Healer Diversity Ideas

[Theo Mcknight.4169]

Good morning fellow Guild Warriors,

 

So per the title, I am putting out some ideas to boost the effectiveness of some of the forgotten healer specializations from Heart of Thorns. Myself and several of my guildmates all enjoy healing in higher tier fractals and raids. As more content is introduced at that upper level pretty regularly, we are getting lots of chances to play that role. However, right now, the meta is so starkly tilted towards 1 class of healer that pretty much any other healing options are DOA (exception Herald for Diemos Kiting which isn’t exactly healing). I am not out looking for Druid nerfs right now, I am hoping for some small QoL changes or trait changeups to push Healing Heralds and Water Tempests into playability. Having these 2 classes gives one healer spec per Armor Class which makes it a lot easier to swap a character to healing if you have focused your crafting and collecting on only 1 armor class up to this point (My other classes are all heavy armor for example). I am not a deeply mathematical Theorist nor am I the worlds top 15 best raiders, but I have managed to collect myself some magnetite and festoon my guild hall with some trophies so take what I have with that in mind.

 

First up: The Herald Revenant

I think the Healing Herald is almost totally playable now. She heals a lot with good boon support and alacrity support, so her changes are tweaks and one functionality switch

Primary Change: make her personal Aura radiate from the Ventari Stance tablet and make it a separate entity from himself. This allows the Revenant to provide 225 Ferocity to the entire Raid with good tablet and personal positioning but would not unnecessarily buff condi Renegade (I’d prefer different changes for that weird class) but it would allow any renegades in your raid to take the more selfish invocation traitline and boost their own dps.

Less necessary but possible also good options

Minor Tweaks:

1. Reduce Energy cost on Natural Harmony to 15 allowing another use or two before needing to Legend Swap

2. Increase range on Staff 4 to 600 allowing you to cast it back to front of a Raid and make sure it is coded to only heal people not full health (I haven’t checked and this part may already be in effect)

And that’s it! Heralds already provide Boons and Alacrity which are great additions to a raid possibly even freeing up a Chrono slot.

 

Second Target: The Tempest Elementalist

Like the herald, the Tempest is almost playable now due to truly epic healing numbers. But that’s it. Healing, that’s what you get and the Druid provides just so many offensive boosts and tools that no one will take a Tempest in raids even if you are good at what you do because you are going to take a huge dps hit having one along. So here are some small fix ideas

Primary Changes:

1. First idea is an across the board buff to Aura Overloads by reducing their cast time from 4 seconds to 2 seconds while leaving all the other current limitations in place. I am fully aware this will affect DPS Tempest as well, but without testing I still don’t think they will exceed weavers on the Golem and I think 2 seconds of casting(1 with Quickness) is still long enough to keep them from being meta in PvP either and if not, make a PVP version of the overloads with a 3 or 4 second cast time. As for the reasoning, standing still for a 4-second cast is crazy unless that 4-second cast results in something truly life-altering which right now they do not.

2. Now that we made overloading a little simpler to pull off, time for a blatant rip off of Druids. Instead of Regeneration and Healing, (regeneration just doesn’t feel very useful in big fights) when a tempest overloads water it provides healing and a knockoff spirit of frost type buff with a chance on hit/crit to boost damage of allies affected which could stay 5 making it not as strong as the actual spirit but could still push Tempests to nearly the same level of effectiveness and broaden the field for non-druid healers.

Minor Tweaks:

Possible one to give more weapon variation, make dagger 3 heal in water attunement for a moderate amount inside the explosion area.

 

And that’s What I have, anyone else with ideas, lay em out. I think high tier PvE is not in a bad place, but am hoping for some extra options in team comps so everyone can get in on the fun instead of just druids.

[Knox.8962]

In the current environment, most groups are better off with a non-druid healer for any healer after the first one.

 

There is just a ton of inertia on druids and chronos because we have 2 years playing with them being the only serious option.

[Jaxom McFrostey.7138]

i would like to see other healers become meta

[Azoqu.8917]

You missed the original support class with healing skills in the Guardian there.

[Theo Mcknight.4169]

True, I did think about guardians, but revenants are so starved for something to do that I figured boosting them first was a good plan. Guardians have several great specs right now. But I welcome Ideas for boosting core guardian healing capabilities.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Honestly herald heal is top heAler then auramancher ele then druid druid has too be nerfed and its spirits too so healer diversity may be reality

[reikken.4961]

there are three ways to get in other healers:

 

bring a sprit soulbeast and play renegade+firebrand instead of chrono

nerf spirits and/or druid by an enormous amount

give every class unique dps buffs

[BrokenGlass.9356]

Also, I've been healing with Seraph's Scourge. Extremely fun. The king of sustain healers.

[Ertrak.9506]

Healing renagade >>> healing herald for pve. Herald is trash outside of pvp and wvw. Period.

 

And I'm saying that as a rev main.

 

And support renegade is already optimal for some group comps. I can't see what else it would besides radii increases.

[reikken.4961]

> @"Ertrak.9506" said:

> Healing renagade >>> healing herald for pve. Herald is trash outside of ~~pvp and~~ wvw. Period.

 

fixed

[Vagrant.7206]

> @"Knox.8962" said:

> In the current environment, most groups are better off with a non-druid healer for any healer after the first one.

>

> There is just a ton of inertia on druids and chronos because we have 2 years playing with them being the only serious option.

 

You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

 

LUL

[reikken.4961]

> @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

>

> LUL

 

yeah medkit would still suck even if all the numbers were doubled. need to make the thrown pickups AoE

but ele, guard, rev, necro are all good non-ranger healers

[Nimon.7840]

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

> >

> > LUL

>

> yeah medkit would still suck even if all the numbers were doubled. need to make the thrown pickups AoE

> but ele, guard, rev, necro are all good non-ranger healers

 

Lul. If necro would be a goos healer, everyone would play it. Its more likely gimmick. But most likely trash tier.

 

Just an excuse for anet saying " but you have a support spec"

[Vagrant.7206]

> @"Nimon.7840" said:

> > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

> > >

> > > LUL

> >

> > yeah medkit would still suck even if all the numbers were doubled. need to make the thrown pickups AoE

> > but ele, guard, rev, necro are all good non-ranger healers

>

> Lul. If necro would be a goos healer, everyone would play it. Its more likely gimmick. But most likely trash tier.

>

> Just an excuse for anet saying " but you have a support spec"

 

Have you seen some of those barrier builds? They're actually very potent support builds.

[Einlanzer.1627]

It's really strange that they haven't fixed the healing meta so that anyone else is as good as druids.

 

Just going strictly from profession themes - guardians, elementalists, and engineers should all have strong healing options that rival or even beat the druid. Why this hasn't been addressed already is beyond me.

[reikken.4961]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> It's really strange that they haven't fixed the healing meta so that anyone else is as good as druids.

>

> Just going strictly from profession themes - guardians, elementalists, and engineers should all have strong healing options that rival or even beat the druid. Why this hasn't been addressed already is beyond me.

 

I think it's consensus that the other healers _are_ stronger than druid _at healing_. But druid is much better at boosting party dps.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Nerf druid and dpirits buff all other rangers ahould not be healers

[DuckDuckBOOM.4097]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> It's really strange that they haven't fixed the healing meta so that anyone else is as good as druids.

>

> Just going strictly from profession themes - guardians, elementalists, and engineers should all have strong healing options that rival or even beat the druid. Why this hasn't been addressed already is beyond me.

 

Except they have "fixed the meta."

This is a team of 5 killing Sabetha with neither a Chrono nor Druid in the group because that comp is actually inferior to the one they tried. Both the firebrand or renegade could easily swap to more heal support by simply adding healing power to their gear. It's not a balance issue anymore. Everyone saying Druid buffs are too strong to let go are forgetting that base ranger or SB can still bring most of those buffs and might is easy on a lot of classes. Heck SB has other kinds of buffs via stances so it's not necessarily even a loss to not have GoE. People having played with Chrono/Druid for so long that it's hard to dislodge because gearing support classes can get really expensive. Furthermore, the new comp isn't that much better than the old comp in casual groups which means there isn't much pressure to change.

 

As for Tempest, I would actually say it's meta on some level already. Before my raid static burnt out, 2 druids was default but one of us would often swap to heal tempest for fights with a lot of pressure. If I recall correctly, even qT mentioned bringing heal tempests on day 1 of raid releases because it's healing is OP and could cheese mechanics. I don't think it's balance but encounter design that actually keeps tempest from being more common. When it's easier to stack on the boss, druid (and Rev/Guard) is favored heavily. However the more groups would be forced to spread out and the more pressure there is (this is also somewhat based on player skill), tempest becomes the only viable healer because it's a 600 radius PBAO on soothing mist, regen and shouts is godly compared to the small AOE that other healers have to deal with. If Tempest could stack might as well as Druid, it would be OP.

 

All that being said, Anet mentioned fixing regen priority for the next balance patch. Of all the annoying min maxing I've had to do while messing around with healing builds on multiple classes, this was the only thing that I could complain about. That Chrono regen would always get in the way of most Rev, ele and guard regen because of duration stacking while only Druids could consistently out-regen the Chrono. Even Druid is unable to use healing springs/water spirit because they can't beat Chrono regen with those skills.

 

TLDR: It's not balance (aside from the regen issue), it's an entrenched and stagnant meta that is resistant to change.

[Einlanzer.1627]

Yeah i'm curious to see the next patch.

[Nimon.7840]

> @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > @"Nimon.7840" said:

> > > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > > > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > > You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

> > > >

> > > > LUL

> > >

> > > yeah medkit would still suck even if all the numbers were doubled. need to make the thrown pickups AoE

> > > but ele, guard, rev, necro are all good non-ranger healers

> >

> > Lul. If necro would be a goos healer, everyone would play it. Its more likely gimmick. But most likely trash tier.

> >

> > Just an excuse for anet saying " but you have a support spec"

>

> Have you seen some of those barrier builds? They're actually very potent support builds.

 

Yes and i played it a long time. But its nowhere near being viable right now. Cause the other healers are way too strong. And for proper healing output, you will need to constantly use f3,4,5 + your healskill. You dont have anywhere neraly enough lifeforce for that, even while playing dagger you will run out of lifeforce pretty fast.

If you mix in a f2 now and then. Say good night to your healer build.

 

Maybe its okayish as a supportive healer, with something like condidmg+ healpower.

But as a standalone healer its pretty much the worst of all healers in the game right now.

 

Maybe we will see a buff next balance patch. But as it always is. Necro will mostly recieve nerfs. Especially dmg-wise. So maybe the only viable option will be a healing build. And then, noone will play necro anymore. Since you also need another healer for your group you are pretty much loosing a dd.

 

Maybe if they removed the % of revive, and instead give better scalings or better numbers it might be good.

 

Cause in highend pve, if you always need that revive. Your group just sux.

And in wvw its bad as well, when it comes to big zergfights. You pull and instakill your teammates with that, if the enemy comander has even 1/8 of a brain

[BrokenGlass.9356]

> @"Nimon.7840" said:

> > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > @"Nimon.7840" said:

> > > > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > > > > @"Vagrant.7206" said:

> > > > > You say that, and then there's [Medkit](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Med_Kit "Medkit").

> > > > >

> > > > > LUL

> > > >

> > > > yeah medkit would still suck even if all the numbers were doubled. need to make the thrown pickups AoE

> > > > but ele, guard, rev, necro are all good non-ranger healers

> > >

> > > Lul. If necro would be a goos healer, everyone would play it. Its more likely gimmick. But most likely trash tier.

> > >

> > > Just an excuse for anet saying " but you have a support spec"

> >

> > Have you seen some of those barrier builds? They're actually very potent support builds.

>

> Yes and i played it a long time. But its nowhere near being viable right now. Cause the other healers are way too strong. And for proper healing output, you will need to constantly use f3,4,5 + your healskill. You dont have anywhere neraly enough lifeforce for that, even while playing dagger you will run out of lifeforce pretty fast.

> If you mix in a f2 now and then. Say good night to your healer build.

>

> Maybe its okayish as a supportive healer, with something like condidmg+ healpower.

> But as a standalone healer its pretty much the worst of all healers in the game right now.

>

> Maybe we will see a buff next balance patch. But as it always is. Necro will mostly recieve nerfs. Especially dmg-wise. So maybe the only viable option will be a healing build. And then, noone will play necro anymore. Since you also need another healer for your group you are pretty much loosing a dd.

>

> Maybe if they removed the % of revive, and instead give better scalings or better numbers it might be good.

>

> Cause in highend pve, if you always need that revive. Your group just sux.

> And in wvw its bad as well, when it comes to big zergfights. You pull and instakill your teammates with that, if the enemy comander has even 1/8 of a brain

 

If you are using a power based build and leaning purely on healing power... The scaling on necro heals is pretty small. What it is, is consistent. You get your heals by preventing the need for them.

 

Summoning a savant shade, can put barrier on lots of people, even spread out... And can be rapidly spammed. The f2 becomes a strong source of boons on bosses that do lots of conditions. F3 is saved to allow a spike of barrier to save players close to the edge. The f4 is the only one that needs to be spammed on CD (but save it if the raid doesn't need it) . Sigil of water is stupidly strong with scepter.

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRArd7fn0ICd3gd9CW3As9iFjBTftGXvrR/sAwBY6oFDeBA-j1RAQB9Y/BAcSBGqyPiqE8n6P0wTCIoq/EAIBYmKTlpyUZamyMNTz0MNTzUlpZammpZammpZammpSB85yK-w

 

I've been playing this awhile now, and I keep a sold 25 stack of might. Constant streams of green numbers. It's really strong. AND it does dps on the low middle of the pack in virtually every pug fractal or raid I've taken it to. I feel confident healing any content in this build. For bosses that require two healers, I prefer having another class healing with me. Two scourge can get rough.

 

So, tldr: it's viable, and fun. But needs a buff. Which we can hope that it's getting on Tuesday. (cross fingers eyes and teeth.)

[LadyKitty.6120]

If we want healer diversity, either druid needs a heavy nerf or other healers need a massive offensive boost. 'Cause currently, a good druid with 100% boon duration (without sigil) can keep up full might, pretty much full fury, Spotter, 80% SoF and SS and 10% GoE on the whole raid squad if they even remotely stack. (Kitty's been there and pretty much done that.)

 

Charr firebrand can do quite similar thing for 5-man subsquad, but not for whole raid squad like druid can. Support-deadeye also gets somewhat close to druid, but with heavy cost to damage and no heals or unique boons (even FB has quickness as kind of unique boon).

[ardhikaizecson.3697]

I got a chance to play as Healer Tempest in raid in the first week after the changes of gotl, it was really good and could make your subgroup almost above 90% hp but then the meta settles in now that everyone now still wanted 2 druids to fill the healer roles. since they bring alot of offensive buffs and ccs.

maybe rework another tempest trait to give increased duration of aura and gives few percent of damage boost to ally affected by aura.

[CptAurellian.9537]

I don't think that introducing new unique offensive buffs to non-druid healers is such a great idea. It will just lead to a new, likely rigid meta, be it druid+X or X+Y. Even with buffs that are not unique, but different from other healers (e.g. FB quickness, which competes with chronos), we get the problem that reasonable class combos are highly restricted due to overlapping and incompatible kits. Currently, for example, you can take either chrono+druid or renegade+FB to cover heals, quickness and alacrity. Mixing them, however, does not work.

 

In my opinion, it would be more promising to differentiate the way healer classes do the healing job, but streamline their secondary support capabilities. Rev could bring range-limited powerful burst healing, ele maybe more range-independent but less powerful healing, and so on. And with regard to support, all healers would get the same function, e.g. might bot, and some reasonable CC, but lose access to other offensive buffs.

[Theo Mcknight.4169]

I personally had a recent conversation with someone who played a necromancer like class in a different RPG where life steal and shield based healing was possible and he said it was his favorite healing in any game. So I am interested in the sand shade business.

 

I have heard about the regen changes being bandied about and maybe that will help some of the side classes show up to the fight more easily. I'm glad to see interest from the community and I am hoping with just some tiny tweaks we can start seeing huge meta swaps because I love having options beyond 1 choice when it comes to team construction.