23 replies to this topic

[Noctis]

We all know that all professions have different strong and weak points. Some classes can take on specific roles better than others. The same thing can be attributed to stats. Depending on the build of course the same stat can benefit one profession more or in a different way than another profession.

What I want to talk about is Healing Power. It's pretty obvious at this point that Healing Power is a massively important stat for some builds. I can cite Menorah's RRR build as an example. Healing Power also benefits Guardians in a huge way for both Altruistic Healing and Meditation builds. It would seem Elementalists can benefit from this stat because of all the sources of healing an Ele has access to. (I personally haven't played an Ele enough to make a judgment call.)

On the other hand unless you are playing a purely support/healing/PvE build Healing Power is pretty much useless for a Necro. Mainly because of the fact that leeching and life siphoning do not get affected by Healing Power. As for the Mesmer I haven't found any good builds that could benefit from Healing Power in a meaningful way.

I'm not sure about the Warrior. Additional healing for shouts or better yet banners seems to be pretty good, but then again I haven't experimented with it enough to say for sure. And Engineer and Thief are the only other classes I haven't played at all yet.

So I'm really curious to hear from people who have experimented with Healing Power or just strait up have it as their main stat. I really don't want to disregard the possibility the it can be very useful for other classes because they excel at something else.

Anyways, what do you guys and gals think?

[Menorah]

Healing power is useful only if you are using a build that has multiple avenues of healing. Since healing power scales relatively unnoticeably on any single method of regeneration, regardless of whether or not it's burst or pulse, only those combinations using several can really take advantage of its effect.

Looking at guardians/rangers/elementalists specifically:

Rangers have a passive regeneration from Signet of the Wild and BM XII grandmaster trait.
Guardians have multiple healing abilities and a passive regeneration from the Rejuvenation boon.
Elementalists benefit from soothing mist (a passive regeneration) and burst heals that resonate with each other on every skill used.

Basically the thing all these have in common is that a lot of the healing comes from places outside a common boon. Meaning, you cannot strip these builds of their heals. Regardless of what the opponent does, these builds will keep on healing in the background.

That's how you can tell when healing power will be useful. Engineers can take advantage of healing power as well through turret pulse healing and passive regenerations. Thieves are amazing healers if you have someone dropping water fields. Each of their blast finishers will heal around 2000 hp to everyone nearby if they have healing as a main stat (about double what they can normally do).

It all depends on how certain builds plan utilize their healing abilities outside of the "regeneration" boon.

[Reisa]

If I recall correctly, healing power scales exactly as power does.  Granted, most things that heal don't actually have the base damage that skills do, except for the healing skill.

Healing used to be good for elementalists, but I think they've mostly given up on stacking that outside of all-stat trinkets in favor of just killing things and taking more hits.  Think the current d/d meta, for example, emphasizes knight's gear.

But yes, in short, Anet seems to really dislike healy-tanky builds, except the guardian obviously, and it's only a matter of time before the regen ranger build gets its nerf, because if there's one OP class that badly, badly needs a nerf, it's those rangers.

[Menorah]

I might need to rephrase what I mean by "scaling".

Passive regenerations and healing skills that use healing power generally have base heals for "x" amount. Then they have very small co-efficients in the realm of 0.04-0.125 that give the regeneration equation as

healing=x+*hp

where *hp is healing power multiplied by whatever that coefficient is. Blast finishers and direct heals will generally have larger coefficients but the healing skills/abilities that you have access to throughout the entire fight, the really reliable ones, have small coefficients. This is why I say healing power scales poorly in comparison to other skills. If you aren't utilizing multiple avenues of healing, the overall effect of this stat is small in comparison to the benefit you can be getting from another.

[Palerider]

You should see J's(from Rekz) warrior banner build. All clerics gear and can get area regen for over 400 per tic, plus if he used Sigent of Health that could give him regen bordering 900 per sec.

[Heylo]

I use a mix of cleric's and magi's gear on my guardian (with an apothecary ascended back piece because it's the only backpiece with healing power...) and I definitely enjoy the benefits from having high healing power. With an Altruistic Healing build, healing symbols, and almost constant regen, i have green numbers all over my screen.
My bf played a healing grenade(or bombs?) engie and he had cleric's gear. He would get up in the fray of things and drop the whatever they were and heal all over the place. Unfortunately, he ran around naked to see what kind of healing he would get, and it wasn't that big of a difference. I'm with menorah in that healing power is only a great stat if you get heals from multiple places.

[Noctis]

Thank you for the responses. <3
I think I will try a regen build on my Warrior after it hits 80 pretty soon. Have a nice idea how to go about it.

Overall I just find it curious that certain professions seem to be created to feed of off Healing Power so to speak, ie Guardians and Eles, while others don't seem to need it at all - Necro. And jet if you approach buildcrafting creatively you can make it work in some cases extremely well. That aspect of the game is fascinating to me.

[Palerider]

Heylo, on 07 June 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

I use a mix of cleric's and magi's gear on my guardian (with an apothecary ascended back piece because it's the only backpiece with healing power...) and I definitely enjoy the benefits from having high healing power. With an Altruistic Healing build, healing symbols, and almost constant regen, i have green numbers all over my screen.
My bf played a healing grenade(or bombs?) engie and he had cleric's gear. He would get up in the fray of things and drop the whatever they were and heal all over the place. Unfortunately, he ran around naked to see what kind of healing he would get, and it wasn't that big of a difference. I'm with menorah in that healing power is only a great stat if you get heals from multiple places.

Bomb kit, and it can be effective. I went other way with my engi clerics set and use elixir gun with elixir H toss and healing mist can stack 700 per tic regen and the heal from H can give 9k (trying to remember). Plus condi removal from fumigate and elixir tosses made it an Engi Medi.

[Heylo]

Palerider, on 07 June 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

Bomb kit, and it can be effective. I went other way with my engi clerics set and use elixir gun with elixir H toss and healing mist can stack 700 per tic regen and the heal from H can give 9k (trying to remember). Plus condi removal from fumigate and elixir tosses made it an Engi Medi.

That makes sense. I just started an engie yesterday...... teach me how to engie?

[Palerider]

Heylo, on 07 June 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

That makes sense. I just started an engie yesterday...... teach me how to engie?

I'll show the Garbologist build, best troll build besides maybe RRR.

[Seviryn]

I do wanna point out, skills have different Healing Power ratios. To cite two examples:

Cleansing Wave has a base heal of 1,302 and also heals an additional 100% of your healing power. If traited properly, this can be cast on attunement, on dodge roll, and on skill activation. For me, that's 7,500 healing (and 3 conditions removed) to up to 4 other people (I'm using Apothecary's/Cleric's and Celestial trinkets).

Glyph of Elemental Harmony has a base of 4,894 and heals an additional 75% of your healing power. However, it can also apply regeneration, which in itself has a base of 130 HP per second with an additional 12.5% of your healing power.

It's important to note if skills have good scaling. One of the reasons Troll Unguent is so strong is that it has a base of 856 + 12% of your healing power per second over 10 seconds. That's a total of 8,560 + 120% (!!) of your healing power. If you have about as much healing power as I do (remember, apothecary+celestial, so about 1,000) that's almost 10,000 HP healed back. Most regen rangers will probably have a few hundred more.

One last thing is that you need to be able to balance this with actually being able to deal damage or else resign yourself to being straight support. The former is good for soloing and roaming, the latter if you just run with groups and have a way to spread your heals around.

[Hobo Boogie]

Palerider, on 07 June 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

You should see J's(from Rekz) warrior banner build. All clerics gear and can get area regen for over 400 per tic, plus if he used Sigent of Health that could give him regen bordering 900 per sec.

Glad to hear it i recently made full clerics set for my warrior and went boon duration loved the team support but wasn't sure if i could justify the loss of dmg on the frontline. Goin boon duration gimps healing a bit, gonna adjust runes to 6 water or dwayna thx for the reassurance Bob and Js by extension

[Reisa]

Hobo Boogie PK, on 19 June 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

Glad to hear it i recently made full clerics set for my warrior and went boon duration loved the team support but wasn't sure if i could justify the loss of dmg on the frontline. Goin boon duration gimps healing a bit, gonna adjust runes to 6 water or dwayna thx for the reassurance Bob and Js by extension

If you want boon duration, why not do some combination of 2x monk, 2x water, 2x of y for your runes? 2x sup monk and 2x sup water along give you something like 38% longer boon duration.  You can use the final two runes of something else such as Hoelbrak for buffing might duration or something or just runes of divnity.

[Seviryn]

Monk and Water gives 15% each, major variant gives 10%. If you want more healing, sapphire orbs in the other two slots wouldn't be a bad idea.

[Nidstev]

Noctis, on 07 June 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

Overall I just find it curious that certain professions seem to be created to feed of off Healing Power so to speak, ie Guardians and Eles, while others don't seem to need it at all - Necro. And jet if you approach buildcrafting creatively you can make it work in some cases extremely well. That aspect of the game is fascinating to me.

Necros won't use healing gear because the healing coefficients don't work with most our well/siphoning heals.

[Jinks]

As a thief it scales poorly with a our blast finisher. Like an extra 300.

[Menorah]

Palerider, on 07 June 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

I'll show the Garbologist build, best troll build besides maybe RRR.

RRR is old news. I've got a new troll build, BTR (Boon Tank Ranger) 2500 hits in a day already.

[Chowder]

Has anyone tried a full cleric/water for ele? Is it true that you'll be healing everyone greatly with the cleric set? I want to be full healer when running with the pack since I don't want to embarrass Bob lol!

[Reisa]

Chowder, on 26 June 2013 - 12:38 AM, said:

Has anyone tried a full cleric/water for ele? Is it true that you'll be healing everyone greatly with the cleric set? I want to be full healer when running with the pack since I don't want to embarrass Bob lol!

If I recall correctly from all the patch nerfs, ele heals scale kinda crappily with their heal stat, and I don't know about how much sustained healing you can do, since your only access to party heals would be water fields and EA dodge while in water.  You can, theoretically, have three blast finishers, but not access to them all at once.  Arcane Wave is a blaster finisher.  Earth 2 is one (so cast it then switch to water and drop a water field), and EA dodge earth attunement is one (water field then dodge into it and switch to earth before dodge ends).

But if you're going with a group, there's no reason that you can't take cleric's gear--just be sure to stick with your celestial trinkets.  You might wanna go 0/0/10/30/30, since the new earth trait is supposed to be fantastic.

Fun fact, the latest patch allows you to cast water 5 while moving now.

[Noctis]

The important aspect of healing effectiveness when running with a group is that the combo heals scale of off the person who did the finisher. So if you just provide the healing field that is all you can offer. If you're the one doing the blast finisher your healing power gets calculated for the area heal.

So in many regards Eles running full healing gear will not be as effective as Eles either running full offensive gear or only with healing on trinkets. At this point I mean group synergy. Warriors on the other hand who are geared to be both tanks and healers are massively effective: providing sustainable regen, massive heals on blasts and their overall tankiness, (is that a word? ) all the while maintaining respectable damage.  

Overall it's a question what class if more effective in offense or in defense, damage or support.