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Starting to really look into this game but have a question.
Beacker
Member UncommonPosts: 440
in Guild Wars 2
So far I am liking what I see after hearing about it and looking into it. I have yet to try a beta but I did play gw1 and loved it. However I know there is no dedicated healing class. My wife believe it or not loves to heal. So for you people who have played the beta and know all there is to know about GW2 how do you go about making a dedicated healer?
What class has a good heal tree that can be a main healer? Really would like some information on it as I can't find too much regarding this issue. Thanks a ton!
Comments
Guardians and Water Elementalists.
Unfortunatly there is no dediacted healer. There is support-like classes in the guardian that don't do a bunch of damage and give support features like reflect ranged attackes. But for the most part every one keeps themselves alive with there own heals. The elementilast has 2 heals in there water form but they both have a decent cooldown and you can't just sit there and wait for them. If she is into the support type role I would look into a guadian.
Really Guardian? hmm. Which is better for healing of the 2? This leaves me to my next question is warrior work for a tank or is guardian also viable as a tank.
you simply can't make a dedicated healer.
you can make a dedicated support character but you'll be fighting alongside your allies attacking and aiding allies at the same time.
the elementalist for example has several healing abilities in their water attunement and they can drop those on allies to give them some boosts to healing. but in between that they would do well to switch over to other attunements and sprinkle in some more offensive abilities or other kinds of support abilities as well.
one thing to note is you won't have abilities that you'll target your teammates with and use on them constantly throughout a fight. your attention should be focused on the combat as a whole, where your allies and the enemies are, and responding to individual situations. sometimes the best thing you can do will be to support your allies through damage, sometimes you'll be more help by blinding foes at an opportune time, or even jumping in between an enemy and a player low on health and trying to take a hit or two yourself while you have an aegis buff.
there is no such thing though as a simplistic "heal the tank" class.
Thanks. Hmm I don't want to actually have to keep myself alive lol I suck at that. I knew there was no dedicated healer I think that was a bad idea to have taken it out because there are people out there who do just love to heal lol. Personally it is not for me I just wanted to know if some class could viably heal a group if they were spec for heals overall. If that was even possible.
Warriors at high levels(there is a 30 skill trait that adds an AoE heal to all of their shouts. You can spec into shouts, give them 3 shouts, plus their self-heal, etc. There is also a skill that adds regen to banners, but I find shouts a LOT more useful).
Elementalist
Guardian
Engineer(potions, plus there is an entire healing toolkit, and healing turrets)
Ranger
Most classes have some group heals, i.e. the thief has an AoE stealth+heal.
You can still stat and gear and skill your way into some good healing, but let's go over some things first:
I agree, you cannot make a character who will do NOTHING but heal... on the other hand, I can make a character who has 4 active healing skills plus weapon skills which proc heal, etc... So it is possible to have a quasi-dedicated healer... You are just healing while doing other things.
some classes have a few skills that heal, a tiny bit. but there are no "main healers". the game doesnt work that way. everyone is dps/support.
People have already stated there is no need for a dedicated healer and why, thats obvious. But I know you asked for the next closest thing, so here:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/25901-best-healer-build/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing
The skill are pretty straightforward, the main part is traits. If you want a pure healer then focus on traits that will do so.
http://www.gw2builds.org/
Use this to help you out, gives you info on every single skill/trait.
Thanks all for the replies I appriciate it immensly. Guess I will have to preorder 2 digital deluxes so my wife and I can try this last beta weekend to get a feel for it. Hopefully she likes it because as I said she loves to heal lol. She did like the GW1 monk.
Thanks! I gotta say sometimes the MMORPG people come through and are nice at answering questions. I thank you all again for this. Sometimes you ask things and are flamed for them but it must be the GW2 people that are awesome!
hope you guys enjoy it! my wife and i have had so much fun playing together!
and try a few different classes out, i too enjoy support style gameplay but found myself gravitating heavily towards a mesmer whereas i originally planned on playing an elementalist.
maybe because its something that feels very new and fresh!
No problem. I hope you and your wife enjoy the game, and welcome to the community.
Yea I had a mesmer in gw1. I also play a lot of tanks in games so I love that aspect as well as support. I may go with a warrior or a mesmer. Not sure yet.
It's not possible, I do like to heal but healing spells at least with the elementalist have a long cd and is not possible to heal very often what you can do is learn how to support your team no only with heals but also with buffs and that's the closer thing you will have to a healer
Like others have said there really is no dedicated healer. Also to point out there is no taunt in the game at all.
Me and my husband have a lot of fun on our ranger and necromancer. So far there hasn't been much we couldn't handle. We try to trade off aggro and healing duties while doing as much damage as possible. We have found that it takes a lot of mobility to strike the right balance - we both carry both ranged and melee weapons.
I have not played enough of the other classes to go much into depth on the healing ability they have. But basically all classes have some form of group support. Be that buffs or healing, believe it or not, buffs can contribute just as much, if not more to a group staying alive.
I did play the Guardian to 34 and it is a very strong support class. I have been building it to be more of a support/tank over pure damage. I have high Vitality (HP) as well as high Healing (healing from skills).
I use weapons like the Mace and Shield to be able to take damage better, as well as put up barriers to protect my allies. I have skills that warp to people and heal them; AoE bubbles that shield from projectiles, knock back opponents and heals everyone inside; I also have a skill that revives people instantly. It works very well. There are also traits later in the lines that will allow me to give passive healing to my entire group, and other nice things.
You can't really be a dedicated healer, but you can definitely aid your group immensely with a more supportive build. Staying alive is each players responsibility. That isn't to say that buffs and healing can't help with recovery immensely though. The beauty of GW2 is you can pretty much play any character and build them into whatever you want. There is A LOT of customization and things to pick and choose.
Lastly, as others have said, there is no dedicated tank or healer class or even build. Depending on your build, you will be able to take more damage or heal others better, but it won't be enough so people can stand there and get beat on for a long period of time. There are bosses that can and will 1-shot just about anyone. So yea, hope that helps some
Honestly, I would just pick the class you like playing the most (or that you like the feeling of most) and go with that. You can make pretty much anything work in this game.
Healing strength in order:
1. Guardian (Mace/Focus)
2 (tie). Water Attuned Elementalist (Staff) and Ranger (Spirit Elite, Healing Spring, Moa Pets, Heal on Dodge Roll trait)
4. Engineer (Healing Utilities)
The other professions all have a means of healing a group, but it's insignificant compared to the above 3.
Keep in mind as others have said you cannot play a dedicated healer, so none of these professions are going to be able to keep everyone alive in the dungeon that falls on individual player responsibility.
Instead of telling you that you can't really do the whole dedicated healer thing in GW2, I think that the first thing people should have told you is this:
Class roles in GW2 are based around the the core combat principles of damage avoidance. If you can avoid as much damage as possible, regardless of your role, you are going to have a much easier time of things than if you are stuck thinking in terms of the trinity. There just isn't a good analog for the trinity in GW2.
Support can provide minor heals, but honestly it isn't going to be enough for the harder stuff. Support can provide boons, which are many times more useful for survival, such as the toughness boon or the regen boon or the aegis boon or the vigor boon. Boons also help out combat by making you and others hit harder, move faster, and generally do more of everything.
Taking support oriented skills or using a support oriented build does NOT mean you sit in the back dishing out heals and buffs. It usually means you do these things while in the fray, dealing damage and kiting all at the same time.
Control is all about doing what tanks do in the trinity system, which is make sure that enemies don't hit other people. Control doesn't do this by gaining aggro and tanking damage, they do this by slowing, snaring, stunning, blinding, flinging, dazing, and generally weakening the target.
Control is something that goes along with many attacking skills, and is usually a key part of your build. Most builds should run at least a little control imo.
Damage dealing is a job that is done by everyone. The more damage you can do, the shorter fights usually are, and the less damage you are going to be taking. Some people like running glass cannon builds that do stupid amounts of damage, but just as you aren't going to be completely support or control, you aren't going to be completely limited to dealing damage, even with frail glass cannon builds.
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The classes that I like for each roll (each class can perform all roles in some way) are as follows:
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
ArenaNet are not doing without a reason. And though there is alot of people that love to heal, there is alot more people that suffers from having to wait for a dedicated healer because good old trinity just makes you to dependent on them.
But that doesn't mean that you can't have a really good experience i gw2 as a support character. And while alot of things have been mentioned , there is one thing that makes support and healing focused build really good, and thats dying. In GW2 players die alot , and need to be raised. And any character build around being good at raising is going to be "the healer" of a group. Any character can ressurrect , but those build around it do it faster, provides more health and benefit to the target, while even protecting the target while "healing it".
Thats the hidden healer in GW2, and it works well and actual feels really satisfying to play. Often players even takes time to send a thx in chat when brought back to life.
Other already pointed out everything else but I have to add this:
There are no "target" heals in the game, there is no red-bar watching like the monk in GW1. That is, click on someone then click on "heal" to save them from certain death. There are either self-buffs or area buffs that affect a whole area. You can't "save" a specific target with your skills, the only super reliable "save" button is your self-heal, as good as any other support skills are they will never surpass a self-heal (and dodging/getting out of the way)
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
Just a little piece of advice for the OP and his wife. When you play the BWE 3 try what you think you will like first out of the classes (obviously), however if you are not enjoying it dont just turn round and say 'Jesus what a waste of money on a totally crap game' First try a few other classes and races.
In GWs1 my main was a necro and I played it HC for 5yrs, so obviously GWs2 BWE 1 I dived straight in on a necro (Charr) and to my horror I hated it and I thought crap what am I going to do for my online entertainment for the next 5yrs. Anyway I decided as the rest of my guild were still playing on the BWE I would try another class and race just for fun. So I chose a thief (my least fave class from GWs1) and guess what I had an absolute blast best fun I have had in an MMO for years.
Now after getting to grips with the game through the thief I went back and made a human necro in the last stress test, this time I had 4 hours of real Necro madness and enjoyed it more than my thief.
So basically what I am saying is a lot of people are finding some classes really suit the way they play better than other classes and I have never found another MMO where a class choice can be so singular to a person. Once you have found a class that really suits you and you have had some time to experience the game and understand its mechanics a bit more than you may find trying another class alot more fun than it was at first.
Hope this was clear and that you find it helpful advice so that you can have as much fun in BWE 3 as I have been having in the last 2 BWE and stress tests
I agree with this as well. However i would take it a step further and suggest also trying out the different weapon combinations before writing off a class as even a weapon change can have a profound effect on how the class plays. For example: I was entirely unimpressed with the guardian class and didnt find it to be at all fun (despite enjoying playing support classes usually). However once i switched to the greatsword or hammer, i loved it. Suddenly it became a total blast to play for me. On the other hand, i also made a necro and had been playing with build calculators and judging from the skills and descriptions, i totally wrote off using a staff on it at first. But when i played in the bwe and just for the sake of unlocking the skills, started using the staff, it quickly became my favorite weapon and loved the support/aoe build i made with it.
People's suggestions are not incorrect, but it is really not that possible to create the heal spec. At some point you will have to tank and take dmg, and stay back and deal dmg. You will have hard time through the content trying to play support only. Of course you can be heavy support but gw2 allows you to adapt quickly iwth weapon swapping and out of combat skill changing. btw this only applies to pve part of the game (also wvw maybe) but it is nearly a must to be able to fill different roles in sPvP