New Medkit Sucks in WvWvW and Ideas How to Fix It!

I have over 4000 hours of experience with medkit. So I have played a LOT with the previous incarnations as well. Note: I almost solely play WvWvW (in EU).

I wanted to wait enough time to give my final analysis why medkit sucks and suggestions how to fix it:Medkit #1 medblaster is still a pretty much useless skill. It does no damage or self heal (unless druid staff #1 or ele staff #1). The ally heal is way too low unless they have tons of boons that it is basically never a useful skill, unless you are in the middle of the zerg, which has tons of boons, but even then you. When you are using medkit, you are not doing damage. You are almost always more useful to your team to by applying big AoE damage than using medkit #1. Medkit #1 should NOT be a targeted skill, but act like 360 radius burst around the engineer and either heal engineer himself as well or do some damage.

Medkit #2 bandage blast another useless skill. Both medkit #1 and #2 suffer from targeting issues. Medkit also does no self heal and the packages, which heal a pathetic amount might end up picked by a single player or just fly to wrong places. I have analysed the combat log a lot and this skill achieves way too little for the time invested. For example compare with warrior shouts, which are not even meta, they heal significantly more and are instant cast 600 radius. Medkit should be 360 radius burst around the engineer and affect the engineer himself as well.

Medkit #3 cleansing field might be okay skill for pve and contesting a circle in spvp, but it is really problematic for the highly mobile nature of WvWvW. You get to cleanse up to 4 conditions, only IF you stay within the 300 radius, which is more or less a death sentence in the circle of deaths game mode ( = WvWvW). The field should be expanded to 360 radius and move with the engineer or give us medkit #2-5 skills back, but make them affect up to 4 allies as well and have 360 radius. Now having this as the only condition removal and having 20 s cooldown pretty much kills medkit in an extremely condition heavy meta.

Medkit #4 vital burst gives a mere 942 base heal with 20 s cooldown and 3/4 s activate = must be a bad joke as it doesn't even offer any boons or a field. Should be increased to 360 radius and either provide a boon e.g. 2 s resistance or cleanse 1 condition.

Medkit #5 Infusion Bomb has a combo finisher. Thus it offers nice utility with the water field = AoE heal and e.g. smoke field + medkit #5 = AoE stealth. The skill could be made more stream lined to use to act just like medkit #3-4, 360 radius centered around the engineer as the 900 range is rarely ever needed. The skill definitely should do some damage and be classified as an explosion skill and benefit from related traits.

The previous medkit with tossable skills was quirky to use, but far better the current medkit in small scale setting and better for zerging as well, if you are not inside the zerg, but a playing a mobile sniper. Previous medkit offered better condition removal and also resistance and fury boon. It made 1 vs 1 against condition spammers like scourges much easier. Now those fights are just to be avoided.

Medkit toolbelt skill has remained the same through all the incarnations, so no comment on that. Solid basic skill, could benefit from having a bit shorter activation time e.g. 3/4 s, so that it can still be interrupted.

Medkit still works with runes with the following caveats:

2nd and 4th rune effects (e.g. Lyssa or Altruism) trigger by pressing 6 (merely stowing medkit) which is super nice.6th rune effect and on heal traits are activated only by using the medkit toolbelt skill (bandage self)All 3 incarnations of medkit have worked like this. This allows some clever use of runes to do stuff e.g. superior rune of altruism will give AoE might with stowing medkit and give AoE fury by using medkit toolbelt skill.

I have pretty much stopped playing engineer, despite huge investment on that character. My 2nd main is warrior (but not spellbreaker).

Nerf after nerf, often massive nerfs (e.g. grenades 1500 -> 900, removal of alchemical tinctures), despite engineer is the rarest profession WvWvW, makes me a sad boy. I have also noticed the enemy engineers are by far the easiest profession to kill (besides being the most rare opponents). Most WvWvW engineers are playing holo or scrapper as core engineer is more or less dead breed. Of course once in a blue moon you run into a tanky engineer, but they generally do so low damage, they are not a problem vs sustain builds, which are so common in WvWvW. Engineer truly is in sad state for WvWvW and Arenanet devs don't seem to understand it.

Medkit remake looked good on paper and works really bad in real life WvWvW.

You should put WvW in your title if that is all you are concerned with. The mobile nature of WvW definitely doesn't mesh well with this kit, but it's not a bad skill anymore.

Are you playing with any healing stats? As a standalone heal skill with no healing stats Med Kit is pretty fair. You can't and won't be using it to heal allies but the sheer amount of things it can do for 1 skill are pretty good. Sounds like you aren't using healing stats at all since you repeatedly quote the base heal values, if that's true it really shouldn't be doing very much healing.

Sounds like a WvW issue. In PVE, it works really well atm as heal-engi can alone keep up 5-7 boons for 5 and the heals are really powerful if heal-build.

Imo skills 1 and 2 could use some tweaks while 3-5 need cooldowns reductions.

Med Blaster could be more consistent if the additional healing per boon was based on the Engineer.

Bandage Blast would work better as a cone/wave so it can always heal up to 5 targets without having to deal with the hassles of consumables. It can retain some of its flavor and balanced by having range thresholds for varied healing and regen durations.

I know the heal scaling and did some tests and found out that increasing healing power definitely increases healing. Currently I use moderate healing stats via pseudo-celestial ascended set (full cele lacks power), but going healer in WvWvW as engineer simply makes no sense. Firebrand offers much better group support, offering much better boon uptime and superior condition removal and boon conversion (radiant recovery and eternal oasis). It is possible do good damage as firebrand while offering the needed boons, such as group stability, aegis, resistance etc. Scourges laugh at enemy boons. Thus those two professions determine the AoE heavy zerg meta.

Weaver elementalist is a better healer, so is druid. With full healing stats full shout warrior also heals quite a bit, but shout warriors are not meta.

Core engineer has never been part of WvWvW meta and currently neither holo or scrapper are in current WvWvW meta. In fact you can often see a 30+ member squad without a single engineer in it. Zergs are full of firebrands and scourges, coupled with spellbreakers, weavers and few hammer revenants + couple of mesmers for utility. In roaming mirage/chrono mesmers, DD thieves, beastmaster/druid rangers dominate. Greatsword warriors are also far more common roamers than engineers. In fact GS so much dominates warrior builds that I see it as a balance problem as well (more viable choice is always better).

There is a good reason why engineers are the rarest core profession:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics

from the above site: guardians total play time 15.67% and engineers total play time 5.82%. I am sure this includes all game modes. In spvp and pve engineers are doing a bit better than WvWvW.

Arenanet should really do something to make engineer more viable in WvWvW. Fixing and enhancing medkit would be one step. Medkit skills #1 and #2 are currently pretty much useless in current WvWvW meta (only skills #3-4-5 and toolbelt are worth using). Reverting grenade kit nerfs and brining back alchemical tinctures would also open up more build choices, but that is another topic.

I've been able to cleanse maybe 3 or 4 times as much as any FB in a Zerg tbh. Med Kit, Elixir Gun. It depends on the positioning for sure.

@Deniara Devious.3948 said:

Medkit #1 medblaster is still a pretty much useless skill. It does no damage or self heal (unless druid staff #1 or ele staff #1). The ally heal is way too low unless they have tons of boons that it is basically never a useful skill, unless you are in the middle of the zerg, which has tons of boons, but even then you. When you are using medkit, you are not doing damage. You are almost always more useful to your team to by applying big AoE damage than using medkit #1. Medkit #1 should NOT be a targeted skill, but act like 360 radius burst around the engineer and either heal engineer himself as well or do some damage.

The Med Kit auto attack would be better if you could press the auto attack key once and have it heal your allies indefinitely instead of pressing the button over and over. Also increase the healing by a lot and remove the boon requirement in order for it to be useful.

Medkit #2 bandage blast another useless skill. Both medkit #1 and #2 suffer from targeting issues. Medkit also does no self heal and the packages, which heal a pathetic amount might end up picked by a single player or just fly to wrong places. I have analysed the combat log a lot and this skill achieves way too little for the time invested. For example compare with warrior shouts, which are not even meta, they heal significantly more and are instant cast 600 radius. Medkit should be 360 radius burst around the engineer and affect the engineer himself as well.

Bandage Blast should be a ground targeted skill that allows you to throw 3 bandages that heal you and allies while giving regeneration. The reason why I chose 3 is because if the engineer can use it, it would give the engineer too much sustain.

Medkit #3 cleansing field might be okay skill for pve and contesting a circle in spvp, but it is really problematic for the highly mobile nature of WvWvW. You get to cleanse up to 4 conditions, only IF you stay within the 300 radius, which is more or less a death sentence in the circle of deaths game mode ( = WvWvW). The field should be expanded to 360 radius and move with the engineer or give us medkit #2-5 skills back, but make them affect up to 4 allies as well and have 360 radius. Now having this as the only condition removal and having 20 s cooldown pretty much kills medkit in an extremely condition heavy meta.

I would much rather have the field placement bug fixed and have the radius increased to 480 like Healing Turrets' water field.

Medkit toolbelt skill has remained the same through all the incarnations, so no comment on that. Solid basic skill, could benefit from having a bit shorter activation time e.g. 3/4 s, so that it can still be interrupted.

Make it so that it also grants you resistance for 6 seconds.

Nerf after nerf, often massive nerfs (e.g. grenades 1500 -> 900, removal of alchemical tinctures), despite engineer is the rarest profession WvWvW, makes me a sad boy. I have also noticed the enemy engineers are by far the easiest profession to kill (besides being the most rare opponents). Most WvWvW engineers are playing holo or scrapper as core engineer is more or less dead breed. Of course once in a blue moon you run into a tanky engineer, but they generally do so low damage, they are not a problem vs sustain builds, which are so common in WvWvW. Engineer truly is in sad state for WvWvW and Arenanet devs don't seem to understand it.

As a long time core engineer, I couldn't agree more.

I don;t have the same results as you.

I'm not saying your experience or opinion are invalid but the kit seems far from useless in world versus world to me. No more or less than any healing does. There's just too much damage around and blob versus anything is going to be a nightmare if you find yourself up against someone coordinating via a VOIP teamspeak vent whatever who knows how to focus you're not going to do much to keep someone up against that whatever the case. That said, it's a much stronger kit than it ever was now.

If built for healing say with magis- and with the intention of survival and condition clearing via a scrapper, alchemy, inventions build with pistol and shield it's right up there.

Medblaster is far from useless. And in a general blob setting for those who aren't being focused it's amazing at keeping everyone topped up. It's not hindered the way druids staff auto was by needing an enemy target to activate it just sprays healing all over everything and would come in second only to staff one auto ground spamming for an ele traited for water.

Treat bandage blast as you would button two on ranger shortbow. It's a gravy skill on top of everything else. It doesn't need to be ground target - it shouldn't as ground targeting made the previous version of the kit slow, clumsy and generally not worth it.

Cleansing field- the field placement is a bit wonky but it's not there to completely replicate turret's radius. It's there for blasting on the go with an instant belt skill for area healing and it's one of the easier ways to do it. Thumper belt skill does it, blowing up a turret in the field does it. Setting infusion bomb down first then setting the field over it does it. Even rocket boots from in it will do it. It's not that terrible- just experiment more with it.

Vital burst is good for what it is which is a solid burst of healing on a relatively low cooldown of twenty seconds. Could it be reduced to about sixteen or fifteen yes, but if we're going by the pattern of most kits/weapon set 1-5 it's not bad for a number four skill. Having it give a boon or not isn;t that big an issue as it's just something to be stripped or corrupted and turned against you.

Infusion bomb isn't terrible either and being the only ground targeted skill allows for good burst healing while giving you a chance to run back or get out of the way if you need to without completely abandoning your healing duties.

All this said, yes the new Medkit isn't a world beater taken in isolation. You'll want to build for high healing power to make it shine, but for once it's actually a kit designed for one purpose -support. If you look at some of our other skills it intergates quite well with the rest of Engineer.

The biggest drawback for it is that on average you aren't going to be playing against idiots. It has obvious tells. Once you begin seeing the same opponents every night and they're wise to you running about with pistol shield or the medkit it's obvious you're there to keep your friends alive. Just the same way they go for revs dragging the tablet around or for eles walking around with water bracelets. The problems we have with medkit right now are the same problems we have engineer-wide if we aren't using rocket boots- it's lack of mobility to keep away from someone after us.

Finding yourself more than not in outnumbered situations or against unstoppable cheese builds when trying to roam anymore is lame, but those are just the pitfalls for the game mode right now and they're not liable to change in the near future. I hate saying it but we're lucky to have gotten this and I'd rather see our other shortcomings addressed before crying for another pass on medkit.

Think of it this way: if med kit were deleted would it really impact engie gameplay in any meaningful way?

Feels fine in WvW to me just annoying that you have to swap a lot to tag.

Have also had multi 1v1s using this as scrapper and had no issues, maybe opponents were just bad.

I’ve been running as a heal/conversion scrapper in large scale a lot since the patch and I feel the exact opposite. For the first time I feel like I have a solid support option on my engi for running with a Zerg/guild.

Full minstrel armor and HammerMonk runes with sigil of transference and Sigil of benevolence.Normal heal food/utility

Many known fight commanders are running scrappers in their party now. I wish MK 2 was a bit more reliable but things are looking good.

honestly the kit is ok all it needs is 25%-33% wider # 1 cone spread and 3 and 4 to trigger and pulse around the engineer instead of the ground

I have been recently having a lot of outnumbered fights. 20 vs 50 has been typical. It is definitely challenging. I have had better success as shout berserker (warrior), which is as far from meta as warrior builds can be (no stances, not spellbreaker, no greatsword, no shield) than as engineer. Shouts healing is better, because most shouts are instant cast, leaving me time to other things at same time. Shouts also heal at 600 radius, which is much bigger area. I feel I am helping both my team to stay alive in heavily outnumbered fights + doing the damage to down the enemies or keeping them downed.

In order to make medkit work it must heal more than any other heal in the game or provide tons of utility (e.g. boons, finishers or do some damage or CC), because the use of medkit requires so much time invested (you must stow the kit to use any of the skill #1-5 and while stowing medkit, you are not doing any damage!). Right now the utility from medkit is way too weak, few short lasting boons (regeneration, swiftness and vigor), condition cleanse at 20 s cooldown, plus water field and one blast finisher. Arenanet must either increase the utility or increase the self-heal and make group heals more easily applied to make it competitive. How about giving a stunbreak to medkit toolbelt skill?

Those who are claiming that engineer is ok, might look at the statistics: engineer is the most rarely played core profession. And I am sure there are many good reasons for that. If medkit engi would viable alternative to support firebrand or weaver, I am sure a lot more players would choose so.

Arenanet has been "balancing" the engineer wrong way for many years. Instead of toning down the overpowered elite specs in proper, they have way too much neutered the core, while at same time many other profession have received massive buffs to core e.g. the trait rework was massive buff to mesmer.

The core engi traits which have synergy are scattered to way too many trait lines. To get most of out medkit you must take 2-3 trait lines: inventions, alchemy and tools. This leaves way too little room for build variety.

@"Deniara Devious.3948" said:Those who are claiming that engineer is ok, might look at the statistics: engineer is the most rarely played core profession. And I am sure there are many good reasons for that. If medkit engi would viable alternative to support firebrand or weaver, I am sure a lot more players would choose so.

Arenanet has been "balancing" the engineer wrong way for many years. Instead of toning down the overpowered elite specs in proper, they have way too much neutered the core, while at same time many other profession have received massive buffs to core e.g. the trait rework was massive buff to mesmer.

I never liked the Holosmith because it neutered the engineer from being the most difficult profession in the entire game to a braindead button masher that deals a lot of damage and CC. All of the kit knowledge, combining certain skills and combo finishers have been reduced to pressing a single button and going Super Saiyan Blue on everyone. Core engineer can only be improved by buffing or reworking some of the kits. Kits like Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, Flamethrower and Elixir Gun could use a few minor buffs while the Tool Kit could use a rework on skills such as the auto attack.

When it comes to traits, there needs to be traits that benefit certain kits. Everyone knows that core engineer is way too reliant on kits and can you blame him? Elixirs got nerfed at the beginning of 2018, turrets are weak and are not worth using and all of the gadgets except for Rocket Boots are useless. Traits that do benefit using certain kits like Juggernaut only work when you're using the Flamethrower. Another idea is to make the trait Iron Blooded reduce physical and condition damage by 10% when you're using the Elixir Gun. These kinds of traits will result in you having to camp kits, but in what way could you possibly balance core engineer other than making certain traits that benefit core engineer and not the Holosmith? Better yet, why is ArenaNet making it so difficult to balance core engineer?

I agree it's clunky, but i broke new records with base engi in wvw for healing. It's the new gold standard for heal bot. Max healage vs siege clocked in at 24.8k Heals... per second. this is averaged over 1 min. I use 1 min because for wvw its a good indicator since some fights wont last 1 min. and ones that do need some cooldown period where people reposition etc. In open field the spec caps at around 15k heals per second, again over 1 min. Realistically speaking you will see about 15-20k vs siege and 7-12k open field. Aiming the bandage blast and timing your skills and direction to those that need it is key. dumping everything on cooldown is also a necessity.

It needs reworking, yes. I wish 1 healed yourself and 2 could feel less wonky. 5 doesnt bother me. its a pre fight heal empower for the build.

I just hope it gets no nerfs when they go to adjust it. it's great in wvw just as it is. it CANT replace FB, but it can stand beside it proudly just as it is.

@LightBrave.5638 said:I agree it's clunky, but i broke new records with base engi in wvw for healing. It's the new gold standard for heal bot. Max healage vs siege clocked in at 24.8k Heals... per second. this is averaged over 1 min. I use 1 min because for wvw its a good indicator since some fights wont last 1 min. and ones that do need some cooldown period where people reposition etc. In open field the spec caps at around 15k heals per second, again over 1 min. Realistically speaking you will see about 15-20k vs siege and 7-12k open field. Aiming the bandage blast and timing your skills and direction to those that need it is key. dumping everything on cooldown is also a necessity.

How you got such numbers? About 25k heal/s divided between 5 targets would mean about 5k heal/s per target. This would mean that any damage below 5k per second would be completely negated! It 3k heal/s per target is true for zerg vs zerg open field, then every zerg would probably have at least 40 % of medkit engineers, because 2/5 being medkit engineers would pretty much negate enemy direct damage, except the biggest spikes. Yet I see almost zero engineers in the WvWvW and those engis who are in WvWvW usually use some other heal. If I run into enemy engineers, they are usually free kills (or bunkers, which don't do much damage, thus won't kill you fast).

I use the combat log to analyze the results and got nothing close to your numbers for medkit #1. Did you count in stuff other allies were blasting into the water field you generated with medkit #3?

May I ask are you stats and what is your build?

the problem with healer engineer is that it relies on medical dispersion field and perma regen, amazing for PvE but useless for pvp and wvw cuz of boon strip and boon corrupt, as it is i prefer medic gyro cuz of 5s protection and 5 condi cleanse from tool belt 3k heal from MDF and 2k pulse heals dunno if super speed regen heals get passed to allies via MDF too

PLOT TWIST - The numbers are based on full map Q blobs. (maybe i made it sound too good to be true..) But you can still get 7-10k hps even if you are running 30.. MAYBE 25.. Full minstrel, MEME BASE ENGI build. I actually don't want to share the exact build but yeah you need numbers around you. Since your regen takes priority, you can spam condi clears and it converts everyones condis to REGEN. MDF is great, which is why people are pumping scrapper, but if you dig deeper, you realize you can bust through high percentages with REGEN. yeah, boon strip is real, and the condi clear spammage on base engi is just as real, always replaced with regen.

for wvw when you full push with a blob, its quite easy to dump a load of condi clears and healing, and the regen/MDF will carry the high numbers.

It's not that I am full of @#$%, its more like I want people to think outside the box for builds and skills. Personally, it has ZERO stab if you go full condi clear and healing, but.. you can't replace a FB with stab. There's just too much stab. But yeah, the real shine in base engi heal build is the fact that you have to condi clear fast and it spreads regen like wildfire. between bombs or running through red, the sea of green healing ticks you give is legit.

wvw is about exploiting the weakest link of any zerg/squad/blob. Healing is a current hole that engi fills wonderfully. The large 1111 spam range, the burst heals, the condi clearing for people caught and the regen on so many mean that when you have a spread out of unbalanced squad of composition, you can cover sustain across the board. You are patching the hole that is the weakest link. Which is always support. But yes, they really need to fix its clunky medkit approach. 2 is REALLY hard to get off, but I have hit people with 12k bandage blast (point blank) and f1 gives 6k to others so if you stack f1 and 4 you got a 10k heal bomb.

In WvW I've tried to use the med kit to put heals on rams when trying to take just a moderately defended structure and it seems a waste of effort. The numbers I'm getting just aren't there to warrant equiping the med kit. It either needs to be buffed even more or switched out with something different..

@Jaruselka.5943 said:In WvW I've tried to use the med kit to put heals on rams when trying to take just a moderately defended structure and it seems a waste of effort. The numbers I'm getting just aren't there to warrant equiping the med kit. It either needs to be buffed even more or switched out with something different..

This is confusing me what are your numbers? I am running an all in healing build on scraper with the medkit and the 1 spam alone is enofe healing out put even better then what you could pull off with ele staff water 1 spam with out the lost of the skill being eaten by anty projectile.

2k over 1.5 sec on 5 targets is good maybe to powerful of an effect. Add in the other skills (all though the 4 skill realty feels out of places its just a heal and that it not even a different effect on it) i am not sure why ppl see the medkit as weak.

@Jski.6180 said:

@Jaruselka.5943 said:In WvW I've tried to use the med kit to put heals on rams when trying to take just a moderately defended structure and it seems a waste of effort. The numbers I'm getting just aren't there to warrant equiping the med kit. It either needs to be buffed even more or switched out with something different..

Maybe they are still running Zerker gear?

Might be helpful if you shared your build. Seems like there's an issue there and/or in playstyle.

All I'm going to say is that support scrapper can consistently out-heal and out-cleanse firebrand. Functional in blobs, great in GvGs, good for small-group roaming.

I wouldn't object to some small QoL tweaks here and there, but nothing like any of your suggestions.

Theres 2 versions of the Healing med kit ive been running, one with full magi stats and another one with full minstrel stats.

So far, the Minstrel version has been peforming more better, not only i'm doing my job as healing, but i feel like i'm not being blew so quickly like in magi.

The main reason i've been using minstrel stats it's for have a high quickness uptime, following the same formula that the drunk engi had (more might, more quickness thanks to the applied force trait), this allows me to spam the med kit auto-attack more faster and fluidly, it simply heals more faster.

Both version run the same rune: Rune of the Monk.

and for sigils, i've been using the sigil of life and the sigil of transference.

Honestly, as someone who used to play this build before the rework, this is a blast, you guys have no idea how much the kit has improved, that includes the autoattak, the old med blast compared to this one is like day and night.

I guess the reason anet won't make this as powerful as Firebrand book 2 or druid cele form is that you can camp this permanently.And that is the reason why this is the only healer spec I like in gw2 (ventari rev is too clunky to micro manage the tablet).

On a personal note from experience I would say the following:

• Skill 1 now self heals. Improve the base healing slightly.
• Skill 2 is an aoe around you. Each kit can hit up to 3 allies instead of only 1.
• Skill 3 will either appear at your location at the end of the cast (instead of currently where you were when you began casting) or preferably make it a mobile combo field.
• Skill 5 has the annoyingly loud sound on detonation reduced.