Healing

[kurtis.4736]

Hey all,

So new player coming from WoW to GW2, main a healer for most of WoW looking to do the same here. What recommendations does everyone have? 

[Linken.6345]

harrier firebrand.

[DeanBB.4268]

Healers/support are only needed in certain group content. Check MetaBattle.com for current builds. Otherwise, everyone provides their own healing.

[kurtis.4736]

Just now, Linken.6345 said:

harrier firebrand.

You mean Guardian? then spec into Firebrand?

[Linken.6345]

55 minutes ago, kurtis.4736 said:

You mean Guardian? then spec into Firebrand?

 

Yes

[ASP.8093]

Generally the go-to support class is Firebrand (a specialization of Guardian). You heal people and cleanse their conditions, you give them crucial offensive buffs, you proactively cover some of their mistakes with your defensive buffs like Aegis (negates the next hit) and Stability (prevents them from being CCed).

 

A nice thing about how Firebrand works is you can also get yourself a DPS-oriented gear set and play an offensive build with some strong secondary support abilities. I find it pretty nice because you actually use a bunch of the same skills for both, but you prioritize them differently in play. (Swapping to a different specialization of the same class for your DPS build, like Dragon Hunter, is also easy to do.)

 

There are other classes with potential healing builds (most notably, Druid in 10-player Raids, or Scourge Necros if a group needs *repeated* ressing), but Firebrand is versatile, easy to get into, and in demand across a broad range of content.

[Rasimir.6239]

8 hours ago, kurtis.4736 said:

Hey all,

So new player coming from WoW to GW2, main a healer for most of WoW looking to do the same here. What recommendations does everyone have? 

Welcome to Tyria!

 

For a start, try to let go of the "role" idea the way you know it from WoW. The classes in GW2 are very versatile, and most of the gameplay relies on each character being self-sufficient. As such, every class has abilities to offer group support, some more obvious (like the guardian spec firebrand or the ranger spec druid), others less so but not necessarily less potent.

 

Elementalist (most notably when specced as tempest) and engineer (scrapper spec) can be built to be good buffers and healers, too, and personally I find them very fun to use. Even the thief, which tends to be a glass cannon dd with most players, has interesting support builds.

 

Personally I see guardian/firebrand as the "lazy" support option. It is one most people know and rely on, and at the same time gets pigeon-holed into the support role a lot, despite being able to build into a very good dd, too. You'll have an easier time getting into groups with people that insist on playing "meta" compositions, although meta in this game is less about being the absolute best (or even only) group composition, but rather about people unwilling or unable to adapt to different set-ups.

 

The game really does hand out the tools to make pretty much every class combination work even in instanced group content. Depending on how desperately you want to play that kind of thing (mostly high-end fractals and raids), which isn't nearly as important or played by as wide a part of the playerbase as it is in WoW, you might want to try all of the classes before deciding on a main (or two or three or ...).

 

If you have access to an unused lvl80 ticket, your best bet might be to use that to test-drive all of the (base) classes in lvl 80 content. It will drop you in the Silverwastes with equipment appropriate to the map (not the best, but good enough to check out the playstyle of each class) and you can play around on that map as long as you want before committing to actually boost that character.

 

After you've tried the classes, choose whichever one feels most fun to play to you to learn the game. If you find at one time in the future that high-end fractals and raids (the only kind of content that honestly needs that kind of specialized class setup) is in fact your endgame (which it actually isn't for most of the playerbase) then you'll have gathered enough resources to quickly and easily level and gear another class anyway.