Player targeted healing

[Cjam.8634]

I’m not a healer by any means but I have tried Druid before and noticed that I can’t target a player and heal them...pretty sure it was all AoE healing? I was just wondering what some of your guys’ thoughts are on this...Anet maybe introduce player-targeted healing? What do you healers think about that?

[Linken.6345]

Why is it needed move your mouse over player and press skills mate.

[Alatar.7364]

I don't see any use for Player Targeted Healing?All Heals that are ment to heal Allies are AoE and Passive target.What would be the use for Player Targeted Healing?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

@Linken.6345 said:Why is it needed move your mouse over player and press skills mate.

That's.. not how healing on the Druid works. Staff is auto on enemies, alot of other skills (e.g glyphs) are PBAoE and only a select few are targetted.

OP: This was actually allowed in beta, you could use the staff without a target, but ArenaNet nerfed it to require an (enemy) target because apparently just healing anyone that you wanted was too overpowered (despite the fact that Engi has this feature in their Medkit already).

The main reason the devs stick to AoE healing is because of no good ally selection system (just the party UI for the most part) and many skills will not cast with an ally selected even if its a support skill or hybrid support/attack skill (e.g most Guardian skills), and the health bars are not visible most of the time,so the whole thing just isn't set up for direct ally healing and this probably won't change for a long time.

[Tolmos.8395]

Interesting... I haven't tried druid healing yet, but I'm guessing it is NOT like elementalist where I can target a player and cast my heal (like staff #3 & #5 in water attunement)? Because I just have "target next player" hotkeyed, pop over to who I want, cast my heals, and go back to what I'm doing.

With druid it has to be an enemy targetted for the spell to be cast?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

@"Tolmos.8395" said:Interesting... I haven't tried druid healing yet, but I'm guessing it is NOT like elementalist where I can target a player and cast my heal (like staff #3 & #5 in water attunement)? Because I just have "target next player" hotkeyed, pop over to who I want, cast my heals, and go back to what I'm doing.

With druid it has to be an enemy targetted for the spell to be cast?

Staff heals require an enemy target and heal in a "beam", with one of the skills even literally creating a healing aura for allies on the enemy itself. Burst heals are usually PBAoE, a few in CA (Celestial Avatar) are ground-targetted but one has a really tiny AoE that its very hard to hit even a single player with much less one that is moving around, so it tends to just get spammed on the group hoping to hit someone who needs it.

In instances where HP bars are visible (raids and fractals), its easier to use them but not by much. And yes, it is a very different type of gameplay from my Elementalist where I can constantly spam heals directly where they are needed even when far away from the group.