulty, I’m mad at the underlying trend, and the inconsistency with skill based playing.

a lot of spikes, go the most difficult and convoluted way you can think of >< I just memorized the spike areas is all and trial and error on how to get around. A lot of jumping up and around things.

Just finished W1 S2, much more enjoyable with infinite continue coin but I feel dirty for buying it

Ah yes, but were they insert a quarter every time you die games? or buy it once and continue to try to learn it forever?

Again, there are only two problems I have and they are connected…random unforseable spikes.

They should either do a knockdown/knock back or take hearts, not insta kill. OR they should have a learn able tell, like the flowers, the holes in the ground to lava, or the difficult jumps and timing.

Right now I"m at the jumping rocks in the lava part on world 1 stage 2, and I"m not frustrated with it. You know why? because I have a chance to learn and adapt with the timing and flow of the game.

random spikes are my only complaint. The rest of the difficulty is great and I love it, because I can learn and be “skillful” in overcoming the challenge. Spikes are just random and unfun, designed to push you to continues through many many deaths.

I am not even going to try to defend the decision making process on this one. I still like the game, and there is a thin line to make excuses that it is not pay to win, but for practicality purposes it is. Technicalities there are ways around it, sure, but I think you need to go give it a shot.

I just finished world 1 stage 1 after LOTs and LOTS of deaths, probably more than 99, and a continue coin would at most give you 5 lives I believe?

I’m fine with “most” of the difficulty, but there is a very thin line they are walking here and I just encouraged it by buying the continue coin

A lot with this patch that is upsetting a lot of people, and I"m surprised to be one of them as I typically understand the changes and love the game. This one I have to side with the hatter crowd for once

Not horrible yet, but I’m beginning to see the road we are walking down and ANet has a hatchet in the back seat for when I’m not looking

I have some problems with the hidden message with the Tribulation mode, and as pointed out, it is “pay to win” in that you almost “need” to purchase the infinite continue coin to do it in a meaningful way. This is the first time I actually felt disgusted in buying something from these mini transactions from the trading post. I think this is breaking grounds in a bad way….but I bought it…I’m sorry….

Also, I get it, tribulation mode is supposed to be trail and error and difficult.

I learned to be aware of the odd flowers that look different and may explode
I learned that certain rocks will jump up and knock you around
I learned that sometimes barrels are dangerous so be weary
I learned that some areas of the ground look different at the seams and segment down a bit…that may be a lava pit….

I haven’t learned a thing from the random spikes, this has no warning or tell, so I can’t use what I have learned to get better. I think the spikes are one of the biggest critical failures in this mode, the rules of difficult gaming require there to be a “tell” to give skilled players the ability to learn that tell and overcome it.

Also the tribulation cloud shoots far too many lightning bolts and should be toned down, you simply can not sustain a meaningful dodge rate with them. The lightning sword move also persists after activation and will still damage players while it is traveling in a radius..I feel that one is a bug.

A hard game should be something that is difficult to do, but there is room to learn how to overcome it. If we are expected to die a lot, we should be given the opportunity to continue without strict penalties such as spending real money for a “cheat” (infinite continue coin).

four break down posts should be enough, will delete the extras later…but taking a break for now, will update the rest today or tomorrow…..unless someone else wants to help do the work? no? …. ;p

I may go back over what I already did and add heal percent per second, to include ability cooldowns to compare with healing over time effectiveness… blah more work, why do I make this game so complicated??!

Light Armor

Elementalist

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Water Blast (2.9%)
• Geyser (6.4%)
• Water Trident (12.7%)
• Cone of Cold (6%)
• Cleansing Wave (11.6%)
• Tidal Wave (2.6%)
• Glyph of Elementals (47.6%) does it scale with healing power?
• Water Arrow (0.3%)
• Healing Ripple (11.6%)
• Evasive Arcana (Casts Cleansing Wave on dodge when in water, 50% weaker in pvp)
• Soothing Mist (0.7%)
• Regeneration (1.2%)

1709 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Water Blast (3.9%)
• Geyser (8.8%)
• Water Trident (22.6%)
• Cone of Cold (9.4%)
• Cleansing Wave (21.6%)
• Tidal Wave (3.5%)
• Glyph of Elementals (47.6%) does it scale with healing power?
• Water Arrow (1.3%)
• Healing Ripple (21.6%)
• Evasive Arcana (Casts Cleansing Wave on dodge when in water, 50% weaker in pvp)
• Soothing Mist (1.2%)
• Regeneration (2.5%)

Mesmer

300 Healing Power w/ 18082 Health

• Restorative Mantras (14.7%)
• Restorative Illusions (1 illusion 5%, 2 -> 6%, 3 -> 7%)
• Restorative Illusions w/ illusionary persona (0 -> 4%, 1 -> 11%, 2 -> 12%, 3 -> 13.5%)
• Regeneration (0.9%)

1570 Healing Power w/ 18242 Health

• Restorative Mantras (16%)
• Restorative Illusions (1 -> 6%, 2 -> 7.6%, 3 -> 8.6%)
• Restorative Illusions w/ illusionary persona (0 -> 6.5%, 1 -> 14%, 2 -> 15%, 3 -> 16%)
• Regeneration (1.8%)

Necromancer

300 Healing Power w/ 21372 Health

• Deathly Invigoration (1.7%)
• Transfusion – Life Transfer (does not heal self, but does heal for a huge amount, heal is fixed at 2628 a tick for 9 ticks.)
• Regeneration (0.8%)

1570 Healing Power w/ 21532 Health

• Deathly Invigoration (3.6%)
• Transfusion – Life Transfer (does not heal self, but does heal for a huge amount, heal is fixed at 2628 a tick for 9 ticks.)
• Regeneration (1.5%)

Medium Armor

Thief

300 Healing Power w/ 10805 Health

• Shadow Refuge (16.4%)
• Assassin’s Reward (0.73%)
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation (3%)
• Regeneration (2%)

1392 Healing Power w/ 10965 Health

• Shadow Refuge (24.4%)
• Assassin’s Reward (1%)
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation (4%)
• Regeneration (3%)

Ranger

300 Healing Power w/ 15082 Health

• Signet of the Wild (0.53%)
• Spirit of Nature (3.2%)
• Harmonic Cry (22%)
• Chomp/Drake (13.2%)
• Chomp/Armorfish (13.2%)
• Carnivorous Appetite (pet only)
• Natural Healing (0.89%)
• Regeneration (1.1%)

1691 Healing Power w/ 15242 Health

• Signet of the Wild (1%)
• Spirit of Nature (3.1%)
• Harmonic Cry (24%)
• Chomp/Drake (14%)
• Chomp/Armorfish (14%)
• Carnivorous Appetite (pet only)
• Natural Healing (0.87%)
• Regeneration (22.4%)

Engineer

300 Healing Power w/ 15082 Health

• Bandage Self (35%)
• Drop Bandages (8%)
• Launch Elixir (2.9%)
• Super Elixir Impact Heal (5.4%)
• Super Elixir Pulse Heal (16%)
• Elixir-Infused Bombs (1.2%)
• Backpack Regenerator (0.88%)
• Regeneration (1.1%)

1704 Healing Power w/ 15242 Health

• Bandage Self (43.4%%)
• Drop Bandages (12.2%)
• Launch Elixir (4.7%)
• Super Elixir Impact Heal (9%)
• Super Elixir Pulse Heal (25%)
• Elixir-Infused Bombs (2%)
• Backpack Regenerator (1.3%)
• Regeneration (2.3%)

Heavy Armor

Guardian (Adjusted stats/gear to be consistent with other profession breakdowns)

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (0.7%)
• Empower (13%)
• Orb of Light (2.4%)
• Orb of Light Active (7%)
• Faithful Strike (3.7%)
• Shield of Absorption (9.9%)
• Light of Judgment (0.7%)
• Bow of Truth (0.7% per tick, 29.2% total)
• Merciful Intervention (15.5%)
• Sanctuary (2% per second, 12.2% total)
• Light of Deliverance (“full heal”)
• Healing Area (10.5%)
• Symbol of Judgment (unsure of total health when downed, so can’t figure percent)
• Altruistic Healing (0.5%)
• Monk’s Focus (15%)
• Pure of Heart (5.2%)
• Selfless Daring (3.1% PvE, 2% PvP)
• Writ of the Merciful (0.9%)
• Zealous Blade (0.2%)
• Battle presence (VoR to allies)
• Regeneration (1.2%)

1710 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (1.3%)
• Empower (23%)
• Orb of Light (4.4%)
• Orb of Light Active (13%)
• Faithful Strike (5.5%)
• Shield of Absorption (11.8%)
• Light of Judgment (1.7%)
• Bow of Truth (0.7% per tick, 28.9% total)
• Merciful Intervention (21.4%)
• Sanctuary (2.5% per second, 15.1% total)
• Light of Deliverance (“full heal”)
• Healing Area (15.4%)
• Symbol of Judgment (unsure of total health when downed, so can’t figure percent)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6%)
• Monk’s Focus (19%)
• Pure of Heart (7.7%)
• Selfless Daring (13.2% PvE, 7% PvP)
• Writ of the Merciful (1.7%)
• Zealous Blade (0.2%)
• Battle presence (VoR to allies)
• Regeneration (2.5%)

Warrior

300 Healing Power w/ 18372 Health

• Vigorous Shouts (7.8%)
• Adrenal Health (1 Bar 0.9%, 2 Bars 1.6%, 3 Bars 2.2%)
• Regeneration (0.9%)

1704 Healing Power w/ 18532 Health

• Vigorous Shouts (13.8%)
• Adrenal Health (1 Bar 2%, 2 Bars 2.7%, 3 Bars 3.3%)
• Regeneration (1.9%)

Adrenal Health ticks every 3 seconds, making the heal per second percent:
300 Heal Power (1 Bar 0.3%, 2 Bars 0.53%, 3 Bars 0.73%)
1704 Heal Power (1 Bar 0.67%, 2 Bars 0.9%, 3 Bars 1.1%)

Updated original list with Selfless Daring, pondering going down the list seen on the wiki here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing

It would be interesting to see, but I don’t know all the other professions to the same degree that I understand guardians, so I may end up with sub optimal setups and errors and what not.

Getting additional vigor from another source shouldn’t be needed, if your crit rate is high enough to maintain the proc, and it doesn’t stack in intensity so additional vigor from another source shouldn’t matter, unless you can not maintain the boon on your own.

Shouts are useful in a group utility set up in an offensive set up, but to a minimal degree in terms of healing. The protection boon is highly useful, but the regeneration boon is seemingly pointless as it heals for so little, but if you have nothing else, why not.

Also you could replace the shouts with other utlities that may help the group as well, such as wall of reflection (projectile reflect), shield of the avenger (projectile block and weakness), purging flames (condition removal), hallowed ground (stability), merciful intervention (low hp ally heal), bow of truth (condition removal), signet of judgement (weakness?…maybe I"m stretching on that one).

Protection is the only group utility missing, but if you trait down virtues you can give the group protection with VoC, and if you use hammer it is going out with a higher up time than the shout.

So there are ways to not use shouts and still not be a selfish jerk and support your group at the same time.

Still going over the shouts some more, stability, retaliation, aegis, and swiftness from Retreat and Stand your ground are additional shouts you can run in an offensive set up to provide utility, and if you are down the Honor tree with your offensive set up you can also clear conditions with shouts.

I am not saying shouts are not good for an offensive set up, I am saying, how ever, shouts are not good for self sustain in an offensive set up.

You could also go as far as the argument that everyone should support themselves and a dead dps is no dps, so self sustain with top damage is a good way to help support the group by doing as much damage as possible and killing things as fast as possible to maybe rally allies that downed mid combat. Another argument another time, and I run a more group support role typically, regardless.

Going back to the main point though, I was pondering these things in terms of pvp and wvw survival and not so much pve. What are ways that we can help “ourselves” survive?

I would argue that the passive abilities from virtues are supposed to be strong for “you” and the actives are supposed to be strong for the “group”.

Right now Virtue of Justice is a good example of passive/active utility, but then burning is under the popular opinion of meh for the guardian.

Virtue of Resolve is a arguably inefficient passive for yourself and a pretty good active for yourself and group, “IF” traited for Absolute Resolution.

Virtue of Courage is really easily ignored active or passive, it just kind of is there. Some good uses of it are an on demand block in any build, but the cooldown is so extensive it is only clutch in very small and limited situations and typically will not turn a fight around. Traits can make it somewhat useful in the sense of stability/stun break but again a lot of trait points have to be dedicated to make it “ok”.

As far as missing healing sources, I purposely omitted additional regeneration sources, as the heal per second is what was important, and just used our primary regen shout as an example of “what it does”. I also ommitted Orb of Light, because I was lazy =p, pretty decent heal for group, but difficult to use effectively most of the time.

As far as Selfless Darring, I completely forgot about that one when making this list, and I will go back and add that one. Good to know if it is worth it to pick up without healing power or not, as it requires you to dedicate 15 points into a non-offensive trait line, if you are specing for offense.

Now advanced synergies that you can do with AH and consecrations as well as staff empower are beyond the scope I was looking at, and simply thinking of when to pick what sustain mechanic in a general sense. Monk’s Focus giving multiple procs of healing from Merciful Intervention is probably a bug, and at most it should give two procs (one for ability and one for trait), but again just speaking in general terms and that is sort of beyond the scope.

Again, this is not the whole picture and frequency of application and intensity of incoming damage could warrant a “lesser” heal source.

Also again the size of your HP pool changes the percentages, so percents are not the end all to saying it is a “good” heal, but just trying to gauge some commonalities between the heals.

Edit: fixed some math errors, but skip towards bottom as I created a baseline to compare each profession skills against each other while minimizing inflation of stats with things like signets or traits that up healing power

Healing power is generally seen as useless to a majority of the GW2 community, but we have seen and shown how it can be highly effective in some builds, especially here on the guardian side of the house.

Some random musing about survival and what is the best way to gain that, with and without healing power.

Our list of healing abilities to include self and group:

300 Healing Power w/ 13805 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (0.7%, 0.9% traited)
• Regeneration (1.2% per tick, 7% total with hold the line)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6% per boon at around 2% in group scenario)
• Monk’s Focus (15%)
• Writ of the Merciful (0.9%)
• Staff Empower (13%)
• Mace Faithful Strike (2%)
• Zealous Blade (0.1% per hit, best case burst heal with 10 whirling wrath hits and 5 targets, 9%)
• Selfless Daring (3% PvE, 2% PvP)

I would argue that shouts are bad for DPS specs, in general. Reason being is that a our primary healing shout, Hold the Line! will probably have a regeneration boon heal maxing out at around 1002 healing with at most 300 healing power in your spec. Your life will be around 13000 at most in a full glass cannon set up.

This will only provide 7% of your life back every 28 to 35 seconds. This is opposed to something like Monk’s Focus which will provide 2140 healing back every 16-20 seconds with Smite Conditions, this is approximately 15% life back every 16-20 seconds.

The only caveats to keep in mind with that is you do not get the protection boon with smite conditions and the cooldown only starts when you use it, so it will not be a continuous tick and you will have down time between the next available heal (large gaps in no healing).

Without putting anything other than trait points into healing, virtue of resolve will provide 102 to 127 healing a second, writ of the merciful provides 129 healing a second with symbols, mace auto attack gives a 389 heal. These are all anywhere from 0.007% to 2% healing, VERY minor returns.

Staff empower gives a decent amount back with 1800 healing which is 13% of your life.

The break away from these low numbers is our saving grace, Altruistic Healing, but it is only useful in groups, as it’s effectiveness is horrible when alone. 72 healing per a boon applied, most frequent return is from crits and symbols in groups, which is typically 5 people max. So in the best conditions AH will provide 72*5 healing a second, 360 health which is about 2% of your life, but it ticks consistently if utilized correctly.

So mace auto attack and altruistic healing provide 2% life back a second, yet our core class mechanic, virtue of resolve provides 0.007% life back a second…..yeah that needs to be fixed I think.

Now lets put max healing power into the mix and review those abilities again.

2398 Healing Power w/ 13965 Health

• Virtue of Resolve (1.6%, 2% traited)
• Regeneration (3% per tick, 18.5% total with hold the line)
• Altruistic Healing (0.6% per boon at around 2% in group scenario)
• Monk’s Focus (24%)
• Writ of the Merciful (2%)
• Staff Empower (26%)
• Mace Faithful Strike (5%)
• Zealous Blade (0.1% per hit, best case burst heal with 10 whirling wrath hits and 5 targets, 9%)
• Selfless Daring (18% PvE, 9.5% PvP)

Regeneration, all of the sudden becomes very powerful, and surpasses altruistic healing in effectiveness.

Now, healing percentages vary depending on maximum health, so a weaker heal could be stronger on a lower health pool. So the above numbers are not the end all tell all of what heals to pick. I still think it is intriguing and takes into account the stats that go along with a best case scenario glass cannon build versus a full heal bunker build. I could have given the GC build zero healing power, and maybe that would have adjusted the numbers to show better for them…or maybe worse.

Another factor to consider is frequency of application, a low percentage heal may happen very frequently, thus adding up in effectiveness (altruistic healing) versus a high percentage heal that has a long cooldown (monks focus).

I do think this shows that a build with no healing power, should probably not try to rely on regeneration for sustain, but should rely on “shocker” altruistic healing or monk’s focus.

Still, the utilities are easily replaced since the majority of healing will be provided via crits and symbols, the shouts are minimalistic to the build at most.

This also shows just how drastically ineffective our core class mechanic, virtue of resolve is in sustain, and I once again argue that it needs to be adjusted to give us more build diversity and realistic survival outside of AH/MF or full clerics.

Well, there is no “taunt” in gw2, but there are agro mechanics that change from mob to mob. It may be that the spirit weapons have such little armor/health that they pull agro from being the weakest target in the area.

Also range from the target increases agro. Some mobs prefer ranged targets other prefer melee targets.

Overall the agro mechanics are sketchy in this game and inconsistent, which is why you always hear, “there are no tanks”.

Still, I do notice spirit weapons pull agro really quick for some deficiency in it or another. Either health, armor, range, or damage are the typical factors that encourage targets to lock on to a target.

Oh, yeah, his wasn’t a healway set up, but a confusion/interrupt build based on asuran racials and wards with runes of perplexity.

He said he had a non-asuran set up, but hasn’t posted it yet as I think he was rounding out the edges.

Geomancy wouldn’t work because healway relies a lot on the dodge roll heals for survival and that would conflict with that cooldown, and sigils of earth require crit rating that we wouldn’t have without putting some magi gear in there, which again is fairly low chance even with it, unless you sacrifice a lot of apothecary which would then drop the condition damage.

If you don’t want to 100% your burning duration and get 2 ticks out of it, then you can change the giver’s weapons to apothecary and maximize condition damage, but getting 2 procs of burning doing 525 each (1051 a second), will get you more damage out than going for another set of apothecary giving you more condition damage putting the burning up to 558 and just shy of 2 seconds, causing it to only do 1 tick. If you have a multi hitting ability you could round up those fractions of a second, but that wouldn’t happen on sword auto I don’t think…on whirling wrath it will though.

All going apothecary does is make you lose power stat, which is already low, and not a source of damage, and then you gain condition damage. Retaliation does 344 with full clerics (not ascended) and power food/sharpening stone.

Apothecary will have retaliation doing 280 damage a tick, 64 less damage, but you gain 230 burning damage, which, theoretically will be consistent up time with sword auto and whirling wrath bursts.

Add in 100% burning and you get 1051 burning, which is 493 more burning damage than pure clerics.

All this while maintaining a majority of the healway build, and keeping healing power above 1200, which I think chris said was his bare minimum and anything lower lost a lot of survival.

This by no means is a condi burst build, and people can still run away from you, but it may give you more offensive pressure along with your defensive retaliation pressure to shorten fights and cause people to back away from you sooner or die without realizing how much burning is going on.

Too often when I play a defensive build, I realize just how much ignoring me defeats my whole strategy. Putting some burning damage on your attacks gives you more umph and makes you a little bit more threatening if being ignored.

This would still be a healway playstyle, just with burning added.

Amins, if you have done this or something similar, I would be interested to hear the feedback of how it went.

Has anyone attempted to turn healway into a condi bunker yet with something like this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsdRlUgyCXFyvDf4ES2jVCBVwqCxD2DMKj6IA-jgyAYNBRaBI9JQ5xioxWyiWxLsV4goZwUrER1elioVLFAETjA-e

maintains a majority of the healing, I think about 100 less, swaps out the power for condition damage and you still maintain some retal damage at around 280 damage a tick (I think with all clerics you will be around 350ish?). Double up on burning duration to reach 2 seconds and you have 1051 damage every 4-5 attacks. With whirling wrath and sword auto attack, that should be plenty of sources of burn.

Not spike damage like you can do with bleeds condi set up, but with the long survival of healway, it may help push the damage a bit.

That’s fine, but what you sacrifice to obtain the extra damage is sometimes not worth it. If you are just running around randomly and getting a kill here and there fine, but if you are trying to do team fights, bunker a point, or handle the heavy condition meta the game is right now, then spirit weapons are just lack luster.

They were “ok” before, but horrible now.

On the other side of the equation with pve, spirit shield is invaluable in many dungeons and when soloing the sword and hammer contribute a lot to your solo damage. I was able to push some events that had timers on them solo by going full pet spec with elite and spirit weapons.

I still contest they need some more flair to make them useful. As it stands now, they are still gimicky.

oh, good to know. nice one foofad, even if I don’t use spirit weapons

I think it is worth noting that guardian spirit weapons follow the typical pet AI in the game, so it is a common problem with all classes, but our are more squishy and short termed causing more problems for usage.

By same AI, I mean in order for them to get “IN” combat and start doing the combat AI pet thingy, you have to attack a target with a direct action skill.

I watched a video showing the issues with necro pets and noticed this is the same with guardian spirit weapons.

Also being attacked yourself will not immediately trigger the pet, but the pet being hit, will.

So if you want better control of your spirit weapons, hit the target from a distance before running in.

Yeah, I noticed the gear set I was narrowing down to with the balanced variant looked appealing to an offensive Healway set up.

Unfortunately, the only way to get magi weapons is from the following dungeon tokens:

Ascalonian Catacombs, Twilight Arbor, or Honor of the Waves.

Easy enough to do, but gates your time a little bit in gearing till you run those dungeons.

I’ll have to try it out with a dumbed down exotic version of it instead of ascended, but my only question is, what happens if you drop symbols out of it and just rely on meditations?

I have a feeling it will perform similar to what you have now, thus making it a meditation build and not a symbology centered build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApfRlUgyCXFSIEf4ERNj4dPsHY8jd8+AFB-jgyAoNBRiQgoCgZxhMmGjaVDooyoxqawUqER1ejioVLFgzCjA-e

Here is another stab at a “balanced” build with 41% crit chance. The damage is much less guaranteed, but frees up a lot of stats. Focused on symbol damaging traits with the side effect of greater power and opening up greatsword some more for burst.

Also used exotics instead of ascended to make this more accessible, trying both the meditation one and this one tonight after I sort out an exotic version of the meditation build.

What was your focus on trinkets and setting up the stats? They seem kind of random.