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What are the odds of Elementalist becoming a strong/meta healer?


Rico.6873

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Thinking of gearing my Elementalist with ascended gear for fractals/raidingBut I can pick only one option power gear or healing gear/harrier for ascended (also 150 Agony Resistance can only be done 1 time on short term)

For raiding I can always get exotic armor

Anyone can here played dps Ele/heal Ele and can tell me how it is and its strong/weak points?

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No experience really with ele (I could only get a very very squishy build, but I can't really play this class as supposed aka piano playing) but you may want to read into these 2.

Dps (power):

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_PowerDPS(Fractal)

Support Healer:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Support_Healer

I hope these builds are still up to date with the latest patches. Additionally you may want to ask similar question in the Professions > Elementalist forum. I think it also comes down to your playstyle on what suits you best. There may be footage on these builds as well. Optionally you could go into Heart of the Mists (the pvp map with the test golems). The skills will be pvp based but you can test around with stats and weapons there freely.

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Tempest was the strongest healer pre PoT but this was never the point Druid has spotter(+150 precision) and could later generate 25 might in an instead. FB has a lot of boons and its counter part in the meta setup Renegade has a trait for +150 ferocity for the whole group. Tempest has only heal and condi remove which makes him sometimes used as auxiliary heal in WvW maybe sometimes in PvE raids to but that its. Not in fractals

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Tempest healer is perfectly viable.With dagger or scepter + warhorn you can easily share 25 might for 10 man, generate fury with the fire traitline or else extend everyones fury and Keep 100% protection uptime. Asside from that tempest has a super quick revive with the arcane trait that also heals everyone around the downed player, rebound and static charge.

Druid has spotter, but your team can just take precision food to make up for that. It's cheaper than the power food anyway.Druid has frost spirit, 10% damage increase. It's better than static charge, but at least tempest has something.Druid has stone spirit, tempest can keep up 100% protection anyway.Druid has sun spirit, for condi encounters I guess.Druid has entangle, many raid mechanics are made easier because of this skill. Dagger 3 on tempest is also an immobilize, but it's a dash and clunky to use. Doesn't last as long either.

On the other hand! Tempest heals better and has rebound and quick ressing.Druid is better for experienced groups who want to maximise their dps and clear as quickly as possible. Therefore it's meta, most effective strategy available.Sadly a lot of players just see that one line "druid is meta healer" and then just stop accepting anything else. I'd take any healer over a druid who does not know what they are doing. And I'd take a scourge healer or tempest healer over a good druid even, if my party is bad. Because those healers can keep the party alive after every dumb mistake.

Anyway, tempest works perfectly fine as a healer. But whatever you decide to do, please, PLEASE take the time and effort to practise and learn. This goes for all healers. ( dps and boon support too actually)

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@"Nup.4591" said:Tempest healer is perfectly viable.With dagger or scepter + warhorn you can easily share 25 might for 10 man, generate fury with the fire traitline or else extend everyones fury and Keep 100% protection uptime. Asside from that tempest has a super quick revive with the arcane trait that also heals everyone around the downed player, rebound and static charge.

Druid has spotter, but your team can just take precision food to make up for that. It's cheaper than the power food anyway.Druid has frost spirit, 10% damage increase. It's better than static charge, but at least tempest has something.Druid has stone spirit, tempest can keep up 100% protection anyway.Druid has sun spirit, for condi encounters I guess.Druid has entangle, many raid mechanics are made easier because of this skill. Dagger 3 on tempest is also an immobilize, but it's a dash and clunky to use. Doesn't last as long either.

On the other hand! Tempest heals better and has rebound and quick ressing.Druid is better for experienced groups who want to maximise their dps and clear as quickly as possible. Therefore it's meta, most effective strategy available.Sadly a lot of players just see that one line "druid is meta healer" and then just stop accepting anything else. I'd take any healer over a druid who does not know what they are doing. And I'd take a scourge healer or tempest healer over a good druid even, if my party is bad. Because those healers can keep the party alive after every dumb mistake.

Anyway, tempest works perfectly fine as a healer. But whatever you decide to do, please, PLEASE take the time and effort to practise and learn. This goes for all healers. ( dps and boon support too actually)

This is good advice for the raid part of the ops question the fractals tho people seem to want firebrand/renegade comps now

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I've run fractals and raids with support elementalists and, when well-played, they are awesome. However, for a variety of reasons, they aren't often well-played. Because of that, I don't think they'll catch on in PUGs.

Similarly, for experienced groups interested in speed clearing, there are more efficient choices, so I don't see (with current balance) that they'll be strongly recommended by SC or DT. And since the meta is so strongly influence by those two groups, it seems unlikely that tempest healer will become meta that way.

As @Nup.4591 and @Linken.6345 say, practice. Boss Blitz and some of the more intense metas are good opportunities to do so outside the comfort zone of the training room.


You asked about strengths and weaknesses. From my observation, these are roughly two sides of the same coin: the build can offer big heals and big damage mitigation on demand, but not often. Consequently, you have to be able to predict when passive healing is enough, when big heals are about to be needed, and of course, when to mitigate. That means knowing the mechanics really well and knowing the group. You'll play differently in a training group versus PUGs versus static/progression, versus static/efficient. (Of course that's generally true for any support build, it's just that the ele has less wiggle room; scourge, for example, doesn't have to pay all that much attention in most situations.)

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tldr: heal tempest is a niche build that is super powerful at some fights. But druid will probably remain the go to first healer for a long time. Some groups sometimes have two healers and in that situation heal tempest can shine. If you insist on gearing an ele for fractals and raids, go dps.

I play heal tempest every week in my static at some fights. We aren't hardcore, but we aren't casual either. Heal tempest gives a nice safety net to make raiding fairly casual/relaxing.

Is is highly unlikely ele will ever be a meta or even popular healer. However, ele is an incredibly strong healer. In terms of heals per second, I think staff water/earth tempest is probably the highest hps in the game. On the test golem, tempest can outheal the highest pulsing aura easily indefinitely without any boons from anyone. Additionally besides keeping protection up 100% on 10 man easily, tempest can also keep a lot of frost aura up (even further damage reduction). In terms of being able to out heal damage, to me, there is no equal. Tempest is king.

I have even been experimenting with a minstrel tempest tank so that my two chronos can just go 0 toughness at some fights like xera (if your going to have two healers, you might as well have one of them tank). Minstrel tempest tank is faceroll easy. I was initially afraid to tank with literally no blocks on my toolbar. Even at xera, it was a non-issue. Your heals are your blocks, and it works great at a lot of stuff.

But strong healing isn't what makes a meta healer. Because most raids don't have a heal requirement high enough to require max healing. If a group is only running a single healer, the obvious versatile choice is druid. There might be a few situations where you run a soul beast for spirits + some other healer. But if you have to ask a question like this thread, your not in a group like that. It comes down to the fact that druid can provide so many boons and buffs, that ele's higher heals just aren't worth it compared to druids buffs. A druid can give perma 25 might for 10 man, good fury uptime for 10 man, good vigor for 10 man (essential for mirages), good protection for 10 man. All of these boons are made permanent through chronos. Making druid one of the highest dps contributors in a group (indirectly of course, by raising everyone else's dps).

In a comp with two healers, most run a druid + x. Some groups just run 2 druids, this is easy as most healers will gear a druid first. However, 2 druids really only makes sense in a 2 chrono comp, which is getting nerfed every patch. Many classes can fill that second healer role. Heal firebrand, healer scourge, heal renegade, heal herald, heal scrapper, heal tempest. In fact what is best, probably depends greatly on the encounter.

However, as the meta adapts and evolves away from two chrono comps, running a heal firebrand or a heal renegade in the second healer slot (again, only for groups that even want a second healer), becomes the obvious choice. The firebrigade comp is a lot less flexible for the second healer role, and so heal tempest is even less likely as being viable as time goes on.

As I said, I run a heal tempest for my raid static every week. But we don't run that everywhere. For example, at matthias and earth cardinal, a boon thief +heal druid + heal alacrigade is such a strong choice we run that. For the statues event in wing 5, druid has a trait that effects stun duration, and is strategy defining, so of course we have two druids there. And for fights that have really low healing requirements like gorseval (assuming you fast break), I have arcdps build templates to quickly swap from minstrel chrono tank (for vg) to a more dps oriented condi tempest (this allows me to keep up protection while our druid is running frost,sun and air spirits, so that our dps are free to play condi or power on the fights that don't heavily favor one or the other (again we are fairly relaxed, and don't mandate that players run only power at boss x, except the obvious exceptions like power at kc and mirage at largos).

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Saying tempest isn’t a strong healer is like saying firebrand doesn’t give blocks. Tempest is one of the strongest healers In the game.

As far as Meta goes. It depends by the group your with and who your pugging with. In fractals, the best comp for fractal cms is healbrand + divine ren, power soulbeast for spirit. Power banner, power ele/dh.

However just because it’s meta doesn’t mean you can’t clear the cms in a safe and easy manner like the heal ren + firebrand comp.

Another way would be heal temp dagger/scepter, warhorn harrier build. Which does stack enough might for 10 man. + regen + vigor. You can also have stab to the group if using earth trait. Boon/divine chrono. Power soulbeast, banner power ele/dh.

In all honesty Druid is only meta because of spirits + spotter. If tempest is given something equivalent to spotter and spirits, Druid would be easily replaced since tempest defense is fantastic + 25 stacks of might.

Tech you don’t have to run heal temp, you can run boon temp if the groups dps is sufficient enough. Boon temp provides enough defense that you don’t need a healer in fractals.

For example you can do boon temp which provide 25 stacks of might, banner/spellbreaker power warrior, dh/weaver, power quickbrand, divine ren

If everyone is ok in dps. You can pull an easy 50k. But if people know rotations you can hit an easy 60-70k group dps with blocks+defensive boons.

So as far as Meta goes its more of its what people do because that’s what they know. But there’s plenty of sufficient comps to kill cm fractals. And sufficient comps to kill raids. Unless your like Sc, Or LN, or meta, qtfy. Then what truly matters at the end of the day is the kill, and the breeze of getting the kill. So which ever comp that keeps everyone without panic is the comp you should pick. But there’s more then 1 meta. It just depends by the comp and how you use it.

Actually as much as people bash balancing. This day and age with gw2 pve content has given a variety of using different classes and comps that are very well suitable to kill things very close to meta. Unless you are a try hard, then just go for the kill and progress with how to make it easier for your group later on.

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