Suggestions for Heal Warrior improvements.

[HeliosMagi.9867]

I'm loving Staff so far, and both Heal Berserker and Heal Bladesworn are really fun to play. They both however have some key weaknesses that still need some patching up if they want to be competitive with the other go-to healers like Firebrand, Herald, or Druid.

Heal Berserker

Heal Berserker's problems are maintaining Berserk and consistent Adrenaline generation. While adding Adrenaline gain to Staff 2 and 5 helped with the latter, it's no replacement for a proper support-focused adrenaline trait, and Heal Zerker still needs to run Rages to maintain Berserk Mode, which compete with critical utilities like Banners and Shouts. My suggested solution for these problems is the adjustment of two trait:

Heightened Focus: Rework this trait so that it instead gives Adrenaline when granting boons to an ally. EDIT: Also viable to swap this trait's place with Opportunist from Arms.

Eternal Champion: Make this trait extend the duration of Berserk mode when healing an ally in addition to its current effects. EDIT: Another option would be to make Smash Brawler give a 4s duration extension on Rampart Splitter only.

Both of these changes would solve Heal Berserker's biggest problems and make the build far comfier to play.

Heal Bladesworn

Heal Bladesworn's problems is that while it's far more comfortable to play than Heal Berserker thanks to not having issues with adrenaline or upkeeping a state, it instead has the issue of its healing and boon output being significantly lower than Heal Berserker. And the reason for that is our weapon swap being locked to the gunsaber, a weapon with no support value beyond spamming ammo skills for Lush Forest. In addition our Relic is locked to Relic of Febe, as it's our only source of group Swiftness, and we can't provide Vigor at all. No access to Staff F1 means we're denied a large chunk of healing and are reliant on either Staff Autos or Banner of Defense for Regeneration upkeep. My suggestions for big improvements are as follows:

River's Flow: Make the effect apply to outgoing healing in addition to it's current effect.

Lush Forest: In addition to its current effects, make it so that Gunsaber weapon skills apply boons in a radius around the use, including Swiftness and Vigor. Also reduce the internal cooldown from 1s to 1/4s or even remove it entirely, just for comfort.

Daring Dragon: Revert it to it's old version, and instead rework Immortal Dragon to provide Alacrity, Regeneration, and Healing when Dragon Slashing, with the amount healed scaling with number of charges spent.

Edited March 2 by HeliosMagi.9867

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Here is my take:

• Increase the adrenaline gain on Staff 2, to 5 adrenaline per ally healed. That should be more than enough, and keeps it limited to staff where it is needed.
• Increase the Berserk Duration on Primal Burst use from Smash Brawler to 3s, 1s for Decapitate. (PvE only of course)
• Eternal Champion should grant it's effects in an AoE along with Burst of Aggression.
• Unshakable Mountain should grant barrier in an AoE rather than just for the Bladesworn.
• Daring Dragon should get it's old functionality back. The alacrity really should be moved to Spellbreaker, but if it stays on Bladesworn then change out the boon on Immortal Dragon to Alacrity as recommended above.

Staff gets the adrenaline it needs, while non-axe Berserkers get an easier time upkeeping Berserk without being shoehorned into a set utility bar. Berserkers get some extra support boon utility, and Bladesworns get to supplement their lower base HPS with aoe barrier applications.

[Jzaku.9765]

9 hours ago, HeliosMagi.9867 said:

I'm loving Staff so far, and both Heal Berserker and Heal Bladesworn are really fun to play. They both however have some key weaknesses that still need some patching up if they want to be competitive with the other go-to healers like Firebrand, Herald, or Druid.

Heal Berserker

Heal Berserker's problems are maintaining Berserk and consistent Adrenaline generation. While adding Adrenaline gain to Staff 2 and 5 helped with the latter, it's no replacement for a proper support-focused adrenaline trait, and Heal Zerker still needs to run Rages to maintain Berserk Mode, which compete with critical utilities like Banners and Shouts. My suggested solution for these problems is the adjustment of two trait:

Heightened Focus: Rework this trait so that it instead gives Adrenaline when granting boons to an ally.

Eternal Champion: Make this trait extend the duration of Berserk mode when healing an ally in addition to its current effects.

Both of these changes would solve Heal Berserker's biggest problems and make the build far comfier to play.

Heal Bladesworn

Heal Bladesworn's problems is that while it's far more comfortable to play than Heal Berserker thanks to not having issues with adrenaline or upkeeping a state, it instead has the issue of its healing and boon output being significantly lower than Heal Berserker. And the reason for that is our weapon swap being locked to the gunsaber, a weapon with no support value beyond spamming ammo skills for Lush Forest. In addition our Relic is locked to Relic of Febe, as it's our only source of group Swiftness, and we can't provide Vigor at all. No access to Staff F1 means we're denied a large chunk of healing and are reliant on either Staff Autos or Banner of Defense for Regeneration upkeep. My suggestions for big improvements are as follows:

River's Flow: Make the effect apply to outgoing healing in addition to it's current effect.

Lush Forest: In addition to its current effects, make it so that Gunsaber weapon skills apply boons in a radius around the use, including Swiftness and Vigor. Also reduce the internal cooldown from 1s to 1/4s or even remove it entirely, just for comfort.

Daring Dragon: Revert it to it's old version, and instead rework Immortal Dragon to provide Alacrity, Regeneration, and Healing when Dragon Slashing, with the amount healed scaling with number of charges spent.

Having played the heal builds a bunch I largely agree with your Heal Berserker takes - other than maintaining Berserker being an issue. Berserk CD is REALLY short now and it really isn't that big of a deal. If I were to make a change to Eternal Champion (if at all, to save dev time) it would be to have it share the stability it grants to allies, that way you can tactically drop out of Berserk to grant Stab in a pinch. 

As for Heal Bladesworn I actually disagree on a lot of things. Heal Bladesworn played optimally is the opposite of comfy due to timing Lush Forest procs, but when you play it optimally you super juice Staff CDs so hard your healing output is comparable to Zerk. I would rather eliminate the Lush Forest CDR tango entirely and turn the trait into something like "Explosions heal allies in X radius" turning Gunsaber 1/2/3/5 into healing buttons. 

General feedback on Staff though, the Prot on 3 should be moved to Staff 2. Warrior has only 1 other access to Prot in Tactics, and a boon like Prot that you want to sustain permanently should not be on the same button as your GIANT HEAL and EMERGENCY SITUATION AEGIS. 

Also, having Adrenaline gain on Staff 2/5 doesn't feel good. The Warrior gameplay loop has been "spam burst skills off-CD" for years now, and having these periods of terrible Adrenaline between Staff 2 CDs damper on the minute-to-minute gameplay loop of Heal Berserker. The Adrenaline gain should instead be on the last strike of the Autoattack with the exact same stipulation of hitting an ally with the effect, so it's always available. 

 

2 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Here is my take:

• Increase the adrenaline gain on Staff 2, to 5 adrenaline per ally healed. That should be more than enough, and keeps it limited to staff where it is needed.

See paragraph above. This change does close to nothing - if you use Staff 2 -now- you will have enough Adrenaline to use your next burst when it comes off CD. The stuttering adrenaline gain is only an issue between CDs of Staff 2.

[HeliosMagi.9867]

Another solution is to swap Heightened Focus with Opportunist from Arms. Opportunist is actually a fantastic trait for Heal Zerker, making both our Staff and Mace Primal Bursts refund half their cost and adding adrenaline gain onto Staff 4 and Mace and Dagger 3. The only problem is it's in the wrong trait-line.

[HeliosMagi.9867]

Another way to improve Heal Zerker's user-friendliness is to make Smash Brawler give a greater than normal duration extension on Rampart Slitter specifically, like how Decapitate has a lesser effect separate from all the other bursts.

[Infusion.7149]

The Immortal Dragon change would be for the better, even if it is applying alacrity only in PvE. The staff warrior was the only thing I was looking forward to since all the other weapons added this patch don't change much for WvW players.

[HotDelirium.7984]

Staff skill 3 has a great special effect (I think IT should be the burst imo) but like 4 of the skills all have the same heal burst effect. Can't we get different heal effects?