Ranking for healing?

[Obtena.7952]

So we have DPS ranks ... is there something similar for healing?

From what I can gather, as pure healing is concerned, Ele, Druid and ... eng? are top ranked healers? Not much information on this.

[Sister Saxifrage.7361]

Ele has the most raw healing output, but Druid stacks might at the same time which is why it's still the prime healer. Also, a group taking so much damage that a druid can't overheal is probably still doomed with ele's bigger heals. Don't know enough about where rev and engi fit to say anything about them, other than that they work well enough that you run into players occasionally enjoying those builds.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

We have DPS ranks because that's simple to benchmark. (Laborious, of course, but the process is easily described and replicated.)

That's not at all true for healing. Without an ally with 500 missing health, there's no way to measure the difference between 499 healing and 225. So people can only rely on theory backed up by anecdotes.Plus there are not-quite-healing mechanics that hide the effectiveness of healers: regen (and how long it lasts), shared health, temporary health pools, and damage prevention. (That last isn't "healing" in the least, but arguably it's equally important to the reasons that we care about healers.)

---

I think a more useful way to think about healing (and support generally and even DPS) is to consider: what's the goal? And then look for ways to measure effectiveness against that concept. QT & SC and DT benchmarking is all about speedclearing: the goal is clear, more deeps = more better. Everyone can be assumed to understand mechanics and avoid damage.

But the goals for PUGs or non-speed statics is different, sometimes substantially (sometimes marginally). Some groups don't get all the mechanics so including some healing is almost required to sustain the DPS of the rest of the group. Some groups really have trouble, so dedicating healing is worth considering.

I think it's more important to consider why you want more heals first and then spec to meet those goals. Generally, in GW2, you want to bring as much DPS as the team can afford to have. Everything else you bring is to help afford more.

[Obtena.7952]

So would it make sense to ask the question "what do you think about this healing build?" Frankly, my goal is to get the best healing for the least fiddling with class mechanics. I'm also not very familiar with Ele or Druid, so it would be nice to play a class I'm more familiar with.

I've been looking at Engi, but then again, I'm just shooting blindly: I have little idea of what kind of performance it will give for healing or damage. It could be garbage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnsTBdpilXBGpC0ehFDjKMAGn8juxf8LXc/Ch/D-jxhXAB1oEkedAAs/gdXAAEU+F6DAwf1fIFgXLAA-e

Is this just one of those things I have to try? Someone must have looked at these classes and determined what ones are 'good healers' in various situations?

[Lilian.4729]

As far as I was told when I asked this on the GW2 Reddit Discord..

People seems to think: Druid > Revenant > Ele.. Firebrand fits in there somewhere. Druid seems to be the preferred healer because of the Might stacking. Revenant itself has very powerful heals with Ventari. Ele has strong heals as well, but I think it falls a little short from the two.

[Knox.8962]

A quick breakdown of healing viability would look something like this:

Druid - Very solid healing and easily the strongest DPS buffs for healers. Provides massive quantities of Might, Fury, CC, Ranger Spirits. This is the healer most people are probably familiar with. It is a jack of all trades healer that provides great DPS buffs to a group. If you run with a single healer for a group, it should almost always be a druid. However, adding a 2nd druid provides FAR less utility than the first druid does.

Tempest - Best AoE healer in the game easily. Soothing Mist provides 600 radius heals to 5 players (and if pulled outside of the main group, can easily maintain stacks on 7-8 players. This is a fabulous pug healer because the large AoE of Soothing Mist makes it nearly impossible to avoid the healing provided by an ele. They provide great defensive support, but limited offensive power. They do have the ability to alternate between damage and healing to some extent, but still with limited damage throughput.

Rev - Highest Throughput healer with some limitations. Revs can stack up HUGE healing modifiers (over 2x the effect on outgoing healing) and are able to provide extremely high healing throughput because of that. They have limitation in that the heals are largely centered around tablets or spirits and they struggle to keep up with healing when people are spread out rather than stacked up neatly. Provide large uptime alacrity and some might and prot. Renegade spirits provide non-trivial DPS increases even for pure healing setups. The Renegade Elite spirit completely trivializes some mechanics.

Firebrand - Great sustained AoE healing and defensive support. Great access to blocks and condition clears. Can provide every boon in the game. Struggles somewhat to heal groups as they spread out as many of the tools are PBAoE or cone shaped. Incredible ability to tank while healing. Can provide group Quickness.

[Sephylon.4938]

Healing engi is lackluster. Healing kit does not work at all due to skills 2-5 dropping only 1 item for 1 person to use, leading to people having to compete for your buffs, and its 1 skill has such a low healing factor, you'd need to have every buff in the game on all your allies when you heal them to make it worth using. Healing turret would be more useful as not only does it apply regen to 5 people, it also provides a water field, and doubles as a blast finisher. Also elixir U will only grant quickness to you as toss elixier U will randomly cast wall of reflect or smokescreen, neither of which is a desired result, only place I can think of where you might use it is bandit trio to help against the snipers at the start. I prefer elixir B since it grants stab and has a 50/50 chance to grant a desirable boon to your allies (3/4 if your ally is a dh/weaver) and grants might if traited. I personally prefer elixir gun over medic gyro for condi cleansing. It's an extra blast finisher, an extra heal on 5 and tool belt. Compared to medic gyro which pulses condi cleanses and is more likely to get pathing problems, or just outright die from aoes. Bulwark gyro is fine, just pray it doesn't find a pebble in its path. As for mortar kit, the more water fields the better, just have your finishers ready. If your group is good, you shouldn't have any problems playing heal engi, otherwise, it's a safety net with very large holes in it.

editforgot to mention, med kit 1 heal allies in a very small cone infront of you; imagine pre buff guardian mantras, only smaller.

[Henry.5713]

Any rankings people could give you are going to be subjective and rather situational. Different builds shine in different places. This is just as true for support and healing builds as for anything else in this game and we are strictly talking about (instanced) PvE here:

My own subjective view on the rankings (number of > indicates the size of the gap between builds):Healing by itself: Tempests > Druids/Firebrand/Revenant - but greatly depending on the situationHealing and support/utility: Druid >>> Firebrand > Revenant > Tempest

Most could make a case for their favorites depending on the situation. Many continue underestimate the firebrand in PvE. However, everyone who is not in denial will tell you that nothing comes close to the druid in terms of their level of versatility and utility (both offensive and defensive) alongside good healing.Might stacking is an important feature but only the tip of the iceberg if you look a the bigger picture. Spotter, Sun Spirit, Frost Spirit, (Stone Spirit), Glyth of Empowerment, Spirit of Nature, Allies' Aid trait, utility defined by your choice of pets like good CC next to the stuff that is not unique such as party wide fury, regeneration, etc.

[Obtena.7952]

Seems that until more work is done, I got 4 class choices to work with ... and none are Engi. Kinda sucks. Thanks for the answers.

[FASTCAR.7831]

Ele is best by 10 fold. Not even close

[Sephylon.4938]

nice necro. Btw as of late, a buff to engi med kit made what I said up there obsolete

[reikken.4961]

This is a really old post

But some people think druid is on top because of might. It's not. The other healers can keep up 25 might too, and druid used to not even have might stacking capability at all. Druid is on top because of spirits, spotter, and CC. Also Glyph of Empowerment for bursts.

[LadyKitty.6120]

As someone who's actually raided on all healbuilds, Kitty would rank them followingly (in order of keeping squad from wiping):

1. Heal-engi
2. Heal-tempest
3. Heal-scourge/heal-FB
4. Heal-renegade
5. Lingering heal-druid
6. Magi's chaos chrono
7. GotL druid
8. Heal-warr
9. Heal-thief

[Rodrick.1942]

@"LadyKitty.6120" said:As someone who's actually raided on all healbuilds, Kitty would rank them followingly (in order of keeping squad from wiping):

1. Heal-engi
2. Heal-tempest
3. Heal-scourge/heal-FB
4. Heal-renegade
5. Lingering heal-druid
6. Magi's chaos chrono
7. GotL druid
8. Heal-warr
9. Heal-thief

Thx for your personal experience about healing class rank :+1: .Here I also want to share a story , few days ago I joined a pug t4 , which is also looking for healer. When I told them that we can find druid or fb healer, the chrono dude immediately ask me " please enlighten me why we need FB" and started to list the reason why we only need druid ( I know , I know).

I was trying to show him that we should have more options since its hard to find healer at that moment ,and we look for a healer to prevent us from wiping , not for dps competition . But that chrono dude act as if he'll die if he didn't see the spirit on the ground...

In the end I left that group as he started to yell at the pug druid for not heal him ( he was stand on the condition aoe which is dropped from champion golem in chaos fractal ), trolling and really don't respect others.

[Talindra.4958]

Very subjective. Also depends team build .. druid can do it all.. if the group is really good, they don't need pure healer at all. So that's why no one cares for benchmark for healing ... Support role can be omitted in some party.. if you ask me which one good for healing, I'd say rev. I play druid and used to auramancng in early days raid. I also think necro as support is good too.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

I have never done raids, but in my experience it's far easier to heal pugs that try their hardest to avoid my healing with engineer than with my druid.

[Henry.5713]

@Sephylon.4938 said:nice necro. Btw as of late, a buff to engi med kit made what I said up there obsolete

@reikken.4961 said:This is a really old post

But some people think druid is on top because of might. It's not. The other healers can keep up 25 might too, and druid used to not even have might stacking capability at all. Druid is on top because of spirits, spotter, and CC. Also Glyph of Empowerment for bursts.

Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.

Additional, I quite disagree with Kitty's ranking but as I already mentioned before: Any rankings people could give you are going to be subjective and rather situational.You'd have to create a study on each encounter with different builds and party compositions, while playing each of these healing builds perfectly. Not going to happen.

[reikken.4961]

@Henry.5713 said:

Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.

only druid and deadeye can target 10 allies for mightthis may or may not be important for your group

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Henry.5713 said:Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.They may have been aware of it, but the change accomplished nothing. Nerfed druid healing is still sufficient to do your job. Besides, I think that spirits now are worse offenders to healer diversity than might is.

[Sephylon.4938]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Henry.5713 said:Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.They may have been aware of it, but the change accomplished nothing. Nerfed druid healing is still sufficient to do your job. Besides, I think that spirits now are worse offenders to healer diversity than might is.

Spirits and banners need to be shared with other especs imo, problem however, is stacking. If the new bannet and spirit stacks with the old and are just as good, those especs would become mandatory. To fix that, you'd have to make sure they don't stack, amd considering the sphagetti code of gw2, that'd prob break alot of things

[Walhalla.5473]

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Henry.5713 said:Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.They may have been aware of it, but the change accomplished nothing. Nerfed druid healing is still sufficient to do your job. Besides, I think that spirits now are worse offenders to healer diversity than might is.

Spirits and banners need to be shared with other especs imo, problem however, is stacking. If the new bannet and spirit stacks with the old and are just as good, those especs would become mandatory. To fix that, you'd have to make sure they don't stack, amd considering the sphagetti code of gw2, that'd prob break alot of things

Perhaps a solution would be to change either banners or spirits so both are giving out the same buffs. Like Sun Spirit and strengh banner both either giving 10% increased damage or giving the stat bonus, without stacking on each other so a sun spirit AND strengh banner wouldn't give 20% increased damage together. So you could choose for either bannerslave or druid for that job.

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Walhalla.5473 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Henry.5713 said:Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.They may have been aware of it, but the change accomplished nothing. Nerfed druid healing is still sufficient to do your job. Besides, I think that spirits now are worse offenders to healer diversity than might is.

Spirits and banners need to be shared with other especs imo, problem however, is stacking. If the new bannet and spirit stacks with the old and are just as good, those especs would become mandatory. To fix that, you'd have to make sure they don't stack, amd considering the sphagetti code of gw2, that'd prob break alot of things

Perhaps a solution would be to change either banners or spirits so both are giving out the same buffs. Like Sun Spirit and strengh banner both either giving 10% increased damage or giving the stat bonus, without stacking on each other so a sun spirit AND strengh banner wouldn't give 20% increased damage together. So you could choose for either bannerslave or druid for that job.

Sounds like a good idea. That would also have the beneficial effect of lowering overall raid damage, countering power creep a bit.

[apharma.3741]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Walhalla.5473 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Henry.5713 said:Is there any other build that can up 25 might on 10 players reliably and all by themselves? There are many might sources but there is only one GOTL. That has not changed. Nerfing avatar healing while introducing the new choice between GOTL and LL shows that the devs were quite aware of that fact.They may have been aware of it, but the change accomplished nothing. Nerfed druid healing is still sufficient to do your job. Besides, I think that spirits now are worse offenders to healer diversity than might is.

Spirits and banners need to be shared with other especs imo, problem however, is stacking. If the new bannet and spirit stacks with the old and are just as good, those especs would become mandatory. To fix that, you'd have to make sure they don't stack, amd considering the sphagetti code of gw2, that'd prob break alot of things

Perhaps a solution would be to change either banners or spirits so both are giving out the same buffs. Like Sun Spirit and strengh banner both either giving 10% increased damage or giving the stat bonus, without stacking on each other so a sun spirit AND strengh banner wouldn't give 20% increased damage together. So you could choose for either bannerslave or druid for that job.

Sounds like a good idea. That would also have the beneficial effect of lowering overall raid damage, countering power creep a bit.

You would see people ditch warriors for dps whenever warrior is not considered top dps. Druid will still remain mandatory, if the change was made today nothing would change except warrior is no longer mandatory as Druid now provides every buff while stacking might for 10 and doing some top up healing with CA.

Also for healing I’d say rankings are

Heal tempest/FB.Rev close behind.Druid with LL.Everything else.

Ele can sustain 10 players with insane sustained healing and it’s rezing power is unmatched even by FB. FB gives out as much maybe a bit more healing as well as damage prevention and important boons like aegis, stab, resistance and through tomes can cover tons of mechanics has a Rez with mercy signet but much longer cool down than eles geyser and trailed geyser.

[Grimjack.8130]

For pure healing purposes, Renegade is unmatched. The order is something along the lines of Renegade, Tempest, Engineer, Firebrand, and then Druid. I'm not counting anything else they do, this is purely Healing Per Second. Including whatever else they do, Tempest is # 1 for support purposes.