Is it possible to do a healer ?

[Romanreaders]

Hey guys, sorry lol, never played this game. Played a lot with WoW and FFXIV. Can we do a healer in this one ? If yes, count me in!

Thx

[SinisterSlay]

Sort of yes. Druid healer build

[JellyRaven]

Yes! Tempest heal is a thing too.

[ϟTrixo-Zawunϟ]

The holy trinity lines in gw2 is really blurry, so you can play as a healer in literally any class (from a more conventional healer in other games like Druid (ranger elite spec), to a more "weird" approach, like Specter (thief elite spec). In fact, this also apply to tanks and dps, same deal; you can even play tank thief with elite spec Daredevil, you use your dodges to tank. Not all builds are meta of course, but definitely viable, specially if you know how to play and theory craft. Give it a shot, its a great game :)

[Mr.Hmm]

Its 100% possible to go full healer in any class since its doable, that said some classes will clearly have a better advantage over others in terms of healing since their kit its 100% more suited to healing/supporting.

The game has load-outs where you can save your specs so you can make a DPS spec and later on make a Heal Spec.

[SAROMON]

Yes, it is possible. Every class can respect to do more heals over time or more healing effect. Supportive with boons too. It very handy in some situations.

[merio]

warrior healer is good meme. but strong!!

[gl7]

sadly it is not a holy trinity game, in fact the healer build maybe more sustain and dps than a pure dps.

[gl7]

you all will be overwhelmed by unknown source of condition that suppose to be ticking dmg but always instant down you, condi are hard to see, melee dmg become easy to dodge.

[A.C.I.D.🌀23]

healing doesnt feel like healing in GW2 imo. It playes more like an DD/Support, i love this game but it has nothing to do with healing in other mmos like WoW, ESO, FFXIV....

[Rontemon]

HQFB (Heal Quick Firebrand)
HAM (Heal Alacrity Mechanist)

End-game 5-man and 10-man instances usually consist of a team like:

3 DPS, 1 Alacrity, 1 Quick (Usually one of the support 'quick' or 'alacrity' will bring heal as well)

Alacrity - reduces team's skill cooldown
Quickness - increases everyone's speed

HQFB and HAM do no damage though because they would have to go with support gear that is the Harrier stat.

Harrier = increases your heals and boon (buffs) duration.

There are also variations that do hybrid damage + quick/alacrity and those usually go with gear like Ritualist (Condition damage + boon duration) or Diviner gear (Power + Boon duration).

I think you will enjoy Firebrand if you like a Paladin-like support character. Firebrand brings tons of support like Aegis and Stability as well.

[Drake]

In GW2, there are no roles. You're supposed to do several things at the same time. instead it's a set of things that are required. Like people will ask you to bring quickness, might, alacrity or whatever depending on your class.
The point of GW2 is that you should be able to do a 5 warrior team if you want to, but each warrior will have a completely different build (some will do more damage, others a certain type of support, another with another type of support, one will do more cc etc.). no class is locked into a type of role.

[miLes]

As a healer, you want to give either Quickness (increases attack/cast speed) or Alacrity (reduces skill cooldown) to your squad members.

Quick healers are:
1. The meta, Heal Firebrand (or a hybrid celestial Firebrand that does both dps and heals, only for experienced players) (Guardian)
2. Heal Scrapper (Engineer)
3. Heal Herald (Revenant)

Alacrity healers are:
1. Heal Tempest (Elementalist)
2. Heal Renegade (Revenant)
3. Heal Specter (Thief)
4. Heal Druid, the original healer spec (Ranger)
5. The other meta, Heal Mechanist (Engineer)

Only mesmers and warriors can't do dedicated heal roles. While they do have access to healer talents/traits, they're not as efficient as the ones listed above.

Scourge support (Necromancer) is an outlier in which that instead of dedicated heals, they provide barriers (temporary HP added onto the base HP) as well as the best resurrect skills. They are the known as the "carrys" since they can often save a raid run from a wipe.

[Fizzee]

As other have said, yes but "sort of" not a hard yes.

The game doesn't exactly use the same holy trinity style of WoW and WoW likes.
depending on what game mode you're playing.
In Raids (PvE) I believe you're mostly trying to ensure all Buffs (boons) are covered and the "healer" builds tend to be builds which are utilised to supply a lot of these required boons.
In World vs World (large scale PvPvE) you usually have a dedicated healer who's roles are to cleanse conditions and keep people healed up.
In open world PvE there is no need for a healer at all.

However, all players have decent self heals and so whilst healers are very much desired, they are not completely essential like they are in most other MMOs

The good news in GW2 is that switching builds is free and can be done any time out of combat. The gear is slightly more difficult, but within weeks of level 80 you'll be able to gear well enough to fulfil any role you desire.

Also once you have fully geared up your character for that build it will never be made redundant. The gear I got 9 years ago is still just as useful as it was then, although it's now been replaced with legendary gear which has same value of stats but lets you choose the stats you want.

[Bralock]

As many have said you can (sorta). It's probably best to think of your options more as DPS and Support as there really are no traditional tanks and everyone has a heal ability. Yes, you can certainly specialize in healing others (some classes/specs are better at it than others) and there will be healing needed for much of the group content (both PVP and PVE.) It's not quite your traditional healer from the games you mentioned, however. Really do recommend you look into it though as you can certainly play for free - though healing/support builds don't really come into effect until end game when you're finalizing your character. With the games you mentioned most people don't specialize in healing until end game there either.

For what it's worth, I also enjoy playing Support in those other games and I enjoy healing in GW2. There are times I miss those other games as it doesn't have quite the same sense of accomplishment, but it is a great feeling knowing that your group survived an encounter because you healed them through it just like other games.

[Drake]

That said, I think (and I'm not alone thinking it) that doing support oriented build even on other types of content is a good thing. First it speeds up the metas, When you have a group of 50, if 10 players are buffing 40 other players (while also killing stuff) you dish you more damage than just having 50 players doing dps. If everyone brings something for the group it works very well. Then it makes you less inclined to just put everything in damage and be closed to doing some support stuff later, you pick up on good habits.
GW2 gameplay is very synergy oriented, adding something is always going to be positive.