Elementalist as a Healer?

[Don Vega Van Kain.9842]

@corwin.3495 said:Well, as you can see in the title, is it possible to build an Elementalist as a healer for fractals/dungeons and to be viable? Or should I just drop this and build a guardian healer?I really like the idea of an Elementalist as a healer and a class. All my characters are damage dealers and I would like to have one support character.I dislike how druids look like, that is why I am in two minds whether to go with an Elementalist or a Guardian.

Tell you a true story, one day, a ranger piss me off with his near 0% healing in fractal, i've take my Tempest, add Minstrel's stuff and till now...everytime we have a problem with healing in fractal, i switch to my tempest and mates don't have even to dodge anymore (Insane healing, the best burst healing in the game imo), all they have to do is to focus in hitting mobs.

Other thing, with tempest you don't have to be near your mates all the time to burst healing ;) a big + with pu groups who runs everywhere.

Ps1: Ppl take Ranger for others boons, his healing isin't that big compared to tempest BUT if u have a bad ranger, you lost boons(not the passive one)s AND healing.Ps2 : use the same build and the same stats in Wvw succefully.

[Emberheart.8426]

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:

@corwin.3495 said:Well, as you can see in the title, is it possible to build an Elementalist as a healer for fractals/dungeons and to be viable? Or should I just drop this and build a guardian healer?I really like the idea of an Elementalist as a healer and a class. All my characters are damage dealers and I would like to have one support character.I dislike how druids look like, that is why I am in two minds whether to go with an Elementalist or a Guardian.

Tell you a true story, one day, a ranger kitten me off with his near 0% healing in fractal, i've take my Tempest, add Minstrel's stuff and till now...everytime we have a problem with healing in fractal, i switch to my tempest and mates don't have even to dodge anymore (Insane healing, the best burst healing in the game imo), all they have to do is to focus in hitting mobs.

Other thing, with tempest you don't have to be near your mates all the time to burst healing ;) a big + with pu groups who runs everywhere.

Ps1: Ppl take Ranger for others boons, his healing isin't that big compared to tempest BUT if u have a bad ranger, you lost boons(not the passive one)s AND healing.Ps2 : use the same build and the same stats in Wvw succefully.

That's good and all but support firebrand is the meta in fractals and for a good reason. You will have just as much survivability due to the sheer damage negation that FB provides, in addition to having better boons. If you look at most other supports, maybe tempest has some sort of place because of high heals, but as long as FB keeps dodging serious nerfs tempest will continue to be a 2nd rate support spec.

Also I am still waiting for fire aura to become useful one day. Right now it only serves to proc aura traits. The aura itself is completely trash and makes no difference anywhere in the game.

[Gamble.4580]

This is what staff support ele feels like in pvp. Nice support but 0 effective dps

No sound for first 6mins for some reason

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Gamble.4580" said:This is what staff support ele feels like in pvp. Nice support but 0 effective dps

No sound for first 6mins for some reason

The most perfect way to play staff sup in spvp. I usto play ele staff in spvp but i stopped when i realized that no matter how many times you might resurrect your teammates, they will still lose xd

I run exactly the same build as yours except i use magnetic shield over armor of earth. Great gameplay man.

[Gamble.4580]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Gamble.4580" said:This is what staff support ele feels like in pvp. Nice support but 0 effective dps

No sound for first 6mins for some reason

The most perfect way to play staff sup in spvp. I usto play ele staff in spvp but i stopped when i realized that no matter how many times you might resurrect your teammates, they will still lose xd

I run exactly the same build as yours except i use magnetic shield over armor of earth. Great gameplay man.

Thank you! Felt I done all right but game was close and both teams done well. Was streaming yesterday had some great games on this and reaper. Never make videos of games so was nice to post some check the necro part of u interested

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Hannelore.8153" said:To people who say the Ele can't give buffs and utility- I disagree.

While their raw boons provided (Fury, Might, Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness, Vigor) are nothing to write home about compared to Quickness and Alacrity, they are still very heavy buffers in small groups that lack other classes, with a single Ele able to keep the party alive, topped up, and at full might and dodges quite easily, not to mention activating the many traits on the various classes that synergise with those boons.

This is also not taking into account the sheer effectiveness of auras as buffs, which while insignificant when triggered from a combo due to their short duration, are a huge advantage to the party when they are near-permanent, especially Magnetic Aura in reflects situations.

People underestimate the advantages of being able to do e.g reflects tactics without worrying about positioning.

The Elementalist, Tempest in particular, is mediocre at everything, except healing and reviving, but when you combine everything they can do on top of that, it makes the party very hard to kill, perhaps the most resiliant possible in the game, and while the builds are notorious for poor DPS, remember that if you successfully carry even one person you've already replaced your entire lost DPS.

---

A few comments on some of the posts here:

• Precision is only a "useless" stat if you don't run water sigils, which require crits for heal.
• My preferred healing gear (from LS1+) is Magi armor, Clerics trinkets, and Zealot's weapons; remember that your healing % modifiers are outgoing only and don't affect you, so having more health can do more harm than good depending on the situation.
• Celestial is still good for Elementalist to have an okay DPS, heals and survival, if you like playing open world or WvW.

Before 2018, I mostly ran pure HPS builds, but since then I'm running a monolithic build, Celestial+max heal%+dagger/warhorn+auras+full rotation. All game modes, 5man, 10man, etc. I want to experiment with a pure HPS build again now that build templates were added, though.

@Waisenpai.6028 said:You don't need tempest heals in pve. WvW everyone is using scourage barrier and FB for heals. Staff heals are just lazy spams but not true damage mitigation or life savers.You don't know what you're talking about here, the Ele has a trait that cleanses conditions when they grant Regeneration which with aura sharing and boons basically turns them into an ultimate cleansing powerhouse for zergs, the heals are just icing on the cake.

Healing Rain is one of the go-to rush defenses in the game, and entire battles can be decided by it.

A lot of people have too many misconceptions about this game because nobody really bothers to do the research and would rather default to a bias as to what they “think” works, when objectively it’s not the case

Running Water sigil for example, is probably the biggest misconception here. Consider that to use water sigil you’d have trade a 10%or 12 % healing modifier. Tempest are capable of pulling out over 6 million (potentially 7 million) healing every 3 minutes. 10% of that is 600k-700k.

Compare that to Water sigil, which if you crit to land a heal 100% of the time will yield only 216k. Unless I’m wrong about the target cap which I’m assuming is 5 players, that’s a 500k difference in healing. So ya, making use of precision is a net negative and it’s why it’s still a pretty useless stat, unless you actually do want to deal some mediocre damage.

Another thing is that Healing Rain is a good skill but I’d hardly classify it as the best healing tool on the kit. It’s a big water field which is what makes it important, but Overload Water Waaay outclasses and had more consistent potential. Water fields have limitations (only 5 allies can blast it and in order to make good use of it you have to be blasting it hard which takes a coordinated effort which usually never happens, even in serious GVG settings.)

Now can you yield good results with it? Yes. But I wouldn’t consider it as defining the outcome of a battle because of how hard it is to reach its max potential (which is 1.8 million over 3 minutes btw, assuming 5 unique players each blast it 5 times.)

I didn't say anything about efficiency, I said Precision was not entirely a wasted stat on healing builds, and even went on to say that i don't recommend gear with maximum Precision and Vitality (i.e, not full Magi's), for a few reasons. As the viability of efficiency calculations regarding direct healing versus outgoing healing are not directly comparable because one of them doesn't affect the Ele while the other does.

And talking about maximum potential in messy skirmishes like its a raid, even if you do all the research and min/max, you're only going to reach anywhere the potential of your build in straight up PvP, and either you don't make any mistakes or your enemy plays very poorly. In WvW, skirmishes tend to be unpredictable, moreso the more players involved, and adaptability exceeds all build potential in less than ideal situations.

I've been playing RvR games since 2007, so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about it.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:To people who say the Ele can't give buffs and utility- I disagree.

While their raw boons provided (Fury, Might, Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness, Vigor) are nothing to write home about compared to Quickness and Alacrity, they are still very heavy buffers in small groups that lack other classes, with a single Ele able to keep the party alive, topped up, and at full might and dodges quite easily, not to mention activating the many traits on the various classes that synergise with those boons.

This is also not taking into account the sheer effectiveness of auras as buffs, which while insignificant when triggered from a combo due to their short duration, are a huge advantage to the party when they are near-permanent, especially Magnetic Aura in reflects situations.

People underestimate the advantages of being able to do e.g reflects tactics without worrying about positioning.

The Elementalist, Tempest in particular, is mediocre at everything, except healing and reviving, but when you combine everything they can do on top of that, it makes the party very hard to kill, perhaps the most resiliant possible in the game, and while the builds are notorious for poor DPS, remember that if you successfully carry even one person you've already replaced your entire lost DPS.

---

A few comments on some of the posts here:

• Precision is only a "useless" stat if you don't run water sigils, which require crits for heal.
• My preferred healing gear (from LS1+) is Magi armor, Clerics trinkets, and Zealot's weapons; remember that your healing % modifiers are outgoing only and don't affect you, so having more health can do more harm than good depending on the situation.
• Celestial is still good for Elementalist to have an okay DPS, heals and survival, if you like playing open world or WvW.

Before 2018, I mostly ran pure HPS builds, but since then I'm running a monolithic build, Celestial+max heal%+dagger/warhorn+auras+full rotation. All game modes, 5man, 10man, etc. I want to experiment with a pure HPS build again now that build templates were added, though.

@Waisenpai.6028 said:You don't need tempest heals in pve. WvW everyone is using scourage barrier and FB for heals. Staff heals are just lazy spams but not true damage mitigation or life savers.You don't know what you're talking about here, the Ele has a trait that cleanses conditions when they grant Regeneration which with aura sharing and boons basically turns them into an ultimate cleansing powerhouse for zergs, the heals are just icing on the cake.

Healing Rain is one of the go-to rush defenses in the game, and entire battles can be decided by it.

A lot of people have too many misconceptions about this game because nobody really bothers to do the research and would rather default to a bias as to what they “think” works, when objectively it’s not the case

Running Water sigil for example, is probably the biggest misconception here. Consider that to use water sigil you’d have trade a 10%or 12 % healing modifier. Tempest are capable of pulling out over 6 million (potentially 7 million) healing every 3 minutes. 10% of that is 600k-700k.

Compare that to Water sigil, which if you crit to land a heal 100% of the time will yield only 216k. Unless I’m wrong about the target cap which I’m assuming is 5 players, that’s a 500k difference in healing. So ya, making use of precision is a net negative and it’s why it’s still a pretty useless stat, unless you actually do want to deal some mediocre damage.

Another thing is that Healing Rain is a good skill but I’d hardly classify it as the best healing tool on the kit. It’s a big water field which is what makes it important, but Overload Water Waaay outclasses and had more consistent potential. Water fields have limitations (only 5 allies can blast it and in order to make good use of it you have to be blasting it hard which takes a coordinated effort which usually never happens, even in serious GVG settings.)

Now can you yield good results with it? Yes. But I wouldn’t consider it as defining the outcome of a battle because of how hard it is to reach its max potential (which is 1.8 million over 3 minutes btw, assuming 5 unique players each blast it 5 times.)

I didn't say anything about efficiency, I said Precision was not entirely a wasted stat on healing builds, and even went on to say that i don't recommend gear with maximum Precision and Vitality (i.e, not full Magi's), for a few reasons. As the viability of efficiency calculations regarding direct healing versus outgoing healing are not directly comparable because one of them doesn't affect the Ele while the other does.

And talking about maximum potential in messy skirmishes like its a raid, even if you do all the research and min/max, you're only going to reach anywhere the potential of your build in straight up PvP, and either you don't make any mistakes or your enemy plays very poorly. In WvW, skirmishes tend to be unpredictable, moreso the more players involved, and adaptability exceeds all build potential in less than ideal situations.

I've been playing RvR games since 2007, so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about it.

Has nothing to do with whether you’ve played RVR since 2007. I’ve been theory crafting since gw1, but that’s irrelevant. it’s about the research you do on the actual game and it’s mechanics

The maximum healing potential of a healing build is directly correlated with how well it can perform. The larger the potential the more you can do with less.

For example; Let’s just say the healing potential of Build A is 1 million healing over 3 minutes, and the healing potential of Build B is 10 million. Let’s say that in order for a person to survive a fight in your squad, they need to be healed for 500HPS

Now let’s say you are in a group of 10 people. Over the course of 3 minutes Build A can heal those 10 people for 100k each (500hps)

Now let’s say you are in this group of 10 people using Build B. with 10million potential, you can heal each player for 1 million over the course of 3 minutes (5.5k HPS)

So you can see that you heal a lot more...but now extrapolate this to 25 people in a group. Build A will heal each person for 200hps, while Build B will heal for 2.2kHPs. Build A can simply not handle healing this group of 25 people, while Build B can.

Again now you have to extrapolate, that instead of increasing the number of players on your squad, you need to scale up the damage being inflicted upon your 10 man squad, So the more incoming damage that your squad receives, (our limit of 500HPS for the group to survive increases) means that Build A won’t be able to compete with Build B against stronger and stronger enemy groups. That’s why Build B is objectively better than Build A. It’s not that you have to fight in ideal situations to evaluate the performance of a build for a specific role...you just need to be able to evaluate the potential of the build so that in situations that DO push your build to it’s limits, you’ll be able to handle the situation.

[Don Vega Van Kain.9842]

@"Gamble.4580" said:This is what staff support ele feels like in pvp. Nice support but 0 effective dps

No sound for first 6mins for some reason

Playing a staff support tempest in pvp AND without a static team u masochist :D

Nice vid anyway ;) love how your mates runing away from ur healing XD

[Gamble.4580]

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:

@"Gamble.4580" said:This is what staff support ele feels like in pvp. Nice support but 0 effective dps

No sound for first 6mins for some reason

Playing a staff support tempest in pvp AND without a static team u masochist :D

Nice vid anyway ;) love how your mates runing away from ur healing XD

Ha! That’s what unranked is for, the madness!! On one of them videos I think there are comments of people actually saying wtf is all the aoe on ground hahahahaha and was avoiding it.

Also the 0 deaths made me laugh as I should of died soooo many times. And that free Rez LOL