Healer DPS Hybrid the future of Instanced content

[Mell.4873]

There has been alot of asks especially with Vindicator to let players play exclusively a healer in instanced content. 

Why not open the flood gates for a Support DPS that just heals.

 

Good candidates are:

Virtuoso: The addition of the Inspiration traitline they can provide 5k HPS.

Vindicator: Plenty of burst healing with a nice self boon which can boost outgoing healing, will synergies really well with certain runes/sigils. 

Untamed: Even without traited spirits, FF can reset many different abilies that can be used for resurrecting people.

Tempest: Water overload with full dps gear and traits could be used to heal a party. 

Scourge: Barrier and amazing resurrection pull (often played in Fractals as primary healer.)

Edited January 21, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Zzik.5873]

If you command a squad, youre free to play whatever you want, but in my squad I prefer keyboon + heal. Im not convince by a heal dps... feel like in that case both heal and dps gonna be scuff. Maybe wrong but Im not sold on the idea. Blood scourge is probably the closet to what youre asking but even there you go full DPS for gear and just use slot in blood trait line.

[Mell.4873]

33 minutes ago, Makuragee.3058 said:

If you command a squad, youre free to play whatever you want, but in my squad I prefer keyboon + heal. Im not convince by a heal dps... feel like in that case both heal and dps gonna be scuff. Maybe wrong but Im not sold on the idea. Blood scourge is probably the closet to what youre asking but even there you go full DPS for gear and just use slot in blood trait line.

I mean is that pretty much exactly the same with Virtuoso. You don't change really anything about how you play and instead slot in Inspiration.

I'm farely certain you could extend this to Vindicator but with its grandmaster on dodge trait and Salvation (Centaur) Traitline.

Im not well versed on Elementalist but I'm certain all Elites can atleast attempt to support heal throughout their rotation.

 

Ultimately we already have Support DPS so I don't see why we can't have Heal DPS. 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Mell.4873

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

The last time I had the "fortune" to have Healer-DPS Hybrid in a party/squad I was in we had barely any healing, boons and they had barely any DPS. 

14 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Scourge: Barrier and amazing resurrection pull (often played in Fractals as primary healer.)

I've seen 4 Scourges in Fractals since EoD came out and one of them was me.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Players attempting this are when you see a 270 Regeneration tick instead of 600-700+. It doesn't work, trust me, because the DPS loss isn't worth the extremely low healing that can't even keep others alive. The bulk of your healing comes from Healing Power and %healing bonuses, just like how damage works, so just throwing some healing into your build doesn't cut it unless your group is already used to running no-heal.

This is also why Harrier's fell out of favor, it has a much lower Healing Power than Minstrel's for only a few thousand DPS extra, which while necessary back when there wasn't as much powercreep and DPS checks could be failed, is just overkill now that a single player can bring that extra 2-3k DPS just by changing one trait or utility skill.

 

Celestial also does higher damage than Harrier's on most builds when Toughness isn't an issue, and most existing "healer" DPS builds like Celebrand (though recently nerfed) run it.

 

Furthermore, lack of a key boon means that even the best healer isn't going to be played in instanced content. Scourge has the highest total numbers between healing, barrier and revives, yet its perhaps the most uncommon healer in the game when you don't specifically need a carry through Boneskinner or Keining Overlook.

 

This is also why Vindicator doesn't see effective play.

 

The most viable build for accomplishing what you want is probably an axe/staff Alacrity mantra Mirage.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Zzik.5873]

8 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I mean is that pretty much exactly the same with Virtuoso. You don't change really anything about how you play and instead slot in Inspiration.

I'm farely certain you could extend this to Vindicator but with its grandmaster on dodge trait and Salvation (Centaur) Traitline.

Im not well versed on Elementalist but I'm certain all Elites can atleast attempt to support heal throughout their rotation.

 

Ultimately we already have Support DPS so I don't see why we can't have Heal DPS. 

Well yes and no, since you have 0 key boon and you dont have the juicy revive trait of blood scourge. Youre free to try in your group and tell us how it go.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

In general its just alot more efficient to run alac+quick on support. There are a couple of decent hybrid builds out there, for example you could probably run a hybrid healalac temp, hquick herald and plaguebringer scourge and get decent results

There are also enough builds that can slot in abit of extra dps with relative ease. For example Tempest mostly relies on healing modifiers and base healing since it has low healing coefficients. Also htemp only has 2 mandatory traitlines, you can pick either arcane traitline for abit more healing or fire for abit more dps. 

 

Most encounters do not require a full heal setup, aslong as you're willing to swap between fights you can easily slot in extra dps. Still unless you're running 3 hybrids i wouldn't recommend adding healers without any form of quick/alac

[Mell.4873]

6 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

The last time I had the "fortune" to have Healer-DPS Hybrid in a party/squad I was in we had barely any healing, boons and they had barely any DPS.

There little context on what Healer/DPS were in your party. Most of time I see Scourge take this role in fractals.

27 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

In general its just alot more efficient to run alac+quick on support. There are a couple of decent hybrid builds out there, for example you could probably run a hybrid healalac temp, hquick herald and plaguebringer scourge and get decent results

There are also enough builds that can slot in abit of extra dps with relative ease. For example Tempest mostly relies on healing modifiers and base healing since it has low healing coefficients. Also htemp only has 2 mandatory traitlines, you can pick either arcane traitline for abit more healing or fire for abit more dps. 

 

Most encounters do not require a full heal setup, aslong as you're willing to swap between fights you can easily slot in extra dps. Still unless you're running 3 hybrids i wouldn't recommend adding healers without any form of quick/alac

Exactly so for a 5 man, two people run  Quickness/Alacrity DPS while the third does Heal DPS. 

Right now we have normally a Quickness/Alacrity Healer with under 3k DPS. I don't see why everyone can't just be pushing 10k+.

[Zzik.5873]

5 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

There little context on what Healer/DPS were in your party. Most of time I see Scourge take this role in fractals.

Exactly so for a 5 man, two people run  Quickness/Alacrity DPS while the third does Heal DPS. 

Right now we have normally a Quickness/Alacrity Healer with under 3k DPS. I don't see why everyone can't just be pushing 10k+.

Not everyone try to have a perfect rotation with meta build. Some people play ge casually even in endgame. Gamimg aint suppose to be a job where your performance are recorded. As lomg you do your job aka doing mechamic amd not dying, people should be left alone. Its not like gw2 is a hard game amd have tight DPS check. People are way to obsede with number these day. I mean if you like gaming like this more power to you, put dont try to push it into other player if you pug. Im not talking about trolling the group or anything, and honestly 3k you probably exagering, anyone with hybrid support build without following a rotation will do about 10k.

[A Hamster.2580]

20 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

There has been alot of asks especially with Vindicator to let players play exclusively a healer in instanced content. 

Why not open the flood gates for a Support DPS that just heals.

 

I think the type of player that want the current heal vindicator to be accepted into Raids and Strike CM's are the type that would not want to be expected to do DPS. They only want to heal and nothing else. They want the easy carry since they probably think heal output is harder to measure with the current popular meter (It's not. We can tell if you suck at healing).

 

The other point is adding a "healer DPS" would make it harder for commanders to sort out roles. I know there are some that don't want to command because of having to make sure all the proper boons and heals are in place for both sub squad. I think adding another level of complexity in the "healer DPS" would result in less players willing to command a group. Remember when unique boons like Spotter and Banners were part of the meta? It was harder forming groups back then than today if you want to have the "meta" group.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

16 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

There little context on what Healer/DPS were in your party. Most of time I see Scourge take this role in fractals.

Exactly so for a 5 man, two people run  Quickness/Alacrity DPS while the third does Heal DPS. 

Right now we have normally a Quickness/Alacrity Healer with under 3k DPS. I don't see why everyone can't just be pushing 10k+.

In which groups do you see this? Because it's surely not T4 EU, not even in CMs.

[Cyninja.2954]

Simple reason why boon/support healer trumps dps/healer:

- the synergy for defensive supports is usually higher and more flexible versus hybrid damage/healers

 

Splitting your stats, traits and skills 2 way results in mediocre performance for both while splitting between boon uptime of a specific boon and either healing or damage (defensive and offensive supports) will still result in a still top tier healer or  good dps with both maxed boon output.

 

The main reason why heal scourge hybrids work is because they:

- give no mandatory boons worth mentioning

- are insanely overstacked on ressurection utility

- have high barrier output

 

The final reason is role compression. It's far easier and more efficient to distribute boons and healing between 2 classes (offensive and defensive support) versus 3 classes (hybrid heal/dps, 2 offensive supports).

 

Even the ultra safe comp of heal scrg and 2 offensive supports (one in general being herald) is carried by the far to high boon output of herald and the insane carry capacity of hscourge. Still requires a custome setup to run and is far less flexible than all the other dual supports compositions.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

Exactly so for a 5 man, two people run  Quickness/Alacrity DPS while the third does Heal DPS. 

Right now we have normally a Quickness/Alacrity Healer with under 3k DPS. I don't see why everyone can't just be pushing 10k+.

Its still really inefficient in a normal 5 man group. Healsupport usually takes care of all defensive Boons while support dps usually only has offensive Boons. This means either the dps will have to cover these boons or you will still have to run extra concentration to cover the boons resulting in a dps loss for the dps healer. Best dps build for a dps healer will probably be Celestial, but guess what: most of the healsupport especs van do that aswell. 

 

The only reason to actually take a pure heal is if it offers significant bonuses over its competitors. Only healscourge can provide that. So you can pick a plaguedoctor/heal scourge as a niche pick for strikes/raids, but its simply to much dmge loss for fractals/Dungeons heal. The severe lack of Boons of healscourge also makes it a suboptimal pick for solo heal. 

 

Sure you can add a heal only to any team, but in the end you'll simply lose out on ~7k dmge. Its not to bad, but i definitely understand the aversion of the regular pug groups against heal only players. 

[Mell.4873]

2 hours ago, Makuragee.3058 said:

Not everyone try to have a perfect rotation with meta build. Some people play ge casually even in endgame. Gamimg aint suppose to be a job where your performance are recorded. As lomg you do your job aka doing mechamic amd not dying, people should be left alone. Its not like gw2 is a hard game amd have tight DPS check. People are way to obsede with number these day. I mean if you like gaming like this more power to you, put dont try to push it into other player if you pug. Im not talking about trolling the group or anything, and honestly 3k you probably exagering, anyone with hybrid support build without following a rotation will do about 10k.

I agree which is why I don't think a dedicated healer needs to exist in most content rather you can just hybridise everything. 

I mean the most common issue in Raids in having enough support in subgroups or when people die. If everyone is gearing towards contributing something to team, including heals it's not so rough. DPS issues will go away aswell since you won't have people with 3k dps or lower who play pure Healers. 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

2 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

 

I think the type of player that want the current heal vindicator to be accepted into Raids and Strike CM's are the type that would not want to be expected to do DPS. They only want to heal and nothing else. They want the easy carry since they probably think heal output is harder to measure with the current popular meter (It's not. We can tell if you suck at healing).

 

The other point is adding a "healer DPS" would make it harder for commanders to sort out roles. I know there are some that don't want to command because of having to make sure all the proper boons and heals are in place for both sub squad. I think adding another level of complexity in the "healer DPS" would result in less players willing to command a group. Remember when unique boons like Spotter and Banners were part of the meta? It was harder forming groups back then than today if you want to have the "meta" group.

Hmm true but you could always have main Healers on off-Healers. I don't thing that should be to hard to work out. 

Vindicators who just want to heal are a bit silly but from what I played you can easily doing amazing DPS and at a moments notice switch to burst heals. 

[Mell.4873]

24 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Simple reason why boon/support healer trumps dps/healer:

- the synergy for defensive supports is usually higher and more flexible versus hybrid damage/healers

 

Splitting your stats, traits and skills 2 way results in mediocre performance for both while splitting between boon uptime of a specific boon and either healing or damage (defensive and offensive supports) will still result in a still top tier healer or  good dps with both maxed boon output.

 

The main reason why heal scourge hybrids work is because they:

- give no mandatory boons worth mentioning

- are insanely overstacked on ressurection utility

- have high barrier output

 

The final reason is role compression. It's far easier and more efficient to distribute boons and healing between 2 classes (offensive and defensive support) versus 3 classes (hybrid heal/dps, 2 offensive supports).

 

Even the ultra safe comp of heal scrg and 2 offensive supports (one in general being herald) is carried by the far to high boon output of herald and the insane carry capacity of hscourge. Still requires a custome setup to run and is far less flexible than all the other dual supports compositions.

Yeah I can agree with this. 

The same could be said for an Untamed who slots in Spirit of Nature. Same DPS but now you have an aoe resurrection. 

Honestly it's more I see a future where you literally run no healer and just tones are people who can resurrect downed players right away or in the case of Vindicator or Virtuoso keep everyone topped up.

[Infusion.7149]

You're looking for the 20K DPS cele firebrand but you just don't know it.

Haven't seen the benchmarks but there's a cele mechanist healer likely around 20K (at least at EoD launch) and cele is sort of ran on condi alacrity tempest (which is ~25K). Plaguedoctor scourge was ~27K when condi scourge was ~37K , not sure about now.

EDIT: That's not even including any specter builds in general which have sort of fell out of favor nor any celestial variants of renegade that are still around (meta has moved to ritualist).

Edited January 22, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Sobx.1758]

On 1/21/2023 at 10:16 PM, Mell.4873 said:

Exactly so for a 5 man, two people run  Quickness/Alacrity DPS while the third does Heal DPS. 

Right now we have normally a Quickness/Alacrity Healer with under 3k DPS. I don't see why everyone can't just be pushing 10k+.

Sure they could, but saying "that comp is possible" is different than claiming it's "the future of instanced content". Overally I don't see you supporting your initially overblown claim.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

You guys are totally missing the point OP is making.
He's not telling you to let dps healers into your groups.
He's telling a-net this role is a thing, but currently needs more of a push to be viable.

And I totally agree. We already have totally viable dps boon builds that make room for dps healers.
Power quickness Heralds and Scrappers, quickness condi harbs or firebrands - boons need not to be strapped to a healer.

Problem is there's a lot potential for dps healer role but it's always shot down by something.
Vindicators lack free stats that a power dps healer hybrid desperately needs. If not stats then at least strong base values on thier barrier and viktor skills in PvE.

Scourges just recently suffered denial in that role through lowering their base barrier values but increasing healing power coefficients, along with traits that clearly separate healer scourge from dps scourge.

Elementalists are dead on arrival for the role, because to heal they must go into water attunement which has bad damage output by default.

And the list goes on... these are a-net fixes that need to happen not player ones.

[Infusion.7149]

Depends on what you call healing.
A dedicated healer is used because most healing scales with healing power, meaning your heals are dramatically worse if you are on a DPS spec with DPS gear. There isn't a good reason to play a build focused on healing if you are also DPS, at best you use a heal or barrier skill (ritualist specter , warrior with banner of defense comes to mind) if it doesn't cut into a huge chunk of your damage.

Celestial firebrand or seraph firebrand (symbol healing, aegis healing if traited, bow of truth, tome of resolve, mace heals if equipped), celestial alac mechanist (barrier signet, barrier burst, barrier engine, mace autos), condi alac tempest (not overload water but the warhorn skills) , alac specter all give up far less due to role compression.

If the idea is to play plaguedoctor scourge or something akin to that where you only resurrect people and apply barrier which may be redundant with the advent of alac mechanist and alac specter it really isn't suited for most groups anymore. Going for heal virtuoso or heal vindicator would be even worse than that because they do not have the resurrect potential. The same goes for untamed which doesn't even have any ally healing traits or skills: your best use would be Nature's Renewal probably (instead of Strength of the Pack) but I don't see why you would play a DPS untamed with healing skills rather than outright just using alac untamed.

In short it still would be preferable to run a boon support with some healing than a "DPS healer".

[Sobx.1758]

53 minutes ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

Vindicators lack free stats that a power dps healer hybrid desperately needs. If not stats then at least strong base values on thier barrier and viktor skills in PvE.

Scourges just recently suffered denial in that role through lowering their base barrier values but increasing healing power coefficients, along with traits that clearly separate healer scourge from dps scourge.

I disagree scourges somehow "suffered" here, they were simply a great example of what happens when you give the high base values on group sustain you apparently want to once again see brought back. And what happens? Trivializing of everything, stack scourges dps heals and kill everything by default while at the same time outsustanining everything by default. Just... don't do it again. Want to fill some niche "dps heal" role? Great, build for it and have some visible trade-offs instead of "great base values".

Edited January 23, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Mell.4873]

8 hours ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

You guys are totally missing the point OP is making.
He's not telling you to let dps healers into your groups.
He's telling a-net this role is a thing, but currently needs more of a push to be viable.

And I totally agree. We already have totally viable dps boon builds that make room for dps healers.
Power quickness Heralds and Scrappers, quickness condi harbs or firebrands - boons need not to be strapped to a healer.

Problem is there's a lot potential for dps healer role but it's always shot down by something.
Vindicators lack free stats that a power dps healer hybrid desperately needs. If not stats then at least strong base values on thier barrier and viktor skills in PvE.

Scourges just recently suffered denial in that role through lowering their base barrier values but increasing healing power coefficients, along with traits that clearly separate healer scourge from dps scourge.

Elementalists are dead on arrival for the role, because to heal they must go into water attunement which has bad damage output by default.

And the list goes on... these are a-net fixes that need to happen not player ones.

I bit of both columns, for this truly to become a Meta we need both good DPS healing gear and also trait reworks. 

I feel like it's a bit of DnD approach, which is let Healers play the game aswell. Sort of original goal of Guilds Wars 2.

[Beddo.1907]

I'd prefer my healer to completly focus on support, rather than dps and support.

Also no matter how much I look at it, even with better gear distribution, damage, boons and healing will be severely lacking compared to just playing a full dps and healer.

As for the rez spam instead of healing: there is a rez limit before instant death.

[Mell.4873]

14 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

I'd prefer my healer to completly focus on support, rather than dps and support.

Also no matter how much I look at it, even with better gear distribution, damage, boons and healing will be severely lacking compared to just playing a full dps and healer.

As for the rez spam instead of healing: there is a rez limit before instant death.

I never said you couldn't be a full healer especially in Raids/Strikes, but I don't think there needs to be ban on partial healers especially for stuff like fractals CMs where DPS checks are a bit more important.

Anyone that can contribute something other than just DPS should be valued more highly than those who don't.

[Beddo.1907]

16 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I never said you couldn't be a full healer especially in Raids/Strikes, but I don't think there needs to be ban on partial healers especially for stuff like fractals CMs where DPS checks are a bit more important.

Anyone that can contribute something other than just DPS should be valued more highly than those who don't.

Adding 10-20k dps + mediocre boons and healing<skipping an entire mechanic with healing so you don't need to stop.

If you contribute something more in return for not doing your main job, you shouldn't be more valuable.